Inside the UAE’s Secret Hacking Team of U.S. Mercenaries

Reuters

 

Two weeks after leaving her position as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. National Security Agency in 2014, Lori Stroud was in the Middle East working as a hacker for an Arab monarchy.

She had joined Project Raven, a clandestine team that included more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives recruited to help the United Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of other governments, militants and human rights activists critical of the monarchy.

Stroud and her team, working from a converted mansion in Abu Dhabi known internally as “the Villa,” would use methods learnt from a decade in the U.S intelligence community to help the UAE hack into the phones and computers of its enemies.

Stroud had been recruited by a Maryland cybersecurity contractor to help the Emiratis launch hacking operations, and for three years, she thrived in the job. But in 2016, the Emiratis moved Project Raven to a UAE cybersecurity firm named DarkMatter. Before long, Stroud and other Americans involved in the effort say they saw the mission cross a red line: targeting fellow Americans for surveillance.

“I am working for a foreign intelligence agency who is targeting U.S. persons,” she told Reuters. “I am officially the bad kind of spy.”

The story of Project Raven reveals how former U.S. government hackers have employed state-of-the-art cyber-espionage tools on behalf of a foreign intelligence service that spies on human rights activists, journalists and political rivals.

Interviews with nine former Raven operatives, along with a review of thousands of pages of project documents and emails, show that surveillance techniques taught by the NSA were central to the UAE’s efforts to monitor opponents. The sources interviewed by Reuters were not Emirati citizens.

The operatives utilized an arsenal of cyber tools, including a cutting-edge espionage platform known as Karma, in which Raven operatives say they hacked into the iPhones of hundreds of activists, political leaders and suspected terrorists. Details of the Karma hack were described in a separate Reuters article today

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New Chemical Weapons Provocation Will Serve as Pretext for US', Allies' Strike on Syria - Russian MoD

Sputnik 

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, militants are arriving in Syria's Idlib after being trained by a private British military company called Olive.

The Russian Defense Ministry has accused the United States, the United Kingdom and France of preparing to carry out new strikes against Syria under the pretext of chemical weapons use by Syrian government forces.

"Western countries' actions in spite of their public statements are aimed at another sharp deterioration of the situation in the Middle East region and the disruption of the peace process on the territory of Syria," ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov noted."

According to the spokesman, militants in Idlib province are preparing to stage the use of chemical weapons against civilians by the government.

"To carry out the alleged 'chemical attack' in the city of Jisr al-Shughur in the province of Idlib, militants from the Tahrir al-Sham group (affiliated with the Jabhat Nusra* terror organization) had delivered 8 tankers with chlorine… to a village a few kilometers from Jisr al-Shughur," the general stated."

For this purpose, the destroyer USS The Sullivans armed with 56 cruise missiles had arrived in the Persian Gulf several days ago, while a US В-1В bomber carrying 24 air-to-surface AGM-158 JASSM cruise missiles has been deployed at Al Udeid air base in Qatar, the spokesman suggested.

"This provocation with the active participation of the British special services will serve as another pretext for the US, UK and France to conduct a missile strike on the Syrian government and economic facilities," Konashenkov said."

A group of militants trained under the guidance of a private British military company, Olive to work with poisonous substances has arrived in Idlib, the ministry said.

Read more

See also:  Eva Bartlett: Bolton calls on Al-Qaeda to stage more chemical attacks in Syria

Western intervention obstructs peace in Africa

Comment: Not exactly a new revelation but a good reminder of how modern corporatism operates in Africa.

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The Duran 

Western business interests create and maintain conflict in order to exploit African resources

It’s no secret that foreign interventions have been helping to create and stoke conflicts all over the over world, but most famously in the Middle East, as the US has armed and trained proxy forces known as ‘moderates’ to help overthrow the Assad regime in Syria. However, these sorts of activities are conducted in other nations and on other continents as well. In Africa, conflicts are often initiated and prolonged over economic interests tied to Africa’s natural resources. In a recent interview with Sophie Shevardnadze on RT’s Sophie & Co, a South African private military contractor delves into the topic and explains how and why Western interests are so interested in prolonging conflicts on the African continent.

RT reports:

The Western powers are interested in prolonging conflicts in Africa as they crave after the continent’s resources, a private military company founder told RT. Most African forces are “set up to fail” by foreign advisors, he added.

The Western nations see prolonged African wars and chaos as just a means to get their hand on the rich African resources, Eeben Barlow, the founder of Executive Outcomes, the South African firm that started a private soldier boom, told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze. “As long as there is conflict on the go, certain deals can be struck with governments,” which allow foreign powers to “get hold on these resources for own use,” he said.

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From Syria to Burma?

Voltairenet.org
Thierry Meyssan

The Pentagon is preparing a new war in South East Asia - this time against Myanmar. Till now, the jihadists in Syria, which have the support of several countries that form part of the Middle East, have been waging war between themselves. But now they have a new vision: fighting together with the Pentagon against the Burmese army and the Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Suu Kyi.

Since 2001, the United States has been systematically destroying the whole of the expanded Middle East. For some days now, it has been preparing a new war against Iraq and Syria. Its conduit? The Kurds of the Barzani and Muslim families.

It seems that all of a sudden, the US has been struck by a new vision: Burma as the new theatre of operation. In this case, all the jihadists plus several countries in the region would be mobilized to go to fight in South East Asia.

For a month now, the international press has been denouncing the plight of the Rohingyas and have been presenting Burma as some sort of hell, using just as many lies as it did to savage Syria.

While in 2013 Saudi Arabia had prepared an army in Jordan and funded jihadists in Syria, it had also created in Mecca, “the Movement for Faith” which then became the “Army for the Safety of the Rohingyas in Arakan”. Just as it did in Syria, it blended a toxic cocktail of authentic Burmese with the floating mercenaries that it habitually deploys all over world. Thus the leader of this group is a Pakistani who brought his arms to Bin Laden’s side when he was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

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Mercenary Group “Blackwater” Receives $204m Government Contract

Daily Beast 

A mercenary air force that became a symbol of the U.S. occupation of Iraq is back in action—this time in Central Africa, supporting a shadowy American U.S. Special Forces commando operation targeting the Lord’s Resistance Army. 

In late January, a source on the ground in Central African Republic spotted a Sikorsky S-61 helicopter with the registry number N408RC carrying American Special Forces troops. The LRA, a cultish band of thieves and rapists led by warlord Joseph Kony, is most active in the forested region where Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo meet.

In 2010, President Barack Obama deployed around 100 Green Berets and other personnel to Central Africa to help local forces hunt down Kony and the LRA. Seven years later, Operation Observant Compass continues, mostly unnoticed by the press. The Pentagon asked Congress for $23 million to extend the operation through 2017.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the Sikorsky helicopter that The Daily Beast’s source observed in Central African Republic belongs to Illinois-based EP Aviation, LLC. 

EP Aviation was once a subsidiary of Academi, the Virginia-based company that was formerly known as Blackwater. The “EP” stands for “Erik Prince,” Blackwater’s founder and the younger brother of billionaire U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

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Empire on steroids: The expansion of U.S. secret wars in Africa

Justin Yun
Chimes

The secret expansion of U.S. military bases and special operations in Africa has initiated a new and lightweight style of warfare and welcomes the next phase of American military imperialism. Unlike the highly publicized U.S. military "pivot to Asia," the proliferation of drones, special ops, mercenary spies, classified bases, proxy fighters and cyber warfare constitute what the journalist Nick Turse calls a "new light-footprint Obama doctrine" that "seems to be making war an ever more attractive and seemingly easy option."

A New Style of Fighting

On any day, elite U.S. forces conduct covert missions in an estimated 70 to 90 countries. According to Turse, special forces have been sent to an unprecedented 147 countries — 75 percent of the world's nations last year alone. This is a 145 percent increase from the rate of operations conducted under the Bush administration.

Wars conventionally fought by large infantry forces and full-scale invasions of foreign countries have made way for a new style of fighting — one that has become increasingly dependent on special forces, drones and private defense contractors. Because of the confidential nature of special ops, the Pentagon can essentially keep foreign military involvement secret from the American public. The U.S. has always had troops in Africa since the Cold War but the rate of its expansion dangerously indicates a lack of public accountability.

A Naive Claim

The shadow wars in Africa are now fought by members of the U.S. Special Operations Command and JSOC — a clandestine organization that carries out kill/capture missions. JSOC has been called "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine" by counterinsurgency advisor John Nagl and many have described it as the president's "private assassination squad." The group reports directly to the White House. It is the military's secret military.

The notion the U.S. would someday pull its troops out of the Middle East is a rather naive claim considering the fact we have nothing short of a permanent war economy. From main operating bases that house thousands of soldiers to single airstrips used by the C.I.A. to taxi their blacked-out turboprops, the U.S. continues to maintain over 800 to 1,000 bases around the world — making us the most expansive military empire in history. Nobody really knows the exact figure — not even the military experts. The late scholar Chalmers Johnson wrote in his book, "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic" on how the Pentagon and an uncontrollable military-industrial complex have turned the U.S. into "a new kind of military empire — a consumerist Sparta." Chalmers declares, "Another crucial characteristic that distinguished the American empire from empires of the past is that bases are not needed to fight wars but are instead pure manifestations of militarism and imperialism."

Global Instability

Military expansion does not make us safe since it cultivates global instability. The uncontrollable growth into Africa has resulted in the funding and training of proxy armies with atrocious human-rights records and has attracted mercenaries such as Erik Prince — founder of the infamous Blackwater private army hired by the D.O.D to provide security to high-level diplomats during the Iraq war.

With military presence in 53 of 54 of Africa's nations, the American empire has emerged to pick up where the former European colonial powers have left off. 

Monolithic and Ruthless Conspiracy: The West's Obliteration of Yemen by Covert Means

Bahar Azizi and Niall Bradley
Sott.net

Saudi Arabia's unilateral blockade of Yemen since late March 2015 has caused a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in the Arabian peninsula. It is extremely difficult for journalists, aid workers and diplomats to access the country, but from the little information that does leak out, it is clear the situation there is dire. From a population of 25 million - about the same as Syria's pre-2011 - at least 16 million Yemenis are without clean water, there is a critical shortage of medicine, and 6.5 million civilians are at risk of starvation, including 1.7 million children presently at risk of malnutrition. Peter Maurer, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said after visiting the country last August: "Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years."

Widespread aerial bombardment by air forces of the Saudi and Gulf states - with significant direct and indirect military assistance from the US and UK - has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians. During a press briefing early this year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that "the number of civilian casualties recorded between 26 March and 31 December, 2015 [is] 8,119 people, including 2,795 killed and 5,324 wounded." However, Dr. Judith Brown, who worked in Yemen for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, points out that the death toll resulting from this military intervention is probably much higher than reported. 

But whose war is this anyway? In the Western media narrative, the House of Saud and Gulf monarchs are intervening to [hold your nose] 'uphold the legitimate and democratically-elected leader of Yemen' against an unconstitutional coup that was directed, or at least facilitated, by the Iranian regime. In this context, Saudi bombing of civilians targets are 'mistakes'. In reality, however, the picture is somewhat different. 

Read more
 

Russia versus NATO's Gladio 2.0: Turkish jihad from China to Syria

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

To understand what is happening on the geopolitical global scene today, you have to understand what has been happening on that same scene for the last 100 years, because it hasn't really changed much.

The US Empire has been the world's only (and 'greatest') superpower since at least the end of the Second World War. Once the Empire had achieved that position, it was determined to keep it. Russia was supposed to have been destroyed as a result of the 1939-45 war, but Russian ingenuity and hardiness, and Stalin's surprising independent streak, forced the Empire to accept a division of the world between 'East' and 'West'. As soon as the lines were drawn, however, the Empire sent its agents out to continue and complete the process of global conquest.

Apart from the few overt US military forays (Korea, Vietnam, the odd turkey shoot in Latin America) the Empire relied primarily on covert operations to expand its control. In Western Europe - a prized piece on the 'grand chessboard' - the US Empire established 'stay-behind' networks made up of paramilitary groups from various backgrounds and espousing right-wing, fascistic ideologies. The rationale for 'mining' Europe with weapons caches and nutjobs trained in sabotage and bloody mayhem was that, in the event of a Soviet invasion and occupation of Europe, 'resistance fighters' would form the West's front-line in the coming war with the Soviets.
These groups were created and funded as part of the Truman Doctrine, which pledged to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures". A Soviet invasion was never on the cards, of course, and thus this 'support' took the form of CIA funding, training and arming of minority groups that used extreme violence to 'correct' any European political or social drifts towards 'the left', or anything that opposed the Empire's interests. In their spare time, many of these groups involved themselves in arms- and drug-smuggling and other racketeering, much of it also under the control of the CIA and other Western intel. agencies. 

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G4S, the controversial British outsourcing firm's for-profit juvenile detention facility 'a disgrace to Florida', says grand jury

The Guardian 

 

G4S, the controversial British outsourcing firm behind the disastrous security provision at the London Olympics, has been accused of running a “disgraceful” juvenile detention centre in Florida.

 

 The Highlands Youth Academy (HYA) in Avon Park, a facility for young men aged 16 to 19 that was the site of a riot involving more than 130 children two years ago, was described as “a disgrace to the state of Florida” by a grand jury report that called for it to be closed down.

 

 The excoriating 21-page report, unsealed last week, details a string of criticisms, including dilapidated buildings, unclean sanitary facilities, undertrained and poorly equipped staff and failure to report incidents of children escaping.  

 

“What we have discovered at the Highlands Youth Academy simply cannot be what our Legislature and state leaders have intended for our juvenile justice system,” the jurors wrote. “While the citizens are essentially being ripped off – the juveniles are being even more poorly served. The Highlands Youth Academy should cease to exist.” 

 

The grand jury called the Highlands Youth Academy’s conditions a ‘disgrace’. Photograph: State attorney's office of the 10th judicial circuit in Florida G4S, which is set to make a $4m profit from the facility over five years and runs 28 other juvenile detention centres in the state, said the grand jury’s report contained “multiple factual errors and misstatements”. 

 

Photos released to the Guardian by the state attorney’s office reveal living quarters described by the grand jury as “disgraceful”: bedrooms with exposed plywood walls where children slept on steel bunk beds, and bathrooms with unpainted plaster and more plywood with peeling and dilapidated fixtures and fittings. 

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The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq. Towards the Creation of a US Sponsored Islamist Caliphate

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham: An instrument of the Western Military Alliance 

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky 

Global Research, June 14, 2014 

The Western media in chorus have described the unfolding conflict in Iraq as a “civil war” opposing the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham against the Armed forces of the Al-Maliki government. (Also referred to as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS))

The conflict is casually described as “sectarian warfare” between Radical Sunni and Shia without addressing “who is behind the various factions”.  What is at stake is a carefully staged US military-intelligence agenda.

Known and documented, Al Qaeda affiliated entities have been used by US-NATO in numerous conflicts as “intelligence assets” since the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war. In Syria, the Al Nusrah and ISIS rebels are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, which oversees and controls the recruitment and training of paramilitary forces.

The Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) re-emerged in April 2013 with a different name and acronym, commonly referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The formation of a terrorist entity encompassing both Iraq and Syria was part of a US intelligence agenda. It responded to geopolitical objectives. It also coincided with the advances of Syrian government forces against the US sponsored insurgency in Syria and the failures of both the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its various “opposition” terror brigades.

The decision was taken by Washington to channel its support (covertly) in favor of a terrorist entity which operates in both Syria and Iraq and which has logistical bases in both countries. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s Sunni caliphate project coincides with a longstanding US agenda to carve up both Iraq and Syria into three separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, and a Republic of Kurdistan.

Whereas the (US proxy) government in Baghdad purchases advanced weapons systems from the US including F16 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham –which is fighting Iraqi government forces– is supported covertly by Western intelligence. The objective is to engineer a civil war in Iraq, in which both sides are controlled indirectly by US-NATO.

The scenario is to arm and equip them, on both sides, finance them with advanced weapons systems and then “let them fight”.

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400 US mercenaries 'deployed on ground' in Ukraine military op

RT

About 400 elite mercenaries from the notorious US private security firm Academi (formerly Blackwater) are taking part in the Ukrainian military operation against anti-government protesters in southeastern regions of the country, German media reports.

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infowars.com
Kurt Nimmo

The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported on Sunday 400 U.S. mercenaries are working with the junta government in Ukraine to suppress opposition to the coup in the eastern part of the country. The newspaper said the for-profit mercenaries are actively participating in the effort to eliminate anti-coup activists in Slavyansk and possibly other areas in the Donetsk region.

It is not known if Blackwater mercenaries were involved in gunning down voters in eastern Ukraine.

On Thursday we covered a report stating the CIA and the FBI are involved in the effort to quell resistance to the junta. The CIA has been involved with nationalist and fascist Ukrainian groups since the late 1940s.

In March, we reported on the presence of Greystone mercenaries in Donetsk. The mercenaries were “soldiers of fortune proficient in combat operations,” a diplomatic source told Interfax, according to the Daily Mail. “Most of them had operated under private contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan and other states. Most of them come from the United States.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the mercenaries were contracted “to suppress civil protests and dissatisfaction.”

“Among the candidates for the role of gendarme is the Barbados-registered company Greystone Limited, which is integrated with the Academi corporation,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “It is an analogue, and, probably and affiliated body of the Blackwater private army, whose employees have repeatedly been accused of committing grievous and systematic human rights abuses in different troubled regions.”

Academi was known as Blackwater and then Xe following its involvement in the murder of 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad, in 2007. Academi’s board of directors includes former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Bobby Ray Inman, the former director of the NSA, and the company’s CEO is a retired Brigadier General, Craig Nixon.

US Greystone mercenaries come to Ukraine to kill?

Contractors flood into Iraq to give Al-Qaeda a run for the money

A U.S. soldier performs a radio check during a patrol in Mosul,

390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad (Reuters/Saad Shalash)

RT

The rapidly developing Al-Qaeda incursion is forcing the Iraqi government not only to buy more American weapons and supplies, but also to payroll an army of mercenaries and private contractors, previously hired by the US Defense Department.

According to the Wall Street Journal, more than 5,000 specialists have been contracted by the Iraqi government. They are currently working in the country as analysts, military trainers, security guards, translators and even cooks. Some 2,000 of them are Americans.

“You have a situation where the government has become dependent on contractors,” Allison Stanger, a political-science professor at Middlebury College, told WSJ. “It’s a real quantum shift.”

“The military task has, in fact, been outsourced in Iraq,” confirmed analyst Steven Schooner, a professor at George Washington University Law School.

Washington’s relationship with Baghdad has undergone a major transformation. Officially, the US has just several hundred troops in Iraq and the US Defense Department does not contract private security companies to operate in Iraq.

Yet the major shift in US-Iraq relations now is that Washington is no longer allocating budget money on operations in Iraq. It is Baghdad that spends money on American weaponry, vehicles and equipment, while American defense companies are earning money in Iraq by placing military contractors there.
Private defense companies, such as Triple Canopy and Dyncorp International, have multibillion contracts in Iraq for years to come.

Washington is actively assisting the Iraqi government in fighting terrorism, supplying Baghdad withdrones and is considering training some of the country’s elite military forces in neighboring Jordan.
An assault operation against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a faction of Al-Qaeda currently occupying Fallujah, is promising to be a serious undertaking implying the use of the utmost in firepower, so Baghdad is buying $6 billion worth of military equipment from the US, including 24 Apache attack helicopters and nearly 500 Hellfire missiles.

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Ghosts of Baghdad: America’s army of contractors hasn’t gone anywhere they just work for Iraqi government

Foreign Policy

The Pentagon says the last of its defense contractors left Iraq in December, just weeks before portions of the increasingly violent country were conquered al-Qaeda. There’s a catch, however: While the number of Iraq contractors on U.S. payrolls has plummeted, some of those same individuals are still there, working directly for the Iraqi government.

The change is part of the United States’ evolving relationship with Baghdad. The last Defense Department contract with Iraq was transferred to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s administration in December, said Navy Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman. That leaves the Defense Department’s number of contractors in Iraq at 0, down 6,624 in October, according to a quarterly report released at the time. Of those 6,624 contractors, 1,626 were U.S. citizens, 2,807 were civilians of another country, and 2,191 were Iraqi citizens from Iraq, the report said.

Work on the last major Defense Department contract in Iraq ended Dec. 15, when the Iraqi government took over a U.S. facility at Umm Qasr Naval Base, Speaks said. The United States built a ship repair facility there for the Iraqi military, and opened it in 2011.

The change underscores how the U.S. military continues to disentangle itself from Iraq even as a recent surge in sectarian violence threatens to undo years of hard-won gains. There are now just 250 U.S. troops in Iraq, Speaks said, down from 157,800 at the height of the surge. About half are assigned to the Office of Security Cooperation – Iraq, which oversees the U.S. military’s interaction with Iraqi forces. The rest are primarily Marine Corps security guards who work at U.S. diplomatic facilities.

One example of a company staying in Iraq despite the change in who pays its bill is Triple Canopy, the behemoth defense firm based in Herndon, VA. It has made a fortune as one of Washington’s primary security providers in war zones, and is one of eight companies with a piece of the State Department’s five-year, $10.8 billion Worldwide Protective Services contract, which was signed in 2010 and lays out the terms by which contractors provide security to U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel across the world. But Triple Canopy also had a variety of smaller contracts with the Pentagon for other work in Iraq, and intends to continue working there now.

“Recently all U.S. government agencies have reduced their reliance on contractors due to budget cuts and have de-scoped contracts across the board, including in Iraq,” the company said a statement to Foreign Policy. “Contractors will continue to remain engaged in Iraq in the near future. However, the majority of these personnel will likely be working on commercial extractive and construction projects.”

The State Department, meanwhile, still has about 5,000 contractors on its books working in Iraq at the embassy in Baghdad and its consulates in Basra and Erbil, a department spokesperson told FP. About 2,000 are U.S. citizens. Both numbers reflect a steep decline from January 2013, when the State Department had 12,500 contractors – including about 4,500 American citizens — working in Iraq.

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Armies and Police Are Being Privatized Around the World and Business Is Booming

 

 An American private security guard pushes back Iraqi demonstrators in Baghdad.

Slate
By Elliot Hannon

In a world where budgets are tight, and bottom lines daunting, it makes sense that governments around the world have to do more with less, or they just have to do less. Surprisingly, one part of the state apparatus that most countries seem happy to outsource is one of its most fundamental—security. At home, cash-strapped American cities, and even communities, are turning to private forces to protect public order. And a report out of the UN on Monday shows that the private security industry is experiencing a global economic boom that many of its customers would love—the shadowy industry is growing at 7.4 percent a year and is on target to balloon to a $244 billion global market by 2016.

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. is the world’s biggest spender on private security, totaling $138 billion a year, thanks in large part to a spike in demand during the concurrent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the report, last year the Pentagon spent $44 billion on mercenaries in the two countries combined and in 2011 the U.S. spent $3 billion alone on a five-year deal for private protection for the U.S. embassy building in Baghdad. But, as the American military presence diminishes, much of the outsourced security work is transitioning to police work, with protection of oil company assets abroad also on the rise.

Outside of war zones, contractors have flocked to the perilous shipping routes off the Somali coast that are particularly high risk because of pirates. More than 140 private companies now patrol those waters. The ongoing shift towards private forces poses huge regulatory issues, particularly the registering and licensing of private contractors and the absence of internationally binging legal codes, according to the report. The UN itself is a major employer of private security firms and the report warned "there is a risk that, without proper standards and oversight, the outsourcing of security functions by the United Nations to private companies could have a negative effect on the image and effectiveness of the United Nations in the field."

Iraqi tells Barack Obama you are withdrawing from my country in shame and defeat

 

 Obama 'accomplishes' George W Bush's 'mission'

Stop the War Coalition

On 14 December 2011, President Obama addressed a crowd of US soldiers who had just come back from Iraq. He tried to cheer them up by declaring that they had returned home in honour and victory. Just like Bush before him, Obama's idea of honour and declarations of victory rest on dubious political morality, driven by the needs of an uncontrollable death machine: a military-industrial complex that feeds on war and destruction. Iraqi dissident and exile Sami Ramadani says Obama, who initially opposed the Iraq war, today enthusiastically continues the policies of the two war criminals, Bush and Blair.  

Dear Mr Obama,

There is absolutely nothing honourable or victorious in blockading a people for 13 years (1991-2003) and causing the death of half a million of its children; invading and occupying (2003) another country for nearly nine bloody years; killing more than a million of its people; turning millions of its children into orphans; turning hundreds of thousands of its adults into widows; destroying its infrastructure; wiping out its essential public services; making millions of its young people unemployed; impoverishing most of the people the people of one of the world's richest countries; letting in al-Qaida-style terrorist gangs to saw division and sectarian strife; deploying tens of thousands of ruthless mercenaries contracted to the Pentagon; creating a political process and a constitution that rests and feeds on sectarian and ethnic divisions, relying on corrupt political parties and leaders; attempting to take full control over Iraq's oil and gas reserves and production; sending young Americans to their deaths in aggressive military adventures; erecting a monument for US imperialist designs under the guise of an embassy that will use 15,000 personnel in the Baghdad's Green Zone...

Which of the above, Mr. Obama, is an honourable act or a sign of victory? And where did you refer to the pack of lies that the US administration used to invade Iraq, or the fact that throughout the 1980's the US backed and armed Saddam's dictatorship ?

The truth is that despite being wounded a thousand times, the heroic Iraqi people have defeated the mighty US death machine on the soil of Mesopotamia. 

The Iraqi people, supported by the overwhelming majority of the peoples across the world, refused to kneel before the tanks of the occupation forces. They rose in resistance and opposition and forced a change of direction in Washington, even before you took office.

The truth is, Mr. Obama, though you were opposed to the initial decision to launch the 2003 war of aggression on Iraq, you are today enthusiastically continuing the policies of the two war criminals, Bush and Blair. 

You are now preaching for war on Iran, attempting to ignite civil war in Syria, backing Israeli suppression of the Palestinian people, and backing Saudi and Qatari dictators to thwart and hijack the uprisings of the Arab peoples against  the assortment of dictatorships that the US had installed or backed for decades.

The truth is, Mr. Obama, the US is now attempting to control Iraq by using its so called embassy, tens of thousands of mercenaries, thousands of spies and corrupt Iraqi political forces that answer to Washington.

America aims to use the Strategic Framework Agreement to tie Iraq to the US economically, militarily and culturally. It has tried to do this through occupation, now it is trying to do it by stealth. 

But the Iraqi people are saying no, and America will be defeated again in its latest attempt to dominate our country.

Western Mercenaries and Corporations Pouring Into Libya

Activist Post via  Black Agenda Report

Western security firms – a polite term for mercenary outfits – are cramming planes into Libya to make the country safe for an invasion of western capitalists, the real beneficiaries of NATO’s war. So frenzied is the crush of war capitalists and their hired gunmen seeking to cash in on the Libyan catastrophe, the New York Times tell us a $5 cab ride from Tripoli’s airport to downtown hotels now costs $800. The head of the U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce calls it a “gold rush,” as officials of the government established by force of NATO airpower lay out the red carpet for the foreign hordes. Libya’s nominal new rulers in the Transitional National Council are in a rush to sell off the nation's birthright before they've even got it in their hands.

The huge influx of big, burley western mercenaries is most ironic, since the so-called rebels’ principal call to arms was that Moammar Gaddafi was maintained in power by paid gunmen from sub-Saharan Africa. They used the false specter of a black mercenary presence to turn the rebellion into a race war that claimed the lives of untold thousands of black Libyans and immigrant workers – an ethnic cleansing that no doubt still unfolds and will forever mark the new regime as racist to its core. That same regime now embraces a real world invasion of Euro-American mercenaries. White and money, indeed, makes right, in the new Libya.

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N.Y. billing dispute reveals details of secret CIA rendition flights

Washington Post

Details of shadowy CIA [rendition flights] have emerged in a ... New York courthouse in a billing dispute between contractors. The court documents offer a rare glimpse of the costs and operations of the controversial rendition program. For all the secrecy that once surrounded the CIA program, a significant part of its operation was entrusted to very small aviation companies whose previous experience involved flying sports teams across the country. In the process, the costs and itineraries of numerous CIA flights became part of the court record. The more than 1,500 pages from the trial and appeals court files appear to include sensitive material, such as logs of air-to-ground phone calls made from the plane. These logs show multiple calls to CIA headquarters; to the cell- and home phones of a senior CIA official involved in the rendition program; and to a government contractor, Falls Church-based DynCorp, that worked for the CIA. 

Attorneys for a London-based legal charity, Reprieve, which has been investigating the CIA program, discovered the Columbia County case and brought the court records to the attention of The Washington Post. “This new evidence tells a chilling story, from the CIA’s efforts to disguise its illegal activities to the price it paid to ferry prisoners to torture chambers across the world,” said Cori Crider, Reprieve’s legal director.

See more on Dyncorp - 

Dyncorp and Friends: Securing Private Politics Part I 
Dyncorp and Friends: Securing Private Politics Part II 
Dyncorp and Friends: Securing Private Politics Part III 
Dyncorp and Friends: Securing Private Politics Part IV 
Dyncorp and Friends: Securing Private Politics Part V

'Xe' guns for hire above law as US hears & sees no evil

RT

The private security firm formerly known as Blackwater is on trial in the U.S. Not over allegations that it killed innocent civilians in Iraq 4 years ago. But because two ex-employees claim the company overcharged Washington for protecting State Department staff in war zones. The firm which is now called Xe provides more mercenaries for the U.S. in Afghanistan than anyone else, and has been implicated in a number of scandals. In 2007, its hired guns were accused of shooting dead 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad.

Despite a lengthy legal process, no-one was punished over the alleged massacre. The company is now set to take an even bigger role in Afghanistan, as the U.S. withdraws its combat troops.

Dennis Kucinich "War Takes Money From The American People & Gives It To War Profiteers!"

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