It could have maybe gone a bit differently if the US government had resisted the urge to interfere, like in the bad old days of the cold war. They isolated Chavez and then Maduro, which backfired just enough to justify the slide into full-on dictatorship.
People voted for Chavez and then (at least once) for Maduro because the massive inequality was unsustainable. If the US had accepted that and worked with them instead of against them, maybe we'd be in a different place right now. But the interests of oil companies always come first, sadly. (obviously this does not absolve the Venezuelans from their responsibilities.)
'Isolated' Chavez is a bit disingenuous here, they full on attempted to mount a coup against a democratically elected president. See this documentary 'the revolution will not be televised: https://youtu.be/GF4peYCrV6Y?si=EAKdElE6cq7js8aL'
Ofcom does what the government tells it to do. And the government does what people tell them to do. You underestimate the popular support for censorship laws in the UK - the country still had a legally-empowered "Board of Film Censors" in 2010...
The fact that it's not listening to you does not mean it's not listening to anyone.
Our MPs are listening to the faith-based organizations bankrolled by American interests. They are listening to the Catholic Church, the Church of England, and their equivalents in the other faiths (they all condemn "vice"). They are listening to anti-porn organizations. They are listening to "think of the children" groups. They are listening to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. They are listening to Mumsnet. They are listening to censorship-enabling companies. They are listening to anyone with money and an interest in defining power structures to further entrench themselves.
They are listening, just not to the apathetic, individualistic know-it-alls who don't engage in politics and then complain that it's all shit.
The BBFC still exists today and serves pretty much the same purpose as the MPA in the land of the free. Is there any practical difference between the two?
BBFC's rulings have legal impact, and they can refuse classification making the film illegal show or sell in the UK.
over in the US, getting an MPAA rating is completely voluntary. MPAA rules do not allow it to refuse to rate a motion picture, and even if they did, the consequences would be the same as choosing not to get a rating.
If you don't get a rating in the US, some theatres and retailers may decline to show/sell your film, but you can always do direct sales, and/or set up private showings.
The legal system, in Italy, has been fundamentally bankrupt for a long time. It's one of the reasons a lot of foreign companies don't invest over there - if anything goes wrong, the legal system is unlikely to be of any help.
Plus, any court proceedings in Italy can routinely take decades, destroying one's life even if they are completely innocent, even if the complaint is trivial, even if the complainant is obviously malicious.
> On 21 July 2006, Adamo Bove, predecessor of Tavaroli as responsible of security at the Telecom company and former DIGOS member, died in Naples by falling from a motorway bridge. Bove had discovered a flaw in the system which enabled people to enter the Telecom system and implement wiretaps without leaving a trace.
The minefield is just the reality of the Italian business landscape. In a country dominated by small companies run by families and friends, this sort of thing happens every other day.
In that particular story, if true, I bet the writer is a relative of someone in the branch of police dedicated to tax checks (the much-feared Guardia di Finanza, who effectively wields power of life and death over most small businesses).
It's a little bit trickier though, if you're selling hardware with a one off cost and not a subscription. Because your installed base grows even with flat revenue. The lifetime cost of CS (including the calls from people who need to be turned down) needs to be baked into the sales price, but that's a bet.
My experience is with enterprise software, where most products were born as shrinkwrap and slowly moved to other models, and I agree, it's not an easy problem to solve. Even if you size lifetime costs correctly (and very few people can), it is quite hard to scale a support org; even if one can see the storm coming, one might not be fast enough to be prepared for it for a number of reasons (geography, capital investment, training times, churn, brain drain, etc etc).
That's why some big names have literally declared support bankruptcy and just don't provide almost any support (google, amazon...).
Unrelated, but: if you are a fan of comics/graphic novels, Ken Parker by Berardi & Milazzo [1] is an awesome Western. It's a series of short stories bound by a coherent but loose continuity, following the eponymous character as he moves across late-1800 America.
Having started in the '1970s, it features topics of social justice and the fate of Native Americans to a literary level rarely found in comics, but it's particularly good in how it depicts realistic characters - often conflicted, incoherent, and of uncertain morality. Parker himself is hardly a saint, and definitely not a hero to start with.
As far as I know, it has only partially been translated to English from its native Italian, but even the smallest nuggets is worth experiencing IMHO. There is something about Italians doing Westerns (see also: Sergio Leone) that brings the genre to epic levels.
Alan Ford is another Italian gem taking place in the states and touching upon social justice issues, though more of a cynical/dark comedy. One of the villains is SuperHic, a drunk who steals from the poor and gives to the rich
Obviously this rule would apply only to real journalists. Members of the party will get free roam. They will stay.
Just another day in the life of a regime.
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