Welcome to the future of warfare; privatised, deadly, unaccountable, brutish, secretive and increasingly attractive to so-called democracies and autocracies looking for a stealth force to repress or kill. A stunning New York Times investigation yesterday: Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked…
Showing all posts tagged Blackwater
Blackwater is God’s new gift to perverted morality
The private military contractor is a key player in the post 9/11 world. This latest choice shows the complete moral collapse of a corporation that sells itself as an “efficient” and privatised player in the “war on terror”: The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief…
Murder civilians and continue getting mercenary work
The future of warfare: The number of private security personnel working for the US military in Afghanistan rose to 18,919 at the end of last year, the highest level used in any conflict by the United States, a congressional report said. The Congressional Research Service report said that the number of private security contractor personnel…
Blackwater helping us save the world
Look at what our world has created; mercenaries with government backing: Erik Prince, the founder of the international security giant Blackwater Worldwide, is backing an effort by a controversial South African mercenary firm to insert itself into Somalia’s bloody civil war by protecting government leaders, training Somali troops, and battling pirates and Islamic militants there,…
The new frontier; private firms making money in apartheid West Bank
One: The Danish-British security firm G4S recently confirmed in a letter its involvement in the Israeli occupation and violations of international law — reported on last month by The Electronic Intifada. After the publication of The Electronic Intifada’s report on 15 December 2010, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre asked G4S to respond to…
Blackwater powers on (and leaves dead bodies way behind)
Who says a company causing death and destruction should be a barrier to securing US deals? Never mind the dead civilians. Forget about the stolen guns. Get over the murder arrests, the fraud allegations, and the accusations of guards pumping themselves up with steroids and cocaine. Through a “joint venture,” the notorious private-security firm Blackwater…
Scahill on Blackwater madness under God and country
U.S. Businessman: Blackwater Paid Me to Buy Steroids and Weapons on Black Market for Its Shooters. Seriously.
Blackwater boys don’t mix with the rest
Yesterday I wrote about Jeremy Scahill’s explosive revelations that Blackwater are operating covertly in Pakistan and a reliable journalist contact who spends considerable time in the country passed this on: You know there’s a heavily guarded pub in Peshawar called the American Club where these Blackwater dudes hang out. No one else goes there, they’re…
The friends who help
Jeremy Scahill, The Guardian, July 23: It seems that executives from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration’s favourite hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS gas and Little Bird helicopters and go back to the great dismal swamp of North Carolina whence they came. Or at least…
We matter, they don’t
Human rights preservation, Washington-style: Out of the dozens upon dozens of reports of abuses by private contractors as part of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only one prosecution of a contractor has taken place. This, says a new report from Human Rights First, epitomises the woefully insufficient response by the U.S. government to…