271–280 of 463 posts
Does anyone have the original article link? There are several indications in the comments that it was changed by an HN editor.
The title was edited by the mods at least twice.
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While obviously, mafias and governments work on the same problem: How to govern, how to stay in power. Of course, a government has the power to brand a mafia as a criminal organization, but the line between legal and criminal can be very blurry, and often quite arbitrary. If you just go, historically, by the score of committed crimes, then whatever metric you choose, governments and their agencies will beat criminal…
> While obviously, mafias and governments work on the same problem Bullshit. You'd do well to read more about the Mafia and how it affects places where it's strong. They are badly governed, and generally not good places to live or do business as an honest person. Denmark has a strong government that is quite involved in its citizens lives, but the number of them that end up dead, tortured, with their lives ruined, an…
I can only hope that this incident is investigated further and that we get some solid answers from those in power about why David had been detained for the legally permitted time of 9 hours without charge.
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And which one will that be? The "democrat" or the "republican"? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTJ0qYR6YFo
I think that a candidate who was not afraid to make the "security state" a campaign issue, and the massive government encroachment in so many other aspects of our lives, and was able to explain the issues and his or her positions without sounding like he was regurgitating focus-group tested talking points, would do quite well in the current climate. Or it may be that the average person still doesn't care. People who…
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…
I wonder from how high up this order came. After all, it's not like Greenwald is going to take this lying down and that's something that they could predict quite accurately ahead of time. To abuse these powers on the partner of the journalist that is reporting the abuses is the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date, short of the diversion of a diplomats plane. Taking into account that the UK law enfor…
If it did, then clearly people in positions of power are happy to abuse them to hold that power.
If it did not, then it implies there is a whole shadow power structure so confident of their position that they are happy to do something like this knowing full well it would get publicity.
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Sharp. I do think this is driven by fear and incompetence rather than malice but you could easily be right. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the various offices dealing with the fall-out from this, especially the interface boundary between the foreign affairs and the anti-terror branches.
This is actually the 2nd salvo. Glenn Greenwald basically made his opening statement in the negotiation for how this is going to go down in the NYT's profile of Laura Poitras: Read the middle of the last page: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno... > Their discussion turned to the question of coming back to the United States. Greenwald said, half-jokingly, that if he was arrested, WikiLeaks w…
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/25/greenwald-s...
“When I was in Hong Kong, I spoke to my partner in Rio via Skype and told him I would send an electronic encrypted copy of the documents,” Greenwald said. “I did not end up doing it. Two days later his laptop was stolen from our house and nothing else was taken. Nothing like that has happened before. I am not saying it’s connected to this, but obviously the possibility exists.”
After that his partner was definitely in play and that set the stage for todays (or yesterday, depending on where you live) action.
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> It could also have been to make more public that Greenwald has a younger gay Brazilian partner, something we gloss over in this crowd, but for which he'll be judged harashly for in other social circles. Well, it's not like the Guardian is really terribly popular amongst bigots, anyway... If he wrote for the Daily Mail I could see your point.
The irrational (but very real) reasoning goes like this: Glenn reported on the NSA leaks. Glenn is gay. Everything gays do is wrong, therefore reporting on the NSA leaks is wrong. Also, supporting gays is bad, because someone might think you're gay. Therefore supporting NSA leakers is bad. Where Glenn works is irrelevant. The NSA probably wants to discredit everyone involved, and garner as much support for themselves…
Discrediting gay people because they are gay is losing its power even in the US.
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Sharp. I do think this is driven by fear and incompetence rather than malice but you could easily be right. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the various offices dealing with the fall-out from this, especially the interface boundary between the foreign affairs and the anti-terror branches.
Also note that this wasn't the US government; it was the British state, which for the past decade seems to have based its foreign policy obsessively on playing Mini-Me to the USA's Dr. Evil. Quite possibly the idea of detaining Mr. Miranda originated from an overzealous busy-body relatively low in the hierarchy. Or perhaps it's merely meant to look like that. (I discount the gay smear argument. It might play in the U…
Somewhat surprisingly, I don't think it plays in the US anymore either. I have heard fairly little about either Greenwald or Manning's GSM status. The media has made more of a deal with Snowden and his "pole dancing" ex-girlfriend.
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No, it isn't because these lists are one-way. Once you are detained no one in authoritay ever considers the possibility that you are on the list incorrectly. There is absolutely no benefit to themselves to question the list. If they are wrong they let a terrorist go, meanwhile detaining the guy is all by the book so no risk to their job security.
No, this is Special Branch. David's passport is on a stop list. SB have a database that is outside the usual police records that contains information that you won't get by making an FOI request. They know exactly who is coming through and when. They will have had specific instructions on what to do, and those instructions come directly from the Home Office. Even HMIC don't get to look at this stuff. Stopping someone…
If you're right, they screwed up, because they detained him on his trip back to Brazil. Any data he might have been carrying to Poitras he could have already delivered -- and I'm sure he would have been smart enough not to keep a copy.
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Neither the BBC, Independent, The Sun nor Daily Mail report on it; q.e.d., the "general public" doesn't care. Edit: The Sun does, however, have boobs on its homepage, the Daily Mail talks about celebrities and the BBC's international site talks about Syria, Gibraltar and Usain Bolt, with its England page concerned with assisted suicide, a rider who died after a horse accident, something about climate activists and th…
It's now the second-to-top story on the www.bbc.co.uk website