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Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

theguardian.com

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Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#131

Post by kaonashi »

octagonal wrote: post #117
davidw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sicilian Mafia are pretty vile human beings, by and large. Compare and contrast "detained 9 hours", which is a big violation of civil liberties on behalf of a government, with "dissolved an innocent child in acid", which is just sickening and inhuman. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omicidio_di_Giuseppe_Di_Matteo Not to say at all that what the government did in this case was "not so bad", just that there is worse o…

The mere fact that it's becoming possible to make comparisons between a Western government and a criminal organisation, even if it's just to get a message across, is worse enough on its own.

That's more a testament to Western propaganda than the historical restraint shown by Western governments.

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#132

Post by danielharan »

jlgreco wrote: post #60
nsns wrote: post #38

I think it's time we started talking of the "English-speaking axis" and its totalitarian tactics.

That is probably a tad unfair to Canada, Ireland, Jamaica, etc.

Canada's RCMP spied on Amnesty, the Anglican Church and the Raging Grannies. Our secret services gave their American counterparts information that led to torture of Canadian citizens and others.

You think we're not part of this totalitarian movement?

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#133

Post by saraid216 »

hga wrote: post #49
grey-area wrote: post #22

The salient quote from Greenwald's article on this: They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name. [1] This is a great example of why we should treat terrorism lik…

This is the same country that used a slightly later, post-9/11 terrorism act to freeze the assets of an Icelandic bank that were in the country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsbanki_Freezing_Order_2008 Icelanders replied with some good pictures: https://www.google.com/search?q=iceland+terrorism&tbm=isch Then again this is the country that inspired Nineteen Eighty-Four (Minitrue from Orewell's time at the BBC) and…

And the entire spy film genre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_film

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#134

Post by k-mcgrady »

corin_ wrote: post #108
icambron wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, UK and USA spying are part of a well-connected system also including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I'm not sure there are relevant distinctions to be made here in terms of spying.

k-mcgrady wasn't making distinctions about spying, he was making distinctions about who decided to detain someone in a British airport - the fact that the UK has been affected by the NSA leaks means they have as much motivation here as the US does.

Exactly, that's what I meant.

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#136

Post by kafkaesque »

As Greenwald's response[0] suggests, it seems the only obvious way to cause any type of change (from small to moderate), seems to speak in terms of 'mafia', 'fascism', and 'police state'.

Allow me to take John Stuart Mill out of context momentarily, because he was speaking with regard to Irish-English relationship (territory disputes between the two countries). But it summarises Mill's thought on why radical and extreme thought is useful: it helps bring small to moderate change because it incites dialogue. Unfortunately, this seems to be where we are at now.

"...I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment. [...] To induce them to approve of any change it is necessary that they should look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself".[1]

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-m...

[1] Autiobiography. John Stuart Mill. Penguin Classics. p. 216.

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#137

Post by rolux »

oscargrouch wrote: post #120
rolux wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversion of a plane carrying a head of state, to be precise. But yeah, it's not easy to imagine how such decisions are made. Of course, it's one of the features of authoritarianism that the display of authority trumps "tactical mistakes". But it's people who give such orders, not "authoritarianism". The simplistic explanation would be to state they're "pissed off". But maybe reality is quite close to that. By arrest…

>the UK authorities primarily demonstrate, to themselves, >that they still hold certain powers yes. the power to be subservient to the US twisted domestic politics.. (a US colony perhaps??)

I don't think the UK government is just a US puppet here. A lot of materials that Snowden released are directly related to UK interests -- part of which is to at least be perceived as an autonomous entity that can make autonomous decisions.

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#138

Post by alexhawdon »

Disclaimer: This is largely speculative and WHOLLY me playing devil's advocate. I do not condone this sort of behaviour by my government.

Could the case be made that journalists are legitimate targets for investigation following on from Manning and Snowdon? My focus here is less on terrorism and more towards counter-intelligence. Were I a rival nation-state I would see an intelligence-gathering opportunity in what's happened: Rather than bribing/coercing people into become informants, there is now the option to invite them to 'blow the whistle' by posing as a journalist.

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#139

Post by aspensmonster »

jacquesm wrote: post #73
[deleted] wrote: post #64

[deleted]

Because it was killed or because it is being resubmitted very frequently from a source that is dead. That's not the first time I see an article with that many upvotes dead. Was it 'not dead' first? If so then it was a moderation action.

For posterity's sake, the deleted comment, by qubitsam(https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=qubitsam):

>Why is this submission* of Greenwald's account of the incident dead (even after it got on the front page with 25+ upvotes)?

>* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6233685

I'd say it's because the submitter for the linked submission, with username cransa (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cransa), is only 17 hours old, while the submitter of the active link is m1 (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=m1), a user for 2 years. It is interesting that m1 hasn't commented on any submissions in months, and this submission is one of only two in his history. If he's been active recently, he's only been lurking. Of course, it shouldn't matter how old the user is or what their activity history looks like, so long as the submission isn't spam. The deaded submission clearly isn't spam and cransa's comments aren't spammy either (and that dead link is his only submission to boot), but this isn't the first time the mods have decided to give preference to links submitted by older users (edit: as well giving preference to other users with no discernible rationale for doing so). As well, in my own observations, it appears that there is a upvote/comment threshold that once crossed means the rising submission is liable to get killed. That is, if a rising submission has ~10-20 upvotes but no comments, it seems at greater risk of being deaded. And of course there's the auto-hellban for new users that decide to jump into active discussions, regardless of their comments' content. I think that's a more insidious action than any of the preceding.

tl;dr: Mods = Gods

(I don't know if qubitsam deleted the comment of his own accord. But assuming he didn't: Please, dear gods/mods, consider not deleting this one too.)

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#140

Post by jusben1369 »

I think this is a terrible mistake but I do wish he'd stop referring to himself as a journalist. He's a political protagonist using his platform for change. Journalist's don't "aggressively" report on stories. It matters because GG is now so tightly integrated into this story that we need to view his comments not as those of an impartial reporter.

I doubt they think they can intimidate him. They probably are hoping they can get their hands on as yet unreleased docs to stop them being published. Either way it's a real mistake.

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