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Collapsed UK Bank Attempts to Censor Wikileaks
James Hardine writes "Wikileaks has released a couple of hilarious legal demands over a confidential briefing memo entitled Project Wing — Northern Rock Executive Summary. Northern Rock Bank (UK) collapsed spectacularly late last year on the back of the sub-prime lending crisis and was re-floated by the Bank of England at a cost of over £24bn. The memo was used by the Financial Times, the Telegraph and others. It attracted a number of censorship injunctions, as reported by the Guardian, which only Wikileaks continues to withstand. In their legal demand to Wikileaks, Northern Rock's well-known media lawyers, Schillings, invoke the DMCA & WIPO, claim it'll be 10 years in prison for Wikileaks operators for not following the UK injunction, but then, incredibly, refuse to hand over a copy of the order unless Wikileaks' London lawyers promise not to give it to Wikileaks. Finally they claim copyright and more — on their demands! The letters raise a serious issue about the climate of censorship in the UK, where one can apparently easily obtain a censorship order — a judge made law — that everyone is meant to obey, but no one is meant to know."
Thousand million. The million million meaning is obsolete.
Thousand million. No-one has seriously used billion to mean "million million" in perhaps the last 25 years here in the UK. Usage of billion to mean thousand million was certainly common on TV news by at least the early 90s.
Northern Rock has not collapsed. It's share price has, but the bank itself is still trading normally.
That law has been there for almost 300 years.
What?
Modern banking does rely an some non understanding and/or acceptance of the system to work. This video explains how banks today came to be, and why our governments are so entangled with them. The UK government bailing northern rock doesn't surprise me, nor does their desire to keep some things out of the public eye. Its scary that our press can be silenced so easily.
Indeed, linking to the full Northern Rock vs. Wikileaks page is more useful, because it contains links to the all (hilarious) letters that have been received in that context
At the end of that page, you find links to:
Being able to read the letters in the right context is much more useful. The first censorship demand (a fax in PDF format) is well worth reading.
https://secure.wikileaks.org/leak/Project_Wing_-_Northern_Rock_Executive_Summary.pdf
grab it before it gets taken down.
when i lived in the usa i got quite peeved by the way bills were just put into place by companies who "owned" congressmen and senators (dmca is a prime example). now i'm back in the uk the practice seems to have followed me - it wasn't my fault honest!
#include <sig.h>
While I agree with your sentiments, I have to point out that the quote you ascribe to Mussolini is something of a myth, probably based on a mistranslation. He is not known to have said that and, based on what he wrote, his philiosophy did not include giving power to anything other than the fascist state.
(see http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/corporatism.html)
The text of a legal document sets forth a demand, a contract, etc. The writing is not creative, it is just a listing of facts or positions. I was told this by one of the top partners at WSGW (top legal firm in Silicon Valley) when he advised me to copy another company's contract. The formatting of the contract (e.g. the forms you can buy at a stationer's store or download pdfs online) is creative layout - you can't just photocopy the contract and use it as that is a copyright infringement. But if you want to make your own form with a different layout and using the exact same words, that is perfectly legal.
Of course, lawyers can CLAIM copyright on their legal documents, but that doesn't mean they are correct. Lawyers make false claims all the time, when it suits them or suits their case. Recently the RIAA made a claim that it is illegal to rip music from your own CDs to listen to that music on different devices that you own. In the 1974 Supreme Court ruling in Sony VS Universal Studios, this type of personal use copying was ruled as fair use, but that didn't stop the RIAA from making this new outrageous claim.
"I'd much rather be mistaken as a lesbian by a bigot than be mistaken as a bigot by a lesbian."
Unless you live in most of mainland Europe, where the decimal separator is a comma not a full stop.
Good think you didn't post AC, you have shown your ignorance.
In part, that's because before the US joined the Berne Convention with the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, they couldn't. Documents needed a claim of copyright [the (c) notice] to be considered for copyright, and registration with the copyright office to be able to sue for damages. Now everything, even your post and mine, are automatically considered copyrighted objects.
I don't have any special insight about why it's Northern Rock and not other banks, they are merely the one on everybody's radar since they actually got caught short.
However, your repeated claims they 'have the money' are false. They did not, (+ do not, and never will) 'have the money', and therefore they could not honour their creditors when they got nervey and tried to withdraw their money. Wham! Instacrisis.
Having the deeds on a lot of property on which you have lent Mortgages is not the same as having the actual money itself, since it's 'value' is wildly overinflated in our current economics. Basically they (and indeed most other 'geniuses' of the modern economics) are treating money reserves that have been unrealistically inflated by the housing bubble as if it is real, cash-in-your-pocket money.
This is the same root cause as the sub-prime crisis, the whole pack of cards is built on a fictional basis: 'lending money you don't have to people who cannot afford to repay it'.
It's easier to see in the Sub-Zero examples because the lending was done to obvious bad risks. Whereas with Northern Rock the lending is done to ostensibly affluent people who can easily be painted as 'good risks'. But in fact their debt is also crippling them and if there is any downturn in their income they're screwed, if it's a mass downturn in income the banks are screwed too. (Think: governments urging pay restraint to combat inflation and most people getting meagre pay-rises.)
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Fascism has at its core, the philosophy that the people exist to support the government's needs. The first thing that fascist governments usually do is to remove corporate posession from owners and stockholders (a type of corporati). The merging you describe, refers to the people and how their goals and power become the goals and power of the government. Those people's groups (corporata, iirc) then no longer need to exist and, in a fascist state, will not be allowed outside of the government.
Conversely, a trend towards allowing corporate entities more rights and responsibilities removes everyday power from the government and places it in the control of the officers and owners of the corporations. This is a move towards oligarchical control and is the antithesis of fascism.
While a fascist state could itself be oligarchical in nature, it would still seek direct control of power and not divest it to the political systems that exist in and serve corporate interests.
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