Fiat demands to play by its rules. There are no shortcuts, that is why we see such results outlined in OP.

you cannot handle and process 3rd party funds without special money handling licenses

i'm not surprised one bit

WBX account frozen in November 2011.

https://www.worldbitcoinexchange.com/?page=news

As a bitcoin noob this is the thing that stands out to me as well.

I tend to believe the exchanges are the victims of the banks but do we know this is the case?

These exchanges seem to be very powerful really.   If they are the ones who can control whether or not an individual can withdraw their funds to a "real" currency then the possibility that they could be corrupted must be a pretty big threat to bitcoin as a whole. 

But I'm still learning. I may well read something tomorrow that convinces me that this aspect is really safe and then get paranoid about something else instead..

Complete and utter BULLSHIT.

https://campbx.com/faq.php ...

Mt Gox also had their Techocash accounts closed, a PayPal account frozen pre-Tibanne, and their French bank accounts frozen.

It's not just with banks that the exchanges are at risk of having the accounts in which they hold user funds frozen.  Whenever they're passing user funds through a licensed financial services provider of some sort, they're up against AML and KYC laws as well as fraud detection practises in general.  That's even without any issues related to the exchanges themselves operating in a grey area.  The more points through which funds must pass to get from user to the exchanges and back, the greater the chance that one of the financial institutions/payment processors will flag the exchange transactions as "suspicious" under their risk management policies.

The exchanges themselves have acknowledged that banking offshore - one of the solutions often - suggested would create another set of problems which would make users unhappy.

you want the feds off your back?  

Treat bitcoins like Silver and not gold.

Silver is used as currency AND x-ray machines AND parts for your electronics AND solar panels... etc...

Gold is just a currency for the most part.

If we had bitcoins used for 4000 differing things,  like DRM or whatever.. it would completely diffuse why people use bitcoins into a much wider pool... it also would solidify the fact that bitcoins are a commodity not a currency...  and hence completely sidesteps many of the issues that we are running into (and will run into).

Why not just get qualified?