.
(AlertNet/The Nation) – A former Blackwater employee and an ex-U.S. 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.
These allegations, and a series of other charges, are contained in sworn affidavits, given under penalty of perjury, filed late at night on August 3 in the Eastern District of Virginia as part of a seventy-page motion by lawyers for Iraqi civilians suing Blackwater for alleged war crimes and other misconduct. Susan Burke, a private attorney working in conjunction with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is suing Blackwater in five separate civil cases filed in the Washington, DC, area. They were recently consolidated before Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions.
Blackwater defends team in Baghdad shootings
- “Prince views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.
Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to ‘lay Hajiis out on cardboard’. Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince’s employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as ‘ragheads’ or ‘hajiis’.”
Among the additional allegations made by Doe #1 is that “Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq.” He states that he personally witnessed weapons being “pulled out” from dog food bags. Doe #2 alleges that “Prince and his employees arranged for the weapons to be polywrapped and smuggled into Iraq on Mr. Prince’s private planes, which operated under the name Presidential Airlines,” adding that Prince “generated substantial revenues from participating in the illegal arms trade.”
(ABC News) Nov. 14, 2008 – The investigation of the alleged dog food smuggling scheme began last year after two Blackwater employees were caught trying to sell stolen weapons in North Carolina. The two, Kenneth Cashwell and William “Max” Grumiaux pleaded guilty and became government witnesses, according to court documents.
Under State Department rules, Blackwater is prohibited from using certain assault weapons (M4) and silencers in Iraq because they are considered “offensive” weapons inappropriate for Blackwater’s role as a private security firm protecting US diplomatic missions.
“The only reason you need a silencer is if you want to assassinate someone,” said former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou, an ABC News consultant.
Blackwater USA founder and West Michigan native Erik Prince funds a variety of rightwing and religious causes according to a review of grants awarded by Prince’s Freiheit Foundation. Prince, who’s Blackwater has drawn considerable attention for its work in Iraq, post-Katrina New Orleans, and Colombia, also has strong ties to the economic and religious right both through the contributions of his Freiheit Foundation as well as his parents, Edgar and Elsa Prince, who are prominent supporters of the religious right both in West Michigan and on the national level.
I can’t say I’m surprised. I can say that I am relieved that the coalition of white Christian supremacists who rode into Washington on the coattails of a reactionary demagogue were foiled by the sheer incompetence of their plans for world domination. It usually works out that way, though seldom so early in the scheme — just ask the Germans what happened when a faction just as malign but far, far better organized and disciplined hijacked their democracy in 1933.
It’s worth noting how often these horrific state nightmares begin in democratic or otherwise popular movements, generally in reaction to tyranny, real or perceived. The Bolsheviks, the various European fascist parties, the Bush administration. If you look further back, you might as well include the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France and the vast bloodshed of the English civil war.
Every time, the lesson is the same: homicidal maniacs who want to gain the public trust will do so by adopting the trappings of patriotism and, more often than not, piety. Even now, you can see the same failure to understand among the Christian fringe who think Obama is the Antichrist, as if their mythical Antichrist would come to America as a liberal, secular politician. Most likely, he would come as an outspokenly patriotic evangelical preacher, the better to fool the believers. After all, unbelievers like us are already damned.
If we wish to survive as a civilization, or at least a civilization built on our better natures, we must do a much, much better job of educating our children to think critically and skeptically. There are, of course, many reasons to do so, but one of the most important is making sure that they understand that the most dangerous enemies always, always pretend to be your friend. If they did not, they wouldn’t be dangerous, now would they?
.
Prince converted to Roman Catholicism at Easter time in 1992. His family had been members of the Calvinist Dutch Reform Church. Prince’s most important benefactor was fellow conservative Roman Catholic convert L. Paul Bremer, former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American occupation government in Iraq. In August 2003, Blackwater won a $27.7 million contract to provide personal security for Bremer.”
Prince has added some colorful characters to his executive suite. He hired Cofer Black, a former counterterror chief at the CIA (who promised to run down Qaeda leaders until there were “flies on their eyeballs”), and Joseph Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general who was so impressed with von Steuben’s legacy that he put the Prussian general’s family motto (“Always Under the Protection of the Almighty“) on the IG’s official seal.
Prince says his company is being hounded by “trial lawyers” working in cahoots with Democratic congressional staffers. In 2004, four Blackwater contractors were killed, and two were dismembered and burned, in Fallujah, Iraq. When evidence surfaced that their mission (prosaically, to pick up and deliver kitchen equipment) was underarmed and probably ill conceived, the families of the dead soldiers sued Blackwater. After the Fallujah slaughter, Prince reached out to some family members, but then Blackwater turned icily unresponsive. Prince has hired some heavy-duty defense lawyers, including former independent counsel Ken Starr, and countersued the families for $10 million.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Wait’ll you hear about the connections between Prince, far-right European Catholic movements and the Vatican. They make the Israeli secret stuff look minor in comparison.
Oh.
I forgot.
You won’t hear about them.
At least there is an active anti-Israeli imperialism presence in parts of the media and online. Anti-Vatican? Naaaahhhhhh….
The Vatican’s shit not only doesn’t smell…as far as the mass media is concerned, it doesn’t even exist.
Talk about Jewish control of “the media”?
Catholic world population? 1,121,516,000
Jewish world population-14,956,000
Catholic population of the US? 64,621,000
Jewish population of the US-6,452,030
Power comes from the barrel of a cash register, not a gun.
Outnumbered means out-cashed. Especially worldwide.
Do the math.
There are about 75 Catholics for every Jew.
Real coverage of a religion that has capped its internal economic and political info very successfully for several thousand years?
Please.
This story will disappear into the mists of the PermaGov/Intel/Multinational Corporate/Holy Roman Catholic Church NeverNeverLand.
Watch.
Even SuperBarack cannot penetrate past its kryptonite-like infobarriers.
Bet on it.
Watch.
Prince wiill get away with it, just like the Wall Street hustlers have gotten away with it.
Too big.
Maybe a Madoff-like sacrificial lamb will be led out to the killing field, but otherwise?
Naaaaaahhhhhh.
You think the PermaGov got on little Keithie Olbermann about his little (ratings-positive for both hustlers) feud with O’Reailly?
Think about the heat that THIS connection would bring down.
Fuggedaboudit.
Emily Llitella had it right.
Nevermind….
AG
.
Indeed not the numbers that matters, money rules the so-called democracies … there have been some more sacrificial lambs in New Jersey receently.
“He who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind. Repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity for communicating dissent and opposition. This is the formula for political conditioning of the masses.”
Source: Quotes by Joost Meerloo (1956)
≈ Cross-posted from my diary — Dangers of SERE Reverse-Engineering Torture Explained 53 Years Ago by Joost Meerloo ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Numbers are money, Oui.
Especially if they can be mentally and emotionally controlled.
AG
a decent length segment on the Olberman show.