The pills had worn off and I was awake far too early, sitting at the computer by default, reading the MSNBC online news, because the word “Blackwater” had caught my attention while the damned machine was booting up, and I’ve been figuring for a while this private, capitalist, and highly profitable gun-thug legion requires a whole bunch of our attention – and maybe more – lest we find our sorry selves in a world of armed goon-terror and because vast areas of basic law enforcement will seemingly be sold to for-profit sociopaths. The news story was pretty much what I expected up until the end of this excerpt.
“Blackwater has an airstrip and hangar filled with gleaming helicopters, a manufacturing plant for assembling armored cars, a pound filled with bomb-sniffing dogs and a lake with mock ships for training sailors. An armory is stacked to the ceiling with rifles. Throughout the place are outdoor ranges where military, intelligence and law enforcement authorities from around the country practice shooting handguns and assault rifles at automated metal targets made by the firm. An incessant pop, pop, pop fills the air. There's no other place quite like Blackwater, at least not in private hands. The complex anchors a global training and security operation that is one of the government's fastest-growing contractors and both a fixture and a flashpoint of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a decade, Blackwater's revenue from federal government contracts has grown exponentially, from less than $100,000 to almost $600 million last year. In August, the company won its biggest deal ever, a five-year counternarcotics training contract worth up to $15 billion shared with four other companies.”
At which I exclaimed “Hold it the fuck right there!” Because – with this fucking contract – it would seem Bush & Cheney have gone and sold the War On Drugs to a cartel of Uzi-toting fundamentalist storm troopers with cart-blanche to kick my fucking door down if they so desire because they think I’m a reefer smoking old trouble-maker. And this is the first I’ve heard about it -- when it’s already a done deal! Time to get the .50 caliber and plan for the blaze of glory, methinks.
A background video from The Nation
The secret word is Rabid
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2 comments:
It was only a matter of time before private contractors begged for and began receiving part of a government's share of the proceeds of the conspiratorial crime we know as the War On Fun.
Beer N. Hockey is right on the fucking money. Share the drug enforcement industry with the private sector. That's corporate socialism.
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