we're in a gang

You know, I don't often identify with Lee Adama, aka Apollo from the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, but right now I do. To be more specific, with his speech during Gaius Baltar's trial in the third seaon finale, and his "We are not a democracy anymore, we are a gang" conclusion. Because what else are we these days, "we" being the Western democracies, plural, not just one (or two)? The British police detaining David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald who was Edward Snowden's foremost media channel, for the nine hours it is currently possible to detain someone without having the charge them with a crime is just the most recent example.

Leaking information about war crimes is unpatriotic and treason. So is leaking information about the complete disregard of just about anyone's privacy (especially if they don't carry a US passport) world wide. But using plain old mafia tactics of intimidation and harrassment, oh, that's okay, because that's how you fight terrorism. Back in 1962, something happened in Germany that's known as "die Spiegel-Affäre", the Spiegel Scandal - you can read the details here you don't know them already. Back then, the fact that one of our major magazines published an article about the state of the German army, which led among other things to the then secretary of defense, Franz Josef Strauß, having the author of the article (who was on holidays in Spain) and the chief editor of the magazine arrested and accusing them of treason. Lack of patriotism. Leaking military secrets and helping the terrorists communists. Cue major public uproar (which is why the Spiegel Affair is seen as a big turning point, the first trial, so to speak, of whether Germans were still in the old authority-beholden mindset or had internalized democratic values) and effectively the end not just of Strauß' as a secretary of defense but of his political career outside of Bavaria.

I think of that, and the what's seen as acceptable behaviour by the state these days in the name of "fighting terrorism", and well, I do feel like Lee Adama. We're a gang now, or several gangs. Sure, it's still better to be in this gang than, say, in the Russian one, especially if you're gay, but you better not question the gang leaders tactics anyway, or keep it to complaining, as opposed to trying to document said tactics, because otherwise you're aiding the terrorists. And there are no polticial leaders, none, from wichever party in whichever country, who aren't complicit in this.

The terrorists won a long time ago.