The Saudi money laundry and the president's uncle. No, this isn't Michael Moore, it's the Wall Street Journal:

Riggs National Corp., facing regulatory and political assault for dealings at its once-venerable embassy-banking division, agreed to sell itself to PNC Financial Services Group Inc. for $779 million in stock and cash.

The deal marks the fate of a storied institution whose roots stretch back 165 years. Known as the bank of U.S. presidents, it financed the Mexican-American War and the purchase of Alaska. Under Joe L. Allbritton, a Washington billionaire and [Bush family pal*] power broker whose family controlled Riggs, the bank cornered the market for diplomatic banking, servicing most of the embassies in the nation's capital.

But the diplomatic business, which became the bank's calling card, turned out to be its undoing. Regulators earlier this year fined Riggs $25 million, a near record, for a range of money-laundering violations related to its oversight of accounts held by diplomats and foreign leaders. And this week, a Senate panel blasted the bank for turning "a blind eye" to evidence of extensive corruption involving U.S. oil companies and the president of Equatorial Guinea. The bank allegedly also helped former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet hide millions of dollars from U.S. and European authorities.

[...]

May 13 [2004]: Federal banking agencies impose $25 million fine on Riggs for money-laundering violations related to accounts held by diplomats in Saudi Arabia.

For the uncle part of the story, unreported in the Journal, we rely instead on links provided by Holden at Atrios.

There we see that Uncle Jonathan Bush was President, Chief Executive Officer, and a Director of Riggs Bank.

As Holden asks, "Gee, what is it with the Bush family and their financial connections to notorious dictators accused of crimes against humanity?"

*When George W. Bush's inaugural parade passed the Riggs branch on Pennsylvania Avenue, he spotted [Joe] Allbritton and said, "Hey Joe, how are you doing?"

Check this out too: "Inside safe deposit boxes at Riggs Bank is more than $710 million in cashier's checks that Riggs doesn't want. Neither does any other bank. The stash, once in checking accounts held by the embassies of Saudi Arabia and Equatorial Guinea, is likely to grow."

{ 9:40 AM }

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Taste and tax laws. The brilliant art critic Robert Hughes:

"...I don't think there is any doubt that the present commercialisation of the art world, at its top end, is a cultural obscenity. When you have the super-rich paying $104m for an immature Rose Period Picasso - close to the GNP of some Caribbean or African states - something is very rotten. Such gestures do no honour to art: they debase it by making the desire for it pathological. As Picasso's biographer John Richardson said to a reporter on that night of embarrassment at Sotheby's, no painting is worth a hundred million dollars"

"...it is ridiculous that some of them should have the amount of influence they do merely because the tax laws enable them to use museums as megaphones for their own sometimes-debatable taste."

In related news, Lea Fastow is still in jail.

{ 9:24 AM }

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Billionaires for Bush summer limo tour.

{ 8:00 AM }

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"If my name wasn't Ken Lay, there wouldn't be an indictment out there," he said in an interview with the Financial Times.

That is so true. If he were a Democrat who didn't give to Bush and his name were Martha Stewart, say, he'd be facing his sentencing tomorrow.

{ 4:55 PM }

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The cure for language poverty is poetry. Bookslut informs us about these poetry broadsides, which in turn remind me that the Poetry Center of Chicago has produced a marvelous CD of Lawrence Ferlinghetti Live at the Poetry Center. For a mere fifteen bucks, you can experience the very same reading I posted about back in October 2002.

{ 1:20 PM }

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A cloud over civilisation. "Wars are a major threat to civilised existence, and a corporate commitment to weapons procurement and use nurtures this threat. It accords legitimacy, and even heroic virtue, to devastation and death." JK Galbraith in the Guardian.

{ 12:22 PM }

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"The national forest as pot field story is pure Fox." Fox News chief John Moody, 6/3/2003, via Wonkette.

{ 9:18 AM }

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Readers are leaders.

"A survey released on Thursday reports that reading for pleasure is way down in America among every group — old and young, wealthy and poor, educated and uneducated, men and women, Hispanic, black and white. The survey, by the National Endowment for the Arts, also indicates that people who read for pleasure are many times more likely than those who don't to visit museums and attend musical performances, almost three times as likely to perform volunteer and charity work, and almost twice as likely to attend sporting events. Readers, in other words, are active, while nonreaders — more than half the population — have settled into apathy. There is a basic social divide between those for whom life is an accrual of fresh experience and knowledge, and those for whom maturity is a process of mental atrophy. The shift toward the latter category is frightening." Andrew Solomon in The New York Times.

"It's not clear which is sadder: The fact that George W. Bush hates to read because he never took book-learning seriously, or the fact that [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice doesn't read for pleasure because her parents made her read so much growing up that reading is a chore." Fiona Morgan in Salon.

{ 2:57 PM }

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Hey DJs! Here are the raw materials you need for your mashups: Bushspeak: The Curious Wit & Wisdom of George W. Bush on disc.

{ 11:47 AM }

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Fastow children vs. Enron children, Part 2. Even Ken Lay distinguishes between the small children of his supposed arch-nemeses Andrew and Lea Fastow and those of the rest of the Enron employees they collectively bilked:

[Criminal sycophant LARRY] KING: How did they, since it wasn't you, how did they pull this off? Was it Mr. Fastow? Was he a genius?

[Former Enron CEO/Chairman KEN] LAY: I don't think anybody has questioned Andy's intelligence. Andy is a very intelligent individual.

KING: He's going to testify. He's one of the government witness against you.

LAY: I'm sure he'll be in the trial...

KING: His wife went to jail.

LAY: Which is very sad, Larry...

KING: Did you like her?

LAY: Well, as far as like individuals, they're both God's children. Just like we all are and they're lovely people and, I mean, as far as the context of just the individuals, but they have small children. It's just an enormous tragedy on that family.

I'm so glad I missed this interview. The nausea this induces is truly profound.

The Fastows, according to Kenny Boy Lay, are "God's children." But the Enron employees who bought Enron stock for their 401(k) plans when Ken said "Buy" (but secretly sold $90 million worth), well, they must be something far less than the children of God -- they're the children of Enron.

{ 9:34 AM }

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For you "Lea Fastow" Googlers, here are most of the posts I've written about Lea Fastow, Enron perp.

{ 12:13 PM }

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Instead of a postponement of the November election, why don't we all just agree now that if there's a major terrorist attack we should insist on a reversal of the last election?

{ 11:24 AM }

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Lea Fastow is now in prison.

It was dutifully reported that Andrew is with the children, but what remains of the Enron art collection? And all the money they gave Tom DeLay?

{ 10:40 AM }

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