Everyone needs a Mother Jones subscription. There’s a great deal in this piece, but here’s what really gets my attention:

Last Wednesday afternoon, amid news that Blackwater USA security contractors had killed 11 Iraqi civilians and wounded 12 others in a Baghdad firefight, members of the antiwar group Code Pink gathered outside the Washington office of the International Peace Operations Association, a trade group that represents a who’s who of the private military industry. There to greet them when they arrived was Doug Brooks, the IPOA’s founder and president, who’d been tipped off to the protest earlier that day by an anonymous caller. “He was on the street with an assistant with an armful of IPOA magazines,” said Code Pink’s Gael Murphy, who heads the group’s Washington office. “He had a smile on his face the entire time as though it were some kind of industry expo day, and he kept [smiling], even as we were asking him about some pretty dreadful matters.” Brooks spent about an hour fielding questions and even escorted some of the protesters upstairs to see his office. I asked Murphy if Brooks had managed to change any minds. “No,” she said. “We were not fooled just because [Blackwater] has a network to cover them—that they’re somehow more legitimate than they were the day of the killings.”

If they are bothing to listen in on the phone calls of a bunch of silly women in Code Pink (and you know I’m just teasing those grrls when I say that, they are the best), they are probably listening in on much more important people as well. Like Senators and Representatives who are considering votes for $200B in additional funding for the war, a significant amount of which goes to Mr. Brooks’ clients. Here, have a little Saturday morning Orwellian:

His organization currently represents 42 companies—among them, Blackwater, DynCorp, and MPRI—that belong to what Brooks describes as the “peace and stability industry.” The IPOA’s mission, according to its website, is “to promote high operational and ethical standards of firms active in the Peace and Stability Industry; to engage in a constructive dialogue with policy-makers about the growing and positive contribution of these firms to the enhancement of international peace, development, and human security; and to inform the concerned public about the activities and role of the industry.”

Fuck, someone make my head stop spinning. I don’t think I’ve seen that much bullshit packed into one paragraph in a long time. Anyway, these are your Masters. And what they are doing in Iraq is a practice run, I’m getting more and more sure of that every day. Oh, wait- it’s already here:

A possibly deadly incident involving Quinn’s hired guns underscores the dangers of private forces policing American streets. On his second night in New Orleans, Quinn’s security chief, Michael Montgomery, who said he worked for an Alabama company called Bodyguard and Tactical Security (BATS), was with a heavily armed security detail en route to pick up one of Quinn’s associates and escort him through the chaotic city. Montgomery told me they came under fire from “black gangbangers” on an overpass near the poor Ninth Ward neighborhood. “At the time, I was on the phone with my business partner,” he recalls. “I dropped the phone and returned fire.”

From another publication you should be paying for.

Remember kids, you too are a “black gangbanger.” Even if you’re lily white and live in a nice middle class home with 2.5 kids and a dog. If you read this blog, you are “the enemy.” The private mercenaries don’t work for the United States, they don’t work to bring peace and security, they work for a very exclusive group of people who guarantee that they can kill with impunity while getting rich off your taxdollars. I don’t know how much more bluntly to put it.