offer their services in replacement--at a highly inflated price--after having already thoroughly looted the federal treasury. Lord, this makes me mad! Doctors and firefighters and paramedics dying in Iraq--conscripted right out of our communities, and paid a pittance compared to Blackwater mercenaries--their lives and careers and services to us destroyed--and sent back for multiple tours, to the point of insanity, and some now suffering lifelong injuries--and these rightwing bastards now want MORE profit from it all.
Compare the Blackwater Mercenary School to the egalitarian effort of the "Greatest Generation" in transforming San Diego into a navy base in WW II. They were all in it together, for the common good. It was a US government-funded, American, patriotic, DEMOCRATIC enterprise. For all its military culture--which individual sailors and other citizens may or may not care for--it is OURS. It is OUR facility--our common ground. Yeah, there are always some people looking to profiteer, and developers looking to take advantage of any big government project, by building housing tracts and shopping malls, but in those days at least the war profiteering was regulated, and the housing was middle class housing meant for GIs (whose housing loans were subsidized), contributing to the creation of a strong, democratic and broadly prosperous society.
THIS thing--Blackwater--turns us into a magnified "Banana Republic." And it is, indeed, extremely worrisome, especially in the context of rightwing California politics, the Enron looting, the Schwarzenegger coup, the Dieboldization of our election system, the highly corrupt election officials in San Diego and nearby counties, the WALL against Mexico, the Bushite tagging of Americans as "the enemy" (oh, they are so right), and something that may be in the planning stages for the future: War with CHINA. Another war in the Pacific.
Schwarzenegger was put in place in the most unusual election we've ever had in California--the first big Diebold election--the recall (125 candidates on the ballot--easy pickins for high speed, "trade secret" vote counting)--after a meeting with Ken Lay, George Schultz and other reps of the Bushite western billionaire club--in May 2001, in Los Angeles (exposed by Greg Palast). At that time, part of the problem was Enron's theft of $9 billion from California (and $80 billion total from Texas energy corps), and efforts of the Davis administration to get some of it back. That had to be stopped. And scanning the California political landscape now, there are Prop. 13 (was a means of securing extremely low land taxes for vast oil giant rice farming and other lucrative corporate projects, by selling the "property tax" issue as protection of the homes of the elderly), redistricting (a particular Schwarzenegger goal--to get it out of the hands of the Democratic legislature), direction and probably looting of the state pension system, expansion of the "prison industrial complex," the busting of uppity unions (all except the prison guards' & cops unions--but their day may come)--especially the teachers and nurses--to destroy public education, and also to further loot the health care system, controls over the ever-growing Hispanic vote (a whole topic in itself, involving the Diebold shill who heads Los Angeles elections--Connie McCormack), and the corruption/collusion of the state Democratic Party leadership (also another whole topic).
The Bush Cartel has a Plan for California, for sure. I first started seeing its outlines when our good Sec of State, Kevin Shelley, was "swift-boated" out of office on entirely bogus corruption charges, just after the 2004 election. (Shelley had sued Diebold, decertified their touchscreens and demanded to see their source code, six months prior to the 2004 election.) Diebold is part of the Plan.* And, no doubt, a major assassination school and training ground for soldiers who have no connection to California communities (unlike, say, our National Guard) is part of it, too. Blackwater.
One of the threats that the fascists are mobilizing for is the huge democracy revolution going on in Latin America--with leftist (marjorityist) governments elected in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Nicaragua, a huge leftist movement in Mexico that came within .05 of winning the presidency last year, and leftist movements also in Guatemala, Paraguay and Peru (likely to win future elections). These democratic ideas might float--are floating--northward. They are an enormous threat to global corporate predators--to their power and to their ungodly profiteering on everything from war and global warming to the food supply. If we were to have transparent vote counting and a democracy revolution HERE, in the U.S.--that is, in Corporate Predator headquarters--it might just lead to an equitable and peaceful world. Can't have that.**
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*(They got rid of Shelley--possibly because he was onto the recall scam, and/or the plan for '04--and installed a Diebold shill as Sec of State, appointed by Schwarzenegger--with the complicity of the state Dem leadership. He soon (and illegally) re-certified Diebold touchscreens (the machines that were kept in election officials' homes and cars, etc., in the Busby/Bilbray election--in SAN DIEGO!). Now we have a good Sec of State again--Debra Bowen--one of the miracles of the '06 election (big revolt of the grass roots Dems in Calif). And we'll see what happens next. Bowen strikes me as someone who cannot be corrupted. But that was true of Shelley as well. Yet the corporate news monopolies managed to create a completely false narrative about him. Scary is the word. Bowen recently called for a top-to-bottom review of California vote counting systems.)
**(Interesting interview of Naomi Klein on the "privatization of the state" beginning with the privatization of war...
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/02/1345218 )
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