Rosa Brooks on Blackwater.

"Outsourcing foreign policy by Rosa Brooks L.A. Times

The latest Blackwater controversy exposes a larger effort to auction off key government roles to the highest bidder.
September 21, 2007

Why fight another war, with all the bother of convincing Congress, if you can quietly hire a private military company to fight it for you? Why interrogate suspected insurgents if you can outsource the whole messy business? Why go through the tedious process of training Afghan judges if DynCorp will handle it instead -- as long as you're not too picky about the results?"

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I know movie stars are interesting, but the above events might actually impact your life in a real way.

Actually they are already impacting your life. 

In San Diego Blackwater is allegedly building a training facility…who do you think they are getting ready to police? A public military or police entity can’t kill someone or stop someone just because they don’t have the "proper" paper work, but a private entity of highly trained, well connected and well armed can and more importantly unhesitantly will kill.

What do you think would happen if the government started hiring private police, similar to what they do in downtown?

Of course we have rights, but in general it’s pretty hard to enforce rules of civil and human rights in regards to private corporations.

(Why do you think the vast majority of ethnic people who have jobs with health insurance work for public entities? Yeah the whole black person at the DMV/post office/airport and the Indian owning 7-11 thing is real funny, but the fact of the matter is some people will look at your name, face and won’t hire you and the vast majority of the time they can get away with it.)

Lots of times US corporations use foreign countries to see how things work and then they try it out on us Americans and we’re people, not like those funny accented foreigners. During Katrina if you watch the documentary "When the Levees" broke notice that there are some military people in the background, but they have on an odd uniform. To me the uniforms look similar to Blackwater’s uniform. I could be wrong, but imagine if the LAPD started hiring a Blackwater like company to enforce the laws. Yes a private corporation may be more efficient and able to cut through the red tape, but you know I want people who get to kill people to have to go through red tape.

Private security firms allow sadistic fucks to not be held accountable. Do you think that’s a smart idea? Do you think possibly you should be worried about it?

Browne