Blackwater guards are in one incident at least finally being sentenced to prison for murder today. But their boss will be speaking at the University of Virginia on Wednesday.

Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater, visited Charlottesville 8 years ago and explained some of what's wrong with private mercenaries.

He said that the Pentagon is useless to politicians because it doesn't make campaign "contributions". But when you take a big chunk of that enormous military budget and give it to private companies, you free it up to come back (some portion of it) to politicians every campaign season.

Thus you trade higher costs and less oversight for a built-in generator of systemic pressure for more wars. It's win-win-win.

Former Washington insider and four-star General Wesley Clark spilled the beans several years ago on how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia “won’t stop us.”

As I recently reviewed a YouTube eight-minute clip of General Clark’s October 2007 speech, what leaped out at me was that the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that – after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's visit to
Bangkok last week resulted in trade deals, revived relations and a
public snub at Washington by Thailand's heavily criticized coup leader
who praised Moscow's friendship when "a friend is in trouble."

But on April 13, stung by published accusations that Bangkok was using
Moscow as a tool to slap Washington, coup-installed Foreign Minister
Tanasak Pantimapragorn said:  "We have never befriended anyone because
we want to make other jealous"

Mr. Medvedev began his two-nation tour in Vietnam, sparking
speculation that the Kremlin was trying to "pivot" toward Southeast
Asia and mirror President Barack Obama's initiative to engage the
region, still scarred from the Vietnam War which America lost 40 years
ago.

Here in Thailand, Mr. Medvedev's April 6 to 8 visit was examined by
analysts to determine if Moscow would benefit by filling the vacuum
created when the U.S., Europe and several other countries diminished

Thank you for having me here. I know a lot of people have been involved in planning this event. Thank you!

I'm going to try this morning to address the question of how we can best talk our fellow human beings out of one of the primary myths that allows war to continue. And in a second speech later today I'm going to turn more to the question of activism and building a peaceful world.

I mailed a box of my books here, and I had to mail another one because the first box arrived undamaged except that all of the books were missing. Although I don't know who stole the books, Mary Hanna recommended I inform you that the message I bring you was so threatening that the books were taken, and the empty box delivered, by a bunch of -- and I quote -- Weannie-heads!

Now, you see what I've done. I've called somebody a weannie head in a speech about peace but arranged it so you'll blame Mary (and maybe the U.S. Postal Service) instead of me. But of course when Michigan State's basketball team beat Virginia's I said something worse than Mary has probably said in her life, just as I'd done the year before, not that I'm holding any grudges.