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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."
Northern Rock has not collapsed. It's share price has, but the bank itself is still trading normally.
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.
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."
The problem with that video is it confuses fractional reserve with tort money and as a result its conclusions are nonsense.
If the system were as that video states than banks would never go bust - they could make infinite money just by lending it to each other!
The wikipedia article covers what really happens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
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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