D.C. Tax Workers Charged In Scam
2 Accused of Taking $16 Million Worth Of Illegal Refunds

By Carol D. Leonnig, Clarence Williams and David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 8, 2007; Page A01



Clinton, in Particular, Draws Equal Parts Cash and Vitriol
By Jose Antonio Vargas For Candidates, Web Is Power And Poison
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2007; Page A01

How Blackwater Sniper Fire Felled 3 Iraqi Guards
Witnesses Call Shooting From Justice Ministry Unprovoked, But State Dept. Cleared Its Security Team After a Brief Probe
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 8, 2007; Page A01

Kaine Hails 'Balance' in New Political Landscape
By Tim Craig and Anita Kumar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 8, 2007; Page A01


Bhutto Urges Protest Against Musharraf
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 8, 2007; Page A01

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Brand name spies and disaster capitalism

Blackwater's Owner Has Spies for Hire
Ex-U.S. Operatives Dot Firm's Roster
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 3, 2007; Page A01

First it became a brand name in security for its work in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it's taking on intelligence.

Somehow I don't think these particular spies' investigatory talents will be utilized to discover the origins of the Harris fire.


Yeah, leave it to Cofer Black.

I'm so cynical that I think soon there will be shit going on in the border area that we residents of San Diego have NEVER seen before. Weird shit like, oh, how about suicide car bombers ramming Border Patrol vehicles? That's always a clue that the CIA is pulling shit in the neighborhood. Or drug runners using illegal Mexican mules except for maybe one of the mule's backpacks has explosives in it instead of drugs. These guys never stop coming up with reasons to create yet another underfunded law enforcement agency that will inevitably need to be supplemented with overpriced, overfed, overripe contractors who are accountable to no one. Double-dipping ain't near enough money for these greedy motherfuckers.

Hey, didn't the Roman Empire rot from the inside out?

People Burn Here

Rapture Rescue 911: Disaster Response for the Chosen Naomi Klein


Whoops, missed the CityBeat Blackwater article on the 30th, here 'tis

Blackwater, Potrero, Naomi Klein

(update) “Shock Doctrine” Author Naomi Klein on State-Sanctioned Torture and Disaster Response for the Chosen (click on pic)

Happy Halloween.

How about a ghoulish San Diego story?

Tiny Potrero Battles County and Blackwater USA
Published on February 22, 2007
By Don Bauder

...Last July, Blackwater hired as a lobbyist Nikki Clay, a longtime cheerleader for corporate welfare (Chargers, Padres) and former president of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. Blackwater brought on the developer-friendly environmental firm of Mooney, Jones & Stokes, along with other companies to make up their project team. The team quickly snuggled up to the County, which was not playing hard to get...

( San Diego County is the largest urban county in the state without its own fire department.)

Massive security contractor faces growing protest in rural California town over 824-acre base
Miriam Raftery and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday April 3, 2007

Good neighbor?
Blackwater keeps its eye on a tiny East County enclave.
By Pat Sherman 10/09/2007

apparently the swamp things are ugly neighbors


11:53 a.m. October 21, 2007
Potrero fire causes evacuations around Julian
SIGNONSANDIEGO NEWS SERVICES

POTRERO – Santa Ana winds of 30 to 35 mph fueled a fast-moving brush fire that broke out Sunday in Potrero and resulted in evacuations of several rural communities, authorities said.

The fire started about 9:30 a.m. near Harris Ranch Road and Potrero Valley Road and was heading northwest as the noon hour approached, but no injuries were reported. The flames jumped Highway 94, according to Cal Fire officials.


Blackwater to California: Hire us to Put Out Your Fires
October 25, 2007 07:27 PM (EST)


Blackwater = Fire-Fighter?
By Noah Shachtman October 26, 2007 3:34:02 PM
Categories: Homeland Security, Mercs

...Local groups opposed to the complex said, before the latest conflagrations near San Diego, that Blackwater West's "regular detonation of firearms would be a risk both to the fire-prone landscape as well as to the wildlife that currently calls that area home, including the golden eagle and the California condor."

Au contraire, Blackwater execs answer. Brian Bonfiglio, vice president of Blackwater West, notes that the complex's proposal includes water tanks capable of holding 35,000 gallons. "I see a tactical operation center for East County fires," he says. "Can you imagine how much of a benefit it would be if we were operational now?"...

Injured California Firefighter Anticipated Dying
Updated: 10-29-2007 09:05:04 AM
TONY MANOLATOS, Staff Writer
The San Diego Union-Tribune

Rapue, 53, was in charge of Pikop and the two other firefighters, whose names have not been released. Both are in critical condition at UCSD.

...For Pikop, the day started like every other Sunday. The crew at the San Marcos station was mowing the lawn and trimming hedges.

Rapue, the captain, was normally based at Cal Fire's Rincon station, one of 18 in the county. He was covering the San Marcos station because the regular captain was off.

The four-member team heard about the fires on the radio, so they weren't surprised when they were dispatched to Potrero, 67 miles away.

The call came in shortly after 9:30 a.m., said Pikop, who started with Cal Fire less than five months ago....

Blackwater Provided Potrero with Relief Suplies During Fires
Oct 29, 2007
Amita Sharma

Blackwater's relief effort wins praise of project foe
By Anne Krueger
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
October 30, 2007

Fire facts

Why Aren't We Better Prepared for Inevitable Disasters?
...The GOP rivals parrot the same old, increasingly irrelevant and out of touch formula of cutting taxes and dismantling government....

Santa Ana winds set to make encore

By Harrison Sheppard, Sacramento Bureau

Article Last Updated: 10/30/2007 11:00:26 PM PDT

Let's meet Naomi Klein

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Today's Fishwrap

Potrero and evacuees

A Town Beseiged: Potrero Residents Battling Blackwater Now Suffer Ravages of Wildfire
by: Miriam Raftery
Thu Oct 25, 2007 at 10:54:43 AM PDT

The Harris fire started in Potrero on Sunday morning

The cause is under investigation

Harris fire red on map

Harris fire Google

Google fire map

I just had a friend call and I hadn't known that he had been evacuated to Qualcomm. While I was on the phone with him a caller to Thom Hartmann's show called in from Qualcomm to say she was being told by the police to leave, but wasn't ready to go home. This is still nuts.

Update: It's definite: Game's on Sunday at Qualcomm
The comments are a trip. Emotions are still running high.

A friend just told me that they announced over the loudspeaker that they were going to be checking ID's and a thousand people left. No doubt that not everyone that was there was an evacuee. That would be the
San Diego the Tourists Never See

On PBS NOW tonight:

God and Global Warming
Raging Fires in California
Will homeowners be burned by insurance policies?

Zeitgeist the movie

What a fun time waster. Pretty basic stuff.

L R & Center

PBS NOW
Immigration on Main Street

Bill Moyers tonight,
Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater

The Military-Industrial Complex

The Balance of Trade

Finished reading

"Legacy of Ashes
The History of the CIA"
By Tim Weiner © 2007
Tim Weiner is a New York Times reporter who has written on American intelligence for twenty years. He was awarded a Pulitzer price for this work on national security programs. He has traveled to Afghanistan and other nations to investigate CIA covert operations first hand. This is his third book.

On page 411 in the book is an interesting passage on William Casey. {Casey was the OSS chief in London during WWII. He was a Wall Street operator who made his money selling tax-shelter strategies. He was Reagan’s campaign manager.}

He was the director of the CIA at the time.

December 15, (1986) Casey had a seizure in his 7th floor office. He was wheeled out on a stretcher before anyone grasped what had happened. At Georgetown University Hospital, his doctors determined that he had an undiagnosed, central nervous system lymphoma-a malignant spider’s web spreading in his brain, a rare disease, difficult to detect. It often led to inexplicably bizarre behavior in the twelve to fifteen months before it was discovered.

{ So Reagan sleeps through briefings and the director of CIA has some weird cancer in his brain. Iran-Contra anyone? }

There’s a passage on page 510 that left me with my mouth hanging open:

The clandestine service began to abandon the techniques of the past - political warfare, propaganda, and covert action - because it lacked the skills to conduct them. The agency remained a place where few people spoke Arabic or Persian, Korean or Chinese. It still denied employment to patriotic Arab Americans on security grounds if they still had relatives living in the Middle East as most did.

Huh? Who’s security does this protect? The security of Americans? The relatives still living in the old country? So I guess deaing with liars, cheats, thieves and drug dealers has proven to be a more efficient way to gather intelligence. Yeah, tell that to all the families of the foreign CIA recruits that got killed upon discovery. Mmmmmm hmmmm, OKaybee.

On page 512 a now familiar lament from anyone with three brain cells left:

At he end of Dwight Eisenhower’s years a president, a few days after he lamented the legacy of intelligence failures he would pass on to his successors, he gave his farewell address to the nation and famously warned" "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplace power exists and will persist." Little more than a half century later the surge of secret spending on national security after 9/11 had created a booming intelligence-industrial complex.

Corporate clones of the CIA started sprouting all over the suburbs of Washington and beyond. Patriotism for profit became a $50 billion-a-year business by some estimates-a sum about the size of the intelligence budget itself. This phenomenon traced back fifteen years. After the cold war the agency began contracting out thousands of jobs to fill the perceived void created by the budget cuts that began in 1992. A CIA officer could file his retirement papers, turn in his blue identification badge, go to work for a much better salary at a military contractor such as Lockheed Martin or Booz Allen Hamilton, then return to the CIA the next day wearing a green badge. After September 11 the outsourcing went out of control. Green-badge bosses started openly recruiting in the CIA’s cafeteria.

…Lockheed Martin posted help wanted ads for "counterterrorism analysts" to interrogate suspected terrorists at Guantánamo prison.

So this book mentions some local hotshot names of people who are in hot water, and then mentions Blackwater USA. This company wants to set up a training camp a few miles from Tecate, Mexico in a tiny little place called Potrero. I was listening to the only local progressive talk radio show in San Diego this morning and a listener called in to say that she was at the protest yesterday in Potrero. She said that she felt like the Blackwater goons were trying to intimidate the Blackwater protesters. They were filming and one of these goons was pointing his finger at the protesters and making it look like a gun. I wasn’t there because I figured that something like that would happen. I've tangled with right-wing idealogues before. They're so stupid and brainwashed that reasoning with them is a waste of time, but they're kind of like cornered badgers, you don't want to fuck with them, they're nasty little shits.

Three hundred against Blackwater, and fifteen for Blackwater at the protest:

Blackwater foes begin fight with their feet

The right-wing brainwashed morons who commented on the Fishwrap article just crack me up. I wonder if any of them have ever looked up the word 'liberal' in a dictionary.

Stop Blackwater

Erik Prince testified today

Here's an interpretation of what happened.

(Oh Jeez, I just caught this sentence from the above article: "Every indication is that Prince is a very bad man." Totally cracks me up. I used to listen to squids try to impress me by trying to bullshit me into believing that they were Navy Seals. They didn't realize that that didn't impress or even interest most chicks raised in San Diego. Why? Because we knew that they were assholes. By the time I was eighteen I had had about enough of guys who thought that they were Billy BadAss.)

The asshole acts like his shit don't stink because of The Bush administration's ties to Blackwater


We don't want Blackwater in San Diego.

Encampment and Demonstration to Stop Blackwater West from building a training facility in San Diego County

Stop Blackwater in Potrero October 6-7 2007

The cancer that is killing this country is out of control in this city.
The military-industrial-complex can't even be surgically removed from San Diego.
The triage nurse just rolls her eyes and calls for morphine.

Here's a nice little local article about Brent Wilkes, Dukie Cunningham, ho's and hot tubs, and Wilkes' troubles before the Dukie thing.

Well, um.. the trailer's funny, but only if you've been paying attention

"We don't do body counts," Gen. Tommy Franks, who directed the Iraq invasion, has said.
Saturday, May 3, 2003

In their testimony, Sergeant Vela and other soldiers described how their teams were pushed beyond limits by battalion commanders eager to raise their kill ratio against a ruthless enemy.
Published: September 28, 2007

Senate wants Blackwater answers
Posted by Jim Tankersley on September 28, 2007 11:32 AM Permalink

Veterans of PTSD
9.28.07

War Inc. trailer



John Cusack interviews Naomi Klein

Milton Friedman is dead.

The fantasies he sold are being exposed as fantasies.

Naomi Klein's the Shock Doctrine

The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Monday, September 17th, 2007
Watch or listen to the Amy Goodman interview.

Religions sucks #7 Blackwater edition

(click book cover to find a copy of Scahill's book, click Gomer for an article that provesLarry correct)

Blackwater denies Iraq smuggling

September 27 2006
Blackwater Founder and West Michigan Native Funds Right-wing through Foundation

Blackwater in Iraq The New Private Warriors
By Sgt. MARTIN SMITH
September 19, 2007

Hessians Redux: Blackwater, U.S. and England
By Dr. Sam Hamod
09/20/07 "ICH"

Religious nutjob blogger's entry on Blackwater.

What a country I live in. My government's unfairness and arrogance and hypocrisy infuriates me sometimes. I didn't know I could feel horrified, terrified, angry, disgusted, and despondent at the same time.

*sigh*

I can.

And I'd like to add that Blackwater may finally be getting the negative press it deserves, but the problem is systemic. There are companies competing for a chunk of the security company gravy train that this shitty, fucked up war has created.

Lookee here at the list: PRIVATE FORCES DOT COM

Wednsday September 19, 2007 SDUT

Front Page UT

A little more Blackwater doody---

Federal official is under scrutiny
Krongard accused of stopping probes
By Lolita C. Baldor
ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 19, 2007

...Also under scrutiny is whether Blackwater USA, the private security firm banned this week from working in Iraq over the killing of civilians, was “illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq,” according to a letter to inspector general Howard J. Krongard obtained yesterday by The Associated Press...

...In addition to outlining a host of allegations against Krongard, who took over the State Department post in May 2005, the Waxman letter raises new questions about Blackwater. Although the security company is not named in the letter, several senior administration officials confirmed that Blackwater is the firm mentioned as being suspected of smuggling weapons into Iraq illegally...

Hey Howard, howsya bruthuh Buzzy, doin' eh?

Condi says she's sorry and can her Blackwater boys stay and play?

Rice apologises for US security firm shootings



The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, apologised to the Iraqi government yesterday in an attempt to prevent the expulsion of all employees of the security firm Blackwater USA...

Well, well, well, I guess that answers one of my questions anyway. Betcha she ain't spillin' the beans on the Kurdistan question, though.

Iraq Revokes Blackwater's License

Now can we keep the morons out of San Diego?

Something tells me NO, the San Diego 'ol boy/ M-I-C network is too entrenched.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad.

Larry says Blackwater ain't leaving Iraq.

Hmmm, so when the blithering idiot that we call our president says something about troop withdrawal does he mean the approximately 200,000 "private contractors?" I wonder how many of the contractors are mercenaries? I know I'm still hearing local ads for Border Patrol agents. That's a big hint to me that our Border Patrol agents are working in the Middle East for security contractors who pay a hell of a lot more money than the US Govt Pays.

(See my last blogpost for why I think things are going the way they are)

I think this is the only book that preznit poopypants has ever read, but I think he missed some of the important stuff. W misses important stuff sometimes. Whoa, am I Captain Obvious this morning, or what?

Texas Co. Signs Iraq Oil Deal With Kurds
With No National Iraq Oil Law Passed, Kurdistan Region Makes Its Own Rules
Comments 30
DALLAS, Tex., Sept. 9, 2007


I have qvestion. What happens to the Kurds now? Will they be able to hire mercenaries from their oil revenues and stop the Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi governments from killing them? Will there be new borders drawn in the area? Does this mean Kurds will get Kurdistan?

(update 4:21 PM 9/17/2007 Jeremy Scahill will be on the Randi Rhodes Show tomorrow, Tuesday September 18, 2007

Blackwater's Starr

Suit against Blackwater over contractor deaths moves to arbitration
By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 20, 2007

Blackwater Succeeds in Forcing Arbitration of Employee Claims
Harper's magazine
Scott Horton
May 22, 2007

Daily Kos diary Potrero vs. Blackwater from Sat. Mar 17, 2007

US Security Contractors Open Fire in Baghdad
By Steve Fainaru and Saad al-Izzi
The Washington Post
Sunday 27 May 2007

Update:
Sending in the Praetorian Guard
Harper's Magazine
BY Scott Horton
May 28, 2007

Every day I want this company to go back to the fucking swamp they came from and play with Kenneth Starr, the reptile they hired to represent them in court.

I've got reptiles on the brain. I saw this picture out of the corner of my eye the other day and just had to link to the article. It's a couple of years old now.

I thought of Russian and U.S. military intervention when I saw this picture. The critter sploded.

Dianne Jacob

San Diego County Board of Supervisors

I am Dianne Jacob, Supervisor of San Diego County’s Second District, representing communities affected by the proposed Sunrise Powerlink including Ramona, Wynola, Santa Ysabel and the greater Julian area...
...SDG&E, to its credit, has made some changes.
The applicant was receptive to the idea of undergrounding a stretch of the 230 kilovolt
Inland Valley Link;

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. gave $50,000 to Dianne Jacob...

and she buys a new rescue vehicle with it, awwww, how wunnerful.

Hey, does she receive any money from the publication that published this article?

Jacob 'splains to the peasants/proles why she's mum on Blackwater (video)
The first part of the Campo Revitalization meeting, conducted by County Supervisor Dianne Jacob. Unfortunately, despite a large number of people present who wished to speak about it, they were not provided with a public comment period (in violation of the Brown Act) and comments about Blackwater were not allowed.

I don't trust why she's mum on Blackwater because Last July, Blackwater hired as a lobbyist Nikki Clay, a longtime cheerleader for corporate welfare...
Clay said she was communicating regularly with the supervisor's office and the office of military powerhouse Congressman Duncan Hunter, even though Potrero is not in his district. Potrero's supervisor is Dianne Jacob. The Blackwater project team proudly noted that although Jacob "has historically required secondary access," in this case "she will be in favor of only requiring primary access."

Here's a couple more reasons why this woman bugs the crap out of me.

San Diego Medical Marijuana Raids
SAN DIEGO SUPES DEFY STATE MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW
Vote to File Federal Lawsuit Against Prop 215, SB 420
Dec. 7th. Opposing a state requirement that counties issue medical marijuana ID cards, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted to file a federal lawsuit against California's medical marijuana law.

Supervisors moved to sue the state after being threatened with a lawsuit from San Diego NORML for failing to implement the ID system.

County's pension board blocks Jacob's role on benefits
But the retirement association, which has chewed over the retiree health benefit issue itself for the last two years without coming to a resolution, bridled at the county's ultimatum. That unhappiness ultimately led to the board to use a relatively new policy to forcefully "disqualify" Jacob from discussing or voting on the issue.

You know, if there's one thing about this county that sticks in my craw it's that if you're flashing cash you can do whatever the fuck you want to do. It doesn't matter who it hurts, and the public doesn't even need to know about it. There's so many goddamned military bases, loaded with people who don't HAVE any rights that you can always pull the "need to know" bullshit line. Then you ramp up the fear mongering, and the rhetoric on Reich-wing radio hate spew, which is what the right-less uniforms listen to (well that, and the rock station that hasn't changed the fucking playlist since 1979). They watch Faux Newz, it's what's encouraged on the bases. Not that the local mainstream newz is worth a tinkers damn, either. You wouldn't trust it, if you knew anybody unlucky enough to to have their story sensationalized and filled with inaccuaracies. The cash flashers also get away with a lot of crap because there are tons of transient people here, including the right-less uniforms.

Death Toll for Contractors Reaches New High in Iraq

...At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as United States government contractors in Iraq.

That brings the total number of contractors killed in Iraq to at least 917, along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews...

...A top security industry official said he was told recently by American military and contracting officials that 50 to 60 percent of all truck convoys in Iraq were coming under attack. Previously, he said, only about 10 percent had been hit...


U.S Fatatlities confirmed by the DoD

This war sucks. Actually, all war sucks.

You expected me to make some smart-ass remark about Blackwater or DynCorp ?

Blackwater

Potrero Mounts Up - Taking a Stand
by: Lucas O'Connor
Sat May 12, 2007 at 21:44:23 PM PDT

The link to the UT article and the comments that the UT chose to publish are telling.
The article was a bit irritating, but I expect that from the fishwrap. This comment started out with a jaw-dropper:

"I am mystified by the hostility in some of the comments..."

ewh wha?
Especially in a military town.

Let's review.

Accountable

Unaccountable

Private security company seeking to establish training camp near San Diego
Last modified Sunday, May 13, 2007 1:00 AM PDT
By: North County Times Wire Services -

Locals Against Training Camp In East County
POSTED: 10:15 am PDT May 12, 2007
UPDATED: 11:07 am PDT May 12, 2007

Defense Appropriations Subcomittee hearing

Ok, this is the worst attempt at "live blogging" that I've ever seen. Well, not really live blogging, just streaming it and attempting to type what I'm hearing. Yes, I mean what you're going to read on this page right here. It's bad, I'll leave it just to remember how bad it is, but if you want to know what I was watching Here is a portion of it. Not the Jeremy Scahill part.
Update: Here is Jeremy.
Click here for Kos diary

Hat tip to the fabulous Terry

Appropriations Subcomittee hearing. Basically it's about what's going on with contracting out in Iraq?

scroll down and click on webcast

I'm watching now.

(Terry watched it also, & she's much more calm about the whole thing .)

Fucking amazing, nobody knows who Aegis is.

Betcherass they don't.

Jeremy Scahill is coming up.

05/10/07
Defense Subcommittee
Contracting Out
10:00 AM, 1:30 PM 2359 Rayburn House Office Building

DoD contractor costs are 75% higher than they were in 1996? Am I hearing that correctly? Jeebus.

126,000 contractors in Iraq? (Did I Hear That Correctly?)

10:50 AM 5/10/2007 PST Scahill's up

1400 dead and wounded contractors as of Dec 06

48,000 private security contractors in Iraq with better weapons, better equipment.

Slang in Iraq is called "going Blackwater" for soldiers leaving military service for better pay with private contractors.

Contractors act like rock stars and are unaccountable.

Congress is asking a reporter for information on these contractors? (DIHTC?)

10:50 AM 5/10/2007 (pst) Robert Greenwald is up. On private contractors in Iraq.

He's talking about "burn pits"

Oh. My. God. Who is this asshole rednecked dickhead "conservative" attacking Scahill and Greenwald?

Ooops, found him. Rep. Jack Kingston (R) from GA


money from GD mil contractor fer ole Jack Hmmmm, Jack attacked Jeremy, for not being in Iraq since 2003. Wonder if Ole Jack went there & had Blackwater perteck him?

11:52 AM 5/10/2007 omigod omigod omigod, right now I want to punch that rednecked idiot, Kingston, yapping about all the money made in Hollywood...Does this guy have a button that you push somewhere on him and he spews talking points?
11:59 AM 5/10/2007 show's over, but before it cut off I spied Kingston hightailing it down to talk to Greenwald and Scahill he was laughing. I hope somebody out there is geekier than me and uploads this soon.

Blackwater

Stop Blackwater (USA) West in Potrero (San Diego)

A Victory for Mercenary Opponents

But it's not over yet.

New deadline is May 28!

I saw Jeremy Scahill speak tonight on Blackwater

Well, I was going to re-read Orwell's 1984.
San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice


I'm really glad that I decided to make the drive to see Jeremy Scahill speak instead. He seemed like a nice kid, and really sharp, and I'm glad that he came to San Diego. It's so nice to listen to a real reporter who cares about things that really matter to the American people.

Update 8:44 AM 5/2/2007
the the right-wing piece of crap fishwrap: “Stop Blackwater” bumper stickers were offered at the event, and those in attendance were asked to send comments to the San Diego County Department of Planning and Land Use about their opposition to the project.

What the fishwrap "reporter" fails to mention is that the Department of Planning and Land Use gave the wrong e-mail address AND the wrong street address to people who wanted to lodge a complaint and keep Blackwater out .

Not to mention this: Last July, Blackwater hired as a lobbyist Nikki Clay, a longtime cheerleader for corporate welfare (Chargers, Padres) and former president of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. Blackwater brought on the developer-friendly environmental firm of Mooney, Jones & Stokes, along with other companies to make up their project team. The team quickly snuggled up to the County, which was not playing hard to get.

Go see Jeremy speak.

Details
Author Jeremy Scahill

When: 6:30 p.m. today (5/2/2007)

Where: La Mesa Community Center, 4975 Memorial Drive, La Mesa

Democracy Now on Blackwater West

Three out of four registered voters in Potrero don't want this mercenary camp in their community.

Blackwater Plans for New Military Facility Near San Diego Draws Fire From Residents, Peace Activists and Local Congressmember
Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Listen to it now with your RealPlayer
Note: This content may require the latest RealPlayer, which is not available on Windows 95, Mac OS9 or Linux systems.
or listen to the mp3 of the whole show

It's quite enlightening. The political connections are interesting. This company's behavior indicates that it thinks it's above military and civilian law. It's outrageous.

For more on how to help stop this camp from being built:

Stop Blackwater.net

Citizens Oversight.org