Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 16

nice to see that the yankees still abide by those pesky founding principles of theirs...

exerpt from:

SECRECY NEWS
from the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy
November 16, 2001

BEGIN



THE SECRETIVE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

Taken individually, each of the new national security policies adopted
by the Bush Administration in recent weeks has its pros and cons, its
potential excesses and mitigating factors. But collectively, they
represent a striking new concentration of power in the executive branch and a transformation of the national security landscape.

What common factors underlie diverse measures such as military tribunals for suspected foreign terrorists, the monitoring of certain
attorney-client conversations, and new restrictions on disclosure of
historical presidential records, among other recent policy excursions?

Each involves an expansion of the exercise of executive branch authority with diminished opportunity for independent oversight, and little or no provision for public accountability.

The new policies are being unilaterally adopted faster than they can be
assessed by Congress. In effect, the Administration is altering the
institutional balance that has been gradually honed over recent decades,
and jettisoning the experience on which that balance was based.

It is not necessary to attribute any malicious intent to the Bush
Administration in order to conclude that its new policies will make the
abuse of government power more feasible, harder to detect, and much more difficult to correct.

Several of the new policies were surveyed in a November 15 Associated
Press story, "U.S. More Tightlipped Since September 11," by Deb
Riechmann. The story, with links to related documents, is posted here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2001/11/ap111501.html



******************************
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691

EOF

yt,
Orchard

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35917

I am still interested in the bit about foreigners. If the terrorists recruited US moslems (as the IRA recruited English catholics, mostly of Irish descent) then these rules would either be powerless or would need to be extended to US citizens.

At the moment, there is no real evidence to suggest that there are US citizens like this, but it is entirely possible, surely? The soviets found enough merkins to help them out, for example. In that case, these new laws form a nice template for laws to cover all citizens.

Even if the terrorists are foreign, money talks, and they will be able to buy help from citizens. If you need these powers (and I am not saying that you so) then you might easily find that you need them across the board.

I also find it a little odd (as I mentioned in another thread I think) that foreign workers, given visas because their skills are deemed necessary to the US economy, should have their rights curtailed like this.

The UK experience doesn't tell clear lessons on this, but I would say that for containment of terrorism, prevention laws that contain 'human rights abuses' (whatever 'human rights' are) do work, but that they don't act to stop it or recruitment into the terrorists' ranks; quite the opposite, perhaps.

It is an odd mixture of having to act with alacrity to contain a menace and at the same time to avoid hasty and ill thought-out legislation.

There wouldn't be as much debate in the UK, but then I think that we trust our government more than you merkins do. What I do think is that it is that when you consider the government getting new powers, imagine a hated figure in charge, with these powers at his disposal. Are you happy for him to have those powers?

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 7236

Admin pops in, no time, will reply later

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