Murder mystery developing at Blackwater
A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”
In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into the country on Prince’s private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed…
Kim Sky:
Who got murdered?
Love the “may have murdered or facilitated in the murder of individuals” stuff.
Like you say, I guess this is a murder mystery.
Hopefully this investigation will continue and that X and Y don’t get murdered as well.
5 August 2009, 5:33 pmMichael Anderson:
Something I am concerned with (worried about, yes) is “when will this come to America (a major capitalist metropole center, still, at present, even in decline) full-scale”, not just with disaster management; speaking of Hurricane Katrina specifically.
As the system winds down—and it is winding down, despite appearances—complex systems can APPEAR to function normally until tipping points are reached—witness the financial meltdown of 2008—exterminism expands as the system struggles to maintain itself, and Blackwater is exterminism embodied.
There is the matter of dealing with creatures (I hesitate to call them people—sorry, but it’s damn hard not to DE-humanize them, despite Jesus’ call to love your enemy) who are operant-conditioned to kill, and a lot of them obviously like it, if what I read is true.
I am not afraid of death, per se, but I would like to meet it in a gentler way—-but that may not be the case. I realized just how serious these creatures are during the Anthrax scare—no mystery there. Spent a bad couple of days coming to grips with it.
Perhaps we need to discuss linkage between nihilism, fear of death, and “keeping on keeping on” with what we do, whether it is gardening, fixing bicycles, not rendering to Caesar, or good scholarship (any or all). Most of us have not “taken up residence close to death”, to quote Stan. Or maybe that would be better done over at the IA website?
6 August 2009, 12:51 pmSean:
Michael speaks to my fears there. Well-said Michael. Not many things I fear in the natural world, bobcats play in the same mountains I do and I see bear frequently. I know how to deal with them. With the possibility of a band of roving mercs with no moral compass afoot in America, I start getting afraid.
As soon as private merc work became part of the ever-increasing fascist drift of privatizing govt services as a practical but not fully relinquished matter, I began worrying about this. What I have heard about Prince and his friend J Cofer Black make me think of Heinrich Himmler and Ernst Rohm. Dick Cheney is sinister enough to shoot a friend in the face, and the reward to Blackwater was Cheney’s gambit.
Yes, we should be afraid. Look at where this road takes us.
6 August 2009, 8:36 pmJames M:
Michael, I for one could see the value in such a discussion. Maybe you could start by expanding on those concepts in your last paragraph?
Or anyway, I would value a philosophical / theological exploration of how we deal with / face down the “operant-conditioned” killers exemplified by Blackwater, over speculations based on murky (abeit easily believable) allegations.
6 August 2009, 10:41 pmStan:
Yoder:
New norms. Exemplary community. I think here of the Woolworth’s lunch counters in Greensboro.
7 August 2009, 4:55 amMichael Anderson:
I have got to read “The Politics of Jesus” soon….I know that is where the Yoder comment comes from. Now that we are settled in (more) from the move, it is next on the reading list—thanks, Stan for the poke (!).
Community—either by finding it or creating it (or a combination of both), and seeking normalcy, in terms of positive human values—I don’t think our present dominant system fosters those kinds of values that can be considered “positive”. We got a little dose of good community here (Coos Bay) when we visited the local farmers’ market on Wednesday, getting in touch with local people who are baking good bread and doing community gardens, and the OSU extension service has folks here, too.
Now that I think about it, community, as fostered by the “exceptionally normal quality of humanness” mentioned above, can certainly be a reinforcement of acceptance and tolerance, and a bulwark against fear, especially fear of death. Our present system fragments us, because we are easier to manage as a herd of fearful individuals than as a cohesive whole.
Andrzej M. ?obaczewski, in his book “Political Ponerology”, mentions the quality of normalcy and “common sense” that is present in the majority of the human population as a counteraction to the pathology of evil.
We are a death-loving society (vicariously), but we avoid dealing with our own demise like the plague. Or mask our fear in action-hero behavior—is this what operant-conditioning does? For James—the term comes from B.F. Skinner’s experiments with rats in a box, applied to humans—-to perform an action as a conditioned reflex, without thinking.
On a tangent—-Stan, in “Sex and War” you mentioned people in Haiti dispatching Tonton Macoutes without much of a second thought…how does this relate to raising your hand in anger against another man? Or does it?
Got to get going out of town to gig….thanks.
7 August 2009, 1:20 pmTimothy R. Anderson:
On the bigger subject of private security guards in war-zones.
One of the best pieces I’ve read about that subject was written
by James Surowiecki. It was published on ” The Financial Page ” in
the “New Yorker ” magazine. It takes a lot of money, everyone, to
train and house and feed and clothe and equip ( and to recruit ! )
a member of the conventional military. Then that same person will
likely become an employee of a private business like Blackwater, now
known as “Xe”. Which, I think, means that the conventional military needs
yet another person in it. This is counter-productive, yes ?
It is interesting, to me at the very least, to guess at how
differently the War In Afghanistan ( October 2001 to ? ) would’ve
developed if the private security guards had never set foot on Afghanistan’s
soil …………. I figure we just don’t get that opportunity.
Timothy R. Anderson
7 August 2009, 2:14 pmStan:
Sorry I’ve been awol except to post links. It’s August; and that means my energy levels are low after work.
On the macoutes (the Tonton Macoutes were a paramilitary organization, whose last name is now applied to political partisans of the grandons), I just retold it. I was sympathetic to that opposition. My pacifism is newfound.
In Sex & War, I said that masculinity is a death cult. I stand by that.
But when I follow that logic the rest of the way out, for myself, I find myself still a member so long as I keep my old “left revolutionary” reservations on violence.
I think I let a comment in a while back from someone who was incensed at my pacifism, and who tried hitting me over the head with my own book (Full Spectrum Disorder, written when I was a full-fledged member of an ML organization) to make his point. All part of the journey, eh. This brother’s vehement objection to my Christianity/pacifism had a very masculine edge to it, if you recall… shrill, in fact. That’s that little masculine demon writhing in him, with 99% sound analysis clothing the core 1% that still says “kill, kill, kill.”
He said that I am objectively a fascist for being a pacifist. Carolyn Merchant and others have had a lot of interesting things to say about the historical connection between “obejctivity” and male power. Here’s Susan Bordo on Merchant in this regard.
One of the disturbing aspects of the whole Blackwater affair is how it maps onto the dangerous and chiliastic religio-militarism of people like the right reverend General Boykin and his cult of killers within the military, about which I and not a few others have sounded the alarm recently. Complicated, since this so-called Christian tendency is utterly demonic. False prophets, indeed.
Further on “objectivity” and masculinity, I’d note the objections raised against the confirmation of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court were that she lacked “obejctivity,” and the proof was her reference to empathy as part of the judicial process. It’s not subtle once you recognize it.
7 August 2009, 5:10 pmM. D.:
One of the more difficult aspects of this, for me, which pulls breath from my chest when I think about it, is that the story isn’t in the corporate media headlines or top stories on the nightly news. But the story of swift Iraqi justice - when several of these contractors met with their fate in Fallujah, hung from a Euphrates River bridge in March 2004 - sure made corporate media headlines. And can you imagine what the people of Fallujah had endured? Then the story about the retaliation against Fallujah - when a rain of fire, white phosphorous, fell on the city, on civilians, burning even little children, in November 2004 - never made the news, either.
7 August 2009, 8:09 pmxenia:
it’s not as if those blackwater christians care so much about assyrian christians, who are certainly some of the oldest communities in the world…
8 August 2009, 7:20 pmShamrock Pat:
The charge of smuggling weapons in to Iraq does not make much logical sense. Who would he sell them to other than Iraqis? This would not be out of the question but also seems unlikely since such weapons could be used not only to kill other Muslims but US servicemen and women as well. If such things really did occur it would indicate that he is more interested in making money than in anything else.
Stan, I do not quite follow your fourth paragraph. Do you care to elaborate?
I find it kind of interesting comparing fascism with pacifism. If fascism is a type of authoritarianism then pacifism would seem to be its exact opposite. Through my own filters it seems to me that the only political theory compatible with pacifism is libertarianism (of the Rothbard&Rockwell variety). Many people instinctively reject authoritarianism and drift to what appears to be its exact opposite, libertarianism. Yet over time one can see libertarianism of this model leads to chaos (anything can happen at any time). For many people such outcomes are unacceptable and they turn towards alternative ideologies. Marx also does a good job of explaining how libertarianism can lead right back to authoritarianism by non violent means (monopolies).
An authoritaran state could itself be described as a form of chaos. On one level the lives of people in countries like North Korea or Nazi Germany or Saudi Arabia are very ordered but on another level they live in a state of chaos because the slightest set of coincidences could set off ones imprisonment in hell.
Yet one could counter that even democratic societies are also simultaneously chaotic because anything can still happen at any time. A bunch of stupid or ambitious government officials can set in motion events that cause great suffering, on small and large scales. Just think of the lives ruined by that case in California quite a few years ago when workers at a day care center were falsely accused of sexually abusing the children there.
So chaos is inescapable but because of our fear of it we try to create a society that will help us escape from chaos and we come to believe the illusion that we have escaped it.
Could pacifism also be seen as an attempt to create an illusion that we are leaving barbarism behind?
Non violence struggle is not an ends in itself. It is a means. It is a means that does not dehumanize an opponent. Are there times when using this means of achieving ones goals does more harm than good?
Shall we cast the dice to get our answer?
9 August 2009, 9:00 amAK:
Although I’m certainly no fan of Keith Olbermann (to put it mildly), this segment from his show briefly outlines and expands upon the Blackwater/Xe attrocities detailed in Scahill’s article from “the Nation”:
“Countdown: Blackwater / Xe - more disgusting criminal allegations”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZiS4y4gy7s
“devout Christians,” my a**. Perfect masculinity truly is a death cult.
End the Occupation(s)!
9 August 2009, 1:07 pmFree Vermont!
Free Iraq!
Sean:
Shamrock Pat, I think maybe your map of political theory may be missing a few key places. There’s a whole spectrum of anarchists who would qualify as pacifist. Some of them may lean toward libertarian thought if one expands libertarian thinking beyond what I’ve seen most commonly — a secret handshake among the privatization fans, a view on minarchism that makes fascism look an improvement.
Anarchism in the colloquial sense in many pockets of America is read or heard to mean “crazy bomb-throwers who want to dismantle the government with violence and destruction” — or something like that. Anarchism is simply what libertarianism would be if it stopped listening to “economists” who are “free-market” champions only because they want to privatize the government and profit off those privatization steps. They mean that they want a market free to profiteer, for the chosen few who help schematize the privatization on the road to minarchism. Anarchism means, basically, do whatever you like as long as you do no harm to another. Most intelligent people I know are really anarchist at heart, whether they’d admit it socially. They’d like to maximize their personal freedom because they know how to behave in a way that respects others, and they think others can do the same. Maybe anarchism sounds naive. Maybe it is naive. But it beats the stuffing out of pretending to want “liberty” when all that’s really sought is a shift in economic power from one select group to another.
10 August 2009, 1:19 amMichael Anderson:
“He said that I am objectively a fascist for being a pacifist.”
Boy, it still amazes me how this tactic WORKS, on a certain level. This has been part of the book for centuries, and found a particular form of perfection in Germany mid-20th century. This could also be described as “Austrian thinking”, as Lobaczewski put it in his book—-using a solid-sounding, yet fallacious argument to prove a spurious conclusion.
To James H.—Your suggestion about a greater discussion is valued. I realized, after reading Stan’s Yoder quote, that I myself need to dig deeper into this subject. But, to start—-facing down, as Sean put it: “…a band of roving mercs with no moral compass afoot in America” is, to be blunt, a big slap in the face as far as dealing with your own concept of “personal empowerment” (as is known in the 20th-21st century American mode of thought), and a question aimed directly at you asking if you have made your own peace with, as W.C. Fields put it, “the fella in the bright nightgown”.
I know I still, at times, feel “that little masculine demon” down there, but I have him under control (the first step in dealing with a problem is admitting you have a problem)—the Blackwater boyz scare me, and at one time they would have made me angry and the little green-eyed monster would shout for revenge, but now the whole damn thing just hurts my heart instead. Ain’t no way to run a planet….I know it is what is, but I don’t have to like it—and I don’t.
10 August 2009, 11:12 amSean:
Michael — my phrase does pretty well stifle discussions on how to find empowerment within one’s self, that’s true — if the reader has sufficient self-doubt to begin with, I’m probably going to make that reader feel like eating a bullet. That wasn’t my point, but it’s how some might have read me.
On how to find personal power now, in the present American political climate… hmmm. Well I would begin by saying that knowledge is power, no matter how cliche that term becomes or remains. And obtaining knowledge requires healthy self-doubt, a willingness to believe that what previously you felt true, may indeed have been an elaborate (or simple) charade maintained by those who are in power.
In order to feel one’s own potential, one must know exactly where one stands. My point in the phrase you quoted was to say this — we cannot trust the Fed Govt to deal with us fairly in the current era. The POTUS has the ability to declare any of us an “enemy combatant” for any reason he or his designee chooses, and thereby destroy habeas corpus and all civil rights. Such a designee may be taken to Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib or the like, and held indefinitely without access to counsel.
This is the start, the legal framework. Layer on top of that the power held by Blackwater/Xe and like “contractors” for “security” matters. And imagine the POTUS or his designee authorizing the “security contractor” to neutralize “enemy combatants” within the nation.
The authority to treat us as were the Jews, Gypsies and others during Nazi Germany’s reign is fully in place. Halliburton began building the detention centers under Bush/Cheney, presumably it continues that work under Obama/Biden.
This is what I fear, Michael. And I think that if we’re going to get past this point in American history, we all need to know how bad things are.
10 August 2009, 9:18 pmStan:
I like Chomsky’s description of anarchism, that the burden of proof is on anyone who claims the need to use force.
I don’t believe we are at the brink of some kind of Nazism, nor that the machinery is now in place just waiting for the will. We have these email conversations without much fear that we’ll be policed up. ooth, no executive will relinquish executive power; and that’s what Obama has done with his inheritance from Bush — the expansion of executive power: left it in place. We are still in that place, at the junction of culture and politics, where abuse of that power is very selective and wedded to rhetoric about terrorism. But any attempt to use that power broadly would be met with broad - and politically devastating - resistance.
The latent power to make that kind of shift is still waiting for a greater degree of desperation from a lot more people and being pushed hardest not by politicians, who are inherently cautious - if perfidious - creatures; but by the likes of Lou Dobbs with his relentless nativist and anti-immigrant diatribes.
Obama’s timidity is a well-established bullet in his CV, and the embarrassment of some emerging scandal with a rogue government contractor will discomfit, not outrage, him. His concern is not ideological, as the Bush administration’s was. Obama is looking out for Obama in the most disembodied, poll-obsessive, Clinton-like kind of way.
What his opposition knows is how suggestible great masses of people can be. Boo.
Unfortunately, the left has been guilty of panic-mongering and impressionism, too.
11 August 2009, 5:07 amMichael Anderson:
Judi Bari said that in activist politics, the FBI plant is the person who offers to get the dynamite….(smile)….burden of proof indeed.
If Fascism is a middle-class phenomenon, then the people to watch are the folks who have SOME small bit of money or privilege. They are the prime takers for the fear-mongering of the MSM, and always seem to fall for the Corporate-approved bogeymen of race, education, and homophobia, which is grounded in (white) male power and privilege.
I am eagerly awaiting my copy of Yoder’s book in the mail!
11 August 2009, 10:01 amSean:
Stan, you said:
“But any attempt to use that power broadly would be met with broad - and politically devastating - resistance.”
Would you mind sharing your reasons for thinking that such resistance would arise and be politically devastating? I’m afraid I don’t know but a small handful of people who even bother to study this subject, and of that handful, I believe only 1 or 2 would engage in resistance. I just do not see the numbers of informed people prepared to resist. I don’t see the readiness to resist. I don’t see anyone but a very tiny minority wanting to resist. What am I missing?
11 August 2009, 11:04 amShamrock Pat:
Sean, thank you for your comment.
Stan, I like Chomsky’s description of anarchism to. It is a very reasonable expectation. Of course it is also reasonable to expect that reasonable people can and will have disagreements about when that burden of proof has been met.
Will we ever live in a world in which such decisions are made by rational people trying to reach a decision based on the positive and negative consequences that such a decision would have? Or will we always be cursed by special interests manipulating naive or economically desperate people to conduct acts of violence against others for reasons of (national, class, sectarian, industry) self interest? Those are rhetorical questions so there is no need to answer unless you want to. My answer is that we will never know until there is a big change in the United States as the US seems to be the biggest source of so much conflict. After that the lesser evils can be tackled.
11 August 2009, 1:12 pmStan:
We have a tendency to engage in hyperbole - left as much as right sometimes - in order to shore up a line of thought that has cracks in it. I myself have engaged in hyperbole on many occasions, particularly when I was inside organizations that were trying to spin reality as part of a political strategy.
Maybe this or that line needs to be shored up…. maybe not.
I might be a bit hyperbolic in my claim that resistence to broad application of repressive measures would ignite politically-turbulent resistence. I doubt it, though.
Three kinds of separating membranes — pourous, semi-porous, impermeable. Our social boundaries — as part of the cosmopolitanism of our larger crises — have become at least semi-porous. Inter-racial and-or inter-national families, for example, are less likely to buy into racial or nativist demagogy. Who here is not her/himself, or have at least one friend or family member who is… gay? Things have changed. Almost 58 years now, I’ve been watching.
These kinds of realignments, often first through kinship ties, are hugely consequential in ways we cannot yet know. As these conflicts become more visible and open (they are concealed conflicts now), I sincerely believe that many people in the United States will pull back from these brinks.
Give Obama another six months of his grandstanding out of harm’s way, and the movements against war, torture, et al, will get their bearings again. Obama had to happen to teach a terrible lesson about the Democratic Party, about its utter amorality.
11 August 2009, 1:43 pmSean:
Stan, I hope you didn’t think I was trying to impugn your sincerity. I am simply stymied when I try to see the connections you’re discussing. For all those positive developments of the interpersonal sort you describe, I see more blatant immorality among people put in positions of fiduciary responsibility. I see more greed, not more altruism. I see more materialism, not more austerity. I see more arrogance, not more humility. What has preceded the “bailouts” that have been underway since the Bush-Obama transition began them? Chrysler in the late 70s, perhaps, but at least Chrysler kept people employed. The latest round of bailouts crushed a lot of people while enriching those who were responsible for the crushing. This is but a small picture of the present era. I’d think these negatives need to be outweighed by positives before we can anticipate people banding together to resist something.
And given the massive equipment advantage of the Fed Govt, which Americans are going to resist and end up like a sad re-run of Kent State?
11 August 2009, 9:34 pmTimothy R. Anderson:
Some Of The Americans Who Might Resist.
While I’m awaiting the answers to my questions about Afghanistan…………… on another thread.
I’ve not seen much coverage of it, but there’s a petition
for SUPPORTING Victor Agosto, who is very much an American,
and the fact that more than one dozen, two dozen persons
and MORE have put their names on it is an encouraging indication
to some persons.
As a group, the American civilian public is behaving much
like it did pre-9/11/01 . Buying oil from the royal family
of Saudi Arabia - massive, MASSIVE quantities of oil.
Buying products manufactured in China. Quietly going on with
life while the USA’s federal government is borrowing billions and
billions and billions and billions and billions and billions
and billions and billions and billions of dollars. Currently,
there’s no military draft going on in the USA. That might change.
It might change, given the ” unique ” circumstances the leadership of
Rumsfeld/Gates/Rove/Obama/Biden/Cheney/Clinton/Powell/Rice/Clinton/Bush developed on the USA’s taxpayers’ behalf.
The employees of businesses who manufacture bullets, guns, uniforms, flags,bombs, tanks,
helicopters, planes, plastic limbs, caskets, etc. etc. are willing
to earn a living by continuing this nation’s wars.
What would happen if, during the time that the USA’s military is run by Commander-In-Chief Obama, the volunteers that the USA’s federal government is now depending upon decide, en masse, to teach
Creative Writing to fourth-graders instead, or be nannies and
organically-grown lawn trimmers ? What’s the plan for
if that happens ?
Ooooooops.
I am just sayin’
Timothy R. Anderson
12 August 2009, 12:05 pm