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

201–210 of 343 posts

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

#201

Post by atwrk »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #189
marcus_holmes wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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). https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers... >The GDPR applies if: >your company processes personal data and is based in the EU, regardless of where the actual data processing takes place >your comp…

The don't emphasize citizenship because it is enough to live in the EU for the law to apply, i.e. immigrants etc. are included.

If you look into the actual GDPR, you will find the phrase "data subjects who are in the Union", which are "natural persons", for whom the data protection laws apply.

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

#203

Post by bux93 »

somenameforme wrote: post #182
saghm wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a statute that made sense in 1789 when it was enacted by a bunch of people that thought God made universal law applicable to the whole world. Yet the same people who are likely to be responsible if this law does get thrown out are totally fine with plenty of other laws that make a lot less sense today than in 1789. Let's not pretend that the same court who ruled that all firearm regulations need to be interpre…

That's not at all what Supreme Court ruled with regards to the 2nd amendment. They precisely said that contemporary laws related to firearms must be consistent with the centuries of jurisprudence we have on the limits and liberties enabled by the 2nd amendment. In your own words, states must not "throw out precedents from the most recent couple of centuries." This law, by contrast, was enacted in 1789 but only invoke…

The Supreme Court in this case was also not basing their opinion on fact, since there actually was jurisprudence about gun control [1]

Also, it doesn't make sense to say laws should perfectly adhere with jurisprudence. Laws are enacted and changed precisely because lawmakers don't like the results the legal framework is giving them up until that point in time. To whit, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights were enacted because the lawmakers at the time did not enjoy the British legal framework and their 'unwritten constitution' as they now like to call it.

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fact-checking-the-sup...

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

#204

Post by generationP »

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"

Keep in mind that any company operating in Russia (paying taxes, providing data to "law" enforcement, etc.) would fit the same jumpsuit.

We could go that way, but it would be a serious change of rules and create its own perverse incentives.

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

#205

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dunekid wrote: post #181
NicoJuicy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That already encountered a coup? That barely happens in a democracy.

Do you remember the insurgency at the Capitol?

> Do you remember the insurgency at the Capitol?

Yes, we get our share of Emperor Nortons [1] and sovereign citizens [2]. Those aren't coups. At best, they're idiotically-attempted coups.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement

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

#206

Post by rolandog »

gxs wrote: post #185
raffraffraff wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Very cool, I’ve had very similar thoughts in the past. Thinking about the law in this way actually made realize how the number of bugs there is actually low for what a clusterfuck it is.

I think that corporations' leadership (and anyone that aided in the process) not being held criminally accountable, not being stripped of their ill-gotten gains, and not having to pay reparations for the damages they caused is a very serious bug.

CVE 9.8/10.0 and all that.

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

#207

Post by Thlom »

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 company in question managed to get the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala and replace it with a military dictatorship.

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

#208

Post by riehwvfbk »

Xelbair wrote: post #187
thebeardisred wrote: post #2

It's about time one of these Chiquita (ex United Fruit Company, Cuyamel Fruit Company, and others) / Dole (ex Standard Fruit Company) are held liable. [1]: https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/food-drink/story-bananas-ban... [2]: https://growjungles.com/united-fruit-company-in-costa-rica/ [3]: https://www.biggerlifeadventures.com/chiquita-bananas-cia-fu... [4]: https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/ Edit: fo…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... I'll add this to the list

If you're going to add to the list, the annexation of Hawaii by Dole certainly belongs there.

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

#209

Post by nathancahill »

Xelbair wrote: post #187
thebeardisred wrote: post #2

It's about time one of these Chiquita (ex United Fruit Company, Cuyamel Fruit Company, and others) / Dole (ex Standard Fruit Company) are held liable. [1]: https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/food-drink/story-bananas-ban... [2]: https://growjungles.com/united-fruit-company-in-costa-rica/ [3]: https://www.biggerlifeadventures.com/chiquita-bananas-cia-fu... [4]: https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/ Edit: fo…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... I'll add this to the list

Always relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cCLJieV9IY

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

#210

Post by dcastm »

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. -…

I'm surprised that most of the previous comments assume they could have just not paid and faced no consequences.

I grew up in a town where these groups had significant influence. It was very common to see businesses, both big and small, paying a "vacuna." Not paying could lead to kidnapping, intimidation, or even death for the owners or operators of the business.

Post reply on HN