When it comes to our corporatocracy,it is always about the $. There are no good guys or bad guys; there is only our bad guys who will cooperate with us, and their bad guys who will not play our game with corporate rules. I am sure this is not an epiphany to most of you, but this article only proves the point.

Whole foods sells these banannas.

Suzi Cole Hiett said:

"For centuries boycotting has been effective against bullies. We have to employ this time honored tool and systematically boycott all products and services that lie, cheat, overcharge, and oh yes, kill others."

But then what will we buy???

Seriously, corporations dominate every aspect of our lives, from our clothes to our food to how we move around to our entertainment to our news....

Boycotting is a great idea anyway. I've been boycotting most big brand products for years. What I try to do is limit my spending as much as possible to mostly what I really need, buy it at local family businesses or from local farmers, and try to buy everything else secondhand at garage sales or second-hand stores. Oh, and drive less if you can. Walk or ride a bike.

Or if you have a lot of money you're investing, maybe disinvest from the corporations and re-invest in making your house self-sustainable... Wind turbines, a cistern for rain water, a garden...

These things have varying levels of accessibility in various places for various people, but anything you can do is beneficial.

Good info from canuckchuck. I have been wanting to delve into the background of both Latin America and S. America and wanted to know if anyone out there would recommend a good, historical book written by a noted journalist regarding the politics involved with big business and government. What has been going on in our southern hemisphere has not been given much press, and when people such as former Bush runs and owns corporations such as UFO, I find it imperative that this information should have reached the voters before he ran for President. Information such as this is especially important to voters regarding all of the Presidential hopefuls that will be hitting us with propaganda via tv. etc.

Similarly, keep in mind the murder of union organizers in Columbia by thugs hired by Coca-Cola.

If all sorts of agribusinesses can be sued for their complicity in global slaughter, then the global exploitation business will dry up.

Perhaps we need a local food movement. Maybe this will help.

I've always felt that there were two branches of government. One branch, twelve citizens in a jury room, is the branch that works, the branch that gives us civil rights. The other branch, Washington, is bought and sold.

There's somthing else going on here. Rightwing-leftwing - irrelevant. The amounts, what they're based on, irrelevant. The heartwarming details, irrelevant.

"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."

Unless you've been in a coma for the last 100 years, you must be at least vaguely aware that the US has had military bases in most SA countries, from which it supplies and launches its own military to "protect American interests overseas" (look a the messes in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Cuba; remember the fighting communism garbage? still believe that line of hooey?). One of its major resources is the international black market in drugs and arms and the vast sums it makes available for (para)miltary and corruption. (Anyway, hasn't Blackwater blurred the distinction between military and paramilitary? Ollie North, between legan and illegal?)

The staggering arrogance of the US in suing Chiquita for the very same things the US is doing and on a much larger, more vicious scale everywhere, is truly stunning. The biggest vicious gang of armed thugs (military-paramiltary, tomayto-tomahto)on the planet right now is the US. Somebody ought to go after them. But who's left? Whoever is behind this suit is after extending its own gang territory, that's all. Look for that.

Of course, the money isn't going to go to the victims! That's not who it's intended for! Victims-shmictims - they're just the pretext (Nawlenz is still in your memory, yes?) It's a completely different game! Sheesh! At least, the Mafia was honest about being crooks.

Somebody please catch on and tackle this on a level other than legal niceties. It's waaay bigger and nastier than you realize.

"The company was forced to make such payments to both right and left wing organizations..." Actually, I find this to be a highly-credible statement. I think this is why it is so difficult to stop the plutocrats. They can couple legitimate concerns with the desire for monopoly while always creating a cushion of "plausible deniability". But, at least, they're going to have to defend themselves in court for a change. I, for one, take some encouragement in that.

The "Bloody Banana!"

For centuries boycotting has been effective against bullies. We have to employ this time honored tool and systematically boycott all products and services that lie, cheat, overcharge, and oh yes, kill others.

Why was Chiquita paying extortion? Why didn't they take the honorable route and hire Blackwater?

Smedley Butler- good to see that mention, and that is a free read available online (though I have a copy and think it is a great addition to any home library). Think I'll read it again, over the holidays...
http://www.questionwar.com/war_is_a_racket.html
While you're at it, "The War Prayer", by Mark Twain (FYI Twain was one of Nikola Tesla's best friends):
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-war.htm
One more, "Robber Barons" by Matthew Josephson:
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=13529226

Unfortunately most Americans are totally ignorant of the "banana" terrorism in Latin America.

That's only one of the problems of our "suicidal" foreign policy...

We are finished as a nation; finished as an attempt at democratic government....welcome fascism!!

sierra

Good old curmudgeon! If one studies the Marine Corps Hymn, it is obvious that there is a long long history of the US invading Central American countries in the name of "American Interests". The link to the Bush family is notorious, but I don't think it was W's daddy, rather an older progenitor who began a local "development" bank which ultimately became a branch of the US Government about the time of the FDR administration. Another person of interest is a fellow by the name of William Walker. Prescott Bush has denied any familial relationship, but has closed his ancestry to scrutiny from all the geneological records I can find on line. William Walker was sponsored by the Vanderbilt fortune and was recognized as the president of Honduras in the mid-nineteenth century after leading a military coup. I believe that a study of the Bush family will show their participation in the triangle slave trade as well as in war profiteering dating back to our revolutionary war. Bad folks from way back who have just been forgiven by history too many times. Curmudgeon is right about reading Smedley Butler's history and writings. He truly is an unsung American hero, he's been largely ignored by history because of his book War is a Racket, opposing US corporate exploitation in the western hemisphere, and his blowing the whistle on a planned coup of FDR by JP Morgan, et al. There otta be a national holiday in his honor.

Read about USMC General Smedley Butler and his take on our invasions in central america (including San Salvador & Nicaraugua)during 20s & 30s in support of Chiquita and other US corporations.

Jez, Canuck! This one obviously rang your bell. Thanks for the history lesson. I don't get the connection to Iraq though. Unless you are talking about the US/CIA demolishing democratically elected governments with dictatorships for the last 100 years.

I mean, lets get real here. You think the corporatocy wants to deal with the real people of any country? It's so much easier to just buy off one guy. After all, dictatorships don't require all that nonsense of treaties and legislation that has to be actually agreed to by all the riff raff. What a pain!

Let's just cut to the chase here. The corporations run the world, including America. And they aren't just above the law. They don't recognize any law anywhere, any time. It's all about the bottom line. PROFITS.

Too bad the MSM won't be helping anybody connect the dots the way Canuck just did for us.

Thanks

I'm a Chiquita Banana and I'm sad to say,
We've killed and tortured workers for the USA!
You'll know when I beat you...I'm CHIQUITA!!

The capital of the United Fruit Company empire was in Guatemala, in the town of Bananera, where it made its headquarters. From here it master-minded its empire and corrupted every level of government and politics in Guatemala. United Fruit also managed to exempt itself from virtually all taxes for 99 years. UFCO had its fingers in almost every pie in Guatemala. UFCO had the unconditional support of right-wing dictators who maintained their power by terrorizing the people and arresting prominent citizens who were either killed on the spot or tortured in prison to extract confessions. During one wave of repression under Jorge Ubico, hundreds were killed in just two days.

In 1944, the people of Guatemala overthrew the right-wing dictator then in power, Jorge Ubico. Guatemala held its first true elections in history. They elected Dr. Juan Jose Arevalo Bermej to the presidency. A new constitution was drawn up, based on the U.S. Constitution. Arevalo was a socialist and an educator who built over 6,000 schools in Guatemala and made great progress in education and health care.

At this time in Guatemala, just 2.2 percent of the population owned over 70 percent of the country's land. Only 10 percent of the land was available for 90 percent of the population, most of whom were Indians. Most of the land held by the large landowners was unused. Arevalo was succeeded in another free election by Jacobo Arbenz who continued the reform process begun under Arevalo. Arbenz proposed to redistribute some of the unused land and make it available for the 90 percent to farm. Here is where the problem arose: United Fruit was one of the big holders of unused land in Guatemala. The pressure mounted against UFCO and finally the company complained to the many friends it had within the U.S. government including President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, saying that Guatemala had turned communist.

The U.S. State Department and United Fruit embarked on a major public relations campaign to convince the American people and the rest of the U.S. government that Guatemala was a Soviet "satellite".

"It [United Fruit] began with enviable connections to the Eisenhower administration. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his former New York law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, had long represented the company. Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, had served on UFCO's board of trustees. Ed Whitman, the company's top public relations officer, was the husband of Ann Whitman, President Eisenhower's private secretary. (Ed Whitman produced a film, "Why the Kremlin Hates Bananas," that pictured UFCO fighting in the front trenches of the cold war.) The fruit firm's success in linking the taking of its lands to the evil of international communism was later described by one UFCO official as "the Disney version of the episode." But the company's efforts paid off. It picked up the expenses of journalists who traveled to Guatemala to learn United Fruit's side of the crisis, and some of the most respected North American publications - including the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and New Leader - ran stories that pleased the company. A UFCO public relations official later observed that his firm helped condition North American readers to accept the State Department's version of the Arbenz regime as Communist-controlled and the U.S.-planned invasion as wholly Guatemalan." (Quoted from Inevitable Revolutions - The United States in Central America by Walter La Feber, 2nd ed. 1993, pp. 120-121.

The campaign succeeded and in 1954 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated a coup, code-named "Operation PBSUCCESS". The invading force numbered only 150 men under the command of Castillo Armas but the CIA convinced the Guatemalan public and President Arbenz that a major invasion was underway. The CIA set up a clandestine radio station to carry propaganda, jammed all Guatemalan stations, and hired skilled American pilots to bomb strategic points in Guatemala City. The U.S. replaced the freely elected government of Guatemala with another right-wing dictatorship that would again bend to UFCO's will.

The United Fruit Company was a major American corporation that traded tropical fruit (primarily bananas and pineapples) grown in Third World plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 from the merger of Minor C. Keith's banana-trading concerns with the Boston Fruit Company. It flourished in the early and mid-20th century and came to control vast territories and transportation networks in Central America, the Caribbean coast of Colombia, Ecuador, and the West Indies. Though it competed with the Standard Fruit Company for dominance in the international banana trade, it maintained a virtual monopoly in certain regions.

The Company had a deep and long-lasting impact in the economic and political development of several Latin American countries. Critics often accused it of exploitative neocolonialism and described it as the archetypal example of the influence of a multinational corporation on the internal politics of the so-called "banana republics." After a period of financial decline, United Fruit was merged with Eli M. Black's AMK in 1970 to become the United Brands Company. In 1984 Carl Lindner, Jr. transformed United Brands it into the present-day Chiquita Brands International.

ALL SOUNDS VAGUELY REMINISENT OF IRAQ

"i wonder what the idiot-in-chief is going to do about a US company sponsoring terrorists in South America?"

Note that the idiot-in-chief's daddy used to run Chiquita when it was called the United Fruit Company.

Has anyone noticed to Chiquita bananas with an "organic" stamp on them. They look identical to their regular bananas and are usually a little more expensive. Can't really trust that, can we? Who monitors that labeling?

Im afraid things are going to get much worse for all of us around the world trying to restore organics, to stopping the destruction of the earths bio diversity for our energy needs. What are we to say to ourselves when we are now 2% local if any at all? We are so consolidated that I think to keep the modern world going the policy is going to stay the same. Mono crop the third world for palm oil bio diesel and bring about a wrath of corruption for the system of slavery Americans have installed to sustain their festering way of life. I want a strike on Americans and there consumption ways.

"Why does the U.S.A. always support disfunctional governments with massive cash? (Taxpayer dollars)" - cocaine, oil, diamonds, cobalt, circulating tax dollars to our crony corporations like Halliburton.

Why does the U.S.A. always support disfunctional governments with massive cash? (Taxpayer dollars)

The legal system is funny, are they really going to do the right thing or like MSM do damage control?

from united fruits to united brands to chiquita brands international. this company goes way back. a 1975 1.25 million dollars bribe to the president of honduras, to killing of 45 leaders of workers on plantations in 1954......to.... the list of collusion between either local dictators or the c.i.a. or the united states government is long. in south and central american history text books these stories are told.

I'd boycott Chiquita bananas, but I'm not eating them now anyways.

and what of shell in nigeria, unocal in burma, etc., etc.? has union carbide ever fulfilled its obligation to the families in bhopal?

corporations are the cancer that's eating away at the earth and ALL its inhabitants. if they're legal "persons," why can't they be tried and executed for their seemingly limitless atrocities?