Nowhere to Run

It breaks my heart to read this headline:

U.N. rights chief says secret terror prisons cause for grave concern

I remember a time, not so long ago, that I would see a headline like the one above and instinctively
think that this must certainly refer to someone else's prisons- not America's.
Secret terror camps are as common as the petty tyrants who create them, and you can't swing El Duce from a rope without hitting a petty tyrant these days.
This is nothing new.

It's just that when I was growing up, I learned to associate secret terror prisons with forward thinking humanitarians like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and the Gang of Four.
Images of frozen Siberian gulags come to mind.
Secret terror prisons are something that America used to be against.
Now we are the ones running the prisons.

We are building detention camps right here in the USA. Giving $385 million to Halliburton to build them. Enough to hold 400,000 detainees.


This biased left-winger mentions it.

This biased right-winger also writes about it.

They both draw the same conclusion: Police State.

Conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts mentions it at the end of this blistering attack on BushCo and his failed war; which also includes this:

America is drowning in the shame of war crimes. One monstrous slaughter of civilians after another, each denied and covered up until brought to light by photos and eyewitnesses. The once proud US Marines, unable to defeat the resistance that is picking them off one by one, is now a frustrated, demoralized force that is getting even by murdering 3-month-old babies and old women.

The Council of Europe has issued its report on the Bush administration’s policy of kidnapping "suspected terrorists" and spiriting them off to tyrannical regimes to be tortured. US State Dept spokesperson, Sean McCormick, whose job it is to justify the criminal conduct of the Bush administration, said that he was "disappointed" in the report. Sean seemed genuinely puzzled that Europe’s oldest political organization would second-guess the sound judgment of the virtuous Bush administration or protest US violations of international law and human rights.

The only reason Americans can look themselves in the mirror is that they are clueless and have little idea of what is being done in their name...

Formerly conservative, now proto-Nazi, publications such as National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, keep pounding the war drums, as does right-wing talk radio and neocon propaganda organs such as the Weekly Standard and Fox "News."

Remember, not long ago, when it was "news" that the NSA was:

- monitoring outgoing international telephone calls from terrorists
then
- well, a few domestic calls too, still for terrorists- we swear, that's all
then
- OK, maybe some of your calls...but just a little bit of the internet
then
-alright, every call you make, plus a good portion of the internet
now
- every call you make , a good bit of the internet and your financial records.

Where does the line get drawn?


I wonder how citizens of other countries feel about having the USA monitoring their phone calls and banking transactions?

Freedom marches on.