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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCheck out Little Sister...
...the antidote to Big Brother.
http://www.littlesis.org
It's like an "involuntary facebook for the 1-percent."
PS: Thanks, CrispyQ!
Cleita
(75,480 posts)K&R
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The late artist pegged the Bush-bin Laden connection before 9/11.
Toward a Diagram of Mark Lombardi
by Frances Richard
2001 http://www.wburg.com
Who is James R. Bath?
A nodal point in Mark Lombardi's drawing George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens 1 c. 1979-90, 5th Version, 1999, James R. Bath appears in the upper lefthand corner of the 16 1/2" x 41" piece of paper. The spatial syntax of Lombardi's drawingswhich map in elegantly visual terms the secret deals and suspect associations of financiers, politicians, corporations, and governmentsdictates that the more densely lines ray out from a given node, the more deeply that figure is embroiled in the tale Lombardi tells. Thirteen lines originate with or point to James R. Bath, more than any other name presented. Among those linked to this obscure yet central character are George W. Bush, Jr., George H.W. Bush, Sr., Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, Governor John B. Connally of Texas, Sheik Salim bin Laden of Saudi Arabia, and Sheik Salim's younger brother, Osama bin Laden.
The drawing is done on pale beige paper, in pencil. It follows a time-line, with dates arrayed across three horizontal tiers. These in turn support arcs denoting personal and corporate alliances, the whole comprising a skeletal resume of George W. Bush's career in the oil business. In other words, the drawing, like all Lombardi's work, is a post-Conceptual reinvention of history painting, a document of factually verifiable yet extremely pared-down relationships limned in a double light of international fame and cryptic realpolitik. Or rather, the light is triple. For, though he possessed the instincts of a private eye and the acumen of a systems-analyst, Lombardi was of course an artist, and from the raw material of wire-service reports and books by political correspondents, he drew not only chronicles of covert, high-stakes trade, but technically pristine and sensually compelling visual forms. His project's sources are profoundly art-historical, even as they are obviously journalistic, and the creative tension between abstracted, self-propelling image and direct verbal communication propels his work. Delicately balanced and gracefully enlaced, these lines and circles read from across the room as purely retinal explorations of two-dimensional space. Their stylized complexity, however, lures the eye in, to a point where language registers as legible and referentiality asserts itself through the scrim of form. A narrative emerges. Looking shifts toward reading, and Lombardi's one-two punch lands.
James R. Bath, it turns out, is a Texas businessman, a sometime aeronautics broker whose firm, Skyway Aircraft Leasing, LTD., was a Cayman Islands 2 front amassing money for use by Oliver North in the Iran-Contra affair. Bath also served as an agent minding American interests for a quartet of Saudi Arabian billionaires, one of whom was Sheik Salim bin Laden, the oldest son and heir of Sheik Mohammed bin Laden, father of fifty-four children including Osama. According to reports by the Houston Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal, Time, and others, Bath did business in his own name but with the Saudis' money; tax records indicate that he collected a fee of 5% on their multimillion dollar American investments. In 1979, Bath contributed $50,000 to Arbusto Energy, a limited-partnership controlled by George W. Bush. As Bath had little capital of his own, oil insiders trace the funds to his silent partners, specifically Salim bin Laden. Such cash infusions from Bath's client sheiks and George H.W. Bush's cartel cronies could not, however, prop Arbusto up. The venture collapsed in 1981 and merged into the Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation. Spectrumstill with W. at the helmevolved through more near-failures and mergers into Harken Energy, which, in 1990, embarked upon a sweetheart deal to drill oil wells in Bahrainthis regardless of the fact that Harken had never drilled an overseas well, nor a marine well of any kind. Oil industry cognoscenti again assume that the Bahrain contract was orchestrated as a favor from the Saudis to the American chief executive and his family. The favor paid. On June 20, 1990, George W. Bush sold two-thirds of his Harken stock at $4 per share. Eight days later, Harken finished the second quarter with losses of $23 million; the stock promptly lost 75% of its value, finishing at just over $1 per share. Two months later, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the Gulf War began. All these events are cited in Lombardi's drawing.
Meanwhile, another Bath associate, Sheik Khalid bin Mafouz, was involved in the collapse (in July, 1991) of the Bank of Credit and Commerce, International, better known as BCCI. Among the sins of the Pakistani-owned BCCI were money-laundering on behalf of Colombian druglords, arms brokering, bribery, and aid to terrorists; when this cabal came unglued, millions of investors in seventy-three countries lost their life-savings. Although Bath was not personally implicated in the BCCI fiasco, an estranged business partner claims that that he, Bath, had been recruited to the CIA in 1976-77 by George Bush, Sr., after serving in the Texas Air National Guard as the buddy of George Bush, Jr. (in 1972, the two young men narrowly escaped arrest for cocaine possession). Bath's putative CIA connections, the Agency's operations in the Middle East, and the adventures of BCCI thus compose a kind of symmetry. The byzantine saga of BCCI's demise is plotted in the drawing that is perhaps Lombardi's masterwork, BCCI-ICIC-FAB, c. 1972-1991, (4th Version), 1996-2000. Unveiled in the landmark P.S. 1 exhibition "Greater New York" in 2000, this piece signaled Lombardi's arrival at the cusp of art world fame; it is now in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum. A wall-size panel schematizing twenty years of suspect alliances amongst scores of players, BCCI-ICIC-FAB was the last major work the artist made before his death.
CONTINUED...
http://www.whale.to/c/mark_lombard3.html
Old news to you, Cleita. A real shocker to those new to the scene.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)i hope it won't peter out like most of the other examples i've seen.
on edit: some of the features on this, like interlocks, are great.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)For instance, DUers used it to expound on the clear links Bush-James R Bath-BCCI-bin Laden:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1480644
It's understandable why Corporate McPravda doesn't bring them up.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)ohheckyeah
(9,314 posts)thanks for posting.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
Catherina
(35,568 posts)They_Live
(3,252 posts)Thanks for sharing this link.
SaveOurDemocracy
(4,400 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)yonder
(9,690 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)And we are not in it.
Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)Thanks, Octafish!
SalviaBlue
(2,918 posts)hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Hey, little sister, who's your only one?
There is nothing pure in this world. but it's still a nice day for a white wedding.
senseandsensibility
(17,282 posts)You know you're from the 80's when.....
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)There is nothin' safe in this world
And there's nothin' sure in this world
And there's nothin' pure in this world
Look for something left in this world
Start again
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Initech
(100,177 posts)octoberlib
(14,971 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)CrispyQ
(36,619 posts)Looks fun!!
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)...Whatcha doin to big brotha?
Triana
(22,666 posts)UTUSN
(70,851 posts)and about the KOCHes et al., "What's wrong with people putting their money into what they believe?!1"
Well, just that my one puny vote is NOT EQUAL in clout. But as for the bi-partisan interlocking power/financial structure in the link, it's called "networking" and who-you-know.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)So many concentric circles... so little time these days...
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)think
(11,641 posts)And a great set of research tools.
Thank you!
think
(11,641 posts)OneGrassRoot
(22,925 posts)CrispyQ
(36,619 posts)However, that is from the website. I didn't come up with it.
I spent a lotta time at that site yesterday! It's interesting to see which other politicians contribute to my senators & rep & who they contribute to. What a web! such a great concept to try to map it all out!
corkhead
(6,119 posts)US Representative from Michigan
Analyst notes about Tim Walberg
A Representative from Michigan; born in Chicago, Cook County, Ill., April 12, 1951; attended Western Illinois University, Macomb, Ill., 1969-1970; B.S. Fort Wayne Bible College, 1975; M.A., Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill., 1978; minister
http://littlesis.org/person/13648/Tim_Walberg
That probably tells you all you need to know about my own personal Koch Bros. Toady.
Xyzse
(8,217 posts)Thanks!
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)is a cabal running the country. Many of those in control have transcended the change from Bush to Obama. The cabal is probably fluid to a certain extent but there must be a top 20 or so that "lead". Any ideas here?
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)Initech
(100,177 posts)nolabels
(13,133 posts)Maybe after after Agent Mike gets off his lunch break he will have a little extra free time so he can check it out too
hay rick
(7,690 posts)Kick in to the DU tip jar?
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