Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the jackal Essay

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the jackal - Essay Example While in Cuba, he was trained in urban guerilla tactics, usage of automatic weapons, explosives and sabotage (Pons, 2001)?. In 1970, Sanchez traveled to a guerilla training camp run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Amman, Jordan. This would form the basis of much of Sanchez's activities and terrorist ideology, which was rooted in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. While training, he was given the pseudonym â€Å"Carlos† by PFLP spokesman Bassam Abu-Sharif. The Guardian newspaper in Britain gave him the moniker â€Å"The Jackal† after police found a copy of Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal in his abandoned apartment following his assassination of French intelligence agents (Hamm, 2007)?. Carlos the Jackal has freelanced for Saddam Hussein, Moammar Qaddafi, Marshal Tito, the Italian Red Brigade, the Spanish Basque ETA and the secret services of several Soviet bloc nations. Carlos the Jackal was arrested by an American and French coaliti on effort in Khartoum, Sudan, following an operation on his groin. He is now serving a life sentence in Le Sante maximum security prison in Paris, France. Stated purposes In a 1999 interview with New York Press, Sanchez made two main statements regarding his personal beliefs ?(Haden-Guest, 1999)?. The first is with reference to mainly secular terrorist attacks; that revolutionary development is a barometer of social injustice, and is a permanent cycle. The second one is that the political effects from the growing disparity between rich and poor inevitably results in violently increasing revolutionary backlash. He made the second statement specifically with the then-dominant United States in mind. Carlos the Jackal also stated that the majority of his terrorist attacks were done â€Å"in the name of Palestinian liberation and revolution† (Cody, 2010)?. In 1998, a will he wrote entitled En Cas de Mon Deces was released to the media. In that will, he stated that for every day th at he spends in jail, one American or Zionist should be killed (Haden-Guest, 1999)?. Current terrorist and other political/social operations Since Carlos the Jackal is currently incarcerated and serving a life sentence, the focus of this section is on his and his affiliates' actions prior to his capture in 1994. Sanchez is most well known for the 1975 kidnapping of over 60 hostages, eleven of which were OPEC oil ministers at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Austria (Cody, 2010; Haden-Guest, 1999; â€Å"What's up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,† 2002)?. In this instance, the Jackal and his PFLP cohorts were responsible for three deaths: an Austrian police officer, and two low-ranking members of the ministers' delegations. The OPEC kidnapping was done under the orders of PFLP faction leader Dr. Wadih Haddad. The order was to ransom most of the ministers for money that the PFLP needed. However, the oil ministers for Saudi Arabia and Iran, Ahmed Zaki al-Yamani an d Jamshid Amouzegar, were to be killed, as the two countries at the time did not support the proposal to raise oil prices. Besides that, Saudi Arabia and Iran were deemed by the PFLP as not supportive enough of the Palestinian cause (â€Å"What's up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?,† 2002)?. In Sanchez's own words, Saudi Arabia was not paying their â€Å"revolutionary tax† (Haden-Guest, 1999). Upon the successful kidnapping of the OPEC ministers, Sanchez and the PFLP terrorists flew to Algeria with the hostages. All of the hostages were released upon payment of ransom.

Comparative Economic Systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Comparative Economic Systems - Essay Example The size of the population along with the role of the government in programming economic growth processes, all help to determine the stability of the country. The labor market, capital market, the agriculture, trade, healthcare together reflects the economic strength of the country. Emphasizing these aspects of economic growth dynamics, this paper will aim at assessing the economic components of the US in comparison to the performance of China, Russia and the UK. Prime focus will remain in studying the economic variability of these countries in the recent era. From a generalized point of view, as can be observed, the growth of the US economy as compared to the other nations has been more because of its industrialization benefits, which illustrates that the economy considerably depends on its micro and macro environment. Discussion Comparison between China and the US The US has remained one of the leading economies of the world since 1979. However, recent statistics comparing the US g rowth rate with that of China reveals that both the countries reside alongside with insignificant differences in their growth rates. As per the statistical reports of aThe World Bank (2013), China’s GDP growth rates have been consistently higher than the US since 2003 to 2012. Comparisons on the performances of the two economies further indicate that even though the GDP growth rate was higher for China, its GDP in the USD tends to be much lower in comparison to that of the US. For instance, the GDP USD recorded for China as on the fiscal year 2012 was estimated at $8.358 trillion, while the recorded GDP USD for the US in the same year amounted to $15.68 trillion. One of the possible reasons to such fluctuation may be caused due to their differences in terms of population and other socio-economic components. To be noted, China currently is recorded to host 1.351 billion nationals, where the total population of the US is recorded to be 313.9 million in comparison [refer to Tabl e 1 in the Appendix] (aThe World Bank, 2013; bThe World Bank, 2013). This indicates that even though the Chinese economic growth may seem to be better than that of the US, an in-depth understanding to the issue exhibits a different scenario altogether, owing to their differences in terms of various other inherent economic factors. . As per the data, China is the second largest trade partner of America, since 1980 to 2012, the countries saw a growth of $5 billion to $536 billion (Morrison, 2013). This again makes the macro-economic components of trade largely interdependent among these two countries, where the economic prosperity of China may also influence the economic performance of the US to a substantial extent. It is worth mentioning in this context that as a developing nation, China possesses certain benefits, which the US lacks when performing in the global market. For instance, the GDP growth rate of China has shown a regular growth since 1979 to 2013, even when the world was facing an economic slowdown and the GDP growth rate in the US declined to zero [refer to Table 1 in the Appendix]. It was fundamentally owing to the flexibility enjoyed by a developing natio