{"id":34771,"date":"2021-12-05T21:43:22","date_gmt":"2021-12-06T03:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=34771"},"modified":"2021-12-05T21:43:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T03:43:22","slug":"nice-corporation-youve-got-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/12\/05\/nice-corporation-youve-got-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Nice Corporation You’ve Got There"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’d be a pity if happened to that company of – oooooh, too late<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

The five Syrians pulled from their homes by secret police on the same night last year were not insurgents, spies or suspected of being disloyal to the country\u2019s president, Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n

Instead, they were targets in a desperate new phase of Assad\u2019s battle to survive: the hunt for cash.<\/p>\n

All five were executives at Syria\u2019s second-largest cellphone company, MTN Syria, according to individuals familiar with the episode. Their arrests were part of a ruthless campaign by the president to seize MTN\u2019s assets, along with almost every other meaningful source of revenue in Syria\u2019s shattered economy. [WaPo<\/strong>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not only personal endangerment, but corporate as well<\/em>:<\/p>\n

MTN was ultimately brought to its knees four months ago after protracted pressure in which those arrests were followed by demands for multimillion-dollar payments, threats to revoke the company\u2019s operating license and a dubious court ruling that put an Assad loyalist in charge of the company.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every company that funds Republican candidates who think that any Democratic victory is questionable should read that and think about the ignominy that would go with such a failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’d be a pity if happened to that company of – oooooh, too late: The five Syrians pulled from their homes by secret police on the same night last year were not insurgents, spies or suspected of being disloyal to the country\u2019s president, Bashar al-Assad. Instead, they were targets in \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34772,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34771\/revisions\/34772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}