Excerpt: "... Very few are well aware of what's going on. The Patriot Act, and the new, planned Patriot 2 Act, it is true, undermine - in principle at least, in words, and partially in actions - fundamental civil liberties to a remarkable extent. So, the current justice department has claimed the right to arrest people, including American citizens, put them in confinement indefinitely, without charge, without access to lawyers and families, until the president declares that the war on terror is over. They have even gone beyond that. The new plans include plans to actually take away citizenship if the attorney general decides to do so. This has been very harshly condemned by civil rights lawyers, law professors, others, but very little of it leaks into the media. It's not really well-known. These moves are quite dramatic. President Bush is supposed to have on his desk a bust of Winston Churchill[Weil landläufigen Angaben nach eins seiner großen Vorbilder; eigene Anm.], given to him by his friend Tony Blair, and in fact Churchill had something to say about this. He said, and this is virtually a quote, [that] for a government to put a person in prison without trial by his peers is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian governments, whether nazi or communist. He said that in 1943, condemning proposals of a similar nature in England, which weren't enacted. Remember, in 1943 England was in pretty desperate straits - it was under attack and facing destruction by the most vicious military force in history, and nevertheless Churchill rightly described measures like these as "in the highest degree odious", and "the foundation of totalitarian governments". Yes, people should be very upset about it. ..."
