Jeremy Scahill | The Nation

Blackwater USA has a new attorney to defend it against a wrongful death
lawsuit by families of four contractors killed in Iraq: Kenneth Starr.

A federal appeals court has ruled a wrongful death lawsuit
can proceed against Blackwater USA: Families claim the firm cut corners in pursuit of
profit in Iraq, leading to the brutal deaths of four employees in Fallujah in
2004.

As the United States decries the private militias of Lebanon and
Iraq, GOP-connected, privately owned global mercenary firms receive
blank checks and little oversight.

Hurricane victims are still homeless in New Orleans, but thanks to the federal government's $30 million contract bonanza, Blackwater USA's profits are soaring.

Tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims remain without homes. The
environment is devastated. People are disenfranchised. Financial
resources, desperate residents are told, are scarce.

Lawsuits by families of soldiers-for-hire killed in Falluja have put a major war profiteer in the cross-hairs.

Scandals abound in the smoking remains of the Alexander Strategy
Group.

TENNESSEE'S HEALTHCARE CUTS

Rochester, NY

A top-secret memo detailing George W. Bush's proposal to bomb Al
Jazeera is not "outlandish," as the White House claims. The Bush
Administration had been threatening, insulting and imprisoning Al
Jazeera staffers and other unembedded journalists long before Bush
reportedly floated the idea to Tony Blair.

Given the Administration's record of attacking Al Jazeera verbally and
militarily, is it conceivable that President Bush tried to convince
Tony Blair to bomb its international headquarters? Only publication of
an explosive memo will prove it.