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Bush family and S&L Scandal pt2
The basic actions of Neil Bush in the S&L scandal are as follows:
Neil received a $100,000 ''loan'' from Ken Good, of Good International, with no obligation to pay any of the money back.Good was a large shareholder in JNB Explorations, Neil Bush's oil-exploration company.Neil failed to disclose this conflict-of-interest when loans were given to Good from Silverado, because the money was to be used in joint venture with his own JNB. This was in essence giving himself a loan from Silverado through a third party.Neil then helped Silverado S&L approve Good International for a $900,000 line of credit.Good defaulted on a total $32 million in loans from Silverado.
During this time Neil Bush did not disclose that $3 million of the $32 million that Good was defaulting on was actually for investment in JNB, his own company.Good subsequently raised Bush's JNB salary from $75,000 to $125,000 and granted him a $22,500 bonus.Neil Bush maintained that he did not see how this constituted a conflict of interest.Neil approved $106 million in Silverado loans to another JNB investor, Bill Walters.
Neil also never formally disclosed his relationship with Walters and Walters also defaulted on his loans, all $106 million of them.Neil Bush was charged with criminal wrongdoing in the case and ended up paying $50,000 to settle out of court. The chief of Silverado S&L was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail for pleading guilty to $8.7 million in theft. (Keep in mind that you can get more jail time for holding up a gas station for $50.)Today Neil Bush is working on closing a deal in Florida, where his brother Jeb is governor, to sell a software package to schools with his startup company Ignite.
Update 11/28/2003: Some of Neil Bush's business deals have been exposed in his recent divorce case. For more on this see:
www.truthout.org/docs_03/112703A.shtml
www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/01/26/neil_bush/index.html
It should also be noted that shortly after news of Neil Bush?’s involvement in the S&L scandal hit the press his father, George Bush Sr., announced the Desert Storm campaign in Iraq, which subsequently had the result of making Neil?’s name quickly fade from the headlines. In addition, while Neil Bush's divorce proceeding were exposing more backroom Bush dealings, America was once again bombarded with war propaganda for Operation Iraq Freedom.
By friends of the bush dynasty
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Bush family and S&L Scandal pt3
The S&L scandal is by no means the only incident of questionable, and actually illegal, financial activity that the Bush family has been involved in. The line of questionable, illegal, and unethical businesses practices goes back at least to Prescott Bush Sr., George Bush Sr.?’s father. Prescott Bush was a Senator from 1952 ?– 1963. Previous to his time as a Senator Prescott was a banker and businessman. Prior to the American entry into WWII Prescott Bush was director of Union Banking Corporation. Union Banking Corporation helped to finance Hitler?’s regime. The Concentration Camps of Nazi Germany were labor camps that the Nazis used to make products for their regime as well as for sale to raise money. Prescott profited directly from the Auschwitz labor camp.
In 1942, after Hitler declared war on America the United States government seized the Union Banking Corporation under the Trading with the Enemy Act as a front operation that was supporting the Nazis. Much of the profits from the operation were already pocketed by Prescott however, and $1.5 million was put in a trust fund for George Bush Sr.
For more on Prescott Bush's ties to the Nazis see:
www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html
www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2
The issues of WWII will be revisited again later.This is actually just the tip of the iceberg as far as the Bush family and business dealings are concerned, the topic is a book in itself. In the interest of brevity I invite you to research the Bush family business ties yourself, including those in Saudi Arabia, where George Bush made millions as an oil well developer, and George Bush?’s $14 million deal when he sold the Texas Rangers, while leaving tax payers footing the bill.
www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm#rangers
For information on Prescott Bush Jr.'s economic ties to China see:
www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002/02/19/usat-prescott-bush.htm
By friends of the bush dynasty
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Spy plane standoff heightens pt1
3 April 2001
The collision of a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet in the South China Sea has exacerbated political and military tensions between the two countries. The incident, while apparently accidental, comes in the context of US diplomatic provocations and on the eve of a decision by the Bush administration on whether to sell advanced US anti-missile and air defense systems to Taiwan.
The US EP3-C turboprop, a plane about the size of a Boeing 737 jetliner, crossed paths with two Chinese air defense jets while it was engaged in electronic spying southeast of the island of Hainan, China's southernmost province. The EP3 was monitoring Chinese military communications, while the two jets were monitoring it, in an exercise in mutual surveillance that was a staple of the Cold War and still continues between the United States and China.There is no way to determine independently what actually took place in the collision. Chinese officials say that the EP3 suddenly veered to its left and struck one of the two F-8 jets, the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet MiG-21. US officials claim the collision was the fault of the Chinese, citing the greater speed and maneuverability of the F-8s compared to the slow and heavy EP3, with its load of sophisticated electronic gear and crew of 24.The F-8 plunged swiftly into the sea, with the pilot presumably killed. The EP3 sustained damage, forcing it to make an emergency landing on Hainan, where the crew and the plane have been detained. Press reports indicate that none of the US crewmen was injured either in the collision or the landing.
The initial reaction of the Pentagon and the Bush administration was strident and aggressive, with President Bush demanding that US officials be allowed to meet with the crew of the captured spy plane and the military brass demanding that the plane be considered US territory, that the Chinese authorities refrain from boarding it and that they extend diplomatic immunity to the crew.
The likely death of the Chinese pilot was treated callously, with only a perfunctory statement that US ships and planes would be available to participate in the search for his remains. Meanwhile, in a saber-rattling move, the US Navy diverted three destroyers that were passing through the region en route to the US Pacific coast from the Persian Gulf, and ordered them to the waters off Hainan.
By Patrick Martin
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Spy plane standoff heightens pt2
Subsequent statements toned down the harsh rhetoric, particularly after Beijing announced that US officials would be allowed to see the crewmen some time on April 3. State Department and Pentagon spokesmen both admitted that the collision was unintentional on the part of the Chinese.In this incident the US has once again assumed its standard posture of the aggrieved party, even as it arrogantly asserts its ?“right?” to deploy military and intelligence forces around the world, intruding into air space and waters claimed by targeted nations. In an unusually frank article published April 2 in the web edition of Time magazine, entitled ?“Is It Really Any Wonder that the Chinese are Sore Over Spy Plane??”, writer Tony Karon presented a picture of how the incident would look to the US if the roles were reversed:
?“Imagine a Chinese plane flying a surveillance mission off the Florida coast colliding with a Navy F-16 sent on an aggressive monitoring mission. The Navy fighter goes down and the pilot is lost; the Chinese plane is forced to land on US soil. The incident occurs at a moment when China is about to supply a package of sophisticated weapons to Cuba (possibly including the very same model spy plane now in US hands); is planning to deploy a missile shield that would neutralize the US nuclear arsenal; and has signaled that curbing US regional ambitions it to become the organizing principle of its military doctrine. Imagine further that the incident comes two years after Chinese bombs had destroyed (albeit inadvertently) a US embassy in Europe... It's unlikely Americans would feel in a particularly forgiving mood, either.?”
The region off Hainan and the mainland provinces of Guangdong and Fukien have long been a potential flashpoint. US spy planes regularly fly up and down the Chinese coast from Air Force bases in Okinawa, patrolling the Taiwan Strait and the northern part of the South China Sea, which contains a number of small islands whose sovereignty is disputed between China, the Philippines and Vietnam.
According to US press reports citing Pentagon officials, naval intelligence operations in the western Pacific were retargeted in 1992, with China supplanting the former Soviet Union as the top priority. The EP3 and similar spy planes collect data for US Navy aircraft battle groups. Hainan is a particular focus, since it is covered with military bases due to its strategic location at China's southernmost point.
There is an eerie resemblance between the military situation today around Hainan and that prevailing at the Soviet offshore island of Sakhalin in 1983, at the time of the KAL 007 incident. The Korean passenger jet was shot down by Soviet air defense fighters after it deliberately flew over Sakhalin, the site of numerous Soviet military bases, as part of an operation coordinated with US intelligence agencies. A US spy plane similar to the EP3 was flying on a parallel course, shadowing the KAL flight, and observing the responses of Soviet radar installations and air bases.US demands for diplomatic immunity for the crew of the EP3 contrast sharply with the American government's treatment of those it claims to have caught engaging in espionage. Just last month the Bush administration ordered the expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats and trade officials, an extraordinarily disproportionate retaliation for an alleged Russian intelligence coup in the case of Robert Hanssen, an FBI counterspy arrested for working for the KGB and its successors.
As a matter of international law, the US claim is more than a little dubious, since diplomatic immunity does not apply automatically to all employees and agents of a foreign government. This is particularly the case when the agents, as in this case, did not enter China with the permission of the Chinese government.
By Patrick Martin
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