David Miranda was traveling from Berlin to Brazil on business. He is Glen Greenwald's partner and also an employee of the Guardian. He was carrying a laptop, USB drives, a camera and gaming consoles. He was traveling between meetings with Greenwald and his co-lead journalist on the Snowden project, Laura Poitras. At his stopover in London, he was detained, allegedly at the behest of United States, based on the special relationship between the two nations and their secret police forces.

Two months earlier, at the beginning of the Guardian's revelations of Edward Snowden's leaks, Britain's Tory government began pressuring the newspaper to give up or destroy its files. According to Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger, “A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favored a far more draconian approach.”

Peace Activists Commemorate 50th Anniversary of March on Washington with Vigil and Procession from Vietnam Veterans Memorial to MLK Memorial

On August 23rd and 24th peace and anti-war activists will commemorate the historic March on Washington 50 years ago and give voice to Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to end racism, poverty and war.

On Friday night, August 23rd at 8pm United for Peace & Justice UFPJ, will Shine the Light of Peace in a candlelight procession, beginning with commemorative words and a wreath laying ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial followed by NYC Light Brigade offering visual messages at the Reflecting Pool (see examples at Facebook) on our way to the MLK Memorial for a closing ceremony.

On Saturday, August 24th, UFPJ and other peace and anti-war groups will also be participating in the March on Saturday. UFPJ will be distributing posters at 14th and Constitution to bring the message of peace to the streets.

After revelations that Glenn Greenwald's partner was detained and threatened by British security forces earlier this week, Britain's rightwing media moguls made sure to close ranks and shield Westminster from too much public criticism. Major news outlets including the usually libertarian Daily Telegraph have responded to the story by running an aggressive string of articles downplaying or smearing the Guardian's coverage of this abuse, and others, by Prime Minister David Cameron's government.

David Miranda, who lives with Greenwald in Brazil, was held at Heathrow Airport for nine hours under the Terrorism Act (2000), denied legal representation for the duration, and told repeatedly that he would be imprisoned if he failed to surrender the passwords to his personal accounts. Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, also revealed that two months ago "shadowy figures" from the government told him "you've had your fun" and demanded access to the newspaper's basement, where agents smashed hard drives thought to contain sensitive NSA and GCHQ data.

You've heard people say they want to be spied on, as long as it means that other people will be spied on too. I know you've heard people say this, and which people it was, and how your face looked when you heard it, and what your next telephone call was. Or, rather, I could know all of that if I were one of the thousands and thousands of low-level snoops it will take for our government to accomplish its surveillance goals.

The logic is completely flawed, however. As FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley remarks, if you're looking for a needle in a haystack, adding more hay doesn't help. It makes you less likely to find the needle. A government that sucks up ever vaster quantities of useless information on innocent people actually hurts its own ability to investigate crimes. And the imagined intimidating effect of things like surveillance cameras in public spaces doesn't actually reduce crime; it merely makes us think of each other as potential criminals.

Is the human race determined to snuff itself out through mass violence? There are many signs that it is.

The most glaring indication lies in the continued popularity of war. Despite well over a hundred million deaths in World Wars I and II, plus the brutal military conflicts in Korea, Indochina, Hungary, Algeria, Lebanon, Angola, Mozambique, the Philippines, the Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, wars continue to rage across the globe, consuming vast numbers of lives and resources. In 2012, worldwide military spending reached $1.75 trillion. Moreover, the most lavish spenders for weaponry, war, and destruction were the supposedly “civilized” nations of NATO, with $1 trillion in military expenditures. By far the biggest military spender in 2012 was the United States, which accounted for 39 percent of the world total.