Canadian_watcher wrote:compared2what? wrote: ]But it coexists with another context (political), which is also important. And in that one, the difference between "looks like martial law" and "martial law" is not just fucking semantics. They're both objectionable. But only one of them defines who you are and what you can do about it or anything else.
Which one can you do something about, then? What Boston went through was exactly the same as what Montreal went through - it was exactly the same
except that there was no declaration.
And that no one was repeatedly raided, detained, arrested, or subjected to acts of repression and reprisal for their political beliefs. And that no one's right to participate in the political process (or do anything else) was at stake. And that being subject to military control wasn't a permanent aspect of everyday life. And that what Montreal went through was a response to a threat to the power of the government, whereas what Boston went through was a response to a threat to the lives of the people. And that police powers during the action in Boston were exactly the same as they had been before it and still are now.
Also, one lasted less than twenty hours..
I believe that they should have declared a state of Martial Law.
I don't think there are any circumstances under which I'd say
that.
The fact that they didn't but that they carried it out anyway is the one that ought to scare you and everybody else, frankly because when they don't officially begin something how, pray tell, can anyone be sure they've ended it? How can anyone know what the true state of their rights are during and 'after' - see, there is no after in this case. There's only during.
They didn't carry it out. The law was the same. Police powers were the same. That's still the case. At this exact moment, the cops are legally entitled to come into my home as I sit here typing if they think doing that addresses an urgent threat to public safety. If they think there's evidence of criminal activity lying around in plain sight, they're legally entitled to arrest me for it. I have the right to remain silent, to counsel, and to a trial by a jury of my peers, etc. But I can also challenge it before that. And I've been living under those conditions every second of my adult life so far.
The real risk of it happening to any one person isn't equally shared by all. [ON EDIT: Neither is the real risk of not getting that deal, or any.] Race. Class. Environmental factors. Political climate. Et cetera. People are -- can be, have been -- deprived of their rights by the government in this country. Abused. Enslaved. Killed. .
I subscribe to the view that an injustice to anyone anywhere is an injustice to everyone everywhere. But that doesn't mean my rights are lost whenever anyone's are, although they might be. Because the entire fucking point of it is that when they're not, I take their losses personally enough to share whatever resources the rights I've got give me that they could use.
So I'm not in any hurry to declare myself or anybody else newly oppressed by the state when the status quo wrt who is and isn't subject to its various powers hasn't fucking been altered. And I'm not more or less unhappy about it being as it is than I was before.
compared2what? wrote:I don't know. There's not as much of a difference between feeling powerless and being powerless as one might hope.
Oh yes there is. You FEEL powerless when men with guns storm your house looking for a criminal on the loose and meantime have a looky loo at everything you're doing and threaten to arrest you for it. You ARE powerless when you wake up and realize that it's a permanent state of affairs. It's what happens in the in between time that will either hasten or prevent the latter from happening.
I agree. That's not as much of a difference as one might hope, imo. I'm just not anxious to diminish it further. Plus I'm not interested in feeling or being any more powerless than I have to for practical purposes, such as being correctly oriented to reality and so on.
There's a real potential for bad things permanently affecting some or all when stuff like this happens. In this case, I'd say the people at greater risk of loss were immigrants and Muslims. I'm not sure that the balance shifted wrt general rights and freedoms. But if it did, it probably shifted in the direction of expanded video surveillance, a la CCTV in the UK.
________
Maybe I'm too complacent. But I don't worry equally that tanks in the street are about to become an everyday fact of life in the United States every time I see a picture of it. Same as I don't worry that there's an imminent danger of taxation without representation whenever I see a picture of Colonial Williamsburg.
That's not because I think a little martial law is okay every once in a while. I don't. I just don't see the point of declaring it on myself when nobody's declaring it on me. I'm also not into threatening myself with that prospect. And I find overstatements by non-state actors who threaten me with it on the state's behalf suspect to whatever extent it appears to be part of an organized campaign. Because that's a fascist-totalitarian tactic, historically. Real freedom-fighters are traditionally recognizable by their opposition to real losses of freedom.
Speaking of differences worth observing.