Will Blackwater Become The Police of the United States? 'Blackwater Eyes Domestic Contracts in U.S.'

[spanone]

snip~

Morning Edition, September 28, 2007 · The first Blackwater employees arrived in New Orleans just 36 hours after the levies broke. At one point, more than 600 Blackwater employees were in the city. Some were guarding the local Sheraton hotel. Others were helping fish people out of the water or were rescuing them off rooftops. Eventually, Blackwater landed a $73 million contact to protect FEMA staff helping with the Katrina recovery operation.


Blackwater's Prince Has GOP, Christian Group Ties

With more than $800 million in contracts, Blackwater USA, led by Erik Prince, is among the biggest companies providing armed guards for U.S. officials and government contractors in Iraq.

Prince, the heir to a Michigan auto-parts fortune, has close ties to the Republican Party and conservative Christian groups. He began his career with a stint as an officer in the U.S. Navy SEALs, and co-founded Blackwater in 1997 with other former commandos. His family's wealth made it possible for the then 27-year-old Prince to fund the Blackwater start-up with his own money.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14707922

[Auggie]

1. Why don't we just bring the Gestapo out of retirement?

[BrklynLib at work]

2. That is exactly what BushCO is trying to do....

[Auggie]

5. This is a very, very scary possibility

[movonne]

6. they are...

[Raster]

14. Blackwater IS the Gestapo coming out of retirement...

Rested and ready to kick ass... yours, mine, whomever.

[Niccolo_Macchiavelli]

18. tsts

Gestapo is DHS' work

Blackwater is in for the Waffen-SS (the good equipped elite)

Freepers and Theonutz can be the Sturmabteilung (the thugs)

[alfredo]

20. I believe they have some of Pinochet's men working for them.

[BlooInBloo]

3. They were on the job in nola for Katrina.

[spanone]

16. to the tune of 73 million dollars

[kurth]

4. Private armies should be outlawed

[blm]

7. No, no - The fascist agenda is just TINFOIL. We have all been imagining the

corporate takeover of essential government duties since Bush1 and Cheney started outsourcing our Defense to private companies since 1991, continued by Bill Clinton through the 90s and put into high gear by Bush2 since 2001.

Yep - just imagined.

We imagined that Bush2 was going to hand our ports over to the same guys his dad was involved with in BCCI. Yep - just imagined.

[paparush]

8. BW is about to get another healthy slab of OUR cash for the Grizzly armored vehicle.

[angrycarpenter]

9. just wait until it's blackwater vs. war protesters

We will see their true colors. Hopefully it will be only beatings rather than firing into a crowd.

[Zodiak]

17. After they have been in Iraq with total immunity...

...I do not foresee the outcome of Blackwater vs. protesters resulting in zero deaths.

[liberal N proud]

10. Cleveland mayor wants to privatize the police at Hopkins airport

Mayor Frank Jackson has finally told the public some badly needed details of his plan to put more police in neighborhoods by replacing 45 officers now assigned to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

A private company would hire a dedicated force of state-certified, special police. They would be armed, trained by the Transportation Security Administration and empowered to make arrests.

http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1190928609288480.xml&coll=2

So it looks like it may already be in the works, don't know if Blackwater will get this one but this is just a tip.

[spanone]

11. then crime becomes profitable for the police....then throw in corrections corp of usa....

[Junkdrawer]

12. The Pinkertons make a comeback...

For those labor history challenged:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike

[spanone]

13. thanks.

[Exultant Democracy]

15. Who wants to bet that the Republicans will hire them for their convention.

[Auggie]

19. During Katrina Blackwater employees were paid $950 a day --

about eight times the salary of a New Orleans police officer.

[tridim]

22. When BW takes over, what's the point of being a police officer?

Police in general have to follow the law, BW doesn't. It's not a stretch to predict that former police officers will skate and join up with Bush's personal army.

The day BW starts patrolling the streets of America is the day America officially dies.

[blm]

23. I think it did in 1991 when Poppy and Cheney began privatizing the military openly.

Why was it allowed to continue under a Dem president?

The only time to stop it would have been 1993-2000.

[tridim]

27. Yes, that's true..

I'm just imagining BW ops patrolling the streets arresting thousands of people for being "immoral" or "not white" or "undesirable" or "Liberal". America will not stand for that, I know I won't.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

26. Even more, what's the point of representative government?

In my other post in this thread I cite Naomi Klein's piece in Harper's about the contract cities that Blackwater is helping build and manage for wealthy communities. The cities are set up so that property taxes enrich only the communities and none of the areas around them, from which they have cut themselves off. The loss of the tax base will affect politicians' influence as well as the quality of the police forces and schools they once helped subsidize in lower-income areas.

I don't understand how this is legal. I don't understand how a state can let a municipality set the rules this way. But then I don't even understand why this country doesn't have standardized textbooks in schools, and why some shitheads in Kansas or Texas or wherever can so wildly skew the basic information - the understanding of the world and how it works - that we all need to agree upon in order to work as one.

Privatized schools, privatized towns...privatized America says Fuck You to anyone who can't afford it.

[Auggie]

29. Most of our representation is privatized to a degree

[alarimer]

33. I think that was the rate the government paid to Blackwater for each employee

but I don't think they each got that much. It was still a lot more than cops were paid. Well the cops that actually stayed in NO. I read in Douglas Brinkley's book The Great Deluge that many NO police officers (on the oder of hundreds actually) deserted their posts. And that of course left a vacuum for Blackwater. But Blackwater actually provided private security for the rich folks in their fancy. Gotta keep those "looters" out.

[Richard D]

21. They are already buying . . .

. . . military airplanes. Scary to think about this, but we have to.
http://www.declineandfall.net/2007/08/coming-to-state-near-you-blackwater-air.html

[Jed Dilligan]

28. Weird little plane

Obviously designed to destroy human settlements without air defenses.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

24. Naomi Klein covers this story at length in this month's Harper's

It is hair-curling.

Blackwater and other "security" corporations have looked ahead and can see the dwindling of DoD contracts due to budget constraints.

They are turning their efforts towards creating private infrastructure for American cities.

Wealthy citizens are creating contract communities like Sandy Springs, Georgia, where they can control what their taxes purchase. Their property taxes no longer support schools and police in low-income, African-American areas of Atlanta. All their money goes to paying for their own services.

Powerful construction companies are partnering with giant security firm to create more of these privileged contract communities. These companies have used their taxpayer-funded government contracts to purchase bigger, better and newer equipment than anything owned at the state or municipal level. They offer wealthy citizens one-stop shopping for all their private infrastructure needs.

They are also trying to push nonprofits out of business by offering rescue service "packages" that turn your emergency hurricane evacuation experience into an unexpected holiday at a five-star resort until the crisis passes.

Just want to be coptered off your roof and onto dry land? It's still gonna cost you. Why should the government do it for free when there's money to be made?

Blackwater not only has ties to Christian groups, it contributes heavily to the anti-abortion movement. It doesn't take too big a leap of imagination to see a town like Monaghan's private PizzaVille as becoming more than a place for devout Catholics. It is the future, where only those who share the vision share the wealth.

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/10/0081739
(probably requires subscription - may be added to the free section eventually)

One of the most alarming aspects of this industry is how unabashedly partisan it is. Blackwater, for instance, is closely aligned with the anti-abortion movement and other right-wing causes. It donates almost exclusively to the Republican Party, rather than hedging its bets like most big corporations. Halliburton sends 93 percent of its campaign contributions to Republicans; Fluor, 78 percent. Is it far-fetched to imagine a day when political parties will hire these companies to spy on their rivals during an election campaign - or to engage in covert operations too shady even for the CIA? - From "Disaster Capitalism: The New Economy of Catastrophe" by Naomi Klein

[Auggie]

30. How ironic -- I'm reading her book between posts

[MisterHowdy]

25. privatizing the police

wouldn't that be a hoot.

[superkia]

31. Absolutely! At that point I think our civil rights will be on their way out!

[OneBlueSky]

32. now this is just downright scary . . . Congress should stop worrying about MoveOn and . . .

start attending to the important stuff . . . like Blackwater, both in Iraq and here in the "homeland" (god, I hate that word) . . .

[blm]

36. All of the MoveOn stuff was pure dog and pony show for the bases when it comes

down to it.

All I want is honest and open government and many of our Democrats join ALL of the GOPs in preventing us from having that type of government.

[flashl]

34. U.S. Government=contractors

Must Read: The Shadow Pentagon

Private contractors play a huge role in basic government work—mostly out of public view

September 29, 2004

As war fighting came to dominate the news in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, names like Halliburton and Bechtel became as familiar to the average American as the names of any general, division or soldier in the field. Fallujah first attracted wide public attention when insurgents killed and crowds mutilated the remains of four employees of Blackwater Security Consulting. Employees of CACI International and Titan were accused of taking part in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. That the use of contractors on the battlefield and in nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan is front page news comes as a surprise to many, but it is a consequence of a decades-long policy to keep government smaller by relying on the private sector.

What the War on Terror has shown is the extent to which private contractors have become part and parcel of Pentagon operations. Where once contracts went to build ships, planes, tanks and missiles, today the majority of contract dollars buy services—the time of people—and information technology. Increasingly the private workforce works alongside officials, in Pentagon meeting rooms as well as on Iraqi battlefields, performing what citizens consider the stuff of government: planning, policy writing, budgeting, intelligence gathering, nation building.

In March 2002, a year before the start of the Iraq war, then-Secretary of the Army Thomas White told top Defense Department officials that reductions in Army civilian and military personnel, carried out over the previous 11 years, had been accompanied by an increased reliance on private contractors about whose very dimensions the Pentagon knew too little. "Currently," he wrote, "Army planners and programmers lack visibility at the Departmental level into the labor and costs associated with the contract work force and of the organizations and missions supported by them."

= snip =

Defense does not know the numbers of contractors performing basic government work—that is, drafting rules, policies, budgets, and other official documents. But a measure of its increasingly commonplace nature can be found on the Web sites of the department's contractors. Private companies announce that they're hiring analysts to prepare the Defense Department's budget, or boast of having written the Army Field Manuals on Contractors on the Battlefield.

For insiders in the corridors of the Pentagon, the pervasive role of contractors in the replacement of civil servants is a given. Government Executive reports that the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness—the senior official responsible for the official workforce "acknowledges that he often attends meetings in which he is the only civil servant in a room full of contractors."

---

In short, what we call "government" is actually private contractors.

[Ghost in the Machine]

35. Best thing I can tell y'all to do is buy at LEAST one or two guns and

stock up on ammo. Blackwater is a paramilitary mercenary outfit that calls itself a "security" company.

They are MERCS and they hold no allegiance to any flag nor country, just the highest bidder.

We're fixing to hit the bottom of the rabbit hole, folks. Are you ready??