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Western Union Blocking Money Transfers to Arabs
lowrydr310 writes "Western Union is blocking money transfers to people with Arab names. They have delayed or blocked thousands of cash deliveries on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed. 'In one example, an Indian driver here said Western Union prevented him from sending $120 to a friend at home last month because the recipient's name was Mohammed.' Western union claims they are merely following U.S. Treasury Department guidelines that scrutinize cash flows for terrorist links. I agree that Western Union shouldn't allow anyone supporting terrorism to use their service, however I'm fairly certain there are millions of people named Mohammed or Ahmed who aren't terrorists. I wonder if any other financial companies such as banks are doing the same thing."
"Western Union prevented him from sending $120 to a friend at home last month because the recipient's name was Mohammed"
Not true. They prevented him from sending the cash because his name was Sahir Mohammed. A bit of a difference.
Perhaps a Sahir Mohammed has some links to 'bad guys'?
Well, it happens here in the US too. There are plenty of stories regading people being put on the 'do not fly' list due to circumstances like this as well.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
The statistics may have changed, but I remember one of those trick/trivia questions from when I was younger (in the 1980s): What's the most common name in the world?
It turned out it was, if you include all the variations, Mohammed. Throw in Mahmet, Makhmoud, Mahmoud, and various other spellings and transliterations.
Somehow, I doubt a large enough percentage of them are liekly to be terrorists for the name to be worth checking.
Not all muslims are terrorists but most terrorists are muslims. Well atleast the current crop.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Thats another case of ridiculous procedures, One of the most ridicule stuff I found on WU was that when using the persons description when making a MO the form omits (to be politicaly correct im sure) the persons skin color. Cmon one of the MOST obvious diferences on fisionomy is skin color, please quit the politicly correctnesses.
racism isn't just about believing one race to be superior, it's also about stereotyping;
i.e. all arabs are terrorists
or
all Jews have big noses and run banks
It is quite racist to assume based on name alone that someone might be a terrorist. Or have we forgotten Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, Theodore Kaczynski, or Eric Robert Rudolph?
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Nope, it's not - because I don't legislate that rednecks can't get married. I don't think hillbillies should be prevented from flying on a plane because they are chewin' tobacco. I don't give a fuck if people have opinions... I have a problem with a government run by people who are so ignorant that they believe that stereotypes give them the right to treat some people differently.
My thoughts exactly. This plan is infringing on the freedom of people who have not committed (or who have even been accused of) a crime.
Perhaps the people involved in this should actually do their job and investigate rather than simply assuming Arab == terrorist.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Obviously there needs to be a better system, but what kind of system would work?
What makes you think that ANY system could work?
Some beauraucrat comes up with a lame-ass policy that, by the way, goes against the grain of everything America claims to stand for and even the people smart enough to realize it is a lame-ass policy are still brainwashed into believing that it is somehow necessary?
Here is a system that would work - don't waste my tax dollars on useless anti-american shit. Spend it on emergency services instead.
No matter how many tax dollars you throw at the problem, terrorism is a tactic that can not be fully countered. So instead of fucking with people - 99.999% of whom have nothing to do with terrorism - spend it on the infrastructure that minimizes the damage. Better hospitals, better fire departments, better "first responder" teams. That way, we get the benefit of the money spent regardless of if a terrorist blows up a building or an earthquake knocks it down.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
No Mohamed Sahirs on the SDN listd n/sdnlist.txt
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/s
Lots of Sahirs and Mohameds but i dont see that combination.
They use front companies for that, like Halliburton did under Dick Cheney. They set up a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands and have all the transactions go through the shell corp. This way Halliburton was able to secure contracts in Iran in violation of US federal law.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2005/s299.html
A radio maverick jumps to internet only. The Future of Rock n Roll
That is a highly subjective and very incomplete list. Contact me again when you have a complete list.
1. al-Qaeda receives more than 90 percent - even today - of its funding directly or indirectly from Saudi Arabian citizens.
2. Most people using Western Union with Arab names are not from Saudi Arabia.
3. Requiring a Passport of someone wiring money with an Arab name, and just checking to see if they're citizens of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Egypt would work much more effectively.
4. Fake passports and name changes are easy to buy, usually costing less than $25 on downtown streets of any major port city (or even Detroit, Michigan).
5. Fake patriotism, like concern for non-existent flag-burning rampages, is very easy to do, and highly ineffective.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In Soviet Russia people had passports for everyday identification purposes and they were required to carry them along all the time. Among other data there was a place to write down one's ethnicity. Will that be the dream of today?
Here's an example of the passport. One can see just below the blank line there's space to state ethnicity. In this odd case, moronic officer from Soviet Udmurtia has written "negro". However, more common words included Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek or Georgian.
The violent actions of Christians/Catholics have ALWAYS been denounced and condemned by Christianity as a whole.
Yup, especially that whole business of the crusades. All the christians denounced those, but damned if that stopped anyone!
As a "right-wing" Christian I would have no problem granting all of these rights through civial union. In fact I would encourage the government to do that. I also do not think civial unions should be only for homosexual couples. If two heterosexual guys want to live together and share finances then they should be able to. Historcally men had closer relationships but now homophobia prevents a lot of guys from socializing to that kind of depth.
The only thing I have a problem with is calling it marriage. At no time in history has a union between two men or two women been called a marriage. Because that is not what it is. It's just a union. And like I said unions should have all the same rights from taxes to healthcare to authority over the other in life threatening situations.
If you have proof showing another group that has indiscriminately gone after Americans more often then I would love to see it.
Well, I'd start with the long list of anti abortion activists that terrorize american's every day.
Such as:
http://www.rickross.com/groups/abortion.html
I don't have time to dig up more, but goggle it, there's more than enough info out there.
And christians and Jews never wear turbans, right? Good to know "towelhead" isn't targetting Arabic muslims.
And White people never have deep tans, right? So 'darkie' isn't a racist epithet either!
The fact that the association doesn't make sense doesn't mean there isn't one. "Redneck" is equivalent to the less popular epithet "white trash". Therefore, in the infinitely wise laws of comedy, only white people may use the term.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
You know, I thought quoting Ann Coulter would be the most pathetic thing ever. But I was wrong. The most pathetic thing on the world is tryin to pass of an Ann Coulter quote as yours.
It's like, evil and stupidity PLUS plagiarism. I don't know how much lower you can get (but I'd guess not much).
Speaking as a homosexual, it has more to do with spousal rights (right to visit your spouse in the hospital, getting on your spouses health insurance if you have none/job does not offer any/job has insurance that sucks and/or is more expensive than your spouses, right to say what happens upon death, etc)...
Just out of curiosity, if you realy only want equal rights, then why was there such an uproar about the terminology? I remember there being a debate about giving homosexuals the right to a "civil union" which would be the same as a marriage except without the religious implications or the name. Yet that seemed to be an unacceptable compromise.
I'm in Canada and I know that homosexuals here had Civil Union rights long before we legislated to allow same-sex marriage. Same sex partners in civil unions had the same rights as married couples. Yet when the same-sex marriage debate came up, and people pointed out that we already had civil unions, most homosexuals complained that using a different name was discriminatory in and of itself.
I'm not trying to suggest that you're a liar...but if you beleive what you wrote then it certainly seems like you're an exception to the rule.
The unspoken point is much more disturbing. They aren't just holding the transaction for a few hours and letting it sit there. They're holding the transaction, calling or notifying a government agency, and saying "Mohammed Everyman is sending $500 to some guy names Jimmy James, is it ok?" and then waiting for the government to check it out and get back to them.
Helloooooo, data mining.
Seriously, what an absolute load of shit. How can you people stand for this? Because it's foreigners??
I say the EU passes a new law, requiring banks and transfer institutions to hold and check all activities by guys named "Bob" and "Mike". But it's ok, it's for security purposes.
You know what? I could rant all day, but there's a much better way to express myself:
*boggle*
*bangs head on desk*
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.