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Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries

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

#91

Post by Tao3300 »

evulhotdog wrote: post #51
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.

I don’t know if I necessarily agree with eye for an eye mentality, but risk of prison or enough money that it makes you actually consider your decisions, seems like a better path. The goal being that it is enough so that it cannot and should not be planned for and can’t be covered by insurance or similar.

> risk of prison

Ship a couple of them to La Modelo

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

#93

Post by dmix »

> During the 2007 trial, it was revealed that Chiquita had made payments amounting to more than $1.7m to the AUC in the six years from 1997 to 2004.

> The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming

Not saying this is the case here but imagine if Mexico allowed families harmed by cartels to sue every businesses that paid off cartel mobsters threatening to ruin their business, because they happen to operate in areas where the police/army consistently fail to control them and the gov/police often colludes with the cartel.

AUC is pretty notorious for penetrating the Colombian gov and law enforcement at varying levels.

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

#94

Post by dventimi »

trust_bt_verify wrote: post #90
dventimi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a guess.

Yes.

Was Uribe center-left or far-right? It seems like was both at different times. In any case, viewed by this outsider from thousands of miles away, Colombian politics looks fluid enough that labels lose distinction. The one constant seems to be U.S. policy.

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

#95

Post by dmix »

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.

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

#96

Post by FactKnower69 »

caycep wrote: post #64
dventimi wrote: post #47

Through at least two administrations, Republican and Democrat, Bush and Obama, the U.S. has funded anti-leftist militarism in Colombia, to the military and to paramilitary groups like AUC. It's not just a fruit company and it's not just a relic from the past. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/co...

last 2? weren't they toppling latin American governments since Teddy Roosevelt?

The JFK admin and CIA were openly committing terrorism on Cuban soil ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose ), at the same time the Joint Chiefs of Staff were begging Kennedy to let them perform terrorist attacks on Americans(!), to be blamed on the Cuban government ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods ); that plan was apparently just a little too far over the line to get green lit

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

#97

Post by throwup238 »

snypher wrote: post #81
dventimi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That's why I wrote, "Through at least two administrations". Personally, I consider the scale of injustice in Latin America alone at the hands of U.S. policy to be vast and unsparing in the culpability it lays at the feet of every American. I recognize that not everyone will be joining me out on that limb, however, so I chose to make my opening bid smaller but more unassailable.

There's not really anything the average person can do to influence this policy, so by saying "of every American", the blame is diluted across the population, instead of held directly against those responsible. So what is the answer? Large scale protests against imperialism are just shut down and the protestors get doxxed or arrested and the band plays on.

> There's not really anything the average person can do to influence this policy, so by saying "of every American", the blame is diluted across the population, instead of held directly against those responsible.

Latin American countries wouldn't have become banana republics without Western demand for bananas. There are different levels of culpability but the rest of us aren't blameless - our collective demand drove these policies and I don't know about you but I've enjoyed a lot of tropical fruit in my life.

To be honest I can empathize. I'd totally support going to war with Mexico if it threatened my year round supply of avocados.

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

#99

Post by cscurmudgeon »

anigbrowl wrote: post #43
evulhotdog wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it’s not nearly as much as it should be, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

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).

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

dventimi wrote: post #47

Through at least two administrations, Republican and Democrat, Bush and Obama, the U.S. has funded anti-leftist militarism in Colombia, to the military and to paramilitary groups like AUC. It's not just a fruit company and it's not just a relic from the past. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/co...

[deleted]
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