{"id":27029,"date":"2010-09-16T15:32:36","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T15:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/?p=27029"},"modified":"2010-09-16T15:32:36","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T15:32:36","slug":"article_21634","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/article_21634\/","title":{"rendered":"Notorious Agribiz Giant Monsanto Hired Notorious ‘Security’ Firm Blackwater to Keep Tabs on Activists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar
\n Wilde once described the traditional English gentleman’s pastime of fox
\n hunting as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.” <\/p>\n

I
\n thought of that great line when I caught news that Monsanto, probably
\nthe globe’s most reviled agribusiness firm, had contracted the services of
\nBlackwater, the globe’s most notorious “private security” (i.e.,
\nparamilitary) firm. <\/p>\n

Jeremy Scahill, <\/p>\n

The Nation<\/span>‘s ace investigative journalist who has been dogging Blackwater and breaking news on the shadowy company for years<\/a>, has the goods<\/a>. Monsanto hired the company in 2008, Scahill reports. <\/p>\n

Before<\/p>\n

we dig into the story, let’s establish that by 2008, Blackwater had
\nproven itself to be a really, really dodgy company. Blackwater first
\nbecame famous in 2003, soon after the start of the war in Iraq, when
\nthe company flooded the country with armed contractors at the invitation
\n of the Bush administration, which
\n had multiple ties<\/a> to
\n Blackwater’s right-wing founder, the wealthy heir Erik Prince.
\nBlackwater quickly involved itself in a long string of violent
\nincidents, including the killing of 17 unarmed civilians in 2007 in Iraq<\/a>.
\n By then, the company’s trigger-happy gunmen had become involved in the
\nwar in Afghanistan and even in post-Katrina New Orleans. <\/p>\n

The
\n 2007 atrocity in Iraq wrecked the company’s reputation, forcing it
\nchange its name to the unpronounceable Xe and break into what <\/p>\n

The New
\nYork Times<\/span> recently called<\/a> “a
\n web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries [created] in part to obtain
\nmillions of dollars in American government contracts.” (None of this
\nhas stopped the Obama administration from continuing to work with
\nBlackwater and its shell companies; last year, Scahill reported<\/a> that Blackwater was on the ground in Pakistan on a U.S. contract.)<\/p>\n

Into
\n this unsavory milieu stepped Monsanto in 2008, Scahill reports. The
\nagribusiness giant was one of a group of transnationals — others
\ninclude Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines,
\nDeutsche Bank, and Barclays — that hired a Blackwater shell company
\ncalled “Total Intelligence Solutions” for overseas services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeremy Scahill, The Nation’s ace investigative journalist who has been dogging Blackwater and breaking news on the shadowy company for years, has the goods. Monsanto hired the company in 2008, Scahill reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1000,1031],"tags":[7,24],"organicbytes":[],"countries":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNotorious Agribiz Giant Monsanto Hired Notorious 'Security' Firm Blackwater to Keep Tabs on Activists - Organic Consumers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/organicconsumers.org\/article_21634\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Notorious Agribiz Giant Monsanto Hired Notorious 'Security' Firm Blackwater to Keep Tabs on Activists - Organic Consumers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jeremy Scahill, The Nation's ace investigative journalist who has been dogging Blackwater and breaking news on the shadowy company for years, has the goods. 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