Petits débats sur Echelon
S'exprimant à Bruxelles alors que son gouvernement préside l'Union européenne, le ministre portugais de l'intérieur, M. Fernando Gomes, affirme qu'il n'a « pas de doute sur l'existence d'un système d'interception des télécommunications». Difficile en effet de continuer à se voiler la face quand l'ex-directeur de la CIA James Woolsey lui-même confirme l'« honnêteté intellectuelle » du rapport sur le système Echelon présenté au Parlement européen par le journaliste britannique Duncan Campbell.
Echelon est le produit du pacte Ukusa, signé au tout début de la guerre froide par les Etats-Unis et le Royaume-Uni - qui furent rapidement rejoints par le Canada, l'Australie et la Nouvelle-Zélande. L'écoute et l'analyse routinières des conversations téléphoniques, fax et courriers électroniques permettent de rapporter vers la National Security Agency (NSA) américaine quantité d'informations, secrètes ou non, concernant l'ensemble des domaines d'intérêt stratégique : données économiques, stratégies des décideurs, milieux concernés par tel ou tel enjeu, etc.
Au fil des découvertes se dessine une formidable machine de contrôle, secrète et d'une envergure fascinante (1). Au Parlement européen se posait une question centrale : les échanges de données pratiqués par les services de renseignements d'un pays membre de l'Union (les services britanniques principalement) peuvent-ils conduire à l'espionnage des citoyens et des entreprises européennes pour le compte de services américains ? A Washington, le Congrès s'interroge sur la surveillance par la NSA de citoyens américains - une pratique qui serait contraire à la Constitution. Qui espionne qui et au nom de quoi ?
Mais la nature d'Echelon soulève aussi d'autres questions. Ce réseau est construit sur les « échanges » d'informations entre services de renseignements de différents pays. Echanges inégaux, bien sûr, les services alliés étant largement dépendants de la NSA (qui décide ce qu'elle prend dans les données collectées chez ses partenaires et choisit ce qu'elle leur répercute). Echanges systématiques, surtout, qui de plus peuvent se dérouler à l'insu des gouvernements concernés - comme a pu en témoigner l'ancien premier ministre néo-zélandais David Lange (2).
Si bien souvent les militaires motivent leur coopération internationale par la « lutte contre le terrorisme », faut-il leur faire grâce d'une définition de ce terme ? Considérer, par exemple, que la collaboration du Bundesnachrichtendiest (BND) allemand avec le Service fédéral de sécurité (FSB, ex-KGB) russe pour l'échange d'informations concernant les « terroristes tchétchènes » relève d'un très normal échange de bons procédés (3) ? Accepter sans débat le fait que la Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE) française entretienne des contacts étroits avec la NSA depuis... les années 70, portant notamment sur des échanges de technologie (4) ?
Les récentes révélations sur les agissements des services européens sont à rapprocher de l'arrogance avec laquelle l'ancien directeur de la CIA pointe, comme justification d'Echelon, la corruption pratiquée par les entreprises européennes pour conquérir les marchés extérieurs. L'Europe, qui pourrait à bon droit considérer Echelon comme une agression d'une gravité exceptionnelle, hésite à poursuivre ses investigations. Car elle pourrait alors se trouver confrontée à des questions identiques à celles qu'elle souhaite poser à la NSA. Conjuguées aux pressions britanniques, ces craintes ont eu raison du projet de création d'une commission d'enquête, repoussée le 13 avril 2000 par la conférence des présidents du Parlement européen.
(1) Si fascinante que de nombreux mythes circulent à son sujet, et notamment, sur Internet, une « liste des mots-clés interceptés par Echelon ».
(2) Dans sa préface au livre de Nicky Hager, Secret Power, New Zealand's Role in The International Spy Network, Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson, Nouvelle-Zélande, 1996.
(3) Collaboration revendiquée par la partie russe et (faiblement) démentie par le porte-parole du BND (Libération, 14 avril 2000). Rappelons que le dirigeant tchétchène Djokhar Doudaev fut abattu, en avril 1996, par une roquette probablement pointée sur... son téléphone satellitaire.
(4) « Le secret embarras des Français au sujet d'Echelon », Le Monde du renseignement, 16 mars 2000.
source: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/dossiers/echelon/
September 7, 2006
About Those Nazi Appeasers
Bush Family Values
By MICHAEL DONNELLY
It's astonishing to see how desperate our homegrown fascists have become. The entire cabal is in full-on media blitz mode with Rummy, Dick and Theodosius, er, Bush slamming their foreign opponents with the latest absurd tag "Islamic Fascists;" and, their domestic ones as "Nazi appeasers." Or, in the deranged mind of Condi Rice; domestic opponents are tantamount to folks who would have stopped the Civil War and allowed slavery to continue in the South.
It's not just desperate; it's monumentally moronic, given the real history. This bizarre trip on the Wayback Machine demands a deeper look--though don't look to the mainstream media. Given the opening, one would think that everyone by now would be fully informed that the Bush Family took "Nazi appeasement" to far greater heights and were actually part of an American faction of documented Nazi SUPPORTERS.
We're also unlikely to see much mainstream media analysis of the new "Islamic Fascist" branding of those opposing the Empire's designs on the Middle East. As Sir Winston Bush gets a media pass as he tries to conflate fascism, communism and Islam while also trying to ironically tie his criminal wars to WWII and the Cold War, it warrants our own trip on the Wayback Machine to see just what the Bush family was doing during those earlier "good wars."
Samuel Bush: arms merchant
George W. Bush's great-grandfather, Samuel Bush was charter member of the military/industrial complex. In 1918, he was chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section for the War Industries Board, with oversight responsibility for Percy Rockefeller's Remington Company. Rockefeller had helped get Bush's son, Prescott into Yale and Skull and Bones in 1916.
A 1926 Senate Munitions Inquiry (the Nye Committee) into the military/industrial complex's WWI windfall examined Samuel Bush's dealings with Remington as part of his War Industries Board duties. Virtually ALL of the records of Samuel Bush's efforts were destroyed by the National Archives "to save space."
Prescott Sheldon Bush; George Herbert Walker: Nazi collaborators
George W. Bush's grandfather, former Connecticut Senator Prescott S. Bush was a Wall Street banker with Brown Brothers Harriman. (Averill Harriman was also instrumental in getting young Prescott into Yale and S&B.) Bush's maternal grandfather George Herbert Walker was the bank's first president. Walker built the famed Bush family estate at Kennebunkport on Walker Point. Prescott Bush joined W. A. Harriman & Company in 1926 and became its CEO.
Harriman Bank was the official Nazi financial conduit in the US. Closely tied to Fritz Thyssen, who proudly claimed in his 1941 book "I Paid Hitler" that he was the Nazi Party's first and greatest financial backer. The Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was a subsidiary of Harriman created by Walker and it was used for Nazi financial matters. Thyssen provided 100,000 gold marks ($10 million in today's dollars) to the Nazis in 1923 just prior to Hitler's failed putsch. By 1941, UBC held a private Nazi stash of over $3,000,000 ($36 million in today's dollars) in its New York vaults.
After the war, a Treasury Department investigation reported that during the two years after the Stock Market crash; "Thyssen dedicated his fortune and his influence to the single purpose of bringing Hitler to power. In 1932, he arranged the now famous meeting in the Düsseldorf Industrialists' Club, at which Hitler addressed the leading businessmen of the Ruhr and the Rhineland. At the close of Hitler's speech, Thyssen cried, `Heil Herr Hitler'. By the time of the German elections later that year, Thyssen had succeeded in eliciting contributions to Hitler's campaign fund from all of the big industrial combines. He himself is reported to have spent 3,000,000 ($30 million today) marks on the Nazis in 1932 alone.
During 1933 Thyssen served as intercessor between von Hindenburg, von Papen, and Hitler. He brought them together at a secret meeting which laid the basis for the appointment of Hitler as Reichschancellor."
It was Thyssen, not Prescott Bush as some now claim, who was called "Hitler's Angel" by the New York Herald Tribune. He later fled Germany in 1939.
Even though Hitler had declared war on the US, it was still legal for UBC to conduct finances for the Nazis. But, after Pearl Harbor that outrage finally changed. After another ten months of Bush/Harriman/UBC work for the Nazis; in November 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, all of the Harriman business interests were seized by the government, including UBC.
The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war and then quickly returned. Prescott Bush' interest in UBC consisted of One Share--worth $1,500,000 ($19 million in today's dollars) at the time UBC was disbanded in 1951. (The Harriman family garnered $4 billion!) It was the money used to start the Bush Family Texas oil empire.
Another Harriman subsidiary through Silesian Holding Co.; Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation saw the Harriman-Bush group owning one-third of a complex of steel making, coal-mining, and zinc-mining activities in Germany and Poland. The other two-thirds were owned by Wehrwirtschaftsführer (Military Economy Leader) Friedrich Flick. Silesian Holding Company's president was George Walker and its sole directors were Prescott Bush and Averill Harriman.
Silesian Steel used slave labor from Auschwitz (even before the concentration camp was built there) in its coal, iron and zinc mining operations. At Nuremberg, Flick was sentenced to seven years for Silesian's role in building up the Nazi war machine. Harriman, Bush and Walker were never charged.
June 14, 1940, nine months after the Nazis conquered Poland, the IG Farben Company opened an Auschwitz factory and slave labor camp in occupied Poland, to produce artificial rubber and gasoline from coal. This was done in a partnership with Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company (EXXON).
The millions made off the labor of hundreds of thousands of Nazi victims were inherited by William S. Farish III, grandson of William S. Farish, the head of the IG/Standard cartel. Farish III is George H.W. Bush's best friend and the person who took over Bush's assets and managed them in a blind trust after Bush was elected vice-president.
Investigator John Loftus has said, "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman to be prosecuted for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."
I've yet to take the Wayback Machine back to investigate Rice's whopper that decrying the carnage of the U.S. Civil War meant supporting leaving Slavery in place. But, I'm pretty certain that the same unsavory links to what John Trudell calls, "the colonial industrial class" were just as odious in the 1860s.
MICHAEL DONNELLY has numerous family members who fought in WWII against the Nazis while the Bush family was enriching themselves collaborating. He can be reached at pahtoo@aol.comhttp://www.counterpunch.org/donnelly09072006.html
part one part two.
Aux victimes du 11 Septembre: nous ne vous oublieron JAMAIS.