In a joint effort, Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and several other human rights entities have identified 39 people removed from the public arena by the CIA.

The full list of people has people obtained in many different countries from a variety of nations and transported to secret U.S. Detention centers.

Full text of article on Human Rights Watch indicates that some of these detainees have been held for years, without outside contact, and without legal counsel of any kind.

In another article, secret prisons of the CIA are identified in Poland and Romania, including how prisoners were transported there.

This reminds me of the scrolling marquee in the Van Halen video, for the song Right Now. The marquee states many things that might go on in a person’s life. Most of these are innocuous, but they build to things of higher importance. One of the last things on this moving marquee is some words to the effect that, as this is being watched, our country is doing things to people in places we only believe other countries do.

While it is a wonderful country we live in, it must be known that the government frequently carries out heinous operations, often in the name of greater good or nobility. Ethnocentrism is not a substitute for courage and deliberation.

Those who will dismiss this as political leaning, left or right, must be made aware that it is clearly central in the most important sense. Either one is concerned about himself, and humanity as a whole, or not. If not, what else is there?

[tags]amnesty international, center for constitutional rights, human rights watch, CIA, magna carta, CNN, API[/tags]