You say that, but in the UK when libel laws last changed, there were actually papers sat on both sides of the argument. Typically the division was the red tops that libel and ruin people's lives on one side being pissed they wont get away with it anymore, and those who publish factual, well sourced information and that have some actual journalistic integrity and hence no threat of losing a libel suit anyway.
So yeah, even with stuff like that it makes no sense that absolutely every media outlet would oppose someone over it. Some are happy to see the sleezy lie-rags pulled into line and forced to compete on the same level by having to do real actual journalism rather than pedalling outright lies to make sales.
It's also possible they're just as intelligent as the rest of us, and realising that someone is trying to interfere in the election of the world's largest superpower from their embassy could cause a whole lot of political shit that they don't need beyond that they're already willing to accept having given him refuge was sufficient all by itself.
Really, if my neighbour kicked her husband out and I let him stay at my place next door, but then he started throwing petrol bombs at her out the window every time she walked past, it wouldn't require her to come and threaten me. I'd just tell him to stop it or GTFO simply because I'm not a complete and utter ass. I suspect the same is true of Ecuador.
I largely agree with you, but I'm not convinced it's a solveable problem, and you've kind of subconciously noted the problem with enforcing that strictly in your own post - what if someone has strong political views that most people find abhorrent, but the bank has to serve them anyway, but that person is also likely to get them in hot bother because they engage in money laundering, or because they simply cause the bank to take a loss? Can they close the account down?
If no, then what happens when everyone whose causing the bank a loss simply declares they have strong political views and uses that as a shield, causing the bank to collapse?
If yes, then what's to stop them just using that excuse to censor anyway - "Oh they're a fraud risk", or "Oh, they're not profitable enough", or "Oh, they cause reputational damage to the company causing a loss for us".
I absolutely agree with you that financial censorship is scary, whatever one may think of Wikileaks (I don't really like it nowadays, it's become a propaganda organisation rather than a transparency organisation) I thought it was always rather disturbing that the US tried to shut down the Iraq/Afghan war log leaks by strongarming Mastercard, Visa, Paypal et. al. to not work with them to censor them and send them offline. It's definitely a real concern, but on the same note how do you implement that legislation whilst also allowing such organisations to reasonably run their businesses?
Also, should it apply to just banks, all financial organisations, or every organisation? If it's just banks, then that means organisations like Paypal, Visa, and Mastercard can cut them off, if it's all financial organisations that's much more clear cut, but it doesn't change the fact other organisations can still censor - a communications infrastructure company could still choose to cut off their broadcast, so you could apply it to every organisation, but then you're right back to square one where businesses are having to potentially serve people that cause them loss and end up going out of businesses anyway.
Here's a semi-related thought experiment from the UK's recent Brexit vote, in the UK it's illegal to discriminate against employees based on political views, but, if a company is forced to make cuts due to Brexit, then shouldn't a company be allowed to fire those who voted for it first and foremost over those who voted against it? Why should some suffer for other's decisions when it would be fairly trivial to make people accountable for their own actions in this sort of case? Should people really be protected from facing the consequences of their actions, whilst expecting others who aren't responsible for their actions to suffer the consequences instead?
I don't know, or even pretend to know the answer to any of these questions - I'm just making the point that it's massively complex, and I'm not sure there really is a rationally objective answer. I think the answer is always going to be subjective and therein lies the problem - what you may view to be a reasonable approach may not be acceptable to the majority. That is unfortunately the reality of democracy, minority viewpoints often get fucked, and the sad reality is that many people don't actually have too much of a problem with censorship, as long as they're not the ones being censored - they're just too dumb to realise that one day it could be them.
No, but a provision of membership of the EU is that you abide by it, as soon as article 50 is triggered and the two years are up there's no longer any legal barrier to us pulling out of it, something which Theresa May has long stated she wanted to do when she was Home Secretary. Now she's Prime Minister.
Actually, Ecuador's willingness to make a point has only ever gone so far. Effectively all they've ever wanted to do is say "Look, you criticise us for playing fast and loose with the law when we tackle our political dissidents, but you do it too and we want that known".
There have been a number of occasions where Ecuador has sought to defuse the situation by using him as leverage as there have been extended talks on multiple occasions between Ecuador and the UK and Ecuador and Sweden, to try and end the situation - it's not like Ecuador has simply said "No point talking, we're making a point" - that's not a discussion that goes on for days, multiple times, they've just never actually ended it because presumably they've never got the deal they wanted.
Now that there's a view (real, or perceived) that Assange is involved in trying to sway the US election on behalf of the Russians, the calculus has presumably changed - either the UK or US is willing to offer a better deal to Ecuador as a result of this, or Ecuador is concerned that this is a step too far that's taking it far deeper into this quagmire than it ever intended to get.
I don't think Ecuador's stance has ever been "We must protect Assange at all costs", but more "We'll cover him whilst he's useful". The problem, ironically, is that it looks like it may have been Assange himself that's made himself stop being useful.
"That said, it's hard to see how any of it is illegal and deserving of being closed down. Is there more to this story that isn't public? Or is this as simple as Britain shutting off RT just to quiet it. I hope there is more to this and not some overly sensitive clod high-up abusing his power."
On the contrary, it's none of these things. It's a private sector organisation refusing to provide banking services to another private sector organisation.
Businesses get to choose what other businesses they do business with, any decision to cease that needn't have anything to do with government enforced censorship - it could be anything from private censorship - i.e. the CEO deciding he wants his company to withdraw it's services to try and silence them, all the way through to RT constantly being in debt, not paying it's bills, or any such thing such that they're not a good customer to have.
It's none of these things though, I've explained what it is here:
"You have actual evidence of this or are just making shit up?"
Actually there's a shit load of evidence of this, if rather than simply trying to declare the other person's post false you could've simply Googled it. Given that an AC appears to have done that for you it appears I wont have to. Long story short though, some of it is covert, and some of it is overt. There's evidence of both, but the funding for France's national front for example wasn't even a secret:
Russia also holds an annual meeting of far right European leaders including people like Le Pen, Nick Griffin from the UK's BNP and so on and so forth. Interestingly these groups they host were the same people, and the only people they allowed into Crimea as "international observers" for their Crimean independence referendum - they wouldn't let any actual neutral observers in from the UN et. al. Make of that what you will, it's really not rocket science though.
No, this is part of a change to UK banking law. It occured a couple of years ago and it's effected all sorts of people and organisations including MPs themselves - the law of unintended consequences and all that.
Basically, the law now allows for banks to be held culpable if they facilitate money laundering, and as such banks have started pursuing a zero risk approach to the topic. Therefore everything from charities merely accused of corruption, funding terrorism and so forth, through to MPs that engage with corrupt foreign leaders even if simply engaging on political fact finding missions have had their and even their families bank accounts shutdown.
This is merely a continuance of that, Russia is basically the global capital of corruption. Given the rise of the many billionaire oligarchs post-soviet era I'm amazed it's actually taken the banks this long to decide that supplying banking for the a Russian government run organisation is too risky.
So no conspiracy theories are really necessary, nor would they make any sense. When the same law is resulting in MPs and their wives, kids, and grandmothers having their bank accounts closed down as it is RT it's a complete nonsense to suggest anything nefarious is going on. It really is just about a private company choosing to play it overly safe in the face of a change in the law.
Given the impact on MPs themselves, I'd be surprised if this particular law change lasts long at all. I believe this also enshrined into law US overreach too, as my father who has never had any link to, nor ever been to the US was asked to prove he was not a US citizen (I don't know how you prove you're not a US citizen, I can imagine how you prove you are one) and avoiding paying taxes whilst living overseas under the FATCA regulations. It rather sickens me that my father had to provide information on his personal finances as a British citzen to the US authorities to allow them to decide if he's evading American taxes or not when he's got nothing to do with America or face having his bank account shutdown in a similar manner.
Yeah, so long story short, basically they've gone over the top in trying to crackdown on fraud and tax evasion and everyone and their dog (probaby literally) in the UK is being hit right now. On the scale of organisations deserving to be hit by this law though because of probable real actual corruption I'd say RT is pretty high up the list relative to all the people who really are unquestionably innocent and are also suffering the same fate.
Really, despite all the rhetoric from Russia about censorship, sanctions and such there genuinely is no such story here. It's entirely about our banking regulations currently having been made a complete ass.
Why? the embassy is in the UK. Most of us are lucky here if we can get our connection fixed within 3 months, 24 hours is not a typical response time for BT - even if you have an SLA with them on a commercial line you'll be lucky if they actually bother to fulfil it half the time.
I've always been first to agree that the whole case against Assange is poorly handled, I wont say it's cooked up because I accept there is a possibility he is guilty, but there has clearly been a desperation to get him to Sweden when he could in fact have just been questioned via videolink, something even Sweden's highest court eventually declared criticising the Swedish prosecutor for not doing so.
But he did commit a crime in the UK, he skipped bail. This is a criminal offence in itself. Were the Swedish case dropped he may be able to get away with this because the case he was being bailed over turned out to have no case to answer, but whilst there is still a case to answer, and whilst he's skipping bail, he is a wanted fugitive under the UK justice system.
But have you also read the original Bible? I'll give you a hint, books from over a thousand years ago tend to be a little bit backwards.
That doesn't however mean their adherents follow them to the letter. There are 1.3billion Christians and 1.2billion muslims. By and large, the vast majority of all of them are perfectly peaceful, sensible, rational human beings. You'll have walked past many without a thought that they might be a "muslim" because they're just like everyone else.
You may hate the Clintons, but you still haven't explained why that justifies lurching all the way to the far-right to someone whose policies and rhetoric genuinely does match that of Hitlers in the early 30s. You've not explained why you think that extreme is ever justifiable, do you really believe that the German people did the right thing in the 1930s because they were in the same quandary you are now?
Actually it doesn't take that long for Earth to trap that carbon again, trees and plant life can do that incredibly quickly and efficiently. The problem is that right now we're both pumping out way more than they can trap, and cutting the amount of carbon dioxide absorbing biomass that existing by destroying forest (and producing more carbon dioxide) too.
The solution is to reduce the amount we churn out, and stop destroying Earth's natural sink in such a ridiculously unsustainable manner. Do that and we're talking about seeing correction well within a human lifespan.
When we stop repopulation will occur, so it's not simply about saving what's left, if we can halt the decline we can also achieve recovery for many not yet already extinct species.
That's kind of the point though, it's not the change that's the problem, it's the rate of change.
If it happens much more slowly then species can adapt through natural selection and evolution, the problem is right now that we're causing the change to happen too quickly for species to evolve, hence why this is regularly being referred to as a mass extinction event.
"Reefs are most certainly tied to geological features. They need shallow water at the right temperature. And change that and they'll die off. Just as much as if you somehow stop all the rain, the forests in California will all burn down."
Just to clarify, that's not entirely true. It's true of some reefs such as the GBR for sure, but some go much deeper, and others can cope with distinctly different temperatures to those that the GBR sees, including down to about 2km and temperatures ranging from 4c up to about 35c.
Some cold water and deeper reefs are just as teeming with life, and just as pretty, the GBR is famous largely because of it's scale, and tourist destination popularity.
"The Nazi label is just a strawman argument used by people who don't take seriously the Jewish threat to the rest of civilization. Like when there was that war we lost, everybody was appalled when your 'Nazi' called for a moratorium on allowing Jews into this country, noting that all the wars we've lost since 1901 have been because of Jews in the name of Judaism."
Yeah, you see how your argument sounds when a few simple words are replaced to higlight the exact same way it was used in 1930s Germany?
I'm kind of glad that Hillary is probably going to win regardless of people like you, but it disturbs me that after everything that happened last century that there are still folks like you that far-right populists like Trump can manipulate to do their bidding in the exact same way Hitler did in the 30s. Can you really honestly not see how far gone people like you are? You really can't see the correlation? Even the slogans are pretty much identical - make America great again was exactly like Hitler's cries to make Germany great again after it's failure in World War I.
Let's be clear here, far-right politics has been tried on so many occasions (not just in World War II), and every single time it's resulted in the most horrendous outcomes for humanity. Why are you so willing to try and put humanity through all this yet again when it's so clear that it never has worked, and never will work?
Are you unemployed? poor? have you lost everything? is it desperation and a feeling that anything is better than your current situation or what? Or are you simply just angry at everything and full of hate? I'm genuinely intrigued to know what could drive someone to support that kind of ideology. I don't expect you to be capable of the introspection necessary to answer, but I figure it's worth a try. Your justifications in themselves are fascinating if nothing else, you've created yourself this great un-reality in your head that requires complete ignorance of the facts, it's like watching someone who has suffered an utterly traumatic event like the violent death of their family receding into some imaginary safe space in their head because they can't cope with the truth of actual reality.
"Another point - electing Hilary and then trying to make her a one term president is the stupidest thing I've read from anyone to date."
You'd be right if the alternative wasn't a neo-Nazi funded by Vladmir Putin.
Unfortunately it is, so you're not. Everything you say regarding corruption and Hillary applies to Trump too, because he's one of the single most corrupt businessmen in existence today bar perhaps Murdoch and the Koch brothers.
This is really the problem, you're arguing that you don't want Hillary to become president because she's incredibly corrupt and you hate corruption, then voting for someone even more corrupt. It doesn't make any kind of rational sense to those of us not blinkered by the partisanship of the US election debate.
That's because despite all the supposed animosity in the news between tech companies like Google and Apple the reality is that the top tech CEOs are all best friends. Gates, Jobs, Schmidt, they all know each other and spend time with each other.
Ritchie wasn't a top tech CEO. Now I completely agree with you, but my point is that the decision wasn't made at Google based on contribution, it was made based on personal relationships at the top. Recognise that and it'll make a lot more sense.
Photos from 2010, at the hight of the supposed Google-Apple smartphone animosity:
This FWIW is also why there were issues with collusion on keeping salaries down by agreeing not to take each others employees - because whatever the supposed competition between the companies, the bosses just wanted to keep on getting rich together at the end of the day.
It's important to becareful not to conflate the public image of companies like Google with the reality of the fact that they're still out to make money, and their bosses are still very human, and make very human decisions and mistakes. As companies go Google et. al. do quite well at keeping things decent (They're certainly no News International for example), but ultimately you'll never eliminate human faults like greed and selfishness from the process whilst humans remain involved in it.
Steve produced an awful lot of pretty things that flopped.
In fact, contrary to all the hype at the time the original iPhone was largely a flop, shifting a pathetic 6 million units, where even Nokia's run of the mill N95 broke 10 million. This was mostly because they failed to give the original iPhone the necessary engineering time for things that people had been expecting in their phones for years beforehand, such as GPS/mapping, MMS, apps and so on and so forth.
It wasn't until they allowed engineering to actually build these things into the device that it became popular.
Macs are pretty and covered in Steve Jobs' magic dust, but they're still a negligible fraction of the market compared to Windows/Linux PCs that are engineered products first and foremost. Android devices were never as pretty and fancy as the iPhone, yet they outsell them 4-1. There are plenty of cars with all sorts of fancy designs and gadgets, but the ones that sell the best in the UK (I don't know other markets) are the ones that are solid, practical, and do the job like the Fiesta, Corsa, Astra, and Focus. There were all sorts of search engines covered with various amounts of magic, but Google destroyed them all when it just gave us a page with a logo and a fucking search box that worked and nothing else.
Pretty and "magical" is popular amongst a small crowd of self-obsessed hipsters who confuse themselves with the majority, but the reality is the vast majority of people (like, 80%+) just want a practical and well engineered product. Fluff, fashion, and pixie dust is grossly overrated. There's money in it for sure, but that's not the same thing as what the vast majority of people prefer to utilise.
If MPs were all truly independent and you weren't voting based on party manifesto then we wouldn't have a Prime Minister, a cabinet, and party whips. The manifesto is the document that drives party policy from the top down and hence on what politicians are whipped into voting for, which they do in the vast majority of cases with the fringe cases being only those that were either typically not in manifestos (i.e. declarations of war ala Syria) or made such a hash up of by cabinet and PM that MPs distance themselves from and u-turn. The party system is a fundamental piece of our system of government and the manifestos is the key document on which parties are elected. The big parties with the resources to do so (i.e. Labour, and the Conservatives) typically even fund delivery of a copy of their manifestos or at least a summary through people's doors in a localised format with their local MPs on with their local MP's backing.
You're absolutely right that they have no legal standing, but then, neither does the Brexit vote - it was merely advisory and can be ignored by parliament. Rightly however there'd be hell to pay if they decided not to listen to the will of the people on it though, party manifestos are no different and that's why politicians are so often pinned to them - they're the very document that tells you what to expect if you vote for this candidate and his party wins.
Unfortunately people make this mistake with a lot of political terms, for example, if you call Donald Trump far-right people say "Oh but he hasn't created death camps like Hitler so that's totally unfair!", but that's not really the point - it's more than possible to be far-right without being Hitler and Trump fits the very political definition of far-right.
Consider Qaboos Bin Said of Oman, or Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, both dictators by your definition (and by any definition!), but they went a long way to modernise their respective countries, to decrease corruption and so on and so forth. Perfect? No, but not really any less perfect than many democratically elected leader.
Point is that it's important to realise that just because I'm pointing out she's currently acting like a dictator, doesn't mean I'm pretending she's like Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin et. al. Even dictatorship has varying degrees of good to evil, albeit basically never at the genuinely good end of the scale.
"Sadly I'm not sure you do either. You don't vote for a manifesto, you vote for an individual to represent you in parliament."
Unless you're voting for an independent, then MPs in the UK sign up to their party manifestos and agree to back them. The two things aren't mutually exclusive.
"May was elected by the Conservative MPs who in turn were elected by the people."
Yes, on a specific manifesto, which May has ripped up. I don't think you understand how our democracy works.
"It's not true that May is forcing through policies without a mandate, parliament will have to vote on any new legislation. It is true that Brexit was not in the Conservative manifesto, but holding a vote on Brexit and enacting the will of the people was. There is a clear mandate here, and not for "Brexit in name only" that the Remainers want (i.e. no end to free movement, remain subject to rulings of the ECJ, etc). "
I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the change in economic direction, I'm talking about the return of things like grammar schools. These things have nothing to do with Brexit, though on Brexit itself there was indeed a mandate to leave the EU, but what form that takes isn't a given from the referendum result no matter how much you want to pretend it was, even hard-right folks like Daniel Hannan only wanted an increase in sovereignty (not a decrease in immigration) so the idea that there was a > 50% majority for certain specifics beyond leaving the EU is complete nonsense - you'd only need a swing of 1.8% of voters who voted leave purely for sovereignty reasons for their not to be a majority on an aspect such as immigration. I suspect the fact that you're suggesting there was a mandate for that even though there clearly wasn't is merely a function of the fact you presumably agree with Theresa May's dictat - that doesn't make it democratic though no matter how much you may wish to claim it does. It's not like there was an overwhelming enough majority to claim that some extreme hard-right interpretation is justified as you're implying, to suggest otherwise is to simply spin a lie.
"In summary: you lost the referendum, May is here to stay whether you have an election or not, get over it."
I did? That would be news to most people I suspect. I don't care if she's here to stay, that's not the problem (I don't want Corbyn, I think he's a complete idiot, he can't even manage his 2 metre square front garden, let alone a country) - if the people reelect her on her new manifesto that's great, because at least she's told us what that manifesto is and we've made a concious decision as a country to back it. Right now however, the lack of general election means she has no mandate to push through her entirely secretive manifesto where random policies pop up that no one has given her a mandate for such as grammar schools, foreign worker lists, increased public spending and a slow down in debt reduction and so on and so forth.
I don't really give a shit who is in, I don't really give a shit what they do, as long as they have a democratic mandate to do it, and are transparent about it. May has options - she can be transparent, she can continue to pursue the 2015 election manifesto with Brexit obviously overruling anything where there is conflict due to having a newer mandate, and that would be fine. What she can't do is continue to pursue this secretive set of policies that fly in the face of what her party was elected on without a general election unless she (and her supporters such as yourself) is content accepting that she's merely acting as a dictator pursuing a set of policies that have no democratic mandate right now (beyond merely pulling us out of the EU - she can trigger article 50 without a vote fine IMO because that is indeed what people voted for).
What do you mean "paranoid" exactly? Are you suggesting that May isn't pursuing an unelected manifesto? Are you suggesting she has in fact been completely transparent?
I'm intrigued to think which parts you believe are paranoia, rather than established fact. Did I miss a general election or something? I'd really love to know where you think May's manifesto got it's democratic mandate from because it sure as hell wasn't the last general of the EU referendum - none of those things obtained public backing for policies like grammar schools, or increasing the public debt.
I'm using the word dictator not because it's rhetoric, but because it's the only accurate description of the type of government we have in the UK currently - when policy is being pushed down from up high with no democratic mandate you do realise that dictatorship is merely an accurate description of the type of government right?
The UK's electoral system doesn't guarantee accurate democracy. This is one of those occasions where it's intricacies leads to dictatorship. The same was true when Gordon Brown ousted Blair. It's fine for a new leader to take the place of the old, but people vote based on party manifestos because we have a party based system of government so if a new leader also rips that up without calling a fresh general election it means that they're acting as a temporary dictator. There's nothing OTT about it, it is what it is.
Slashdot Mirror
You say that, but in the UK when libel laws last changed, there were actually papers sat on both sides of the argument. Typically the division was the red tops that libel and ruin people's lives on one side being pissed they wont get away with it anymore, and those who publish factual, well sourced information and that have some actual journalistic integrity and hence no threat of losing a libel suit anyway.
So yeah, even with stuff like that it makes no sense that absolutely every media outlet would oppose someone over it. Some are happy to see the sleezy lie-rags pulled into line and forced to compete on the same level by having to do real actual journalism rather than pedalling outright lies to make sales.
That theory assumes Ecuadorians are stupid.
It's also possible they're just as intelligent as the rest of us, and realising that someone is trying to interfere in the election of the world's largest superpower from their embassy could cause a whole lot of political shit that they don't need beyond that they're already willing to accept having given him refuge was sufficient all by itself.
Really, if my neighbour kicked her husband out and I let him stay at my place next door, but then he started throwing petrol bombs at her out the window every time she walked past, it wouldn't require her to come and threaten me. I'd just tell him to stop it or GTFO simply because I'm not a complete and utter ass. I suspect the same is true of Ecuador.
I largely agree with you, but I'm not convinced it's a solveable problem, and you've kind of subconciously noted the problem with enforcing that strictly in your own post - what if someone has strong political views that most people find abhorrent, but the bank has to serve them anyway, but that person is also likely to get them in hot bother because they engage in money laundering, or because they simply cause the bank to take a loss? Can they close the account down?
If no, then what happens when everyone whose causing the bank a loss simply declares they have strong political views and uses that as a shield, causing the bank to collapse?
If yes, then what's to stop them just using that excuse to censor anyway - "Oh they're a fraud risk", or "Oh, they're not profitable enough", or "Oh, they cause reputational damage to the company causing a loss for us".
I absolutely agree with you that financial censorship is scary, whatever one may think of Wikileaks (I don't really like it nowadays, it's become a propaganda organisation rather than a transparency organisation) I thought it was always rather disturbing that the US tried to shut down the Iraq/Afghan war log leaks by strongarming Mastercard, Visa, Paypal et. al. to not work with them to censor them and send them offline. It's definitely a real concern, but on the same note how do you implement that legislation whilst also allowing such organisations to reasonably run their businesses?
Also, should it apply to just banks, all financial organisations, or every organisation? If it's just banks, then that means organisations like Paypal, Visa, and Mastercard can cut them off, if it's all financial organisations that's much more clear cut, but it doesn't change the fact other organisations can still censor - a communications infrastructure company could still choose to cut off their broadcast, so you could apply it to every organisation, but then you're right back to square one where businesses are having to potentially serve people that cause them loss and end up going out of businesses anyway.
Here's a semi-related thought experiment from the UK's recent Brexit vote, in the UK it's illegal to discriminate against employees based on political views, but, if a company is forced to make cuts due to Brexit, then shouldn't a company be allowed to fire those who voted for it first and foremost over those who voted against it? Why should some suffer for other's decisions when it would be fairly trivial to make people accountable for their own actions in this sort of case? Should people really be protected from facing the consequences of their actions, whilst expecting others who aren't responsible for their actions to suffer the consequences instead?
I don't know, or even pretend to know the answer to any of these questions - I'm just making the point that it's massively complex, and I'm not sure there really is a rationally objective answer. I think the answer is always going to be subjective and therein lies the problem - what you may view to be a reasonable approach may not be acceptable to the majority. That is unfortunately the reality of democracy, minority viewpoints often get fucked, and the sad reality is that many people don't actually have too much of a problem with censorship, as long as they're not the ones being censored - they're just too dumb to realise that one day it could be them.
Yes, all 3 of them.
No, but a provision of membership of the EU is that you abide by it, as soon as article 50 is triggered and the two years are up there's no longer any legal barrier to us pulling out of it, something which Theresa May has long stated she wanted to do when she was Home Secretary. Now she's Prime Minister.
Actually, Ecuador's willingness to make a point has only ever gone so far. Effectively all they've ever wanted to do is say "Look, you criticise us for playing fast and loose with the law when we tackle our political dissidents, but you do it too and we want that known".
There have been a number of occasions where Ecuador has sought to defuse the situation by using him as leverage as there have been extended talks on multiple occasions between Ecuador and the UK and Ecuador and Sweden, to try and end the situation - it's not like Ecuador has simply said "No point talking, we're making a point" - that's not a discussion that goes on for days, multiple times, they've just never actually ended it because presumably they've never got the deal they wanted.
Now that there's a view (real, or perceived) that Assange is involved in trying to sway the US election on behalf of the Russians, the calculus has presumably changed - either the UK or US is willing to offer a better deal to Ecuador as a result of this, or Ecuador is concerned that this is a step too far that's taking it far deeper into this quagmire than it ever intended to get.
I don't think Ecuador's stance has ever been "We must protect Assange at all costs", but more "We'll cover him whilst he's useful". The problem, ironically, is that it looks like it may have been Assange himself that's made himself stop being useful.
"That said, it's hard to see how any of it is illegal and deserving of being closed down. Is there more to this story that isn't public? Or is this as simple as Britain shutting off RT just to quiet it. I hope there is more to this and not some overly sensitive clod high-up abusing his power."
On the contrary, it's none of these things. It's a private sector organisation refusing to provide banking services to another private sector organisation.
Businesses get to choose what other businesses they do business with, any decision to cease that needn't have anything to do with government enforced censorship - it could be anything from private censorship - i.e. the CEO deciding he wants his company to withdraw it's services to try and silence them, all the way through to RT constantly being in debt, not paying it's bills, or any such thing such that they're not a good customer to have.
It's none of these things though, I've explained what it is here:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
"You have actual evidence of this or are just making shit up?"
Actually there's a shit load of evidence of this, if rather than simply trying to declare the other person's post false you could've simply Googled it. Given that an AC appears to have done that for you it appears I wont have to. Long story short though, some of it is covert, and some of it is overt. There's evidence of both, but the funding for France's national front for example wasn't even a secret:
https://themoscowtimes.com/new...
Russia also holds an annual meeting of far right European leaders including people like Le Pen, Nick Griffin from the UK's BNP and so on and so forth. Interestingly these groups they host were the same people, and the only people they allowed into Crimea as "international observers" for their Crimean independence referendum - they wouldn't let any actual neutral observers in from the UN et. al. Make of that what you will, it's really not rocket science though.
No, this is part of a change to UK banking law. It occured a couple of years ago and it's effected all sorts of people and organisations including MPs themselves - the law of unintended consequences and all that.
Basically, the law now allows for banks to be held culpable if they facilitate money laundering, and as such banks have started pursuing a zero risk approach to the topic. Therefore everything from charities merely accused of corruption, funding terrorism and so forth, through to MPs that engage with corrupt foreign leaders even if simply engaging on political fact finding missions have had their and even their families bank accounts shutdown.
This is merely a continuance of that, Russia is basically the global capital of corruption. Given the rise of the many billionaire oligarchs post-soviet era I'm amazed it's actually taken the banks this long to decide that supplying banking for the a Russian government run organisation is too risky.
So no conspiracy theories are really necessary, nor would they make any sense. When the same law is resulting in MPs and their wives, kids, and grandmothers having their bank accounts closed down as it is RT it's a complete nonsense to suggest anything nefarious is going on. It really is just about a private company choosing to play it overly safe in the face of a change in the law.
Given the impact on MPs themselves, I'd be surprised if this particular law change lasts long at all. I believe this also enshrined into law US overreach too, as my father who has never had any link to, nor ever been to the US was asked to prove he was not a US citizen (I don't know how you prove you're not a US citizen, I can imagine how you prove you are one) and avoiding paying taxes whilst living overseas under the FATCA regulations. It rather sickens me that my father had to provide information on his personal finances as a British citzen to the US authorities to allow them to decide if he's evading American taxes or not when he's got nothing to do with America or face having his bank account shutdown in a similar manner.
Yeah, so long story short, basically they've gone over the top in trying to crackdown on fraud and tax evasion and everyone and their dog (probaby literally) in the UK is being hit right now. On the scale of organisations deserving to be hit by this law though because of probable real actual corruption I'd say RT is pretty high up the list relative to all the people who really are unquestionably innocent and are also suffering the same fate.
Really, despite all the rhetoric from Russia about censorship, sanctions and such there genuinely is no such story here. It's entirely about our banking regulations currently having been made a complete ass.
Why? the embassy is in the UK. Most of us are lucky here if we can get our connection fixed within 3 months, 24 hours is not a typical response time for BT - even if you have an SLA with them on a commercial line you'll be lucky if they actually bother to fulfil it half the time.
I've always been first to agree that the whole case against Assange is poorly handled, I wont say it's cooked up because I accept there is a possibility he is guilty, but there has clearly been a desperation to get him to Sweden when he could in fact have just been questioned via videolink, something even Sweden's highest court eventually declared criticising the Swedish prosecutor for not doing so.
But he did commit a crime in the UK, he skipped bail. This is a criminal offence in itself. Were the Swedish case dropped he may be able to get away with this because the case he was being bailed over turned out to have no case to answer, but whilst there is still a case to answer, and whilst he's skipping bail, he is a wanted fugitive under the UK justice system.
But have you also read the original Bible? I'll give you a hint, books from over a thousand years ago tend to be a little bit backwards.
That doesn't however mean their adherents follow them to the letter. There are 1.3billion Christians and 1.2billion muslims. By and large, the vast majority of all of them are perfectly peaceful, sensible, rational human beings. You'll have walked past many without a thought that they might be a "muslim" because they're just like everyone else.
You may hate the Clintons, but you still haven't explained why that justifies lurching all the way to the far-right to someone whose policies and rhetoric genuinely does match that of Hitlers in the early 30s. You've not explained why you think that extreme is ever justifiable, do you really believe that the German people did the right thing in the 1930s because they were in the same quandary you are now?
Actually it doesn't take that long for Earth to trap that carbon again, trees and plant life can do that incredibly quickly and efficiently. The problem is that right now we're both pumping out way more than they can trap, and cutting the amount of carbon dioxide absorbing biomass that existing by destroying forest (and producing more carbon dioxide) too.
The solution is to reduce the amount we churn out, and stop destroying Earth's natural sink in such a ridiculously unsustainable manner. Do that and we're talking about seeing correction well within a human lifespan.
When we stop repopulation will occur, so it's not simply about saving what's left, if we can halt the decline we can also achieve recovery for many not yet already extinct species.
That's kind of the point though, it's not the change that's the problem, it's the rate of change.
If it happens much more slowly then species can adapt through natural selection and evolution, the problem is right now that we're causing the change to happen too quickly for species to evolve, hence why this is regularly being referred to as a mass extinction event.
Sure, if we increase the amount of funding for carrying out such tasks by several orders of magnitude.
It'd be cheaper and easier to just protect it in the first place though.
"Reefs are most certainly tied to geological features. They need shallow water at the right temperature. And change that and they'll die off. Just as much as if you somehow stop all the rain, the forests in California will all burn down."
Just to clarify, that's not entirely true. It's true of some reefs such as the GBR for sure, but some go much deeper, and others can cope with distinctly different temperatures to those that the GBR sees, including down to about 2km and temperatures ranging from 4c up to about 35c.
Some cold water and deeper reefs are just as teeming with life, and just as pretty, the GBR is famous largely because of it's scale, and tourist destination popularity.
"The Nazi label is just a strawman argument used by people who don't take seriously the Jewish threat to the rest of civilization. Like when there was that war we lost, everybody was appalled when your 'Nazi' called for a moratorium on allowing Jews into this country, noting that all the wars we've lost since 1901 have been because of Jews in the name of Judaism."
Yeah, you see how your argument sounds when a few simple words are replaced to higlight the exact same way it was used in 1930s Germany?
I'm kind of glad that Hillary is probably going to win regardless of people like you, but it disturbs me that after everything that happened last century that there are still folks like you that far-right populists like Trump can manipulate to do their bidding in the exact same way Hitler did in the 30s. Can you really honestly not see how far gone people like you are? You really can't see the correlation? Even the slogans are pretty much identical - make America great again was exactly like Hitler's cries to make Germany great again after it's failure in World War I.
Let's be clear here, far-right politics has been tried on so many occasions (not just in World War II), and every single time it's resulted in the most horrendous outcomes for humanity. Why are you so willing to try and put humanity through all this yet again when it's so clear that it never has worked, and never will work?
Are you unemployed? poor? have you lost everything? is it desperation and a feeling that anything is better than your current situation or what? Or are you simply just angry at everything and full of hate? I'm genuinely intrigued to know what could drive someone to support that kind of ideology. I don't expect you to be capable of the introspection necessary to answer, but I figure it's worth a try. Your justifications in themselves are fascinating if nothing else, you've created yourself this great un-reality in your head that requires complete ignorance of the facts, it's like watching someone who has suffered an utterly traumatic event like the violent death of their family receding into some imaginary safe space in their head because they can't cope with the truth of actual reality.
"Another point - electing Hilary and then trying to make her a one term president is the stupidest thing I've read from anyone to date."
You'd be right if the alternative wasn't a neo-Nazi funded by Vladmir Putin.
Unfortunately it is, so you're not. Everything you say regarding corruption and Hillary applies to Trump too, because he's one of the single most corrupt businessmen in existence today bar perhaps Murdoch and the Koch brothers.
This is really the problem, you're arguing that you don't want Hillary to become president because she's incredibly corrupt and you hate corruption, then voting for someone even more corrupt. It doesn't make any kind of rational sense to those of us not blinkered by the partisanship of the US election debate.
That's because despite all the supposed animosity in the news between tech companies like Google and Apple the reality is that the top tech CEOs are all best friends. Gates, Jobs, Schmidt, they all know each other and spend time with each other.
Ritchie wasn't a top tech CEO. Now I completely agree with you, but my point is that the decision wasn't made at Google based on contribution, it was made based on personal relationships at the top. Recognise that and it'll make a lot more sense.
Photos from 2010, at the hight of the supposed Google-Apple smartphone animosity:
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker...
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker...
This FWIW is also why there were issues with collusion on keeping salaries down by agreeing not to take each others employees - because whatever the supposed competition between the companies, the bosses just wanted to keep on getting rich together at the end of the day.
It's important to becareful not to conflate the public image of companies like Google with the reality of the fact that they're still out to make money, and their bosses are still very human, and make very human decisions and mistakes. As companies go Google et. al. do quite well at keeping things decent (They're certainly no News International for example), but ultimately you'll never eliminate human faults like greed and selfishness from the process whilst humans remain involved in it.
Steve produced an awful lot of pretty things that flopped.
In fact, contrary to all the hype at the time the original iPhone was largely a flop, shifting a pathetic 6 million units, where even Nokia's run of the mill N95 broke 10 million. This was mostly because they failed to give the original iPhone the necessary engineering time for things that people had been expecting in their phones for years beforehand, such as GPS/mapping, MMS, apps and so on and so forth.
It wasn't until they allowed engineering to actually build these things into the device that it became popular.
Macs are pretty and covered in Steve Jobs' magic dust, but they're still a negligible fraction of the market compared to Windows/Linux PCs that are engineered products first and foremost. Android devices were never as pretty and fancy as the iPhone, yet they outsell them 4-1. There are plenty of cars with all sorts of fancy designs and gadgets, but the ones that sell the best in the UK (I don't know other markets) are the ones that are solid, practical, and do the job like the Fiesta, Corsa, Astra, and Focus. There were all sorts of search engines covered with various amounts of magic, but Google destroyed them all when it just gave us a page with a logo and a fucking search box that worked and nothing else.
Pretty and "magical" is popular amongst a small crowd of self-obsessed hipsters who confuse themselves with the majority, but the reality is the vast majority of people (like, 80%+) just want a practical and well engineered product. Fluff, fashion, and pixie dust is grossly overrated. There's money in it for sure, but that's not the same thing as what the vast majority of people prefer to utilise.
If MPs were all truly independent and you weren't voting based on party manifesto then we wouldn't have a Prime Minister, a cabinet, and party whips. The manifesto is the document that drives party policy from the top down and hence on what politicians are whipped into voting for, which they do in the vast majority of cases with the fringe cases being only those that were either typically not in manifestos (i.e. declarations of war ala Syria) or made such a hash up of by cabinet and PM that MPs distance themselves from and u-turn. The party system is a fundamental piece of our system of government and the manifestos is the key document on which parties are elected. The big parties with the resources to do so (i.e. Labour, and the Conservatives) typically even fund delivery of a copy of their manifestos or at least a summary through people's doors in a localised format with their local MPs on with their local MP's backing.
You're absolutely right that they have no legal standing, but then, neither does the Brexit vote - it was merely advisory and can be ignored by parliament. Rightly however there'd be hell to pay if they decided not to listen to the will of the people on it though, party manifestos are no different and that's why politicians are so often pinned to them - they're the very document that tells you what to expect if you vote for this candidate and his party wins.
Unfortunately people make this mistake with a lot of political terms, for example, if you call Donald Trump far-right people say "Oh but he hasn't created death camps like Hitler so that's totally unfair!", but that's not really the point - it's more than possible to be far-right without being Hitler and Trump fits the very political definition of far-right.
Consider Qaboos Bin Said of Oman, or Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, both dictators by your definition (and by any definition!), but they went a long way to modernise their respective countries, to decrease corruption and so on and so forth. Perfect? No, but not really any less perfect than many democratically elected leader.
Point is that it's important to realise that just because I'm pointing out she's currently acting like a dictator, doesn't mean I'm pretending she's like Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin et. al. Even dictatorship has varying degrees of good to evil, albeit basically never at the genuinely good end of the scale.
"Sadly I'm not sure you do either. You don't vote for a manifesto, you vote for an individual to represent you in parliament."
Unless you're voting for an independent, then MPs in the UK sign up to their party manifestos and agree to back them. The two things aren't mutually exclusive.
"May was elected by the Conservative MPs who in turn were elected by the people."
Yes, on a specific manifesto, which May has ripped up. I don't think you understand how our democracy works.
"It's not true that May is forcing through policies without a mandate, parliament will have to vote on any new legislation. It is true that Brexit was not in the Conservative manifesto, but holding a vote on Brexit and enacting the will of the people was. There is a clear mandate here, and not for "Brexit in name only" that the Remainers want (i.e. no end to free movement, remain subject to rulings of the ECJ, etc). "
I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the change in economic direction, I'm talking about the return of things like grammar schools. These things have nothing to do with Brexit, though on Brexit itself there was indeed a mandate to leave the EU, but what form that takes isn't a given from the referendum result no matter how much you want to pretend it was, even hard-right folks like Daniel Hannan only wanted an increase in sovereignty (not a decrease in immigration) so the idea that there was a > 50% majority for certain specifics beyond leaving the EU is complete nonsense - you'd only need a swing of 1.8% of voters who voted leave purely for sovereignty reasons for their not to be a majority on an aspect such as immigration. I suspect the fact that you're suggesting there was a mandate for that even though there clearly wasn't is merely a function of the fact you presumably agree with Theresa May's dictat - that doesn't make it democratic though no matter how much you may wish to claim it does. It's not like there was an overwhelming enough majority to claim that some extreme hard-right interpretation is justified as you're implying, to suggest otherwise is to simply spin a lie.
"In summary: you lost the referendum, May is here to stay whether you have an election or not, get over it."
I did? That would be news to most people I suspect. I don't care if she's here to stay, that's not the problem (I don't want Corbyn, I think he's a complete idiot, he can't even manage his 2 metre square front garden, let alone a country) - if the people reelect her on her new manifesto that's great, because at least she's told us what that manifesto is and we've made a concious decision as a country to back it. Right now however, the lack of general election means she has no mandate to push through her entirely secretive manifesto where random policies pop up that no one has given her a mandate for such as grammar schools, foreign worker lists, increased public spending and a slow down in debt reduction and so on and so forth.
I don't really give a shit who is in, I don't really give a shit what they do, as long as they have a democratic mandate to do it, and are transparent about it. May has options - she can be transparent, she can continue to pursue the 2015 election manifesto with Brexit obviously overruling anything where there is conflict due to having a newer mandate, and that would be fine. What she can't do is continue to pursue this secretive set of policies that fly in the face of what her party was elected on without a general election unless she (and her supporters such as yourself) is content accepting that she's merely acting as a dictator pursuing a set of policies that have no democratic mandate right now (beyond merely pulling us out of the EU - she can trigger article 50 without a vote fine IMO because that is indeed what people voted for).
What do you mean "paranoid" exactly? Are you suggesting that May isn't pursuing an unelected manifesto? Are you suggesting she has in fact been completely transparent?
I'm intrigued to think which parts you believe are paranoia, rather than established fact. Did I miss a general election or something? I'd really love to know where you think May's manifesto got it's democratic mandate from because it sure as hell wasn't the last general of the EU referendum - none of those things obtained public backing for policies like grammar schools, or increasing the public debt.
I'm using the word dictator not because it's rhetoric, but because it's the only accurate description of the type of government we have in the UK currently - when policy is being pushed down from up high with no democratic mandate you do realise that dictatorship is merely an accurate description of the type of government right?
The UK's electoral system doesn't guarantee accurate democracy. This is one of those occasions where it's intricacies leads to dictatorship. The same was true when Gordon Brown ousted Blair. It's fine for a new leader to take the place of the old, but people vote based on party manifestos because we have a party based system of government so if a new leader also rips that up without calling a fresh general election it means that they're acting as a temporary dictator. There's nothing OTT about it, it is what it is.