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After BofA Escalates, Refuses To Process Wikileaks' Payments, Wiki Retaliates, Advises Americans To Put Their Money "Somewhere Safer"
Bank of America just fired the preemptive escalation shot in its duel with Wikileaks. Late on Friday, America's biggest mortgage lender, and the firm that is now getting sued left and right for various mortgage transgressions, announced it is joining MasterCard, Paypal and Visa in ceasing transactions for Wikileaks. While this decision will certainly not improve Operation Anonymous' empathy toward the North Carolina bank, it may just precipitate overt retaliation by Assange, who is now rumored to be in possession of data that could provie harmful to BAC. Which is why this sudden escalation out of left field by the bank strikes as surprisingly odd: BofA's upside is very limited while its downside could be 100% - even if Wikileaks is bluffing, why provoke them. And as expected, Wikileaks has already retaliated: in two sequential tweets it advised its 568,117 (and very rapidly growing) subscribers to pull their money out of Bank of America, and also to close all their accounts with the firm, urging them to put their money "somewhere safer." What is curious is to see whether this sudden escalation, in what has now become synonymous with a quest for preserving the first amendment for a substantial deal of people (and freedom of speech globally), will have a far broader impact than the comparable "Pull Your Money" out of the Big Banks venture that was attempted by Huffington Post over a year ago, with unsatisfactory results. If people suddenly personify Bank of America with a First Amendment threat, arguably the one freedom most cherished in America, which is precisely what Assange is trying to do, all bets for the Countrywide acquirer may soon be off.
Below is Bank of America's statement released on Friday night:
Concurrently the bank was declined to comment whether it would be Wikileaks' next target.
This press release by Bank of America provoked the following two tweets out of @wikileas' twitter account:
Obviously it is the conditional "safer" keyword that will get everyone's attention. Especially since it is now known that Wikileaks will release it bank data trove as soon as January.
In retaliation to BofA's provocation, it appears that Assange just fired the preliminary shot in the massive run on Bank of America... and possible soon other US banks?
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This is going to be good.
I wish Wikileaks would do the BAC dump already. Why wait?
And btw, Wikileaks ought to pick on somebody it's own size.
.
"If people suddenly personify Bank of America with a First Amendment threat, arguably the one freedom most cherished in America..."
Actually, the 21st Amendment is Amerika's Favorite
The repeal of alcohol prohibition my dear Tyler...
The beer guzzling, football watchin' Amerikan public's all time favorite amendment...
Connecting the dots ... http://marketcyclesresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/feb-6th-or-7th-something-important-to.html
Just asking questions ...
We closed all accounts in large banks 2 years ago. How can you keep money in a bank that lies, cheats, steals from clients who can least afford it. And how many billions of bad loans are off the books because of our corrupt govt. and idiot Geithner. Find a small local solvent bank that actually lends in your area.
C BAC WFC MS all trash. Would never leave money there. And wait till the bonus fun begins.
41 million on food stamps and its Christmas for Wall Street; beyond words.
never overplayed, always a classic -
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
Is Julian going to be framed as the white Bin Laden after the next crisis?
wikileaks= selective revelations, to promote an agenda. profoundly silent, on several serious issues? maybe assange, is another lee harvey oswald.
delacroix=mouthpiece for those who wish that secrets were kept secret.
I say we reveal ALL the secrets, not just the convenient ones ( I only speak for myself)
Please feel free.
While I don't have deposits with BoA, I did have an open credit card with them. It had a nice high limit and very long account duration. I called them up and did what I should've done a long time ago... cancelled it.
When asked why, I simply responded that "I am tired of conducting business with a criminal organization." The lady was dead silent on the other end....
Good riddance.
In contrast to Fraudclosuregate, suddenly, BofA is intimately aware of its "internal guidelines" and overprecautiously preemptive... oh they are such fast learners! or maybe just hypocrites. or both.
Blago knows...don't fuck with BofA.
BoA. DOA.
The U.S. has become a dangerous bad joke. Let's face it, nobody cares for the U.S government and corporates anymore. They are like the rotten kid at school that is angry at everyone and he hates everyone right back - but thinks he is cool?.
In the sad end the angry hated rotten kid realises that he is alone and hated and commits suicide.
This is a tradegy for the U.S. citizens who are being defiled by their leaders, just as it is a tragedy for the family of the poor kid that kills himself - there are only losers.
The U.S. is on the fast path to government and corporate self destruction and when it gets there it will find that no ones cares much, has any sympathy for it or is willing to help.
You are spot on with this. In Asia, people are looking to China and not to the US for the future, and think the US is at the end of the road.
And the sooner the self-destruction completes, the sooner the rest of us can pick up the pieces and restore the Republic, where law rules over all men.
Mark Ames, author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion — From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond, argues that Americans have been beaten down to a degree that they’re now a pacified population, largely willing to accept any economic outrage its elites impose on them.
In a 2005 interview with AlterNet, Ames said the “slave mentality” is stronger in the U.S. than elsewhere, “in part because no other country on earth has so successfully crushed every internal rebellion.”
Slaves in the Caribbean for example rebelled a lot more because their oppressors weren’t as good at oppressing as Americans were. America has put down every rebellion, brutally, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Confederate rebellion to the proletarian rebellions, Black Panthers, white militias … you name it. This creates a powerful slave mentality, a sense that it’s pointless to rebel.
sadly, I agree, mostly.....BUT.... am thinking along the lines of subterfuge, deceit, clandestine ops, you name it. Can't quite put my finger on it, but concept is similar to virus, worm, that kind of thing, though on physical plane as well as cyber... you smart(er) guys got anything?
withdraw your consent, "legally", brick by brick, stone by stone.
the only power the 'top' has comes from the 'bottom'.
this is why it's structured like a pyramid.
Its too bad Canada doens't have a 2nd Amendment. Give that crowd 500 AK-47's or AR-15's and the whole game changes.
One more time, with feeling:
The first amendment constrains the government.
Not you, or me, or Bank of America, or the International House of Pancakes.
Feel free to take your money out of BofA... we already did a couple of years ago. But running around in circles screaming "1st AMENDMENT!!111" in this instance just makes you look silly.
How is it a foreign national living in a foreign land would be covered by the US Constitution?
Are you saying the US Constitution should apply to all the people of the world? If that is the case, we need to help all Europeans to exercise their Second Amendment rights as well.
How is it a foreign national living in a foreign land would be covered by the US Constitution?
As the Constitution does not hold sway in foreign lands how can the US justly interfere with the peaceful and legal actions of those living abroad?
Why not f**k BofA.
BofA fucked your sister, your wife, and your kids. Their lives are changed forever because of that which a select many did with full intention and understanding.
And then we gave them money for doing it.
And I haven't seen one brother, one husband, nor one father do anything about it.
American men are a bunch of pussies.
I don't know anything about this Wikileaks guy, but it sounds like he has a set of balls.
The government accused Daniel Ellsberg of the same shit, including putting American lives at risk. He saved the country from becoming a complete shithole, only to hand it down to a bunch of pussies who let it be turned into the complete shithole he was attempting to avoid.
The differences today are that the Banks are in business with the government now, and everybody handed their balls over to the government with the Patriot Act.
Also, in China, the practical reason you don't open your mouth about the government, is because you will be shunned. The Very First Thing that happens is you are put on a financial blacklist. No bank will process anything in or out of your account, and they will dump your account. Your credit is cancelled and credit score goes to 0. You are effectively removed from the society in 24 hours, with just that one maneuver.
Way back when, somebody in this democracy understood this. A 'bank" couldn't de facto shut you down, without notice unless you had done something to defraud them out of money. But with the Patriot Act, banks have the right to protect themselves from being of any possible "aid" to a "military combatant", no matter how farfetched such a moniker would be.
What is the difference if BofA did anything. Nothing , nothing, nothing is going to be done about it.
Until the men start growing some balls, and speak up about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwxww3r3J5o
He gave a hint in that "Safer" word. I think the information that he has is so damning that it literally can bring the bank down.
I'm closing all my BoA accounts after the holidays. Someone tell me the optimal way to do this (meaning, the most harm I can do to them). Someone suggested demanding it in cash so that it has the effect of withdrawing 10x the FRNS from their books (fractional reserve banking in reverse). How can I inflict the most pain to the largest # of BoA employees?
Also, any drawbacks to credit unions? I assume they are not part of the Federal Reserve system.
buy physical silver with the cash = 2 flies with one stroke, as these guys are all in the same bed
Reply below -- somehow it got filed as a comment, not a reply to a comment.
The Internet is a landscape... not a business.
Speech, association, politics, mutual assistance (charity), etc...
are transactions between humans that pre-date the commercial transaction.
The first ICT was perhaps a bird call constructed out of a leaf made by a hunter to notify his mates of where the prey was…
And the first journalism was Ooga running into camp and announcing she’d just seen the first spring sprout on a favorite berry bush.
And if the message was false, misleading or dangerous… the onus certainly didn’t fall upon the air through which the information was transmitted!
There was no gatekeeper, no intermediary…
ICT AND JOURNALISM were BOTH strictly peer-to-peer.
The same could be said for politics and charity within the hunter-gatherer world... peer-to-peer.
The commercial transaction (and the creation of money, trade tokens, etc) arose with the need for interaction within or between larger or multiple 'social organisms'... an important and needed development.
At its root, a civilization (or any social organism) is a product of individual and group decisions (ideas+actions) operating within the confines of the physical environment and natural law.
we then see culture as the expression of this "social energy".
Money was developed originally as a technology for the allocation of excess social energy where complexity (and loss of various forms of proximity) required conventions beyond the less formalized methods of a hunter-gatherer group.
I believe this suggest some re-thinking about the nature of money and capital (and capital creation) but that's another story...
The point here is that the nature of this "social energy" in a scaled organism requires that the exchange of this energy NOT be bound by transaction costs or other complications IN AREAS RELATED TO COMMONS-DEDICATED FUNCTIONS ESPECIALLY...
These particular areas of exchange actually pre-date the need for or existence of the commercial transaction and require special attention.
This problem (which extends also into the political participation sphere especially) is directly linked to neglected scaling issues in this new landscape... and the capabilities required for Commons-oriented transactions in that space... and why that requires a viable, simple and secure MICRO-transaction.
The Commons-dedicated Account Network:
A self-supporting , Commons-owned neutral network of accounts for both political and charitable monetary contribution... which for fundamental reasons of scale must allow a viable micro-transaction (think x-box points for action in the Commons).(I note that journalism is often a for-profit enterprise and that this presents a complicating factor. I believe this is an addressable issue.)
Re-Igniting the Enlightenment: On Building Landscapes for Decision
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/12/re-igniting-enlightenment-on-building.html
LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/in/culturalengineer
(I feel like Ignaz Semmelweis trying to get attention for what will eventually be seen as a simple, essential innovation... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis ) P.S. Just to keep the crackpot theme going... I also am convinced that this account network should own and maintain its own cloud and bank(s). From google's blog: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governancehttp://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/governments-shouldnt-have-monopoly-on.html
BAC being the latest goose stepper to join the parade fighting for the full conversion of the USA to the USSA. We had better get control of these crooks before we end up like the sheeple of Germany in the 1930's & 1940's and become caught up in something that we'll regret i.e. the loss of our soul and integrity! despised by all for generations to come.
Most people bank with TBTF banks out of convenience. Where I live, they have the most zero fee cash machines and charge the lowest fees for checking. Besides, changing banks is a hassle. All banks promote exit barriers like direct deposit, online checking, etc... Its not like they make a lot of money on many customers. IMO, the only reason to use a bank is to facilitate transactions. I for one, would never buy any savings or investment products from a bank ... especially when there are so many safer options out there and so many negatives about leaving your money with them like:
1) They pay the least interest on savings and CDs
2) The charge the most interest on loans
3) There is no privacy ... they are basically a branch of the government so anything you do with them is reported to or monitored by big brother ... mostly in direct violation of the 4th Amendment.
I think it would be very cool if privately chartered banks started popping up. Perhaps it will eventually come to that.
My admittedly limited experience with Credit Unions thus far is that (from a competence and customer service perspective) they are just as bad as the big banks, they just do it smaller.
That's my hood. The cops did a damn fine job of protecting a fence. Lord knows what would have happened if people actually got close to a FENCE outside of another FENCE outside of another FENCE beyond which the world's aristocrats were playing.