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"While the Bush Administration calls for the immediate disbanding of what it has labeled "private" and "illegal" militias in Lebanon and Iraq, it is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into its own global private mercenary army tasked with protecting US officials and institutions overseas. The secretive program, which spans at least twenty-seven countries, has been an incredible jackpot for one heavily Republican-connected firm in particular: Blackwater USA. Government records recently obtained by The Nation reveal that the Bush Administration has paid Blackwater more than $320 million since June 2004 to provide "diplomatic security" services globally. The massive contract is the largest known to have been awarded to Blackwater to date and reveals how the Administration has elevated a once-fledgling security firm into a major profiteer in the "war on terror"... "Blackwater's higly lucrative "diplomatic security" contract was officially awarded under the State Department's little-known Worldwide Personnel Protective Service (WPPS) program, described in State Department documents as a government initiative to protect US officials as well as "certain foreign government high level officials whenever the need arises" "A heavily redacted 2005 government audit of Blackwater's WPPS contract proposal, obtained by The Nation, reveals that Blackwater included profit in its overhead and its total costs, which would result "not only in a duplication of profit but a pyramiding of profit since in effect Blackwater is applying profit to profit." The audit also found that the company tried to inflate its profits by representing different Blackwater divisions as wholly separate companies... ""This underscores the need for Congress to exercise real oversight on the runaway use of secret companies that have strong connections to the Bush Administration, for clandestine services all over the world," says Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, a leading Congressional critic of private military companies. ""This whole business of security is just insidious," says former Assistant Defense Secretary Philip Coyle, who worked at the Pentagon from 1994 to 2001. "The costs keep going up, and there is no end in sight to what you can spend. What happens is you keep raising the threat levels to require more actions and more contracts to overcome these imaginary threats. It's an endless spiral"... "While the WPPS program and the broader use of private security contractors is not new, it has escalaated dramatically under the Bush Administration. According to the most recent Government Accountability Office report, some 48,000 private soldiers, working for 181 private military firms, are deployed in Iraq alone" ("Mercenary Jackpot." The Nation, Aug 28: 6).
"The high yields Naylor gets from his monoculture fields couldn't happen without added nitrates. The chemical fertilizer industry was born from left-over ammonium nitrate, used in making explosives, the government had after World War II... "Modern warfare and industrial agriculature are entwined... ""Today, it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate." We've traded free energy from the sun for pricey petroleum. "Big Ag thrives precisely because so many of these costs are hidden, especially environmental ones. Chemical runoff from farms contaminates our water tables. Excess nitrogen in our watersheds has created huge dead zones in the Northwest and the Gulf of Mexico. Our public health system faces epidemics of diabetes, childhood obesity, and heart disease, all related to our diet" (Elizabeth DiNovella. "Think Globally, Eat Locally." The Progressive, Nov. 2006: 41-44).
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