#tigerswan — Public Fediverse posts

#Blackwater Founder #ErikPrince Indicted for Arms Sales to #Libya

By Miriam Raftery

July 27, 2023 (San Diego) — "The name Erik Prince became familiar to many residents in San Diego’s East County when Blackwater, the private military contracting firm he founded, sought to build a #paramilitary training camp in Potrero.

"Now Austria has indicted Prince for alleged arms trafficking to Libya in violation of a United Nations arms embargo; at least one shipment of explosives reportedly went through #Austria using an Austrian business, BNN reports. Prince is accused of organizing a covert military operation to supply Libyan warlord #KhalifaHafter with war equipment for rebellion against a government backed by the U.S. and the U.N.

"If convicted, Prince could face up to five years in prison. However, it is unclear whether or not he will be extradited to Austria; Prince holds residency in both the U.S. and #AbuDhabi. Prince has denied UN allegations of arms peddling to Libya.

"The local #Potrero project drew massive opposition on #environmental grounds as well as the many controversies involving Blackwater, which Prince was CEO and chairman of at the time. The Harris Fire in October 2007 displaced many residents, but that didn’t stop them from showing up to vote and recall all five community planning group members who had voted for the project, which sparked national news headlines.

"The 2007 firestorms scorched Round Potrero Valley, where Blackwater planned to store #ammunition and a bunkhouse with 200 men in the box valley with only one exit.

"Blackwater ultimately dropped plans for the Potrero facility in 2008, ostensibly due to noise mediation requirements, although those had not changed since the project’s inception.

"Prince, a former Navy Seal before founding Blackwater in 2009, is no stranger to controversy. Three Blackwater guards were convicted in 2014 of manslaughter and another of murder in charges stemming from the massacre of civilians in Baghdad’s #NissourSquare in 2007. In March 2009, Prince resigned as Blackwater’s CEO but remained chairman of the board until the company’s sale in late 2010.

"Blackwater’s successor company, #Academi, was accused of #ArmsTrafficking in 2012 dating back to when Prince served as CEO and Chairman. Then in 2020, the #FBI investigated Prince for arms trafficking involving #cropduster planes converted for military use.

"He moved to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in 2010, where he was hired by the crown prince to organize foreign troops for the #UAE and formed a new firm called #ReflectResponses, or R2. He later trained Somalis in anti-piracy operations with UAE funding.

"Prince also leads a private equity firm, #FrontierResourcesGroup and until April 2021, chaired Frontier Services Group Ltd., which had various business dealings in #Africa.

"Prince also drew controversy over revelations that he lied to the House Intelligence Committee in Nov. 2017 about his involvement in the #Trump transition team and was at a Trump Tower meeting that allegedly had backchannel communications with a representative of Russian President Vladimir #Putin. A Special Counsel in 2018 found evidence contradicting Prince, the Washington Post reported. The House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department which announced in 2020 that it had opened an investigation into Prince’s alleged perjury during his testimony.

"Politically well connected, Prince is the sister of #BetsyDevos, former Secretary of Education under President Donald Trump, and has been a major donor to numerous Republican candidates and a Trump-aligned super-pac."

https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-indicted-arms-sales-libya

#PrivateArmy #Xe
#CorporateColonialism #PrivateArmies #Fascism
#ErikPrinceColonialism #CorporateColonialism #Blackwater #TigerSwan

“TigerSwan Solutions.”
To keep the #FossilFuel industry safe, #TigerSwan used #counterinsurgency tactics including:
drones,
social media monitoring,
HUMINT (spying)
liaising with law enforcement officials and agencies
local community engagement,
counter-protesters,
building a “pipeline narrative,” and partnering with university oil and gas programs.

“Win the populace, and you win the fight,” the presentation stated.

https://theintercept.com/2023/04/13/standing-rock-tigerswan-protests/

After infiltrating #StandingRock, #TigerSwan pitched its ‘#counterinsurgency’ playbook to other oil companies

More than 50,000 pages of newly released documents detail how the security firm targeted #pipeline opponents and tried to profit off its #surveillance tactics.

by Alleen Brown & Naveena Sadasivam
Apr 13, 2023

"The Intercept and Grist contacted TigerSwan, #EnergyTransfer, the National Sheriffs’ Association, as well as Thompson, the group’s executive director. None of them responded to requests for comment.

"To TigerSwan, the emergence of #Indigenous-led social movements to keep oil and gas in the ground represented a business opportunity. Reese anticipated new demand from the #FossilFuel industry for strategies to undermine the network of #activists his company had so carefully gathered information on. In the records, TigerSwan expressed its ambitions to repurpose these detailed records to position themselves as experts in managing pipeline protests. The company created marketing materials pitching work to at least two other energy companies building controversial oil and gas infrastructure, the records show. TigerSwan, which was staffed heavily with former members of military special operations units, branded its tactics as a 'counterinsurgency approach,' drawing directly from its leaders’ experiences fighting the so-called War on Terror abroad.

"TigerSwan did not just work in #NorthDakota. Energy Transfer hired the company to provide security to its #RoverPipeline in #Ohio and #WestVirginia, the documents confirm. By spring 2017, TigerSwan was also assembling intelligence reports on opponents of Energy Transfer and #Sunoco’s #MarinerEast2 Pipeline in #Pennsylvania.

"The documents from the North Dakota security board paint a detailed picture of counterinsurgency-style strategies for defeating opponents of oil and gas development, a War-on-Terror security firm’s aspirations to replicate its deceptive tactics far beyond the Northern Great Plains, and the cozy relationship between businesses linked to the fossil fuel industry and one of the largest law enforcement trade associations in the U.S. The impetus for spying was not simply to keep people safe, but to drum up profits from energy clients and to allow fossil fuels to continue flowing, at the expense of the communities fighting for clean water and a healthy climate.

"'For them, it was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our tribe and our supporters,' said Wasté Win Young, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the one of the plaintiffs in a class action civil rights lawsuit against TigerSwan and local law enforcement. Young’s social media posts repeatedly showed up in the documents. 'We weren’t motivated by money or payoffs or anything like that. We just wanted to protect our homelands.'"

Full article:
https://grist.org/accountability/tigerswan-documents-dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-surveillance/

#ClimateJustice #BigOilAndGas #WaterIsLife #ACAB #StandingRockSioux #StandWithStandingRock #NoDAPL #Activism #ClimateChange
#EnvironmentalJustice