No New Year celebrations for Tibetans

Tibetans in a northwest part of China which has been a focus of self-immolation protests against Chinese rule marked a low-key lunar New Year on Monday, with many saying celebrations were inappropriate while the burnings continued.

...

Nearly 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest against Chinese rule since 2009, with most of them dying.

In the past few months, the government has begun a new tactic to discourage the protests, detaining and jailing people it deems to have incited the burnings.

The latest detentions have taken place in Gansu's neighboring province of Qinghai, where police last week detained 70 "criminal suspects", 12 of whom were formally arrested, meaning they will be charged.

The government has also seized televisions in Tibetan areas to prevent people from watching "anti-China" programs broadcast from abroad.

At the same time, Beijing has stepped up propaganda efforts aimed at the outside world, heaping blame on exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and overseas Tibetan groups for fomenting the self-immolations.

How China explore and destroy Tibet

No signs of life have been detected at a gold mining site in a mountainous area of Tibet more than 24 hours after a massive landslide buried 83 workers, Chinese state media said today.

 Exhausted model

The daily Die Welt declared recently that the tax haven as an economic model has been "exhausted." 

Luxembourg, with a financial sector more than five times the size of its €44 billion GDP has come under particular scrutiny. 

With a financial sector twice the size of its GDP, the United Kingdon could also become a point of interest.

 Stop the corporate food takeover 

Monsanto and Co. are at it again. These profit-hungry biotech companies have found a way to exclusively ‘own’ something that freely belongs to us all -- our food! They’re trying to patent away our everyday vegetables and fruits like cucumber, broccoli and melons, forcing growers to pay them and risk being sued if they don’t.

Carlos Kleiber - La Boheme (Puccini) - La Scala 1979

Rape victim’s 100 lashes sentence

A rape victim’s 100 lashes sentence in Maldives has caused international outcry, after the teen subject to the repeated rapes was accused of having consensual sex with another man aside from the rape.

The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2012 goes to Iranians Nasrin Sotoudeh, an imprisoned human rights defender and lawyer, and Jafar Panahi, a film director who with his work called attention to the hardships suffered by Iran's poor.

 (Spain) Central government's move to stop schools using Catalan is insulting.
...
There has even been wild talk about mobilising the army.

(The Times, 22.12.2012)

'Republicans and Gun Lobby Complicit' in Newtown

Another Gunman and the Gun Owners of America

Pussy-Pussy and Mafia-Putin

Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.

The state’s leaders stand with saintly expressions in church, but their sins are far greater than ours. We’ve put on our political punk concerts because the Russian state system is dominated by rigidity, closedness and caste. Аnd the policies pursued serve only narrow corporate interests to the extent that even the air of Russia makes us ill.

Our protest has raised the issue of the fusion of the Russian Orthodox Church and the security services

{how nice are the british, british, british, british people like BBC producer Wilfred De'ath (british, british), when they stand for the freedom of the Pussy Riot. In Russia... Ho! Mother Russia... (Russia / no Russia). Curiously no one talks about Portugal (of course not, because british were participants in some State corruption cases, like Freeport, where a portuguese former first minister - the same who ruined the country - was involved, who was protected by the british former first minister Gordon Brown, from the same european party, perhaps from the same branch of the masonry, who ordered SFO's files relating to the case to be destroyed) the "pro-mafia state" in the very earth of the EU. The portuguese "justice" is just a pathetic joke; an insult to the world (the Court of Accounts is often accurately but has no effective power: in this case - just one among many - it would be accountable the former first minister, the Freeport's man... who is embroiled in lots of corruption cases, a member of the present government, and the CEO of a public company. In Portugal it never happened: the laws were tailored to protect those craps... just like in Greece). The regular portuguese "justice" is a very rubbish from long time ago: in 1976 a timer controlled bomb killed Padre Max and Maria de Lurdes - and there were no culprits! A very contemporary example of the portuguese "justice". Portugal's Mafia State is all of this - and worst. Portugal 2012: 118 killings - most of them in family! The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, who is a former portuguese first-minister, is one of the main responsibles for the portuguese present situation. Another responsible for the portuguese situation is ECB's vice-president, Vítor Constâncio, who was Portugal's central bank governor that didn't detect the huge corruption at BPN and BPP, and just smiled when taxpayers got misery to save the former. Portugal'Casa Pia 2007: criminal impunity for crimes against the humanity}

The portuguese"justice" did protect the 175.000 euros/month pension (plus bodyguards & use of a plane), payed by a nationalised (!) bank, to an ex-ceo! The very same terrorist and corrupt "justice" jailed people whom stole some food from supermarkets (because they were hungry!), and let down people to the street.

Yet so far no senior French politician convicted of corruption has been jailed *

* the same as Portugal & Greece

poundzonliberalmarket

Release Imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo and Wife Liu Xi

A Two-Year Travelogue from Hell

before the senior Assad came into power in the wake of a military coup, the Alawites, about 10 percent of the population, were the poorest people in the country, only coming to Damascus as servants. But then Hafez Assad, after rising through the ranks of the military, finally came to power in another coup, in 1970. His son is now determined to hold on to that power at all costs -- or else, as his soldiers' slogan goes, "we will burn the country down!"

The Arab world has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list. The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people. 

"Something has gone wrong inside the Muslim world"

"Something has gone wrong inside the Muslim world," Rushdie continued. Just a few decades ago, he said, major cities in the Arab and Muslim world were outward-looking. But "in the last half century, these cultures seem to have slid backwards into medievalism and represssion. ... It is one of the great self-inflicted wounds."

Southern Arabia's holy warrior, Abraha, had taken control of large areas before long. He even attempted to free bishops being held prisoner by the Persian enemy in Nisibis (in modern-day Turkey), some 2,500 kilometers away.

Saudi celebrity preacher who 'raped and tortured' his five-year-old daughter to death is released after paying 'blood money'

The money is considered compensation under Islamic law

Information is power -  Aaron Swartz 

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.

Berg' Lulu Suite, Debussy' Jeux D'eau & Stravinsky' Firebird - Pierre Boulez / CSO

Charlatans

Bunch of charlatans that has dried up the country to breaking point

"or some institute doing Christ alone knows what ... organizing costing 50.000 Euros, maybe. I jest not."

It was 250.000 euros (spent by a Public Institute in a private party), not a "mere" 50.000 euros. The Portuguese State Mafia like to enjoy big things... The portuguese are charlatans, corrupts, killers (look at the statistics of the killings in Portugal) and cowers (they mostly kill the women and the weak).


Greece's corrupt "elite" (as the portuguese)

But it remains an open question whether Greece’s leaders will be able to engineer such a transformation. In the past year, despite numerous promises to increase transparency, the country actually dropped 14 places from the previous year’s corruption survey.

The greek tried to blame the germans for they present situation, caused by their huge and generalized corruption. In Portugal "they" tried to make the same. Who tried it? The bankers, the politicians, the "great" lawers and the "great" administrators, namely, whom are the real responsible to the ruin of the country.

GM

At a time when we desperately need new ideas to grow more food, genetic modification offers more chemicals, more expensive seeds and patents to protect corporates.

Beethoven - Symphonies 4 & 7 - Concergebouw Orchestra - Carlos Kleiber

D. Fischer-Dieskau (28 May 1925 – 18 May 2012)

Sergei Prokofjev - Pianoconcert nr.3 op.26 - Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest / Gatti / Yuja Wang

States Must Sacrifice Sovereignty to Save Euro

The euro can only be saved with a system of coercion. Brussels must have the power to decide on government spending in Italy, Portugal or wherever."

Not time for Eurosceptic opportunism
Britain should be doing all it can to help, not standing well back, shouting for everyone else to do something, and then threatening to cut the rope.


Who is Responsible for the Greek Tragedy?

Greece’s private creditors were more than happy to pour money into the country, only to shirk their burden-sharing responsibilities when the artificial boom could no longer be sustained. The over-lending was so widespread that at one point it drove down the yield differential between Greek and German bonds to just six basis points – a ridiculously low level for two countries that differ so fundamentally in terms of economic management and financial conditions.

Germans are seen as the hardest working and least corruptible people in the European Union, a survey of eight EU countries shows, with Chancellor Angela Merkel receiving good marks for her crisis management. Greece, which has high praise for itself, is viewed poorly by its neighbors.

Before the euro Greece had a history of debt defaults, financial contagion, inflation crises and banking crises (see Reinhart and Roggof, 2009). This was usually reflected in its higher bond yields – a risk premium for investing in its debt. The spread between Greek and German bonds was historically always high. 

Ever since 1841, the market requires that US states running up questionable levels of debt pay an interest-rate premium to compensate for the default risk. By contrast, Greece and the eurozone's other heavy borrowers were able to borrow at interest rates that had fallen to virtually the same level as German bunds. (Greece...)

Greek economic crisis isn't slowing corruption

Spain... Portugal...
6 June 2012 9:24PM

the government in Madrid angrily rejected the demands, insisting thatit did not need rescuing. With fears of a euro meltdown having rapidly shifted from Greece to Spain, Rajoy is pleading for a direct eurozone rescue of his country's banks,

Don't need rescuing but can someone else rescue us. Weird.

I'm here because I want to know why Castellón built an airport from which no aircraft has ever taken off, an airport that cost €150 million in a city that's only 65 kilometers from Valencia, which already has an airport that's much too big for the region.

...
An airport was built in Ciudad Real, 160 kilometers from Madrid, at a cost of €1 billion. It now serves small private aircraft.

Whats about to tackle the "State corruption" in Spain? Is not, the "legal corruption", at same level as it exists in Portugal? * (don't compare with Romenia and Bulgaria because they are not in the "eurozone")

* keeping on Portugal, just try to find out the number of awful murders there  and see how the portuguese police fail all time to protect the vitims of the portuguese murders and thugs. The Portuguese Parliament and portuguese governments are too busy in managing to protect the "mafia-contracts" favouring  big economical groups and banks, that led the country to the bankrupcy and the regular people to the misery, so there's no time to lost in preventing (mostly women) killings.

Since the EU is not able to stop blatant crimes and huge corruption in its territories why should the world listening to anything coming from the EU? Portugal, for example... is not "only" corrupt... (Portugal is like a Mafia State) (the strange case of the not yellow submarins. There's also the helicopters' case and many many more...) 

Imagine

"imagine what would have happened had the UK chosen to maintain its trade links with independent Commonwealth nations upon decolonisation, and trade freely with the rest of the world, rather than joining the EU’s customs union, thus discriminating against its old trading partners and deliberately shifting its trading patterns towards what was to become the lowest-growth, most stagnant part of the world economy?"

Surely!(since the "asian" rapists "old trading partners" are very far from UK you are definitely alright - but, please, don't forget to blame the EU if they were in UK all the time (sections of the pakistani community have been doing this for years to Sikh and Hindu girls and a Sikh gang was formed to combat this back in the 80s).

Lahore: A nine-year-old girl was in a critical condition in hospital after being raped by three men in Pakistan's Punjab province, police said.

Death penalty for rapists 

Teenage sister watched parents suffocate 17-year-old Shafilea Ahmed 

Are those murders new in the UK?

Girls as young as five 'forced into marriage' 

"The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said at least 943 women and girls were murdered last year for allegedly defaming their family’s honour. The statistics highlight the scale of violence suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan"

Five women 'killed by tribal elders for dancing and singing with men at wedding party in remote Pakistani village'

"one Christian couple was sentenced to 25 years in 2010 after being accused of touching the Qur'an with unwashed hands"

Fifteen men and two women have been found beheaded in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. Officials said the victims were killed by Taliban insurgents as punishment for attending a mixed-sex party with music and dancing.

Former Pakistani dancing girl commits suicide 12 years after horrific acid attack

Pakistani parents kill 15-year-old daughter with acid 

Another 27 children's bodies were found massacred in Syria

To stop this horror, we need to cut off the flow of arms to the regime. There is one way to do it, but it's going to take all of us working together to make it happen. 

India and the US are key clients to Syria’s main weapons supplier -- the state-owned Russian company Rosoboronexport. If we can get the two countries to threaten to halt all deals unless the Russians stop supporting Syria's murder machine, the arms dealers could be forced to stop their Syria sales. Both the US and India want to stop the violence in Syria, but diplomacy is failing. This is their best chance -- let's give them a massive mandate to act. 

Syrian government forces and militia loyal to the Assad regime are killing and sexually abusing children and using them as human shields

Opposition fighters in Syria have hitherto been handicapped by a reliance on an old and inadequate arsenal, while the regime in Damascus has been able to rely on a supply of arms from Russia and Iran. Moscow is arming Syria with attack helicopters, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, claimed yesterday.

• A United Nations investigation into the killing of more than 100 civilians in Houla last month says forces loyal to the government "may have been responsible" for many of the deaths. It said the location of government checkpoints, and the timing of bombardments of the area pointed to government complicity in the massacre

"A lot of children have been killed. My friends, my cousins."

Qatar is an autocracy and Saudi Arabia is among the most pernicious of caliphate-kingly-dictatorships in the Arab world. Rulers of both states inherit power from their families – just as Bashar has done – and Saudi Arabia is an ally of the Salafist-Wahabi rebels in Syria, just as it was the most fervent supporter of the medieval Taliban during Afghanistan's dark ages.

The dark side of the Arab Spring

Egypt, where Islamist militias led by the Muslim Brotherhood ousted long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak, has seen liberty for religious minorities enter a crisis. Coptic Christians — who comprise approximately 10 percent of Egypt’s population — had experienced persecution for decades from Muslim groups, but until the fall of Mubarak, the government provided the Copts with official protection.

Since Mubarak’s demise, however, the situation for Copts has deteriorated. A wave of targeted murders, rapes, mob beatings and church burnings has devastated the Coptic Christian community on an almost daily basis for the past year. Despite the brutality of these attacks, the new democratic government has shown no desire to stop the persecution. Last October, a peaceful march protesting the destruction of a Coptic Christian church was broken up by police and military forces. Over 20 people were killed and more than 300 people were injured, some of them run over by military vehicles. In a recent and typical instance, when a mob of 3,000 Muslims attacked and burned Coptic homes, churches and shops in the village of Kobry-el-Sharbat, the police waited outside the village until the mob had enough of looting and beating. SAM HOEL

So in Tunisia, once the most secular and progressive country in the Arab world, gangs of Salafist Muslim thugs now roam the streets, threatening unveiled women and firebombing shops that dare to sell alcohol. In Yemen, Al Qaeda now controls large tracts of the south of country, while in Egypt, the first round of the presidential election has resulted in a run‑off between an Islamist hardliner and a former military crony of Mubarak — hardly the victory for democracy that the Egyptian people were promised at the height of the revolution.

With Mali’s north under rebel control, fears are growing that a breakaway Islamist state could emerge, creating a local stronghold for the region’s jihadis and criminal gangs.

Salafists in German 

The Salafists were waiting. By the time the violence finally came to an end, 29 police had been injured, two of them landing in the hospital with stab wounds. The pro-NRW demonstrators that the police had been protecting were unharmed.

Salafists also believe, among other anti-Western doctrines, that democracy, because it is a man-made form of government, must be destroyed.

Cologne-based rapper Najafi has drawn the wrath of Shiite Muslims after publishing a song that appeared to make fun of the 10th imam. Following a fatwa by an Iranian ayatollah, he has received death threats, and there is a $100,000 bounty on his head. Now he is under police protection but insists he will keep making music.

German neo-Nazis helped the Palestinian terrorist organisation Black September to carry out the infamous massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, intelligence files released nearly four decades after the killings revealed yesterday.

Jiang Zemin himself has shown the way regarding corruption. In October 2007, former Minister of Finance Jin Renqing resigned unexpectedly, presumably because of the money transferred abroad by Jin and Jiang Zemin a few years before—nearly 100 billion yuan (US$15.8 billion) in misplaced funds.

The Party’s Central Disciplinary Commission is currently investigating a major corruption case that is linked to Jiang and his son, Jiang Mianheng. The money involved in the financial fraud could reach as high as 1.2 trillion yuan (US$190 billion).

The corruption is symptomatic of the radical immorality of the persecution itself. Crimes—slander, theft, brainwashing, unimaginable tortures, rape, and murder—are not only permitted, but are also required by the persecution. The officials who enforce the persecution gain a freedom from all notions of right and wrong so that crime comes easily to them.

In China’s five thousand year history, no single dynasty or political figure has killed as many Chinese citizens as the CCP has. In a time of peace, the CCP has persecuted hundreds of millions of Chinese, causing 80 million Chinese to die from unnatural causes. This is more than is estimated to have died in World Wars One and Two combined. Evidence on Organ Harvesting in China.

Jiang Weisuo

A man who earned nationwide fame as a whistle-blower exposing malpractice in the mainland dairy industry is dead from injuries he sustained in a beating 

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone
NHK Symphony Orchestra
Paul Kletzki, conductor
Filmed at the Salle Pleyel, Paris, 24 October 1960

Firebird

Hard to swallow?

How it was possible?  

Perhaps the contemporary art is transformed in a mere financial product where the artist/PR count more than the "product" itself. When musiciens work hard, year after year, sometimes to achieve very little, here, in the contemporary art world, relations - artists/gallerists/curators - and the arranged image of the artist - is whats make things move further. Little surprise if Damien Hirst is "the artist" in the city of the city... It still real great artists in the world today, so we can just to compare - but the point is how it was possible to someone like Hirst get where he is now: at Tate Modern. We can just to reduce it to the british art and to the british society - where two guys were able to make a huge business with Hirst's objects and collections of objects?

Anguish in Azerbaijan

Baku, set to host the Eurovision Song Contest in just over a month, is rapidly trying to become a modern city. To do so, it is forcibly removing residents from their homes to make way for slick new skyscrapers and other development projects. Those who try to stay bear the brunt of the government's wrath.

Web freedom faces greatest threat 

Threats range from governments trying to control citizens to the rise of Facebook and Apple-style 'walled gardens'.

As concerned global citizens, we urge you to immediately drop the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Our democracy and civil liberties are under threat from the excessive and unnecessary Internet surveillance powers it grants.

Google says it increasingly fields requests from government agencies trying to use their power to suppress political opinions and other material they don't like. 

Rebellion in the Nuba Mountains *

ON MARCH 16th George Clooney, a film star, was arrested for picketing the Sudanese embassy in Washington, DC. His aim was to highlight the brutal campaign by Sudan’s government to suppress a rebellion in the Nuba Mountains, close to the border with newly independent South Sudan. * (and others)

Syrian regime accused

The UN has accused the Syrian regime of "crimes against humanity" – including the use of snipers against small children – and has drawn up a list of senior officials who should face investigation, reportedly including President Bashar al-Assad. guardian

Patients tortured by medical staff 

A video leaked from a military hospital in the embattled Syrian city of Homs has revealed horrific images of patients receiving torture, instead of treatment, by medical staff. alarabiya

A fleeing refugee tells Channel 4 News of "total genocide" and sexual violence allegedly committed by Syrian soldiers in and around the besieged city of Jisr al-Shughour. channel4

Assad is keeping his troops in the dark. To prevent them from defecting, the soldiers are deployed to new locations every few days, primarily in the sprawling, poor northern suburbs of the capital city -- with no mobile phones and no knowledge of where they are.

Russia, a longtime Assad ally, was giving Assad diplomatic cover to intensify his crackdown

The reports from Syria of the deliberate savagery of government forces as they shell, torture and shoot civilians from areas that have dared to protest against them is unbearable to read or to watch. In the city of Homs, families just like yours or mine are trapped in a city which is being shelled from early morning until darkness falls. Buildings are being obliterated as terrified inhabitants hide in cellars. There is no water or electricity and people are running out of medicines and food.

Certainly the massacre at Houla on Friday was horrible even by the standards of this conflict: more than 100 people killed, many of them young children. They join the estimated 13,000 Syrians who have died in the past 15 months, most at the hands of the regime.

Iran to execute five Ahwazis 

Iran has one of the highest rates of executions in the world. 

Putin's Mafia State

Sergei Magnitsky's mother vows to continue fight for justice.

The West must speak out against this thug - Economic growth based on gas and oil can no longer compensate for the lose of industry, education and dignity that comes from living in a mafia state. (Garry Kasparov in The Times)

Putin mingles with Berlusconi (Bunga-Bunga)

How did Vladimir Putin afford his £450,000 watch collection?

Putin's 'Luxurious Life' Set Out By Activists

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Ekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alehina – all members of the anarchic Pussy Riot punk band – have been in prison since March, held on charges of hooliganism which could eventually mean a seven-year sentence.

Ukraine Is Becoming Increasingly Authoritarian

Murder and power, Chinese style

The son of the premier Wen Jiabao, a supposed "liberal" opposed to Bo, has been linked to a dollars 100m investment fund, a story kept out of Chinese newspapers. Wen's wife is a lover of expensive jewellery. A secret US diplomatic cable, quoted by WikiLeaks, suggests influence is for sale by the Wen family.

President Hu Jintao's son has been linked to a controversial telecoms deal in Africa. When a young man died in a black Ferrari crash in Beijing last month, rumours soon had it that he was the illegitimate son of the politburo stalwart Jia Qinglin, who is said to have large property interests. And so it goes on.

Chang welcomes Bo’s downfall: “I think it’s a very good thing this guy fell because he was a huge promoter of Mao, and he did it in a very cynical way. This guy was portraying himself as an anti-corruption zealot. He was torturing people, executing people, for alleged gangsterism — true or not, these cases aren’t going through any legal process — and yet was himself very corrupt. He was one of the top guys, you can see how murky it is. Anyone who promotes the Mao era as the era most free of corruption, who knows Mao was responsible for the death of well over 70 million Chinese ... it makes my blood boil.”

Falun Gong practitioners have heard 610 Office, labor-camp, and prison staff repeat certain policies over and over: “Being beaten to death will count as suicide.” “Cremate the body immediately.” “Ruin their reputations, exhaust their finances, and destroy them physically.”

‘Partnership’ in which one partner robs the other

Joseph Stiglitz characterizes the Obama administration’s vast transfer of money and pubic debt to the banks as a “privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a ‘partnership’ in which one partner robs the other.” 

Prof. Bill Black describes banks as becoming criminogenic and innovating “control fraud.” globalresearch

Far away from funding industrial growth and development 

Banking has moved so far away from funding industrial growth and economic development that it now benefits primarily at the economy’s expense in a predator and extractive way, not by making productive loans. This is now the great problem confronting our time. Banks now lend mainly to other financial institutions, hedge funds, corporate raiders, insurance companies and real estate, and engage in their own speculation in foreign currency, interest-rate arbitrage, and computer-driven trading programs. Industrial firms bypass the banking system by financing new capital investment out of their own retained earnings, and meet their liquidity needs by issuing their own commercial paper directly. Yet to keep the bank casino winning, global bankers now want governments not only to bail them out but to enable them to renew their failed business plan – and to keep the present debts in place so that creditors will not have to take a loss. Michael Hudson

(Yes, this is very hard to swallow. It should not be saved)

New Labour imitated Mrs Thatcher in much of her rhetoric and some of her ideas. The trouble was that they learned only half the lesson. They confused the creation of wealth, of which she was a passionate advocate, with the wisdom of the wealthy, about which she was sceptical.

The Governor of the Bank of England ... launched a stinging attack on the culture of the industry he oversees, condemning bankers for high pay, immoral practices and providing shoddy service to customers.