Sharp practice....whence it came & where it's heading
Staying vigilant about 24/7 cheating....
I just opened a new bank account here in The Gambia. The branch manager told me that my debit card was "absolutely free". How kind of them, I thought, to let me have access to my own money* without charge. Later that day, I received a notification on my Smartphone saying that the cost of insuring my card against theft would be 500 Dilasis....and this had already been deducted from my new bank account. I had not asked for theft insurance, but the bank had very kindly read my mind, discerned my quantum thoughts on the matter...and pocketed the money anyway.
*I'm a 20th century bloke, and when I was young we called this "sharp practice". However, when it comes to the 'my own money' thing, I do of course understand that once I put my money in any bank on Planet Earth, by some miraculous process of transubstantiation, the money becomes their money....and I'm not really a customer at all - I'm nothing more than an unsecured lender, with no guarantees whatsoever should the bank go tits-up.
I wonder how many people reading this post grasp that reality?
Everywhere you go in the increasingly digitalised 21st century, bankers are behaving like dodgy black market Flash 'Arry spivs in wartime Britain. Should you venture abroad and use VISA cards, for every 8000 currency units you withdraw from a remote ATM, you will be charged 200 units in admin charges. But look carefully at your account statement, and you will spot that you're now being charged an extra 180 units in what is laughably called 'ancilliary interbank coordination'.
This increases the commission you're paying these bastards from 2.5% to 4.75%.
Nice work if you can get it.
Yesterday, right on cue [as she nearly always is] Meryl Nass asked as follows:
'Where did basic common sense go? When did the ethical compass disappear? Are we just not trained to have a strict moral code? Does that need to be trained or is it innate, and conditioned out? Does living in society beat it out of us? Are we psychically numbed?....it sure seems that the bad guys have more emergencies planned with which to terrorize us. And I worry that they will pull it off again. They were so good at making people hate and fear each other. They have that one figured out. Do we have the will and the wits to withstand it next time?......Economist Professor Gigi Foster delivered a TEDx talk titled The Manipulators’ Playbook at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in October 2024....It was a bold examination of how, in times of crisis, fear and conformity can be deliberately harnessed by those in power to manipulate public behavior and silence dissent....Her message was a call to defend the freedom to question, to challenge authority, and to think independently.'
Amen to all of that. What a wonderful inspiration she is for all those of us who can see and hear the pantechnicon coming down the road.....with nobody at the wheel.
Meanwhile - in the eternal Now of reality beyond distortion, distraction to produce deception - the lunatics are running the asylum formerly known as Planet Earth:
- Iranian state media says a new wave of ballistic missiles have been launched towards Israel, as more explosions rock Iran’s capital, Tehran.
- New explosions have been heard in Tehran after Iran launched missiles at targets across Israel, killing at least 13 people.
The whole point of distortion, distraction and deception is to hide the inevitability of Earthling human destruction
....and all the emerging contemporary evidence suggests that - be the subject pensions, bank bailout compensation, health scams, Secret State diplomacy or incontinent State expenditure - your Government will welch on every promise it ever made.
Whether you live in Gothenburg, London, Johannesburg, Banjul, Paris, Beijing, Canberra, Quebec, Anchorage, Brussels, Glasgow, Athens, Barcelona, Dusseldorf, Mombassa, Kansas, Santiago, Mexico, Delhi or Colombo, the outcome will be the same unless the masses stop - and rebel against the lying.