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Comment by zrth | Hacker News Reader

The most promising way to prevent politicians and criminals from trying to censor through killing journalists is to retaliate the killings by investigating the initiator and their allies until every crime they have committed has surfaced. As soon as it is clear that a flood of investigations are consequence of violence against people who speak the truth the risk of speaking should diminish greatly.

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After having lived in a corrupt country, this will just get you killed. These people aren't lone actors, they are part of a network of people looking out for one another. If these sorts of crimes aren't investigated seriously by the authorities, then they are in fact part of that network and you are really going after the main power structure in the society. You will need to affect some sort of revolution to displace that power structure, anything else will just get you locked up/beat up/killed/or worse.

Sometimes investigations can be continued from other countries where silencing journalists is less feasible.

Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daphne_Project

That can be difficult to do depending on the context. Mexico comes to mind. Criminals can use both fear and loyalty to make it harder to prove crimes and if politicians are involved, they can easily threaten other politicians or even the legal system itself. This isn’t to say that the approach won’t work, long-term de-escalating violence, increasing controls in arms trade, and asserting the rule of law above any individual are all viable. It’s getting the existing gangs and political systems to change their ways that is harder. It’s also worth pointing out that a justice system based on evidence can still serve unjust sentences, make mistakes. And politicians write the laws the system enforces. And many places don’t have free speech and human rights upheld to such an extent that laws can’t easily be written to curb it. So it’s a complicated problem... I’d even start by saying Panama Papers highlights a problem that you can have anonymous “persons” making transactions that are untraceable, etc. And countries and businesses can profit off this, and there isn’t agreement as to when privacy is worth more or less than free speech or when profit is valued more or less than security.

True, Mexico is quite ruff. It's hard to even guess where to start from and what to do.. Maybe go after the people who are responsible for selling the weapons and laundering the money? E.g. US based weapons manufacturers and German banks?

There are countries that are not as hopeless where I can see potential for change, or so it seems at least: https://www.dw.com/en/murder-of-jan-kuciak-13-judges-arreste...

I would say that the most promising way to prevent politicians and criminals from trying to censor through killing journalists is to retaliate the killings by killing them back. It is not something that I necessarily support but I do not believe that you will get anywhere by trying to go through the lawful route. At best it will be ignored (see the wikileaks revelations, did you have many people go to jail?). At worst you might end up getting killed, just like the previous journalists that they murdered.

Requisite mention: Jim Bell's Assassination Politics.

I doubt that it'd ever work. Too few of the oppressed masses would ever be motivated enough to participate, or would risk it, even if they were. And so it'd mostly get more journalists etc assassinated.

But still, it was a cool statement, back in the day.

This works really well once you have setup a system of law to convict politicians and rich people for crimes.

But if you don't have that system setting it up will require violence - either externally applied or internally.

This can become a problem if your judiciary is corrupted.

I mean, it ought to be fine, but if a country were to let politicians pick the judges, that would be a problem right?

Like maybe one elected politician just gets to pick anybody he wants, friend of a rich donor maybe, and they're now a judge even though they've no relevant qualifications?

Not mentioning any particular North American countries whose name begin with the letter 'U'.

Justicial Appointments are confirmed by Congress.

USA has many problems, but its Constitution is not one of them.

> Justicial Appointments are confirmed by Congress.

How is this a defense from corruption? The judicial is gated by the corruption from authority. This process is why judges are largely grouped into conservative or liberal appointments...because the Supreme Court Judge positions are almost always the result of a specific political environment. At any given point in time, there is a large pool of technically qualified judges. Who gets vetted (politically) is the topic of discussion, in the confirmation hearings.

> USA has many problems, but its Constitution is not one of them.

I, and many others consider our country to be experiencing a constitutional crisis, so I politely refute your assertion.

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