Going bananas: tools of terrorists?

A welcome companion to cold cereal, they're great with peanut butter or as dessert (cooked or unadorned) who doesn’t adore canary yellow nature’s candy? And where else are you gonna get your potassium? But does the banana foster a sinister side?
Besides its resemblance to a gun, the fruit bears a secret. It seems lady Chiquita was hiding something else in that banana hat—protection money.

In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said
several unnamed high- ranking corporate officers at the Cincinnati-based company
paid about $1 million

between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia, known as AUC for

its Spanish initials.
Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press

Chiquita’s Columbian banana trees are in a war zone where left wing revolutionaries battle right wing terrorists. If Chiquita didn’t pay for protection, we’d have no bananas. If you worked in a bad neighborhood wouldn’t you want your employer to do something for your safety? Americans are shocked their grocery purchases go to terrorists, we're used to only our drug money finding terrorism.

Chiquita spent $1.7 million on security from 1997 to 2004, and is ordered to pay almost 15 times that, $25 million. I’m not saying America should interfere, we do enough of that, but we should understand lives are at risk for our meals and Chiquita had few options. Perhaps the fruit sellers should transplant the plants to a less violent location; I have a backyard that could use a few fruit trees.