Gotta Love those Wikileaks

I’m still waiting for the BOA Wikileaks data drop but the idea of a Swiss Banker from offshore banking haven, The Cayman Islands, dropping a dime on a few of those tax evading customers is almost as sweet.  I can sense the thickness of air hanging in private clubs all over the world from my little corner of the ninth ward.

Rudolf M. Elmer, the former head of the Cayman Islands office of the prominent Swiss bank Julius Baer, refused to identify any of the individuals or companies, but told reporters at a press conference that about 40 politicians and “pillars of society” worldwide are among them.

He told The Observer newspaper over the weekend that those named in the documents come from “the U.S., Britain, Germany, Austria and Asia — from all over,” and include “business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates — from both sides of the Atlantic.”

Mr. Assange said that WikiLeaks would verify and release the information, including the names, in as little as two weeks. He suggested possible partnerships with financial news organizations and said he would consider turning the information over to Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, a government agency that investigates financial corruption.

That’s a wow story!   But then, there’s been a series of them coming from Assange’s organization and the entire thing is just too great for words.  Any one that really doesn’t see that Wikileaks is becoming THE way for little guys to undermine the power elites of the world is basically a tool of oppressors and autocrats.  Just as Bradley Manning witnessed tapes that revealed the incredibly war crimes and inhumanity of a few American soldiers, Rudolf Elmer has witnessed pilfering that probably includes profiteering from crimes against humanity.  However, like every one else, I want NAMES.

Check out the CIA’s list of the RICHEST countries in the world in per capita terms. I always love to quiz my students on which ones shake out at the top and they nearly always get it wrong.   The top ten countries–with the exceptions of oil rich Kuwait and Norway–are all havens of offshore banking, tax evasion, and gambling.  The USA has dropped to number 11 on the richest country list.  Undoubtedly, it still holds that position because of its Investment Bankers.  As I mentioned in the Friday Reads, it’s not because we reward our brain surgeons, 4 star generals, or great minds. I’m appalled that this might be the century that proves Karl Marx right on how ‘capitalism’ eventually falls.  I’m only afraid that it will not be replaced with any kind of utopia; worker or otherwise.

What was Rudolf Elmer’s motivation?

Mr. Elmer said he had turned to WikiLeaks to educate society about what he considers an unfair system designed to serve the rich and aid money launderers after his offers to provide the data to universities and governments were spurned and, in his opinion, the Swiss media failed to cover the substance of his allegations. “The man in the street needs to know how this system works,” he said, referring to the offshore trusts that many “high net worth individuals” across the world use to evade taxes.

This, is the beauty of the Wikileaks.  (I’m going to take some time here to wave to our junior G-guys and G-gals!)  It gives a voice to those of us that work in the trenches holding up a system that rewards our work with pink slips, loss of insurance, and raises that don’t keep up with the cost of living don’t have much power.  The information we sit on frequently has a lot of power.  Once released to the public domain, it has even more power.  These leaks expose corruption and thievery; pure and simple.

We’ve seen the power of people with access to the internet and Wikileaks proof that their tin foil hats were rightly placed.  CNN has this disturbing story up on those in the midst of the Jasmine Revolution taking place right now through out the MENA region. Self-immolation protests–something I haven’t read about since Vietnam–are occurring in the region.  Why?

News reports out of Mauritania say a man set himself on fire Monday in front of the presidential palace. Reports identify the man as Yacoub Dahoud, who posted a Facebook message praising Bouazizi and vowing, “We will never forget you.”

Mauritanian media said Dahoud started a Facebook group called “Stop the corruption and tyranny in Mauritania.” In a statement on the page, Dahoud wrote, “Isn’t it the time for the Mauritanian people to choose their freedom?”

“The Arab world’s horrific new trend: self-immolation,” wrote Blake Hounshell of the foreignpolicy.com blog on Monday.

“There is something horrifying and, in a way, moving about these suicide attempts. It’s a shocking, desperate tactic that instantly attracts attention, revulsion, but also sympathy,” Hounshell, Foreign Policy’s managing editor, wrote.

Throughout the Tunisia protests, experts have been saying similar demonstrations could spread to other nations in the region.

Go check that CIA list for Mauritania.  It’s near the very bottom of the list with a 2010 estimated GDP per capita (ppp) annual income of $2100.  The PPP is important because it tells you that they’re making the incomes reflect consistent purchasing power based on the US dollar.  Can you imagine living on that here?

The very same social networks that were made to collect marketing information and drain funds from folks like us are becoming lifelines and important sources of information.  It has already been suggested that the Tunisian Revolution was the result of the released Wikileaks cables from the US State Department. We’ve witnessed the unsuccessful but foundation shaking Green Revolution in Iraq also.    However, the Wikileaks cable releases show that we’ve not really changed much since the 1960s.  We’re still just propping up a bunch of tin pot dictators that steal money from their countries.  Tunisian bloggers are leading the way and aided by their Wikileaks proof.  So too,  are Tunisian tweeters and Facebook groups putting the information out there.

Cyberactivism is featured in a CNN video on the page called Tunisia’s social media revolution.  (Since we’ve started featuring some of the Wikileaks, we’ve started getting hits from sites in the relevant places.  Our big pharma discussion has attracted Nigerians.  Our information on  Bangladesh has garnered hits from there.  The information we provided on Monsanto is still gathering hits today. Countries whose dictators are trying to block their access to the truth are relying on what they can find on line.

It’s been argued that Assange believes that the only way this worldwide plutocracy of  military power, financial power, and government power will be cured is through disruptive releases of truth.  This is why the US government sees him as a political provocateur instead of a journalist.  There are many organizations painting Assange as an information anarchist. Assange denied this in his interview with David Frost for English Aljazeera.

Frost: Do you think of yourself- when you see references to yourself as anarchic, or an anarchist, is that an accurate description of what you are?

Assange: No, it’s not at all an accurate description.

Frost: Why not?

Assange: That’s not what we do. We’re an organization that goes about and has a long record all over the world of exposing abuses, by exposing concrete documentation, proof of bad behavior. That’s not anarchy. That’s what people do when they’re civil, is that they engage in organized activity that promotes justice.

Frost: So therefore it’s — in that sense you’re not anarchic because you’re actually, you’re in favor of authority if it’s doing the right thing.

Assange: Correct. Correct.

Frost: You’re not automatically opposed to authority.

Assange: You know, having run an organization I understand the difficulties in building institutions, having a good institution. Institutions are very important. I mean anyone who’s worked in Africa, as I have, knows that successful civil institutions don’t just come from nowhere. It’s a — you’ll find a difference going between particular African countries or European and African countries well, clean roads and so on don’t just come from nowhere. There is an institutional infrastructure behind this. But secret institutions start to become corrupted in their purpose. They’re able to engage in secret plans which would be opposed by the population and carry them out for their own internal purposes. So they’re not performing the function that people demand that they perform.

Mr. Elmer now faces charge of theft of bank records in Switzerland and violating Swiss secrecy laws. An interesting question to ask is what is the difference between privacy laws and secrecy laws?  What purpose do they serve?

The offshore banking industry has come under increasing pressure from whistle-blowers like Mr. Elmer over the last two years. In 2009, Bradley Birkenfeld, a former private banker for UBS, was sentenced to more than three years in prison after refusing to admit his own role in the Swiss bank’s efforts to help American clients evade taxes.

Prosecutors did, however, credit Mr. Birkenfeld for helping to disclose some illegal tactics in the industry. As a result of Mr. Birkenfeld’s disclosures, UBS agreed to turn over details of several thousand client accounts to the Internal Revenue Service as part of a legal settlement. UBS agreed to pay a $780 million fine and admitted criminal wrongdoing.

In London on Monday, Mr. Assange said that financial institutions “operate outside the rule of law” because of their economic power. WikiLeaks itself had, he said, been “economically censored” by companies like Visa and MasterCard, which stopped processing donations to it late last year in response to its release of hundreds of thousands of classified United States documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and thousands of State Department cables.

WikiLeaks has also said it would release information from an American bank, thought to be the contents of a Bank of America executive’s hard drive, early this year. But, Mr. Assange said, the site is not fully “open for public business” owing to the weight of the existing leaks it is struggling to process.

The Wikileaks are playing an important role in bringing down corrupt plutocracy throughout the world. Again, you can see how important exposing offshore banking deals is to the super wealthy. It gives them fewer places to hide. It exposes their privateer status. The uber-rich provide these small states with tremendous wealth and these small states shelter assets from the obligations citizens have to help fund their country’s business.  Wikileaks is also playing an important role in exposing the utter corruption in many regimes as well as the complicity of countries–like ours–in actions that do not perpetuate democracy but further enslave people to brutal, pirate regimes. The powerful and rich may want them suppressed. Those of interested in releasing humanity from the bonds of ignorance and oppression should fully support them.

I have only two words to say to people who think our government or any other should be protected from Wikileaks.

BABY DOC.

In related breaking news from the BBC:

There has been more violence in Tunisia as the country’s prime minister announced a unity government.

Political prisoners are to be freed and the media given more freedom, both key demands of the uprising which saw the country’s president flee last week.

More from Rudolf Elmer via NPR:

“I do think as a banker I have the right to stand up if something is wrong,” said Elmer, who addressed reporters at London’s Frontline Club alongside WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“I am against the system. I know how the system works and I know the day-to-day business. From that point of view, I wanted to let society know what I know. It is damaging our society,” Elmer said.

WikiLeaks said that none of the material will be published on its website before Assange’s team has had a chance to verify the data.

Here’s another one for you on why big banks should be broken up via NBC News:

No. 2 bank overcharged troops on mortgages

NBC News exclusive: JPMorgan Chase also improperly foreclosed on homes

One of the nation’s biggest banks — JP Morgan Chase — admits it has overcharged several thousand military families for their mortgages, including families of troops fighting in Afghanistan. The bank also tells NBC News that it improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen military families.

The admissions are an outgrowth of a lawsuit filed by Marine Capt. Jonathan Rowles. Rowles is the backseat pilot of an F/A 18 Delta fighter jet and has served the nation as a Marine for five years. He and his wife, Julia, say they’ve been battling Chase almost that long.

The dispute apparently caused the bank to review its handling of all mortgages involving active-duty military personnel. Under a law known as the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), active-duty troops generally get their mortgage interest rates lowered to 6 percent and are protected from foreclosure. Chase now appears to have repeatedly violated that law, which is designed to protect troops and their families from financial stress while they’re in harm’s way.