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Thursday
May 17th
Xe, the Templar Crusade by Michael Carmichael PDF Print E-mail


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Blackwater is a US corporation that provides mercenary soldiers and supporting security personnel to the US government.


Erik Prince, the billionaire founder and owner of the now infamous Blackwater, hails from Holland, Michigan where his family was prominent in two powerful institutions - (1) the Republican Party and (2) the evangelical Christian Church.  After scandals hit his large and lucrative firm, Prince ordered a curious rebranding that changed its name to 'Xe' - a tactic that caused puzzlement among the business community and the American public-at-large.

'X' is an archaic form of abbreviation for Christ and/or Christian that was derived from the cross and the Greek Alphabet.  'X' or 'Chi' is the Greek letter that is the initial of "Christos."  At the same time, 'X' served as a secret symbol for the cross.  Sometimes written 'Chi-Rho,' ie. 'Xp' is another abbreviation for Christos and his followers, the Christians.  From the perspective of medieval Christian symbolism, 'Xe' is a combination of the Christic cross and the Greek letter, Epsilon, the first letter in the Greek word, 'Evangelion,' glad tidings or gospel.  From the perspective of a modern member of the Knights Templar, 'Xe' is simply 'Chi-Epsilon' and immediately recognizable for it symbolizes Christian Evangelism.

Prince's background

Eric Prince's father owned a thriving automotive parts business and sent his son to Holland Christian School - an evangelical establishment that accepts students from Kindergarten through the 12th grade.  Since his childhood, Prince converted to Roman Catholicism - and may be a member or associate of Opus Dei, a very conservative cult now described as a prelature that is a strong ally of the current pope, Benedict XVI, who - when he was a Cardinal - paved the way for the beatification and canonization of the cult's founder, St. Josemaria Escriva.  There are politically active groups of right-wing Catholics who espouse Islamophobia, a prejudicial religious ideology that demonizes Islam and all of its adherents.  These reactionary Catholic groups strongly supported former President George W. Bush and his hawkish neoconservative ideology.

Here is a brief description of Erik Prince's religious background taken from a website:

The founder and CEO of Blackwater is Erik Prince, son of Edgar Prince, the now deceased businessman from Holland, Michigan. Prince's background as a Western Michigander is not just limited to geography, the brother of Betsy DeVos has also embraced the conservative religious beliefs that his family promoted zealously, particularly with their money. Erik began his political career working as an intern for Gary Bauer at the Family Research Council and also worked in the Bush I White House, although he thought that this administration was too liberal. Prince disapproved of the Bush I administration to the extent that in 1992 he supported Patrick Buchanan for President, something that got him into trouble with his sister Betsy.

Unlike his family, which is part of the Christian Reformed Church, Erik Prince is a Catholic. He most likely became Catholic when he married his first wife, who died of cancer shortly after they were married. Interestingly enough, most of the leadership at Blackwater is also Catholic, albeit a conservative wing of the church that is quite reactionary. Erik Prince is personally connected to conservative Catholic groups like Catholic Answer, Crisis magazine, and a Grand Rapids-based group, the Acton Institute. But Prince has not abandoned his Protestant/Evangelical roots and is a close friend of Watergate criminal turned believer Chuck Colson. They have shared the podium on several occasions, even once at Calvin College. According to Scahill, Prince is aligning himself with a new Catholic/Evangelical alliance called "Evangelicals and Catholics Together." The ECT manifesto states:

"The century now drawing to a close has been the greatest century of missionary expansion in Christian history. We pray and we believe that this expansion has prepared the way for yet greater missionary endeavor in the first century of the Third Millennium. The two communities in world Christianity that are most evangelistically assertive and most rapidly growing are Evangelicals and Catholics."

Prince's relationship to what Scahill calls the "Theocon" movement is not marginal. Prince himself writes about this relationship and it's importance, particularly with the mission of Blackwater. Prince says "Everybody carries guns, just like the Prophet Jeremiah rebuilding the temple in Israel - a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other."

The current Crusade

In 2004, the current pope signed a letter to the Bishops in the United States warning the laity not to vote for Catholic candidates who had voted in favor of women's rights to abortion.  Cardinal Ratzinger's letter weakened the campaign of John Kerry and strengthened George W. Bush  who had used the term "crusade," to rally his forces shortly after 9/11. Speaking in Regensburg in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI made insensitive remarks about the Islamic faith that caused outrage in the Muslim world.

Erik Prince's personal Crusade

Among his personnel at Xe, Prince is known to be a high-profile Islamophobe who believes his personal mission in life is to bring about the total extinction of the Muslim population of this planet in what he has described as a global campaign of genocide or a, "Crusade."

Here is an excerpt of an article about Prince that appeared in The Economist :

In an affidavit lodged with a court in Virginia, one of the witnesses said that Mr Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe." The statement continues

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince's executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to "lay Hajiis out on cardboard." Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince's employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as "ragheads" or "hajiis."

21st Century Crusade

In rebranding his badly tarnished company 'Xe' Prince hoped to deflect public criticism while he negotiates with the Pentagon for billions of dollars in new contracts for assignments in Afghanistan.  Whether this transparent ploy was an intelligent business strategem or not remains to be seen. 

What is vividly clear is that Prince and his top staff at Xe are a driven group of Christian Evangelicals and reactionary Catholics who believe themselves to be on a mission from their god - a global religious war that is nothing less than a 21st century crusade to exterminate every single solitary Muslim in an Islamic Holocaust that will dwarf the Nazi Holocaust of WWII.


Michael Carmichael is the founder of Planetary.

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