The Knights Templar, Knights of Malta and Blackwater’s Erik Prince

August 6, 2009

The Knights Templar, Knights of Malta and Blackwater’s Erik Prince
By Mitch Cumstein

In a declaration under the penalty of purjury, a former employee of Erik Prince’s Blackwater defense contracting firm said Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.”

The accuser, only known as John Doe #2 in court documents because he claims he has been threatened with “death and violence” by managers of Prince’s company, wrote that “Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Chrisian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.”

This mention of the Knights Templar is an interesting one because it shifts the focus of Iraq from a quest for oil to that of a holy war. Remember when Pres. Bush got laughs for referring to the “war on terror” as a “crusade.” And this isn’t the only time Prince and his company Blackwater have been linked, albeit tenuously, with these shadow elements of the Catholic church and Christian fundamentalists.

The European Parliament published a report by Giovanni Claudio Fava, a Socialist Group legislator, claiming that there are connections between Blackwater and Malta. Malta is where the Knights of Malta, another right-wing element of the Catholic Church similar to the Knights Templar, once lived and still maintain control of Fort St. Angelo.

The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill has also written about connections between Prince, Malta and Pres. Bush’s rendition program in which terrorist suspects were sent to other countries for the purpose of torture. The program, according to Scahill was run by Cofer Black, who is allegedly a Knight of Malta himself and used Malta in the rendition program.

Black is the current vice chairman for Blackwater. At the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC, Black was director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center.

According to a referenced Wikipedia entry:

[Black] was the United States Department of State coordinator for counterterrorism with the rank of ambassador at large from December 2002 to November 2004. After leaving public service, Black became chairman of the privately owned intelligence gathering company Total Intelligence Solutions, Inc., as well as vice chairman for Xe.

Xe is the current name of Blackwater and Total Intelligence Solutions has been dubbed as Prince’s private CIA.

But all of this “evidence” is largely hearsay and circumstantial at best. The reason for this could be that a common thread between the Knights Templare, the Knights of Malta and Blackwater is that there appears to be a concerted effort to confuse and obfiscate exactly what these groups are doing, or whether they’re even separate entities.

One tactic Prince employs to confuse people is setting up several supposedly different corporate entities. According John Doe #2, “[T]he various Price companies did not observe any corporate formalities or otherwise operate any of the Prince companies as independent entities. Instead, the Prince companies all operated as a single company.”

One of those companies is Greystone Limited headquartered in Barbados where Prince can avoid paying taxes and government scrutiny. The Virginia Pilot published a story last month stating that Greystone was operating in Iraq working for the International Republican Institute. The IRI is funded by the US government. After the slaughter of innocent Iraqis on Sept. 16, 2007 in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square by Blackwater employees, according to a court case filed against Blackwater, Blackwater was banned from operating in Iraq by the Iraqi government. And when Blackwater’s contract expired earlier this year, it was not renewed by the US State department, yet, Blackwater, under the name of Greystone Limited still operates in Iraq today.

There’s no definitive proof that Prince, Bush, Knights Templar or the Knights of Malta are conspiring to wage a modern-day crusade, but there’s something going on here, and it’s certainly worth an intensive investigation by the Dept. of Justice. This might be happening, as court documents trickle out of the US District Court in Virginia indicate. However, it’s illegal for the Dept. of Justice to speak about whether there even is an investigation, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

The US District court has consolidated five cases against Prince and his various companies into one. The cases accuse Prince of murder, conspiracy, gun smuggling, child prostitution, war crimes and waging a crusade against Islam for the purpose of global Christian supremacy. Tomorrow there’s a court date scheduled, so stay tuned, this could get really interesting really quick.

More information
I’ve created a page containing an archive of court documents relating to the cases against Prince here.

You can purchase Jeremy Scahill’s book “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” here from Amazon.

An interesting tidbit about the Knights of Malta is that they’ve have been given observer status by the United Nations under the entity called the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is based in Rome, Italy and has diplomat relations with about 100 countries, but not the US.

Blackwater Wiki
Knights Templar Wiki
Knights of Malta Wiki

Photos of Erik Price. Source: Wikipedia.org

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Source: http://gnunews.take88.com/the-knights-templar-knights-of-malta-and-blackwaters-erik-prince/

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Holbrooke trumpets Clinton leadership after address

Wed, 07/15/2009 - 5:21pm

Six months into the job, Hillary Clinton set out today to raise her profile and rebut Beltway chatter that the U.S. secretary of state has been somewhat eclipsed by the international star power of President Barack Obama, her former Democratic primary rival, and that big-name envoys such as Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell are taking the lead on the most pressing U.S. foreign-policy challenges.

Holbrooke, buttonholed shortly after Clinton's speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, vigorously dismissed such talk as nothing but a "journalistic construct." He said that Clinton was deep in the weeds with him on formulating U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and noted that the two of them had earlier this week spent 30 minutes with David Lipton, a Larry Summers aide who was being sent to Pakistan to do an economic assessment. He argued that the fact that several former cabinet-level officials work for Clinton is a sign of her strength, and pointed out how, regarding his own portfolio, Clinton had spoken extensively in her remarks and in the subsequent question-and-answer session about such intricacies as the agricultural component of U.S. Af-Pak policy.

The presence of Holbrooke, Mitchell, climate change envoy Todd Stern, newly transferred to the National Security Council Middle East strategist Dennis Ross, Policy Planning chief Anne-Marie Slaughter, her deputy Derek Chollet, and former Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, plus a couple hundred other of Washington's foreign-policy elite, demonstrated the speech's perceived importance.

Before the secretary's address, as a few senior State Department officials milled about in the foyer, one pulled a reporter aside to offer a few thoughts. Clinton's remarks would be taking what Obama said in Cairo and "connecting the dots," the "how," the "strategy," the official said on condition of anonymity. In that June 4 speech, the U.S. president sought to recast American relations with the Islamic world and urged Muslims to help him confront "violent extremism in all of its forms."

Clinton referred explicitly to Obama's Cairo speech today. "In approaching our foreign policy priorities, we have to deal with the urgent, the important, and the long-term all at once," Clinton said. "But even as we are forced to multitask ... we must have priorities, which President Obama has outlined in speeches from Prague to Cairo, from Moscow to Accra. We want to reverse the spread of nuclear weapons, prevent their use, and build a world free of their threat. We want to isolate and defeat terrorists and counter violent extremists while reaching out to Muslims around the world.

"We want to encourage and facilitate the efforts of all parties to pursue and achieve a comprehensive peace in the Middle East," she continued. "We want to seek global economic recovery and growth by strengthening our own economy, advancing a robust development agenda, expanding trade that is free and fair, and boosting investment that creates decent jobs. We want to combat climate change, increase energy security, and lay the foundation for a prosperous clean-energy future. We want to support and encourage democratic governments that protect the rights and deliver results for their people. And we intend to stand up for human rights everywhere."

Given how both the White House and the secretary's advisors have aggressively rejected any suggestion that Clinton has seemed at times somewhat marginalized within the administration, it seemed odd that Obama would be giving remarks on healthcare five minutes into Clinton's big speech, which was shown on CSPAN.org but not apparently televised live.

The president was discussing a totally different subject and to a totally different set of reporters, one White House aide explained, dismissing the significance of the scheduling overlap. Cable networks are only paying attention to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings anyhow, he said. Earlier today, administration officials familiar with Clinton's preparations for the speech had noted how closely she was consulting on it with the White House and with top administration principals.

Clinton, subject to an intensive, six day a week, six to eight week regimen of physical therapy after surgery to repair a broken elbow, notably did not wear her sling to the CFR speech. Asked if that was indeed the case, an advisor confirmed she wasn't wearing the sling, whose Secretary of State seal she had jokingly showed off at a press conference last week. "She takes it off a lot," the advisor said. (Still a politician, notes former Clinton speechwriter Heather Hurlburt.)

Clinton's speech today emphasized that the United States is working in partnership with other countries to achieve its national-security interests, repair alliances and relationships that had frayed during the George W. Bush era, and make diplomacy, engagement, and development policy key tools of U.S. national-security policy. Clinton also reiterated U.S. policy that it's Iran choice whether to engage or be further isolated, and said that time was not endless for the Iranian regime to respond to the offer for negotiations.

"Neither the President nor I have any illusions that dialogue with the Islamic Republic will guarantee success of any kind, and the prospects have certainly shifted in the weeks following the election," Clinton said. "But we also understand the importance of offering to engage Iran and giving its leaders a clear choice: whether to join the international community as a responsible member or to continue down a path to further isolation. .... We remain ready to engage with Iran, but the time for action is now. The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely."

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Source: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/07/15/holbrooke_trumpets_clinton_leadership_after_address

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Clinton getting her second wind

Clinton getting her second wind

Mon, 07/13/2009 - 11:09am



As the six-month mark of her tenure approaches and she recovers from a broken elbow, Secretary Clinton is getting her second wind this week as she prepares for a major foreign-policy speech Wednesday and trips to India and Thailand this weekend. It's great that Clinton is now healthy enough to travel overseas after her canceled trips to Russia, Italy, and Greece.

The speech and trips -- which include the annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) -- are opportunities to raise her profile after some have said she "toils in the shadows." Clinton "hasn't been the face of America abroad," said Ben Smith, the reporter for the Politico article "Clinton Toils in the Shadows," on National Public Radio this weekend.

Smith said that there was an expectation that Clinton was offered the secretary-of-state job because Obama would be busy trying to fix domestic problems, namely the Great Recession. Instead, however, Obama has been able to travel abroad, and when he does, people go wild with Obamamania. Obama and his identity have been riveting symbols overseas -- think about his speeches in Cairo and Ghana. "I don't think you can upstage Barack Obama," Wendy Chamberlin, a former U.S. ambassador and now head of the Middle East Institute, told Agence France-Presse.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had it easier when it came to her profile overseas. No one liked George W. Bush, so she had the spotlight all to herself. Nevertheless, it now looks like Clinton, with her second wind, is will be emerging into the limelight to make her mark and be another face of America abroad.

Photo (Clinton at NATO summit, April 3, 2009): MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images
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Source:http://hillary.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/07/13/clinton_getting_her_second_wind

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*Hillary Clinton plans to reassert herself with high-profile speech

By BEN SMITH 7/14/09 4:38 AM EDT

In the first six months of the Obama administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has brought her star power to the world stage and cemented her position as a serious internal player. Now, according to her aides, she is ready to articulate her own policy agenda, one that focuses in part on strengthening Americans’ capacity for what has been called “smart power.” The speech she is scheduled to give Wednesday to the Council on Foreign Relations is expected to serve as an explanation and framework of the administration’s foreign policy and a tour of its busy first half-year. But it will sound some themes closely associated with Clinton’s former life as first lady and U.S. senator.1

“She is bringing the concept of ‘it takes a village’ to foreign policy,” said Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott, invoking the title of a well-received book that Clinton wrote while her husband was in the White House.

“She thought it was a good time to try to give a framing speech to take some perspective, talk about what we have been doing, what we plan to do – the administration and her as secretary – and how these issues fit together as part of a larger strategy,” said an administration official familiar with the draft speech, who said it would tour a breakneck half-year’s diplomatic efforts everywhere from Iran to North Korea, Iraq, Pakistan, and the Middle East.

“It’s an opportunity to take a step back and talk about how this all fits together,” the official said.
The speech will include “strong discussion of development and a forward-looking overview of how we think about U.S. relations with [and] management of the great powers in a way that gets more comprehensive than what they are doing on this or that crisis,” said another Democratic foreign policy official.

One official said the speech has been long in the making and has been labored over by Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter — a former academic who has emerged as a key Clinton policy adviser — along with speechwriter Lissa Muscatine.2, 3

But another official suggested an additional motivation: Beating back a persistent perception that Clinton has been kept in the administration’s shadows. Tina Brown wrote on The Daily Beast on Monday that President Barack Obama had confined Clinton to a kind of “wifehood of the Saudi variety” and that it is “time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa.”

Officials at the White House and State Department reject the notion that Clinton has been marginalized — and note that much of the low profile is of Clinton’s choosing. She has made, for instance, just one appearance on a Sunday morning talk show — and none until last month — but they insist that’s an absence as much of her choosing as of the White House’s. The White House press office sought to book her on Sunday shows three times before, an official said, but she declined each time, twice because she was overseas and once because she was in New York for Mother’s Day.

Her visibility was also affected by a broken elbow, which required surgery and extensive physical therapy, and prevented her from accompanying Obama on his most recent foreign trip.
Having established herself within the administration and on the world stage, the logical next step for Clinton is to turn her attention to a domestic audience and explain a foreign policy different in tone and substance from George W. Bush’s administration, according to Clinton watchers such as James Goldgeier, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

“She is so good at explaining things that I would hope that at least part of what she’s doing is explaining to the American people why the administration has the policies that it has,” said Goldgeier.

Clinton appears increasingly comfortable expressing her views. State Department officials have suggested that she’s been a hawkish internal voice, pushing Obama toward more confrontational stances toward adversaries from Iran to Cuba. And she has shown a new willingness in recent days to throw the occasional mild elbow in public — even one directed at the White House.Read more:
At a town hall meeting at the United States Agency for International Development on Monday, Clinton complained about the slow vetting of Harvard public-health crusader Paul Farmer for the job of running the soft-power focused agency.

“The clearance and vetting process is a nightmare, and it takes far longer than any of us would want to see,” Clinton said. “It is frustrating beyond words. I pushed very hard last week when I knew I was coming here to get permission from the White House to be able to tell you that help is on the way and someone will be nominated shortly.”

“I was unable,” she said. “The message came back: ‘We’re not ready.’”

But officials said Clinton would be careful in her speech to avoid any hint of daylight between her and the White House. “It’s a White House-dominated foreign policy,” Goldgeier said. “The president’s clearly in charge.”

But Talbott and others close to Clinton pointed to her remarks at another town-hall-style meeting with State Department employees for a sense of the themes she wants to emphasize as secretary.

“We are prioritizing development along with diplomacy as part of our global agenda,” Clinton said, announcing a Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review modeled on the military’s procedures for developing policy. “We’re working to build a world of economic stability and prosperity, clean and affordable energy, health care, housing, and education for our children, an expansion of fundamental rights, tackling the threats of global extremism, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

And she intends to keep making her case domestically after Wednesday, the official familiar with her speech said.

“This is not the end of the conversation,” the official said. “In many ways this is the beginning of the conversation.”
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Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24893.html

1 HRC consults Brzezinski, Scowcroft
By BEN SMITH 07/14/09 1:41 PM
Greg Sargent has a list of foreign policy thinkers Clinton's been talking to before her speech. Read blog post.

2 Lissa Muscatine
Lissa Muscatine was a speechwriter and the communications director of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Currently, she is a speechwriter of Senator Clinton's campaign for the presidential nomination, and is one of her closest advisors, a member of Hillaryland.[1]
She is married to Washington Post editor Bradley Graham, and is on the Board of Trustees of the Sidwell Friends School[2].

3 http://www.muckety.com/Lissa-Muscatine/19544.muckety
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