While it is true that many trucking companies have gone out of business, it also seems that business maybe picking up here in the US.

Why, you may ask?

Had the company been indicted, it could have been suspended from doing business with the U.S. government, and a conviction could have brought debarment from all government contracts, including providing guard services for the CIA and State Department in war zones. In recent weeks the Obama administration awarded the firm a $120 million State Department security contract, and about $100 million in new CIA work.

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If the renamed Blackwater were indicted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, it would cost Xe Services more than 95 percent of its business.

As Blackwater, that business included protecting the CIA's Kabul station and participating in a never-implemented program to hunt down and kill al Qaida leaders.

Why Sudan?

Southern Sudan had emerged in 2005 as an autonomous region after a U.S.-brokered peace deal ended a 22-year war with the North. Weeks after he took the helm of the new Southern Sudan government, Kiir's predecessor, John Garang, was killed in an unexplained helicopter crash, and Blackwater's sales pitch to the Bush administration was that protecting the new leader would support U.S. policy objectives.

The company, however, also saw huge potential profits.

After negotiating a $2 million draft contract to train Kiir's personal security detail, Blackwater in early 2007 drafted a detailed second proposal, valued at more than $100 million, to equip and train the south's army. Because the south lacked ready cash, Blackwater sought 50 percent of the south's untapped mineral wealth, a former senior U.S. official said.

In addition to its well-known oil and natural gas reserves, Southern Sudan has vast untapped reserves of gold, iron and diamonds.

"Most people don't know this stuff exists. These guys did," said a second former senior official who saw the document, which apparently was never signed.

Meanwhile, what a monster Germany's Miroslav Klose is. An absolute animalé who refuses to be stopped when he gets near the goal.  No one comparable for the Brits.

As unconfirmed reports of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities pick up steam in the Middle Eastern media, a US-based strategic intelligence company has released a chart showing US naval carriers massing near Iranian waters.

rawstory

Seems to me that Iran is going to get nukes because once it has nukes this sort of thing will not happen. It is amazing to me that some argue that nukes in responsible hands are ok. The big problem I have with that statement is that the ones who are deciding who is responsible or not are the ones who have nukes.

The bulk of the arrests came later in the evening, mostly from among a group of peaceful marchers against summit-related restrictions on civil liberties. The police arrested those who sat down on a street near a hotel hosting some delegates to the summit.

As was the case earlier in the day, police officers moved journalists out of the area as they began to make the arrests. Steve Paikin, a prominent Toronto journalist said that he was escorted away by two police officers who saw his government-issued summit media credentials. He was advised that if he stayed he would be arrested.

As he was being taken away, Mr. Paikin said he saw another journalist, Jesse Rosenfeld, a contributor to the Guardian website, showing his identification to two police officers. At that point, according to Mr. Paikin, each of them took one of Mr. Rosenfeld's arm as a third police officer, wearing a t-shirt and shorts, punched the reporter in the stomach. After Mr. Rosenfeld fell to the ground, the third officer jabbed an elbow into his back. Mr. Paikin said.

"This commission was also going to ask Mr Torres why he personally flew to Iraq, to FOB Shield, and strongly suggested that Torres AES be allowed to post the unapproved guards, guards that would protect American troops, and then to 'catch-up the approval process'."

Instead, a lawyer informed the commission staff that Torres was "nervous about appearing".

The failure of a contractor to appear for an oversight hearing into lapses was just one example that the use of some 18,800 armed "private security contractors" in Iraq and another 23,700 in Afghanistan to protect convoys, diplomatic and other personnel, and military bases and other facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq was not working.....

WTF:

Asked to explain why Xe was awarded the contract, Charlene R Lamb, deputy assistant secretary for international programs at the State Department, stated that the competitors for the contract - DynCorp and Triple Canopy - weren't as qualified.

Yet Don Ryder of DynCorp and Ignacio Balderas of Triple Canopy testified that they were both qualified and able to do the contract. The two men said that they would consider lodging a formal protest at the State Department on Tuesday after a debriefing with the government....

Some witnesses and experts said that by definition this work should not be handed out to private contractors in war zones.

"Private security contractors are authorized to use deadly force to protect American lives in a war zone and to me if anything is inherently governmental, it's that," said commissioner Clark Kent Ervin, a former inspector general at both the State Department and the Homeland Security Department. "We don't have a definitional problem, we have an acknowledgement of reality problem."