It's a Small World After All

I just got done watching a fascinating film called The Good Shepherd starring Matt Damon as one of the founding agents in the CIA. The movie, directed by Robert DeNiro, depicts the dark and soulless world that was the agency. It shows how powerful this department became in shaping history. In a great scene, toward the end of the film, one of the heads of the CIA says, "Someone asked me why we don't say the CIA. I asked him if we say the God." Great stuff. The story is based on true events that went down at a time of flux, what with the end of WW2 and the beginning of the Cold War. The US government felt it needed men in the shadows, shaping events for the "security of democracy" throughout the world.

Today, it seems that Big Business has taken over for the spies of yesteryear. I just read a disturbing piece at Truthout.org about Drummond Company, Inc., an Alabama-based coal company that operates in Colombia. Latin America, where I currently reside, has a long and storied history of CIA infiltration. Today, corporations run things, and they apparently work in very similar ways.

According to the article, the Drummond Co. stands accused of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to the infamous AUEC Paramilitary that have been responsible for over 3,000 deaths and disappearances in this troubled country. What did they pay this sum for? The execution of two union leaders who had been making headway for Sintramienergetica union, which represents a third of the local workers employed by Drummond. According to a filing in an Atlanta circuit court, a union official allegedly saw a Drummond executive pay off a Para.

Some of the interviewed include former government official in Colombia, former AUEC, as well as employees of the company. This, as the report states, is becoming reminiscent of the $25 million suit successfully brought against the Chiquita Banana Corporation for using the same fighters to protect and control operations in the country.

I have lived in Brazil for almost four years now, and Colombia is always in the news down here. That is not the case in the US, but the world is getting very small these days, and the ripple effect just keeps going and going. Think about that at your next charcoal barbecue.