Martial law, forced labour and some other niceties of American political life.

[Guest guest]

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 05:08:04 -0500 (EST)

A

Martial law, forced labour and some other niceties of

American political life.

 

 

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/02/martial-law-forced-labour-and-some.html

 

 

 

Monday, February 20, 2006

Martial law, forced labour and some other niceties of American

political life.

 

 

A few years back, when some newspapers suggested that Bush had laid in

place the foundations for martial law, and Tommy Franks was alleged to

have told some cigar magazine that another 9/11 would certainly

eventuate in that, one couldn't help thinking of Oliver North. Details

of North's plan for introducing martial law in the event of widespread

civil disobedience came out during the Contra hearings, and the Miami

Herald exposed a programme called Rex 84 in which such measures were

envisaged. The plan, " was said to be similar to one Mr. Guiffrida had

developed earlier to combat a national uprising by black militants. It

provided for the detention of at least 21 million American Negroes in

assembly centers or relocation camps. "

 

It's now 2006, post-Katrina, and the Bush government has handed

Kellogg, Brown & Root another fat little contract to build and

maintain " temporary detention facilities " in the event of an emergency

influx of immigrants, or in case of another natural disaster in which

thousands of people are displaced - because detaining people in a

hellhole of a flooded city, depriving them of food, water & medical

aid, and then subjecting them to martial law, doesn't look good on

teevee (supposing one could get more than a glimpse of this picture

from teevee). Kellogg, Brown & Root seem to get all the breaks with

this administration. It's not even funny any more.

 

There had been suggestions that civilian internment camps were on the

way for some while. Most of this came from various religious-style

kooks and paranoid right-wingers. Big Government was comin-a-gitchoo.

After Guantanamo, and the mass post-9/11 detentions in the US, it's

hard to even raise an eyebrow. Mass detention camps for

Arab-Americans? Blurring the distinction between terrorism and

dissent? Criminalising protest? We've seen that old schtick before,

over and over again.

 

Because these things are not a fixture of daily life for most

Americans, one assumes that outright government repression is an

anomaly. From John Africa to Waco, from suppression of labour to

Cointelpro, the record suggests otherwise.