Thursday, September 8, 2005

A dress rehearsal for martial law?

When I put on my tinfoil hat, I usually pull it down over my eyes and ears to obtain the maximum effect. This piece on the World Socialist Web Site is chilling nonetheless.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the disastrous delay in providing aid to the city's beleaguered citizens was in large part a matter of waiting until this massive military force was ready to deploy.
While no doubt incompetence and indifference played a major role, there is also strong evidence that aid was deliberately withheld by the White House and the Pentagon as part of a strategy for asserting unfettered military control over the city.

In response to my post referring to Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard's comments on Press The Meat:

Both hurricane victims and public officials have given multiple accounts of US authorities actively turning back aid and blocking rescue attempts in the days that followed the breaching of the city's levees.
Finally, he said that just a day earlier FEMA agents had come in and "cut all of our emergency communication lines" without any warning. The local sheriff, he added, had the lines reconnected and then posted armed guards to see that they were not cut again.

This last, and most sinister, example is in keeping with the Pentagon's "information war" doctrine, which demands the complete control of communications in an area targeted for invasion and occupation.
In reality the US ruling elite and both major parties have used September 11 as the pretext for implementing far-reaching attacks on democratic rights and breaching legal barriers - such as Posse Comitatus - against the use of military force against the American people.

Just last month, the Washington Post published an article revealing that US military's Northern Command had developed a series of "war plans" for the military "to take charge" in domestic crises. (See: "Pentagon devising scenarios for martial law in US".)

While apparently these plans involved a response to supposed terrorist attacks, including the detonation of a nuclear device in a major American city, the catastrophe that struck New Orleans provided ideal conditions for testing the plans out.
The deliberate denial of food, water and means of escape to tens of thousands of suffering New Orleanians in order to prepare a massive military exercise is a crime. It is moreover a warning that the deepening of the social crisis in America raises the threat of military repression and dictatorship.

<\tinfoil>? Maybe so, maybe no. Read the article. Socialists may be paranoid nutsos, but they're not stupid.

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