The sexual offence allegations against Assange.

The timeline in bullet points

Huge interest in the subject but I don't think many aware of the specifics of the allegations and why they are raising suspicions and doubts. The following is presented as an agreed statements of facts and issues by both sides, according to ABC Four Corners "Sex, Lies and Julian Assange" documentary. Mods later choose to merge this with the other thread, but I felt this was relevant enough to warrant a separate thread to garner attention to these specifics.

On August 11th 2011, Assange arrived to attend a conference organised by the Swedish Brotherhood. He was offered Anna Ardin’s apartment whilst she was away, but Ardin returned a day early on the 13th and invited Assange to stay over the night where they would have sex. She would later tell police Assange had violently pinned her down and ignored her requests to use a condom. Assange denies this.

On August 14th, the following day, Assange addresses the conference with Ardin at his side. Later that afternoon, Arden organises a crayfish party [barbecue] and posts a Twitter message writing: "Julian wants to go to a crayfish party. Does anyone have a couple of seats tonight or tomorrow?”

The crayfish party was held that night and went on till the early hours of the morning. Ardin posts a twitter message: “Hanging out with the coolest and smartest people in the world at 2am. Its amazing”.

A guest at the party would later tell police the event was a “very hearty evening”. When he offered to host Assange for the night in his apartment, Ardin replied: “He can stay with me”.

The next day, Assange attends a dinner party organised by Pirate Party founder, Rick Falkvinge. Anna Ardin had arrived with Assange, and according to Falkvinge, the mood at the dinner was “professional”. Here is a photograph of that evening. Anna Ardin is on the left. Assange would yet again spend the night with her.

The following day, August 16th, Assange had sex with Sofia Wilen at her apartment. According to police reports, Ardin was aware that he had slept with Sofia. A witness tells police that he had contacted Anna Ardin looking for Assange, to which she texted back: “He’s not here. He plans to have sex with the cashmere girl every evening”. That same day, the witness asked Ardin: “Is it cool he’s living there? Do you want me to fix something else?”. She replied back: “He has a problem with his hygiene, but its okay, he lives with me. It’s no problem”. {Note: The tweets would later be deleted}

Three days later, Sofia, accompanied by Ardin, went to the police to seek advice on whether Assange could be forced to take an STD test. Ardin had gone along primarily to support Sofia but at some point during the questioning, the police had announced that Assange was to be arrested and questioned about possible rape and molestation. [Note: it wasn’t the police themselves who pressed for this but a duty prosecutor who was contacted by the police]. Sofia became so distract by the idea that she refused to give any more testimony, and refused to sign what had already been taken down. Assange was “arrested in his absence”. Assange wasn’t questioned by the police.

Within hours, not only was this development leaked to the tabloids, but in addition to that were the statements made by the two women. It became international news.

Less than 24 hours, a more senior prosecutor dismissed the rape allegations leaving only the lesser allegation of molestation.

On the 30th of August, Assange of his own accord went to the police and expressed his fears of anything he said in questioning would end up in the tabloids. The interviewing officer responded: “I’m not going to leak anything”. The interview was then leaked.

This article is reproduced from the website : 
 http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=41190027#post41190027

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Sachin and the god particle

By : Ajaz Ashraf | December 22, 2012

This article below is more about us mad Indians, than about Sachin ... and how true! - cr

The debate over whether Tendulkar should retire provides us a perspective into our collective psyche. How dare he fail after we have worshipped him for 23 years?

Five months before the English cricket team began its tour of India, triggering a passionate debate on whether Sachin Tendulkar should retire from international cricket, the batting maestro was in Herzogenaurach, Germany, where the Adidas headquarters are located. The Germans were astonished at the reception Tendulkar received: a few hundred Indians gathered at the headquarters, lustily cheered and screamed at his sight, and jostled to touch or have him sign their autograph books. One Adidas executive remarked to a journalist, "Even Lionel Messi did not receive such a reception. " The dwarfing of Messi for a soccer-crazy nation seemed inexplicably mysterious. 

Obviously, the German executive did not know that deification is embedded deep into the Indian psyche. Remember the bewildering pantheon of gods we Indians worship. Recall our propensity to turn the cremation sites and residences of mortals, extraordinary though their achievements are, into monuments and museums. From gods we ultimately become a tad alienated as our supplications do not lead to divine intercession, goading us to shout Jim Morrison style, "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer. " 

From the Invisible we can only turn away, but our disappointment with the flesh-and-blood gods provokes us to acts of vengeance. It is we who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. We mock Jawaharlal Nehru, pummelling him more now than what we did in his life, dismissing him as a woolly-headed idealist who wanted to keep India non-aligned and insisted on the state occupying the commanding heights of economy. We have belatedly begun to herald BR Ambedkar's contribution to the framing of the Indian Constitution but have no qualms in breaking his statues. 

It is this national trait of deification which has turned Tendulkar the cricketing genius into Tendulkar the god of cricket. How dare he fail after we have worshipped him for 23 years, pinned our hope on him for India's redemption on the cricket ground, bought goods he advertised and sent our children to coaching camps! It is galling that his failure has coincided with India's precipitous decline in Test cricket. Aren't gods supposed to magically help us overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, which perhaps are consequences of tamasha cricket aka T20 cricket? 

No doubt, unharnessed popular expectations mounted tremendous pressure on Tendulkar. What else can explain the sudden dip in form as soon as he reached his 99th international century? Till then, he had been in fine fettle, batting with aplomb and scoring centuries as frequently as only he can. Thereafter, in 17 Tests he managed 953 runs, at an average of 31. 76;in ODIs, he managed 473 in 14 outings, at an average of 33. 78. On reaching his 100th international century against Bangladesh, Tendulkar said, "I was not thinking about the milestone, the media started all this, wherever I went, the restaurant, room service, everyone was talking about the 100th hundred. Nobody talked about my 99 hundreds. It became mentally tough for me..." Indeed, there couldn't be a more apt example of how deification unravels gods. 

The debate over whether Tendulkar should retire provides us a perspective into our collective psyche as much as it has diminished his chances of, yet again, rediscovering his old form. What explains our national trait of creating idols of our heroes? In some ways, it is redolent of the feudal mindset, from which we believed we had emerged. The personality of the feudal lord was infused with charisma that made his subjects consider him worthy of unquestioning adulation. It was/is an important factor why many erstwhile royalties were/are elected to Parliament. The subcontinent is the land where charisma reigns - the Nehru-Gandhis are supreme in India, as are the Bhuttos and Sharifs in Pakistan, the Wajeds and Zias in Bangladesh and, to some extent, the Koiralas in Nepal. 

Worship presumes accepting your own inferiority in relation to those who boast of seemingly exalted lineages or, as in the case of Tendulkar, are prodigiously talented. From them, we feel, flow our blessings, whether in politics or cricket. We prescribe a different set of rules for them. We wish to exempt Tendulkar from the mandatory duty on the car he wants to import. We nominate him to the Rajya Sabha, knowing he won't have the time to attend its proceedings. Not for us a culture, say, that of Germany, which incarcerated tennis star Steffi Graf's father for violation of tax laws. Our inferiority stems from the pervasive caste codes which have taught us to accept the inequality inherent in the social system. 

Place the national psychology and Tendulkar's breathtaking talent against the backdrop of political ambience of the 1980s, in which he made his debut, and you will understand why he was turned into a national icon. The 1980s was the decade of pessimism. There had been a succession of grisly communal riots - Moradabad, Bhagalpur, the Nelli massacre etc. In 1984, the assassination of Indira Gandhi sparked off a veritable slaughter of Sikhs, prompting an organisation to print a poster with the photos of Kapil Dev (Hindu), Mohd Azharuddin (Muslim), Roger Binny (Christian) and Maninder Singh (Sikh) with a caption declaring, "If we can play together, we can live together. " In 1989, the Bharatiya Janata Party initiated the Ram Janambhoomi movement, bringing consecrated bricks from different parts of the country to Ayodhya. The nation was pushed to the edge. 

It was also in December 1989 that Sachin Tendulkar, a callow 16-year-old, stepped out on Pakistani soil to make his debut, against the fury of their fast bowlers. In the fourth Test of his life he was struck on the nose. Blood gushed out but he refused to leave the field. The picture of that moment was there in every newspaper;he went on to score 57. A dream had been born, of talent and aspiration. 

It was to take another three-four years for the dream to truly develop wings and soar high. By then, the Babri Masjid had been demolished and Mandal and Mandir politics had bitterly divided the nation. In this gloomy scenario Tendulkar became the symbol of national unity, his majestic wielding of the bat papering, however ephemerally, over all social schisms. He was also our only popular entertainment, as the culture of VCR was gradually squeezing the life out of Bollywood until the multiplex-driven renaissance resuscitated the cinema from its death throes. We made him a national icon because of our own compulsions, and laid out different yardsticks for him. 

Forgetting our own connivance in turning Tendulkar into a god, we have triggered a debate not only graceless but also deeply insulting to our own memory of pure bliss he brought to us. As a people we are notoriously fickle. We hailed Indira Gandhi as an incarnate of Durga and then pelted stones at her, only to vote her back to power three years later. Likewise, we mounted such pressure on Tendulkar at the time he was a century away from his 100th ton that his batting prowess diminished overnight, as if some celestial being wished to punish us for our pathological obsession with milestones. 

Yet a question remains: why didn't the crossing of the 100th-century milestone relieve the pressure on Tendulkar ? Alas, as any psychologist would tell you, it is difficult for a person to rediscover the earlier state of serenity once his mind learns fear and anxiety. Such foibles are habit-forming. This malaise had afflicted him earlier as well. Tendulkar took as many as eight Tests and a string of poor scores - 2, 8, 1, 8, 2, 5, 55, 3, 20, 32* - to equal Sunil Gavaskar's 34 centuries, then the world record. He took eight more innings to reset the record and another 18 innings to score his 36th ton. That malaise has now returned on a more tragic scale. 

Perhaps he now finds difficult to overcome his mind because he lacks the resilience of the young. The biological change is often sudden - for instance, many 40 year olds suddenly discover one day that they need to hold the newspaper closer to their eyes to read it. It's the body's signal to have reading glasses prescribed. Tendulkar's cheap dismissals are time's intimation to him of his ageing body and slower reflexes. 

Perhaps he still believes he has the capacity to adjust to the gradual withering away of his powers. Or perhaps he can't retire because, as some allege, the business model built around him would collapse. But give Tendulkar a few more Tests to know whether or not his form has deserted him permanently. Let Tendulkar bat without the fear that he might be asked to leave without a delectable swansong. Should such an innings prove elusive, he won't potter around, for the structure of sports can't sustain a cricketing equivalent of Dev Anand, who continued to produce films for the love of it even though no one watched them. We owe this much to Tendulkar, for bringing light and warmth in those gloomy years we lived in. 

(The author is a Delhi-based journalist. Email: ashrafajaz3@gmail. com)

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Baby Falak - Only the nurses remember

FALAK KI YAAD ME

======================

phoolo si komal thi jiski kaya,

jivan me jiske andhera tha chaya,

masumiyat jiske chehre se jati thi jhalak

ha ha us pari ka naam tha baby falak.

usne apne jeevan me kya paya,

na mata pita ka sath

or na apno ka saya

bachpan uske liye ban gaya ek abhishap,

garibi or lachari ka bhugta usne dushparinam.

na ma ka use anchal mila ,

na pita ka mila sahara,

or na hi bhai bahan k sath waqt usne gujara,

jane kin lakiro ne uske hatho me ghar tha banaya,

jane kesi taqdeer ne tha uska matha sajaya,

ese jaal me uljhi vo nanhi pari,

aatma jhakjhor de esi vipda us par padi

masumiyat bhare uske chehre par

kar diye hevaniyat k nishan,

sharir par hazaro jakham diye,

har pal nikalti uski jaan.

karhana usne sikh liya tha ,

kilkariyo ki umar me.

har dard apne naam kiya,

bachpan k khel bhool k.

par hosla tha uska buland ,

ladi thi vo jee jaan se.

begano se bhi apno sa pyar mila,

desh videsh se mili duaae thi.

par ek din wo har gai ,

is jivan jaal se.

hevan rupi insan se ,

or uske kiye kam se.

par jaate jaate wo dikha gai ,

hame buraiyo ki shakal.

de gai ek gehri soch ,

ki kesa hoga hamara ka.

kya yu hi bachpan dam tode ga,

majboori or lalach k jaal me.

kya yu hi bikti rahe gi aaurat,

hevano k hath me.

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India's Baby Falak

This is Falak, this is India and this is the story of our own inhumane psyche, where nobody is at fault, but a few poverty stricken people living with their own miseries. The people who should be accountable, in the various child welfare agencies, and the government  for paying them salaries, go scott free, as other Falaks and worse brutalities continue to happen... Click link below to read the story. It will be worth it...

NEW DELHI–The story of Baby Falak is a close-up look at the underbelly of Indian society: prostitution, human trafficking, bride selling, and domestic violence.

It also is the story of a small group of ordinary people – a young mother, a rebellious teenager, a taxi driver, a tire repairman, a lonely graduate — trying to escape the tribulations of their daily lives, and of the people who exploited them, the institutions that failed them, and the people who helped them. 

The events that transpired over 10 months, from mid-2011 to early 2012, moved millions, at least briefly, to unprecedented outrage and introspection, as if India were asking itself: “Are we like this only?”

Falak: The Complete True Story of ‘India’s Baby’

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This govt is taking the country down with it

By : Francois Gautier | (As appeared in DNA on Tuesday, May 8, 2012)

In Tamil Nadu, one of the country’s most industrialised states, there are 10 to 15 hours of power cut a day, workers stand idle, small units are closing down daily by the dozens and business is slow. The rupee is sliding, India is downgraded by many countries as an investment risk and the stock market tumbles. The government allows the best airline, Kingfisher, to go nearly bankrupt, bled dry by extravagant airport charges, huge fuel taxes, while it keeps pouring thousands of crores into Air India.

India is the laughing stock of South Asia: Pakistan sends its terrorists, New Delhi cries murder, but the next moment the pretty Pakistani foreign minister comes and the Indian media goes gaga. China plays the Indian government like a violin. Maoists have a field day, kidnapping officials at random, knowing that ransoms will be paid.

Indians today live in a country where mullahs can preach secession, while Hindu gurus revered by millions of Hindus are the target of ridicule, media attacks and police assaults.

Even the army, India’s last non-politicised, casteless barrier is not safe: since Sonia Gandhi has come to power, it has been targeted, first by attempting to make a census of its Muslim soldiers, then by trying to remove AFSPA, which would be as good as giving away Kashmir to Pakistan, and lastly by the concerted attack on General VK Singh, the man who dared to expose the total disinterest of the Indian government on the army’s preparedness and the rot in defence procurement.

Here we have a government that is racked by scandal after scandal which would have brought down any government in the world. But this government has no shame: it does not care if it brings down the country with it, as long as its ministers can keep their perks and loot the country for another two years. What it is good at, however, is surviving, using lie, deceit, all that with a smile on its face.

For, democracy in India has been hijacked to the point that a government that is basically in minority, which is openly flouting all values of decency and honesty, which has lost the trust of the people, is able to continue damaging India’s fabric, taking advantage of the fact that the majority of Indians, who are Hindus, do not riot and descend in the streets when they are unhappy. The instruments of power have also never been so perverted in India: the CBI blatantly and shamelessly quashed all injunctions against Ottavio Quattrrochi and even allowed him to get away with billions of rupees which he had stolen from India. Yet, without batting an eyelid, and with the Indian media turning a blind eye, it goes ruthlessly after Narendra Modi, chief minister of the most efficiently run state, the most corruption free. Her governors shamelessly hijack democracy by twisting the laws.

It is a fact that Sonia brought discipline, order and cohesion into the Congress party. But the amount of power, that she, a non-Indian, a simple elected MP, like hundreds of others, possesses, is frightening. She is the ultimate arbiter and nothing of importance is decided without her caveat. Because of her immense power, India has now entered an area of semi-dictatorship, where hundreds of thousands of phones are tapped, emails are read, letters opened, gurus arrested, journalists scared to speak aloud…

The going down of India because of the selfishness and petty interests of its politicians, including the BJP, which is terribly disunited and refuses to acknowledge that Modi is its only eligible PM candidate, is a tragedy for the few of us who have dared over the years to defend India in our respective countries, by saying that India, and not China, should be the natural choice of investment for western countries, for it is democratic, liberal, pro-western and friendly people. We have also clamored that the West should realise that India is of an immense strategic geopolitical importance — at the cross roads of many civilisations, a buffer of freedom against the Chinese hegemonic tendencies and an example of integration in the face of Islamic fundamentalism.

Cry O my Beloved India, look at what Thy children are doing to Thee…

Follow Francois Gautier on Twitter@fgautier26
Link : http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_this-govt-is-taking-the-country-down-with-it_1685873

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Make mistakes but never repeat them!

Harsha Bhogle: "Make mistakes but never repeat them!"

From  : http://www.careers360.com/news/8259-success-journey-against-odds-harsha-bhogle 
Published on: April 13, 2012

The TV anchor and cricket commentator writes about his life, struggles and the reality of learning and perseverance.

AFTER so many years in the profession it might seem unusual to say so - but I should never have been in television. I didn’t have what it took and for a better part of my career I was defined by who I wasn’t rather than by who I was! I wasn’t a test cricketer, I didn’t look like a suiting model (far from it!), I had no sense of fashion or colours. I wore large glasses, I had gaps in my teeth and I spoke too fast. It has been suggested that I had a face for radio and after the first programme of a new series for ESPN, the producer said (though I must admit, not at the time) that there was everything wrong with it, including the anchor.



Harsha feels that making mistakes is not a crime.
Not learning from them, repeating them is criminal.

Worse still I had no one to look up to. Live television was very young in India and Doordarshan was the only channel. I guess you could say that, as a result, I knew what not to do but didn’t always know what was right. And so I had no choice but to learn by making mistakes. I did what I thought was right and if it was wrong, I tried not to do it again.

Big blunders

I made many mistakes. I once ended a presentation ceremony at the end of a high profile tournament halfway through because I thought the director was telling me to move on when in reality he was telling someone else. I had very little idea of how to use the ear-piece through which the presenter gets instructions from the director. So when he said, “After this we will go to an interview” I assumed he was talking only to me and not to the crew so after that particular award had been given, I turned to camera and said “That’s it from the presentation”. WhenI turned there were a million eyes boring holes into me. I crept up to where the producer was, feeling as terrible as anyone could, and said, “Sorry Rik, I promise it will never happen again”. He put me at ease but I knew I had committed a blunder.

He is never afraid of learning.
He learns from everyone around him.

Making mistakes isn’t a crime, repeating them is!

Indeed the year before that, I was first asked to present the telecast and I said, “Yes”, without having a clue about what it meant. So before leaving for Chennai, my wife and I went to buy a couple of jackets. We only knew one store so we went to the Raymond shop and as it turned out they only had double breasted jackets so those were what we bought! One of those was a black and white striped jacket, the kind you should never wear on television because the picture jitters.

But I learnt one thing about mistakes and about failure. It is not a crime to commit them, but it is criminal not to learn from them and ensure they are not repeated. If you make one mistake it tends to be pardoned but if you keep making it, no one is interested in you anymore.

Look, failure is a necessity

And you know, little failures are like potholes on a road. After a while you know where not to drive. Also, you learn what not to do and it was thus that I learnt what I did about television. So if you fail, don’t think it is the end of the world. Ask yourself why you failed and promise yourself that you will never do it again. You will actually emerge tougher. In a programme my wife and I did some years ago, an Australian sports psychologist told us that when they put together elite squadrons in Australia, they don’t pick you if you’ve never failed because if you have never been face-to-face with failure you may not know what to do when confronted by it. If, however, you have looked failure in the eye, vanquished it and returned stronger, you are considered a better candidate.

The one thing we should all try to do in life is to convert a problem into an advantage, into an opportunity. Because I didn’t have much to start with, I tried much harder than anyone else, I was never afraid of learning. I learnt to be professional from the cameramen and the editors on the crew, I learnt what colours are good for television from Navjot Sidhu, I learnt how to knot a tie from my friend whose camera I had to look into, I learnt how to iron a jacket from someone else.

Unfortunately in India we condemn failure too strongly, we attach a social status to it and clothe failures with a stigma. Stay away from such people or better still, try harder to prove them wrong. Failure can sometimes drive you towards getting even better than you would have if you hadn’t failed.

 We fail when we fear failure

But remember, failure can be a friend only if you learn from it and never repeat it. There are hundreds of stories around you of what the human spirit can do. Failure is not an enemy, failure is not fatal so don’t fear it because the more you fear it, the more you attract it. I found that the day I stopped being afraid of failing, I grew much more relaxed. I told myself, ‘what is the worst thing that will happen?’. I would have had to apologise on air, in front of all those viewers but I would only be apologising for a mistake, I wouldn’t be committing a crime.

Very often we fail because we are afraid of failing, because we fear the aftermath of failure. I didn’t do well at all in my first term at IIM Ahmedabad because I spent more time fearing a D or an F than actually studying - which would have saved me in the first place. So relax, if you fear failure, it will encircle you.

If failure, if mistakes, could ruin people, then I would never be in television.

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Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

By GREG SMITH

Appeared in the "The New York Times" in The Opinion Pages - Published: March 14, 2012 

This struck home as something very familiar, something I have lived with. As I read it, I found uncanny similarities to what happened in my own company, GE which I had to leave after 33 years.  I considered GE as my own company for over a quarter of a century after which I went through the same turmoil faced by Greg Smith. I loved every bit of my work there, with wonderful people to work and be friends with. Slowly, I saw the changes overtaking the work and ethic culture. People who were friends, started slowly jockeying into positions for better "visibility and instant rewards" at the cost of colleagues and customers. Well, Greg Smith's article says it all, so, read on. 

For sake of brevity, some details has been editted out. The full version of the article can be read here

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.

Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

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