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Loading ...Kevin Phillips is a former top Republican strategist. He first became well known in 1969 with the publication of his book his book The Emerging Republican Majority which Newsweek described as “the political bible of the Nixon Administration.” After Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, Phillips was generally acknowledged as the Republican party’s principal electoral theoretician. In 1982, the Wall Street Journal described him as “the leading conservative electoral analyst — the man who invented the Sun Belt, named the New Right, and prophesied ‘The Emerging Republican Majority’ in 1969.”
He has since become a prolific writer and a critic of the current state of the Republican Party. Among his books are Wealth and Democracy and The Politics of Rich and Poor.
His latest book is American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. It examines how the Bush family has been consolidating its power for four generations and how the Bushes have been staging their ascent to national power since World War I.
Recently, Kevin Phillips was interviewed on Democracy Now! Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 140 stations in North America.Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the U.S., Democracy Now! is broadcast on Pacifica, community, and National Public Radio stations, public access cable television stations, satellite television (on Free Speech TV, channel 9415 of the DISH Network), shortwave radio and the internet.
For true democracy to work, people need easy access to independent, diverse sources of news and information. But the last two decades have seen unprecedented corporate media consolidation. The U.S. media was already fairly homogenous in the early 80s: some fifty media conglomerates dominated all media outlets, including television, radio, newspapers, magazines, music, publishing and film. In the year 2000, just six corporations dominated the U.S. media.
Democracy Now! is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations. We do not accept advertisers, donations from corporations, or donations from governments. This allows us to maintain our independence.
This transcript of Kevin Phillips interview is available free of charge and there is a Printer-Friendly Version online as well.
Here are some highlights:
And Halliburton, of course, that was the Dick Cheney company, but Halliburton bought Dresser, which was the industry that Prescott Bush first–that was the company where he got involved with the oil industry in 1930. So, what Prescott Bush had been involved with Dresser Industries became part of Halliburton, which was the Cheney company, and it all became one group of happy people connected to the Enron-Halliburton administration also known as the Bush-Cheney administration.
George Bush and Bin Laden Pals? Well, there’s probably not much doubt about this. The Bin Laden family is not the same thing as Osama in the sense that Osama is a black sheep who rebelled against them. But it’s absolutely true that the Arbusto package involved a $50,000 investment by a fellow named James Bath, who was the U.S. representative of the Bin Ladens, and the Khalid Bin-Mafuse, who was also distantly related, because they had all had four wives, and the concubines kids could get in the pie and everything. A lot of people were related. These two are said by some of the experts to have actually been the ones who provided the money that Bath gave to Bush in 1979, and then in his later business, Harkin Energy, which was in the late 1980’s, B.C.C.I., the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which was mixed up in Iran contra and a lot of other scandals was front and center in Harkin. You have a tie to two of Bush’s oil investments that bring you to the Persian Gulf types. The Bin Laden family was also involved in the Carlysle group, which George H. W., after he left office in 1993, became very prominently affiliated with the Carlysle group. There are these ties.
Ready to be really disturbed? Read the rest of the interview. This is not the first time I have heard these and other connections. More on that another day.
