poor taste w/ steven phibbs

blakewhitman:

jgdillard:

I know I posted this video before, but this why I love VIMEO. People can talk about serious issues without using “youtube language”.

Comment from Vimeo user: szlevi

“Not really intended to defend or condemn any side of this issue. More a look at military privatization.”

Too bad because tis’ a pretty clear story: IT IS WRONG AND DANGEROUS, period.
This (well-known extreme-right wing, mind you) Prince guy is a VERY DANGEROUS person. He already built a breathtaking-sized private army, all from your tax money and he’s still building it, thanks to these no-bid Pentagon “contracts”… in the meantime they have absolutely NO RESPONSIBILITY, soldiers HATES them because usually they have to deal with the fallout, with all the problems these trigger-happy idiots caused every single time they popped up and shot people without any sense.
Blackwater must be disbanded and this whole financing should be immediately investigated.

J. Scahill’s book is EXCELLENT, a VERY IMPORTANT book - Scahill is one of the best investigative journalists out there, right there with Seymour Hers, Greg Palast, Gary Webb etc.

My response:

szlevi,

Thanks for the comment. So this is what I think:

Military privation and the use of PMC’s is one of few issues that I always make sure I’m read up on. After reading your comment, I must say that my thoughts are not as clear cut as yours. Let’s first take the lowest common denominator, something we both probably believe: there needs to be more regulation and accountability. These guys need to fit into some judicial system to make sure that justice is served where justice is due. Like anything though, I hate making generalizations. While Blackwater is the biggest name, they clearly are not the only ones there. With 100,000 contractors in the middle-east, I think it’s hardly fair to say they’re “trigger-happy idiots”. There are definitely stories that substantiate the contrary. Obviously some companies have better reputations than others and I’m not saying that wrong isn’t being done over there. However, there are companies that legitimately apply for a contract and once selected, with poise and professionalism provide security to those who are paying for it. This is all just a justification for what’s happening right now, but my views about the future are much different. Will the term “security” change and evolve into more preemptive definition? Probably. Will PMC’s gain an even shadier amount of judicial protection? Probably. Will security details slowly evolve into actual mercenary units? Probably. Should the financing be under more scrutiny? Hell yes. Do I think the government should create and manage it’s own High Risk Security Groups? Definitely. While I am concerned about what PMC’s are today, my major concern is what they’ll be tomorrow.

So in response to “Rememeber: a journalist/documentarist HAS to speak up when something is clearly wrong, it’s one of the beauty of doing this.” This piece was an exploration of the issue through media that is publicly available, which in and of itself is a bit ironic. I’m trying to create an unbiased viewpoint with heavily biased content for the viewer to gleam the basic information, want to seek out more, and then formulate as educated an opinion as possible. I felt it’d be wrong to push “good” or “bad”, when I myself can’t even cut the issue up that clearly. In making this video, I took segments that I thought were important for coming up with an opinion. I personally don’t get along with content that has a heavy slant, whether I agree with it or not. Even if it’s not the intention of the maker, I like work that presents information to me in a way where I can (or at least have the illusion of) creating my own opinion. But hey, maybe that’s what a good documentary is, the invisible coercion of the maker.

Also, I read Scahill’s, “Blackwater” but I preferred Robert Young Pelton’s, “Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror”.

RIght on JD, right on.