60 MINUTES TONIGHT: Story on Colombia Paramilitary and Chiquita

It is the first story.

The "60 Minutes" host TOTALLY omitted any reference to the fact that Chiquita paid AUC to murder union workers. Instead, they're going with their tired, worn out lie about they paid them to "protect our workers," oh, please!

Protect them from wages owed any human being for his labor!

Of course you've heard the claim that if business pays workers what they actually earn they wouldn't make a profit. Sad.

At least this information in PART is finally getting out. Better some than none at all!

Did you see it? What was your impression?

leader, powerful AUC monster, who is currently in prison, tell the interviewer that even though he's perfectly willing to tell anything and everything about his business with U.S. companies which gave him money, NO ONE FROM THE _BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS CONTACTED HIM to find out what other companies also made payments to the death squads. He said there hasn't been one peep from Washington.

Funny, isn't it, that the _Bush "Justice" Department is not interested in learning the identities of U.S. companies doing business in Colombia which also are connected to death squads?

It's EXACTLY what you'd expect from an administration run by criminals, but NOT by good, law-respecting, decent people.

and the US gov't. wishes they both would drop dead.

off a short pier, for sure.

They've both done the right-wing's bidding, but they're dangerous to them now.

What happened to Carlos Castaño?

I guess Mancuso feels lucky, considering what happened to his fellow death-squad, narcotrafficking paramilitary warlord monster!

Did you ever hear the rumor that although Castaño was murdered with his bodyguards by people sent by his brother, he, himself, had his older brother killed long ago? It's a case of karma not taking so long to catch up with someone.

How many people would have mourned his passing, one wonders!

Colombian paramilitary warlords extradited
Posted on Tue, May. 13, 2008
BY TYLER BRIDGES
tbridges@MiamiHerald.com

In a surprise move, the Colombian government early Tuesday morning extradited 14 notorious paramilitary warlords to the United States, where they are wanted on cocaine-trafficking charges.
(snip)

The paramilitary leaders, Holguín said, continued to engage in criminal activities behind bars in Colombia and failed to make reparations to victims, in violation of a 2003 pact under which they surrendered and received lenient terms.

The massive extradition comes at a time when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is facing accusations that he and senior leaders of his party -- including many members of Congress -- have had close ties with the right-wing paramilitary leaders. Uribe was expected to address the Colombian people Tuesday morning to explain what was happening and why.

Among those extradited were Salvatore Mancuso, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo (better known as ''Jorge 40''), Diego Fernando Murillo (``Don Berna''), Hernán Giraldo, alias ``Pablo Sevillano,'' and Ramiro ''Cuco'' Vanoy.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/531206.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Almost as if by magic, the stollen White House was ready with all kinds of remarks about it:


White House Hopeful Colombia Extradition Can Boost Trade Pact

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The White House is hopeful that Colombia's extradition of paramilitary warlords to the U.S. can help lift the Colombia trade agreement's prospects in Congress.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the administration is still " dismayed" that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hasn't allowed lawmakers to vote on the trade pact, a situation that may doom the deal.

But Colombia's decision to extradite 14 leaders of illegal militias - many accused of drug trafficking - to the U.S. could ease some lawmakers' concerns that Bogota isn't doing enough to fight the spread of drugs.

"We can certainly hope that this would persuade Congress, the Democratic leaders in Congress, specifically Speaker Pelosi, that she would see this as yet another sign, but I would point out to you that this is not the first time that these types of extraditions have taken place," Perino said.

The House voted last month to suspend a 90-day deadline Congress was facing to hold a vote on the Colombian trade deal. Democrats say they are unlikely to revive the agreement until the White House agrees to back some of their domestic economic priorities, potentially including a second stimulus package.

http://www.international.na">~~~~ link ~~~~

Looks as if they decided they've got to go for broke, pull out all the stops in order to pressure Democrats into rewarding the corporations by agreeing to the free trade agreement.

On edit:

We can be assured, since Mancuso said no one from the White House EVER contacted him to find out more about U.S. corporations and their ties to the death squads, that the subject certainly isn't going to be broached, now, either, even if he's going to be here for a while.

n/t

That's So Alvaro!

Remember all of those Colombian paramilitary leaders who were exposing the connections between Alvaro Uribe's administration and right-wing terrorist groups? They were all extradited to the U.S. in the middle of the night, where they will be tried for drug trafficking...and nothing else.

"Claudia Lopez, an independent investigator who helped uncover the paramilitary-political scandal fears criminal cases against politicians will now end: 'They've taken away all the witnesses,' she said Tuesday."

http://www.borev.net/2008/05/thats_so_alvaro_2.html

http://snipurl.com/28qok

One hand washes the other.

lets take murder. are you saying the US should pass a law making it a crime for Colombians to kill Colombians in Colombia?

why not for other countries then too?

I'm curious about your position on the paras. do you want them punished or not?

if I am not mistaken, the voluntary dissolution of the paras (and those rebels if they would agree) is accompanied by a reduced prison term and a promise NOT to extradite to the US providing they abide by the terms of their imprisonment.


also, taking the political angle, lets suppose it is just a political stunt by Uribe in order to gain favor for the FTA. Democrats in Congress are the bulk of the opposition because Colombia hasn't "done enough" to bring murderers of trade union members to justice. OK, so Colombia acts to further punish paras by following through with their threat of extradiction for political motivations. what is the difference what Colombia's motivations are if the result is the same? is this a case of "intervention" by the US (Democrats in this instance who oppose the FTA? when does political pressure become intervention in your estimation?

serious about cracking down on terrorists, while simultaneously removing the death squad leaders to a place where they won't be questioned about where the bodies are buried, and what people in the administration they can identify for total connections to the massacres, land theft, vote fraud, voter coercion, assassination of political opponents, press intimidation, etc.

Gets them out of the country at a time it has seemed "investigations" are just around the corner, so there won't be any surprises they can't control.

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