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Bank of America Cuts Off Wikileaks Transactions
Chaonici writes "The first actual bank to do so, Bank of America has decided that it will follow in the footsteps of PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa, and halt all its transactions that it believes are intended for WikiLeaks, including donations in support of the organization. 'This decision,' says the bank, 'is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.' Coincidentally, in a 2009 interview with Forbes magazine, Julian Assange stated that he was in possession of the hard drive of a Bank of America executive, and that he planned to release information about a major bank early next year."
Ok, so it's time for a run on the bank.
Get in before the rush!
the war has begun (?)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
If the government can declare something "illegal" and pressure private companies to not do business with a particular entity... does it really matter if they can "make no law" abridging freedom of speech? Isn't the first amendment completely worthless?
accepted any manner of shady transactions regarding
-Bernie Madoff
-mortgage derivatives
-selling mortgage securities without proper paperwork
The problem, anymore, is that banks and ISPs aren't content to just be carriers. They have to judge the content of your transactions, too.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It is clear then that Bank of America is an instrument of US foreign policy.
expandfairuse.org
I'm assuming that they're trying to keep the rape allegations and wikileaks issues separate.
Expect it if he gets shipped off to America specifically over wikileaks stuff.
Way to spoil the surprise. Thanks alot, BoA.
his arrest was temporary and for show. nothing more.
not worth getting big guns out just for that. that was simply a practice run.
this drama won't end for years, in all probability.
and keeping it all alive is *exactly* what the big liars don't want.
btw, if I was a bofa customer, I'd pull all my funds out of their bank. if my bank pulls this shit, I'll definitely yank my account and transfer it all elsewhere. it will be a hassle but I'm fully willing to do it. (hint, its over 6 figures, too. that HURTS banks, if enough of us do that).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Let's make wagers on how long it takes until Anonymous DDOS's them because at this point it's not a matter if it will happen but when.
Though this isn't the best fit, I came across a quote by Thoreau in a short story called "Repent Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman that seems like a good fit for the whole thing in general so I thought I'd share.
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly,
but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army,
and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc.
In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the
judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves
on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men
can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well.
Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.
They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.
Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers,
and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads;
and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as
likely to serve the devil, without _intending_ it, as God.
A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the
great sense, and _men_--serve the state with their consciences
also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and
they are commonly treated as enemies by it.
Maybe Bank of Ireland would be willing to help out Wikileaks. They are so broke they are not really in a position to care about where the money is going to
I think, technically, he turned himself in to the UK police.
Which I think is a strategic move on his part. Once Sweden extradites him, in all likelihood, he can't be extradited *from* Sweden by another country (say, US). Note that he got bail in the UK despite basically being a nomad, and all he has to do is spend four hours during daylight hours and four hours during night hours at a friend's mansion. I suspect (and it is just a guess) that the reason is that he agreed not to fight extradition to Sweden. Note also that the criminal charges he faces in Sweden do not carry any mandatory jail time.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
You obviously do not have the 1.4GB "wikileaks insurance" file.
Now to get that key.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Assange also claimed he had a "poison pill" file he'd release if he were arrested.
No he didn't. I challenge you to find a single quote from him saying anything even remotely like that.
All the "poison pill" stuff has been speculation by commentators and pundits regarding the insurance.aes256 file - but Assange hasn't said one word about what that file is or what anyone might do with it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Note also that the criminal charges he faces in Sweden do not carry any mandatory jail time.
So Interpol got involved with something that doesn't even carry mandatory jail time?
It looks like they solved all serious crimes, and are now working on the other ones.
If Federal regulators even SUSPECT you have been allowing terrorists to receive payment, you are subject to an audit with a cost of about 50 million dollars to support (you have to pay all of your people to deal with the audit instead of their normal job responsibilities). The fines and reprecussions are on top of that initial cost, and can include being barred from the FDIC, which basically shuts down a bank forever.
My guess is that bank of america merely has the inside scoup and wikileaks is about to be declared official terrorists.
"our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities ... inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments"
Shut up. You're a bank. Just move people's money around for them and don't try to have an opinion.
Having a hard drive of a B of A executive is hardly conclusive as to the banks safety. As far as we know, the contents might have been removed, etc - and it was sent in for repair.
Safety? Wikileaks isn't going to be releasing Bank of America's passwords or security information. If they release anything it's going to be about corruption, insider dealing, complicity in illegal activities etc. The concern isn't the bank's "safety" per se. It's that if shit falls on Bank of America, their share price will get hit, there might be legal investigations into wrong-doing... That sort of thing. And I don't know what sort of shape Bank of America is in - are they part of the general morass that US banking has sunk into over the last couple of years? If so, probably the last thing they need right now is investors getting out. A run on the bank by the public? That's not a first response to this. It's this hit on share price and investors that would be the immediate effect. Expect some emergency buying by non-neutral parties to keep share price up if Wikileaks comes out with anything juicy.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Assange / Wikileaks doesn't do business with Bank of America, and likely never has.
Bank of America did not close a bank account (like the swiss postbank) or terminated a payment processing contract (like Paypal, Visa and Mastercard), it stops transferring money to other banks. So anybody with a Bank of America account is no longer allowed to transfer his money to another bank account without "moral approval" of the BoA.
I am surprised that this hasn't led to more media coverage jet.
They deal with scum like Bernie maddoff and involved with some of the shadiest operations imaginable and they turn off the hose to THIS? banksters are the cancers of our society. When the revolution comes, there won't be enough brick layers to keep up with the wall building demand.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
http://www.businessinsider.com/julian-assange-is-going-to-drop-a-poison-wiki-bomb-if-hes-killed-or-arrested-2010-12
I wouldn't worry too much however if Assange does have a B of A harddrive means he is in position of stolen goods which is a crime.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
When you close your account, be sure to note that it is because you have reasonable belief that Bank of America may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with your internal policies for a bank-customer relationship.
It does need to be a lesson to every organization though. Wikileaks / Assange will turn on you any second that they think they have something that they can use to feed their ego. You're not safe doing business with this guy
In order: 1. It's not a lesson to every organization. It's only a warning to ones that have been engaged in wrong-doing. 2. "Wikileaks / Assange" is not good terminology: Wikileaks is not synonymous with Julian Assange and the constant identification of the two with each other is a symptom of our media which simplifies everything to Hollywood plot-lines. We shouldn't perpetuate this. 3. Wikileaks has not "turned on" anyone because this has strong connotations of betrayal. When were Wikileaks and Bank of America ever partners in anything? 4. Why this business of "feeding the ego"? It seems a cheap way to try and invalidate an action by alleging a base motive to the person doing the action. If someone wants to "feed their ego", they're better off trolling innocents on Slashdot or getting a job in Airport security where they can boss people around, than taking on the US government. As a member of the public, I have an interest in knowing about wrong-doings committed by world governments or large corporations.
On a side note, I'm going to go hide that childhood picture of me dressed as a girl for halloween... I'd hate to see it end up on Wikileaks after the cleaning lady steals it.
Wikileaks isn't for people's personal foibles - it's about malfeasance by those in power.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
In Arizona, BoA is being charged with fraud.
http://foreclosureblues.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/arizona-attorney-general-charges-bank-of-america-with-mortgage-and-foreclosure-fraud-complaint-here/
So yes... my hope is that Wikileaks does right by the people and exposes this corrupt bank and its practices.
Banks are the number one enemy these days, and rightfully so. They could have actually helped stop the recession by helping homeowners with the mortgages.
Yeah, one man and his loose knit band of info leakers are REALLY bullying a multi-billion dollar international corporation...
Nice try.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Or perhaps it was imaged and sent back to it's owners.
Or perhaps someone working for B of A sent a drive to wikileaks to leak information.
I see no reason to hang on to the drive either way.
The word is "Losing".
And yes, they are.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Bully? That's a laugh. No wikileaks is more like the snitch who blurts it out to everyone what the bullies are doing.
There. Fixed that for ya.
Those mean old activists bulling the multi billion international corporation.
And having the GALL to suggest other people not do business with a company which is blocking their donations.
when will these peasants learn!
The actions of Americans to hide what they have truthfully and secretly said to their kin disgusts me.
The whole insular and antagonistic country needs to go and d.i.a.f. and leave the rest of the world to live their lives in peace.
Americans espouse freedom of speech... until it gives them a red face, then they show their true colours. A country of warmongers.
Have you ever been to America? They're some of the politest and most welcoming people you'll ever meet. The dichotomy between the decency of the people there, and the corruption of the government is inexplicable. Until you turn on a TV in the USA and see what passes for news in that country. You want someone to blame? Blame the oligarchy that owns America's media.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Yes take great care, large amounts of cash flowing out under one name can trigger a report of a suspicious money transfer.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is crap, the banking world should have precisely 2 options:
1. they receive some kind of common carrier status, which means they will have to accept everyone as a customer and have to process everyone's transactions.
2. they can have the freedom to do business with whomever they like and maintain blacklists of payments they will not process, but that means they will become accomplishes if the transfer is part of some crime.
The only possible exception would be specific government regulation.
(assuming an uncorrupted government off course, in that case all bets are of)
Sorry, this ain't News. Whoever thinks this is news should have probably read the news a few weeks/months/years back. The reaction of the bank is completely expected. Yawn!
to code or not to code, that is the question.
They are known as MBNA in Europe (Bank of America took over MBNA, but kept the MBNA name in Europe because it is much better known than BoA), and they are in trouble with the Office of Fair Trading for their debt collection practices http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/dec/14/mbna-credit-card-debt-procedures
I smell duplicity.
I have been loving these articles, as it routes out the companies that obviously aren't aligned with supporting liberty, and I hate to use companies which don't espouse, or support in some way, the values I believe in. So all of these articles, and businesses, have saved me a lot of time. More so, I love the ones where some companies steps up to fill the void. Those are the companies I'll migrate my business, and my businesses business to.
Nothing like a little private and public sector cleansing!
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
But it's really not funny that there doesn't seem to be an inch of daylight between government and big business.
And, no, it hasn't always been that way. There have been times historically the situation was similar, but it hasn't always been that way.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Hah... anyone who was waiting for THIS news to leave BoA has had their head in the sand...
Wikileaks didn't leak any info they just published what was already leaked which is what the New York Times and others have done so how come B of A isn't doing the same thing to all the other media outlets that publish this stuff?
This decision,' says the bank, 'is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.'
Too bad Wikileaks is not an international drug running or firearms smuggling organization, they appear to be more befitting "internal policies".
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Or more directly here in case anyone was wondering if the dailyheil had twisted it.
Thanks though, I hadn't kept up with the recent statements.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
every country has this shit, if anything it's that americans talk about it
1: because they're unlikely to be dragged from their beds and killed for speaking out.
2: sometimes things actually change.
A great deal of wikileaks supporters are americans who want to root out the corruption in their own government.
if Assange does have a B of A harddrive means he is in position of stolen goods which is a crime.
Damn. If only he'd asked you for legal advice he could have avoided this situation.
Apparently, it's stuff that makes the current revelations look like weak beer.
My guess? The story behind the Kennedy assassinations.
Why? Because it has to be something that's been around for a while, not recent; it has to be something that people want to know about; it has to be something controversial; and it has to have connections with a lot of the "dirty tricks" that have been going on for decades.
Bernie Madoff and his scheme had nothing to do with Bank of America.
Also Bank of America had very little to do with MBS, and only got bigger because by buying up those collapsed companies.
Bank of America purchased Countrywide Mortgages, which were right in the thick of the whole mortgage-backed security mess and practically started the system in the first place. When they purchased that company, they took on all of the liabilities including the responsibility to clean up the mess that the company made in the first place. In this sense, Bank of America is Countrywide Mortgages, one of the most notorious lenders of underwater property in America. Their hands are certainly not clean with this mess.
As for Bernie Madoff, I don't think Bank of America was necessarily active in terms of any of its officers directly involved with setting up the ponzi scheme, but to say that Bank of America was completely uninvolved is sort of a lie as well. I don't know the full extent of how they were involved, if any, but I'm sure at least some money that Madoff used went through one or more Bank of America accounts. They are too big of a bank not to be completely uninvolved with the kind of money and the number of clients involved. It was a bit unfair, however, to even invoke Madoff as the MBS mess and loans to illegal immigrants (at the insistence of many within the Democratic Party leadership in Congresss) and other "disadvantaged minorities" with little by way of credit worthiness or ability to pay off the loans routinely did happen with this bank, and that is sufficient to show how corrupt the system got. Madoff is a side show, not the main event, and may even be shown in the long run as a hero as he was at least up front in the end that he was running a ponzi scheme. These banks are doing much worse and getting away with it too.
I'm assuming that they're trying to keep the rape allegations and wikileaks issues separate.
Expect it if he gets shipped off to America specifically over wikileaks stuff.
Apparently this is not likely to happen since most countries will treat breaking your espionage act as a political crime and the US - UK and US - Sweden extradition treaties do not cover political crimes.
Also, since some of your politicians have suggested killing Assange we could not extradite him if there was any danger of this happening. Almost all countries in Europe (UK and Sweden definitely anyway) consider the death penalty to be so barbaric that we refuse to extradite people to face it regardless of the crime they are accused of. The espionage act does have some parts which are punishable by the death penalty.
I dont read
Or perhaps he (or someone) bought a used computer that still had data on it. Much more likely, and legal too...
Good for you. As a Bank of America customer, I'm transferring more money over to them because they are willing to stand up to a bully who is in receipt of a stolen hard drive and trying to damage the organization.
Do you have any proof the hard drive in question was stolen?
It may be an exec's personal laptop hard drive, and when he got fired, he sent it in.
As for "trying to damage the organization, BofA doesn't need any help with that. They have that one covered all by themselves.
If you believe that helping the homeowners with mortgages would have magically helped stop the recession then you are woefully ignorance of economics.
The head is not in the sand....aim higher up.
you folks had it good for a long time.
btw, you're generally a religious group, right? (conservatives generally are.)
go back to your bible and re-read the david and goliath story.
sweet dreams banksters....
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Once Sweden extradites him, in all likelihood, he can't be extradited *from* Sweden by another country (say, US)
He can, but only with the approval of the UK authorities. If he's extradited to Sweden under the European Arrest Warrant legislation then he's essentially "on loan" from the UK, so while Sweden can charge and imprison him, they can't move him to another jurisdiction unless the UK says it's OK (not that that's a great deal of comfort considering how readily we allow the extradition of our citizens to the US on the flimsiest of evidence).
Lots of people are still sharing it, even though it was uploaded in August.
Don't worry about download speed - you'll max out your connection.
If you believe that helping the homeowners with mortgages would have magically helped stop the recession then you are woefully ignorance of economics.
Why? Because you say so? Oh, and how about all that TARP money? Yeah, that totally saved the economy!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"We will no longer process payments to them because they are not consistent with our policy for who we process payments to."
This tautology neatly covers the fact that Wikileaks has been charged with precisely zero crimes over Cablegate. These upstanding organizations all like to pretend that they are following the law, but they are actually taking the law into their own hands. I hope they get the shit sued out of them.
Wikileaks' official position seems to be that the file is not blackmail material, but a failsafe measure to get the data public if their operations are disrupted too much to continue their gradual, controlled release. Also that the file simply contains all the material they are going to release anyway, eventually.
I hope Larry Flint and Hustler have bank accounts with BoA :)
Assange also claimed he had a "poison pill" file he'd release if he were arrested.
No he didn't. I challenge you to find a single quote from him saying anything even remotely like that. All the "poison pill" stuff has been speculation by commentators and pundits regarding the insurance.aes256 file - but Assange hasn't said one word about what that file is or what anyone might do with it.
Direct quote from Assange himself:
The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000 people in encrypted form. If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/dec/03/julian-assange-wikileaks (last answer)
Granted, he didn't mention insurance.aes256 directly, but I'm not aware of any other encrypted archives being distributed on such a large scale, so I can't imagine what else he could be referring to. Also note that he said "if something happens to us," not "if something happens to me."
Wikileaks in possession of stolen hard drives from senior executives at BofA and BofA doesn't like Wikileaks?
[citation needed]
Best refugee ever, why do we let so many others in but scare Assange away?
/ Swedish citizen
https://www1.bankofamerica.com/foundation/index.cfm?template=contact_us_here
Let them know what you think of their decision and that you'll be closing all your accounts with them.
Well unless that person from Bank of America had permission to give away the drive then they stole it and Assange revived stolen property. When you knowingly or in many places negligently (ie you should have suspected enough to check things out) receive stolen property its a crime.
Assange has effectively confessed to a crime here if Bank of America can show a drive missing from the inventory or some IT guy improperly disposing of one.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
To expand a little : extraditions can still happen even for crimes for which death penalty could be pronounced, they just involve a special agreement that it will not be. At least, that's how it works between France and the USA.
There's nothing like $HOME
Anecdote time! When I first opened a bank account, it was with a bank that BOA bought out within a few months. In the following months until I closed my account, I lost over $600 in my account from bullshit charges, even though only two transactions were ever placed on that account. Their explanation? They showed me my bank statement, which had NONE of the charges they just claimed against me on it, and claimed I had overdrafted from my account numerous times even though THEIR OWN RECORDS stated otherwise. They couldn't explain why they couldn't even agree with their own records, so I closed my account. BOA is a terrible, terrible bank that will shaft anyone they feel they can get away with.
EVERY tourist area has a "OMFG these idiots again" vibe among the locals. I live on an island that has tourism. It is good for our economy, but I curse them like everyone else when stuck in a traffic jam caused by them using my neighborhood as a shortcut.
Usually what happens is that the death penalty is removed formally as a possible punishment, something that has been enforced by U.S. Courts in recognition of such extradition agreements. That doesn't stop something stupid like how Jack Ruby ended up killing Lee Harvey Oswald, and it would certainly bring up a whole host of long-term conspiracy theories about how evil and corrupt the U.S. government is if something like that happened, but it wouldn't be an "official act" in terms of an execution.
I, personally, don't see the problem of the death penalty for certain crimes, if there is a higher bar in terms of criminal conviction over and above what is expected for legal "proof of guilt". In other words, I'd need to know for certain that the person really did do the crime and circumstantial evidence would not be sufficient for me. I also reserve the "right" to jury nullification if I was ever asked the question as a juror in terms of imposing such a verdict.
I understand the political opinion of those who feel otherwise and think such acts are a thing of the past. On the other hand, I think that is just a facade for public consumption as I'm sure both the governments of Sweden and the UK would both kill people as an official act by officers of their respective governments if the need ever arose, including assassinations where the "target" isn't an immediate threat to the government. It just doesn't happen through the judiciary. I
We already have every major news outlet to filter the news and predetermine what's important. No need for wikileaks to reinvent the wheel.
If Assange's credit card numbers have been leaked, then they are effectively already public knowledge. He would probably welcome the notice to cancel his card.
Yes,and I totally balanced my check book by moving all my debt from one credit card to another.
Whether it "saved" the economy is something we will not be able to determine until we've paid for it.
I doubt the charges would stick anyway.
The problem is just whatever our government is stupid enough to let US decide what will happen.
Earlier I would had supposed no, but considering all their misstakes in recent times I don't know what to believe:
* TPB raid
* FRA law
* IPRED
* Since the terrorist attack in Stockholm less than a week ago they are considering letting the police use FRA for intelligence and "looking for terrorists."
* 200 terrorists within the country, who's labeled them? US?
* US allied even beneath parliament level so neither the parliament or people would complain.
* Assange mess
* Asked the US to send people from the Afghanistan government to speak for Swedes about all the amazing stuff we do for their citizens.
* Asked by the US to but preassure on Iran (or something such.)
* WTF are we doing in Afghanistan in the first place?
Not weird they called Carl Bildt a medium sized dog, whatever that's supposed to mean. Clearly there's a lot of ass licking going on on Swedens part.
Why put us to shame with all this filth?
And don't forget the damning one about Medvedev being Robin to Putin's Batman. That one really exposed the corruption in our government.
Yes, this is total crap. Just more evidence that the banking system is more corrupt than anyone ever imagined. I mean Visa and MasterCard were content to deal with the Canadian Pharmacy operation for a DECADE and now suddenly the financial institutions are ganging up on WikiLeaks of all things?
Remember guys. If you want to do something about this, your best bet is to support BitCoin, a peer to peer currency with a small but rapidly growing economy. A BitCoin is worth roughly 25 cents on the exchanges. The production BitCoin network needs your CPU or GPU time to grow stronger, so mosey on over and grab the distribution. It's MIT/X11 licensed.
"If you guys do anything to harm me, I'll release this file full of information which I'll slowly release anyway".
I don't think the word "security" means what he thinks it means.
I have been enough to America, to know that msot of the folk is highly prejudicied for a reason or another. I am always polite, and try to speak the local language as good as possible. But once people remark my french accent, it is game over. I get cold shoulder and so on. And pelase don't tell me that's because I am french : 1) I have colleague from other nationality which also got cold shoulder (Iran, Indian, Swiss, german, Spanish nationalities) 2) For TRULY polite people it would not matter which color or nationaly one is, by default people should be polite with people they don't know anything beyond the nationality.
Sure it is only a bunch of anecdotial story, and so no real evidence, but really I call bullshit on what you said. The US is not a country of polite people. Provide us evidence of it and maybe we'll all think our anecdotial evidence is only a sign we got bad luck. until then, all i have to answer you is : get real.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
But it is by far and away better to fight extradition in the judiciary rather than having to fight off potentially the combined strength of the British Army, in the UK. By turning himself in, it becomes strictly a judiciary fight that at least he has the potential of winning, and likely the ability to return home if necessary if he does. If he has to spend the rest of his life traveling only to Commonwealth countries, it wouldn't be the end of the world.
The charges are pretty wimpy as well, and I can't see a judge sentencing him for more than a year or two... during which time he could certainly do quite a bit simply by being there. Going to prison isn't going to be damaging his reputation any more than already has happened, and being incarcerated might even be a resume enhancement considering the line of work that he is involved with. Depending on the prison arrangements, it might even be nice as a coder to spend a few months locked up with a pad of paper and a pencil. Other software developers have produced some amazing software doing just that, not to mention some amazing books that have been written in prison. Besides, Wikileaks will do just fine without Assange and might even improve.
You want someone to blame? Blame the oligarchy that owns America's media.
As an American, sorry - no - I'll blame the people.
Despite the childish fantasies of moronic conspiracy lovers, we the people are still in full control of the country. That we keep voting the same corruption back into Washington speaks volumes on the topic of our morality and intelligence.
If it's not bullying then why all the hype about upcoming releases and the insurance file? Why not just do what they are theoretically supposed to be doing an release them without all the grandstanding and saber rattling?
Julian Assange might disagree with you here:
"In an online exchange with one volunteer, a transcript of which was obtained by The Times, he warned that WikiLeaks would disintegrate without him. 'We’ve been in a Unity or Death situation for a few months now,' he said. When Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year-old political activist in Iceland, questioned Mr. Assange’s judgment over a number of issues in an online exchange last month, Mr. Assange was uncompromising. 'I don’t like your tone,' he said, according to a transcript. 'If it continues, you’re out.'
Mr. Assange cast himself as indispensable. 'I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier, and all the rest,' he said. “If you have a problem with me,' he told Mr. Snorrason, using an expletive, he should quit."
---from the New York Times
The Kennedy assassinations (both JFK and RFK) are hardly fertile ground anymore and have been beaten to death in so many ways that I find it hard to believe anything more can be said on the topic. Everything from JFK being an alien to a Soviet conspiracy and even involving the New York City mafia groups has been brought up in a rather convincing manner. J. Edgar Hoover and Elvis Presley have even been mentioned in connection with those assassinations. The only person that would be new to introduce would be Barack Obama, and he was just a toddler when JFK died. Perhaps Obama Sr. was the "second gunman" or something stupid like that, and "junior" pulled the trigger, if it was even a remote possibility. I really don't see how anything new could even be brought up that hasn't been hashed and rehashed over and over again.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner.
That has got to be one of the most pointless posts ever in the history of the internet. Fact.
In space no-one can hear your vuvuzela.
Have you ever been to America? They're some of the politest and most welcoming people you'll ever meet. The dichotomy between the decency of the people there, and the corruption of the government is inexplicable.
It's not just us. Visit Italy or Kampuchea or Nigeria, among others. The average guy practically anywhere is usually pretty decent, even if his government is unbelievably corrupt. Democracy can reduce the level of official corruption, but it's not a silver bullet, e.g., Italy or Louisiana.
FWIW, America's problem is its hypertrophied nationalism. People here identify so strongly with their idealized image of their country that when someone points out flaws or misdeeds by the government, they interpret it as a personal attack.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
You are right, but that 1% of solid gold is what its all about isn't it...
In space no-one can hear your vuvuzela.
We assume that banks transact their client's funds with an implicit neutrality, or else anyone in possession of a check couldn't trust that it was a valid monetary substitute. BoA isn't indicating "illegal" behavior, only that the recipient is acting in a manner inconsistent with BoA policies.
Between the Government stampede to eliminate the 1st amendment, and the use of corporations to act where the rule-of-law isn't convenient, the US Government and Corporate overlords are playing with fire.
All democracy-loving non-US entities should be watching carefully as this plays out.
Well said
In space no-one can hear your vuvuzela.
Those are solid ideas. We can only hope that things do change before that first point goes away.
Let's set some things straight:
- Wikileaks leaks PUBLIC information (not PRIVATE). Credit card numbers are not public info, voters don't need this info to decide how to vote. What the government does, on the other hand, is something we need to know. Remember Wikileaks censored the names of US informants in the war diaries.
- About the cables - Wikileaks actually did not leak them to the public. They gave them to 5 major newspapers around the world who discussed them together and decided what to leak and what not to leak.
- It's not up to Wikileaks to decide what public info is important and what public info is not. This is up to us, the public. We already trust our governments to tell us info that is important, and they don't tell us (as evidenced by the Iraq Diaries leak). What good does it do if Wikileaks does the same thing as the government and also decides what we should know? Wikileaks is not an activist group, it only gives the public access to the info it can get us. Whether that information is important or not is up to members of the public to decide. And frankly, in a country where people elect their president based on his skin color, religion or how good looking he is in a suit then I think even whether Hilary Clinton wears red or white underwear is probably important public information too (at least to some people).
- Consider also that people who leak documents take risks. They want to be sure that the information they give Wikileaks WILL be published otherwise they could be taking risks for nothing. This is another reason why Wikileaks should not decide what is important and what is not. The only thing Wikileaks should sort out is what is public and what is private info.
- I'm not even sure what you guys are getting at. Are you suggesting Wikileaks sometimes leaks irrelevant information? Or that it should be shut down because it does not always leak important information? Or are you just bashing it for no reason other than you find it fun. Whatever your reasons I respect them, but I just don't understand what is the point you are trying to make.
Fortunately the US law doesn't apply where Mr. Assange has his mailbox.
The security files have all the names of operatives in clear.
I imagine because they have lots of lawyers and money and he does not.
Wow, I that's one of the most efficient summaries of American society I've seen.
Move to a local Credit Union. Cheaper fees and much better service along with responsiveness. I did and Yes I have Direct Deposit, Online Banking with Bill Pay, far better interest on my savings and checking plus a much better rate on my credit card. Another advantage is that a credit union can not pull this kind of shit as the members cand and should review the leadership on a regular basis, then decide if they need replacement.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
And would that be because of BoA's recent behaviour with Wikileaks, or the fraud and corruption of which Wikileaks claims to have evidence?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
The first step if one wishes to act 'holyier than thou' is to rid yourself of all the skeletons in your closet & then lead a life beyond reproach. Jillian Assenge is, sadly, more like the rest of us with issues in our past, leaving him vulnerable to not only undermining his message, but also distracting from what Wikileaks is trying to accomplish...
Ken
That will just make it illegal to send money to Bitcoin.
While I've taken a personal stance that sending money to Wikileaks via Bitcoin is a good thing, most of the people on the Bitcoin forums are against the idea and the lead developer wants to stay away from Wikileaks as long as he can. It is already causing grief for the Wikimedia Foundation, especially as Jimmy Wales ended up buying the domains for Wikileaks through a comedy of errors (via Wikia).
The nail in the coffin on the idea of using Bitcoin to send money to Wikileaks is that the Wikileaks guys don't want it either. If you set up an address for Wikileaks, they won't even take the bitcoins. I think they are foolish to do that, but that is their prerogative and not something you can force upon a group like this. Their main complaint is that they can't get the money out to pay their bills... something that is of a concern. You can easily exchange Bitcoins for Liberty Reserve Dollars, but getting your money out from LR Dollars isn't easy either and that seems to be the main sticking point.
Bitcoins certainly isn't ready to process tens of thousands of dollars in daily throughput to and from federal reserve notes... at least yet. There are some volunteers and interested parties trying to get that going, but it isn't there yet, and you certainly can't buy bitcoins with PayPal or a credit card at the moment unless you personally know somebody with a stack of bitcoins willing to sell them in a direct exchange.
About the only thing bitcoins are good for at the moment is to trade Dollars for Russian Rubles and the other way around. It works pretty good that way and I got at least a couple of Rubles via Bitcoin. You can also indirectly trade both currencies for Japanese Yen, although that market is still quite slow as there aren't many in Japan trading bitcoins at the moment. Somebody selling pounds might be a potential market that currently isn't being met either.
On a side note, I came to realize that there's no true alternative to US based credit card companies.
I'll be ditching my Mastercard soon. However, there are no real alternatives. Here in Europe there's the German EC debit card but it is only accepted in Germany, Switzerland and neighbouring regions.
This situation is actually more concerning than Oracle becoming arseholes over Java. Most likely, the US government can influence payments globally.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Ah right, sorry, I didn't mean "use BitCoin to send Wikileaks money". I meant to support it as a general statement against the existing banking system, the problems of which the Wikileaks fiasco happens to have clearly exposed but would have been problematic anyway.
I am of the opinion that all organization of sufficient size would have skeletons in its closet; that organization can't get as large (or prosperous) as it has without having done one or more things at some point that is either illegal, or immoral, or both.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
selling you the rope to hang them with. I guess they got wise.
I don't think the word openness means what he thinks it means. He publishes some files and withholds others according to unknown criteria, he redacts some of them and not the others, apparently he withholds some for purposes of blackmail.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
No point in responding to your parent, since he was anonymous.
Basically all the big banks were selling off mortgages without proper paperwork (hence the "Where's the note?" stuff).
Re: Bernie Madoff: This is a separate class of accusation than the others. It's not that BoA did the shady stuff there, just that money went from BoA to Madoff.
BoA is the largest bank in the US. It's quite hard to believe none of BoA depositors ever sent money to Madoff via BoA.
The fact is money was transferred from BoA to be used in illegal activities.
But I don't think anybody was ever gunning for BoA on that account, since BoA was just a conduit, and not an actor re: Madoff. Similarly, there's no reason for them to attempt to "moral police" their depositors when they want to send money to WikiLeaks or anything that BoA thinks might be related to WikiLeaks, because BoA would just be a conduit ("a carrier").
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
A bank declining to pay a check written to wikileaks will make its customer liable under "hot check" laws, right?
As a Bank of America customer I'm looking forward to the giant class action lawsuits that will result from this.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
This could also be the issue...
How about 9/11?
Also, since some of your politicians have suggested killing Assange we could not extradite him if there was any danger of this happening. Almost all countries in Europe (UK and Sweden definitely anyway) consider the death penalty to be so barbaric that we refuse to extradite people to face it regardless of the crime they are accused of.
Oh yeah, cause we Swedes care so much about not turning over people to countries where they might be killed or tortured (1). And Sweden will surely stand up to the US when informal requests are made to handle the issue (2).
Can't seem to paste in the links for some reason, but for (1) Google for "extradition egypt torture sweden". As for (2), remember what happened to the Pirate Bay servers here in Sweden?
Wikileaks isn't for people's personal foibles - it's about malfeasance by those in power.
... it's about enjoying the power and media attention so much that you don't care if a decent person risking the wrath of the Mullahs gets hammered as a byproduct of your ego-stroking publicity stunts.
And only Wikileaks gets to define those things, right? And change those definitions whenever it suits them? How is identifying (in the publishing of stolen State Dept cables) an important figure in the opposition to Iran's current thugocracy of a government about malfeasance by those in power? It's exactly the opposite
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It sure doesn't help. Neither does the overall level of apathy and lack of awareness of current events beyond the heavily filtered TV news sources.
The real killer, IMHO, is that we're so physically isolated by the oceans that relatively few Americans visit other developed countries to see how other people live. When I first spent a few months in western Europe, I felt like those Soviet soldiers in WW2 that Stalin subsequently purged because they had seen how well people lived in the West, contrary to Soviet propaganda.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
"Once Sweden extradites him, in all likelihood, he can't be extradited *from* Sweden by another country (say, US)."
Why all the worry about the US extraditing Assange from Sweden? He was after all in the UK, an ally of the US. If the US wanted him, the UK would have provided him wrapped up with a fucking bow (with the appropriate regrets in public). And considering our policy of rendition, detention and torture, legal niceties don't really matter anyway.
Streisand is in effect and we will be seeing some JOUUUUICYYYY info on BOA in the next leak?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Yes.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
Lots of luck with that.
Conservative, mod down for violating
Of course not! They pump it into their executives and their board of directors!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When I bought a house, with an FHA loan, I was informed that the loans are only "temporarily" run through FHA and that it'd be sold to a bank within 3 months.
When I found out BofA bought my home loan, I cringed. They're nothing but assholes, the crap I went through when they bought out MBNA and acquired my main credit card was unbelievable.
They recently started fucking around with the interest rates (fortunately the one on the house payment is fixed!) on cards, and they tried to stick an $80 "security" monthly payment to my escrow when, the month after paying yearly property tax, the escrow went a few cents under $50.
Yeah. "Bank of America" needs to get their asses kicked.
Here's a legitimate question though: how many disciplinary measures have actually been taken based on documents posted to wikileaks? Even if they disclose some great fraud or corrupt bargaining, what chance is there that anyone will act on it? Has anyone been taking action based on these documents to root out whatever corruption and fraud they've been posting evidence of?
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
"Something" is not the same as "imprisoned". The something in question probably means much more shady things.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Suing a bank over something only they have records for? Good luck! Especially in the US where your chance to get your right mostly depends on how deep your pockets are. And you're standing against someone whose pockets are residing in the Grand Canyon.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They're banks, not charities.
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
Good point, but my thinking - and again it's just mine - he didn't go to the UK until the Swedish arrest warrant was issued. At that point, the UK was beholden to Sweden for him, even if the US stepped up with a warrant.
And why didn't they (US) issue a warrant earlier? {shrug}. Strange as it sounds, it does take a while for US authorities to figure out a way to circumvent the existing laws to get their way.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Well, on the average computer of a kiddy porn enthusiast, you find a LOT of rather boring files, operating system, drivers, a few documents, a couple games, an office system... and maybe a picture or two they forgot to erase and that makes your stomach cramp.
But that's enough.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, even a Swedish feminist apparently stated that this was the first time she had heard about Sweden issuing an international arrest warrant for this kind of sex crimes.
You don't need Wikileaks or /. comments to see obvious evidence of fraud, corruption and criminal activity by BofA and all of the other big banks.
Municipal bond bid-rigging
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-24/bankers-rigging-municipal-contract-bids-admit-to-lying-to-cover-up-tracks.html
Failing to transfer mortgage notes into MBS trusts . . . but not keeping them on the balance sheets either? Hmmmmm.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/11/countrywide-routinely-failed-to-send-key-docs-to-mbs-trustees.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EconomistsView+(Economist's+View+(EconomistsView))
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-02/bofa-drags-balance-sheet-confidence-backward-commentary-by-jonathan-weil.html
These are great because a senior BofA executive testified under oath that BofA routinely never trasnferred mortgage notes to the mortgage trusts when they were sold as "Mortgage Backed Securities" i.e. they were really "Nothing Backed Securities"
Now, the funny part is that BofA is Disavowing the testimony of its own executive.
http://www.bankinvestmentconsultant.com/news/bofa-mortgage-2670073-1.html?zkPrintable=1&nopagination=1
If you need any further evidence of fradu and corruption, "4closurefraud.com" also has a mountain of dirt and evidence of fraud, forgery and corruption bu BofA and the other the big banks.
Anyone still doing business with these scumbags is either completely apathetic to the idea of "voting with your dollars" as a form of social activism, or just a fool.
Well I'd be pulling out 20 figures! But it'd be in Zimbabwean dollars, so I don't think it'd help.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Proposed Amendment: Money and services provided by the federal government to the states or the citizens there of shall not be determined in whole or in part based on the policies or laws of said state.
In one fell swoop, this fixes RealID, drinking age, etc. I've thought about this idea for a while, but I have no idea how to get this amendment off the ground. It also probably needs some word-smithing to close loopholes and prevent unintended consequences.
Banks do not keep money. That's probably what you're missing. Banks make money by loaning out cash to companies (this is where the lion's share goes) and to people who need it. They charge them an interest rate that is higher than the interest rate that they pay out on deposits. This difference in interest rates is what contributes to banks earnings. Banks do have to store a percentage of depositors' money with the Central bank (the percentage varies from country to country and is called Cash Reserve Ratio), but the percentage is usually only around 20% or less. In a nutshell, banks don't keep money. That's a wrong notion.
They've been my bank for most of the past decade and have been great to me, but this (on top of other things not related to customer service in the past few years) makes me want to shift to another bank. The problem is, I know that every other bank is the same. It's not like there's just one evil bank and the others have halos over their heads.
Having a hard drive of a B of A executive is hardly conclusive as to the banks safety
Actually it is. How come an executive's data is not encrypted, in the case of the drive falling into the wrong hands? That is a huge point of failure right there. You wonder what other POF's the bank has overlooked (and even aware of) while they handle _your_ cash.
You'll notice that the US Government didn't really do *too* much to Assange after his prior leaks. Hell, he already leaked before and they didn't "shut 'em down". On the other hand, they shut the hell out of dozens of domains that pirates trademarked purses and stuff last month. If they can do that, why can't they do the same for something that supposedly "puts national security and lives at risk"? Right, because it doesn't and it didn't.
However, THIS time, he warns that he has pretty dire information about financial institutions and THEN shit suddenly hits the fan. The clear point here being that it's the FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS that are putting the screws to him.
Surely you mean: "we already have every major news outlet to filter the news and predetermine what advances their political agenda"?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
keep your withdrawals and deposits under $10k, of course. that's a magic 'terrorist examination flag' for banks. they think that $10k 'means something' and you are now on a list of those who 'move money'. moving money, if you are not rich already, is almost a crime these days, it seems.
so if you need to move cash, keep each trans under $10k.
(sigh)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
That's my point. If BoA has been engaged in these shenanigans so long and their customers didn't leave them, what is so different about this Wikileaks thing that should worry BoA that anybody would actually go to the effort of closing their account? People are lazy.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
In most places, if you buy a contianer, and inside the container discover something of value that a reasonable person would expect was lost or stolen, you have a duty to return that item. Very few places have "finders keepers" laws.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Wikileaks doesn't refresh liberty, stop talking rubbish. kthnxbye
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You can't blame the banks for any of that, though. Banks have to comply with a stack of regulations taller than you in this area, actively seeking and reporting evidence of a list of crimes starting with money laundering. But still, every time I suggest we might want a government that's a bit less intrusive, someone always replies "so you don't want roads?", so I guess we as a people are content with this sort of thing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
hell, go one better than that.
send a letter to the president of the bank AND also the 3 letter orgs (no, I don't mean TLD's either) telling them you suspect BofA of dealing with terrorist organizations and you would rather not have your money mingle with folks who engage in rather questionable ethics.
use fire to fight fire. call TERRORISM on them and tell any 3 letter org you want that you want BofA investigated.
a shitstorm of letters would be just desert. spread the word that BofA is a terrorist org and also that the exec staff has been thought to also be invovled in rape.
yes, they are THOUGHT to be. some people think so and that is enough to raise the doubt.
so, raise it. raise it loud and clear and make it google-able, too.
enjoy.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Please turn in your geek card. It didn't even take me a minute.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
it does not matter that moving your money is a net change of zero. to THEM its not!
I'd love to see a mass exodus from bofa. even if its from evil1 to evil2, the fact that they lose your business is MEASURABLE to them.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Cultural politeness on a 1-on-1 basis is distinct from the kind of foreign policy that a country sets up. In fact the very idea that "They're some of the politest and most welcoming people you'll ever meet" can be used in an argument for cultural superiority that justifies interfering in the rest of the world. That can sometimes even be a good thing. What I'm saying is that it is possible for a country to simultaneously be a country of individually polite people and a country of warmongers.
BTW, I happen to agree and think that supporting Bitcoin is going to be one way to end the cartel control over the world's banking system. Bitcoins are certainly going to be something significant to start using if Dollars and Euros start to go hyperinflationary on us.
I happen to think that is a very real possibility, and there is a whole bunch of reasons to start to worry about the next major crash that is going to slam world curencies: naked shorting on precious metal contracts. I've read stories about how there is now about 100x more metal being sold as contracts than physically exists on the Earth in the form of tangible metal you can hold and use. This is way above and beyond any metal backed currencies which also have this problem.
Bank of America is right in the middle of this fiasco, and it may be one of several things to be revealed in the upcoming document dump. It is something that could potentially shut down the U.S. economy as a whole because it is so bad... worse in some ways than the derivative market fiasco and this time American taxpayers are not going to bail these banks out. That card has been played already with those who voted for that package no longer in political power.
When all hell breaks loose, Bitcoin is going to be looking mighty fine.
The first step if one wishes to act 'holyier than thou' is to rid yourself of all the skeletons in your closet & then lead a life beyond reproach.
...and the first step to leading a life beyond reproach is to spell "holier" correctly. To do otherwise leaves you vulnerable not only to undermining your message, but also distracting from what your Slashdot post is trying to accomplish...
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
OK, well I have seen stories recently on how the amount of money banks are lending is well below average, I dont feel like looking it up though.
Either way.. you could change the last part of either option to saying that the banks burn the money in a pit to heat their hottubs. Option 2, prevents some of the whole living on the streets thing.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Can anyone recommend a major bank that is not likely to do something similar over the next few months?
"Once Sweden extradites him, in all likelihood, he can't be extradited *from* Sweden by another country (say, US)."
Why all the worry about the US extraditing Assange from Sweden?
More importantly, why all this incoherent use of the word extradite? You don't extradite persons on foreign soil to your country, you extradite persons in your country to another country. You request extradition of persons in another country. By definition, he can't be extradited from Sweden by another country, but he could be extradited from Sweden by Sweden, to another country, which had previously requested extradition. And that would occur "once the UK extradites him to Sweden", not "[o]nce Sweden extradites him."
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
If it's not bullying then why all the hype about upcoming releases and the insurance file? Why not just do what they are theoretically supposed to be doing an release them without all the grandstanding and saber rattling?
I call it self preservation.
He let it be known that he was going to release some documents, in order to protect himself from an entity with billions of dollars he also let it be known that he has more documents that will be released in the event that he meets with an unfortunate end.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There's no real reason for the US to want him here officially. Any trial would involve seriously messy 1st Amendment issues. Discrediting him by getting him charged with rape (or whatever) in Sweden works out a lot better, though IMO it's a little obvious.
So let's get pragmatic here. While a pain, especially when handling e-bills, closing one's account is relatively easy. But finding a bank that would denounce what Bank of America has done will be a whole lot tougher. In fact, I'd say the best we can do is move funds to a new bank and hope they don't do evil. Perhaps a credit union?
Until the U.S. postal system stops delivering money orders if it thinks the receiver belongs to WikiLeaks ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Systems like BitCoin will become illegal because they allow transferring of money outside of government control. Most governments today are too corrupt to allow citizens free reign with their funds. The excuses are legion: tax evasion, Wars On Everything, money proceeds from general crime etc. So instead of trying to figure out ways to create a taxation system that works and is financially viable (which of course would mean 80-90% reduction in size of most governments), stopping ridiculous religiously-motivated witch-hunts or fighting actual crime as opposed to its symptoms, the governments take the easy (and most profitable to them) way out: ever more Orwellian control of all citizenry.
We see it continuously on every front, but nowhere it is as vicious as in the world of money. OECD governments will terrorize any country that refuses to become their slavishly obedient "partner" in their taxation schemes, they will stop at nothing to eliminate all cash transactions (as cash is mostly untraceable), they drool at the day when every last cent of every last citizen has been accounted for, taxed, tracked and eventually transferred to the personal account of some lawyer, lawyer-cum-politician, bureaucrat paper-pusher or their personal friend business associate.
That is why any e-currencies are all doomed to fail: they are one of the ultimate threats to absolute power of governments over citizenry. E-currencies that have a centralized registry (as does BitCoin) offer a central point of attack and that is how they will be destroyed. Any other attempts will be attacked at the point of conversion to real-world goods and services. And if you do not believe me, you can look up what happened to other, earlier attempts such as e-gold.
I do not believe that a currency not subject to complete government control will become viable until a far-greater-in-scope revolt against the farce that the "democratic" governments have become is successful. And that is an entirely different story.
My personal take is that the Dark Ages of totalitarianism-dressed-up-as-"freedom" are upon us and things will keep getting progressively worse until the day when blood of the lawyers and politicians, their mercenaries and many, many of those yearning for freedom will flow on the streets of the oh-so-smug "democracies" again.
"Finders-keepers," is pretty much never true. It isn't true on the playground as soon as a teacher gets involved, and it isn't true in most law in the real world.
This is the reason for things like a title search and title insurance when you buy a house. What happens if the person who sold you the house, didn't actually own it? Well you don't get to say "Finders keepers, I paid for it so it is mine now!" Actually it is not, the lawful owner gets to have the house and you get nothing. Sorry, but it isn't yours. So that's why a title search is done first, to make sure that the person who claims to own it does indeed have the title free and clear. Title insurance then is insurance so that in the very unlikely event they missed something in the title search, you are reimbursed for your money and can thus pay off your loan (which is why banks require it).
You find that legal principal is valid in all kinds of law. The legal owner of something is entitled to it, even if another party now has it. You also find that along those lines refusing to give something up is illegal, and that even having it can be illegal. As the parent noted, you can get in trouble when you reasonably should have known. What's that mean? Well like many legal standards it is open to some interpretation but it means that if you were truly unaware (like in the situation of a house where a title search said it was clear) then no problem, but you can't just put your hands over your eyes.
So in the case of a drive that clearly contains data from a company, well that is probably a case you could get in trouble for. If you formatted the drive and used it then no, because there is no reasonable way you could have known, you bought it for storage and didn't look at it (though they could still probably get the hardware back if they wanted it). However if you dug through the contents found all sorts of information about who it belonged to, and then talked about that? Ya well ignorance doesn't apply anymore.
So the Wikileaks thing aside, remember that for you own life: Finders-keepers isn't the law. The law is more "Rightful owner gets it back." Don't presume that because you come across something that you can take it and keep it.
Links:
Text
Wikipedia article
The dichotomy between the decency of the people there, and the corruption of the government is inexplicable
Does decency and politeness excuse ignorance, or complacency? Hell, doesn't the ignorance and complacency bring into question the aforementioned decency?
Why do you think it was stolen? It could easily have been tossed by a careless IT employee and someone picked it up from the dumpster.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
So very few countries expect people to be responsible for making sure that they don't throw away their valuables. If you're stupid enough to sell me a Nintendo and I open it up and find you stashed gold coins inside, that's your own damn fault - I didn't sneak into your house and put them there.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
August/2010 A warrant for Assange is issued by the Swedish Prosecution Authority.
August/2010 The law firm of Borgstrom and Bodstrom quickly volunteer to represent the two accusers, Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen.
Thomas Bodstrom, former Justice Minister, has an interesting background: he came under investigation four times by Sweden's constitutional committee while Justice Minister after arresting members of the Pirate Bay file-sharing operation. He was also instrumental in pushing through the EU’s data retention directive.
And here’s an interesting quote on the attorney Bodstrom:
“Thomas Bodström will be remembered as the minister of justice who flushed the Swedes' civil rights down the head. He wants to eavesdrop on people who aren't even suspected of criminal activity, he wants to monitor all computer traffic, he wants to read all your email, he wants to store your telephone calls, and he wants to remove the prohibition against using the military against civilians.” - Anna Sjödin January 2006
(sgt.d: It’s important to understand that Bodstrom was also responsible for pushing through a harsh warrantless-wiretapping-type legislation in Sweden, extremely similar to what the Bush administration had pushed through in the States. Also, Bodstrom once remarked, while Justice Minister, that he had the right to bug any and every newspaper in the country without first obtaining a court order or warrant.)
[Anna Ardin is, or was, the political secretary and press officer for the Swedish Brotherhood Movement. Also a member: Thomas Bodstrom.
It was the Social Democrat Party that invited Assange to speak on its behalf at an event in Stockholm that month. Ardin had arranged Assange's travel for the event.
At the very beginning of the Assange investigation, and during it, details were illegally leaked to the tabloid, Expressen, owned by the Bonnier family. Attorney Claes Borgström’s two sisters, Annette Kullenberg and Kerstin Vinterhed, both work for Bonnier family newspapers, and Anna Ardin happened to intern at the publication, GT, also owned by the Bonnier family, by way of Expressen.]
November/2010 Par Nuder, former co-cabinet member with Thomas Bodstrom, and former adviser at one time to Bodstrom, is hired as a director at Madeliine Albright’s international lobbyist firm, Albright Stonebridge Group. (Certainly one might suspect Madam Albright having worries about possible leaked State Department cables and how they could reflect upon her.)
November/2010 Thomas Bodstrom travels to USA.
December/2010 Within moments after the announcement that Assange will be granted bail, we hear from the USA Attorney General, Eric Holder (with a background defending corporate assassins and mercenaries), that the American Justice Department will be taking legal action against BP and other companies.
[Now we know from those Wikileaked cables (and other past sources, of course), that the US government, British government, and others, have been pressured by the oil companies in their diplomatic activities. We also know that the US government has acted to compromise foreign legal systems. Could this be a situation were the US government is either acting to pressure the UK to allow the Swedish extradition of Assange?
Or the Americans are actually acting on behalf of BP, to appear to be pressuring the UK?]
In the same Olof Palme Centre which houses the offices of the Social Democrat Party, one also finds nearby the offices of the National Endowment for Democracy. (The N.E.D. just happens to be funded by the US government, and was set up by President Reagan in 1983 as a civilian extension to covert activities overseas.)
Closing remarks: Given the above information, together with previous statements by attorneys and bloggers of the erased tweets from An
If it's $600, he takes them to small claims court. It doesn't matter how many lawyers they have.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The other half of the story is this... The banks gave out loans that they knew had very little chance of ever being repaid and then sold those bad loans off to the unwary as fast as they could. Legal does not equal ethical. Remember that, and you'll know why people are so pissed at the banks. If they were in it to make an ethical buck, then they could have still made those loans, kept the risk, then re-mortgaged people who were in trouble at more favorable (to the borrower), but less profitable terms (for the owner of the loan), which would have still made the banks (less) money AND kept people in their homes. Instead, the banks chose to foreclose, as that way they could charge the people they sold the bad loans to for administering the foreclosure, not have to worry about losing the principle or interest on the loans, and leaving borrowers bankrupt and homeless. Sure, the people who took those loans shouldn't have, but if only one party, ie the banks, had done the right thing at any step of the way, everyone could have still come out of this without it having been half as bad as it's been.
I recommend a bit of caution there. Moving money in amounts under that limit so you don't trigger an "alert" may trigger an alert for "structuring". Isn't our government wonderful?
Fascinating - we have a meme distribution mechanism (agenda based media outlets) that is reminiscent of cancer or disease.
Where is the meme immune system (education/engagement)?
Or will these memes ultimately kill the patient (society)?
Cheers,
-I.
P.S: By education I mean critical thinking, philosophy, psychology, politics and history. Not the propaganda tool it can be used as.
They need to die. They're incompetent AND fraudulent. Unfortunately for me they bought my mortgage back in June (something I'm still cranky with TD Bank about). I just got called by them again last night (by a robot) claiming my mortgage is past due. Problem? I paid the mortgage over a week early. But they can't handle that. This is the fifth month in a row they haven't been able to figure out my mortgage is actually paid up in full, and they will (once again) have to admit and apologize to me that they were in error by claiming I was behind on payments... again... I'm calling them again Monday to do this dance again, but first I'm calling my state's Department of Banking and Insurance to file a complaint. This has gone beyond the pale. Then I'm calling them, informing them ONCE AGAIN that they are abject MORONS, and demanding to see proof that they actually hold the promissory note on my mortgage as chances are with this level of incompetence they never actually bothered to get the note when they bought the damn thing, and if they don't have the note they don't own the mortgage and they can kiss my ass.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
The Co-operative Bank in the UK is a genuinely non-evil bank. Check their ethical policy (dating back to before it was trendy), and note their refusal to deal with 'evil' companies their owners don't want them to.
I've been considering moving to them. They seem to be about the best of the bunch in the UK.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Out of curiosity if we can't trust the large faceless banks with our money who can we trust? This is a legitimate question by the way... if the banks were to fail where would my money be safe?
I'm a wanker.... and loving it!
Too bad Wikileaks is not an international drug running or firearms smuggling organization, they appear to be more befitting "internal policies".
Of course they are. Lots of money involved in smuggling. Not so much money involved in free press.
- About the cables - Wikileaks actually did not leak them to the public. They gave them to 5 major newspapers around the world who discussed them together and decided what to leak and what not to leak.
Yes they did. Or rather are currently. They are slowly releasing them all on their site.
Currently released so far... 1766 / 251,287
A random example: http://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/12/09USNATO588.html They may be slightly censoring the versions released to the public, but they are releasing them.
However, THIS time, he warns that he has pretty dire information about financial institutions and THEN shit suddenly hits the fan. The clear point here being that it's the FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS that are putting the screws to him.
I'm not entirely sure how the financial institutions think this is going to help them. Do they think WikiLeaks might not publish the dirt if they boycott them? Or are they trying to show their corruption right now, so people won't be as shocked when WikiLeaks publishes about it?
I had a different problem with those assholes as BofA. My late father had several loans in his retirement portfolio. BofA decided they didn't like them. To make a long story short, they forced Ma to take those loans out of the portfolio as a yearly distribution which caused her to pay about $15K in taxes that she wouldn't have had to pay if she were to take out the money over time in smaller amounts. They are a soulless company which deserves no better than to have their employees sold into slavery and their property financially salted to such an extent that no one should ever profit from it.
Fun facts about the Bank of America:
Bank of America Corporation is a financial services company, the largest bank holding company in the United States, by assets, and the second largest bank by market capitalization. Bank of America serves clients in more than 150 countries and has a relationship with 99% of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies and 83% of the Fortune Global 500. The company is a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and a component of both the S&P 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. As of 2010, Bank of America is the 5th largest company in the United States by total revenue, as well as the second largest non-oil company in the US (after Wal-Mart). In 2010, Forbes listed Bank of America as the 3rd "best" large company in the world. The bank's 2008 acquisition of Merrill Lynch made Bank of America the world's largest wealth manager and a major player in the investment banking industry. The company holds 12.2% of all U.S. deposits, as of August 2009, and is one of the Big Four Banks of the United States, along with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo -- its main competitors
Bank of America deposits in June 2009:
$817,989,321,000. The Largest Banks In The U.S.
"here you go, we found this drive and after looking through it we decided it must be yours, we were concerned that perhaps the data on it might be corrupted or lost in transit so we backed it up to a very reliable network of servers, if anything has happened to your data you can retrieve a copy from this URL..."
We shouldn't do business with banks which use our money to speculate, fail and let us bail them out again. And when some whistle blower site does something unpleasant for a government then they through that site out. There are banks, which invest in sustainable project, which do not try to make as much money as possible and externalize the risks to the public. Just lets switch.
I don't actually care what happened to the pirate bay servers since they were basically taking the piss and a server is certainly not a human being.
As for the link you did not provide but asked me to google for I see your point since they do allege they were tortured. However, they were not killed which is what I was talking about in my post. Also, there is not actually any way of independently verifying their allegations and they would obviously have preferred a life in affluent Sweden to that of a life in Egypt. We in Europe cannot take in every single person from the rest of the world who happens to have been born into a terrible oppressive country.
I dont read
I have *yet* to see an American churned by the younger generation. All also know a bit of english due to the school system. I keep hearing those story, but from older people. But even if youw ere right, that does not excuse being randomly impolite to a stranger. So what now ? A frencvh was impolite so you can churn any other frnech ? A black has attacked you so you can all accuse them in mass ? A woman spurned you so they are all bitch ? Get real. Prejudice and bad history is not a reason to be impolite for a whole class of people. And frnakly , when the french excercized their right of "free speech" by not agreeing with the Irak war , what happened ? Well a few american started to act like real polite resonable adult : they renamed the fries fries "freedom fries" (or was it freedom toast?) and destroyed merchandize (IIRC unpaid merchandize, aka , vandalizm) does that mean I have to spurn American because of a minority of idiot ? Jeez NO. Civility and politess is the normal state of what one should have with a stranger , unless that stranger demonstrate he did not earn it. This is the true sign of a polite nation. And nonetheless , no matter how insightful the mod found you, you are not insightful, you are simply mistaken.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
But I have lived in Paris for a lot of time, basicaly some people are impolite to other NO MATTER their country of origin. Especially garcon de cafe (sorry no c cedille or accent on this keyboard) I have been spit in my glass by some of those guy, despite being polite to them. But I bet with you they remembered the BAD stuff, and never recalled all the other french being civil. That is a selection bias at work here.
But that does NOT matter, this is missing the point by a mile. Politesse and civility is not something earned by a nation. When 2 random indivudal encounter what should matter is the history between them, and if they have no history, civility and politesse SHOULD be the ground state, and only if that precise individual show itself to be an idiot, one can if wished switch to being impolite. BUT , being impolite to a french, because some otehr guy years ago laughed at you, this is not a justification, this is grounding one's decision on prejudice. Prejudice is never a good way to do decision, in social situation.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Someone in US should take legal actions against these mega corporations which obviously (seen from a european eye) are violating US constitution!
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Let me make those links clickable:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/current/h3.htm
which shows that banks have over $1 trillion in excess of fractional reserve requirements; that's money that has effectively been taken out of the economy.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/20081030/
During the crisis, the banks had far less in reserve, and the non-borrowed figure was negative.
The only times banks gave out loans to people with little chance of paying them off was when they were pressured by the government via the CRA
It would be nice if you actually had any statistics to back that up. When I search around, I seem to be getting results indicating that CRA loans are faring better than non CRA loans.
Of course, not completely unexpected, as banks would tend to be far more strict conservative when giving "forced" loans in areas perceived as risky.
Your thinking is false. He was in the UK long before Sweden issued the arrest warrant. The reason he came here is because his claim to remain in Sweden failed. He asked the prosecutor if he could leave Sweden as he no longer had any right to remain there, and was effectively told "Yeah, we're done with you".
It was a matter of hours between Sweden issuing a valid arrest warrant and Assange turning himself into the police in the UK. All of the other noise about warrants could do with a bit more understanding - the original ones weren't valid, which is why he remained in the UK and did NOT turn himself into the police here. Once Sweden actually got their act together and issued a valid warrant, he turned himself in.
"Why worry", says BoA, when the Fed would probably just 'bail them out', courtesy of Joe Taxpayer.
That explains why even the libertarains that are forever going on about how they need big guns to overthrow the government go crazy at even the mildest criticism of that government by outsiders. They call for death for leakers but a bed of flowers for those that sold US missiles to Iran with some sort of backdoor Presidential approval.
Bitcoins is a totally retarded idea because the more popular it gets, the more energy has to be needlessly wasted and more CO2 and other pollution pumped out, higher risk of nuclear accidents etc etc 'The production BitCoin network needs your CPU or GPU time to grow stronger' Shouldn't we all be against this?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
I have been to CountryX (including the US and France). Most of the people I met were friendly and treated me well, and I did more or less the same. A very few were rude, either because of something about me or something about them, or one or both of us having a bad day. And if you get to know someone well enough often you find something to disagree about strongly, and it's hard to not take that personally. Now I could single out the rare rude person and make some sort of generalization except, unsurprisingly, my experiences traveling in my own country are exactly the same. Therefore, if you want to get real, your prejudices are those of a bigot looking for a country to hate.
However if you want to hate the way the US government and its greedy owners (the rich and the multinational corporations, including Bank of America) are treating the poor, gambling on mortgages, misinforming the public (which the released cables are helping to un-misinform), despise the killing wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Columbia), and theft of public resources--you will find most of the US public in agreement with you. Including the ones having a bad day.
And on a tangent, what the rich from France and the US have done and are doing to Haiti is a horror. The US and France owe the Haitians reparations.
Couldn't the same be said of anything involving computers? In other words, isn't your post rather pointless?
Even if the bank succeed in assassinating Julian Assange, WikiLeaks will release the documents to their mainstream press partners.
(Think about it. if he, as the public face of WikiLeaks, causes only a 1% drop in stock valuation, that's still billions of dollars out of the pocket of the banking community. The man's dead. He'll be a martyr, but a very dead one.
[The "rape trial" is obviously an attempt at character assassination. Rape as a crime is NEVER pursued so much as to cause extradition. Once the leak is done with, the charge will be done with...
{Julian Assange may be a prick and an egotistical asshole. For all I know he may even be guilty. Rape charges DON'T happen like that unless somebody with "mui dinero" is calling the shots.
(Think of what YOU could expect if your sister was the victim. Do you see the cops from the local precinct running to another country to capture somebody. Its not even a murder. That's what I'm saying.)}])
Now the question is how scared are these partners.
Do the Guardian, the New York Times and half a dozen other still retain enough editorial integrity not to knuckle under from the shit storm of advertising the banks are going to unleash defending their fictional record and fighting the truth of how nefarious, perfidious, greedy, grasping, manipulative, wanton crazed, depraved and devoid of human sensibility, their actions are.
Banks are definitely not charities.
They aren't even businesses.
They're banks.
They handle money, and money is the root of all evil.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Well, a friend of mine in Albany NY, where off track betting on the horses is legal, is a sports reporter who specializes in horse racing. He just told me that BofA has, for awhile now, been refusing transfers from BofA to the tracks or to the OTB offices EVEN THOUGH IT"S LEGAL. He said people in that world have known about this for awhile now. I've not seen much of anything come through in the media about that either. Since when did Bank of America decide they have a right to tell ANYONE how to spend their dough? No matter what you may feel about gambling, this isn't right.
I'd love to change the world but I can't find the source code.
From the middle of the fifteenth century to the twenty-first, banks have only cared about one thing and one thing only.
POWER!
Mugabe lost it, so the banks cooperated until the Zimbabwean dollar was solely backed by Mugabe's fillings.
The value of the German mark was manipulated after the first world war to the benefit of the Krupp industrial group.
That little debacle resulted in bankrupting the country, theft of all of the funds (a few million marks was a comfortable retirement one month and the face value of the stamp saying the bank had closed your account the next.)
Krupp just happens to make arms so it also led to the second world war.
Why do you think that the federal government and the Federal Reserve are so scared of inflation?
The specter of needing a wheelbarrow full of bills to buy a loaf of bread haunts their memory worse that the great depression.
The Catholic church may have been extreme in its excommunication of money lenders, but that doesn't mean that they weren't right about money being the root of all evil.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I wasn't aware that receiving a copy of someone's bits was stealing. You seem to have drunk the RIAA/MPAA koolaid a bit too many times.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Or people could have paid their mortgages. Oops, get into a house that was a bit too much? So sorry, let's blame it on the banks!
Word!
Look it up.
because they are a huge pain in the arse.
Try that as a business and see how long it takes before your appear in court. Also: telling all the world you don't do business with X because you suspect him to be a criminal would that not be slander. Because it is saying that X is a criminal without prove and without a court case proving he is a criminal.
That would be an interesting one if Wikileaks would sue Visa, Amazon etc. pp for slander.
Does decency and politeness excuse ignorance, or complacency? Hell, doesn't the ignorance and complacency bring into question the aforementioned decency?
It doesn't excuse ignorance, just as presence of an engine, body and windows on a car doesn't excuse a lack of wheels - you need all components to complete the whole. But you can then say: "this is a fine car, but someone has stolen the wheels" rather than "this isn't a car". The OP was ranting about the despicability of the American people. In fact, what is more use, is to realise that they are, on the whole, decent people who are victims of a well-orchestrated media con-job.
I set a lot of value on being precise. Why make misleading and wide-sweeping statements when we can instead say: "your average American doesn't have a good grasp of International realities". In the more precise version we can (a) stop insulting a lot of people and (b) more precisely identify rememdies: I.e. maybe all the mainstream media in the US being owned by a handful of biased super-corporations is a bad idea.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Anyone who remembers the Viet Nam war will find that BofA was on the wrong side of that one too. Look up BofA Isla Vista to see how people dealt with it back then. I first had an account with BofA in 1961 which, when the bank made an error, they denied it and left it up to me to do the book keeping. This at a time when i was living paycheck to paycheck, and had to panic to get my money so i could pay my rent. Of course, after several hours of hustling around town (no on line banking back then) they apologized - NOT. I pulled my account the same day. These bankers are crooks and always have been! Poke around and see how many times they have been the evil doers in our little drama.
Its all about the money.
notice to bankers, go buy your islands and guatamala hide aways, and fly out on your jets.
The people are coming, and they will burn you bankers at the stakes.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Bitcoin is great and all, but what can you do with it? From what I saw, some people pay cash for your bitcoins if you can even generate any. I personally, after some previous talks here about bitcoin, decided to give it a go, and found the client didn't even do cuda or opencl processing out of the box, that you needed to trust and figure out how to use some 3rd party apps to do such things that were poorly documented. I wish it was as easy to setup as folding@home gpu clients for sure. For wikileaks defense though, I would say they didn't put bitcoin as a donation method because bitcoin is still rather obscure compared to the traditional paypal/google checkout/amazon/bank transfer methods. Maybe not to hardcore geeks, but to the general public.
If you are wanting to do the GPU generation, yes you need to get some 3rd party support (for now). Then again, this is open source software and if you have the technical skills you can put that stuff into the main stream software app too.
At the moment the cuda-enabled clients really ought to be considered experimental, even if it happens to be an incredibly useful experiment.
You are also missing the point with what this is for, which is as a medium of exchange. To the general public, they are likely not to be using the cutting edge generation and their more pressing concern is to be able to buy stuff or sell stuff. You don't need to generate bitcoins to sell something for bitcoins, and in fact you are far more likely to make something useful and sell it for bitcoins than you are to make money putting together a server farm with GPUs and create bitcoin. Make some wooden train sets or something else you are good at, unless you happen to like putting together computer systems as a hobby and have access to cheap computer equipment and cheap electricity with a really good broadband backhaul.
If you have bitcoins, it is easy to spend them as a donation and to me about as easy or easier than traditional payment methods. It certainly is as easy as PayPal, where you are forgetting what it takes to put money into PayPal in the first place. The hard part is to put dollars in or to take them out, and due to the chargebacks most people trading bitcoins for credit card payment usually decide to drop the business as an unprofitable enterprise. Those who've tried lost their shirt. There are other ways to get dollars defined electronically, and bank transfers do work and are being done, both ways.
If you use bitcoins, however, treat it as its own currency and it makes life a whole lot easier. The only problem there is simply trying to find something to do with them.
OMG, Inzide J0rb? Boxcutters freffal supernanothermite lolZ!
If you believe that helping the homeowners with mortgages would have magically helped stop the recession then you are woefully ignorance of economics.
Yeah, the money is in investing in both sides of any available armed conflict.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
I'm not a fool, but I do still do business with BofA. Since you're apparently hip on using insults to get your point across, I don't feel bad calling you naive. Your little vote-with-your-dollars speech is quaint, but it completely ignores the fact that there is no "vote" to be counted.
There is no alternative here. All the banks are engaged in this bullshit. The state banks, too. Credit unions. Want to keep your money in some alternate investment? Great, you can be fucked over by companies like Vanguard or TDAmeritrade.
You also don't have a vote in the sense that these financial services companies don't need customers to be profitable. In fact, they're learning that it's sort of easier without the customers. Banks can stop managing other people's money, and get low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve, which they invest in commodities, stocks, or some other investment that is being propped up by the international finance cartel. So, taking your $100k out of the bank will make no difference to them.
What about just not investing in anything? Great ... do that, and your money will disappear before your eyes. Have you ever asked yourself why inflation doesn't average 0%, over long periods of time? Why does it always seem to be above zero? It's because that's the finance cartel's way of ensuring that you use their services, in one form or another. Over time, you'll still usually lose money, in real dollar terms. But, less than you would if you just kept your cash under the mattress.
(Please, no idiotic replies about how some stock index has outpaced inflation over time ... if you believe the validity of either of those published numbers, then you're a lost cause).
So, until you realize that our societal tolerance of these finance leeches has led us to a position where we're essentially powerless to do anything, your market-based democracy is going to be utterly pointless.
You missed out the part before that where the Clinton administration passed legislation requiring the banks to make those loans and in a number of cases actively challenged the banks in court to ensure their compliance.
I was in Europe all last summer (July - Sept.), & I saw the same in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, England, Spain, & yes, France.
Um, there is no Czechoslovakia. It broke up in 1993 and there is now a Czech republic. Don't call it Czechoslovakia - they don't like that.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
You seem to think I'm saying nothing was wrong. I am not. The only thing I am saying is that stealing is the wrong name for the act.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Shooting the messenger is rarely a good first response.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.