KEVIN PHILLIPS: George H. Walker was a real piece of work. I mean, he was a buccaneer. He was sort of a Joe Kennedy, but with a social register type qualification. He got involved in the 1920's with a bunch of Cuban companies, because of his ties to Percy Rockefeller and the National City Bank. They handled a lot of investments in Cuba. He was a director during the 1920's of eight or nine Cuban companies. George H. Walker had ties to the -- investment ties that were independent, so he had invested in some of these companies. One of them turned out several -- several turned out to merge into something called West Indies Sugar. West Indies Sugar became one of the major American companies in Cuba, and George H. Walker Jr., the son of George H. Walker and Prescott, Bush's cousin was a director, held a family seat on West Indies Sugar. Now during the late 1950's, West Indies Sugar was based in the Indy province in Cuba. That's where the Castro insurgency was developing. Castro and his people sort of shook down West Indies Sugar. They used their trucks and hit them up for money and so forth. They were unhappy with the Castro movement. In 1959 or 1960, I forget which year, Castro's people nationalized West Indies Sugar, and at this time George H. W. Bush's uncle was Director of West Indies Sugar. The value of West Indies sugar had been about $50 million and it wound up being virtually peanuts. I don't know how much their stake was. I couldn't begin to guess. It may not have been nearly as much as one would suggest from the bigger numbers. They were an unhappy set of campers when West Indies Sugar went bye-bye.

-snip
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid...


PS BTW THERE IS TALK OF SUGAR CANE BEING USED AS AN EFFICIENT ALTERNATIVE FUEL, as is used in Brazil.
(more on sugar cane ethanol at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_...