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The UK is one of the most problematic nation states on the planet. Couple all the nasty spying with all the banking, money laundering and tax havens and it's ha

The UK is one of the most problematic nation states on the planet. Couple all the nasty spying with all the banking, money laundering and tax havens and it's hard to think of one country doing more to suppress working people world-wide.

jmnicolas 11y ago
Frankly I don't think you can have the moral high ground if you live in a first world country ... I'm French so of course I would tend to agree about UK (;-) but if I start to look at my country there are a lot of things not to be proud of ... and if I look at the neighbors it's the same, even Switzerland helped South Africa back in the apartheid days on a project to gas their ghettos ! Maybe Iceland ?
- adwf 11y ago
  Yeah, it's really easy to criticise the US and UK at the moment, because they're the only ones that have had their documents leaked. If anyone thinks that France, Germany and others aren't doing the exact same stuff, then they're very mistaken.
  - nickik 11y ago
    Germany has the most active community fighting against this stuff and is far, far better then the US,UK or France. France itself is quite bad, but not to the point of US or the UK. The UK is so bad that the NSA has more rights in the UK then in the US.
    - adwf 11y ago
      My point was that no-one knows what the French and German governments are upto in secret, because it is still secret. It hasn't been leaked. The only reason the US and the UK are getting so much press is because their programs have. The UK's surveillance program was even ruled illegal once it was found out what they were doing. So what if a lot of the German public are against surveillance - so are a lot of Brits - they just don't know what their government is doing in secret. I'd bet everything I own the French and Germans and every other major country are doing the exact same stuff.
      - nickik 11y ago
        I don't know about France, at least publicly they are not very excepting of privacy arguments, specially after Paris. I have no idea about the secret part. Germany is somewhat different because of its history. We know quite a bit about what the BND does, in terms of monitoring extremist groups. We have pirates in pretty important positions and the CCC is regularly working with government in oversight commissions. It is pretty hard to hide all that you are doing, both in terms of physical infrastructure and in terms of financials. Now it may be that the BND is extremely clever and hiding all of this from basically everybody. However given the competence displayed by the BND on various action that they have taken, it is a really hard sell that they are operating a infrastructure close to the US or UK one.
        adwf 11y ago
        Yeah, but when you see the outrage that Merkel displayed over finding out her phone had been tapped by the NSA; do you seriously believe that the BND haven't tried the exact same thing on Obama or Cameron when they're in Germany? My point is that a lot of the outrage is only because the UK and US are the only ones we know of.
        nickik 11y ago
        I am talking about broad mass surveillance not individual acts of espionage.
        dogma1138 11y ago
        Yes and Germany still spied on at least 2 us Secretaries of State and Turkey. Countries spy for most of them it would irresponsible not to do so because riding on the high horse doesn't have much rewards on its own.
- kabouseng 11y ago
  "even Switzerland helped South Africa back in the apartheid days on a project to gas their ghettos" What! Please provide a source on that.
  - jmnicolas 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Coast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Coast I found some links in French stating that Switzerland launched an investigation in 2002 about this.
    - kabouseng 11y ago
      So I hope you realize the error of your statement. Nowhere did South Africa "gas" their ghetto's, nor did Switzerland help. Research was done on nerve agents, and crowd control measures (two separate research goals) and a number of other substances, which almost all countries did similar military research. Furthermore there is allegations of birth control research but this the evidence is flimsy, controversial and nowhere is it alleged that it went any further than research. So good sir, you are absolutely mistaken.
    - kabouseng 11y ago
      PS. thanks for getting back with a link. As a post script, Apartheid was bad but it was not much more than legalized discrimination. Let's not demonize Apartheid any more than for what it really was. And the current situation in South Africa is far worse than the situation ever was during the reign of Apartheid.
- branchless 11y ago
  I'm not taking the high ground. I'm British. Down with our disgusting establishment, now and forever.
fennecfoxen 11y ago
> Couple all the nasty spying with all the banking Yes, all that nasty, nasty banking. Accepting deposits, loaning out money, and expecting that money back (with a hefty 3-4% margin of profit) is truly the epitome of Evil in this 21st century. Better bring some holy water next time you go to an ATM.
- dtf 11y ago
  I think we can take banking to mean those particularly wicked fruits of the City of London... things like AIG's collapse, LIBOR and FX rigging, HSBC's drug money laundering, the seemlingly endless scandals of UK retail banking like PPIs, etc etc that have completely eroded the general public's trust of our pinstriped friends. Nobody's complaining about banking. We're worried about banking.
- branchless 11y ago
  That's not how banking works. Try reading up. http://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-intermediaries-of-loanable-funds-and-why-this-matters/ http://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-interm...
  - fennecfoxen 11y ago
    I'm aware of how banks mostly originate and securitize loans these days, rather than holding them. However, as banks continue to perform many billions of mundane operations throughout our everyday lives, mere securitization may be problematic but seems inadequate to demonstrate a clear connection to the oppression of the working man. In general, banks are not above criticism by any means, but making a throwaway statement about the existence of financial industry headquarters in a city being tantamount to Oppression is tendentious in the extreme. If one wishes to make that case in these pages while maintaining some semblance of rational discourse (as opposed to populist rhetoric and invective) then we should do so while identifying the assumptions and world-view which led to it, so that they can be properly understood and critiqued.
    - branchless 11y ago

jmnicolas 11y ago

Frankly I don't think you can have the moral high ground if you live in a first world country ... I'm French so of course I would tend to agree about UK (;-) but if I start to look at my country there are a lot of things not to be proud of ... and if I look at the neighbors it's the same, even Switzerland helped South Africa back in the apartheid days on a project to gas their ghettos ! Maybe Iceland ?

adwf 11y ago
Yeah, it's really easy to criticise the US and UK at the moment, because they're the only ones that have had their documents leaked. If anyone thinks that France, Germany and others aren't doing the exact same stuff, then they're very mistaken.
- nickik 11y ago
  Germany has the most active community fighting against this stuff and is far, far better then the US,UK or France. France itself is quite bad, but not to the point of US or the UK. The UK is so bad that the NSA has more rights in the UK then in the US.
  - adwf 11y ago
    My point was that no-one knows what the French and German governments are upto in secret, because it is still secret. It hasn't been leaked. The only reason the US and the UK are getting so much press is because their programs have. The UK's surveillance program was even ruled illegal once it was found out what they were doing. So what if a lot of the German public are against surveillance - so are a lot of Brits - they just don't know what their government is doing in secret. I'd bet everything I own the French and Germans and every other major country are doing the exact same stuff.
    - nickik 11y ago
      I don't know about France, at least publicly they are not very excepting of privacy arguments, specially after Paris. I have no idea about the secret part. Germany is somewhat different because of its history. We know quite a bit about what the BND does, in terms of monitoring extremist groups. We have pirates in pretty important positions and the CCC is regularly working with government in oversight commissions. It is pretty hard to hide all that you are doing, both in terms of physical infrastructure and in terms of financials. Now it may be that the BND is extremely clever and hiding all of this from basically everybody. However given the competence displayed by the BND on various action that they have taken, it is a really hard sell that they are operating a infrastructure close to the US or UK one.
      - adwf 11y ago
        Yeah, but when you see the outrage that Merkel displayed over finding out her phone had been tapped by the NSA; do you seriously believe that the BND haven't tried the exact same thing on Obama or Cameron when they're in Germany? My point is that a lot of the outrage is only because the UK and US are the only ones we know of.
        nickik 11y ago
        I am talking about broad mass surveillance not individual acts of espionage.
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        Yes and Germany still spied on at least 2 us Secretaries of State and Turkey. Countries spy for most of them it would irresponsible not to do so because riding on the high horse doesn't have much rewards on its own.
kabouseng 11y ago
"even Switzerland helped South Africa back in the apartheid days on a project to gas their ghettos" What! Please provide a source on that.
- jmnicolas 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Coast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Coast I found some links in French stating that Switzerland launched an investigation in 2002 about this.
  - kabouseng 11y ago
    So I hope you realize the error of your statement. Nowhere did South Africa "gas" their ghetto's, nor did Switzerland help. Research was done on nerve agents, and crowd control measures (two separate research goals) and a number of other substances, which almost all countries did similar military research. Furthermore there is allegations of birth control research but this the evidence is flimsy, controversial and nowhere is it alleged that it went any further than research. So good sir, you are absolutely mistaken.
  - kabouseng 11y ago
    PS. thanks for getting back with a link. As a post script, Apartheid was bad but it was not much more than legalized discrimination. Let's not demonize Apartheid any more than for what it really was. And the current situation in South Africa is far worse than the situation ever was during the reign of Apartheid.
branchless 11y ago
I'm not taking the high ground. I'm British. Down with our disgusting establishment, now and forever.

fennecfoxen 11y ago

> Couple all the nasty spying with all the banking Yes, all that nasty, nasty banking. Accepting deposits, loaning out money, and expecting that money back (with a hefty 3-4% margin of profit) is truly the epitome of Evil in this 21st century. Better bring some holy water next time you go to an ATM.

dtf 11y ago
I think we can take banking to mean those particularly wicked fruits of the City of London... things like AIG's collapse, LIBOR and FX rigging, HSBC's drug money laundering, the seemlingly endless scandals of UK retail banking like PPIs, etc etc that have completely eroded the general public's trust of our pinstriped friends. Nobody's complaining about banking. We're worried about banking.
branchless 11y ago
That's not how banking works. Try reading up. http://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-intermediaries-of-loanable-funds-and-why-this-matters/ http://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-interm...
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  I'm aware of how banks mostly originate and securitize loans these days, rather than holding them. However, as banks continue to perform many billions of mundane operations throughout our everyday lives, mere securitization may be problematic but seems inadequate to demonstrate a clear connection to the oppression of the working man. In general, banks are not above criticism by any means, but making a throwaway statement about the existence of financial industry headquarters in a city being tantamount to Oppression is tendentious in the extreme. If one wishes to make that case in these pages while maintaining some semblance of rational discourse (as opposed to populist rhetoric and invective) then we should do so while identifying the assumptions and world-view which led to it, so that they can be properly understood and critiqued.
  - branchless 11y ago