Which do we live in? The Country founded on Freedom...or the Country becoming a clone of the old Soviet Union...
Nothing more I can say will tell as much as the following news items..
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htmA senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book." Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program. The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said. The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/19/nsa/index.htmlPresident Bush defended Monday a secretive program that eavesdrops on some international phone calls involving U.S. citizens, saying the United States must be "quick to detect and prevent" possible near-term terrorist attacks.
At an end-of-the-year news conference, Bush spent much of his time answering questions about the program, which bypasses the normal procedure of attaining a court warrant and is designed to intercept communications between suspected terrorists in the United States and other countries.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/19/bush/index.htmlPresident Bush defended using government wiretaps without court authorization to monitor terrorism suspects and urged the Senate to renew the USA Patriot Act during his year-end news conference Monday.
The president said he intends to continue using secret international wiretaps to monitor activities of people in the United States suspected of having connections to al Qaeda.
"To save American lives we must be able to act fast and to detect these conversations so we can prevent new attacks," Bush said during the event, in the East Room of the White House. (
Watch Bush defend using secret wiretaps -- 2:23http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.
A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.
http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/afx/2005/06/24/afx2110388.htmlUS acknowledges torture at Guantanamo; in Iraq, Afghanistan - UN 06.24.2005, 11:37 AM GENEVA (AFX) - Washington has, for the first time, acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said. The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity.
http://hrw.org/campaigns/torture.htmEach day brings more information about the appalling abuses inflicted upon men and women held by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the world. U.S. forces have used interrogation techniques including hooding, stripping detainees naked, subjecting them to extremes of heat, cold, noise and light, and depriving them of sleep—in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This apparently routine infliction of pain, discomfort, and humiliation has expanded in all too many cases into vicious beatings, sexual degradation, sodomy, near drowning, and near asphyxiation. Detainees have died under questionable circumstances while incarcerated.This must end. Torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading practices should be as unthinkable as slavery. U.S. Department of Defense officials have announced that certain stress interrogation techniques will no longer be used in Iraq. But President Bush should ban all forms of abuse during interrogation in Iraq and everywhere else that the United States holds people in custody. It is wrong in itself and leads to further atrocities.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-22-gitmo-cover_x.htmPresident Bush ordered the Pentagon to create the tribunal system to try foreign terrorism suspects while guarding U.S. intelligence-gathering methods.
But Begg and the others won't have the range of traditional rights that defendants get in U.S. civilian courts. A year after the Pentagon began releasing rules for the tribunals, a picture is emerging of a system in which the scales of justice are tipped against foreign terrorism suspects in favor of protecting national security.
The system contains twists on defendants' rights that likely will be unfamiliar to U.S. citizens who are used to civilian and military courts anchored by independent judges and unbiased juries.
•There will be no independent judge, and no jury will be selected to decide a case.
The government will have broad discretion to hold portions of trials in secret.
Terrorism suspects who are acquitted by tribunals still could be detained indefinitely.
