Interesting things

[juliet]

• Sign the Indymedia petition (more details on the FBI seizure of their machines at that link)


• Found this on Strange Machine (marnameow should like this)


• Alien Loves Predator (made kitty_goth & I laugh immoderately)


• MY MONITARY SISTEM IS f1dud14ry & 133t!!!!!! (especially this one)

Comments

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And being fuckwits shouldn't exempt you from that legal protection.

[puffinry.livejournal.com]

That's true, but also Indymedia aren't fuckwits.
They publish stories that are ignored by the mainstream
media, some of them very important. The opinions of
contributors are often controversial, and occasionally
they're completely insane, but nobody is forcing you
to agree with some random nutcase!

I guess I fundamentally disagree with beingjdc insofar
as I don't think the expression of wrongheaded beliefs
should be criminalised, whatever they concern.

(A proud signatory of the petition.)

Let's see how far this goes, then...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

You'd repeal laws banning incitement to racial hatred, and criminal offences of conspiracy, or not?

Anyway, I wasn't saying that they should be criminalised, I'm saying that the fact they hate Jews so much they will publish articles claiming that the most wronged people in human history were the Germans in 1945 is a *good indicator* that some of their 'reporters' might have something on these famous hard disks that might help the legitimate authorities in the prevention of terrorism.

Indymedia site going down for a couple of days, versus innocent people dying in terrorist attacks. I'm not finding this a very hard choice, obviously my moral compass is broken.

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

So where do you place a limit on invasive procedures in order to prevent terrorism? It's ok to take disks without a warrant in a region outside your jurisdiction, if it's to prevent terrorism, because fuckwits have been known to post on the site.
If that's a good indicator, how about raiding homes of people without a warrant because they are related to or work with people suspected of terrorism? Or related to or work with racists?
Racist != terrorist by default, any more than being of any race = terrorist.

"Indymedia site going down for a couple of days, versus innocent people dying in terrorist attacks."
False comparison. If the FBI can take disks from a company outside the US, what's stopping them seizing property or people of anyone in the world who exhibits 'good indicators' of terrorist sympathies. For example, anyone who's been to various countries in the Middle East - which marks you out for special questioning at US immigration. Must be a good indicator.

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Fuckwits posting on the site is quite different in this case, when the site claims to be a news organisation. It's not like they're posting on the "we love osama" LJ community. The URL states 'newswire'. That's because they want people to accept that their reporting is the 'hidden truth' that the capitalist-(hem hem euphemism)-owned media doesn't want you to hear.

Fundamentally, I'm more scared of the bad guys than the good guys, though I appreciate that evil perpetrated by the notional good guys makes for better conspiracy theory fiction, which is why The Matrix was better than Men in Black. But it isn't the real world.

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Fair enough re first para.
Re second - if the good guys think that what they do is good because they're the good guys, that can lead to worse consequences than the bad guys that everyone was watching closely.

Like Senator McCarthy who was a good American patriot.
Like nice Uncle Joe Stalin, staunch ally of Britain and the US.
Like Saddam Hussein, who was fighting the bad Iranians and was helped by the West.
To mention a few 'good guys' in real life who could have done with being checked earlier.

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

We've been through a period of history when we had to do an awful lot of messy choosing the lesser of two evils. If anything, the choice is clearer now than it has been in over half a century.

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[puffinry.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I hope Juliet doesn't mind her journal comments
turning into a spirited debate. (If you do mind, Juliet,
let me know and I'll shut up.)

Ah, the vexed question of how far we should extend
the right to freedom of speech. There are no easy
answers, and I wouldn't pretend otherwise. Personally
I think incitement (to activity of any kind) can usefully be
distinguished from the expression of beliefs; but of
course there's no magic formula for making that distinction
in any particular case and there are murky grey areas.
Similarly, although I do worry about the wide scope
of our conspiracy laws, conspiring to do
something is not the same as saying what you think
about it!

I suspect that our actual differences are rather slight.
If the lives of innocent people (or even guilty
people for that matter) can be saved by seizing IM's
disks - which, though I have doubts, is not impossible -
then seize them by all means! But I think it's incumbent
on the authorities in such a situation to explain as
clearly and publicly as possible why they felt it necessary
to do such a thing.

In other words, there need to be checking mechanisms
to ensure that official powers designed to prevent 'terrorism'
are not misused. Is that unreasonable?

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the answer is probably something like "a spy in a terrorist group told us they had contact with person x in planning terrorist acts", and giving that answer is a pretty good way of getting your spy jumped. It's kind of the point of the secret services, they keep secrets.

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Secret police can only do their job if they're secret.
Secret police are an essential element of maintaining the security of a state. Even Canada has secret police, I'm sure.

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[puffinry.livejournal.com]

It's not as though secrecy is black and white; that either you never explain the reason for anything, or else you publish the details of all your investigations on the internet. When I say "as clearly and publicly as possible", I take that to imply reasonable constraints.

It seems to be in the nature of secret organisations to be as secretive as possible, rather than merely as secretive as necessary. There's an interesting article in the current LRB arguing that the CIA should be abolished. I don't know whether to agree with the conclusion, but the article gives plenty examples of that phenomenon and how it has backfired in the past.

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[peshwengi.livejournal.com]

hear, hear.

Re: Let's see how far this goes, then...

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

A point on laws banning incitement to racial hatred: They haven't made the BNP go away. They haven't even materially altered the actual beliefs and policies of the BNP; I'm willing to bet that the likes of Griffin are as racist now as they were 20 years ago.
However, laws formulated to obstruct the dissemination of racist policy (a worthy goal) have forced the BNP to adjust the declared character of its policies in such a manner to present the appearance of respectability, and thus of electoral plausibility.
The intelligent listener can still tell that they're racist scum, of course.