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Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater - C-SPAN2 Saturday at 9pm ET

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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-28-07 06:32 PM
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Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater - C-SPAN2 Saturday at 9pm ET
Saturday, March 31
After Words: Jeremy Scahill, author of "Blackwater: The Rise Of The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army" interviewed by David Martin
On C-SPAN2 at 9pm ET

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DemReadingDU Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-28-07 06:39 PM
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1. I heard Jeremy Scahill on NPR

There was a segment about Blackwater on NPR Fresh Air on 3/19/07.
Jeremy Scahill talked about his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Very enlightening. Scahill said that .40 cents of every dollar being spent for the so-called war on terror, goes to private contractors!

Another interesting tidbit. During the aftermath of Katrina, Blackwater was paying something like $350 for people to work. Then billing the govenment something like $950 per day per man! Where did this $600 go???

click hear to listen...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8992128


Should be an interesting discussion on Saturday.
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-28-07 06:48 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Blackwater USA ...Very scary
Edited on Wed Mar-28-07 06:50 PM by seemslikeadream
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DemReadingDU Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-28-07 07:02 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Ah, the other side of Blackwater
very, very scary
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Jcrowley Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-28-07 07:27 PM
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4. Who's Greystone?
Blackwater has reportedly developed a gunship variant of a CASA-212 for use by Greystone. Its new 767s are most likely intended to fly for Greystone missions. And the purpose of its new training facility in the Philippines is becoming much clearer: it's not a jungle training facility for US troops, but an offshore training facility for troops that could not get visas to enter the US. It seems that Blackwater is using Greystone to hire Third Country Nationals who are much cheaper than US former military personnel:

We believe in and specialize in creating layered security packages that use personnel from numerous nationalities...The synergistic advantages of combining locals, third country nationals and Expats far outweigh any additional required effort.

Translation: Cheap, Third World grunts, working under American officers. American BW trigger-pullers, your jobs are being outsourced.

Greystone was launched with strong international interest and limited corporate interest. Representatives from over two dozen countries attended its inauguration, along with executives from ExxonMobil, Morgan Stanley and UBS Investment Bank.

http://www.thespywhobilledme.com/the_spy_who_billed_me/2007/03/outsourced_warf.html
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-28-07 07:59 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. Greystone is an army without a flag.
:hi:
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-28-07 08:06 PM
Response to Reply #4
6. Executive Outcomes Leads to Bush
Corporate Mercenaries - Executive Outcomes Leads to Bush


Executive Outcomes is the most infamous mercenary company in operation today. Unlike traditional mercenary companies, it operates as the heavy partner in a web of related companies. Sandline international is such a sister company: 170 elite South African dogs of war were hired to crush the Bougainville freedom Fighters for $22m. Just another job for the likes of Sandline international? Paul Vernon investigates...

Set up in 1993 by Tony Buckingham and Simon Mannl <1>, Executive outcomes (EO) has worked in Asia, Africa and South America. Most of it's personnel are hired from South Africa.

Buckingham is the chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas, which is now registered in the (tax-free) Bahamas. When EO was hired by the Sierra Leone government to crush people's revolt, Heritage received much of the payment in the form of mining rights. Sir David Steel MP happens to be a director of Heritage as well as a close friend of Buckingham. Recently Sierra Leone was thrown back into chaos with another military coup.

Eeben Barlow, the present CEO of Executive Outcomes, is a veteran of the Civil Co-operation Bureau, which allegedly assassinated antiapartheid activists. Barlow is the frontman for the group he told Newsweek (2) in February: "I'm a professional soldier. It's not about politics. I have a job to do. I do it." EO is thought to have a annual turnover of more that £20 million.

The South African government, with help from officials from the United Nations, has begun to draft proposals of legislation aimed to counter what officials called "the increasing frequency with which our soldiers-of-fortune are operating overseas".(7)

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/magazine/issue4/cw4f8.html

Executive Outcomes ties lead to London and Bush
Executive Intelligence Review January 31, 1997, pp. 42-43
by Roger Moore and Linda de Hoyos

Exposes appearing on both sides of the Atlantic on the mercenary group Executive Outcomes, threaten to blow the lid off the British intelligence nexus already identified as responsible for the February 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and for the current cataclysmic destabilization of Africa on behalf of circles associated with the Queen of England's Privy Council and Sir George Bush.
The exposes appeared in the French daily {Le Figaro} on Jan. 16, the {London Observer} on Jan. 17, and the February issue of the American magazine {Harper's.}
Executive Outcomes is the mercenary arm of a vast
network of British-South African corporations dealing in gold, diamonds, and oil, primarily, but not exclusively, in Africa, that come under the umbrella of Strategic Resources Corporation, headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa. Described universally as an ``advance guard of a corporate network that includes mining, oil, and construction companies,'' Executive Outcomes is active in 13 African countries, including Uganda. For its services, it demands a lien or franchise on the exportable raw resources, particularly mineral wealth, of the client country--in the same fashion as the British East India Company of the 18th and 19th centuries, which in turn functioned as the ``advance guard'' of the British monarchy.
Executive Outcomes was incorporated offshore, on the Isle of Man, in 1993, by Anthony Buckingham, a British businessman, and Simon Mann, a former British officer, the {Observer} reported, based on a leak to it from British intelligence. Buckingham is also chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas, which in turn is linked to the Canadian firm Ranger Oil. Other firms operating out of the same headquarters in Chelsea Plaza 107, London, include Branch International Ltd. and Branch Mining Ltd.
Preliminary investigation by {EIR} has further determined that Executive Outcomes lies at the heart of the British monarch's raw materials cartels and secret intelligence operations, in conjunction with Bush's rogue apparat:
Through Sir David Steel, a former leader of the Liberal Party, Executive Outcomes and, presumably, its deployment, is a subsumed operation of the Queen's Privy Council. Steel is a close friend of EO's Buckingham, and is on the board of directors of EO's sister firm, Heritage Oil and Gas, according to {Le Figaro.} In 1977, Steel was inducted into the Privy Council, making him the youngest member of Britain's highest-level policy-making body.
The links between Executive Outcomes and Ranger Oil point to operational ties with the Bronfman family of Canada, whose scion, Edgar Bronfman of Toronto Broncorp, sits on the board of directors of Ranger. Recently, the Bronfman family merged its mammoth real estate firm, Trizec, with Barrick Gold, whose senior advisory board includes Sir George Bush. Barrick Gold is deeply involved in northeastern Zaire, where it has purchased 83,000 square kilometers of land. Zairean sources report that the so-called Zairean rebel Laurent Kabila is no more than a mercenary for Barrick and Anglo American Corp., sponsored by the British Crown-backed Ugandan and Rwandan militaries. Executive Outcomes, {Le Figaro} and other sources further verify, is deeply entrenched in Uganda, the key British marcher-lord state in the region.

http://www.aboutsudan.com/action/geopolitical/executive_outcomes.htm
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