Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 343 posts

Re: Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

#141

Post by dmix »

WesternWind wrote: post #132
dmix wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically every corporation operating in the US has to follow US law at all times, regardless of the economic/legal circumstances in other countries? I can see why that is controversial and almost certainly will be extremely selectively enforced.

I feel like the US government has a legitimate interest in making sure US corporations don't pay paramilitary death squads for drug traffickers, especially ones that the US had designated as terrorist organizations at the time. I don't think it's really that controversial to prevent US companies from doing this. But to be clear they had already pled guilty to doing that crime in 2007 (and they also prosecuted the AUC…

Yes I'm aware of the details

> But to be clear they had already pled guilty to doing that crime in 2007 (and they also prosecuted the AUC, many AUC leaders were extradited to the US in 2008).

That's exactly what I mean for extremely selective enforcement

Say some hypothetically medium/small US business with some operations in Mexico has their employees stalked/intimidated and their equipment gets burned down and people with guns hang out in the office, usual cartel stuff that happens daily there

Then they go to the Mexican gov for help and find out they don't give a shit because they are paid off or worse directly working for the cartel (as this particular Colombian paramilitary group was notorious for being protected by the gov).

So they pay money to some local cartel to make them go away

This is bad yes and should be punished.

But I don't see how that behaviour at all should allow civil action by random families from Mexico who were harmed (indirectly) by the same Cartel to make a case in the US

That's the most disconnected and roundabout form of justice imagineable.

Their crime should have rightfully been procescuted by Colombia at the time or the US sanctioning them. That is the real deterence. Civil courts in the US have no business playing judge in that context IMO. Unless your goal is feel good emotions by giving victims of crime money by takkng money from another party coerced by the same criminals.

Re: Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

#142

Post by anigbrowl »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #99
anigbrowl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incrementalism normalizes dystopia, in my view; this becomes just another contingency that can be budgeted for. Imagine, by contrast, the impact that executing one Chiquita executive would have.

> Incrementalism normalizes dystopia Radicalism creates dystopia in the first place (e.g., the USSR was far more dystopic).

It can certainly exacerbate it. I'm less sure about creation; Tsarist Russia was not a nice place for anyone but the aristocracy, and life was also highly precarious in China before Mao came along - the Taiping Rebellion is estimated to have killed as much as 10% of the population, while China's population grew close to 50% during Mao's tenure despite the death of tens of millions from starvation.

I'm not communist, but it has arguably been a good fit for underdeveloped agrarian societies that feel a strategic need to industrialize rapidly without giving up political/industrial autonomy.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/publ...

Re: Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

#143

Post by rayiner »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #105
dmix wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically every corporation operating in the US has to follow US law at all times, regardless of the economic/legal circumstances in other countries? I can see why that is controversial and almost certainly will be extremely selectively enforced.

> So basically every corporation operating in the US has to follow US law at all times, regardless of the economic/legal circumstances in other countries? It is wild to me how some people can throw something like this out as this like, unreasonable and clearly sarcastic question like, what you expect a corporation to follow the law everywhere? And I'm just over here like... yeah? Yeah. I... always did, really, I neve…

The issue has nothing to do with conservatism versus liberalism, but sovereignty. Why should the US get to make law for the whole world, and then enforce that law in US courts?

The funny thing about the leftist children of Reaganites is that they maintain their parents’ universalism and lack of respect for foreign sovereignty. “Maybe America should fuck off and mind its own business” is never part of the political conversion.

Re: Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

#144

Post by shiroiushi »

thsksbd wrote: post #127
mike_d wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, yes? There are dozens of specific US laws that govern this and tons of existing case law that committing a serious crime overseas is punishable in the US regardless of its legality elsewhere. The Travel Act for example makes it illegal to fly to another country to engage in sexual acts with a minor, even if it is legal in that country. Do you think that is some sort of government overreach?

Yes because it is a breach to the principle of jurisdiction and it's ultimately based on American imperialism. Mind you, Id gladly have pedos and banana execs shot in public.

The thing that's a bit scary about that Travel Act is: what happens when US laws change?

Instead of having sex with minors, suppose the US elected some crazy religious zealots who managed to make it illegal to have sex outside of heterosexual marriage, after getting abortion banned (so, not exactly far-fetched). So does that mean that all "US persons" (citizens, green card holders, residents, etc.) who travel (or live) outside the US and have sex with someone they're not married to are now criminals?

Re: Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

#145

Post by darby_nine »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135
o11c wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notable claim from part of that link: corporations are persons, but cannot be sued like a person can.

> corporations are persons, but cannot be sued like a person can Yes. Just like Californians, non-Americans and children are all natural persons with varying rights, Delaware C corporations, New York non-profits and unions are all legal persons with different rights.

This seems like a blatant abuse of the term person.

Re: Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

#146

Post by shiroiushi »

leetcrew wrote: post #124
avalys wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we’re talking about crimes like “murder”, yes, it’s pretty clear. If we’re talking about crimes like “bribing a public official”, it’s less so. There are countries where that is simultaneously 1) technically illegal by that country’s own laws, 2) absolutely an expected and required part of doing business. So what do you do in that case?

idk, I see it the other way around actually. if you kill someone in another country, that's still bad, but it's not clear why the US government should be the entity that holds you accountable for it. seems more appropriate to turn you over to that country's government upon request. whereas if you bribe public officials in other countries as normal business practice, that might give you an advantage over other compani…

>it's not clear why the US government should be the entity that holds you accountable for it. seems more appropriate to turn you over to that country's government upon request.

This would make it very easy for Americans to be mercenaries and assassins for foreign governments.

Re: Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

#147

Post by JumpCrisscross »

darby_nine wrote: post #145
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> corporations are persons, but cannot be sued like a person can Yes. Just like Californians, non-Americans and children are all natural persons with varying rights, Delaware C corporations, New York non-profits and unions are all legal persons with different rights.

This seems like a blatant abuse of the term person.

> seems like a blatant abuse of the term person

Fictitious personhood is older than childhood personhood (or universal natural personhood, for that matter). To the degree we need a better term, it’s for natural persons.

It’s a logical consequence of assembly, tracing back thousands of years to trade guilds and municipalities needing the ability to stand in court as a collective.

Anyone who thinks we should end it should consider the consequences of requiring a find-and-replace exercise across our entire body of law, specifying which persons each statute and case applies to, and then prepare for an endless game of whack-a-mole as new categories of person are created. (Murder is legal if you’re a DAO!)

Re: Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

#148

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138
xvector wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, punishing someone because they were extorted under threat to life and property makes no sense. If someone threatens to kill your employees and burn everything you own to the ground - and you know they will - you're gonna pay them. The government of Columbia should be held to account for allowing this evil to run rampant, not the victims of these cartels.

> If someone threatens to kill your employees and burn everything you own to the ground - and you know they will - you're gonna pay them No, you withdraw from the country. Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff. But paying the bribe and then continuing to do business with a foreign terrorist organisation is not grey area stuff.

[deleted]

Re: Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

#149

Post by bryanrasmussen »

dmix wrote: post #95
advisedwang wrote: post #45

The Alien Tort Statue [1], the reason this case [2] is in the US at all has sometimes been used for significant environmental and social justice global legal activism. Because of this, it is in the sights of the conservative legal movement. Sadly I suspect this case may end up at the supreme court and end up another victim of the removal of redress for the evil of the powerful. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/ali…

So basically every corporation operating in the US has to follow US law at all times, regardless of the economic/legal circumstances in other countries? I can see why that is controversial and almost certainly will be extremely selectively enforced.

>So basically every corporation operating in the US has to follow US law at all times, regardless of the economic/legal circumstances in other countries?

wait - was the argument that the laws of these other countries they were operating in required them to fund paramilitary death squads? I must have missed that part.

I'm thinking the slope is not as slippery as feared here.

on edit: Ok I read your Mexican cartel example, slipperiness still not apparent to me how one slides from we hired death squads that killed people to we hired a cartel for protection but the money we paid was put in a big pile of money that cartel used to also fund bad stuff the cartel did that hurt people who were not trying to damage our company.

at any rate the amount of money paid out here having people killed is the usual cost of doing business slap on the wrist considering Chiquita's size and doesn't actually affect them. The negative publicity is worse.

Post reply on HN