451–460 of 463 posts
How long until the organizations that protect us meet the definition of terrorists themselves?
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The actions cited: investigating the behavior of government, and questioning public servants about that behavior. Which is basically the role of the fourth branch; read any founding father. But you describe this, with a vindictive imagination zealous enough to do any federal prosecutor proud, as "blackmail". Journalists, doing their jobs. What. The. Fuck.
Journalists doing their jobs is quite a lot different to what the poster posted: > They can make an oxygen-sucking scandal out of nothing. This could devour the rest of Obama's second term if it gets out of hand This is not 'journalism'. This is blackmail.
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VFW / Veterans -- their brothers died for our freedoms, now our own government is taking those freedoms away. This is the demographic we need.
Basically all the people I met in be military we're essentially libertarian and "personal responsibility" on safety issues; some of the more religious people were against eg gay marriage for moral/religious reasons. I don't think most of the military outside the IC is in favor of domestic spying at all -- they are even pro drug decriminalization.
It may not be related, but we know first hand what its like to have the government entirely too "in the know" about your life. Not many of us are fans of it, even when it was arguably necessary to keep people alive.
Wait...What? HFSMFCSWTF!
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The EU came to be in 1993 :)
Pedant. :P Yes the EU name was formed in 1993. But there was the EC or EEC before then, which was basically the same thing.
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…
Speculating for a moment that he did give the OK to this, then I do not doubt that he did it with his eyes wide open. He would have known exactly what the PR repercussions were. There must have been a very good reason for him to want to stop Mr. Miranda - which means that it is unlikely to be simple intimidation. (Not the sort of thing that I can imagine your typical Whitehall civil servant stooping to in any case).
My guess is that it was believed that he was carrying a copy of Snowden's cache of documents, and the UK badly wanted to get their hands on a copy. Which is fascinating, if true, because it means that they still do not know what documents he has....
Fun to speculate ....
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Then they should have voted for a different government. Sorry, but “there are people in a country with a democratic government that don’t deserve what their government brought upon them” is not a particularly good reason – and even then, I don’t think it’d hurt to allow immigration into Europe for a while, so there’s even a perspective for those that “really don’t deserve” the results of their (in)action.
The people vote for law makers. The law makers produced a law which was abused by law enforcers. Law enforcers can't be voted for.
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…
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Another possible pre-meditated outcome: 4) Highlight the fact that Greenwald is in an openly gay relationship in an attempt to discredit him / colour what he's saying in a personal light. Sadly, a large part of the conservative base will cling to this I think.
He was already out, no?
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If it were up to those in power to define what is and is not "an oxygen-sucking scandal out of nothing", nothing would get investigated by journalists, ever. That's why, at least until recently, it has been journalists who have decided the proper focus of their work. The First Amendment is not vague on this point: Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press... I know you're trolling…
> There's no money here. What is the "other valuable thing"? The safety of journalists' innocent loved ones? That's monstrous, and that isn't a proper interpretation of law No, the 'other valuable thing' in this case is immunity from search or seizure.