Slashdot Mirror
Why Terror Financing is So Tough to Track Down
An anonymous reader writes "After a recent Slashdot story detailing the errant investigation into a credit card holder's dept payment, comes this article from the Christian Science Monitor discussing the commoditization of terrorism, its relationship to crime, and the difficulties encountered when trying to track "bad" money."
For people who shuddered when they saw that the paper reporting this had "Christian Science" in the name like I did, it appears that the paper is not linked in any way with the Creation Science movement.
According to their site, the paper is largely secular (except for a single religious article each day). The paper just happens to be published by a church.
You've clearly never read the Christian Science monitor, either, as it has nothing to do with Christian Science but is in fact highly regarded for its relative objectivity and minimal bias in reporting compared to other American newspapers.
English is easier said than done.
They are also not very scientific in their approach, as they often would refuse to be treated by doctors, and refuse to acknowledge the existense of bacteria, viruses and other micro-organisms and how these can cause disease.
I think they should just pick a new name. There was such a group on my campus and I approached their table thinking it is a group of scientists who are just Christian that have meetings, Bible study and what not, I had no idea it was a religion all by itself...
Remember in the 70's and early 80's when West Germany was fighting the Red Army Fraction and collaborating palestinian terrorists? Maybe not, since nobody called it global war on terrorism. Anyway, the federal government tried the same techniques (Rasterfahndung, dragnet investigation). They checked every bank account, every lease, harassed innocent people at every second intersection. The bottom line is these measures were unsuccessful and people did mistrust their government more than they did before. The worst case scenario! Free people should be able to trust their government. What did make the difference was a totally different tactic. Teams of few well trained police officers and agents tried to understand how the terrorists operated. One team would pursue one target. These teams were damn successful, and I am very glad. They big question is, why repeat mistakes?
I'm not really sure you understand what "sectarianism" means.
Basically... it is violence between two relegious factions. Sometimes it is used to describe violence between two warring political factions.
If the Catholics and Protestants (ex: Ireland) go at it, that is sectarian violence.
Sectarian violence isn't necessarily terrorism and terrorism isn't necessarily sectarian violence. Sectarian violence is always within a group.
Which adjective you use to describe the violence depends on what the story is. Is the story about (1) people dying? Or is it about (2) why they are dying. If 1, it's terrorism, if 2, it's sectarian violence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarianism
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
As is the case with many things; Quality pot usually doesn't come from the U.S. and even if it does, it's not as cost effective as the dirt cheap equivilent that comes in from Mexico. It's just easier to grow the crop where law enforcement doesn't really look that hard for it, then sneak it across the border. It's economics at work. A large growing operations that produces enough pot to be super cheap has a harder time doing "business" in the U.S. due to "regulation" (re: DEA agents busting down the doors.) In Mexico, the government doesn't care, so you can make a lot of a cheap product for export.
There are a lot of different Marijuana traffic patterns. A lot from Mexico, a surprising amount from Canada. Most of the US grown pot comes from old moonshine territory such as the Kentucky hills.
The big Terrorist drug is Opium. Afghanistan exports two things: Opium and more opium. The drug money in that country faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar surpasses any GDP they've ever had. Ever. Hell, add a bunch of their yearly GDP's up and compare it to a years worth of estimated Opium exports. Adjust for inflation, have Enron do the book keeping, do what you want. Afghanistan is to Opium as Kuwait is to oil. That's the biggest terrorism financing tool. Good old fashioned Smack.
So remember kids, be a Patriot! Smoke homegrown pot! and When you're doing Herion, you're shooting up with Osama!
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
While tracking money that goes through conventional means is difficult, tracking money distributed by Hawala is much more so. Trying to really outlaw it has had only mixed success. The U.S. has had a lot of success in drying up tens of millions of dollars in known terrorist funding, but the frightening fact remains that 9/11 cost about $500,000 to plan and carry out. While the funding for 9/11 largely didn't depend on Hawala, it still remains an effective and difficult to trace method of doing business. The attack on the U.S.S. Cole likely cost much less than 9/11, not to mention low-cost, low-level domestic eco-terrorism operations (ALF, et. al.). Drying up the funding is great and important, but it's like playing whack-a-mole at best.
No, no no.
Many suicide bombers are MIDDLE CLASS with degrees! That's what people don't get. These aren't just people who know they have nothing going for them.
European help was rejected with phony arguments, despite being urgently, and obviously so, needed.
Not just European help, people from other parts of the US were prevented from helping. You even got the situation of doctors being prevented from treating people whilst their papers were checked.
The 9/11 Commission was a bipartisan effort initiated not from Congress but from the families of 9/11 victims. Where is the evidence that they covered up or lied about this particular story?
/snip
The Families of 9/11 victims are still looking for answers.
Press Release from 10/26/2004 demanding a better investigation Note: the 9/11 Commission was published July of 2004
The top 15 reasons to doubt the official story of Sept. 11, 2001 Number 1: Conflict of interest of those on the commission.
Conspiracy theories are very tempting, but sometimes more logical explanations exist.
And the logical explanation for WTC7 collopse is?
And how is it the ASTM E119 certified steel in the World Trade Towers weaken/melt after exposure to an uncontrolled & undirected jet fuel fire?
See Letter from Underwriters Laboratories(UL) to NIST
snip
We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119. The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally, I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F (2). Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all.
If the buildings collapsed because fire weaken the steel support, then there are some serious safety issues that need to be addressed. But no one has really bothered with this. At the very least you would think building codes would have been updated to mandate better steel and UL would have to update it testing&certification process. Because clearly their certification that the steel used in the World Trade Towers was not up to snuff. Gee, that kinda smells like a lawsuit... but I haven't heard of one.
Don't forget that the Commission was opposed by the Bush Administration every step of the way!
And when W did final give testimony to the commission it wasn't under oath, it was behind closed doors and his vice-president was there to help him.
What kind of "War President" needs his vice president to help him testify?
Why wasn't his testimony under oath and public? (we can't handle the truth?)
But hey the gov't put out a report, so that must be the end of it. Nothing to see here, move along. Oooo look over there the Vice President was out hunting, had a few beers and shot someone. What were we talking about?
This current administration is the most blantly & openly corrupt administration ever. Nixon was almost impeached(his resigned before they could impeach him) for bugging the DNC. Bush admits to illegal wiretaps on untold thousands of Americans on national TV and Congress has to have a meeting to decide if they even want to question Bush about it. WTF?!?!
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy