BFEE Fighter -- Mark Lombardi

[Octafish]

Mark Lombardi is the Artist Who Knew Too Much about the Bush Organized Crime Family...
a.k.a. the Bush Family Evil Empire (BFEE).

An accomplished visual and conceptual artist, Lombardi is remembered for creating incredibly detailed social network diagrams that serve to illustrate the links between the various elements of the BFEE. In one famous example, Lombardi’s giant drawings show how George W Bush is directly linked to James R Bath who is directly linked to Osama bin Laden.

Here’s an example of Mr. Lombardi’s brilliant work:



A detail:



Strange, but true: His career was starting to take off when, on the evening of March 22, 2000 Mark Lombardi was found hanged in his loft. The authorities ruled his death a suicide.

For those interested in learning more, here are a couple of links:

http://www.nyfa.org/nyfa_quarterly.asp?type=2&qid=4&id=108&fid=6&sid=16

http://www.wburg.com/0202/arts/lombardi.html

There’s an exhibit of his work touring North America. The show is in Iowa now. Next stop is Toronto. (Yo, Minstrel Boy!). Here’s the itinerary and a link:

Faulconer Gallery of Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa from June 18 through August 1, 2004. The exhibit will be on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto from September 10 through December 5.

http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html

Hey, DU: A favor - - please pass the word around on Mark Lombardi and his work. You’ll be fighting the BFEE.

[blm]

1. Octafish, please post this at bartcop, too.

There are a few Iowans there who would appreciate the heads up.

[Octafish]

2. You got it, blm!

If it's OK, I'll do that later this noche. I'm at my new day gig, which is, um, limiting.

[blm]

4. Grazie.

You da best.

[ArkDem]

3. Thank God, they didn't get his drawings!

.

[Octafish]

5. Absolutely correct, ArkDem! The guy was a GENIUS.

The exhibit was in Ann Arbor at U-Mich and I found out about it too late. The curators there kindly sent me a catalog (about $20, IIRC). It's an outstanding collection from the show and an excellent read, as well. There's stuff available on GOOGLE, for those interested in battling these monsters.

[Octafish]

7. Forgot to include Lombardi's Libray...

Here's a link to the listing of what this guy liked to read. Interesting how his library is filled with works many DUers discuss...

http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardibibliography.html

"At some point in my development," says the artist, "I began to reject reductivist approaches in favor of one capable of evoking the complexity, venality and occasional brutality of the times. What emerged was a study of 'irregular' financial transactions, with special emphasis on those undertaken in secret by select groups of influential yet silent partners." - - Mark Lombardi

Source: http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html

[Octafish]

6. Why this matters...BFEE is scared of the TRUTH!

Documenting these BFEE Social Networks is something we can ALL do. It's a way of showing how the Bush Organized Crime Family is tied to global criminality, illegal war and genocide.

It's no joke. Down with the BFEE.


The late Mark Lombardi,
Researcher, Artist, BFEE Fighter.



Here's a decent over(re)view from Village Voice...

Turning Conspiracy Theories Into Visual Exorcisms
Dark Star

by Jerry Saltz
May 9th, 2003 6:00 PM

Weird how art communicates deep or secret things about its maker. The first words I said to Mark Lombardi when I met him on November 19, 1998, the day before his New York debut opened, were "You're not crazy or going to kill yourself, are you? Should I be nervous?" He gripped his Styrofoam coffee cup, took a rapid drag off his cigarette, grinned, gave me a funny sidelong glance, and chuckled, "No." Sixteen months later, on March 22, 2000, Lombardi hanged himself in his Williamsburg loft. Friends said he had been "stressed out." Hinting at a darker side, some reported that he had been "warned" not to exhibit work tracing the political and financial doings of several mob families.

Lombardi was obsessed with conspiracy. To make his art—big, lacy, seemingly innocent ornamental diagrams that resemble flow charts, star maps, blueprints, or subway plans—he lived, breathed, and slept conspiracy. (Two of these color-coded beauties are featured in the New Museum's current "Inside the Grid"; two more can be seen in "High & Inside" at Marlborough Chelsea.) And boy, did he research it. Lombardi maintained a file of more than 12,000 index cards listing facts and figures associated with various scandals, culled during hours spent over books and periodicals. His subjects ranged from the familiar to the obscure to the sinister and included the savings-and-loan crisis, the arming of Iraq, Whitewater, the Iran-Contra affair, and the Vatican Bank scandal. Names like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Meyer Lansky, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden pop up. As do cartels and companies like Lockheed, JP Morgan, BCCI, and Drexel Burnham. There are also a host of shady bankers, CEOs, spooks, and criminals. A line labeled "75 million dollars" might connect to a circle with the name Richard Perle that leads to another labeled Kissinger. Oliver North and Pat Robertson are linked together, as are the pope and Margaret Thatcher. Pretty soon you find yourself fixated on conspiracy, too.

Needless to say, our post-9-11 age would have been Lombardi's glory days. I don't mean this lightly. We need him. It's heartbreaking that he isn't here to help diagram everything that has happened lately.

Pierogi's show of 37 of his small preparatory drawings, all made in the seven years before his death, and all executed in his spidery scrawl, provides a fascinating glimpse into the configurations Lombardi experimented with before making his super-neat final drawings. It's also a poignant reminder that Lombardi's story doesn't happen much in New York anymore. In 1996, at the urging of Fred Tomaselli and the late Colin de Land (both of whom saw his work in Texas), and at the relatively late age of 45, Lombardi moved to Brooklyn from Houston, where he had operated his own gallery, Square One. Once here, things happened fast. He fell in with a group of artists. His work got out. Writers took notice. Collectors started buying. By 1998, with the help of Joe Amrhein, the Williamsburg gallerist-patron saint who runs Pierogi, Lombardi's star was on the rise.

CONTINUED...

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0320/saltz.php

[seemslikeadream]

8. My favorite part

Shortly after September 11 the FBI paid
a visit to the Whitney and Pierogi Gallery to inquire after a drawing of Mark Lombardi's. George W. Bush, Harken
Energy, and Jackson Stephens, c.1979-
1990 5th version, 1999, outlines the current president's life as a businessman whose dealings within the oil industry were financially supported by prominent Saudi's, including the father of Osama Bin Laden. Both Bush and Bin Laden, junior and senior, appear together in this piece.

Shortly before the Gulf War, Harken Energy, under the clumsy control of George W. lost almost a quarter million dollars, but the future president had already sold his stock well before it plummeted to $1 a share. While this story dates back more than a decade, neither the players, nor the particular corporate scandal described, have lost relevance.

The timeliness of the Lombardi's work will undoubtedly draw a crowd made of equal parts curiosity seekers and artists. At the time of his death Lombardi was working on new modes of presentation, such as light boxes. In a videotaped interview with him in 1997, Lombardi discussed his desire to investigate the workings of organized crime, and according to Robert Hobbs, the artist had begun to research organized crime and to follow the activities of major media figures.

His careful and intelligent tracking of the rich and powerful have led some to speculate that his death in March 2000 might not have been the suicide it seemed. While he never veered into the more dangerous zone of direct over 10,000 index cards that he used to archive his research, will travel around the country.

Presented by Independent Curator's International and curated by Robert Hobbs, Global Networks will open January 25, 2003 at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and move on to as yet undisclosed locations from there.

http://www.11211magazine.com/editor/issue13/air13.html

[Octafish]

13. You got it, seemslikeadream! The BFEE are very afraid of the Truth.

Here's a bit of what Lombardi wrote about in regards to "BCCI-ICIC & FAB:"

... But beneath the veneer of legitimacy BCCI, in conjunction with ICIC, its shadowy “black” banking unit founded in teh Caymans in 1976, plied quite another trade — handling “hot,” “black” and “dirty” money for a panoply of international gangsters, arms dealers, bagmen, corrupt foreign officials, drug smugglers, tax evaders, money launderers and agents of influence, not to mention elements of the intelligence services of the U.S., U.K., Pakistan, U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia which among other things, used the bank in the early 1980s to provide support to the Afghan mujahedeen fighters, finance parts of the Iran-Contra operation and funnel bribes to “retired” Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal; BCCI also helped launder money for erstwhile allies of the U.S. like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Gen Manuel Noriega of Panama, and was involved in suspicious multi-million dollar deals with various other heads of stat such as Babangida of Nigeria, Cerezo of Guatemala, Rajiv Gandhi of India and Ershad of Bangla Desh.

The bank’s downfall began in 1988 when U.S. Drug Enforcement officers arrested seven mid-level BCCI executives suspected of laundering cash for the Medellin drug cartel through a branch office in Tampa, Florida; the U.S. Justice department’s lack of enthusiasm for the case and lenient treatment of BCCI upon conviction served to arouse even more interest in the bank; it was then discovered that BCCI secretly controlled Clark Clifford and Robert Altman’s First American Bank (FAB), the largest bank in Washington, D.C., through a complex chain of ownership ultimately vested in (Credit and Commerce American Holdings N.V.) (CCAH), a Netherlands Antilles shell company; by mid-1982 state and federal indictments had been handed down against the bank, its satellites ICIC and CCAH, Abedi, Clifford, Altman, Kamal Adham, Ghaith Pharaon, Khalid bin Mahfouz, Faisal Fulaij, and numerous others; meanwhile in the U.K., Bank of England officials who had long questioned BCCI’s financial viability but failed to act because of intimidation by the Thatcher government and concerns about the scale of the problem, finally decided to move against BCCI; in July 1991 an ad hoc “College of Regulators” consisting of officials from the U.S., U.K., France, Spain, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands seized the bank in a simultaneous multinational raid, the first of its kind in history; within weeks of the seizure examiners found that at least $14 billion had disappeared or was unrecoverable; thousand of defrauded British depositors then sued to recover their money; Sheik Zayed of Abu Dhabi, the bank’s main powerbroker and majority shareholder, offered to settle depositors’ claims out of court for 30 cents on the dollar; the deal was rejected as insufficient and remains in litigation; in early 1992 BCCI’s surviving Middle East operations were reorganized under a new name, the Oasis Bank of Abu Dhabi.

It is no coincidence that BCCI was founded in September 1972, only two weeks after Palestinian extremists massacred the Israeli Olympic team in Munich, Wst Germany, and that ICIC, which opened in July 1976, came into being in the midst of a massive congressional investigation of over 100 U.S.-based multinational corporations suspected of paying multi-million dollar bribes to win contracts and do business overseas, particularly in the Middle East. Nor is it merely coincidental that the directors of BCCI, who operated above and beyond the law for almost two decades without interference from any governmental agency, were for the most part drawn form the diplomatic corps and intelligence community. This is because BCCI was specifically created to serve geopolitical rather than commercial ends: to further the regional political and national security ambitions of a handful of conservative Gulf Arab states allied to the U.S. and Britain, regardless of cost.

SOURCE: "Mark Lombardi: Global Networks" a catalog of the current tourin exhibit, published by Independent Curators International, New York

[Stephanie]

9. He was covered on the Newshour on Tuesday

Kind of astonishing, that he is covered at all, but of course they said would he have added KERRY to his drawings? After all, Kerry was connected to Bush through Skull and Bones.

He was some kind of mad genius. I'm very sorry I never met him.

[Octafish]

12. Wow! Sorry I missed the newscast.

Interesting that they would mention Lombardi at all, but telling that they would denigrate Kerry, even if tangentially. They're a real special brand of BFEE over there at PBS these days.

I very much wish Lombardi had met you, or had the opportunity to read your work, Stephanie. In fact, upon reviewing "Global Networks" by Independent Curators International (NYC), I wish our country as a whole knew of his work. We may've avoided the Selection 2000 and all the rest.

Here's what a friend had to say about him:

"He was funny and manic with a racing mind that was always trying to connect the dots. He seemed to be a perpetual student of interdisciplinary information -- which is so much more interesting than people who talk about art all the time." -- Fred Tomaselli, painter.

[blm]

16. Kerry's connection: He EXPOSED much of the BFEE

during his investigations of BCCI, IranContra and CIA drugrunning and Lombardi based much of his work on those efforts.

Guess the fools at Newshour forgot about those minor events and Kerry's role in them.

Shame.

[Minstrel Boy]

10. Thanks Octafish, I didn't know his work was coming to Toronto

this Fall.

Taking it in will be a good way to mark the anniversary of Sept 11.

[Octafish]

14. Mebbe I can take a vacation day...

... I'd like to see the exhibit. Seeing it on September 11 would make the reality of these monsters even more palpable.

Did you see the works in Lombardi's library? It made me think of the reading lists kept by you and a couple of dozen more DUers. Like the homeless ones from "Fahrenheit 451," our duty is to continue spreading the Truth, even after it is banned.

[Jose Diablo]

11. Other network diagrams by Lombardi

Lombardi's "Chicago Outfit and Satellite Regimes, ca 1931-83" created in 1998 show how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

BFEE is just a part of a far-flung 'loose' association of criminals and corrupted officials.

Our world is corrupt beyond our worse imaginations. This corruption is almost timeless and I am sure if historical data was available to document the corrupt 'social networks', what we would see is 'evil' passing from generation to generation all the way back.

What some call Satan, Devil or pick your name for a personification of 'evil', is a set memes that some people accept and use to further their material well-being. These memes or ideas are immortal riding in the mortal being's patterns of thinking. Each 'new' generation that replaces the 'old' accepts the patterns of thinking, thus propagating the evil.

As Mr. White said in the movie The Chamber; "...evil can be culled from the flock and be destroyed, once it is identified".

Lombardi's "suicide" seems too handy. Lombardi was murdered in my opinion.

[Octafish]

15. You got it, JellyBean1. That's where Lombardi refers to Ronald Reagan...

And although Lombardi did not specifically mention how Reagan could be tied to the Chicago outfit, there are some who have not been completely cowed by the BFEE. One is investigative journalist and author Dan Moldea, who really pegged Pruneface:

The Corruption of Ronald Reagan

EXCERPT...

Ronald Reagan was an invention of the Hollywood conglomerate, MCA, which was founded in 1924 by Jules Stein, a Chicago ophthalmologist who quickly became friendly with the local underworld. Every facet of Reagan’s life, from his careers in acting and politics to his financial successes, were directed by MCA, which, with the help of the Mafia, was the most powerful force in Hollywood from the mid-1940s until the Bronfman family purchased the company in 1995.

     Reagan came to Los Angeles in 1937 to make motion pictures, and, in 1940, MCA bought out his talent agency. Lew Wasserman became Reagan's personal agent; he negotiated a million-dollar contract with Warner Brothers on Reagan's behalf.  In 1946, Wasserman became the president of MCA, and the following year, Reagan, with his film career already in decline, became the president of the Screen Actors Guild.  By his own admission, Reagan immediately aligned himself with the corrupt Teamsters and other mob-connected unions in an effort to combat Hollywood Reds.

     A sweetheart relationship developed between MCA and the guild, which culminated in July 1952 during Reagan's fifth consecutive term as SAG's president.  Reagan and Laurence Beilenson, an attorney for MCA who had previously served as SAG's general counsel and had represented Reagan in his 1949 divorce from Jane Wyman, negotiated an exclusive blanket waiver with SAG that permitted MCA to engage in unlimited film production.  The agreement violated SAG's bylaws, which prohibited talent agencies from employing their own clients, and no other talent agency was granted a similar agreement at that time.  A Justice Department memorandum indicated that the waiver became "the central fact of MCA's whole rise to power."

SNIP...

As President, Reagan watched as his Justice Department quashed major federal investigations of the Mafia’s penetration of both MCA and the entire motion picture industry, which were being conducted by the Los Angeles office of the U.S. Strike Force Against Organized Crime.  Two highly respected Strike Force prosecutors, Marvin Rudnick and Richard Stavin, lost their jobs because of their refusal to succumb to pressure from the Reagan Administration.

CONTINUED...

http://www.moldea.com/ReaganRedux.html