Extraordinary

I just finished watching The Lives of Others , a quite amazing movie about the horrifying system of observation in the former East Germany, controlled by the "Stasi", a sophisticated, cunning, and thorough secret police.

And then I read some stuff about Extraordinary Rendition , something that is happening right now throughout Europe. In a nutshell, United States CIA agents roam through European countries, and when they see someone they would like to question, they kidnap them, fly them to some third world country, question and torture them for a few months, and then either release them around where they had found them, or dump them into Guantanamo.

According to Wikipedia:

Extraordinary rendition (which critics have dubbed torture by proxy) is an American extra-judicial procedure which involves the sending of untried criminal suspects, suspected terrorists or alleged supporters of groups which the US Government considers to be terrorist organizations, to countries other than the United States for imprisonment and interrogation. Critics have also called this practice "torture flights". Reportedly, in a number of cases (such as Khalid El-Masri and Maher Arar) the practice of "extraordinary rendition" has been applied to innocent civilians.

This is no joke. Have a look at:

The European Parliament resolution on the "alleged" use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners. (February 2007)

BBC News "Europe under 'rendition' cloud" story (February 2007)

Bush admitting to CIA secret prisons.

And many more sources therein.

I find it quite extraordinary that these things are still tolerated. I mean OK, the DDR was back then, and there was a big wall all around it. But the US? And now? So much for the land of freedom.