Since the onset of the "war on terror", the US has detained more than 3,000 people worldwide in a network of secret prisons established by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a number of regions, from Southeast Asia to North Africa, South Asia and Eastern Europe.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11260.htm

Iraq war debate enters new phase:

You might not expect a West Point graduate, Vietnam vet and career soldier to come out with a book titled "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Addicted to War." But that's what Andrew Bacevich, who now directs the program in International Relations at Boston University, has done.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/251384_tony09.html


From Information Clearing House

Jessica Sanchez poses an urgent threat to the US military. For a Pentagon stretched by stagnating enlistments and an Administration bent on waging a "global war on terror," the question of whether this four-foot-eleven Mexican-born legal resident and others like her will decide to join the military has enormous geopolitical implications.

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20051003&s=lovato


From Information Clearing House

During his response to President Bush this afternoon, Murtha revealed, for the first time, that the Pentagon will ask for an additional $100 billion for operations in Iraq next year.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11254.htm

By Richard Cohen

If, as Samuel Johnson said, "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," then "support our troops" is very close by. It is being used to deflect criticism of the war in Iraq, or to rebut those who call for a pullout or question how incompetents seized control of the government in a coup by ideologues. In the lexicon of some, the only way to support our troops is to ensure that more of them die.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11261.htm

By Philip Gallo, Ph.D.

The administration lied about WMD, lied about their earnest intent to go to war only as the last possible option and only when it was demonstrably unavoidable, lied about every aspect of the Iraqi situation, did so from the start and at every available opportunity, and continues to do so to this day.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11259.htm

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=96613;show_parent=1

pass on.........

I recommend reading 1984 by George Orwell, help understand what is happening right now, your local library may have it... unless it was burned !

beefree


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_states

George Orwell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

A police state is a totalitarian state regulated by secret police; the police exercise power on behalf of the executive and the conduct of the police cannot be effectively challenged. In such regimes there is no significant distinction between the law and the will of the executive; there is no rule of law.

Under the political model of enlightened despotism, the ruler is the "highest servant of the state". The ruler exercises the absolute power that he enjoys to provide for the general welfare. All of the powers of the state are to be directed toward this end; to constrain the ruler with written law would be bad policy. This view was supported by such thinkers as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau .

Because the enlightened despot is charged with the public good, opposition to government policy is an offense against authority, and thus against the state itself and all that it represented: the concept of loyal opposition is incompatible within this political framework. Because public dissent is forbidden, dissent is inevitably secret. To police dissent, therefore, requires use of informers and secret police.

Liberal democracy, with its emphasis on the rule of law, focused on the fact that the police state was unrestrained by law. Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law into German jurisprudence, for example, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the aristocratic Polizeistaat ("police state").

No state ever claims to be a "police state", the term is always applied by critics of the state, based on differing perceptions of legitimate law, human rights and social contract. [edit]

The police state in literature

The best-known literary treatment of the police state is George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which describes life under a totalitarian régime that uses the constant presence of eternal war as a pretext for subjecting the people to mass surveillance, constraining both freedom of action and of thought.

A police state is a totalitarian state regulated by secret police; the police exercise power on behalf of the executive and the conduct of the police cannot be effectively challenged. In such regimes there is no significant distinction between the law and the will of the executive; there is no rule of law.

Under the political model of enlightened despotism, the ruler is the "highest servant of the state". The ruler exercises the absolute power that he enjoys to provide for the general welfare. All of the powers of the state are to be directed toward this end; to constrain the ruler with written law would be bad policy. This view was supported by such thinkers as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau .

Because the enlightened despot is charged with the public good, opposition to government policy is an offense against authority, and thus against the state itself and all that it represented: the concept of loyal opposition is incompatible within this political framework. Because public dissent is forbidden, dissent is inevitably secret. To police dissent, therefore, requires use of informers and secret police.

Liberal democracy, with its emphasis on the rule of law, focused on the fact that the police state was unrestrained by law. Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law into German jurisprudence, for example, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the aristocratic Polizeistaat ("police state").

No state ever claims to be a "police state", the term is always applied by critics of the state, based on differing perceptions of legitimate law, human rights and social contract. [edit]

The police state in literature

The best-known literary treatment of the police state is George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which describes life under a totalitarian régime that uses the constant presence of eternal war as a pretext for subjecting the people to mass surveillance, constraining both freedom of action and of thought. George Orwell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

A poll found that workers' perceptions of discrimination in the workplace are mismatched with official reports of discrimination. The survey was conducted during a year that marks the 40th anniversary of the formation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/120905LC.shtml

Seventy years ago our Congress guaranteed the right of workers to organize unions and bargain collectively with their employers. But it took the famous "sit-down strikes" of Flint, Michigan, in 1936-37, where workers occupied the auto factories and refused to leave, before that right became a reality. Now we are back to square one, argues Mark Weisbrot.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/120905LB.shtml

With the nation's labor unions divided and shrinking, the AFL-CIO has organized 100 demonstrations nationwide this week to assert that the right of American workers to form unions is being systematically violated.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/120905LA.shtml