BLACKWATER: What's ERIK PRINCE up to?

May I just say Erik Prince is so badass. He's like Tony Stark except without the lame-o Ironman costume and playboy persona. It's a shame he left the country for the Middle East- I had real respect for Blackwater and it's PMCs. Oh well, more power to his UAE adventures! Wishing him and his new company the best.

Blackwater Founder Builds Mideast Mercenary Army to Put Down Revolts by Spencer Ackerman

What’s Erik Prince been doing since he sold off Blackwater, the infamous mercenary company he founded and turned into a juggernaut of the private security world? His shadiest, most morally-compromised guns-for-hire scheme yet.

Prince moved to Abu Dhabi last year as legal and governmental scrutiny of Blackwater intensified. “I’m done. It’s all sold or shut down,” he told journalist Robert Young Pelton shortly before boarding his farewell flight. “I’m getting out of the government contracting business.” And provided he meant the U.S. government, that vow has stood the test of time. But his adoptive country is a different story.

Documents obtained by the New York Times indicate that Prince rebooted his efforts in private security to build a praetorian army of mercenaries for the ruling clique in the United Arab Emirates. His new company, Reflex Responses, hires a mixture of Colombian soldiers of fortune and South African vets of Executive Outcomes, the pre-Blackwater merc firm that fought nasty counter-guerilla wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. That’s right: forces from Christian nations hired to protect Muslim leaders, possibly against their own people. And in keeping with Prince’s history, if Reflex is doing business legally — from the perspective of U.S. law — it’s only barely so.

Prince, who conceals his involvement in the firm by using the codename “Kingfish,” takes money from the UAE to ”conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts.” His take: $529 million so far, and the possibility of earning “billions more.” His contract with the UAE lasts until 2015. (Click here for more!)