Deeper Than Blackwater

Just before Christmas 2018, following the resignation of Jim Mattis from his role as Defence Secretary, the rumblings of the return of Blackwater began.

“We Are Coming”

An ominous full page advertisement was placed in Recoil magazine according to Military Times: a black background with the words “We Are Coming” above a Blackwater logo centred at the bottom.[1]

The initial report by Tara Copp of Military Times was picked up and promoted on Russia Today, who has a much bigger audience.[2]

Internet conspiracy theorists jumped at the opportunity to spout off about how this is somehow proof of Blackwater’s return to take over military operations in Syria from U.S. forces. This was, after all, following Trump’s announcement that he is withdrawing troops from Syria.

Blackwater is an American private military company founded in 1997 by former Navy SEAL officer Erik Prince that was renamed as Xe Services in 2009, and is now known as Academi since 2011. In 2014, Academi merged with “Triple Canopy … along with other companies that were part of the Constellis Group package … all gathered under the Constellis Holdings, Inc .”[3]

The company was initially rebranded to get away from the stigma and negative PR associated with the Blackwater brand following multiple lawsuits, investigations and allegations regarding illegal activities in Iraq.

The Russia Today article entitled ‘‘‘We are coming’: Chilling Blackwater ad triggers fears of Trump seeking to privatize Mideast wars” cites a tweet from handle @defense_news as its source for the ad, which links to a Military Times article.

Defense News and Military Times are both part of Sightline Media Group.[4] The @defense_news twitter account promotes Military Times articles.

Tara Copp, the author of the Military Times article, has been contacted in regards to how she came across the Recoil ad. I also asked Copp if she had information on who financed and placed the advert after she stated in her article that “Blackwater USA took out a full page ad in the January/February 2019 issue of "Recoil" magazine with the company's logo and a message: "We are coming."’

At this time, no response has been given. I did however receive a response from Constellis, parent company of Academi, who confirmed that they had nothing to do with the placement of the advert.

Tara Copp, the Pentagon Bureau Chief for Military Times, failed to investigate and identify the source of the advert in her article. I have my doubts that Copp stumbled across the ad reading Recoil magazine. I suspect Copp was told by contacts at the Pentagon to publish a story on the negative conations associated with the name Blackwater to promote a negative image of the use of private military contractors by the Defence department.

Adding to this propagated hysteria, ABC reporter Julia Macfarlane speculated about Erik Prince becoming the new Defence Secretary replacing Mattis based on the Blackwater Ad in Recoil magazine.

Blackwater Ammunition

I reached out to Recoil magazine in regards to the Blackwater ad and I’m delighted to let you know that all the hype of the return of “Blackwater USA” provided by Russia Today, Julia Macfarlane and sloppy conspiracy theorists via Tara Copp’s negligent journalism is all a false alarm.

The ad was taken out by Blackwater Ammunition. The latest company founded by Erik Prince.

Who would have imagined that an ammo company would advertise in a magazine called Recoil?

The brand was launched at the IWA Outdoor Classics 2018 exhibition in Nuremberg.[5

It is clear that this whole situation over this ad as it relates to Syria is hysteria. It is false information like this that muddies the waters, distracting away from more important and substantiated information in regards to private military contractors.

The Kremlin’s Russia Today hypocrisy

In the above video, Russia Today took the opportunity to highlight the negative history of Blackwater in Iraq. This is part of a Kremlin driven, Aleksandr Dugin inspired agenda to highlight U.S. imperialist aggression against the Islamic world to drive Muslims closer to Russia.Jewish Zionist lobby driven U.S. foreign policy and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians have helped in achieving this goal. This is one of the reasons why I believe this is all being done by design to create a good cop, bad cop dialectic in the Middle East.

What Russia Today will not tell you is that Russia has private military contractors (PMCs) in Syria.[6] They have been involved in very controversial events that would be viewed as very negative to the majority of people in the Middle East region, especially the Syrian people, if Russia’s PMCs got the attention they deserved.

PMC Wagner

Russian President Vladimir Putin with the leadership of PMC Wagner at Georgievsk Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace, December 2016. Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin is the gentleman on the far-right.

Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin is the commander of private military company, Wagner. Previously he was a lieutenant colonel and brigade commander of a special forces (Spetsnaz GRU) unit (the 700th Independent Spetsnaz Detachment of the 2nd Independent Brigade) in Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).[6]

After retiring in 2013, Utkin began working for the private company Moran Security Group. The company performed security and training missions around the world, specializing in security against piracy. Utkin participated in counter-pirate operations in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia in an effort to provide secure passage for vessels transiting the area. This area is an important part of China’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI) as it is in between ports, moving important materials and resources to and from Africa for building infrastructure and providing arms.[6]

Senior Moran Security Group managers were involved in creating Slavonic Corps, whom Utkin carried out missions with in Syria. Wagner Group evolved out of this, and was founded by Utkin in 2014. It is worth noting that Moran and Slavonic Corps were registered in Hong Kong, where Wagner also has offices.[6][7]

In December 2016, Utkin was invited to a reception to celebrate Heroes of the Fatherland Day in the Georgievsk Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace, where he received the honour of becoming a Cavalier of the Order of Courage.[8]

Utkin became the CEO of Concord Management and Consulting LLC, which belongs to the Concord company group and is co-owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin.[8]

Prigozhin, or “Putin’s chef” as he is also known, is among the 13 Russian nationals indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for his connections to troll farms involved in an operation to assist U.S. President Donald Trump win the 2016 Presidential election. According to the indictment , Mueller accuses troll farm company Internet Research Agency employees of “posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operating social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences.”[9]

Prigozhin’s Concord Management is directly involved with the administration of troll farm Internet Research Agency, according to documents published by hackers from Anonymous International.[10]

Understanding Krysha

The Putin-Prigozhin relation is great example of the “Krysha” concept. Krysha means roof and is a slang word for protection. In exchange for contracts with the Kremlin, oligarchs such as Prigozhin work on behalf of the Mafiya State.[11]

F. Michael Maloof

South Sudan

The investment fund CITIC Group which is owned and controlled by the People’s Republic of China and is FSG's largest shareholder. CITIC Group is heavily invested in China’s African oil endeavours, especially China’s major oil production region, South Sudan.[24]
CITIC Group sent Erik Prince and his new Frontier Services Group to South Sudan in 2014 to meet with the bellicose South Sudanese leader Salva Kiir, who was in the process of fighting a civil war against his former Vice President Riek Machar for control of the newly independent country. The purpose of the trip was to re-establish the flow of oil from the Chinese owned oil reserves that were shut down and barely producing product due to the heavy fighting within the Upper Nile region of South Sudan.[24]
After initial meetings with South Sudanese officials, a $150 million security contract was penned. Later that same year the contract was halted after Prince told Kiir in a closed door meeting that he would be financing an attack aircraft along with being promised a “foreign mercenary force” to use against Machar’s rebel forces, which would have violated several international laws.[24]

Somalia

Prince’s FSG has signed a deal covering logistics, aviation and security services with the Free Zone Investment Authority of the South West State of Somalia. South West State’s plans include building a seaport, airport, residential areas and setting up agricultural zones. “The project will include an integrated solution of air-land-sea logistics capabilities and advanced security management”.[25]

No doubt the seaport will lie on the BRI route along the East Coast of Africa and will likely be integrated into the network upon completion. FSG is taking over from where Moran Securities left off tackling piracy in the Indian Ocean.

Prince had a prior endeavour in Somalia with his previous company Xe backed by his Gulf state connections, which involved recruiting and training 2,000-2,500 Somali nationals in anti-piracy operations along the Somali Coast, as well as fighting al-Shabaab in and around Mogadishu.[24]

FSG has also signed contracts to support China's Belt Road Initiative including building a series of bases in China’s Xinjiang Province.

In December 2016, FSG announced its plans to set up a “forward operating base” in Yunnan to provide logistics and unarmed security training services to facilitate Belt & Road-related projects in Southeast Asia.[23]

FSG Deputy Chairman is Director of Emerdata (formerly Cambridge Analytica)

The Executive Director and Deputy Chairman of Prince’s FSG is Mr. Chun Shun Ko, who is also a Director of Emerdata with Julian Wheatland and Alexander Nix, both formerly of Cambridge Analytica. The address for Chun Shun Ko in the Emerdata listing is 3901 39 Floor, Far East Finance Centre, 16 Harcourt Road, Admiralty, Hong Kong, the same address as the Hong Kong headquarters for Frontier Services Group.[26]

So, a Chinese national who is tied directly to the People’s Republic of China’s largest investment wing is also director of a large and controversial data firm that has access to huge databases of information on people worldwide that was instrumental in assisting the Trump and Brexit campaigns.[27]

In September 2017, Alexander Nix and Steve Bannon presented at a conference run by CLSA. CLSA is part of CITIC Securities, which is part of China’s state-owned CITIC Group, the majority owner of Erik Prince and Ko Chun Shun Johnson’s Frontier Services Group. Bannon was also an investor and on the board of Cambridge Analytica prior to his appointment as White House Chief Strategist.[26][27]

It looks to me as if the CLSA speeches were a cover for the real reason Bannon and Nix travelled to China. It is likely, as both men were involved in Cambridge Analytica, that they met with Erik Prince and Chun Shun Ko to discuss working together under the new brand, Emerdata. Bannon likely represented the Mercer’s interests as well as his own.

UAE connection

In January 2017, Prince attended a meeting in the Seychelles with the United Arab Emirates’ Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev, and George Nader, a former consultant for Erik Prince’s company Blackwater/Xe. Prince met with Steve Bannon ahead of the trip to the Seychelles, likely discussing Cambridge Analytica/Emerdata. On January 23, 2018, Mr. Ahmad Al Khatib, a resident of Seychelles, was appointed as a Director of Emerdata.[13][26]


My takeaway from New Horizons Conference in Iran and Russia Today narratives

The failure for anyone at the New Horizons Conference and Russia Today to mention this information and address these connections is highly suspicious. The American speakers at the Iran Conference consistently discussed Israel and the Zionist influence in the Western hemisphere, and rightfully so. But they are being used as pawns of Dugin’s Eurasia and Multipolar World Order agenda by assisting a new Cold War narrative playing allies/proxies against each other.

The theme of Israel as the enemy and Russia as the saving grace, like the good cop, bad cop dialectic, is prevalent throughout the conference, while all connections between Israel and Russia are seemingly ignored.

Another issue about all this is Aleksandr Dugin’s ties to Zionists are also completely ignored.[28]

The participants of the Iran conference’s silence on the issues in regards to covering

• PMC Wagner and their actions in Syria;
• Duginism;
• the Kremlin connected troll farms and their influence on the U.S. elections;
• Israel’s and Erik Prince’s roles in the Belt Road Initiative;
• the ever growing relationships Israel has with Russia and China; and
• the technology transfers via Israel from the United States; and
• Israel’s major role in the development of technology including AI, cyber security and cryptocurrency.