Comment: Re:what mcafee is good for: (Score 1) 93
the potential for some conspiratards to see themselves as they talk about "the government"
because it's all the same paranoid bullshit
if they really had anything on him for the murder, they would ask usa to extradite and the usa would extradite. if there's a tell that the accusations are phony it's that they're unable to prove them without beating him up(yay gitmo!).
it's an interesting story about 3rd world politics and gangland rules by local cops in 3rd world countries, that has little to do with conspiracy theories - but much more about why doing legit business in some countries is pretty hard since you can't just look the local mob(police) rules up from a book. part of those rules is that the establishment(local coppers, mob, whoever) has to keep the natives from getting any funny ideas that they wouldn't need to bribe. if his property was torched on purpose to intimidate someone, it was done to intimidate the locals to not ask questions "hey, what about that murder? what was that all about?" rather than to screw with mcafee, since he is already far out of their radar.
bad thing is of course that building codes, zoning rules and openly planning city/society development go straight out of the window in areas governed like that. it's kinda stupid since if they just acted by the books they could get a lot of foreign investment and people to come - which is why some countries attract pensioners etc easier: because there they don't have to deal with the bullshit.
it's a common phenomena that usually happens just about everywhere if public officials have low official pay, so low that stinging money out of favelas even makes sense - and officers have so low pay as well that they ask the lower level coppers for part of the bribes - exactly like a mob racket with protection money that flows up the organization. over the russian border here it's the same thing, so much that people are instructed to not carry their actual passports around when going sightseeing so that they don't have to bribe police, random soldiers or whoever happens to take it without reason. it's also the reason why many russian logistic centers are situated on this side of the border: because on the other side you never know what's going to happen, the local governor might just give the land contracted to your logistics center to someone else who paid him personally rather than the city... it's really sad because it hampers trade and makes living for the law abiding normal people pretty complicated - would be a lot simpler to just increase taxes and have better, more honest coppers and officials(since the bribing amounts to an extra tax anyways).