Post-Katrina: New Orleans becomes a war zone

The growing reliance on the military, however, is a response neither to terrorist threat or natural catastrophes. On the international arena, the US ruling elite has turned toward the use of military aggression and the seizure of strategic assets and territories as a means of offsetting the relative decline of American capitalism’s position in the world economy.
At home, the turn toward martial law is a manifestation of growing fears within America’s fabulously wealthy financial oligarchy that conditions of social polarization and steady decline in the living standards of the vast majority of working people have created a social powder keg.

I'm not much in agreement with their politics, but these people's analysis of what's been going on rings true. Read more?