Loss of Privacy

When Blackwater’s name became too well known, particularly in a negative way, they changed their name to Xe. Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater quickly distanced himself from anything negative and promptly moved to the Middle East. The name change from Xe to Academi is the company’s effort to further distance themselves from Blackwater’s past and Erik Prince after he sold all interest in Xe a year ago.

The Arlington-based company announced it will no longer be known as Xe Services and is now called Academi. The name is inspired by Plato’s Academy in ancient Greece and is designed to connote elite, highly disciplined warriors who are thinkers as well as fighters.

Wright, who came to Academi from government contractor KBR, also said he has promised customers that he’ll be taking a lower profile and that they won’t be seeing negative newspaper headlines about Academi. One of his first hires after becoming CEO in June was a newly created position of compliance officer, whose job is to ensure the company’s work is done ethically and legally.

Wright said the company can maintain that level of protection even as it sheds the gung-ho culture of its past. The company continues to provide security or training in more than half a dozen countries around the world, most notably in Afghanistan. And it wants to get back into Iraq, where Wright said the business opportunities are promising. “I have every confidence we’ll be operating in Iraq again,” Wright said, arguing that the Iraqi and the U.S. governments will recognize his company’s culture change.

Since the US military is officially pulling out of Iraq and the US is relying on contractors for security, it is likely Academi will find its way back into the country.

When the company was known as Blackwater, Iraqi citizens feared them because they operated without impunity. They could do and say whatever they wanted until people started to speak out

Make no mistake, Academi are a company of assassins hired by corporations to do their bidding. They are sociopaths hiding behind a pseudo-legal company. They are not a legitimate company. They are mercenaries. They can change their name a hundred times, but their basic mission will remain the same; hired killers.

It is absolutely disgusting how people continue to say that we should support the troops and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. I can’t and won’t. This video aptly explains why so many people believe as I do.

There may have been men and women who had good intentions when they joined the military, but they are just as guilty as their superiors for not refusing illegitimate orders and for violating international laws and committing vile acts of rape and murder.

After following the horrific story of Jamie Leigh Jones, reading and hearing of the Franken Amendment, and the 30 senators who voted against it, I thought I’d heard it all, but several of the stories have disappeared from the websites that bloggers had linked to.

Last year, Jamie Leigh Jones, 22, a KBR employee who says she was drugged and brutally raped by several male KBR employees two years earlier, sued the company (and Halliburton, KBR’s parent company until last year) for, among other things, trying to cover-up the incident. One thing KBR officials did, she says, after she woke up bleeding, was sequester her in a shipping container, telling her if she left Iraq for medical treatment she’d be fired. It was only after she was able to convince a guard to let her use his cell phone to call her father at home in Texas that he intervened by calling the State Dept, and she was able to get out.

One response from KBR was to ban employees from carrying cell phones.  Their claim is that it is a security concern.  While searching for the stories confirming this, they have all seemed to disappear.

CNN.com turns up a page not found.
The examiner returns a 404.  When trying to do a search on the site, there is only one result.  It, too, is empty, stating, “There is no content to display for the current topic at this time.”

The story can be found at the Canada Free Press website.  It links to a different web address on CNN’s site.

A KBR employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said he was “not aware of any security breaches involving the use of cell phones” and that employees were not given any reason for the order.

He said he has no plans to comply and believes his personal security would be at risk without his cell phone.

If there hadn’t been any security breaches, why did they institute the policy?  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the reason.  If there was, indeed, such an imminent danger to US citizens in Iraq, the cell phone ban would affect civilian and military personnel.  It doesn’t.  And it’s strange that the ban went into effect shortly after Ms. Jones was able to call her father back home in America.

Finding links to these articles shouldn’t be so difficult, especially a year after the news reports.  It’s just a bit suspicous when foreign web sites readily have the articles, while American sources seem to have disappeared.

Visit Daily Kos for more details on the story.

YouTube link
reddit link
Digg link