From the National Security Archive, just released, "The Chiquita Papers"

[Judi Lynn]

April 11, 2011
The Chiquita Papers

Bogotá, Colombia, April 7, 2011 - Confidential internal memos from Chiquita Brands International reveal that the banana giant benefited from its payments to Colombian paramilitary and guerrilla groups, contradicting the company's 2007 plea agreement with U.S. prosecutors, which claimed that the company had never received "any actual security services or actual security equipment in exchange for the payments." Chiquita had characterized the payments as "extortion."

These documents are among thousands that Chiquita turned over to the U.S. Justice Department as part of a sentencing deal in which the company admitted to years of illegal payments to the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)--a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization--and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. The Archive has obtained more than 5,500 pages of Chiquita's internal documents from the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act and is publishing the entire set online today. Key documents from the Chiquita Papers are included in the recently-published document collection, Colombia and the United States: Political Violence, Narcotics, and Human Rights, 1948-2010, now available as part of the Digital National Security Archive from ProQuest.

The documents provide evidence of mutually-beneficial "transactions" between Chiquita's Colombian subsidiaries and several illegal armed groups in Colombia and shed light on more than a decade of security-related payments to guerrillas, paramilitaries, Colombian security forces, and government-sponsored Convivir militia groups. The collection also details the company's efforts to conceal the so-called "sensitive payments" in the expense accounts of company managers and through other accounting tricks. The Justice Department investigation concluded that many of Chiquita's payments to the AUC (also referred to as "Autodefensas" in many of the documents) were made through legal Convivir organizations ostensibly overseen by the Colombian army.

New evidence indicating that Chiquita benefited from the illicit payments may increase the company's exposure to lawsuits representing victims of Colombia's illegal armed groups. The collection is the result of an Archive collaboration with George Washington University Law School's International Human Rights and Public Justice Advocacy Clinics and has been used in support of a civil suit brought against Chiquita led by Earth Rights International on behalf of hundreds of Colombian victims of paramilitary violence.

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/colombia/index.htm

[Newest Reality]

1. What?

We are living in the "The Chiquita Papers" today.

It should be no shock or surprise as we continue to unravel, unfold and realize what we have been manufactured to believe and hold dear.

This is a time of great realization and change. What you thought was, is not. What you thought wasn't proves to be reality. This is a prime opportunity to step-up and assert your own understanding a truth and present it with your own life and meaning to underscore the impact and result you intend. There has been no other time like this and no greater opportunity. You can either shrivel-up and dissolve in your fear, or stand-up and present who you are as if it really matters, for a change.

Either way, you are going to vote decisively and probably, for a very long time, about the future of yourself and your children. There is no better time to act as if it matters.

[bananas]

2. Where is Fielding Mellish when we need him?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananas_%28film%29

[yngdip]

3. K&R

thanks for the post!