Reasonable Grounds for Suspicion

There are, of course, any number of perfectly innocent reasons for the detention of David Miranda; reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Miranda's partner is Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who has been writing about the abuses of the National Security Agency. Certainly there is no reason to believe that Miranda's detention was ordered by the White House; a well-trained dog does not need to be told who to attack. Miranda is Brazilian, like the notorious terror suspect Jean Charles de Menezes; and Brazil, of course, is actionably close to Argentina, which insists on negotiating about the Falkland Islands; and to Ecuador, which continues to shelter the fiend Assange. Worse yet, both Argentina and Ecuador share a language with Spain, which at this very moment is treating the brave little folk of Gibraltar as though they were some sort of immigrants. All things considered, Miranda should really count himself rather lucky that he got away with nine hours' imprisonment and the confiscation of his gadgets, rather than a headful of dum-dums and a bit of posthumous defamation. Still, to look on the bright side, at least we now know that there are some police-state tactics to which even the Labour front bench have some objection, provided they do not happen to be in government at the time.