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--
Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major
General Smedley Butler, USMC.
War
is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as
something that is not what it seems to the majority of people.
Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted
for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I
believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If
a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble
with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over
here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent.
Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I
wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy
investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should
fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the
Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is
blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies,
its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain
men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss"
Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It
may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison.
Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four
months in active military service as a member of this country's
most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all
commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And
during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class
muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.
In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I
suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure
of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never
had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental
faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the
orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the
military service.
I
helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil
interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for
the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in
the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the
benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I
helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of
Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped
to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During
those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a
swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given
Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his
racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
Brown
Brothers and the Bush connection...
George
Herbert "Bert" Walker and Prescott Bush (1895-1972): US
Government seizes assets for alleged ties to Nazi Germany
Summary:
In
1942, the US government charged Prescott Bush with running a Nazi
front group in the US.
In
1900, Bert Walker founded the banking and investment firm of G. H.
Walker and Company. In 1924, while G.H. Walker was
also the president of Union Banking, which is located in the
offices of Averill Harriman's company (W.A. Harriman & Co.).
(Harriman is a dominating figure of US politics at the
time; a sort of one-man Heritage Foundation.) At this time
Union Banking has ties with Fritz Thyssen, the German
industrialist who is financing Adolf Hitler's infant political
party.
In
1926, Bert Walker makes his son-in-law Prescott Bush vice
president of W.A. Harriman. According to
confidential, unnamed sources, Loftus and Aarons say that in the
1930s Union Banking becomes an "out-and-out Nazi
money-laundering machine."
Walker
made millions for his clients by investing in Germany's economic
revival. He left W.A. Harriman in 1931 to concentrate
on G.H. Walker, with Prescott Bush staying behind at Harriman.
Harriman
merged with Brown Brothers, making the firm ‘Brown Brothers,
Harriman.’ Prescott Bush was made a senior partner.
Walker also set up a deal for Union Banking to take over the North
American operations of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, a cover for I.G.
Farben's Nazi espionage unit in the US. This shipping line
smuggled in German agents, propaganda and money for bribing
American politicians to see things Hitler's way. A holding
company was set up to mask another holding company, the Harriman
Fifteen Corporation. The directors of this company were
Averill Harriman, Bert Walker and Prescott Bush.
In
1934 an employee of Walker's, Dan Harkins, blew the whistle on the
Hamburg Line to Congress. A 1934 congressional investigation
alleged that Walker's Hamburg-Amerika Line subsidized a wide range
of pro-Nazi propaganda efforts both in Germany and the US.
At this time Prescott Bush hired a young lawyer named Allen Dulles
(later to head the CIA) to help hide the firm's assets.
The
Roosevelt administration began to investigate Prescott Bush and
Bert Walker. Finally, in 1942, the US government
charged Prescott Bush with running Nazi front groups in the US.
Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, all shares of the
Union Banking Corporation were seized, including those held by
Prescott Bush as being in effect held for enemy nationals. A
few days later two of Union Banking's subsidiaries were seized.
.
(Sources: The Secret War Against the Jews (John Loftus and Mark
Aarons, 1994, St. Martin's Griffin; and Webster G. Tarpley and
Anton Chaitkin's George Bush: the Unauthorized Biography at http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm
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