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The Oil Monarchs:
George W. Bush and His Royal Kin
By Christopher Bollyn
While President George W. Bush is portrayed in the mass media as the chief architect of the plan to conquer Iraq, his family’s intimate connection with those oil-rich European royals who also support him is seldom discussed.
On a daily basis the mainstream media presents expert opinions as to who is behind the military campaign against Iraq and why. Lately there has been a flurry of editorials seeking to debunk the notion that the major British and American oil companies are behind the planned conquest of Iraq and its rich oil fields. What is never discussed, however, is the kinship between President George W. Bush and the European royals who support the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq.
There are basically two schools of thought among those who do not accept the official reasoning for war against Iraq. The first is that the conquest of Iraq’s oil resources is an agenda being pushed by the major oil companies and their agents in the British and U.S. governments. The second is that Israel and its supporters, seeking to further the Zionist agenda, are the true architects behind the war of aggression being planned against the most populous Arab state.
While these two theories are usually presented as being mutually exclusive, the secret networks that exist between the government leaders in the United States and Britain, “Big Oil” and Israel indicate they are connected and appear to be part of a master plan.
The huge anti-war protests of Feb. 15 clearly demonstrated that a significant majority, estimated to be 80 percent, of the people in Europe are strongly opposed to war in Iraq. The largest protests were seen in those nations that have allied themselves with the U.S. war policy on Iraq: namely Britain, Spain, and Italy.
With so many Europeans opposed to war, the question being asked is: “Who is supporting the Bush policy, and why?”
“Blair Petroleum”
Tony Blair, the British prime minister, is Bush’s staunchest and most visible ally in the campaign against Iraq. Blair has long taken an aggressive position on Iraq and says it was the first thing he discussed with the new president after Bush was declared winner of the flawed election of 2000.
While Blair’s intimate relationship with the Anglo-American oil giant British Petroleum (BP) should be a matter of discussion in the context of his war policy against Iraq, it is seldom mentioned in the main-stream British press.
Blair’s “New Labor” policies are now more closely connected to both Big Oil, particularly BP, and Israel, than they are with the British working class. The close links between BP, which was originally known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. having been founded to exploit Iranian oil reserves, and Blair’s politics have led to the company being dubbed “Blair Petroleum.”
During his first term, Blair appointed then chairman of BP, Lord Simon, to be trade minister in May 1997. A controversy surfaced when it emerged that Simon still owned a considerable shareholding in the company.
BP’s current chief executive Lord John Browne, whose mother was an “Auschwitz survivor,” is also said to be “close to the prime minister.” Blair added a peerage to Browne’s knighthood after he helped end fuel protests in Britain.
Anji Hunter, Blair’s former secretary and close friend, was said to “be among New Labor friends” when she left government to take the position as director of communications at BP in November 2001. Hunter went to school with Blair and has worked with him continuously since 1986.
“There is a bit of a revolving door,” says Norman Baker, a Liberal Democrat member of parliament who has looked into the ties between BP and the Blair government. The connections are probably more extensive than with any other UK company, Baker said.
One of Blair’s closest allies is Lord Michael Levy. Levy serves as one of the most important fundraisers for the Labor Party and Blair’s unofficial envoy to the Middle East, according to Red Star Research of London, which investigates the ties of Blair’s New Labor to Big Oil—and Israel.
Levy reportedly met Blair at a dinner party in 1994 held by Gideon Meir, a senior Israeli diplomat, and became his tennis partner. Levy was put in charge of donations to the “private trust,” which funded Blair’s office before the 1997 election (which reached more than $10 million), and is now the chief fundraiser for the ‘high value’ donors account at the Labor Party. He is reported to have raised $18 million for the ‘high value’ fund before the 1997 election, and became known as ‘Mr. Cashpoint’, according to Red Star Research.
King George
While President Bush’s war policy is strongly opposed by the leaders of Europe’s largest republics, Germany, France, and Russia, he is supported by those nations where royal families are still in power, or close to it: Britain, Spain, The Netherlands, and Bulgaria. What the U.S. mainstream media fails to mention is that he is actually related to the royal families of those European states where his policy on Iraq is supported.
As the media reported during the election of 2000, Bush is closely related to every European monarch on and off the throne and has kinship with every member of Britain’s royal family, the House of Windsor.
Saxe-Coburg Gotha is the true name of Britain’s royal family, but the name was changed to hide their German ancestry during the First World War.
Bush has more ties to European royalty than any other president to date, having “blue blood” from both his paternal and maternal lines. His mother, Barbara Pierce Bush, is related to European royalty through the Pierce family, which also produced the fourteenth U.S. president, Franklin Pierce (1853-1857).
Harold Brooks-Baker of London’s Burke Peerage says Bush’s royal connections are startling. “Bush is closely related to every European monarch both on and off the throne,” Baker told American Free Press.
“They are cousins.” Baker said when asked about the relationship between Bush and the Bulgarian prime minister, Simeon Saxe-Coburg Gotha, who visited the White House on Feb. 25. Gotha is the former King of Bulgaria who was returned to power after decades spent in exile.
About the apparent close relationship between Bush and the Spanish king, Juan Carlos, Baker said: “They know they are related.” Asked why the media fails to report these family ties, Brooks-Baker said, “The American public does not know who these kings are. Not one person in a thousand has any idea who these people are.”
“Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush have an unusually large number of royal and noble descents,” Baker said during the election campaign of 2000. “In point of fact, never in the history of the United States have two presidential candidates been as well endowed with royal alliances.”
There has always been a significant “royalty factor” in those who aspired to the White House, with Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, among some 30 other presidents, all boasting blue blood links.
Asked if the support of the European royals for Bush’s war policy could be attributed to the fact that these families are heavily invested in the leading oil companies, Brooks-Baker said, “That’s an interesting question. Indeed, Royal Dutch Shell petroleum made Queen Beatrix of Holland one of the richest women in the world. She owns more land in New York and the United States than any other foreigner.”
Queen Beatrix, the matriarch of the secretive Bilderberg group, is like Queen Elisabeth of Britain and is not allowed to play a public role in political matters. Behind the scenes, however, these monarchs continue to exercise political influence.
Asked if he thought that kinship with the European royals was the reason for their support of Bush’s war policy, Brooks-Baker said: “I don’t think there is any question about it. These people are obsessed with supporting relations. It has a great deal to do with it. They all work together as one family.”
—American Free Press, March 7, 2003
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