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Germany Won't Prosecute NSA, But Bloggers
tmk writes: Despite plenty of evidence that the U.S. spied on German top government officials, German Federal Prosecutor General Harald Range has declined to investigate any wrongdoings of the secret services of allied nations like the NSA or the British GCHQ. But after plans of the German secret service "Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz" to gain some cyper spy capabilities like the NSA were revealed by the blog netzpolitik.org, Hange started an official investigation against the bloggers and their sources. They are now being probed for possible treason charges.
The Stasi could never gather enough guts to prosecute the KGB, what makes you think the current government of Germany - essentially a lapdog for Uncle Sam - would prosecute NSA?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Germany Won't Prosecute NSA
Could they even do so if they wanted to?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
How do these writers make it to mainstream media.
Uh, that's a skill required in mainstream media. "The Officer's pistol discharged." Obfuscate and decline to the passive voice. Don't rock the boat and always demur to power. Keep the corporation highly profitable.
It's indy media that says, "yet another cop shot an innocent fucking black man in the head," not establishment.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
At the moment they say that their site is overloaded with requests on Twitter. Everyone shows solidarity for them there using the hashtag #Landesverrat (treason).
If your goal is money, go after those with the deepest pockets. If your goal is intimidation, go after those with the least ability to defend themselves.
Which just goes to show a lot of indie media is composed of fucking retards. Using murder rate of population as a metric for danger to cops, in death by cop whites are overrepresented and latinos and blacks are underrepresented. The only reason you don't hear anything from either the whites or latinos about it is because they don't whine about it like toddlers having a tantrum for not having their favorite toy.
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
The last time such accusations were leveled against the press the secretary of defense had to vacate his chair afterwards. (Spiegel-Scandal)
The time before, it won the person publishing "state secrets" the Nobel Peace Price (Carl con Ossietzky)
So the accusations against netzpolitik.org are rather honoring them in the eyes of those who know history.
Why "treason"? Because the real aim is chilling expression.
No such fortunate situation when real culprits from Verfassungschutz and other federal institutions including the chief master boss Frau Merkel would be charged with anything.
The lists of triggers are still not analyzed by the parliamentary commission because NSA did not give its permission. Either German government is just a vassal of Murica on own wish or Murica has (thanx among others NSA activities) something nasty on key figures in government. Either way it is time to resign for some of them or be forcibly removed from office. That would be pity of course as they were not damaging(*) all too much so far, which is already good thing for any government.
* - they did not manage to destroy the luck that Germany had in riding the waves of economic disruptions of late.
Burma-Shave
Which just goes to show a lot of indie media is composed of fucking retards
It really doesn't fucking matter whether talking about a black or a white or a hispanic or an asian getting shot in the back by a cop, the "officer's pistol" didn't magically "discharge". The cop murdered a non-threat, plain and simple.
And never mind the recent rash of suicides for traffic violations - I have to give them credit, that takes their disdain for the general population to a new low. They couldn't get much more blunt about how the feel about us short of literally pissing on us at every traffic stop. "Don't worry, I've marked you, the next one will pass you by".
It's indy media that says, "yet another cop shot an innocent fucking black man in the head," not establishment.
Yikes, now it's a crime to be fucking while black?
Using murder rate of population as a metric for danger to cops, in death by cop whites are overrepresented and latinos and blacks are underrepresented.
Did you read the entire article till the end? It concludes with
“The odds that a black man will be shot and killed by a police officer is about 1 in 60,000. For a white man those odds are 1 in 200,000.”
In absolute numbers, more white people are shot by police than black people, but the former also make up a significantly larger chunk of the population (63% white vs 12% black). What I find disturbing about the guy presenting those numbers is that he thinks those are very low chances, while I think that both are way too high.
The insets in the article pointing to "PHOTOS: 21 best guns for home protection" and "PHOTOS: Bang for your buck: Best handguns under $500" are also rather surreal to me in that context (but that's probably just me).
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In absolute numbers, more white people are shot by police than black people, but the former also make up a significantly larger chunk of the population (63% white vs 12% black).
But if you're going to make everyone look at it through the lens of skin pigment, then you also have to do what the producer of those statistics did: take into account the demographics surrounding high crime rates. Police shootings rarely, rarely occur outside the context of the cops interacting with someone in the middle of a violent or headed-towards-violent situation. Though the media is focused on things like that idiot campus cop who shot the guy trying to speed away from a traffic stop, that's NOT the sort of thing that makes up, in any meaningful way, the larger body of numbers. Take into account the wildly higher rates of violent domestic disputes, basic street crime, robberies, and (if nothing else) gang warfare, and the percentage of police shootings involving people of one skin tone relative to the percentage of that skin tone in the population takes a back seat to what that percentage is actually doing when it comes to the sorts of activities that bring wary cops rushing to the scene.
If one insists on comparing skin color percentages in the wider population, compare skin color percentages involved in violent crime before doing math about how often cops have violent encounters with a given group. Or, skip the whole skin color thing, and focus on geography. In places where cops have a hugely higher rate of violent criminals and behavior to deal with, they end up having to use force more often than in places where the population is much less routinely violent.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I was just challenging a completely unsupported conclusion of someone trying to make people look through that skin colour lens.
Of course you have to look at the wider picture, and of course the cases of unjustified police violence garner the most public attention. Given that even when looking only at unarmed victims getting shot, black people appear to be 3 times as likely to be a victim as white people, your '"they end up having to use force" may rather be "they end up using force" though. And you also have to widen the picture even further, looking at why those particular neighbourhoods suffer so much from those issues in the first place, etc.
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It's called a chilling-effect, and as the AC mentioned, if your goal is to prevent future messengers, it works pretty well.
Correlation does not imply causation.
As it happens there is a well documented pattern that police seems to have forgotten in the past few years and which almost certainly is at play here - and could turn your conclusion on it's head.
That pattern is called "escalation'. If the cops start carrying shotcuns, criminals start carrying machine guns.
If the cops start driving tanks, the criminals will get bazookas.
So it's quite possible that the causality was the other way around. Racist cops in black neighborhoods started carrying heavier arms - so the criminals there upped-their-game ... and a cycle of escalation ensued, which basically means that now, the vast majority of innocent people in those neighborhoods have no chance whatsoever since criminals and cops alike are going in with a shoot-first mindset and the tools to take that approach.
One interesting piece of corroboration is the the correlation between police arms and crime rates is an INVERSE correlation. In countries where most street cops mostly carry non-lethal ordinance (like nightsticks) only, and the guns only come out when you ALREADY CONFIRMED the suspect you're about to go after is likely to be armed - police hardly ever get shot, crime rates are low and hardly anybody gets shot by the cops either.
The UK averages less cop shootings in a decade than the US does in a year, and the vast majority of UK cops are not armed. They also don't GET shot.
Iceland has had only one person shot by police in their ENTIRE HISTORY !
The police in Iceland are unarmed in general, they can be issued weapons if needed for specific operations - but they don't carry them around.
Police getting shot in Iceland are unheard off.
You REALLY want to get rid of crime and make serving police officers safer than they've ever been ? All the evidence suggests your first step should be to disarm the street cops.
Let SWAT be the only ones who get to carry guns and while you're at it, make them need a warrant before they can carry those guns out of the station.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *