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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mel Etitis (talk | contribs) at 09:30, 17 February 2005 (Removal of categories). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

I think that the remarks on the US are going overboard. This is a discussion of police states in general, not of the Bush administration's policies. David.Monniaux 14:15, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't the picture of the Department of Justice be more appropriate in a section on the Department of Justice (or possibly the US Patriot Act). The picture seems to imply that the US is a police state which I believe would not be in the NPOV. Maybe a picture of a historic building of the Stasi would be more appropriate (although I don't know enough about the Stasi to know objectively if they had created a police state). I am fairly inexperienced here, so I could use an explanation of why the picture is or is not NPOV. --Techieman 06:36, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It seems that although the paragraphs regarding the US have been cut, the picture was left in. I'm removing it. porge

That's unfortunate. That picture was way cool and really gave a "police state" feeling. Can't we keep it? --Shibboleth 05:42, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I took the picture, its a real picture. Im not implying that the US is a police state. Think of the picture as a description of what a police state is, rather than something that says the US is or is not a police state. I took a trip to DC, and while I was there we walked by the US DOJ building. The entire building was surrounded by this barbed wire fencing. Then I saw what was carved on the building. Whether the US is a police state or not is irrelevant. This picture shows a representation of what a police state FEELS like. Justice is cut off from the populace by the state. Leave the picture in, but without a caption of what the building is. Theon 17:32, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately since the inscription is in English, an attentive reader will guess even without a caption that the building is probably in the United States or Britain, and may well reasonably think we are implying that one of those countries is a police state. I understand what you're saying, but the only way to make that clearly understood to readers would be to add a disclaimer to the caption. e.g. "This picture is only meant to give the feel of a police state, and does not come from an actual police state." That's not really acceptable, so I guess we're left with no choice but to remove the picture. Regrettable, since it was a great picture, but NPOV trumps everything else. I hope it can be used in some other article, though. --Shibboleth 04:22, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Economics meaning

In economics, we call "Police State" to a State whose only intervention in the economy is the creation of laws and rules which help the market structure. Shouldn't this be added to the article?

Removal of categories

I've removed three categories from the article, on the basis that 'Police state' isn't part of any of them (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, for example, might be said to fall under the category of Police State, but not vice versa). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:30, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)