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Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

bbc.com

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

#191

Post by boffinAudio »

xvector wrote: post #125

It is clear that most HNers aren't reading the article. This has nothing to do with the UFC's "banana republic" atrocities, and seems to be a rather unjust situation: - Chiquita was forced to pay "protection money" to the AUC. Read: "pay us or we kill your employees and burn your plantations to the ground." - Chiquita makes the payment and alerts the Department of Justice that they were forced to pay under duress. -…

So all future acts of imperialist aggression can be spooned off as "being in defense of our employees"?

You do realize this same justification has been given for the invasion of sovereign nations, and their destruction, since the beginning of time?

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

#193

Post by bryanrasmussen »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #186
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

continuing instead of editing: I mean actually this is probably the rule for most countries regarding some laws at least - EU companies as I understand the law need to follow GDPR when outside EU, there are laws against bribery and money laundering that work across nations despite what the economic/legal circumstances are in play in other countries. Luckily though I believe every country in the world that is not a fi…

Non-EU companies need to follow GDPR when serving EU customers, yes. There are many websites that geoblock EU visitors because they don't want to comply with GDPR. But the EU only enforces that for transactions involving EU citizens. If you want to grab all the data from US visitors, go for it, the EU will not complain (as long as you don't do it to EU visitors). I think the difference here is that the US is enforcin…

>If the USA makes the precedent that it can enforce its domestic law on actions happening in other countries...

Again, there is already ample precedent for this

https://www.trade.gov/us-foreign-corrupt-practices-act

this applies to any U.S company engaging in business in another country.

>I think the difference here is that the US is enforcing US law on an operation in a foreign country by a company that operates in the US.

Well, perhaps that Chiquita used to be an American company affects the situation, not sure here, since Chiquita is nowadays a Swiss company.

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

#195

Post by barbarr »

sensanaty wrote: post #194

The punishment being fines is criminal in and of itself. Everyone involved needs to be locked away for a long, long time, not have to pay pennies as "punishment"

Also if you take a step back, it's more like the US is getting a cut of the $, almost like profit sharing.

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

xvector wrote: post #175
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> No, you withdraw from the country. And you watch your employees die? Great, you've saved your business and yourself from legal ramifications, and the people you worked for are dead, and your business is in ashes. Chiquita did actually end up withdrawing from Columbia shortly after this. > Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff. This is not how the real world works. If you try this stuff wi…

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by JumpCrisscross »

xvector wrote: post #175
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> No, you withdraw from the country. And you watch your employees die? Great, you've saved your business and yourself from legal ramifications, and the people you worked for are dead, and your business is in ashes. Chiquita did actually end up withdrawing from Columbia shortly after this. > Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff. This is not how the real world works. If you try this stuff wi…

> watch your employees die?

If a gunman comes to your office, what do you do? You defer to competent authority. Same here. Particularly when it comes to scheduled foreign terrorists, there is no (legal) excuse. (Moreover, if the gunman comes to your office every Monday.)

> If you try this stuff with the AUC in Columbia [sp], they will torture and kill your people for fun

If you're operating in Colombia without K&R (or, apparently, basic OpSec), that's on you. Otherwise, I know plenty of people who do good business in Bogotá and Medellín and need not debaucher themselves.

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

#198

Post by JumpCrisscross »

raffraffraff wrote: post #171
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sho…

Strangely enough, we've ignored that "find-and-replace across the body of law" in the past. Even the new gender laws ignore existing laws. I sometimes wish that we had written a compiler for law. And a statically typed language designed for compiling policy (think Rego + Rust). Politicians and Law makers would have to test their new proposals in code before wasting anyone else's time on it. Lawyers would have to lear…

> Politicians and Law makers would have to test their new proposals in code before wasting anyone else's time on it

I look forward to when code can express the richness of natural languages. In the meantime, formally-declared law is a fantasy. (Exhibit A: any court opinion.)

> You might have to start off an extremely simplistic set of rules (kinda like RocoCop's prime directives or Moses' 10 commandments)

Every civilisation has a leader who thought they could reïnvent law from first principles. Nobody uses their systems. (Legal axioms ultimately track to time immemorial, i.e.g prehistory.)

> Killing is wrong unless X is true

Murder vs manslaugher vs self defence vs execution vs being stabbed by a soldier is a good lens into law. (Or, to be provocative, eating meat.)

> it would be an interesting exercise

It's a popular in laws school. In its failure one learns of the intersection between culture and the law and why VHS beat Betamax.

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

#199

Post by JumpCrisscross »

darby_nine wrote: post #165
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sho…

I of course understand the necessity of representing collectives in a legal system, but given that we cannot apply many legal concepts people rely on to trust such a system (say, punishing bad behavior with more than just a fine), it stands to reason they shouldn't be granted many of the benefits, either. Perhaps if we could have the board or stockholders stand in and accept the punishment personally it would make mo…

> given that we cannot apply many legal concepts people rely on to trust such a system

Your problem isn't with corporate personhood. It's with our quasi-aristocracy.

To that extent, complaining about legal entities is entirely a distraction. (Akin to how "corporate death penalties" distract from proportional fining. Red herrings littering the path.)

> don't have much hope for fixing our body of laws, frankly

Have you studied them? They're precedented in millenia, not tweets, for good reason.

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

#200

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ruined wrote: post #162
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sho…

oh, comeon. this is just responsibility laundering. individual natural persons are implementing every act of these artificial hyperagents, and there is precedent and reason for holding individuals accountable for individual actions.

> this is just responsibility laundering

It's linguistics. Corporations were people in English before many folks of darker skin colour.

(OP argued the use is abusive. That is wrong. The term wasn't manipulated. Our world got kinder faster than our English.)

> individual natural persons are implementing every act of these artificial hyperagents

With responsibility comes power. (See: Tiberius.) If the CEO is entirely responsible for their corporation, then they are king. We've derived feudalism.

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