Breakfast With Blackwater

Mia Farrow and Blackwater CEO Prince Met to Discuss A Possible Collaboration

By ANNA SCHECTER

August 20, 2008—

Two unlikely allies met for breakfast last month in New York to discuss a possible collaboration: Mia Farrow, actress and passionate activist for Darfur refugees, and Erik Prince, founder and CEO of the government contractor, Blackwater Worldwide.

Farrow told ABC News that Blackwater, despite its controversial history and allegations of murdering civilians in Iraq, might be able to help the "hopelessly under-equipped" African Union forces deployed in Darfur with logistics and training.

"Blackwater has a much better idea of what an effective peace-keeping mission would look like than western governments," Farrow told ABC News from a refugee camp in near the Darfur border. Farrow said those governments have been unsuccessful in standing up to the Sudanese government and bringing peace to the region.

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By Joseph Neff | Raleigh News & Observer

Blackwater obtained dozens of small business contracts worth more than $110 million even though the private security company may have exceeded size limits for a small business, according to a federal audit released today.

The Inspector General of the Small Business Administration said Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., obtained 39 contracts set aside for small businesses from 2005 through 2007. Of these, 32 contracts worth $2.1 million were set aside for companies with annual revenues of $6.5 million or less.

Blackwater's revenues have exceeded $200 million each of those years, according to federal contracting data.

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July 11, 2008

By Madhavi Bhasin

On July 7th the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in an Address before the Arab Ambassadors stated that his Government was looking at the necessity of terminating foreign presence on Iraqi land and restoring full sovereignty. The U.S. public diplomacy machinery began operating in full swing after the statement was released and has emerged with a self justifying explanation: the remarks of the Iraqi Prime Minister are reflective of the confidence in the stability and democratic progress of Iraq facilitated through the efforts of the Coalition Forces. The venue and timing of the comments are being considered crucial. The regional concerns over Iraq’s stability were expected to be put at rest, while convincing the local population of the independence of the Iraqi regime ahead of elections in autumn.

The more serious considerations behind the demand to begun negotiations for a withdrawal strategy and date have evaded popular attention.

In September 2007, 17 Iraqis died as a result of unjustified and unprovoked shooting at the Nisour Square. Personnel of Blackwater Worldwide, a private agency contracted by the U.S. to operate in Iraq, were involved in the shooting. A week later the Iraqi Government revoked the license of Blackwater to operate in the country. In the last week of September, Blackwater received a contract worth up to $92 million from the U.S. State Department. In April 2008 the assignment to provide personal protection for diplomats in Iraq by Blackwater has been renewed for the third year. The FBI is still investigating the killings at Nisour Square; more than 30 witnesses have been questioned and three Iraqis have testified before the Federal Grand Jury in May 2008. Neither the lives of the ordinary Iraqis nor the decisions of the Iraqi Government were taken into consideration while renewing the contracts for Blackwater.

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By MIKE BAKER, Associated Press Writer 

27 minutes ago

Federal agents raided Blackwater Worldwide this week as part of an investigation into whether the private security company sidestepped federal laws prohibiting the private purchase of automatic assault rifles, the company said Thursday.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives searched Blackwater's armory at its corporate headquarters in Moyock on Tuesday as part of the investigation. She said she did not know whether the weapons in question were seized.

The company signed agreements in 2005 in which Blackwater financed the purchase of 34 automatic weapons. Camden County Sheriff Tony Perry became the official owner of the weapons, but Blackwater was allowed to keep most of the guns at its armory. 

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Blackwater using cache of AK-47s 

Rifles given to sheriff in deal that skirts law 

Joseph Neff, Staff Writer 

The private military company Blackwater has found an unusual way to skirt federal laws that prohibit private parties from buying automatic weapons. Blackwater bought 17 Romanian AK-47s and 17 Bushmasters, gave ownership of the guns to the Camden County sheriff and keeps most of the guns at Blackwater's armory in Moyock.
Tiny Camden County -- population 9,271 -- is one of the most peaceful in North Carolina. In the last 10 years, there have been two murders, three robberies and seven rapes reported. The sheriff has just 19 deputies.

Sheriff Tony Perry said his department has never used the 17 AK-47s outside of shooting practice at Blackwater. None of his 19 deputies are qualified to use the AK-47s, Perry said, and his department's need for automatic weapons is "very minimal." 

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by OPOL 

Sun Jun 22, 2008 

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Some of you who were around when I first started posting at DailyKos a little over two years ago may remember the 'OPOL flame wars' as kos himself put it. Many of my ideas provoked great animosity in the dkos community. I was called every name under the sun, was threatened with banishment, and was the object of great wailing and gnashing of teeth. I was bitterly and enthusiastically criticized for saying things like:

The 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen.
The war on terrorism is a bogus invention meant to justify war profiteering.
The rise of the neocons amounted to a fascist coup.
The democrats enabled the neocons and in some cases were complicit in their crimes.
Our political system is broken and corrupt to the bone.
Bush and Cheney should be impeached.
The Bush administration committed war crimes.
Our government is enslaved to the evil of the Military Industrial Complex.
The American dream is just another lie.
Our government has no intentions of ever leaving Iraq.
We are running out of time to save the humans.

After all that has transpired over the past two years, these ideas seem much less inflammatory today. A casual reading of DailyKos these days suggests that most kossacks now agree with many if not all of these statements. The hideous nature of our present reality can no longer be denied by thinking people. The horror we face has begun to sink in. 

Naomi Wolf - Blackwater Fascism 


The propaganda machine we are subjected to from cradle to grave in this country is a powerful force. We are taught that this is 'the greatest country in the world', though we are not told why. American exceptionalism is drilled into us incessantly until it becomes one of those core beliefs not subject to deep questioning. It is hard for us to face that we are NOT the good guys, NOT the land of the free and the home of the brave, not really even a democracy, just a pretend one. The real power in America is not the vote - it's the buck. 

America is Tyranny 

 

In my view the time for action is nearly past. If we don't act decisively and soon, all will be lost. More and better Democrats is not the answer, and the reason is because the system is so corrupt that it taints anyone who gets near it. What we so desperately need (IMHO) is radical reform of our government and political system. A good start would be mandated public financing, outlawing all but the most benign lobbying, and to make lying in the course of one's official duties as an elected or appointed official, a major crime with severe penalties.
If we fail to do those things at a minimum, we will all die in due course of planetary neglect. The only question that remains, it seems to me, is do we give up or fight back?

Everybody Knows

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by: OPOL Fri Jun 20, 2008

I came of age in the time of Nixon and Vietnam.  I learned then that our government was not to be trusted, that they lie to us whenever it's convenient and that there is nothing pure about their motives.  I also learned to suspect that elements of our government played an active role in the assassination of John Kennedy and possibly others.  I'm not saying they did, just that I've pondered that possibility for most of my life and not without reason.  I still have to wonder.  The possibility that our government is that fucking evil shouldn't seem like such a stretch to anybody these days.

I just heard it described on CNN how a man arrested in Baghdad by U.S. forces was sodomized as many as 15 times, and another man was made to lay face down in urine, was raped and then urinated upon - all of this at the hands of U.S. servicemen.  This new information comes from the report released today by Physicians for Human Rights, and as disgusting as it is, it is nowhere near the worst of what has been done in all of our names.  And the claim that it was just some out-of-control rogues at the bottom of the food chain is just another dirty lie.  The real culprits are hiding in plain sight, so far untouched by accountability or justice.   "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." MCClatchy Heh, he's starting to sound like some of us.

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Related
Judge Allows Blackwater To Resume Work on San Diego Facility

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• The Nation
• War & Peace
• Blackwater

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Blackwater's Private Spies

By Jeremy Scahill

This article appeared in the June 23, 2008 edition of The Nation.

June 5, 2008

This past September, the secretive mercenary company Blackwater USA found its name splashed across front pages throughout the world after the company's shooters gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square. But by early 2008, Blackwater had largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on the media radar sparked by Congressman Henry Waxman's ongoing investigations into its activities. Its forces remained deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and business continued to pour in. In the two weeks directly following Nisour Square, Blackwater signed more than $144 million in contracts with the State Department for "protective services" in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
Blackwater's Iraq contract was extended in April, but the company is by no means betting the house on its long-term presence there. While the firm is quietly maintaining its Iraq work, it is aggressively pursuing other business opportunities. In September it was revealed that Blackwater had been "tapped" by the Pentagon's Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to compete for a share of a five-year, $15 billion budget "to fight terrorists with drug-trade ties." According to the Army Times, the contract "could include antidrug technologies and equipment, special vehicles and aircraft, communications, security training, pilot training, geographic information systems and in-field support." A spokesperson for another company bidding for the work said that "80 percent of the work will be overseas." As Richard Douglas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, explained, "The fact is, we use Blackwater to do a lot of our training of counternarcotics police in Afghanistan. I have to say that Blackwater has done a very good job."

Such an arrangement could find Blackwater operating in an arena with the godfathers of the war industry, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. It could also see Blackwater expanding into Latin America, joining other private security companies well established in the region. The massive US security company DynCorp is already deployed in Colombia, Bolivia and other countries as part of the "war on drugs." In Colombia alone, US military contractors are receiving nearly half the $630 million in annual US military aid for the country. Just south of the US border, the United States has launched Plan Mexico, a $1.5 billion counternarcotics program. This and similar plans could provide lucrative business opportunities for Blackwater and other companies. "Blackwater USA's enlistment in the drug war," observed journalist John Ross, would be "a direct challenge to its stiffest competitor, DynCorp--up until now, the Dallas-based corporation has locked up 94 percent of all private drug war security contracts." The New York Times reported that the contract could be Blackwater's "biggest job ever."

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Ed. note: Regular readers will know DynCorp is a CIA front company.

Related
Blackwater Isn't the Only Security Contractor With Something to Hide

June, 03 2008 By Edward S. Herman

Identifying any kind of war criminal is tricky. It is common to latch on to the hit men, or the ones issuing the immediate orders, while ignoring the planners and decision-makers, the funders, and those providing intellectual and moral support. And of course war criminals (military division [MD]) are always found only on the losing side, when frequently there are outstanding candidates among the winners. Identifying war criminals is hard to do without an arbitrariness that renders the whole effort dubious.

As for economics-based criminality, the very idea is anathema to the western establishment, because it points up an area in which its principals are vulnerable. Just as the West (and especially the United States) fought against incorporating economic (and social) rights as fundamental rights in post World War II formulations of the International Declaration of Human Rights, so today it avoids the phrase "class war" as well as the possibility of criminality associated with economic policy and private economic actions. The western establishment devotedly supports capitalism, which means "economic freedom," which means the freedom to starve as well as accumulate wealth.

It also means the right of establishment politicians to carry out economic policies that immiserate and kill large numbers of people, and the right of the corporate elite to fire, exploit, and otherwise mistreat employees within the (flexible) limits of the law. These rights are fundamental to the system, and spokespersons for contemporary capitalism view any immiseration produced by its normal operations as inescapable facts of nature, like cosmic rays. As we are in a New World Order of resurgent corporate power, more aggressive class warfare, an ongoing global redistribution of income upward, return to "Dickensian" work conditions, and environmental devastation, the notion of economic criminality is especially dangerous. Immiseration must be normalized, and it is the function of the intellectuals at the Cato, American Enterprise, Manhattan and other institutes, and economists at the University of Chicago and elsewhere, to extend the intellectual and moral boundaries of potential immiseration.

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Related
Report: Blackwater Worldwide buys Brazilian-made fighter plane

New Contracts Reflect Continued Presence in Iraq

By Walter Pincus

Monday, June 2, 2008; A11

The depth of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the difficulty the next president will face in pulling personnel out of the country are illustrated by a handful of new contract proposals made public in May.

The contracts call for new spending, from supplying mentors to officials with Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries to establishing a U.S.-marshal-type system to protect Iraqi courts. Contractors would provide more than 100 linguists with secret clearances and deliver food to Iraqi detainees at a new, U.S.-run prison.

The proposals reflect multiyear commitments. The mentor contract notes that the U.S. military "desires for both Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense to become mostly self-sufficient within two years," a time outside some proposals for U.S. combat troop withdrawal. The mentors sought would "advise, train [and] assist . . . particular Iraqi officials" who work in the Ministry of Defense, which runs the Iraqi army, or the Ministry of Interior, which runs the police and other security units.

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Exclusive: Hedge Fund in Talks to Buy Blackwater

Private Equity Firm Could Invest At Least $200 Million Into Controversial Security Firm

By MADDY SAUER

April 30, 2008—

The hedge fund giant that owns a controlling stake in Chrysler is in negotiations to buy the controversial security firm Blackwater USA, which has millions of dollars in U.S. government contracts in Iraq, according to sources familiar with the talks.

Cerberus Capital Management could invest $200 million for a stake in Blackwater, said a source close to the negotiations. Other sources said auditors from Cerberus had been examining Blackwater's books since the beginning of the year.

A source close to the negotiations says there is no deal yet, but there might be one in the future and that negotiations about a possible investment into Blackwater are ongoing.

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The reclusive founder of Cerberus, Stephen Feinberg, reportedly told his investors in a letter earlier this year that he hated all the attention the company was getting.

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... SEC Chairman Christopher Cox,(who lied about WMDS in Iraq sending thousands to their deaths),and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr.,(who threatened Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore for taking a trip to Cuba while allowing ex Treasury Secretary John Snow, Dan Quayle, Stephen Feinberg as well as Kellogg,Brown and Root boys and their sleezy Cerberus hedge fund to operate their money laundering Austrian Bawag Bank there),keep only Syria ,Cuba and Iran on their list of terrorist money laundering nations while Chris Cox's SEC allows criminally connected far right Israelis as well as far right Arabs in Dubai(where the $70,000 check to Mohamed Atta in Venice,Florida was sent just before 9/11),to continue to 'invest' in and defraud American and retail investors with U.S. penny stocks ! Why !?

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Steve Feinberg - Wikipedia
Steve and Gisela Feinberg are prolific donors to the Republican Party and related organizations. Former Republican Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle works for Cerberus as Chairman of Global Investments and former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is a client.

Cerberus - Wikipedia

In Greek mythology, Cerberus or Kerberos (Greek Κέρβερος, Kérberos or Sürbürǔs, the daemon or ker of Erebos) was the houndHades, a monstrous three-headed dog[1] with a snake for a tail and snakes down his back like a mane, whose analogs in other cultures are hellhounds. Other hell hounds included Orthus, his two-headed brother. Cerberus guarded the gate to Hades.

Houston-based KBR has again been selected to participate in a 10-year military logistical support contract valued at up to $150 billion, the U.S. Army announced today.