[Associated Press, February 13, 2009:] ”Blackwater said Friday it will no longer operate under the name that came to be known worldwide as a caustic moniker for private security, dropping the tarnished brand for a disarming and simple identity: Xe, which is pronounced like the letter "z."”
In other news, Barry Lamar Bonds announced that he was changing his name to Barack LaMar and hoped for a try-out with the Chicago White Sox.
In seclusion at his bungalow in Crawford, Texas, George W. Bush was said to be working on his own name change but hadn’t been able to think of one yet.
Well, a cesspool by any name smells as sweet...
More from the AP story:
”It's a rare surrender for a company that cherished a brand name inspired by the dark-water swamps of northeastern North Carolina, one that survived another rebranding effort about a year ago, following a deadly shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. The decision to give it up underscores how badly the Moyock-based company's brand was damaged by that incident and other security work in Iraq.
”Blackwater acknowledged last year in an interview with the The Associated Press the damage to its reputation had persuaded the company to focus on lines of business other than private security contracting.
”The issue came to a head last month, when the State Department said it would not rehire Blackwater to protect its diplomats in Iraq after its current contract with the company expires in May. The company has one other major security contract, details of which are classified.
”The company is also replacing its bear paw logo with a sleeker black-and-white graphic based on letters that make up the company's new name. In a note to employees, president Gary Jackson said the name change reflects the company's new focus, and he indicated Xe would not actively pursue new security business.
”"This company will continue to provide personnel protective services for high-threat environments when needed by the U.S. government, but its primary mission will be operating our training facilities around the world," Jackson said. It has expanded other businesses such as aviation support, recently building a fleet of 76 aircraft that it has deployed to such hotspots as West Africa and Afghanistan. The company got its start in training and continues to build up that business. Last year, some 25,000 civilians, law enforcement and military personnel attended a Blackwater class.
”Late last year, prosecutors charged five of the company's contractors -- but not Blackwater itself -- with manslaughter and weapons violations. In January, Iraqi officials said they would not give the company a license to operate. The State Department responded by informing Blackwater it would not renew a contract that comprises a third of the company's nearly $1 billion in annual revenue.
”"It would hurt us," company CEO Erik Prince said in an interview before losing the State Department deal. "It would not be a mortal blow, but it would hurt us." Blackwater has rebranded before, introducing a new name -- Blackwater Worldwide -- and slight changes to its logo about a year ago. But Friday's announcement cuts ties entirely with a name created in 1997 when Prince and some of his former Navy SEAL colleagues launched the company.”
Look, what else do you do when your BRAND is “damaged”? At least the fuckers didn’t sell ‘naming rights’ to CitiGroup.
The AP article was, of course, quite modest in its description of Blackwater’s/Xe’s history, perhaps due to the influence of the company’s public relations hacks, the same folks who ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign before Mark Penn was fired.
Blackwater/Xe has been pre-eminently the one to call when your corporation and its executives needed professional killers. In fact, until it got too embarassing, they enjoyed criminal immunity in war zones, extended by the generosity of the Bush administration.
What Blackwater/Xe represents is so dangerous, even with a late-arriving interest among a few members of Congress, that its very existence threatens the nation. That is because its operatives, armed with advanced weaponry and trained in killing, are a private enterprise, virtually unregulated, outside of the reach of a democratic system.
Dictatorships, notably of the fascist variety, employ private armies. Private armies enforce the power of private corporations and businesses to crush latent dissent. Throughout South America, there are instances where there is no discernible difference between such armies and death squads.
In the United States, we have witnessed the growth of secret arrangements between government and corporate empire. The telephone companies worked with the Bush administration to implement a widespread program of illegal surveillance targeting American citizens, then got immunity for it from a corrupt Congress. Notably, Barack Obama supported this retroactive immunity.
If you were expecting the new President to overturn these disastrous, undemocratic policies, don’t hold your breath. In the past week, Justice Department lawyers told a California judge that they would continue the Bush position of insisting that a lawsuit –– brought by victims of kidnapping and torture –– could not be tried because the evidence the victims needed could not be seen, even by the judge and even if the judge were granted a security clearance.
The lawsuit is one brought against the Boeing subsidiary which furnished the private planes used in the kidnapping and flights to torture chambers in Saudi Arabia and other places which regard horrendous infliction of pain as enlightened penology.
Private corporations, in league with criminal governmental figures, are breaking the law with impunity. Boeing, AT&T, Halliburton, Blackwater... it’s a long list.
How sad for us all if it turns out that ‘change we can believe in’ turns out to be nothing better than re-branding.
