Life is cheap. If you’re brown.

Blackwater settles civil lawsuits over Iraq deaths

By MIKE BAKER, Associated Press Writer

Thu Jan 7, 4:34 pm ET

RALEIGH, N.C. – The security firm formerly known as Blackwater has reached a settlement in a series of federal lawsuits in which dozens of Iraqis accused the company of cultivating a reckless culture that allowed innocent civilians to be killed.

It was a princely settlement- $30,000 for each person wounded and $100,000 for people who were murdered.

Not all the plaintiffs appeared happy with the decision. Sami Hawas Hamoud Abu al-Iz also was wounded during the 2007 Nisoor Square incident along with his son. His mother was killed. He said the agreement came after the plaintiffs were told by their lawyers that there was a risk that they might not receive anything.

The lawsuits sought compensation for deaths and injuries. Unlike federal probes that have specifically targeted company contractors for their actions, the civil lawsuits accused the Moyock, N.C.-based company – and founder Erik Prince – of producing a climate in which it was acceptable for innocent Iraqis to die.

“Mr. Prince personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army … to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians,” one of the lawsuits said.

But you know you can’t let pesky things like that affect the bottom line.  This is a free market economy, not socialism.

“This enables Xe’s new management to move the company forward free of the costs and distraction of ongoing litigation, and provides some compensation to Iraqi families,” the company said.

They hate us for our freedoms you know, like the freedom to fire Hellfire missiles from drones at anything that moves, just like wolves from a helicopter.

Faithless Heathens: Scriptural Economics of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Two of the dead, Jeremy Wise, 35, a former member of the Navy Seals from Virginia Beach, Va., and Dane Clark Paresi, 46, of Dupont, Wash., were security officers for Xe Services, the firm formerly known as Blackwater.

As long as it’s brown and furrin’.

Because we’re not cowards!

The problem is that these mooslim rag heads don’t value life like us bible believin’ ‘muricans.

Update:

Two ex-Blackwater staff charged with Afghan murders

AFP

Thu Jan 7, 8:36 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Two former Blackwater employees have been charged with the murder of two Afghans in Kabul last year and could face the death penalty, the Justice Department said.

Justin Cannon, 27, of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Christopher Drotleff, 29, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, have been charged with second-degree murder following the shooting deaths of the two Afghan men.

They were also charged with attempted murder, after a third man was wounded in the Kabul incident on May 5, when Cannon and Drotleff were working as contractors for the Department of Defense in Afghanistan.

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  1. Rhyme of The Three Captains

    By Rudyard Kipling

    . . . At the close of a winter day,

    Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;

    And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,

    And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby,

    And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall,

    And he was Captain of the Fleet–the bravest of them all.

    Their good guns guarded their great gray sides that were thirty foot in the sheer,

    When there came a certain trading-brig with news of a privateer.

    Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze,

    Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas.

    Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled,

    And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold.

    “I ha’ paid Port dues for your Law,” quoth he, “and where is the Law ye boast

    If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast?

    Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk,

    We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk;

    I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare

    Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.

    “There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore,

    And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.

    “He would not fly the Rovers’ flag–the bloody or the black,

    But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack.

    He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew–he swore it was only a loan;

    But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own.

    “He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line,

    He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green unripened pine;

    He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas,

    He has taken my grinning heathen gods–and what should he want o’ these?

    My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his boats;

    He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats.

    “I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside,

    But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied.

    “Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,

    I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;

    I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,

    And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;

    I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,

    I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;

    I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,

    And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;

    I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i’ the mesh,

    And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh;

    I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws,

    Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab’s claws!

    He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow,

    For he carries the taint of a musky ship–the reek of the slaver’s dhow!”

    The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold,

    And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted hold,

    And the Captains Three called courteously from deck to scuttle-butt:–

    “Good Sir, we ha’ dealt with that merchantman or ever your teeth were cut.

    “Your words be words of a lawless race, and the Law it standeth thus:

    He comes of a race that have never a Law, and he never has boarded us.

    “We ha’ sold him canvas and rope and spar–we know that his price is fair,

    And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides off Finisterre.

    “And since he is damned for a gallows-thief by you and better than you,

    We hold it meet that the English fleet should know that we hold him true.”

    The skipper called to the tall taffrail:–“And what is that to me?

    Did ever you hear of a Yankee brig that rifled a Seventy-three?

    Do I loom so large from your quarter-deck that I lift like a ship o’ the Line?

    He has learned to run from a shotted gun and harry such craft as mine.

    “There is never a Law on the Cocos Keys to hold a white man in,

    But we do not steal the niggers’ meal, for that is a nigger’s sin.

    “Must he have his Law as a quid to chaw, or laid in brass on his wheel?

    Does he steal with tears when he buccaneers? ‘Fore Gad, then, why does he steal?”

    The skipper bit on a deep-sea word, and the word it was not sweet,

    For he could see the Captains Three had signalled to the Fleet.

    But three and two, in white and blue, the whimpering flags began:–

    “We have heard a tale of a–foreign sail, but he is a merchantman.”

    The skipper peered beneath his palm and swore by the Great Horn Spoon:–

    “‘Fore Gad, the Chaplain of the Fleet would bless my picaroon!”

    By two and three the flags blew free to lash the laughing air:–

    “We have sold our spars to the merchantman–we know that his price is fair.”

    The skipper winked his Western eye, and swore by a China storm:–

    “They ha’ rigged him a Joseph’s jury-coat to keep his honour warm.”

    The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,

    The skipper spat in the empty hold and mourned for a wasted cord.

    Masthead–masthead, the signal sped by the line o’ the British craft;

    The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed:–

    “It’s mainsail haul, my bully boys all–we’ll out to the seas again–

    Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub at his grapnel-chain.

    “It’s fore-sheet free, with her head to the sea, and the swing of the unbought brine–

    We’ll make no sport in an English court till we come as a ship o’ the Line:

    Till we come as a ship o’ the Line, my lads, of thirty foot in the sheer,

    Lifting again from the outer main with news of a privateer;

    Flying his pluck at our mizzen-truck for weft of Admiralty,

    Heaving his head for our dipsey-lead in sign that we keep the sea.

    “Then fore-sheet home as she lifts to the foam–we stand on the outward tack,

    We are paid in the coin of the white man’s trade–the bezant is hard, ay, and black.

    “The frigate-bird shall carry my word to the Kling and the Orang-Laut

    How a man may sail from a heathen coast to be robbed in a Christian port;

    How a man may be robbed in Christian port while Three Great Captains there

    Shall dip their flag to a slaver’s rag–to show that his trade is fair!”

    • TMC on January 8, 2010 at 17:34

    in criminal court  now appears to be the tactic that will be used by the Justice Department. All Xe has to do is put fear in to the civil litigants by pointing out that the criminal charges were dismissed and offer a settlement. Hoe clever.

    Yup, the foxes are in charge of the hen house

  2. and Xe and Goldman Sachs and friends seem to have split the booty between our ‘economy’ and ‘foreign policy’ in our peaceful transition of power (as DiFi described it at the inaugural). How come these freaky hired Christian killers are still under contract? I think this whole revival of the war on terra replete with the underpants bomber (jeeze can’t they find a patsy that’s not so idiotic) is all just so they can widen the killing field which now includes Yeman.

    The ‘news’ has gone into full blast propaganda mode even on Rachael and KO It’s wall to wall scary Muslims and even scarier teabaggers, and the Cheney contingecy. Meanwhile the spooks have unleashed their revenge drones on Pakistan and Rachael reported it as 15 terrorists killed. No mention of who else was killed. No mention of the kids handcuffed and killed by the spooks? and nobody is asking why Xe is still working for us. You know it’s trouble when they start talking ‘high value’ targets like humans are a grade of meat. US prime kills, the collateral damage isn’t even rated.        

  3. and Xe and Goldman Sachs and friends seem to have split the booty between our ‘economy’ and ‘foreign policy’ in our peaceful transition of power (as DiFi described it at the inaugural). How come these freaky hired Christian killers are still under contract? I think this whole revival of the war on terra replete with the underpants bomber (jeeze can’t they find a patsy that’s not so idiotic) is all just so they can widen the killing field which now includes Yeman.

    The ‘news’ has gone into full blast propaganda mode even on Rachael and KO It’s wall to wall scary Muslims and even scarier teabaggers, and the Cheney contingecy. Meanwhile the spooks have unleashed their revenge drones on Pakistan and Rachael reported it as 15 terrorists killed. No mention of who else was killed. No mention of the kids handcuffed and killed by the spooks? and nobody is asking why Xe is still working for us. You know it’s trouble when they start talking ‘high value’ targets like humans are a grade of meat. US prime kills, the collateral damage isn’t even rated.        

  4. init usa() {

        if (doj == justice && system == works) {

             blackwater = criminal;

        } else {

             settlement = 30000;

             surprise = 0;

             disappointment = 1;

             vomit << “Hearty chunks of disgust”;

        }

        return 0;

    }

    I think that should properly compile my feelings about this and hold me to my commitment not to get side tracked from my course of study today.

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