This sounded principled and anti-establishmentarian on its face. Modern banking, based upon the fractional-reserve system, is wholesale fraud. Beyond specific issues of Swiss banking law, privacy and bank secrecy, a person claiming to be able to expose some of the scandalous elements of a system whose rampant fraud is based on secret-keeping sounded good. Forty or so politicians as collateral damage sounded even better.
Listening to the conference, however, gave me pause. I'm not sure I am on the same page as these WikiLeaks people now. Furthermore, I am beginning to wonder if they are at cross-purposes to myself and everyone else who is an advocate of the private property society.
Here is a short list of stand-out themes conveyed in the press conference that raised red flags for me:
- Swiss banking secrecy must end (this was a point-blank, unconditional statement made by one of the various handlers during the press conference)
- Western government public welfare systems are threatened by tax evasion enabled by bank secrecy; people ask "where is the money?" for these programs and the answer is the wealth has moved offshore to bank secrecy havens (this is a decidedly pro-welfare, statist reason for attacking bank secrecy)
- All wealth the State has arrogated to itself via tax laws rightfully belongs to the State; bank secrecy allows Swiss banks and other 3rd party regional jurisdictions to set Western government tax rates, an unacceptable circumstance (bank secrecy has no place in open, transparent and progressive democratic systems because it allows for concentrated wealth to be passed down through families by avoiding schemes like the inheritance tax)
- Regulators and legal authorities in the past have not been accommodative when accusations of criminal wrong-doing have been brought to them in the past, but the specific information contained in these leaks -- bank Julius Baer -- will be delivered to "competent legal authorities" for them to decide how to handle it, rather than made public (an obvious and inexplicable contradiction)
- Journalists can not be trusted to serve the public interest because they are often pressured and compromised by those perpetrating anti-social schemes to serve as accomplices, knowingly or unknowingly; we will use the mainstream press as our partners in leaking this information (another obvious and inexplicable contradiction)
- Today, money and capital are international, which means they can flee the tax regimes of their host States at whim-- this is a social bad (another of the handlers implied that international capital mobility was problematic for Western welfare States, where "any currency can be exchanged into any other" and the world financial system was "truly fluid" and interconnected, allowing people to move and hide their wealth beyond the reach of grasping local politicians)
WikiLeaks is sounding less and less like a freedom-oriented outfit and more and more like a bunch of well-intentioned but ultimately gullible and therefore dangerous statist dupes.
If they're not an outright fraud and a simple front for the very elites they're supposedly working against.
*UPDATE*
Below is the video embed, if the link above is no longer active:
Did Assange somehow get psyop'ed while in prison?
ReplyDeleteRudolph Elmer is quite the hero. I don't think I wwoud have the guts to do what he is doing. Remember that UBS banker and whistle blower, Bradley C. Birkenfeld received a 40 month sentence in the United States.
ReplyDeleteThe first problem is that we have a state.
ReplyDeleteThe second problem: We should have completely free banking (no state).
The third problem: we should have complete private property rights (no state, no banking laws, no legal tender, and NO taxes).
The forth problem: See the first problem.
I think one good outcome of this type of revelation is a further exposing of the "do as I say, not as I do" mentality of our overlords.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree it's an attack on private property...I think the upside of stoking mundane anger leads us one step closer to mass reclamation of consent.
Anyone really serious and knowledgeable(not dumb?) about protecting their property has most likely already moved their assets to places other than Swiss banks.
Many might find this source questionable but they bring up some good points on who is behind the whole Wikileak phenomenon:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=22389
Is seems to me that the source has been played up by the mainstream media as some kind of new source for honest information. That's the first warning sign.
everyone is a statist. seriously. of some sort. ideologically people are molded into statists. obeyers. sheep. mules. monkeys. zombies. junior g-men. its pathetic. like really? wikileaks? what the f-bomb were they supposed to do? break all the zombies out of their routine little lives with a couple leaks that indeed the governments really are liars?
ReplyDeletepeople like mcdonalds, big screen televisions, popcorn, having babies, gpa's, college sports, stuff thats green, peace, and really funny movies that are pg-13.
I don't think there is anything to psy-op !!!
ReplyDeleteAlarm bells should be ringing, Taylor Conant is right to ring the first bell. WikiLeaks is clearly not pro-liberty. We should all be able to avoid taxation if we can, we have a duty to avoid tax. "It's my money and I will hide it if I want to".
Oh that was a close call I nearly made a donation to WikiLeaks a month ago.
Elmer is not wikileaks; he is working with wikileaks. If anyone is wikileaks it is Assange.
ReplyDeleteIt is irrational to expect perfection in any organization composed of human beings. Face it, all individuals have inconsistencies and all are bought into or corrupted by evil in some way. All of my heros have feet of clay.
Look at the big picture: having wikileaks out there is better than not having it. If Elmer has made some mistakes, tell him you are disappointed.
If another outfit comes along that is more consistently freedom-oriented than wikileaks, then at that point bail out of wikileaks. Nothing wrong with competition.
"All my heroes have feet of clay" Good one. I agree, as much as we all have our idea of what Wikileaks is or should aspire to be, they are human, which is why we shouldn't have heroes. There are actions we can admire but no one person can live up to being anyone's 'hero' and they shouldn't try. Assange made clear his motives - need for secrecy is a weakness when at any moment anything can be leaked. For his purposes it doesn't matter if the info is made public, the fact that the Swiss banking community knows it could be public at any time will change the way they do business internally, crippling many of their business models. Sure we'd all like to see the names and all the other secret information Wikileaks has, but if we don't, Assange's own goals are still being met.
ReplyDeleteWikileaks is probably more left than it is libertarian, but I'll take it when it's libertarian and I'll attack it where it's not, same as anything else that leftists do.
ReplyDelete"WikiLeaks is sounding less and less like a freedom-oriented outfit and more and more like a bunch of well-intentioned but ultimately gullible and therefore dangerous statist dupes."
ReplyDeleteOh, good morning, welcome to the reality. It obviously never occurred to you that many left-wing morons hate George W. Bush and want to "expose government conspiracies". Not all of them are libertarian anarchists.
"Did Assange somehow get psyop'ed while in prison?"
No, you just have been too stupid to see that he was a commie from the outset.
Excellent points, Taylor!
ReplyDelete~Deb T.
Didn't Wikileaks also expose Climategate?
ReplyDeleteWell that was surely damaging of a deeply leftwing cause.
So while it is to be expected that Wikileaks will consist of a number of leftwing statists, it should not be dismissed out of hand.
Let's face it, without Wikileaks we may not know a bunch of things about government that we should be knowing. We don't have to appreciate the personal ideologies of the people, just some of the work they do.
"Didn't Wikileaks also expose Climategate?"
ReplyDeleteNope.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/11/30/assange-on-climategate/