Week in Review: 'Dystopian Plots,' Christian Nationalist Crusaders, and the Anger Needed for the Fights Ahead

Saturday, June 15, 2024 ■ The Week in Review 93 Nations Back ICC as Israel Faces Charges for War Crimes in Gaza A joint statement calls on "all States to ensure full co-operation with the Court for it to carry out its important mandate of ensuring equal justice for all victims of genocide, war crimes, [and] crimes against humanity." By Jon Queally • Jun 15, 2024 DeSantis Declares Emergency Over Floods After Cutting Stormwater Funds "As I'm sitting here stuck on a Brightline train because of flooding in my district, all those stormwater projects he cut look pretty stupid right now," a Florida lawmaker said. By Edward Carver • Jun 13, 2024 Biden Urged to 'Put Up a Major Fight' Over Mass Layoffs at John Deere One labor advocate implored the president to "put the heat on John Deere and show the working class that you're tougher than Trump when it comes to saving American jobs." By Jake Johnson • Jun 13, 2024 Supreme Court Starbucks Ruling Seen as Gift to Corporate Union-Busters The head of the union representing Starbucks workers said the ruling "underscores how the economy is rigged against working people all the way up to the Supreme Court." By Brett Wilkins • Jun 13, 2024 News of Chomsky's Ill Health Prompts Outpouring of Gratitude for 'Lion of the Left' "So many thousands of people have stories about how he has changed their lives," said one admirer. "He certainly changed mine." By Brett Wilkins • Jun 12, 2024 'We Should All Be Angry' That Corporations Spent Trump Tax Windfall on Buybacks: Expert "Corporations took their tax windfalls and spent a trillion dollars of it in 2018 on stock buybacks instead of on worker wages or innovation," said Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies. By Jake Johnson • Jun 12, 2024 AOC, Raskin Announce Bill to Rein in 'Captured and Corrupted' Supreme Court "A group of anti-democratic billionaires with their own ideological and economic agenda has been working one of the three co-equal branches of government," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. By Julia Conley • Jun 12, 2024 Sanders, Omar Lead Call for Biden to Back Global Tax on the Rich "This is a historic opportunity for the United States to provide global leadership on tax fairness and also strengthen the administration's vital domestic efforts to achieve a fairer tax system." By Jessica Corbett • Jun 11, 2024 US Jury Holds Chiquita Liable for Colombian Death Squad's Murder of Banana Workers "The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed," said one attorney, "but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita's doorstep." By Brett Wilkins • Jun 11, 2024 Democrats Target Pro-Trump 'Dystopian Plot' With Stop Project 2025 Task Force "We need a coordinated strategy to save America and stop this coup before it's too late," said Rep. Jared Huffman, who is spearheading the new task force. By Jake Johnson • Jun 11, 2024 Caught on Tape, Alito Exposed as 'Crusader for Christian Nationalism' "Justice Alito can hardly blame his wife this time," said one critic. By Julia Conley • Jun 10, 2024

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■ Opinion The Second US Civil War Has Already Begun This time, the rebels are using their power inside the government and their influence through social media to subvert fundamental democratic institutions. By Steven Harper • Jun 14, 2024 They’re Arresting the Wrong People Inside of Congress While they are arresting peace activists for exercising First Amendment rights, they are making plans to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant request. By Olivia Dinucci • Jun 12, 2024 If Joe Biden Doesn't Intervene to Stop Mass Layoffs at John Deere, Who Will? The president should let Deere know that they can’t continue to receive taxpayer money if they ship taxpayer-funded jobs to Mexico. By Les Leopold • Jun 12, 2024 The End of Affordable Internet The federal funding contained in the Affordable Connectivity Program offered a vital lifeline for people in South Carolina and nationwide. Now we must fight to resurrect such a program so that everyone has digital access that enriches individual lives and communities. By Ro Khanna,Annie E. McDaniel • Jun 11, 2024

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US Jury Holds Chiquita Liable for Colombian Death Squad's Murder of Banana Workers

"The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed," said one attorney, "but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita's doorstep."

In what case litigants are calling the first time an American jury has held a U.S. corporation legally liable for atrocities abroad, federal jurors in Florida on Monday found that Chiquita Brands International financed a Colombian paramilitary death squad that murdered, tortured, and terrorized workers in a bid to crush labor unrest in the 1990s and 2000s.

The federal jury in West Palm Beach, Florida found the banana giant responsible for funding the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and awarded eight families whose members were murdered by the right-wing paramilitary group $38.3 million in damages.

EarthRights International, which first filed the case—Doe v. Chiquita—in 2007, called the verdict "a milestone for justice."

"The jury's decision reaffirms what we have long asserted: Chiquita knowingly financed the AUC, a designated terrorist organization, in pursuit of profit, despite the AUC's egregious human rights abuses," the group said.

"By providing over $1.7 million in illegal funding to the AUC from 1997 to 2004, Chiquita contributed to untold suffering and loss in the Colombian regions of Urabá and Magdalena, including the brutal murders of innocent civilians," EarthRights added. "This historic verdict also means some of the victims and families who suffered as a direct result of Chiquita's actions will finally be compensated."

One of the plaintiffs in the case called the verdict the "triumph of a process that has been going on for almost 17 years, for all of us who have suffered so much during these years."

Plaintiffs' attorney Agnieszka Fryszman said that "the verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita's doorstep."

The U.S. labor reporting site More Perfect Unioncalled the verdict "an unprecedented win against corporate violence, which could [be] the first of many."

A Chiquita spokesperson toldFruitnet that the company plans to appeal the verdict.

The AUC was formed in 1997 via the union of right-wing paramilitary groups battling leftist guerrillas—mainly the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN)—in the South American nation's civil war. Closely linked to Colombia's U.S.-backed military, the AUC—some of whose members were trained by Israelis—was designated a terrorist organization in 2001 by the U.S. State Department, which cited its "massacres, kidnappings of civilians, and participation in the trafficking of narcotics."

In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty in federal court to funding the AUC and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. The company admitted to paying the AUC via its wholly owned Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, which was also its most profitable operation. Chiquita recorded these transactions as "security payments" or payments for "security" or "security services" in its corporate records.

Chiquita said that it began making the payments after Carlos Castaño, who led the AUC at the time, implied that Banadex's employees and property could be harmed. However, despite—critics say because of—the payments, AUC members brutally targeted Banadex workers in what victims and their advocates say was an effort to suppress labor unrest.

An earlier lawsuit described the fate of one victim, who is identified by the pseudonym "Pablo Pérez":

In the early morning hours of November 1, 1997, a group of heavily armed paramilitaries dressed in camouflaged uniforms stormed Pablo Pérez's home in the village of Guacamayal, in the banana zone of Magdalena, while he was sleeping. The paramilitaries broke down the door to the home, found and seized him, tied him up, and forced him to accompany them at gunpoint, beating him as they kidnapped him. His corpse was found the following morning with signs of torture and two gunshots, one to the head and one to the body.

According to plaintiffs in that case, in 2001 a ship carrying 3,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 5 million rounds of ammunition left Nicaragua and, instead of heading to its declared destination in Panama, dropped off the arms at a Banadex-run port in Turbo, Colombia. Castaño called the procurement "the greatest achievement by the AUC so far."

The earlier lawsuit states that in addition to using the money provided by Chiquita to "drive the leftist guerrillas out of the Santa Marta and Uraba banana-growing regions," AUC militants would "resolve complaints and problems with banana workers and labor unions."

"Among other things, when individual banana workers became 'security problems,' Chiquita notified the AUC, which responded to the company's instructions by executing the individual," the document states. "According to AUC leaders, a large number of people were executed on Chiquita's instructions in the Santa Marta region."

Chiquita has a long history of deadly repression against workers. Formerly the United Fruit Company (UFC)—the infamous "Octopus"—the New Orleans-based behemoth monopolized land and markets throughout Latin America in the 20th century. Through slick marketing campaigns, UFC introduced the previously unknown banana to consumers in North America and beyond. The company propped up so-called "banana republics"—extraction economies characterized by state repression, severely stratified social classes, and compliant local plutocracies—throughout the region.

UFC stopped at nothing, including participation in U.S.-backed coups, to protect its property and profits. By the 1930s, UFC controlled around 90% of the U.S. banana import business. It owned or controlled nearly half of Guatemala's land in the 1940s.

In Colombia, where UFC workers earned the approximate equivalent of $1 per month, UFC refused to negotiate with workers who went on strike in 1928 in Ciénaga, near Santa Marta. U.S. and UFC officials falsely portrayed the strike as communist subversion and Colombia's right-wing government deployed 700 troops to crush the labor action. The U.S. Embassy subsequently informed then-Secretary of State Frank Kellogg that "I have the honor to report... that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded 1,000."

Violence against Colombian banana workers continued into the 21st century, often with impunity for the perpetrators. Litigants in Doe v. Chiquita said Monday's jury decision marked the beginning of a new era of accountability.

"This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations everywhere: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished," EarthRights International general counsel Marco Simons said in a statement. "These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process."

Then-AUC commander Carlos Castaño is seen here with some of his paramilitary fighters near Uraba, Colombia on February 20, 2021. 

(Photo: STR/AFP via Getty Images)

COMMON DREAMS

THE CIA, AMBASSADORS & ALL INVOLVED MISREPRESENTED OR LIED ABOUT ISSUES TO PROTECT MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN THEIR PLUNDERS OF THESE NATIONS MUCH LIKE ELLIOT ABRAMS: 

Biden Nominates Elliott Abrams, Death Squad Backer Convicted of Lying to Congress, to Gov’t Commission

HEADLINEJUL 06, 2023

President Biden has nominated Elliott Abrams to the bipartisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Elliott Abrams was convicted in 1991 of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, and later pardoned by then-President George H.W. Bush. He defended death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s, when he served as assistant secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. Abrams dismissed reports that El Salvador’s U.S.-trained military had massacred 1,000 civilians, including children, in the Salvadoran town of El Mozote in December 1981. He has also been linked to the 2002 attempted coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and helped plan the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Under President Trump, Abrams served as special envoy to Iran and Venezuela. Abrams will need to be confirmed by the Senate to serve on the commission.

DEMOCRACY NOW