Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow

[AngusJS]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa

Apparently, being the partner of an investigative journalist increases the likelihood that you're a terrorist.

If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. Beyond that, every time the US and UK governments show their true character to the world - when they prevent the Bolivian President's plane from flying safely home, when they threaten journalists with prosecution, when they engage in behavior like what they did today - all they do is helpfully underscore why it's so dangerous to allow them to exercise vast, unchecked spying power in the dark.

[Skybird]

Journalists these days better have their accreditation filled and stamped by the national ministry of truth.

But many of the young newcomers have not learned what thorough research on a topic is anyway, and mistake opinion pieces for reports, and rhetorics for arguments. They paste and copy from others and always sniff in the wind for the direction the politically correct opinion is blowing from.

Good journalists with teeth and a spine are a dying species. And German TV journalism is nothing party-controlled "Hofberichterstattung".

[Skybird]

In this context it is interesting to know that the attempted intimidation of the Guardian by the British government became very robust:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-schedule7-danger-reporters

I stick to it, these new "security laws" we have gotten since 9/11 have little to do with anti-terror, but with destroying free press and free opinion, free thinking and free information - with the latter being the indispensable pillar of free opinion forming. Like Prism and Tempora are not about counter-terrorism int he first, but for the most can be expected to serve as tools for business spionage and stealing business knoweldge. German press reported some days ago that the NSA data collector listed Germany officially as a - hostile - target for their data collection attempts.

Free press? Free speech, free thinking, free opinion? Allied nations? Friends...?

Control! Dominance! Supressing free speech and free thought! Corrupting journalism! That'S what it is about.

We are living in a postdemocratic era. Not that I think that it was too big a loss. It has brought the ordinary citizens a tax burden beyond 50%, and the state a debt burden nevertheless that will sooner or later collapse everything. And then the 20s of the past century will appear to have been a party. Sh!t happens when you destroy real money and replace it with meaningless paper money. Always.