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US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

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131–140 of 193 posts

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty amazing how nonchalant you’re talking about theft. I guess the approved strategy for legal theft is as follows. 1. Create a payments company that accepts deposits and holds balances (a bank — but don’t call it that) 2. Create a broken AML algorithm that flags X% of deposits as fraud 3. Force the falsely accused to take you to court to get their money back 4. Keep the rest. Most people won’t contest What a grea…

You don't get to keep the money yourself. It sits on your balance sheet as a liability for 7 years, and eventually gets classed as a dormant account and gets paid to the state treasury.

This isn't my wheelhouse but couldn't one put the money in a money market account and keep the interest?

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#132
post #90
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they suspect fraud, they aren't allowed to tell you about it. That sounds like bullshit. Why would a mere suspicion of fraud, in the absence of a subpoena or court/gag order, mean that they aren't allowed to tell the account holder that they are suspecting fraud?

Correct. Look up the laws on suspicious activity reporting. If they came back and said "oh, we banned you because you made multiple, small transaction to high risk countries", well then you could just not do it next time.

> well then you could just not do it next time.

Isn't that what they want?

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it rather Zionists usually support the settlers, with or against the government? (and orthodox jews don't recognize the israeli government as truly legitimate anyway) Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settler_violence

Orthodox Jews by vast margins support Israel, you've been a victim of disinformation. There is a tiny sect of ultra-Orthodox that don't, but even the vast majority of the ultra-Orthodox are pro-Israel. Support for Israel amongst Jews in general is somewhere north of 90%. Zionism is simply support for a Jewish state in Israel, not necessarily for settlers. The vast majority of the center-left political groups in Israe…

"Orthodox Jews by vast margins support Israel, you've been a victim of disinformation. "

Possible, there is lots of disinformation going on. My wording also might have been bad, but by my definition and understanding orthodox jews aim for a 100% jewish state. And Israel is not 100% jewish, but tries a mixture as they also have arab and beduin population with voting rights. So orthodox jews surely mostly support Israel as being mostly jewish, but they rather would support a 100% jewish Israel state.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#134
The sad reality is that Paypal doesn't serve these territories because they are "high risk" and also low income which means the amount of compliance officers they would have to employ to watch people in these territories and the regulatory penalties for accidentally letting a Hamas transaction slip through (these aren't easy to detect either as the government emphasizes that "terrorist financing" can be as little as a few hundred dollars at a time, in fact most terrorist financing prosecutions involve amounts < $10000) probably does not exceed the amount of fees they would earn.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally do a web search for any first world country and domestic terrorism and you'll find an instance of it. The argument you have made also implies that USA should be disconnected from PayPal.

1,100 That's how many explosive rockets Palestine fired at civilian targets in Israel in 2022. Sorry but that isn't remotely equivalent.

Now please count how many rockets, bombs and other munitions Israel fired at civilian targets in Palestine.

Because it's also > 0, then by this logic we must ban all Israeli from accessing financial services.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#136
post #98
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might as well be that the only reason why Iran and others are active in Palestine is because it’s blockaded.

Before all this they had legal and fair election where they elected a terrorist org: Hamas. Stop infantilizing an entire people. They are adults with their own agency. They are responsible for the decisions they make. The reason a terrorist group runs things there is because they want it to. In fact, if elections were held today, Hamas would lose… to Islamic Jihad because they’re more radical. Support for Hamas has b…

Well, I support neither Islamists, nor Israel. And I can see how Palestinians look like terrorist to someone from Israel. But I can understand that IDF looks like a terrorist organization when they drop bombs on your head. Point is, both sides take extremely violent actions which affect non-combatants, at least from time to time.

It’s hypocritical to take a side. They all suck, but the UN is too dysfunctional to change anything.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#137
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Look up the laws on suspicious activity reporting. If they came back and said "oh, we banned you because you made multiple, small transaction to high risk countries", well then you could just not do it next time.

> well then you could just not do it next time. Isn't that what they want?

They want you to not commit fraud, they also want to catch you if you do

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#138

Does US law have anything to say about private companies supporting human rights abuse in other countries through their policies?

I think it doesn't because it wants to control what is polices, rather than relying on third parties like human rights groups to decide that.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#139
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Look up the laws on suspicious activity reporting. If they came back and said "oh, we banned you because you made multiple, small transaction to high risk countries", well then you could just not do it next time.

> well then you could just not do it next time. Isn't that what they want?

Anti money laundering checks are typically very primitive. Things like "Made at least 3 payments in a week to accounts recently created".

If they told you what the checks were, you could easily come up with a scheme to not be flagged.

What they miss is that all serious criminals know someone who works for a bank and can just tell the criminals what the checks are at that bank.

Re: US lawmakers urge PayPal to end ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories

#140

it sounds like we need an anti-OFAC law. Instead of only telling companies who they can't transact with, tell them who they can't arbitrarily not transact with. We need a financial bill of rights. Custody and payment rails should be like public utilities where everyone can use them regardless of your opinions about them.

I think Republicans tried something like this in the aftermath of Choke Point, it didn't go anywhere: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-republicans-money-laund....
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