On June 3, Jeremy Scahill’s bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army was released in fully revised and updated paperback form. The new edition includes reporting on the now-famous Nisour Square massacre on Sept. 16 of last year, in which Blackwater mercenaries opened fire in a Baghdad neighborhood, brutally murdering 17 Iraqi civilians. The killing spree, which the U.S. Army would label a ‘criminal event,’ would reveal the extent of the lawlessnewss enjoyed by private contractors abroad and the lengths the Bush administration will go to protect its private army of choice. Antonia Juhasz caught up with Scahill on the phone the day the new edition was released. A fellow at Oil Change International and author of The Bush Agenda, Juhasz is also the author of the forthcoming book The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry, and What We Must Do to Stop It. Juhasz and Scahill discussed, among other topics, the story behind Blackwater, congressional inaction, radical privatization, Barack Obama, corporate vs. independent media, GI resistance in the age of private mercenaries, getting real about challenging corporations and the power of dissent. Antonia Juhasz: I first have to admit that, until […]
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater is Still in Charge, Deadly, Above the Law and Out of Control
Author: ANTONIA JUHASZ
Source: AlterNet
Publication Date: June 21, 2008
Link: Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater is Still in Charge, Deadly, Above the Law and Out of Control
Source: AlterNet
Publication Date: June 21, 2008
Link: Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater is Still in Charge, Deadly, Above the Law and Out of Control
Stephan: This is a little more polemical that I would like, but it addresses a trend that has developed in this administration that ought to be of concern to everyone. This is pure Milton Friedman economics, privatize everything, including war. We are creating mercenary armies. The Founders would be appalled. They had experienced the brutality of the hired Hussians, the Blackwater soldiers of their day, and they loathed and remembered what it was like.
Antonia Juhasz is a Tarbell Fellow, Oil Change International, and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. She is author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), now available in paperback, updated with a new afterword. Juhasz is also the author of the forthcoming book The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry, and What We Must Do to Stop It
