War Profiteers are a Threat to the security of a Free State

War Profiteers are a Threat to the security of a Free State

The Second Amendment is NOT for the formation of rogue business Armies

"Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

This could be read as to say that our communities.. our municipalities are legally able to organize defense forces to protect against a rogue central government, foreign invaders or corporate looters.

This DOESN't mean a "corporate person" should be able to build it's own mercenary army.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/53460/
"
Blackwater Heavies Sue Families of Slain Employees for $10 Million in Brutal Attempt to Suppress Their Story

By Daniel J. Callahan and Marc P. Miles, AlterNet. Posted June 8, 2007.

The lawyers representing the families of four American Blackwater contractors killed in Fallujah make the case that the company's executives are suing the families to keep them quiet and to avoid any accountability.

The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet.

Raleigh, NC -- The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting. After Blackwater lost a series of appeals all the away to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blackwater has now changed its tactics and is suing the dead men's estates for $10 million to silence the families and keep them out of court.
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Blackwater...is owned by the wealthy and politically-connected Erik Prince.
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Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families.

To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.
...
After filing its suit against the dead men's estates, Blackwater demanded that its claim and the families' existing lawsuit be handled in a private arbitration. By suing the families in arbitration, Blackwater has attempted to move the examination of their wrongful conduct outside of the eye of the public and away from a jury. This comes at the same time when Congress is investigating Blackwater.
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Due to lack of accountability and oversight, Blackwater's private army has been able to obtain huge profits from the government, utilizing contacts established through Erik Prince's relationships with high-ranking government officials such as Cofer Black and Joseph Schmitz.
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When the families' attorneys, Callahan & Blaine, obtained a Court Order to take the deposition of a former Blackwater employee with critical information about the incident, Blackwater quickly re-hired him and sent him out of the country.
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Blackwater has now lifted this atrocity to a whole new level by going on the offensive and suing the families for $10 million. The families now find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun as Blackwater, armed with a war chest and politically-connected attorneys, is aggressively litigating against them. Blackwater has also threatened to hold the administrator of the estates personally liable to scare him into abandoning his position, and has threatened the families' attorneys as well.
...
Blackwater has said that it will not pay one red cent to assist or console the surviving families, but instead has counter sued for $10 million.

Without help, Blackwater will succeed in avoiding scrutiny for its conduct, escaping accountability for its actions, and silencing the families of the four Americans killed in Fallujah. A defense fund has been established by which the public is able to donate money to assist the families with litigation costs and expenses.

Donations can be sent to the estates' trust account, payable to "C&B ITF Blackwater Victims Defense Fund," c/o Callahan & Blaine, 3 Hutton Centre Drive, Ninth Floor, Santa Ana, California 92707. Donations may also be made securely online through PayPal by going to blackwatervictims.com. All donations will be kept confidential and anonymous.
"
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/53460/

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/11/1531232
"
Friday, May 11th, 2007
Author and DN! Correspondent Jeremy Scahill Testifies in Landmark House Hearing on Defense Contracting
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Jeremy Scahill testified before a House Appropriations hearing on defense contracting. Scahill is author of the book "Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army."
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a House panel put some of the harshest criticisms of this privatization of the war into the congressional record for the first time.
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about the lack of oversight of the tens of thousands of contractors deployed in Iraq.
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we face the widespread use of private forces seemingly accountable to no effective system of oversight or law. While tens of thousands of these contractors provide logistical support services for the military, thousands are heavily armed private soldiers roaming Iraq. We do know that there are 48,000 employees of private military companies in Iraq alone. These forces work for US companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp, as well as companies from across the globe. Some contractors make in a month what many active-duty soldiers make in a year.
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we have a phenomenon of soldiers leaving the active-duty military to jump over to the private sector. There’s now slang on the ground in Iraq for this jump; it's called "going Blackwater." To put it bluntly, these private forces create a system where national duty is outbid by profits
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In four years, there have been no prosecutions for crimes against Iraqis committed by contractors and not a single known prosecution of an armed contractor. That either means that we have tens of thousands of boy scouts working as armed contractors or something is fundamentally wrong with the system.
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Members of Congress tell me they've been stonewalled in attempts to gain detailed information about the activities of these private contractors. I think it's a disturbing commentary that I’ve received phone calls from members of Congress asking me for documents on the contractors, and not the other way around. In the current discussion in the Congress on this issue, what is seldom discussed is how this system, the privatization of war, has both encouraged and enabled the growth and creation of companies who have benefited and stand to gain even more from an escalation of the war.
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This war contracting system has intimately linked corporate profits to an escalation of war and conflict. These companies have no incentive to decrease their footprint in the war zone and every incentive to increase it.
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Blackwater is a company that has very deep connections in US intelligence, in the military. It does indeed have political connections to the White House.
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Mr. Prince likes to refer to Blackwater as the Federal Express of the national security apparatus.
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not only is Mr. Prince a significant contributor to several of the campaign causes of Republicans who are in influential positions, particularly in the years of the Republican-controlled congress, as well as to the White House, but he has deep connections to some of the religious right organizations that have come to a position of prominence in this country.
[...]
I think this is a company that embodies a lot of what President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address in 1961.
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what we need to do is de-link corporate profits from an escalation of conflict. I think we need to pass effective anti-mercenary legislation.
"
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/11/1531232



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