High-Impact Terrorism Proceedings of a Russian-American Workshop (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Organized Crime and Terrorism
Organized Crime and Terrorism
Pages 37-52
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From page 37... ...
By its nature, criminal terrorism can be international and domestic. In terms of location, it can occur on land, air, and sea and involve the use of traditional and technological means that is, nuclear, chemical, biological, cybernetic, and other means using highly toxic ingredients and especially destructive powerful explosives, as detailed in the reports of other seminar participants.
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From page 38... ...
These include weakening the activities of law enforcement agencies, slowing legislative initiatives unfavorable to the criminal world, demoralizing the population, getting criminal kingpins or their helpers or sponsors elected to organs of legislative power, obtaining important posts in the federal and regional executive branches, and gaining immunity from legal prosecution for crimes committed. The striving of organized crime toward these desired political results is used by some far from politically clean parties, which receive serious financial sup
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From page 39... ...
The last form of criminal activity also represents criminal terrorism, to a certain extent.
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From page 40... ...
Given the lack of legal criteria and in the interests of demonstrating successful actions, the internal affairs agencies often listed common crimes committed by groups under the heading of organized crime. Unfortunately, many law enforcement agencies merely engage in window dressing.
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From page 41... ...
A significant portion of the crimes cited remain unsolved; therefore, they are not included in the organized crime database. For example, of the 135 registered cases of terrorism in 2000, only 3 terrorist acts committed by organized crime elements were officially established after investigation.
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From page 42... ...
In the world today, there are 23 countries that openly or secretly possess nuclear weapons, but there are grounds for believing the number actually to be 44 countries, including totalitarian regimes.5 American films showing organized crime using nuclear weapons to blackmail governments could turn out to be reality. The overall intensification of terrorism in the current century will be closely linked with worldwide processes of globalization.
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From page 43... ...
In their well-argued internationally-published work The Global Trap: The Assault on Democracy and Prosperity, the German authors consider such urgent questions as the following: The 20:80 society; World rulers en route to a different civilization; Globalization and global disintegration; Dictatorship with limited liability, and playing with billions; The "Law of the Wolves" and the job crisis; The myth of the fairness of globalization; Sauce, qui Peut and the disappearing middle class; The poor global players and the welcoming back of compulsion; Who does the state belong to the loss of national sovereignty; The dangerous world policeman, et cetera. The authors present the contemporary world as if from an unseen side, revealing harsh economic realities and leaving no rosy illusions regarding free competition, freedom of speech, and equality for all.
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From page 44... ...
The influence of globalization as planned by the world economic elite could provide a strong impetus to the growth of crime in Russia and could intensify organized crime and criminal terrorism. Many years of mass frustrations provide a foundation for the strengthening of aggression, violence, and terrorism.
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From page 45... ...
The third criminologically significant problem is that of the substantial reduction of the capacities of national governments to govern society and fight crime. In late 2000, the World Bank published its twenty-second and most recent analysis.8 As noted by J
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From page 46... ...
The above-mentioned characteristics represent the real marks of the globalization of crime and of the world as a whole. Despite all the substantial variations in crime rates in various countries, the first and defining trend in the world is the absolute and relative growth of crime, with relative being understood in terms of population size, economic development, culture, and so forth.
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From page 47... ...
Democracy is often powerless in the face of growing crime, acknowledging only brute force, while totalitarianism, capable of holding traditional crime somewhat in check, is itself criminal in its nature and therefore does not reduce the victimization of the people. An optimal solution would appear to lie in firm social-legal democratic control over crime, based on laws passed democratically and carried out with strict observance of fundamental human rights.
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From page 48... ...
We are interested in this. In his book Travels with Charley: In Search of America, the American writer John Steinbeck writes that we love virtue, yet we take more interest not in the honest accountant, the faithful wife, or the serious scholar, but rather in the bum, the charlatan, the embezzler, the criminal, the bandit, the terrorist, et cetera.
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From page 49... ...
7. Representatives of law enforcement agencies and research institutions mistakenly consider that the intensive expansion of the sphere of activity considered to be crime actually signifies a process of strengthening law and order.
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From page 50... ...
And that is how it has always been. The first thing that those in power thought of after the death of the dictator Stalin was to obtain freedom from legal controls on the part of law enforcement agencies.
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From page 51... ...
The process of globalization cannot be eliminated, but it must proceed along an evolutionary path in parallel with legal support from the United Nations and the entire international community in order to eliminate double standards, interstate forms of violence, and dictatorial methods from international relations.
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From page 52... ...
2. Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook.
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