Reflectii

Twenty-first-century fascism is the dictatorship of big money. Finance, fossil fuels giants, other large corporations, and the military-industrial complex, have effectively merged with the state, calling the shots in Washington. An immense surveillance and propaganda machine is at their disposal. Narrative and information control is the first line of defense but the militarized police state acts when all else fails. Big money wants total control and tolerates no rivals.

The peace movement in various parts of the world has emphasized in various contexts that if the huge amounts spent on various wars had been spent instead on meeting essential civilian needs, then apart from avoiding the loss of lives caused in actual fighting and bombing or due to the loss of health infra-structure destroyed by bombs, many lives could have been saved also by diverting war expenditure to essential civilian needs presently unmet.

Abstract: The landscape of terrorist financing has transformed owing to the self-starter phenomenon, characteristics of terrorist organizations, self-funded terrorism, and weapons of choice. On a different note, nationally and internationally, financial institutions still rely on traditional counterterrorist financing policies. These policies against the financing of terrorism were drafted as a result of the 9/11 attacks to identify large, complex attacks financed through the international financial system. Unfortunately, the policies have proven to be redundant in tracing the financial footprint of small cells and lone actors – such groups use little to no money to fund their activities. So far, the anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism policies have been studied from their ability to trigger suspicious reports and cost-of-compliance perspectives, but not from the perspective that seeks to answer why the existing system is insufficient at detecting self-funded terrorism.

*All names have been changed for personal safety

In the two years since the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, people in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince have been caught in a spiral of ongoing violence and insecurity. The turmoil has impacted daily lives, plans for the future, and access to much-needed medical care. Just last week, on July 7, 2023, armed men violently entered a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Tabarre and forcibly removed a patient from the operating room, where he was being treated for gunshot wounds.

En 1968, Robert Kennedy était assassiné alors qu’il venait de gagner les primaires de Californie, ce qui faisait de lui le favori dans la course présidentielle. Une fois à la Maison-Blanche, il aurait été en mesure de rouvrir l’enquête sur la mort de son frère cinq ans plus tôt, et l’on sait, par de nombreux témoignages, qu’il en avait l’intention.

Abstract: International recommendations on countering the financing of terrorism have been accepted as the benchmark when drafting national policies against terror financing. Still, the international recommendations are yet to clarify what needs to be included in terrorist financing. This paper examines the necessity to revise the international standards catered to countering the financing of terrorism. The landscape of terrorist financing has changed since the inception of the recommendation about 20 years ago. In addition, the mechanisms in place to identify what is or is not terrorist financing are also explored to better grasp what is scrutinized as terrorist financing on the ground level. In line with that, this paper provides an insight into what could be the components of terrorist financing that need to be considered when revising the international standards on countering the financing of terrorism.

As Chile marks the 50th anniversary today of the coup that brought strongman Augusto Pinochet to power for almost 17 years — toppling Chile’s democratically-elected socialist government, and resulting in the murders and “disappearances” of thousands of Pinochet’s political opponents — it’s important to recall the central role played by Richard Nixon and Nixon’s national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, in this atrocity.