{"id":190594,"date":"2009-11-11T11:43:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-11T16:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/11\/11\/least-surprising-news-of-the-day-20\/"},"modified":"2009-11-11T11:43:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-11T16:43:00","slug":"least-surprising-news-of-the-day-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/11\/11\/least-surprising-news-of-the-day-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Least Surprising News of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img690.imageshack.us\/img690\/2647\/12902435302879339819071.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"400\" \/>The <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">New York Times<\/span> is now reporting that mercenary corporation <span>Blackwater<\/span> (now Xe) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/11\/world\/middleeast\/11blackwater.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;pagewanted=all\">approved over a million dollars in bribes to Iraqi officials<\/a> in order to continue to operate in Iraq:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 102);\"><p>Top executives at <span>Blackwater<\/span> Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which <span>Blackwater<\/span> security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.<\/p>\n<p><span>Blackwater<\/span> approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in <span>Nisour<\/span> Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company\u2019s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for <span>Blackwater<\/span>\u2019s ouster from the country, and company officials feared that <span>Blackwater<\/span> might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So they violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and, if you go down further, it looks like they were paying off victims and witnesses in order to secure their silence during the FBI investigation.<\/p>\n<p><span>Srsly<\/span>, <span>prosecushuns<\/span>, now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times is now reporting that mercenary corporation Blackwater (now Xe) approved over a million dollars in bribes to Iraqi officials in order to continue to operate in Iraq: Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1052,1063,972,1179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-crimes","category-iraq","category-justice","category-mercenaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}