← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Ed Toner
Thread ID: 7825 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2003-07-03
2003-07-03 18:16 | User Profile
[url=http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1997_hr/hfa44990_0.htm]http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1997_hr/hfa44990_0.htm[/url] What follows is excerpts from the hearings on international organized crime held by the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations in October of 1997
From the link: "........................Drug cartels have the ability to move literally hundreds of billions of dollars in and out of legitimate financial systems. In Colombia, for example, a few years ago several arrested members of the Medellin cartel reportedly offered to pay off the Colombian national debt if only their government would not honor its extradition treaty with the United States, which had been honored as early as 1985. Today the Colombian Constitution has been amended and no longer permits extradition of Colombian nationals. Organized crime groups, particularly in Russia, now have almost a choke hold on the country's vast natural resources, as well as their banks and media.
Page 7 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Russia has been described recently by the press as a kleptocracy from top to bottom, a semicriminal State. And there are now various terrorist groups, including those being sponsored by Iran and Iraq, which are actively recruiting top nuclear scientists in their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. And most recently, Russian General Lebed, a former national security advisor to President Yeltsin, suggested that dozens of nuclear suitcase devices are mysteriously disappearing from Russia's military arsenal and are feared out there and available on the black market. And the same threat exists from weapons using biological or chemical content. What all of this tells us is that in the interest of global business, these dangerous groups will soon cross a threshold of compartmentalization, will begin merging and are working jointly with one another. Its sophisticated and highly disciplined managers view crime as an investment; indeed, an export commodity. When opportune, they will pool resources and move back and forth between legitimate and illegitimate activities, just as they are beginning to do today. This new globalized crime wave will take complete advantage of the new technologies to hide their activities, and when combined with their ability to move huge sums of money instantly, actually threaten every free society's ability to assert financial control over its own economy. These new global cartels can ultimately be capable of buying entire governments, commercial trade zones in emerging democracies and eventually undermining established Western markets and stable world financial commercial trading systems. Last but not least, their ability to obtain and hide the purchase of stolen weapons, including nuclear devices, will give any major crime cartel or terrorist organization the necessary means to power bully itself through the use of force and intimidation, something we all know is part and parcel of their natural behavior. We have as witnesses today members of both the law enforcement community, both domestic and international, and the private sector, all of whom are exceptionally knowledgeable on both the depth of the problem and its potential solutions........................"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Can anyone speculate what ethnic group comprises the Russian organized crime groups?
2003-07-03 19:41 | User Profile
Let me guess Ed. Are these Russian gangsters able to snort huge amounts of coke in one sniff because of an oversized proboscis? Not that I want to get ethnic or anything.