>great column by Matt Taibbi
>
>http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213
>
>Joanna
Matt Taibbi seems to assume that because the bank confessed, they are guilty. But this is the USA justice system - where confessions are extorted from the accused, where the presumption of innocence is long dead and a fair trial is no longer available.
This is the reason all those poor people are able to be persecuted. They can't get a fair trial in America. They are blackmailed into confessing, under threat of an even more draconian penalty. That's how the system works.
So now prosecutors have discovered that as well as of extorting drug dealers and drug users (and anyone else they think is guilty of something) they can also extort vast sums from foreign banks? How nice.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the bank is innocent. Its laughable to imagine that a big international bank is innocent. But two wrongs don't make a right, extortion and blackmail are vile crimes when committed by gangsters, but far worse crimes when committed systematically by a state authority.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas