A great primer for DUers still getting to know the Bush Family Evil Empire

[blm]

Buzzflash Interview with Robert Parry is an easy to read and understand how everything happening today is just a CONTNUATION of the Bush family's criminal dealings using the cover of government.

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/10/int04054.html

Investigative Reporter and Author Robert Parry Plumbs History, Unearths the Roots of the Bush Dynasty

Bush was allowed essentially to walk off into the sunset with his reputation intact -- when there was a potential from all four of these investigations to have implicated the Senior Bush in misconduct....

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW | Part 1 | Part 2

America lives in a historical vacuum, empty of context and devoid of truthful reporting, especially when it comes to contemporary events. The corporate media cares little about actions or words from the past. As a result, Americans are left with a disjointed view of reality -- with no context.

But a new book by veteran journalist Robert Parry, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, gathers the fragmented pieces of the past into a disturbing picture of how the Bush family figures in the major scandals of the past 30 years. Robert Parry, an award-winning Washington journalist for 27 years, broke many of the stories now known as the Iran-Contra Affair while reporting for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. His well-researched and "just the facts ma'am" style prose connects the dots on the Bushes -- many of which will surprise you.

If you ever ask yourself, "How did America get here?" then you simply must read this book. It gives the clearest, most concise history of contemporary politics -- including Watergate, the October Surprise, the Iran-Contra Affair, the arming of Saddam Hussein, U.S. support of death squads in Latin and South America, the birth of the right-wing media, the witch hunt of Bill Clinton, Al Gore’s unfair shake from the press, Bush’s failure on September 11th and Bush's lies to invade Iraq.

In 1995, Robert Parry started Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc., and consortiumnews.com, the Internet’s first investigative magazine where he continues to research and write in-depth articles as editor. Parry also maintains an astonishing archive and clearinghouse for information on the Bush Family and a running list of scandals and corruption long forgotten by most of the media.

Robert Parry epitomizes the eloquent quote from Czech writer Milan Kundera: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

We are pleased to bring you Part 1 of our interview.

* * *

BuzzFlash: Your new book is called Secrecy & Privilege, The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. It traces George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush’s rise to power in the context of major scandals and events over the last 30 years. You state at one point that American politics has fundamentally changed because of the two Bush administrations, and the most important thing is -- I like this quote -- “how information, the sustenance of democracy, is rationed to the American people, and how the government leads the people." In other words, there’s a disconnect between what the Bushes say and what they do.

Robert Parry: Right. The book tries to show how the U.S. got where it is today in terms of its dysfunction with information, with the use of fear, and the incredible use of dishonesty in the political debates. It shows, going back 30 years to the period of Watergate, how that has evolved.

At the time of Watergate, at the time of The Pentagon Papers, right after the Vietnam War, there was a more skeptical, more vibrant Washington press corps. The public seemed more alert in terms of deceptions that the executive branch, in particular, could bring to bear in getting the country to war. What happened? How come 30 years later we’re at a point where a president could lead the nation to war using information that even he now admits was wrong? Why wasn’t there a more skeptical press? Why wasn’t the public more alert to these kinds of deceptions?
>>>>>>>>>

[porphyrian]

1. Kick. - n/t

[Gman]

2. Supplemental reading:

Fortunate Son

[HCE SuiGeneris]

3. Kicking. Always good to know your enemies. n/t

[shain from kane]

4. Add eugenics, Nazis, and JFK assassination.

[blm]

5. If only an investigative reporter had been following the Bushes back then the way

Parry has been for the last 30 years.

Maybe there was and he was disappeared.

[happydreams]

6. K&R. Thanks for sharing this.

:hi:

[hootinholler]

7. Is Der Fishy really Robert Parry?

Has anyone seen them Octafish and Parry together?

-Hoot

[blm]

8. Heh - - no. Octafish's timeline usually begins with JFK assassination.

Parry hasn't gone that far back as far as I know.

[hootinholler]

15. I thought it began with Prescott n/t

[blm]

16. Oh definitely - Octafish's MODERN DAY timeline usually starts w/JFK, though, as

most DUers can recognize the events and Poppy Bush's personal involvement has a clear start there.

[hootinholler]

20. Prescott begat Nixon...

Nixon begat Poppy, Rumsfeld and Cheney.

-Hoot

[blm]

21. I think Nixon was more a smokescreen while Poppy was manipulating behind

the scenes.

[hootinholler]

22. Nixon was a protege of Prescott

Poppy in turn, was a protege of Nixon. Landed the CIA Directorship about that time and Ford brought in Rummy and Cheney, sent Rummy to go dick with the DOD as SecDef.

-Hoot

[passy]

9. This theory of JFK's murder is quite interesting

if only just for the background history on these sons of bitches
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2928756561478705121&q=jfk+2&hl=en

[Junkdrawer]

10. The Safari Club....

...the program accesses information from a VERY important new book “Prelude to Terror” by Joseph J. Trento. In this book, the author sets forth information about the Safari Club, an “outsourced” intelligence network in which the Saudis financed a privatized espionage establishment that dominated American intelligence operations for the better part of a quarter of a century.

Utilizing the Saudi GID and the Pakistani ISI as proxy agencies, this network ran the Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and Afghan mujahideen efforts. The most significant outgrowth of this network was the birth of al Qaeda, with all that has resulted from its conception. One of the points that Trento makes is the fact that outsourcing U.S. intelligence operations eliminated the necessary function of counterintelligence—monitoring one’s allies in order to verify their loyalty and competence.

The failure to conform to this basic tenet of intelligence has haunted the U.S., and will continue to do so. It is important to note that the elder George Bush and the Reagan administrations were at the core of the Safari Club. The Safari Club was specifically created to circumvent Congressional and even Presidential oversight!

...

http://www.spitfirelist.com/f522.html

[JackRiddler]

11. Rec & Kick for the courageous and great Robert Parry. n/t

[Cha]

12. Recommended and Bookmarked~

Thank you, blm, for the excellent "primer" from buzzflash. I love the buzz!

"Why wasn’t there a more skeptical press?"

They wanted the ratings..also to boost the fascists they put in power. They're scared to death of the Dems and The People. They'd rather America go under than state the facts about our Climate Change and our hardworking Democrats..and I'm not talking about the democratic losers club.

The press has blood dripping from their collective pages.

[blm]

13. Further - the press work for the fascists now and have been for 20yrs, at least.

.

[MN ChimpH8R]

14. Kick

fascinating, terrifying and undoubtedly true

:kick:

[formercia]

17. One ring to bind them all..

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/10/int04054.html

Robert Parry: If you go back to the Watergate period, and the period right after the Vietnam War, you had a very demoralized Republican Party. And you had an essentially shattered conservative movement. They had lost not just the White House; they were the minority in the House and the Senate. They’d lost a lot of seats in the '74 election in particular. They’d been faced with a popular movement there that they could not really deal with, and they felt it undercut them. They felt that the press was hostile to them. But they decided the world they saw was a very weak environment.

Now what they did about it is very important. They started building in their own institutions. A person who was the Treasury secretary under Nixon, William Simon, plays an important role here. He starts pulling together these conservative and right-wing foundations, and they begin making strategic investments in media, in think tanks, in attack groups. They build effectively their own establishment in Washington and make it heavily focused in Washington, which is their key point.

So they begin to counteract very aggressively what they see as this hostile situation. It starts relatively modestly by some standards. It's in the tens of millions of dollars, but then it accelerates. After the Reagan-Bush victory in 1980, the Executive Branch gets behind this effort.



http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.sh.htm

William E. Simon - CNP dates unknown; CFR; is or was a trustee of the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation 24... He is president of the Olin Foundation, a major funder of rightwing groups.... He ... was on the Council for National Policy,... Simon is a member of the elite, conservative, lay-Catholic group, the Knights of Malta--an anticommunist group very active in Central America... He headed the short-lived Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, a group founded specifically to provide assistance to the Nicaraguan contras... He also served on the advisory committee for AmeriCares, the major recipient of contra funds from the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund. AmeriCares not only supported the contras, but has been implicated in manipulation of the internal politics of Nicaragua... Simon was a board member of the Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America (PRODEMCA), another member of the contra-support network... Simon has been connected with other rightwing groups including the media watchdog, Accuracy in Media 25 ; the think tank, the American Enterprise Institute 26; and the lobby group, Committee for the Free World...; He is a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies 27 Co-founded with Irving Kristol the Institute for Educational Affairs.

[blm]

18. That section really should make people take notice. Democrats whine about

election coverage AND blame the candidate for it. That is why the left never built up any media machine of their own this entire time. They were too willing to LIE about each other and blame good people instead of the press that lied about them nonstop.

If Dems had looked at what happened to Gore and chosen to TAKE ON THAT BATTLE AGAINST THE MEDIA, then 2002 and 2004 would have been cakewalks for them.

Instead, they selfishly placed all blame on Gore and did NOTHING to take on the media. Hell, they never even took on the battle to fix the election fraud problems after 2000. Why? Because some establishment Dems didn't WANT Gore in office and wanted him neutralized, so they went along with the smearing of him - he must've been too honest for them. Then the same thing happened to Cleland in 2002 and Kerry in 2004.

[formercia]

19. A well oiled and finely tuned machine

The Great Wurlitzer.

They try to make it look like indivdual attacks but it is all very well coordinated.

[formercia]

23. More on the Knights of Malta

If they were just an advocacy group, that would be one thing, but they're into right wing terrorism too:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=491841&mesg_id=491901

[formercia]

26. The NWO connection:

http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/organisations/Le_Cercle.htm

In 1986 CIA director William Casey, a member of Le Cercle and a Knight of Malta, began organizing a large scale anti-Soviet resistance operation in Afghanistan, which would last until the end of the war in 1988-1989 (90). His Saudi counterpart, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, another member of Le Cercle, financed a large portion of this operation (91). The BCCI has been named as a main conduit for all these undercover transactions. It was set up by Agha Hasan Abedi, whose membership in the 1001 Club indicates he was accepted by the British aristocracy (92). The by now well known Cercle president Julian Amery was an advisor to the BCCI in the 1980s (93).

The 61
In the early 1970s the CIA was heavily criticized for its role in the Vietnam War and Watergate. Reporters and investigating committees began looking into the agency and soon plenty of stories emerged about domestic spying, infiltration of the media, subversion of foreign governments, assassinating foreign leaders, and large scale experiments with mind control. Some revelations were highlighted more prominently than others. Additional doubts were cast on the CIA 's role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the midst of all these reports, measures were taken to reduce the autonomy of the CIA. The ban on domestic spying was re-enforced while Congress and the Senate received far more influence over the appointment of CIA officials and the distribution of the CIA's budget. They requested numerous briefings and decided which clandestine operations were or weren't allowed. The CIA was not allowed anymore to subvert any foreign government or assassinate any leader it felt like. Authorization from Congress became mandatory. Furthermore, it was also largely prohibited from working with questionable characters to gather intelligence or aid in their coups.



This didn't fall well with many intelligence chiefs and associates like Brian Crozier. They claimed the CIA's (human) intelligence gathering and intervention capabilities had been destroyed almost completely; and even more so after Admiral Stansfield Turner in 1977 started to force half of the CIA's anti-Soviet staff into retirement. Crozier and his Cercle-associates went looking for a solution and came up with the idea to establish a transnational secret intelligence agency of their own. For security reasons this group initially didn't have a name, but within a few months it became known to insiders as The 61 (or more correct, 6I). Its purpose, according to Crozier:

--snip--

[H2O Man]

24. Nominated.

I strongly recommend that DUers read Robert Parry's books "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & Project Truth," and "Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq." Both can be found at:

www.consortiumnews.com

[blm]

25. He paid attention to the details and links that no other journalist dared to notice.

.

[H2O Man]

27. Yes, he did.

And time has shown that he was correct. His works are of increasing value.

[blm]

28. Could be why some folks are using Dem forums to question his integrity.

They want to stop more people from connecting the dots of the last 40 years.

[Gregorian]

29. This has given me a thought about why there is less skepticism.

I find this an extremely interesting subject. I swear that quote about memory is something I also came up with independently.

Perhaps the lack of skepticism is due to the fact that more Americans are born in this country now. Before, many of the people who lived in America came from despotic regimes. They were immigrants who knew and came from nondemocratic politics. And now we have generations born into comfort and security. And there is seemingly no reason to worry. No reason to even care or pay attention. It's just a thought.

[blm]

30. It doesn't help when the media becomes just an arm of the fascists in government.

They are used to distract, not inform.

[Gregorian]

31. I'll say. It IS a rather concerted effort.

But I've had this conversation before. And I always end up realizing that I wasn't fooled. You weren't fooled. I think we need that sociologist again. Hello!

Wouldn't something as silly as a single bullet theory cause all kinds of massive skepticism? Or those wacky Reagan years. And many of those were pre-dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine. Although I admit there wasn't much in the way of news immediately upon arrival of the "great communicator".

I guess there will always be fools to fool. Maybe it's just how many. It's all so foreign to me since I come from a world of actual humans. Humor, culture, architecture, science, and reality. I am beginning to wonder about people. NO, I've been wondering a long time. But I digress from my digression.

[blm]

32. Part of the distraction is the focus on the unimportant and mundane by the media.

All emotion, no critical thinking. Completely dumbed down American audiences.

Elections are ALL about abortion and gays dontcha know? Nothing about civil rights, human condition, world peace, fair salaries, dontcha know?

[AtomicKitten]

33. My thoughts on Robert Parry.

It is not incumbent upon those at DU to hate those you hate and worship those you worship, blm, particularly since your range of emotion seems to register diametric opposites and most people enjoy the middle ranges in their thought processes.

However, for those that feel compelled to stand behind your raised banner of righteous indignation or fawning adoration, it might be helpful if you provided DU with a comprehensive list of who you hate and those you love so the lines can form in an orderly fashion.

Your not too veiled accusation that "some" are trying to denigrate Robert Parry is yet another exaggeration lobbed to persuade and mislead. I, in fact, constitute the "some" in your latest endeavor to herd the Heathers behind your banner, I who had the audacity to suggest that Parry while once an investigative journalist in the true sense of the word has evolved into more of an opinion journalist, which is fine but let's call a spade a spade.

Case in point is his attack on Bill Clinton, essentially blaming him for not singlehandedly taking down the BFEE. This accusation is punctuated with poorly sourced, i.e., single anonymous sourcing, to "prove" that theory. You in turn gleefully painted your banner with that accusation and carry it around DU as if it is fact. Your campaign to muddle together the work he once did and that he is doing now is done for the sheer purpose of bamboozling people into just taking your word that Parry's opinion about Bill Clinton is correct.

That, in fact, disrespects people here at DU. It is as manipulative as it is dishonest. People are entitled to think for themselves and not to be manipulated away from the critical analysis of a theme you have taken on as a crusade. You organize boycotts and attacks of people that even question that which you declare is fact, and you post homage threads to cover up the breathtaking blaming of Bill Clinton; anything but honest discussion because god forbid anyone take an unemotional look at the specious accusations Mr Parry has made against Bill Clinton.

No, this isn't a question of anyone trying to diss Mr. Parry. What this is really about is shining a light on some of the accusations he makes proffering anorexic sourcing that are passionate but reek of opinion. That sunlight has never cast a shadow on the tremendous work he has done in the past. That sunlight simply removes the emotionalism from your/his view of Bill Clinton and restating the purpose of genuine investigative journalism as opposed to hit pieces. I'm afraid just despising Bill Clinton isn't a good enough reason to try to bring someone to their knees. You and Parry are free agents to continue in that vein, but it is not up to you to declare that the specious accusations made are unequivocal, undeniable fact.

No worries, blm. Carry on with your crusades to organize and lead the thought process here at DU. In your efforts to cultivate one point of view - yours - I sincerely hope some people are brave and honest enough to move away from the herd.

[bobthedrummer]

34. Your highly biased positions are well known by old time DUers, AK

but gifted investigative journalists like Robert Parry (along with the work of others like him both living and deceased) won't be shunned by those of US that research all open sources for the truth.

I hope you don't mind me responding to a post that you intended for blm, who I respect as a person seeking the truth above all else.

Truth seekers and truth tellers won't be distracted just because of your pissing and moaning.

A criminal and/or network can be of any or no political affiliation-eom.

on edit: my biases are known too and many of them have been found to be correct over the past six years.

[AtomicKitten]

36. the irony of your assessment

... is that seeking the truth is being discerning and not just believing a writer because he did some great work before.

I do not pick up a torch and pitchfork because I am told the intended target is deserving. When a journalist weaves poorly sourced innuendo and his own opinion into what he writes, it ceases to be investigative journalism.

While Bill Clinton is most certainly an imperfect human being and leader, Parry goes over a cliff with his breathtakingly scorched earth accusations. If you are satisfied to take his word for it, that's your prerogative. Just know that that makes you highly biased toward believing everything you read and me the one being discerning; get that part straight.

I say seek the truth, the real truth, the unvarnished, unemotional truth. And especially if it's nasty business, prove it with reliable sources so the reader knows it is not just the gratuitous grinding of an ax.

On edit: To illustrate, I'm also not a big fan of a couple albums Elvis Costello put out although he is still one of my favorite all-time artists. That's the difference between being discerning and honest and just being a fan.

[blm]

38. Read Clinton's own book - His own book proves he took no actions that were needed

to fully reveal Poppy's crimes of office through the access he had to needed documents.

[mtnsnake]

35. Thanks for posting this. It's disgusting how far some will go to crucify Bill Clinton

only because they have a personal grudge against on of both Clintons. What's surprising is how many people make believe they buy that opinionated Parry shit just so they can jump on any anti-Clinton bandwagon that cruises by.

Good job, AtomicKitten!

:yourock:

[blm]

39. Where were you when Parry defended Clinton for years? Y'know, after 9-11 it became

crystal clear that it happened BECAUSE of decades of Poppy Bush's machinations in that region under the guise of US government.

After 9-11, we should have learned as a NATION that silence about what led to the attack that claimed thousands of lives, and probably led to the loss of a million more in Afghanistan and Iraq is just too costly.

You want Democrats to go back to just PRETENDING that Poppy Bush and his cronies are just decent, homorable public servants because Bill Clinton decided BushInc should not be held to account?

At what cost? Bush2, 9-11, Iraq war, and RW Supreme Court wasn't costly enough for you?

[blm]

37. No one expected Clinton to do anything singlehandely - considering all the YEARS of work

and investigation put in by others, Clinton's decisions and role would have been pretty darn easy.


BTW - Do you own a mirror?