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As noted here many times

As corporate overlords position by themselves to seize what little remains of an tattered social net (adieu Medicare plus Medicaid! Social Security? Au revoir! ), the Current is moving at break-neck pace to expand police say programs first stood-up from the Bush government.After almost all, with world share costs gyrating wildly, employment and wages from a death spiral, and pensionable funds and publicly-owned property swallowed whole by speculators and also rentier scum, the express better dust-off contingency projects lest the Greek, Spanish or British "contagion" distributed beyond the fabled shores of "old Europe" plus infect God-fearin' folk here in the heimat.Fear definitely not, they have and the lyrically-titled Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army along with other Resources, otherwise known since Army Regulation 500-50, spells out there the "responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department from the Army in planning and operations involving the application of Army resources in the actual control of actual and also anticipated civil disturbances. " (emphasis added)With British politicians hard a clampdown on social websites in the wake with London riots, and with all the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San francisco, switching off underground cellular phone service to help squelch a protest against police physical violence, authoritarian control tactics, aping those deployed with Egypt and Tunisia (that worked out well! ) are becoming normative in so-called "Western democracies. "Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, Congress does their part to preserve us from that pesky Bill of Rights; that can be, before 81 of them--nearly some sort of fifth of "our" selected representatives--checked-out for AIPAC-funded junkets to help Israel.Secrecy News reported that this Senate Intelligence Committee "rejected an amendment that is going to have required the Attorney General as well as Director of National Intelligence to confront the condition of 'secret law, ' by which government agencies rely on legal authorities which can be unknown or misunderstood because of the public. "That modification, proposed by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) was rejected by voice vote, further entrenching unprecedented surveillance powers of Executive Branch agencies such as the FBI and NSA.Because Antifascist Calling previously documented, the Electronic Frontier Footing filed a Freedom associated with Information Act lawsuit resistant to the Justice Department "demanding the discharge of a secret legal memo accustomed to justify FBI access that will Americans' telephone records without any legal process or oversight. "The DOJ refused and yes it now appears that this Senate has affirmed that "secret law" ought to be guiding principles of the former republic.Secrecy News also disclosed how the Committee rejected a second amendment towards the authorization bill, one that would get required the Justice Department's Inspector General "to estimate how many Americans who have had the contents of their communications reviewed in violation belonging to the FISA Amendments Act connected with 2008 [FAA">. "As noted here many times, FAA is often a pernicious piece of Bushist legal detritus that legalized the last administration's secret spy workout sessions since embellished by our current "hope and change" leader.During the run-up that will FAA's passage, congressional Democrats, including then-Senator Barack Obama plus his Republican colleagues throughout the aisle, claimed that what the law states would "strike a balance" in between Americans' privacy rights and also the needs of security specialists to "stop terrorists" attacking america.If that's the situation, then why can't that American people learn whether their rights are already compromised?Perhaps, as recent reports in Truthout and various publications suggest, former OUGH. S. counterterrorism "czar" Richard Clarke leveled "explosive allegations against three former top CIA officials--George Tenet, Cofer Dark and Richard Blee--accusing these folks of knowingly withholding intelligence...about two of this 9/11 hijackers who had entered the usa more than a year prior to the attacks. "Clarke's allegations follow closely on the heels of an exploration by Truthout journalists Jeffrey Kaye in addition to Jason Leopold."Based on on paperwork obtained under the Independence of Information Act and an interview which includes a former high-ranking counterterrorism public, " Kaye and Leopold mastered that "a little-known navy intelligence unit, unbeknownst towards various investigative bodies probing the actual terrorist attacks, was ordered by senior government officials to stop tracking Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's movements before 9/11. "As readers are well aware, the 9/11 provocation was the pretext used by the capitalist state to be able to wage aggressive resource competitions abroad while ramming through repressive legislation much like the USA Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act which targeted the democratic rights with the American people here in your own home.But FAA did more then legitimate illegal physical trainings. It also handed retroactive immunity and economic cover to giant telecoms like AT&T in addition to Verizon who profited handily via government surveillance, shielding them from monetary damages that might have resulted from your spate of lawsuits for instance Hepting v. AT&T.This raises the question: usually are other U. S. agencies similarly shielded from overview by secret annexes in FAA or the privacy-killing U . S . Patriot Act?view