OntheWilderSide

Kimberly writes:

Okay…so the FBI has gone after hackers, who messed with the financial system by hacking at Visa, Mastercard and PayPal…

But, when does the FBI arrest the executives at those firms, who jeopardized our banking system by making arbitrary decisions to stop processing donations to Wikileaks? When does someone officially punish or arrest Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal for interfering with Julian Assange’s right to get support and make a living, based on flimsy charges which did not even materialize until a long time after the corporate decision was enacted? Who is in trouble because I was blocked from my freedom of speech and the freedom to use my own money, because my Visa card suddenly didn’t work to support Wikileaks or Julian Assange?

Also, what about all of the crime and havoc the banks have caused in general? When do the US banks get in trouble for making bad mortgages, red-lining communities, and foreclosing improperly on people? Why are we investigating young people and computer hackers, but not making bad executives and bad bank board members accountable?

It’s all just a little backwards, if you look at it from a fairness point of view. But, it’s right on point, if you think about the history of justice and unfettered, corporate capitalism.

(PS – see Julian Assange at Splendour in the Grass music festival in Britain on July 29th. And, see my Wikileaks video at the bottom of this post.)

Story at The Guardian, UK:
FBI targets Anonymous hacking group in series of raids on homes
Tuesday 19 July 2011

Suspected members of collective allegedly behind attacks on Fox News and Visa websites arrested

A 16-year-old boy was arrested in London Tuesday night while the FBI detained at least 14 people after raiding homes across the US as part of an international operation targeting the hacking activist groups Anonymous and LulzSec…

Anonymous hit the mainstream media headlines in December when it rallied to the support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Asange. It has an agenda of sympathy for freedom of information and attacked the websites of companies like Visa, MasterCard and PayPal in protest at those firms severing ties to WikiLeaks and making it difficult for Assange to raise money from supporters…

I stumbled upon an opinion piece at New York Magazine, with sentiments similar to mine about the banks being criminal:

(excerpts from) NY Magazine
Obama’s Original Sin
The president’s failure to demand a reckoning from the moneyed interests who brought the economy down has cursed his first term, and could prevent a second.
By Frank Rich / Published Jul 3, 2011

What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they “are burnt and purged away.”..

Even now, on the heels of Bank of America’s reluctant $8.5 billion settlement with investors who held its mortgage-backed securities, the Obama administration may be handing it and its peers new get-out-of-jail-free cards. With the Department of Justice’s blessing, the Iowa attorney general, Tom Miller, is pushing the 49 other states to sign on to a national financial settlement ending their investigations of the biggest mortgage lenders. What some call a settlement others may find a cover-up….

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwpuxaugjMs]

Filed under: international politics, music, News, progressive politics, social & economic justice, video Tagged: | Anonymous, banking, banking system, Financial System, Free Speech, Julian Assange, PayPal, Wikileaks