Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Don't you love the final paragraph of the linked article?

"For an extended period of time, Academi/Blackwater operated in a manner which demonstrated systemic disregard for U.S. Government laws and regulations," said Chris Briese, Special Agent in Charge of the Charlotte Division of the FBI. "Today's announcement should serve as a warning to others that allegations of wrongdoing will be aggressively investigated."

I am certain that the threat of an investigation alone will be enough to keep potential lawbreakers in line. No need to upset them with the threat of actual prosecution.

The steely resolve of that threat and its bold commitment to justice undoubtedly sends a shiver down the spines of scofflaws and scoundrels. Even the most depraved criminals can't mistake the message.

Academi? That sounds more like a corporate for profit secretarial school dependent on userous federal loans for sheep to sheer...errr...students.

Ya Brian
I agree
The series of DBA's has a resonance range
beyond the cull of most script writers

Academi[2]—previously known as Xe Services LLC, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide—is a private military company founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark.[3][4] Academi is currently the largest of the U.S. State Department's three private security contractors. Academi provided diplomatic security services in Iraq to the United States federal government on a contractual basis.[1] Academi also has a research and development wing that was responsible for developing the Grizzly APC along with other military technology. The company's headquarters is in Arlington County, Virginia.[5][6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi

Via a partic. type of rifle, I think it may be possible to trace back into the 1950s - Armalite, Fairchild, Springfield Armory, CONARC, et cet, et cet. ...ct

Whatever the case, private contractors remain and likely in force.

Xe (February 2009), and Academi (post Xe “sale,” December 2011) were such a seamless transition from the changing of the throne from the Deranged Fundy [and fwend Darth] ... to Stem™ Man.

And I’m sure Ambassador Clooney preferred dealing with xe, than Blackwater, ..not too good for the image, that swamp water (though ....ooopsie, Putin/Berlusconi’s bed George?).

(testing: p .Explanation: I have something I saved in html code which I wrote on a - now thoroughly swept from the web – web site, a bit back, about the Iraq, Nisour Murders ...and have been wanting to repeat again, on an anniversary (or, even earlier, if the mood strikes) for whatever it is worth.)

oops, sorry, I should have ended the italics at the end of to Stem ™ Man.

the test worked, I'm going to try to toss it out here, after I look at what might cog the works as far as the coding I had to do at the time, most of which has slipped my mind for more important matters with those I love.

(sorry Al, have I thrown the thread into an italics spin? ...I didn’t use italics html coding in my last post, though forgot the html italic end in the one prior that. I’ve thrown in an end italics code at the beginning of this post, in the hopes that quote notification will finally quit. ... siiiiighhhhhhh ...smile? or is that too sappy (Owen Pain)?)

ahhfuck, guess I'll just go with the flow drink a tad more red, and keep repeating my favorite Van Morrison songs on my cheap ass, non analog (you FUCKERS) cd player ... cleanin windows is priceless ....as one of the lesser heard ....

Fixed. Thanks for pointing me to the problem tag.

Oh, thank you so much Al, for the final end italics, I have quite enough to apologize for in life already,...let alone accidental, totally unintentional shit ( even when trying to take care and be RESPONSIBLE ™ ), ....which none of us really have much understanding or control over anymore.

Any time, Diane. I keep a sack of tag closers on hand for just such occasions.

Diane, there's a huge copy and paste comment in the auto-moderation queue; it has too much HTML for these comment cages. If you post a link to the page, that would work out okay.

Unfortunately Al, the only link, is to my "hard drive." As I noted, I kept an html coded copy of a "diary" (not a diary, I've never lived in Nisour, though, I am human and sensed it was horrid and evil, what happened there) post I made (do you remember Peeder? ....once a hot shot at the mostly rancid orange) to a website which seems to have been thoroughly deleted from the web.

I wanted to retain the color coding I did on the lettering.

Al, I think you can colorize those letters, but if you keep it to yourself for the time being, I understand.

You and Owen, remind me of two of my older 'blood' ..."biological" brothers (whom I love dearly, at the end of the day, and at the top of the morning) they've been taqgged "identical twins," yet so different, yet not really, they feel each other in what must be an incredibly painful way sometimes.

(although, Al, I will make at least one more attempt at posting it from this end. I need to think about it, and strip all the 'logged in' "diary post" html stuff from it.)

Go ahead and try reposting. I'll check the queue for stranded posts and see what I can do to assist.

I'll try after I sleep and wipe the 'sand' from my eyes. I can't begin to tell you what your listening has meant, stay safe.

Rest well, if that's possible.

I'm going to try to post it piece by piece Al (a bit too much wine last night, very sorry about the hugh klumph of a post).

Fri Sep 28, 2007 at 16:53:20 PM PDT

On the Bus....

photos of her and her children.

www.mcclatchydc.com/2007/09/27/20047/blackwater-guards-killed-16-as.html

Blackwater Guards Killed 16 as US Touted Progress
By Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers

Thursday 27 September 2007

[Prior to the 11 killings that had Iraq demanding the expulsion of Blackwater]:

Baghdad - On Sept. 9, the day before Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told Congress that things were getting better, Batoul Mohammed Ali Hussein came to Baghdad for the day.

A clerk in the Iraqi customs office in Diyala province, she was in the capital to drop off and pick up paperwork at the central office near busy al Khilani Square….

snip

As Hussein walked out of the customs building, an embassy convoy of sport-utility vehicles drove through the intersection. Blackwater security guards, charged with protecting the diplomats, yelled at construction workers at an unfinished building to move back. Instead, the workers threw rocks. The guards, witnesses said, responded with gunfire, spraying the intersection with bullets.

Hussein, who was on the opposite side of the street from the construction site, fell to the ground, shot in the leg. As she struggled to her feet and took a step, eyewitnesses said, a Blackwater security guard trained his weapon on her and shot her multiple times. She died on the spot, and the customs documents she'd held in her arms fluttered down the street.

Before the shooting stopped, four other people were killed in what would be the beginning of eight days of violence that Iraqi officials say bolster their argument that Blackwater should be banned from working in Iraq.

snip, snip, snip, snip

Anyone who moved was shot until the convoy left the square , [al Khilani Square], witnesses said. Also among the dead was Kadhim Gayes, a city hall guard.

Ever wonder what ‘terrorists’ carry in their purse Chuck Colson and Eric. ‘Prince’?

It took two days for Hussein's family to retrieve her body from the morgue. Before they could, her sister signed a sheet acknowledging the contents of her purse, which had been collected by security guards at the Baghdad city hall - a Samsung cell phone, a change purse with six keys and 37,000 Iraqi dinars ($30), gold bracelets, a notebook, pens, and photos of her and her children.

Afrah Sattar, 27, was on a bus approaching the square when she saw the guards fire on the white car. She and her mother, Ghania Hussein, were headed to the Certificate of Identification Office in Baghdad to pick up proof of Sattar's Iraqi citizenship for an upcoming trip to a religious shrine in Iran.

When she saw the gunmen turn toward the bus, Sattar looked at her mother in fear. "They're going to shoot at us, Mama," she said. Her mother hugged her close. Moments later, a bullet pierced her mother's skull and another struck her shoulder, Sattar recalled.

As her mother's body went limp, blood dripped onto Sattar's head, still cradled in her mother's arms.

"Mother, mother," she called out. No answer. She hugged her mother's body and kissed her lips and began to pray, "We belong to God and we return to God." The bus emptied, and Sattar sat alone at the back, with her mother's bleeding body.

Downstairs, her father, Sattar Ghafil Slom al Kaabi, 67, sat beneath a smiling picture of his wife and recalled their 40-year love story and how they raised eight children together. On the way to the holy city of Najaf to bury her, he'd stopped his car, with her coffin strapped to the top. He got out and stood beside the coffin. He wanted to be with her a little longer.

"I loved her more than anything," he said, his voice wavering. "Now that she is dead, I love her more."

very sorry Al, I forgot the end font after the d in "emptied." I added an end font to the beginning of my last post and I think that might have cleared it.

Changing topics all around, here's something you'll like.

http://forwhatwearetheywillbe.blogspot.com/2012/08/andalusia-direct-action-expropriating.html

I loved this line:

... to march to the New Aushcwitz of death by unemployment and homelessness like sheep - not really an option.

Never ceases to amaze me that people expect the ever increasing homeless to loss their shirts willfully without a peep, and certainly not ask for food, set up a tent anywhere, nor sleep, or sit anywhere.

Diane, I think they're counting on the imminently shirtless to rip each other apart—petty personal conflicts, petty faction struggles, etc.— and the shirtless themselves to succumb to stress disorders.

Jack Crow made some interesting points the other day; about salvation and redemption. Redemptive brutality trumps pragmatism. It would be cheaper, more peaceful and more effective, for that matter, to expand the welfare state. Cronies can be fattened just as easily. Dissent becomes quaint and breezily eccentric. The fattened themselves get to live in giant theme parks, with the population at large organizing itself into a sort of domestic staffing arrangement. Butlers and maids, tour guides and docents galore. But for proudly displayed "moral" reasons, that's not going to happen.

Somehow, I think you will understand this response, at least a tid tad bit, Al:

ts2.mm.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=4681661046260485&id=5655fd97fa40f3c122a5d0e089b991ea

ts3.mm.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=4855598620541222&id=baa4b147589a493e26a50742505d6fc2

ts3.mm.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=4633591776610758&id=aa7592856dae8bbf8e677e611b56733b

(I’ve been reading Jack’s writings for a bit, and they hit my gut, I have an enormous amount of respect for what he has to say, even while cringing at much of the hopelessness. ...it’s a Mean, Vicious Fucker, Hatred, calling the shots ...but there are those few moments of reprieve, ..... which are always unexpected and bewildering)

(and Al, it was so endearing to me that you stuck up for me. Your, so kind hearted, frustration (due to taking the heat for me, so wholeheartedly), showed up, ... in that red font above, when I momentarily switched all the font, ...to Orange ....

I truly appreciate you letting me repeat one of the better things I think I may have written in life, and you should never forget the kindness you have spread, by doing so.)

I have many lexical grievances, but I bear up as best I can. It's not always easy. One of my ancestors was indentured to a printer, a guffawing oaf who took mean pleasure in forcing his servants to listen as he read all the "begats" in the Bible out loud. He'd purposely lose his place, emit one of his cruel guffaws, and start the recitation from the beginning. Even though that was hundreds of years ago the outrage is, if anything, even stronger and more easily triggered.

Al, you, Owen, Jack, and so many others have brightened my life significantly, with your humanity.

One thing I always try to cling to, is us human's capacity for kindness at the end of the day.

It's there, in abundance, and we all know it is, underneath it all, ...someone has done each of us an incredible kindness, for no reason .... other than to be kind.

I sense that you're more acutely aware of that than most, and that it causes you no small amount of pain and worry (like my orange fonting of the page).

(by the way, I could slap myself for having used the word "written" above, I should have written: crayoned and made by best attempt to highlight.)

Don't worry about minor misstatements. I read charitably, being in need of charitable reading myself, and I try to stuff my font-violation anxieties into recesses of the psyche where they can do no harm.

I have to confess, Al, I did kind of laugh, when the font of your remark went from orange to red but my next post was left unbathed. I was thinking that you might be thinking: no good deed goes unpunished! On the other hand, I was really hoping you weren't totally pissed, as you disappeared for a good while after that. I'm glad you're not.

I'm always totally pissed off. It's a requirement. Vile Stalinists have to be irate at all times. I don't want to let down the team!

There are going to be some extended breaks between my posts here, Diane. SMBIVA takes a lot of energy from me. I only have it to spare when offline commitments are slack, which is also one of the reasons I try to keep things friendly and, if possible, entertaining.

I can imagine it does suck a lot out of a person to post regularly, especially if they take the time to respond to commenters, as you do, while also living their far more important, 'non-virtual' life.

In other circumstances, I wouldn't have worried about your disappearance, but since I was feeling guilty about momentarily turning the page into a ghastly Dkos replica, I was fearing your Vile Stalinist Fury!

(I have no room to talk, I'm generally pissed much of the time myself and entertaining just shutting off all noooz, or getting a lobotomy.)

I was fearing your Vile Stalinist Fury!

Thanks! That makes my day. It's much better for my self-esteem than "querulous old geezer's testiness".

You're welcome, Al Fury! I don't see you as a "querulous old testy geezer," did that rascal Owen call you that?

He hasn't yet, but I still have hopes. He'll get around to it eventually. Right now he's focused on the reeducation of the economists he keeps in his gulag.

@diane - not that it should be used but
rgb(0, 255, 255) should be the color
although there are different rgb's.

perfect for everyone in kabul or at least the green zone.....

thanks

Just to get a clearer understanding Anon, I come up with turquoise, and can you give an example of where you would replace the current font colors used above (given that the problem with extensive use of it is that it's so difficult to read the text in that color, at least on my screen), thanks!

(No worries, Al, I'm not going to attempt a revision here, smile.)

(and, just for further clarification on my part, I was using the naval blue and red as an UZ Flag bit (the white, being the page background) with the red also symbolizing aggression, stress, ..... spilled blood.)

(I was hoping you could respond back Anon, and now wondering whether you may have taken my follow-up as defensive (sigh, the tubes leave so much to be desired as to ancient non verbal messages - which technology will never ever replace and certainly never better - witness drones .....), my response wasn't defensive, .... I was touched by your response.)

Diane, no, I did not take your follow-up in such fashion [Actually had not read it until a few minutes ago or would have responded sooner] -- only had ref to your 2;43 comment, which seemed a question.

Please be careful and have a great year - might also advise op to dump his neoclassical econ/ideology but stick to the poetry.

Juan de la O

Oh thank you so very much Juan, for the response, the tubes are so filled with nanosecondry lack of follow up. Now I understand, you were giving the html code for my turquoise “p,” far above now.

I’m thinking that you’re the same Juan, on the sand dunes post? So much violation done in the Central and South Americas ......

You have as great a year as you can and be safe also, sweetheart, a huge hug to you.

(And, as regards Owen: well, I love that Owen is able to, and does, go after the Creative Destruction ™ fuckers with their own background knowledge, even though I believe that the entire monetary system (whether tangible coin, or Peter Thiel’s: Nazi, pal ™ ‘invention') is, always was, a disaster. But then I’m a “dark humanist” (Owen may be one also, and just trying to escape the harshness of that monetary verdict, and who can really blame him?).