Our Corporations Funding Brutal Militias

For Heaven's sake, what in the world is going on and why is our government not taxing/fining the hell out of these bastards, throwing their asses in jail and generally having a fit, like the one I feel like throwing?

The American middle-calls and the working poor should not foot the bill for this mess. We create it.

When will these sociopathioc instituions, called corporations, be held accountable?

Do, we the people, have to do everything? If, so, why in the hell are we paying those over-paid knot-heads in Washington?

US companies accused of funding militias
By NESTOR IKEDA,
Associated Press Writer
Thu Jun 28, 7:29 PM ET

The United States shares the blame for Colombia's suffering, a top Democrat said Thursday at a congressional hearing focusing on allegations that U.S. companies funded illegal right-wing militias. The deaths of union activists in the Andean nation have been linked to the militias.

"We are complicit in the devastation of that society," said Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass. "So it is a moral imperative that requires us to help Colombia end that cycle of violence"

Delahunt, who chairs the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, spoke during a hearing in which Chiquita Brands International Inc. and the Alabama coal company Drummond Co. Inc. were singled out as having close ties to Colombia's paramilitaries.

Chiquita has acknowledged having paid paramilitaries $1.7 million in protection money over six years. The company, which sold its operations in Colombia three years ago, was fined $25 million by the Justice Department this year for making the payments from 1997-2004.

Drummond has denied having made any payments. The Colombian arm of the Alabama coal company faces a trial next month in Birmingham in a lawsuit alleging it paid for the murder of three union activists in Colombia in 2001. In Colombia, a paramilitary leader has been charged with ordering the slayings of two union leaders at a Drummond mine. The company has not been charged with a crime, but a probe continues.

In a statement, Drummond said its Colombia division "is innocent of the allegations made in today's committee hearing as well as those in the pending civil suit."

"The allegations are completely without merit and have no basis in fact," the company said.
Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., said during the hearing that he had not heard any hard evidence that the transactions took place.

Burton said that Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, has put in place policies that led to the demobilization of more than 30,000 paramilitaries, a process he said has helped drastically reduce violence in the country.

Witnesses included Edwin Guzman, a former Colombian army sergeant who became a member of the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. He said Drummond gave trucks and motorcycles to paramilitaries to patrol its mine grounds.

"There are links between the paramilitaries, Drummond, the army and politicians," Guzman said through an interpreter, admitting that he personally had no proof the company made payments to the paramilitaries. "At one point, the army captured 14 paramilitaries on Drummond property."

The president of Colombia's national mining union, Francisco Ramirez, claimed that other international companies were complicit in the killing of union activists in Colombia — either by paying paramilitaries or indirectly through the U.S. military aid for Colombian army units that he said committed the murders.


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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.