Macondo: Mystery Firm Based in N.M.
Oct. 7th, 2010 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purejuiceHere is the deal with Macondo.
I arise and read this story, which has a six column headline at the top of the page of the Macondo Manana [TILDE!!!!]:
Publication: Jnl Final Edition 8/2005-today; Date: Oct 7, 2010; Section: Front Page; Page: A1
Mystery Firm Based in N.M.
Security Contractor Ordered Out of Afghanistan
Copyright © 2010 Albuquerque Journal
By Charles D. Brunt
Journal Staff Writer
A New Mexico security contractor being shown the door by the Afghan government seems intent on maintaining the cloak of secrecy that has characterized many of the cohort companies that operate in the Middle East.
The Afghan government has ordered eight private security firms operating there — some of which have been criticized for acting like private militias — to cease operations.
Among the companies that have begun shutting down in Afghanistan, according to The Associated Press, is Four Horsemen International, a company that is based in Tinnie, in southeast New Mexico.
According to its website, the company has done business in the Middle East since 2002.
Repeated calls and e-mails to the Four Horsemen International’s New Mexico office this week have not been returned.
Roswell attorney David M. Stevens, listed by the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission’s Corporations Division as Four Horsemen’s agent, said by phone Wednesday that he represents the company’s president, whom he declined to name. He also declined to discuss the company or its role in Afghanistan.
“The official company policy is, no comment,” Stevens said.
The state Corporations Division lists Four Horsemen International as a Nevada corporation based on Arabella Road in Tinnie, and John Allen as its president. The Nevada Secretary of State’s office lists an address for Allen in Oak Ridge, Tenn., but no telephone contact.
Another company on the Afghan government’s list is North Carolina contractor Xe Services, formerly know as Blackwater.
Blackwater became the target of several U.S. and Iraqi investigations after a Sept. 16, 2007, incident in Baghdad during which Blackwater guards escorting a U.S. State Department convoy opened fire and killed 17 Iraqis. Several witnesses have testified that the attack was unprovoked.
In January, a security contractor working for Four Horsemen International, Australian Robert Langdon, was sentenced to death by an Afghan court for fatally shooting an Afghan colleague in May 2009. He blamed the killing on a Taliban ambush.
Langdon’s family has been working for his release based on payments to the dead man’s family, according to The Australian newspaper.
Four Horsemen International’s website says the company is “a leading provider of security, logistics, construction, operations and maintenance, program management, and consulting.” It lists several divisions, ranging from security and logistics to automotive maintenance and latrine services.
Manta, an online database listing profiles of more than 64 million businesses and organizations, indicates Four Horsemen International has annual revenues of $12 million.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced in August that private security contractors would have to cease operations by the end of the year — wiping out a multimillion-dollar industry with tens of thousands of guards who protect military convoys, government officials and businesspeople. Afghan officials said the government cannot have armed groups operating independently of its police or military forces.
The Afghan government has estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 armed security guards are working in the country.
Presidential spokesman Waheed Omar told the AP earlier this week he did not know why the eight companies had been chosen as the first to be closed down, or if any international firms had actually left the country.
A screen capture of the website of New Mexico-based security contractor Four Horsemen International. Four Horsemen is among eight private security contractors the Afghan government has ordered to close by year’s end.
Given the presence of Los Alamos, and the nukes "hidden" inside the Manzano Mountains, White Sands Missile Range, Kirtland Air Force Base, the Large Array Telescope (don't tell me it's not a spy rig), and the weird pride Burque feels at being Ground Zero (are you joking? the WTC put the lie to that), the presence of 12th-rate Beltway Banditti like the Four Horsemen, which seems to be based in Roswell, NM, the center and omphalos of all UFO conspiracy theories, does not surprise me. There is a sense that out here, far away from streetlights, you can do anything you want to. See the stars. See stars. Whatevs.
The thing about Macondo is all of that, ie., buccaneer schemes to rip the Indians off of their DNA/plutonium, or designate entire hospitals/medical institutions as single carrier health insurance gulags, or to sell all the water rights of the Rio Grande to Texas, such that you don't own the rain water which falls on your roof, is contrasted, in a magical realist way, with 1500 year old urbanities and arts.
The copy shop didn't take plastic for the $4 fee I ran up yesterday, so they said, Oh, you'll come back, we trust you.
On my way over there this morning with the $4, the latest evidence. A big old white SUV with KCOE CHANNEL 13 emblazoned on the side in red letters two feet high.
At the Great Metropolitan Daily, they got rid of company cars with GREAT METROPOLITAN DAILY emblazoned on the side nearly 50 years ago. During the MLK Jr. assassination riots. When such vehicles were stoned, if not capsized, by rioters.
It's just so bush league, and also suicidal, as well as so Not Kansas any more. There are no riots in Macondo. Not least because the thugs run the place.
All the black people in Burque are frighteningly respectable, totally Beaver Cleaver, either descended from the railroad workers (ca. turn of 20th c.) or the post-Civil-War freedmen of the Buffalo Soldier ilk who founded little towns out here in don't-fence-me-in territory.
And then you get swept away by the Navajo blue arch over the shitty highway just at the point where the vista toward the blue Sandias opens out of the shitty strip mall. It matches the mountains' skyline and color perfectly. Lift thine eyes! It's magic, the desert. For real.
I arise and read this story, which has a six column headline at the top of the page of the Macondo Manana [TILDE!!!!]:
Publication: Jnl Final Edition 8/2005-today; Date: Oct 7, 2010; Section: Front Page; Page: A1
Mystery Firm Based in N.M.
Security Contractor Ordered Out of Afghanistan
Copyright © 2010 Albuquerque Journal
By Charles D. Brunt
Journal Staff Writer
A New Mexico security contractor being shown the door by the Afghan government seems intent on maintaining the cloak of secrecy that has characterized many of the cohort companies that operate in the Middle East.
The Afghan government has ordered eight private security firms operating there — some of which have been criticized for acting like private militias — to cease operations.
Among the companies that have begun shutting down in Afghanistan, according to The Associated Press, is Four Horsemen International, a company that is based in Tinnie, in southeast New Mexico.
According to its website, the company has done business in the Middle East since 2002.
Repeated calls and e-mails to the Four Horsemen International’s New Mexico office this week have not been returned.
Roswell attorney David M. Stevens, listed by the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission’s Corporations Division as Four Horsemen’s agent, said by phone Wednesday that he represents the company’s president, whom he declined to name. He also declined to discuss the company or its role in Afghanistan.
“The official company policy is, no comment,” Stevens said.
The state Corporations Division lists Four Horsemen International as a Nevada corporation based on Arabella Road in Tinnie, and John Allen as its president. The Nevada Secretary of State’s office lists an address for Allen in Oak Ridge, Tenn., but no telephone contact.
Another company on the Afghan government’s list is North Carolina contractor Xe Services, formerly know as Blackwater.
Blackwater became the target of several U.S. and Iraqi investigations after a Sept. 16, 2007, incident in Baghdad during which Blackwater guards escorting a U.S. State Department convoy opened fire and killed 17 Iraqis. Several witnesses have testified that the attack was unprovoked.
In January, a security contractor working for Four Horsemen International, Australian Robert Langdon, was sentenced to death by an Afghan court for fatally shooting an Afghan colleague in May 2009. He blamed the killing on a Taliban ambush.
Langdon’s family has been working for his release based on payments to the dead man’s family, according to The Australian newspaper.
Four Horsemen International’s website says the company is “a leading provider of security, logistics, construction, operations and maintenance, program management, and consulting.” It lists several divisions, ranging from security and logistics to automotive maintenance and latrine services.
Manta, an online database listing profiles of more than 64 million businesses and organizations, indicates Four Horsemen International has annual revenues of $12 million.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced in August that private security contractors would have to cease operations by the end of the year — wiping out a multimillion-dollar industry with tens of thousands of guards who protect military convoys, government officials and businesspeople. Afghan officials said the government cannot have armed groups operating independently of its police or military forces.
The Afghan government has estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 armed security guards are working in the country.
Presidential spokesman Waheed Omar told the AP earlier this week he did not know why the eight companies had been chosen as the first to be closed down, or if any international firms had actually left the country.
A screen capture of the website of New Mexico-based security contractor Four Horsemen International. Four Horsemen is among eight private security contractors the Afghan government has ordered to close by year’s end.
Given the presence of Los Alamos, and the nukes "hidden" inside the Manzano Mountains, White Sands Missile Range, Kirtland Air Force Base, the Large Array Telescope (don't tell me it's not a spy rig), and the weird pride Burque feels at being Ground Zero (are you joking? the WTC put the lie to that), the presence of 12th-rate Beltway Banditti like the Four Horsemen, which seems to be based in Roswell, NM, the center and omphalos of all UFO conspiracy theories, does not surprise me. There is a sense that out here, far away from streetlights, you can do anything you want to. See the stars. See stars. Whatevs.
The thing about Macondo is all of that, ie., buccaneer schemes to rip the Indians off of their DNA/plutonium, or designate entire hospitals/medical institutions as single carrier health insurance gulags, or to sell all the water rights of the Rio Grande to Texas, such that you don't own the rain water which falls on your roof, is contrasted, in a magical realist way, with 1500 year old urbanities and arts.
The copy shop didn't take plastic for the $4 fee I ran up yesterday, so they said, Oh, you'll come back, we trust you.
On my way over there this morning with the $4, the latest evidence. A big old white SUV with KCOE CHANNEL 13 emblazoned on the side in red letters two feet high.
At the Great Metropolitan Daily, they got rid of company cars with GREAT METROPOLITAN DAILY emblazoned on the side nearly 50 years ago. During the MLK Jr. assassination riots. When such vehicles were stoned, if not capsized, by rioters.
It's just so bush league, and also suicidal, as well as so Not Kansas any more. There are no riots in Macondo. Not least because the thugs run the place.
All the black people in Burque are frighteningly respectable, totally Beaver Cleaver, either descended from the railroad workers (ca. turn of 20th c.) or the post-Civil-War freedmen of the Buffalo Soldier ilk who founded little towns out here in don't-fence-me-in territory.
And then you get swept away by the Navajo blue arch over the shitty highway just at the point where the vista toward the blue Sandias opens out of the shitty strip mall. It matches the mountains' skyline and color perfectly. Lift thine eyes! It's magic, the desert. For real.
