International Business And Bank Money Transfers - Douglas E. Castle

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International Business Update: Wiring Funds And Banking

If you are either conducting business internationally or are contemplating conducting any type of business which may require international electronic or SWIFT transfers of funds (i.e., funds transfers inbound or outbound via wire) the current terrorist threat levels are already creating additional diligence and reporting on the part of depositary institutions, as certainly as it will now take you longer to go through airport security clearance protocol on any international flight due to the prevalance of consciousness relating to possible terrorist or Ebola virus-related problems throughout the world.

Following are several suggestions to provide your banker, or your recipient's banker – as well as the host of regulators to which they now answerable – with additional comfort regarding the nature of your transactions, business and funds. 

While you may see these steps as “overkill,” rest assured that they are not, and that they will reduce the likelihood of any holds or restrictions on your funds. Again, these are not legally mandated, but are just an extra step of precaution:

1. Do not, under any circumstances, accept any inbound transfers, or make any outbound transfers by wire (or by check, for that matter) to businesses or other organizations located in any of the prohibited jurisdictions on US Ex-Im Bank's most recent publication of the Country Limitation Schedule (a link to which which follows for the purposes of example) or which happens to be on the Department Of The Secretary Of State's “Watchlist” (a link to which follows for the purposes of example) ;
2. Pre-advise your bank, via email to your account officer or manager, if you are anticipating any transfer into or out of your account in any amount in excess of $1.0 million US;
3. Have any transferor execute the following undertaking [or one in a format suggested by your legal counsel] in a signed writing and either fax or email the same to your banker (in the form of a PDF attachment) with your own covering letter to accompany it: “ _________________ is transferring funds in the amount of _____________________ to ________________ [recipient name] via SWIFT [or even via check, if you'd like to take that extra precaution when you are accepting a check drawn on a foreign bank in payment for goods or services]. This transaction is made using clean, cleared funds of non-criminal origin, and is being transferred in compliance with applicable laws; further, these funds are free of all liens, taxes, encumbrances and other claims of any sort, and are being conveyed to be utilized for legal purposes.”

The above steps will help to keep both you and your bankers in the best possible standing. Should you wish to view Ex-Im Bank's latest updated Country Limitation Schedule (CLS), go to http://www.exim.gov/tools/countrylimitationschedule/index.cfm.

Should you wish to find out if the country with which you are considering doing business is “watchlisted” by either the Department Of State or the Department Of Homeland Security, go to either http://www.state.gov/ or http://www.dhs.gov/ respectively. Both websites offer you telephone numbers to contact helpful civil servants to answer any of your questions.

Douglas E. Castle

NOTE: THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS ARTICLE SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED BY THE READER AS BEING LEGAL, FINANCIAL, TAX, ACCOUNTING, ECONOMIC OR INVESTMENT ADVICE. NO OFFERING OF SECURITIES OR OTHER INVESTMENT INTERESTS OF ANY TYPE IN ANY ENTITY IS MADE HEREBY, NOR IS A SOLICITATION FOR THE PURCHASE OF SECURITIES OR OTHER INVESTMENT INTERESTS OF ANY TYPE IN ANY ENTITY MADE HEREBY. THIS ARTICLE IS INTENDED FOR GENERAL INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND REPRESENTS THE VIEW OF THE AUTHOR ONLY.

THIS ARTICLE IS COPYRIGHT 2014 BY DOUGLAS E. CASTLE, WITH ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ANY REPRODUCTION, TRANSMITTAL OR DISTRIBUTION OF THIS ARTICLE, EITHER IN WHOLE OR PART, IS UNAUTHORIZED AND MAY BE UNLAWFUL, UNLESS FULL ATTRIBUTION IS GIVEN TO THE AUTHOR AND ALL LINKS IN THE ARTICLE REMAIN INCLUDED AND “LIVE.”

TAGS, LABELS, SEARCH TERMS, CATEGORIES AND KEY WORDS FOR THIS ARTICLE: Douglas E. Castle, International Ventures, Banking, Wire Transfers, EX-IM Bank, Department Of State, Department Of Homeland Security, Representations, Anti-Money Laundering, Terrorism, Ebola.

Charges In Beghazi Attack: Whitewash Politics - Intelligence Failure

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The charges in the attack at the US Embassy in Benghazi which cost American lives are really just an initial toss of some obvious "usual suspect" types under the bus to palliate angry Americans. This is an example of a combination of Whitewashing politics (i.e., cleaning up a story to eliminate certain important and influential persons who might have been intimately involved), an intelligence failure in the United States at home and abroad (in Libya), and a case of a heartless state of priorities in the US Government; a situation where an informed political agency or two decided that this just wasn't "important enough" to react to.

The incident, if looked at from a telescopic view, smacks of intelligence failure, a poor sense of priorities in terms of handling the inevitable to save Human lives, and the triumph of political parading over an "unimportant little station" in Libya. This cannot either solve a problem in terms of future occurrences, nor can it be something to be proud of. We had better be more vigilant and response to future terrorist threats -- especially in parts of the world where the West, and in  particular, the US, are hated and are constantly being targeted by extremists. As a US resident, ardent Constitutionalist and an active Internationalist, this speaks of an unwieldy political machine desperately in need of repair. The value of intelligence is negligible if we fail to respond to the information provided to it about an inevitable threat.

Hillary Clinton, a brilliant political strategist, resigned from her hot seat position as the U.S. Secretary of State as part of her damage control tactic relating to the incident, and the intensive questioning by Congress and the American Public about her role in all of this, and what appears to be her failure to act in the interest of saving American lives.

Because of another "credible threat", the US has already closed embassies in the predominantly Islamist parts of the world, and some other regions possibly accessible to a major terrorist threat. The reason for this is (aside from the threat, which US intelligence agencies believe is highly credible) that nobody in government at the federal level wants another Benghazi embarrassment. An article follows from the Associated Press, in care of Yahoo! News that illustrates, mainstream media being told to do what it is supposed to do. There is very little investigative, independent journalism -- major publications are briefed by those in power in the White House, either directly or indirectly. This makes mainstream media horribly biased in all too many politically sensitive cases.
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DONNA CASSATA 12 hours ago - (Courtesy Of YAHOO! News)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has filed the first criminal charges in the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, two U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The officials confirmed that a sealed complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington against an unspecified number of individuals in the September 2012 attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. One official said those charged included Ahmed Abu Khattala, the head of a Libyan militia. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss a sealed filing.

The New York Times reported late Tuesday that Khattala had been charged with murder and that he has said in an interview that he is innocent. At least two other foreigners have been charged in the attacks, the newspaper said.

Earlier, CNN, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal reported that unspecified counts had been filed and sealed in the Benghazi attack.

"The department's investigation is ongoing. It has been, and remains, a top priority," said Justice Department spokesman Andrew C. Ames, who declined to comment further.
A key Republican urged the administration to do more than file charges.

"Osama bin Laden had been criminally charged long before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but was not apprehended," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement. U.S. Navy SEALS killed bin Laden in Pakistan on May 2, 2011. "Delays in apprehending the suspected Benghazi killers," Issa added, "will only put American lives at further and needless risk."

The Associated Press reported in May that American officials had identified five men who might be responsible for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi that occurred just weeks before President Barack Obama's re-election. The suspects were not named publicly, but the FBI released photos of three of the five suspects, asking the public to provide more information on the men pictured. The images were captured by security cameras at the U.S. diplomatic post during the attack, but it took weeks for the FBI to see and study them. The FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies identified the men through contacts in Libya and by monitoring their communications. They are thought to be members of Ansar al-Shariah, the Libyan militia group whose fighters were seen near the U.S. diplomatic facility prior to the violence.

Waiting to prosecute the suspects instead of grabbing them now could add to the political burden the Benghazi case already has placed on Obama and Democrats who want to succeed him in 2016.

Since Obama's re-election, Republicans in Congress have condemned the administration's handling of the matter, criticizing the level of embassy security and questioning the talking points provided to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for her public explanation of the attack. Conservatives have suggested that the White House tried to play down the incident to minimize its effect on the president's campaign.

Republicans also have taken political aim at Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attack and is a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2016.

In an interview with the Times in October, Khattala said he had arrived at the American compound in Benghazi as gunfire broke out but that he had played no role in the attack. He told the newspaper that he entered the compound at the end of the siege in an attempt to rescue Libyan guards who worked for the Americans and were trapped.

Khattala accused American leaders of using the Benghazi attack to play "with the emotions of the American people" in an effort to "gather votes for their elections," according to the Times.

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I fear the Khattala is close to the truth, and this should frighten all U.S. citizens. The sovereign Government (purportedly comprised largely of elected officials) is serving its own purposes and private organizational agenda  and putting the people it is sworn to serve and protect second. U.S. citizens are indeed being indolent sheeple. It is almost like one of those mass hypnosis or subliminal messaging conspiracies that you read about in fiction novels.


Are those novels really fiction?

Labels, Tags, Keywords, Categories And Search Terms For This Article:
Benghazi, FBI, United States, Barack Obama, Osama bin Laden. intelligence failures, whitewashing, government versus the people it is sworn to serve, mainstream media is compromised, conspiracies, Hillary Clinton, The Internationalist Page, terrorism, closing embassies, 


Douglas E. Castle at http://DouglasECastleBlog.com and at http://www.DouglasECastle.com

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Scoop.it

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HAMAS: Tempting Fate, Instability And Commerce

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Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Quada tempt fate, court regional instability, and threaten world commerce. They do not seem to be advocating an agenda (except perhaps for the annihilation of Israel and the type of "westernization" exemplified by the United States). They have no positive offering, very little to actually lose (they have nothing to protect except for the possible ability to destroy civility) and an agenda based on the international equivalent of radical and contagious negative campaigning. They nourish themselves on chaos. And since they have nothing to lose (except the 'hero' status afforded their leaders), they cannot truly be a party to any productive negotiations.

These acknowledged terrorist organizations, nestled in many nations, are more vociferous, and possibly more powerful and influential than the 'host' nations which harbor them and empower them. This configuration of terrorist rule makes any binding, stabilizing compromise an impossibility. Israel is not dealing with nations -- they are dealing with self-appointed negotiators with zero-sum game agendas.

*It is a cardinal rule of commerce to ultimately negotiate with figures of authority who can bind their organizations to an agreement. Without this, negotiations are futile. The Internationalist Page Blog does not view Israel as intractable; it views Israel as being coerced from multiple directions to negotiate with terrorists instead of sovereign leaders. Sadly, the leaders of the states in the troubled region are leaders in name only. These countries have become breeding grounds, hiding places and shields for the terrorist groups which actually control them.

The following article appeared in the New York Times:

November 19, 2012

Hamas Leader Dares Israel to Invade Amid Gaza Airstrikes

By FARES AKRAM, JODI RUDOREN and ALAN COWELL

GAZA CITY — The top leader of Hamas dared Israel on Monday to launch a ground invasion of Gaza and dismissed diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire in the six-day-old conflict, as the Israeli military conducted a new wave of deadly airstrikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave, including a second hit on a 15-story building that houses media outlets. A volley of rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel included one that hit a vacant school.
Speaking at a news conference in Cairo, where the diplomatic efforts were under way, the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshal, suggested that the Israeli infantry mobilization on the border with Gaza was a bluff on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

“If you wanted to launch it, you would have done it,” Mr. Meshal told reporters. He accused Israel of using the invasion threat as an attempt to “dictate its own terms and force us into silence.”
Rejecting Israel’s contention that Hamas had precipitated the conflict, Mr. Meshal said the burden was on the Israelis. 

“The demand of the people of Gaza is meeting their legimitate demands — for Israel to be restrained from its aggression, assassinations and invasions, and for the siege over Gaza to be ended,” he said.

The Hamas Health Ministry said Monday evening that a total of 107 people had been killed since Wednesday morning, when Israeli airstrikes began, following months of Palestinian rocket fire into Israel. A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said she believed that a majority of these were militants, though it is difficult to know because Hamas’s own fighting brigade and the other factional groups are secretive.

The Hamas ministry said that the dead included at least 26 children, 10 women and 12 men over 50, who were presumably not involved in combat. Of the remainder, at least 36 are known militants. Hamas officials said more than 860 have been wounded, 260 of them children, 140 of them women and 55 men over 50.
Three people have been killed so far in Israel, all civilians, in a rocket strike that hit an apartment house in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi on Thursday morning. The Israelis have said that at least 79 Israelis have been wounded and that Gaza rockets have reached as far north as Tel Aviv.

The latest Gaza casualties — 22 people reported killed since midnight local time — included Palestinians killed in strikes by warplanes, a drone attack on two men on a motorcycle, and a father and two toddler sons in their bombed northern Gaza home, witnesses and medical sources said. Another Israeli drone attack killed the driver of a taxi hired by journalists and displaying “Press” signs, although it was not clear which journalists had hired it, Palestinian officials said.

On Sunday, Israeli forces attacked two buildings housing local broadcasters and production companies used by foreign outlets. Israeli officials denied targeting journalists, but on Monday Israeli forces again blasted the Al Sharouk block, a multiuse building where many local broadcasters, as well as Sky News of Britain and the channel Al Arabiya, had offices.

That attack, which struck a computer shop on the third floor, sparked a blaze that sent plumes of dark smoke creeping up the sides of the building. Video footage showed clouds of smoke billowing.
An Israeli bomb pummeled a home deep into the ground here on Sunday, killing 11 people, including nine in three generations of a single family, in the deadliest single strike since the latest conflict began. Members of the family were buried Monday in a rite that turned into a gesture of defiance and became a rally supporting Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.

A militant leader said Tel Aviv, in the Israeli heartland, would be hit “over and over” and warned Israelis that their leaders were misleading them and would “take them to hell.”

Israel says its onslaught is designed to stop Hamas from launching the rockets, but, after an apparent lull overnight, more missiles hurtled toward targets in Israel, some of them intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. Of five rockets fired on Monday at the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, four were intercepted but one smashed through the concrete roof at the entrance to an empty school. There were no reports of casualties. Other rockets rained on areas along the border with Gaza.

Later a second salvo struck Ashkelon. Several rockets were intercepted, but one crashed down onto a house, causing damage but no casualties.

Israeli officials said 135 rockets were fired from Gaza at Israel on Monday, of which 42 were intercepted by Iron Dome, Most of the others landed in open areas.

On Sunday, a new volley of Palestinian rockets totaled nearly 100 by nightfall, including two that soared toward Tel Aviv but were knocked out of the sky by Israeli defenses.

In a statement on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces said overnight targets included “underground rocket launchers, terror tunnels, training bases, Hamas command posts and weapon storage facilities.” But news reports said the strikes flattened two houses belonging to a single family, killing two children and two adults and injuring 42 people, while a shrapnel burst from another attack killed one child and wounded others living near the rubble of the former national security compound.

The latest exchanges offered a grim backdrop to Egyptian-led cease-fire efforts that have so far proved inconclusive. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was set to join the effort in Cairo.

Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said there had been a reduction of up to 40 percent in rocket fire from Gaza, while Israeli forces had launched 40 attacks on tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, both at the entrances and along the road leading to them, causing considerable damage.

He said six rocket launching teams and two men on motorcycles were hit, while the Israeli forces continued to intercept Palestinian radio signals to urge Gaza residents to steer clear of activists.

In the Israeli strike on Sunday morning, it took emergency workers and a Caterpillar digger more than an hour to reveal the extent of the devastation under the two-story home of Jamal Dalu, a shop owner. Mr. Dalu was at the market when the blast wiped out nearly his entire family: His sister, wife, two daughters, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren ages 2 to 6 all perished under the rubble, along with two neighbors, an 18-year-old and his grandmother.
Ismail Haniya, the prime minister of the militant Hamas faction that rules Gaza, condemned the attack as a “massacre” that “exceeded all expectations.”

General Mordechai, the spokesman for the Israeli military, said it was “examining the event.”
“The wanted target in this case was responsible for firing dozens of rockets into Israel,” he added. “I do not know what happened to him, but I do know that we are committed to the safety of the citizens of Israel.”

The Dalu family were buried Monday after an intense, chaotic two-hour funeral procession that quickly became a Hamas rally clearly aimed at least in part at sending a strong message of defiance through the scores of journalists in the crowd. Thousands thronged the streets following the bodies from the destroyed Dalu home to the Esraa Mosque and then to the Sheikh Radwan cemetery, shouting slogans of resistance as fighters fired rifles into the air and waved the green Hamas flags as well as the white ones of the armed Al Qassam Brigades.

Outside the cemetery, a Qassam leader named Mosheer Al Masri spoke not about the victims but about the enemy.
“Tel Aviv, which we hit, will be hit over and over until you stop your crimes against our civilians,” Mr. Masri said. “Your threats will not scare us, they will just make us stronger and more resistant.”

He threatened a repeat of the 2006 kidnapping of Sgt. Gilad Shalit if Israel proceeded with a ground invasion, and vowed “revenge for the killing of these children.” He offered a message to Israelis: “Your leaders are misleading you and will take you to hell.”

“Our message to Netanyahu is that we will defeat you like we defeated your ancestors,” he added. “We still have so much in our pockets and we will show you if we have to.”
   
Fares Akram and Jodi Rudoren reported from Gaza City, and Alan Cowell from London. Reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner from Ashkelon, Israel; Ethan Bronner, Myra Noveck and Irit Pazner Garshowitz from Jerusalem; Rina Castelnuovo from Ashdod, Israel; Peter Baker from Bangkok; and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.
   
   

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The lessons here are simple ones, but are worth mentioning:

1) You can only negotiate with legitimately empowered and legitimate decision makers;

2) You cannot negotiate while you are actively in a state of militant conflict;

3) Without a demonstrated basis of mutual respect, trust and value to exchange, you can not have any negotiations;

4) You cannot engage in palliative discourse with any party who or which advocates your destruction, or wishes you to render yourself more vulnerable to attack;

5) In any negotiation, you must look at your counterpart's historical conduct in order to know which negotiating strategies are most likely to work, and which are most likely to b futile.

6) A negotiation takes place, of necessity, between two parties, and not through a "weighing in" of industry or world opinion. These latter distractions create further grandstanding and belligerence between the negotiating parities, Third parties can only serve to suggest a negotiation or to facilitate an initial introduction.

7) In any negotiation, sadly, the party with the most to lose is at a decided perceptual disadvantage.

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While I am an advocate of negotiation, mediation and arbitration (in that order), I don't think that any of these three tools are appropriate in the situation cited above, where rockets speak louder than words, and a positive, peaceful and stable outcome is not desired equally by both sides in sincerity.

Thank you, as always for reading me and for retweeting me.

Douglas E. Castle for The Internationalist Page Blog, The Global Futurist Blog, The Business And Project Planning And Management Blog, The CrowdFunding Incubator and The InfoSphere Business Alerts And Intelligence Blog.

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