Big oil is pure evil

You've heard the stories, but you haven't heard any like this, because there aren't any.

How is this even possible?

Chevron Honoring the World's "Global Thinkers"

Thanks in large part to global green giant Chevron, Foreign Policy has hit the interwebs with its special “Global Thinkers” edition. [...] One of their “leading global thinkers” is Kabul graffiti artist, Shamsia Hassani.

Supply Shamsia Hassani with spray paint, and the lasting effects of Afghanistan’s war will be covered with street art. Her dramatic murals enliven wreckage and abandoned buildings in Kabul. In Afghanistan, where women have historically been oppressed, those murals run counter to stereotypes about the culture. </>

And, because this is pretty and we want to keep people reading, there’s a picture……of someone who’s not Shamsia Hassani.

Afghan women all look alike, thanks to years spent under the burqua. So it can be tough to tell one from the other. It’s actually a picture of Lima Ahmad.

  Sunny in Kabul

Ooops. Well, sometimes doing your internet research on the fly and on a deadline, you make a booboo. Although, the Guardian did do a spread on Shamsia in September.

It’s not FP’s fault, not really. There’s no reason they should have spent more time making sure they’d labeled the picture of the one Afghan woman in their collection correctly.

[...]

After all, they could have just gone with random-woman-in-a-burqua-shot-from-the-window-of-an-armored-car.

[...]

Afghan women should be happy they made an appearance at all in something as lofty as a collection of people put together using the editorial equivalent of a dartboard.

[...]

So keep your expectations in check, Afghans. You got a mention. Not an accurate one, but…a mention.

Chevron, doing great things for the earth and humanity.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Richmond Progressive Alliance Shows It CAN Be Done

I really like this story.  It's too rare, and I'm still pessimistic about the States overall, but...I really like this story.

Go, Richmond!

It’s not often that a city council race in a city of 100,000 draws national attention. It happened in Richmond, California, this fall because one big corporation was so shameless in its open attempt to buy the election.

But even more remarkable was the fact that the corporation got beat. Up against the Democratic Party establishment, plus $3 million in campaign spending by Chevron—the third-largest company in the world—a grassroots group won.

[...]

The city is now 40 percent Latino, 26 percent Black, 17 percent white, and 14 percent Asian. A fifth of the population was born outside the U.S.

Richmond was long dominated by Chevron, whose massive refinery sits on the shoreline belching oil byproducts into the atmosphere. Chevron is the town’s biggest taxpayer and largest employer—but only 7 percent of employees live in Richmond. The execs certainly do not.

[...]

How did the Davids of RPA beat the Chevron Goliath?

  Labor Notes

Go ahead and read this one yourself.

And let's hope Chevron doesn't decide to make an example of Richmond and pull out.  It can afford to.

Chevron's Pockets Are Deeper Than Yours - and Ecuador's

[Law firm] Patton Boggs today abandoned the Ecuadorian rain forest residents on whose behalf it had fought zealously to hold Chevron responsible for contamination in the northeastern oil-producing region of the Andean country. It’s almost unheard of, however, for a major law firm to humiliate itself in the fashion Patton Boggs has done in the face of Chevron’s threat to pursue pending fraud allegations against the Washington (D.C.) firm. Patton Boggs did not admit to any wrongdoing in connection with the settlement.

[...]

Patton Boggs also agreed to provide Chevron with supportive documents and testimony and to pay the company $15 million as a tangible symbol of its abasement.

[...]

The bizarre saga stems from a February 2011 judgment in an Ecuadorian trial court that Chevron is culpable for decades of oil contamination in that country. The liability verdict was upheld by Ecuador’s Supreme Court, but the $19 billion in damages was halved to $9.5 billion.

Chevron refused to pay, arguing that the architect of the judgment, New York plaintiffs’ attorney Steven Donziger, fabricated evidence, coerced Ecuadorian judges, and participated in the ghostwriting of supposedly neutral expert reports and the February 2011 ruling itself. Chevron formalized those allegations in a U.S. civil racketeering suit against Donziger that produced a March 2014 verdict against the plaintiffs’ lawyer. Donziger denies wrongdoing and has appealed.

[...]

Patton Boggs [had] signed on as co-counsel with Donziger, agreeing to use its expertise and influence to help enforce the Ecuadorian judgment in courts around the world. That led to Chevron’s accusing the law firm of participating in the racketeering conspiracy pinned on Donziger by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. Patton Boggs, in turn, accused Chevron and its main outside law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, of abusive tactics. In the wake of Judge Kaplan’s March ruling against Donziger, however, Patton Boggs decided to throw in the towel.

[...]

Apart from Patton Boggs, a number of other former Donziger allies, including lawyers, scientific experts, and financiers, have disavowed their past relationships with the plaintiffs’ attorney and their allegations against Chevron.

  Business Week

Chevron Damage Control: An Apology and a Pizza

A Chevron well in the preparation stages for hydraulic fracturing exploded last Tuesday 50 miles south of Pittsburgh, Penn., causing a fire that lasted for four days and left one Chevron contractor unaccounted for and another one injured.

[...]

An image of a coupon from Chevron offering free pizza to residents near last week’s disaster was posted online Monday, prompting outrage, mockery and disbelief among activists and the Internet commentariat.

[...]

“The Chevron Guarantee: Our well won’t explode...or your pizza is free,” read one of many sarcastic tweets directed at Chevron on Tuesday.

The coupon was handed out along with a letter apologizing for the blowout to about 100 residents near the gas well, local media reported.

[...]

“How [...] stupid do they think people are?” said Gloria Forouzan, a leader with Pittsburgh-based anti-fracking group Marcellus Protest. “What (fracking companies) are doing in terms of PR is insidious. They advertise, and they advertise heavily, and for that, (people) are basically willing to lie down and let the companies walk all over them.”

  alJazeera

Well….

John Kuis, who lives about half a mile from the drilling site, can still hear sounds “as loud as a jet engine in my driveway,” as Chevron tries to cap gas leaking from the well. He said Chevron didn’t inform him of the incident until five days after it happened, when they handed out the pizza coupon.

He’s not sure he’ll use the coupon, but said he still considers the company a good neighbor.

“I guess they were just trying to be nice,” he said.

But wait. Chevron has more to offer.

The pizza isn’t the only relationship-mending effort Chevron is undertaking after the fire. The company will also donate grants ranging between $1,000 and $7,500 to fire departments that operate in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale region, where much of the state’s fracking takes place.

I started to comment, but I think I’ll just let that sit there and sink in.

How Handy

At the end of September, Ecuador’s foreign ministry announced that the US had seemingly denied visas to a delegation that was set to travel to the UN General Assembly in New York to present their case regarding an ongoing dispute against Chevron-Texaco.

According to the ministry’s official announcement, visas for the five Ecuadorian nationals were returned by the US Embassy in Quito “without any explanation.”

The group was to present testimony during a special event at the UN regarding the ecological impact caused by Chevron-Texaco’s oil operations in the Amazon rainforest region of Ecuador, which contaminated two million hectares, according to the country’s government.

  RT

Shouldn't the UN be its own territory? Grant its own visas? How nice for the United States that it is on US soil and subject to visa control by the US government.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.