Business As Usual For Top Bananas

WASHINGTON - Banana company Chiquita Brands International admitted in federal court Monday that, for years, it paid terrorists to protect its Colombian banana-growing operations.

The company pleaded guilty to one count of doing business with a terrorist organization [United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC]. The plea is part of a deal with prosecutors that calls for a $25 million fine.

The agreement ends a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with right-wing paramilitaries and leftist rebels the U.S. government deems terrorist groups.

The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports. The U.S. government designated the right-wing militia a terrorist organization in September 2001.

… Chiquita, conglomerate child of the infamous coup making, union breaking, official bribing, peasant squashing, peon enslaving – Empire of United Fruit, founding fathers Capt. Lorenzo Dow Baker, Minor C. Keith, and Andrew Prescott.

Men who were men's men, back in the days when fascism's top bananas called it "expanding markets." Oh, it still is? Back when the heads of corporate empires and the politicians they owned wore pocket watches and mustaches. Heroes, who today are choosen as subjects for PhD (Piled Higher & Deeper) theses.