Bush's orders SWIFT and CHIPS

SWIFT and CHIPS

I did want to acknowledge the experts at CounterTerrorism Blog. It was after reading this article, and in particular this portion of text which reads

"The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries."

After this paragraph I started thinking about SWIFT and CHIPS. As it turns out, the aforementioned paragraph came from the UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group report that can be found here (pdf). You will find a couple other article that pertain to this subject, here and here.

I also came across this article "Disgracefully" Attacking the Messenger over at Truthout.org. Seemed like an appropriate follow up to me.

UPDATE: The saga continues...the House of Representatives passed a meaningless resolution condemning the NY Times for reporting the news and doing the job of congress which is supposed to serve as a consitutional check to presidential power grabs. The most interesting turn of events would have to be the alternative reolution of Barney Frank who took his pen out and mad a few edits to the original resolution.

While I have no doubt that I could describe Barney Frank's edits, some things you just have to see for yourself (pdf).


SWIFT, CHIPS, UN, Bush, Barney Frank