Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: May 4, 2007 2:56:06 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Will Blackwater Become Fuehrer Busch's SS, The Nasty
Party's Paramilitary Arm?
"Will they be training [our police officers] for torture [here in
Illinois]? asked one speaker at a community meeting. "We ought to
know."
"People are afraid --particularly people with young children--
when they see strange men here in camouflage with submachine guns."
Blackwater Rising
By Chuck Goudie
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=investigative&id=5267983
May 2, 2007 - The world's most controversial security service is
now open for business in Illinois. But is Blackwater, Inc. looking
to make Illinois an outpost for what has been called the world's
largest private army?
This is the same Blackwater that has become the icon for private
security services in Iraq. According to critics, Blackwater is
nothing more than a corporate warlord, based in North Carolina,
with a payroll of hired gunslingers -- hundreds of them now
protecting diplomats and contractors in Iraq. Blackwater executives
say they and their mission near a rural town south of Rockford are
greatly misunderstood -- that to know them is to like them -- and
that they want their new neighbors in Illinois to know them.
On the ground in nine nations around the world, Blackwater is what
one company executive calls the most "notorious" in the fast-
growing business of private security. For 10 years the firm has
been headquartered on almost 7,000 acres in North Carolina. More
than 100,000 people have been trained there, the majority of them
active duty US Marines, sailors and soldiers. That makes it the
largest private military training base in the world.
The firm has received hundreds of millions of dollars in State
Department security contracts the past few years. But Blackwater
also has a law enforcement training division. And the company says
the facility it just opened in northern Illinois is for police
training.
"We saw a need for it. You would have to go five states away to
find a training facility to find anything like this," said Anne
Tyrrell, Blackwater spokeswoman.
Surrounded by pristine farmland, down a series of bumpy rural
roads, "Blackwater North" took over an existing 80-acre shooting
range. On the day ABC7 visited, officers from several departments
including Chicago and Rockford were in a tactical hostage exercise.
"There are new techniques that the criminals are using so we have
to be updated with our techniques. Coming out to Blackwater, these
guys have seen it all," said Det. Steve Stoball, Freeport Police
Department.
In the nearest "big city" of Mount Carroll, some people say they
just woke up one morning and Blackwater was in business.
"If they are going to do training for torture, are they going to do
that on the site? We don't know," said one speaker at a community
meeting.
Residents recently met to discuss Blackwater's move into Illinois,
and whether it will be expanding, something the company claims it
does not intend.
"There is a campaign being waged against us to spread false
information," said Annie Tyrrell, Blackwater spokesperson.
Much of the Blackwater resistance began after an incident in
Fallujah focused attention on Blackwater's hired gun role in Iraq.
Four Backwater security agents were ambushed by insurgents,
murdered, dragged through the streets and strung from a bridge over
the Euphrates.
"It's like a secret army over there that the majority of Americans
aren't aware of," said the wife of a dead Blackwater employee.
At a Congressional hearing in February, relatives of Blackwater
officers killed in the grizzly assault testified that their loved
ones were deployed to a combat zone with minimal preparation or
protection. Blackwater is among 25 private military firms hired by
the US government to provide security in Iraq, at a cost of $4
billion according to Congress, but with little oversight or
accountability.
"If you are going to subcontract out this war then there needs to
be some laws," said the wife of the deceased Blackwater employee.
North Shore Representative Jan Schakowsky has introduced a bill
that would crack down on contractors who provide rent-a-soldiers in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Private military firms in general I think are a threat to
democracy," said Dan Kenney.
The spillover from Blackwater's military operations prompted DeKalb
4th grade teacher Dan Kenney to begin a campaign against the
security contractor. On his spring break, Kenney says he went to
Blackwater, Illinois, posing as a prospective customer to find out
what they were up to.
"They call it it a 'combat town'," said Kenney.
Kenney says what he saw, and was told, leads him to believe that
Blackwater will eventually conduct military commando training in
Illinois.
"They kind of see themselves above the law. They see themselves
above the law in Iraq and other countries they go into," said Kenney.
"The company has come in under false pretenses," said Mary Jo
Burke, Blackwater protester.
Nearby resident burke Says she has been trying to unravel
Blackwater's intentions for several months.
"Since we don't know who they're going to be training, what kind of
training or the impact on the environment, we don't want them
here," said Burke.
Burke says the Jo Daviess County Board should have held public
hearings. Board President Marvin Shultz did not return ABC7's phone
calls to discuss Blackwater.
"People are afraid, particularly people with children seeing men in
camouflage with submachine guns," said Burke.
"We want to prepare law enforcement to do their jobs to the best of
their ability, to best serve and protect the populace. That's will
be going on here," said Anne Tyrrell, Blackwater spokesperson.
Blackwater officials say there are many "myths" surrounding what
they do.
One thing about Blackwater that is NOT a myth, based on personal
experience and observation during a reporting trip to Iraq, is the
fear that the company's security officers instill while on duty.
In Iraq, whenever a caravan of Cadillac Escalades used by
Blackwater agents would approach, regular Iraqis, those of us in
the media, and even some American military personnel, would stop in
their tracks, knowing that the Blackwater squad was heavily armed
and not afraid to use their weapons.
========
Almost coinciding with the anniversary of the Kent State
massacre ... DEJA VU ...
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/05/03/170606.php
LAPD swept through the May Day Immigration Reform Protest at
MacArthur Park, causing panic and assaulting attendees and several
media spokesmen and journalists. It has to be one of the most
blatant cases of excessive force used by the LAPD, and was probably
recorded by more people than any other example of police misconduct
and aggressiveness.
Police began clearing the park after alleged attacks by protesters
throwing bottles. Rubber bullets were fired at protesters and
journalists, as the police cleared the park with multiple cameras’
rolling, capturing incredible scenes of the confrontation.
Fox11 LA, Telemundo and Univision are a few of the news agencies
that were present covering May Day. While Univision reporters were
setting up interviews, shots rang out from the LAPD and batons
started swinging. FOX 11's Christina Gonzalez and her videographer,
Patti were close by filming and were also assaulted by the police
with the camera’s filming everything. There were so many cameras
rolling that they all caught each other in a odd panoramic
landscape, with bits and pieces showing the entire area from
multiple angles.
Several camera men, reporters and media personnel were filmed being
hit with batons and having their equipment snatched from their
hands and tossed away. The clips of the incident speak for
themselves as this small protest was brought to a terrifying end.
The Radio and Television News Association is demanding an
investigation, and planning on conducting its own investigation.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/51454/
Police with riot guns fired 240 rounds [of tubber bullets], shot
tear gas and clubbed protesters and journalists gathered in
MacArthur Park. Of at least ten people injured, seven were
journalists.
Pedro Sevcec was broadcasting live for the Spanish-language
television network Telemundo when police knocked over his monitors
and lights and hit his staff with batons. Sevcec told the Los
Angeles Times a police officer grabbed one of his cameras and threw
it more than 15 feet to the ground. He said police pointed a gun
directly at his face*, hit him with a baton, and forced him out of
the park.
-----
*In case you're unaware, rubber bullets fired at close range KILL
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