I was curious to know if there were any preliminary reports on the Brexit vote going on right now, so I popped over to the BBC. There’s nothing. They actually have some sensible restrictions on the media.
What can the BBC report?
* Uncontroversial factual accounts such as the appearance of politicians and others at polling stations or the weather.
* The practicalities such as when the polls are open, the wording of the question and expectations of when the result may be known are allowed.
* The BBC’s online sites will not have to remove archived reports.
What can’t the BBC report?
* The BBC stops short of actually encouraging people to vote.
* While the polls are open, it is a criminal offence for anyone, not just broadcasters, to publish anything about the way in which people have voted in the referendum, where that is based on information given by voters after they have voted.
* The BBC can’t report anything emerging from exit polls (which, by definition, are asking people how they actually voted), although the broadcasters have not commissioned any exit polls for the referendum.
* No opinion poll on any issue relating to the referendum can be published by broadcasters until after the polls have closed.
I marveled. The 24-hour news networks will be a circus on election day in this country — a very, very boring circus presided over by Wolf Blitzer and his mindless monotone, with Fox News providing the clowns. There won’t be any news here, either, but they’ll make stuff up.
To find out how the referendum turns out, we’ll have to tune in after everyone has voted. Amazing! And the BBC tells me that that will be at 22:00 BST, which is 4:00 my time (CST). We shall eagerly, but patiently, await the conclusion.
Do you mean 4.00 pm? Switching between 24 hr & 12 hr formats is a wee bit odd.
I take your point, but we have our own sillinesses: TV coverage of “the results” starts when the polls close, but the first actual results won’t be out until around 02:00 BST Friday, so the broadcasters will fill in with 4 hours of pointless speculation, arguments between politicians, reports from around the country showing the votes being counted, reminiscences of the 1975 referendum, etc. Unless it’s very close, the overall outcome should be clear somewhere between 03:00 and 04:00, although a declaration of an officiual result is not likely before 07:00.
I’m not keen on staying up late but will have the funeral dirge on standby nonetheless. Just because sinking themselves and taking everyone else with them would be so very British. Oh, and because the running poll summaries on the BBC site have always shown equal numbers for Remain and Leave. Therefore roughly half the people polled willingly aligned themselves with the Leave campaign and even admitted to this when asked. Unthinkable! Well, good bye faith in humanity.*
But a hurrah for the BBC. I’m reminded of the Mitchell and Webb sketch of newscasters calmly reporting on the ongoing apocalypse at the hand of alien invaders. That’s how things should be done.
*To be fair, it was smothered years ago. Now people are just dancing on the bones.
So they don’t get to enjoy the spectacle of the British version of Karl Rove sputtering in disbelief at the numbers coming in and someone having to walk over to the people posting the numbers to confirm that they are in fact true?
That’s a shame, because let me say as a Canadian that was one of my favourite moments ever in American election history.
Here’s hoping for a victory of the Leave camp. Why? Because Britland is a parasite in the body of the EU and America’s little saboteur lapdog, blocking all sorts of reforms, generally gumming up the works and poisoning public debate.
Hopefully the exit is followed by a swift collapse of their financial derivative-centric economy and a consequent transformation into something resembling a 21st century society.
Sure, it’s not like any actual people might get hurt by that, right, applehead?
Just cast my vote. Looking forward to Jeremy Vine and his ridiculous CGI extravaganza tonight. And hopefully a decision in the right direction too…
Just can’t beat good old auntie beeb. That, the NHS and a proper cup of tea are the three things we’re probably proudest of in this little island of ours.
“To find out how the referendum turns out, we’ll have to tune in after everyone has voted. … which is 4pm my time”.
Don’t expect much interesting then. The broadcasters have decided not to pay for exit polls, so nothing much will become clear until 4 or 5am here in the UK. (10pm or later Central time).
Also their standard techniques are designed for a system of constituencies, where many votes ultimately don’t count for much, whereas in the referendum they do, which makes the polling rather harder!
Of course, there are private polls but they’re for financial speculation (heck don’t you need to know whether to sell sterling short?) , not public information.
The rules restrict what the BBC can report, but they don’t apply to Sky News (prop. R. Murdoch), who can (and do) report exactly whatever line they are told, by whom one can’t guess, because Murdoch asserts the complete editorial independence of all his media. The restrictions on the Beeb are part of an ongoing campaign by the UK media- almost all oligarch- owned- to muzzle the BBC and to transfer any potentially bprofit- making parts to private ownership.
@5,6: “it’s not like any actual people might get hurt by that, right, applehead?”- people (including British ones) are already getting seriously hurt by the idiot economy that’s been foisted on us over the last 30 years.
You can, however, check on the odds at betting shops.
Which are 1/6 to remain and 9/2 to leave
I.e. you would have to bet £6 to gain £1 on UK remaining, but only £2 to gain £9 on leaving
So among people putting money on it, the expectation is that it’s 27 times more likely that the remain camp will prevail.
While betting odds are not perfect, they do seem to be more reliable than polls – and this is a substantial spread.
As an ex-pat, I sincerely hope that my UK passport doesn’t suddenly stop being an EC passport. Unfortunately I can’t vote having been away for more than 15 years
CaitieCat, Harridan of Social Justice @ 6;
By the looks of Applehead’s post @ 5, they would probably contest the application of the title ‘people’ to the inhabitants of what they clearly consider to be perfidious Albion.
I mean, what is a couple of million lost jobs, widespread hardship, and blunted life opportunities for an entire generation (not even counting the damage a British exit might do to the broader EU itself, up to and including its possible dissolution as a political project) set against Applehead getting a shot at being snidely self righteous?
Priorities, CatieCat, priorities…
Applehead @5: I hope you won’t take it the wrong way when I say that, as a Brit, I will be seriously inconvenienced if that happened. Also, screw you.
We most certainly can get those laws here.
The first step to doing so is, repeal the first amendment. :/
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The UK lacks that protection of free speech and press, going with an invisible restriction that was last seen at its most repressive during WWII.
The final result isn’t expected until at least 7am BST, though it’s expected to be obvious which way it’s going by 5am.
At which time, I will be on a local TV station, trying not to swear if it looks like going Leave’s way.
If you ask: the final poll showed Reamin being ahead by four points, but since exit polls were very wrong during last elections, british media won’t publish these this time around.
Turnout was apparently way higher in Unionist than Catholic-Republican districts in Northern Ireland, but people don’t know how to interpret it: normally the Unionists skew more right-wing than the Catholics, implying an advantage for the Brexit, but the possibility that said Brexit will cause the dismembering of the UK may have push more Unionists in the Remain camp to preserve the Good Friday agreement and avoid a reunification of the island under Dublin.
***
No, but we may get to see Brexiters who claimed that They were the Real True Defenders™ of the WillofthePeople doing a 180° and accusing Britons of being a bunch of morons who don’t deserve to live in a democracy.
***
Or it will embolden the other Putin-funded far-right demagogues throughout the continent and cause the final collapse of the European Union. Which means that 10 years from now, France will be a fascist dictatorship with nukes with Cersei Lanister’s less subtle cousin as its ruler.
Applehead @5: If I thought Brexit would have achieved any of that I would have voted for it but the parasites would simply have moved operations elsewhere after sucking the corps of the UK dry.
I’m reminded of all those people who say, “Let Texas / the South secede! Good riddance!”
I’m a Texan. It doesn’t help me.
@Gregory Greenwood #11:
We will survive, we will plod on. We will be more british than the British. It’ll whet libertarian whistle concerning EUxit being possible, but most of us remember being alone and rejected by Europe and don’t want to repeat it.
Ah, we live in interesting times!
@laurentweppe #15:
A deeply unpleasant prospect, only mildly alleviated by the sniggers it would cause in the non-French-speaking world if she followed the lead of her 20th century German and Italian predecessors when choosing a fitting honorific for her new status.
Sounds like I was wrong about the timing of the first results – some may be out before midnight. There have been no exit polls (at least, none have been announced) but an on-the-day poll by YouGov came out at 52:48 for Remain. The pound and shares have risen, which probably means private polls also show a Remain win. Turnout is high – speculated to favour Remain. And Farage is reported to have said he thinks Remain may have “edged it”. But given that Farage is wrong about everything…
The tin foil hat brigade are out in force…
Found via Mary Beard, who sums up the tension quite well.
Well, I think that’s fair enough, and indeed, it should be substantially less than 15 years! There are many people who’ve left the country for good and have no intention of ever living here again who can vote, while millions of EU citizens who live here and would be directly and badly affected, can’t.
Pensiltension has been at an all-time-high during my watch of the referendum. Those most enlightened have voted with their small pencils, the rest have grabbed associated pencilage and penmanship to try to vote. According to reports, MI5 has bought out all eraser reserves. Brexit seems doomed!
Apparently the stock market – an entity I could care less about, if only I made the effort – has been bouncing around as well, first anticipating Remain and now Leave. Or something. Of course maybe they are just gambling and guessing but no, finance experts wouldn’t do that, would they? Especially not with money that isn’t actually theirs.
But it’s nice to go to bed being all but certain that the Brits will frack it all up for everyone. Every refresh of the BBC tracker has growing numbers, and Leave is always bigger. Thanks, lads. No amount of chips will make up for this one, I’m afraid.
Well, fuck. We’re out. But Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voted strongly to remain. If the UK is going to break up (there will be clamour for another independence referendum in Scotland), can London leave the UK? Maybe Scotland would have us?
Moggie #25
bugger
My sentiments exactly.
As an English Scot (English by birth, Scottish by choice, pro-independence), there will be such clamour, but it’s not going to happen immediately, nor is the result of any second referendum – if one is allowed, because that’s down to the UK parliament – by any means guaranteed. A lot of those who voted Remain will have voted No in the indyref, quite a lot of those who voted Yes will have voted Leave. So calling indyref2 “so we can stay in the EU” is not an obvious winner. If Sturgeon is canny, she will focus for now on demanding Scottish representation at the negotiations prior to leaving (and she’ll likely get northern Irish and Welsh support), and further devolution, and yell like hell every time the UK government goes against Scottish interests.
There was a non-serious article on the BBC about this a few days ago, but I can’t envisage it as a real possibility – more a near-future post-disaster SF scenario. But then, this stupid vote could be chapter 1 in such a novel – with a renewed financial meltdown as chapter 2.
Since London has a considerably larger population and economy than Scotland, maybe it’s “would London have us?” ;-\
Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck. Kippers and the far-right across Europe all ecstatic. How could we collectively have been swayed by arguments as paper-thin as the Leave campaign? Poor and relatively poor working people seem to honestly believe that this is going to make things better for jobs, public services … when what it’s actually going to do is invite in the TTIP vultures to strip the flesh from all our bones; the trickle-up of money will become a river, and Johnson and his ilk of course won’t give a toss because they’ll be the ones on top of the smaller, dirtier, crumbling little heap.
I know the Scottish situation is not a simple one, but if Sturgeon does call it in the next few years I’m applying for nationality for me and the family.
Chapter 1 is now done and chapter 2 appears well in progress. The pound is down against every currency I’ve seen it measured against this morning. It has bounced a little, but not much and my completely uneducated guess is that there will be further, probably more gradual, falls over the next few months. Reality is way ahead of its nanowrimo word count.
Also, wasn’t the breakdown of relations within Europe and renewed tensions between the US and Russia how the war started in the Fallout series? Time to stock up on water purifiers.
@#30, dianne
I don’t see that you get to worry about that; your preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, is one of the causes of those tensions. She wants a U.S. military presence in Syria to actively work against the Russians there, she wants a confrontation with Putin over the Ukraine, she wants an expansion of NATO which the Russians specially do not want, and she’s one of the backers of the plan to spend a trillion dollars (yes, that’s what they want) on new nukes to put in Eastern Europe. You ought to be thrilled! You’re getting what you wanted! An explicitly pro-war candidate with a history of decisions which backfire (NAFTA, Iraq, and Libya, just to name three) in charge of the military! Julian Assange has just said that he’s read some of the e-mails which were leaked from that pesky server you keep ignoring, the one the Koreans and the Russians both hacked and which contained State Department secrets, and he says Clinton is actually even more of a war hawk than Obama says, and he says she was the one in the cabinet who was always pushing for war! You ought to go and buy some champagne to keep around, just in case you can’t get any once the nuclear warheads are falling like hailstones, so you can celebrate how thoroughly you got your choice! Just like the idiots who voted for the Brexit are getting what they wanted in the form of an immediate destruction of the value of their currency, huge immediate job losses, and a shrinkage of the British economy by £350 Billion in 24 hours! You are not permitted to not will the obvious outcomes of your actions. You have asked for those tensions with your vote, and they are already materializing.
I wouldn’t want to be Corbyn today. Labour’s campaigning was lacklustre, and the knives will be out for him. I think he’ll survive in the immediate term, but I wouldn’t bet on him still being in post by September. Labour desperately need someone with more leadership abilities than a damp sock.
Actually it started with Europe invading the Middle East to pillage its oil, followed by Arab terrorists nuking Tel-Aviv in retaliation, followed by Europe nuking the Middle East in re-retaliation, which turned out to be for nothing since the oil fields dried up in 2060.
#6,
the British people murdered one of their own elected representatives.
The British people committed Holocaust before the Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%9378
The British people wanted to prevent German reunification and started the Falklands War.
The British people are the worst kind of people, they are monsters. For once, I want to see justice served in this broken world. The British have spread so much suffering and death over the entirety of their existence they deserve – demand – punishment.
I want to see the British BLEED
(And anyway, the innocents and actually good people among them can emigrate to the civilized world, can they not?)
@33: Clearly it’s been too long since I played Fallout. I no longer remember the back story correctly. Also, I would think that nuking the Middle East would result in any residual oil oxidizing.
Back in the real world or whatever this is, Sturgeon is saying a new referendum on Scottish independence is “highly likely”. If Britain is out of the EU they can’t block Scotland’s entry.
#31,
Oh sweet Jesus, let it go already. Bernout got nixed by the democratic system he wanted to destroy with a make-believe “revolution.”
Is your Bernie Bro irrational hatred so strong you try to turn everything and anything against President Clinton? How dare she seeks to defend the free world against Putin and his plan to resurrect the Soviet Empire! (Just google “Eurasian Economic Community” and “Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”)
Depending on what you mean by the “civilized world”, not any more, they can’t. Thanks to their own decision.
Actually, I don’t know if people from Britain can apply for citizenship in other EU countries in the next 2 years and get it as easily as they could have, say, yesterday or not. Maybe they do have 2 years to find a new place.
And the S&P reduced the UK’s credit rating. Almost as though nationalism and xenophobia had consequences.
White nationalist America and xenophobic Britain will be the Axis Powers this time around.
@39: Time to just rename the mess “Oceania” and be done with it? If Trump wins, I’m sure he’d be entirely happy to call Britain Air Strip One.
Re: #34
Once again the distinction between country and people would be handy to have. The average citizen probably had as much a hand in the events you name as today’s US citizen does in the casual bomb strikes carried out by their government. Which is to say, none at all.
The standard response to this would seem to be, ‘vote the buggers out then’, because it really is that simple and absolupositively works. Or so the legend of democracy goes.
I really don’t see it but I’ll override myself and consider this sarcasm. Either way this is an utterly idiotic sentiment.
Yes, that would seem eminently practical. When things get too bad you just up and leave. That has never caused any problems or tensions at all, nor any hardship, misery and death. Oh, wait, there was this ‘refugee crisis’ on the news the other day. Could that be relevant?
Applehead I think your comment @34 is offensive and deeply insulting to the large proportion of reasonable British people.
If add nothing constructive to the conversation.
applehead’s comments are insulting to any human being with a sense of empathy or ability to reason.
It’s an example of the kind of bankrupt class-blind smug liberalism that characterizes many fanatical clintonites, and risks electoral defeat now and and the year 2020, especially if Clinton neoliberals it up during her time.
applehead@34,
You’re racist scum.
@#36, applehead
Yeah, that democracy always makes the best choice. Like the way the British just blew up their economy to spite refugees. Oh, and it looks like the “Leave” vote was very much an old people thing, like the Clinton vote was. Baby Boomers are not only not going gentle into that good night, they’re trying to take everyone else with them.
Everything that’s her fault, yes. And a surprising amount of it is. That’s the price you pay for having a candidate who has been screwing around and pushing rightward for 40 years. People who describe Clinton as a liberal are seriously delusional; at every step of her political career, she has been a warhark, she has been anti-labor, and she has always been willing to sacrifice minorities for her own good. (As recently as 2010 she was describing gay people as “unnatural” in public appearances. A 180° turn may merely be “evolution” if you’re not paying attention, but to those who actually have an attention span it’s an obvious fake.)
Yeah, yeah, sure. And he’s secretly a Commie! And probably a Muslim — after all, he’s working with those shifty Iranians and willing to help Syria where the U.S. wasn’t! He must be a terrorist! How dare other countries want to band together with countries near them because it serves their interests better! Why, don’t the Russians know that U.S.-backed insurgencies and coups are always in everyone’s Best Interests? How could anyone not like the Neo-Nazis we put into power in the Ukraine?!
Save it for the Republican convention, you right-winger.
The Vicar, why the US is so almighty powerful, we’re now installing regimes in the Ukraine!
Did we use a time machine to do that too?
@#47, wzrd1:
2014. We were the ones funding the group now notionally in power. About a third of them are Neo-Nazis, the remainder are Chalabi-style opportunists who have been raiding the treasury. Why do you think there’s all that unrest over there, disappointment with the outcome of the last Eurovision?
(And it was the Clinton State Department which oversaw that whole thing. Don’t you remember the leaked Victoria Nuland phone conversation recording where someone pointed out that the EU wouldn’t like what we were doing, and she said “Fuck the EU”? I assure you that the Europeans remember that, even if you don’t.)
The Vicar, I recall precisely what Hillary said about the EU. As I recall, it was around the time we had a carrier task force heading toward the Ukraine and the Russians were invading a chunk of it. Then, there was the Russian South Ossetia campaign, I’m sure you’ll blame us for that as well.
Indeed, perhaps you’d like to blame Carter for Russia invading Afghanistan as well?
It was amazing how much Russian soldiers were allowed to take home on leave with them for both Russian campaigns. Russia’s a lot more generous than the US Army was, as we weren’t allowed to take aircraft and tanks home with us on leave. Damn you, Hillary! I wanted to take the tank to the drive-in…
@#49, wzrd1
A large part of the problem with Hillary Clinton is that what she says (in public, at least) and what she does do not often sync up. And a large part of the problem with Hillary Clinton’s supporters is that they listen to what she says and ignore what she does.
Yeah, I remember that. I also remember that they carefully did not cross the border, and that the only people in the Ukraine itself who were going crazy over it were the government we backed. Everyone else was nervous but not asking for help.
Actually, much though I despise Russia, they act very rationally. NATO, led by the U.S., has been trying to pen Russia in and cut off its ties with other countries ever since the collapse of the Russian economy (which was, essentially, western banks looting the country and scamming people out of their savings with techniques which had been against the law under the Communists and were therefore unrecognized by the citizens at large). I’m not happy with the idea that they’re trying to grab more land and influence, but for the last 50 years, the foreign policy of the U.S. has been to undermine any country which resisted us, and to flat-out invade any country which doesn’t try to protect itself. Russia is looking at Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Egypt, Cuba, and so on, and sees that an aggressive anti-US policy is the only way a country the U.S. doesn’t like can avoid being destroyed by us.
Nope. That was a dumb move of the Russians; it was just as dumb for us to invade Afghanistan under Bush. By the Pentagon’s own figures, every soldier we keep in Afghanistan is costing a million dollars a year. How much infrastructure could we rebuild, how many schools could we fund, how many hungry people could we feed, if we hadn’t gone there?
Why bother taking stuff home with you? You can have all the weapons you like without having to steal, thanks to the NRA.
@#50, The Vicar
Welcome to US politics, where one can tell when a politician is lying: The lips are moving.
Oddly, those people “going crazy” only happened to do so after Russian forces started slipping across the border. Amazing correlation there! But then, I was reading our intercepts, radar observations and other US government information on the events as they were happening live. We had a very real concern that resources might have ended up being needed from CENTCOM and AFRICOM at that time, should things go sideways. The Russians halted at the border, which is an interesting border, as it only existed after the Russians declared it a border and our carrier task force was in range.
Russia has been trying to restore her old sphere of influence that was previously the USSR, at least, that is the intelligence consensus.
Interesting, so Bank of America was fleecing Russian citizens? Most western banking organizations aren’t licensed to operate in Russia or most of the former USSR. Shall we discuss Putin and his ties to Gazprom? Your information sources seem to be the same ones that feed Russia Today.
Still, as far as I’m concerned, we screwed up when we didn’t invite Russia into NATO. It’d protect Russian access to warm water and encourage less militaristic misadventures, while forcing mutual protection.
Do review Pentagon figures on how much it costs to station US troops in Germany, South Korea and even our our domestic installations. A million a year is chump change in the DoD budget, compared to say, the costs of keeping bombing, submarine based missiles and B-52’s ready to nuke the planet.
Odd, while I do possess a number of firearms, I lack artillery, mortars, tanks or armored personnel carriers. Even more odd, even the National Guard won’t let their troops take any of those things home. I’ve also noted a dearth of gun shops that sport the NRA logo selling those artillery pieces, mortars, tanks or armored personnel carriers, let alone combat aircraft.
Oh, that’s right, people with military assets are obviously from an industry group that touts itself as a sportsman’s organization. Why, the USMC is really part of the 4H club!
Seriously?!
Full disclosure: I refuse to compete in NRA events, I stick with a *real* sporting organization, the CMP (Civilian Marksmanship Program). Put up a man shaped target at a CMP event, get escorted from the property. Use an exploding target, get banned from the club forever. Yahoos are not welcome. Indeed, fire more than once per three seconds, get some surprised and alarmed stares. We do slow fire, precision fire, calipers and magnifiers are used in scoring.
As a comparison, NRA members frequently stockpile a 5000 or more rounds of ammunition, which is pretty much the ammunition supply of an entire CMP club.
@#51, wzrd1
Funny, not even the U.S. government made the claims you’re making now, or at least I didn’t see them showing up on the newsfeed. Even the people calling for outright war weren’t claiming that. Gee, should I believe people who could have helped their own cause with even a single photo from a cell phone camera showing a violation, or some random person on the Internet? Hmmmm. Tough choice.
The license restrictions were put in place after the fleecing, which took place back in the 1990s. Gorbachev got kicked out of office by an overwhelming majority (he got, IIRC, 1% of the vote in his reelection campaign) because he invited western “investors” in who stripped the country bare. Now that I think of it, that was under the Clintons, too.
Only if we can discuss Clinton’s ties to the banking industry, the arms manufacturers, and the private prison industry, all of which are known to act against the interests of the public.
You seem to think that NATO was formed to make us safer. Presumably you got this idea from a politician. You know, the people you say lie whenever their lips move?
A million a year is indeed chump change. But that’s the annual cost per soldier. How many troops do we have in Afghanistan? (And how many years has it been?) The quick result from Google says we’re spending a little under $10 billion on this each year, and that’s now; a while back we had more troops there.
#46,
Woah! “How could anyone not like the Neo-Nazis we put into power in the Ukraine?!” You DO realize that’s a meme of the hardcore Putinites to justify their blood-soaked, criminal invasion, don’t you?
The stark madness of the Bernie Bro, ladies and gentleman! So benighted, they pull a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” on all of Hills’ opponents, even if it’s Vlad “I kill dissidents with polonium” Putin! Yeah, you go and spit on the mass graves of all those massacred Ukrainians and Crimeans…
And folks here have the nerve to call me scum. Could one of you brainiacs call that loon out for claiming the Ukrainians fought and died for Neo-Nazism rathe than freedom and sovereignty?!
@#53, applehead:
Um, sorry, but the U.S. government has admitted that we’ve been backing Neo-Nazis. Looks like you’re just as full of sh*t on this as on everything else.
But even beyond that, there’s a very good argument that Russia isn’t a big threat: if Russia were a threat, then letting Russia see state secrets would be a serious breach of security.
Russia read Hillary Clinton’s e-mail, which has now been confirmed to have contained secrets, thanks to her unsecured server and her willingness to ignore established State Department rules by using her private server for official business*. In addition to this, Mossad has admitted, themselves, that their ranks have been infiltrated by the Russian Mafia, and Putin is tied to the Russian mafia and presumably gets any intelligence they collect. Any secret we share with Israel, therefore, is going to Russia. Yet Clinton wants to share more intelligence with Israel.
If Russia is a threat, therefore, Hillary Clinton is unarguably totally unfit for any sort of high office. You claim Hillary Clinton is a good candidate. Therefore you do not believe Russia is a threat. Q.E.D.
*People who claim “other Secretaries of State did it too” are either intentionally or unintentionally lying; other Secretaries of State had private e-mail addresses, but never ran their own servers, and generally did not conduct official business through their private addresses. On the very rare occasions they screwed up and sent official mail through private addresses they were hauled over the coals for it — Colin Powell did it exactly twice, by mistake; Clinton was doing it continuously for years. Any corporate IT department who found an employee doing what Clinton did would demand that employee’s head on a platter; to anyone with a background in IT Clinton’s e-mail server was stupidity on a par with the Brexit.
The Vicar #49, let’s see now, secret information was sent via the internet. Wrong. Secret information is sent via SIPRnet, do learn the difference between NIPRnet, SIPRnet and JWICS.
Unclassified information is sent via NIPRnet, Secret information via SIPRnet and Top Secret and SCI information via JWICS.
Russia got classified state department e-mails courtesy of Manning.
I happen to not only have an IT background, but Information Assurance for US government and DoD networks.
Oh, the government confirmed that Hillary’s server wasn’t compromised, even when the official White House network and e-mail server was compromised. As classified information doesn’t go on NIPRnet, it was an annoyance only.
Oddly, the Bloomberg article says the opposite, that Neo-Nazis won’t get US funding and hence, backing. Is this doublespeak?
Sharing data with allies is common, even Israel. One penetration or two doesn’t cause compartmentalization to suddenly uncompartmentalize. You do know what compartmentalization is, yes? Compartments, working groups, bigot lists all restrict information to a small group of people who are supposed to have specific intelligence. Those not on the bigot list, in the working group or compartment won’t gain access to that information, as there are access barriers in place. Hell, allies even share information with us, one of the most notoriously leaky nations on the planet! In your version of the world, we’d have never received intelligence and burning aircraft would’ve been raining down on US cities, courtesy of Al Qaeda in Yemen’s printer bomb plot. We got the intelligence, the printer bombs were intercepted long before they even neared our shores, indeed, some, intercepted in the Persian Gulf, one in the UK.
So, your QED was a logical failure, assuming, based upon ignorance of how security classification systems operate, protections that are in place and what compartmentalization is and why it’s effective.
@#55, wzrd1
You seem to have skipped the entire description of the scandal. Hillary Clinton abandoned her state department e-mail and had all her “work” e-mail, including state documents, sent to her private address on her private server. She conducted official public business using this address, and the server was repeatedly hacked. The State Department has confirmed all of that. (In fact, the person who set the server up for the Clintons even manually removed security from the server, and apparently messages with viral attachments were routinely getting through. Whether they were actually activating is another question, but they weren’t being properly filtered out.)
So your contention that nothing was wrong? Just another outright lie.
Utterly irrelevant.
(And, incidentally, an aside re: Manning and whistleblowers in general: people like Hillary Clinton really, really want to punish whistleblowers. Clinton — and Obama as well — can’t think of a punishment harsh enough to apply to Snowden. You know what’s the absolute rock-solid method to ensure whistleblowers can’t reveal that you’re doing illegal stuff? Stop doing illegal stuff. Clinton, apparently, considers that to be too difficult to implement.)
You’re lying, here. And that means I’m done replying to you.
The Vicar, could you supply a credible link for that as on Googling, all I see are a lot of right wing sites saying maybe this or maybe that, a lot of speculation from sites I don’t know the veracity of, Trump claiming she’s been hacked and then when asked for his sources just muttering well someone said and so on, oh and supposedly the Russians hacked her, but no proof yet. So lots of claims by a lot of people but nothing real. Now that’s not to say that she hasn’t been hacked, but I would like more than the speculation and rumours. So perhaps you have an actual reputable link that is more than speculation or rumours.
Yeah, Vicar is your typical Russia-today (or any Russian-TV watching) propaganda-blurred asshole. Defending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with ” third of them are Neo-Nazis[!]” is total bullshit. If you start sending guns, tanks and “little green men” and ground-to-air-missile-systems into a country, you are waging war against them. If you repeatedly manipulate elections and switch between president/prime minister roles while holding absolute power, if you murder and imporison political dissidents, you’re an authoritarian, if you invoke grand notions of a famed national past, and pan-national empire, all the same time scaremongering about external enemies (or gays and atheists) you’re a fascist.
I live in a country that Russia (or more specifically Putin) would love to (and is constantly trying to) once more include in it’s sphere of influence and I say fuck ’em. We don’t need more wannabe-fascist dictators in Europe, nor do we need to shed a tear for poor Putin not being able to stick whet his whistle on ex-USSR countries that he (for no sane reason) has some right to fuck over. I shed no tears for Putin and I’ll be glad when he croaks.
#56, The Vicar,
Odd how every official report, even Congressional reports say that the server wasn’t compromised. Even when the White House servers were compromised.
You also fail to comprehend what I said, classified mails were sent via classified networks, which were all US government systems. Private systems are not permitted on NIPRnet or JWICS.
Try finding a source that isn’t Trump or Russia Today.
You mentioned the Russian possession of diplomatic e-mails that were classified, that is the source and hence, is relevant. Just because you lose a point on the source of stolen information doesn’t make it irrelevant.
Stop moving the goalposts.
As for punishing “whistleblowers”, whistleblowers go to local media, they go to political leaders. They don’t give information to foreign individuals or organizations, for that isn’t whisleblowing, it’s espionage.
Had Snowden gone to the NY Times or Washington Post, that’d be one thing, he instead went to a foreign news organization.
Manning spilled to Wikileaks, all because of a pending Other Than Honorable discharge. Manning’s access should have, per regulations, been revoked once pending deleterious personnel actions were initiated. That is the regulation and frankly, his entire chain of command should be in adjacent cells, as their dereliction of duty enabled the reprisal action that Manning conducted.
In short, Manning is in the right place, but should have a handful of full time company. Just as if I were to release classified documents and information, I should be in an adjacent cell.
Anyone with a security clearance knows what will happen if classified information is released, it’s literally an annual briefing and the penalties are explained in detail.
Her chain of command that is, assuming you were referring to Chelsea Manning.
@Vivec, at the time, Manning self-identified as Bradley.
One should take temporal matters into account when speaking of someone’s past.
Besides, the soldier’s first name is PFC, Private First Class. It’s a really old joke in the military, one’s first name is one’s rank. ;)
Uh, no, not really. If someone refferred to me by my deadname or old pronouns when talking about me in the past, knowing my current preference, I’d consider them an asshole at the very least.
Hmm, I’ll have to consider that viewpoint. I most certainly do not wish to provide offense when one is not intended.
Or more simply, I try not to be an asshole when such is not called for. ;)
I was simply using the same general rule, such as for married people and the, at the time name/gender utilized before a life change.
Now, if only we could have gender neutral pronouns.
Well, they/them is a thing. Those are my preferred pronouns for that very reason.
But, doesn’t they/them imply plural and hence, either erroneously refer to a group, “those people” type of connotation or at least multiple people and hence create confusion?
wzrd1, no.
They is my fall back whenever I am not sure what pronoun to use or if I don’t want to specify the gender of the person I am referring to. In the UK the singular usage of they has always been common as far as I can remember in my 64 or so years on the planet.
True, I’ve used the singular they as well, just not in this specific context.
Fortunately, I enjoy learning something new, enjoying that on every occasion offered.
Still, do remind me if I slip up on occasion, a lifetime of specific language usage tends to be a bit hard to break.
wzrd1, all of us oldies have been there at some time or another :) but its the attempt that counts.