War for Profit: Implications of the Growing Private Security Industry

They not only work regarding battlefield operations, but also offer knowledge and strategies on how to attack and defend in different types of conflicts.

BYMARTHA GARCIA
DECEMBER 6, 2023


The private security industry mostly entails Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC) which offer military services all around the world to national governments, international organizations and non-state actors in exchange for monetary profits. They engage in various activities, from conducting small training missions to deploying combat units comprising several hundred trained soldiers armed with some of the best weaponry, including tanks and attack helicopters. However, they not only work regarding battlefield operations, but also offer knowledge and strategies on how to attack and defend in different types of conflicts.

For most of the 20th century, the privatization of war was not a viable option and nearly all of the use of military power was restricted to state agencies, yet the Cold War changed it all. By the end of 1991, the market was full with military specialists and armament with no immediate use anymore. Additionally, several small-scale wars and civil armed conflicts erupted around the globe, mainly in Africa. Consequently, Private Military and Security Companies gained strength and became popular. Companies from the U.S. and United Kingdom, such as Sandline International, even gained popularity worldwide. Today, more than 150 private military companies exist and offer their services in around 50 countries. The size of the industry is quickly evolving: by 2020, 223 billion dollars worth of services were sold; an amount estimated to double by 2030.

Within this framework, many politicians and government officials seem to support the precision and effectiveness of PMSCs, but there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered and situations to be acknowledged for this to be true. For starters, Private Military and Security Companies are bound by the laws of the country where their operations are established. Nonetheless, the legality of their actions becomes a subject of scrutiny when they operate in regions beyond their home country. Some of these companies are no strangers to violating international humanitarian and human rights laws, as long as they meet the needs of their clients so they can get paid.

For example, in 2004 muslim prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison in the hands of personnel from the United States’ contractor CACI International were brutally tortured; soldiers even took pictures with the detainees making fun of them. Despite that, CACI International received no punishment, asked the accusers for a refund due to legal expenses, and continued to carry out contracts with the U.S. worth 23 million dollars. In the same context, the privatization of the United States army itself is a confusing and concerning issue. There are no concrete laws still, hence, it is difficult to prosecute those who commit crimes; and even so, it is rarely done. In 2019, it was reported that around half of the Department of Defense allocations were spent in paying private contractors. In like manner, it is widely unknown the backgrounds, context, locations and activities of Private Military and Security Companies even though they outnumber soldiers. On numerous occasions, there were several PMSCs active in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the same time employing over 200,000 private contractors’ personnel. These contractors originated from various countries, including Nepal, Serbia, South Africa, Fiji, Chile, and nearby nations in the Middle East. Limited information was available regarding their past training, employment background, or criminal records.

Likewise, another concerning inquiry is the known employment of mercenaries by PMSCs as soldiers and strategy personnel. The international market for mercenaries and private military contractors is exceeding 100 billion dollars, and discerning a clear difference between the two is becoming more and more difficult every time. Mercenaries are more powerful and organized than state officials would like to admit. Nowadays, groups of mercenaries are called private armies and they possess the same skill set as PMSCs; the main difference is who they agree to work for, but even then there is no clear line. As a result, in April of 2005, the United Nations came up with Resolution 2005/2 on the use of mercenaries within armies or as soldiers. The document urges all states to be vigilant regarding the employment of mercenaries done by private companies offering international military consultancy and security services. Also, in September of 2008, the Montreux Document was published by Switzerland and the International Committee of the Red Cross with recommendations so states can regulate PMSCs properly.

As a case point, Sierra Leone is one of the countries with the most negative consequences due to the intervention of Private Military and Security Companies. This case study demonstrates how self-interested the private security industry truly is. Executive Outcomes and Sandline International were both involved in the civil war of the country, which took place from 1991 to 2002, employed by the government. Their operations were executed on the beliefs of working regarding seven sectors: competence, effectiveness, flexibility, field cooperation with regular forces, cost efficiency, impact on national military and political control over contractors. The government wanted to fight off rebel forces, nevertheless, the methods employed and taught by the private sector personnel and soldiers were, questionable at best, inhumane at worst. Serious ethical concerns were signaled by those involved in the armed conflict, but what caused the most commotion was the use or mercenarism. Mercenaries fought against rebel groups as part of the PMSCs soldiers, and paramilitary groups as well. So much so, that some scholars even called and referred to PMSCs at the time as mercenary companies.

Partially, due to what happened in Sierra Leone, and many other countries around those years such as Papua New Guinea also with Sandline International involvement, the International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries was published by the United Nations (UN) in 2001. Even so, the United States, along with other nations possessing substantial military forces such as China and Russia, dismissed the characterization of Private Military and Security Companies’ activities as mercenary and refrained from endorsing and ratifying the convention. As a result, still today, the employment of PMSCs creates a situation where states can engage in otherwise illegal warfare activities, while assigning accountability for such actions to the growing private security industry. Private Military and Security Companies particularly those operating in Africa, continue to be implicated in several human rights violations.

Furthermore, Private Military and Security Companies, impose a huge challenge for international law and international relations. Most of international diplomacy bets for law prohibiting the use of force within international relations, but traditionally is only addressed to states. There is still no proper regulation for PMSCs as worldwide actors and their entire sector. The predominant trend is spearheaded by four countries, collectively constituting approximately 70% of the market: the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and South Africa. Correspondingly, the U.S. is home of the largest Private Military and Security Companies in the world, as well as a major client, and still, there is no individual law in the United States that comprehensively addresses the complete range of services provided by these companies. Therefore, American contractors often market their services overseas with minimal supervision. It is urgent for laws to cover the entire sector, but mainly three aspects of this industry: limitations and implications for contracting states (countries hiring PMSCs), territorial states (countries where PMSCs operate), and home states (countries where PMSCs are headquartered).

Private Military and Security Companies are becoming so relevant that even the United Nations have employed them. From 2012 to 2017, the UN self-reported a total of 166 million dollars paid for PMSCs services. The United Nations frequently justifies its dependence on PMSCs by pointing to gaps in both quantity and quality within traditional peacekeeping forces. It is believed that private military contractors’ services compensate for internal incapacities and these faults to be addressed by the expertise and efficiency of private companies. However, since there are no clear laws neither for PMSCs and international organizations’ relationship, this becomes dangerous, mainly by challenging the legitimacy of the United Nations within the international arena.

In nations such as Afghanistan and Somalia, the UN is cautious about depending on local police forces. Hence, the organization turns to PMSCs to safeguard its personnel and facilities, while helping with combat strategies. Regardless, this decision did not turn as expected, nor resulted as wished. Peacekeeping operations are starting to turn into a lobbying industry for military powers and civilians’ wellbeing is getting caught in the middle. Similarly, in 2011, the UN Department of Safety and Security began crafting a policy proposal that provides suggestions for adopting more responsible and unified contracting practices with Private Military and Security Companies. The extent to which this initiative, once completed, will find acceptance and support across the international organization remains uncertain.

Governments and international organizations or non-state actors frequently employ PMSCs motivated by factors like cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and the ability to tap into specialized expertise and advanced technology. This alters the distribution of military power, moving it away from conventional state-centric frameworks, thereby prompting worries about accountability and adherence to international standards. The increasing dependence on private entities adds intricacies to decision-making processes, potentially aligning state interests with corporate interests. Primarily, the services offered by these companies are distinct from any other industry. Comparable to firearms, they pose significant dangers and can be highly destructive when misused. For instance, the U.S., Russia, China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates have employed the private military industry to carry out ruthless regimes bypassing all legal restrictions. The rapid expansion and normalization of the use of PMSCs has allowed numerous bad actors to exploit it, as it essentially trades not just in weapons but also in knowledge. They offer a scapegoat for governments and non-state actors to surpass domestic and international laws to obtain their personal bidding. As a result, there is a dangerous gap and huge incomprehension regarding this evolving threat.


Martha Garcia Torres Landa has a bachelor's degree in International Relations at the Tecnologico de Monterrey University in Queretaro, Mexico. During her undergraduate degree she has specialized in conflict and peace studies. Likewise, she has taken several creative writing courses and workshops in both Mexican universities and abroad. Her research interests include feminism, social activism, World History and Human Rights.

SEE

Moral Turpitude Is Spelled Blackwater

IRAQ- THIS WAR IS ABOUT PRIVATIZATION

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: War! What's it Good For? Profit 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for GANGSTER STATE 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CONTRACTORS 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

Dutch F-16s were sold to a private military company in Florida, USA

By TOC On Jul 5, 2021

AMSTERDAM, BM,  – The Dutch Ministry of Defense has announced the sale of twelve Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcons to Draken International LLC., a US company headquartered at Lakeland Linder International Airport, Florida.

Draken, with a fleet of used military aircraft, offers air support, flight training, air threat simulation, electronic warfare, and air refueling. Draken employees also conduct research and testing for the US Department of Defense, defense contractors, and aerospace companies.

It is noted that the delivery of F-16 fighters and related equipment to Draken International will begin in 2022. The agreement includes an option to resell an additional 28 F-16s. The second group of fighters is expected to be phased out of the Netherlands by May 2024.

As we reported in May, the American private company Top Aces, a private Air Force company, has acquired a 4th generation F-16 fighter and will be the new strike force of the private military. Top Aces and F-16 go down in history as the first private army to acquire this type of fighter.

The delivery of the four second-hand F-16A / B ‘Netz’ fighters, which belonged to the Israeli Air Force, took place earlier this year, and the first test flight took place this month.

Top Aces is a private US air force operating various warplanes. The Pentagon often hires this company to support the regular US Air Force in different parts of the world. Top Aces is expecting to continue to support the Pentagon’s ground, air, and naval operations with the new acquisition.

There are many private armies in the world. The most famous Russian private army, for example, is Wagner. Unlike his American counterparts, however, Wagner operated primarily on third-generation fighters, such as improved versions of the MiG-29.
The private air force receives large contracts with the Pentagon

In the United States and the production of weapons technology, private companies are another profitable business. The Pentagon has never hidden the use of such services. In 2020, for example, it became clear which private sector companies will provide support to US troops around the world.

Draken International, Airborn Tactical Adventure Company, and Tactical Air Support were funded for the next five years by nearly $ 430 million, each with a specific mission. The funds will go mainly to train new personnel enlisted in the US Army, and for this purpose, the companies will use five air bases selected by the Pentagon.

Separately, the United States is providing about $ 6.4 billion to other private companies with more specific and dangerous missions around the world. Analysts at The Drive say the business is starting to multiply. It is only a matter of time before seeing the first fifth-generation fighter in the private air force. Will it be an F-22 or an F-35? Time will tell.

The rise of mercenary armies in Africa

More African countries are turning to foreign security companies to protect leaders or deploy them in conflict zones. However, criticism of the use of mercenaries, who some accuse of impunity, is growing louder.

A number of African leaders are opting for foreign private security firms for protection

They protect influential African leaders and their properties, secure foreign investments, and intervene in intra-African conflicts — usually without regard for losses.

Foreign private military companies are being deployed in more and more crisis-ridden countries in Africa.

But many mercenaries do not shy away from crimes and human rights violations, according to a recently published study by the Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security (GRIP), an independent research institute based in Brussels.

"Private military companies have increased their power and influence in many African countries over the past few years," Amandine Dusoulier, author of the GRIP study, told DW.

She warned that in some African countries, the [mercenary groups] had become a kind of state within a state, thereby threatening the countries' sovereignty.

Russian private security company Wagner Group has increased its presence in Africa

Shadowy mercenary missions

It is still difficult to estimate the number of private soldiers on the African continent. Many of these companies operate in the shadows, says Jade Andrzejewski of the French Observatory for International Relations, OERI. "There is no detailed information about private military companies operating internationally."

Andrzejewski told DW that the companies often operate unofficially and camouflage their activities.

The shadowy Russian mercenary group, Wagner, reportedly working in Libya, Mozambique, Sudan, the Central African Republic and Mali, is the main object of criticism.

Wherever Wagner mercenaries appear, they make negative headlines. But other private military and security companies — including those from the US and Europe — are also active in Africa and do not always take human rights seriously either, according to the GRIP study published in March 2022.

The US' Blackwater private security firm was accused of human rights violations in Iraq

UN concerns

Last September, a United Nations working group also expressed concern about "the increasing involvement of private military and security providers in humanitarian operations."

The UN group called for a "binding international legal framework" for private security companies.

In its report, the UN working group recalls human rights violations committed in the past by private military companies in various regions of the world. 

For example, in 2007, guards from the US security firm Blackwater fired indiscriminately on Iraqi civilians and killed 14 people, including children.

These atrocities made international headlines. But similar atrocities are still being committed, including and especially in Africa, the UN working group said.

"In Africa, the activities of mercenaries continue to be a matter of serious concern," said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on the occasion of the working group's report.

The African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat stressed that the fight against mercenaries must be seen in the context of promoting peace and security on the continent.

AU President Mahamat says mercenary groups must contribute to Africa's peace

Wagner, DAG, Asgaard & Co.

The list of accusations against private security companies is long: Mercenaries from the Russian Wagner Group have repeatedly committed serious human rights violations against civilians in the Central African Republic, among other places, according to the United Nations document.

The Dyck Advisory Group (DAG) is also in the pillory. The Mozambican government had hired the South African security firm to combat Al-Shabaab jihadist violence in Cabo Delgado in the north of the country.

The UN paper said that instead DAG operatives killed civilians indiscriminately in June 2020 and did not distinguish between civilian and military targets.

US companies CACI and Academi are among the most prominent private military companies present on the African continent, apart from Russia's Wagner Group. 

In addition, the French company Secopex, Great Britain's Aegis Defence Services and G4S are also active in Africa. Others are Omega Consulting Group from Ukraine, South Africa's Dyck Advisory Group, and from Germany, Xeless.

Germany's mercenary involvement

OERI expert Andrzejewski says most mercenary companies hide their activities

Asgaard, another German private security company, recruits mainly former Bundeswehr soldiers and police officers for security duties. This company is mainly active in Sudan, Libya, Mauritania and Egypt.

The private security industry has a long history on the African continent, says GRIP researcher Dusoulier, whether in the Sahel, Mali, or the Central African Republic.

"This state of affairs is fostered by two factors: the weakness of government institutions in some countries and the continent's wealth of mineral resources," Dusoulier points out.

The OERI expert listed Angola, Sierra Leone, G5 Sahel nations, Sudan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and CAR as some of the African countries that have resorted to the services of private mercenary forces in the past.

But criticism of using mercenaries in Africa is growing. At the African Union summit in early February, the AU commissioner for political affairs, peace, and security, Bankole Adeoye of Nigeria, called for the "complete exclusion of mercenaries from the African continent."

This article was translated from German.

Edited by: Chrispin Mwakideu

Armed Militias Are Taking Trump’s Civil War Tweets Seriously

By Mary B. McCord Wednesday, October 2, 2019


Oathkeepers members at the 2017 Unite the Right Rally
in Charlottesville, Virginia (Source: Flickr/Anthony Crider)

Over the weekend, the pre The president sent a tweet that seemed to warn of civil war if he were to be impeached and removed from office:

....If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress, @FoxNews

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2019


Although the president was quoting Pastor Robert Jeffress’s comments on Fox News, he was adopting them as his own.

It might seem tempting to dismiss this language as of a piece with President Trump’s typical Twitter rhetoric. But it is worth paying particular attention to this tweet—because among the people who read it were militia groups enthusiastic about exactly what Trump portended. And while no violence has yet resulted from the president’s tweet, it would be foolish to underestimate the power of Trump’s comments to call rogue militias to action, particularly if there is an impeachment and he continues to use this rhetoric to fan the flames. In the days after his civil war tweet, he went on to use similarly incendiary language, referring to impeachment proceedings as a “COUP.”

Consider the Oath Keepers group, a far-right armed militia. Calling on its 24,000 Twitter followers to read the president’s whole tweet thread, the Oath Keepers account posted:

Here’s the money quote from that thread. This is the truth. This is where we are. We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859. That’s where we are. And the Right has ZERO trust or respect for anything the left is doing. We see THEM as illegitimate too.@StewartRhodesOK https://t.co/DjB8TY0vCo

— Oath Keepers (@Oathkeepers) September 30, 2019



Before this tweet, the Oath Keepers account tweeted that, under the U.S. Constitution, “the militia (that’s us) can be called forth ‘to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.’ ... “All he has to do is call us up. We WILL answer the call.” Other Oath Keeper tweets also hint at violence: One states that “their favorite rifle is the AR 15.”

According to the Oath Keepers’s webpage, the organization is “a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,’” while declaring that they “will not obey unconstitutional orders.” The Anti-Defamation League, by contrast, describes the group as “an anti-government right-wing fringe organization” whose members have appeared “as self-appointed armed guards” at various places around the country, in defiance of what they deem to be unconstitutional government action. Last month, the group sought “security volunteers” from their membership and “other capable patriots” to escort Trump supporters attending a New Mexico rally “to protect them from potential leftist violence.” And last year, the Oath Keepers announced its “Spartan Training Group program,” with the goal of “form[ing] training groups in as many states as possible” to create “a pool of trained, organized volunteers who will be able to serve as the local militia under the command of a patriotic governor loyal to the Constitution, or if called upon by President Trump to serve the nation” (emphasis in original).

The Oath Keepers are far from the only militia group that vocally supports deploying potential force in aid of the president. In November 2018, after Trump pledged to send up to 15,000 U.S. troops to the border to deal with the approaching caravan of Central American migrants, the militia group known as “The Minuteman Project” published an “URGENT CALL FOR TEXAS BORDER OBSERVATION DUTY” to cover the 2,000-mile border from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas. According to U.S. Army documents obtained by Newsweek at the time, the military expressed its concern internally about the presence of unauthorized militias along the border, warning that protests occurring at points of entry historically had been peaceful, “unless extreme right or left groups attend.” The Minuteman Project’s co-founder, Jim Gilchrist, cautioned potential volunteers that their adversaries were “US-based PROPAGANDA organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, People without Borders” and many more groups like them. He further warned members to “use extreme caution when confronted by mainstream media” because “they are not your friends.”

Earlier this year, after Trump’s reelection campaign repeatedly ran ads quoting Trump’s references to an “invasion” on the southern border, another group—the United Constitutional Patriots—set up camp at the New Mexico/Mexico border. Without any legal authorization, this group assumed the duty of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to stop and detain migrants, all while heavily armed and dressed in military fatigues. In March and April 2019, a spokesperson for the group, Jim Benvie, regularly posted livestream videos on Facebook showing militia members chasing and capturing migrants while armed with assault rifles, and detaining them until they could be turned over to U.S. officials. In other posts, the United Constitutional Patriots described themselves as combatants in a “war” raging along the border due to migrants’ “invasion” of the country and actively sought to recruit people with military or law enforcement experience to join them. One such recruit, upon observing migrants while on “patrol” at the border, reportedly grabbed his AR-15 and asked his fellow militia member, “Why are we just apprehending them and not lining them up and shooting them?” In April, after the group’s “national commander” was arrested on unrelated charges and the Union Pacific Railroad ordered the group off of its property, significant media attention exposed the militia’s activities and it reconstituted itself as the Guardian Patriots, decamped to private land with the owners’ consent, and closed its public Facebook account.

Both of these armed militias took action at least in part in response to Trump’s rhetoric about the need to secure the southern border. Now that the president has invoked the idea of civil war, there is a risk that armed groups will take heed of this language too, whenever the president suggests that it is time.

Federal criminal law prohibits “rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof,” including incitement or assistance to such rebellion or insurrection. It also prohibits conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government, levy war against it or oppose its authority by force. Based on the organization’s declared mission, there’s little doubt that the Oath Keepers would view any impeachment action by congress as “unconstitutional” and therefore not to be obeyed. Although the group’s current tweets come close to calling for rebellion or insurrection should that happen, there’s been no indication that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating. Are the militias drawing up plans for possible civil war, for example? Are they training? Are they stockpiling weapons? These are things that law enforcement should be investigating, whether under federal law or state law.

Although it is widely believed that the Second Amendment protects the right to form private militias, it does no such thing. The Supreme Court made this clear in its 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, explicitly reaffirming its own 1886 holding that “the Second Amendment ... does not prevent the prohibition of private paramilitary organizations.” Indeed, they are prohibited by state constitutional provisions or statutes in all 50 states.

The constitutions of 48 states include provisions that require the military to be at all times subordinate to the civil authority. That means that private, unregulated and unauthorized militias—operating wholly outside of the civilian governmental authority and public accountability—are prohibited by state law. There is good reason for this. As prominent historian and scholar A.E. Dick Howard wrote in 1974 in “Commentaries on the Constitution of Virginia,” the Virginia constitution’s ban on private militias “ensures the right of all citizens ... to live free from the fear of an alien soldiery commanded by men who are not responsible to law and the political process.”

Notably, Virginia was the first state to adopt its own constitution, known then as a Declaration of Rights, in June 1776. According to the operative language in Virginia’s constitution, illustrative of the language used in 47 other state constitutions, “[I]n all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” Last year, in a successful lawsuit against the private militias that usurped legitimate law enforcement authority during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a state judge ruled that, based on this “strict subordination” clause in Virginia’s constitution, “[t]here appears to be no place or authority for private armies or militia apart from the civil authorities and not subject to and regulated by the federal, state, or local authorities.” The case resulted in court orders prohibiting the defendant militias from returning to Charlottesville as part of coordinated, armed groups during rallies, protests, demonstrations and marches.

Other state law criminal provisions also prohibit various types of militia activity. Twenty-eight states prohibit groups of people from associating together as a military unit or parading or drilling together in public with firearms. (It was one of these statutes that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 1886 against a Second Amendment challenge in Presser v. Illinois.) Similarly, 25 states prohibit assembling together to teach, demonstrate, train or practice with firearms, explosives or “techniques” capable of causing injury or death, knowing and intending to further a civil disorder. And another state criminal statute, found in some variation in 12 states (and in the U.S. Code), prohibits the false assumption of the duties of a law enforcement or peace officer or the unauthorized wearing of military uniforms or close imitations thereof. The United Constitutional Patriots’s spokesperson, Jim Benvie, is currently charged in federal court with violations of the federal statute based on his false assumption of the duties of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. And this summer, the Virginia attorney general issued an opinion that heavily armed militias, dressed in fatigues and other military accessories, acting in a coordinated fashion and patrolling a line of citizens waiting to engage with their elected legislators before a special session on gun safety legislation, violate Virginia’s prohibition on the false assumption of law enforcement functions.

The Oath Keepers and other militia organizations are in violation of some of these laws right now. Their existence as private paramilitary units in states with “strict subordination” clauses is prohibited, as it is in states with statutes that prohibit associating together as a military unit or company. Training, instructing or practicing in paramilitary techniques for use in a “civil war” or other uprising is also currently banned in many states. And to the extent the armed militias are showing up in public places asserting authority they don’t have, they are violating state and federal laws criminalizing the false assumption of law enforcement duties.

Some observers may say that the tweets of both the president and the Oath Keepers are simply hyperbole. But the militia movement has shown that it will take action based on the president’s statements. His “civil war” comments were phrased conditionally—dependent on “the Democrats” attempting to remove him from office. State officials and law enforcement, however, do not have to wait for that condition to be fulfilled—or for the president to post new tweets that militias may interpret as calling them to arms—to tackle the potential threat posed by militias. Governors may issue cease and desist orders based on their state constitutions, law enforcement may initiate investigations based on federal and state criminal statutes, and the public may report instances of current law-breaking by militia members. Authorities would not sit idly by while foreign forces prepare for potential violence against other Americans, and they should not sit idly by while rogue private armies do the same.



Mary B. McCord is currently Legal Director and Visiting Professor of Law at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law School. She is the former Acting Assistant Attorney General and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice and was a long-time federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

REPUBLIC OF SENEGAL
Sinegal is the next African country in Russia's crosshairs

ON DECEMBER 11, 2023
By Louis Auge


Signup to our weekly newsletter to receive exclusive interviews, articles & videos.




We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. You can unsubscribe at any time.


Opposition politician Sonko does not hide his ties and sympathies for Russia.

Worrying news for Senegal: the Russians are sending their private armed groups into the country, as they did in Mali and Burkina Faso, in anticipation of the presidential elections.

Yevgeny Prigozhin

The next presidential elections in Senegal, scheduled for February 24, 2024, risk taking place in a scenario reminiscent of the coups in Burkina Faso and Mali. This hypothesis stems from frank allusions made by pro-Russian influencers. In particular, Kemi Seba declared on his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za5KB4OvZvE:

“You saw that things have changed in Mali, we have greatly contributed to it.” And he continues: “Soon Alassane Ouattara…” Or even that of Senegal: “soon Macky Sall. I'm going to Russia in a few days. »

Today, Senegal is one of five West African countries not to have experienced a coup d'état since its independence from France in 1960 and is generally considered a relatively stable democracy. It is worth taking a close look at what exactly Russian private armies are bringing to African countries at the end of their bayonets. Since the Soviet era, Moscow has actively encouraged anti-colonial sentiment in Africa, taking advantage of real problems arising in relations with the former metropolises. Indeed, these relationships are often difficult and painful. But can Russia offer Africans better relations? Is it seeking anything other than access to natural resources, cheap labour and the expansion of its influence through the puppet regimes it controls?

Russia itself is a cruel and bloodthirsty empire that despises colonized peoples, condemning them to poverty, humiliation and loss of identity. Can Russia do anything other than colonize neighbouring lands, kill those who disagree, and exploit its colonies? As the war in Ukraine clearly shows, Russian imperialism is no better than Western imperialism, and perhaps even worse, because it brings a lot of blood, destruction and savagery.

And in Africa, what have Russian weapons brought to the Central African Republic and Mali? Did the populations, thanks to the intervention of Wagner's troops, live more prosperously, in peace and tranquillity? Has the change of government in these countries, orchestrated by the Russians, brought an improvement? Nothing is less sure. The African continent has seen an obvious increase in the number of coups d'état over the last three years, accompanied by armed raids in Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, Chad and Mali. In each case, the rebellions were not without the involvement of Russian mercenaries. According to Kemi Seba, Nathalie Yamb, Franklin Niamsy and other pro-Russian influencers, the Kremlin is preparing to indirectly intervene also in the elections in Senegal, to facilitate a change of power in the republic.

The regime of the current president of Senegal, Macky Sall, is not ideal. The fact that one of the main opposition leaders, Ousmane Sonko, is being held behind bars on the eve of the elections is a clear indication of the absence of democratic standards. This is what both the Senegalese opposition and Western human rights defenders emphasize. But today it is very important to look further. The mobilization of the opposition for the release of Sonko could provoke mass unrest and plunge the country into chaos and a wave of violence that goes in the direction of the interests of Russian private armies. What is this interest? It is imposing on those in power people who are compatible with Russia's appetites. Let us recall what happened in Mali, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic. Russian flags on armoured personnel carriers brought these countries not freedom, but blood and disaster.

Is Ousmane Sonko the man the Russians need today? There is no certainty on this subject, but the words he said

The Privatization of Torture

The War in Iraq has been called the new face of war in the 21st Century by no less than President Bush.

And what is this new war? It is war by private armies the so called 'contractors', private companies like Halliburton, and now the contracting out and privatization of torture.

Of course when the Market State privatizes war completely we will be in the era of decadence that saw the fall of all great Empires that relied upon mercenary armies, from Carthage to Rome.

AI accuses CIA of using private planes for rendition flights

04/05/2006

In a report issued on Wednesday, Amnesty exposed what it described as a covert operation involving front companies and private aircraft operators to preserve the secrecy of so-called rendition flights.

Son San Joan airport in Majorca

And of course these private planes have been landing at small regional airports in Canada.

Earlier this year, media reports said that American planes believed to be contracted to the CIA made 74 flights to Canada between September 2001 and November 2005, according to documents released to Canadian Press through freedom of information.But Amnesty's Canadian office said that requests to the Liberal government for a review of the allegations met with no response. Amnesty's secretary general, Alex Neve, sent a letter to Stockwell Day, the minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, calling for an investigation by the Tory government.The human rights organization also called for safeguards ensuring that Canadian airports are not used to transfer suspects to countries where they may be held without protection of international law. More flights linked to CIA

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
CIA, torture, privatization, contracting, out, War, Iraq, mercenaries, contractors

War and the Market State

A tip o' the blog to bradspangler.com for drawing my attention to these articles.

Which led to inadvertent connections between two articles. Because again in the syncronistic universe that is the WWW, I was looking for his link to this, Counter-Economics: review of excellent book on smuggling and came across another article, which describes the actual nature of what folks mistakenly call globalization.

The creation of the new market states is the result of NAFTA, the EU, and other new evolving models of contractual corporate and state cooperation. They are the WTO, APEC , etcagreements and meetings that are occuring that have set in motion the evolution of the market state that Bobbitt speaks of below.

The War in the Balkans followed by the war in Afghanistan followed by the war in Iraq is not just the war of Empire and Imperialism but of private armies and private contractors, becoming in effect a state, since they provide privatized functions of the state as I have blogged about.See; War! What's it Good For? Profit

The attack on the Balkans was an attempt to end the last vestiges of State Capitalism and pound the Serbians into submissive acceptance of the privatization of the State through strategic bombing of industries.

It is the same with Iraq. It too was the last state capitalist country in the Middle East that had to be privatized. The other countries were less vulnerable since they are hierarchical societies that had opened their markets to capitalism, while remaining fuedalistic social constructs.

An interesting analysis of this concept of the War of the Market State can be found at Global Guerrillas which reviews this book;

The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History

by Philip Bobbitt

" A new form of the State — the market state – is emerging from this relationship in much the same way that earlier forms since the 15th century have emerged, as a consequence of the sixth great epochal war in modern history.

The “market-state” is the latest constitutional order, one that is just emerging in a struggle for primacy with the dominant constitutional order of the 20th century, the nation-state. Whereas the nation-state based its legitimacy on a promise to better the material well-being of the nation, the market-state promises to maximize the opportunity of each individual citizen. The current conflict is one of several possible wars of the market-states as they seek to open up societies to trade in commerce, ideas, and immigration which excite hostility in those groups that want to use law to enforce religious or ethnic orthodoxy.

A state that privatizes most of its functions will inevitably defend itself by employing its own people as mercenaries-with equally profound strategic consequences. "

So if the exisiting nation states are using private armies, and further privatization due to the transformation of these new models of transnational corporate/state agreements creates the historic conditions for the development of market states then the current conflict called the War on Terror is a conflict between the black market states, such as Bin Laden Inc. against 'legitimate' transnational corporate states like Halliburton USA Inc.

In fact all of the current 'Stan states (Afghanistan, Kyhrigistan, etc.) which were once colonial outposts of the Soviet Union and were not fully developed state capitalist economies are now home to much of the black market. And while they are dictatorships still, they are ones that capitalism finds friendly, and able to do business with. But within these states exists another state, that is international in scope and is linked with organized crime, international intelligence agencies, terrorist networks, drug smugglers. etc. etc.

The way these black market states are funded is through what Libertarians call counter economics. Piracy by any other name. The very origins of the primitive accumulation of capital under fuedalism that gave rise to banking, trade and eventually full blown capitalism.

The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China

It is useful at this point to quote from the book review of Illicit from Global Guerrillas

Moises Naim, the editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, has an excellent new book called Illicit on the rise of global smuggling networks. It's a must read.

Globalization Melts the Map

Moises copiously documents how globalization and rampant interconnectivity has led to the rise of vast global smuggling networks. These networks live in the space between states. They are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He shows how these networks make money through an arbitrage of the differences between the legal systems (and a desire to prosecute) of our isolated islands of sovereignty. He also shows how their flagrant use of corruption can enable them to completely take over sections of otherwise functional states.

By all accounts the amount of money involved is immense. In aggregate, the networks that form this parallel "black" global supply chain, have a "GDP" of $1-3 trillion (some estimates are as high as 10% of the world's economy) and are growing seven times faster than legal trade. These networks supply the huge demand for:

• Drugs (both recreational and pharmaceutical).
• Undocumented workers (for corporations, home services, and the sex trade).
• Weapons (from small arms to RPGs, many come from cold war arsenals).
• Rip-offs of intellectual property (from digital content to brand named consumer goods).
• Laundered and unregulated financial flows.

This supply chain isn't run by the vertically integrated cartels and mafias of the last century (those hierarchies are too vulnerable, slow, and unresponsive to be competitive in the current environment). The new undifferentiated structures are highly decentralized, horizontal, and fluid. They specialize in cross border movement and therefore can handle all types of smuggling simultaneously. They are also very reliant on modern technologies to rapidly transport and coordinate their global operations.

I would also reccomend Robert Naylors Hot Money, though dated, from the 1970's, it was one of the first to talk about International Finance and the black market and its impact on the bank meltdowns like BCIC and the connection of the banking industry to the black markets and their involvement in the debt crisis in the developing world. It was published by Black Rose books. A new edition is out as well he has written another work along similar lines, critiquing international relations, crime and hot money, entitled the Wages of Crime.

Thus the War on Terror is a war on two fronts. One to smash and transform the last outposts of state capitalism in Europe and the Middle East, and a war on the unregulated market.

Global Guerrillas says; The similarity between these commercial networks and those of modern terrorism (my global guerrillas) is not incidental.

Nor is it incidental that the American Empire is sowing the seeds of its own self destruction, not only in expensive military operations that rack up thousands of corpses and trillions in deficits, but in the fact that like the British Empire before it in order to finance these wars, it too relies on the black market. The British Empire set itself up for decline as it persued its Opium Wars against China. The US set itself up in the 1980's providing stinger missles to the Mujahadin in Afghanistan who paid for them in opium money. Who transported them through smuggling routes, still with us today used by Bin Laden Inc.

And quoting Bobitt again;
The current conflict is one of several possible wars of the market-states as they seek to open up societies to trade in commerce, ideas, and immigration which excite hostility in those groups that want to use law to enforce religious or ethnic orthodoxy. States make war, not brigands; and the Al Qaeda network is a sort of virtual state, with a consistent source of finance, a recognized hierarchy of officials, foreign alliances, an army, published laws, even a rudimentary welfare system. It has declared war on the U.S. for much the same reason that Japan did in 1941: because we appear to frustrate its ambitions to regional hegemony.

Capitalism has outgrown the Nation State. It reguired it for its period of ascendency. Now that it is the real domination of everything , of all social relations it needs a new state, a market state. One that can continually destroy its overproductive capacities. As capitalism evolves better technonological production, increases productivity and reduces the need for real labour, it amasses capital, which becomes unproductive. It is here that the new market state can use this capital to create permanent war, small scale localized war, that does not threaten its global expansion, but allows it areas for wide scale destruction of productive capabilities to offset its cancerous growth.

If war is privatized and all state functions are privatized, then the individual is no longer identified as a citizen, or as a wage labourer, but as 'free' individual, a contractor in a market state. Capitalism will have evolved to its logical conlusion; that we remain wage slaves but no longer to a particular boss or business but to the market. Our alientation will be complete. And it will be a society of barbarism, of all against all.

Labour 'is and remains the presupposition' of capital (Marx, 1973, p. 399). Capital cannot liberate itself from labour; it depends on the imposition of necessary labour, the constituent side of surplus labour, upon the world's working classes. It has to posit necessary labour at the same time as which it has to reduce necessary labour to the utmost in order to increase surplus value. This reduction develops labour's productive power and, at the same time, the real possibility of the realm of freedom.

The circumstance that less and less socially necessary labour time is required to produce, for want of a better expression, the necessities of life, limits the realm of necessity and so allows the blossoming of what Marx characterised as the realm of freedom. Within capitalist society, this contradiction can be contained only through force (Gewalt), including not only the destruction of productive capacities, unemployment, worsening conditions, and widespread poverty, but also the destruction of human life through war, ecological disaster, famine, the burning of land, poisoning of water, devastation of communities, the production of babies for profit, the usage of the human body as a commodity to be exchange or operated on, the industrialisation of human production through cloning etc.

The existence of Man as a degraded, exploited, debased, forsaken and enslaved being, indicates that capitalist production is not production for humans - it is production through humans. In other words, the value form represents not just an abstraction from the real social individual. It is an abstraction that is 'true in practice' (cf. Marx, 1973, p. 105). The universal reduction of all specific human social practice to the one, some abstract form of labour, from the battlefield to the cloning laboratory, indicates that the separation which began with primitive accumulation appears now in the biotechnical determination to expropriate human beings. Capitalism has gone a long way. Indifferent to life, it 'was satisfied with nothing more than appropriating an excessive number of working hours' (Dalla Costa, 1995a, p. 21). It is now engaged in the production of human-workers.

The Permanence of Primitive Accumulation: Notes on Social Constitution

Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

I came across this well written essay at Dissident Voices, an anarchist-left compiliation blog. Its about Hong Kong, by Chohong Choi;Hong Kong’s “Free Market”: Someone Pays

Very lengthy, like some of the stuff I write here. But despite its length it's very informative. Well worth your time. I thought I would give you a flavour of it by presenting his conclusion.

And because Somalia is back in the news of late, and is the only 'real free market economy' with no government. I thought it was interesting that he concluded on that point as well. More on this at the end of Chohong Choi's missive.

Be Careful What You Wish for

Business always speculates on how much better it would be if government would just get out of the way and let free enterprise do its thing. It longs for some mythical time in the past when the businessman was on his own and things worked out fine. It sure hopes not. For it is the biggest user and beneficiary of public facilities like the courts, education, fire services, hospitals, infrastructure, the military, and the police. Not only does business rely on these resources, its employees and customers do too. Also, business utters nary a word when the government goes to bat for it by enacting favorable legislation and signing trade deals with foreign countries. It knows who hold the keys to power, and spares no effort to ingratiate itself with these movers and shakers, as well as to find as many backers as it can to represent its interests in the government.

It is not always a bad thing that Hong Kong’s economy is not as free as advertised. Its public facilities and regulations help ensure stability in the city and make it a livable and investable place. That is how a strong community is built. Hong Kong still suffers from crowdedness, pollution, stress, and a widening rich-poor gap, but its public sector, while not without fault, has succeeded more than it has failed. Even as Hong Kong’s business sector continues to preach the advantages of the “free market,” it is silently thankful for (just to name a few) its affordable public healthcare, which releases it from straining its resources to provide its employees with basic health coverage like employers in the U.S., and for its public safety measures, which spare it the expense of having to hire high-priced private security contractors to protect its assets à la post-Katrina New Orleans.

If Hong Kong was chosen as the site of the last WTO conference because it appeared to practice free trade and free market economics better than anyone else, then that makes sense. Free trade talks and deals are mostly razzle-dazzle anyway, as those players who can afford to flout the terms of any agreement do so with near impunity. Insiders and those at the short end of these pacts know better. Markets and trade are never free. Someone reaps the rewards, someone pays for the rewards, and someone certainly pays for its consequences.

If the closest thing to a truly free market is what you seek, then Hong Kong is not it. That place, according to one journalist, would more likely be Somalia. But there is no invisible hand at work in Somalia. If anything is invisible, it would be a functional national government, which has not been seen since 1991 (hence, no government regulations), as well as foreign aid (thus, no strings attached). Private enterprise exists in Somalia, and some of it works quite well given the circumstances. But even those in the private sector await the return of a working central government, which can help ensure stability and provide the framework for a smoother operation of society. Until then, rules are made by word of mouth and usually enforced at the point of a gun (the visible fist).

Any chance that the next WTO conference will be held in Mogadishu?

Heh, heh not likely eh. Recently some liberaltarians have been singing, or ringing, the praises of the free market in Somalia. Seriously, they have the largest cell/mobile phone system in the world. All set up amongst freely competing capitalists and their private armies, it make's the free (booty) marketers over at the Von Mises Institute drool. Unfortunately such anarchic capitalism is based on the primitive accumulation of capital, in otherwords brigandism and piracy. Gee just like the foundation of Hong Kong as the distribution centre of Opium into China, in the 19th Century.

Unfortunately the current minarchist capitalist free for all in Somalia while successful in producing a mobile phone business has not solved the problem of the current drought affecting the Horn of Africa. In fact the free market brigands and pirates have been detrimental to the attempts by the UN to get food to the starving masses.

Conflict and lawlessness in the Horn of Africa are making it far harder to get aid to those who need it. In particular, Somalia's pirates and warlords are disrupting shipping routes and delaying food deliveries.

The biggest security problems are in Somalia, which has had no central government for 15 years.

Even in the best of times in Somalia, when there's plenty of rain, warlords often wage battles. But in a time of drought, specialists warn that the stresses of survival will further unravel local power structures, creating new opportunities for havoc from freelance bandits, militias, and perhaps Islamic extremists aligned with Al Qaeda.

''Somalia has been an extraordinarily difficult country for the last 15 years," Christian Balslev Olesen, UNICEF's Somalia representative, said in an interview in Nairobi. ''We've had flooding, drought, conflict, war, and general insecurity. But we haven't seen anything like this drought for the past 25 years. . . . The worst scenario is that we might be going into huge drought with some kind of high-scale conflict. And bringing food into a security situation like Somalia for 2 million people is going to be a nightmare."

Last year, pirates hijacked two World Food Program ships carrying donated food. US Navy ships now patrol off the coast, but most shipping companies have refused to deliver to ports in Somalia. That means it takes up to a week longer for each shipment of food to come from the port in Mombasa, Kenya, and then be trucked to south and central Somalia

A woman and a girl stood in a field outside Wajid, Somalia, that has not produced a crop of sorghum, a grassy grain that is one of the foundations of the Somali diet, in two years. (John Donnelly/ Globe Staff)

Somalia is an excellent example of Anarcho-Capitalism in action. That is the theory that all state services could be privatized, including having private armies and police forces. Well that's Somalia. Look there for the future of this flawed ideology.

You see capitalism needs a State to function properly, as does business. Without the State, capitalism returns to its original state; fuedalism in decay. As Yemen has shown as well as Somalia.

Today, Yemen itself is on a dagger's edge, precariously balanced between forces of modernization and the pull of powerful traditionalists. In the West, Yemen may be best known for its recent history of tribal kidnappings of tourists, the 2000 al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole, and the ubiquitous chewing of khat, a mildly narcotic leaf. But the government has helped roll up several al Qaeda cells and, at least until a recent prison break, generally allayed western fears that terrorists would find sanctuary in the large tracts of lawless, tribal lands.
In deep denial. These days, though, Yemen is facing its own crisis, the result of deepening poverty and a government in denial about the depth of reforms needed to survive. In the past year, the United States and the World Bank have slashed their modest aid programs to Yemen, increasingly fed up with a bureaucracy that is one of the most corrupt in the world. "Yemen is teetering on the edge of failed statehood," warns one U.S. official. "It will either become a Somalia or get serious about transforming." For a nation awash in guns and crisscrossed by well-worn smuggling routes, the threat is grave.

And the capitalist state is not just any kind of government, it is a specific kind of government that regulates the market in favour of stability for the creation of monopolies. As the history of Hong Kong and of course British and American capitalism shows. This is the history that the right wing of course has always revised, whether it is the Heritage Foudation or the Von Mises Institute.

For as Herr Dr. Marx said the history of the world is the history of class struggle which the right has interpreted as the history of the world is the history of people clashing with the state. Which is only partially true, for in this assessment of the world, they forget people have developed self-government and that the masses revolutionary struggles have not been just over what kind of government should exist, but how the social relations of society should function.

In other words its not enough to just Smash the State in a fuedalistic society or a capitalist one. It is essential to change the means of production and distribution. The apologists for capitalism, see Somalia as a free market. It maybe, but it is not a self governing market, it is far from a society of Liberty, Equality and Solidarity.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
minarchism, anarchism, left-libertarian, libertarian, Somalia, Hong, Kong, Free, Market, capitalism, fuedalism, brigands, pirates, drought, Africa,

WSJ Criticizes Contracting Out

My my what a difference a decade makes. The Wall Street Journal today published this. Yes the Wall Street Journal, the voice of Rupert Murdock, the voice of corporate capitalism in America sounding like Mother Jones magazine. The irony is that contracting out government services has created a welfare state for private companies, and an increase in the size of government. The exact opposite of what the neo-copns claimed it would do.

Government by Contractor Is a Disgrace
Many jobs are best left to federal workers.
Back in 1984, the conservative industrialist J. Peter Grace was telling whoever would listen why government was such a wasteful institution.
One reason, which he spelled out in a book chapter on privatization, was that "government-run enterprises lack the driving forces of marketplace competition, which promote tight, efficient operations. This bears repetition," he wrote, "because it is such a profound and important truth."
And repetition is what this truth got. Grace trumpeted it in the recommendations of his famous Grace Commission, set up by President Ronald Reagan to scrutinize government operations looking for ways to save money. It was repeated by leading figures of both political parties, repeated by everyone who understood the godlike omniscience of markets, repeated until its veracity was beyond question. Turn government operations over to the private sector and you get innovation, efficiency, flexibility.
What bears repetition today, however, is the tragic irony of it all. To think that our contractor welfare binge was once rationalized as part of an efficiency crusade. To think that it was supposed to make government smaller.
As the George W. Bush presidency grinds to its close, we can say with some finality that the opposite is closer to the truth. The MBA president came to Washington determined to enshrine the truths of "market-based" government. He gave federal agencies grades that were determined, in part, on how abjectly the outfits abased themselves before the doctrine of "competitive sourcing." And, as the world knows, he puffed federal spending to unprecedented levels without increasing the number of people directly employed by the government.
Instead the expansion went, largely, to private contractors, whose employees by 2005 outnumbered traditional civil servants by four to one, according to estimates by Paul Light of New York University. Consider that in just one category of the federal budget -- spending on intelligence -- apparently 70% now goes to private contractors, according to investigative reporter Tim Shorrock, author of "Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing."
Today contractors work alongside government employees all across Washington, often for much better pay. There are seminars you can attend where you will learn how to game the contracting system, reduce your competition, and maximize your haul from good ol' open-handed Uncle Sam. ("Why not become an insider and share in this huge pot of gold?" asks an email ad for one that I got yesterday.) There are even, as Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, D.C., told me, "contractor employees -- lots of them -- whose sole responsibility is to dream up things the government needs to buy from them. The pathetic part is that often the government listens -- kind of like a kid watching a cereal commercial."
Some federal contracting, surely, is unobjectionable stuff. But over the past few years it has become almost impossible to open a newspaper and not read of some well-connected and obscenely compensated contractor foisting a colossal botch on the taxpayer. Contractors bungling the occupation of Iraq; contractors spinning the revolving door at the Department of Homeland Security; contractors reveling publicly in their good fortune after Hurricane Katrina.
At its grandest, government by contractor gives us episodes like the Coast Guard's Deepwater program, in which contractors were hired not only to build a new fleet for that service, but also to manage the entire construction process. One of the reasons for this inflated role, according to the New York Times, was the contractors' standing armies of lobbyists, who could persuade Congress to part with more money than the Coast Guard could ever get on its own. Then, with the billions secured, came the inevitable final chapter in 2006, with the contractors delivering radios that were not waterproof and ships that were not seaworthy.
Government by contractor also makes government less accountable to the public. Recall, for example, the insolent response of Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater, when asked about his company's profits during his celebrated 2007 encounter with the House Oversight Committee: "We're a private company," quoth he, "and there's a key word there -- private."
So you and I don't get to know. We don't get to know about Blackwater's profits, we don't get to know about the effects all this has had on the traditional federal workforce, and we don't really get to know about what goes on elsewhere in the vast private industries to which we have entrusted the people's business.

SEE:
The Failure of Privatization
Another Privatization Failure
Moral Turpitude Is Spelled Blackwater
IRAQ- THIS WAR IS ABOUT PRIVATIZATION
The Neo Liberal Canadian State


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
US, military, pentagon, reinventing-goverment, privatization, contracting-out, scandal, waste, pentagon, costoveruns, Iraq, contractor, privatization, Bush, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, USA, war, KBR, Halliburtona ,infaltion, recession, USeconomy, USA, economy, banks, war, Erik Prince, Iraq, Fallujah, military, Blackwater USA, mercenaries, contractors, Green Zone, economics, Halliburton, Bechtel,