on Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 04:34:34PM -0700, Tim May (tcmay@got.net) wrote:
On Tuesday, October 16, 2001, at 04:04 PM, Greg Broiles wrote:
At 05:45 PM 10/16/2001 -0500, measl@mfn.org wrote:
On Tue, 16 Oct 2001 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
According to Pravda, the US is now under martial law
For all intents and purposes, we are.
Well, no. "Martial law" usually implies that civil authorities have been replaced or overriden by military command, and that civilian law is not in effect, having been replaced by orders from a military command structure; and it's usually imposed on formerly hostile territory, or territories considered very close to conflict spatially or temporally.
That has not happened in the US, except arguably at the ground zero site, and even there it sounds like it's civilian police officers and elected officials, not military officers, who are setting policy.
Agreed, not martial law.
However, America operates on the ratchet principle: the tightening of liberties _always_ proceeds in the forward direction. Each new crisis, each new emergency order, each new federal agency, each new law...everything cranks the ratchet wheel toward less liberty.
So the 1960s-70s really *was* a time warp. I tend to see things as more cyclycal myself. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]