[plug] [OT+link] Feeling secure? Want to stay that way? Then don't read this.

[Leon Brooks]

Well... 99% OT, anyway.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37943-2002Dec25.html

    "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you
    probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised
    the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want
    to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole
    problem for a long time with the CIA."

    The off-limits patch of ground at Bagram is one of a number of secret
    detention centers overseas where U.S. due process does not apply,
    according to several U.S. and European national security officials,
    where the CIA undertakes or manages the interrogation of suspected
    terrorists. Another is Diego Garcia, a somewhat horseshoe-shaped
    island in the Indian Ocean that the United States leases from Britain.

    [...]

    At a Sept. 26 joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence
    committees, Cofer Black, then head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center,
    spoke cryptically about the agency's new forms of "operational
    flexibility" in dealing with suspected terrorists. "This is a very
    highly classified area, but I have to say that all you need to know:
    There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11," Black said.
    "After 9/11 the gloves come off."

    According to one official who has been directly involved in rendering
    captives into foreign hands, the understanding is, "We don't kick the
    [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can
    kick the [expletive] out of them." Some countries are known to use
    mind-altering drugs such as sodium pentathol, said other officials
    involved in the process.

    [...]

    U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack declined to
    comment earlier this week on CIA or intelligence-related matters. But,
    he said: "The United States is treating enemy combatants in U.S.
    government control, wherever held, humanely and in a manner consistent
    with the principles of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949."

    The convention outlined the standards for treatment of prisoners of
    war. Suspected terrorists in CIA hands have not been accorded POW
    status.

    [...]

    In contrast to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, where military
    lawyers, news reporters and the Red Cross received occasional access
    to monitor prisoner conditions and treatment, the CIA's overseas
    interrogation facilities are off-limits to outsiders, and often even
    to other government agencies. In addition to Bagram and Diego Garcia,
    the CIA has other secret detention centers overseas, and often uses
    the facilities of foreign intelligence services.

So... walk into a US embassy or military base and you're on US soil under US 
flag and the protection of its laws - except for this bit over here where we 
torture people, an action well outside the bounds of US law and almost 
certainly international law as well.

Of course, if they're prepared to down such basic and obvious freedoms in the 
name of national security, are they going to blink at downing a freedom which 
allows Linux to flourish? [you just read the on-topic 1%]

BTW, you can learn too much from the Internet. Stand by for a serious mystical 
break:

    And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had
    two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

>From other passages you can deduce that:

  * a beast represents a political power

  * earth as a medium represents a sparsely populated land

  * two horns represent two leaders or modes of leadership

  * a lamb represents a gentle power

  * a dragon represents a violent power.

So... we have a political power that arises in a sparesely populated land, has 
a two-pronged system of government which gives it the appearance of 
gentleness, but is really nasty at heart. Which kind of matches the USA. `We 
have these laws under which everyone gets a fair deal and nobody gets 
tortured, aren't we great?' Land of the free, rah rah.

Now why this is interesting is that it leads up to the `mark of the beast' bit 
that you see on many personalised licence plates:

    And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and
    causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first
    beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so
    that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight
    of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of
    those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast;
    saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an
    image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
    And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the
    image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would
    not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth
    all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a
    mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man
    might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the
    beast, or the number of his name.

...which is exactly where Palladium and the SSO projects like Passport are 
headed...

    Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of
    the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six
    hundred threescore and six.
 
`Name' seems to imply something more along the lines of reputation or 
character (as in `he made a name for himself') than a literal moniker like 
Robert or Lauren. If I find 666 buried somewhere in Passport or Palladium, 
I'm not sure how I'll react. (-:

Cheers; Leon