Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation.
Blackwater's work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater's owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article.
A report by three U.N.-appointed human rights experts Wednesday said that Israeli forces violated international law when they raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla killing nine activists earlier this year.
The CIA created, controls and pays for a clandestine 3,000-man paramilitary army of local Afghans, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Woodward describes these teams as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there.
There is no rational reason to prohibit all homosexuals from adopting children, a Florida appeals court said on Wednesday in a ruling that upheld a gay man's adoption of two young boys. Florida is the only remaining U.S. state to expressly ban adoption by gay men and women without exception, the ruling noted.
A Polish prosecutor says his office has opened an investigation into whether a Saudi man accused in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole was mistreated in a prison that the CIA allegedly ran in Poland.
Two men have filed a lawsuit accusing Bishop Eddie Long of exploiting his role as pastor of an Atlanta-area megachurch to coerce them into sexual relationships when they were members of his congregation.
David Miliband gave MI6 the green light to proceed with intelligence-gathering operations in countries where there was a possible risk of terrorism suspects being tortured, the Guardian has learned. During the three years Miliband served as foreign secretary, MI6 always consulted him personally before embarking on what a source described as "any particularly difficult" attempts to gain information from a detainee held by a country with a poor human rights record.
Computer simulations show how the movement of wind could have parted the waters of the Red Sea The parting of the Red Sea, as described in the Bible, could have been a phenomenon caused by strong winds, according to new computer simulations.
A group of United Nations experts has criticized Israel and Hamas for failing to conduct serious probes into alleged war crimes last year in the Gaza Strip. The fact-finding mission of Justice Richard Goldstone last year recommended that the sides conduct independent investigations into his report, which charged that war crimes may have taken place during the 2008-2009 conflict in the Gaza Strip.
