Kelley Vlahos on Erik Prince

The founder of Blackwater, now Xe Services--The Picture of Erik Prince.

(The U.S. Training Center???)

Counterpunch updates

A lot of good articles with the weekend edition:

The Economic Velociraptors By ANDREW COCKBURN
"We Don't Want a Bunch of Angry Teamsters Showing Up at Our Doors!"

The Goat in the Clearing By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Government of Lawyers Spit on Law By SAUL LANDAU
Assassination, Inc.

A Pitiless, Punitive Giant By FRAN SHOR
Dumb Power in the Af-Pak War

Greece Signs Its National Suicide Pact By MARSHALL AUERBACK
The High Priests of Fiscal Rectitude Win Again

Health Insurance Death Spiral By JOSEPH SHER
What the Blue Cross Rate Hike Really Means

Empire of the Sunset By RANDALL AMSTER
The Point of No Return

Obama's Drug War Budget By BILL PIPER
Looking a Lot Like Bush's

How Blackwater Built Morale By MISSY BEATTIE
Strippers, Prostitutes and Murder

Mark Hackard, Blackwater “Crusaders”? As If!

Prince is often called a “conservative Catholic” in the various articles and exposés written on his company’s activities. For all of his supposed traditionalism, he must have had a rather elastic interpretation of the Church’s Just War Doctrine to support a U.S. policy of preemptive war and occupation. Prince’s business decisions place him in the camp of neoconservatives such as George Weigel and Michael Novak, Catholics who embrace globalized modernity and advocate armed social engineering abroad to further its spread.

Judging from his actions, Blackwater’s founder adheres to the widely-held belief that the United States is called to redeem the world through democracy and “free markets.” This way of thought finds America to be the grand instrument of God’s will, which curiously conforms to the interests of U.S. policy and financial elites. Many self-proclaimed religious conservatives misguidedly place their faith in an only nominally “Christian” kingdom of this world rather than the Kingdom of God, and assist the triumph of profane materialism. The Blackwater scandal might just seem like a case of life imitating bad art on the level of a Dan Brown novel. But there is a more unsettling tendency at work here—the appropriation of faith and tradition for profoundly anti-traditional and anti-Christian ends. Erik Prince, envisioning his mercenary company as a successor to the Templar order, could create only a deadly counterfeit.

Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater By RAY MCGOVERN

A different take on Blackwater and PMCs

from John Robb: Is Blackwater evil?

Interview with P.W. Singer about Blackwater

An Interview with P. W. Singer
Privatizing Terror, Outsourcing Diplomacy
By WAJAHAT ALI

Blackwater/HK partnership

Sarge, the official announcement.

Course offerings of Blackwater HK International Training Services include the full spectrum of operator and instructor classes covering HK submachine guns, pistols, and rifles. Armorers’ courses cover current HK weapons and newly developed systems like the HK416 carbine.

As part of the HK and Blackwater relationship, Heckler & Koch accessories, merchandise, and apparel will be sold in the Blackwater “Pro Shop” located at the Moyock, North Carolina training facility. Special edition HK/Blackwater firearms are being developed. HK logo products and accessories will also be sold through the Blackwater web site (www.blackwaterusa.com/proshop).

The new url for the ProShop. (No HK products, yet.)

Interview with Jeremy Scahill

Author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Transcript; mp3

via Lew Rockwell

Is Blackwater really like the fictional Ravenwood of Jericho? Is it really such a threat to freedom and "democracy"? Or are these just fears of leftists and libertarians alike? What is Mr. Scahill's position on the 2nd amendment and gun control?

So is being a mercenary necessarily a bad thing? What then would we say to the Swiss, especially the Swiss Guards? Are most mecenaries men who would do anything for money? Or are they decent, God-fearing Americans? Somewhere in between?

One of his articles, In the Black(water)
other articles