RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: US Firms Face Charges for Aiding Paramilitary Killers (right-wing death squads)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: IPS

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: US Firms Face Charges for Aiding Paramilitary Killers
By Barin Masoud

NEW YORK, Jun 22 (IPS) - Two U.S. corporations operating in war-torn Colombia -- Chiquita Brands International and Drummond Company Inc. -- have been accused of aiding far-right paramilitary groups with alleged ties to the Colombian government. They are facing charges in two separate suits filed in U.S. district courts by plaintiffs seeking justice for human rights abuses.

Chiquita Brands International, the banana giant based in Cincinnati, Ohio, is being sued for its alleged role in the murder of hundreds of Colombian workers killed by paramilitary groups. Drummond Company, a major coal producer based in Birmingham, Alabama, is facing similar charges in the murder of three trade union leaders.

It is estimated that over 4,000 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia in the past two decades alone, reports the AFL-CIO Solidarity Centre.

Fifty-eight Colombian labour activists were killed in 2006, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, while the Escuela Nacional Sindical, a Colombian labour rights group, put the number of killings for that year at 72.


Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38280

[Peace Patriot]

1. I think I heard in the news today that the unions and good Dems got military

aid to Colombia reduced and more social funding, in the Colombian aid bill, but the bill nevertheless lards multi-millions in military aid on the Uribe government, which has very close ties to these rightwing paramilitaries.

This military aid--$4 billion over a several year period--is very misused to drive poor peasants off the land, with toxic pesticide spraying, ostensibly to eradicate the cocaine trade, but really to clear the land of small organic farmers, so the big criminal drug lords can move in, and for Monsanto and others who want the land for biofuel production (monoculture). Policies like these have driven thousands of poor peasants into urban poverty and squalor--and millions throughout South and Central America. The paramilitaries have not only slaughtered thousands of union organizers, small farmers and leftists, they are also heavily into drug trafficking. The military aid also fuels this "war"--I'm sure with misappropriation of equipment and funds, also with torture training, flooding the country with weapons, and a police state mentality--and it clearly has been the hatching place for rightwing plots.

I'm glad the good guys got some concessions, but I am not at all happy with this bill. Congress is wasting ten million dollars setting up Bushite propaganda TV/radio broadcasts to Venezuela--a country that is already drenched in rightwing broadcasting of a most virulent kind. The vast majority of Venezuelans ignore it all, anyway. They know what's what. But the WRONG priorities of this Congress are appalling. Colombia should not get one penny more in military aid. And ten million bucks for propaganda, while hundreds of thousands struggle to put food on the table, is just obscene. Why aren't they HELPING poor people--like the new leftist governments in the Andes are doing--instead of trying to fuck with their minds, and giving massive weaponry to the worst government in South America--Colombia?!

[Judi Lynn]

8. It's a screaming insult to see how large the budget is STILL going to be for them, after all the

debate, and questioning, after seeing how many of their national assembly has been caught with connections to the death squads, as well as members of Uribe's own cabinet.

It seemed our Congress just might be poised to do something important here: instead they knuckled right under, even after talking about wanting to take a closer look at the human rights problems, and the way Colombia treats the workers, and the displaced persons who are described by the United Nations as a humanitarian crisis, considering there are MILLIONS who have been driven out of their homes....

Jesus H. Christ.

Here's the new deal you mentioned worked out by our Congress:

The House approved 530.6 million dollars for the program -- some 60 million less that the government of President George W. Bush requested.

The revised Plan Colombia cuts the military aid portion of the plan from 36 of funds to 26 percent.

Colombia, Washington's closest ally in Latin America, however still has some 300 million dollars worth of military aid tucked away in the Pentagon budget.
(snip)

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_House_approves_slimmer_modified__06222007.html

Some new deal, isn't it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Saw this story yesterday, have been waiting to see what the AP and Reuters stories will be: don't hold your breath. Apparently, no one at the N.Y. Times or the Washington Post or any other US paper felt inclined to inform the public of this huge award to the right-wing government which has been the US'S 3RD LARGEST AID GRABBER for years.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All this, after Al Gore publicly called attention to the murder of union workers, peasants, became possible when _Bush friend, President Uribe executed his "end around" play, and went to Bill Clinton to get help, and hired Hillary Clinton's PR firm to handle Colombia's PR during the time he was working Congress for the funds.

[enough]

2. K&R

[whistle]

3. This is a disgrace for any major American firm like these two corporations

....to use murder and terrorism in order to prevent labor from organizing.

[farmbo]

4. Chiquita Brands = Carl Lindner = The Banana Republican

http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=196963

This Cincinnati- based malefactor gave $200,000 to Bush Cheney'04 and another $200,000 to Bush's Inaugural.

While he uses his checkbook to obtain his objectives in the US, it appears he has resorted to more unsavory means --right wing death squads-- to work his will in Columbia.

There must be a special place in Hell for these people.

[fed-up]

5. and how many of these killers are working for Blackwater in Iraq? nt

[0007]

6. Black Water has tens of thousand mercenaries in Iraq....

This family owned business is just as rotten and greedy!

Estate of Rodriquez v. Drummond Co.

In April 2003, the U.S. District Court in Alabama hearing the case against Drummond allowed a suit brought by Sintraminergetica and families of killed relatives to go ahead, Estate of Rodriquez v. Drummond Co..<1> Sintraminergetica has sued the Drummond Coal Company for allegedly conspiring with paramilitary groups to exterminate the union. This suit was brought after years of abuses ranging from forcing potential employees to undergo lie detector tests to reveal their political affiliation as a condition of employment, to the assassination of union leaders, their displacement from the mining zones, and accusations made against them of being guerilla supporters. On March 12, 2001, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita Amaya, the President and Vice President of the union local, were taken from a company bus en route from the mine to their homes. Locarno was assassinated with two shots in the head in front of his coworkers. Over the protests of the workers, Orcasita was taken away in a truck. The next day his body was found, with obvious signs of torture. On October 5 of the same year, under similar circumstances, Gustavo Soler, the union's new president, was taken from a bus, taken away in a pick-up, tortured, and killed. His body was found on October 7 by people from the area. The court ruled that Sintraminergetica has standing to bring suit against Garry Drummond and the Colombian managers of the company under the Alien Torts Claims Act. The crimes committed violate ILO pacts and agreements, and are also crimes against humanity and war crimes, according to U.S. and International Law.

Drummond Company has brought many jobs to the country and a level of stability to mostly poor coregimiento of La Loma, Cesar which has suffered civil unrest and corruption scandals. The company established a village for the mine workers and their families to live. The Drummond family established a school in the town for the mine workers children.
More..

[acmavm]

7. The democratic party isn't very picky who they take money from either...

<snip>
What he got: The World Trade Organization forced European Union nations to open their markets to Chiquita bananas, while Lindner gave substantial financial support to the Democratic Party under former President Bill Clinton and to President George W. Bush. The move by the WTO accelerated a trade dispute between the EU and the United States that, in 2003, threatened to add more than $6 billion in tariffs on U.S. products, including $2.2 billion in tariffs on products manufactured in political battleground states.
<snip>

<snip>
BACKGROUND:
From his seat as chairman and CEO of American Financial Group (AFG), Carl Lindner oversees nearly $20 billion in assets. AFG, which serves as a holding company for the Lindner family’s financial interests – which once included Chiquita Brands International, the world’s largest banana distributor – controls vast insurance operations and real estate across the country. Its holdings include the Great American Insurance Company, Great American Financial Resources, Inc., and Provident Financial Group Inc., which National City Corp. recently bought in a $2.1 billion stock deal. (That deal is expected to give Lindner and AFG nearly $1 billion in bank stock.) Its real estate holdings include luxury hotels and New York’s Grand Central Station. Lindner is known for contributing to politicians of both parties; in the past 10 years, Chiquita and Lindner have contributed $6.4 million to Democratic and Republican political campaigns alike. In 2000, Lindner and Chiquita Brands gave Bush and former Vice President Al Gore $200,000 each. Since then, his giving has leaned more Republican: He gave $200,000 to the Bush-Cheney inauguration in 2001, double the $100,000 contribution limit (the inaugural committee refunded the excess money, only to have Lindner funnel the money through AFG). During the 2002 Senate elections, Lindner and his family contributed $450,000 to Republicans. In the 2004 presidential campaign, Lindner was one of the first 23 “Rangers” who raised at least $200,000 in bundled contributions for Bush. He hosted a September 2003 fundraiser at his home in the Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill, which raised an estimated $1.7 million for Bush.

<snip>


WHAT HAPPENED:
As the former chairman of Chiquita Brands International, Lindner exerted significant influence in a U.S. trade policy decision over the past decade. In July 1993, the European Union began reserving 8 percent of its banana imports for its former African and Caribbean colonies. Lindner claimed the quota system gave an unfair advantage to those producers over Chiquita. Meanwhile, Chiquita claimed the quota would halve its share of the European market – estimated at 22 percent before the quota took effect. But the quota system was even more critical for farmers in the former colonies, who produced few crops and depended on access to European markets. In a 1996 meeting with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Terry Telemaque, a banana farmer from Dominica, predicted dire consequences if Chiquita succeeded. “If they squeeze us out, we will be the ones that suffer,” he said. “Some big men are trying to do us cruelty because when you take away a man’s daily bread, you take away my livelihood. You send me on common crime. You send me to steal. You force me to (grow and sell) drugs.”

Nevertheless, Lindner lobbied the Clinton administration to join Latin American nations in asking the World Trade Organization (WTO) to examine the EU trade quota. On April 11, 1996, the Clinton administration filed its complaint with the WTO. The next day, Lindner gave more than $500,000 in soft money to Democratic parties in nearly two dozen states. In 1997, the WTO ruled the EU banana quota was illegal and ordered the nations to develop new trade rules for bananas. When the EU refused, the U.S. slapped tariffs on European luxury items. The banana struggle finally seemed to reach an end in 2001, when the U.S. and the EU agreed to phase out the quota system by 2006. In exchange, the U.S. would eliminate its retaliatory sanctions on European luxury items, which by 2001 had totaled $191 million.
-MORE-

http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=196963

[Judi Lynn]

9. Oh, God. The closing paragraph of your article really hits hard:

In 1954, the United Fruit Company (Chiquita’s predecessor) participated in a coup in Guatemala that removed a democratically elected president, a move giving new meaning to the term “banana republic.” Now, thanks to the bidding of its former chairman, Carl Lindner, Chiquita appears to have found a new “banana republic” in the halls of Congress and the Clinton and Bush II White Houses. While Lindner opened European markets for Chiquita bananas, it came at a high cost: more expensive goods for American citizens; the threat of fewer jobs in industries that buy American-manufactured steel; and certain economic instability for Caribbean and African nations and its citizens.
(snip)

Unbelievable power wielded by these total scums. The suffering to human beings unlucky enough to be caught in their traps by poverty, unable to simply pick up and move somewhere else, or chose to work elsewhere is beyond reckoning.

[acmavm]

10. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?

We have to take our country back. Liars and thieves on BOTH sides of the political sprectrum have made out country an international pariah.

And this is part of old Billy Boy's legacy. He is NOT the martyred saint people make him out to be.

[pork medley]

12. isn't the free market great? there's something for everyone

[Judi Lynn]

11. COLOMBIA: Civil Resistance Aimed at Recuperating Biodiverse Lands

COLOMBIA: Civil Resistance Aimed at Recuperating Biodiverse Lands
By Zilia Castrillón

CHOCÓ, Colombia, Jun 23 (IPS/IFEJ) - Indigenous and black communities of Colombia's north-western department of Chocó are trying to recover their lands and food sources, lost to the decades-long civil war that has taken its toll on this area of vast biological diversity.

Alirio Mosquera, legal representative of the community councils that unite the 3,000 inhabitants of the Cacarica River basin on the Bajo Atrato (lower Atrato River), is working to combine community production projects with the peaceful resistance to the Colombian internal conflict that has lasted a half-century.

"The people need their land returned in order to recover their traditional practices," Mosquera said in an interview.

He was elected May 20 after a long struggle as logistical coordinator for the return of more than 700 families displaced in 1997 by violence by the army and right-wing paramilitary groups, which ended in land being seized or illegally purchased by agribusiness and forestry companies.
(snip/...)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38290

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. In the Letters column of the (UK) Daily Mail, they published a letter from an executive

of Blackwater, roundly repudiating the accusation that the flights of US planes into UK airbases were on "rendition" missions, stating - no, don't laugh - that the men involved were merely private contractors of the Blackwater Corporation! Love it! And don't tell me the Daily Mail staff didn't know who and what Blackwater are.

A leopard doesn't change its spots. Mussolini and Hitler were the cat's whiskers with the Daily Mail in their day. I wrote a letter on the subject of their shameless white-wash of Blackwater's executive (and something else in the same issue), in full knowledge of how little, if anything at all, most people would know about them, about who and what they are. The spirit of imperialsm dies hard in the soft underbelly of the upper classes.

[Doctor_J]

14. Charges? I am surpsied they don't get Freedom Medals

Since when has the US been against SA death squads?

:shrug: