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Comment by tiniuclx | Hacker News Reader

This is a dangerous article. It seems to be engineered to produce a knee-jerk anti-government reaction, as can be seen in this comment section. The article does not seem to provide any sources for any of its claims. Furthermore, I have never heard of middleeasteye.net before and it would be safe to be skeptical of any claims posted by them.

Even if the allegations are true, is it such a bad thing after all? Terrorist attacks leave people vulnerable and afraid. Those feelings can easily turn into violence against those who are perceived to be the "cause" of the attack. Taking preemptive, albeit underhanded action to ensure mass violence does not occur seems like a good thing to me.

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I could see two sides to it. On the one hand, if you're in a position of trying to reduce harm in the society, it makes sense. On the other hand... it is a direct betrayal of the most foundational principles of democracy itself. It is a reversion to pre-democratic principles where the general public are seen as a teeming mass of resources to be manipulated by their betters for goals chosen by those betters, and where influence and participation of the public is to be prevented. Where do you stop once you have decided that the general public generally has bad ideas and shouldn't play a role in their own governance? We did persist, as a species, for thousands of years with governments based upon the notion that those in the government were inherently superior, chosen by a god, from special bloodlines, etc, and I don't see any reason we couldn't get back there. But for the past couple hundred years, we've been trying out this democratic bent where we don't believe there are any specially anointed people destined by mystic forces to be leaders. And actively manipulating the public opens doors to lots of dangerous practices that were previously barred solely upon the principle that it would prevent public participation. Why not suspend elections if it looks like your party will lose power if you earnestly and honestly believe that the other parties won't continue the efforts you started to 'protect the public from themselves'? You can no longer form an argument against it.

> a knee-jerk anti-government reaction, as can be seen in this comment section.

Oh don't worry, we don't need an article like this to bad mouth the UK government. Go into pretty much any pub in the evening, wait about 30 mins and someone will be slagging off the UK Government (Doesn't matter who is in power or what their polices are about, we will find something to bitch about them over).

> Furthermore, I have never heard of middleeasteye.net before and it would be safe to be skeptical of any claims posted by them.

You should be skeptical of claims posted by any media, especilly if what this article describes is true.

I'm not sure it's a bad thing. It gives ammunition to the "fake news" crowd, though. Because the running narrative there is that establishment is trying to artificially manufacture some narrative, while the reality is that country X is in danger from Y.

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