AIG subsidiary parties in style in OC, two weeks after bailout

Less than two weeks after Uncle Sam gave American International Group (AIG) an $85 billion loan - staving off financial collapse - execs from one of its insurance subsidiaries, AIG American General, gathered for a conference at the uber-swank St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort, billed as “California’s only Mobil Travel Guide Five-Star Resort,” where ocean-view rooms start at $565 a night and “world class luxury” is the rule.

On Friday, before the presidential debate got under way, caterers for the St. Regis were setting up dozens of tables on the grounds of Mission San Juan Capistrano for AIG American General’s sumptuous off-site dinner. Tables were draped with soft Tuscan-gold tablecloths that cascaded to the grass; elegant fresh flower centerpiece graced each table; and what appeared to be fine crystal stemware, at least from a distance, glistened in the fading light.

Workers set up a lengthy bar stocked with bottles of liquor. A half-dozen tall space heaters stood sentinel in case the evening turned cool. There was a large center stage with lighting and a sound system, and once the sun went down, the whole scene took on a magical patina as tiny white lights twinkled in the trees.

The Watchdog - and the Outraged Taxpayer who alerted us to the situation - understand that corporate events such as these are planned many months in advance. I mean, really. Who could have known in the spring that there’d be Financial Armageddon in the fall?

But still. “The inappropriateness and the excessiveness just blew us away,” said the Outraged Taxpayer, who went to the Mission Friday to pray in the chapel. “It’s outrageous. In very poor taste. Over the top.”
http://waronyou.com/2008/10/aig-subsidiary-parties-in-style-in-oc-two-weeks-after-bailout/

The British Occult Secret Service

It is not really surprising that historically occultism and espionage have often been strange bedfellows. The black art of espionage is about obtaining secret information and witches, psychics and astrologers have always claimed to be able to predict the future and know about things hidden from ordinary people.

Gathering intelligence is carried out under a cloak of secrecy and occultists are adept at keeping their activities concealed from sight. Like secret agents they also use codes, symbols and cryptograms to hide information from outsiders. Occultists and intelligence officers are similar in many ways, as both inhabit a shadowy underworld In 1570 Walsingham wasof secrets, deception and disinformation. It is therefore not unusual that often these two professions have shared the same members.

The ‘father of the British Secret Service’ was the Elizabethan lawyer, politician, diplomat and spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. He was a Protestant and as a young man during the bloody reign of the Catholic Queen Mary was forced to flee abroad to escape persecution. While in exile, Walsingham learnt Italian and French and became acquainted with the work of the famous Venetian Secret Service that used its spying skills for trade and commerce under the cloak of diplomacy.

How President Bush's Grandfather Helped Hitler's Rise to Power

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.

While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar#Bush_is_worse