Chiquita Bananas of Death

Bananas of Death.

Every time you eat a Chiquita banana, you are eating a blood-stained banana.

Is that too hyperbolic?

Well, although it has been generally ignored by anything but the business press, eight executives of Chiquita Brands International admitted to paying $1.7 million to right-wing paramilitary death squads in war-torn Columbia during a period spanning 1997-2004.

Let's go over that again.

To keep the bananas flowing, to keep "leftists" from taking banana fields and to keep workers' rights activists from unionizing banana pickers, Chiquita Brands paid right-wing death squads to...ensure the "free and fair" trade of bananas. With guns. Automatic guns.

Do you think we'll invade Chiquita's Headquarters in Ohio for supporting terrorism? Well, it's not like they are Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, after all. Bush can give them a pass, right?

The company agreed to pay a $25 million dollar fine. I mean, c'mon, $25 million paid to the US Government is surely enough to offset the terrorism and killing done in the name of Americans' access to that phallic fruit.

Who cares if hundreds, if not thousands, of brown people had their peasant lives disrupted or ended by this terrorist campaign against the enemies of banana freedom? Because there is no chance that any of the $25 million will ever see it's way to those who suffered at the hands of Chiquita's plan to liberate bananas from Pinko anti-bananaists.

Of course, it does not do anyone any good to set off a round of recriminations. To that end, the agreement reached with Chiquita kept the names of those eight executives involved withheld from the public. Now, next time you "liberate" snack foods from a local Mini-Mart, perhaps using right-wing gangs to do your bidding, you can rest assured that your name will be withheld from the public. Let's just hope you can afford the fine. We know that Chiquita can.

The funny thing about this? It's been going on for decades.

The United Fruit Company is the paragon of death-squad free trade, the historical blueprint of covert use of violence to ensure free access to bananas. Back in the 1950s, Guatemala elected a dude named Arbenz who thought that the Guatemalan people should own the land of...well...Guatemala.

Silly man.

The United Fruit Company, of which the Bush family was a major shareholder, proposed the idea that Guatemalans owning Guatemala smacked of Communism. What to do? Well, they overthrew the elected government of Guatemala...thanks to their friends in the CIA...and they made sure that the free flow of bananas remained the backbone of anti-Communist nutrition in American bellies everywhere.

Really, it's true. CIA documents prove it. Hell, they've even bragged about it.

And it's even funnier than that! Chiquita's old name, prior to 1985? The United Fruit Company! Isn't that cool?

Now, in Columbia the stakes are even higher. Columbia is still the world's largest exporter of cocaine. During Bubba Clinton's Administration, they got Congress to agree to Plan Columbia...a multi-billion dollar plan to take back the coca fields from the "leftists" and put them in the hands of pro-American right-wingers and the Government of Columbia. Of course, the "Plan" was supposed to "liberate" the fields from evil Pinkos and end the production of coca leaves.

Didn't happen.

In fact, the Columbian government...considered the most pro-American government in South America...is in the middle of a huge scandal. The scandal? Oh...well...those right-wing paramilitary squads hired by Chiquita? It looks like right-wing paramilitary squads like them were linked to members of the parliament and to President Uribe's Administration. The self-same Uribe using American Plan Columbia dollars to fund the "fight against cocaine."

Oh yeah, Columbia also has a huge untapped oil fields, but there is no way that oil would be something we would kill people for...is it?

What's really happening with Plan Columbia is that we are funding right-wing cocaine kingpins who are friendly to America in their fight against cocaine kingpins who refuse to pay any tolls or tariffs to American drug masters...in other words, they were Commies. It's sorta like the deal "we" had with the Contras...they were allowed and assisted by the CIA in their drug-running ops during the 1980s by the CIA and members of the Iran-Contra team in the White House. In return for that help, they killed Commies. Seems like a fair trade. Get it? Fair trade.

So what if it led to the crack cocaine epidemic? Yes, there is empirical evidence for this. Read Gary Webb. Read about Freeway Ricky Ross and the Meneses Brothers. It's all there. That is, if you want to know.

So here we are, some fifty years later and Chiquita is doing the same damn thing that the United Fruit Company did. But dammit if we don't have the freedom to buy bananas each time we go to the supermarket.

Isn't free trade fun, even if it isn't close to being fair?

Sheikh Your Booty

It's an elegant dance, the Texas Two-Step Side-Step. So far, DubbaYou's Administration has danced around some of the most pernicious scandals in presidential history.

Enron. WMDgate. Abramoff. The Department of Interior. Plamegate.
And can you believe Halliburton is still the largest contractor in Iraq? It's sorta impressive when you think about the things they've gotten away with.

They keep on dancing, sliding around these and other impeachable and firing offenses like a young John Travolta at Gilley's. But, although they don't ride the mechanical bull...they do produce the bull mechanically. Like a factory.

The cleanest getaway may be 9/11. The unanswered questions are legion. The 9/11 Commission was the most compliant of dance partners, following the Administration's lead like a Texas Debutante.

Is it possible that they'd refuse to hear testimony that Prince Bandar, as in Bandar Bush, and his wife were funding Al Qaeda? Yes.

That they'd use that famous Texas Two-Step Side-Step to justify not telling us who put those pesky put options on American and United Airlines? Yes.

But putting aside fact that the 9/11 Commission's version of that fateful day is one of the most fanciful conspiracy theories ever concocted, the real boon to the Administration has been the dance partner they've embraced over and over again: Al Qaeda Evildoers--the Terrorism Two-Steppers they whirl out onto the public dancefloor every time they need a little misdirection.

The Miami Terror Plot, the Re-Killing of Al-Zarqawi, The NY Tunnel Plot, those exquisitely timed internet video releases from Bin Laden on servers we just can't seem to find...and don't forget that Terror Alert "Thermometer" they used to stick up our collective ass just to remind us to be scared. Hey, John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge coming at you with a rectal thermometer is enough to scare anyone.

This "Nexus of Terror and Politics," as it's been called, stretches the definition of coincidence. But it has, until recently, worked quite well. The White House danced around scandal after scandal by trotting out their latest terror jig and keeping us all off balance. So, is it surprising that just as US Attorney Firing-Gate was leading right into the White House and the email trail left by Rove that they'd hit the dancefloor with the Grand Confessor, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? It's been three years since they took him into their torturous bosom and now they got him confessing to everything but kidnapping the Lindbergh baby.

When the story begins to terrorize the White House, they turn the story to terrorism.

It looks like the Sheikh was the best dance partner they've had yet...following their lead like a fawning Texas Debutante. The question is what would you confess to after three years of torture, sensory depravation and humiliation? Of course, the parts of the transcript where the Sheikh was asked about his being tortured are blacked out. So is much of the information he gave about the killing of Daniel Pearl. Which is strange, because you'd think they'd want this hot-button example of Evildoing exposed in full...getting the maximum effect. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Pearl was in India working on another, very damaging story when he got the "out of the blue" call to meet with Al Qaeda's braintrust. He was digging into a huge Enron scandal in India...a multi-billion dollar boondoggle Kenny Boy had perpetrated on the Indians.

Another misdirection, perhaps?

It's hard to tell anymore. The Two-Step Side-Stepping has had the media in such a whirl for so long that reality and perception management became indistinguishable. And the media was, for years, paying the piper while they did his dance. Can't risk coddling terrorists by asking our leaders hard questions. Can't risk losing access to the propaganda. To the Bull Mechanism.

However, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession, which includes a bombing plot on a bank that had not even been founded when he was captured, is not working the same dancefloor magic of previous fleet footed flurries. This time the media is not dazzled, which is refreshing. Not that they are asking questions about the impact of torture, or why it has become so tacitly acceptable to so many. Or why we didn't get anything that would lead us to bin Laden. But it's a long-overdue start.

Now, the question that hangs out there like the Hindenburg over New Jersey is whether or not people will begin to look back and see if we've all been swung around since these Unitary Executives came into office. It seems like an eternity ago, but the questions--about Bandar, about Bin Laden investments in the Carlyle Group and DubbaYou's first company Arbusto, the money funneled by the Head of Pakistani Intelligence to Mohammed Atta, Marvin Bush's role in the company handling security for the World Trade Center, Dulles and the airlines in question--they are a pertinent as ever. There is quite a bit of Terrorism Two-Stepping we need to retrace. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is, for the purposes of mis-directing us from another potentially impeachable and certainly firing-able offense against the US Constitutional and judicial systems, a perfect follower of Karl's lead. Can Karl dance his way out of this? Perhaps.

There is a glimmer, though, reflecting off the great Disco Ball...mirroring back to us a faint image of what's happened: false terror alerts, torture and extraordinary rendition...and the false flags under which so much has been done.