Martial law, forced labour and some other niceties of American political life. posted by Richard Seymour

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.