Magpie

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Secrets? Dubya's administration has them.

Tons of them, according to a latest secrecy report card from OpenTheGovernment.org.

In 2005, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved all 2,072 requests for secret surveillance orders made by U.S. intelligence agencies, rejecting none. So while surveillance of foreign organizations and nationals under the jurisdiction of this secretive court has doubled in the past five years, the public knows nothing of whom or what is being investigated or how agencies are carrying out such investigations.

The government issued 9,254 National Security Letters during 2005. These letters can be used to obtain information about individuals without the government applying for a court-reviewed warrant and, thus, without any external review....

President George W. Bush has issued 132 signing statements challenging over 810 provisions of federal laws. In the 211 years of our nation's history preceding 2000, presidents issued fewer than 600 signing statements that took issue with the bills they signed.

The most damning evidence (at least in this magpie's opinion) of how Dubya's administration uses secrecy as a political tool is shown in the following table:

Chart showing increasing federal use of 'state secret' privilege

Chart showing increasing federal use of 'state secret' privilege

[Sources: Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; National Security Whistleblowers Coalition; National Security Archive]

Take a look at the number of times that the feds have invoked the 'state secrecy' privilege over the years. You'll notice that Dubya's administration has used this privilege to keep the public from knowing what the government is doing 22 times since it took office in 2001 — almost quadruple the number of invocations between 1953 and 1977. For the historically impaired, those years were the height of the Cold War, a period during which the rivalry between the US and Soviet Union was frequently on the brink of escalating into nuclear war.

Does anyone seriously believe that the threat posed to the US by 'terrorists' is greater than that the country faced during the Cold War? And that, because of this threat, more information needs to be kept secret? If you do, I've got a number of bridges to sell you ...

You can download the full report in PDF format if you go here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:12 AM | Get permalink

Free brith control for every woman 14 and older.

That is, for every Chilean woman 14 and older.

Under new rules just issued by Chile's government, any woman over age 14 is entitled to free birth control — including emergency contraception — at any public health center in the country. In making this decision, the government of President Michelle Bachelet has placed itself in direct opposition to the Catholic Church and the country's right-wing opposition parties. Chile's new contraception rules contrast dramatically with the way Dubya's administration has dragged its feet in making emergency contraception more easily available to US women, and how the feds have allowed drug companies to jack up the prices they charge nonprofit clinics for birth contol.

"We applaud the decision of the Chilean Health Ministry, because we believe it safeguards the rights of women and gives us a chance to interrupt the cycle of poverty," Ximena Rojas, assistant director of the non-governmental Centre for the Development of Women (DOMOS), remarked to IPS....

The measure, announced Saturday by Health Minister Soledad Barría during the fifth Chilean Congress of Pediatric and Adolescent Obstetrics and Gynecology, forms part of the new "national norms on fertility regulation" that will begin to be applied this month in all public hospitals and clinics around the country.

Any teenage girl over the age of 14 will now be able to directly ask her doctor for a prescription for birth control, without authorisation from her parents, and the contraceptives must be provided free of charge by the public health system.

The new decree complies with the sexual and reproductive rights approved at the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo.

The most controversial aspect of the Health Ministry decree is that it not only covers traditional birth control methods, but also emergency contraception, which up to now was only available free of charge in cases of rape, although it was available by prescription in the country's pharmacies.

This magpie notes that Chile's current president, Michelle Bachelet, was a pediatrician before she entered politics.

Via Inter Press Service.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink