New lawsuit claims Chiquita transported weapons

[struggle4progress]

Source: Palm Beach Post

By JANE MUSGRAVE

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

WEST PALM BEACH — Accused of contributing to the deaths of hundreds of unarmed civilians in Colombia, Chiquita officials have long claimed that no one could connect the $1.7 million they paid to a terrorist organization with the murders.

On Tuesday, attorney Jim Green filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Colombian man who says he watched the terrorist group unload large wooden crates he believed contained firearms from a ship with Chiquita written on its side.

The lawsuit Green filed in federal court is one of 10 against Chiquita Brands International that U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra will consider Friday.

Like the others, Green's lawsuit is on behalf of those who claim relatives were slain by the Chiquita-backed, right-wing group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia ...

Read more: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/05/13/s1b_chiquita_0514.html

[dubeskin]

1. You've gotten dynamite in my banana!

No, you've gotten banana in my dynamite!

[meow2u3]

20. Explosively delicious

[nashville_brook]

2. omfg -- will the Banana Wars never end?

[tctctctc]

3. Yeah, and watch out for charitable orgs, too

at least don't pass up checking their crates...it's an old racket, war is. Even the Red Cross. The Red Cross can go behind lines, no questions asked. Rotary Clubs should be watched. I'm not saying they dont have good people with them...but agents can easily infiltrate and you could understand that kind of advantage. It's also the disarming image they pose. Who would suspect?

Oh yeah...rendition flights. Too cushy. Drugs and Arms is so Skull & Bones, n'est pas?

[KamaAina]

21. Marion "Pat" Robertson uses his "Operation Blessing" to smuggle blood diamonds

how very Christian of him. :sarcasm:

[jeff30997]

4. That's an old Murkan tradition.

1954.Guatemala.United Fruit+CIA = Brutal US supported Dictatorship still in place.

"Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's law firm had prepared United Fruit's contracts with Guatemala; his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, belonged to United Fruit's law firm"

"Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán who became president in democratic elections in 1951..."

"Arbenz continued to implement the liberal policies of Arevalo, and instituted an agrarian reform law to break up the large estates and foster individually owned small farms. The land reform program involved redistribution of 160,000 acres of uncultivated land owned by United Fruit Company. United Fruit was compensated for its land."


"In 1954, Eisenhower and Dulles decided that Arbenz finally had to go, and the US State Department labeled Guatemala "communist". On this pretext, US aid and equipment were provided to the Guatemalan Army. The US also sent a CIA army and CIA planes. They bombed a military base and a government radio station, and overthrew Arbenz Guzmán, who fled to Cuba.

The coup restored the stranglehold on the Guatemalan economy of both the landed elite and US economic interests. President Eisenhower was willing to make the poor, illiterate Guatemalan peasants pay in hunger and torture for supporting land reform, and for trying to attain a better future for themselves and their families. In order to ensure ever-increasing profits for an American corporation, the US State Department, the CIA, and United Fruit Company had succeeded in taking freedom and land from Guatemala's peasants, unions from its workers, and hope for a democratic Guatemala from all of its people. "

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.html

If you happen to be in Dulles International Airport,don't forget to spit on the floor.

[bean fidhleir]

11. Older than that - Smedley Butler was sent to support Chiquita when they were United Fruit

A hundred years of exploitation.

[jeff30997]

19. Smedley Butler ?

The guy who wrote: War is a Racket?

[Peace Patriot]

16. Then Reagan followed up, with aid in killing 200,000 Mayan villagers in Guatemala

on suspicion of being "communists" (for land reform). 200,000 men, women and children slaughtered--while most of us in the U.S. slept through it.

Colombia is one of the last outposts of racist, fascist horror, so, naturally, the Bushites have larded those murderers and drug traffickers with $5.5 BILLION in military aid--to rid Colombia of its "labor problem" and its small peasant farmers, preparatory to the Colombian "free trade" deal.

Oh, and they're trying to create a fascist enclave in Bolivia, by supporting, funding, organizing and--no doubt in my mind--arming the white separatists who want to split off the gas/oil-rich eastern provinces from the central government of Evo Morales--the first indigenous president of Bolivia (a largely indigenous country)--in order to deny benefit of those resources to the poor majority. Since a leftist just won the presidency of Paraguay--and both he and Rafael Correa want the U.S. bases out of their countries--the Bush Cartel has NO strategic ground in the "southern cone" (southern half of South America--all gone leftist). So they are trying to create one artificially with the white "independence" movement.

Their evil is unbounded, and is as active today as it was in the 1980s and the 1950s. The difference, though, in South America, is that South Americans have learned from the horrors that were inflicted on them by the U.S. fascists and their corporate puppetmasters, have worked long and hard at creating sturdy democratic institutions--and, very important, regional cooperation--and have elected democratic, leftist governments now covering virtually the entire continent (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and further north, Nicaragua and Guatemala--and, likely next year, El Salvador and Peru). They are creating a South American "Common Market," and, recently proposed by Brazil, a common defense. They have had it with Reaganites and Bushites and their death squads. Not that these fuckwads can't cause more suffering and chaos. They can. But they won't win, in South America--and they'll be lucky to hang on to a few looting grounds (and drugs/weapons trafficking routes) in Central America.

Lessons for us: 1. Transparent vote counting. 2. Grass roots organization. 3. Think big.

[bulloney]

5. Chiquita is owned by Carl Lindner of Cincinnati.

His empire includes the UDF convenience store chains that were targets of racial discrimination complaints in the 1990s. Until recently, Lindner owned the Cincinnati Reds and drove that once-proud franchise into the ground.

But the RW talk radio idiots like Bill Cunningham (remember him?) talk up Lindner because he's rich and powerful. Any disparaging remarks about Lindner and his business ventures is out of jealousy.

[rucky]

6. damn...I liked UDF

and bananas, too.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Bloody Bananas

Bloody Bananas



Pablo Neruda's poem, La United Fruit Co. is a profound and heartbreaking polemic against one of the most nastiest companies in the world food system. It's a poem worth reading in full, but here's an excerpt ahead of today's story:

When the trumpet sounded,
the land was prepared
and Jehova divided the world
unto Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other beings:
for the United Fruit Company
was reserved the juiciest morsel,
the central coast of my land,
America’s sweet waist.
Baptized as new worlds,
‘Banana Republics’,
and over the sleeping dead
over the unquiet heroes
who conquered greatness,
freedom and flags,
they founded a comic opera.
So, today's big story is this: Chiquita Brands Inc., one of the world's largest banana traders, has settled a US Department of Justice investigation. It has agreed to pay a $25m fine and acknowledged that a subsidiary, Banadex, paid $1.7m to right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia. (Full story here.)

For the company, it's an investment that paid off. While they were paying the paramilitaries, Banadex was Chiquita Brands most profitable subsidiary. And, for Chiquita Brands, this is just the latest in a long history of criminal behaviour that has stretched back over a century and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Because before Chiquita was called Chiquita, it was called The United Fruit Company.

Founded in 1899, the Company was the world's largest banana merchant. At its peak, the company controlled the trade not only in bananas, but also in freight, mail and money across an archipelago of Central American countries.

It guarded its position jealously. Little stood in its way. When locally elected governments tried to curb the company’s power, or when residents of the country organized to alleviate their exploitation, it struck back.

Most famously, the United Fruit Company used its connections in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations – especially through the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whose law firm had represented the company – to argue that Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the president of Guatemala, was about to become a Communist. The reason? Arbenz Guzmán had in mind to buy unused land from the United Fruit Company to give to landless peasants, at the artificially low price at which the Company had declared the land’s value on its tax returns.

In response, the president authorized in 1954 a CIA-backed invasion of Guatemala, Operation PBSUCCESS. The resulting war claimed 200,000 lives, over forty years. The land, however, remained in the Company’s hands. Hence ‘success’.

Incidentally, the CIA operation in Guatemala had a follow-up mission, to scour historical archives for evidence to prove that Guzmán was a Communist puppet. The mission was entitled ‘PBHISTORY’. Despite trawling through over 150,000 pages, no such evidence was found. But the damage continued, for over forty bloody years.

It was through acts such as these that the company earned the name ‘el pulpo’ – the octopus.
(snip)

Chiquita Brands itself is well prepared for a public relations disaster like this. It already has links with the Rainforest Alliance, through which it has achieved "100% compliance" for worker safety. Indeed, the company's defence was, for a while, to assert that it was paying the paramilitaries to protect its workers. It's also part of the UK's Ethical Trading Initiative which, in the words of the company

is a unique alliance of companies, nongovernmental organizations and labor unions working together to advance good practice in business ethics, corporate responsibility and human rights.

With a stock of greenwash like this, it's likely that the company will be able to paint over its slight ethical malfunction, portraying it as an aberration, rather than behaviour entirely in keeping with its past.

More:
http://stuffedandstarved.org/drupal/node/123

http://towardfreedom.com.nyud.net:8090/home/images/stories/April07/1banana.gif

[otherlander]

14. They handed out laurels like Ceasars...

That's the one line I remember.

[formercia]

8. United Fruit: "El Pulpo"

http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/chiquita.htm

History

"The yellow fruit that saw red." Traces United Fruit's background to Boston Fruit Company merged with the interests of Brooklyn-born Central American railroad baron Minor C. Kerith. "Their aim was to own and cultivate large areas of Central American land using well-organized, modern methods, providing predictable harvests of bananas which Keith, who controlled virtually all of Central America's railroads, could then carry to the coast for shipment to the USA......"As the company grew richer and the stakes grew higher, the company came to be known as "El Pulpo" (the Octopus). Local journalists accused it of corrupting government officials, exploiting workers and of generally exercising an influence far beyond its role as a foreign company....Personal financial interest in high places coupled with a general fear that Guatemala was on the brink of fullly embracing communism led to the CIA-engineered coup of 1954. The tremendous power of the United Fruit Company had succeeded in setting back democratic development in Guatemala by at least half a century."

"Under dictator Jorge Ubico (1931-1944), American-owned United Fruit Company gained control of 42% of Guatemela's land, and was exampted from taxes and import duties. The other two of Guatemala's three main enterprises -- International Railways of Central America and Empress Electrica -- were controlled by United Fruit.

1954 Involvement in the Coup against President Arbenz

# In 1954, a CIA-orchestrated coup ended what Guatemalans call the "Ten Years of Spring," which began with the bloodless overthrow of military dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944. During this period, two democratically-elected civilian presidents governed Guatemala, trying to provide opportunities and raise the standard of living. Jacobo Arbenz, elected in 1950, began to push agrarian reforms more seriously than his predecessor. The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) (UFCo) protested when unused portions of its vast holdings were expropriated and distributed to land-less peasants. The Guatemalan government paid the US company the tax-declared value of the land, but UFCo protested to the highest levels of the US government. Two UFCo stockholders at the time were the Dulles brothers, Secretary of State and head of the CIA in the Eisenhower administration. © 1998, Piet van Lear, A War Called Peace

--snip--

[crikkett]

9. But.. I thought bananas were good!

"I like bananas. Bananas are good."
The Doctor's banana from The Doctor Dances.

[formercia]

10. Potatoes have twice as much Potassium as Bananas.

Wake up and smell the Poutine.

[Judi Lynn]

12. What a shame they can buy such power in corruptible governments.

Published on Thursday, November 15, 2007 by Reuters
Chiquita Sued In NY Over Killings In Colombia

NEW YORK - The largest U.S. lawsuit to date against top banana producer Chiquita Brands International was filed on Wednesday, claiming the company funded and armed a Colombian paramilitary organization accused of killing banana growers.

The civil lawsuit seeks a total of $7.86 billion on behalf of 393 victims and their relatives and accuses Chiquita of conspiring with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym AUC, to control Colombia’s banana growing regions.

“It was about acquiring every aspect of banana distribution and sale through a reign of terror,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Jonathan Reiter told reporters in New York. The suit seeks damages for supporting terrorism, war crimes, wrongful death and torture.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/15/5237/

~~~~~~~~~~~
People have tried for so very long to get these guys to justice and they buy their way out and sidestep justice every time. Looking forward to that day it ALL comes back on them, from the early days forward, like a tidal wave.

[Barrett808]

13. Chiquita also transported cocaine to Europe

But Lindner had that story quashed.

[otherlander]

15. This should put a stop to

the "they were just paying protection money" argument.

[jeff30997]

17. Kickin'

This is important news IMHO.

[Quantess]

18. Wow, very interesting.

Bananas and guerillas. No pun intended.