need to add title here

The Price of Bananas

August 9, 2009 4:20 PM

Chiquita Brands International says it paid murderous paramilitaries in Colombia to protect its employees there, but families of civilians killed by paramilitaries fault the company for their deaths.

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by moh2o August 14, 2009 9:38 AM EDT
This is a cover up story. Notice how the involvement of the CIA is never mentioned. The black ops history of the CIA in central America is horrific.
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by sameehebrahim August 14, 2009 12:09 AM EDT
watch aljazeera's peoples power report on chiquitas illegal payments to AUC..it was not paying the money to protect its employees as is usually claimed by multimillion giants who exploit poor countries.they paid the paramilitary to kill union leaders who askd 4 increase in wages or who even believed in marxist ideals..a paramilitary leader who ordered the murder of around 1000 people has confirmed this report.no wonder this channel got 23 emmy awards.its for these kindof reportings they do.the journalist either didnt investigate well or he was nt intrstd in bringin out the truth.he was just doin this story for the sake of doin a report on this incident coz evry other news org. was doin it.
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by BFShields August 10, 2009 10:05 PM EDT
News of a US company having to pay for employee and/or business protection in a foreign country should not surprise anyone. In countries other than the US, this is a standard business practice.

I formerly worked for an automotive supplier to the Big 3 who was forced to open a plant in Mexico in order to keep their business. According to our state international representative at the time, we were expected to pay the local police for employee protection (which they said was against the law but you had to do it anyway), we would have to hire employees from a "union" group (and to pay the union for the privilege), and for our plant management we would have to house them in a gated community and pay for private schooling for their children in order to protect them. After setting up our facility in Mexico, in once instance, we had to pay the Mexican border officials a bribe in order to allow our product into their country.

Everyone knows what is going on, yet nothing happens until someone files a lawsuit. Then everyone is after everyone else. No one wins in this situation. And still the bribery will continue until the foreign governments put a halt to it or until the US companies stand up and say "no more."
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by antilawyer August 10, 2009 8:06 PM EDT
I started watching your program last night on dvr and had to erase it it made me so mad to think a company here in this country could be sued for protecting it's employees from terrorist.If they would have hired mercenaries to kill the terrorist they would have been sued for killing freedom fighters.What else could chiquita do? And why isn't this lawyer locked up for economic terrorism? this makes me want to go out and buy bannanas and I'm alergic to them.
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by scohen305 August 10, 2009 4:04 PM EDT
America and our global village require a total holistic makeover. We need to recreate government, money, and the control of weapons of destruction.
For furhter information log on to http://www.realworldnewworld.com and http://www.scohen305.blogspot.com
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by justme1123 August 10, 2009 9:22 AM EDT
I realize that Americans are pretty uneducated about other countries but are there really that many people in our country that didn't know companies pay to do business in a lot of the other countries? Look at what's going on in Mexico. Do you really think the companies doing business there are not paying? The funny thing is it never occurred to me that these payouts were not "common knowledge".

To say it is about exploitation is silly. They paid the groups so that their employees would stop being murdered. And now they have other groups trying to jump on the bandwagon and get theirs out of the company as well.
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by thurston2001 August 10, 2009 9:05 AM EDT
Corporate America acting without ethics or a soul in the name of greed. And this is suprising, why?
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by Freedom_First August 10, 2009 12:27 AM EDT
The vast majority of violence in Columbia is a direct result
of the U.S. imposed war on drugs which is, in fact, a war
against human beings and their freedoms.
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by JanOmaha August 9, 2009 11:14 PM EDT
My son returned recently from a trip for Witness For Peace to Columbia, Bogata and Cauca province specifically. Your story was good, but only touched the tip of the iceberg in the number of US corporations that are using unsavory practices to exploit the indiginous Columbian people and their fertile lands. Our Department of Foreign Affairs needs to investigate.
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