Berkeley Forum

Last October, President Bush surreptltiously signed into law new
security legislation which allows him to declare martial law at any time.
 Nobody in the mainstream media seems to have noticed this law, which supersedes the
Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the only U.S. criminal statute to outlaw
military operations directed against the American people.

The new John Warner Defense Authorization Act 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."

Detentlon camps for citizens rounded up as "undesirables" are already
being constructed by Halliburton and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
according to the Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International.

This law in effect opens the way to dictatorship.   Only one more piece
of legislation would have secured an absolute dictatorship: a clause
abolishing the 22nd Amendment which prohibits the President from serving more
than two terms. But so many Amendments (habeas corpus, for example) have already
been suspended since the passing of the Patriot Act and other anti-terror
legislation, why not another one?  A state of emergency can justify anything.

The oldest democracy in the world may soon be no more.  Where are you,
Paul Revere?

-Prof. Clive Leeman

# posted by Berkeley Forum : 4:53 PM