RadarPress Newswire

Reacting to a recent uptick in violent crime — which, as Gerald Celente has warned, is a predictable social consequence of the ongoing economic collapse — the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania chapter of the NAACP has petitioned Governor Ed Rendell “to suspend some civil liberties and impose martial law in the city,” reports the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

In the past month, there have been a dozen shootings in Harrisburg, many of them committed in broad daylight. This prompted NAACP chapter president Stanley Lawson to demand that Rendell deploy the National Guard in the city for at least 30 days and to impose a curfew.

“We’re beyond what the Harrisburg police department can do,” Lawson said at a recent meeting at the Capitol Presbyterian Church. “We need help.”

Apparently, the “civil rights” group considers it improper to encourage people to exercise the most elemental individual right — that of armed self-defense — and prefers the course of serfdom, albeit on a “limited” basis.

Stanley Mitchell, an attorney who also belongs to the Harrisburg NAACP chapter, acknowledged that the group was requesting a “short suspension of some civil rights,” but insisted that “We have the civil rights [sic] not to be shot.”

Of course, under martial law — as even the most casual observer of the Iraq occupation would recognize — that is the first “civil right” to be taken away: Civilians render instant, unqualified obedience to the men in uniform or face the prospect of being shot immediately. The local NAACP hasn’t explained how that would be a moral or practical improvement over the present situation in Harrisburg.