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BREXIT / British Politics thread - cont


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1 hour ago, elijah said:

Kosovo had been a part of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which no longer exists. 

During its existence, Kosovo had the same state attributes as the other federal units, including a constitution, and had its representatives in all federal institutions - in the collective presidency, the assembly, the executive council or federal government, and the constitutional court. 

It also had its own presidency, assembly, government, police, territorial defence, constitutional court, intelligence service, central bank and secretariat for international relations. 

At the federal level, Kosovo had the right to veto, and equal participation - along with other federal units - in all key federal institutions such as: the collective presidency, the federal government and the federal assembly. 

Kosovo's well-defined boundaries - as well as the international borders of the former Yugoslav Federation and those of other entities - were protected by the constitution, and could not be changed without the consent of the federal units, for instance the parliament of Kosovo. 

The dissolution of the former Yugoslavia began with the violent destruction of Kosovo's federal status in 1989 by Serbia, which illegally stripped Kosovo's autonomy through the police duress and military force.

Now, to compare with the Kosovo case, Catalonia's autonomy was not illegally revoked by Spain. 

The Catalan people did not face the violent repression, crimes against civilians and ethnic cleansing by Spain - the way Serbia did in Kosovo toward Albanian majority. 

The events in Kosovo between 1989 and 1999, caused by Serbia, were characterised as a humanitarian catastrophe and a serious threat to international peace and security - something that fortunately did not happen in Catalonia. 

Kosovo's independence is also a result of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, which was confirmed by UN Resolution 777.

In Kosovo, there were almost 1 million people forced to flee the country and some 25,000 people killed by the Serbian regime. This was not the case in Catalonia.

Kosovo citizens from the Albanian majority - or 93 percent of the population - were committed to gaining independence. This is not the case in Catalonia, where there is division between proclaiming independence and mediating with Madrid.

The factors mentioned above, regarding Kosovo, are not found in any other cases - including Catalonia - making Kosovo's independence completely unique and also in line with norms in international law.

https://euobserver.com/opinion/139340

what's this biased BS??

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38 minutes ago, elijah said:

I don't know if an Article similar to Art. 155 of the Spanish constitution was indeed included within the Yugoslav federation constitution.

No you don't know, do you...

38 minutes ago, elijah said:

However facts (not opinions) are indisputable that before Kosovo, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia  have all already seceded from Yugoslavia and were already recognized by the majority of the states (EU included) which leads me to believe 1) no such article existed or 2) it wasn't known who was the successor of Yugoslavia so that this subject would act upon trying to respect it. If such an article existed at all, its evident by the facts that it wasn't respected by at least 4 federal units, so why expect that of Kosovo? Thus the argument of the rule of law being applied differently doesn't seem to be true at all as we are looking at 2 absolutely different situations. So in my opinion the citation of those important facts was quite relevant.

You ll have to keep on looking forward to me posting "the next puff piece propaganda from Tory party head-office about how well the Brexit deal is going", cause I m definitely against Brexit.

LOL.

And how did Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia secede from Yugoslavia? That's right, by holding independence referendums and legally seceding.

And how did Kosovo gain its independence from Serbia? That's right - international intervention,  Nato bombing campaign, U.N. administrative mandate, UDI.

Sound familiar? So what's YOUR preference?

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Just now, Kim said:

No you don't know, do you...

LOL.

And how did Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia secede from Yugoslavia? That's right, by holding independence referendums and legally seceding.

And how did Kosovo gain its independence from Serbia? That's right - international intervention,  Nato bombing campaign, U.N. administrative mandate, UDI.

Sound familiar? So what's YOUR preference?

And I ll be glad to hear more information on an Art. similar to Art. 155 of the Spanish constitution so that we could see if there are even any grounds for discussing "different application of the principle of the rule of law". If no law existed, it is irrelevant and inapplicable in Kosovo case.

Actually I made the effort and I saw that the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution explicitly granted to the federal units the right to secede which means that the 2 cases are totally different and we have zero ground to talk about  "different application of the principle of the rule of law". Thus the referendums in Yugoslavia u mentioned were constitutional. It further proves my point.

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1 hour ago, elijah said:

And I ll be glad to hear more information on an Art. similar to Art. 155 of the Spanish constitution so that we could see if there are even any grounds for discussing "different application of the principle of the rule of law". If no law existed, it is irrelevant and inapplicable in Kosovo case.

Actually I made the effort and I saw that the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution explicitly granted to the federal units the right to secede which means that the 2 cases are totally different and we have zero ground to talk about  "different application of the principle of the rule of law". Thus the referendums in Yugoslavia u mentioned were constitutional. It further proves my point.

*groan*

Serbia, which at this point was already independent having seceded in 2006. Kosovo as part of Serbia declared UDI in 08. They did this while under a UN administrative mandate which supposedly still recognised the territorial integrity of Serbia under UN Security Council Resolution 1244. The legal focus therefore was on the legality or otherwise of the unilateral action of the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government having power to declare independence or not.

Serbia was confident enough in it's legal stance to take the question of the legality of the UDI to the international court of justice which decided that whether the declaration was in fact an official act of the Provisional Institution was unclear; in the end determining the UDI was issued by "representatives of the people of Kosovo" acting outside the normal Provisional Institutions of Self-Government. The Serbian argument was that the Kosovo Provisional Institutions had exceeded the authority given to them by the Constitutional Framework. 

The international court (rightly) declared that the UDI was not illegal but stated it didn't "feel that it is necessary" to address "whether or not Kosovo has achieved statehood" or "whether international law conferred a positive entitlement on Kosovo unilaterally to declare its independence." 

Clear as mud then.

As we know, Kosovo remains a disputed territory and partially recognised state.

Which leads back to the original point Craig Murray makes in his article, that it's an unalienable right for the people of Kosovo and Catalonia and any other people to their own self determination.

So I ask you again, should Catalonia be given a democratic referendum on their own future or not?

I guess you'll be waiting for a Catalonian UDI or a civil war to see what happens when Spain defends it's "rule of law" to the court of human rights? Alternatively, give them their fucking referendum.

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7 hours ago, Kim said:

*groan*

Serbia, which at this point was already independent having seceded in 2006. Kosovo as part of Serbia declared UDI in 08. They did this while under a UN administrative mandate which supposedly still recognised the territorial integrity of Serbia under UN Security Council Resolution 1244. The legal focus therefore was on the legality or otherwise of the unilateral action of the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government having power to declare independence or not.

Serbia was confident enough in it's legal stance to take the question of the legality of the UDI to the international court of justice which decided that whether the declaration was in fact an official act of the Provisional Institution was unclear; in the end determining the UDI was issued by "representatives of the people of Kosovo" acting outside the normal Provisional Institutions of Self-Government. The Serbian argument was that the Kosovo Provisional Institutions had exceeded the authority given to them by the Constitutional Framework. 

The international court (rightly) declared that the UDI was not illegal but stated it didn't "feel that it is necessary" to address "whether or not Kosovo has achieved statehood" or "whether international law conferred a positive entitlement on Kosovo unilaterally to declare its independence." 

Clear as mud then.

As we know, Kosovo remains a disputed territory and partially recognised state.

Which leads back to the original point Craig Murray makes in his article, that it's an unalienable right for the people of Kosovo and Catalonia and any other people to their own self determination.

So I ask you again, should Catalonia be given a democratic referendum on their own future or not?

I guess you'll be waiting for a Catalonian UDI or a civil war to see what happens when Spain defends it's "rule of law" to the court of human rights? Alternatively, give them their fucking referendum.

But before that Miloshevich stripped Kosovo of its de facto federal unit status according to the Yugoslav 74 constitution and federal units did have the right to secede. So again indeed its "clear as a mud" and shows that the two cases are totally different. Add to that the fact that there was ethnic cleansing going on and we are looking at totally different situations.

As for Catalonia and should Catalonia be given a democratic referendum on their own future or not I think that should be a question for the Spanish constitutional court to decide on within their constitutional order. From what I ve read on the matter, they don't have legal grounds to organize such a referendum. There is also lack of any other logical reason why they should secede from Spain, even if its illegal to secede from it. There is no ethnic cleansing or ill treatment that puts the Catalans in danger: actually Catalonia is one of the most prosperous Spanish regions. If they were oppressed it would have been the opposite. I believe the Catalans have been subjected to severe propaganda and some Catalan politicians have been probably paid to spread lies and negativity towards other Spaniards. So in their case, no, I don't think there should be such a referendum at present. In any case, if they continue to desire to secede and block Spanish economy and continue to act like spoiled brats, maybe in the end they will be granted such a referendum.

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9 minutes ago, promise to try said:

this is like dynasty and the colbys????? which one is dynasty and which is the other?:lol:

I only know that you and me are the ones cleaning the stables.  Just wait and see that after all this passes,  these politicians will be loaded and we will face a worse economy. 

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Just now, karbatal said:

I only know that you and me are the ones cleaning the stables.  Just wait and see that after all this passes,  these politicians will be loaded and we will face a worse economy. 

we live in Delta Ro!!! it seems we are going to clean a lot of  shit hore now, yes.seat is thinking about moving, some other brands want to move away from spain, some pp people are mentioning 155 for the basque country too... this is not the colbys!!!! this will be the titanic!

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Just now, karbatal said:

But I would say that Catalonia is the Colbys.  More modern and trendy... Until the argument evolves to aliens and the series are cancelled.

catalonia has always been very trendy, right?? at least during the last decades they had that touch

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http://www.itv.com/news/utv/update/2017-10-29/stormont-talks-set-to-resume-on-deadline-day/

James Brokenshire has already shown he's weak for having it drag on this long. Almost 10 months is farcical. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if he extended the deadline again because they're "close to an agreement" only to be still sitting here in January with nothing. We'll be back at the polls again soon

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  • 3 weeks later...

Playing hard ball with Theresa May!

“Before we move to phase two talks on trade, we want taken off the table any suggestion that there will be a physical border, a hard border, new barriers to trade on the island of Ireland,” he told reporters. “If we have to wait until the New Year, if we have to wait for further concessions, so be it.”

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/…/brexit-varadkar-demands-commi…

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The Tories just keep sinking lower and lower. 

 

The Tory Government has outdone itself when it comes to neglecting animal rights this week – by voting that all animals (apart from humans, of course) have no emotions or feelings, including the ability to feel pain.

Remember all that campaigning against the badger cull and May’s attempt to bring back fox-hunting? It was probably all a waste. As the Government begins to shape the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, it has taken a vote to scrap EU legislation that sees non-human animals as sentient beings. Once we leave the EU in 2019, it’s not only badgers and foxes that will be threatened by this change in law, but all animals that aren’t pets. So basically all animals that it will be profitable to exploit.

True words from Ricky Gervais below. 

It's good to know that the government have decided that animals don't feel pain. Also, immigrants don't feel racism and poor people don't feel the cold.
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Follow the data: does a legal document link Brexit campaigns to US billionaire?

We reveal how a confidential legal agreement is at the heart of a web connecting Robert Mercer to Britain’s EU referendum

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  • This article is the subject of a legal complaint on behalf of SCLE and Cambridge Analytica.

On 18 November 2015, the British press gathered in a hall in Westminster to witness the official launch of Leave.EU. Nigel Farage, the campaign’s figurehead, was banished to the back of the room and instead an American political strategist, Gerry Gunster, took centre stage and explained its strategy. “The one thing that I know is data,” he said. “Numbers do not lie. I’m going to follow the data.”

Eighteen months on, it’s this same insight – to follow the data – that is the key to unlocking what really happened behind the scenes of the Leave campaign. On the surface, the two main campaigns, Leave.EU and Vote Leave, hated one other. Their leading lights, Farage and Boris Johnson, were sworn enemies for the duration of the referendum. The two campaigns bitterly refused even to share a platform.

But the Observer has seen a confidential document that provides clear evidence of a link between the two campaigns. More precisely, evidence of a close working relationship between the two data analytics firms employed by the campaigns – AggregateIQ, which Vote Leave hired, and Cambridge Analytica, retained by Leave.EU.

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British electoral law is founded on the principle of a level playing field and controlling campaign spending is the key plank of that. The law states that different campaigns must not work together unless they declare their expenditure jointly. This controls spending limits so that no side can effectively “buy” an election.

But this signed legal document – a document that was never meant to be made public and was leaked by a concerned source – connects both Vote Leave and Leave.EU’s data firms directly to Robert Mercer, the American billionaire who bankrolled Donald Trump.

This is a deeply complex story. It has taken three months of investigation to unravel the web of connections – both human and contractual. But these connections and threads linking two separate foreign data analytics companies – one based in Canada and one based in London – raise profound and troubling questions about our democratic process. Because these intricate links lead, in not many steps, to Robert Mercer.

This ordinary-looking document is at the heart of a web of relationships that link Mercer with the referendum to take Britain out of the EU. What impact did Mercer have on Brexit? Did the campaigns know of the link? Did they deliberately conceal it? Or could they, too, have been in the dark?

Because, legally, these two companies – AggregateIQ in Canada and Cambridge Analytica, an American company based in London, have nothing to connect them publicly. But this intellectual property licence shown to the Observer tells a different story. This created a binding “exclusive” “worldwide” agreement “in perpetuity” for all of AggregateIQ’s intellectual property to be used by SCL Elections (a British firm that created Cambridge Analytica with Mercer).

The companies may have had different owners but they were legally bound together. And, the Observer has learned, they were working together on a daily basis at the time of the referendum – both companies were being paid by Mercer-funded organisations to work on Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in America. What is more, several anonymous sources reveal the two companies, working on two separate British Leave campaigns, actually shared the same database at the time.

In fact AggregateIQ had a non-compete clause. Leave.EU announced in November 2015 it was working with Cambridge Analytica which means that AggregateIQ must have had explicit permission to work with Vote Leave.

And yet none of this was visible. Dominic Cummings, a former Tory special adviser who was Vote Leave’s chief strategist, was a vocal critic of Ukip, Farage, Leave.EU and its millionaire backer, Arron Banks. And the two campaigns followed different strategies – Leave.EU targeting Ukippers and disaffected working-class Labour voters with images of queues of refugees. Vote Leave targeted middle England with a message about returning £350m a week from Europe to the NHS.

Follow the data, however, and another story is revealed, which leads directly to Mercer and his close associate, Steve Bannon, now Donald Trump’s chief strategist in the White House. Mercer was the owner of Cambridge Analytica, a firm which, as the Observer detailed last week, was spun out of a British firm with 30 years experience in working for governments and militaries around the world, specialising in “psychological operations”. At the time of the referendum, the Observer has learned, Bannon was the head of it.

What was not known, until February, was the relationship between all these figures and the Leave campaign. That was when Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s communications director, revealed to this paper that Farage was a close friend of both Bannon and Mercer. He said that the Leave campaign was a “petri dish” for the Trump campaign. “We shared a lot of information because what they were trying to do and what we were trying to do had massive parallels.”

Wigmore also said that Mercer had been “happy to help” and Cambridge Analytica had given its services to the campaign for free. It was the general secretary of Ukip, a British lawyer called Matthew Richardson, who effected Leave.eu’s introduction to Cambridge Analytica, Wigmore said. “We had a guy called Matthew Richardson who’d known Nigel for a long time and he’s always looked after the Mercers. The Mercers had said that here’s this company that we think might be useful.”

He said that Mercer, Farage and co had all met at a conference in Washington. “The best dinner we ever went to. Around that table were all the rejects of the political world. And the rejects of the political world are now effectively in the White House. It’s extraordinary. Jeff Sessions. [Former national security adviser Michael] Flynn, the whole lot of them. They were all there.”

When the Observer revealed Mercer’s “help” in February, a “gift” of services, it triggered two investigations. One by the Information Commissioner’s Office about possible illegal use of data. And another by the Electoral Commission. Cambridge Analytica is a US company and Mercer is a US citizen and British law, designed to protect its electoral system from outside influence, expressly forbids donations from foreign – or impermissible – donors. The commission is also looking into the “help” that Gunster gave the campaign. It was not declared in Leave.EU’s spending returns and if donated, it would also be impermissible. Gavin Millar QC, an expert in electoral law, says it raises questions of the utmost importance about the influence of an American citizen in a UK election.

But the contents of this document raise even more significant and urgent questions. Coordination between campaigns destroys the “level playing field” on which UK electoral law is based. It creates an unfair advantage.

Millar said that one of the significant and revealing aspects of the arrangement was that it was hidden. “It’s the covert nature of the relationship between these two companies and campaigns that I find particularly revealing and alarming. If there is covert cooperation via offshore entities, [it] is about as serious a breach of the funding rules as one can imagine in the 21st century.”

Millar said that this case was without precedent. “To have a billionaire so directly buying influence in a British election is absolutely unheard of. This is completely out of the ordinary. And what’s clear is that our electoral laws are hopelessly inadequate. The only way we would be able to find the truth of what happened is through a public inquiry.”

The link between Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ was never supposed to come to light. And it is still uncertain how Vote Leave came to work with AggregateIQ. There are several major Tory donors and pro-Brexit figures associated with Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections, including Lord Marland, former treasurer of the Conservative party and head of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council. The pro-Brexit Tory donor Roger Gabb, the owner of South African wine company Kumala, is also a shareholder and was involved in one of the Leave campaigns. In a separate incident he was fined £1,000 by the Electoral Commission for failing to include “imprints” – or campaign branding – on newspaper ads.

The Observer revealed last week that two core members of the Vote Leave team used to work with both Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ. Cummings said that he found the company – on which he spent by far the biggest chunk of his campaign budget – “on the internet”.

He declined the opportunity to comment for this article. On Twitter, he accused the Observer of “bad journalism” and said the story was “an embarrassment to a national paper” but he did not comment further on how he found AggregateIQ, a firm with fewer than 10 employees based on an island off the west coast of Canada, on LinkedIn. Or if he knew of its relationship to Cambridge Analytica and Mercer. Though he has been a keen follower of Mercer’s dealings, tweeting several times about his company, Renaissance Technologies, which he describes as “the world’s most successful quant fund” [a hedge fund that uses automated trading].

Millar said: “It is appalling that Vote Leave, whose lead campaign status was authorised by the state (and whose campaign was partly funded by the state), does not feel an obligation to give … public answers to the questions you raise.”

Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica have responded by telling the Observer that they did no work with each other. Arron Banks, the head of Leave.EU, said it had talked to Cambridge Analytica about working with it “if we won the official designation – but we didn’t”.

This directly contradicts his own memoir, The Bad Boys of Brexit. Under the entry for 22 October 2015, Banks writes: “We’ve hired Cambridge Analytica, an American company that uses ‘big data and advanced psychographics’ to influence people.” There are multiple further pieces of evidence. The YouTube video of Leave.EU’s launch event, the same event in which Gunster talks about data, shows Banks sitting next to a senior executive of Cambridge Analytica, Brittany Kaiser. She is described on Leave.EU’s Facebook pages as its director of programme development, and she told the British press about the “large-scale research” that would identify what people were really interested in and how this would “help inform our policy and our campaigns”.

A now deleted post on Leave.EU’s website (but available via archive), entitled The Science Behind Our Strategy, details how Leave.EU was working with Cambridge Analytica, whose “psychographic methodology” is “on another level of sophistication”.

In November, Kaiser told Bloomberg the first stage of the work involved interviewing “close to half a million Britons”. To put this in context, typical polling samples conducted by firms such as YouGov are of about 1,200 people. Research on this scale and magnitude would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, say experts – though nothing has been declared or accounted for by any campaign. Any donation of services by Cambridge Analytica or Mercer would be “impermissible” under UK law.

n February 2016, Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, Alexander Nix, told Campaign magazine: “Recently, Cambridge Analytica has teamed up with Leave.EU – the UK’s largest group advocating for a British exit (or ‘Brexit’) from the European Union – to help them better understand and communicate with UK voters. We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU’s social media campaign by ensuring the right messages are getting to the right voters online and the campaign’s Facebook page is growing in support to the tune of about 3,000 people per day.”

On 2 February, Banks tweeted: “Our campaign is being run by Gerry Gunster (won 24 referendum in the USA and Cambridge analytica experts in SM”. (This post has since been deleted, though screenshots exist.)

In March 2016, Kaiser gave an interviewer further details: “Well, actually right now we are working on the Brexit campaign so we are working with all three of the main parties. […] It’s a very exciting campaign because it has forced the British government to run their third ever national referendum.”

In January 2017, Banks responded to a dismissive tweet about Cambridge Analytica, with: “Interesting, since we deployed this technology in leave.eu we got unprecedented levels of engagement. 1 video 13m views. AI won it for leave.”

All this has taken so long to come to light because the spending returns for the different campaigns were published only in February. Martin Moore, director of the Study of Communication, Media and Power at King’s College London described how he began to investigate the returns back then.

“I went through the invoices when the Electoral Commission uploaded them to its site. And I kept on discovering all these huge amounts going to a company that not only had I never heard of but that there was practically nothing at all about on the internet. More money was spent with AggregateIQ than with any other company in any other campaign in the entire referendum. All I found, at that time, was a one-page website and that was it. It was an absolute mystery.”

Other outlets found discrepancies. Buzzfeed published a story about how Vote Leave had given a 23-year-old fashion student, Darren Grimes, a gift of £625,000 in the week before the election, – which was spent on the BeLeave social media campaign – as well as a further £50,000 from another third party donor. Vote Leave and Grimes both claimed there was no coordination between campaigns. Grimes, the Observer has learned, had previously worked with Chris Wylie, a Canadian political strategist, who introduced AggregateIQ to Cambridge Analytica.

The returns showed that Vote Leave donated a further £100,000 to Veterans for Britain – which then spent exactly that amount of money with AggregateIQ. Both campaigns denied any “coordination”. Nor was there coordination, Vote Leave said, with the Democratic Unionist Party, which spent a further £32,750 with AggregateIQ.

Leaked emails published in February last year appeared to reveal a plan to break spending laws by creating different campaigns and covertly coordinating them. Steve Baker, Conservative MP for Wycombe, wrote to colleagues: “It is open to the Vote Leave family to create separate legal entities each of which could spend £700k: Vote Leave will be able to spend as much money as is necessary to win the referendum.”

But if coordination did occur, it is unclear which parties knew what. A spokesman for Veterans for Britain told the Observer that AggregateIQ approached it. “I didn’t find AggregateIQ. They found us. They rang us up and pitched us.”

However lawyers for Cambridge Analytica say that neither it nor SCL Elections has had any contractual or other link with AggregateIQ for 12 months, when it was retained to provide some software development and digital marketing support. They add that neither SCL Elections nor Cambridge Analytica was involved in AggregateIQ’s alleged involvement in the Vote Leave campaign.

A number of individuals, including Stephen Kinnock, MP for Aberavon, have sent a file of evidence to the Electoral Commission, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan police pointing out a catalogue of issues. They all referred it back to the Electoral Commission, saying it was the body with jurisdiction over the matter.

The commission announced it was going to pursue an investigation of Leave.EU. Publicly, it has made no statement about Vote Leave. Sources have told the Observer that it is unable to pursue a proper investigation because AggregateIQ is outside British jurisdiction. The Observer has learned that the Information Commissioner’s Office is actively investigating BeLeave, Vote Leave, Veterans for Britain and the DUP for potential offences, including illegal sharing of data, but it is believed to have the same problem: the evidence is offshore.

Kinnock said: “It’s clear the Electoral Commission, the body which is meant to uphold it, is completely toothless … That’s the heart of the problem. Even if it finds a problem, it can only impose a fine which is just the cost of doing business. There’s clear evidence of channelling funding through third parties, including DUP and BeLeave as front organisations to circumvent the rules. And there is no way of properly holding anyone to account. What you’ve shown is that there is a much bigger story here that I believe needs a full public inquiry. There are so many issues. Thousands of pounds of work apparently unaccounted for. Evidence of coordination between multiple campaigns. Multiple breaches of data protection. And this question of foreign influence, of a foreign billionaire buying influence in a British election, goes right to the heart of our entire democratic process.”

The Observer asked Cambridge Analytica for comment on the financial and business links between Cambridge Analytica, Mercer, Bannon, AggregateIQ, Leave.EU and the Vote Leave campaigns. We asked about an apparently coordinated campaign strategy between Leave.EU, Vote Leave, BeLeave, Veterans for Britain and the DUP “in part funded and enabled by Robert Mercer”.

A Cambridge Analytica spokesman said: “Cambridge Analytica did no paid or unpaid work for Leave.EU.”

Lawyers for Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections wrote to the Observer on Saturday to complain about our previous stories, which they said contained significant inaccuracies and amounted to a sustained campaign of vilification designed to paint a false and misleading picture of their clients. They said we were conducting a concerted campaign to undermine their clients and cause them damage. They said their clients have done no wrong, broken no laws and breached no one’s rights and had not been part of a “shadowy” or unlawful campaign to subvert British democracy or dupe the British public.

 

Link to article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/14/robert-mercer-cambridge-analytica-leave-eu-referendum-brexit-campaigns?CMP=share_btn_tw

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There's a plan to undermine the euro and the EU. It's been clear for 10 years. The risk rate sky rocketing in several European countries was orchestrated and only aimed to break the common currency. How could Spain for almost 2 years have a higher risk in the debt than most center African countries? The same for Portugal or Ireland. Even Greece, being on the veirge of bankrupt, had more risk than countires desolated by poverty. It was a plan from the main rating companies, that very suspiciously never put the USA in a bad situation or a higher risk.

Then there's Brexit. The far right rise,  now Catalonia. Those are things that start with a real feeling from the people, but that later have either a big support by troll farms in countires like Russia or funds from other billionaires in USA. 

There's something fishy here. Nobody outside the EU profits from a strong European Union and a common currency. Now they can't speculate with a dozen of coins as they did before, and they have to agree to hard and strict rules in health and practices in terms of agriculture to land here in Europe products, for example. The fracking industries have problems too because of European environment rules... 

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39 minutes ago, karbatal said:

There's a plan to undermine the euro and the EU. It's been clear for 10 years. The risk rate sky rocketing in several European countries was orchestrated and only aimed to break the common currency. How could Spain for almost 2 years have a higher risk in the debt than most center African countries? The same for Portugal or Ireland. Even Greece, being on the veirge of bankrupt, had more risk than countires desolated by poverty. It was a plan from the main rating companies, that very suspiciously never put the USA in a bad situation or a higher risk.

Then there's Brexit. The far right rise,  now Catalonia. Those are things that start with a real feeling from the people, but that later have either a big support by troll farms in countires like Russia or funds from other billionaires in USA. 

There's something fishy here. Nobody outside the EU profits from a strong European Union and a common currency. Now they can't speculate with a dozen of coins as they did before, and they have to agree to hard and strict rules in health and practices in terms of agriculture to land here in Europe products, for example. The fracking industries have problems too because of European environment rules... 

And here you hit the nail on the head. It is also the sole reason why Trump stopped TTIP, claiming it was bad for the U.S.. An explanation that probably left everyone in Europe stunned considering the EU people were much more critical of the agreement in the first place, out of fear that the stricter European rules and laws meant to protect the people were undermined by the U.S. side. It appears the negative results of the agreement, that would have only worked in favor of the U.S. and its corporations, were still not favorable enough to go on with the negotiations. I'm also convinced we will hardly ever get to know the true scale of this agreement. There was a reason why those negotiations were done so secretly that even members of the National Parliaments were unable to attain information about the content. Remember that the papers were leaked and made public when the secrecy became highly suspicious and resistance in Europe grew how this was handled.

And people want to know who has an interest? Follow the money!!!! But here the problem starts. My impression is that most governments are not really interested in solving issues as it may reveal how much outside influence on politics really exist and how vulnerable democracy is. Did someone ever find out who made a lot of money a few years ago when Moody's out of the blue downgraded Frances rating? Those rating companies are doing some shady business. There are supposed to control things but who actually controls them?

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9 hours ago, Jazzy Jan said:

Poor Larry the cat having to live with that witch Theresa May who thinks animals have no feelings. 

I pity all the shitheads who supported her, blindly believing all her unconvincing crap.

Wishing all tories assholes and their ill-informed fascist supporters to fall into misery, despair and hard suffering very soon.

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Inaccurate on the part of Leo Varadkar. The Irish Government's role is consultative.

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/dublin-warned-of-good-friday-agreement-breach-1-8256786

For the avoidance of any doubt whatever, I will share any legal opinion to the contrary commissioned by the DUP.

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/ni-can-have-special-status-in-brexit-deal-says-legal-report-1-8254895

Seriously wrong step! It also sends out a negative message about the way the UK perceives rights.

And there will be challenges to this. It's a complicated area and there is a global dimension to Rights.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-charter-fundamental-rights-commons-uk-eu-defeat-a8068326.html

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Well we can't have it all,  can we?  

A country wants to be out after years of moaning and such... What did people expect with frontiers?  Gibraltar and Northern Ireland will have to have a frontier too.  And if they don't, then people from the EU will walk there whenever they want. Legal or illegal people.  And brexit was built upon the idea of having a more strict immigration policy. 

I don't know,  I feel as if people are so used to living in a certain way that cannot understand the extent of such radical decisions as leaving the EU or being independent.  I listen to some Catalán people and they gave zero idea of what it means to be an independent country.  It seems the same in the UK.  They expect all good things to happen instantly and are unable to see the problems. 

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6 hours ago, karbatal said:

Well we can't have it all,  can we?  

A country wants to be out after years of moaning and such... What did people expect with frontiers?  Gibraltar and Northern Ireland will have to have a frontier too.  And if they don't, then people from the EU will walk there whenever they want. Legal or illegal people.  And brexit was built upon the idea of having a more strict immigration policy. 

I don't know,  I feel as if people are so used to living in a certain way that cannot understand the extent of such radical decisions as leaving the EU or being independent.  I listen to some Catalán people and they gave zero idea of what it means to be an independent country.  It seems the same in the UK.  They expect all good things to happen instantly and are unable to see the problems. 

Exactly. Its shocking that the British people are shocked at the consequences of Brexit. Were they expecting only positives and no negatives? I mean I ve read that a British minister has said that the EU Medicine Agency could stay in London irrespective of Brexit and now they are shocked it moves to Amsterdam? How can anyone think they can be THAT entitled and that rules don't apply only to them or they don't know the rules (bigger possibility)? And its astonishing how little people know about EU matters like open skies, functional airspace blocks etc. With no deal no British planes would fly to EU and vice versa and ppl are shocked again. Well, hello. All those liberties have been created within the EU and the public don't seem to gasp the rights are not up for granted. And they wont stay the same after Brexit or at least they have to be regulated bilaterally between UK and EU.

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3 hours ago, BrendanT1993 said:

Britain will not be allowed to host the European Capital of Culture as planned in 2023 after Brexit, Brussels has said.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-european-capital-of-culture-uk-cancelled-leeds-eu-banned-a8071261.html

:rotfl:

Please tell me the UK wasn't expecting to host it :lol:

 

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This is most unbecoming of someone sitting in The House of Lords

Referring to the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) by his ethnicity and using such a feeble excuse for doing so should result in some formal sanction surely?

At the least, an apology is required.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-42103510

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