Western Union Blocking Money Transfers to Arabs 904
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."
Cryptome (Score:4, Informative)
http://cryptome.org/western-union.htm [cryptome.org]
They do (Score:5, Informative)
From here [adc.org]:
Race baiting in the war on terror (Score:1, Informative)
A quick search on the author ANJAN SUNDARAM shows him to be a bit of a rabble rouser. His article is completely anecdotal and short on facts. Perfect for this forum. Seems reporting from the Congo is not as beneficial to his career as race baiting in the war on terror.
FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Banks and Homeland Security (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Racism (Score:3, Informative)
(Hint: None of them. It's a stereotype, but not a racist one.)
Re:Racism (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Racism (Score:2, Informative)
2) It's amazing that people think that just because a government is democratically elected that it must be given a free pass by the rest of the world to do as it pleases.
The palestinians elected a brutal terrorist organization to power, which has the destruction of Israel written into it's charter. They were certainly free to do so, it was their right as a society to elect whomever they wish to govern them. HOWEVER, there are consequences to every action, and in this case a consequence of electing murderers to power is that other nations will then refuse to associate with them until they renounce their violent methods.
Re:Race baiting in the war on terror (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, anecdotes from people who work at Western Union. I guess one person's "rabble rouser" is another person's "investigative journalist". Oh I did that quick search [google.com]. Wtf were you talking about? Taking pictures of gorillas is rabble rousing?
Re:Racism (Score:5, Informative)
The last time I checked the IRA operated in Ireland and the Basque Separatists operated in the Basque region of present-day Spain. But, we could go on about other groups:
Aum Shinrikyo?
Communist Party of the Phillipines?
Kach and Kahane Chai?
Kurdistan Workers' Party?
Shining Path?
Revolutionary Armed forces of Columbia?
17 November?
ELA?
Tamil Tigers?
While Islamic groups get most of the press, there are many, many non-Islamic terrorist groups.
Re:The world's most common name (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Race baiting in the war on terror (Score:3, Informative)
It's a news article, of course it's anecdotal, that's what news is - stuff that happens, not necessarily repeatable experimental observations that support a hypothesis.
Having said that, the article is full of facts. Facts that can be checked. Like quotes from sources, most of which are identified clearly.
Of course, it's easier to just disparage the writer (and with him, the Associated Press, not a source well known for being unreliable) than to check those facts. Or to entertain the possibility that they might be true.
The most common name (Score:1, Informative)
Re:FUD (Score:5, Informative)
We too have to run periodic checks against the names in that database. If a match comes up, we have people individually check other information to confirm that it is an actual match (e.g. same name, different birthday).
We have open accounts with these people though, so we have a significant amount of time to deal with these. Western Union has a very short period of time because it is a one time transaction that happens relatively quickly.
And this was implemented by Clinton administration (Score:1, Informative)
This was not even a Dubya deal. You can thank Bill Clinton for this one back in the early 1990's. It was because all people who made large bank deposits were automatically assumed and made guilty of laundering drug money... until proven otherwise.
Re:Racism (Score:5, Informative)
Right now we have no control over any of this unless whatever state we are in specifically grants such rights outside of marriage.
We want to be treated equally. We don't want any "extra' benefits that heterosexual people wouldn't have. Hell, if the religious don't want us having "religious" marriage, I (and many others) would be perfectly happy with a state official conducting the ceremony.
There is no "agenda" here, despite what the religious right-wingers would have you belive.
I'm sure the issue is a bit more indepth than I've stated here, but you could look at hrc.org [hrc.org] to read up on it.
Re:Racism (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Google seems to have come up with a [islam-democracy.org] few [moroccotimes.com] examples [rferl.org]. But, hey, it's so much easier to paint billions of people with the same brush than it is to attempt to actually comprehend the complexity of the situation, eh?
Re:Racism (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mohammed eh? (Score:2, Informative)
Your favorite, huh? To bad that it never happened. Several stories have noted that the airlines use software which uses and algorithm derived from an indexing system known as "Soundex" first used in the 1880 census, and that the last name of Johnny Lydon of Sex Pistols fame, has the same value under this system is Laden, of terrorist fame. However, Johnny Lydon has never been detained because of this.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/
http://www.csoonline.com/read/010104/briefing_nam
Re:Mohammed eh? (Score:3, Informative)
OFAC (Score:2, Informative)
Most likely they're blocking money transfers as part of their compliance with OFAC [ustreas.gov]
The rules are supposed to be you check relevant information (including but not limited to name) against the watch list, and then hold any monies which are associated with a positive hit on the watch list until it is resolved whether the recipient is a false positive or truly on the watch list. Most financial companies which I have worked with try to resolve within 24 hours, but my experience is limited to a small small number of companies.
It does sound that Western Union is having an issue properly identifying and resolving OFAC positives.
OFAC is a legal compliance requirement. Much like another of our favorites, SOX.
Re:Racism (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Racism (Score:1, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Malone [wikipedia.org]
Re:Racism (Score:5, Informative)
When were Jews allowed to enter the House of Commons? The 19th century, the first being Lord Rothschild. Indeed the Rothschild story is interesting because the _father_ of the Rothschild business dynasty lived in the Jewish Ghetto in Munich. Where every Jew had to pass under the arch of the ghetto entrance which had a picture on it. Of a pig. With little Jewish children suckling at its teats and a Rabbi eating its excrement. And its only one example out of many.
Gee-whizz. It seems Christian Europe didn't outright "kill" those Jews, but it sure made their lives interesting.
When were Jews allowed to hold high office in the Muslim Empire (Caliphate)? Well, blimey, for more than a thousand years, be it in academia, goverment, the Caliph's own purveyors, etc. Indeed when the Spanish threw out all their Jews, they went to the Caliphate and quite a few became involved in the goverment there (if one recalls correctly, Spanish power more or less declined not too long afterwards and they were supplanted by the Dutch and the English).
And why were those dastardly Muslims (remember those curvy swords) being so compassionate to the Jews? Well it seems that, apart from plain decency, the Quran tells them so.
"Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabians -whoever believed in Allah and the Last Day and did right- surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve."
Seems to me, that if Muslims are so het up about the Quran being the Word of God, and God sort Smiles upon those mentioned above, that Muslims would do well not to go round killing them, y'know? And the historical record of more than a millenium bears that out. Even Bernard Lewis, whom Said criticised, holds this view.
Now there are verses which are used by the ignorant repeatedly, notably the one about "Slaying unbelievers where ye might find them" and "Do not take Unbelievers as friends" (or something similar), so we shall deal with those:
You will actually find that the lines: "And magnify Mohammed and his followers as thou didst magnify Abraham and his followers..." "And bless Mohammed and his followers as thou didst bless Abraham and his followers..." are recited (at least) thirteen times _per day_ in the compulsory Muslim five daily prayers. Now what use would these lines be if you didn't know whom Abraham or his followers were? The key is context, in order to find out what those lines are teaching, you have to go and do a little bit of historical homework on Abraham and why he was such a good pal of God's, to the extent that people living thousands of years after Abraham are still being taught to behave like him and his congregation.
Similarly, for the "slaying" and "friends" verses mentioned above, context is needed otherwise the lines can easily appear to be contradictory. The verse about not taking Jews and Christians as friends is very often misused by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. But the actual historical reference (remember, that history homework again is needed), actually refers to when the northern Arabian tribes were becoming politically unified through their common adherence to Islam. Just as the Vatican or Israel would hardly trust its affairs to, eg, Iran or Saudi Arabia, and not necessarily because of antagonism but merely due to sensible political considerations, the same was true at the time for the fledgling Arab-Muslim state. Similarly, the slaying refers to a _state_ breaking its treaty and taking it as a call to exterminate non-Muslims is downright silly. Political Islam, or indeed Christianity or Judaism, is somewhat divorced from how you should treat your neighbour: it is how one nation should treat another. The verse about taking Christians as friends is the non-political way in which Man should deal with his brethren in the world, holding up the pious Christians of the time as an example to be followed. One can therefore easily ascertain how consistency is not lacking between the two verses, merely that people do not do their homework.
The parent is a learned genius. Mod appropriately, someone!
Re:Do you really mean that? (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't there a rule about using a word in the definition of a word?
"Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."
-- US Federal Bureau of Investigation
The key word is "unlawful", otherwise the US federal government would fit the bill.
Re:Racism (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Racism (Score:5, Informative)
Nice choice of words there. I noticed that you failed to mention that MOST "militant islamists" arrested in the US were african american.
If you are going to racially profile for terrorism then african americans should be your number one if not number two target group.
Re:Racism (Score:5, Informative)
We are talking about ALL terrorist attacks against the United States and if you consider that then you will see the majority (and quite large majority) were carried out by militant Islamists. Take a look here: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001454.html [infoplease.com] [infoplease.com]
Your list is woefully incomplete. What about Eric Robert Rudolph, who bombed abortion clinics in Birmingham and Atlanta, a gay nightclub in Atlanta, and a concert given during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta? What about the vast number of attacks on Americans -- kidnappings, hijackings, bombings -- in and around Columbia over the past several decades? I'm rather certain those attacks far outnumber attacks against Americans by "militant Islamists" prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq (assuming you classify all the suicide bombings in Iraq as terrorist acts, as opposed to acts of war). What else can I come up with off the top of my head? The Hutu rebels who attacked tourist camps in Uganda in 1999. The disgruntled FedEx employee who, sometime in the '90s, attempted to hijack a FedEx 747 on takeoff and crash it into the company's headquarters in Memphis (he was stopped by the pilot and copilot, but not before he cracked their skulls with an axe). The rocket-propelled grenade fired through the window of the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1995. The Catalan rebels who bombed a bar full of U.S. servicemen in Barcelona in the late '80s. For that matter, it's missing the world's first bombing of an airliner, which was committed in the '60s by a man from Missouri in an insurance scam.
Heck, with a little research I might really be able to make a list. If you think Muslims are the only significant perpetrators of terrorism in the world, you aren't paying attention. Your point of view is precisely why the idea of racial profiling is so popular these days. The more fact-based approach is the reason security experts say racial profiling not only doesn't work [salon.com], but makes us less secure by focusing our attention in the wrong places.
Re:Racism (Score:4, Informative)
If you have proof showing another group that has indiscriminately gone after Americans more often then I would love to see it.
What about clinic bombings [publiceye.org] or don't you consider that terrorism? What about the KKK?
The most thorought treatment of terroism in the US I could find with a quick google was pdf. [ncjrs.gov] FYI, the tables are at the end of the document.
Re:Doesn't suprise me (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Racism (Score:3, Informative)
Menachem Begin was a well-known terrorist leader before he was elected prime minister of Israel.
As others have mentioned, Timothy McVeigh and his friends commited the second worst terrorist act in US history.
And, of course, Israel bombing civilian infrastructure to force the release of a soldier (who could be considered little more than a prisoner of war), is at least arguably an act of terrorism. -- I mean, how many innocent civilians have to be killed by Israel in the name of freeing these two soldiers? -- Oh, yeah, that's right. They're members of a different ethnic group, so they don't count.
Where do you think terrorism comes from?