Kevin Phillips paints a compelling picture of the Bush family as an oil dynasty in the LAT today. But Bush Sr. is also CIA, and there is a tangled and extremely fishy web of connections through him from CIA to various energy and banking conglomerates. There are crucial ties to Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Bahraini oil magnates, and of course HW Bush was instrumental in arming Iraq in the '80s. The family acts as one piece of the omnipotent network of global capital that Ned Beatty's character describes in Network:
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably deter- mined by the immutable by-laws of business.The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr. Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
BushCo is a node -- an important node -- in this global network, this vast and ecumenical corporation. It's fascinating to read the details.
Posted by Chris at January 11, 2004 03:40 PM