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According to the Raleigh News & Observer, Blackwater has changed its name to Xe. As the article says:
Company officials announced Friday that the group of businesses formerly called Blackwater Worldwide will now be known as "Xe," pronounced like the letter Z.
I had always gotten a bit of an internal smirk at the Blackwater name. Since I spend a lot of time taking my kids to horse shows, more than once I’ve seen a "blackwater" label on dumping stations where people dump sewage from RV’s and horse trailers that have living quarters built in. By changing their name to Xe, Blackwater prompted an even louder guffaw from me. Xe is the chemical symbol for Xenon, a noble gas. Somehow, I don’t think anything "noble" will rub off on them from this name change.
The linked article above continues:
The attempt to rebrand itself comes as six former employees face manslaughter charges for a shooting that killed 17 civilians in Baghdad. The company has also faced intense scrutiny since four of its employees were massacred and two of them hung from a bridge in Fallujah in 2004.
In January, the Iraqi government denied Blackwater a license to operate there, and its workers are expected to leave the country this spring.
Company spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the new name reflects a new focus.After earning more than $1 billion in federal contracts from the Bush administration, mostly for providing security to U.S. diplomats in Iraq, she said the company will no longer pursue new security contracts. She said it will now work mostly on training law enforcement officers and military troops in such areas as weapons handling and hostage rescue.
And then, there is this from the parent of one of the Blackwater employees killed in Fallujah:
Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, whose son Scott Helvenston was one of the Blackwater employees killed in the massacre, said Friday that the name change made sense.
"I’m not surprised at all," she said "They’ve become so corrupt, I don’t think they could get a contract under Blackwater’s name. So, good luck."
In a sidenote to the article, the News & Observer also notes that Xe is the name of a currency exchange in Canada and that their Xe.com is a very popular website, ranking between 250th and 380th for traffic.
According to their CEO, Steven Dingler:
"Why on earth they’d want to name themselves the same thing as such a well-established brand, I don’t know," Dengler said. "We just think they made a bad mistake."
/snip/
"We have our trademark registered all over the world, but we certainly don’t have anything registered under ‘mercenary army,’ " he said.
Nope, Blackwater can change their name, but they forever will be liquid sewage to me.
19 Comments
To me, Blackwater is what happens when rich men claim that government doesn’t matter, that everything important is better privatized, and that no one has to be accountable to the law provided they have the wealth to jet off to their private, fenced-in compounds.
They’re a manifestation of larger social, economic, and systemic problems.
Here’s hoping the agents of sanity and courage can make a world where Blackwater — under any name — will be less relevant. They’ve overplayed their hand and like most corrupt things, stepped into a noose of their own making.
That certainly would be a departure from the centuries when rich men thought that government mattered greatly, and privatised that.
Recommended and DIGG is open
Shoulda been 3D (Darth’s Death Dealers)
I’m with you on that one!
Thanks for the Digg, acquarius74.
Jim, don’t miss yesterday’s diary by James K Galbraith here at Oxdown. How about swinging by and saying, ‘Howdy’…and while there treat yourself to readerOfTeaLeaves’ unique analogy of these dreary days (economically).
Thanks.
How did we come to this place in the world where mass murderers openly advertise their services and no stigma attaches to those who hire them?
As a people we must cleanse ourselves of this deadly psychological infection spread among us by Darth Cheney, GW Bush, Rummy Inc.
They are entrenched..the Pentagon’s favorite corporation.
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” While most attention is focused on Blackwater Security Consulting, the unit that provides contractors for work in Iraq and elsewhere, there is far more to it than that. Blackwater has long sought to be a one-stop shopping center, a sort of Wal-Mart for all the U.S. government’s military outsourcing needs, and a review of its business units shows it has gone a long way toward meeting that goal. “
Presidential Airways is a charter cargo and passenger airline based at Melbourne International Airport. It holds a Secret Facility Clearance from the Pentagon. It operates several CASA 212 aircraft in addition to a Boeing 767.
Among other services, according to a European Parliament report, Presidential Airways has provided rendition flights to the CIA. “
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9603
How to further destabilize the Pakistan government.
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” At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise over Pakistani opposition to the campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Islamic extremist targets along Pakistan’s northwestern border.
“As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” she said. “
http://www.latimes.com/news/na…..6260.story
To me, the security contractor most in need of a name change is Custer Battles, which to me represents the death not only of innocent Iraqis but of irony.
What’s in a name? An murderous, rapacious, law-disregarding mercenary by any other name would stink as badly!
How could they have gone so wrong?
Gulf War 1
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” Following the end of the Gulf War, the Pentagon, led by then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root Services over $8.5 million to study the use of private military forces with American soldiers in combat zones. “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton
” We begin our endeavor with The Guantánamo Testimonials Project. The goals of this project are to gather testimonies of prisoner abuse in Guantánamo, to organize them in meaningful ways, to make them widely available online, and to preserve them there in perpetuity. “
http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu…..ject/index
Blackwater is another name for oil seems to me. And for Blackwater to change it’s name to “Xe” means no one will be able to search Google to find out what they’re doing now! Genius! Spit. Assholes.
Blackwater sounds more like where the ocean is deep and light doesn’t penetrate.
Didn’t know this, blue. Seems that sooner or later all the evil traces back to Cheney’s fingerprints. Of course, his awarding that contract to Brown & Root wouldn’t have anything to do with his own stock in Halliburton. /s
Why is Darth not in prison?????
Mornin’, KaylnMaine. I made that same name connection some time back. The new name could have more than one meaning. I’m thinking about that.
Thanks for the link, ralphbon. I’d never heard of the Custer Battles firm. So Battles was ex-CIA. Guess that Judge Ellis will know next time to consult his handlers before opening his mouth, huh?
God, how I’d like to see the word, honor resurected, cleaned and shined up, held in high regard, and dominating conduct again….gone like the mastadon.
Blackwater is a very spooky company; Jeremy Scahill’s book is a must read. Everyone there, from Anne Tyrell, daughter of Emmett, to the money from Amway, reeks of right-wing “movement” people of the scariest kind. They’ll be slithering back; count on it.
Grant in Texas has an interesting take on what the meaning of “Xe” (or Zee) really means:
http://whitenoiseinsanity.com/…..ment-37952
Frightening!