BAD COMPANY: Part 2 May 4, 1992 by Curtis Lang

BAD COMPANY: Part 2
May 4, 1992

by Curtis Lang		print version
		print version (graphics)

Brotherly Love

     The same year George Bush was running for president on a platform attacking Willie Horton, denouncing flag burning, and extolling family values, his brother "Pres" Bush was doing deals with Japanese gangsters and Chinese dictators.

     Pres Bush Jr. lent a hand to the notorious Japanese Yakuza godfather Susumu Ishii, helping Ishii close a 1988 deal to invest $5 million in the New York firm of Asset Management, International Financing & Settlement, where Pres was senior adviser.

        Bush guaranteed half of a $5 million investment by West Tsusho, a firm controlled by Ishii, who has been identified by Japanese police as head of one of Japan's Big Three Yakuza families, which raise much of their investment capital the oldfashioned way--by extortion, prostitution, and gambling.  Pres Bush also recommended that a senior official at West Tsusho invest in a Houston-based computer software firm, Quantum Access, Inc.

        Pres Bush, who resigned as Asset Management's senior adviser in 1990, received $250,000 for arranging the deal, and was promised a three-year consulting contract at $250,000 a year.

        Pres Bush not only dealt with the Yakuza, but also arranged with a legitimate Japanese company, Aoki Corp. of Tokyo, to help build an $18 million golf course and resort near Shanghai, China.

        The next year, when China's ruling gerontocracy crushed the student uprising in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, George Bush refused to impose meaningful sanctions against the butcher of Beijing.  Since then, Bush has continued to favor most-favorednation trading status for China, backed continued World Bank loans to China, and ignored mounting evidence that Chinese slave labor has been routinely used to supply Western companies with consumer products for sale in America. Because of Prescott Bush's business dealings with the Japanese and the Chinese, the appearance of a conflict of interest hovers over George Bush's Japan and China policy.

        American aristocrats like George and Prescott Bush apparently feel most comfortable with secret business and political dealings involving members of other solidly entrenched elites from around the world.  That's not surprising.  Their experiences have been profoundly antidemocratic here in America, and their lifestyles and personal beliefs probably correspond more closely with other members of the international elite than with American middle-class workers.