ForestBoard

Canaltia wrote:

I'm not even a third of the way through the RMB. Just you wait!

Oh god.

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

An irrelevant question: Do we have a special demonym for the residents of Forest?

Foresters is the only natural answer.

Darths and Droids wrote:

Foresters is the only natural answer.

I thought Forestians was the denonym we used?

The Cypher Nine wrote:

Yes so it didn't sound like we were cutting trees down lol.

Well some of our nations are.

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

By the way I realized that we currently have 111 member nations. It appears that we had a record high of 120 nations in 2013, so do you think we will refresh this record soon?

An irrelevant question: Do we have a special demonym for the residents of Forest?

Canaltia wrote:

It's a good question...

We had the full discussion back then (you can all go read the full of it) and another one a while after that as well (region=forest/page=display_region_rmb?postid=20729873#p20729873). We never decided on one but settled on letting people use whatever they preferred, which is sort of nice because you get to see a bunch of different ones even up to today. I’ve personally settled on using Forestian for almost everything, because while it’s not my favorite creative choice (arboreal might be that one) it has no other connotations (like Forester being someone who manages/chops down trees and arboreal being something that lives in trees) and feels very functional and official. I think most of our government publications have used it recently too, whether out of informal protocol or just personal preference, so Forestian is now really the de facto standard. But it’s always delightfully surprising to see another demonym used! ^_^

Canaltia wrote:

Well, I'm only on page 210 of the RMB, so...
It's actually fascinating reading the entire RMB. I've learned a lot. For example: We used to have a science minister, we had a nation called Outubro that wrote poetry for the region, The Black Hawks raided us just to break Ransium's streak as delegate, and a lot of other things. 10/10 would recommend reading old RMB posts.

I don’t know if I’ve ever read the entire RMB straight through, but I’ve done quite a bit of history reading and stumbling-upon over the course of my time here. It’s quite interesting seeing the dynamics of our community change and flow!

EDIT: I know you haven’t gotten to the part where I appear with an unceremonious “We’re happy to be here, Frieden-und Freudenland!!” because I haven’t received oodles of notifications yet. :P

Chan island wrote:

I thought Forestians was the denonym we used?

Let's culturally appropriate Foresters for ourselves and rebrand it as something ecofriendly. Besides, forests occasionally have to naturally remove dead growth or trees to make way for the new.

Esterild wrote:

I like that idea of using whatever we prefer. But in the spirit of creativity:

Forster? Foresteer? Forestani? Ranger? Guide? And I think someone must already have suggested Sylvans or Sylvanians.

Sylvans... Sylvans... Oh, you mean Elves?

Canaltia wrote:

Just caught wind of something happening in the United Kingdom. Apparently, a free-speech activist by the name of Tommy Robinson has been arrested for "disturbing the peace" because he was live streaming a news report from outside of a court. I watched the clip, and he literally wasn't doing anything to disturb the peace. He was just talking about the case while walking through public property, and the police arrested him.
This only happened a few hours ago, and he's already allegedly been sentenced to 13 months in prison. I mean, what kind of case goes that fast? There's no way he got proper legal representation in that time, and I just think the whole thing is a little ridiculous. Of course, there hasn't been an official statement confirming this, but people who were at the case are claiming it was 13 months. If he actually goes to jail, it's a huge loss for freedom of speech.
I'm actually concerned for people from the U.K. now. There isn't much information, but it sure looks like someone was just arrested for basically having an opinion the government didn't like. That technically makes the U.K. a police state, which is bad news for anyone who isn't a liberal.
I don't agree with everything he has said, and I actually disagree fully with his stance on immigration from Islamic countries, but I don't think anything he has said or done should warrant him getting but in jail. I find it a little ironic that free speech and freelance reporting are now seen as a threat to modern liberalism, as both of them are results of classical liberalism.

Full story. He is a far right politicial activist.

He has been arrested for contempt of court, namely because of this:

Contempt of court is a criminal offence that can see people jailed for speeches or publications that create a "substantial risk that the course of justice in the proceedings in question will be seriously impeded or prejudiced".

Now to give some background. It has recently come to light that there have been gangs of pedophiles operating in the UK and the victims (almost solely working class women and girls) have been ignored for decades, going back to the 80's. The larger gangs are made up of people who are either immigrants or come from a non white british background.

It is a complex issue, and there may be something to the police saying they were afraid to push the issue because they didn't want to be seen as racist. It may also be because they ignored working class people for decades (you know, joking about the girls beig stupid sluts and treating them like suspects)

However it is very clear this is like catnip to massive racists like this. He had already endangered a similar trial in Kent by filming the defendents and making stuff up and sticking it on facebook and was warned for it.

He is now doing the same and endangering the outcome of a trial. He will place this on facebook and social media and as a result it is possible that the trial of some very dangerous predatory pedophiles may be ruled a mistrial - because this man wants to use it as an excuse to call for violence against immigrants.

Edit: There are much better instances of the UK acting like a police state that can be found. Just in case anyone thought I liked the UK's police and justice system. I dunno, someone could have read this who only joined yesterday or something.

The new bluestocking homeland wrote:

On Tommy Robinson, for further clarity (not that I can add much -- Caracasus covered pretty much everything) "Rebel Media", the site for which he works, is basically a UK version of Canadian (apparently -- he's just the UK 'correspondent') Breitbart.

No, he's British alright. Tommy Robinson is a UK version of Breitbart.

As for the case itself: the UK has some strict rules around reporting court cases, though these are very much a point of contention in politics when putting in the free speech aspect. He circumvented the rules, he gets punished (though I agree that he was sentenced frighteningly fast).

If you really want to see the disturbing authoritarian trend of the UK nowadays, I recommend either looking up the Nazi pug case (which is truly terrifying for free speech) , or look into the comments section of any article about Brexit, especially on a right wing paper.

Chan island wrote:

No, he's British alright. Tommy Robinson is a UK version of Breitbart.

As for the case itself: the UK has some strict rules around reporting court cases, though these are very much a point of contention in politics when putting in the free speech aspect. He circumvented the rules, he gets punished (though I agree that he was sentenced frighteningly fast).

If you really want to see the disturbing authoritarian trend of the UK nowadays, I recommend either looking up the Nazi pug case (which is truly terrifying for free speech) , or look into the comments section of any article about Brexit, especially on a right wing paper.

See also: GCHQ, police giving lists of union activists to industry to create blacklists for employers, police using dead kids' identities to spy on peacefull protest groups, special branch, UK govt. Shifting online opinion using tactics similar to the whole russian troll farm thing, use of anti terror legislation to arrest journalists and hold them, extraditing suspects to be tortured oversees....

I do have more.

Chan island wrote:

If you really want to see the disturbing authoritarian trend of the UK nowadays, I recommend either looking up the Nazi pug case (which is truly terrifying for free speech)

The new bluestocking homeland wrote:

Apparently, he was the leader of the English Defence League, which tells me all I need to know about him.

And Tommy Robinson was a prominent supporter of the Nazi pug guy. I'm not supporting guilt by association, but ask yourself who would benefit if people were allowed to post videos trying to get a laugh out of a dog performing a Nazi salute in response to the repeated phrase "gas the Jews." It probably isn't the current and future victims of hate crime, who won't be much comforted by being told that they also have the right to free speech and so can say whatever they like about Gentile white racists.