I love announcements like this

privacy.at Anonymous Remailer mixmaster at remailer.privacy.at
Fri Jun 20 10:25:55 PDT 2003


On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:27:50 -0400, you wrote:
>
> today...
>
>
> SURVEILLANCE MATTERS
> Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) (F.R. Page 35631)
> Closed meeting to discuss surveillance matters.
> Location: 1155 21st St., NW, 9th Floor Conference Room,
>     Washington, D.C.. 11 a.m.
> Contact: Jean Webb, 202-418-5100
> **CLOSED**

How about this news from China. Looks like Ashcroft has the same 
process underway here. Maybe it is modelled on our "partner in 
freedom", China.

Papers, please!!

http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501030623-
458835,00.html?cnn=yes

Asia
Hostages of the State

A murder that shocked the nation exposes the brutality of 
China's system of extrajudicial detentions
BY SUSAN JAKES / BEIJING CHINA PHOTO/REUTERS

Sun Liusong's son, Sun Zhigang, was beaten to death in a 
detention center in March 2003 Had it ended differently, Sun 
Zhigang's life might have been a testament to his country's 
progress. The 27-year-old carpenter's son had worked his way out 
of a remote village in China's central Hubei province to a 
university in the provincial capital of Wuhan. He graduated with 
an arts degree, then later moved to Guangzhou, landing a job as 
a graphic designer and the chance to make a home in new China's 
glittering boomtown. But three weeks into his new life, Sun's 
luck ran out. On his way to an Internet cafi, he was stopped by 
police and asked for his ID. When Sun said he had left it at 
home, the police took him to a nearby station. By the next day 
when his boss and friends showed up with the necessary papers, 
Sun had been transferred to a detention center for vagrants. Two 
days later, on March 20, he was dead, the victim of a brutal 
beating in the center's infirmary.

Last week, in a highly secretive trial, a Guangzhou court meted 
out harsh punishmentsincluding two death sentencesto those 
deemed to be the culprits in Sun's death. They included a nurse 
alleged to have ordered other inmates to beat Sun, and the 
inmates accused of complying. But the major accomplice in Sun's 
death got off free. The bulk of the blame for Sun's death ought 
to fall on a little-known system of administrative 
detentionthat is, detention outside of the criminal justice 
systemwhereby Chinese citizens can be locked up merely for 
being in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Custody and 
repatriation," as the system is euphemistically called, exists 
to enforce laws that keep impoverished rural dwellers from 
overcrowding the country's more prosperous cities. Officially, 
custody-and- repatriation (C.-and-R.) centers are responsible 
for detaining vagrants, beggars and those who lack permits to 
live in cities, and returning them to their hometowns. In 
reality, say human-rights experts and those who have experienced 
the system firsthand, it's a terrifyingly arbitrary and 
routinely abused tool of state power that, at its worst, amounts 
to little more than a police-enforced kidnapping-and ransom 
scheme.....





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