How Did Jack Ruby Enter The Dallas Police Station Basement?

A number of people have claimed that prior to his silencing of Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963, Jack Ruby was escorted into the Dallas Police Station basement in Dallas’ City Hall by Dallas Assistant Chief of Police Charles Batchelor, via the elevator. Coincidentally, during the March 31, 1964 testimony of Dallas Police Lt. Jack Revill before Warren Commission Assistant Counsel Leon Hubert Jr. the following exchange took place:

Lt. REVILL: Prior to the shooting…He arrived at city hall at 9:30. This preacher’s name is Ray Rushing…He came to the city hall and went to the third floor, and—by the way, he rode up on the elevator with Jack Ruby, now…Rode to the third floor…This preacher was one of the people that we located and he related this story to me, that he rode up on the elevator with Jack Ruby on the morning of Nov. 24…

Mr. HUBERT: In other words, Rushing says that he rode up with Ruby on the morning of the 24th, prior to the shooting?

Lt. REVILL: Yes, sir…

Mr. HUBERT: Did he say whether he had any conversation with him?

Lt. REVILL: He talked about the weather. I asked him.

Mr. HUBERT: Did he say whether he was—whether he saw Ruby there afterwards?

Lt. REVILL: He said he [Ruby] turned to the right and—went up to the third floor and, after arriving on the third floor, he [Ruby] turned to the right and went to the administrative office and talked to Chief Assistant Batchelor.

(Downtown 4/1/92)

Next: Mass Media Coverage of JFK Assassination Probe-Related Deaths

Did LBJ Know JFK Was To Be Eliminated In 1963?

In his book, The Texas Connection, Craig Zirbel asserted that according to former President Johnson’s “girlfriend of over 20 years, Madeline Brown, Lyndon Baines Johnson told her prior to President Kennedy’s assassination that Kennedy was going to be killed in Dallas” and LBJ “knew in advance but did nothing.” Zirbel also wrote that “according to Johnson’s motorcade seatmate, Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough (who smelled gunpowder near the grassy knoll), at the exact time of the assassination Johnson had his ear up against a small walkie-talkie held over the back seat listening to the device which was `turned down real low.’”

Coincidentally, in her early 1990s book, JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, Jean Hill also recalled that a Dallas motorcycle cop who escorted President Kennedy’s car on Nov. 22, 1963—J.B. Marshall—told her the following, after President Johnson was inaugurated:

“According to the guys who were escorting his car in the motorcade, our new president is either one jumpy sonofabitch or he knows something he’s not telling about the Kennedy thing…

“They say he started ducking down in the car a good 30 or 40 seconds before the first shots were fired…I’d say that’s just a little peculiar, wouldn’t you?...

“…One of them told McGuire he saw Johnson duck down even before the car turned onto Houston Street…

“…This guy said it sure looked like he was expecting bullets to be flying…”

(Downtown 2/3/93)

Next: How Did Jack Ruby Enter The Dallas Police Station Basement?

City Planning Commission's Amanda Burden, PBS's Charlie Rose & Columbia Expansion

Because family members of New York City Planning Commission Chairperson Amanda Burden used to sit on the board of trustees of Columbia University, it’s not surprising that Amanda Burden recently pushed the New York City Planning Commission to rubber-stamp Columbia University’s latest campus expansion and land-grabbing real estate development scheme in West Harlem, north of West 125th Street. And since Charlie Rose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Rose was apparently involved in an on-and-off personal relationship with Amanda Burden, it’s also not surprising that critics of the Burden family, the New York City Planning Commission and Columbia University’s undemocratic attempt to impose its expansion plan on West Harlem neighborhood residents haven’t been given much airtime on Charlie Rose’s boring PBS evening television talk-show.

A former wife of Duke University School of Law graduate Charlie Rose apparently played a key role in helping the former Bankers Trust corporate manager to move from the unglamorous, intellectually dull world of banking into the more glamorous, intellectually dull world of commercial TV broadcasting in 1972. As Current Biography revealed in its January 1995 issue:

“Through his [then] wife, who was doing research for the CBS television show 60 Minutes, Rose became friendly with people employed in broadcasting…After his [then] wife was hired by the BBC (in the United States), he handled some assignments for the British Broadcasting Service on a freelance basis. In 1972, while continuing to work at Bankers Trust, he landed a job as a weekend reporter on WPIX-TV…In 1974, [LBJ’s former press secretary Bill] Moyers telephoned Rose, after Rose’s wife spoke to Moyers about him at a social gathering…Within weeks he began working as the managing editor of the PBS series Bill Moyers’ International Report…"

Channel 13/ WNET-TV’s decision to allow Rose to monopolize its late night TV talk-show time-slot in September 1991 was apparently unilaterally made by former Westinghouse Group W Television Inc. President Bill Baker—after Rose, “acting on a friend’s suggestion,” approached Baker “with a proposal for a new interview show,” according to the January 1995 issue of Current Biography.

(Downtown 2/15/95)

Charlie Rose has been hosting his PBS-syndicated late evening TV talk-show that originated from the “non-commercial” studios of Channel 13/WNET in Midtown Manhattan since the early 1990s. Yet before 1991, Rose was more into commercial TV than public television. Between 1984 and the early 1990s, for instance, Rose worked for the commercially-oriented CBS News organization in Washington, D.C. as the host-interviewer of its CBS News Night Watch program. During the 1970s, Rose also worked in the world of U.S. Establishment commercial TV at Channel 11-WPIX-TV in Manhattan and for NBC News.

(Downtown 8/18/93)

Historically, Charlie Rose’s late-night PBS talk show was subsidized by a foundation whose surplus wealth was derived from its New York City real estate industry investments. In 1994, the Astor Foundation gave a $150,000 grant to Channel 13/WNET “toward production costs for `The Charlie Rose Show'”; and in 1995 an additional $75,000 grant was dished out by the Astor Foundation to Channel 13/WNET to sponsor Charlie Rose’s TV show. An article that appeared in Downtown’s Feb. 17, 1993 issue, “Newsweek Magazine’s CIA Connection,” made the following reference to Vincent Astor and the Astor Foundation:

“Vincent Astor became…Newsweek’s chairman of the board and its principal stockholder between 1937 and his death in 1959…Astor inherited a fortune…which included $63 million worth of real estate, such as the Waldorf-Astoria, the Hotel Astor, the St. Regis, Astor Place and office and apartment buildings in Manhattan. During the 1920s, Astor sold about half of the family’s real estate holdings in New York City for $40 million…By the time he died the estate which he left the Vincent Astor Foundation had an estimated value of $123 million…Astor also built oil drilling barges for off-shore oil ventures in the Southwest, was a director of American Express, Western Union, Chase National Bank and railroad companies…and was the largest shareholder and a director of the United States Line shipping company.”

In the pre-CIA era of U.S. history, Astor also apparently acted as a spy for Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. As The Astors 1973-1992 by Derek Wilson recalled:

“Roosevelt…set up his own secret intelligence unit headed by Washington journalist John Carter…He dispatched…fact-finding missions…commanded by Vincent Astor. The…cruises of [Astor’s yacht] Nourmahal provided a perfect cover for espionage.”

(Downtown 2/5/97)

In the 21st-century, a corporation that has been the target of a “Stop Killer Coke” global boycott because of its anti-labor policies and environmentally destructive policies, Coca-Cola, has apparently also been involved in helping to fund Charlie Rose’s mainstream media work.

Next: Did LBJ Know JFK Was To Be Eliminated In 1963?

CIA Manipulated Somali Elections In 1967

Many years before former CIA Director Bush I ordered his troops into Somalia in late 1992, the CIA also expressed a special interest in the internal politics of Somalia. According to a 1979 book which Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Karl Van Meter and Louis Wolf edited, titled Dirty Work 2: The CIA In Africa, “CIA agents played a significant role in manipulating the outcome of the 1967 elections in Somalia” and “The rise to power of Prime Minister Muhammed Egal was said to have been `facilitated by’ thousands of dollars in covert support to Egal and other pro-Western elements of the ruling Somali Youth League party prior to the 1967 presidential elections…”

Who Ordered Press Photographers Away From JFK’s Car?

Although “the press car was loaded with photographers and journalists and was supposed to follow directly behind the car carrying the President’s bodyguards, which followed the Presidential limousine,” according to The Texas Connection by Craig Zirbel, on November 22, 1963 in Dallas “shortly before the start of the motorcade” the press car “was deliberately bumped to a rear position for no stated reason.” The same book also noted that “this resulting strange line-up change prevented professional journalists and photographers from witnessing and photographing the slaying” of President Kennedy.

(Downtown 2/3/93)

Next: City Planning Commission’s Amanda Burden, PBS’s Charlie Rose & Columbia Expansion

Human Rights Violations In Turkey Historically

Although the Turkish Establishment that has apparently been bombing Kurdish villages in Northern Iraq in recent weeks is a long-time ally of the U.S. Establishment, its human rights record in Turkey historically apparently hasn’t been too good. The London-based human rights organization, Article 19, reported, for instance, in the May 1991 issue of its Censorship News that the following human rights violations occurred in Turkey in January of 1991:

“1/7/91—Cumburtyet reported that the governor of Ankara had banned a meeting of the Ankara Chamber of Medicine on the subject of the health risks of war.

1/13/91—Cumburtyet reported that a 22-year-old woman, Yadigar Coskun, was killed when police opened fire on a 50,000-strong anti-war rally in Istanbul, addressed by Erdal Inonu, leader of the Social Democratic People’s Party. Thirteen people were injured as police tried to break up the rally.

1/19/91—Two successive issues of an Istanbul magazine, Yent Ulhe, were seized for printing the slogan `No to War.’

1/23/91—Gunes reported that police prevented 30 actors and artists from placing an anti-war placard in front of the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul and subsequently destroyed the placard.

1/25/91—Macid Kaplan was shot dead and Aziz Coban and Kazin Karaca were wounded when police opened fire on an anti-war march in Tatran.

1/25/91—74 people were detained and held for three days in Batman, southeast Turkey, when thousands of anti-war demonstrators were dispersed by police. The following day, two people were wounded and 40 others were detained during a pro-Iraq demonstration in the same town.

1/28/91—11 people were detained, including Ercan Kanar, president of the Istanbul branch of the Human Rights Association, after 100 members of the organization were dispersed for protesting against the banning of a peace rally…”

In 1992, the human rights situation in Turkey got even worse, according to Article 19. In an introduction to its September 1992 Censorship News, entitled “Turkey: Censorship By The Bullet—Shocking Statistics and Official Silence,” the London-based human rights organization noted that “the most serious form of censorship—murder—is being practiced with frightening regularity in Turkey: eight journalists have been assassinated in 1992 for exercising their right to freedom of expression.”

Although the U.S. Establishment’s Big Media in the early 1990s rarely mentioned human rights violations that occurred in Turkey, Article 19 also described the following 1992 human rights violations in Turkey:

“On 2/25/92 Huseyin Akyol, publisher of Yent Ulke, and 10 other journalists were injured in an attack by Turkish soldiers and special police team members in Diyarbakir when returning from the funeral of murdered journalist Gengiz Altun;

“Yent Ulke photographers Yakya Orban and Naif Yasar were beaten by Turkish police during their arrests for taking pictures at authorized demonstrations in March 1992.

“It is estimated that between 1/1/92 and 6/30/92, at least 57 journalists were detained once or more by the Turkish police.

“Irfan Ucar of Gundem, arrested on 5/6/92 at the office of his lawyer, reported that he was tortured during his week in detention.

“Since its launch in June 1992, with a particular focus on investigating human rights abuses by security forces in southeast Turkey, the daily Oxgur Gundem has seen the assassination of three of its correspondents and others have been briefly detained.

“In the first six months of 1992, Turkish police, acting on court orders, confiscated at least 41 issues of newspapers and magazines.

Ismail Pelbivan, editor-in-chief of the satirical journal, Girgir, was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment on June 10, 1992 for having `insulted President Turgu Ozal.’”

(Downtown 2/17/93)

Next: CIA Manipulated Somali Elections In 1967

Columbia University Gave Brent Scowcroft Award In 2005

“Brent Scowcroft, who is among Columbia’s most eminent alumni, was the obvious choice this year for the Andrew Wellington Cordier Award, our honor for superior and distinguished public service. Deeply loyal to his country, he spent over three decades in the military service working under three U.S. presidents. We also recognize his valuable contributions as a national leader in both the government and the private sector.”

Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs Dean Lisa Anderson in 2005

“Mr. Kissinger worked on a number of other Government advisory bodies, including a 1983 Presidential commission on strategic forces headed by Mr. Scowcroft. At the time, Mr. Scowcroft was president of Kissinger Associates, as well as a personal consultant on general arms control and military issues for the Lockheed Corporation…Mr. Scowcroft’s ties to Lockheed, a major military contractor, were not publicly known, but were disclosed in a confidential statement to the Pentagon…The commission’s final report, however, contains a number of…recommendations, including `continued development and the deployment of the Trident II (D-5) missile as rapidly as possible.’ Lockheed has long been the manager of the Trident missile program, including the D-5…Mr. Scowcroft declines to respond to written questions about the Lockheed situation or any other matters.”

The New York Times on April 30, 1989

Besides giving former Kissinger Associates Vice-Chairman Brent Scowcroft its Andrew Wellington Cordier Award in 2005 http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/05/04/global_leaders.html , the Columbia University Administration also gave the former board member of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s Santa Fe International subsidiary a Columbia University honorary degree at Columbia’s 2005 Commencement ceremonies. As a U.S. Air Force officer, Scowcroft first attended Columbia University in the early 1950s, where he picked up a Master’s Degree in International Relations from one of its graduate schools. While working in the planning and operations section of Air Force headquarters at the Pentagon during the Vietnam War Era in the mid-1960s, Scowcroft also was able to return to Uptown Manhattan to work on his PhD at Columbia. In 1967, Columbia gave a PhD in International Relations to U.S. Air Force officer Scowcroft without too much on-campus publicity.

In a 1991 telephone interview, Downtown asked Columbia University’s then-spokesperson Lonnie Lippsett if Scowcroft was the only U.S. military officer to be awarded a PhD by Columbia’s School of International Affairs while working at the Pentagon in the 1960s; and if U.S. military officers were attending Columbia’s School of International Affairs in the 1990s?

“In general, it is not unusual for PhD candidates to be working at other occupations. And we don’t keep records of the occupations of PhD candidates. The occupation of military officers is treated like any other occupation by Columbia,” the Columbia University spokesperson replied in 1991.

According to Lippsett, “no figures are kept” on the number of Pentagon military officers who are currently enrolled at Columbia and, even if such figures were kept, they wouldn’t be released.” Lippsett indicated in 1991 that Columbia University’s institutional policy was to still accept all applicants to its PhD programs who met its academic qualifications and were willing to pay tuition—even if an applicant was involved at the highest level in Pentagon war-making decisions, like Scowcroft was in the 1960s. Columbia’s 1991 institutional policy was apparently not to make any value-judgments which would keep U.S. military officers in civilian disguise off its Uptown Manhattan campus.

After moving into his White House National Security Advisor office in 1989, Scowcroft apparently maintained contact with Henry Kissinger. Like Bush I’s White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, Scowcroft was “authorized to use military planes on non-government business,” according to the April 24, 1991 issue of the New York Times. In addition to making “classified trips that were not listed”, Scowcroft also used U.S. government planes to fly “about 45 times” between January 1990 and April 23, 1991, according to the Times. And one of these U.S. government plane trips was used by Scowcroft for “an official trip to New York for a dinner at which the host was Henry A. Kissinger,” according to the Times.

Scowcroft’s former business partner, Kissinger, was not too pleased when some Times reporters decided to write an investigative article about Kissinger Associates’ clients and their past links to then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who was the Kissinger Associates president before he moved into this State Department office in 1989. On April 14, 1989, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kissinger was “annoyed” at the Times for its “investigation of Kissinger Associates’ clients” and was “threatening a lawsuit against the paper for harassing clients.”

The results of this Times investigation of Kissinger Associates were published on April 30, 1989, in an article entitled “Kissinger And Friends And Revolving Doors” by Jeff Gerth and Sarah Bartlett. The article noted that, initially, Scowcroft “told the White House he was merely a consultant to Kissinger Inc.” and only “later amended his financial disclosure statement to reflect his position as vice-chairman.”

According to the Times, Scowcroft also “told the White House he had to disclose only the name of Kissinger Associates, not the specific clients he worked with, because he was merely a consultant to the firm.” Scowcroft only amended the financial disclosure statement he had filed on Feb. 21, 1989 (to indicate that he was actually the Kissinger Associates vice-chairman) on March 17, 1989, “one day after a reporter aasked him why he had not reported” his true Kissinger Associates post on his original financial disclosure form.

Unlike Bush I’s cabinet appointments, the Scowcroft appointment to the National Security Advisor slot did not have to be confirmed by Congress, so no confirmation hearings were held in 1989 to investigate the reasons why Scowcroft apparently had felt the need to conceal both his early 1980s employment by Lockheed and his actual position at Kissinger Associates.

On his public disclosure form, according to the Times, Scowcroft indicated that he would “disqualify himself from specific matters involving companies he holds stock in and former clients such as Kissinger Associates, but not from matters involving the firm’s clients.” The Times also reported in 1989 that “among those willing to pay $200,000 or more to be clients of Kissinger Associates are ITT, American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Coca Cola, H.J. Heinz, Fiat-Volvo, LM Ericsson, Daewoo and Midland Bank.” As Downtown revealed in its March 27, 1991 issue (“ A Look At Henry Kissinger’s Kuwaiti Connection”), the government of Kuwait Inc. owned 10.5 percent of the stock of Kissinger Associates’ Midland Bank client in 1990 and then-Midland Bank Director Cunningham was also then a director of Kissinger Associates.

The “Kissinger And Friends And Revolving Doors” article also reported in April 1989 that “Mr. Scowcroft belatedly disclosed that he held stock in Kissinger Associates and, according to Mr. Kissinger and public documents, he arranged” in March 1989 “to have Mr. Kissinger buy it back for nine times its estimated worth” and that Scowcroft’s Kissinger Associates salary exceeded $293,000 per year in the 1980s. According to the April 30, 1989 Times article, “a number of current and former government officials, none of whom would allow themselves to be identified, have questions about potential conflicts of interests involving Kissinger Associates.”

In his 1991 book, The Commanders, Bob Woodward wrote that for Columbia University Honorary Degree Recipient Brent Scowcroft in the early 1990s. “War was an instrument of foreign policy, pure and simple.” According to Woodward, prior to the start of the Pentagon’s high-technology bombing blitz of Iraq in January 1991, then-National Security Advisor Scowcroft “was substantially more willing to go to war than” then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell.

After Saddam Hussein marched some of his troops into Kuwait in 1990, the former director of the Kuwaiti-owned Santa Fe International and former Kissinger Associates vice-chairman, Scowcroft, “returned to the White House…and informed Bush,” according to The Commanders. Scowcroft then “called an emergency meeting of the deputies committee by securing video links and chaired it himself from the Situation Room.”

At the emergency meeting, according to The Commanders, Scowcroft “pressed for more action,” proposed that a squadron of 24 Air Force F-15 fighters be offered to Saudi Arabia immediately and “called a National Security Council [NSC] meeting for first thing in the morning.” He then went to sleep in his White House office at 4 a.m., awoke 45 minutes later and “by 5 a.m. was at Bush I’s bedroom door” with an executive order to be signed that freezed Kuwait Inc.’s foreign assets. This executive order insured that little of the Al-Sabah family’s foreign wealth would end up in the hands of the Iraqi government while Kuwait was occupied.

After the initial White House National Security Council meeting of Thursday, Aug. 2, 1990 was held, according to Woodward, “Scowcroft was alarmed” because no immediate military response was agreed upon. A second NSC meeting was held in the White House the following morning, on Friday, Aug. 3. At the second NSC meeting, according to Woodward, the following happened:

“Scowcroft stated that there had to be two tracks. First, he believed the United States had to be willing to use force. Second, he said that Saddam had to be toppled. That had to be done covertly through the CIA, and be unclear to the world.”

Responding immediately to the policy recommendation of the nonelected, nonconfirmed former Kissinger Associates vice-chairman, “Bush I ordered the CIA to begin planning for a covert operation that would destabilize the regime and, he hoped, remove Saddam from power,” according to The Commanders.

After Scowcroft’s proposal to respond to the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait by sending a few hundred thousand troops to Saudi Arabia had been implemented in August and September of 1990, the Emir of Kuwait visited Bush I in the Oval Office of the White House on Friday, Sept. 28, 1990. According to Woodward, “Scowcroft joined them for the hour-long meeting” and “though the Emir did not directly ask for military intervention to liberate his country Scowcroft could see that that was his subliminal message.”

According to The Commanders, by Fall 1990 “Scowcroft had become the First Companion and all-purpose playmate to the President on golf, fishing and weekend outings” and by early October 1990 “Scowcroft told Cheney that Bush [I] wanted a briefing right away on what an offensive against Saddam’s forces in Kuwait might look like.”

On Oct. 11, 1990, the Pentagon plans to launch a military offensive against Iraq were given to Bush I. And, at a 3:30 afternoon meeting on Oct. 29, 1990, Bush I met with Baker, Cheney, Scowcroft and Powell in the White House Situation Room were, according to Woodward, “Bush and Scowcroft seemed primed to go ahead with the development of the offensive option.”

The Commanders also reported that by Dec. 17, 1990 Scowcroft was eager to begin the bombing blitz of Iraq, despite all the pre-January 16, 1991 Bush I Administration talk of how eager it was to have its Secretary of State Baker talk face-to-face with the Iraqi foreign minister in order to avert Gulf War I:

“It was obvious to [Congressional Representative] Aspin that Scowcroft had lost his patience with diplomacy…Saddam was jerking everyone around. There was no reason to deal with him, Scowcroft said. War would take less time…Scowcroft said. Hew was now convinced that war would be a two-to-three week solution…”

That same week in December 1990, Scowcroft told the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, that “Basically the President had made up his mind” and that the diplomatic efforts to avoid war undertaken by the Bush [I] Administration were `all exercises.’”

Nearly a month later, on Jan. 16, 1991, the militaristic U.S. Establishment began an endless war against the people of Iraq that is still going on nearly 17 years later; and, during Gulf War I, between 100,000 and 300,000 Iraqis were killed by the U.S. war machine. In addition, 150 U.S. troops lost their lives during Gulf War I, before the Bush I Administration finally ordered an end to its early 1991 high-technology bombing blitz of Iraq.

(Downtown 9/25/91)

Next: Human Rights Violations In Turkey Historically

`George Philanthropist'

(chorus)
“I may be a plutocrat
But I believe in philanthropy
It lowers my tax rate
When I give you my blood money.

(verses)
“My name is George Philanthropist and here’s a grant for you
To fund your media project and sponsor your protests, too
I invest heavily in Carlyle, which makes weapons for war
And if you don’t disclose this fact, you never will be poor. (chorus)

“My name is George Philanthropist and here’s a grant for you
To fund your anti-war work and your indymedia, too
I speculate in currency, making billions when I score
And if you don’t disclose this fact, I’ll give you grants some more. (chorus)

“My name is George Philanthropist and here’s a grant for you
To fund your own dance company and theatre in the street
I brought human rights to Europe by working with the CIA
And created a free market where my artists are well-paid. (chorus)

“My name is George Philanthropist and I’m building a world empire
Of NGO grant-hustlers, to put out the rebel fires
My billions from stock investment, I’m using to manage change
And if you call me `Plutocrat,’ my cops will put you in chains.” (chorus)

The George Philanthropist protest folk song was written in the early 21st-century, as the forces of foundation-sponsored “NGOism” continued to marginalize within the dissident U.S. anti-war left sub-culture those grassroots anti-war revolutionary leftists who refused to accept U.S. Establishment foundation grants.

CIA-Funded Foundation Grants (Downtown 3/17/93)

Although most U.S. foundations pose as being free of any CIA connection, during the 1960s many U.S. foundations were actually used by the CIA to grant CIA money to recipients of U.S. foundation grants. According to Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA In Transition by former Rhodes Scholar and former CIA Director Stanfield Turner, “Excluding grants from the three largest U.S. foundations—Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie—nearly half of the grants made in the field of international affairs by U.S. foundations between 1963 and 1967 involved CIA money, as did one-third of the grants in the physical, life, and social sciences.” Not surprisingly, few U.S. foundation grant-recipients do any critical research on the CIA’s role in 20th-Century U.S. history and world history, or the CIA’s role in U.S. scientific research.

(Downtown 3/17/93)

Did Ford Foundation Have CIA Connection? (Downtown/Aquarian 1/8/97)

During the Cold War era, a Ford Foundation executive who later became the CIA Deputy Director for Plans responsible for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the President of the Columbia University-affiliated Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA], Richard Bissell, simultaneously worked as a CIA consultant. As the now-deceased Bissell recalled in his book Reflections Of A Cold Warrior:

“In January 1952 I joined the Ford Foundation…I worked out of a small office in Washington…The arrangement allowed me to work for the foundation while engaging in outside consulting assignments…Working in Washington…enabled me to maintain my close professional relationships…with people like Frank Wisner, Sherman Kent, Desmond Fitzgerald, Tracy Barnes, and Max Milliken, all of whom were in the CIA and close to Allen Dulles…

“In the fall of 1952, I became part of the CIA’s Princeton Group of consultants (so named because it met on the university’s campus)…In late 1952…Max Milliken resigned as an assistant director of the CIA…to become director of MIT’s Center for International Studies [CENIS]…I was able to get the trustees of the Ford Foundation to fund research at CENIS.”

(Downtown/Aquarian 1/8/97)

Why Ford Foundation Was Set Up (Downtown/Aquarian 2/5/97)

The Ford Foundation was originally set up by the ultra-rich Ford Dynasty as a tax avoidance scheme. As Charity USA: An Investigation Into The Hidden World Of The Multi-Billion Dollar Charity Industry by Carl Bakal recalled in 1979:

“By setting up the foundation and bequeathing 90 percent of their Ford Motor Company stock to it, the noncharitable Henry Ford and his son, Edsel, enabled their heirs to avoid an inheritance tax that would have come to $321 million…All the stock that was given to the foundation was nonvoting. The 10 percent retained by the family had total voting power, maintaining the family domination of the company. Moreover, the voting stock passed to the family tax free, saving another $42 million, because the wills of Henry and Edsel provided that the taxes on the bequest be paid by the foundation.”

(Downtown/Aquarian 2/5/97)

Carnegie Trustees Gave Grants To Own Institutions (Downtown/Aquarian 11/27/96)

During the 1990s, U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice and Time magazine’s then-editorial director, Henry Muller were both affiliated to Stanford University. U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice was then Stanford University’s Provost and Muller was a member of Stanford University’s board of trustees. At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Rice and Muller were also both trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York during the 1990s. Coincidentally, the Carnegie Corp. of New York gave five grants, worth over $2.7 million to Stanford University in 1994-95, according to its 1995 Annual Report.

WNYC Foundation Trustee Wilma Tisch was also a Carnegie Corp. trustee in the 1990s. Coincidentally, the Carnegie Corp. gave a $200,000 grant to the WNYC Foundation in 1994-95.

Of the $55 million in grants dished out by the Carnegie Corp. of NY in 1994-95, none of the major grants apparently went to NYC groups involved in either providing services for people with AIDS or for AIDS research. On Sept. 30, 1995, the market value of the “non-profit” Carnegie Corp.’s investments exceeded $1.2 billion; and then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was a Carnegie Corp. trustee before he moved into a D.C. government office.

Downtown/Aquarian asked then-Time magazine editorial director Muller to comment in 1996 on whether there was a conflict-of interest in him then sitting on a foundation board whose past and present trustees and activities were being reported on by Time magazine; and whether he thought it was ethical for Carnegie Corp. trustees to give grants to institutions, like Stanford University, with which they were personally affiliated. But the then-Stanford University/Carnegie Corporation trustee and then-Time magazine editorial director did not return our calls.

(Downtown/Aquarian 11/27/96)

In his 1975 book, The Rockefeller Syndrome, Ferdinand Lundberg summarized how the Ultra-Rich Rockefeller Dynasty has tended to historically operate:

“Spelling it all out, so that even…professors can understand, the Rockefeller Operation boils down to the following:…A huge fortune, illicitly amassed, is doled out in part over a span of many years in a variety of projects…A…sympathetic chord is struck with some part of the public for each project, appeasing discontent with the way the fortune was acquired…Managerial…elements benefiting personally from each project naturally become Rockefeller boosters…The Rockefellers avoid taxes…A further gain in funding tax-deductible projects…is that…one has…the privilege of…decreeing what shall and what shall not be…supported…A vast fortune is retained through the generations and is so managed as to confer great…economic clout from one generation to the next…Anyone who presumes to criticize the operation is countered by the technique of…public relations officers and the outcries of the immediate beneficiaries, the tax-exempt project administrators.”

Next: Columbia University Gave Award To Brent Scrowcroft In 2005

Kissinger Associates In The 1990s: The Confidential Consultants

Scowcroft’s old firm, Kissinger Associates ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kissinger_McLarty_Associates ), had an office in Manhattan at 350 Park Avenue in 1991. According to a spokesperson at that time, Scowcroft ended his connection to Kissinger Associates “when he re-entered government service” as President Bush I’s National Security Affairs advisor. When asked by Downtown in early 1991 who some of Kissinger Associates clients were, the spokesperson replied: “That’s all confidential.”

Downtown then asked the spokesperson if there was anything the public could be told about what kind of work Kissinger Associates did.

“We’re an international consulting firm,” she replied. She then suggested that Downtown speak to another employee of the firm, named L. Paul Bremer [who was subsequently appointed to be George W. Bush II’s Presidential Envoy to Iraq on May 6, 2003], if we had any more “technical questions.” The spokesperson then added that she didn’t “see any connection” between Kuwait and the work of Kissinger Associates.

When Downtown telephoned later in the afternoon to speak to Bremer in early 1991, we were told by an English-accented spokesperson named Penny that “Ambassador Bremer left for Washington 15 minutes ago” but perhaps she “could help.” When asked who some of the clients of Kissinger Associates were in early 1991, Penny also replied that such information was “not given out” and “was confidential” but that “We don’t service any governments.”

Downtown then asked Penny why information about Kissinger Associates’ clients was not given out. “Most companies don’t give out this kind of information,” Penny answered. “I don’t really know who our clients are, myself.”

When Downtown expressed skepticism that Penny could work a few years for Kissinger Associates without knowing who its clients were, Penny replied in 1991: “Well, basically, all I do is set up appointments with the press and arrange press interviews.”

In the late 1990s, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff McLarty became a partner in Kissinger Associates and the firm’s name was changed to Kissinger McLarty Associates. ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kissinger_McLarty_Associates )
One of the 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidates, Bill Richardson, was also employed by Kissinger McLarty Associates in the 21st-century.

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: George Philanthropist protest folk song lyrics

Brent Scowcroft: Kuwait Inc.'s Friend In The Bush I White House

Before working for Kuwait Inc. as its Santa Fe International Director, President Bush I’s National Security Affairs advisor, Brent Scowcroft (http://www.scowcroft.com/html/staff/scowcroft.html ) , had a long career in the U.S. military. But like former U.S. Vice-President Quayle and former U.S. Secretary of Defense and current U.S. Vice-President Cheney, Bush I’s National Security Affairs advisor in the early 1990s also apparently had no military combat experience on an actual desert battlefield.

Born in Utah, Scowcroft came to New York State in the 1940s and graduated from New York’s U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1947. New York’s West Point Military Academy is located only 50 miles north of Downtown Manhattan and 4,500 cadets attended it in 1991—only 10 percent of whom were women in the early 1990s. Women were completely excluded from New York’s Military Academy when Scowcroft studied there.

When Scowcroft attended New York’s Military Academy it also “barred black cadets from social hops and dancing classes…and from intercollegiate sports teams” and “prohibited” African-Americans “from entering Officer Clubs with their classmates during summer trips,” according to the book The Long Gray Line by Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson. The Long Gray Line book also noted that, until the 1950s, African-Americans at New York’s Military Academy were also “forbidden to teach Sunday school classes attended by teenage white girls.”

After graduating from West Point, Scowcroft became a U.S. Air Force lieutenant. But in 1948 his disabled plane crashed and Scowcroft was unable to fly again. For the next five years, Scowcroft held a number of administrative U.S. Air Force staff positions at the same time he returned to New York to attend Columbia University’s graduate school. He was awarded a Master’s Degree in International Relations by Columbia University at the age of 28.

Scowcroft was then called back to New York’s Military Academy to teach Russian history at West Point until he was 32. At 33, Scowcroft was ordered down to Washington, D.C. to study Slavic Languages at Georgetown University’s School of Linguistics, before being ordered to serve as an “assistant air attaché’” at the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia between 1959 and 1961. In 1962, the 37-year-old Scowcroft returned to the world of military academic life when the Air Force ordered him to teach political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy until 1964. In 1964, Scowcroft was ordered to the Pentagon to work in the planning and operations section of Air Force headquarters and, at the same time, he was able to return to New York City to work on his PhD at Columbia University. In 1967, Columbia University gave Scowcroft a PhD in International Relations and the 42-year-old Dr. Scowcroft was then ordered by the U.S. Air Force to teach at the National War College.

The next year, during the height of the Vietnam War Era, Scowcroft was ordered back to the Pentagon to direct the staff of Joint Chiefs of Staff General John W. Voigt for the next three years. And in November 1971, the 46-year-old Air Force Colonel Scowcroft was named to be [the now-deceased] former President Nixon’s military aide.

Nixon was so pleased with Col. Scowcroft’s work that he was promoted to Brigadier General in 1972 before eventually leaving the Air Force after becoming National Security Affairs advisor Henry Kissinger’s deputy in January 1973. Two years later, Scowcroft, himself, became the National Security Affairs advisor of [the now-deceased] former President Gerald Ford. After Ford was defeated in the 1976 U.S. Presidential election, Scowcroft became a director of the National Bank of Washington until 1983.

In 1982, Scowcroft joined with his old boss, Henry Kissinger, to form the Kissinger Associates consulting firm before being named, along with former U.S. President Ford, by the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation to be a director of its Santa Fe International then-subsidiary. Shortly after George W. Bush II’s father, George Bush I, was elected president in 1988, Scowcroft was chosen to be Bush I’s National Security Affairs advisor on Nov. 23, 1988. By late January 1989, he had moved from his vice-chairman’s offices at Kissinger Associates in Washington, D.C. and in New York City into his White House office.

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Kissinger Associates In The 1990s: The Confidential Consultants

Kuwait Inc.'s Historic Special Influence In Germany, Spain and Italy

In the early 1980s, the value of Kuwait Inc. government investments in Germany had also reached $3 billion, most of which was invested in the stock of 30 large German corporations, such as Volkswagon, Metallgesellschaft, Daimler Benz, Korf Stahl and Hoechst AG.

The Kuwait Inc. government’s first large investment in Germany was in 1972, when it purchased 14.6 percent of Daimler-Benz for $440 million. By 1991, Kuwait Inc.’s share of Daimler-Benz was valued at $3.5 billion. According to the OPEC’s Investments And The International Financial System book, Kuwait Inc.’s Daimler-Benz investment “aroused some opposition within Germany and led Kuwait to maintain a very low profile over the next several years,” although “unfavorable publicity did not prevent further large investments.” In 1975, for instance, Kuwait Inc. purchased 30 percent of Korf Stahl in Germany but did not publicly announce this new German investment until 1978.

The government of Kuwait Inc. also had a special influence in Spain during the early 1990s. According to the March 7, 1988 issue of Business Week, by 1988 the Kuwait Inc. government was “already Spain’s largest stock player with more than $2 billion sunk into Madrid since 1986.” While playing the Spanish stock market in the 1980s, the Kuwait Inc. government purchased 72 percent of Spain’s Grupo Torras chemical conglomerate. By 1990, Kuwait Inc.’s share of Grupo Torras was, alone, worth between $2 billion and $3 billion.

The government of Kuwait Inc. also had a special influence in Italy during the early 1990s. It owned a refinery in Naples and 2,000 Italian gas stations at that time. Under its Q8 label, it also operated at least 4,800 other gas stations in Europe.

The government of Kuwait Inc. also had a special influence in Japan during the early 1990s. Kuwait Inc. was the first OPEC nation to use its new oil wealth to start playing the Tokyo Stock Market in the 1970s. By the end of 1982, the government of Kuwait Inc., according to the OPEC’s Investments And The International Financial System book, owned between $2 billion and $3 billion worth of Japanese corporate stocks and bonds in such Japanese companies as Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Arabian Oil Company, Nippon Kogyo and Teikoku Sekiyo (an oil company that operates mainly inside Japan).

After 1986, according to Business Week’s March 7, 1988 issue, “Kuwait…earned more money from foreign investments than from oil exports.” According to Time magazine’s Dec. 24, 1990 issue, for instance, from its foreign investments in the United States, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and the rest of the globe, the Al-Sabah royal family’s Kuwait Inc. government was taking in “about $20 million a day” in late 1990—despite its homeland being temporarily occupied by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military machine at that time.

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Brent Scowcroft: Kuwait Inc.’s Friend In The Bush I White House

Kuwait Inc.'s Special Influence In The UK Historically

Because the British Government’s British Petroleum [BP], the third-largest transnational oil company in the world in 1991, had a special interest in Kuwait, it was not surprising that British Conservative Party politicians in 1991 urged the Pentagon to use U.S. troops then to “liberate” the homeland of Kuwait Inc.. Another reason why the same British Conservative Party politicians who stubbornly supported the British military occupation of the North of Ireland were so against the 1990 Iraqi military occupation of Kuwait was, perhaps, because Kuwait Inc. also had a special influence on British politics. The value of Kuwait Inc. government investments in the UK in the early 1980s, for instance, exceeded $3 billion.

In 1952, the government of Kuwait Inc. opened an office in London that was called the Kuwait Investment Office [KIO] and in 1991 was located in a seven-story London building called St. Vedast House, near London’s St. Paul Cathedral. By the early 1970s, the government of Kuwait Inc. began to use its new wealth from the sale of Kuwaiti crude oil to play on the London real estate market. For $250 million, the Kuwait Investment Office purchased 100 percent of the St. Martin’s Property Corporation in 1974 to serve as Kuwait Inc.’s vehicle for its London real estate investments. By 1991, the value of the Kuwait Inc. government’s St. Martin Property Corporation was $1.5 billion. Among the London real estate properties owned by the government of Kuwait during the early 1990s was London Bridge City, a one-million-square-foot complex of offices, shops and restaurants along the Thames River of London.

The Kuwait Investment Office also began to play the London Stock Market with its new oil wealth in the 1970s; and by late 1982, according to the OPEC’s Investments And the International Financial System book by Richard Mattione, the government of Kuwait Inc. owned $2 billion worth of British corporate stock. The same book observed that the shares of British corporate stock owned by the Kuwait Inc. government “are concentrated in the areas of insurance, property and investment trusts” and in the early 1980s there were 53 British corporations in which the Kuwait Inc. government owned over 5 percent of all the stock.

Ten percent of Britain’s Midland Bank, worth $400 million, was also owned in 1991 by the Kuwait Inc. government. Sixty million dollars worth of another British bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, also was owned in 1991 by the Kuwait Inc. government, as was $100 million worth of Britain’s Trusthouse Forte travel and catering firm. Until the early 1990s, the Kuwait Inc. government owned over 20 percent of the British Petroleum [BP] Corporation. But British popular opposition to having a foreign government control so much of Britain’s national oil company compelled the Kuwait Investment Office to reduce its ownership of BP to 9.9 percent.

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Historic Special Influence In Germany, Spain and Italy

Kuwait Inc.'s Past Santa Fe International Investment

The largest direct investment of Kuwait Inc. in the United States during the early 1990s, however, was still the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s Santa Fe International. In the early 1980s the Kuwait Inc. government-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation [KPC] purchased 100 percent of Santa Fe International, a U.S. transnational corporation specializing in oil exploration, for $2.5 billion. Kuwait Inc.’s Santa Fe International owned 275 oil and gas leases, worth approximately $14 million, on 252,950 acres of U.S. government-owned land and had pending leases covering an additional 299,000 acres on U.S. government-owned land during the early 1990s.

As a result of these Santa Fe International current and pending oil and gas leases in 1991, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation was permitted to drill for oil on U.S. soil in order to turn U.S. oil into more Kuwait Inc. government investment funds to play with on foreign stock markets. KPC’s Santa Fe International also acquired Andover Oil Company for $150 million in 1982 in order to further increase the U.S. oil and gas holdings of KPC’s U.S. subsidiary. The annual sales of KPC’s California-based Santa Fe International subsidiary exceeded $1 billion during the early 1990s.

To increase its political influence in Washington, D.C. after it purchased Santa Fe International, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation hired the now-deceased former U.S. President Gerald Ford to be a Santa Fe International director. The government of Kuwait Inc. also hired Ford’s former National Security Affairs advisor, Brent Scowcroft (http://www.scowcroft.com/html/staff/scowcroft.html ) , to be a Santa Fe International director at the same time. Santa Fe International Director Scowcroft, like George Bush I, was a member of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission at that time. While serving as a director on Kuwait Inc.’s Santa Fe International corporate board in 1984, 1985 and 1986, Scowcroft also worked with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as vice-chairman of the New York and Washington, D.C. consulting firm of Kissinger Associates. As President Bush I’s National Security Affairs advisor, Scowcroft—like his former business partner Henry Kissinger—was an advocate of using Pentagon military forces to “liberate” the homeland of Kuwait Inc. in 1991.

To further increase its special influence in United States politics during the 1980s, the Kuwait Inc. government’s Santa Fe International subsidiary formed a political action committee [PAC] which contributed $70,108 to the election campaign chests of influential U.S. politicians during the 1984 U.S. congressional elections. An additional $71,750 was contributed by KPC’s Santa Fe International PAC to U.S. congressional candidates in 1986.

In May 1987, KPC’s Santa Fe International also created a new company, Chesapeake Shipping Inc.. The purpose of creating Kuwait Inc.’s Chesapeake Shipping Inc. subsidiary was to quickly reflag Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf with U.S. flags, so as to more easily enable the Reagan administration to commit U.S. military forces to the protection of special Kuwait Inc. commercial interests, as well as to the protection of special U.S. transnational oil company interests in the Persian Gulf waters.

In addition to operating out of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation office at 45 Rockefeller Plaza, Kuwait Inc. operated in the U.S.A. in 1991 under the auspices of the Bank of Kuwait and The Middle East, the Commercial Bank of Kuwait SAK, KPC U.S. Holdings and the Kuwait Foreign Trading Contractor and Investment Company [KTFCIC].

Downtown telephoned the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation office in New York City in early 1991. According to the person who answered the telephone then, this office was “just a small four-person office” which mainly focused on “assisting students from Kuwait who are studying in the United States on Kuwait Petroleum scholarships.” She stated that the business operations of KPC in the U.S.A. were controlled by KPC’s London office and suggested Downtown telephone the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation in London if it wished to speak to a company public relations official.

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Special Influence In The UK Historically

Kuwait Inc.'s Special Influence In The U.S.A. Historically--Part 2

Kuwait Inc. also owned three million shares of IBM stock, as well as stock in DuPont and Ford in the 1980s. At least $457 million worth of the stock of the U.S. oil companies and $191 million worth of the stock of U.S. utility companies were also owned by the Kuwait Inc. government in the 1980s. The Kuwait Inc. government also owned $12 billion in U.S. government treasury bonds in the early 1980s. The U.S. stocks and bonds owned by the government of Kuwait Inc. continued to be managed by Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan/Morgan Guaranty Trust in the 1990s.

The government of Kuwait Inc. and Kuwaiti private businessmen also used their new post-1973 oil wealth to make more direct investments in the United States. In 1985, for instance, the value of property in the United States in which the Kuwaiti Inc. government or Kuwaiti private businessmen owned more than 10 percent of the stock exceeded $4 billion. The Atlantic Hilton Hotel, for instance, was owned by Kuwait Inc. investors. A large share of the Galleria Dallas and Houston hotels and malls, worth $500 million, was also owned by Kuwait Inc., as was a large share of the Great Western Resources Oil company, worth $100 million. In the early 1980s, Kuwait Inc. businessmen also owned the Columbia Plaza, a $22 million office complex in Washington, D.C.

The government of Kuwait Inc. also owned 15 percent of the Exploration Company of Louisiana in the 1980s. Other partly-owned Kuwait Inc. properties in the U.S.A. included PCA Crossroads Associates, the Kansas Oil Resources Project, L’Ermital Palm Beach Project and the Williston Basin Oil Exploration Project. The Williston Basin investment of Kuwait Inc. stemmed from the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation joining with the Arizona-based AZR Resources Inc. to set up the International Energy Development Corporation that explored for oil. KPC also agreed in 1981 to set up a joint venture to refine and sell oil products with the Honolulu, Hawaii-based Pacific Resources Inc..

In 1981, private Kuwaiti businessmen also spent over $200 million to acquire three small independent Texas oil refineries. In 1982, Kuwaiti private investors also joined other Arab investors in purchasing a 25 percent share of the U.S. private banking house, Smith Barney, for $40 million.

The government of Kuwait Inc. also owned a 25 percent share, worth $2.4 billion, of Germany’s Hoechst AG transnational chemical company during the early 1980s. In 1986, Hoechst AG purchased the U.S.-based Celanese Corporation for $2.8 billion. Hoechst AG also operated two large factories in low-wage South Carolina through its Hoechst Fibers textile subsidiary in the 1980s.

A 14 percent share of Germany’s Daimler-Benz transnational automotive company, worth $3.5 billion, was also owned by the government of Kuwait Inc. in the 1980s. Daimler-Benz’s U.S. subsidiary, Freightliner, had total annual sales of $1.3 billion each year, prior to Daimler-Benz eventually merging with Chrysler. Fifty-one percent of Korf Industries, a U.S. subsidiary of Germany’s Korf Stahl steel company was also owned by the government of Kuwait Inc. in the 1980s.

The government of Kuwait Inc. also owned 9.9 percent of British Petroleum [BP], whose U.S. subsidiary, BP America, was worth $21 billion in the late 1980s. BP America used to operate under the name of Standard Oil of Ohio [SOHIO] before the British government and the Kuwait Inc. government’s BP purchased it.

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Past Santa Fe International Investment

Kuwait Inc.'s Special Influence In The U.S.A. Historically--Part 1

In December 2007, Dow Chemical announced that Kuwait Inc.’s Kuwait Petroleum Corporation had agreed to buy a 50% stake in Dow Chemical’s plastics divisions for $9.5 billion, marking the biggest overseas investment by a Kuwaiti firm. Yet there’s nothing new, historically, about the government of Kuwait Inc. using the surplus capital it obtains from its oil revenues to purchase more stock in U.S.-based transnational corporations.

In the 1970s, for instance, the government of Kuwait Inc. began to play the New York stock market with the new wealth it gained from the sale of Kuwait’s crude oil to the transnational oil companies during that decade. In an article entitled “Power Broker: Kuwait’s Money Man Favors U.S. and Stocks In Placing Oil Billions,” which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 9, 1979, the advisor to the Emir of Kuwait revealed that the government of Kuwait Inc. held “between $1 million and $50 million in the stock of most of the top 500 U.S. corporations.” By 1982, according to the book OPEC’s Investments And The International Financial System by Richard Mattione, the total value of the Kuwait Inc. government’s New York Stock Exchange holdings was $11 billion. By 1990, the total value of the chunks of U.S. corporate stock owned by the Kuwait Inc. government was between $15 billion and $20 billion. In the early 1980s, for instance, the government of Kuwait Inc. owned:

2.1 percent of all General Electric/NBC stock (788,500 shares), worth $52.8 million.

3.7 percent of all AT&T stock (1,744,200 shares), worth $91.4 million.

2.3 percent of all Procter & Gamble stock (788,300 shares), worth $55.6 million.

2.4 percent of all Philips Petroleum stock (1,268,200 shares), worth $59 million;

2.4 percent of all Conoco stock (1,050,400 shares), worth $59.5 million.

3.8 percent of all Atlantic Richfield stock (1,808,000 shares), worth $96.1 million.

2.5 percent of all Eastman Kodak stock (749,400 shares), worth $61.1 million.

2.1 percent of all Schlumberger stock (500,300 shares), worth $50.1 million.

2.1 percent of all Digital Equipment stock (546,300 shares), worth $51.1 million.

2.1 percent of all American Home Products stock (1,535,000 shares), worth $51.8 million.

Besides controlling the RCA/NBC television network and NBC news operation, the General Electric company that Kuwait Inc. partially owned in the early 1980s also was the U.S. company which received the second-largest amount of Pentagon military contracts in 1988--$6.9 billion worth of weapons production work. Another company that Kuwait Inc. partially owned in the early 1980s, AT&T, sponsored the Public Broadcasting Service’s MacNeil/Lehrer News program between 1983 and the early 1990s. A third company that Kuwait Inc. partially owned in the early 1980s, Procter & Gamble, influenced U.S. mass media programming by being the leading U.S. national advertiser in the late 1980s, spending $1.4 billion on advertising in 1987.

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Special Influence in the U.S.A. Historically—Part 2

Kuwait Inc.'s Political System of "Sabahcracy" In 2005

Since the Bush I White House (whose national security affairs advisor, Brent Scowcroft, was a former board member of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s Santa Fe International subsidiary) used the U.S. high-technology war machine to bring the Al-Sabah dynasty back into power in Kuwait in 1991, the pace of political democratization within Kuwait has been slow. As late as March 8,, 2006, for instance, even the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor’s Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Kuwait for 2005 described the political situation in Kuwait under the Al-Sabah Dynasty’s rule in the following way:

“Kuwait is a constitutional, hereditary emirate ruled by the al-Sabah family, which governs in consultation with prominent families and the elected National Assembly. The 1962 constitution grants the emir executive and legislative authority and permits dissolution of the elected National Assembly by decree.

“Kuwait has a population of 2.9 million residents, approximately 970 thousand of whom are citizens. During the July 2003 parliamentary elections, the electorate consisted of approximately 143 thousand male citizens, and there were no political parties….The government and the opposition reportedly bought votes…

“Following the 2003 elections, the emir appointed a new prime minister whose authority the crown prince previously held. The prime minister appoints all officials in the executive branch…

“The constitution provides for some judicial independence; however, the emir appoints all judges, and the Ministry of Justice must approve the renewal of most judicial appointments.

“While civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces, there were some instances in which elements of the security forces acted independently of government authority.

“The government improved its human rights record by granting women the right to vote; however, serious problems remained. The following human rights problems were reported: no right to change the government; abuse of and alleged torture of detainees; official impunity; poor prison conditions in certain facilities; restricted civil liberties--freedoms of speech, press, assembly and association; limited freedom of religion and of movement; corruption; violence and discrimination against women, especially noncitizens; abuse of noncitizen domestic workers; unresolved legal status of bidoon Arabs; and restricted worker rights.

“On May 16 [2005], the National Assembly approved legislation to grant women the right to vote and seek elected office; however, women were not eligible to vote in the June 2 [2005] municipal council elections because the annual February voter registration period had passed.”

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Special Influence in the U.S.A. Historically—Part 1

Kuwait Inc.'s Political System of "Sabahcracy" In 1990

The Al-Sabah family may be shy about revealing to people in the United States exactly how much stock it owns in each U.S. corporation. But the Al-Sabah family was not shy about monopolizing political power in Kuwait Inc. prior to the August 1990 occupation of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops.

Sheikh Jabir Al-Ahmad Al-Jabir Al-Sabah had been the Emir of Kuwait since 1977. Kuwait Emir Al-Sabah also was chairman of Kuwait’s Supreme Defense Council, Kuwait’s Supreme Petroleum Council, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, and the Kuwait Foundation for Scientific Advancement in 1990. Kuwait Emir Al-Sabah also was Kuwait’s prime minister between 1965 and 1967, Kuwait’s crown prince between 1966 and 1978 and Kuwait’s minister of Finance and Industry and minister of Commerce between 1965 and 1983. But shortly after his country was invaded on August 2, 1990, Kuwait Emir Al-Sabah—the then-chairman of Kuwait’s Supreme Defense Council—had fled from his presidential palace by helicopter.

Sheikh Saadal Abdallahal Salim Al-Sabah had been both Kuwait’s crown prince and Kuwait’s prime minister since 1978. Kuwait Crown Prince and Kuwait Prim Minister Al-Sabah was the Kuwait metropolitan police deputy head between 1954 and 1959, the Kuwait Police and Public Security Department deputy president between 1959 and 1961, Kuwait’s minister of the Interior between 1961 and 1965 and Kuwait’s minister of the Interior and Defense between 1965 and 1978.

Another Al-Sabah family member, Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jabir Al-Sabah, had been Kuwait’s minister of Foreign Affairs since 1963 and Kuwait’s deputy prime minister since 1978.

Nouwaf al-Almad al-Jabir Al-Sabah was Kuwait’s minister of Defense in 1990. Jabir Mubarak al-Hamal Al-Sabah was Kuwait’s minister of Information in 1990. And Salim al-Sabah al-Salim Al-Sabah was Kuwait’s minister of the Interior in 1990.

Another Al-Sabah family member, Sheikh Ali Al-Khalifa Al-Sabah, had been Kuwait’s minister of Oil since 1978 and Kuwait’s minister of Finance since 1983. Kuwait minister of Oil Al-Sabah had also been the chairman of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation [KPC], the world’s 12th-largest oil company in 1990, since 1980. In the 1960s, minister of oil Al-Sabah was a student at the University of California at Berkeley before graduating from San Francisco State College in 1968. And his close friends had nicknamed him “Ali Cash.”

Nasir Muhammad al-Ahmad Al-Sabah was Kuwait’s minister of Social Affairs and Labor in 1990. And Sheikh Saud Nasir Al-Sabah had been Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States, Kuwait’s ambassador to Canada and Kuwait’s ambassador to Venezuela, simultaneously, since 1981. Kuwait ambassador to the United States Al-Sabah was previously Kuwait’s ambassador to Great Britain, Kuwait’s ambassador to Norway, Kuwait’s ambassador to Sweden and Kuwait’s ambassador to Denmark, simultaneously, between 1975 and 1980.

The Al-Sabah family government of Kuwait Inc. and its Kuwaiti National Assembly had never been too eager to encourage residents of Kuwait to participate in Kuwaiti political life or to even vote, historically. According to the 1989 Political Handbook of the World:

“Political parties are not permitted in Kuwait…Only literate, adult, native-born males whose families have resided in Kuwait since 1920 are allowed to vote, an increasingly vocal call for some women for suffrage being rebuffed by the Assembly in July 1985.”

As a result, only 85,000 out of 825,000 Kuwaitis were allowed to vote before August 1990.

The 1989 Political Handbook of the World also reported that:

“Constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press were suspended by Emir Sabah on August 29, 1976…In conjunction with the dissolution of the Assembly in July 1986 the government imposed new press restrictions, subjecting periodicals to prior censorship and announcing it would suspend any newspapers or magazines printing material `against the national interest.’ The government also continued its drive to Kuwaitize the news media, with an estimated 40 journalists from other Arab countries being deported to open jobs for nationals. The Kuwait Broadcasting Services and Television of Kuwait, both controlled by the government.”

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Political System of “Sabahcracy” In 2005

Kuwait Inc.'s Foreign Investments Historically

In a March 7, 1988 article, titled “Kuwait’s Money Machine Comes Out Buying,” Business Week observed that “since gaining full independence from Britain in 1961, Kuwait has built up a huge blue-chip portfolio” of foreign stocks and bonds and that this foreign investment portfolio “may now be worth upwards of $200 billion.” (Collectively, the richest 400 people in the United States were also worth around $200 billion in 1988, according to Louis Rukeyser’s Business Almanac).

Twenty-five percent of Kuwait Inc.’s $200 billion in foreign investments was privately-owned by Kuwaiti businessmen in 1988. Seventy-five percent of Kuwait Inc.’s foreign investment assets were owned in 1988 by the government of Kuwait Inc., which is controlled by the Al-Sabah royal family. But, according to the Aug. 6, 1990 issue of Business Week, “no outsider can know for sure where the Al-Sabahs’ assets end and the government’s begin.”

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Political System Of “Sabahcracy” In 1990

Kuwait Inc.'s Historic Special Influence

“Buying quietly through Citibank, Morgan Guaranty Trust, and Chase Manhattan, the Kuwaitis have taken big positions—sometimes just under the 5 percent level requiring disclosure of ownership—in the top 70 industrials on the New York Stock Exchange. So obsessed with secrecy are the Kuwaitis that in the early 1980s they pulled much of their money out of Citibank when details of their holdings appeared in the press…They have concealed ownership of some New York skyscrapers because of possible backlash from Jewish tenants.” (Business Week magazine 3/7/88)

In the early 1980s, Brent Scowcroft ( http://www.scowcroft.com/html/staff/scowcroft.html ) was hired by the government of Kuwait Incorporated’s Kuwait Petroleum Corporation [KPC] to sit alongside Ali Jabar Al Ali Al-Sabah on the board of directors of KPC’s U.S. subsidiary at that time, Santa Fe International. Scowcroft sat on Kuwait Inc.’s Santa Fe International corporate board in 1984, 1985 and 1986, according to Poor’s & Standard’s Register of Corporations. Yet in 1991, the former director of Kuwait Inc.’s major U.S. subsidiary at that time--Brent Scowcroft--was allowed to sit in a White House office as President Bush I’s National Security Affairs advisor.

Like the historically less camera-shy Israeli government, the government of Kuwait Inc. seems to have had a special influence on U.S. politics historically. In the name of “liberating” the homeland of Kuwait Inc., for instance, the Pentagon’s war machine launched a 1991 military offensive against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi war machine to start Gulf War I at that time.

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Foreign Investments Historically

Columbia University Professor Dinkins' Historic Wall Street Connection

Columbia University Professor David Dinkins failed to fight against the special interests of Wall Street’s investment bankers when he was the Mayor of New York City during the early 1990s. One reason may have been because he accepted campaign contributions in 1989 from the same Wall Street investment banking firms who were selected by his administration in 1990 to make big bucks by selling City government bonds. As Shadow Government by Donald Axelrod observed:

“Excluding the federal government, New York City issues more bonds than any public authority or state and local government in the United States. In July 1990 the city selected five underwriters from a field of 53 companies to sell $6 billion in bonds: Bear, Stearns; Goldman Sachs; First Boston; Shearson Lehman Hutton; and Merrill Lynch. To no one’s surprise, the New York Times revealed that all five had contributed $233,000 to the campaigns of Mayor David N. Dinkins and Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman."

Under Columbia University Professor Dinkins’ administration, the official unemployment rate in New York City was 9.5 percent in August 1993.

(Downtown 9/29/93)

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Historic Special Influence

1,429 Pages In FBI's "James Baldwin File"

Although the FBI has never been famous for its special interest in African-American literature, it apparently showed a great interest in the prominent U.S. novelist James Baldwin, prior to his death in 1987. As Natalie Robins noted in her book, Alien Ink: The FBI’s War On Freedom Of Expression:

“The first mention of novelist, playwright, and essayist James Baldwin anywhere in the FBI files occurs in 1951—in Richard Wright’s file…Baldwin’s 1,429-page file remained `dead’ until 1960. The FBI employed a great many confidential informants to shadow Baldwin, people who attended rallies and meetings with him, and reported what he said and did, as well as neighbors who were willing to keep a surveillance on him, or monitor his mail for any change of address. The FBI also telephoned him under various pretexts to ascertain his whereabouts, and photographed him…By 1964, the bureau stepped up its harassment of James Baldwin, targeting him in a COINTELPRO operation…He was to be one of 8 recipients of an anonymous letter…”

(Downtown 3/31/93)

Next: Columbia University Professor Dinkins’ Historic Wall Street Connection

`He Walked Up The Hill' (for Martin Luther King)

He walked up the hill and he knew it was willed
That the white racists, they would slay
All the good men who crossed their way
And what else is there left to say?
“Look! The Black Prince of Peace now lays.”

And all go and pray, though they kill people everyday
Their soldiers kill ‘cross the seas
Their cops shoot up the cities
Their managers steal our bread
Their teachers, they ruin our heads.

“Be Non-Violent!” they scream, for they fear what we all will dream
Now that Moses is dead
Shot in the back of the head
“Love them” is what he said
Yet look how they treated him.

The hearts now are red as they rise up from their beds
To say to the Man with hate:
“We’re sorry but it’s now too late
We want to control our fate
The Panther will kill your snake.”


To listen to the He Walked Up The Hill eulogistic protest folk song, click on the following music site link:
http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/More+Biographical+Folk+Songs/He+Walked+Up+the+Hill+%28for+Martin+Luther+King%29

The He Walked Up The Hill eulogistic protest folk song was written during the summer of 1968, in an apartment near Amsterdam Avenue and W. 106th Street, a few months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.

Next: 1,429 Pages In FBI’s “James Baldwin File”

Hillary Clinton's Previous White House Experience: May 1993 to July 1993

When the Clintons first occupied the White House, 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spent her time in the following way between May 1, 1993 and July 30, 1993:

In the evening of May 7, 1993, Hillary and her husband attended both a reception in honor of Bill Clinton and a Marine Corps evening parade at the Marine Barrack. Two days later, on May 9, 1993, the Clintons then spent the afternoon touring an exhibit of French paintings at the National Gallery of Art.

On May 15, 1993, in the afternoon, Hillary and her husband next attended the U.S. Air Force Thunderbird aerial demonstration at Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland. Afterwards, the Clintons traveled to New York City for the evening and, late that night, returned to Washington, D.C.

Two weeks later, on May 29, 1993, the Clintons again traveled to Camp David, Maryland for the weekend. Then, on May 31, 1993, Hillary and her husband returned to the White House from Camp David in the morning for a White House breakfast with representatives of veterans groups.

On June 9, 1993, the Clintons next attended their daughter Chelsea’s eighth grade graduation ceremony at the Sidwell Friends private school. Four days later, on June 13, 1993, Hillary and her husband then hosted an evening reception for members of the White House press corps. A few weeks later, on June 30, 1993, the Clintons and their daughter spent the evening attending a performance of “The Phantom Of The Opera” at the JFK Center for the Performing Arts.

The following evening, on July 1, 1993, Hillary and her husband had dinner with then-U.S. Senate Republican leader and 1996 Republican Party presidential candidate Robert Dole and Mrs. Robert Strauss. Then, on July 5, 1993, the Clintons traveled from San Francisco, California to Tokyo, Japan in the afternoon.

Three days later, on the evening of July 8, 1993, Hillary and her husband next attended a dinner at Japan’s Imperial Palace which was hosted by Japanese Emperor Akinito. Then, in the late morning of July 10, 1993, the Clintons traveled from Tokyo to Seoul, South Korea.

The following evening, on July 11, 1993, Hillary and her husband traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii from South Korea, crossed the international dateline going east, and thus arrived in Honolulu on the morning of July 11, 1993. After the Clintons participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial, they spent the evening attending a dinner for then-Hawaii Governor John Warhoo.

On July 21, 1993, Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, said the following after Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster Jr.’s mysterious death:

“Forty-two years ago…I lived with my grandparents in a modest little home around the corner from Vince Foster’s nice, big, white brick house. And our backyards touched.

“When I started my career in Arkansas politics, he was there to help me. When I decided to run for attorney general, he was the first lawyer in Little Rock I talked to about supporting me. When the Rose Law Firm hired Hillary after I moved to Little Rock, Vince Foster and Webb Hubbell became her closest friends.”

Then, on July 23, 1993, the Clintons traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas in the morning to attend the funeral services for their Deputy White House Counsel at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in the morning; and, in the afternoon, Hillary and her husband traveled to Hope, Arkansas where they attended a burial service for Vincent Foster at Memory Garden Cemetery. The following day, on July 24, 1993, the Clintons returned to Washington, D.C. from Little Rock.

The Clintons are now hoping to move back into the White House for another two terms in 2009—despite the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting U.S. politicians from occupying the White House for more than two terms as U.S. President.

Next: He Walked Up The Hill lyrics

Hillary Clinton's Wal-Mart Connection Revisited

Although 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claims to be pro-labor and against the economic exploitation of U.S. working-class women, when her husband was the Governor of Arkansas during the 1980s and early 1990s, the former First Lady sat on the board of a corporation, Wal-Mart, that is notorious for exploiting its non-unionized women workers. As Liza Featherstone recalled in her 2004 book Selling Women Short:

“Her law firm represented Wal-Mart frequently, and she was a shareholder as well as the wife of the governor of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is headquartered…In November 1986…Hillary Clinton became Wal-Mart’s first female board member, a position…for which she accepted $15,000 a year…Her hourly rate was about 156 times that of a female Wal-Mart worker…Senator Clinton would not comment on her work with Wal-Mart…

“Wal-Mart cannot be blamed on George W. Bush. The Arkansas-based company prospered under the state’s native son Bill Clinton when he was governor and president. Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, were close friends with the Clintons, and for several years, Hillary Clinton, whose corporate law firm represented Wal-Mart, served on the company’s board of directors. Bill Clinton’s `welfare reform’ has provided Wal-Mart with a ready workforce of women who have no choice but to accept the company’s poverty wages and discriminatory policies…”

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Previous White House Experience: May 1993 to July 1993

Big Media Newsroom Racism Historically

The U.S. Establishment’s press still seemed to be integrating its newsrooms at an extremely slow pace as late as the 1990s. As Media Studies Journal Editor Ted Peace noted in an early 1990s essay, titled “Philosophical and Economic Arguments for Media Diversity,” which appeared in Pluralizing Journalism Education:

“At the end of 1990, 8.7 percent of newsroom professionals—reporters, copy editors, desk editors, photographers, graphic artists, and so on—were minorities. The country, however, is more than 24 percent non-white…

“…People of color still are largely excluded from both newsrooms and news content, or are included only as second-class citizens…A variety of scholarly studies of news media performance show that coverage of minorities by those large metropolitan newspapers tends to account for only about 3 percent of their total news coverage. Further, more than half of white journalists and more than 70 percent of minority journalists, responding to a national 1991 study, said that their own newspaper covered minority communities only marginally or poorly.

“From these examples, it is apparent that the news industry, whether intentionally or not, still excludes people from the media mainstream because of their race or cultural perspective. The news industry is not keeping up with demographic change in this country, either in terms of employing people of diverse backgrounds as information-gatherers, or in terms of providing content and coverage of people who are not white…”

(Downtown 11/10/93)

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Wal-Mart Connection Revisited

The Military-Industiral-Academic Complex Revisited: A Review of `The University In Chains' by Henry A. Giroux

The University In Chains by Henry A. Giroux
(Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2007)

If you think the links between U.S. universities like Columbia and the U.S. war machine were cut forever after the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt, then you probably need to read Henry A. Giroux’s new book, The University In Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.

In the tradition of Thorstein Veblen’s The Higher Learning In America, Upton Sinclair’s The Goose-Step, and James Ridgeway’s The Closed Corporation, Giroux provides his readers with an updated picture of how the 21st-century U.S. university system has become more closely tied to the U.S. military and the U.S. national security state apparatus and more openly subservient to external special corporate business interests in this post-9/11 “era of permanent war.” In addition, Giroux also describes how academic freedom on U.S. campuses is becoming increasingly endangered, now that well-financed external right-wing pressure groups are targeting U.S. campuses as a place where they feel U.S. right-wing ideological control needs to be established more deeply.

Giroux’s book on the 21st-century U.S. Military-Industrial-Academic Complex consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first chapter “focuses on the growth of militarized knowledge and research, the increasing development of academic programs and schools that serve military personnel and the growing influence of the CIA on college campuses.” The Pentagon, with a budget for research and development of $66 billion a year, funds, for instance, 55 percent of all federally-funded university-based computer sciences research and 60 percent of all federally-funded campus-based electrical engineering research.

Much of the Pentagon-funded university research is for the purpose of developing weapons like micro-wave guns, space-based lasers, electromagnetic guns, holograph designs, electric tanks and robot-type weapons. One of the largest recipients of Pentagon research money, MIT, for instance, is also developing remote sensing and imaging systems to help the Pentagon “nullify the enemy’s ability to hide inside complex mountain terrains and cityscapes,” according to Giroux. In addition, an increasing number of college degree programs are now being offered to U.S. military personnel in the form of on-line courses. At Central Texas College, for instance, “74 percent of its 63,000 students are members of the active-duty military.”

Giroux also provides his readers with some examples of the increasing presence of the CIA and other spy agencies on U.S. campuses since September 11, 2001. A CIA-sponsored program to train 150 analysts in anthropology on U.S. campuses, the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, was established, for instance, after 9/11. U.S. universities also have been developing high-tech gadgets for the CIA and allowing more and more of their faculty members to work as CIA consultants or become recipients of CIA grants and CIA research contracts.

The second chapter of Giroux’s The University In Chains book provides readers with a 21st-century update of how U.S. corporations have increased their special influence over U.S. campus life since Lawrence Soley published his book, Leasing The Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of Academia, on the same topic in 1995. Giroux observes that “as corporate culture and values shape university life, academic labor is increasingly transformed into the image of a multinational conglomerate workforce.” The University of Illinois, for instance, “plans to launch a whole new college, which would be completely online, operate as a for-profit entity, and consist almost entirely of part-time faculty, with no tenured faculty at all.”

Already in 2004, 44.5 percent of all faculty members on U.S. campuses were just employed as part-time employees by their universities; and less than 40 percent of all U.S. professors were employed in 2004 in a tenure-track academic position. Transnational corporations like BMW and IBM are also being given more direct control over the curriculum and hiring procedures at academic research and training centers which they fund at U.S. universities like Clemson, North Carolina State and UC-Berkeley.

If you’re an anti-war professor at a U.S. university these days who criticizes the U.S. social system from a liberal or left perspective, you’ll probably find chapter 3 of Giroux’s book to be worrisome. Titled, “The New Right-Wing Assault On Higher Education,” the chapter indicates the similarities between the post-9/11 attack on Middle Eastern Studies at universities like Columbia by off-campus right-wing pressure groups and the McCarthyism of the 1950s that threatened academic freedom at that time. The role that right-wing foundation-funded conservative intellectuals like David Horowitz have been playing in recent years to try to pressure U.S. university administrations to replace liberal and left-wing U.S. academics with more politically right-wing academics is also examined in this chapter.

Giroux’s final chapter proposes “a strategy to retake the university” from the U.S. war machine and special corporate interests that pretty much control the current political direction of U.S. higher education. Hopefully, more U.S. anti-war students and U.S. anti-war professors will read The University In Chains soon and then unite in a 21st-century anti-war movement of students, faculty and community activists which fights to end U.S. university complicity with the U.S. war machine in this current “era of permanent war,” before there’s yet another U.S. military escalation in the Middle East in 2008 or 2009.

Next: Big Media Newsroom Racism Historically

`Hiding In The Shade'

How many times will the people be fooled
Before they awake from their daze?
Yes, and how many times will they fall for the lies
And consent to be treated like slaves?
And how many times will they cheer for their kings
Who exploit their frustration and pain?
The answer, my friend, is hiding in the shade
The answer is hiding in the shade.

How many seas can their bald eagles fly
Before they’re all captured and drowned?
Yes, and how many towns can their singers exploit
Before people hear their false sounds?
And how many times will the people just cry
And march passively to their graves?
The answer, my friend, is hiding in the shade
The answer is hiding in the shade.

How many years will the prisons be locked
Before all the people revolt?
Yes, and how many years will the poor walk the streets,
Their lives lacking food and all hope?
And how many years will it take till they fight
The class which provides them with chains?
The answer, my friend, is hiding in the shade
The answer is hiding in the shade.
To listen to the "Hiding In The Shade" folk song, you can click on the following music site link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Love+Songs+and+Others/Hiding+in+the+Shade

The Hiding In The Shade protest folk song was written in the late 1970s or early 1980s and can be sung to the tune of No More Auction Block/Blowin’ In The Wind. Unfortunately, in the 21st-century the questions still need to be asked, but the answer is still hiding in the shade.

Next: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex Revisited: A Review of The University In Chains by Henry A. Giroux

Hillary Clinton's Previous White House Experience: January 1993 to April 1993

When the Clintons first occupied the White House, 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spent her time in the following way between January 20, 1993 and April 30, 1993:

Following her husband’s Inaugural luncheon at the Capitol on January 20, 1993, Hillary Clinton and Bill went by motorcade along the parade route to the White House, where they viewed the Inaugural parade from the reviewing stand. In the evening, the Clintons then attended several Inaugural balls.

The following morning, on January 21, 1993, Hillary and her husband held an open house in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room. Then, in the afternoon, Hillary and her husband hosted a reception in the White House State Dining Room for their family and friends from Arkansas.

A few days later, on January 25, 1993, Hillary’s husband announced that Hillary would work with three of Bill’s other advisers to drew up an effective health care reform plan. Then, on January 28, 1993, Hillary and her husband attended funeral services at the Washington National Cathedral for Justice Thurgood Marshall in the morning.

Two days later, on January 30, 1993, Hillary and her husband went to Camp David, Maryland for a retreat with her husband’s Cabinet and senior staff members of the Clintons’ White House. The following day, on January 31, 1993, Hillary and her husband returned to the White House from Camp David in the afternoon.

On February 12, 1993, Hillary and her husband then spent the morning touring the Fenwick Center health clinic in Arlington, Virginia.

Nearly two months later, on April 8, 1993, Hillary and her husband next travelled back to Little Rock, Arkansas in the morning. The following day, on April 9, 1993, Hillary and her husband then attended a memorial service for her father, a Republican named Hugh Rodham, at the First United Methodist Church in Little Rock.

The next morning, on April 10, 1993, Hillary and her husband then travelled from Little Rock to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where they attended funeral services for Hillary’s father. In the evening, Hillary and her husband again traveled to Camp David, Maryland for the weekend. Two days later, on April 12, 1993, Hillary and her husband returned to the White House in the morning from their weekend stay at Camp David, Maryland.

Later that month, on April 21, 1993, Hillary and her husband hosted a private reception at Blair House in the evening. A few days later, on April 24, 1993, Hillary and her husband next traveled to Jamestown, Virginia where they went sightseeing with several other Clinton family members. And on the afternoon of April 29, 1993, Hillary and her husband met with King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain.

The Clintons apparently enjoyed living at taxpayers’ expense in the White House for two terms during the 1990s so much that they’re now hoping to move back into the White House for another two terms in 2009—despite the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting U.S. politicians from occupying the White House for more than two terms as U.S. President.

Next: Hiding In The Shade lyrics

Institutional Sexism In Hollywood Historically

Although the fantasy lives of many traditionally-minded U.S. women are still heavily-influenced by Hollywood-produced movies, U.S. women have generally not exercised much influence in Hollywood, historically. As the 1980 book Women And The Mass Media by Matilda Butler and William Paisley observed:

“Motion pictures are the most male-dominated of the media. June 1974 membership figures for the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences show that men are: 89 percent of the actors/actresses; 100 percent of the cinematographers; 99 percent of the directors; 98 percent of the executives; 99 percent of the producers; 92 percent of the writers; 89 percent of the editors; 90 percent of the art directors; and 94 percent of all members…

“Women are far less than 1 percent of the members of the Producers’ Guild (8 out of 3068). They are 1 percent of the members of the Directors’ Guild (23 out of 2366) and 5 percent of the members of the Writers’ Guild (148 out of 2976).”

(Downtown 3/31/93)

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Previous White House Experience: January 1993 to April 1993

Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 13

After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.

Following, is the final section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:

On December 7, 1988, the New York Times reported that “Donald Trump is prepared to spend $2 million of his own money on anti-Koch television commercials in next year’s mayoral race” because he “says Koch has systematically mismanaged New York City and allowed it to become a `cesspool of corruption and incompetence.’” ( In 1985, Trump had previously backed Columbia University Professor Dinkins in his successful campaign for Manhattan Borough President).

The following day, December 8, 1988, the New York Times reported that “Borough President David Dinkins comes close to announcing his candidacy for New York City Mayor” but “despite desire to run and favorable poll, Dinkins says he will wait 2 months to determine how much support and money he can get.”

After Dinkins decided to run for Mayor in 1989, he was rewarded for the way, as Manhattan Borough President, he apparently protected the special, private, corporate interests of the Dinkins and Sutton family’s Inner City Broadcasting Corporation/Queens Inner Unity Cable System and their Time-Warner business associates.

On October 21, 1989, the New York Times reported on its back pages that “Percy Sutton, Dinkins’ political mentor, Sutton’s relatives and businesses with which he is connected have contributed over $70,000 to Dinkins’ New York City mayoral campaign.” As of October 2, 1989, Percy Sutton and his family had donated $23,150 to fund the Dinkins for Mayor Campaign and Sutton’s Percy Sutton International firm had donated $8,500 more to fund Dinkins’ 1989 campaign. Another $8,470 was donated to Dinkins by other officials of his family’s Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. Another business associate of Sutton, Eugene D. Jackson of the National Black Network, donated $5,500 to the Dinkins campaign.

The Times also noted that “officers of Time Warner Inc., part of the Queens Cable consortium, and a law firm representing it account for more than $25,000 in Dinkins contributions.” Six thousand dollars of this Time-Warner money for Columbia University Professor Dinkins’ 1989 campaign was contributed by the now-deceased former Time-Warner Co-Chairman Steve Ross and his wife. The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? book had noted in 1981 that:

“Steve Ross is the president of Warner Communications. He contributed $48,000 to [then New York governor] Hugh Carey in 1978 and flies Carey around in his corporate jet. Ross wants cable television franchises and is interested in casino gambling.”

Brooklyn Queens Cable Television President Richard Aurelio and his wife, Suzanne, donated $6,250 of the Time-Warner subsidy for the Dinkins campaign. Aurelio was New York City’s Deputy Mayor in the early 1970s. He later apparently traded his political influence for a lucrative Warner Communications lobbying job in the late 1970s.

Another $14,750 of the Time-Warner campaign funding for the Dinkins for Mayor 1989 campaign was contributed by another Time Warner lobbyist, Sid Davidoff, and Davidoff’s law partners. In 1968, Davidoff was the assistant of the now-deceased former New York City Mayor John Lindsay who helped supervise the New York City police invasion of Columbia University’s campus on April 30, 1968 and May 21-22, 1968. In the early 1970s, Davidoff also approved and monitored the bank that got interest-free deposits of New York City public funds from the Lindsay Administration. In 1972, one of the banks, Century National Bank, gave Davidoff a $9,000 unsecured loan so that he could get into the restaurant business. According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York?, Davidoff’s “restaurant eventually went bankrupt and Davidoff was indicted for nonpayment of taxes to the state.”

Predictably, when the white New York City corporate and real estate establishment apparently told Dinkins to utilize his political power as New York City Mayor to use police violence to clear out the Lower East Side’s Tompkins Square Park and occupy Tompkins Square in 1991, Columbia University Professor Dinkins obediently issued the anti-democratic order to his police force.

Next: Institutional Sexism In Hollywood Historically