Is Blackwater the Private Mercenary Army of the Oligarchy?

Kurt Nimmo
TruthNews
December 14, 2007


In a democracy, or rather a corporate oligarchy, it does not matter what the people want, who they elect to office, or what they vote for in booths outfitted with Diebold election thievery devices. For instance, the people voted to end the occupation and looting of Iraq in 2004 by installing Democrats in Congress but this did not result in an end to that criminal operation. Democrats went about their merry way enabling the neocons in their serial murder of Iraqis — the body count now numbering well over a million — a war crime by any standard, and Nancy Pelosi had the gall to complain about antiwar demonstrators perched on the sidewalk outside her lair. Democrats, who swore to impeach Bush before the election, suddenly changed course after they were safely installed in the halls of the greatest whorehouse in the nation, complete with three “lobbyists” for each prostitute, er “representative.” Once again, the people were duped, as they will probably be duped in 2008, that is if they don’t elect Ron Paul.

As a choice example of corporate interest trumping the will of the people, consider Blackwater Worldwide. “Government security contractor Blackwater Worldwide reaffirmed plans Wednesday to build a rural training camp, a day after residents recalled five town officials who endorsed the project involving the North Carolina-based company,” reports the Associated Press. “The company wants to build 11 firing ranges, a driving track and a helipad in a valley just north of Potrero, a sleepy hamlet of about 850 people in the desert mountains about 45 miles east of San Diego.”

Potrero residents have repeatedly demonstrated their disapproval of Blackwater’s move into their community. But, of course, this does not matter. Regardless of what the people want, declared Brian Bonfiglio, Blackwater VP, the move is underway, no matter “who’s sitting in that seat,” that is to say the seat occupied by the San Diego County board of supervisors. “Voters gave the boot by wide margins to members of the advisory planning board,” notes the Associated Press.

“Bonfiglio said he thought objections to Blackwater’s other activities were irrelevant to the camp case.” These “other activities” include killing Iraqis at will, activity so egregious it resulted in congressional and criminal investigations. “He said the facility in Potrero would focus solely on training law-enforcement officers, not contractors who work for the company in Iraq and Afghanistan.” In other words, law enforcement, already riddled with goons who derive pleasure from tasering pregnant women, will get up to speed on the latest Blackwater tactics, for instance clearing intersections with automatic gunfire.

According to Gordon Hammers, one of the ousted advisory planning board members, the community was brainwashed by antiwar and anti-Bush “elements,” and it has nothing to do with the fact Blackwater hires trigger-happy mercenaries. “Certain elements made it an anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war surrogate and sold that to the community. They were successful,” Hammers complained.

“Americans tend to think in an American way, and therefore nobody seems to have noticed that the location of this camp is right on the US-Mexico border, just a few miles from Tecate.” writes Nancy Conroy. From an international perspective, there are a number of geopolitical reasons that could explain why this border location was selected. This is probably not merely an issue for the local planning commission, given that the idea of mercenaries along the border has broader international implications…. A Blackwater camp on the border may be a covert attempt to militarize the border without going through congressional oversight or public debate. A so-called ‘training camp’ could probably also function as an operational base. Perhaps Blackwater will obtain government contracts to patrol the border, gradually edging out US agents and putting border security into the hands of a private army away from public scrutiny.”

Of course, this is nonsense, as the ruling neocons and Congress have no intention of patrolling the border and keeping out illegal immigrants. In fact, by way of the SPP and NAU, our rulers are attempting to eradicate the border, not bolster it with mercenaries.

“The first Blackwater employees arrived in New Orleans just 36 hours after the levies broke,” Dina Temple-Raston wrote for NPR last September. “At one point, more than 600 Blackwater employees were in the city. Some were guarding the local Sheraton hotel. Others were helping fish people out of the water or were rescuing them off rooftops. Eventually, Blackwater landed a $73 million contact to protect FEMA staff helping with the Katrina recovery operation.”

Of course, FEMA did not really need to be protected and they did not run a “recovery operation” in New Orleans. Blackwater was invited to partake in a large experiment… call it an exercise for the corporate fascist security state. “What I saw when I was in New Orleans was really the emergence of an absolutely unmasked corporate military state,” explains Naomi Klein. “Now, I know these sound like buzz words, but I’ll give you an example. One of the images that’s really stuck in my mind is the conversion of a huge Wal-Mart into a military base in downtown New Orleans. They call it Camp Wal-Mart. So here you have — and we even hear people suggesting that Wal-Mart should replace FEMA at running disaster response… the presence of these privatized police forces, I think is more ideological than it is anything else.”

Indeed, Blackwater’s glaring presence in Potrero, California, a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, is more about an “ideological… privatized police force” than working to impede the crossing of illegal immigrants. As in Iraq, the presence of Blackwater in America is about a “merger — completely unmasked — of corporate and state interests. There’s no distinction,” as Klein characterizes it. In Iraq, Blackwater and other mercenary outfits worked side-by-side and often supplanted U.S. troops. In America, they will work with and possibly even replace domestic law enforcement.

Finally, all of this begs the question: as contractors, intimately connected to the neocons and the government, what does Blackwater know about what’s coming down the road that the residents of Potrero and America at large don’t know?

Maybe it is something the UK Ministry of Defense foresees, something the rest of us only dimly perceive: “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class,” a Ministry report states. “The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat… Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest” and “flashmobs” comprised of “terrorists and criminals” may undermine the “highly visible super-rich,” who will naturally hire their own mercenary armies, as did the elite in the Late Roman era, as the citizenry was no longer dependable as cannon fodder and inevitably became political enemies.