Chiquita made payments to the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as control of the company’s banana-growing area shifted.

Leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries have fought viciously over Colombia’s banana-growing region, though the victims are most often noncombatants. Most companies in the area have extensive security operations to protect employees...Colombia has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world. Arrangements between companies and either guerrillas or paramilitaries are not uncommon, but it is impossible to know how much money is paid each year.

Meanwhile, an international campaign opposing Occidental's plan is also picking up steam. On April 28 about 100 demonstrators turned up at Occidental's annual meeting in Santa Monica and called on the company to halt the project. Activists...criticized Vice President Al Gore, whose family owns at least a quarter of a million dollars' worth of Occidental stock.

But government backing for Occidental's Colombia proposal runs far deeper than the Gore family's stock portfolio. The Nation has learned, from a government source and the internal memos of an Occidental lobbyist, that the Clinton Administration has been quietly helping the company--a generous donor to the Democrats in recent years--to win support in Colombia for its drilling plans. While Gore has strong ties to Occidental, the Administration's point man on the issue is Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who last year traveled to Cartagena and met with government officials on the company's behalf. Richardson has also hired a former Occidental lobbyist to work in a key international-policy position at the Energy Department.
SOURCE

Gore is in a unique position to act. He inherited $500,000 worth of Occidental stock from his father, a former US senator who served on Occidental's Board of Directors. As a major stockholder, Gore's voice could make a difference. Unfortunately, Occidental has been careful to make sure that its voice is heard--in the form of large campaign contributions.

Simon Billenness, senior analyst at the socially responsible Trillium Asset Management Fund, told the Boston Globe that Gore and Fidelity CEO Edward C. Johnson III could play a critical role. "Both of them could easily pick up a phone and talk to the CEO of Occidental, which could send a very strong message that this project ... is going to be counterproductive. SOURCE

...But none of that has given pause to Occidental or the politician who helped engineer the sale of the drilling rights to the federally-owned Elk Hills. That politician is Al Gore.

Gore recommended that the Elk Hills be sold as part of his 1995 "Reinventing Government" National Performance Review program... Within weeks of the announced purchase Occidental stock rose ten percent.

That was good news for Gore...before the Elk Hills sale, Al Gore controlled between $250,000-$500,000 of Occidental stock..after the sale, Gore began disclosing between $500,000 and $1 million of his significantly more valuable stock.
SOURCE

Gore has held these apocalyptic views about the environment for some time. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings in Occidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas. SOURCE

The corporate media has heaped praise on Al Gore following the international rock gig Live Earth. But to ask the U’wa people, from the tropical cloud forests of north-eastern Colombia, what they thought about Gore and Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), the oil company from which his personal fortune is derived, would be to receive a very different opinion. SOURCE

Environmentalists and human rights activists are accusing Vice President Al Gore of hypocrisy over his shareholding in Occidental Oil, a company that plans to drill in Colombia’s rainforests over the objections of local indigenous communities. SOURCE

Meanwhile, as detailed in today's Washington Times, Vice President Al Gore's family profits are up due to positive returns on his stock investments in Oxy valued at between $500,000 to $1 million. Despite repeated requests from environmental and human rights organizations, Gore has refused to divest his family from Occidental or to support the rights of the U'wa before his family's profits. "Mr. Gore cannot pretend to be any better than Bush when his hands have the blood of the U'wa on them, " said Shannon Wright, of the Rainforest Action Network. SOURCE

It is well-documented that oil companies, including Occidental, Exxon and BP, have used paramilitary groups to force indigenous Colombians off their land to be “re-settled” in the Amazon, where disease, starvation and violence exact a fearful toll. SOURCE

Originally posted by evanmontegarde
Despite how biased Huffington Post generally is, this is 100% facts and I cannot find anything untrue about it.

The co-host of a recent top-dollar fundraiser for Sen. John McCain oversaw the payment of roughly $1.7 million to a Colombian paramilitary group that is today designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Carl H. Lindner Jr., the billionaire Cincinnati businessman, was CEO of Chiquita Brands International from 1984 to 2001, and remained on the company's board of directors until May 2002. Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC), which is described by
as an "illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country's most notorious civilian massacres."

McCain's $2 million fundraiser

This is a legitimate concern. While people are afraid of Barack Obama for having a funny name and being a little bit darker than the rest of the candidates, the McCain campaign is literally accepting money from those who fund terrorism. Imagine if Obama had accepted money from the President of Iran!

[edit on 2-7-2008 by evanmontegarde]

[edit on 2-7-2008 by evanmontegarde]