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GW Bush, Jesus and the Manhattan Institute

By Robert Lederman
8 August 2000

You have to admire the nerve of G.W. Bush. It takes a kind of goofy audacity to claim that Jesus' teachings and the CIA-derived ideas of the right-wing Manhattan Institute are your twin sources of inspiration. Bush publicly credits the Manhattan Institute with inventing his entire "compassionate conservative" platform and persona.

NY Times June 12, 2000. Bush Culls Campaign Theme From Conservative Thinkers

"Gov. George W. Bush has said his political views have been shaped by the work of Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute."

The Dallas Morning Star 4/16/2000. The Godfathers of 'Compassionate Conservatism

"In Austin that day in 1997, Mr. Bush told Mr. Magnet that his 1993 book The Dream and The Nightmare, had changed his life..."

This past April, G.W. declared a new public holiday will be celebrated in Texas each June10th-Jesus Day. [See: http://www.governor.state.tx.us/Proclamations/May00/5-00Jesus .html] Even many Christians found this unprecedented crossing of the line between church and state to be troubling. It is however entirely in line with the teachings of the MI (Manhattan Institute), which advocates having religious institutions take over many of the present tasks of government.

The Weekly Standard 8/23/2000. The Political Theory of Compassionate Conservatism by John J. Dilulio Jr. [A theorist for the Manhattan Institute]

"In every instance where my administration sees a responsibility to help people," [G.W. Bush] promised, "we will look first to faith-based organizations, charities and community groups."

While Jesus' teachings are well-known even to most non-Christians the ideas of the MI are much less familiar to the public. MI was started in 1978 by Ronald Reagan's CIA director, William Casey, and has become the nation's most influential, though not best known-as befits a CIA operation-right wing think tank. While I personally have great respect for the traditions of the world's religions, including Christianity, the CIA promoting religion may not exactly be what Jesus had in mind.

NY Times Monday, May 12, 1997 Turning Intellect Into Influence Promoting Its Ideas, the Manhattan Institute Has Nudged New York Rightward

"Currently housed in an unprepossessing warren on the second floor of a building near Grand Central Terminal, the institute was founded as a free-market education and research organization by William Casey, who then went off to head the Central Intelligence Agency in the Reagan Administration."

Casey was a top American intelligence operative who, among other endeavors, helped the CIA bring thousands of Nazi SS officials into the U.S. after WWII as part of Operation Paper Clip. These Nazi SS doctors, scientists and intelligence experts who were directly involved in the death camps, in propaganda work and in creating the prototypes for new and better ways to kill masses of people, were installed in private industry, in the CIA, in medical and psychological research programs in universities and in the media, supposedly to fight Communism.

Many of these SS officials professed strong religious convictions, as did Adolf Hitler himself and as do many of the top scholars associated with the MI.

"Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it."[Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

While school vouchers and the turning over of public education to religious institutions is being sold by many on the right as a new and very progressive idea, the promotion of religious teachings in public schools was actually a key aspect of the Third Reich.

From: http://atheism.about.com/religion/atheism/library/quotes/bl_q_A Hitler.htm

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.. . we need believing people." [Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933]

More than simply a violation of the separation of church and state which is an essential part of the Constitution, my concern with Bush's "religious convictions" is that they, like those of the Manhattan Institute, are actually a cover for fascism.

Previous to adopting G.W. as their poster-boy, NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was their most prominent operative in elected office. Like G.W. Bush, the infamously repressive and Constitution-violating Mayor of New York has also publicly acknowledged on numerous occasions that the Manhattan Institute is the source of his policy ideas.

"The mayor has a very close working relationship with the Manhattan Institute," Giuliani's communications director, Crystine Lategano, said." -Boston Sunday Globe 2/22/98

The MI's twin obsessions as evidenced by even a brief visit to their webpage, are race and privatization. Among the ideas they are particularly keen on is getting everyone's DNA in a national database. The best known of their many celebrity scholars is Charles Murray, who wrote his controversial book, The Bell Curve-proposing the genetic inferiority of Blacks as a justification for eliminating affirmative action-while a research fellow of the MI. He continues, despite their claims to the contrary, to publicly speak there about eliminating welfare and on racial issues.

From an announcement on the MI website http://www.manhattan-institute.org/

Center for Civic Innovation Welfare Conference Held at the Manhattan Institute Topic: Next Steps in Welfare Reform. Participants: [a partial list] Charles Murray (Author of Losing Ground; American Enterprise Institute), Jason Turner (Commissioner, NYC Human Resources Administration) April 14, 1999 New York, New York

While the public expression of the ideas of the MI are couched in politically-correct terminology, the ideas themselves are closer to those of late 19th and early 20th century Eugenics than any other source. Eugenics is the application of science to the task of improving the human race by selective breeding (positive Eugenics) and sterilization or elimination of undesirable members of society (negative Eugenics).

From: Village Voice 2/29/2000 NEVER AGAIN BY WARD HARKAVY The History of American Eugenics Is Explored Online

A century ago, scientists from the top universities in America began to study people's pedigrees in the hopes of creating "perfect" children. Instead, they spawned a monster: the pseudoscience of eugenics... It's more than coincidence that the Cold Spring Harbor Lab hosts this project. It is, after all, home of the Human Genome Project to map DNA... Minority groups were most often the target of this plan... The ERO itself was endowed by a grant from the widow of railroad magnate E.H. Harriman [Prescott Bush was A. Harriman's business partner in Brown Brother Harriman, a firm that specialized in financing Hitler]. Today's breakthroughs in, say, prenatal screening would have been embraced by eugenicists, and there's always a group of people who will subscribe to racial-inferiority theories like those in The Bell Curve. [written by Manhattan Institute scholar, Charles Murray]

Eugenics reached its most popular expression in numerous American laws passed in the 1920's and 1930's requiring forcible sterilization of mental defectives and restricting immigration from Eastern Europe, Ireland, Africa and Latin America.

Among its top promoters were Rockefeller and Henry Ford. Today, their foundations continue to fund many of the top Eugenics programs in the world. The Manhattan Institute's main sponsor is the Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank, an organization that has publicly admitted to helping Hitler loot the banks of occupied Europe.

Until WWII and the Holocaust temporarily gave Eugenics a bad name, many American States were seriously considering legislation requiring Euthanasia for people with chronic diseases and for so-called chronic criminals.

Among the very few legitimate claims to fame of G.W. Bush is his unprecedented record of presiding over executions while Governor of Texas. Men, women and even mentally retarded convicts are sent to their deaths almost daily via lethal injection in Texas at a rate roughly equal to all other U.S. Governors combined.

NY Times 8/7/2000 Executing The Mentally Retarded Even As Laws Begin to Shift

"Here in Texas, Gov. George W. Bush has opposed laws that would prohibit the execution of the mentally retarded. It is a position he still holds, a spokeswoman, Linda Edwards, said on Friday."

The significance of Nazi Germany to an understanding of Eugenics is that it stands as a more or less fully documented expression of what a high-tech fully-developed social Eugenics program might look like. The Nazis used the most up-to-date science to create breeding programs for the elite and corresponding extermination programs for those to be deleted.

Downsizing and selecting the subjects for an entire society, Hitler promised to create a New Germany and a new humanity. He originated the term, New World Order that later became President Bush's buzzword. As Mayor Giuliani and Governor Bush have done-to an admittedly much lesser degree due to the fierce opposition they have encountered-the harassment, persecution and elimination of the least fit and those least wanted by society substitutes for costly social programs for the disabled, the hungry, the abandoned and the homeless.

G.W. Bush's father-former CIA chief and President George Bush-brought us the corporate-sponsored Gulf War and its after effect-Gulf War Syndrome which has destroyed the health of hundreds of thousands of American service personnel and their families. Accompanied by the same military and intelligence advisors and with the able assistance of American high-tech industry, the son is poised to bring us a play-at-home version of that fiasco.

Here in NYC we are being exposed to genetically-altered mosquitoes bred in nearby bio-warfare labs, sprayed with a rotating cocktail of organophosphate and pyrethroid nerve gas pesticides originally invented by Nazi chemists and will soon be given the chance to become test subjects for the government's latest experimental live virus vaccines, courtesy of Oravax, a private company directly associated with the U.S. Army bio-warfare lab in Ft. Dietrick Md. [See: http://baltech.org/lederman/spray/]

G.W. Bush and Giuliani are not only friends and fellow Manhattan Institute puppets; they have many political associates in common and often pursue similar policies despite the vast difference in their constituencies. At the same time all of NYC is being subjected to an unprecedented exposure to toxic nerve gas pesticides, Texas is simultaneously being doused with even greater amounts of neuro-toxic chemicals. [For details on the massive poisoning by pesticides presently happening in Texas contact rsimon@westxs.net OR mail@westxs.net]

[See: http://baltech.org/lederman/spray/ for detailed reports on the spraying in NYC].

NYC is the perfect site for a practice run to get the government's Eugenics program up to speed, learn how to deal with the inevitable opposition from activists and practice all of the necessary techniques of a fully-fledged police state. Spray an entire city like New York where there are tens of thousands of people from virtually every nation and you will statistically discover exactly which ethnic and racial groups are vulnerable or especially resistant to a particular chemical or vaccine. Compiling statistics was Giuliani's specialty in the Reagan Justice Department.

Carrying out such experiments on Americans or any other civilian or military population is both highly illegal and immoral. And that's why you need men like Giuliani, Bush or Hitler to get this kind of job done. Men who, like Giuliani, can crush the homeless one moment and then make a pious statement about protecting the Holy Virgin the next; or like G.W. Bush who can claim he is inspired by the example of Jesus and then preside over the execution of a retarded man.

People within the Giuliani administration have confided in me that if elected GW will appoint Giuliani U.S. Attorney General. The former Federal prosecutor, who as the number three man in Reagan's Justice Department helped create the phony war on drugs, the Contra cocaine connection and a massive program of civil forfeiture and elimination of civil liberties directly modeled after Hitler's, is the perfect accompanist for G.W.

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed [from Hitler's, Decree For The Protection of the People and the State, 1933]

Latino and Black voters who thought the all singing, all dancing, all praying sideshow and the inclusion of a few words of Spanish at the Republican convention means they have a place in Bush's New World Order need to think about exactly what that place will be. The Republican Convention program was organized in part by the CIA sponsored think tank, The Manhattan Institute.

Village Voice 8/8/2000 Uncle Shrub's Cabin

"Absent in the sticky Philadelphia heat was the drumbeat of the fire-breathing, nay-saying Christian Right. In its place, singing the praises of the Jesus-influenced candidate and following a script laid out by the Manhattan Institute...the social scientists from the Manhattan Institute rolled out their charts and reported that kids who go to church in poor neighborhoods do fewer drugs and thus, churches, mosques, and synagogues "should be supported as uniquely qualified agencies of social control that matter a great deal in the lives of adolescents in America's most disorganized and impoverished communities."

One thing I'll admit about Bush, who strikes me as a blandly nice if not too bright fellow (unlike Giuliani who appears more and more each day to be a demented psychopath) is that if elected and if he institutes Eugenics policies no one will be able to claim he changed his views. When you make your reputation presiding over executions, those who vote for you are getting exactly what was advertised.

It's really all just a matter of semantics. Compassionate conservatism: it's just another way of saying mercy killing or Eugenics. All hail President George W. Bush, the Executioner in Chief.

Robert Lederman (718) 743-3722 ARTISTpres@aol.com
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
http://Baltech.org/lederman/spray/