Blackwater

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

It was the moment the war turned: On March 31, 2004, four Americans were ambushed and burned near their jeeps by an angry mob in the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah. Their charred corpses were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The ensuing slaughter by U.S. troops would fuel the fierce Iraqi resistance that haunts occupation forces to this day. But these men were neither American military nor civilians. They were highly trained private soldiers sent to Iraq by a secretive mercenary company based in the wilderness of North Carolina.

from a Post on Veterans Today

MISSION

To support national and international security policies that protect those who are defenseless and provide a free voice for all with a dedication to providing ethical, efficient, and effective turnkey solutions that positively impact the lives of those still caught in desperate times.

Blackwater is committed to the foot soldiers — the men and women who stand on the frontlines of the global war on terror and who believe in a peaceful future for their communities and nations. Whether serving in or out of uniform, Blackwater is committed to providing these men and women with the very best in training and tactical support to ensure they are fully prepared to meet current and future global security challenges.

from Blackwater’s Website

“And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I’m sorry it’s the case, and I’ll work hard to try to elevate it.”— [Bush] Speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

from Slate’s The Complete Bushsms

Orwell had nothing on George Bush’s America. We have the topsy-turvey language, of course, where the Clear Sky Act is in fact an attack on the environment, and behind the President’s vow to never use torture is a memo justifying torture.

That was just the start. Bush and company (and I really mean company) have built a private army to help fight their war. You would think this would be top-secret, or that if this army were exposed, which has nearly as many people in Iraq as the U.S. Military, it would be an enormous scandal. Nope.

The mercenary army is called Blackwater, and it bills itself as “the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world.” They are not shy.

There’s a bestseller that has “exposed” Blackwater, although it wasn’t really hidden. And Blackwater has pro shop where you can buy hats and t-shirts. You can’t make this stuff up. If you’re thinking of starting your Christmas shopping now, I would love a manly watch.

Posted in: Economics, Miscellaneous, Online Places, War, Writing

SpinZone

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BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Bill O’Reilly may proclaim at the beginning of his program that viewers are entering the “No Spin Zone,” but a new study by Indiana University media researchers found that the Fox News personality consistently paints certain people and groups as villains and others as victims to present the world, as he sees it, through political rhetoric.

from an Indiana University Press Release, May 2

This ought to be really obvious, but it is interesting to see demagoguery fought with simple fact. Or maybe this is just childishness fought by adults. In any case, the researchers also made a useful list of O’Reilly’s techniques, including what they call his “seven propaganda devices”:

* Name calling — giving something a bad label to make the audience reject it without examining the evidence;
* Glittering generalities — the opposite of name calling;
* Card stacking — the selective use of facts and half-truths;
* Bandwagon — appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd;
* Plain folks — an attempt to convince an audience that they, and their ideas, are “of the people”;
* Transfer — carries over the authority, sanction and prestige of something we respect or dispute to something the speaker would want us to accept; and
* Testimonials — involving a respected (or disrespected) person endorsing or rejecting an idea or person.

Again, not surprisingly, the researchers note that these were common practices during the 1930s, evoking Father Charles Coughlin particularly, the anti-New Deal and pro fascist priest. Coughlin was instrumental in stunting U.S. governmental support for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which unsuccessfully tried to help democratic forces defeat Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Civil War was the first battle against European fascism; its been argued that if Franco had been defeated in Spain, the worst of the Second World War could have been avoided. Amy Goodman writes about the Spanish Civil War and the Brigade, here; the Brigade was recently honored at a recent Museum of the City of New York exhibit “Facing Fascism.”

What I find fascinating is how the very same sorts of rhetoric, focused on fear and xenophobia, could be used in such different historical times. Or, perhaps we are not so different. Fear is always useful in domestic politics.

Posted in: Economics, Union, War, Writing

ePluribus Media Journal

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The original stories, articles, interviews and reviews that appear on the Journal start as either a submission to the ePluribus Media editors or as investigative tip.

ePluribus Media researchers, using publicly available information, and often working with a writer, pull together a story. Once a draft is ready, an editor is assigned who works with the main writer/or researcher to help shape the story and more importantly, determine if the story has merit.

from, what we are and how we function

This is an example of the potential of the web– 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0– starting to come to fruition. These ‘crowd sourced’ journals can’t replace mainstream journalism (although they may have to play the role that public radio and television once played) but they can help drive the agenda, as the cliché goes. It’s a model to watch for a number of reasons.

The first is that, perahps learning from Wikipedia, they have a ‘vetted volunteer’ community of writers alongside a complex fact-checking process. It’s a “501(c)(4) tax-exempt, non-partisan organization,” which means that, while dependent on the system of charitable foundations, it can be relatively independent of commercial pressures. The development of a workable institutional model is central to the future of independent journalism.

Another reason that it is worthy of watching is its apparent desire to create permanent research tools, such as searchable timelines on particular events, that can be used in all sorts of settings, from research to the public schools, to policy making. (Here’s the Katrina timeline; they have a Rita timeline as well as one tracing the impact of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome among veterans of the current war in Iraq.)

Alongside the podcasts, articles, reviews, and interviews, they can help create the sort of permanent historical memory long promised by digital gurus. ePluribus Media was founded two years ago, out of what Arron Barlow has a called a desire, “to develop paradigms for journalism on the Web that is horizontal,” an “open source journalism.” You can read his account of the origins and aspirations of ePluribus Media here.

Posted in: Language, Miscellaneous, Online Places, War, Writing

Josh Wolf v. Judith Miller

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After a record seven and a half months behind bars, San Francisco video blogger Josh Wolf has been released. Wolf walked out of a federal prison in Dublin, California Tuesday after prosecutors dropped a key demand that had made him the longest-jailed journalist for protecting a source in US history. Wolf was jailed on August 1st of last year when he refused to turn over video that he had shot of an anti-G8 demonstration in San Francisco.

from Democracy Now, April 4

Eighty-five days after being sent to jail for refusing to reveal a confidential source, New York Times reporter Judith Miller won her freedom after she and her lawyers secured a voluntary and personal waiver from a source who released her from a pledge of confidentiality.

Miller, who was released Thursday afternoon, testified Friday morning before a grand jury investigating who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. Lawyers close to the case told The New York Times and The Washington Post that Miller changed her mind about testifying after I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, assured her that a waiver he signed and gave to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was not coerced. Her testimony was limited to conversations she had with Libby in July 2003.

from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, September 2005

Sometimes it can seem as if the world completely changes in just a few years. In 2005, a reporter for the New York Times refused to reveal her sources and the media could not stop talking about it. She spent eight-five days in jail. Then, last year, reporter Josh Wolf was jailed for the same reasons, eventually spending more than 200 days in jail, more than any journalist in U.S. history, and the story was almost fully ignored.

Interestingly, Miller was widely seen as a journalist corrupted by power, a lackey for the Bush administration’s war propaganda machine. Eventually, her paper, the New York Times, issued an apology for its often blindly patriotic coverage during the build up to the war. It was clearly too little way too late, but it did expose the corruption, just for a moment, that underlies much of the so-called mainstream journalism establishment.

Wolf is young and idealistic and his only mistake seems to have been working for non-traditional media and covering subjects from perspectives that the government would like to suppress. So the media almost entirely missed a story that you would think all journalists would insist is important, if not central to democratic culture. The wealthy cadre of journalist/Washington insiders who see themselves as ‘the media’ seem to be circling the wagons tighter and tighter. They will protect their own, but not much else.

Wolf has gone on to help found MediaFreedoms.net. And, of course, he has his own blog as well, called The Revolution Will Be Televised. This isn’t the sort of thing that you expect from Ms. Miller, but she does have a site to promote her books, JudithMiller.org. The democratic hope, of course, is that Wolf and his ilk will be able to create a permanent infrastructure that can serve as an authentic fourth estate.

Posted in: Language, Online Places, War, Writing