It's amazing how Prince keeps up his christian patriot super soldier schtick even as it's been obvious for years that he's a shameless, amoral mercenary outside the law and against American interests and basic democratic values. https://t.co/DSdNIkevKD
— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 4, 2018
Erik Prince's company is running the largest private security training center in China. Wow. https://t.co/vQDZG6WWr2 @washingtonpost
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) May 4, 2018
“Prince’s role as chairman of Frontier puts him in the unsettling position of advancing the strategic agenda of the United States’ largest rival.” https://t.co/82yywF4h6H
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) May 4, 2018
“Frontier Services”. If we’re being honest, Erik Prince figures more mercenary “security” is exactly what America needs, too. Another excellent Washington Post expose — “The Blackwater founder has cut a lucrative security-training deal with Chinese insiders. But is it against U.S. interests?”:
Beijing’s International Security Defense College, which boasts of becoming “the largest private security training school in China,” sits behind a 45-foot-high exterior wall and a barricade. Inside the compound, trainers with police and military experience teach classes on tackling detainees, handling hostage situations and thwarting terrorist attacks.
The school is overseen by Frontier Services Group, a Hong Kong-based company founded by Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who created Blackwater, a security firm that played a major and controversial role in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…
Prince spent more than a decade at the helm of Blackwater, which won hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts to guard U.S. officials and facilities, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan. After the company ran into legal and political problems stemming from its work for the U.S. military — including an incident in 2007 in which Blackwater workers killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians — Prince has lived and worked around the world, creating businesses based on providing security and handling logistics for enterprises on several continents.
Some members of Congress, military officials and people who do similar security work say that Prince’s role as chairman of Frontier puts him in the unsettling position of advancing the strategic agenda of the United States’ largest rival.
“He cloaks himself in the American flag when he’s seeking a U.S. contract, but he is the hood ornament of the new era of the military industrial complex and a set of mercenaries who work for countries, oligarchs and random billionaires,” said Sean McFate, a former military contractor who wrote a book about private armies, “The Modern Mercenary.” “The Pentagon and national security establishment view Erik as a pariah.”…
Prince is a man of supreme connections — after living out of the country for several years, he turned up at Trump’s election night party; his oldest sister, Betsy DeVos, is the president’s education secretary; he’s also close to Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist. His companies won contracts from the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations to operate drones and provide security for the CIA….A Frontier spokesman… sent The Post a written statement saying that “Erik Prince is a proud American who would never seek to undermine the national interest. FSG is an international company with operations in China and is listed in Hong Kong. It aims to support infrastructure projects internationally to serve its clients’ needs in the interest of shareholders and does not support a political agenda.”
Prince contends that nothing he is doing in China conflicts with his dedication to his own country, but a former U.S. intelligence official who is knowledgeable about Prince’s initiatives said many of his former colleagues think he has crossed a line.
“The China stuff makes everybody uncomfortable,” said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss intelligence matters in public. “In the intelligence community and the Pentagon, there was discomfort to begin with because he was courting the Chinese government at the same time as he was courting the American government for work. . . . He is way out of bounds.”…
After the 2007 incident in Iraq turned Blackwater into a target of political criticism, especially from Democrats, and after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009 scrapped Blackwater’s contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, Prince came to believe that he was the target of unfair and unwarranted inspection.
“I was strung up so the politicians could feign indignation and pretend my men hadn’t done exactly what they had paid us handsomely to do,” he wrote.
Boxed out of new business with the U.S. government, Prince turned his attention to partnerships in other countries. In 2010, after lawsuits and congressional investigations focused on Blackwater and those who had worked for the company, Prince moved to the United Arab Emirates, living there for three years. He wrote in his autobiography that he made the move because he was “fed up with an endless drip of frivolous lawsuits and years of bad press.”…
Although some of Prince’s former associates wish he would steer Frontier away from security work, others say his initiatives in China fit in with his view that American foreign policy has lost its way.
“In some ways, nothing’s changed with Erik,” said a former military contractor who worked closely with Prince for years. “He clearly feels that the U.S. government and State Department betrayed him. He’s very, very angry. The Chinese paid him a lot of money, but he’s not doing this just for the money. He believes the Chinese have a better strategy to solve problems than we do and he thinks a global response is required.”
Once the flashbangs go up, who cares where they come down? / That’s not my department, says Erik von Prince…
For those keeping track: Trump and Kushner's backchannel to Russia was through a war criminal mercenary in China's backpocket, talking to a sanctioned Russian banker, organized by a bribe-happy kleptocratic monarchy, and moderated by a pedophile with multiple convictions. Swell. https://t.co/5pr0sBOBkL
— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 4, 2018
rikyrah
I still believe that we will find out that Prince is behind what went wrong in Niger.
rikyrah
Thanks for the post. Always good to keep up with the evil of someone like Prince.
Baud
The business of America is Prince’s business.
schrodingers_cat
Wasn’t Prince responsible for Fallujah too? Or am I not remembering it correctly.
debbie
He’ll cry like a baby when they steel his intellectual property.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
Are you thinking of Haditha?
lumpkin
Too bad someone doesn’t hire half of his company to go to war against the other half.
NotMax
Not that it shouldn’t be reported on, but this is kind’a old news. The man is scum, a merchant of death. And still trying to get someone, somewhere to buy into his ‘let me build a complete privately owned and run air force for hire’ shtick.
Baud
OT. This NPR headline came across my feed. I didn’t have the heart to click.
Redline
Posted below, just reposting to let people know early.
Longtime lurker, hope a front pager can show this. Indiana voters are getting threatening letters stating to show neighbors if they voted. https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/hoosiers-warned-voter-participation-letter-146868/
I got one, and to me it is a threat to republican voters that if you sit out the next election that they will let your neighbors know. I got the letter, it has nothing to say who it is from but “Indiana State Voter Report Program” and the envelope has in red “IMPORTANT TAXPAYER INFORMATION ENCLOSED.” It lists your voting record and half a dozen of your neighbors, and says everyone will know who voted and who didn’t vote. Again, Indiana. Republican stronghold. Who would be threatened by knowing they didn’t vote?
jl
If Erik Prince is a reactionary Xtianist fundamentalist, then his values align with ruthless and mindless authoritarianism. They worship force. Their whole End Times prophecy stuff is the worship of mindless force and brutality. So, it fits with his gig.
OT, but I saw a list of clarifications, recantations and revisions Rudy made to recent festival of BS. A lot of them don’t make any sense, others are incoherent, and others claim to change the story when they don’t change anything at all (particularly wrt timing of the payments). So, I have to wonder whether Trump dictated it himself. The document is certainly crazy enough, poorly written enough,, and contains enough incoherent gaslighting for it to be a purely Trump production.
debbie
@Baud:
Did you read Wendell Pierce’s Twitter thread responding to Kanye? I thought it was brilliant.
Baud
@Redline: It’s a hard nose tactic but I’m not 100% sure that the Dems don’t do something similar. Voting records are public information.
debbie
@NotMax:
That’s he’s doing this in China is news.
Mary G
Trump only hires the very best people. Criminals who are out to steal tax dollars, all around.
Baud
@debbie: I haven’t.
NotMax
@debbie
The China stuff has been known and reported on, including in comments here, for years.
ruemara
It’s insane that this man has been able to spread his illegal authoritarianism & vile mercenary squad training all over the world. here’s to the Furies finding him.
@Baud: From NPR? Don’t click.
debbie
@Redline:
A quick Google shows the same mailing from a group with the same name (except for the specific state, of course) in Kansas and Illinois.
NotMax
FYI.
Redline
@Baud: I am registered Republican
Jerrt
“…and after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009 scrapped Blackwater’s contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, Prince came to believe that he was the target of unfair and unwarranted inspection.”
You know, if we were ANY sort of an effective conspiracy-generation machine, it would be an easy-Occam’s to argue/believe that Prince was the one that organized and armed the Benghazi raid as a means to ‘sully’ HRC.
But we’re not. We have scruples. So the wingnuts blather on about FAR more convoluted “theories”. And Prince marches on….
debbie
@Baud:
This appears to include all of them.
(Wendell Pierce was on The Wire.)
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
Wow, that is so fishy.
NotMax
WaPo link from May 1.
debbie
@NotMax:
He has to ask???
debbie
@NotMax:
She should go all whistleblower on their asses.
NotMax
WaPo again. More fodder for the lickspittles.
Gelfling 545
@Baud: I’ve never seen such a thing in all my voting years.
trollhattan
@debbie:
“Treme”/”The Wire” Wendell Pierce?
Love the guy.
Cermet
@NotMax: No issue with military weapons (non-nuke) in orbit; the idea of placing military bases on the moon is silly and that will be the case for a long time. So, not exactly important if that one can’t be done and why it was easy to get everyone to sign that off. Orbital units and weapon transports, and attack craft placed in low orbit are, I would think, what a space based force would want/need.
rikyrah
@debbie:
It was brilliant
Frankensteinbeck
@Cermet:
I guarantee you he’s imagining spaceships. Maybe, maybe not with laser blasters. The most practical ideas he may have grasped would be orbital bombardment and destroying other countries’ satellites.
Smiling Mortician
@NotMax: And Mike Pence’s doctor is a girl. How does that even work?
cmorenc
@Baud:
I live in a suburban neighborhood that’s split roughly 60-40 GOP vs Dem – and I have cross-referenced portions of our neighborhood association directory with the NC Board of Elections voter database to get a hint (via their designated party affiliation) which neighbors I should be wary of getting into any sort of political discussion with.
zhena gogolia
Colbert did a great interview with Avenatti.
rikyrah
@Baud:
I read the article. Not as bad as it could have been. I continue to be frustrated by the unwillingness of those who write about Black people being Democrats that they are unwilling to point out that Black people vote THEIR interests!
Roger Moore
@lumpkin:
He wouldn’t care as long as he gets paid.
trollhattan
@Smiling Mortician:
Knowing Pence his annual prostate check is probably the highlight of his year.
rsginsf
The excerpt states this, but: Eric Prince is Betsy DeVos’ brother. I don’t see this get mentioned enough. Also ties to Bannon thru Cambridge. It’s a vipers’ pit.
West of the Rockies
Alright, nothin’ to see here, folks… She’s over… Move along….
FSM forbid we examine what our monied betters are up to.
sdhays
@Smiling Mortician: When the report went out that she had voiced concerns about Dr. Ronnie, Mother must have found out the doctor was a woman and Dense was read the riot act.
laura
@schrodingers_cat: also, Nissour Square.
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
No, I’m fairly certain the only way he’d stumble over that is by crashing shuttles and stations into the atmosphere by using incompetent grifters as the contractors.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Thanks. I wish I could stay up that late! Nice touch about that California bank.
Does anyone know if we should be worrying about this?
VOR
@cmorenc: I got a similar letter in Minnesota. I threw it out because I view voting as a sacred duty and vote in every election.
Re: Space Force. Trump is probably thinking of the Bond movie “Moonraker” which came out in 1979. The movie had US Space Marines and a character named “Holly Goodhead” – I swear I’m not making that up. If I recall correctly, Bond had sex in space. See, Trump’s kind of movie and right in his peak era.
Steve in the ATL
@sdhays: I bet he calls the doctor “Dr. Mother”
Steve in the ATL
@VOR: my god that was an awful movie. I was a Bond-loving tween when that movie came out and even I knew it was garbage!
Outrunning fire? No.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: The book is pretty good.
chopper
@Steve in the ATL:
yeah, def not one of the bond films that holds up well.
Frankensteinbeck
@VOR:
The original source of the Bond stories were parodies, and intentionally had the stupidest names possible. Sean Connery was just so damn sexy, it derailed the series.
chopper
@VOR:
he’s going to cancel the whole idea come Monday. “over the weekend I watched a very informative documentary called ‘Aliens’ and it made me reconsider…”
Ella in New Mexico
@Smiling Mortician: She was Karen Pence’s doctor. Apparently, whatever health issue that befell Karen while she was at Camp David was something she wanted to remain private, as in protected health information HIPPA private. Ronny Jackson bullied his way into her records, then shared them with others, including John Kelly, without Karen Pence’s permission. This doctor filed a complaint, and Ronny, in turn, behaved in an intimidating and aggressive manner towards her, essentially threatening her ability to have a successful career in the organization.
I’m assuming that since Ronny is still there she pretty much decided she wasn’t gonna work with her harasser.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: of course I read all the books! They were fun. Often better than the movies.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@cmorenc:
I did the same thing (though I was just being a nosy teenager) back in 1984 when I did volunteer work at Republican HQ to re-elect Reagan.
Though it involved flipping through the Ward folders until I found my neighborhood because this was before PC’s became commonplace.
TenguPhule
@chopper:
“We will call the Force “Space Marines” and outsource their recruitment to Erik Prince…”
satby
@Redline: I shared that on the South Bend Indivisible group FB page, thanks.
VOR
@chopper: Another option is that he is thinking of “Iron Sky”, a parody film which came out in 2012. It had everything – Nazis attacking from a secret base on the moon, Nazi UFOs, and a space ship called the USS George W. Bush. The President in the movie was clearly intended to be Sarah Palin.
TenguPhule
I can see Adam’s breakdown summary of Trump’s speech is gonna be a doozy.
Roger Moore
@chopper:
For it to have held up well, it would have needed to seem good at the time. It was obviously trash the day it came out.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore: One doesn’t watch the older James Bond Films for the art.
japa21
Regardinbg the letter. This was an short article on one of Indiana’s TV stations.
No info as to who is behind it, but is sounds more likely to be a GOP type of thing.
Roger Moore
@Ella in New Mexico:
Wow. That’s a major HIPPA violation and retaliation against a whistle blower. In a just world, that would end Dr. Jackson’s career.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
Or the newer ones, for that matter. The spectacular stunts are often worth watching.
RobertB
HIPAA, not HIPPA. And it’s GIF like ‘giraffe’, not ‘gift’. :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Conflict of interest much?
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: No.
What Blackwater was responsible for, among other things, was under arming a group of contractors, who were subcontracted to Blackwater, who had complained about their Blackwater security manager. In retribution he put personnel together that hadn’t worked together as a team, denied them the heavier fire power they needed, and short manned the team. As was all too predictable, this caught up to them west of the big US bases – Camp Stryker and Camp Victory – at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). As they raced to get their principal and themselves to safety, time ran out. And a very good friend of mine has spent the past 14 years mourning the fiance she never got to marry.
Adam L Silverman
@Redline: They pulled this in Texas during the 2016 election. If you want to publicize it, I suggest you email Ari Berman who has been covering this stuff very thoroughly.
http://www.nationinstitute.org/fellows/1069/ari_berman/
Here’s his email:
[email protected]
Chris
The other guy who comes to mind here is General Flynn. A guy whose whole brand is based on Islamophobia, and who nevertheless was happy to work for the islamist government of Turkey.
It’s like nationalists have their own little internationale going.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: And he said this in front of the cadets from the Point who won the President’s Trophy. The looks on several of the cadets faces were priceless.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
I read all the original books in early teens after JFK was elected. Went to the first couple of movies – they did nothing for me.
Adam L Silverman
@Smiling Mortician: Well: at a certain stage of gestation, the developing foetus’s genitalia…//
We’ll just have Levenson do a science post on it for you when you’re older.
Chris
@VOR:
Trust Trump to not only base his policies on James Bond movies, but to base them on one of the worst movies in a franchise with over twenty films.
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: She’s also Mother’s doctor. And she was the one who filed the complaint that RADM Jackson had violated Mother’s rights under HIPPA.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: The safeword is “apostle”.//
Ella in New Mexico
@Roger Moore:
Right? Except, as we all know, this is Trump world…also, she was told to run it up her military chain of command, and we don’t have any info on the outcome of that. I’d be curious if something came of her complaint, or if they just buried it for political purposes.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: When I did my close quarters and personal security training I lived in Scotland. The course was in Liverpool. So my housemate – also a martial artist – and I drove down (as in I drove, as I had a car). Among the instructors was Lofty Wiseman, who is a retired Warrant Officer who set up the SP and counter-terrorism teams. Training started on Saturday morning. First thing he did was walk in and dump out two shopping bags full of knives. Early that morning he’d walked to all the pubs and bars and clubs near where we were training and asked the bouncers for the knives they’d taken off of people that evening. This was actually part of a larger point to the training, which was dealing with bladed weapons. Wiseman and his co-instructors teach the GUN method: Grab, Undo, Neutralize.
Britain is well aware of the threat of knives. While knife attacks are not completely uncommon, you don’t have a knife equivalent of a mass shooting every day in Britain.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: Sean is a friend. I used to work as his ex-wife’s (then actually just wife) deputy.
J R in WV
@Redline:
To me it is a promise to vote Democratic all the way down the ticket!!!
To give in to this kind of threat is to give the threatener power over you and yours. Threaten me, you get me to do what you most don’t want me to do. I learned this from my parents at a young age.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Obligatory.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: But of course!
Mike G
Being a shameless, amoral mercenary outside the law and against basic democratic values IS the agenda of Xtian dominionist authoritarians.
NorthLeft12
The driving forces behind most top management types in publicly traded companies are all consuming self interest and unquenchable greed.
I know that some will say that this is exactly what you want in a corporate executive because his success is tied to the company’s success, but thats not how it works any more.
Prince is just another example of an executive doing what he has been taught and trained to do.
lowtechcyclist
Once the flashbangs go up, who cares where they come down? / That’s not my department, says Erik von Prince…
I think the more apt comparison is to Catch 22‘s Milo Minderbinder, who contracts with both the Germans and the Americans to bomb each other.
But since you mention him, I inadvertently discovered, a year or so ago, that Wernher von Braun is buried somewhere in the same cemetery where my father is buried. One of these years I’m going to have to take the time to wander over and piss on von Braun’s grave. No hurry, he isn’t going anywhere. But eventually.
lowtechcyclist
Yeah, the U.S. government helped make him extremely rich, and he’s pissed that we don’t just ignore the fact that his mercenary army killed a bunch of the Iraqis we were supposedly over there to rescue from the evil Saddam, and keep making him richer.
The way the rich see the world never ceases to amaze me.
Matt
@NotMax:
Henry VIII had the right idea of how to deal with churches who get too big for their britches.
The Simp in the Suit
@NotMax: You were asking why the Prince/China story is being published now since you (and possibly some on this board — we haven’t found evidence of those yet), have known about it for some time.
Maybe you’re the only one paying attention? And the rest of us, C’mon sheeple!, should wake up?
;)