Adopted ID

Friday 1 April 7pm

In the fall of 1979 in Cap Haitien, Haiti, I was found in a roadside ditch naked and covered with ants. The locals who rescued me took me to a nearby hospital and handed me over to two nuns who at the time where in contact with a Canadian couple who were looking to adopt from Haiti. Three and half months later I was flown to Montreal, Canada to meet my new family the Craig's. I was named Judith Jennifer Denise by my parents Jim Craig, a minister and Juanita Craig, a stay home mom.

I was raised alongside their four other children in a loving, nurturing Christian home. For the last 27 years this is the only family that I have known and loved. Although growing up as a Black girl in a predominately Caucasian family hasn't been easy I think I am a well adjusted and confident person. Recently however, the need to find my parents or any family member has become an increasing desire. I am returning to Haiti this fall with the faith that I will find what I am looking for.

These are the words of Jennifer Craig, this once orphan who is now a well adjusted adult who works as a social worker in child protection and adoption in the UK. The questions from her mysterious past still haunt her. As she prepares to return to Haiti for the first time, here is some insight into what it feels like to have an Adopted Identity.

Synopsis:

This film uncovers the extraordinary journey of Judith Craig.  Abandoned at birth, she bravely returns to the impoverished nation of Haiti to find her parents. 

From the poverty-stricken families who’ve given up a child to the foreign families looking to adopt one, these disparate worlds collide amid Judith’s quest to solve the puzzle of her past.  With the sights and sounds of pre-earthquake Haiti as a backdrop, these intersecting lives provide a rare and intimate insight into the conditions surrounding transnational adoption. 

The Impact:

The aftermath of the horrific Haiti earthquake highlighted the need for transracial adoption and the benefit of families of wealthy nations assisting families of poorer nations.  In this phenomenon, little is known of the future impact on transracially adopted children. 

Adopted ID provides insight into the complexities of this relatively new type of family. Judith Craig, has lived it, felt it, understands it and wants to give back to other children and parents who are experiencing the same family dynamic.

Judith hopes this film will change the way you understand interracial adoption.   

 

Dir: Sonia Godding Togobo
Canada/UK
2010,
English

Henry Louis Gates and

Black in Latin America:

A Review

By Taunya Banks

15May2011  

Source: Taunya Banks Concurring Opinions

Harvard Professor Henry Louis, perhaps best known to most Americans for his run-in with a Cambridge Police Officer, than for his scholarly writings and academic entrepreneurship, is back on public television.  His television series is entitled Black in Latin America.  The name of the series is somewhat misleading since three of the countries he visits are on islands in the Caribbean, and a fourth, Mexico, also is not located on the Latin America continent.  Nevertheless, the series promised to be eye opening.  As one reviewer wrote, “When most U.S. citizens think of a Latino, they rarely picture someone black. This series broadens our understanding of the very complex identity of people from Spanish-speaking countries, an identity that is usually oversimplified into misleading racial stereotypes in the U.S. media.”  But here again, characterizing the series as about Spanish-speaking “Latinos” also is misleading since the series includes Brazil where the national language is a form of Portuguese and Haiti whose national language is a form of French.  So you are getting some idea of this subject’s complexity.

David Eltis and David Richardson in their wonderful book, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale Univ. Press 2010), map this trade in human chattel that lasted for 366 years “and resulted in the forced deportation of 12.5 million Africans to the New World.”  Black in Latin American briefly looks at the status of these unfortunate humans and their descendants now scattered throughout the islands and the Americas. There is, however, no mention of Central America where the Atlantic slave trade also distributed West Africans.  But this omission is not a criticism, the topic is simply huge.

The Atlantic region includes countries whose history of slavery pre-dates the U.S., and where slavery persisted in some places until the end of the nineteenth century.  Race in the Americas, especially Brazil and Cuba, is a topic that has long excited a small group of anthropologists, historians and sociologists.  Today, however, “Latin American” notions of race have more meaning to Americans because of our growing Hispanic, primarily Latino population, which on the surface celebrates its mestizaje (mixed racial culture) while papering over the racialized divisions within and among each community.  Latin America is a region, like the U.S., that, as a result of the slave trade, is equally bedeviled by race.

Over the years I’ve visited and studied about the construction of race in Cuba, Brazil and Mexico.  A few years back I even wrote an essay about Afro-Mexicans and Mexico’s hidden third root, its African heritage.  By looking at laws in Mexico during the seventeen, eighteen and early nineteenth century, the presence of Africans and their descendants is apparent.  Thus, I eagerly looked forward to this series.

Black in Latin America is divided into four two-hour segments.  The first segment compares and contrasts the histories, institutions of slavery and notions of blackness in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the two nations that share a single island – Hispaniola.  The second segment looks at the status of Africans and their descendants in Cuba before and after the Castro-lead Revolution.  Brazil, the so-called “racial democracy”, is featured in the third segment.  The final segment, which aired last night, compares and contrasts the experience of Africans and their descendants in Mexico and Peru, two countries with large indigenous populations and more hidden histories of black slavery.

Unfortunately, the series does not live up to its billing, or to Professor Gates’ reputation as a scholar.  As one reviewer wrote, “The first episode offered some promise.  The second left me completely unsatisfied.”  I was similarly disappointed with the third episode.  Only in the final episode was there a glimmer of the series’potential.

Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet

<p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #808080; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 600px;">Watch the full episode. See more Black in Latin America.</p>

In each segment race is discussed from an American perspective where, until recently, anyone with known African ancestry, no matter how remote, was classified as black or African American.  A point Professor Gates does not make until the fourth episode.  Despite his own acknowledged mixed racial ancestry, Gates seems genuinely befuddled that people in the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Brazil who look like him might not identify or be classified as black.  There are other problems as well.  At the end of the segment on Brazil the results of ancestral DNA tests taken by several informants is announced and Gates triumphantly announces that one person who self-identifies as white has some African ancestry.  So what, isn’t race socially constructed and not biologically based?  Haven’t ancestral DNA tests been criticized in scientific journals and the popular press as not being determinative of a test taker’s race or ethnicity?

Further, the treatment of each country seems overly simplistic like Professor Gates is talking to some cultural tourist group from the United States.  There is a gee, golly wow aspect to these shows, what legal scholar Neil Gotanda might characterize as a “white innocence” moment.  These “new” revelations about race in “Latin America” allow us to think of race-based distinctions in that region as more pernicious, and irrational, than in the U.S. where the lines seem so clear, and where some hope that the election of Barack Obama signals that this nation has transcended racial divisions – dream on.

This dummying down is surprising for a program aimed at the fairly sophisticated PBS audience.   But then I probably am among the minority in my assessment.  Despite these criticisms Professor Gates should be applauded for his effort.  Only someone of his statute has the clout to bring this information to our television screen.

Fortunately, for the more academically inclined, the television series is supplemented by a nifty website with videos of each segment, timelines, photographs, essays, lesson plans and links to resources (including Professor Gates’ forthcoming book).    The website treats the topic in a more scholarly fashion.  Black in America, Professor Gates’ book, will be out in July (New York Univ. Press) and I hope it too gives us a more scholarly treatment of the topic.  In the meantime, readers who want to know more about Afro Latinos should look at the edited volume Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean (Norman E. Whitten, Jr. & Arlene Torres eds., 1998 Indiana Univ. Press), or for a more local focus read Edward E. Telles’ Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil (Princeton Univ. Press 2004) and George R. Andrews’ The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900 (U. Wisconsin Press 1980) as well as the work of legal scholar Tanya Hernandez (Fordham).

"Clergy Sexual Abuse

of Women

Is a Violent Abuse of Power"
 

Cléo Fatoorehchi interviews DR. VALLI BATCHELOR of the World Student Christian Federation Book Project

Valli Batchelor Credit:Courtesy of Valli Batchelor

NEW YORK, May 15, 2011 (IPS) - Ninety to 95 percent of victims of clergy sexual exploitation are women, according to recent estimates by the Columbia Theological Seminary's Rev. Pamela Cooper White, and yet very few studies have been conducted on this issue.

Now, the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), founded in 1985 and which represents more than a hundred social justice-oriented student movements from around the world, is breaking the silence with the publication of a book entitled "When Pastors and Priests Prey - Identifying, Preventing and Overcoming Clergy Sexual Abuse of Women".

The book will be launched at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC), held in Kingston, Jamaica May 17 to 25. The IEPC is a gathering of church leaders who will assess the outcome of the Decade to Overcome Violence, an initiative created in 2001.

The book's coordinator, Dr. Valli Batchelor, came to collaborate with the WSCF after the 2008 Commission on the Status of Women, where she was participating as an Islamic finance expert for the World Council of Churches, which sponsored the book.

She also runs the Journey Towards Hope Dance Project, which helps to educate and engage the public and prevent violence within communities.

Q: Why do you call clergy sexual abuse against women a "silent killer" within families and communities around the globe?

A: Clergy sexual abuse of women is a violent abuse of power rather than "an affair". Most people may recognise that it is an unacceptable abuse of power for a therapist or doctor to have sex with a patient. Yet many fail to recognise that when a clergy – who commits to spiritually nurture and guide a member of the church - takes advantage of his power and authority to have a sexual relationship with her, he is committing sexual abuse and not having an affair.

Clinical research from the Faith Trust Institute indicates that women victims are likely to remain silent, suffering severe consequences from depression to suicide.

Q: What can a woman do to protect herself?

A: Women can protect themselves from sexual abuse by understanding that people with power and authority in our society can abuse that power for their own ends. Stopping abuse before it begins is the best method for self-protection. If abuse has occurred, reporting the abuse is empowering because it breaks the silence surrounding the offender who is violating the trust placed in him.

Realisation of the betrayal of trust by clergy – who is believed to be the spiritual representation of God - is devastating and survivors need support to cope. Clergy offenders often use their spiritual authority to violate women, pleading or threatening the victims that they must forgive the offender's "sins" or risk being rejected by God for unforgiveness. This is spiritual blackmail and can trap victims into silence and suffering for years or decades.

Survivors recover best when they find someone who believes them and helps the survivor to bring the offender to justice and thus reduce the risk of the offender abusing other victims.

Q: How can people fight against such abuse?

A: First, the issue needs to be faced honestly: that sexual abuse is a violent abuse of power, not a matter of "an affair" between a clergyman and a female parishioner. Second, church congregations and church organisations need to recognise that clergy are capable of sexual abuse so that the churches can devise safe practices for clergy.

The WSCF and the WCC have jointly played a role of historic significance by pooling together the knowledge, experiences and voices of survivors, advocates, theologians and others to create this book, which will hopefully begin a cultural transformation within the worldwide church.

Q: Where does the law stand on this issue?

A: Criminal sexual offences committed by clergy can be prosecuted by the courts. Survivors who take on a criminal prosecution must give a police statement and be prepared to be cross-examined at a trial - and face brutal questioning from defence lawyers. The prosecutor must prove the case beyond reasonable doubt to secure a conviction.

Police are often unwilling to charge an offender unless they are confident of securing a conviction. Survivors of sexual offences by clergy are often embarrassed, trapped in confusion, guilt, shame and self-blame that most victims never make an official complaint to police. Worldwide conviction rates for all sexual assault cases are still very low.

Q: Should the church create some kind of tribunal?

A: Church organisations over hundreds of years have internal processes which are not transparent. Offending clergy have been protected by their church organisations for decades which intimidate victims into silence and cover up disclosures of abuse.

Prosecutions by civil authorities are more likely to be transparent and offer a better option than church tribunals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Prison Reform, Money Trumps Civil Rights

By MICHELLE ALEXANDER

Published: May 14, 2011

Columbus, Ohio

THE legal scholar Derrick A. Bell foresaw that mass incarceration, like earlier systems of racial control, would continue to exist as long as it served the perceived interests of white elites.

Thirty years of civil rights litigation and advocacy have failed to slow the pace of a racially biased drug war or to prevent the emergence of a penal system of astonishing size. Yet a few short years of tight state budgets have inspired former “get tough” true believers to suddenly denounce the costs of imprisonment. “We’re wasting tax dollars on prisons,” they say. “It’s time to shift course.”

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, shocked many earlier this year when he co-wrote an essay for The Washington Post calling on “conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered off-limits to reform: prisons.”

Republican governors had already been sounding the same note. As California was careering toward bankruptcy last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lamented that more money was being spent on prisons than on education. Priorities “have become out of whack over the years,” he said. “What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns?” Another Republican governor, John R. Kasich of Ohio, recently announced support for reducing penalties for nonviolent drug offenders as part of an effort to slash the size of the state’s prison population.

A majority of those swept into our nation’s prison system are poor people of color, but the sudden shift away from the “get tough” rhetoric that has dominated the national discourse on crime has not been inspired by a surge in concern about the devastating human toll of mass incarceration. Instead, as Professor Bell predicted, the changing tide is best explained by perceived white interests. In this economic climate, it is impossible to maintain the vast prison state without raising taxes on the (white) middle class.

Given this political reality, it is hardly a surprise to read a headline that says, “N.A.A.C.P. Joins With Gingrich in Urging Prison Reform,” rather than the other way around. If there were ever an illustration of Professor Bell’s theory that whites will support racial justice only to the extent that it is in their interests, this would seem to be it.

Of course, in the late 1970s, when Professor Bell, who now teaches at New York University School of Law, first advanced his theories, our prison population was much smaller. The Reagan revolution had not yet taken hold. No one knew that the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement would unleash a wave of punitiveness that would trap generations in ghettoes, and brand them criminals and felons. No one foresaw the caste-like system that would emerge, the millions who would be stripped of basic civil and human rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement — the right to vote, to serve on juries, and to be free of discrimination in employment, housing, education and public benefits.

Today, 2.3 million Americans are behind bars; the United States has the world’s highest rate of incarceration. Convictions for non-violent crimes and relatively minor drug offenses — mostly possession, not sale — have accounted for the bulk of the increase in the prison population since the mid-1980s.

African-Americans are far more likely to get prison sentences for drug offenses than white offenders, even though studies have consistently shown that they are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites.

What to do now? Understandably, civil rights advocates and criminal justice reformers are celebrating this moment of what Professor Bell calls “interest convergence.” They say we must catch the wave and ride it. Many have given up all hope of persuading the white electorate that they should care about the severe racial disparities in the criminal justice system or the racial politics that birthed the drug war. It’s possible now, they say, to win big without talking about race or “making it an issue.” Public relations consultants like the FrameWorks Institute — which dedicates itself to “changing the public conversation about social problems” — advise advocates to speak in a “practical tone” and avoid discussions of “fairness between groups and the historical legacy of racism.”

Surely the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have rejected that advice.

In 1963, in his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” he chastised white ministers for their indifference to black suffering: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ ”

He continued: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Such language would not have tested well in a focus group. Yet it helped to change the course of history.

Those who believe that righteous indignation and protest politics were appropriate in the struggle to end Jim Crow, but that something less will do as we seek to dismantle mass incarceration, fail to appreciate the magnitude of the challenge. If our nation were to return to the rates of incarceration we had in the 1970s, we would have to release 4 out of 5 people behind bars. A million people employed by the criminal justice system could lose their jobs. Private prison companies would see their profits vanish. This system is now so deeply rooted in our social, political and economic structures that it is not going to fade away without a major shift in public consciousness.

Yes, some prison downsizing is likely to occur in the months and years to come. But we ought not fool ourselves: we will not end mass incarceration without a recommitment to the movement-building work that was begun in the 1950s and 1960s and left unfinished. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch. If we fail to rise to the challenge, and push past the politics of momentary interest convergence, future generations will judge us harshly.

 

Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, is the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

Blackwater founder Erik Prince

building American-led army

of revolution-crushing

mercenaries in UAE

Xeni Jardin at 7:25 PM Saturday, May 14, 2011  

 

Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater (now rebranded "Xe") is building a stealth, American-led mercenary army in the United Arab Emirates "with $529 million from the oil-soaked sheikdom." The business plan, at least in part, appears to be to help autocratic regimes crush popular democratic uprisings—a response to "Arab Spring." Oh, this will turn out well. Snip from the New York Times' exclusive:

Mr. Prince, who resettled here last year after his security business faced mounting legal problems in the United States, was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the U.A.E., according to former employees on the project, American officials and corporate documents obtained by The New York Times.

The force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts, the documents show. Such troops could be deployed if the Emirates faced unrest or were challenged by pro-democracy demonstrations in its crowded labor camps or democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world this year. The U.A.E.'s rulers, viewing their own military as inadequate, also hope that the troops could blunt the regional aggression of Iran, the country's biggest foe, the former employees said.

 

Read the rest of the story here.

The New York Times also published a copy of the executed contract. (PDF)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a Google Maps link for the Blackwater UAE compound (via Kurt Brown).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Scahill on Twitter, cryptically: "The breaking Blackwater story in NYT is, in part, a limited hangout. Follow the Libyan road."

(Photo: In 2007, Blackwater Chief Executive Erik Prince testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan on Capitol Hill in Washington. At the time, Prince's company was under investigation over deadly incidents in Iraq, and lawmakers took aim at the company's actions in a shooting in which 11 Iraqis were killed.)

via boingboing.net

__________________________

Blackwater

forms spy group in US

Fri May 13, 2011 11:22AM

Executives from Blackwater military firm form new intelligence agency.

The notorious military contractor formerly known as Blackwater along with intelligence operations program Able Danger has formed a new spy firm called Jellyfish Intelligence.

Xe Services LLC and Able Danger claim the Jellyfish Intelligence is a “law-abiding” firm, which aims to sell intelligence to wealthy corporations, a Press TV correspondent reported. 

“We realize that this is an extremely transitory time. Nothing is predictable. What we have set out to do is to make the key intelligence available to companies who just like battlefield commanders, have to maintain successful operations,” Chief Legal Officer of Jellyfish Intelligence, Kathleen Robertson said during a press conference held on discussing the new agency's mission. 

Blackwater changed its name to Xe after the contractor's reputation was tarnished following a series of scandals, most notably the 2007 murder of dozens of Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked shooting spree. 

“Because of the backgrounds of some of the individuals, someone might want to make it into a controversy, but we have no interest in the business of guns, gates, and guards,” Jellyfish Intelligence CEO, Keith Mahoney told Press TV. 

Some intelligence analysts have stressed their opposition to such privatizations, arguing that it would endanger the country's national security, as top-security information will become more accessible. 

>via: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/179686.html

__________________________

Secret Desert Force Set Up by

Blackwater’s Founder

Adam Ferguson/VII Network

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, has a new project.

By MARK MAZZETTI and EMILY B. HAGER

Published: May 14, 2011

Multimedia

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand.

 

Document

Copy of Mercenary Contract

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi hired Erik Prince to build a fighting force.

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IN THE SAND  The training camp for the foreign force, located on an Emirati military base, includes barracks for the soldiers.

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THE PAPER TRAIL A collection of documents about the secret army includes recruits’ permits. Some details have been obscured.

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GeoEye, via Google Earth

A satellite image of the camp in the United Arab Emirates built to train an 800-member military unit.

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The army is based in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, but will serve all the emirates.

The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million from the oil-soaked sheikdom.

Mr. Prince, who resettled here last year after his security business faced mounting legal problems in the United States, was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the U.A.E., according to former employees on the project, American officials and corporate documents obtained by The New York Times.

The force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts, the documents show. Such troops could be deployed if the Emirates faced unrest in their crowded labor camps or were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world this year.

The U.A.E.’s rulers, viewing their own military as inadequate, also hope that the troops could blunt the regional aggression of Iran, the country’s biggest foe, the former employees said. The training camp, located on a sprawling Emirati base called Zayed Military City, is hidden behind concrete walls laced with barbed wire. Photographs show rows of identical yellow temporary buildings, used for barracks and mess halls, and a motor pool, which houses Humvees and fuel trucks. The Colombians, along with South African and other foreign troops, are trained by retired American soldiers and veterans of the German and British special operations units and the French Foreign Legion, according to the former employees and American officials.

In outsourcing critical parts of their defense to mercenaries — the soldiers of choice for medieval kings, Italian Renaissance dukes and African dictators — the Emiratis have begun a new era in the boom in wartime contracting that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And by relying on a force largely created by Americans, they have introduced a volatile element in an already combustible region where the United States is widely viewed with suspicion.

The United Arab Emirates — an autocracy with the sheen of a progressive, modern state — are closely allied with the United States, and American officials indicated that the battalion program had some support in Washington.

“The gulf countries, and the U.A.E. in particular, don’t have a lot of military experience. It would make sense if they looked outside their borders for help,” said one Obama administration official who knew of the operation. “They might want to show that they are not to be messed with.”

Still, it is not clear whether the project has the United States’ official blessing. Legal experts and government officials said some of those involved with the battalion might be breaking federal laws that prohibit American citizens from training foreign troops if they did not secure a license from the State Department.

Mark C. Toner, a spokesman for the department, would not confirm whether Mr. Prince’s company had obtained such a license, but he said the department was investigating to see if the training effort was in violation of American laws. Mr. Toner pointed out that Blackwater (which renamed itself Xe Services ) paid $42 million in fines last year for training foreign troops in Jordan and other countries over the years.

The U.A.E.’s ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, declined to comment for this article. A spokesman for Mr. Prince also did not comment.

For Mr. Prince, the foreign battalion is a bold attempt at reinvention. He is hoping to build an empire in the desert, far from the trial lawyers, Congressional investigators and Justice Department officials he is convinced worked in league to portray Blackwater as reckless. He sold the company last year, but in April, a federal appeals court reopened the case against four Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

To help fulfill his ambitions, Mr. Prince’s new company, Reflex Responses, obtained another multimillion-dollar contract to protect a string of planned nuclear power plants and to provide cybersecurity. He hopes to earn billions more, the former employees said, by assembling additional battalions of Latin American troops for the Emiratis and opening a giant complex where his company can train troops for other governments.

Knowing that his ventures are magnets for controversy, Mr. Prince has masked his involvement with the mercenary battalion. His name is not included on contracts and most other corporate documents, and company insiders have at times tried to hide his identity by referring to him by the code name “Kingfish.” But three former employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements, and two people involved in security contracting described Mr. Prince’s central role.

The former employees said that in recruiting the Colombians and others from halfway around the world, Mr. Prince’s subordinates were following his strict rule: hire no Muslims.

Muslim soldiers, Mr. Prince warned, could not be counted on to kill fellow Muslims.

A Lucrative Deal

Last spring, as waiters in the lobby of the Park Arjaan by Rotana Hotel passed by carrying cups of Turkish coffee, a small team of Blackwater and American military veterans huddled over plans for the foreign battalion. Armed with a black suitcase stuffed with several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of dirhams, the local currency, they began paying the first bills.

The company, often called R2, was licensed last March with 51 percent local ownership, a typical arrangement in the Emirates. It received about $21 million in start-up capital from the U.A.E., the former employees said.

Mr. Prince made the deal with Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates. The two men had known each other for several years, and it was the prince’s idea to build a foreign commando force for his country.

Savvy and pro-Western, the prince was educated at the Sandhurst military academy in Britain and formed close ties with American military officials. He is also one of the region’s staunchest hawks on Iran and is skeptical that his giant neighbor across the Strait of Hormuz will give up its nuclear program.

“He sees the logic of war dominating the region, and this thinking explains his near-obsessive efforts to build up his armed forces,” said a November 2009 cable from the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi that was obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

For Mr. Prince, a 41-year-old former member of the Navy Seals, the battalion was an opportunity to turn vision into reality. At Blackwater, which had collected billions of dollars in security contracts from the United States government, he had hoped to build an army for hire that could be deployed to crisis zones in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He even had proposed that the Central Intelligence Agency use his company for special operations missions around the globe, but to no avail. In Abu Dhabi, which he praised in an Emirati newspaper interview last year for its “pro-business” climate, he got another chance.

Mr. Prince’s exploits, both real and rumored, are the subject of fevered discussions in the private security world. He has worked with the Emirati government on various ventures in the past year, including an operation using South African mercenaries to train Somalis to fight pirates. There was talk, too, that he was hatching a scheme last year to cap the Icelandic volcano then spewing ash across Northern Europe.

The team in the hotel lobby was led by Ricky Chambers, known as C. T., a former agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who had worked for Mr. Prince for years; most recently, he had run a program training Afghan troops for a Blackwater subsidiary called Paravant.

He was among the half-dozen or so Americans who would serve as top managers of the project, receiving nearly $300,000 in annual compensation. Mr. Chambers and Mr. Prince soon began quietly luring American contractors from Afghanistan, Iraq and other danger spots with pay packages that topped out at more than $200,000 a year, according to a budget document. Many of those who signed on as trainers — which eventually included more than 40 veteran American, European and South African commandos — did not know of Mr. Prince’s involvement, the former employees said.

Mr. Chambers did not respond to requests for comment.

He and Mr. Prince also began looking for soldiers. They lined up Thor Global Enterprises, a company on the Caribbean island of Tortola specializing in “placing foreign servicemen in private security positions overseas,” according to a contract signed last May. The recruits would be paid about $150 a day.

Within months, large tracts of desert were bulldozed and barracks constructed. The Emirates were to provide weapons and equipment for the mercenary force, supplying everything from M-16 rifles to mortars, Leatherman knives to Land Rovers. They agreed to buy parachutes, motorcycles, rucksacks — and 24,000 pairs of socks.

To keep a low profile, Mr. Prince rarely visited the camp or a cluster of luxury villas near the Abu Dhabi airport, where R2 executives and Emirati military officers fine-tune the training schedules and arrange weapons deliveries for the battalion, former employees said. He would show up, they said, in an office suite at the DAS Tower — a skyscraper just steps from Abu Dhabi’s Corniche beach, where sunbathers lounge as cigarette boats and water scooters whiz by. Staff members there manage a number of companies that the former employees say are carrying out secret work for the Emirati government.

Emirati law prohibits disclosure of incorporation records for businesses, which typically list company officers, but it does require them to post company names on offices and storefronts. Over the past year, the sign outside the suite has changed at least twice — it now says Assurance Management Consulting.

While the documents — including contracts, budget sheets and blueprints — obtained by The Times do not mention Mr. Prince, the former employees said he negotiated the U.A.E. deal. Corporate documents describe the battalion’s possible tasks: intelligence gathering, urban combat, the securing of nuclear and radioactive materials, humanitarian missions and special operations “to destroy enemy personnel and equipment.”

One document describes “crowd-control operations” where the crowd “is not armed with firearms but does pose a risk using improvised weapons (clubs and stones).”

People involved in the project and American officials said that the Emiratis were interested in deploying the battalion to respond to terrorist attacks and put down uprisings inside the country’s sprawling labor camps, which house the Pakistanis, Filipinos and other foreigners who make up the bulk of the country’s work force. The foreign military force was planned months before the so-called Arab Spring revolts that many experts believe are unlikely to spread to the U.A.E. Iran was a particular concern.

An Eye on Iran

Although there was no expectation that the mercenary troops would be used for a stealth attack on Iran, Emirati officials talked of using them for a possible maritime and air assault to reclaim a chain of islands, mostly uninhabited, in the Persian Gulf that are the subject of a dispute between Iran and the U.A.E., the former employees said. Iran has sent military forces to at least one of the islands, Abu Musa, and Emirati officials have long been eager to retake the islands and tap their potential oil reserves.

The Emirates have a small military that includes army, air force and naval units as well as a small special operations contingent, which served in Afghanistan, but over all, their forces are considered inexperienced.

In recent years, the Emirati government has showered American defense companies with billions of dollars to help strengthen the country’s security. A company run by Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser during the Clinton and Bush administrations, has won several lucrative contracts to advise the U.A.E. on how to protect its infrastructure.

Some security consultants believe that Mr. Prince’s efforts to bolster the Emirates’ defenses against an Iranian threat might yield some benefits for the American government, which shares the U.A.E.’s concern about creeping Iranian influence in the region.

“As much as Erik Prince is a pariah in the United States, he may be just what the doctor ordered in the U.A.E.,” said an American security consultant with knowledge of R2’s work.

The contract includes a one-paragraph legal and ethics policy noting that R2 should institute accountability and disciplinary procedures. “The overall goal,” the contract states, “is to ensure that the team members supporting this effort continuously cast the program in a professional and moral light that will hold up to a level of media scrutiny.”

But former employees said that R2’s leaders never directly grappled with some fundamental questions about the operation. International laws governing private armies and mercenaries are murky, but would the Americans overseeing the training of a foreign army on foreign soil be breaking United States law?

Susan Kovarovics, an international trade lawyer who advises companies about export controls, said that because Reflex Responses was an Emirati company it might not need State Department authorization for its activities.

But she said that any Americans working on the project might run legal risks if they did not get government approval to participate in training the foreign troops.

Basic operational issues, too, were not addressed, the former employees said. What were the battalion’s rules of engagement? What if civilians were killed during an operation? And could a Latin American commando force deployed in the Middle East really be kept a secret?

Imported Soldiers

The first waves of mercenaries began arriving last summer. Among them was a 13-year veteran of Colombia’s National Police force named Calixto Rincón, 42, who joined the operation with hopes of providing for his family and seeing a new part of the world.

“We were practically an army for the Emirates,” Mr. Rincón, now back in Bogotá, Colombia, said in an interview. “They wanted people who had a lot of experience in countries with conflicts, like Colombia.”

Mr. Rincón’s visa carried a special stamp from the U.A.E. military intelligence branch, which is overseeing the entire project, that allowed him to move through customs andimmigration without being questioned.

He soon found himself in the midst of the camp’s daily routines, which mirrored those of American military training. “We would get up at 5 a.m. and we would start physical exercises,” Mr. Rincón said. His assignment included manual labor at the expanding complex, he said. Other former employees said the troops — outfitted in Emirati military uniforms — were split into companies to work on basic infantry maneuvers, learn navigation skills and practice sniper training.

R2 spends roughly $9 million per month maintaining the battalion, which includes expenditures for employee salaries, ammunition and wages for dozens of domestic workers who cook meals, wash clothes and clean the camp, a former employee said. Mr. Rincón said that he and his companions never wanted for anything, and that their American leaders even arranged to have a chef travel from Colombia to make traditional soups.

But the secrecy of the project has sometimes created a prisonlike environment. “We didn’t have permission to even look through the door,” Mr. Rincón said. “We were only allowed outside for our morning jog, and all we could see was sand everywhere.”

The Emirates wanted the troops to be ready to deploy just weeks after stepping off the plane, but it quickly became clear that the Colombians’ military skills fell far below expectations. “Some of these kids couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn,” said a former employee. Other recruits admitted to never having fired a weapon.

Rethinking Roles

As a result, the veteran American and foreign commandos training the battalion have had to rethink their roles. They had planned to act only as “advisers” during missions — meaning they would not fire weapons — but over time, they realized that they would have to fight side by side with their troops, former officials said.

Making matters worse, the recruitment pipeline began drying up. Former employees said that Thor struggled to sign up, and keep, enough men on the ground. Mr. Rincón developed a hernia and was forced to return to Colombia, while others were dismissed from the program for drug use or poor conduct.

And R2’s own corporate leadership has also been in flux. Mr. Chambers, who helped develop the project, left after several months. A handful of other top executives, some of them former Blackwater employees, have been hired, then fired within weeks.

To bolster the force, R2 recruited a platoon of South African mercenaries, including some veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African company notorious for staging coup attempts or suppressing rebellions against African strongmen in the 1990s. The platoon was to function as a quick-reaction force, American officials and former employees said, and began training for a practice mission: a terrorist attack on the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, the world’s tallest building. They would secure the situation before quietly handing over control to Emirati troops.

But by last November, the battalion was officially behind schedule. The original goal was for the 800-man force to be ready by March 31; recently, former employees said, the battalion’s size was reduced to about 580 men.

Emirati military officials had promised that if this first battalion was a success, they would pay for an entire brigade of several thousand men. The new contracts would be worth billions, and would help with Mr. Prince’s next big project: a desert training complex for foreign troops patterned after Blackwater’s compound in Moyock, N.C. But before moving ahead, U.A.E. military officials have insisted that the battalion prove itself in a “real world mission.”

That has yet to happen. So far, the Latin American troops have been taken off the base only to shop and for occasional entertainment.

On a recent spring night though, after months stationed in the desert, they boarded an unmarked bus and were driven to hotels in central Dubai, a former employee said. There, some R2 executives had arranged for them to spend the evening with prostitutes.

Mark Mazzetti reported from Abu Dhabi and Washington, and Emily B. Hager from New York. Jenny Carolina González and Simon Romero contributed reporting from Bogotá, Colombia. Kitty Bennett contributed research from Washington.

 

>via: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15prince.html?_r=2&hp=...

 

 

Jammin’: Lauryn Hill Performs

Bob Marley’s Hits On Jimmy Fallon

Friday May 13, 2011 – by Leslie Pitterson

If the pregnancy rumors swirling around her are true, then the little one in Lauryn’s womb was definitely jamming last night. The singer made a rare television appearance on NBC’s “Late Nights With Jimmy Fallon,” performing as part of the show’s Bob Marley week. Dressed in a flowy floral dress, a dope dashiki printed jacket and her Magritte-esque bowler hat, Lauryn tore it up giving a fitting tribute to the reggae legend and grandfather of her children.

Check out Ms. Hill covering the classics, “Could You Be Loved” and “Chances Are.”

What do you think of Lauryn’s performance last night- love it or leave it alone? Let us know, Clutchettes. Share your thoughts!

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