dieseltaylor Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 Basically Barcys Bank borrows money from itself, lends it to a company it owns 100% and by skullduggery then improves its tax position to effectively defraud the UK public The original Bank documents are here: http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Barclays_Bank_gags_Guardian_over_leaked_memos_detailing_offshore_tax_scam%2C_16_Mar_2009 If you live in Australia your Govt has probably blocked your access. As we all know all the news you should know ought to be censored. I am surprised that in a democracy people are happy for their ISp's to roll over so easily for a Government. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted March 19, 2009 Author Share Posted March 19, 2009 I suddenly realised that if Australians could not see Wikileaks then they probably could not access this: Summary This list contains 2395 webpages or site variations derived from the those secretly banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and used by a government approved censorship software maker in its "ACMA only" censorship mode. The last update to the ACMA list is August 6, 2008. While Wikileaks is used to exposing secret government censorship in developing countries, we now find Australia acting like a democratic backwater. Apparently without irony, ACMA threatens fines of upto $11,000 a day for linking to sites on its secret, unreviewable, censorship blacklist -- a list the government hopes to expand into a giant national censorship machine. History shows that secret censorship systems, whatever their original intent, are invariably corrupted into anti-democratic behavior. This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring Wikileaks. We were not notified by ACMA. In December last year we released the secret Internet censorship list for Thailand. Of the sites censored in 2008, 1,203 sites were classified as "lese majeste" -- criticizing the Royal family. Like Australia, the Thai censorship system was originally pushed to be a mechanism to prevent the child pornography. Research shows that while such blacklists are dangerous to "above ground" activities such as political discourse, they have little effect on the production of child pornography, and by diverting resources and attention from traditional policing actions, may even be counter-productive. For a fascinating insider's account, see My life in child porn. In January 2009, the Thai system was used to censor Australian reportage about the imprisonment of Harry Nicolaides, an Australian writer, who wrote a novel containing a single paragraph deemed to be critical of the Thai Monarchy. Most of the sites on the Australian list have no obvious connection to child pornography. Some have changed owners while others were clearly always about other subjects. Australian democracy must not be permitted to sleep with this loaded gun. If Australia's "Senator for Censorship", Steven Conroy, has his way, Australia will be the first Western country to have a mandatory Internet censorship regime. When human rights activists push for transparent government and a life free from censorship, the retort from developing world governments will rightly be "haha... what about Australia?". The full blacklist follows in hyperlink form. Note that entries 1.52 and 1.53 are somewhat unusual; while confirmed to be part of the ACMA blacklist in censorship software it is possible that these are contamination of some sort from another list. It is also possible that they are entries previously wrongly excluded from the ACMA because they were on another (non-ACMA) list. Regardless, the complete list is the one that is being used in by the censorship software maker, when placed into "adult - unfiltered" (ACMA) mode. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 If true as reported, this is a rum deal. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 Time for someone to do something about it, it looks like. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
costard Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 Diesel - wikileaks was "off air" for a while a few months ago, I'm able to follow your link to it today. Australia always has been a police state - it's just that no-one could be arsed seeing it through to a dictatorship. As far as the banking scam goes, well.... no worse, really, than in-house insurance which sees fees paid for the insurance of knowingly un-insurable debts. cf. AIG and NINJA loans in the US. The letter of the law is followed (insurance is required because it means there is another layer of inspection of the riskiness of the original loan), but the intent is bypassed. If the behaviour of Barclays is found to be infraction of the taxation laws of your great nation, I would expect the board members and senior accountants to see some jail time. Somehow, I doubt it'll happen. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
REVS Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 As with all government attempts to block the net, the Australian Federal Government's censorship plan is being laughed at by a great majority of the media, and the entirety of the telecommunications industry (except the dudes who got the contract advising the idiots in government that "it might be possible –*give me a few million and I'll see what I can come up with"). As far as I know, all our biggest ISPs, including the biggest one, Bigpond, aren't cooperating with the government's stupid trial run of their stupid net censorship plan. So it's one of those "Move along, nothing to look at here, folks" kind of things, excepting that it's wasting many millions of dollars at a time when there are plenty of better things to spend many millions of dollars on. And of course anyone with a paranoia problem will have something to really worry about. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted March 20, 2009 Author Share Posted March 20, 2009 I am encourage by the comments I see. Disheartened by the stupidity of politicians in power. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mace Posted March 22, 2009 Share Posted March 22, 2009 Disheartened by the stupidity of politicians in power. Everyday must bring you heartbreak then. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stalins Organ Posted March 22, 2009 Share Posted March 22, 2009 Are politicians any less stupid when they are not in power? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergei Posted March 22, 2009 Share Posted March 22, 2009 In a democratic society politicians are just as adept, uncorrupted and wise as is the people that elected them. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Affentitten Posted March 22, 2009 Share Posted March 22, 2009 Basically Barcys Bank borrows money from itself, lends it to a company it owns 100% and by skullduggery then improves its tax position to effectively defraud the UK public The original Bank documents are here: http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Barclays_Bank_gags_Guardian_over_leaked_memos_detailing_offshore_tax_scam%2C_16_Mar_2009 If you live in Australia your Govt has probably blocked your access. As we all know all the news you should know ought to be censored. I am surprised that in a democracy people are happy for their ISp's to roll over so easily for a Government. Like the contractors in Iraq who were sub-contracting to a Cayman Islands company they owned 100% and then adding a margin on a 'cost plus' basis to bill the US government. Or the empty trucks being run across Iraq so that the vehicle movements can be invoiced.... It happens all over the place. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
costard Posted March 22, 2009 Share Posted March 22, 2009 In a democratic society politicians are just as adept, uncorrupted and wise as is the people that elected them. Man, you have a bleak outlook on life. Are politicians any less stupid when they are not in power? Not if you go by the opposition parties in the Oz or the US. They haven't even worked out that they lost the last election. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted March 23, 2009 Share Posted March 23, 2009 Man, you have a bleak outlook on life. (snip) My own feeling is that this applies to politicians across the board and not just in democracies...of course, in democracies, we crow about how glorious it is to express the will of the people in the democratic process. And when the people are gullible idiots, they often vote more idiots into power. Go figure. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted March 23, 2009 Author Share Posted March 23, 2009 OOO I like this precedent. I think there may be a lever here in this case reported this month Petroleum Mishaps New York, NY: (Mar-05-08) A lawsuit against BP PLC, launched by US shareholders, alleges that the company's mismanagement led to a series of mishaps in the US. The suit, brought by two BP shareholders, the London Pensions Fund Authority and Unite Here's pension fund, began in October 2006, naming the company and its executives as defendants. The mishaps referred to a Texas City, TX, refinery blast that killed 15 workers in 2005, a partial shutdown of an Alaska pipeline in 2006 and a federal investigation into alleged propane price manipulation. Company sources confirmed that the parties had reached a settlement in the case, in which BP PLC agreed to resolve the Alaska suit with a $9.75 million payout to the plaintiffs to cover lawyers' fees and costs. Additionally, as part of the deal, the British oil company also agreed to allow tighter oversight by its largest investors and further agreed that ex-Chief Executive John Browne will permanently waive rights to certain termination benefits, which had been frozen last year. [CNN MONEY: BP SETTLES ALASKA COURT CASE] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
costard Posted March 23, 2009 Share Posted March 23, 2009 How so? The lawyers collected their money, the Chief Exec. waived rights to a future benefit (so no punishment inflicted there) and the management and accounting of the business is now to be carried out by two firms instead of one, eliminating the profit generated by the exploitation of the resource. No win for the shareholder here. I'm loving the news as reported of the NYSE surge today - if you read "speculator" for "investor" you get at the truth. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted March 24, 2009 Share Posted March 24, 2009 Additionally, as part of the deal, the British oil company also agreed to allow tighter oversight by its largest investors and further agreed that ex-Chief Executive John Browne will permanently waive rights to certain termination benefits, which had been frozen last year. It's a start. It might not represent an immediate gain for shareholders, but if it becomes standard practice, companies might start seeing more responsible management. But yet more is needed. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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