Blackwater aka John Smith Inc. aka Your Neighborhood Security Guy aka…
Blackwater has painted itself into the same corner the Moonies have been painted into since the early 1970s. When your name is already a laughingstock among billions of people, but you don’t want to stop doing what you’re doing — make up a new name. And then another new name. And another one. And another one.
Nobody wants to do business with a gang of inbred thugs with low IQs, quick tempers and machine guns coming out of their ears. First Blackwater changed its name to Xe. Didn’t help. Now they’ve got about thirty shell companies and subsidiaries. Thirty little Blackwaters, multiplying and spreading like an infection.
It’s surprising the mainstream “media” even picked up this story. But at least they slipped it in during a three-day weekend. We’re all familiar with the Friday News Dump. I don’t know what you call it when an important story gets run on the Saturday before Labor Day.
These thirty innocent little Blackwaterettes are still trying to get millions of dollars worth of government contracts. Some have succeeded; some haven’t. But at least three of them have been hired by the Pentagon and the CIA. XPG and Greystone are two of the Miniature Blackwaters that got CIA contracts.
In Berkeley during the early ‘70s there was a local (or so I thought) innocuous-seeming New Age group called The Ideal City. They were sort of pushy, but harmless. They always had that same vapid smile that Jesus Freaks had back then, and they kept trying to get people to visit them at their headquarters in Boonville, CA.
Years later I saw an article about the Moonies, saying they use a lot of different names since nobody will have anything to do with the Moonies. The article had a long list of group names that were Moonies in disguise, and The Ideal City was on the list.
Let’s hope somebody will start looking a little deeper when Mom ‘n’ Pop Security or We Protect Your Family tries to get a government contract.
Labels: Blackwater, Greystone, Ideal City, Moonies, Xe, XPG
posted by Tom Harper @ 3:21 PM
9 Comments:
Hell, nobody even knows the name Blackwater to begin with, those other covers will assure near anonymity. Good thing we have Jeremy Scahill on our side.
Well somebody had to know as all bidders of Intelligence contracts must be investigated.
Also in the 70's there was this group of fresh faced white kids who went around my Junior College trying to recruit kids for their "meetings", It was found out later is was another branch of the Unification Church.
Of Course Rev. Moon, a Korean Minister who makes his millions manufacturing arms and has called himself the reincarnation of Jesus, has been in good stead with this country since he bought and ran the Conservative Washington Times and denotes millions to right wing causes.
So he brain washes a few kids, so what? They would have been junkies anyway!
Erik
They have even gone as far as moving corporate HQ to Dubai. Guess what Dubai does not have with the US? Ok, you don't have to guess, I'll tell you. They don't have any kind of extradition treaties with us and they also can get away with paying taxes in the US. Prince has come under some investigation because of a couple of murders and shortly thereafter decided he had to move his family and business out of the country. The fact that DoS is still using them is unbelievable to me.
It was like Pandora's Box was opened, wasn't it? Here's this mercenary company, splits itself into a million pieces and those parts will never be fully contained again. So, when eventually Iraq is empty of US presence (and it will be, eventually), will those be the asshats engaging in nation building?
Xe, under all aliases, should be denied government contracts, period!
Seems like another version of the old shell game. Guess which shell the nut is hiding under?
Dave: That's true. Since I follow the news, I keep forgetting that most people don't.
Erik: There were a lot of Moonie organizations during the '70s that all used different names. I keep meaning to look at the Washington Times, just for entertainment.
Jess: Dubai, huh. How conveeenient. I can't believe our government is still hiring him. Actually, yes I can.
Bee: I suppose Blackwater thugs will be in Iraq and all over the Middle East for generations; sort of like the descendants of Nazi fugitives that are still in South America.
TC: Damn right.
Lew: A shell game, that's it.
Even when we had proactive oversight and regulation that was worth a damn, there was always a bunch of crooked operators of many kinds of businesses bilking customers, running their companies off a cliff and then going out of business, often in bankruptcy. Before you know it, they get back in business under a different name, sometimes in a different state.
What's especially interesting is that these shady operators have a special talent for feeding at the public trough for large amounts of ill-gotten gains.
One of the network newsmagazines had an interesting expose of an operator who ran several scam businesses in the 1980s and 1990s, and got filthy rich doing it. In one, he ran a school for big-rig truck drivers, and specialized in getting students who qualified for GI Bill education funding, federal career-change training funds, and so on. Trouble was, the training was substandard in practice and his "schools" had a way of shutting down after a whole lot of people had paid, leaving the students without full training, certification or anything of value. The guy was usually back in business within three or four months in a neighboring state.
They had the attorney general of one state saying how this guy knew just how to stay one step ahead of the law, and how badly he wanted to bust the guy, but couldn't.
I'm sure what the Blackwater offspring are doing is even harder to nail down and put a stop to. But note how they have feasted at the public trough, and want more and more of that good taxpayer money.
What the Obama administration should do — and could do by executive order — is say that from now on, our embassies, consulates, missions, etc., will be guarded by Marines, Army military police or special forces troops, if necessary. But no more private contractors, period.
SW: This trucking school operator you're talking about, was his name Erik Prince :)
"What the Obama administration should do — and could do by executive order" -- unfortunately, you could fill an encyclopedia with things Obama could and should do. But I agree, no more private contractors doing what the military has already been trained to do.
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