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Why Terror Financing is So Tough to Track Down

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the follow-the-money dept.

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."

3 of 578 comments (clear)

  1. Power Of Nightmares by drgonzo59 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    A couple of days I watched the "Power of Nightmares" -- a British documentary. It talks about how both Islamic extremism and neo-conservatism both have a lot in common, especially in the fact that both have this absolutist, idealized view of the world. For ones like Osama, Islam is the answer to all, and the justification of all means, and for Bush, Cheney, Wolfowits and "gang" it is the "American Way" that has to be imposed over all countries. US is seen as the incarnation of pure good and its destiny is to fight and conquer evil. Anyway, another point of the movie is that al Qaeda doesn't really exist in the way we think it exists, there are no organized sleeper cells, Osama didn't even use the name until after 9/11 the Americans gave it to his organisation. The al Qaeda global super organization myth is actually serving the neo-conservatives in this country. Anyway, if you have time, watch the film: free on archive.org. It is about 3 hours long. It is very well done, not as heavy propaganda laden as the Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which I thought was as good of a documentary as "Mars Attacks".

    Check out the Wiki page on it too...

    1. Re:Power Of Nightmares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'd just point out that the documentary says that the name "Al Qaeda" was termed during the investigation of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, not after 9/11. However, it does say that the term was first coined in America and was later adopted by Bin Laden to describe his group.

      It also goes on to say that, for example, Bin Laden had to hire stand-ins to represent his personal guard on camera, since there were so few people actually allying with him. The documentary goes on to compare our fear of terrorism to the fear of the USSR in the cold war - showing, for example, a completely nondescript sattelite photo of a Russian city and an American saying "there are weapons here so insidious that our cameras can't even detect them." It gives pretty good insight into the history of the players in this conflict, and how this war is similar to the things that have happened in the past. Definitely worth a watch.

  2. The latter... by drgonzo59 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I already mentioned this in a post above, but I'll say it again. Watch the Power Of Nightmares movie. It is a 3 hour British documentary. Very well done. Get it at archive.org, just search for it, it is also probably in the "top 3 dowloaded" box.

    It turns out that "fear mongering" is what the neo-conservatives now in power in Washington DC need to do what they do. The most interesting conclusion of the film is that al Qaeda isn't this all global organization with thousands of sleeper cells ready to commit attrocities. That is what people like Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz want us to believe. To find out why, whatch the move...