Blackwater and the Slatten Pardon on Can’t You Read
Editor’s note: as part of a project to turn ninaillingworth.com into a central hub for all of my writing (in response to ongoing censorship of my work by tech companies) I’m spending parts of this month cross-posting older material from other platforms. My apologies if this produces an unwanted notification in your inbox; there’s apparently no way to turn it off.
Mercenaries and the Mendacity of Downmarket Mussolini
As anyone who has seen my Library Page here on this website can attest, I am an avid lover of (at least slightly) subversive books; but the truth is that I’ve never been all that big on straight-up book review posts. What I prefer to do is to wait until something relevant comes up in the current news cycle, and then use that as an excuse to share what I know about a book I’d like to suggest other folks read, at the same time. That was certainly the case for this June 4th, 2019 post on Can’t You Read when news that swine emperor Trump was considering pardoning war criminal Nicholas Slatten, likely as a favor to cartoon supervillain mercenary king Erik Price, allowed me to wax a little poetic about Jeremy Scahill’s excellent book “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.”
Touching on Blackwater, the Nisour Square massacre, and of course the Prince of Darkness himself, this piece is as much about teaching the history of American atrocity (and the lack of accountability for such) as it is about reviewing the book. Although at the time this essay was originally printed Trump didn’t go through with the atrocious pardon of Nicholas Slatten, it should be noted that he did eventually get around to it on his way out of office.
“On a related note, the 2008 paperback edition of Jeremy Scahill’s “Blackwater” opens with a detailed expose of the Nisour Square massacre. While Scahill doesn’t mention Nicholas Slatten by name, the updated introduction does offer a devastating account of Slatten and Blackwater’s wanton slaughter and violence; an account delivered by numerous Iraqi witnesses, including doctors, police officers and heartbroken relatives of the slain – many of whom were women and children. In light of the fact that all of this evidence has existed in the public sphere since at least 2008, I think it’s fair to say that justice has been a very long time coming for Nicholas Slatten; while justice for then-chief Blackwater corpse-farming scumbag Erik Prince, remains deferred.”
To read more over on Can’t You Read, click on the quotation above, or the title header below:
Trump, Nicolas Slatten & The Prince of Darkness
- nina illingworth
Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!
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