Posted on 05/01/2015 8:30:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
The sad scenes playing out in Baltimore are made sadder by the fact that more such incidents are likely over the coming years.
That's because the problems in Baltimore did not begin with the arrest and death of Freddie Gray. Tensions have been building for a very long time. Other cities from coast to coast have similar tensions ready to boil over.
Some tensions are common to all cities -- pockets of economic devastation, laws that are enforced more strictly in some parts of town than others, bad apples among the police, thugs in the community and more.
Some are specific to each city. In Baltimore, the tensions became apparent more than a decade ago when the city inadvertently assumed a prominent role in the Stop Snitchin' movement. Before that, in 2002, a Baltimore woman and her entire family were murdered after alerting police to illegal activities in her neighborhood.
The good news is that there are people on all sides in this tough situation who want to heal their cities. The bad news is that most people -- and certainly most media coverage -- are focused on who to blame. In the blame game, people from different walks of life see what they want to see.
Some see oppressive and racist police. Others see criminal thugs looking to destroy and steal.
In one now-famous incident, a mom slapped her son and pushed him away from the protests. Watching it, I saw a woman who just wanted her only son to be safe. She wasn't thinking about politics or role models or the cameras. She knew her son was in danger and acted to protect him.
That didn't stop others from reading great symbolism into her actions.
Some people, including the police commissioner, dubbed her a "Hero Mom." On Huffington Post, however, Julia Craven pointed out that the mom was protecting her son from the police. One local resident said white America called this woman a hero simply because she was doing what white America wanted to do to all black Americans and their children.
How can people look at the same situation and come up with entirely different conclusions? In Creativity, Inc., Pixar founder Ed Catmull highlighted research showing that only 40 percent of what we see comes from our eyes. The rest is filled in with what our brains expect to see. On the issue of minorities and police departments, the expectations are wildly different, and we've stopped looking more closely at the reality.
That's why we're likely to see more cities burning in the coming years. The tensions exist, and sooner or later a police incident will ignite the fuse. The specifics of the incident won't matter nearly as much as the underlying anger. People will see 40 percent of the story with their eyes, and they'll fill in the rest with what they expect to see.
The only way to avoid such a dismal outcome is to change the other 60 percent of what we "see." Wise city leaders will get people to "see" the reality that the vast majority of both the police and the minority communities want to make things work. Only after that is a shared recognition can people begin to establish the trust needed to make the cities safer and fairer.
The rail, mass transit or bus lines will become dysfunctional during mass urban riots.
Is a “muzzle break” better than a “muzzle brake”? I’m leery of people who can’t properly spell (twice) the names of things they sell.
“I’m leery of people who can’t properly spell (twice) the names of things they sell.”
Well, it doesn’t work in their favor to misspell anything, but they are gun sellers and not publishers. You can get an idea about Classic Arms employees from this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK1J3RPCbVI They’re not Rhodes Scholars, but they do know about firearms and how to sell them.
Also, Classic Arms is just the seller. Inter Ordnance is the manufacturer. They make a nice product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fdkpS2Up-U
The current designation for such activities in use at most of the staff officer training courses I've attended or of which I'm aware is no longer martial law, but is nowadays referred to as Military Rule.
A county sheriff who's a pal of mine asked his county budget authority for a few thousand dollars, far less than the amount needed to buy or equip a new county patrol car, for payment of a county sheriff's posse, should such a thing be useful in our future.
They asked him how much he had in mind for payment of these reserves, and how many he had contemplated swearing in. His answer was simple: one dollar a year per reserve deputy. And the amount he named just happened to equal the number of registered voters in the county, at a dollar each.
My best estimate is that they'll approve it.
The Russian language designation, pretty closely translated into English, is a flame extinguisher.
As recently nicely demonstrated in Garland, Texas, where the anti-American forces were islamic sympathizers rather than rioters, but they proved the point. Rioters, islumocrazies, jihaddys, they're all NEPUTS.
Back around 2000/Y2K when I lived and worked in and around Memphis, we used to say that the one saving grace of a race riot/race war was that you didn't have to take sides. Your face has already done that for you.
Due to Garland (36 minutes from this house), and other ways Obama is quickly destroying the economy/country and bringing Muslims in, my significant other will purchase a “Glock” or “The Judge” personal defense weapon very soon.
We are in the situation the Jews were in before Hitler started mass killing them. The big clues were there but most of the Jews thought it just couldn't happen so they didn't leave or prepare to defend themselves. In their case, since they were a minority, leaving was the only way to save their life. In our case, at this time we are the majority, so preparing with weapons and water/food, etc., is absolutely necessary to combat what is to come in the not distant future.
My suggestion to you, so far as handguns [which should usually not be thought of as your first line of defence] is to follow the procedure followed by me and my fiancée: get whatever suits you best, and have him get whatever works as well for him, whether it's the same type/style/model of weapon or not. But also pick up a spare or alternative for each of you that is of the same common type, so that your ammunition stocks and magazines/speedloaders are common as well. And that also gives you a pair of spares, either for less well-equipped friends or visitors, or for your own use.
I was wondering though, does "martial law" not include local and state police, or, as your definition suggests, is it strictly military? The classic definition, of course, only brings the military to bear when the civilian population or other circumstances have exceeded the normal civil authority.
Given Obama's distaste for all things military, I should think that his preferred brand of "martial law" would be the burgeoning DHS. Watching their rapid growth makes it all the more unnerving to witness the humiliation of local and state police that he seems to be slowly wrapping around his little finger.
I am somewhat troubled at how all the pieces will be fitting together. The rapid influx of criminals across the southern border, the arming of the DHS, increasing military urban exercises, the emasculation of traditional law enforcement, the role of muslims in the black community's problems, islamo-sleeper cells, and an executive branch intent on stirring this stew to the boiling point.
Should make for an interesting debut to the next election.
Military Government
A government that is established during or after military occupation by the victorious country in an armed conflict. According to International Law, the territory that has been placed under the authority of a hostile army continues to belong to the state that has been ousted. However, it may be ruled by the occupiers under a special regime.
When a country's army achieves decisive victory over an enemy, the victor may supplement military presence in the enemy territory with some type of government. If the victor is a signatory to certain international agreements, it must follow international Rules of War that outline the rights and responsibilities when governing a territory under belligerent occupation. This military government is not the same as Martial Law, although the occupiers may impose martial law as part of maintaining order.
The rules of military government are established in various international agreements, primarily the Hague Conference of 1907 and the Geneva Conference of 1949. These documents provide guidelines on such topics as rights and duties of the occupying power, protection of civilians, treatment of prisoners of war, coordination of relief efforts, property rights of the ousted state, and other wartime and postwar concerns. A country that establishes a military government and steps beyond its allotted rights runs the risk of international censure or criticism. Countries sometimes try to deny that they have imposed a military government. For example, in the Persian Gulf War, Iraq claimed that Kuwait is an Iraqi province and therefore not eligible for the protections given by the law of belligerent occupation.
The U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) contributed to the development of rules for military behavior and belligerent occupation. The Lieber Instructions is considered a first attempt to codify the laws of war as they existed during the Civil War era. Columbia College Professor Francis Lieber prepared this list of laws in 1863 at the request of President Abraham Lincoln. They led in part to the Brussels Conference of 1887 and the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 on land warfare. The Lieber Instructions included sections on military jurisdiction, protection of persons, and public and private property of the enemy.
The U.S. Civil War pitted the Confederacy—a group of southern states that wanted to secede from the United States—against Union forces, made up of primarily northern and newly formed states. After the victory of Union forces, the U.S. government had to decide how to treat the defeated South. Some vocal members of Congress insisted that because the Confederate states had violated the Constitution by seceding, they had committed "state suicide" and should be treated like conquered provinces.
These politicians finally got their way in 1867, two years after the war ended. State governments were abolished in the rebel states, and the territory was split into five districts, each commanded by a major general of the Union army. Gradually public opinion in the North pushed for home rule for the South, and by 1870 all southern states were restored to the Union. President Rutherford B. Hayes took office in 1877 and removed the army from the last three occupied southern states.By means of the Hague and Geneva Conferences, and organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the rules of war have evolved beyond those in the Lieber Instructions. When following these general rules, victorious countries continue to have broad discretion in how they govern conquered zones. The United States has used various approaches to establish postwar governments. For example, after World War II, the United States established very different types of governments to oversee the reconstruction of Germany and Japan, which were defeated by Allied forces.
After Germany surrendered in World War II, the country and its capital were each divided into four zones. Government of the zones was assigned to four different countries: the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The occupiers differed in their opinions about what type of permanent government should follow military occupation, and the zones occupied by the Soviet Union became communist East Germany. The other zones became democratic West Germany. The two Germanys were reunited in October 1990.
Unlike the military government in Germany, the U.S. occupation of Japan did not involve a large military presence. After Japan surrendered, its existing civilian governing structure was left mostly intact, directed by General Douglas MacArthur and the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers (SCAP). During occupation, Japan—a nation of seventy million people—was supervised by 600,000 troops, whose number was soon reduced to 200,000.
During more than six years of U.S. occupation, the Japanese Diet (legislature) met and passed laws that were subject to Veto by SCAP. The Japanese army and navy were abolished, weapons were destroyed, 4,200 Japanese were found guilty of War Crimes, Shinto was disestablished as the state religion, and a new constitution—the "MacArthur Constitution"—was adopted. SCAP accomplished land reform, strengthened trade unions, and placed limits on Japan's powerful monopolistic corporations.
After World War II the international community agreed that more safeguards were necessary to protect civilians and their property in occupied territories. As a result the Fourth Geneva Conference was established in 1949 to tackle these issues.
In more recent times, the United States, after invading Grenada and Panama, established a military government in each country during a brief belligerent occupation.
Further readings
Chapman, William. 1991 Inventing Japan: An Unconventional Account of the Post-War Years. New York: Prentice-Hall Parkside.
Craven, Avery. 1969. Reconstruction: The Ending of the Civil War. New York: Holt, Rinehart.
de Mulinen, Frederic. 1987. Handbook on the Law of War for the Armed Forces. Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross.
Dolan, Ronald E., and Robert L. Worden. 1992. Japan: A Country Study. Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. Headquarters, Department of the Army. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Lawson, Gary, and Guy Seidman. 2001. "The Hobbesian Constitution: Governing Without Authority." Northwestern University Law Review 95 (winter): 581–628.
Thomas, David Yancey. 2001. A History of Military Government in Newly Acquired Territory of the United States. Buffalo, N.Y.: William S. Hein.
CITE: West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2.
I appreciate your thorough explanation. Thanks!
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