Fans of investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker will be pleased to hear that he will be releasing a new series of articles over the next ten days covering the dizzying, and vitally important, story of how intelligence-connected criminal networks factor in to not only the GOP's scandals in recent years but the overlapping drug-trafficking elements that popped up all over the place in the story surrounding the 9/11 highjackers.  It involves Nationalist Zionists working with Gulf region financiers, untouchable drug traffickers, the Brent Wilks/Duke Cunningham/"Dusty" Foggo scandals, and much more.  It's all part of what he's referred to in the past as the "Permanent Scandal".

Fans of investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker should check out his recent interview that discusses Gonalez's firings of Sad Diego attorney Carol Lam within the context of the related Duke Cunningham scandal, the Abramoff scandal, mob-owned Casino boats linked with Tom DeLay & friends, the evolution of the Iran Contra private intelligence networks, and many more interesting topics that all tie back to the interrelated criminal networks that have a stranglehold on our country.  Here's the interview, and here's an article from his site talking about the Lam/Cunningham.  

Enjoy!

This post as tangentially related to leveymg's most excellent recent diary "Larger CIA and DoD Privatization Scandal Emerging from Walter Reed Story, US Attorneys Firing" which centers around hedge fund giant Cerberus.  If you haven't had a chance to check that diary out, be sure to do so because it is a very worthwhile read.  

The LA Times had a story yesterday about a three-year investigation into a prominent Saudi Jordanian Bank, Arab Bank, and its involvement in the funnelling of money generated from Saudi government organizations to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) for the purposes of paying the families of suicide bombers.  In addition to the obvious importance of this story highlighting the ongoing support of militant Islamist groups by the Saudi government, this story is also interesting because it ties into an often-forgotten scandal of the 2000 election:  the use of now-convicted leaders for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) on Bush's campaign via Grover Norquist (check out this 2004 Craig Unger article in Salon for more on that).  

This latest move comes despite warnings of potential harm to humans and the development of drug-resistant strains

March 3, 2007, 10:19PM
FDA poised to approve cattle antibiotic despite warnings
Agency likely will approve antibiotic despite fears it could harm people

By RICK WEISS
Washington Post

The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency's own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous — for people.

The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine's last defense against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has ever been approved in the United States for use in animals.

The American Medical Association and about a dozen other health groups warned the Food and Drug Administration that giving cefquinome to animals would probably speed the emergence of microbes resistant to that important class of antibiotic, as has happened with other drugs. Those super-microbes could then spread to people.

...

A couple of days ago TPM Cafe had a piece about Mitt Romney's assertion on Pat Robertson's CBN that his conservative credentials are evident by all the attacks he's received in the "Mainstream Media".  Here's the Here's the quote:

"I think it proves that the media has determined who the conservative candidate is, because they're going after me with hammer and tong and that's the way you would expect to go after the conservative candidate," he said. "I'm proud of the fact that the mainstream media isn't wild about my candidacy and that's why I'm going to win."

Consortium News has a new article out about the incredible amounts of gold and treasure looted from occupied Asia during WWII and how it shaped both post-war Japan AND the right-wing politics here in the US.  While it isn't talked about much, it was decided by General MacArthur to use the loot to help finance the emergence of Japan's democracy.  It also isn't mentioned to much that many of the key figures of Japan's WWII military government went on to because important post-war politicians in Japan's democracy.  This same group has dominated Japan's politics ever since, reflected in the fact that almost every single Prime Minister since 1956 has been a member of the the LPD.

This is just a reminder that the GOP terror donor scandal is a great opportunity to remind folks about a much larger scandal involving Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff’s colleague David Safavian directing a Saudi-financed GOP Get out the Vote effort for the American Muslim in the 2000 election with members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the grand-daddy of all Sunni Islamist militant groups, the Muslim Brotherhood.  This scandal doesn’t simply highlight the duplicitous nature of the people running GWOT, but it’s also reflective of a real split within the GOP between the hard-right Likudnik-types (bomb! bomb! bomb!), and those that want us to ally with the Muslim Brotherhood and other hard-Right Islamists across the Middle East.  Bringing this older scandal up within the context of this new, unfolding GOP terror-financier scandal might help further that schism and weaken the warmongers.  

Here's his book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and his new book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.  He's not sounding too optimistic about our future.  Then again, with leaders that behave as if the want to destroy this country and bring about a new dark age, I can understand his pessism.  :-(

Oh, were you expecting a post on some terror charade involving cartoon food products? ;) Sorry, this is about a different story coming out of Boston.  It looks like the Justice Department might go 'Al Capone' style, and charge a Boston-based subsidiary of one of the central banks involved in terror financing with tax-evasion.  As we'll see below, this could be quite significant.  

This is a story about a network. It’s a naughty network. It’s one of the most important networks of banks and financial institutions on the planet. You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s the al-Taqwa network, the web of Switzerland and Bahamas-based banks that comprise the financial arm of the
international wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. And what’s the Muslim Brotherhood? The Muslim Brotherhood is merely the leading network of Sunni Islamists dedicated to the propagation of various forms of theocratic Islam. And so, with the Muslim Brotherhood being at the heart of so many of the social movements that we’ve vowed to defeat in our global “War on Terror”, and with its rather extensive ties to al-Qaeda (it’s hard to say where one begins and the other ends), it’s easy to imagine why the story behind Bank al-Taqwa is rather important. Perhaps even very important.