Mercenaries, Multinationals and Movies (CorpWatch)

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Mercenaries, Multinationals and Movies

Posted by Pratap Chatterjee on March 9th, 2007
There's a constant stream of good films coming out about corporate malfeasance and we'll try to keep you updated on this blog about some of our favorite ones.

"Shadow Company" opens tonight at the Roxie movie theater in San Francisco. This documentary follows the tale of James Ashcroft, a college friend of film maker Nick Bicanic, who quits his job in a British law firm to take a job with a private security company in Baghdad, whom many human rights activists consider to be "mercenaries," or soldiers for hire made famous by Blackwater in Fallujah.

An excellent interview with film maker Bicanic, explains why people become mercenaries.

It's simple math: you have a given individual who has the prospect of risking his life as part of a member of a nation-state military for X amount of dollars or doing virtually the exact same level of risk and almost the exact same job for roughly three to five times the money for a private company. The proof is in the pudding. A very large number of U.S. and U.K. Special Forces are asking for early retirement, and it's a serious problem.


Like any good documentary, "Shadow Company" has no shortage of "talking heads" � expert human rights activists and academics alike � but it also has quite a few fun little graphics, historical footage, and lots of action to explain the history of private military companies.

What sets this film apart from the classic military channel films or even your typical Amnesty fare, is that it chooses not to take sides, but allow the characters to argue the case for and against private military work in their own words. There's Cobus Classens, a South African mercenary who worked for Executive Outcomes; there's Robert Young Pelton, author of the "The Guide to the World's Most Dangerous Places;" and there's a professor of ethics and a lobbyist for the "International Peace Operations Association" (yes, there is an industry association, believe it or not). .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14410