Nice to know that if you work for a company that can afford to pay the fine, you can literally just straight up kill people(*) and pay the money and it's all good
When the military sees a problem that can only be solved by war crimes they literally just hire contractors to do them.
But you don’t have to be the US government to hire private companies to do war crimes for you. Any citizen* can hire private military contractors to go out and do war crimes for them.
*A citizen is anyone with a net worth of greater than 500 million dollars.
I’m very confused that this is happening now. I thought it happened a long time ago (them being found liable I mean). It’s crazy to me that it’s taken this long for such a pitiful punishment. It is good though that people are being reminded once again how shitty they are. Maybe we can impact their bottom line somehow (doubtful)
This is about Chiquita’s activities in the late 1990s and early 2000s, not about the 1928 coup in Honduras which was funded by Chiquita, then called United Fruit Company.
You know how every once in a while there’s an article going “man, check out all this illegal fucked up shit the CIA was doing 20 years ago, sure is great they stopped and don’t do anything illegal and fucked up anymore”, and the date they stopped doing the illegal shit is always “20 years ago”, regardless of when the article is published?
According to this, 3 million tons a year go from Colombia to Israel.
This is thermal coal, not the (rarer, purer) metallurgical coal.
Israel imports more than 50 per cent of its coal from Colombia, according to the American Journal for Transportation, and uses much of it to feed its power plants.
Israel isn’t huge, so one doesn’t have to come up with a lot of replacement coal.
Coal is fungible, and when shipped by ship, doesn’t have the kind of transportation limitations that gave Russian pipelines, for example, influence over Europe’s natural gas supply. Anyone can buy from anyone. If anyone is willing to sell to Israel, then Columbia’s exports go elsewhere to fill the additional demand that gets created for their coal.
There isn’t any kind of a unified bloc with control of coal, which makes it a hard commodity to cut someone off from. The US, Australia, China, Russia, India, and Germany are all major coal producers.
The US in particular, which I expect probably isn’t gonna cut Israel off, has a ton of coal.
More than 90% of the world’s total proved coal reserves are located in just ten countries. The US tops the list holding more than one-fifth of the total proven coal reserves, while China, which ranks third, is the biggest producer and consumer of coal.
I found another article about his on middleeasteye providing some extra context
Colombia is Israel’s primary coal supplier, accounting for 60 percent of all the country’s coal imports in 2023, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data.
Ynet news has reported that Israel has been quick to seek alternative suppliers and reportedly has “received positive responses from South Africa and Russia”, but will have to pay a higher premium on its coal imports.
“In the immediate term, they have reserves, so it’s not going to lead to energy outages, but it will have an economic impact long term, and joined by others, it will have the effect of impacting their energy production capabilities,” a Global Energy Embargo spokesperson told Middle East Eye. “If these other countries are taking action, that’s going to have a massive knock on effect.”
The coalition is now turning its attention to South Africa, where it will begin to mobilise to halt coal exports after the new government has been formed.
“We urgently call on South Africa, which provides nine percent of Israel’s coal, to follow Colombia’s lead,” the group said. t is also looking to stop crude oil exports from Brazil.)
60% of an import is pretty huge number. Israel will be able to find alternatives but it’s going to cost them.
The syntax they're constructing is working the opposite of how you said
You don't have to agree with them (and as they point out, one random solider saying one random thing doesn't mean anything "official" about Hamas as a whole), but they are saying that it is relevant that some individual in Hamas is talking about its female captives in explicitly sexual-slavery terms.
Put it this way, if a US prison guard or an IDF person were talking about female prisoners in an analogous way, it would abso fuckin lutely be some news.
I would say that the reception it's getting indicates that a lot of people at least here have a lot of trouble classifying Hamas as bad people. If I were simply posting a two-week-old story about the IDF desert detention camp, or a US policeman from last November who shot somebody when they shouldn't have, I don't think it would be receiving this level of anguished scrutiny about timeliness and relevance and headline.
I get it. I think because Israel are objectively the bad guys, there's a tendency to interpret any story like this as supportive of them, and so start trashing it out of defense for the Palestinians. I won't say that's a crazy thing to do, but I don't think it should be all that difficult to accept Hamas as bad people. I meant the Israeli government has been giving them funding and support against their domestic opposition, specifically because they can be relied upon to be violent and corrupt in a way that tears down legitimacy for the Palestinian cause. Someone on Lemmy who's standing up in defense of Hamas in any particular war-criminal action they're doing is not making the bold stand for Palestinian people that I think they may believe that they are making.
It looks like it’s getting the reception it’s getting because, as @Cheradenine said, it’s two weeks old and it’s already been rebutted.
I realize rule 1 says within 30 days, but this sort of thing is a story that can change from one day to the next.
Very few people think Hamas are good. They just know, like I do, that Israel is not at war with Hamas. Not really. They’re at war with all of Gaza. They don’t care whether you’re a member of Hamas or not. They don’t care if you’re a baby or you’re 99 years old. And don’t give me the “Hamas hides amongst them” bullshit. That in no way justifies the thousands of dead children.
What do you mean by "it," here? The IDF translation?
Israel is not at war with Hamas. Not really. They're at war with all of Gaza. They don't care whether you're a member of Hamas or not. They don't care if you're a baby or you're 99 years old.
100% agreed. I usually put "war" in quotes because it's much more accurate to describe it as a large-scale terrorist attack by the IDF (killing and threatening a helpless civilian population to influence their behavior) than anything remotely resembling a normal state-level conflict between armed combatants.
indicates that a lot of people at least here have a lot of trouble classifying Hamas as bad people
Oh fuck off with this delusional bullshit. Nobody calls Hamas good people or has trouble saying they are bad people. 99% of the world would happily let every person in Hamas die. The only people who think anyone is supporting Hamas are the same ones who think it’s OK to blindly kill 30,000 civilians in response to 700 civilians being brutally murdered.
It’s not news because everyone knows that Hamas is evil and doing/saying evil things.
Buddy buddy. I'm on your side. If I need to say it, I think that the war crimes Israel is committing are at least 10 times worse than anything Hamas has done. That doesn't mean that all of a sudden a story about Hamas doing crimes becomes a non issue or a thing to react to with hostility. In my opinion.
I didn't say anyone here was supporting Hamas. I was saying that it seems like people are clearly reacting negatively to this story because it makes Hamas look bad, when they would be completely fine with a story that made the IDF look bad, even if it contained some of these issues which they are claiming are what they're so aggrieved about about this story.
Again, I get why there's a value judgement that the IDF is the bad guys. I agree with that judgement. I'm just saying you don't have to demand that your news coverage obey the same judgements.
To me, stories about the world have value beyond the conclusion being "Hamas good" or "Hamas bad," and can be important even if the conclusion along that axis is "Hamas bad" which we knew already. It seems weird that people are saying that because the conclusion is that Hamas is bad, the story is irrelevant, and also are pretending for some reason that the anti-Palestinian-looking viewpoint is not the entire reason they don't like it.
You don’t have to put the in quotation marks, the translation was released by the Israeli goveernment, that is what this article and many others are referring to.
When this was released, two weeks ago, when the article was written, most articles disagreed with the official translation.
I thought my message was short enough that it wouldn't have been missed, but this is one of the articles which disagree with what you're calling the official translation (along with providing a lot of other information.)
Honestly, I posted it because (a) it was news to me; it was a detailed explanation of a news event which enhanced my understanding (b) I felt it was needed perspective to add the "IDF translation was wrong and so nothing to see here" narrative which as we are learning is pretty popular (c) I checked and it was within the 30 day window according to the sub rules
I suspect that the hostility is because people are interpreting it as anti-Palestinian and pro-Zionist. Which is a fair conclusion, I get it, but not why I posted it. Israel's crimes are objectively 10 times worse than anything Hamas has been doing, but I don't see a need to proceed from there to "and therefore anything Hamas does is okay and any attempt to criticize them is probably a lie and I need to support them."
Not that I'm saying you're doing that, but like I say, I suspect some of the hostility to this story lies somewhere on a continuum which does include that at one end.
I am downvoting bc of the exceedingly clickbait title with absolutely zero follow-up details except for a link. This post is therefore “advertising” - like spam in my inbox alerting me to an “opportunity” (to save on car insurance or printer ink, ignoring whether or not I even have one of those devices, or whatever), it takes up all of our attention. Which at currently 37k subscribers to this community, measured at a one minute each, is collectively 617 hours, or 15.4 work week time periods, i.e. 3.9 months total.
The article itself might even be good, or it might not be but at this point I am indisposed to click the bait in order to find out. And my point above stands either way.
Possibly you mean well OP - I have had troubles posting articles myself, assuming that details would be auto-populated like I see elsewhere, but then it did not happen - I am just offering my unasked-for opinion, in case it helps.:-) Especially since others I see are likewise downvoting so I wanted to add an explanation at least from my own POV.
People are either familiar with the sabaya controversy, in which case it's instantly obvious what is meant, or else they are unfamiliar, in which case it would be impossible to communicate any level of approximation of the full situation in 250 characters (and I think the headline is about as good as anything at communicating the rough sketch). A big whole point of the article is, the situation's more complex than can be communicated with quick phrases.
The article itself is a pretty deeply factual and nuanced take on an active controversy in the news, i.e. not just a waste of time oversold by the headline
I am forbidden by the sub rules from changing the title
It's not selling you fucking printer ink, it is news in a news sub
I would be pretty surprised if the phrasing of the headline is why they are downvoting -- I think it's being interpreted as some kind of Zionism or excuse for Israel's crimes, which is a pretty sensible assumption TBF, but in this case is wrong
I don’t think it’s a poor title, and even if it was as you said there is a constraint there, but rather my beef was how the title was the only piece of information offered.
I am not accusing you of trying to sell anything commercially - I was offering some advice to help you get the message out that you wanted to spread. This is not your family that you might expect to click on every single link that you send, this is a social media platform where people from all walks of life are here, and you had an opportunity to not quite “sell” but “encourage” people to read this post. I ran into a similar situation in the past where I posted a video, and someone was kind enough to explain why they did not want to watch it, so I added a description and while it was too late for discoverability, it did help I think.
Yeah some people are discussing the content too, I was hyper-focusing on the delivery aspect here, in case it was of interest to you.
That's actually a pretty good point. I added a body which explained what's in the article and why I think it's relevant.
I'm a little doubtful that that will lead to it being any more well-received, since as I say I think the issue is people interpreting it as anti-Palestinian and reflexively going on the attack, but yeah there's no reason for it to be cryptic for no reason, so I fixed it.
Oh yes that’s MUCH better! Whether your original goal was to encourage people to read the article, or to encourage us all to have a conversation about the matter, either way this helps a ton to increase discoverability! I mean, as you say it’s probably too late now, but still it should help - I get people replying to my comments days to over a week later sometimes - and it is good practice for next time:-).
This bill? 42 democrats apparently voted to protect a foreign genocidal maniac.
how much you wanna bet they also have their names appear on this list
(edit: yeah. I just checked they all do. it’s possible every congress person does, but, uhm, after a cursory search the average is around 100k in contributions from pro-israeli sources. I’m not even going to be bothering to check the republicans that voted yea.)
Instead of supporting a court that has the goal of prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity like they themselves did after 1945, they are now boycotting such courts. I wonder what made them change their position 180 degrees. …
Years of political bribes and outright propaganda. AIPAC has pro-Israel billboards in some locations in the Bay Area. I saw at least one somewhere between Vallejo and Richmond when we were coming back from a hike or something (partner picks outings and drives to spare my frustration in traffic, so I don’t have a solid memory of why we were on that stretch of highway).
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