They have been purportedly hired by the federal and Louisiana governments.
About three years ago, I read Sinclair Lewis's book, It Can't Happen Here, which describes how a hayseed good ol' boy southerner managed by treacherous handlers becomes president. They tear apart one after another American institution""schools, health care, while at the same time appointing politically loyal incompetents with no experience to manage all aspects of US government and other bureaucracies. The media are totally controlled, with uncooperative editors and reporters jailed or killed (Aug. 30th: UN inquiry called for after 18th journalist killed by US troops)
Lewis describes how towns and cities become militarized, how people are sent to jail without trials, or with fixed trials by crooked, corrupt judges appointed by the corrupt president and his cronies. (Jose Padilla and the Death of Personal Liberty)
Lewis wrote his book in 1937, having see Hitler's rise to Power. We've seen many articles describing how similarly the Bush administration has operated, starting with When Democracy Failed by Thom Hartmann. In 2002, Hartmann's article seemed to reek of conspiracy theory and paranoia to some. Now, it is a frightening portent, characterizing too many parallels suggesting that we are much further along the dangerous road that Sinclair Lewis created as a fiction.
The thought of armed, privately paid mercenaries roaming the streets of a major American city, a city filled with Democrats, with poor, helpless African Americans and the most independent, insistent upon being self-sufficient Americans is horrifying. These guns for hired are reportedly authorized to not only make arrests but also to use "lethal force."
We know that when hundreds of victims of the levee floods""New Orleans residents and tourists""tried to cross a bridge to safety, police officers from Gretna, in the Jefferson Parish, fired over their heads and forced them back into the flood ravaged, toxic water deluged city.
An American city is under military rule, with citizens being dragged and handcuffed out of their homes, helpless, frail old women thrown around, manhandled, captured and thrown into transport trucks. FEMA has created "detainment camps" which people are not allowed to leave, where they get two meals a day, are not allowed to cook, can't leave to go to church".
This can not be. This must not be allowed. We must do all we can to end this. President Bush has asked the nation to hold a vigil next Friday. And we must hold one, but not quietly in our churches, temples and mosques. We must go to the streets, raise our voices and tell these betrayers of democracy that it's over, that they can't do this. Tell your congregations you don't want to sit in a building a passively allow this to happen. Wake up your church, your synagogue, temple or mosque and lead them to a local demonstration""a vigil that truly, spiritually supports the victims of both Hurricane Katrina and the Levee Flood Bush's incompetent appointees and stupid funding withdrawals caused.
America is at risk. You can no longer just read about it. You must do something today, not just donating money or goods to the victims in Mississippi and Louisiana. YOU are a victim of this disaster and you have to ask yourself what you're going to do today, what you did last week, what you will do next week to save the USA. Do you live in another country? You can still support publications that tell the truth. You can still contribute to private think tanks.
Send your legislators this message. Write to your newspapers. Tell them to end the martial law, the mercenaries and detainment camps.
