Blackwater // Current TV

China Warns Russia of Impending US Catastrophic Events

Chinese Security agents have warned Russian president Putin that there is an American... more

trut
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4 months ago
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Blackwater now XE looking to return to Iraq

By David Edwards Friday, September 30th, 2011 -- 11:59 am Four years after... more

KB723
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4 months ago
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New Rule Requires Contractors to Display Fraud Hotline Posters! What Do You Think?

By NEIL GORDON

Starting this week, coffee drinkers and water cooler gossips at companies like Lockheed Martin will have something new to read on those lunch room bulletin boards. The Department of Defense (DoD) issued a final rule requiring its contractors to display fraud hotline posters, like the one pictured here, in all common work areas and on their websites.

There was concern that the old rule, which allowed contractors to post notices about their own fraud hotlines in lieu of the DoD posters, was undermining the DoD Inspector General hotline program, under which contractor employee disclosures of fraud, waste, and abuse are protected by federal whistleblower laws. According to the DoD IG’s website, the hotline received almost 17,000 contacts in the past year and has helped the government recover over $425 million since its inception. It has also resulted in safer products and equipment for our military personnel and DoD employees.

The new rule contains several glaring exceptions: It does not apply to contracts or subcontracts that have a value of less than $5 million, involve the purchase of commercial items, or are performed outside the United States. POGO has long been critical of the commercial item exception, a contractor oversight loophole through which you can literally fly an aircraft. As for the exception for contracts performed outside the U.S., you might remember the controversy several years ago when this exception mysteriously appeared in an early draft of the contractor mandatory reporting rule. People understandably get upset when the rules are bent for KBR, Blackwater/Xe, and other large companies that derive a significant portion of their contracting income–and commit a significant amount of contract-related misconduct–in foreign countries.

Fortunately, the White House had a change of heart and dropped both the outside-the-U.S and commercial item exceptions from the mandatory reporting rule, which went into effect in December 2008 and, based on what little we’ve heard about it since then, seems to have a positive impact on contractor accountability. Contractors take the reporting requirement seriously and (we assume) have been able to nip in the bud contract-related problems before they became full-blown fraud/waste/abuse scandals.

Some contractors will not be displaying those retro ‘70s-looking DoD IG hotline posters on their cluttered break room bulletin boards. We hope continued implementation and enforcement of the mandatory reporting requirement makes up for that. Still, all defense contractor employees should be made aware there is a government channel through which they can report misconduct.

Neil Gordon is a POGO Investigator.By NEIL GORDON Starting this week, coffee drinkers and water cooler gossips at... more

dliebelson
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5 months ago
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11 comments

Super Frat: The Romans Would’ve Loved Xbox

Biff and Werewolf discover a video game of questionable morals.

TonyDiGerolamo
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5 months ago
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Iraq to buy 36 U.S. fighter jets

Mission accomplished!

Lori_Price_CLG
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7 months ago
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As The Cookie Crumbles: Some Crumbs

WWH – Sacrifice: Jeremy Scahill is a fucking treasure, a hero, and a bright... more

joeeddy
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7 months ago
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Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers

The story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war. by grtv... more

Pfailblog
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8 months ago
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Why “They” Hate (U.S.)

Three headlines ripped from the past few days highlight very clearly why so many... more

joeeddy
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9 months ago
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The United Arab Emirates authorities increase crackdown on dissent and hire a company run by Blackwater founder Erik Prince | Free Speech Radio News

UAE Hires Blackwater For Aid In Further Repression

mollymew
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9 months ago
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Sons of Blackwater Open Corporate Spying Shop

Veterans from the most infamous private security firm on Earth and one of the... more

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9 months ago
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UAE prince hires Blackwater founder to build private army

The crown prince of Abu Dhabi has enlisted the infamous founder of Blackwater security... more

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9 months ago
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Secret Desert Force Set Up by Blackwater’s Founder

Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in... more

joeeddy
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9 months ago
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Blackwater Shooters Back On The Docket

An appeals court Friday potentially revived the prosecution of four Blackwater... more

joeeddy
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10 months ago
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Blackwater Interview

The Night I Met Blackwater | Pculpa Why is Xe Services (Formerly Blackwater USA)... more

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10 months ago
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1 comment

"CIA Spy" Providing al Qaeda with "Nuclear Fissile Material" & "Biological Agents" Report Says: Raymond Davis - Accused of Double Murder

011-02-20 12:40:00 Double murder-accused US official Raymond Davis has been found... more

gerardange
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12 months ago
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9 comments

Anonymous strikes back... Part II ~ What Is HBGary Federal?

Anonymous Swarms on Security Firm That Poked the Hive By Richard Adhikari... more

gerardange
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1 year ago
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0 comments

Anonymous strikes back... Part 3 ~ Who Is HBGary Federal?

Anonymous attacks US security company HBGary chief Aaron Barr's Twitter account... more

gerardange
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1 year ago
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1 comment

BREAKING NEWS: Former Swedish Judge:Sundberg-Weitman speaks out on the handling of the Julian Assange case

The following summarizes the unfolding of events surrounding the arrest of Julian... more

gerardange
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1 year ago
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Support Wikileaks ~ You're The Voice - Support The Truth

Please support Wikileaks by donating. Click here: http://213.251.145.96/support.html... more

gerardange
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1 year ago
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WikiLeaks' Most Terrifying Revelation: Just How Much Our Government Lies to Us

Wikileaks has shown that our government and military form a 'vast lying machine' that perpetrates mass murder in our name.

January 3, 2011

Do you believe that it is in Americans' interest to allow a small group of U.S. leaders to unilaterally murder, maim, imprison and/or torture anyone they choose anywhere in the world, without the knowledge let alone oversight of their citizens or the international community? And, despite their proven record of failure to protect America -- from Indochina to Iran to Iraq -- do you believe they should be permitted to clandestinely expand their war-making without informed public debate? If so, you are betraying the principles upon which America was founded, endangering your nation, and displaying a distinctly "unamerican" subservience to unaccountable authority. But if you oppose autocratic power, you are called to support Wikileaks and others trying to limit U.S. Executive Branch mass murder abroad and failure to protect Americans at home.

These two issues became officially linked for the first time when former U.S. Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal explicitly stated that the murder of civilians increases rather than decreases the numbers of those committed to killing Americans, and actually implemented policies -- since reversed by General Petraeus -- to reduce U.S. murder of civilians. McChrystal said that “for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies." By so doing he made it clear that killing civilians is not only a moral and war crimes issue, but -- in today's interdependent world -- also threatens U.S. national security.

As important as is the issue of free speech, it is the question of whether the U.S. Executive is in fact protecting the American people through its mass murder abroad that really lies at the heart of the Wikileaks controversy. Executive Branch officials justify persecuting and threatening to murder Assange on the grounds that he has damaged U.S. "national security." If McChrystal is right, however, it is the past decade of U.S. Executive mass murder in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, now revealed beyond any doubt by Wikileaks, that is the real threat to U.S. national security.

The chilling fact is this: whether you believe that September 11, 2001 was due to incomprehensible fanaticism or genuine grievances, it seems likely that U.S. leaders’ murder of countless Muslims since 2001 will cause the next 9/11 should, God forbid, it occur, The recent suicide-bomber in Sweden who came perilously close to succeeding taped a message saying "so will your children, daughters, brothers, and sisters die, like our brothers, sisters, and children die." Similar sentiments were voiced by the Times Square bomber, and it is likely that those responsible for future American deaths will also be motivated by revenge for the hundreds of thousands of Muslims for whose deaths U.S. leaders are responsible since 2001.

This is not, of course, to justify such attacks. Any attacks on civilians, whether by the Taliban or General Petraeus, are totally unjustified and crimes of war. But if the issue is how best to enhance U.S. national security, it is critical to rationally discuss the most prudent and sensible means of preventing further attacks -- which in this case is to stop creating huge numbers of people who want to kill Americans. If General McChrystal is correct, every American should tremble at the long-term danger to America caused by the last decade of U.S. war-making in the Muslim world. If only 1/100th of 1% of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are moved to want to attack America because of America's post-9/11 killing of Muslim civilians, for example, the U.S. Executive will have created a pool of 160,000 Muslims devoted to murdering Americans.

View Next Page:
http://www.alternet.org/story/149393/wikileaks_most_terrifying_revelation:_just_how_much_our_government_lies_to_usWikileaks has shown that our government and military form a 'vast lying... more

gerardange
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1 year ago
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45 comments

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