Poor Blackwater

It sure does suck to be a military contractor in Iraq, especially compared to...the military. That's right folks, because as an article featured in the Blackwater Tactical Weekly newsletter proves

"The popular belief that there is a huge disparity between what U.S. private security contractors and military personnel are paid has been exposed as a myth yet again."

Yes! Even though "[a]n active-duty sergeant (or E-6 in military terminology) has an annual base pay of $33,976" and "a similarly qualified military contractor, whose average base pay is $165,000" may not appear to fair to the underpaid sergeant, it's easy enough to distort this 4.8-fold disparity into a 4.8-fold myth!

I mean, once you start inflating what the sergeant's "paid" with other goodies like

"allowances for housing and subsistence...Adding special duty pay, a re-enlistment bonus aggregated over four years, and other allowances, minus federal taxes, the total net cash compensation comes to $63,340 a year"

But that's not all! Then add "healthcare, installation-based benefits, subsistence in kind, family housing and barracks, education and other benefits," and "retirement pay accrual, compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs, pension, healthcare and related health benefits" to (un)even things out.

Now subtract more than $69k for the "high tax bracket" contractor. Now subtract all the same amounts you added for the sergeant regarding housing, healthcare, retirement and "other benefits."

And what do we get? Well boo-hoo for the lowly contactor, who walks away crying with "a net cash compensation equivalent of a paltry $38,306" Ouch!

And what of our active duty soldier? Well it turns out his compensation "can be up to $126,734."

WOW! If only our servicemen knew that $33,976 was actually $126,734 if you're in the military, but $165,000 is only $38,306 if you're a contractor! Then mercenary firms wouldn't have to recruit from reputable nations like "Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador," who have long histories of outstanding militaries.
Unfortunately, these Latin Americans are "willing to work for $2,500 to $5,000 a month, compared with perhaps $10,000 or more for Americans." Someone should tell them their 5k a month is really only like $1.13 a year if you do that math right.

Denialists

What's with denialists these days? Skepticism is key to insight, but blatant disregard for evidence simply because it contradicts your ideology is a fool's journey. Examples seem to be popping up everywhere, so I'd thought I'd share a few.

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran came out this week to the dismay of the Bush administration. They seemed to have no problem with the 2005 report, probably because it supported their ambitions of wiping Iran off the map in order to prevent World War III. It should be of no surprise then that the authors of that report were the same as those who wrote a similar excuse for war with Iraq in 2002, most of which has since proven entirely false and misleading.
So it should also be of no surprise that when the most recent NIE reports that Iran halted its weapon program 4 years ago and is about a decade away from nuclear weapon capabilities (if they were to resume now) that administration sees it as inconsequential at best, and a plot to politicize the intelligence community and a witch hunt to sabotage President Bush. It’s no wonder some members of the administration - when they don’t see answers they like - have either entirely ignored the intel, fought hard for months to keep this document from seeing the light of day at all or at least not until it reflected certain interests. Propaganda from war hawks won’t cease despite evidence that directly contradicts their baseless ideological claims.


When Al Gore recently won the Nobel Prize for his work on climate change, it revived the denial of global warming. Even John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel, came out to slander the scientific evidence of climate change. And he’s not alone. Some people will just never be convinced, crying “hyperbole,” or attacking Gore himself, even calling him Hitler, no matter how towering the mountain of evidence becomes.


This past Saturday marked another World AIDS Day, which many still see as a dedication to a myth. As far as deadly infectious diseases go, HIV/AIDS is still relatively young, only have been described about 25 years ago. But since the early 1980s the elucidation of the virus and the horrific illness it causes cannot be ignored. It’s frightening that many people out there still deny it’s a real problem and forgo treatment – even more frightening when it directly impacts the lives of others. With particularly devastating effects on minorities, recent discoveries are also used simply to justify deeply held racism.


As mentioned previously, genocide is still widely denied. There are still many people that deny the Holocausts – Jewish and Armenian – ever happened. The combination of denial and the rewriting of history is dangerous and needs to be confronted, even though it might look futile.


Denialists are a strange and difficult breed to deal with. For further insight and many more examples, check out the Denialism Blog, and remember: “don’t mistake denialism for debate!”

Iraqis Showing Some Balls

No, it's not adult entertainment, but it's a hairy situation and will leave you wanting more.

Not only has Iraq's leadership decided to boycott the Middle East peace talks going on in Annapolis, but they have also walked out of parliament and protested their treatment in the Green Zone. A lot of issues on their plate indeed.

They're so cute when they grow up!

An Excerpt from The Shock Doctrine

An example of what I'm trying to wrap my head around...


(shhh, don't tell the publisher, just buy it instead)

At the end of June, only his second month in Iraq, [Paul] Bremer sent word that all local elections must stop immediately. The new plan was for Iraq's local leaders to be appointed by the occupation, just as the Governing Council had been. A defining showdown took place in Najaf, the holiest city for Iraq's Shia, the largest religious denomination in the country. Najaf was in the process of organizing citywide elections with the help of U.S. troops when, only one day before registration, the lieutenant colonel in charge got a call from Marine Major General Jim Mattis. "The election had to be canceled. Bremer was concerned that an unfriendly Islamic candidate would prevail....Bremer would not allow the wrong guy to win the election. The Marines were advised to select a group of Iraqis they thought were safe and have them pick a mayor. That was how the United States would control the process," wrote Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor, the authors of Cobra II, regarded as the definitive military history of the invasion. In the end, the U.S. military appointed a Saddam-era army colonel as Najaf's mayor, as they did in cities and towns across the country.
(This was one of the reasons why "de-Baathification" inspired such rage: while low-level soldiers had all lost their jobs, along with teachers and doctors who had been required to join the party in order to advance professionally, top-level Baathist military officials, well known for their human rights abuses, were being enlisted to bring order to the cities and towns.)

So much for bringing democracy to the Middle East...

End of Times

Deepak Chopra sums up nicely a fundamental conflict of religion, one which fuels conservative religions' influence and yearns for the anticipated end of the universe.

Killing is My Business

And business is good.

At least, according to the UN it is

Once the guards are in areas of armed conflict, immunity granted under national laws to private security personnel can easily lead to uncontrolled behavior, the report said, with "these private soldiers appearing only to be accountable to the company which employs them."

Yeah for corporate responsibility!

Because You Can't Have Too Much Naomi Klein

Happy Anniversary

Five years, seems like a lot longer. Let's hope we don't have to remember the date the Lieberman-Kyl act passed too.

Quasi-Permanent Occupier

Sigh...




That reminds me...



I hope I never lose my memory too

Getting out of Hand

From THINK PROGRESS:

$500,000:
Amount the war in Iraq costs per minute, according to a new analysis by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard’s Linda Bilmes, put out by the American Friends Service Committee. The study finds that this $720 million a day could buy homes for 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children.