What questions would you like put to Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince, next week?

[bobthedrummer]

:hide:

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[NoPasaran]

1. Last cigarette?

[Bluebear]

6. ELEGANT!

[LakeSamish706]

2. The problem with Blackwater as I see it has nothing to do with Blackwater...

perse... but has more to do with the White House in enlisting them in the first place and the other so called "Contractors".... That is such a Bull Shit term to begin with... "CONTRACTORS" for Christ sakes...... They are hired killers with no one holding them in check.... Thats the bottom line here.

I actually ordered the book thru my Library, and then thought... Why would I read something that is so out of date to current events.... I decided that I would be much better off just Googoling them to find out what I wanted to know.

[rwheeler31]

3. This question should go to Michigan.

Have any of you visited Holland Michigan?

[LakeSamish706]

8. Ok.. You have me here... Cause my last name is Wheeler...

and I have relatives that originate from Michigan... So please enlighten me on this... My relatives settled in Mikado Michigan.......

[cascadiance]

36. Here's a few...

1. Why did you give money to the Green Party in Pennsylvania?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001257.php
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001831.php

2. Did you have a lot of fun at alumni parties at Hillsdale College with former Indiana rep "Count Chocula" Chris Chocola, Mr. "Istanbul is Baghdad" Howard Kaloogian, and the former (good Republican) president of Hillsdale that loved having a fling with his daughter in law?

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll//artikkel?SearchID=73049970421921&Avis=TO&Dato=20010114&Kategori=NEWS21&Lopenr=10114001&Ref=AR

3. So if your troops get kicked out of Baghdad, will you "redploy" them here in your future "Protrero Hill" campus here in San Diego?

[Bluebear]

4. wrong place

[alfredo]

5. I would ask him that if bush or any future president tells him to use

force against US citizens, would he.

[spag68]

28. Appears that you have forgotten

KENT STATE!!!!!!

[alfredo]

33. No I haven't, that's why I asked.

I housed some people who left Ohio after the murders. They were very very scared and needed to lay low for a while. One was a professor who was walking from one building to the next. He was in agreement with the protest, but wasn't taking part. A person next to him got shot. He was freaked out.

It was John Mitchel who told the governor to use deadly force.

[Gregorian]

7. What part of "Thou shalt not kill" do you not understand?

Asshole!

[IDemo]

9. One he may not even know the answer to, or care about

How do you reconcile Blackwater operating in Iraq without having to answer to either Iraqi law or US military rules?

[seemslikeadream]

10. What are you going to spend all that blood money on?

[bobthedrummer]

11. Some useful links to help formulate questions for Mr. Prince to respond to

"The Far Right in West Michigan: Erik Prince" (from mediamouse.org)
http://www.mediamouse.org/resources/right.php?personId=8

Source Watch profile

Erik Prince
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Erik_Prince

"Security Company Death Squads Timeline by Dirk Adriaensens and Sarah Meyer" (extensive Blackwater links + info about 19 other mercenaries, thread started 9-25-2007)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x309935

The Prince and DeVos families and their associates have supported the "super secret" Tim LaHaye founded group that Richard B. Cheney met with yesterday in Utah-the Council for National Policy

Council for National Policy page from Source Watch
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Council_for_National_Policy

I'd like to ask him to describe his relationship with J. Cofer Black.
IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[Disturbed]

13. It's a bad idea for Congress to have him testify now.

Later, if criminal charges are brought on him, he may be immune from them
due to his testimony, as Oliver North was.

[Octafish]

12. Will Blackwater be used to circumvent Posse Commitatus?

Back in Rex 84 days, Ollie North indicated that outfits like the Michigan Militia would be "federalized" to help in the round-up of suspected collaborators -- meaning anyone who didn''t support a "hypothetical" invasion of Central America.

Another Day in the Empire: FEMA and Katrina

[bobthedrummer]

14. Now they just "privatize" these death squads for use anywhere, including HOMELAND (tm)

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[seemslikeadream]

15. Will your troops be as kind to us as these are to the monks in Burma?

[Octafish]

17. They took off their sandals and put on jackboots.

In Myanmar, too.

The End of America -- the Police State is Right Here, Right Now

Mutiny, anyone? Mutiny?

[seemslikeadream]

18. A private army when you need it most

MERCENARIES FOR HIRE
All this firepower, trained on a public which places its trust in uniformed guards, raises a variety of concerns: The private security industry is largely unregulated; its employees are often poorly trained, underpaid, and inadequately screened; and they serve only those who hired them. While rent-a cops are legally limited to observing, reporting and attempting to deter crime a power which falls short of the authorized use of force or the right to make an arrest the distinction is apt to be lost on most citizens accosted by a uniformed private guard waving a gun and security badge.
The history of businesses hiring security firms and using them like a private army is long and rife with abuse. Pinkerton, the nation's oldest and second largest security company, earned its spurs in the late 19th century when its guards served as a private army for robber barons intent on wiping out unions. Pinkerton provided the firepower when Ford Frick issued the order to gun down striking workers at Andrew Carnegie's Homestead steel plant in 1892.

Private security companies today have kept that union-busting tradition alive and well. As corporations faced with labor disputes turn more and more to so-called permanent replacement workers, guard firms are utilized to crush militant opposition from unions. A rapidly expanding subset of the industry specializes in strikebreaking.

At the forefront is the Special Response Corporation (SRC), based in Towson, Maryland, SRC's ads feature a uniformed agent wielding a riot shield beneath a headline which proclaims: A Private Army When You Need It Most. SRC promises prospective employers that we can provide the security and control measures necessary for the continued operation of the business in the event of a strike. SRC vouches for the professionalism of its agents, stating that they all have prior military or law enforcement experience. In 1990, SRC helped precipitate a melee when its guards used martial arts sticks against striking newspaper workers in New York City.

http://mediafilter.org/caq/CAQ54p.police.html

Tales of the strike-busters
Unionized workers knock heads with controversial security firms that specialize in picket-line intimidation
BY BRUCE LIVESEY
For Edwin Godinez it was a case of déjà vu. Prior to emigrating from the Philippines six years ago he'd grown accustomed to seeing soldiers dressed in riot gear beating up protesters and strikers. But when Godinez and 450 fellow workers went on strike last October against their employer, Mississauga-based CFM Majestic Inc., it was as if he had never left home.

As soon as the strike began, the workers were confronted by burly security guards outside the factory where CFM Majestic manufactures fireplaces and stoves. The guards had shaved heads, were dressed from head to toe in black uniforms and wore black caps and military boots. As the workers tried to block buses filled with replacement workers -- or scabs, as they're traditionally known -- from crossing the picket lines, the guards shoved the picketers out of the way. Aiming video cameras, they also filmed the strikers. These guards worked for an outfit called London Protection International Inc. (LPI), a security company that specializes in "labour unrest management" situations.

If LPI's intention was to frighten the workers -- the majority of whom are from the Philippines -- it didn't work. "Most of the Filipino workers had been college students back home and were used to this sort of police presence," says Godinez, a 35-year-old father of a baby daughter. "We were not really intimidated."

Even before negotiations with the United Steelworkers of America union broke down last fall, the company hired both LPI and Bill McFadden Ltd., an outfit owned by a former U.S. Navy SEAL who leases trucks and buses for transporting scabs (later prompting workers to brandish signs reading "Dump the Seal"). On CFM Majestic's behalf, LPI recruited scabs, herding them onto buses at a Mississauga baseball field while their guards cleared a path through picketers into the company's plant. "The people were constantly pushing and shoving picketers," says Garnet Penny, a Steelworkers area coordinator. The union responded by launching an effective corporate campaign that, after four weeks, compelled CFM Majestic to grudgingly offer a better first contract.

http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_04.13.00/news/busters.html

[bobthedrummer]

19. Who would put "picket line intimidation specialist" on their resume?

A universal fascist or thug?

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[Octafish]

20. This Machine Kills Fascists

It's called Truth.



From Where the Blog Has No Name...

What do Woody Guthrie, Neil Young, James Brown, Dolly Parton, Irving Berlin and Bob Dylan have in common?

[bobthedrummer]

22. It's a directed energy weapon. One of many, bro.

:)

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[seemslikeadream]

24. Meet L.A. County's Mr. Gadget

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003896377_gadgets22.html


By Richard Winton

Los Angeles Times

PREV 1 of 2 NEXT


AL SEIB / TPN

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Cmdr. Charles "Sid" Heal hopes to see the SkySeer replace some helicopter surveillance operations. The unmanned aircraft, which weighs 4 pounds, can fly over an incident and send video to investigators below. "This thing costs cents on the dollar to run," Heal said.



AL SEIB / TPN

Police forces that seek less-lethal weapons often use nylon stun bags, such as this one filled with lead shot.
LOS ANGELES — Charles "Sid" Heal stands excitedly in the parking lot of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's station in San Dimas, tinkering with a prototype for the ominously named "Active Denial System."

With one zap from what looks like a satellite dish on a tripod, those within target range feel a burning sensation on their skin.

Heal, a Sheriff's Department commander, tested the device on himself.

"It is like stepping into a scalding shower. You are going to step back quickly," Heal said. "It just stops them in their tracks."

Heal likes the system because he sees it as one day making rubber bullets and tear gas obsolete — giving police a less-violent way to control crowds and combative suspects. Heal said he believed the Sheriff's Department would deploy some form of the weapon within a few years.

Heal, a barrel-chested veteran with a street fighter's nose and bulging biceps, knows a lot about deadly force. He was a beat cop in southeast Los Angeles County, headed the sheriff's SWAT unit and had tours in Vietnam, Somalia, Kuwait and Iraq as a Marine and Marine reservist.

But for the past decade, Heal has dedicated himself to helping cops avoid deadly confrontations. As head of the Sheriff's Department Technology Exploration Unit, he has tested hundreds of high-tech law-enforcement gizmos — some backed by huge corporations, others the product of garage inventors.

The 32-year veteran of the department is not a scientist, and he doesn't develop products. But a bad review from him can doom or delay an invention, while endorsements can have buyers lining up at the maker's door. Some, such as Tasers and pepper-spraying flashlights, now are part of deputies' everyday lives.

[bobthedrummer]

26. Sid Heal was featured in Jon Ronson's "The Men Who Stare At Goats"

one of the First Earth Battalion US military cult influenced by people like Col. Channon and Col. Aquino that branched out into the US intelligence community with stuff like STARGATE, but those are the kinds of facts that get threads taken elsewhere so I needn't but mention Cmd. Heal's past in passing slad.

I wonder if he's for war on Iran?

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[seemslikeadream]

27. We gonna be sinkin' soon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdsHqwntOG8

[seemslikeadream]

25. Anti-Crime Unit To Carry Submachine Guns On Central Fla. Streets

http://www.local6.com/news/14224055/detail.html

[Swamp Rat]

23. yep

:hi:

[bobthedrummer]

21. Ollie's part of that Council for National Policy/CNP "super-secret" group

policies that might be based on the LEFT BEHIND cult since Tim LaHaye founded CNP in 1981.

All those modern Pharisees mixing with the master race militarists and black ops folks, listening to Dick Cheney in Utah-it seems like Philip K. Dick and Margaret Atwood works are almost prophetic, here's a repost of the CNP link from Source Watch

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Council_for_National_Policy

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[tabatha]

16. How do you reconcile Blackwater with Christianity?

[gateley]

29. Have you always been a dick? nt

[Jim Sagle]

30. What's the frequency, Erik?

[blogslut]

31. I'd ask him

I...
Who took the money?
Who took the money away?
I...
It's always showtime
Here at the edge of the stage.

I, I, I,
Wake up and wonder
What was the place,
what was the name?
We wanna wait,
but here we go again...

[xchrom]

32. recommend -- no questions -- the intersection between enterprizes like blackwater

and gop politicians pretty much speaks for itself.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

34. You've sold your soul several times over now, Erik

What was the original price, for like the first selling?

[bobthedrummer]

35. How many US military members have died or been injured from interaction with Blackwater missions?

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[bobthedrummer]

37. I have questions about rumored DHS and other domestic Blackwater contracts.

What "services" are they for?

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[bobthedrummer]

38. .

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[Javaman]

39. If the Iraq gov't paid you better would you protect them instead of the corps? nt

[bobthedrummer]

40. !

:puke::argh: