please consult original

The real trouble for Chiquita began on September 10, 2001. The day before the attacks on New York and Washington, the State Department designated the A.U.C. a foreign terrorist group, making it a felony for any person or company to give it support. Officials at Chiquita, headquartered in Cincinnati, overlooked the news the next day, the company asserts. But the federal complaint notes that the Cincinnati Post ran a story on the terrorist designation a month later. It was also widely reported in Colombia, where Banadex officials would have seen it. Chiquita, however, says it remained unaware of the designation for more than a year.

[snip]

After Olson heard about the A.U.C.’s terrorist designation, he consulted Laurence Urgenson, the company’s powerful Washington attorney. Urgenson had once headed the Justice Department’s fraud section. His firm, Kirkland & Ellis, specializes in S.E.C. actions, among other areas of law. Urgenson’s assessment was swift. Chiquita, he told the company, was breaking federal law, and it needed to stop. In notes dated the next day, he set a take-no-prisoners tone that he would maintain throughout the ordeal: “Must stop payments.”

Over the next few days, according to the federal complaint and lawyers on both sides, Olson and Roderick Hills argued internally that Chiquita was in an impossible bind: If it stopped paying off the A.U.C., its workers and facilities would be in jeopardy. Would Chiquita be off the hook because some of the payments had been made through a convivir, or security firm? Urgenson’s legal compass did not move. Notes from his discussions, laid out in a February 26, 2003, memo read like one side of a moot court debate: “Bottom Line: CANNOT MAKE THE PAYMENT.” Followed by “Advised NOT TO MAKE ALTERNATIVE PAYMENT through CONVIVIR.” Also added is a line of basic legal logic: “General Rule: Cannot do indirectly what you cannot do directly.”

On January 6, 2003, the Organization of American States released a report that revealed an investigation into an illegal-arms shipment that was smuggled through Banadex’s port and delivered into the hands of the A.U.C.

Six weeks later, according to Chiquita, a company lawyer surfing the Web ran across the A.U.C.’s terrorist designation and alerted the company’s general counsel, Robert Olson, for the first time.

Based on Edwards’ career litigating against corporate interests, I’d like to see his values in the next AG.

On a broader level, readers above brought up the fact that Chiquita’s attorney Holder is also vetting Obama’s candidates for VP. (I don’t think I could stand to know if Senator Obama is also relying upon Holder to vet other Executive Branch appointees.)

Americans are reeling under energy “deregulation” (thanks for Enron, corporate lawyers); the bankruptcy “reform” (thanks for penury, corporate lawyers); lethal corporate health “insurance” non-coverage (thanks for death, corporate lawyers); epidemic levels of chemically induced cancer and endocrine disruption (thanks for infertility and more death, corporate lawyers); and offshoring/hollowing out of our manufacturing base (thanks for WTO/NAFTA’s gift of the Rust Belt, corporate lawyers).

Here’s a bright idea for Harvard Law grad Obama: Senator, haven’t we given corporate lawyers enough already? Start over with a selection committee with no corporate lawyers: no Holder, no one else from the corporate bar. We’ve had nearly thirty years of corporate lawyers running our health and our economies into – and under – the ground, Senator.

We deserve better, Senator – please deliver on the fine rhetoric about change.

On a broader level, just a word about optics. Unfair as it may be, the Rethugs will try to make hay about Senator Obama’s connections with Rezko.

Holder failed to recuse himself when his buddy requested a pardon for Mark Rich: we all know how well that worked out.

Holder also chose to accept Chiquita – after 4,000 AK-47’s went through Chiquita’s private port to death squad terrorists – as his client.

No one made Senator Obama accept Holder to vet his candidates for Veep or any other Executive office. And only Senator Obama can free himself of the connotations a person with Holder’s history of poor choices would bring to your campaign and or administration.

I want to see Senator Obama win because I want our Republic and people free of the deadly effects of corporate power. That’s why I hope to see Senator Obama’s campaign – and President Obama’s administration – take affirmative steps to close the corporate bar out of the White House and the Executive Branch.

If not now – when we are literally dying at home and in Iraq from unchecked corporate power – when?

Looking at Holder’s Wikipedia entry shows someone suggesting the following short list:
Eric Holder
Former Senator John Edwards,
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano,
Alabama Congressman Artur Davis,
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm.

All of the above have links embedded in Holder’s entry. None seem particularly inspiring or likely to have fire in the belly to make it a department of Justice as opposed to a department of law.

His Ring of Fire show on Air America is proof he knows who’s burying the bodies and where.

inculcated in the cultural norm of depravity

Thanks, Kirk. Reading this late. Hard to wrap my mind around it. Knowing that the abstract evil is out there, but hearing the literal horror …. concrete events…

Inculcated in the cultural norm of depravity … so well put. Denial…. boiling frogs…. desensitization… learned helplessness … the status quo is depraved. It is so not part of the solution it is the problem. We are all enablers to this monstrousness.

Listening to a program on AirAmerica I think they said of the imports brought into this country last year, 40% of them came from China. And 90% of those were recalled. If I got that right. Then they were talking about how so many cheap toys… okay.. 70-80% of all toys from there exposed kids to toxins. I was trying to jot down the statistics but they were blowing my mind and maybe I got them twisted… but you get the idea.

So you got death squads over bananas and children being poisoned from greed and incompetence.

Remember Yosarian in Catch 22? If you aren’t acting crazy in a crazy situation you are crazy, but if you are sane enough to go crazy from a crazy situation then you can’t get out of the situation … i.e…. war because you are sane enough to go crazy from it.

And how about the Kevin McCarthy version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Lots of pod people who went to sleep on us. I have been dozing a lot myself over these years.

I read in a book by Robin Norwood that living with an alcoholic is like having a car accident every day. The level of shock and stress. Chronic shock and stress. Having our addict personalities at the helm of this country … well, there you go. We go…..