Speaking of Blackwater, Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and The Nation contributor, details a new tape of the usually private Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater and hefty contributor to Alliance Defense Fund and other religious right organizations. Some of the revelations to be found on the tapes?  Rampant religiously-inspired racism:

Prince scornfully dismissed the debate on whether armed individuals working for Blackwater could be classified as “unlawful combatants” who are ineligible for protection under the Geneva Convention. “You know, people ask me that all the time, ‘Aren’t you concerned that you folks aren’t covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, ‘Absolutely not,’ because these people, they crawled out of the sewer and they have a 1200 AD mentality. They’re barbarians. They don’t know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there.”

It is significant that Prince mentioned his company operating in Pakistan given that Blackwater, the US government and the Pakistan government have all denied Blackwater works in Pakistan.

Writes Scahill, “The people of the United States have a right to media coverage of events featuring the owner of a company that generates 90% of its revenue from the United States government.”