Martial Law

[Cap-Z-ro]

It seems to me that in the last 6 months, a Bill was enacted, giving the President sweeping powers equal to that of a Dictator...I don't recall any more of the specifics about it though.

Regards...

[Paul-R]

What is all this crap about?

[spinner]

What is all this crap about?

Yes, what exactly is the problem? Aliens? A majority of Earthlings known as "Workers"? What?

[Chad]

 Your laws in the US seem to be carried/copied over here in the UK so i get a little worried when i hear they are making drastic changes to your laws.

Im not what you call a typical conspiracy chaser but recent events are realy getting me and many other people i know very nervous!. Here in the uk the government continues signing treaties giving away parts of our power over to brussels even though the public are totally against this.

Your boarder control's with adjoining countries have become a joke....but a similar thing is happening here with polish and other east Europeans flooding the UK, i dont think for a second this was a misjudgment by our governments but more of a controlled introduction to foreigners to get us ready for the impending merger.

I cant believe all the changes that are happening recently and very few people are aware the problems that these new laws will bring us.

We have the terrorism act,  on paper seems like it could be usefull, but the laws are abused to silence/arrest anybody with an opinion that falls out side the lines of there ideas, it gives them total and utter control of any person no matter if you are breaking a law or just walking down the street minding your own business.

The last time im aware of anything like this happening was when Hitler was trying to take over the world.

heres how they are chiseling away at your freedoms in the US, this was taken from  http://jimbovard.com/blog/2007/04/23/the-martial-law-act-of-2007/

Section 1076 of the Defense Authorization Act of 2006 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from “Insurrection Act” to “Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act.” The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition”â€"and such “condition” is not defined or limited.

These new pretexts are even more expansive than they appear. FEMA proclaims the equivalent of a natural disaster when bad snowstorms occur, and Congress routinely proclaims a natural disaster (and awards more farm subsidies) when there is a shortfall of rain in states with upcoming elections. A terrorist “incident” could be something as stupid as the flashing toys scattered around Boston last fall.

The new law also empowers the president to commandeer the National Guard of one state to send to another state for up to 365 days. Bush could send the Alabama National Guard to suppress antiwar protests in Boston. Or the next president could send the New York National Guard to disarm the residents of Mississippi if they resisted a federal law that prohibited private ownership of semiautomatic weapons. Governors’ control of the National Guard can be trumped with a simple presidential declaration.

[jadaro2600]

Section 1076 of the Defense Authorization Act of 2006 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from “Insurrection Act” to “Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act.” The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition”—and such “condition” is not defined or limited.

Funny wording, but this type of modus operandi has been prevalent since the conception of our constitution.  ...just consider the necessary and proper clause.

Ideally, a constitution would have a catch-all, like in a programming language, the 'else' in an if-then statement that caught anything falling through the cracks.  The real problem is who interprets and to what extent that enforce their interpretations.  If you know a little bit about what happened in the great fires and earthquake that hit San Fransisco, then you know how atrocious mayoral / gubernatorial interpretations can get when a clause is taken out of context.

Hollywood's interpretations of martial law don't help either; they're practically based on the scenario which occurred in the aforementioned disaster; like a template bad-guy stereotype....  not that I'm promoting martial law.

If martial law is enacted, it should be temporal to a locale and not a nation as a whole.  widespread panic is proliferated this way - I'm reminded of the experiments done in third grade where we would whisper a phrase into one person's ear and that person would try to repeat that phrase to the next and so on, when we eventually get the message, we see just how f*cked up that message got.

We go from peas to carrots - media doesn't really help a whole lot.

I talked to someone who was in Iraq who was party-paired to an embedded reporter; this person said that the journalist was nosy and defiant, often misrepresenting the actual situation - being a sensationalist.

I don't support the war or someones sensationalist views of it either - lives have to be saved; there are better ways for sure.

One thing that i didn't support was the event's that transpired in the katrina distaster ... those people should have been afforded the protections sooner, ignorance being a major factor; I would have been put more at ease if I had heard that people were being allowed to keep their weapons, just not at that point, such that they were able to package those goods, and apply some sort of identification mechanism so that they could be returned at a time when martial law was no longer in effect.  No person shall be deprived of property without due process.

Martial law is not a due process - it's an affirmation of a lack there of.