That reminded me to check on Erik Prince. Looks like he has private army in UAE now

[suffragette]

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/18/jeremy_scahill_on_blackwater_founder_erik
The United Arab Emirates has confirmed hiring a company headed by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the military firm Blackwater. According to the New York Times, the UAE secretly signed a $529 million contract with Prince’s new company, Reflex Responses, to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign mercenaries. The troops could be deployed if foreign guest workers stage revolts in labor camps, or if the UAE regime were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world. Prince has one rule about the new force: no Muslims. We speak to investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and Samer Muscati of Human Rights Watch.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15prince.html

The United Arab Emirates — an autocracy with the sheen of a progressive, modern state — are closely allied with the United States, and American officials indicated that the battalion program had some support in Washington.

“The gulf countries, and the U.A.E. in particular, don’t have a lot of military experience. It would make sense if they looked outside their borders for help,” said one Obama administration official who knew of the operation. “They might want to show that they are not to be messed with.”

Still, it is not clear whether the project has the United States’ official blessing. Legal experts and government officials said some of those involved with the battalion might be breaking federal laws that prohibit American citizens from training foreign troops if they did not secure a license from the State Department.

Mark C. Toner, a spokesman for the department, would not confirm whether Mr. Prince’s company had obtained such a license, but he said the department was investigating to see if the training effort was in violation of American laws. Mr. Toner pointed out that Blackwater (which renamed itself Xe Services ) paid $42 million in fines last year for training foreign troops in Jordan and other countries over the years.

Yikes!

[MikeMc]

1. Hessians! Don't worry.

Palin's teabag brigade will ride, shooting and ringing bells, to inform us if Prince's forces are trying to infringe on our inrefudiatable 2nd amendment remedies.

[suffragette]

3. LOL

I like you.

[MikeMc]

5. I think, as long as we aren't facing

Xe security forces, like happened to N.O. Katrina refugees

or facing a pack of rabid gun-&-bell wielding Palin-backing bikers

or facing detention in Halliburton-contracted internment facilities

at least we can pummel them with the vicious mocking that they deserve.

Thank you for LOL. I like you too.

[MikeMc]

15. I swear. We're on the same team suffragette.

Come on back.

[sabrina 1]

2. Wow! Just Wow! This administration supporting Blackwater

I know they will find a way to continue to get funding. But where is Congress on this??

Yikes! Is right. Thank you again for some excellent research. I follow Jeremy Scahill for updates on what Blackwater is up to but missed all of this, other than I knew they were in the UAE. Is this our new home away from home for war criminals??

[suffragette]

4. There and Dubai

Lots of info in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8563433

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8563433#8572831


And:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=433609&mesg_id=433972



http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1032614



The second you blink, they morph more. Reminds me of the Doctor Who episode: Blink
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=doctor+who+blink&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[MikeMc]

7. Alexei Sayle did a Doc Who skit on Thatcher

His Marg Thatcher press release said:

'We must not look on the Daleks, in terms of the human misery and enslavement they cause, but rather as a wonderful opportunity for the micro-electronics and defense industries' (Loose paraphrase, but that's the gist.)

I read the threads, thanks.

The constant name change 're-branding' of these guilty repug outfits reminds me of Homer Simpson, when Marge told him to complain to the phone company about the area code change they hit him with. "But which one? There's so many of them, and they keep changing their names!" Then he dissolves into weeping and wailing.

Scary stuff from Blink. I never did like stone angels.

[suffragette]

8. I'm fine with stone angels

Don't trust Blackwater/XE/newnamehere at all though.

And never trust anything coming from Breitbart & Company.

[MikeMc]

9. Breit is on the boards, again, I see. But not re: the Breitbart Syphilis Epidemic.

He's as shifty, craven, and sweaty as Nixon. So non-endearing. And maybe he WAS lying the last 5000 times he talked. But that doesn't excuse us from giving his latest syphilitic rantings the fair hearing they deserve.

RE XE, I'm down on Prince, Schmidt, Ashcroft, Krongard, Negroponte, and the rest of the gang. But I have to disagree with this stone angels stance you're taking.

[MikeMc]

18. I'm still peeved about your 'stone angels are good' stance.

[MikeMc]

6. You're right, it's a sorry state of affairs

Amy's DemNow! coverage of Jeremy's work is where I go. I didn't know that Jeremy had his own site. I have his Blackwater book all dog-eared and marked up, with stars and ! points. Great reporting, like Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, or Max Blumenthal's Repug Gomorrah.

I'm sure that Speaker Boehner's people will provide the same top-level oversight that we got from Speaker Hastert's people. Rep. Issa is a subpoena-ing whiz. Oh, wait, he's too busy to investigate Blackwater or Halliburton KBR right now. He has too many other irons in the fire.

[sabrina 1]

10. I follow him on Twitter

where he often posts links to what he is working on. I'm not sure if he has his own blog but he does post on a blog sometimes. I cannot remember the name of it right now.

Amy is always good to watch. She is a professional. Not many of them around

[MikeMc]

11. Got it. I have no cell, but always like to hear what JS is saying. NT

[MikeMc]

14. I have a couple of Amy books ready to type in, as well as

Naomi, Max, and Jeremy.

I love hard copy, but maybe I'm just feeling bitterly betrayed by Trend Micro, Dell, Microsoft, and Verizon.

[suffragette]

12. In the meantime, vets from Blackwater and Able Danger

have formed a "private spy" company called Jellyfish:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/blackwater-datamining-vets-want-to-save-big-business/

Veterans from the most infamous private security firm on Earth and one of the military’s most controversial datamining operations are teaming up to provide the Fortune 500 with their own private spies.

Take one part Blackwater, and another part Able Danger, the military data-mining op that claimed to have identified members of al-Qaida living in the United States before 9/11. Put ‘em together, and you’ve got a new company called Jellyfish.

Jellyfish is about corporate-information dominance. It swears it’s leaving all the spy-world baggage behind. No guns, no governments digging through private records of its citizens.

“Our organization is not going to be controversial,” pledges Keith Mahoney, the Jellyfish CEO, a former Navy officer and senior executive with Blackwater’s intelligence arm, Total Intelligence Solutions. Try not to make a joke about corporate mercenaries.



Ok, now you really, really, really have to read "He, She and It" by Marge Piercy.

Really....really :)

[MikeMc]

13. Check.

I always get Piercy and Atwood confused. Please excuse my ignorance.

[suffragette]

16. Actually, you'd need to be aware of them both to confuse them

That's not ignorance, that's knowledge :)
No need for excuses there.

But if you haven't yet read "He, She and It" you should give it a go. So much in there that is pertinent now.

[MikeMc]

17. I've been aware of the bad guys, since Handmaid's Tale,

and I already hated those guys,as a non-pec-tweeting guy. Have read Ursula K. LeGuin, and Andre Norton, and Mad L'Engle.

I have always been fascinated by the lack of capabilities of my favorite guy authors. They mostly can't make a realistic woman character, from what {I imagine} is a woman point of view. Sociologically speaking, I'm paying attention. I could go on, discussing fave male and female authors who are backing Dem thought... But without feed-back, I can't possibly justify almost 50 % of the human race, coz I don't know exactly where you're coming from, besides the Syphilitic-Breitbart vs. Weiner kerfluffle.

Give some credit to James Caan, for the "Lathe of Heaven" role.

I am informed, by thinking of my mom, and I read the posted excerpt on 'He, She, and It'. I know where they're headed, and you and I are stopping them from getting there, right now. If you want to hear a well-read Soc. Major's take on the best guy author version of a woman character, I would be pleased to reply. Or let's just pummel Clarence Thomas into the ground, using only Naomi Klein as a source.