Don't act so surprised guys. Many, many other countries have decended into military regimes why are we as people any different? It's the same script - round up dissidents, invoke fear, secret prisons and police. We pretty much have that already but now they are bringing it out into the open. most of south america, africa, south asia, middle east are that way - in fact the vast majority of people live like this! Even russia has slipped back into that kind of life. As to why, well war is the most profitable human endevor - and the most destructive for those who are into it. And democracy is costly. all those judges, lawyers, trials, records etc. So to have a military regime and a permanent enemy and isolationist policy in place (us vs. "them") is the way to do it. Having police/military extract confessions with a 100% confession rate is easy. Anyone will confess after enough time.
I agree with you. In a sense a dictatorship is a very stable and possibly prosperous form of government. Also I think human nature has a tendency to end up with a hierarchical top-down system. Democracy is an artificial blockade to prevent sliding back into this 'natural' form. The bad thing about dictators is of course that only some of them are benign and the rest has even worse properties than the average. Thus they get greedy and/or megalomaniac and will lead their people into chaos. Now, what should the US governments next step be now that the unifying common foe plan has failed. To me the most obvious next step is to divide the country into a civil war, seize control, which would be legitimate, and side up with the 'patriots'. Since the country is already so divided it only needs 1 explosive issue to fire. Please pay close attention how in the near future such issues will be brought up by your government, not to clarify and solve them and take away the controversy, like a good and caring government would do, but instead to divide the population and prepare it for a major outrage which will legitimize the use of the recently enabled powers. I don't see any other possible intention or possible outcome. Ursa..
Uhh, no, South America USED to be like this. You must be referring to Chile and Argentina in the 1970s-1980s. Brazil and Russia are nothing like this. There, it's either the gang armies or the mob. Also, the russian people prefer to have a strong leader that may seem to have too much power. Their judiciary system is different as well. There are old cultural principles that the Americans simply do not understand. Look up Peter the Great to understand why Russian and many other nations will give up some liberty for prosperity. What is going in USA is quite different. The founding principles of this country are being completely undone. We are talking about going in the opposite directon of what this country is supposed to be. A military regime is not the foundation of this country, while in some Middle East nations, a military type regime is considered normal and even needed. This "move" may be a cultural principle in other countries so you cannot use that as an example to show that it's happening all over the world. Key distinction is the systemic approach which consists of Problem, Reaction, Solution. We had the problem of 9/11, then the media bombardment, now the solution. The funny part is that if according to the "official" story, the problem was the CIA and FBI not sharing info, then shouldn't the solution consist of doing some adjustments between the two agencies? Think on that one. There is a certain plan being executed, with strong pushes by the government against the majority opinion. Personally, I do not plan to be around to see all of it unfold.
"defend your Republican government" .... you couldn't have interpreted my post more incorrectly, most likely due to my inability to properly explain myself. (I'm no legal expert, so have mercy) I read the the law, and concluded the defense of it must have included the problems experienced while establishing authority in the aftermath of Katriana. Apparently, both Democrats and Republicans signed off on it, as evidenced by the defeaning silence from both sides. The ramifications of this law are beyond my imagination. Perhaps we are over reacting. I'm a states-rights type ... Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."
Not so sure about Katrina, that had everything to do with bureacracy, the disorder was the result of bureacracy. Interesting it says "Suppress public disorder", rather than say, "control", or even the usual ministry jargon of "enhance public order" or similiar. How does suppressing public disorder, deal with the provision of, or control of natural disaster releif? It doesnt sound as though Katrina has anything to do with this legislation, certainly not the wording at least.
I still think their justification for enacting this law was based largely on the federal response after katrina : ....allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units "Take control of state-based National Guard units" ... This was the feds primary excuse in defending their response to Katrina. The chains of communication up from the local governments to the federal agencies where so broken as to paralyze their efforts. The State has control of their own national guards, (Or at least, DID). Lousiana demonstrated it couldn't act quickly in the face of a wide-spread catastrophe. Throw in a couple of WMD references and you have yourself a new law. (Not to mention the reported wide-spread looting and "canabalism" in New Orleans) Correct or Incorrect, I think this was the impetus, (and their justification) for the Admin to pursue this law. Seemed pretty obvious to me, but I could be entirely wrong. I suppose at this point, why it was enacted means less than the ramifications of it and I'm not smart enough to comment on those intelligently. Another move by Bush to centralize powers... You know, for the past two years, I've been unable to listen to him (speeches, press confenernces, state-of-the-union) ... his voice makes me cringe. Not hard to imagine how the Left reacts...
Wow in the 21st century, the economic superpower of the world does not know how to deal with disasters, especially ones that are easily forecasted. Hence we need laws to help alleviate the problem. Laws that tend to give almost 100% power & martial law to the government. Yeah I think there is some top notch logic and reasoning behind this. Let's see, FEMA was run by a crony (a friend of the Bush family) who had a history of incompetence. The federal government ignores pleas for help from the mayor of New Orleans prior to the actual hurricane. The state reacts in a similiar fashion. So then we have a full blown disaster that makes USA look like a paper tiger. The solution? Let's give the government power to enact martial law at a snap of a finger. Smoke & mirrors, that's all it is. It's getting so obvious that I am simply amazed at the stupidity of the masses. This is the information age, this is not 1940s when it was near impossible to find out that FDR sent an order to practically disarm Pearl Harbor days prior to the attack. Yes boys & girls, contrary to the public speeches made by Wilson & Roosevelt, the people in power were pushing for US to enter both WWI and WWII. The whole left & right/Rep vs. Dem is just another smoke & mirrors illusion. Hillary Clinton, the poster girl of the Democratic party, voted favorably on this and the Military Commissions Act (I knew that B*tch was evil). Both parties are pushed around by corporate lobbyists. Neither party has a consistent voting record, they flip-flop all over the place except the publicized issues. It's all one big dramatic production that controls the stupid and fools the intellectuals.
I'm not a fan of ANY law that disarms citizens. However the genesis for much of this law was the assault on rescuers by armed criminals in New Orleans. The concept of martial law is not new. Remember Waco.
OK, now you know. You should have taken the Blue Pill instead, because your only <i>reward</i> for knowing is frustration over your inability to change any of it.