- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
*Musk has spent days beefing with politicians over the far-right unrest sweeping the UK. *
Elon Musk could be summoned for a grilling by British MPs over X’s role in race riots that have rocked the U.K. over the last week, as well as his own incendiary comments about the violence.
Labour MPs Chi Onwurah and Dawn Butler, who are competing to chair parliament’s science, innovation and technology committee, both told POLITICO they’d press the billionaire X owner and other technology executives to answer questions about the role of social media platforms amid mounting unrest in the U.K.
Musk has spent days beefing with British politicians over the riots, and is locked in a war of words with Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the U.K’s handling of them. Musk on Sunday wrote “civil war is inevitable” in the U.K. and claimed that the response by U.K. police has been “one-sided."
Yeeeeah no. As much as I despise musk, the UK doesn’t get to call a US citizen into parliment, we fought a war about that one.
(So uh, just as an aside, go after his business interests. You’ll nail that fucker to the wall if you snag his UK investments. We haven’t gotten around to fighting the war against capitalism…)
I know American history classes suck, but I didn’t realize they sucked this badly.
Parliament can call summon anyone they like anywhere in the world. Whether or not the person they summon is required to go depends on local laws.
Believe it or not, even if the U.S. had a “you can’t summon us to parliament, so there” clause in the Constitution, the British could say “fuck your constitution” and do the summoning anyway.
Dude has rot in his brain like damn. Yes he can always just run away, but that wont improve his situation. If you dont answer when you are accused, the sentencing will happen without you. If the UK and EU ban twitter, he wont like that, so its in his own best interest to show up.
If you wanna do business somewhere, you will answer to the laws of that place or deal with the consequences.
Sure, I was speaking in more general terms about the bizarre claim that we fought a war to stop the UK Parliament from summoning Americans.
I mean… That was one of our formal complaints that all criminal trials in colonial American times happened in England instead of locally before a jury of peers, but to ignore the entire legal tradition of jurisdiction and extradition to focus entirely on that is… Dumb. Even then I’m pretty sure Patrick Henry would agree if Elon Musk committed a crime in London, where he should be tried is London. The argument the thread starter is making requires ignoring what the actual formal complaints was and instead flattening it into a simplified version that basically translates to “lol england bad”
Musk is a narcissist, so he’s probably thining the UK wouldn’t dare ban Twitter, now that he’s made it so awesome.
and then get suprised when they ban Shitter
Ah hell, you make one deeply drunken joke and suddenly you’re at -25…
FWIW, the US does have a whole host of laws and various treaty clauses that dictate US citzens cant be held to account by a foreign power without either US government consent or consent of the party. Our extradition and criminal parity treaties mean that, in criminal cases, we might let a citizen be tried outside of the US, but calling a US citizen is really really difficult to pull off. Thats what I was referring to when I said “we fought a war”. The UK government cannot compel him to testify, by hundred-year-old-treaty, without US consent.
But calling a US citizen to testify in front of a foreign legislative power is 100%, by both treaty and hegemony, entirely consensual on the part of the called party. Musk can just say no, and there’s nothing that can be done without getting the buy-off from the state dpt, which… we’re an oligopoly, we’re not going to hand over a billionare.
HOWEVER the UK is entirely able to hold his business interests and investments ransom, which would be highly effective. If parliment is serious about this they’ll do that, but since I have no more faith in the UK government than my own (okay a little more, the US is in a bad place, the tories would honestly be a step up in most states) I absolutely do not expect them to go after musk in a way that even slightly might work. Which I would love to be proven wrong about, please, some government hold this asshole to account.
@Warl0k3 @MicroWave give you one guess where his private jet lands every time he comes through Europe …
He may want to cooperate.
You do realize that Musk is a citizen of two commonwealth countries (in addition to the fact that parliament can demand whatever the fuck they want - and that doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen).
Can’t they call him in due to him being the owner of the company and stoking racist riots via that companies only product in attempt to destabilize their government?
Tho I guess you really only could request it. Unless Twitter is doing actual business in the UK, which for adverts and now with the pay outs for tweeting, they probably are. But even then, one would probably only get the bootlicking CEO Yackinasackarino.
They can call him in for having a K in his name. They could summon Vladimir Putin if they wanted. There’s no restrictions on who they can summon as far as I know.
There’s a difference between a request and a subpoena. Right now They’re discussing basically politely asking. If they want to subpoena him they’ll have to make an extradition request, at which point America will look over the details of the case and decide if they want to cooperate. It happens literally all the time. Sometimes we cooperate. Sometimes we don’t. Usually because Britain is our ally, we cooperate.
As a businessman with major companies operating in the UK. Who is inciting racial hatred and riots. Parliament has a right to request him to appear. I don’t believe that they can even order a UK private citizen to appear before them. Unless they’re a civil servant.
Capitalism has been fought and defeated many times. Each time it went just about as well as beating medicare.