It’s a good thing I don’t live in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana.
If I did, I’d refuse to accept the authority of DynCorp, the renta-cop
and mercenary corporation that may soon replace
the police in the storm-ravaged parish. Chances are I’d end up injured
or dead at a checkpoint because DynCorp, a for-profit private military contractor,
has a reputation “for brutality and recklessness,” according to Jeremy
Scahill, writing for the Nation magazine. “DynCorp has even been
rebuked by the U.S. State Department for its ‘aggressive behavior’ in
interactions with European diplomats, NATO forces and journalists. A BBC News
correspondent even witnessed one of the guards slapping an Afghan government
minister.” If DynCorp thugs slap around Afghan ministers, imagine what
they would do to a non-cooperative American commoner.
Not long ago, citizens elected police chiefs, or they were appointed by elected
city and county officials, and police chiefs went about hiring qualified police
officers, usually from the community. Not anymore. Now law enforcement is increasingly
militarized and military duties are jobbed out to the likes of DynCorp and
Blackwater. “These guys run loose in this country [Iraq] and do stupid
stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on
them hard when they escalate force,” Brigadier
General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the Third Infantry Division in
charge of security in Baghdad, complained in September, 2005. “They shoot
people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over
the place.” If you don’t think likewise may happen in St. Bernard
Parish, think again. If DynCorp does not answer to the Pentagon, why should
they answer to a sheriff in Louisiana?
DynCorp’s track record is abysmal. Its bodyguards working for interim
president Boniface Alexandre in Haiti “beat at least two journalists
trying to cover a presidential event” and other DynCorp employees were
friendly with several feared Tonton Macoutes leaders (Tonton Macoute, Haitian
Creole for bogeymen, is a secret police modeled after the Italian fascist Blackshirts,
known for killing and torturing the dictator “Papa Doc” François
Duvalier’s opponents, on occasion publicly hanging corpses as gruesome
warnings). “DynCorp has always functioned as a cut-out for Pentagon and
CIA covert operations,” especially in Haiti, explain Jeffrey
St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn. It is a nightmare to consider these Pentagon
and CIA “cut-outs” may be directing traffic and arresting pot dealers
in America soon.
DynCorp’s record is worse than abysmal—it comes in near the bottom
of the criminal food chain. According to the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization
Act (RICO) lawsuit filed in Texas on behalf of a former DynCorp aircraft mechanic,
writes Kelly
Patricia O Meara for Insight magazine, “in the latter part of 1999
[Ben Johnston, DynCorp whistleblower] learned that employees and supervisors
from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and]
were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating
in] other immoral acts [in Bosnia]. Johnston witnessed coworkers and supervisors
literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees
would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they
had purchased.”
It appears a number of DynCorp employees were in cahoots with United Nations
officers who set up a flourishing sex trade in the Balkans. According to Amnesty
International, the United Nations and NATO “peacekeepers” (or pimps) “trafficked
women and girls for sex” in Kosovo, the BBC reported
on May 6, 2004. The Amnesty International “report includes harrowing
testimonies of abduction, deprivation of liberty and denial of freedom of movement,
torture and ill-treatment, including psychological threats, beatings and rape” of
women from Moldova, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine.
“DynCorp employees in Bosnia, where the company plays a major policing
role, have engaged in organized sex-slave trading with girls as young as 12,
and DynCorp’s Bosnia site supervisor was filmed raping a woman,” Scahill responded
after Stephen J. Cannon, president and CEO of DynCorp International, wrote
a letter to the Nation complaining about a Scahill article describing the behavior
of “DynCorp, Intercon, American Security Group, Blackhawk, Wackenhut
and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International” in
New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “The company’s initial response
was to fire the whistleblowers,” Scahill adds. “The employees involved
in the sex ring were transferred out of the country. Some were eventually fired,
although none were ever criminally prosecuted. One of the whistleblowers told
Congress, ‘DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want
overseas.’” No doubt it will the worst possible cop in St. Bernard
Parish, as well.
DynCorp is also in trouble for spraying “toxic herbicides over 14 percent
of the entire land mass of the nation of Colombia, purportedly to eliminate
coca crops,” writes Al
Giordano for Narco News. “Although DynCorp’s taxpayer-sponsored
biological warfare [dubbed Plan Colombia] has not made a dent in the cocaine
trade, it has caused more than 1,100 documented cases of illness among citizens,
destroyed untold acres of food crops, displaced tens of thousands of peasant
farmers, and harmed the fragile Amazon ecosystem.” In addition to poisoning
South Americans, DynCorp, according to Giordano, “has also been exposed
for contracting mercenary soldiers-of-fortune for the covert activities of
the US-imposed ‘Plan Colombia,’” a direct and illegal intervention
in the low intensity conflict in Colombia, a civil war going back to 1948.
In other words, as in Haiti, DynCorp rubs elbows with vicious paramilitary
thugs in Colombia, described by Adam
Weiss as “among the most brutal human rights violators in the world
today.”
In the first paragraph of the Washington Post article announcing the possibility
of DynCorp renta-cops (or in the case of Bosnia, renta-whore-mongers) patrolling
St. Bernard Parish, we are told this is necessary because “hundreds of
stark white trailers soon to be inhabited by Hurricane Katrina evacuees” will “hide
criminals and become an incubator for crime” and pose “another
test” for the “cash-strapped sheriff’s department” of
the parish. “The FBI has warned that gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha,
also known as MS-13, could come attached to construction crews and establish
operations, prompting the department to establish a strike team that has already
arrested eight alleged members,” police officials told the Post, never
mind that the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas, is having difficulty preventing
Mara Salvatrucha from crossing
the wide-open border. “Stretched thin, the department is ready to
turn to private contractors to head off what it fears will be an increase in
crime as construction in the parish booms and residents adjust to life in cramped
trailers,” or what will essentially become a concentration camp patrolled
by for-profit mercenaries.
It would seem the idea to unleash a tarnished DynCorp on the residents of
St. Bernard Parish was suggested by FEMA. “The department did not hold
a competition before recommending DynCorp for the work but would consider other
contactors if FEMA recommended it,” Maj. Pete Tufaro, head of the sheriff’s
department, told the Post. “The department thinks DynCorp is the cheapest
alternative, noting that it would charge less than $700 per day, compared with
the $950 a day charged by Blackwater, he said.” In short, no matter how
you look at it, the people of St. Bernard Parish will be under privatized martial
law. “Under the plan, DynCorp employees working for the sheriff’s
department would take over security at several FEMA trailer sites and establish
three highway checkpoints.” Exactly why the residents of Louisiana need
security and checkpoints is not explained. Maybe it has something to do with
Mara Salvatrucha, but then again it more likely has something to do with incubating
a police state.
No doubt, as the economy implodes and a “prospective increase in the
budget deficit” places at risk the “living standards of our country,” as
new central banker head honcho Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke responded
to questions posed by a concerned Congress critter recently, the services of
DynCorp and Blackwater will be required to contain food riots and mass panic.
Our nation, thanks to Bush and the long-running fiat money polices of Bernanke’s
ilk, faces an economic Katrina, a typhoon poised to swamp and wash away the
lives of millions of people. Sooner before later, “stark white trailers” will
be needed to house the dispossessed, and the checkpoints and concentration
camp perimeters will be patrolled by the likes of DynCorp.
Come the economic disaster or the next terrorist “event,” it may
be a good idea to lock up your 12-year old daughter.
Kurt Nimmo
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