Back in December 2008, plezWorld took a peek into the shadowy and fetid world that is Blackwater International. Five of their mercenary murderers were actually accused of... yep, murder while "on duty" in Iraq. Their case is winding its way through a courtroom in Utah. Their shadowy and fearless leader, Erik Prince, has decided to drag his cash-laden luggage out the backdoor while no one was looking!
CNN.com reports that Prince, founder of the Blackwater Worldwide security firm, announced Monday he has resigned as head of the company, recently renamed Xe. Prince, in an e-mail to employees and independent contractors, said Danielle Esposito will become chief operating officer and executive vice president. Esposito has worked for the firm and its partners for nearly 10 years. Blackwater/Xe's president, Gary Jackson, is also retiring. And the position of CEO will remain open, the company said.
This wouldn't be such a big deal if not for the indictments for murder for five of his employees and the fact that Blackwater/Xe had the largest security contract in Iraq. Incidentally, the US State Department and the Iraqi government declined to renew Blackwater's very lucrative contract in light of the murder indictments. Losing the contract will be a huge blow to Blackwater, which was renamed Xe last month. While the company is privately held, the Iraq contract has been estimated to make up one-third to one-half of its business. Blackwater/Xe has about two dozen aircraft in Iraq, as well as 1,000 personnel.
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plez sez: a show of hands... who thinks their contract would've been renewed had john mccain been elected president? oh yeah, you too?!?
go back to my december post on these characters and see how cocky prince is in the interview with "60 Minutes." he is unrepentant as the blood of the iraqi people drip from his spindly fingers. another bush-cheney crony who is taking a hike with hundreds of millions of dollars to show for it... this is maddening!
On Monday, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment of five former Blackwater security guards on charges of voluntary manslaughter, attempt to commit manslaughter, and weapons violations.
On September 16, 2007, the Blackwater guards in the indictment we involved in a shooting in a Baghdad square that left 17 Iraqis dead. Blackwater International said its guards were protecting a U.S. diplomatic convoy when they came under attack from armed insurgents. The guards returned fire.
An Iraqi investigation called the killings "premeditated murder" and accused the guards of firing on civilians indiscriminately. The first U.S. soldiers to arrive on the scene told military investigators they found no evidence the contractors were fired upon.
Blackwater USA has been called the largest private army in the world but little is known about how it operates. The company has a thousand highly trained and well armed security specialists on the ground in Iraq alone, hired by the U.S. government to protect American officials.
Blackwater has maintained the innocence of its former employees:
"Based on the information available to us, we understand that these individuals acted within the rules set forth for them by the government and that no criminal violations occurred. [There have been a number of] misguided assumptions and generalizations that surrounded this unfortunate incident. ... [our] work has been mischaracterized and all of our personnel unfairly maligned."
Blackwater Founder Erik Prince on "60 Minutes"
A CNN.com report cites the complexity of this case for the Justice Department:
The complex legal case has been dogged by difficulties and may present a major challenge to federal prosecutors.
Among the potential problems is that the law under which the charges are expected to be brought covers contractors working for the U.S. military, but the Blackwater guards were contracted by the State Department. Some independent legal experts question whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction in this case.
Also muddying the waters are alleged assurances of immunity given to the guards by State Department diplomatic security agents investigating the incident before the FBI got involved.
The State Department said its agents did not offer blanket immunity from criminal prosecution but only promised that statements the guards made on the scene could not be used against them in any prosecution.
But when the investigation was turned over to the Justice Department to examine possible criminal activity, FBI agents discovered some guards believed they were immune from prosecution and therefore refused to be interviewed again, complicating the FBI probe.
The shooting heightened tensions between U.S. and Iraqi government officials and contributed to a protracted debate over the extent of immunity that U.S. military personnel and civilian contractors have from Iraqi laws.
Security contractors had immunity from Iraqi law under a provision put in place in the early days of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. But starting next year, under a U.S.-Iraq security agreement that Baghdad approved last week, Iraq will have the "primary right to exercise jurisdiction" over U.S. contractors and their employees.
The Blackwater Five, all decorated military veterans who had served the United States in trouble spots around the world and who were employed by Blackwater Worldwide, the largest security contractor in Iraq , surrendered together at a federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah, where their lawyers accused the government of overstepping their authority and of tarnishing their clients’ records of honorable service.
Mark Hulkower, a lawyer for one of the defendants, said the men surrendered in Utah, a relatively conservative, pro-military area, because they hoped to find a jury pool where “people are more sympathetic to the experiences of coming under enemy fire.”
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The State Department, which employed Blackwater to protect U.S. diplomats and other employees, renewed Blackwater's contract this year over strong objections from the Iraqi government.
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plez sez: military stuff really isn't in the bailiwick of plezWorld, since i'm pretty much a pacifist when it comes to launching attacks on sovereign nations. i guess that's why this particular story has my interest.
i saw the "60 Minutes" story about blackwater in october 2007. i still don't understand why the us government is paying untold millions to some corporation to provide "soldiers" in combat when our us troops are underpaid, underfunded, under-equipped, and unappreciated. and then the part of the blackwater arrangement that really reeks was their immunity from iraqi laws while they were over there shooting at anything that moved.
so i have no doubt that these "goons" opened fire into a crowd of iraqis with their sub-machine guns, killing just about anything that moved... since they weren't accountable to any authority in iraq or in the us. hell, they weren't even contracted to work with the defense department, they were a shadow army for the state department!
One blogger wrote: "Blackwater is the new mercenary army accountable to nobody except the corporations and governments who hire them. Keep in mind that Blackwater is now training hundreds of police departments across the US including the Los Angeles Police Department."
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instead of utah, these guys should be sent back to the jurisdiction where the CRIME was committed. and let the iraqi government deal with them in a manner of their choosing ("an eye for an eye" sounds good to me!). there is a sliver of hope that justice is done and these five goons are relieved of their liberty... or more!
On January 12th, Baron "Scooter" Pikes, a 21-year-old sawmill worker, tried to run from police in Winnfield, Louisiana, when they attempted to arrest him on an outstanding warrant for cocaine possession. Winnfield police officer Scott Nugent ran Scooter down. Nugent fired his Taser at Pikes six times in less than three minutes -- shots recorded by a computer chip in the weapon's handle -- in an effort to subdue him. He was handcuffed and then officers put Pikes in the back of a cruiser and drove him to their police station -- where Nugent fired a seventh shot, directly against Pikes' chest.
After the seventh shot, he was dragged out of the car onto the concrete, where he was shocked two more times. When Officer Nugent was finished with him, Scooter was dead... after being Tasered nine times.
A coroner's report found that Scooter had been handcuffed and on the ground when he was first hit with the Taser and might have been dead after the seventh shock from the 50,000-volt device was delivered. The coroner believes that he was shocked two more times after he was dead.
On August 12th, a Louisiana grand jury will convene to decide whether fired Officer Nugent should face criminal charges in the January death of Scooter Pikes, who was Tasered nine times while handcuffed, the parish's district attorney announced Monday.
Winnfield police officers have had Tasers for one year and officers have used them 14 times, according to police records - with 12 of the instances involving black suspects. Ten of the 14 incidents involved Officer Nugent. Officer Nugent is white; Scooter Pikes was black.
How Tasers Work:
The Taser is a conducted electrical weapon developed and manufactured by Taser International, Inc. (Scottsdale, AZ) since the 1970's. Conducted electrical weapons are less than lethal weapons used by thousands of law enforcement agencies in the US. More than 120,000 private US citizens carry a Taser for personal protection. The Taser delivers an electrical pulse, resulting in tetanus like muscle contractions, and sudden death has been associated with its use.
How does it work? The Taser is a weapon powered by 8 AA nickel metal hydride batteries. When the operator fires the device from a distance of as much as 7 meters (21 feet), 2 9-mm barbs (#8 fishhook), attached to the Taser gun by copper wires are discharged. The barbs may hook the skin, but more often the clothing and the electrical impulse can be delivered through 2 inches of clothing. Once contact is made, an electrical pulse (up to 50,000 volts) is discharged for 5 seconds which incapacitates the subject. More electricity is released as the trigger is pulled again.
Voltage is energy potential, but it isn't voltage that poses danger - it is electrical current expressed in amps (amperes). The average current of the Taser is 2 amps (maximum US household current is 240 amps and the threshold for ventricular arrythmias is 50-100 amps).
Estimates of 170 deaths since 1999 have been attributed to Taser use, and while intuitively the thinking may be that the cause is cardiac arrythmias, that does not pan out. While Tasers have been tested on volunteer subjects, those subjects are "healthy workers" and are subjected to one 5 second electrical pulse. The population being subdued by the police may be intoxicated or in a stated of excited delirium - i.e. violent and aggressive.
The American College of Physicians (ACEP) recommends that agitated subjects be brought to the ED for medical evaluation and supportive care. If subjects are intoxicated (alcohol, cocaine, PCP, methamphetamine) or agitated due to psychosis or other unknown reasons, they may be hyperthermic, tachycardic and dehydrated. Supportive medical care - with sedation and intravenous fluids -may prevent death in police custody in these cases. Laboratory studies for drug and alcohol levels and other abnormalities can be done and treated.
Read the CNN.com article on Taser death of Baron "Scooter" Pikes here and here.
plez sez: hopefully, justice will be served. nothing can be done to bring Scotter back to his family, but it is every hope that mr. nugent pays for the torture and murder of mr. pikes.
by all accounts, the taser is effective in disabling a person with one or two shocks. if mr. pikes was already handcuffed and on the ground prior to the first shock, this case borders on calls for charges of torture, indifference to life, first degree murder, hate crime, and any other fancy legal term that can be culled. this may be premature and i'm usually not one to ask for harm to come to people, but this sounds like a capital offense by a racist and sadistic individual who obviously enjoyed the thrill of shocking Black people.
i wouldn't be opposed if the DA went for the death penalty... of course, in the electric chair!
The following video shows a 19-year old cold-blooded killer by the name of James Broadnax describe how he killed two Dallas area men. It is a chilling first person account of what has gone desperately wrong in too many Black communities all over this country.
James Broadnax Confesses To Murder
The story as reported on MyFOXDFW.com:
Cousins James Broadnax and Demarius Dwight Cummings, both 19, face capital murder charges in the deaths of singer Matthew Butler, a father of two, and Stephen Swan, his employee, outside Butler's Christian recording studio, Zion Gate Records in Garland, Texas.
Broadnax and Cummings, speaking to MyFOXDFW.com from the Dallas County Jail, told the station of their plans to rob somebody the night of June 18. They traveled by train from Dallas to the suburb of Garland because "that's where all the rich white folks stay at," Broadnax said.
After the men were shot, Cummings said he took car keys and a wallet from Swan, but the wallet contained only $2. Authorities caught up with Broadnax and Cummings on June 20 in Texarkana in one of the victims' vehicles.
Read the entire article about Broadnax murders here.
plez sez: perhaps one of the most horrific interviews that i've ever seen. it was difficult to watch such a young man with absolutely NOTHING to live for. it is quite possible that no one ever told him that they loved him, never gave him a hug, never congratulated him for a job well done.
there is nothing the government can do. this is a failure of the Black community to nurture and properly raise its young. it takes a village to raise a child. what happened to this boy's village?!?
broadnax asked for the death penalty, "i ain't got 'nothing to live for... i don't know why i was born!"
~ husband ~ father ~ son ~ brother ~ mentor ~ subdivision dweller ~ northern by birth ~ southern by choice ~ raised a black baptist, now guided by the spiritual ~ raised a kennedy democrat, now politically dead center (moderate) ~ raised in a Cadillac Coupe Deville, now hooked on an SUV ~ college educated and still a student of life ~ wild college frat boy and now a settled alumnus ~ intellectual yet fun-loving geek ~ technical and leading edge ~ corporate cog ~ consultant ~ college football saturday devotee ~ and a ramblin' gamblin' helluva engineer (GO JACKETS!) ~
This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine; and they are in no way associated with the views of my employer, family, friends, or associates.
Back in December 2008, plezWorld took a peek into the shadowy and fetid world that is Blackwater International. Five of their mercenary murderers were actually accused of... yep, murder while "on duty" in Iraq. Their case is winding its way through a courtroom in Utah. Their shadowy and fearless leader, Erik Prince, has decided to drag his cash-laden luggage out the backdoor while no one was looking!
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