Update 7 - 1.31.08

The State of the World and Bananas 

Prison Dispatch from Jonathan Paul 

1/31/08 

Today is my birthday.  I am 42 today.  I received a lot of birthday cards from supporters, family and friends.  Thank you for the nice thoughts.  To everyone who has written in support, I thank you.  I am attempting to respond to everyone, but I am way behind.  If you have not heard from me, please know how much I appreciate your support.  I have never been the best letter writer and now that flaw is really being tested.

 

Much of the time I could use to keep up with letters is being taken to write my thoughts.  I have never considered myself a writer, but life in prison has shown me how therapeutic writing can be.  I have a lot of time to think.  Too much time to think.  My thoughts are dominated by, what my friend Spencer and I always say, “the state of the world”.  As many of us are painfully aware, the state of the world isn’t so great.  Pollution, habitat loss, climate change, species extinction, war, famine, over population, animal suffering (human and non-human), dams, deforestation, poverty, social injustice and inequality, and the ignorant, arrogant and violent attitudes of the human species literally hurts my heart.  Now that I am locked up, I can only linger in my thoughts and despair at the state of the world.  Although I cannot physically do anything helpful, I can speak out through my writings.   That is all I have left – it is my voice.

 

What inspired me to write this?  Bananas.  Not that I don’t enjoy the taste of a good organic banana.  This dispatch is about a corporation that grows bananas.  Chiquita.  Once known as United Fruit, Chiquita dominates the banana trade with plantations in Central and South America.   Chiquita had plantations in Columbia, which is my focus here.  Columbia is well known for narcotics trade and extreme violence by the cartels, the government and rebel groups. 

 

Chiquita paid in excess of $1.7 million to the AUC (The United Self-Defense Forces of Columbia) from 1997 to 2004. In addition to this, they are also charged with making payments to FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia) and ELN (National Liberation Army) over a period of time stretching from 1989-1997. 

 

FARC was designated by the US government as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2001.  To be honest, I don’t know much about FARC.  I don’t know if they are terrorists or not.  The government called me a terrorist and I am not.  But I digress….Bananas.

 

Back in the spring of 2007 there was a news story about Chiquita giving money to FARC, AUC and ELN.   A US corporation aiding and abetting groups on the US government’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list.   Not only did Chiquita provide money, they also supplied hundreds of assault rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition.  I thought, “wow, providing not only millions of dollars but weapons and ammunition to a terrorist organization – they are deep trouble”.  

I kept waiting for the press conference from the Bush administration calling the Chiquita Corporation a terrorist group and a pledge to bring them to justice.  I was wondering if they would have a ticker at the bottom of the television screen saying all banana growers were terrorists with pictures of the CEO plastered on the screen for all of America to see.  Instead, the story quickly disappeared and I found out that the Chiquita Corporation paid 25 million dollars in fines and the story was over.  What? 

 

25 million dollars is a drop in the bucket for Chiquita and it was back to business as usual.  To add insult to injury, Chiquita was not required to identify the corporate executives involved in the payments to the “terrorists”. 

 

Despite the fact that Chiquita clear cuts rainforests for plantations, pollutes the land with pesticides, uses cheap labor and consumes huge amounts of fossil fuels to export their product, they are able to get away with aiding and abetting US identified terrorist organizations by just writing a check.  But they are a corporation and corporations get away with murder.  They pollute the air, poison the water, poison the land and our bodies with their products and by-products.  Corporations start wars, they dam rivers and make salmon go extinct, they melt icecaps so the seas rise and polar bears drown.  They make cheap plastic crap produced with slave labor and inundate us with advertising telling us we need to buy this crap to fulfill our lives and feel emotionally content.  They want us to believe their lie and keep their bank accounts full.

 

So when you take that banana with the little blue sticker on it, peel the skin from the fruit and take a bite and remember – behind that fruit is a corporation and behind that corporation is a culture – a death culture.  This death culture envelops almost every aspect of our lives and consumes the substance of our souls.  Because behind this death culture is a small group of people.  The privileged, the super rich, the elite, those who are really in power.  The owners who tell the governments what to do.  The rest of us are consumers and slaves to a system that allows the owners to drive their fancy cars and live in their McMansions while this planet suffers and dies.

 

So next time you buy a banana, maybe instead of eating it, you should jam it into the tailpipe of that limo, the Ferrari or that really ugly gas hog of a Hummer.

 

For the animals and the earth,

Jonathan Paul

#07167-085

FCI Phoenix 

Federal Correctional Institution

37910 N. 45th Ave.

Phoenix, AZ 85086