Tag: blackwater

Dear Atty. Gen. Eric Holder: Rendition THIS!

The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill (2008 with 2013 epilogue) is an in-depth examination of the systematic privatization of the US military.

- "Murder, Inc. has gone corporate and found the perfect screen to hide behind...national security work. That does not include the drug running and other lucrative trade."

- Seth Ferris - 'When your doctor tells you “this isn’t going to hurt”, he really means “I know very well this is going to hurt”.'

The anti-Islam PR campaign continues in Nigeria.

- Worse still, those who should know better, high level intelligence, military and law enforcement officials are part of the problem

NASA has designated 2013 as the Year of the Comet. What would lead NASA to do so?

Navy Seals from the Osama bin Laden operation died in what is reported as a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. The chances of this story being true is almost nil. The chances of this being a staged coverup is over 80%. We believe these people were murdered to silence them. This is why.

Pak-US relations have seen many ups and downs starting early 1950s when Pakistan decided to join western pacts and became a US ally.

VTTV February 20, 2011 with Gordon Duff and Raja Mujtaba The diplomatic standoff between the United States and Pakistan over the arrest of State Department...

DAVIS FOR AAFIA SWAP DEMANDED "Enclaves of Americans, CIA, Blackwater, "diplomats," are said to be all over Pakistan.  Webster Tarpley (video below) claims they...

For nearly a decade, America has been, in the eyes of the world, the successor to Nazi Germany. Last week, nearly 77% of Australians polled (over 10,000 respondents) considered the 9/11 terror attacks an American "false flag" and that nation has troops in Afghanistan fighting alongside Americans. Imagine what nations that oppose American involvement think?

Pakistan Blocks NATO Supplies  By Raja G Mujtaba STAFF WRITER/Editor General Aslam Beg, former Army Chief has also come hard, he demanded to shoot down intruding...

A water truck backs up to the Euphrates River in Iraq. The driver, a Ugandan or maybe an Ethiopian, gets out, lowers a hose into the sewage ridden flow and fills his truck. 5 miles away, a US Army water purification center sits, too far away. The driver thinks, "water is water." Another of the Pentagon's "Zombie Contractors" take their toll, part of the army of "undead" and unqualified who are the world's most expensive work force.

CRASH OF AIRBUS 320 OUTSIDE ISLAMABAD NOW BELIEVED HIJACKED, HEADING FOR  NUKE FACILITY  By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor August 29, 2010 Islamabad, Pakistan (VT exclusive)  Informed...

After nearly a decade of working overtly and covertly for the US government across the globe, the infamous mercenary firm Blackwater is apparently for sale. The company made the announcement in a brief statement Monday followed by an even briefer statement from the company's owner, Erik Prince. "Performance doesn't matter in Washington, just politics," Prince said.

Despite Prince’s attempts to shield his speeches from public scrutiny, The Nation magazine has obtained an audio recording of a recent, private speech delivered by Prince to a friendly audience. The speech, which Prince attempted to keep from public consumption, provides a stunning glimpse into his views and future plans and reveals details of previously undisclosed activities of Blackwater.

RALEIGH, N.C. — The former president of Blackwater Worldwide was charged Friday with using straw purchases to stockpile automatic weapons at the security firm and filing false documents to cover up gifts given to the King of Jordan.

According to reports from Politico, Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed “guarded optimism” yesterday, 26 March, about U.S. progress in Afghanistan but predicted “many tough...

An official at the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to court testimony made public on Tuesday.

Anthony Weiner pulled off the kid gloves and called the GOP a 'Wholly Owned Subsidiary Of The Insurance Industry,' see the video at Crooks and Liars. South Dakota, that center of scientific endeavor and bitter cold, is urged to use astrology to explain global warming to its students by 36 recently evolved members of the state legislature and Jim Hightower provides some guidance on dancing with the devil in today's picks.

Happy birthday Charles Darwin, Steven Newton at Huff Post offers some reasons for the importance of Darwin's work. It's also Valentine's Day and AlterNet's Daniela Perdomo suggests that the way to celebrate it this year is to break up with your bank. The hired "experts" so often seen in the media are very often serving their own bank balances as a story from The Nation tells us and those stories and more in today's picks.

In the past few years Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan's rugged heartland have begun to lose faith in the American project. Many of them can point to the precise moment of this transformation, and it usually took place in the dead of night, when most of the country was fast asleep. In its attempt to stamp out the growing Taliban insurgency and Al Qaeda, the US military has been arresting suspects and sending them to one of a number of secret detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families.

So it was, undoubtedly, with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, who accompanied Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as he stumbled through a challenge-filled, error-prone two-day trip to Pakistan. Gates must have felt a little like a punching bag by the time he boarded his plane for home having, as Juan Cole pointed out, managed to signal “that the U.S. is now increasingly tilting to India and wants to put it in charge of Afghanistan security; that Pakistan is isolated… and that Pakistani conspiracy theories about Blackwater were perfectly correct and he had admitted it. In baseball terms, Gates struck out.”

GOP AND CORPORATE PRESS HAVE ONE GOAL:  KEEP BUSH AND HIS CABAL OUT OF PRISON By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Ask any American, or, in...

The SCOTUS aided Corporate takeover has been prominent in the news this past week and featured heavily here as well, Personally. I can't think of a more important issue than changing or negating the effects of that ridiculous decision. In other stories NATO is coughing up 500mil to pay off the Taliban, apparently their roadside stickup revenues are sagging and Steve Benen address the problem of no nothing voters in today's picks.

I’m proud to say that Anand Gopal, who has been reporting for the Wall Street Journal from Kabul, produces here the single most extensive report so far on American night raids in Afghanistan and the military holding areas that are the“black sites” of this moment. (His investigation, a shared project of TomDispatch.com and the Nation magazine, appears in print in the latest issue of the Nation.

a "Watergate" type attack on the Federal Building in New Orleans was thwarted when 4 "black bag" operatives, one the son of US Attorney, William J. Flannigan, whose offices were in the same building, were arrested "in the act."

Jim Hightower takes on the Supremes' prostitution to corporate plutocracy, Glen Greenwald wants to know whats so sacred about the defense budget, Blackwater (Xe) mercenaries still in the news, Terrible numbers from Haiti, and questions about Afghanistan and Pakistan in todays picks.

The reason that we're losing so badly is that the corporate interests in this country are keeping us distracted by deluding us into thinking we're still fighting the last war - race. But the fact is, corporations don't give a damn about race. As I've mentioned before, in this new economy of the new world order, where corporate competitors all over the world have people working for pennies a day, corporations can't afford the luxury of being concerned about race. All they care about is making money - and that means doing whatever they have to do to degrade the living standards of an expensive U.S. middle class.

The Nation continues Jeremy Scahill's coverage of Blackwater in Pakistan and War Looms Between Israel and Hezbollah at Truthdig along with the grim...

BLACKWATER/XE ACCUSED OF COMPLICITY IN TERRORISM AND WAR AGAINST US TROOPS TOP TALIBAN MILITANTS RECEIVE MEDICAL CARE AT BAGRAM AIR FORCE BASE From Sabrina Elkhani &...

We saw this type of Iraq-style disaster profiteering in New Orleans, and you can expect to see a lot more of this in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. Private security companies are seeing big dollar signs in Haiti thanks in no small part to the media hype about "looters." After Katrina, the number of private security companies registered (and unregistered) multiplied overnight. Banks, wealthy individuals, the US government all hired private security.

Texas iconoclast Jim Hightower helps us find a way to thank Wall Street, illogical fears are analyzed at TomGram, Chris Kelly on "anti Christian muckrakers," and a vast majority of Americans are in favor of legalizing medical marijuana. It figures. Bob Higgins

The Orwellian-named mercenary trade group, the International Peace Operations Association, didn’t waste much time in offering the “services” of its member companies like Blackwater/Xe, and Triple Canopy to swoop down on Haiti and it's eartquake stricke populace for some old fashioned humanitarian assistance disaster profiteering.

The Israel/India Alliance Below is the fourth installment in a 5-part series on Pakistan by Jeff Gates, author of Guilt By Association. In April 2009, Tel...

Were the seven CIA employees killed in the recent terror attack at Camp Chapman in Afghanistan really CIA? Sources now tell us that some were Blackwater operatives, not CIA at all. Is the CIA and Blackwater one in the same? Are either one or both working for the United States or has the disease of privatization created a culture of greed and incompetence that has left the United States vulnerable and defenseless? Are we simply "out of our depth" in Afghanistan?

A federal judge in Washington, Ricardo Urbina, has provided another compelling argument against the outsourcing of war to gunslingers from the private sector. In throwing out charges against Blackwater agents who killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in September 2007, Judge Urbina highlighted the government’s inability to hold mercenaries accountable for crimes they commit.

By James Denselow The Huffington Post Seventeen Iraqi civilians were killed in Nisoor Square, Baghdad, on 16 September 2007. Some of the bodies were so...

By Del Quentin Wilber - A federal judge on Thursday threw out charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 people in...