Exclusive: Shot not hear round the world.

By Gerald, Internet Anthropologist Think Tank.

Oct 16, o8

SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press Writer is WRONG. His hypotheis is that the economic down turn won't hurt terrorist funding.

The price of oil has dropped from a high of $145 a bbl to $74 a bbl currently, we expect the reduced revenues will also reduce al Qaeda funding.

Of bigger concern to us is a method of secret money laundering involving shorting an Investment while simtaniously going long in another country, if the investment moves in the correct direction

then the money is automaticly moved from one country to another without any physical connection

between the transactions, if the position moves against them they break even.

With the current globalization of the stockmarkets one only needs a computer to pull it off and a liquid investment, and a brokerage account.

This is called "The shot not heard around the world".

As it is very hard to track and not very exact way to move money, it may take weeks or months,

and the money can move in the reverse direction it is intended temporarly.

The only costs involved are the brokerage commissions.

And can be done from any country to any country.

If special forces and CIA snipers target the durg cartels heads involoved in Afghan, that will almost shut down the drug trade in Afghan.

Poor reward risk ratio.

Gerald

Series 7 & 11

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Analysts say al-Qaida awash in funds despite global financial crisis

By SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press Writer
12:08 PM PDT, October 16, 2008

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ Al-Qaida, which gets its money from the drug trade in Afghanistan and sympathizers in the oil-rich Gulf states, is likely to escape the effects of the global financial crisis.

One reason is that al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorists have been forced to avoid using banks, relying instead on less-efficient ways to move their cash around the world, analysts said.

Those methods include hand-carrying money and using informal transfer networks called hawalas.

While escaping official scrutiny, those networks also are slower and less efficient — and thus could hamper efforts to finance attacks.

"It would be inconceivable that large amounts of (terror-linked) money would transit through the formal financial system, because of all the controls," said Ibrahim Warde, an expert on terrorist financing at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.

The question of where al-Qaida and its sympathizers get their money has long been crucial to efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. A 2004 U.S. investigation found that banks in the United Arab Emirates had unwittingly handled most of the $400,000 spent on the Sept. 11 attacks.

After the attacks, the U.S. made an aggressive push to use law enforcement techniques to disrupt terrorist financing networks and worked with allies to improve their own financial and regulatory institutions.

Al-Qaida and the Taliban have benefited from the drug trade's growth in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and the booming business likely will not be affected by the global slowdown.

Opium cultivation has fallen slightly this year but is still about 20 times higher than in 2001, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Former U.S. drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who recently consulted with U.S. and NATO officials in Afghanistan, issued a report in July saying al-Qaida and the Taliban "are principally funded by what some estimate as $800 million a year derived from the huge $4 billion annual illegal production and export of opium/heroin and cannabis."

In addition, wealthy donors and Islamic charities in the oil-rich Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, continue to be "one of the most significant sources of illicit financing for terrorism," said Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department terrorism expert now with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The Saudis have long insisted they are doing all they can to rein in terror financing, and U.S. officials have praised their efforts.

But, under a system known as "zakat," wealthy Muslims are required to give a portion of their money to the poor. Much of that is given to Islamic charities, and U.S. officials say at least some of that money continues to be channeled to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries have benefited in the last two years from a surge in oil prices from about $60 per barrel at the beginning of 2007 to more than $145 per barrel in the middle of this year. Prices have fallen almost 50 percent in the last few months in response to the global financial crisis, but not before generating hundreds of billions of dollars to oil producers.

Levitt said the covert nature of terrorist financing makes it difficult to determine a direct correlation between rising oil revenues and the amount of cash al-Qaida has on hand.

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