Last edited Fri Apr 19, 2013, 06:18 PM - Edit history (2)
Got a better source? Bring it in. I don't mind reading. Babysitting gets a little tiresome, but I'd be glad to hear some actual arguments from you.
While you're at it, bring in any source for being "60% of Wikipedia (being) inaccurate."
I can cite a 2008 report from Reference Services Review that "pegged Wikipedia's accuracy rate at 80 percent, compared to 95-96 percent among other sources."
Near as I can tell, you got your "60% inaccurate" figure from not being able to understand the meaning of another recent report, "published in the Public Relations Society of America's journal {that} says 60 percent of business entries on the website contain factual errors, which is making it harder for PR firms to clear those errors on behalf of their clients." {emphasis added to clean up your incomprehension}
So they aren't calling it 60% inaccurate, as you have distorted it; they're saying 60% of articles about current companies have at least one error in them. And this, by the way, is a claim made on behalf of PR firms trying to polish the public image of the companies that hire them--hardly an unbiased source.
But all this is a diversion, my fact-challenged friend. Tell us: How it is you believe Prescott Bush was Hitler's banker? Oh, wait... I see you've deleted that claim prior to parroting my yawning comment. Do let's play again some time.
{on edit - 4:45 CST}
Oh, I see you've updated your comments while I was typing. I'll read over your source and respond in a moment in this space.
{on edit - 5:15 CST}
Turns out, you're still wrong. Oh quelle suprise. What we have is a rehashing of old news, that Poppy Bush's poppy was financially entagled with the same Germans who bankrolled Hitler in search of fiscal sweetheart deals with the government. At no point in your article does it say Prescott Bush was a banker for Hitler. In case you can't locate the critical statement (it's in the first paragraph):
Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
That's rather a different thing than being Hitler's banker, or even being Nazi Germany's banker.
The article notes:
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.
(I think they're talking about you.)
Here's the
actual Bush-Nazi connection for those who prefer facts over hysterics and name-calling:
"... even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, {Prescott Bush} 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.
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.
Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement...
This is largely a rehash of the information that I quoted from Wikipedia and which you "yawned at". You're such a knucklehead, you can't even read and see that the source you posted says
exactly what I said and disputes your own silly mischaracterization of the facts.
To clarify, Prescott was a financial opportunist who didn't scruple too closely who he did business with. This is a bad thing and Prescott sounds like a bad person,
but it isn't handling money for the Nazis. He was a gnat on Fritz Thyssen's ass and made money helping the jillionaire shuffle his money around the globe. Thyssen, in a separate financial sphere, helped bankroll Hitler's rise to power. Yet when Thyssen and Hitler parted ways in the late 30s (before the war), Bush followed Thyssen's path, not Adolf's.
There is the complicating factor that Bush's firm, among other investments, at one point owned shares in a company that used pre-Holocaust slave labor in Germany. Again, bad investments = bad investment banker, but it's still not handling money for the Nazis. Pretty much everyone knows that some of the Bush money came from stock ownership of companies that benefited from Hitler's war-prep-based expansion of the German economy. This is how power and big money work together. We have to be aware of that in real life. But it really helps to be level headed and factually accurate when making arguments about what people did or didn't do.
The reason your posts bore me isn't because I don't like to hear bad things about the Bushies. It's because I don't like to hear or read fools prattle on about things they're clearly lacking any understanding about. One thing that I like about DU is that I get to read a lot of examples here about idiots saying idiotic things from the Republican side of the fence. It really bothers me when I hear equally stupid and misinformed malarkey coming from our side of the fence because it upsets my world view that liberals are smart and conservatives are monkeys. The fact of you confounds my clean dichotomies, you self indulgent jackanapes.
= new reply since forum marked as read
