Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries
bbc.com
bbc.com
[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: formatting
I'll add this to the list
- 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.
- The AUC kills 8 people, as cartels tend to do.
- Chiquita is held accountable.
This does not seem reasonable: First you get extorted at threat to life/property, then you get punished for getting extorted. Furthermore, it's tenuous at best to say "8 people died because you paid the AUC." The AUC kills/maims/tortures children every day for fun. This is not an exaggeration, most people will never comprehend the sheer evil of these organizations.
Calling for the execution[1] of Chiquita execs as some HNers are doing is absurd. Should Chiquita just let their employees get tortured to death and watch their properties burn to the ground?
Perhaps the government of Columbia itself should be responsible for not exterminating its cartels, and instead allowing them to infiltrate the deepest ranks of its military and government.
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.
You do realize this same justification has been given for the invasion of sovereign nations, and their destruction, since the beginning of time?
Everyone involved needs to be locked away for a long, long time, not have to pay pennies as "punishment"
"Following a civil case brought by eight Colombian families whose relatives were killed by the AUC, Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3m (£30m) in damages to the families."
A civil lawsuit doesn't need to be anything like a speeding ticket from a legal point of view, from a normal person's point of view they can both result in a "you did something wrong, now you have to pay an amount set by the legal system".
I'm glad that some victims are getting some recompense, but frankly, justice has not really been served.
Seems like you might be as confused as they are!
> The people you're complaining about don't really care whether or not it's government or civil action.
They do, because it's always in the context of how the "gov't" levied a fine on some business, when it was actually a civil suit and there's no governmental action at all.
> They care that these people are getting away with murder and mass extortion and the only penalty they face is a meager chunk of the profits.
That's not what I'm talking about!
Okay, but when people are complaining about fines in this cases and similar cases, that is what they're talking about.
You can take a fine detail and make an argument out of it, but it's not a point anyone else cares about.
US is an evil empire.
“ (III): Convention relative to the Opening of Hostilities[26][27] This convention sets out the accepted procedure for a state making a declaration of war. It provides the basis on which, in international law, war reparations may be demanded.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_an...
I can only guess the wikipedia article is only a summary and the real convention could be around who is to blame for the war and other factors. Otherwise that's just so ridiculous that it actually encourages declaring wars on countries!
But this is a civil case so they can't get more than money.
Honest what is disgusting is the chump change they are getting 38 mil only for the insane amount of profit the company gained.
If i make a crime, i go to jail. If a company does it, it gets a pat on a back and an insignificant fine. (exceptions - Volkwagen - apply).
We could go that way, but it would be a serious change of rules and create its own perverse incentives.
The US needs certain things from Russia: it's not that all trade has been sanctioned. Just trade that does not have enough lobby power to protect it.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/alien_tort_statute
[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4232180/in-re-chiquita-...
The background is the stuff of movies, Charles Taylor was a high ranking official in Liberia that fled to the US after being accused of embezzlement (principally from US contracts), he was arrested in the US and “escaped” from Federal prison, fled back to Africa where he was armed and funded by Gaddafi, and became President of Liberia after a coup. His campaign slogan was "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”
In fact both Charles and Chuckie are depicted in the Movie Lord of War, where Chuckie was the one who asks Nicolas Cage for the Rambo’s golden gun. Their brutality was also depicted in Blood Diamond, in neighboring Sierra Leon where they were behind Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and would cut people’s arms off (long sleeve/short sleeves for above/below the elbow) when they voted in elections, because voters hands/thumbs were inked as evidence of voting.
Chuckie interestingly was actually a born in the US and a private school kid. Then went to Liberia after Charles became President and became head of his anti-terrorists unit called the “demon forces”, the rest is the stuff of nightmares they leave out of the movies.
If you can read between the lines, this stuff goes to the highest levels of government and intelligence which is another reason the ATS Act is under attack.
[1] https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2010/02/fiu-im...
I suspect the problem is more that the statute gives U.S. courts jurisdiction over conduct that happens in foreign countries, and applies incomprehensibly vague standards such as “the law of nations.” 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 interpreted in the context of what people would have thought in the 18th century[1] would rule differently on a case covering the law we're discussing because of legitimate legal reasoning; they're happy throw out precedents from the most recent couple of centuries in favor of regressing to some ancient historical standard when it ends up with the result they want.
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/politics-mississippi-state-govern...
The Alien Tort Statute, by contrast, literally doesn't make sense--talking about the "law of nations" is like talking about the "aether" or "faeries." It's not even an originalism issue. Even in 1789, the Founders likely didn't intend for the ATS to e.g. allow suits in U.S. courts against the British East India Company for violations of "human rights."
Did you intentionally avoid the actual term whose meaning there is legitimate argument over? It's "well-regulated militia", and there absolutely is wildly different opinions over what that means.
This law, by contrast, was enacted in 1789 but only invoked exactly twice until 1980. [1] Since then it seems to have been regularly enacted with very little in the way of jurisprudence to guide its purpose, limits, and overall meaning. It also suffers from an issue that it appeals to "international law" which is a term more subject to political than legal interpretation. Contemporary examples abounds.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Tort_Statute#History
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...
So instead, if they want to do that, then they would need to amend the Constitution. And that's entirely possible - the process for that is well defined, and it has been done many times. It requires a supermajority vote in both the House and Senate, and then 75% of the US states agreeing to it. It's intentionally designed such that the Constitution will only change when there is overwhelming consensus across all affected groups.
The Supreme Court's role in all of those is exclusively to ensure that laws do not violate the Constitution.
Yet they passed legislation... what an absurd comment. By this logic, why regard the constitution at all?
I assume the portion of the first link you're referring to is the section that starts
> Courts have also split on whether corporations may be held liable under the ATS.
This is a question about the ATS and its scope specifically; the source is not discussing the nature of corporations generally.
It sounds like the scope of the ATS is fairly ill-defined, and that at various points courts have looked for whatever reasons they could to limit its scope, and whether a corporation was involved has just been one of those reasons.
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.
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!)
individual natural persons are implementing every act of these artificial hyperagents, and there is precedent and reason for holding individuals accountable for individual actions.
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.
Etymonline[0] cites phrases like "person corporate" as linguistic precedent this use of the term, but the meaning "individual, human being" goes back to 1200. Legal rights notwithstanding, I don't think you're at all correct if you are suggesting that there was ever a stage of daily English usage where the word would be used to refer equally to free citizens and corporations, but not to slaves. And I'd certainly argue that today, the idea that a corporation can be referred to as a 'person' is very much a specialists' usage that does not at all align with its everyday use.
Corporate personhood, and the referring of entities as persons, goes back to ancient Latin and multiple Indian languages for a reason: it’s a natural consequence of (a) collective rights and (b) polytheistic vesting, whereby “personhood” was understood in a broader context than even today [1]. (See: any spiritual practice that vests inanimate objects with a will and thus, in a sense or directly, personhood.)
> certainly argue that today, the idea that a corporation can be referred to as a 'person' is very much a specialists' usage
Agree. But that doesn’t make it wrong. When you look at why it has that specialist usage, suspending the use makes zero sense. (It also doesn’t mean we shouldn’t debate its use.)
[1] https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/journal-briti...
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.
I think your point may be that laws currently do have nuance (eg murder vs manslaughter vs...) which is all fine. By all means load those rules into the system too, but the point of the language and compiler is that while you're doing this you pay attention to compiler errors along the way and at least be aware when a change (to a rule, or the meaning of a term or type) caused some other change that you didn't expect. Eg: changing the meaning of a word here makes one law ambiguous and causes these two to clash.
Using it in law school is a great idea. It's where it should begin.
Very good! I think these are all interpretations of the same type of event. Do you know the Russell conjugation?
Sure. But legally--and culturally--very different. If someone doesn't see that, they probably shouldn't be commenting on the law. (Practically speaking, they probably aren't.)
Social constructs are socially constructed. Given social systems are heterogenous, this variation is far from profound. (It’s almost corollary.)
> no different to Scrabble or poker
In the way Duplos and dielectric physics are the same.
> if an individual is able to direct the creation of rules in their favour, why shouldn't they?
One usually can’t.
Not really. I imagine its fine to shoot a burglar in the US who breaks in your house, but you could go to jail for murder in the UK. Soldiers can kill civilians without consequences. So can governments (death row, in the US).
>> if an individual is able to direct the creation of rules in their favour, why shouldn't they?
> One usually can’t.
I think most(/all?) law is created this way. Eg a pretty small collection of individuals that have the sway in a corporation use the corporation to pay lobbyists to draft laws to benefit them (creating a moat, force individuals to pay (health insurance), etc, etc). This is done in the name of serving the public interest. The political class then rubber stamps these proposals, in order to receive a seat on the board on retiring from politics.
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.
CVE 9.8/10.0 and all that.
> 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.
I don't have much hope for fixing our body of laws, frankly. I don't think a good reaction to this realization is to accept them as rational or reasonable.
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.
I can see why that is controversial and almost certainly will be extremely selectively enforced.
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, many AUC leaders were extradited to the US in 2008).
This isn't about enforcement at all, this is them being found liable in a civil class action lawsuit, one brought by families of folks the AUC murdered.
> 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.
Traditionally it's more like "they pay money to some local armed group to get rid of union activists and unruly workers asking for more rights and better conditions and salaries".
It's not like such companies like Chiquita even support dictators or topple goverments (or lobby to get it done on their behalf) to protect their margins and cheap labour...
"Among the Honduran people, the United Fruit Company was known as El Pulpo ("The Octopus" in English), because its influence pervaded Honduran society, controlled their country's transport infrastructure, and manipulated Honduran national politics with anti-labour violence."
Columbia extradited the AUC leaders.
Its about punishment to enforce the civil contract and once you exclude bodies, eg drug trafficing CIA officials or sociopathical CEOs, you start to loose credibility.
> 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
So then only attorneys are left to lead the charge, right? How can you still trust a system that prosecutes journalists that uncover war crimes that get covered up by the same cartel?
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.
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 fictional dystopia actually has laws against corporations paying to have people killed so it probably doesn't matter much in this case anyway.
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 enforcing US law on an operation in a foreign country by a company that operates in the US. The equivalent would be the EU enforcing GDPR for all site transactions, regardless of the visitor's nationality.
The point of making this distinction is that there are countries that have laws that we don't want to follow (e.g. various Middle East countries having drastic punishments for atheism and apostasy), and that should not be applied to people (or organisations) who don't reside there. If the USA makes the precedent that it can enforce its domestic law on actions happening in other countries, then it's possible that (e.g.) Australia could enforce its ridiculous anti-online-bullying laws on US citizens who have never left the USA.
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.
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 company is established outside the EU but processes personal data in relation to the offering of goods or services to individuals in the EU, or monitors the behaviour of individuals within the EU
Notice how they emphasized EU citizens? Yeah, neither did I.
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.
oh good! Cause I've done that.
>you will find the phrase "data subjects who are in the Union", which are "natural persons", for whom the data protection laws apply.
tourists who are in the union also apply, there is no idea that you can figure out if that person is just traveling through the EU for some months you can do what you want with them.
https://www.dataprotectionreport.com/2018/12/edpb-clarifies-...
>Data subjects in the Union means any person in the Union whose information is being collected at that moment, regardless of their nationality or legal status. That means EU citizens and residents are squarely in scope. And someone in the EU, even a US tourist using an app in the EU, is a data subject in the Union for purposes of the GDPR.
on edit: if you were just clarifying/backing up my original point, sorry, I thought it seemed you were going with interpretation of the person who I was replying to an EU company can do what they want with any U.S citizen's data.
For the extra cup of strange irony, part of the government in my country (Australia) just tried forcing X to delete posts for everyone globally instead of just not showing them to Australian users. Thankfully the court system told the Aust gov to bugger off due to overreach. ;)
Austrian courts forced Meta to delete certain posts globally. That's some crazy overreach.
https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/die-gru....
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 never considered that if I formed a corporation I could fund death squads in other countries to maintain access to cheap products. What the hell is wrong with you where you thought that was not only desirable, but a normal situation...?
I grew up very conservative and pro-free-market, and honestly a huge part of my transition to being a pinko commie scum was recognizing just how FUCKED big businesses are, especially overseas. Like you have the banal stuff like tax sheltering which is shitty but like, it's just money but then, oh MAN, they get up to some truly horrific shit. Death squads, union breaking, cataclysmic environmental damage, and it's 100% enabled by our system. I hope that this trend continues and we can finally get some justice out of these organizations that have clearly overstepped in so many ways.
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?
[0]. Arms-length, third-party, paper-trail-negative contractors.
Sounds lucrative.
Not quite.
You may be thinking of the “grease payment” exception [1] to the FCPA [2]. Customariness isn’t as important as whether the payment is to speed up a decided outcome or effect the outcome.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitating_payment
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Ac...
You just don't do business in such countries? Why do you want to work with corrupt regimes so much?
whereas if you bribe public officials in other countries as normal business practice, that might give you an advantage over other companies that also operate in the US. if they have to also engage in bribery to compete with you, that seems like a much more direct harm to another US entity.
my point is that the jurisdiction of the US criminal justice system should be limited to the US. if people do things in another country that demonstrably harm US residents, that's fair game. otherwise, it seems like an overreach for the US to enforce laws that might not even exist in other countries. just my opinion, you don't have to agree.
This would make it very easy for Americans to be mercenaries and assassins for foreign governments.
Err, which one? You've mentioned a few different things. :)
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.
I guess it's a good thing, wish I had it. Makes for persuasive and effective writing, that's for sure.
> The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.
The highlighted part just doesn’t make sense unless you believe in some universal, God-given “law of nations.” In this context, the supernatural belief renders the statute itself nonsensical, like a law setting tariffs on imported “faerie wings.”
I’m not using it as an ad hominem to disparage a statute that makes sense on its face. The part of the statute referring to acts in violation of US treaties is perfectly fine.
I'm not an international lawyer, but my understanding is that for a very long time there has indeed been a generally-accepted "law of nations" that simply evolved by (more or less) common consent, not necessarily by any formal enactment on the part of some generally-accepted authority. Lex mercatoria ("the Law Merchant") comes to mind, as does the "right" of any nation to execute pirates captured on the high seas.
The brute fact is that ultimately, might does indeed make right.
Sure. But that’s not “law” that’s the exercise of power. In 2024 we shouldn’t indulge the fiction that it’s more than that.
The way it has been construed, the ATS empowers US courts to do whatever they want if some foreign conduct offends the sensibilities of some Americans. Some feelers in America upset that Bangladesh summarily executes drug traffickers? They can sue for violation of “the law of nations.” I’m not saying the US can’t do that, I’m saying it’s stupid and arrogant.
A longish response would be: "The United States is generally a force for good, and it's the main provider of the very-costly Pax Americana that supports so much of global commerce and a rules-based international order. If we decide you need to follow our standards everywhere if you want to enjoy access to our country, you're always free to refuse — and to accept the consequences."
The short, brutalist response would be: "Because we can."
A footnote: You seem to think that "sovereignty" is some kind of magical concept that causes everyone to honor the wishes of another people. It's not; history amply proves that "sovereignty" is simply shorthand for "we think we shouldn't have to do what you want us to do, because reasons, and we're willing to gamble that our economic power and military might (alone and/or with allies) are enough to enforce our preference over yours."
Short-term vs. long-term analysis. Analogously, if I understand your argument correctly: It's entirely rational for citizens to support costly- and occasionally-violent enforcement of the law against others — e.g., arrest and (upon conviction) imprisonment of murderers, robbers, tax cheaters, etc., and then publicizing that action — even though few if any citizens get any near-term material benefit from doing so. Likewise with the rules-based international order supported by Pax Americana.
Taking (what I think is) your argument to an extreme: The U.S. didn't get involved in WWII to stop Germany from exterminating European Jewry; nor did we invade Rwanda to try to stop the Hutu slaughter of Tutsis and others. But in either case, had we done so, I don't think it would have been "religious nut[-]jobbery."
(You and I are in agreement about the Crusades.)
That’s my beef: if the U.S. wants to meddle in other country’s affairs “because it can” nobody can stop it. But it’s insulting to disguise what is an exercise of power as the enforcement of “law.” And if Americans really do believe there is law that binds the whole world that’s where the religious nutjobbery comes in. Law is something that only exists within a state that has the monopoly on violence to enforce it.
(Intervening in World War II can be justified as an exercise is protecting U.S. security. Intervening in Rwanda cannot, and is an example of Americans believing it’s their job to enforce God’s law everywhere in the world.)
You're setting the bar pretty high. Some "law" simply evolves, by custom and practice, without any formal enactment by anyone. One example that comes to mind is (maritime) anti-piracy law.
Keep in mind that, unless I'm very much mistaken, American extraterritorial law is fundamentally grounded on, "if you want access to our country, financial system, etc., then you gotta follow our rules — and not necessarily just while you're within our geographic borders. You pays your money and you takes your choice."
BTW, the U.S. didn't invade Rwanda at all, to save the Tutsis or otherwise.
Many of us would assert that trying to stop mass murder is a good thing in its own right and doesn't need to be justified by reference to "God's law," whatever that might mean.
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?
Mind you, Id gladly have pedos and banana execs shot in public.
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?
Everyone is happy to give the government extra power for things they don’t like but rarely consider they would use it for things they don’t like
If we're keeping with consistency... yes.
I find it deeply ironic that such morally guided policy unravells a power projection machine only to then be replaced by another powers power projection machine void of values. A power that engages in values mimicry on the surface level and copies the colonial strategies it condemns. And in the end, the morally just but powerless are just written out of history. All the good intentions and they will have never existed.
Some kissinger minion will remove us from the internet archives to have a more correct history for the great leader. And lets not forget the physical, real disasters of antirealpolitics in Europe. Everyone scrambles to get nukes that idealists declared redundant.
In this game the moral and decent loose totally if they allow one player to gain enough power to flip the gameboard. Worser still the moral rightous ones become defacto usefool gamepieces rambling about "red lines & rules" of the opponents, while the littlefingers and kissingers play this game with one arm tied back. The blood in Ukraine is on your hands too, oh moral ones.
The mistake is assuming all those who have some amout of power all have the same agenda.
Such a state is never possible purely because people's personalities, needs, values, environment exist in a wide spectrum. Littlefingers and kissengers loose something everytime they win.
Its like a virus cant kill the host without killing itself.
America isn't solely responsible for the decline of the indigenous population of the New World from ~130 million to ~15 million.
Check out what Spanish did a few centuries previously, annihilating ~8 million of indigenous and millions African slaves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Account_of_the_Destruc...
Lots of blame to go around. It's essential to know all of the uncomfortable parts of history and to avoid repeating them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Overpass
Mentioned here too:
America's own micro Tianamen. Private sector, of course.
If you know what I mean ...
I think people tend to think that modern politics is how all politics was done and... nah. Before we had more robust judicial, communication, and surveillance systems, if someone threatened your business and you were wealthy enough, having them killed and dumped in a bog was 100% on the fuckin table.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60073359/steiner-v-ebay...
No, I'm not. It sounds like a very interesting read, though. I don't think those things tended to happen over here, beyond mafia-style illegal dealings.
The Pinkerton detective agency has a long history of being the go-to contractors for corporate violence against labour organisers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
Luckily no American corporation would ever murder someone who threatened their financial interests, nowadays.
Or you could pay the ransom, report it to the DOJ, and then leave, like Chiquita did.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%2527%...
It's amazing how decades later, they heirs of United Fruit Company are still using violence as a tool for increasing profit. This is what happens when individuals are not criminally prosecuted for bad conduct. I'm sure it will happen again.
Same as this shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Cooper_Keith
https://westisliphistoricalsociety.org/index.php/archives/ma...
(That's a death every 33 feet of construction, for 25 miles...)
https://www.unitedfruitcompany.com/biographies/the-seldom-re...
> 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.
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.
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.
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 with the AUC in Columbia, they will torture and kill your people for fun, and post it on LiveLeak laughing about it.
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.
Okay, how - as a human being - will you reconcile that with the fact that your employees will be tortured to death if you don't pay?
You could stay legally compliant, or you could save your employees' lives. Most moral people would do the latter.
> If you're operating in Colombia without K&R (or, apparently, basic OpSec), that's on you.
Hindsight is 20/20. You are correct, but this statement is fundamentally unhelpful when the AUC is already at your doorstep.
Random Afghans and Iraqis were kidnapped for Guantanamo or outright murdered for less.
For the 2007 criminal case, the company came to the department of justice and disclosed the payments, saying they had been made under threat of violence. Specifically the AUC was threatening physical harm to employees of a Chiquita subsidiary in Columbia. The department of justice appears to have accepted that the payments were made under duress, but did not recognize that as a sufficient excuse, and decided to prosecute anyways. The company reached a plea agreement.
Honestly, it seems like the justice department came down pretty hard. Obviously giving money to terrorist groups under any circumstances shortly after 9/11 would be highly scrutinized, and the company could have dropped the columbian subsidiary, which they wound up doing eventually anyways, instead of continuing to pay the protection racket. But still it seems like they were victims in this too.
It’s also strongly analogous to an issue faced in tech: whether to pay the demands or ransomware gangs.
If the ransomeware gang has ties to terrorism, it’s a crime to pay the ransom.
It looks like the people who could be held individually criminally liable were in Colombia [1]. (I also imagine Chiquita gets points for notifying the DoJ versus getting caught.)
> Random Afghans and Iraqis were kidnapped for Guantanamo or outright murdered for less
To be fair, there is a world of difference between financing a foreign terrorist group and financing one that is attacking Americans. (That and we're cavalier with the lives of South Americans.)
[1] https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/March/07_nsd_161...
A lot of Iraqi's were a big fan of toppling Saddam.
Note : not saying it was a good idea with what we know now.
And about Serbia. The bombing from "NATO" with a focus on military targets made it possible for it's population to overthrow Milosevic by the citizens a year later.
The boots on the ground in this case were the Serbs themselves. From my POV, NATO only provided air-support for them.
The real problem with statements like that is that we can say it about literally any leader.
Those were idiots under the hype of a wannabe dictator with propaganda influence very similar to Russia.
Great video about it here: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/31/17804104/strikethrough-lies-pr...
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
I am tempted to add an image of Jack Sparrow saying, But you've heard of me.
That aside, US would not fall for a coup because of the strong institutions in place. But these places are not that mature in its institutions. So they would fall. It doesn't mean that a similar sentiment is not present in US. And for all the talk of the freedom and democracy US always prefers demagogues and dictators in other parts of the world, as long as US can control them.
The Capitol insurgency and the stop the steal was pretty popular, but it is not a reason for another country to lie and invade this place. Same should have been applied to Iraq. That's all.
The CIA helped them, by overthrowing at least one gov’t. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%2527%...]
Money has always been a national interest for every gov’t everywhere.
That's not how democracy works. /s
Companies do not have to obey the law and, when they are caught, nobody goes to jail. They just need to pay some protection money.
Want to be a criminal without fear of prosecution ? Join a company, preferably on a management position.
They had the choice between not doing business there and paying the criminals. They chose paying the criminals.
It's the same thing US residents do, with the same abusses by the government.
In another 100 years they might actually get a real sentence.
edit: I just learned about Ken Saro-Wiwa
we, the people, are liable
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/co...
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 are other historical examples I can think of which involved mass violence as a significant part of the means to halt the vast injustice. Those examples are probably not what we’d want to model, but they’re notably more readily available for reference.
Assign for yourself whatever share of the blame your conscience will allow.
> So what is the answer?
I have no idea, but whatever it is I suspect it's not yelling at strangers on the internet.
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.
Excellent reference!
The USSR was funding leftist rebels in several central and South American countries throughout its existence - Argentina, Grenada, Guatemala, the list goes on.
Doesn’t seem odd to me for the US to come in and back the current government?
Even if those governments weren’t democratic, I don’t think anyone can argue the Soviet backed ones were going to be beacons of liberty either.
It seems odd to me. The US presents itself as the “city on a hill”, a shining beacon of democracy and freedom for the world to look up to as an example. This should, ostensibly, mean supporting democratic processes even when they yield outcomes that are not necessarily optimal for American interests. It’s clear that this isn’t the case.
If your main motivator is your own personal benefit, and you’re not shy about using realpolitik, deception, and violence to achieve it, at least be open about that fact. Attempts to disguise it as a moral and ethical position are shallow and easily identified.
Would those people really have been better off? Would the US be better off? Would the world be more stable?
What I see a lot with the left is “well if it can’t be perfect we shouldn’t do it”, ignoring the fact that doing nothing is actually a worse outcome than intervening.
Not support coups d'etat against democratically-elected leaders?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Brother_Sam#Developi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
The Arbez coup was an attempt to prevent the USDR from gaining a foothold there.
The Brother Sam operation didn’t even happen - “The operation was thus deactivated before it had any physical effect in Brazil”
The Chilean coup happened before the CIA actually got involved. But regardless that coup was done because Allende refused to follow the Supreme Court “the Supreme Court publicly complained about the government's inability to enforce the law of the land”
So using the “democratically elected” hides the fact the situation was far from democratic at the time of the coup.
Rubbish, but even if it were true, so what? Who gave the US the right to decide what happens in other nations?
> The Brother Sam operation didn’t even happen the operation was thus deactivated
If it was deactivated, then it sounds like it happened. You can't deactivate something that hasn't already been activated. The fact is that it did happen. Oh, sure, the supplies weren't delivered and the land invasion was never launched, but the ships did leave port. Moreover, can you be certain that word of this operation wasn't sent to the Brazilian opposition to reassure them an give them confidence? All of which is moot, of course, because what I wrote earlier was, "[to] Not support coups d'etat against democratically-elected leaders [was an alternative]". Whether or not it had "physical effect"--whatever that is--this was clearly support.
> The Chilean coup happened before the CIA actually got involved
I would suggest doing some research on those and reading further into Wikipedia. Right there after the first paragraph in that section, the article quotes the 2000 report which says, "[The CIA] had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters" (among other things), which again constitutes "support."
> regardless that coup was done because Allende refused to follow the Supreme Court
Only the coup plotters know why the conducted a coup and I'm not convinced they've told you. But if it was because "the Supreme Court public complained" well Heavens to Betsy! Oh no! The Supreme Court "complained" did it? Well now, that is serious. That definitely automatically grants the U.S. the right to decide the matter.
Please.
> So using the “democratically elected” hides the fact the situation was far from democratic at the time of the coup.
That's not a fact. That's a matter of judgement (yours). That Arbenz and Allende at least won elections which were generally regarded as fair, those are matters of fact.
So the US should sit back as the USSR does it?
> Whether or not it had "physical effect"--whatever that is--this was clearly support.
Is it wrong for the US to support on side of a conflict?
> "[The CIA] had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters"
That's not the same as supporting a coup. It's literally the CIAs job to collect intelligence, no? It's something you can do without impacting the outcome?
> Only the coup plotters know why the conducted a coup and I'm not convinced they've told you.
Read up on the conflict. Allende was refusing to follow the constitution. It's not like Chile was some stable democracy, it was teetering on authoritarianism.
> That definitely automatically grants the U.S. the right to decide the matter.
The US wasn't doing that it. It was monitoring the situation and never got involved. But if it had, would it have been wrong to pick a side?
> That's not a fact. That's a matter of judgement (yours).
It absolutely is a fact. Calling it "overthrowing a democracy" is inaccurate. They were highly unstable governments teetering on chaos. Whether the US got involved or not wasn't going to change that fact.
So again, I raise my original point - the alternative isn't a democracy and stability, it's chaos. The US can stand back and let the USSR fund the opposition and end up with a dictatorship. Is that a better outcome than the US getting involved?
These countries were not thriving democracies. So saying "if it wasn't for the US, these people would be living in a democracy" is false.
The options are basically US-aligned dictator, or USSR-aligned dictator. I see no issues with the US supporting the first.
Anyway, you don't know that these are the only two options. You don't know that the USSR would've installed dictators like the US actually did, though I consider it unlikely as there's no evidence they even tried.
It's a textbook example of it, just like this follow up. But I expect nothing else from a user that for years and years always, with no exceptions, no matter the subject, sides with wealth and power. Utter contempt is all I have for you.
so not like, historical atrocities from the era most people think of when they say "banana republics". current-era atrocities, perpetrated by people who probably still work at the company today.
I'm very happy that an example is being made of them to warn other corporations that committing murder to protect your profits may cause a slight dip in your next earnings report.
This is damages, not a fine.
> for killing 8 people
If this verdict stands, you can bet there will be more lawsuits coming.
> which amounts to a tad over 1% of their 2023 revenue
There's income statements available for some years. Their margins are tiny - usually profits are 10% of their revenue or less. Sometimes much less or none.
Imagine, by contrast, the impact that executing one Chiquita executive would have.
Ship a couple of them to La Modelo
Radicalism creates dystopia in the first place (e.g., the USSR was far more dystopic).
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...