Wells Fargo, Wachovia, B of A Involved with Mexico Drug Cartel Operations

Com­ment: It is no secret that major finan­cial insti­tu­tions, Amer­i­can and for­eign, are deeply involved with laun­der­ing drugs for major smug­gling oper­a­tions.  A recent arti­cle notes the involve­ment of B of A and Wachovia (now owned by Wells Fargo) in an oper­a­tion that resulted  in the bust of a DC-9 car­ry­ing 5.7 tons of cocaine. [...]

Islamist Elements Behind Violence, Kyrgystan Government Says

Com­ment: As noted pre­vi­ously, the towns of Osh and Jalal-Abad in Kyr­gys­tan, in addi­tion to being flash­points of lethal Uzbek/Kyrgyz eth­nic ten­sions, are epi­cen­ters of activ­ity for Hizb Ut-Tahrir, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood affil­i­ate.
The gov­ern­ment of Kyr­gyzs­tan is now claim­ing that Islamist ele­ments, con­spir­ing with the fam­ily of the deposed leader, pre­cip­i­tated the vio­lence. In FTR [...]

Muslim Brotherhood and the Violence in Kyrgystan

Com­ment: The esca­lat­ing vio­lence in Kyr­gys­tan is occur­ring in areas in which one finds sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence of  a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood affil­i­ate, Hizb ut-Tahrir.
An AP arti­cle sets forth how the eth­nic clashes in the Kry­gyzs­tan towns of Osh and Jalal-abad are pri­mary between eth­nic Kyr­gyz and eth­nic Uzbek–both groups pri­mar­ily sunni.  The Uzbek’s are 14% of [...]

FTR #708 Going Deep with Daniel Hopsicker

Venice Air­port a cen­ter of intrigue long before Mohammed Atta and com­pany arrived; arms and drug traf­fick­ing a decades-long sta­ple of the milieu that oper­ated there; ele­ments asso­ci­ated with the JFK hit oper­ated here as well.

“Family of Secrets”: A VERY Important New Book

Com­ment: Jour­nal­ist Russ Baker has writ­ten a land­mark vol­ume about the deep polit­i­cal his­tory of the Bush fam­ily, George H.W. (“Poppy”) Bush in par­tic­u­lar. Fam­ily of Secrets (Blooms­bury Press [SC]; Copy­right 2009 by Russ Baker) is a must for seri­ous stu­dents of the real­i­ties of con­tem­po­rary power structure.

Painstak­ingly trac­ing evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries  run­ning through decades of [...]

FTR #703 Interview with Daniel Hopsicker: Catching Up with the “Herd Shot ‘Round the World”

Infil­tra­tion point for the 9/11 hijack­ers, the Venice Air­port has a his­tory of involve­ment with wrong­do­ing and wrong­do­ers; Ponzi schemes the least heinous of their activ­i­ties; the deep his­tory of that facil­ity over­laps the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy.

Russia Alleges that NATO Aiding Afghan Heroin Production

Com­ment: the refusal by the Marines to destroy the crop should not be sur­pris­ing in and of itself. The impov­er­ished Afghan farm­ers depend on it for income and in the “bat­tle for hearts and minds,” that is an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion. Con­sid­er­ing that other options are avail­able, such as pur­chas­ing the opium to make med­ical morphine, [...]

NATO Refuses Russian Request to Destroy Afghan Opium Fields

Com­ment: In light of the mas­sive vol­ume of broad­casts avail­able on this site about intel­li­gence com­mu­nity involve­ment in drug traf­fick­ing, this should come as no sur­prise.
“NATO Rejects Russia’s Demand to Destroy Afghan Poppy Fields”; New Europe; 3/26/2010.
NATO and Rus­sia clashed on 24 March over how to tackle the drug prob­lem in Afghanistan, where West­ern nations [...]

FTR #702 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Tiger Woods’ mother-in-law accused of shel­ter­ing war crim­i­nals; GOP rhetoric ref­er­ences Elin Woods; with bad econ­omy, the influ­ence of drug car­tels increases; Grow­ing clout of the mili­tia move­ment, foot sol­diers of the GOP.

Muslim Gangs Dominate British Underworld

Com­ment: Under-reported is the pro­found con­nec­tion between Islamism and orga­nized crime. There is an entire chap­ter in “Dol­lars for Ter­ror” by Richard Labeviere titled “Islamist Deal-Making and Orga­nized Crime.” Our vis­its with Daniel Hop­sicker have high­lighted this link, to an extent.
In fact, much of the income derived by groups like Al-Qaeda, the Tal­iban and other [...]