Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't Fly During Ramadan

varnull.adityamukerjee.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

851–860 of 986 posts

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#851

Post by guard-of-terra »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #686
belorn wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state, at what point will US become a authoritarian police state? When they have kill lists without any trial, jury or judge? When they keep prisoners in jail indefinitely without a trial? When they torture prisoners? When state officials lie to the public? When state officials lie to public representatives? When the secret police interfere with lawyers communic…

All of those criteria, plus I think an extra criterion that they have to happen to so many people that it reaches some kind of tipping point where there's a mass consensus that things are authoritarian. Just to be clear, I'm not excusing the abuses you've listed.

Do you seriously think that classic examples of XX century authoritarian states had mass consensus that they are authoritarian? That would be a post-modern authoritarian state.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#853

Post by moocowduckquack »

bobbydavid wrote: post #837
moocowduckquack wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, they didn't bother dealing with legal references to air travel before planes were invented. You will also notice that they made no references to space travel either, or computers.

but they don't mention horses either. the method of travel is irrelevant.

Really? Well, I suppose it worked for Hannibal across the Alps...

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#854

Post by [deleted] »

angersock wrote: post #104
jwr wrote: post #73

The land of the free. As I read more and more of those stories I can't help but wonder at how things changed. I am from a formerly-eastern-europe-soviet-bloc country (Poland) and these kinds of oppressive techniques sound very familiar. The haziness of procedures, lack of basic rights, intimidation, no accountability of state officials -- we've seen all that until 1989. At the time, while the communist regime was imp…

I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues. The distressing thing is that we've been putting so much machinery into place, and gotten…

[deleted]

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#855

Post by madaxe »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #686
belorn wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state, at what point will US become a authoritarian police state? When they have kill lists without any trial, jury or judge? When they keep prisoners in jail indefinitely without a trial? When they torture prisoners? When state officials lie to the public? When state officials lie to public representatives? When the secret police interfere with lawyers communic…

All of those criteria, plus I think an extra criterion that they have to happen to so many people that it reaches some kind of tipping point where there's a mass consensus that things are authoritarian. Just to be clear, I'm not excusing the abuses you've listed.

But all of those criteria are already true in both the US and the UK. I think that was his point.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#856

Post by madaxe »

a_bonobo wrote: post #836
JabavuAdams wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these are abuses of power, and should be opposed. That said, I'm confident that there is no nation state on Earth that hasn't done these things. Please correct me if you can think of examples. The difference now is that they are affecting mainstream, middle-class, "normal" Americans. While it's good that people are angry about these abuses, it also seems incredibly naive. This is what states do. This is what t…

>That said, I'm confident that there is no nation state on Earth that hasn't done these things. Please, tell me one "first-world" country that has kill lists??

The USA?

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#857

Post by honzzz »

The fact that they refused to give him any water stuns me the most. Is this really not illegal in the US? Is this not considered a torture? Is this not so obvious abuse of power that the huge media scandal is assured? Is this not the thing that officials who do that to the detained person lose their job or even go to jail for? Because I believe that in my country all of those would be true. How can any country in which all of those are not true call itself "the land of free"?

EDIT: People are discussing here whether or not the US is on their way to became an oppressive regime. I don't understand that. In my book if the country allows this kind of behaviour of their officials and if I understand the word 'oppression' correctly... it already is an oppressive regime. Simple as that.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#858

Post by madaxe »

jwr wrote: post #177
angersock wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues. The distressing thing is that we've been putting so much machinery into place, and gotten…

> I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues. And she is right — the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state. But it i…

I had the Kazakh "special police" tail then detain me. Plain clothes. We mocked them relentlessly then went on our way.

Secret police in kaz aren't very secret, and I feel far more intruded upon and am more careful about what I say in the US than there.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#859

Post by krichman »

jervisfm wrote: post #637
jonahx wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was detained without arrest, based on minimal suspicions. Yes, he should have shut the hell up and not answered questions. Minimal suspicions? A young male flying alone who refuses the scanner and sets of the explosives detector? Yes, he absolutely should have been cooperative and answered their questions after that. I always refuse the scanner, but I don't complain afterward that I have to answer questions and…

> I always refuse the scanner Would you mind to share your reasoning as to why you elect to forgo this option ? It would appear to me having a machine scan you is less intrusive than a full body search by a human agent.

I do it also, because I don't trust them to not save the images, and I suspect the images will either get hacked by or flat-out sold to a third party later. The pat-down doesn't make me feel like I'm being raped, although I guess I can see why others would be uncomfortable.
Post reply on HN