Stop Blackwater Letter Campaign

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We must stop the Blackwater West project!

Blackwater USA proposes to build a large mercenary and paramilitary training compound called Blackwater West near Potrero, in San Diego County, on an 824-acre parcel that includes Cleveland National Forest acreage, borders a proposed wilderness area adjacent to the Hauser Wilderness, and is both an important watershed and an environmentally sensitive habitat for wildlife (such as golden eagles, California gnatcatcher, and even California condors have been sighted recently.)

Mercenary and paramilitary activities are inherently dangerous and pose serious risks--including severe fire danger--to surrounding communities and wilderness areas, will deplete groundwater from a sole source aquifer, increase noise from shooting ranges, driving track, and helicopter activities; increase traffic on narrow, windy, back country roads already overstressed with border activity.

Blackwater USA and other private contractors are not subject to an effective system of oversight and accountability with respect to their operations and government contracting activities, and are the subject of ongoing hearings before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee regarding allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse. Blackwater USA has resisted attempts to subject its private soldiers to the Pentagon's Uniform Code of Military Justice, claiming they are civilians, and has simultaneously claimed immunity from litigation under civil law in the United States, asserting its forces are part of the Pentagon's "Total Force."

Such private mercenary and paramilitary armies threaten unending conflict to maximize profits and to be deployed domestically in a privately funded form of martial law, to quell public dissent, put down popular uprisings, or even to stop opposing points of view through intimidation or outright force.

I hereby request that you oppose mercenary training by private concerns anywhere in the State of California, including the Blackwater West project, and that you support that all military, paramilitary, security, or law enforcement training operations in California, whether private, governmental, or some combination of the two, will be conducted on, and only on, secured U.S. military bases or other established government-regulated facilities designed for that purpose.

We must save the Round Potrero Valley from this sort of inappropriate development!

Sincerely,


-- Raymond Lutz - 24 Apr 2007
Topic revision: r5 - 11 Mar 2015, RaymondLutz
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