Comment by vintagedave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vintagedave | Hacker News Reader

This appears to be the related story about the agent: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61508520

Some truly crazy things in that article too. For example,

> X states he will kill her, leaves the room, and returns holding a machete ... The video cuts out amid her screams ... X was arrested, charged with assaulting Beth and appeared in court. However, while he was at court, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the case.

How can there be a _video_ of a machete attack and the case is dropped?

> items of hers that had also been seized by counter terror officers were returned to a member of her family by a man who did not identify himself. The relative assumed the man was an associate of X. ... We have established the visitor was an MI5 officer. Material seized by a police investigation, under a police warrant, had been given to MI5.

Just read that last sentence!

I'm not a UK national, but tend to believe in them -- including MI5 -- being the 'good guys'. We need good guys in today's world, desperately. This kind of article is hard to read.

There are no such things as ‘good guys’ especially for states.

States only believe in their own interests and the narrative always go towards the powerful and the one which won.

That’s the fatal flaw in international "justice" and has been from the start. Where were the people who allowed the nuclear bombing of civilians during the Nuremberg trials? Why was nothing said about the western nation entering the war so late despite what they knew? Because that’s not justice, merely retribution.

Then, you have to considered the role played by secret institutions in democratic countries. Do they serve the citizenship, the national interests (what does that even mean?), the people in power, themselves first and foremost? From history, I wouldn’t trust them very much, even less as a foreigner.

Be wary of any institution or person holding power. Check and balance are deeply needed and we should be horrified every times they are being limited or abused.

If the UK is still serious about being a liberal democracy, this should have sever consequences. I’m sadly fairly sure it won’t.

No stance on your conclusion but your arguments are... poor. "Why was nothing said about the western nation entering the war so late despite what they knew? Isn't the obvious answer that. Because that’s not justice, merely retribution." No, it's because you're presenting a false dichotomy? It would've obviously come with huge risks, costs, and more deaths. It's not like there was a big red "Deliver Justice" button they could've pressed to deliver justice anywhere anytime for free, and they somehow refused to press it. The world had already been through World War I, and you can imagine they neither wanted to get closer to another one, nor did people want to risk their own deaths or suicide. You can hate the west all you want for not entering the war earlier or whatever else, but at least maybe do it with something a little stronger than a strawman?

> States only believe in their own interests and the narrative always go towards the powerful and the one which won.

And depressingly, even that isn't true - states are plagued with the principal-agent problem[1], as is basically every organization.

---

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

Why was nothing said about the western nation entering the war so late despite what they knew?

What do you mean by that? The war had started by attacking the Western nations and the allies. The second front had opened when Germany attacked its former ally nearly 2 years later.

I suspect this is referring to the United States of America.

> If the UK is still serious about being a liberal democracy

They have not been for quite a while. They are the type of country where you go to jail over a meme.

Who went to jail over a meme?

It didn't happen. They're referring to people who incited arson and murder while there was an ongoing race riot (which started on false pretenses to begin with).

Here are two examples:

https://www.womenarehuman.com/man-arrested-for-sharing-meme-...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-teens-who-mocked-ge...

> "A trio of Snapchat pranksters aged between 18 and 19 are now having to be protected by police after enraging people with their sick reenactment of the death of George Floyd"

It's called protective custody. It's for their own safety.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-62352502

The first one was arrested for questioning because he refused to talk to the police when they first attempted to communicate. He was subsequently released - he never went to jail.

Nobody goes to jail for a meme.

Just like in the USA however there are laws about inciting violence and riots and people have been prosecuted for that.

The bs you're referring to is likely about the guy that went to jail for tweeting that a hotel of migrants should be burned down...during a race riot near the hotel.

Fires were set and people, including those calling for it, were prosecuted.

So he went to jail for a Twitter post? In what world can posting something cause you to be imprisoned for 15 months. The only crazier thing is people defending such horrendous laws.

You do know incitement is illegal in the USA too? Twitter or not, its illegal to ask others to burn people to death....

The twitter post made it to national news because people actually listened to it and set fire to the building while people were inside.

One person isn't responsible for other people's actions, no matter what they say. Britain is a draconian society ruled by fear.

...By that logic so is the USA as incitement isn't protected by the first amendment.

So ordering a henchman to kill a rival shouldn't be a crime?

It's interesting how the freedom of expression argument is always, but really always, used to defend violence and hatred.

Wasn't there the pug that did a nazi salute? Sure, the result wasn't jail, but the effects on free expression are devastating.

As a European I am quite jealous of the freedoms the US population has.

Currently Europe is the continent of the easily frightened and mentally slow people and with the current course it will only get worse in that regard.

A government procecuting such crimes also leaves the impression that they have lost control on certain issues at least.

> and people have been prosecuted for that.

some of them, yes, most of them, no.

Im not sure it's even that simple. Ive worked for many companies that havent worked in their own self interest. Large organizations captured by small, self interested or ideologically extreme groups often dont.

What the state of Israel is doing, for example, is not in its own interest and the untrammeled support given by the west to what it does is definitely not in our self interest.

Remember when UK police shot a random foreigner on the tube in the head and no one was prosecuted?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jean_Charles_de_Men...

The commissioner was found guilty...

> The commissioner was found guilty, and his office was fined.

I'm sure they also gave him a stern talking-to

The officer in charge, Cressida Dick, was given a slap on the wrist. She was later appointed head of Scotland Yard, where she was a signal failure. The Mayor of London, fed up with her equivocations on malfeasance, corruption and abuses in her force, pushed her out, and was criticized for this by the chief Inspector of constabulary. After all, she was a good old girl from the right family who went to the right school and the Establishment protects its own.

There has never been any occurrence of accountability for criminality, malfeasance or gross negligence in the UK for at least 100 years (Aberfan Disaster, Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday, Grenfell, Iraq, Afghanistan, the list goes on).

My father was in the CIA (one of the earliest). He was an idealist who joined out of patriotism, and couldn't reconcile himself with what they were becoming. He ended up resigning. I really feel that it broke him.

The early CIA were basically monsters in men's clothing. Just one dark, twisted scheme after another with no humanity in sight.

I think the very earliest had decent folks. I believe it was more like the second-gen CIA (1950s and 60s). He joined in '52 (after graduating Harvard with an LLB, and working for a short time at a law firm), and resigned in '67.

[EDITED TO ADD] I updated to the proper dates, and linked his eulogy.

https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm

Your dad was probably representative of many people at intelligence agencies. There's no amount of apparent evil that bureaucracy isn't sufficient to explain.

Well, he was a field agent. His job was to run assets in-country (Valerie Plame had a similar role).

He worked in West Africa, where Russian proxies were trying to foster communist insurgencies.

He was a very, very decent person; maybe too decent. The straw that broke the camel's back, was the Shah of Iran.

There are a couple Miles Copeland books on my reading list. They might be of interest to you. He was a big CIA guy (and also father of famous drummer Stewart Copeland)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Copeland_Jr.

I suspect my father was not a fan.

That's understandable. I just read a Miles Copeland interview from 1986 in which he complains about the CIA apparently assassinating fewer foreign leaders and being too truthful to congress.

The OSS leading into the early CIA is exactly who I was talking about.

They lead stay-behind operations in the recently liberated Italy(Operation Gladio) that funded Italian Mafia activities to act as strike breakers, assassinate union leaders.

They funded right-wing terrorist militias, ran false-flag operations, and started their early psychological warfare programs.

Your father resigned a couple years after the conclusion of the Indonesian Coup in which the CIA installed a right-wing military dictatorship, replacing a democratically elected government, that rounded up and murdered 1 Million communists while imprisoning a few million more for years. This event created a blueprint called the Jakarta Method which was used across the globe.

The movie The Act of Killing is about this time in Indonesia. Really a tough watch, but I recommend that movie for everybody... once.

Also, I think The Year of Living Dangerously.

> I'm not a UK national, but tend to believe in them -- including MI5 -- being the 'good guys'.

MI5/6 are never good guys.

Nothing surprising here.

They considered this guy to be a valuable asset and so "raison d'etat" prevailed.

This also highlights that whatever the official line on police and justice independence fed to the public phone calls and meetings that "never happened", well actually do.

With all due respect, there is not a single bigger evildoer over the last 300 years than the UK, they do not deserve any trust.

Hitler?

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