Published since 2005. San Francisco is a city that belongs to the people of the world. Hence this blog has a global focus. The name "Sam Spade's San Francisco" refers to an exciting era in the City's history, the time of Dashiell Hammett's fictional gumshoe and San Francisco character, Sam Spade. My name is Tom Dunn and I edit the blog. I'm not as exciting as Sam Spade, but I am definitely a San Francisco character.Contact or on Twitter -- Search blog below.
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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Blackwater, now Xe, invades Afghanistan
Beware!
Blackwater, the private mercenary army based in North Carolina, that has been and continues to be criticized for its lawless behavior, is now invading Afghanistan under its new name, "Xe".
Xe says the new name refers only to Xenon, a colorless, odorless, uncreative gas. What! That doesn't make sense.
I noticed the bottom of Xe's U.S. Training Center website. There, in small letters at the very bottom it reads: "An Xe company." If the correct word to preface Xe is "an" rather than "a", it suggests the pronunciation would correctly be "ex-ee" rather than "zee".
The letters x and e do not have clear meaning, but one possible answer is the military term "exclusion zone". The acronym for exclusion zone (xz) is commonly pronounced as "ex-ee", rather than the more accurate "ex-zee".
Maybe - maybe not - but take this into consideration:
Xe is in the business of providing exclusion zones for the U. S. Government. Here's the definition for an exclusion zone taken directly from the DOD:
"(DOD) A zone established by a sanctioning body to prohibit specific activities in a specific geographic area. The purpose may be to persuade nations or groups to modify their behavior to meet the desires of the sanctioning body or face continued imposition of sanctions, or use or threat of force."
Now, Xe is slowly working its way into Afghanistan with government contracts - just as it did in Iraq. If the United States continues this trend of hiring mercenary armies to do the work that should properly be done by our military, we are following the path once taken by another great superpower as it entered its long, slow and agonizing decline: the Roman Empire.
Watch the following report filed by LinkTV's Mosaic World News producer Jamal Dajani:
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