Posts Tagged ‘whistle blower’
JP Morgan execs: Useless as [insert expletive here]
In today’s NY Times… Senior executives at JPMorgan Chase expressed serious doubts about the legitimacy of Bernard L. Madoff’s investment business more than 18 months before his Ponzi scheme collapsed but continued to do business with him, according to internal bank documents made public in a lawsuit on Thursday. Oh. My. God. If this is […]
Anonymous comment vs IMPERSONATION
Regular readers of thePaepae.com (and my occasional posts at the PropertyTalk forum) will, I hope, have absorbed my views regarding participation in internet discussions, viz: I believe in speaking in my own name. From my observation, in many cases it seems the anonymity of some commenters on the web seems to encourage them to make […]
Whistle-blowing at a news conference (note the smear)
LONDON, Jan 17: A former Swiss private banker handed over data on hundreds of offshore bank account holders to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a news conference on Monday. Rudolf Elmer once headed the office of Julius Baer in the Cayman Islands until he was fired by the bank in 2002. He is scheduled to […]
Not exactly a whodunnit
‘Dispersing lies’ — that’s what I’ve been accused of doing, by ‘expert in lying‘, spruiker Dean Letfus. His detail-free allegation (by broadcast email and on his blog) comes with bonus faulty logic and an extra smear topping: that I am allegedly doing this (‘dispersing lies’) as ‘a competitor’ — which is kind of an understated […]
In their shoes …
I was surprised recently when someone whom I know is in financial trouble himself emailed me with news of another person’s financial and personal struggles. He said he thought I’d be ‘interested’, as the person and I had previously had some negative interchanges. What the hell? Truly, it struck me as ghoulish, almost akin to […]
Does ANYONE doubt that this guy’s rights have been infringed?
From the BBC today: Julian Assange has told reporters that the US investigation into his Wikileaks organisation was “aggressive” and “illegal”. He went on to say that over 85% of his organisation’s economic resources are spent fighting “technical, legal and political attacks”. Mr Assange was speaking to reporters outside the Suffolk mansion of supporter Vaughan […]
The Spruikers’ Lament
Q: Why is that guy Peter picking on us? A: There can be only one reason: He must be in ‘direct competition’ with us! Yeah! Oh yes. Actually, maybe there’s another reason: He’s a hypocrite. That’s it. A nasty hypocrite. Because (how does it go again? Oh yes, I remember…) He’s in the exactly the […]
History will judge WikiLeaks. And they’ll be seen as right.
‘The Pentagon Papers’ author Daniel Ellsberg has added his voice to support for WikiLeaks … I heard John Pilger on the BBC, doing the same… these men are lions of conscience, and heroes of mine. Whistleblowers aren’t popular. WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in […]
Off with his head
OK, we expect reactionaries like Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly to call for the firing squad for the WikiLeaks source. And ditto whoever writes Sarah Palin’s Facebook stuff (hunt down Julian Assange, the director of Wikileaks “with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders”, describing Assange as “an anti-American operative with blood on […]
Propaganda?
Here’s a ‘new’ poster, designed by Shepard Fairey, the guy who adapted an AP photo of Barack Obama into a HOPE poster etc which sold gazillions, sparking AP to come after him for using their intellectual property without acknowledgment or royalties. (I personally think they had a point. Fairey’s unacknowledged use of the AP image […]
Tis the season?
I heard about this charges-laid-charges-dropped-investigation-re-opened circus targeting whistle-blower Julian Assange on the BBC … crikey! Remember TIME magazine’s little put-down about his mental state? Paranoid? Oh really? This extraordinarily courageous man wears a bullseye on his back. I wish him well. He’s up against people and organisations who present fake documents/bogus ‘evidence’ and pretend things […]
Paranoid (?) but a whistleblower
Over the weekend I read a fascinating profile of WikiLeaks.org founder Julian Assange in a recent TIME magazine. (It’s available online at TIME here.) Here’s a bit that struck me (emphasis mine): Assange has retained a hacker’s mentality. He works from secret bunkers on major leaks and is convinced he is under surveillance from government […]
When ‘gurus’ attack — HOW you do it is important
From a review of The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life … It’s full of tips and advice but the one I like best comes from Buffett via Dale Carnegie, author of How To Win Friends and Influence People: “Criticism is futile, said Carnegie. Rule number one, don’t criticise, condemn or complain.” … […]
In a nutshell: a matter of trust
This small comment, in the middle of an article discussing Facebook privacy, explains what’s actually lost when certain spruikers (you know who I mean) expand their hyperbole and ‘puffery’ into potentially misleading claims … and then their offerings disappoint repeatedly, as in the case of some whose activities I have highlighted here. “They’ve lost the […]
Tall poppy syndrome: last refuge of the scoundrel?
Is a claim of ‘tall poppy syndrome’ the last refuge of the scoundrel? (Yes, I know that’s supposed to be patriotism. But how about it? Or perhaps it could be claims of religious virtue?) Here’s a typical definition of the ‘syndrome’ … Tall poppy syndrome: a social phenomenon in which people of genuine merit are […]
