6 ms·

So, when is it going to be considered misconduct for Dana Boente and the (not so) honorable Theresa Buchanan to tack on gag orders for no good reason? How do we

by joncp 10y ago

So, when is it going to be considered misconduct for Dana Boente and the (not so) honorable Theresa Buchanan to tack on gag orders for no good reason? How do we change that? Calling our representatives in Congress won't help. Signing petitions is laughable. I'm at a loss for how to change this as a regular citizen.

module0000 10y ago
Political actors usually only respond when they are or their colleagues are harmed in some fashion. When people successfully affect politicians, they tend to do so from a grassy knoll. Summary: Oppressive bullies only respond to equal or greater oppressive bullying. edit:typo
- avar 10y ago
  I'd have a vastly different view on politics if I believed in the Kennedy assassination being an inside job, as your offhand "grassy knoll" comment suggests you do.
  - module0000 10y ago
    Sorry for the late reply, but I didn't mean to imply anything about an inside job or other conspiracy theory. My point was that a sure-fire way to affect a politician is to kill them. Everything else is a "this might work..." proposition. I prefer absolutes. I see how my comment could have been misinterpreted by so many people in hindsight. Sometimes I look at things through a very specific-to-my-experience lens. In another life, myself and squadmates(think coworkers) would get orders such as "Cleric(foreign equivalent of mayor/publicly-supported-bad-actor) <John Doe> and all his/her supporters are threats and should be neutralized". That didn't mean we should protest their policies or otherwise attempt to subvert them...those aren't guaranteed solutions. The finality of killing is a guaranteed solution. If they become a martyr and create even more undesirables through their demise...don't despair - just accept that the list of undesirables has grown and await the very predictable orders. It's tried, true, and only protested until the protester's name joins the list and is subsequently checked off.
  - thingexplainer 10y ago
    In all seriousness, and meaning no disrespect, have you researched the Kennedy assassination and come away with the impression there was no conspiracy? Because I didn't even think it was particularly controversial that the official story is bunk. Making no more assumptions about the circumstances of his death (ie, who or how), a conspiracy would be required to produce an official explanation that was lean of some inconvenient facts. But I'm always in the market for convincing evidence that I'm wrong.
    - avar 10y ago
      Yeah I've been quite interested in it an other conspiracy theories, like the 9/11 conspiracy theory (also bunk) etc. Most of what these conspiracy theories consist of is just anomaly hunting, you take a really complex event and try to find any sort of unusual things, which of course you're going to find since it's a big & complex event. Check out this interview (around 40m) in [1] with Gerald Posner, the author of Case Closed[2] (a non-conspiracy Kennedy assassination book) for a good start down the rabbit hole of non-conspiracy coverage of the Kennedy assassination. 1. http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/435 http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/435 2. http://www.posner.com/case-closed http://www.posner.com/case-closed
- a3n 10y ago
  "they tend to do so from a grassy knoll." That was jarring to read. I'm not saying you shouldn't have said it, but it made me uneasy. And it's not actually true. Money, or withholding money, is much more convenient and usually works.
- ldehaan 10y ago
  Killing the opposition has a chilling effect on social progress. The best course of action is to show the people who these politicians really are. The best way to do that is to create a citizen controlled government offices dedicated to spying on our elected officials. Something they'll never give in to, even though they do it to us. Once we're aware of every move those in "power" have then they will no longer be able to lie. Oh, and we have to get rid of religion, so this whole thing is going to to take a while. Honestly I think a super AI is going to come along and change things before we get a chance. So strap in buddy.
- burkaman 10y ago
  When has assassination ever accomplished what the assassin wanted? Most successful political movements, at least in recent history, do not involve killing anybody.
  - Anasufovic 10y ago
    With higher profile assassinations, the results seem to be less predictable. But I think we tend to ignore all the smaller assassinations that gave just the right edge to the opposition since those people just fade into the background noise.
    - burkaman 10y ago
      Do you have an example? If you're talking about government-sponsored assassinations, I think that's less relevant, we're talking about how "normal" people can influence politicians.
  - phs318u 10y ago
    Your first sentence assumes we know the assassins' motives. I question that. Your second sentence assumes that any assassinations would be publicly known (eg assassination of a public figure). Assassination of non-public figures may well be impactful and yet go largely unheeded.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    The assassination of JFK & RFK put Johnson into power. Power mongers pulled all kinds of schemes from there. The assassination of MLK per testimony in court case was intended to stop overthrow of U.S. government by masses tired of their shit. That didn't happen. Numerous witnesses to various things in intelligence misconduct never lived to say it in court. Those things are still debatable due to missing information. And so on. Assassinations that have worked so far were done by the power establishment to expand or protect its power. They tend to work. They're rarely needed, though, as they can do things like media spins, disenfranchising voters, regular arrests, and so on.
    - 10y ago
- joncp 10y ago
  Uh, this isn't the direction I was expecting this to go. When you start killing judges, corrupt or not, you have Mexico. I was thinking more along the lines of being disbarred and exposed to civil and criminal liability. Gag orders should be required to have a short duration and, once lifted, be subject to an open and thorough examination, where it's the state's responsibility to prove that the gag was necessary. Failing that, the prosecutor and signing judge would be liable. The problem is our lack of political momentum and any lever for average citizens to use to move the judicial system to reform.
klapinat0r 10y ago
I'm confused. It seems you have more information than the blog post and attached documents entail. Do you know both how long the investigation would be under for? Do you know the timing? Stating there's no good reason is not true - it's quite possible that a gag order is issued to protect the investigation, including identification of suspects, the number of suspects (at least two in this case), change of behavior (e.g. switch from Signal to smoke signals, fax, or just lay low for a while), etc. What happens when two days after a terrorist attack, OWS publishes a subpoena for the first time? I for one welcome that they go through the official channels to get the redacted version approved. Let's not botch investigations for the sake of pitchforking the "everything should be public" slogans.
- nindalf 10y ago
  I think a middle ground is possible in this specific case. The government could have said "we're placing a selective gag order, meaning you can't publish this notice but you can publish the redacted notice that we've helpfully attached", rather than wait for OWS to file a petition to publish the redacted version.

by joncp 10y ago

module0000 10y ago

Political actors usually only respond when they are or their colleagues are harmed in some fashion. When people successfully affect politicians, they tend to do so from a grassy knoll. Summary: Oppressive bullies only respond to equal or greater oppressive bullying. edit:typo

avar 10y ago
I'd have a vastly different view on politics if I believed in the Kennedy assassination being an inside job, as your offhand "grassy knoll" comment suggests you do.
- module0000 10y ago
  Sorry for the late reply, but I didn't mean to imply anything about an inside job or other conspiracy theory. My point was that a sure-fire way to affect a politician is to kill them. Everything else is a "this might work..." proposition. I prefer absolutes. I see how my comment could have been misinterpreted by so many people in hindsight. Sometimes I look at things through a very specific-to-my-experience lens. In another life, myself and squadmates(think coworkers) would get orders such as "Cleric(foreign equivalent of mayor/publicly-supported-bad-actor) <John Doe> and all his/her supporters are threats and should be neutralized". That didn't mean we should protest their policies or otherwise attempt to subvert them...those aren't guaranteed solutions. The finality of killing is a guaranteed solution. If they become a martyr and create even more undesirables through their demise...don't despair - just accept that the list of undesirables has grown and await the very predictable orders. It's tried, true, and only protested until the protester's name joins the list and is subsequently checked off.
- thingexplainer 10y ago
  In all seriousness, and meaning no disrespect, have you researched the Kennedy assassination and come away with the impression there was no conspiracy? Because I didn't even think it was particularly controversial that the official story is bunk. Making no more assumptions about the circumstances of his death (ie, who or how), a conspiracy would be required to produce an official explanation that was lean of some inconvenient facts. But I'm always in the market for convincing evidence that I'm wrong.
  - avar 10y ago
    Yeah I've been quite interested in it an other conspiracy theories, like the 9/11 conspiracy theory (also bunk) etc. Most of what these conspiracy theories consist of is just anomaly hunting, you take a really complex event and try to find any sort of unusual things, which of course you're going to find since it's a big & complex event. Check out this interview (around 40m) in [1] with Gerald Posner, the author of Case Closed[2] (a non-conspiracy Kennedy assassination book) for a good start down the rabbit hole of non-conspiracy coverage of the Kennedy assassination. 1. http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/435 http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/435 2. http://www.posner.com/case-closed http://www.posner.com/case-closed
a3n 10y ago
"they tend to do so from a grassy knoll." That was jarring to read. I'm not saying you shouldn't have said it, but it made me uneasy. And it's not actually true. Money, or withholding money, is much more convenient and usually works.
ldehaan 10y ago
Killing the opposition has a chilling effect on social progress. The best course of action is to show the people who these politicians really are. The best way to do that is to create a citizen controlled government offices dedicated to spying on our elected officials. Something they'll never give in to, even though they do it to us. Once we're aware of every move those in "power" have then they will no longer be able to lie. Oh, and we have to get rid of religion, so this whole thing is going to to take a while. Honestly I think a super AI is going to come along and change things before we get a chance. So strap in buddy.
burkaman 10y ago
When has assassination ever accomplished what the assassin wanted? Most successful political movements, at least in recent history, do not involve killing anybody.
- Anasufovic 10y ago
  With higher profile assassinations, the results seem to be less predictable. But I think we tend to ignore all the smaller assassinations that gave just the right edge to the opposition since those people just fade into the background noise.
  - burkaman 10y ago
    Do you have an example? If you're talking about government-sponsored assassinations, I think that's less relevant, we're talking about how "normal" people can influence politicians.
- phs318u 10y ago
  Your first sentence assumes we know the assassins' motives. I question that. Your second sentence assumes that any assassinations would be publicly known (eg assassination of a public figure). Assassination of non-public figures may well be impactful and yet go largely unheeded.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  The assassination of JFK & RFK put Johnson into power. Power mongers pulled all kinds of schemes from there. The assassination of MLK per testimony in court case was intended to stop overthrow of U.S. government by masses tired of their shit. That didn't happen. Numerous witnesses to various things in intelligence misconduct never lived to say it in court. Those things are still debatable due to missing information. And so on. Assassinations that have worked so far were done by the power establishment to expand or protect its power. They tend to work. They're rarely needed, though, as they can do things like media spins, disenfranchising voters, regular arrests, and so on.
  - 10y ago
joncp 10y ago
Uh, this isn't the direction I was expecting this to go. When you start killing judges, corrupt or not, you have Mexico. I was thinking more along the lines of being disbarred and exposed to civil and criminal liability. Gag orders should be required to have a short duration and, once lifted, be subject to an open and thorough examination, where it's the state's responsibility to prove that the gag was necessary. Failing that, the prosecutor and signing judge would be liable. The problem is our lack of political momentum and any lever for average citizens to use to move the judicial system to reform.

klapinat0r 10y ago

I'm confused. It seems you have more information than the blog post and attached documents entail. Do you know both how long the investigation would be under for? Do you know the timing? Stating there's no good reason is not true - it's quite possible that a gag order is issued to protect the investigation, including identification of suspects, the number of suspects (at least two in this case), change of behavior (e.g. switch from Signal to smoke signals, fax, or just lay low for a while), etc. What happens when two days after a terrorist attack, OWS publishes a subpoena for the first time? I for one welcome that they go through the official channels to get the redacted version approved. Let's not botch investigations for the sake of pitchforking the "everything should be public" slogans.

nindalf 10y ago
I think a middle ground is possible in this specific case. The government could have said "we're placing a selective gag order, meaning you can't publish this notice but you can publish the redacted notice that we've helpfully attached", rather than wait for OWS to file a petition to publish the redacted version.