Tag: erik prince
Hillary Clinton

Hillary Chartered Free Flights For Afghan Women While Erik Prince Charged $6500

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

As conditions in Afghanistan worsen daily, reports have indicated that individuals are not only eager to volunteer but are showing overwhelming support to welcome Afghan refugees. Organizations and people alike are coming together in efforts to bring Afghan asylum-seekers safely into the U.S. While some nonprofit organizations are urging people to donate miles and partnering with relocation centers to bring refugees to safety, others are advocating for donations to gather funds to fly refugees out.

But organizations aren't the only ones flying vulnerable refugees out of Afghanistan as people surround Kabul airport. After warning of the "huge consequences" of withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton has reportedly been chartering flights out of Afghanistan for the country's at-risk women.

According to The New York Times, Clinton and her team have been trying to aid potential Taliban targets in leaving the country by offering seats to Afghan journalists on a flight her team arranged to help women at risk. While the journalists did not take the flight, some women and children did. The effort comes as some individuals are trying to fill the gap by donating money to charter flights as evacuation projects are becoming increasingly difficult.

"Last week, the evacuation options to get women's rights activists out came largely from an informal network of powerful, connected, some very wealthy people, some trying to literally charter private jets to evacuate women thought to be Taliban targets," Marie Clarke, the vice president of global programs at Women for Women International, told The Guardian.

Many Afghan families are struggling to find the funds necessary to fly out, so these chartered planes make a significant impact. But of course, not everyone is like Clinton—some people, like former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, are attempting to monetize the desperation of the Afghan people by offering flights for $6,500 per person instead of for free, Daily Kos reported.

Clinton's efforts to help Afghan women come as no surprise. While some may see it as her attempting to gain social clout, the reality is that not only was Clinton hush-hush about her efforts, but she has supported women's rights in Afghanistan prior to this current situation.

During a United Nations (UN) meeting last year, which was sponsored by the Group of Friends of Women in Afghanistan and led by the Afghanistan Mission to the UN, Clinton emphasized the role of Afghan women and the importance of "encouraging women's participation," noting that it "is not only the right thing to do; it is the strategic and necessary thing to do for peace, prosperity and security."

She continued: "It is clear that Afghan women are rightly afraid not just for their rights and the Constitution that was written to protect them, but literally afraid that the gains they have made with all of our help will be washed away in a rush to achieve a peace that will not hold anyway. This is not just morally wrong. This is dangerous."

"We must not allow a reign of terror against [Afghan] women and girls. The women of Afghanistan have come too far to be excluded from the negotiation table while their rights are being stripped away. It is also true that we cannot allow that to happen to Afghan women and girls because there is a direct correlation between what will happen in the country, in the region, and indeed the world because of that," Clinton said during her speech at the UN meeting.

According to The Independent, in addition to making efforts to rescue at-risk Afghan women, Clinton also spoke with Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, about the escalating crisis and what he can do to help.

"I also spoke last night with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton," Trudeau said on Tuesday, according to the Washington Examiner, adding that Clinton "shares our concern for Afghan women and girls" and "urged Canada to continue our work."

Clinton had warned what the humanitarian consequences of a withdrawal from Afghanistan would be following the two decades the U.S. spent in the country.

"This is what we call a wicked problem. There are consequences both foreseen and unintended of staying and of leaving," she told CNN in May. Clinton noted that the U.S. was facing "two huge consequences" of withdrawal: the threat from the Taliban and the number of refugees the situation would likely create as a result.

Of course, while we all wish we had access to chartered planes to help those in need, we don't. But there are other ways you can help bring Afghan refugees to safety. For those who are interested, you can donate flight miles and vouchers by following the steps explained here. Additionally, if you are an AirBnB host and are willing to host a refugee family, you can learn more about that process here.

Erik Prince

Billionaire Ex-Blackwater Boss Exploiting Chaos And Misery In Kabul

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

With Afghanistan having fallen to the Taliban and countless Afghans desperately trying to leave the country, former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince has found a way to profit from the crisis, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The paper's Dion Nissenbaum reports, "Mr. Prince, whose Blackwater guards were convicted of killing civilians in 2014 while providing security for Americans during the Iraq War, said he was charging each passenger $6500 to get them safely into the airport and on a plane, and it would cost extra to get people who have been trapped in their homes to the airport. It remained unclear whether Mr. Prince had the wherewithal to carry out his plans."

Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, former secretary of education in the Trump Administration. When Donald Trump was president, Prince had an idea for getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan: replacing them with a private security force. But that idea fell through.

Warren Binford, a University of Colorado law professor who has been helping with evacuation efforts in Afghanistan, told the Journal, "It's total chaos. What's happening is that we're seeing a massive underground railroad operation where, instead of running for decades, it's literally running for a matter of hours, or days."

The United States' 20-year war in Afghanistan started in 2001 following al-Qaeda's 9/11 terrorist attacks and has existed under four U.S. presidents: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now, Joe Biden. Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo worked out an agreement with the Taliban for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and Biden followed through on the Trump/Pompeo agreement — although at a slower pace.

Mother Jones' Inae Oh, reporting on Prince's Afghanistan activities, reports, "Prince's plans to capitalize on tragedy come amid a broader effort by aid organizations to rescue as many people as possible as the U.S. struggles to process visas and evacuate both Americans still in the country and the tens of thousands of Afghans who worked from the U.S. government over the past 20 years of war…. Prince kept busy in recent years by overseeing operations to spy on so-called Trump enemies in government while misleading Congress in the Russia investigation. Now he's back, scrambling to make one last buck from the crisis in Afghanistan."

Bombshell Report Uncovers Right-Wing 'Sting' Plot Against McMaster, FBI

Bombshell Report Uncovers Right-Wing 'Sting' Plot Against McMaster, FBI

Undercover operatives from the right-wing Project Veritas worked with a former British spy and Betsy DeVos' brother Erik Prince to wage a smear and sting operation to discredit "deep state" federal government officials on President Donald Trump's enemies list while he was in office, including the White House National Security Adviser and unnamed FBI agents.

The New York Times broke the bombshell story, reporting that the "campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump's national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau's ranks.

""The campaign," the Times reports, "shows the obsession that some of Mr. Trump's allies had about a shadowy 'deep state' trying to blunt his agenda — and the lengths that some were willing to go to try to purge the government of those believed to be disloyal to the president."

"Central to the effort, according to interviews, was Richard Seddon, a former undercover British spy who was recruited in 2016 by the security contractor Erik Prince to train Project Veritas operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets. He ran field operations for Project Veritas until mid-2018."

Last year, The New York Times reported that Mr. Seddon ran an expansive effort to gain access to the unions and campaigns and led a hiring effort that nearly tripled the number of the group's operatives, according to interviews and deposition testimony. He trained operatives at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming.

The Times' extensive reporting, which runs about 2700 words, does not reveal who initiated or who bankrolled the campaign.

The Times reports the operation was run out of a Washington, D.C, townhouse that rented for $10,000 a month, and that it is not known if President Trump or his closest advisors, including family members, were aware of the operation or had anything to do with it.

"The operation against Mr. McMaster was hatched not long after an article appeared in BuzzFeed News about a private dinner in 2017. Exactly what happened during the dinner is in dispute, but the article said that Mr. McMaster had disparaged Mr. Trump by calling him an 'idiot' with the intelligence of a 'kindergartner.'"

Those allegations were never proven, although they echo what some others inside the administration, like first Trump Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, had allegedly stated.

In the end, McMaster resigned amid far right-wing attacks, but no recordings emerged of him calling Trump an "idiot."

Read the entire New York Times investigation here.




The Times' extensive reporting, which runs about 2700 words, does not reveal who initiated or who bankrolled the campaign.The Times reports the operation was run out of a Washington, D.C, townhouse that rented for $10,000 a month, and that it is not known if President Trump or his closest advisors, including family members, were aware of the operation or had anything to do with it.Last year, The New York Times reported that Mr. Seddon ran an expansive effort to gain access to the unions and campaigns and led a hiring effort that nearly tripled the number of the group's operatives, according to interviews and deposition testimony. He trained operatives at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming.

The Times' extensive reporting, which runs about 2700 words, does not reveal who initiated or who bankrolled the campaign.The Times reports the operation was run out of a Washington, D.C, townhouse that rented for $10,000 a month, and that it is not known if President Trump or his closest advisors, including family members, were aware of the operation or had anything to do with it.


President Donald Trump in Oval Office

Former FBI Investigator Of Blackwater Massacre Explains Why Pardons Were So Wrong

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Just as his critics had been predicting, President Donald Trump granted a long list of pardons and commutations this week — from his 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort to former Rep. Duncan D. Hunter of California to Charles Kushner (father of White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner) to four former Blackwater security guards. Some of the sharp criticism that Trump has received for the Blackwater pardons has been coming from people in national security or law enforcement, and former FBI special agent Thomas O'Connor slams those pardons in an op-ed published on CNN's website on Christmas Eve Day.

The four security guards, who worked for the private security firm Blackwater during the George W. Bush era, were serving time in prison for their involvement in the slaughter of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is a far-right Trump supporter and the brother of Betsy DeVos, secretary of education in the outgoing Trump Administration.

O'Connor, who spent 23 years as an FBI special agent before retiring in 2019, explains, "I know that these men were undeserving of pardons because I was a member of the FBI evidence response team that traveled to Iraq and investigated the site of these killings."

O'Connor goes on to describe the events that occurred in Baghdad 13 years ago during Bush's second term as president.

"On September 16, 2007, Baghdad, Iraq was a dangerous place," the former FBI special agent recalls. "No one will dispute that fact. On that day, a bombing took place a few miles from a busy traffic circle called Al Nisour Square, which is used by Iraqis to access major roadways across Baghdad. A security detail from the private government contractor Blackwater was protecting a U.S. official attending a meeting at a government building when the bomb was detonated."

O'Connor notes that "the Blackwater Raven 23 defendants claimed that they responded to gunfire aimed at them while stopping traffic in Nisour Square that day." But after an "FBI team made four trips to Iraq to investigate this shooting," O'Connor writes, the evidence "was introduced into several U.S. court hearings.

"A jury heard the evidence and found four Blackwater guards guilty of murder, manslaughter and weapons charges," O'Connor notes. "The system worked, and justice was brought to the deceased, the injured victims and their families. The families of those killed and wounded at Nisour Square will now watch those responsible for this tragedy go free thanks to a pardon by the president of the United States. This simply makes me sad and angry."

O'Connor wraps up his op-ed by emphasizing that the four Blackwater guards were not acting in self-defense in Nisour Square.

"There is no forensic evidence of anyone shooting at the Blackwater team," according to O'Connor. "How do I know? The evidence told me that."