Tulip Time 2010 decided to invite Erik Prince (Blackwater) to come to the Governor's luncheon before the first parade of the festival. Erik of course talked about his hometown values during the speech which originally was requested to be media free. Somehow Prince doesn't want what he says to be made public.
When Prince was invited, Chaplain Bill Freeman of the Interfaith Congregation invited Jeremy Scahill to come to rebut the obvious information that would be spoken.
Jeremy Scahill was scheduled to speak at the local movie theater at 7:30 tonight. At 7:00, the originally scheduled theater was full and the staff scrambled to see if they could open another theater and wire it for sound (no visuals). Eventually a rather scratchy, but somewhat listen-able connection was made.
He came over to talk to the overflow first acknowledging that he was impressed by how many were there.
About 700 people paid to see Prince talk. I estimate about 250 came to see Jeremy Scahill. This in a county that has never voted for anything but a Republican in any of our lifetimes.
I am no journalist, but the stories he told about the mercenaries, not just Blackwater (Xe), but also the continued use of them in Afghanistan was appalling. We have no right undermining our good men and women in the armed forces with mercenaries.
The scariest story was how Prince ordered his Blackwater thugs to New Orleans and they were there for over a week before they received a contract for the work.
The men were paid $350 a day, and Blackwater pulled in $950 a day per person from the government. The company made 70 million on Katrina alone.
The moral of the story is that the value that Erik Prince learned in Holland was how to make money by being forward thinking. Damn the consequences.
Story on the Scahill talk from MLive. One or our local newspaper sources.