British journalist held by police at Luton airport for five hours without arrest

You don't even have to get geopolitical to rip on the UK nanny state. TV detector vans are straight up Orwellian to a point where one would consider it a parody from a comedy sketch if it weren't a real thing.

Western government have had high-profile negative media coverage in the past because they weren’t keeping track of returnees from Syria, my guess is they are being more diligent in response to that.

Regardless of the morality it is unusual and you aren’t really supposed to go to Rojava.

Oh, there's nothing random about them.

For imbalanced data, even accurate system will give tons of false positives. Unless you are willing to tolerate false negatives, having large false positive rate is almost inevitable. Rare disease testing is a popular example, but this one is a good instance to I think.

Let's say there are 10 million people linked to terrorism in the world and the system is correct 95% of times. Then out of 20000 people, 20 are positives, and 19 will be stopped; out of 19980 negatives, 999 will be stopped.

Compared to disease testing you may argue that FP is more harmful, but that's a different question. The point is that even very non-random system will be dominated by FP.

Edit: in particular, if they stop truly random people and 500 of them are linked to terrorism that implies that 20% of all people passing there are terrorists.

Great question. The journalist named in the article (Matt Broomfield) is asking authorities to delist the PKK (which clearly IS a terrorist organization targeting civilians) as a terrorist organization.

https://twitter.com/MattBroomfield1/status/15092064663512760...

I suspect the overwhelming majority had "links" to terrorism, for a broad enough definition of "link."

Well, Frontex, the EU border patrol agency, was imvolved in illegal pushbacks (you cannot deny entry to asylum seekers, not speak of the duty to help people in dostres at sea) multiple times. Even resulting in the death of people. Nothing happened, besides having the head of Frontex being removed. Go figure.

This also includes buses on internal routes but within the 100 miles or so of the border. They would stop a bus and ask everyone to prove they are citizens. I know someone who overstayed their visa who was caught and extradited that way.

It’s a way for illegal immigrants to travel relatively cheaply. As opposed to driving or walking. So buses became this target.

Well in my case I can certainly tell you it was because I answered "that's none of your business" to all the questions they asked me. They were livid, and the search they carried out was in an attempt at maximum intimidation.

I'm a US citizen re-entering the US with a valid US passport. They have to let me in and I don't have to answer a damn thing (because the appeals court has already ruled they can search everything you have, including all electronics, without probable cause, I refuse to make their job any easier than it needs to be).

On a separate incident at a separate border point (the Windsor-Detroit tunnel) they sexually assaulted my then-girlfriend (not a US citizen) during a very thorough body search which was also conducted for punitive reasons only after our refusal to cooperate in their search of our electronic devices (after they had already decided to deport her).

(In that case I was driving a rented luxury car, so I don't think it was bus bias, I think it was just retaliation for insisting on our human rights.)

US CBP is rotten trash.

Had two negative experiences at the same place. Some agents are outwardly hostile. There was no provocation.

What do you mean? The media reports about important issues, such as boats, on a daily basis! /s

He appears crank, but he is a seasoned journalist who started running his own blog fulltime, so parts of the appearance might be rooted in that. I can only speculate that we have to account for age, funding and personality.

However what is less speculation is that he (and other critics of the German government) are receiving the full „Zersetzung“ Stasi-tactic treatment: Unwarranted unfounded police stops, especially at airports with well meaning officers even admitting there‘s some sort entry in the database, multiple banks cancelling his accounts, as well as all kinds of internet service providers kindly asking him to set up some shell entity to relief them from government pressure. All of this not only limited to him bit to family members as well (his 8-year old‘s daughter bank account „had to be“ suspended according to the bank)

He has to run his website from _uckin Montenegro.

Placing Reitschuster next to Russias RT is the standard type of smear and funny because Reitschuster is one of the most outspoken critics of Putin, having spent years as a foreign correspondent in Moscow during Putins ascend to power.

People should just make up their own mind by reading a publication, instead of adopting another publication’s opinion about a publication.

So why do you think they covered this story, but not the arguably higher-profile Klarenberg case? Slip under their radar?

My perception: The Guardian deteriorated substantially around 2015. They became an establishment paper. The Guardian is mostly predictable, boring and neocon nowadays.

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of...

> Not sure India and Ireland

India in the Modi era is pretty inspired by Churchill.

He was referring to the use of tear gas in order to disperse crowds (rather than using violence)...that section of the memorandum tends not to be quoted (and Britain only used gases in warfare after Germany began using it indiscriminately in WW1).

It is quite bizarre to imply that pre-colonial India was a haven for human rights but that Britain, the country with the most advanced legal system and which had recognised the notion of human rights nearly 900 years earlier, did not.

It's just a question, designed to provoke a response that might be useful.

Border officials the world over are like this. They have broad leeway to assume everyone is a threat, and to provoke, inconvenience, belittle and annoy them until they are satisfied. Obtuse, trollish rudeness is but one tool in the toolbox.

--

Responding more generally rather than specifically to your point, if you'll forgive me:

I am inclined to believe that while our British border officials are wholly embarrassing, the situation is no worse than it is in every single western democracy.

Let us all not pretend that border police confiscating the journalists' possessions they don't really have the explicit right to confiscate is particularly unique to any country; it's absolutely not. This is an internationally common thing and it is very much a sign of the times.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-border-...

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/journ...

Privileges ok?

We’re allowed to dislike hypocrisy, aren’t we?

Not everyone thinks that we need those things.

It’s also not “complaining”, it’s spreading awareness.

maybe he is not needed as much as he thinks he is

Fully agree with you. (I'm German as well, in case that matters)

> With great success regarding the containment of the far right, they poll quite often on second place now.

So why is this happening? Isn't it a sign that they are proposing ideas more attractive to more and more people? Or alternatively people are becoming skeptical about ideas and policies realized so far by current government over the years?

> Rant over. If Western democracies don't start to stand up for our proclaimmed values, we will loose what little soft power we have left.

Don't worry, to the rest of the developing world, Western democracies are already considered to be a bunch of moralizing hypocrites, looking to impose their erstwhile colonial tendencies in other ways. Oh, and you guys are a laughing stock with the recent immigration issues, what with Lampedusa being showcased front and center of the news.

You guys ship your garbage to other poorer countries in some sort of wretched don't ask, don't tell policy, then blame those same countries for polluting the earth. Meanwhile a bunch of clowns in your countries inconvenience the rest of the populace by sticking themselves to the roads as a "sign of protest". To quote Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, the UAE foreign minister, "the next generation of terrorists will be from Europe and the West".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-dV4m43xZmY

Get over it, you guys are already a joke, already on the decline. Get out of your city shells and walk the rural areas a bit to see how your fellow countrymen actually feel about the policies of your government. Of how the common man has been continually shafted while you preach and vacillate about human rights.

I look forward to the amount of PhD dissertations that will study the decline of Europe and the West over the post-GFC decade. Rant over.

They aren't cooperative. The article explains they didn't actually do anything. But international agreements on policing essentially compel police here to act (but not necessarily charge or return people).

For some reason, it is literally the same people who say that massive limitations need to be placed on native authority by international agreements, by courts (in some countries, depending on the legal system), etc. AND they say it is shocking that our police aren't sovereign...really? We cannot have it both ways...either you trust local authority or you trust the authority of foreign governments...it cannot be neither.

> The West is way to cooperative with regimes like Erdogan, Modi, the UAE or Qatar. To name a few.

I fail to understand how Modi (and likely Erdogan), who are elected representatives, are at the same level as the UAE or Qatar.

"Look at the human right violations they've done!"

Not defending them, but then would you add Bush/Obama/Trump to the list (between Guantanamo Bay/all the middle east military "interventions") Or how Assange is still being treated by the US?

I'm not trying to flame-bait, but if a leader is a democratically elected rep is conflated with autocracies that's not a sound argument. Especially when it's something more countries do than don't. (Disclaimer, am Indian)

Nothing more democratic than asking for the "containment" of the side of politics that you don't like.

German citizen kidnapped by the CIA. Germany does not care:

https://www.dw.com/en/kidnapped-by-the-cia-the-case-of-khale...

> Erdogan, Modi, the UAE or Qatar.

One of these is not like the others - India is a real democracy, even if it has issues.

The west hardly cares about soft power. Can you give an example of some soft power that wasn't due to a legal agreement? I came up dry just now thinking of some example that the west has set that the rest of the world has followed purely on the idea of it alone. There's always some sort of formal agreement it seems when it comes to these sorts of things, e.g. forms of government, trade, mutually passed laws like drug scheduling or extradition.

>Western democracies don't start to stand up for our proclaimmed values

That ship has left the barn long, long ago. We can't provide military resources to a known fascist totalitarian-authoritarian dictatorship, so they can enact genocide, and still proclaim ourselves on the 'right' side of history.

The illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003: same. The funding and arming of ISIS. The destruction of Libya.

We lost our moral altitude long, long ago - and its not coming back. As this story demonstrates, we in the West have gotten far, far too complacent about totalitarian-authoritarianism, such that we just accept it when it happens to us, at the airport, etc.

We have to capitulate because the British policing system is forced to cooperate through international agreements (this isn't often reciprocated, these agreements hand massive power to undemocratic countries because we have to comply and they comply when they feel like it). Turkish judges are actually part of our legal system, we are told that this is an essential part of our legal system respecting the rule of law...people want to have it all and every way (the UK is a horrible police state...but we have to accept the primacy of Turkish judges in our laws...you cannot have it both ways).

That was lifted a year ago.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-resumes-arms-exp...

Wasnt it to get US F35s?

That's a complicated story. Turkey bought the Russian S-400 system instead of NATO weapons, partly because they have economic incentives to be on good foot with Russia, partly because want to be ambivalent enough towards the West to have take advantage of credible threats in upcoming negotiations, partly because of domestic policy reasons.

As was expected, they pretty much immediately found themselves under US weapons embargo. Modern weaponry form integrated systems, and integrating a Russian system in a NATO system is pretty much out of the question for various practical reasons.

The Swedish embargo however was different. Swedish law simply forbids export to countries that use force against civilians. There are plenty of well supported evidence of this taking places, not only in Syria. But all this have to be taken into context to understand the Turkish situation.

Perhaps unfortunately, depending on your perspective, the Swedish embargo was lifted when the NATO negotiations started. That is Realpolitik for you. Nobody wants to risk a Turkey allied with the Eastern block. And Turkey knows perfectly well to take advantage of that. Thus far it seems to be working for Erdogan. The deal maker image gains popularity, which is sorely needed with Turkish economy being what it is. The open question is how far he can push it.

it seems like the ones responsible for the wrongdoing are the ones being blamed, what makes you find that so incredible?

> even put up with Erdogan's regime at all.

Because like it or not they play a critical card in NATO strategy against Russia.