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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1143 thread views

Transnational Thursday for August 14, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Does this have anything to do with Trump?

The article does mention some connections with Trump specifically and with the US government in general.

Prince, a former U.S. Navy Seal, founded the Blackwater military security firm in 1997. He sold the company in 2010 after Blackwater employees were convicted of unlawfully killing 14 unarmed civilians while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy in Baghdad's Nisour Square. The men were pardoned by Trump during his first term in the White House.

Since Trump's return to the White House, Prince has advised Ecuador on how to fight criminal gangs and struck a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo to help secure and tax its mineral wealth.

“It’s hard to imagine them operating without the consent of the Trump administration,” said Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, head of the Haiti program at Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

When asked for comment about Le Cour Grandmaison's assertion, a State Department spokesperson said it has not hired Prince or his company for any work in Haiti.

A senior White House official said: "The U.S. government has no involvement with the private military contractor hired by the Haitian government. We are not funding this contract or exercising any oversight.”

"Since Trump's return to the White House" is a temporal mark. Since Trump's return to the White House I've lost five pounds, but Trump didn't really help me do it. The assumption that Trump personally controls every Prince's operation is quite ridiculous. Which is par for the course for an "expert" from "Geneva-based" NGO, but including this nonsense in the article is on Reuters. And of course no private business needs prior "consent" of the government - that's the opposite of how this works, the government is only supposed to intervene if something is wrong, and if nothing is wrong, the "consent" is implied. US govt, undoubtedly while rolling their eyes very hard, confirmed that they had absolutely nothing to do with it, as expected. Overall it looks like Reuters went to ridiculous length to mention Trump here.

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