title: Suppression of terrorist financing: over-criminalization through international law

authors: Tofangsaz, Hamed

subjects: Terrorist Financing

abstract: In the last few decades, there has been a considerable effort, mainly from Western liberal States, to create and develop an internationally harmonized counter-terrorist financing regime through international treaties, soft laws and Security Council resolutions, and to diffuse this regime into domestic laws. Aimed at preventing terrorism, this regime has introduced two types of measures: financial measures which involve financial institutions in the fight against terrorism, and penal measures which rely on criminalization, freezing and confiscation tools. This thesis examines the penal measures, the notions on which these measures are based, their scope and structure, the human-rights implications arising from their implementation and their consistency with the principles of criminal law. The main idea behind the adoption of these penal measures is to prevent any terrorist activities at early stage and before they are actualized. So, the measures have been designed to target any financing activities that contribute to, or facilitate, the preparation or commission of any terrorist act, or the activities of those involved in terrorist activities even when there is a tenuous or no link between the financing acts and an actual terrorist act. But there are two challenges that this regime faces: defining what is terrorism, terrorist acts or terrorist groups, the financing of which should be tackled, and whether and how far criminal law should be justifiably expanded to criminalize financing of terrorism or confiscate terrorist funds when there is no connection between acts of financing or funds and actual terrorist acts. This thesis illustrates how the lack of consensus on the definition, scope and elements of terrorism (terrorist acts, terrorist groups) has resulted in the adoption of different definitions of terrorism in contradiction with the principle of legality. This also raises doubts as to the effectiveness of the regime in terms of the enforcement of a harmonized counter-terrorist financing measures (although their effectiveness is not discussed here). The thesis argues that the expansion of the reach of criminal law to suppress activities which are not clearly and reasonably closely connected to the commission or preparation of terrorist activities is vague and unjustifiable in terms of the rule of law (especially values of legal certainty) and principles of the criminal law of Anglo-American States which have played a significant role in adoption and development of the regime. The implementation of these measures is in gross violation of some of the basic human rights and values that these States have been promoting.

text: Suppression of terrorist financing: over-criminalization through international law In the last few decades, there has been a considerable effort, mainly from Western liberal States, to create and develop an internationally harmonized counter-terrorist financing regime through international treaties, soft laws and Security Council resolutions, and to diffuse this regime into domestic laws. Aimed at preventing terrorism, this regime has introduced two types of measures: financial measures which involve financial institutions in the fight against terrorism, and penal measures which rely on criminalization, freezing and confiscation tools. This thesis examines the penal measures, the notions on which these measures are based, their scope and structure, the human-rights implications arising from their implementation and their consistency with the principles of criminal law. The main idea behind the adoption of these penal measures is to prevent any terrorist activities at early stage and before they are actualized. So, the measures have been designed to target any financing activities that contribute to, or facilitate, the preparation or commission of any terrorist act, or the activities of those involved in terrorist activities even when there is a tenuous or no link between the financing acts and an actual terrorist act. But there are two challenges that this regime faces: defining what is terrorism, terrorist acts or terrorist groups, the financing of which should be tackled, and whether and how far criminal law should be justifiably expanded to criminalize financing of terrorism or confiscate terrorist funds when there is no connection between acts of financing or funds and actual terrorist acts. This thesis illustrates how the lack of consensus on the definition, scope and elements of terrorism (terrorist acts, terrorist groups) has resulted in the adoption of different definitions of terrorism in contradiction with the principle of legality. This also raises doubts as to the effectiveness of the regime in terms of the enforcement of a harmonized counter-terrorist financing measures (although their effectiveness is not discussed here). The thesis argues that the expansion of the reach of criminal law to suppress activities which are not clearly and reasonably closely connected to the commission or preparation of terrorist activities is vague and unjustifiable in terms of the rule of law (especially values of legal certainty) and principles of the criminal law of Anglo-American States which have played a significant role in adoption and development of the regime. The implementation of these measures is in gross violation of some of the basic human rights and values that these States have been promoting.

year: 2018

title: Bôcher contractions of conformally superintegrable Laplace equations

authors: Kalnins, Ernie G.

abstract: The explicit solvability of quantum superintegrable systems is due to symmetry, but the symmetry is often “hidden”. The symmetry generators of 2nd order superintegrable systems in 2 dimensions close under commutation to define quadratic algebras, a generalization of Lie algebras. Distinct systems on constant curvature spaces are related by geometric limits, induced by generalized Inönü–Wigner Lie algebra contractions of the symmetry algebras of the underlying spaces. These have physical/geometric implications, such as the Askey scheme for hypergeometric orthogonal polynomials. However, the limits have no satisfactory Lie algebra contraction interpretations for underlying spaces with 1- or 0-dimensional Lie algebras. We show that these systems can be best understood by transforming them to Laplace conformally superintegrable systems, with flat space conformal symmetry group SO(4, ℂ), and using ideas introduced in the 1894 thesis of Bôcher to study separable solutions of the wave equation in terms of roots of quadratic forms. We show that Bôcher’s prescription for coalescing roots of these forms induces contractions of the conformal algebra so(4, ℂ) to itself and yields a mechanism for classifying all Helmholtz superintegrable systems and their limits. In the paperActa Polytechnica, to appear, arXiv:1510.09067], we announced our main findings. This paper provides the proofs and more details.

text: Bôcher contractions of conformally superintegrable Laplace equations The explicit solvability of quantum superintegrable systems is due to symmetry, but the symmetry is often “hidden”. The symmetry generators of 2nd order superintegrable systems in 2 dimensions close under commutation to define quadratic algebras, a generalization of Lie algebras. Distinct systems on constant curvature spaces are related by geometric limits, induced by generalized Inönü–Wigner Lie algebra contractions of the symmetry algebras of the underlying spaces. These have physical/geometric implications, such as the Askey scheme for hypergeometric orthogonal polynomials. However, the limits have no satisfactory Lie algebra contraction interpretations for underlying spaces with 1- or 0-dimensional Lie algebras. We show that these systems can be best understood by transforming them to Laplace conformally superintegrable systems, with flat space conformal symmetry group SO(4, ℂ), and using ideas introduced in the 1894 thesis of Bôcher to study separable solutions of the wave equation in terms of roots of quadratic forms. We show that Bôcher’s prescription for coalescing roots of these forms induces contractions of the conformal algebra so(4, ℂ) to itself and yields a mechanism for classifying all Helmholtz superintegrable systems and their limits. In the paperActa Polytechnica, to appear, arXiv:1510.09067], we announced our main findings. This paper provides the proofs and more details.

year: 2016

title: The arguing genre and the explaining genre: A comparison in terms of discourse relational analyses of texts written in English and texts written in Maori

authors: Crombie, Winifred

subjects: linguistics

abstract: There is a commonly held belief that those who are immersed in indigenous cultures have a tendency, when constructing academic texts, to avoid sequential, deductive argumentation. We report here on a comparison of two groups of texts exhibiting two different genres – explaining and arguing. One group of texts was written in Māori by indigenous authors, the other group was written in English by non-indigenous authors. Our findings are that although the percentage use of logico-deductive relationships is roughly equivalent for both groups of texts/ writers in the case of the explaining genre, the Māori texts/ writers use almost twice the percentage of logicodeductive relationships as do the English texts/ writers.

text: The arguing genre and the explaining genre: A comparison in terms of discourse relational analyses of texts written in English and texts written in Maori There is a commonly held belief that those who are immersed in indigenous cultures have a tendency, when constructing academic texts, to avoid sequential, deductive argumentation. We report here on a comparison of two groups of texts exhibiting two different genres – explaining and arguing. One group of texts was written in Māori by indigenous authors, the other group was written in English by non-indigenous authors. Our findings are that although the percentage use of logico-deductive relationships is roughly equivalent for both groups of texts/ writers in the case of the explaining genre, the Māori texts/ writers use almost twice the percentage of logicodeductive relationships as do the English texts/ writers.

year: 2005