The Strange Case of Kim Schmitz aka “Kim Dotcom”: Cyber Agent Provacateur for the Corporations, Underground Reich?

COMMENT: In the after­math of the arrest of Kim Schmitz aka “Kim Dot­com” in the wake of the MegaU­pload take­down by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, Herr Doc­tom has been var­i­ously por­trayed as a mar­tyr for inter­net free­dom and the Sec­ond Com­ing of Christ by his cyber-libertarian sup­port­ers and as the Beast of the Apoc­a­lypse by [...]

FTR #740 Update on the Meltdown Part 6: The Wachovia File

Wachovia deeply involved with laun­der­ing money for Sinaloa car­tel; firm’s exec­u­tives com­plicit with cover-up; World’s major finan­cial insti­tu­tions depen­dent on drug car­tels for liq­uid­ity? Drug smug­glers may have bailed out those insti­tu­tions fol­low­ing crash of ’08.

A Bit of Good News Amidst the Horror . . .

COMMENT: With all of the hor­rors unfold­ing around the world, a bit of good news might be wel­come. Amidst all the “pro­gres­sive” and right-wing carp­ing about Obama, a sig­nif­i­cant piece of infor­ma­tion has [under­stand­ably] been over­looked.
The story below might not appear very sig­nif­i­cant at first glance. Buried well down in the story, how­ever, is [...]

Yen Soars in Value Relative to the Dollar–Potentially Very Troubling

COMMENT: Because of the huge demand for yen in Japan right now, there is major sell­ing of dol­lars for yen. As a result, the value of the yen vs the dol­lar has surged to record highs.  This bears watch­ing, because a surge in the value of yen has the poten­tial to unwind the mas­sive yen [...]

The Sky’s the . . . er . . . Limit!

COMMENT: Some­times life presents us with events that are both sig­nif­i­cant in and of them­selves, and metaphor­i­cally por­ten­tous. These qual­i­fi­ca­tions apply to a story about Can­tor Fitzger­ald oper­at­ing a sports bet­ting oper­a­tion with no limit on the size of wagers!
Major bond trader Can­tor Fitzger­ald recently got into the sports gam­bling busi­ness.  But unlike other bookies, [...]

Prison “Suicide” in Switzerland of Financial Whistle-Blower

Com­ment: The man who pur­loined bank records that revealed that Ger­man nation­als were using for­eign bank accounts to avoid pay­ing taxes has allegedly “com­mit­ted sui­cide” in a Swiss prison.
How con­ve­nient. One can but won­der who might ben­e­fit from this.

“Sus­pect in Swiss Tax Data Sale to Ger­many Found Dead in Sus­pected Sui­cide” by Car­olyn Ban­del; bloomberg.com; [...]

Vatican Bank Being Investigated for Money Laundering

Com­ment: For many years, we’ve looked at the Vat­i­can Bank–the IOR (Insti­tute for Reli­gious Works.) Long a vehi­cle for the financ­ing of fas­cism and crim­i­nal under­tak­ings, the insti­tu­tion has FINALLY come under inves­ti­ga­tion for money laun­der­ing. (The Vat­i­can Bank was dis­cussed at length in AFA #18.)

“Vat­i­can Bank ‘Inves­ti­gated over Money Laun­der­ing”; BBC News; 9/21/2010.
The head [...]

Family of Secrets

The Bush Dynasty, the Pow­er­ful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influ­ence Means for America

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.

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.