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 JANUARY 11 WOMEN’S MIDWINTER RETREAT 1:30 - 5 pm - Presented by: The Center Within Sisters of Charity Motherhouse, Mt. St. Joseph, situated on the hillside overlooking the Ohio River, offers us the beauty of winter. Winter is a time when the tree roots are growing in quiet hibernation, encouraging us as well to take time for prayer and inner reflection on the goodness and beauty of life within us. Come, join the circle of women on the journey of life during this midwinter season. We will together create sacred space, which includes: Song and Guided Prayer/ Reflection - Quiet Reflective time for Listening Within - Sharing our Stories (if you wish) - Celebrating our Lives Together in Ritual Led by: Kathleen Hartman Blackburn, Donna Steffen, SC, Mary Ann Humbert Held at: Rose Room at Sisters of Charity Motherhouse, 5900 Delhi Road, Mt. St. Joseph, OH 45051 - From River Road (50 West), turn Right onto Fairbanks, which becomes Delhi. Stay on Delhi until it deadends at the entrance to the Sisters of Charity Motherhouse. A parking lot is found just past the buildings. Use main entrance! Fee: $25. ($30. after Jan.3 (Mail Registration Below. Keep time, info, and directions. ) Checks/ Registration to: The Center Within, PO Box 6027, Cincinnati, OH 45206 Information: 513-751-3358, 513-681-8881, , http://www.TheCenterWithin.org |
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Thursday, March 15, 2007
Banana Republic: Media Round-Up of the Enquirer-Chiquita Relationship
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Photo courtesy of here.
Today’s front page story at The Enquirer was about Chiquita’s connections with global terrorists—but Cliff Peale’s piece includes no original quotations from Chiquita. Did The Enquirer bother to walk a few buildings down the street to press Chiquita for details? Will they? What happened to investigative reporting in this town? Ironically, it ended in the late 90’s when Chiquita pressured The Enquirer to kill an investigative piece linking the company to death squads. Maybe this new development with Chiquita is a good time to revisit some Cincinnati media history.
This article from Salon.com (entitled “Rotten Banana") is a must read. Here are some key excerpts:
The corporation exercised its considerable political influence in Cincinnati to secure the appointment of a special prosecutor and grand jury for a criminal investigation. And the Enquirer’s editors, publisher and corporate bosses at Gannett, angry at Gallagher’s deception and worried about their own legal liability, fired the reporter and paid Chiquita $10 million. For three consecutive days last week the Enquirer ran a stunning front-page retraction, denouncing Gallagher’s “theft” of “privileged, confidential and proprietary information” and apologizing for creating a “false and misleading picture of Chiquita’s business practices.”
A “false and misleading picture”? The Enquirer’s lawyers may have found it necessary to bend over fast and far. But in fact the “Chiquita Secrets Revealed” series presents a damning, carefully documented array of charges, most of them “untainted” by those purloined executive voice mails. Gallagher’s and McWhirter’s allegations are largely based on old-fashioned reportorial legwork: land records in Central America, interviews with environmental scientists and trade unions, lawsuit records, leaked corporate memoranda and the reporters’ own visits to workers’ villages and camps.
(...)
Sure, Mike Gallagher’s tactics raise thorny ethical questions for information-age reporters. But Gallagher’s crime—if a crime it was—pales by comparison with Chiquita’s documented rap sheet. Meanwhile Chiquita’s heavy-handed suppression of the Enquirer story poses a serious threat to all investigative reporting on corporations—and by extension, to the values of the First Amendment.
Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry for The Cincinnati Enquirer just had the section about Controversial incidents removed on March 7th. The story was taken down from the Enquirer’s web site, and their archive at NewsBank only goes back to 2000. Looks like the only way to get a copy of the story would be on microfiche at the Public Library.
The website Mindfully.org has a great archive of the Chiquita-Enquirer story. Click here to view that resource. It appears that this may actually be the full text of the entire investigation that ultimately marked the end of investigative reporting in Cincinnati.
Here are some samples:
Village destroyed; Armed soldiers evict residents in Chiquita plan to eliminate union
Chiquita SECRETS Revealed
MIKE GALLAGHER & CAMERON McWHIRTER
Cincinnati Enquirer 3may1998
Nothing remains of Tacamiche but a few concrete foundations. No one lives here any more but lizards and crows.
The churches are gone. The homes of the banana workers are gone. Even the streets are overgrown with tall grass.
After six decades as a community among Chiquita’s banana fields in northeastern Honduras, the village was plowed under in February 1996 by about 500 Honduran soldiers. Former residents have not forgotten their village, nor have they forgiven Chiquita and its subsidiary for the fact that soldiers with bayonets and bulldozers forcibly evicted more than 600 people before wiping Tacamiche off the map.
=====
Union Official Murdered on Plantation Honduras isn’t the only country where there has been violence on Chiquita-controlled farms.
Chiquita SECRETS Revealed
MIKE GALLAGHER & CAMERON McWHIRTER
Cincinnati Enquirer 3may1998
On Sept. 30, 1994, in Guatemala, Carlos Ermelindo Veliz Tobar, secretary of agreements for the workers’ union at a plantation called “Chinook,” was shot to death in broad daylight by two men who drove onto the nearby Kickapoo plantation. The men then drove off and escaped. No arrests have been made. Police in Guatemala continue their investigation.
Both Chinook and Kickapoo farms are controlled by a company called COBIGUA and sell bananas exclusively to Chiquita. Through its attorneys, Chiquita declined to define its relationship with COBIGUA, citing competitive reasons. However documents provided to the Enquirer by Chiquita sources show that COBIGUA, in fact, is controlled by Chiquita.
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15 Mar 2007 at 06:33 pm | #
More responsible behavior from the corporate big dogs. Profit before people, the corporate american way.
15 Mar 2007 at 06:36 pm | #
Dean - you’re welcome to shorten this article or not print it at all as you see fit. It’s just one of hundreds that attests to Chiquita’s disgraceful history of oppression of the people’s in the lower America’s.
Coca-Cola, Nestle and Chiquita Brands on �Trial’
Inter Press Service
April 04, 2006
Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Apr 4 (IPS) - The first public hearing held by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) in its Colombia session accused U.S. and Swiss multinational corporations of benefiting from the civil war in this South American nation in order to boost profit margins.
Employment is becoming increasingly precarious in Colombia, and the terror exercised by the extreme rightwing paramilitaries further limits labour rights, all of which leads to growing profits for the U.S. corporations Chiquita Brands and Coca-Cola and the Switzerland-based Nestle, according to the PPT, whose two-day hearing on Colombia ended Sunday.
The PPT was inspired by, and is considered a successor to, the “Russell Tribunal”, a public international body organised by renowned British philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell.
The Russell Tribunal, which was designed to investigate and draw attention to war crimes committed by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, held sessions on that war in 1966 and 1967, and on military dictatorships in Latin America in 1974 and 1975.
The PPT, whose resolutions are non-binding, ruled that Colombia is failing to live up to its obligation to refrain from supporting terrorism, and has failed in particular to comply with United Nations Security Council resolution 1373, adopted in 2001, with regard to taking measures to fight terrorism.
The PPT was set up by the Rome-based Lelio Basso International Foundation for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples.
The PPT’s main accusation against the three companies is that in Colombia they have engaged in practices that violate the most basic human rights, through connections with paramilitary networks, under the guise of protecting their investments and ensuring security.
Victims of human rights violations and relatives of victims gave their testimony in the public hearing. Some of the cases discussed involved the murders of trade unionists, 10 of whom worked for Nestle and nine of whom worked for Coca-Cola.
Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, who are frequent paramilitary targets. Although private armed groups have long existed in Colombia, today’s paramilitary groups emerged in the early 1980s, financed by landowners to fight the leftist guerrillas, who were kidnapping and extorting wealthy ranchers. The collaboration between paramilitaries and the armed forces has been well documented by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, and Colombian government investigators, who hold the paramilitaries responsible for the lion’s share of the atrocities committed in Colombia’s four-decade civil war. The two main leftist rebel groups, the powerful Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), both emerged in 1964. The government of rightwing President �lvaro Uribe, who took office in 2002, negotiated a controversial demobilisation of many of the groups making up the paramilitary umbrella organisation, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), many of whose top leaders are drug traffickers.
The number of trade unionists killed has gone down in the past few years. Official figures put the number at 43 for 2005, compared to 196 in 2002.
But according to the National Trade Union School (ENS), a research centre founded in 1982 by academics and trade unionists in the Colombian city of Medell�n, 70 members of trade unions were killed last year, while 260 received death threats, 56 were arbitrarily detained, seven were injured in bomb attacks, 32 were persecuted for their labour activism, eight were forced to flee their homes, and three were forcibly disappeared.
Those who report the persecution of trade unionists and attempt to draw attention to their plight are in turn accused of being guerrillas sympathisers, according to the PPT.
The PPT’s Colombia session will continue through 2008, consisting of seven hearings that will study economic practices, linked with politics and military tactics, that have a profound effect on human rights.
Although last weekend’s hearing was expected to produce a provisional resolution based on the testimony and documents presented, which was to be submitted to a final session in two years, the members of the PPT said there was no time to lose because the situation in Colombia is so severe.
“They decided to adopt a much more compelling, analytical and well-founded resolution,” Javier Giraldo, a Jesuit priest and human rights defender, told IPS.
“To be here, and to hear the testimony of the victims firsthand, was terribly heartbreaking,” Vilma N��ez de Escorcia, who presided over the hearing, told IPS.
The Nicaraguan activist, who is the regional vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights, said “This has truly been one of the most moving moments in my years working to defend human rights.”
N��ez de Escorcia sat on the Tribunal during the weekend hearing, along with Italian activist Gianni Tognoni of the PPT and five Colombian panel members.
The PPT has held 33 sessions since it was created in 1979. This is the second time that it is holding hearings on Colombia. The first took place from 1989 to 1991, as part of hearings on crimes against humanity committed in 12 Latin American nations.
The current session was preceded by a preliminary public hearing in Berne, Switzerland on Nestle. The multinational is the target of an international boycott because it has repeatedly violated the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes by unethically promoting powdered milk and baby formula in developing countries, where bottle-fed infants are at much higher risk of dying of contagious diseases than breastfeed babies.
Nestle, along with Chiquita Brands and Coca-Cola, is also accused of harassing unionised workers.
In 2003, Chiquita admitted that it had paid the AUC paramilitary network for what it called “protection” for its employees.
According to the PPT, there is also evidence that in 2001 the banana company transported 3,000 AK-47 assault rifles and five million munitions to paramilitary groups in C�rdoba and Urab�, regions in northwestern Colombia that are dominated by the right-wing militias.
The PPT stated that in order to force workers to quit a union or their job, to stop pressing legitimate grievances, or to accept poor working conditions, these corporations routinely turn to the paramilitaries who, by means of intimidation, threats, abductions, torture and murder, defend the “harmful designs of the corporations and the Colombian state.”
Many members of the National Food Service Workers Union (SINALTRAINAL) - which represents Coca-Cola workers in Colombia - have been murdered in connection with their union activities or threatened with death, kidnapped or tortured, and total impunity continues to surround these crimes, said the PPT.
Because of these activities, Coca-Cola products have been boycotted by universities in the United States and Britain, including Oxford.
In January, the soft drink manufacturer accused SINALTRAINAL of conducting a smear campaign against it.
A lawsuit was filed in the U.S. state of Florida in 2001 accusing Coca-Cola and its Colombian subsidiary of using paramilitary death squads to murder, torture, kidnap and threaten union leaders at its bottling plants in Colombia.
The suit was filed by the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labour Rights Fund on behalf of SINALTRAINAL; the family of a murdered union leader; and five other unionists who worked for Coca-Cola and were threatened, kidnapped or tortured by paramilitaries.
As a result of the lawsuit, Coca-Cola donated 10 million dollars to foundations set up by the company to generate educational and work opportunities in sectors of the population that have suffered a high rate of violence.
According to the Florida district court, Coca-Cola’s net worth in Colombia grew eight-fold from 1990 to 2001, while its assets increased by a factor of 26. The company also reported an annual profit margin of 80 percent in Colombia in the 1990s.
Nestle, meanwhile, went from producing 109,000 dollars a year per worker to 427,000 dollars between 1990 and 2005, representing an annual increase of over 20 percent.
Since 1980, both firms have been downsizing, closing factories and subsidiaries, and favouring temporary employment and subcontracting. In the 1990s, Coca-Cola sharply reduced the number of stable and unionised workers in its bottling plants in Colombia. And in Nestle, only three percent of the workforce has at least 10 years of seniority.
Over the past decade, this policy has meant for Coca-Cola a 35 percent cut in salary costs when it hires temporary personnel; a 60 percent reduction when the worker is hired through a subcontractor; and a 75 percent reduction when the worker comes from a cooperative.
Overall, Coca-Cola has reduced its salary costs in Colombia by 2.5 times, while Nestle reduced its salary costs by 59 percent from 1998 to 2005.
Meanwhile, SINALTRAINAL is disappearing from both companies. (END/2006)
15 Mar 2007 at 06:52 pm | #
From CincyNewsAche:
http://cincynewsache.blogspot.com/2007/03/stroll-down-memory-lane.html
15 Mar 2007 at 07:14 pm | #
It was always my understanding that HOW the Enquirer got the info shot them in the foot. Their sales went down for all of a second until people realized that the actual information they dug up had merit. By the time people wanted to know more about what Chiquita was actually supposed to have done, it was too late. The Enquirer was bowing at the feet in the way of retractions and cash and a promise to never touch the subject again.
Somehow this also got translated into hands off Chiquita so instead of the Enquirer going on the warpath and uncovering anything and everything else that had anything to do with Chiquita but this, they wimped out, and have
been up their asshandled Chiquita with kid gloves ever since out of fear of further retribution.Ask most folks in Cincinnati and unless they have some allegiance to Chiquita they’ll tell you that’s how it went down. The common man’s version anyway. I know the nuances are probably more detailed but that seems to be the long and short of it to me.
16 Mar 2007 at 12:00 pm | #
ThatDeborahGirl, that’s it!
16 Mar 2007 at 06:23 pm | #
Ready to go into the Lindner family basement again, Cincinnati? The Enquirer and the rest of local media may be pussified, but this time around we’ve got the blogs to try to make it happen. They got Al Capone on tax evasion. How about trying to nail the Indian Hill pirates with the FEC?
Two Ns, Many Political Donations by Kevin Osborne, CityBeat Staff Reporter, March 16, 2007
Lindner, his wife, sons and other family members are well known as big-money political campaign contributors, mostly to conservative Republican candidates and causes including President Bush. A review of documents filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), however, show that the family also gives money to candidates under the similar name of “Linder.”
The pattern of listing campaign contributions without the second “n” in the family’s name isn’t limited to one or two reports, and appears to be a pattern going back several years.
According to documents filed with the FEC, it’s not just one “Linder” error, and it’s not just Carl Jr.’s last name being misspelled repeatedly; the same error shows up with a variety of other Lindner family members, including his wife, Edyth, and his son, Carl III....
16 Mar 2007 at 09:52 pm | #
Colombians Want Banana Execs Extradited by Toby Muse
Associated Press, Fri, Mar. 16, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia - Outraged Colombians called Friday for the United States to extradite American banana executives after the Cincinnati-based fruit giant Chiquita acknowledged paying money for protection to illegal groups that carried out killings.
Chiquita settled a U.S. Justice Department probe by agreeing Wednesday to pay a $25 million fine and acknowledging that its wholly owned subsidiary Banadex paid $1.7 million to far-right paramilitaries labeled terrorists by the United States. Chiquita also admitted funding Colombia’s two main leftist rebel groups, but the U.S. complaint offered no information about how much it paid them....
16 Mar 2007 at 10:50 pm | #
Chiquita, Its Workers and Colombia’s Death Squads by Al Krebs, CounterPunch, 3-16-07
18 Mar 2007 at 01:42 pm | #
Don’t miss this pathetic apologia buried in yesterday’s Post by the paper’s editors. Check out the first sentence for their summary dismissal of a huge national crime story and their darling “isn’t me cute?” second sentence, letting themselves off the hook for failing to do any original reporting on the subject: and running only the first AP story on Chiquita:
Basketball, Bullets and Buses
Week in Review by Dan Hassert and Robert White
There were plenty of good stories in the news this week, but the only one anyone really cares about is the NCAA basketball tournament. Well, it’s the only one we really care about at the moment, so if you don’t mind we’ll just get right to it and crank this column out so that we can go and park ourselves in front of a TV.
(There you have it. Proof positive that journalists are a) lazy and b) sly little devils who pass off their own biases as if they belong to someone else. But surely we jest.)…
Chiquita fine
Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International announced this week that it has agreed to pay a $25 million fine as part of a plea agreement with the Justice Department over allegations that the company had knowingly done business with a terrorist organization in Colombia. According to court documents, Chiquita officials gave about $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia from 1997 to 2004 as protection money, and also made similar payments to a leftist organization. At the time, some of the company’s largest banana plantations were in Colombia; it sold them in mid-2004.
The banana-growing region of Colombia has been the scene of long-standing and fierce conflict between leftist guerillas and right-wing paramilitary forces, according to an Associated Press account. Must be hard to do business under those kind of conditions.
Yeah. Tough climate for a poor multi-national corporation with a history of overthrowing democracies, subverting organized labor, and financing death squads.
In other words, according to Dan Hassert and Robert White, “Keep moving, folks. Nothing to see here. Just get back to watching the ballgame, you Cincinnati morons. Why should we have any respect for your intelligence when we have no respect for the quality of own work.”
Why is the Post folding? At the moment, I can think of two good reasons and both of them are listed on the masthead.