Did You Know?

With the upcoming election in the United States months away, it's about time to dig up some dirt on the contenders. Barrack Obama was the first African American to hold the position of president. Eric Holder is the first African American to serve as Attorney General of the United States, under Barrack Obama. This represents a major leap in racial equality, which I am all for. Am I all for Barrack Obama or Eric Holder? NO!

During his law practice at Covington & Burling, an international law firm that has a number of large multinational corporations as it's clients, Holder represented the Chiquita Brands International in a criminal case and later civil suit for the funding of paramilitary death squads in Columbia. In this case the paramilitary group in question is the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which was at the time, and still is, on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations. I take a quote from an article written here:

"In 2003, an Organization of American States report showed that Chiquita’s subsidiary in Colombia, Banadex, had helped divert weapons and ammunition, including thousands of AK-47s, from Nicaraguan government stocks to the AUC. The AUC – very often in collaboration with units of the U.S.-trained Armed Forces – is responsible for hundreds of massacres of primarily peasants throughout the Colombian countryside, including in the banana-growing region of Urabá, where it is believed that at least 4,000 people were killed. Their systematic use of violence resulted in the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of poor Colombians, a disproportionate amount of those people being black or indigenous."

Holder helped broker a deal between the Justice Department and Chiquita. The deal would include no prison time for Chiquita officials, even though they pleaded guilty to this crime, but would force the company to pay $25 million in fines over five years. Chiquitas annual net income in 2011, 2010, and 2009 is $57 million, $57 million, and $90 million, respectively[1]. 

So there you have it, on Obama's team includes a man that defended financial support of terrorism and the murder of innocent civilians, not to mention the defense of corporate corruption and ethical malpractice. And he's the head of the US Department of Justice...