Deloitte didn't deny it. The only possible interpretation of their statement is that they absolutely did do it, but they believe they can get away with it. Otherwise you'd just say "Deloitte doesn't falsify documents"
If you're a UK media outlet accusing a Big Four accounting firm and a Russian billionaire of tax fraud and you've got it wrong, you can bet there will be a case filed incredibly quickly in the High Court.
I get this is an unpopular opinion, but it’s even more important given the nature of the allegations. They “look bad” but it’s all accounting stuff in Cyprus, none of us know what’s actually legal here and what isn’t, it’s the BBC making insinuation about stuff to promote an investigative reports show or something they run.
I don’t want to defend anyone involved in the allegations, and don’t personally think they’re above shady business dealings, I just don’t like usual sensationalist “reporting” - essentially advertising like this and how people eat it up.
It still amazes me that in California if someone donates to anti-gay marriage initiative they can be openly called "absolute scumbag" and people just roll with it. It's called having political views.
Someone who derides someone else who donates to causes they find disgusting is also a political view. You're just talking about two people with political views.
> Calling a named individual an "absolute scumbag" in this context is fine grounds as any for a lawsuit.
Based on your misunderstandings of US defamation laws, and the fact that you jumped to stabbing over shooting, it sounds like you've been steeping too much in eurotrash defamation rules. Here in America, truth and opinion are both perfect defenses against defamation lawsuits. My comment consisted only of true facts (the man donated to support prop 8), and the opinions that follow from those facts (the man is a scumbag). You can only sue someone for lying about you, and for public figures like a CEO, you need to prove they were lying on purpose.
> Having the opinion that there should be restaurants, stores, and bathrooms only for white people was an acceptable, mainstream political view during my father's lifetime.
Only in the US, South Africa and Rhodesia.
Same sex marriage did not exist anywhere in the world until very recently, and still does not exist in most of the world.
The majority of the voters was on his side. 52.24% voted yes and there was a 79.42% voter turn out. A huge number of Californians agreed with him at the time. This is quite a bit different than segregation today since acceptance of gay marriage was quite a bit lower and it was a newer issue than segregation.
Racial integration was wildly unpopular in the south when it became a hot political issue of the day, yet that fact doesn't make the opposition to it any more palatable to modern sensibilities. The only point I was trying to make was that you can't hand-wave away something you don't want to pick a side on by saying it's just a political view when a large portion of the society you exist in see it as a civil rights issue.
Well, I guess that too has its caveats. Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were both vocally against same-sex marriage during run up to the 2008 election, I believe roughly the same time that the Prop 8 fight was happening. They didn't switch sides until public opinion started swaying in favor of it and I've never seen anyone hold their feet to the fire or call them "absolute scumbags" over it. Well, no one that wasn't already calling them that at least.
It always surprises me that people can't take a step back and understand that objecting to today's progress is like objecting to women voting, or interracial marriage. You're just signing up to be mad your whole life and to be seen as a historical curiosity.
do you remember when we didn't have to know everything about everyone and didn't feel obliged to only use products created by those with the same opinions as us?
Opposing gay marriage is not denying the humanity of gay people. I'm not even opposed to gay marriage, but hyperbolic language like yours only hurts discussions, it never ever helps.
There was a famous court case where the gay widow had no legal rights over their dying partners medical care, that is a pronounced human right that a heterosexual couple has over a gay couple that has been defined and why the opposition actually hurts people in ways many have not considered.
Remember that the compromise was "let gay people have those same rights, just don't call it marriage" and that was rejected. The opportunity to have that "pronounced human right" was always there but no, they wanted the culture war W of redefining marriage instead.
The same way they have today, through a court order. People didn't have a problem with extending whatever legal protections to gay people, they objected to redefining marriage to get there. There was always a compromise available but again, sticking it to the religious types was the goal.
How do you propose to get a court order in a state that doesn't recognize (Edit: other states') civil unions? The whole point of marriage protections is that they transfer across states.
> There was always a compromise available but again, sticking it to the religious types was the goal.
Once you understand the difference between a state recognized civil union and a marriage that transfers across states, I'm sure you'll realize that this was instead religious people sticking it to gay people.
> How do you propose to get a court order in a state that doesn't recognize civil unions?
All 50 states recognize civil unions or other relationship arrangements. At that point the courts just have to demand that states treat them the same as any other marriage. Not impossible, certainly not any more so than the seismic shift of redefining a centuries old definition of marriage.
> All 50 states recognize civil unions or other relationship arrangements.
Sorry, but your attempt to claim "separate but equal" fails to fit reality. The Full Faith and Credit Clause did not afford civil unions the same protections as marriages.
"But suppose that you and your same-sex partner drive from Maryland to Vermont to enter into a civil union because it is the only state that recognizes a significant legal relationship between same-sex couples. If an accident occurs on your drive home and one of you is hospitalized, most states and institutions will not acknowledge your legal relationship with your spouse."
> seismic shift of redefining a centuries old definition of marriage.
Just as before, you are free to get a religious "marriage" that is unrecognized by the state. Just as before, the state can issue a marriage license to people that a particular religion does not approve (e.g., Orthodox rabbis are forbidden from officiating or validating non-Jewish weddings and do not recognize the resulting marriages, and the LDS church taught that interracial marriage, aside from between white men with native American women, was a sin until 2013). The only thing that changes is what marriages the state allows. There was no "seismic shift" outside the small minds of bigots.
Is opposing polygamy denying the humanity of polygamists/polyamorists?
Is opposing first cousin marriage denying the humanity of people in romantic relationships with their first cousins? (The first anniversary of Connecticut's first cousin marriage ban is later this week.)
Israel bans both same-sex and interfaith marriage domestically – although it recognises both when performed overseas – if the former is a denial of someone's humanity, is the latter equally so?
In a previous generation, the deserving target of eyerolls and groans was people who both-sidesed an issue. In part because it was shallow, and part because it was just a weaponized way of talking where you get to be political under superficial the guise of neutrality. Asking an audience to believe it is just not respecting the intelligence of your audience.
I think the version of that for our generation is the person who says "Gosh let's not talk politics" about obviously political things when doing so is clearly just to shield preferred targets from criticism. Of course it's not always that, and you can never prove it in any particular instance, which is why it's such convenient phrasing. But it gets eye-rolls for a reason.
I wouldn’t find “let’s not talk about politics” eye-rolling and neither would my social circle (first generation Asian families). In fact if someone kept bringing up politics in an overly emotional or pushy way, they probably wouldn’t be invited back.
It would obviously amaze me if I am called a scumbag for simply having political views, the same way how unbelievable it is that people get called scumbags for simply wanting to ban gay marriage.
I read this and classified as "future issue". If it's so easy as the author described it will happen, or it's already happening and it will be discovered much later.
The Dieselgate is a good analogy. Incentives, how easy it is to get to profit.
Just because you don’t like the result of the election doesn’t make it undemocratic. It was a fair and just election and people have voted what they want and that’s how democracy works.
So is democracy always good? Or not? If you say you’re anti democracy, a certain cohort gets upset. If you say you’re anti fascist but fascists get elected via democracy, another cohort gets upset.
“Democracy always works” has been shown to be objectively false, and so I’m unsure how we can say it is an optimal governance system. Works sometimes, but sometimes it doesn’t. Can we tolerate the failure modes until reversion to the mean? Depends on your tolerance for the costs.
> Why it matters: Germany rebuilt its democracy after Nazi rule with unusually strong safeguards against extremism. AfD's breakthrough shows those barriers aren't stopping Europe's far right from becoming dominant electoral forces.
> Context: Germany's postwar system was built in the shadow of the Nazis' destruction of the democratic Weimar Republic.
> The 1949 Basic Law embraces the concept of a "militant democracy" to defend against movements that seek to abolish the constitutional order.
> “Democracy always works” has been shown to be objectively false
Citation needed, never heard this said by anybody.
"democracy" is a wide, wide thing. Technically Russia is a democracy. Also in Europe democracies' presidents don't have the same level of power as Trump, and are more limited.
Democracies only work as long as the people are smart, invested, informed and politicians are accountable and changed often to avoid concentration of power.
Bureaucracy is hell, until you realize it's a feature since it complicates power grabs.
Even Churchill said "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others", so I really have no idea where you got the "it always works" from.
Wow, what a story. I'd say part of it is either you are not communicating with enough clarity or there a people in your team or above who are actively trying to not make it happen.
it's not just reasonable to question, it's all but obvious and anyone who comes up with a retort like "what about millions/billions of years before civilization" is being, at best, insincere
An article like like this could be auto-generated with anybody's name.
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