In the
Christian Science Monitor, Amitai Etzioni protests against the project of the USA Patriot
Act II. The famous sociologist, theorist of social control and the humiliation of the
delinquents, points out that the services of police force must remain subjected to
democratic control, or else, it will not have there more democracy. This platform is
published in the moment when associations of defense of civic freedoms have just revealed
that a discrete article of the bill aims at repealing a law of 1947 and to authorize the
CIA with espionner the citizens states-uniens while escaping control from the magistrates.
In Los Angeles Times, professor Jonathan Turley denounces, as for him, the maintenance in
detention without judgement of minors of less than 16 years to the camp of Guantanamo. It
stresses that the camp, initially designed to intern war criminals, is used to hold no
matter whom by depriving it of all its rights. That has a name, concludes-il : Gulag.
This polemic, which was opened by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, is
instrumental play today in the internal confrontations in Washington. Thus, answering
indirectly the falcons which require its resignation, Colin Powell wrote to Donald
Rumsfeld to require the immediate release of the people held wrongly by the Pentagon with
Guantanamo.
Patriot Act is needed, goal so are revisions, Christian Science Monitor
(the United States) Amitai Etzioni are a professor of sociology in George Washington
University. He is the author of The Limits of Privacy. He
was member of the Task force one National Security in the Information Age, group financed
by Markle Foundation, which gathers the principal companies of high technologies and the
representatives of the
information bureaus of the United States. I have personal reasons to be opposed to the
widening of the field of Patriot Act. In 1964, I was the victim of a test of my honesty
organized by the FBI following public standpoint in which I had criticized the White
House. A false Polish spy proposed to me to betray my country or if not it would have
revealed that I lived with a woman with whom I was not married, which was shocking at the
time. I had refused and I had warned the FBI
which had not done anything. I had learned in 1990 that it was about a test organized by
an agent of the FBI.
A state does not remain free very a long time if those which criticize the government
are treated like traitors. I understand however that, since September 11, we must
adopt new measures to ensure our safeguard. I support much of them, but nothing learns
more than the experiment. However, being treated like
a suspect only because of my opinions learned to me much. This is why it is necessary to
create a body of control charged to supervise the forces of safety of the United States,
composed by sizeable and independent citizens.
(transmitted by Voltaire Network) |
