Cruelty to animals - will the circle be unbroken? : Melbourne Indymedia

It's reliably reported that before he went on to sign death warrants by the bushell and start ilegal and aggressive wars, George W Bush was torturer of small animals. Specifically the harmless frogs that he and his little sadistic south Texas buddies would blow to bits at daddys farm.

One of the most famous torturers of animals for profit today is Huntingtons labs. A 10-foot-high fence topped by razor wire surrounds the headquarters of Huntingdon Life Sciences, 70 miles north of London, and the front gate is protected by a brick compound a long way from Crawford Texas.

Huntingdon’s fund manager, Phillips & Drew, sold its 11 percent stake in February 2000 after its London offices were evacuated following a bomb threat and the disclosure on a Web site of home phone numbers of the fund’s directors.

The Royal Bank of Scotland dropped out a year later, calling in its $35 million loan. And when no other British bank would agree to assume the loan, the Bank of England stepped in to avert bankruptcy. The accounting firm Deloitte and Touche resigned as the company’s auditor in February 2003. The company’s insurance broker also quit, forcing the government to provide emergency coverage.

Huntingdon eventually found new financing with Stephens Inc., an Arkansas investment bank, and reincorporated in the United States as Life Sciences Research Inc. The American company’s share price, which fell to less than $1 in 2002, has risen to more than $11, and it recently reported its 15th consecutive quarter of revenue growth.

So who are the ' white knight ' with the red right hand, Stephens Inc?

Jackson Stephens is the Little Rock billionaire who has held substantial interest in Worthen National Bank as well as in Stephens Inc., one of the largest privately owned investment banks outside Wall Street. Stephens helped bring BCCI (the Bank of Credit and Commerce International) to America. In November 1977, Stephens introduced Lance (Bert Lance, Jimmy Carter's Director of the Office of Management and Budget. ) to BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi, and Abedi in turn introduced Lance to investor Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon, acting on behalf of Abedi, proceeded to acquire the stock of Bert Lance's National Bank of Georgia, a deal consummated on January 5, 1978, a day after Lance's $3.4 million loan from the First National Bank of Chicago was repaid by BCCI London.

Lance then joined with Jackson Stephens to help BCCI take over Financial General. A Financial General lawsuit filed on February 17 named "Bert Lance, Bank of Credit & Commerce International, Agha Hasan Abedi, Eugene J. Metzger, Jackson Stephens, Stephens Inc., Systematics Inc. and John Does numbers 1 through 25." BCCI was the center of a global laundry and a conduit for transactions involving arms, drugs, and nuclear technology.

BCCI founder Abedi was committed to the development of an Islamic atomic bomb, even donating 500 million rupees for the creation of Pakistan's Gulam Ishaq Research Institute for nuclear development. (BCCI paid the lawyer for Dr. Abdul Qader Khan, head of Pakistan's nuclear program, who a Dutch court convicted in 1983 of stealing the blueprints for a uranium enrichment factory. Three Pakistanis indicted in Houston in 1984 had tried to buy nuclear triggers using BCCI gold. A Pakistani-born Canadian, indicted in Philadelphia in 1987 for conspiracy to export restricted specialty steel and metal to enhance nuclear explosions, paid for the materials through BCCI Toronto. Etc.)

BCCI had the right political connections. BCCI-founder Abedi got Jimmy Carter to publicize BCCI to heads of state around the world. Abedi made his personal 727 jet available to Carter, and accompanied the former President to Thailand, Tibet, Hong Kong, and the Soviet Union, among other places. Carter introduced Abedi to many heads of state, from Deng Xiaoping in China to James Callahan in the U.K. Abedi donated a half million dollars to establish the Carter presidential library, and a public policy institute at Emory university.

BCCI had the right intelligence connections. Kamal Adham, who became the lead frontman in BCCI's takeover of First American, had also been the CIA's principal liaison for the entire Middle East from the mid- 1960's through 1979. The CIA utilized BCCI for its own payments. For example, Manuel Noriega, who was recruited by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 1959, who went on the CIA payroll in 1967, and who became head of Panamanian military intelligence in 1968, was paid through the Panamanian branch of BCCI. The CIA also used BCCI branches in Pakistan to launder payments to the Afghan rebels, and Pakistani officials used the same bank to launder heroin profits.

BCCI had the right U.S. financial connections. Jackson Stephens would later capitalize on the $100,000 donation he made to the 1988 campaign of George Bush (thereby becoming a member of Bush's "Team 100"), as well as his friendship with George Bush, Jr., to to get BCCI involved in funding a lucrative Harken Energy offshore project in Bahrain. The money apparently came through the Swiss BCCI subsidiary.

It's a small world for those who love to torture and kill small animals isn't it, oh and by the way...if your wondering about how all this BCCI era stuff never came out at the time of the Iran - contra hearings then just ask the present head of the FBI. He managed the cover up.
BCCI replaced the Nugan- Hand scheme as the CIA's favorite bank and was in turn replaced by the Riggs bank.

The Stephens tentacles are as close as our next door neighbor's cash register after all the greatest thieves that ever lived have been Marcos and Suharto... In 1983 the Stephens brothers had acquired controlling interest in Arkansas' largest bank holding company, Worthen Banking Corp. Another major shareholder in Worthen would be Mochtar Riady, an Indonesian banker closely connected to President Suharto. Jackson Stephens met Riady in 1976, when Riady wanted to buy into an American bank. Two years later Riady and Stephens Inc. set up a joint venture, Stephens Finance Ltd., in Hong Kong to write letters of credit. Later, in 1983, Stephens and Riady bought Seng Heng Bank in Macao, and in 1984 they bought the Hong Kong Chinese Bank. Riady also controlled the Bank of Trade in San Francisco.

A Stephens employee was once fired on a Friday the 13th (Nov. 1987). He had been asked, they said, about an unidentified, out-of-state brokerage account he controlled, and its relationship to a Stephens corporate account. Rumors would circulate saying maybe he was putting profitable trades in the secret account, and sticking Stephens with the unprofitable ones. But that's all they were, rumors. For the man concerned wasn't talking.

Three days after he was fired, there was a furious thunderstorm in Little Rock, during which, it is said, he killed his wife, his two young daughters, and then himself. And to do the job, he used three different handguns. That's what they said.

Curious deaths, those. But this was Stephens country, and no one wanted to ask very many questions. They found it much safer to talk about the violent weather.

Nice weather for shooting frogs.