Chevron’s Andrea Neuman Sanctioned For Abusive Questioning

Chevron lawyers’ unprofessional practices are not going unnoticed anymore. Andrea Neuman , one of the lead lawyers in the Ecuador lawsuit is the fourth Chevron lawyer to be sanctioned by either an Ecuadorian or a U.S. court. Neuman is accused of trying to intimidate an American technical expert during a recent deposition. Chevron has been playing by its own rules for a long time blatantly ignoring the rule of law.

Visit Chevron Pit for more details.

Andrea Neuman

Three Chevron Lawyers Sanctioned For Obstructing Ecuador Environmental Trial

Facing $113 Billion in Potential Damages, Chevron Lawyers Seek Any Opportunity to Delay

Amazon Defense Coalition
29 October 2010 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or Karen@hintoncommunications.com

Lago Agrio, Ecuador (October 29, 2010) -- A trial court has sanctioned and fined three Chevron lawyers for obstructing the trial where Chevron faces a multi-billion dollar judgment for the deliberate dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic waste, according to court papers made available today.

Alberto Racines and Diego Larrea, both of whom have worked on Chevron’s legal team in Ecuador since the trial against Chevron began in 2003, were fined by Judge Nicolas Zambrano this week for repeatedly filing the same motions in an effort to delay the seven-year Ecuador trial.

The judge ruled that the lawyers had used Chevron’s motions “to obstruct the trial.” In 2009, a third Chevron lawyer – Patricio Campuzano – was sanctioned for the same reason.
On August 5 – one day after the court ordered both parties to submit their own damages assessments -- Chevron filed 19 motions to nullify the order or the trial itself in a 30-minute period. Racines and Larrea then cited the failure of the trial judge to quickly rule on each of the motions as a basis to recuse him.

“The evidence clearly shows Chevron used illegal practices that resulted in the massive destruction of the rainforest in Ecuador and the decimation of indigenous groups and other local residents,” said Pablo Fajardo, who represents dozens of indigenous and farmer communities suing the oil giant for dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest.

“To help Chevron evade its obligations, Chevron’s lawyers are trying to sabotage the Ecuadorian legal system in addition to violating their professional obligations,” he added. (MORE)

“We Agree”, Chevron Needs To Clean Up Its Mess

Chevron’s “We Agree” advertising campaign was designed by Chevron’s public relations team to try to convince us that Chevron is more than just an oil company. We are supposed to believe that Chevron cares about people and the environment. Chevron’s strategy was very simple: ignore disastrous environmental record and talk about all the good things Chevron could, but of course will never do.
Activists from The Yes Man launched their own website and sent out faux press release mocking Chevron’s ads. The website was made to look like it’s a part of Chevron’s campaign but instead of empty promises it is based on truth and the real image of Chevron people should see.
Some journalists got fooled by the faux press release and this morning everyone is talking about it. Great!

The True Cost of Chevron

The oil waste Chevron left behind in the Ecuadorian rain forest is making people sick. According to American expert Dr. Daniel Rourke 10,000 people are at risk of getting cancer. The longer Chevron refuses to clean up, the bigger this environmental crisis gets.

Read more about Dr. Rourke’s findings here

Her leg amputated because of a cancerous tumor, Modesta Briones sits in her house near Parahuaco oil well #2 in the Ecuadoran Amazon.

Terrifying Truth

Last month Chevron’s lawyer Andrea Neuman deposed an environmental expert William Power. The lawyer for the Amazonian communities suing Chevron took the opportunity and cross-examined Mr. Powers. His testimony revealed some horrifying truths about Chevron’s contamination in the Ecuadorian rain forest. Below you can read a few quotes, visit Chevron in Ecuador for more details and to read how Mr. Power’s testimony sent Chevron’s lawyers into total panic.

Q: Now, when Chevron-Texaco designed its pits in the Ecuadorian Amazon, what design did it use? 


Powers: Dug a hole in the dirt and deposited the drilling muds in the unlined hole.

Q: And if Chevron-Texaco was designing those pits in the United States, would it have been able to dig a pit in the – and put in the drilling muds as you described?

Powers: No.

Q: What's the consequence of Chevron's design of its pits in the Lago Agrio concession?

Powers: Two consequences: the leeching of the chemicals into the ground, and ultimately into the ground water; and the overflow of the pits due to lack of maintenance and rain water and overflowing directly into the drainage channels surrounding that pit.

Q: And what's the basis for your conclusions concerning the Chevron-Texaco's pits?

Powers: Having viewed the pits and reviewed the nature of how those pits were designed, utilized, and the fact that – it is uncontested that the pits were left with drilling mud in them.

Q: And when Chevron developed the oil field in Ecuador, did it do so in conformity with standards for treatment of production water that were in place in the United States at the time that it was building its infrastructure in Ecuador?

Powers: No.

Q: Can you describe the ways in which Chevron's Ecuadorian concession fell below standards it would have been required to meet if that field were in the United States?

Powers: Based on the salinity and the produced water from the field, the company would have been required to reinject that water into a subsurface formation. Could not have operated that oil field or produced a single barrel of oil without having that produced water injection system operational.

Q: By failing to reinject production water in the Lago Agrio concession, what impact did that have on the environment in Lago Agrio?

Powers: It contaminated the surface water at the points where it was injected, not only with the high salinity of the produced water in an environment that has almost no natural salinity, but the trace contaminants of heavy metals and oil also contributed to the generalized contamination of that surface water.

Q: If you include the produced water in your comparison between the discharge into the environment from Chevron's Lago Agrio concession, when you compare that to the Exxon-Valdez oil discharge from that catastrophe, how would you compare them?

Powers: Both the produced water and the crude oil are toxic. The – you can argue about the relative toxicity of them both. But the amount of toxic liquids that should not have been in the environment in Ecuador was at least 30 times the quantity or the volume of crude that was spilled in the Exxon-Valdez disaster.

Chevron Misleads U.S. Courts with Inaccurate Translation

I just read that Chevron’s lawyers submitted inaccurate translation of Pablo Fajardo’s comments to U.S. Federal court as evidence. By inaccurate I mean changed to fit Chevron’s lies and completely different from what was actually said. Ohhh… the audacity! How can unethical behavior like this go unpunished? How far will Chevron be allowed to go before somebody says enough?!

See Amazon Defense Coalition’s press release below.

Chevron Misleads U.S. Courts with Inaccurate Translation in Multi-Billion Dollar Ecuador Contamination Lawsuit
Gibson Dunn’s Aggressive Legal Strategy Backfires In Federal Court
Amazon Defense Coalition
1 October September 2010 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or Karen@hintoncommunications.com

New York, New York – Chevron has been submitting an inaccurate and misleading translation to U.S. federal courts as part of its effort to evade liability in the multi-billion dollar Ecuador environmental lawsuit, according to court papers filed recently.

Chevron’s lawyers at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, who recently took over the Ecuador litigation for the company, submitted a highly misleading and inaccurate translation of lead Ecuadorian attorney Pablo Fajardo describing the role of court-appointed expert Richard Cabrera. Attacking Cabrera, who in 2008 submitted a damages assessment against Chevron of $27 billion, has been the centerpiece of the oil giant’s strategy to discredit the Ecuadorian judicial system to defeat enforcement of an expected adverse judgment.

Gibson Dunn brags on its website that its litigators in the Ecuador case have been described by American Lawyer magazine as the “Game Changers”; the firm notes that “clients in deep trouble turn to Gibson Dunn for fresh, aggressive thinking and innovative rescues.”

In a brief filed on Sept. 28 by representatives of the Amazonian communities in federal courts in New York and elsewhere, the plaintiffs blast Chevron for its erroneous translation of comments made by Fajardo. According to Chevron’s translation of a 2007 meeting, Fajardo told a group of scientists in Quito that Cabrera would simply “sign the report and review it.”

According to an accurate translation of the exchange, Fajardo actually said that what Cabrera “will do is give his criteria… right… his opinion, and sign the report, and review as well.”

Chevron also excluded from its court submission the contemporaneous translation of Fajardo during the meeting, which verifies that Chevron’s translation was manipulated.

"What Fajardo actually said in the meeting is radically different from what Chevron claimed he said via its bogus translation," said Karen Hinton, a spokeswoman for the communities. "Once again, Chevron is misrepresenting facts to courts around the country in support of its contrived 'fraud' narrative."

"When the facts don't fit the contrived narrative, Chevron's lawyers seem content to just make them up," she added.

Chevron has claimed to U.S. courts that ex parte contacts with experts in Ecuador is illegal, when in fact the practice was commonly used by both parties and sanctioned by the court, said Hinton. Lawyers on both sides of the dispute were invited by the court to provide materials to Cabrera and other experts; Cabrera and these other experts adopted some of the materials provided by the parties.

The plaintiffs also have submitted evidence that Chevron's lawyers, on a regular basis, met ex parte with judges overseeing the trial.

This is not the first time that Chevron has manipulated the meaning of translations for legal or public relations purposes.

In 2009, Chevron accused the Ecuadorian judge then presiding over the case of saying an appeal by Chevron of an adverse decision would only be a "formality" when what he actually said was the parties would have to observe the "formalities" of the appeals process. Chevron then used the misleading translation to claim to the media that the judge had "fixed" the trial.

So far this year Chevron has sought to depose 23 persons in the U.S. associated with the Ecuador case, including two lawyers who have represented the plaintiffs.

Chevron’s strategy of using U.S. discovery rules to harass the Amazonian communities in Ecuador – termed “abusive litigation” by the plaintiffs -- has not gone unnoticed. One U.S. federal magistrate judge recently ruled that Chevron’s discovery strategy is “spiraling out of control” and is an attempt to circumvent the rules of Ecuador’s courts, where Chevron had the trial moved after it was originally filed in U.S. federal court in 1993.

Don't Let Anyone Mention Ecuador!

A few months ago I blogged about Chevron having protesters arrested at its annual shareholder meeting in Houston. Chevron’s CEO John Watson went even further and filled criminal charges against Chevron’s longtime critic Antonia Juhasz for speaking out about Chevron’s despicable environmental record. I wonder if it was also John Watson who thought forcing people to stay quiet would be a solution.

Read more on Chevron Pit.

The Numbers Are In

If there is anyone out there not realizing how extensive the devastation in the Ecuadorian rain forest is, they need to read Chevron Pit’s latest post. New damage assessments have been submitted to the Ecuador trial court and the numbers are mind blowing!
Below are some of the horrific findings. For more detailed look, visit The Chevron Pit

A mother holds her ten-month old daughter

with a skin rash caused by bathing in

oil-polluted water in Rumipamba in 1993.

• Soil Remediation: A conservative estimate of potential costs to remediate contaminated soils at all of Chevron’s 378 former oil production facilities in Ecuador ranges from $487 million to $949 million depending on the clean-up standard used. The actual cost could be significantly higher.

• Groundwater Remediation: Based on data in the trial record, the range for clean-up of groundwater is $396 million to $911 million.

• Rivers and wetlands: Data indicates that sediment contamination exists, but no clean-up number was presented pending further investigation.

• Health Care: Using recent data from the World Health Organization and the Ecuadorian Ministry of Health, an estimated $1.4 billion will be needed to provide health care to the thousands of affected persons over the next three decades.

• Drinking Water: Degradation of the environment with petroleum hydrocarbons associated with Chevron’s production activities has been documented at numerous locations. The cost of a comprehensive series of regional water systems is estimated to be between approximately $326 million to $541 million.

• Excess Cancer Deaths: Actuarial life-table methodology demonstrates that the aggregate cost of excess cancer deaths due to exposure to oil contamination in the area where Chevron operated could be approximately $69.7 billion. This is the based on the value of a statistical life used by averaging relevant data used in the U.S. court system and by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ($7 million for each lost life), and comparing it with official Ecuador mortality data and census information. Up to 9,950 people in the affected area will face a significant risk of dying from cancer in the coming decades even if the area is remediated in the next ten years. Even if the analysis stops in 1990 – the year when Chevron ceased being the operator of the oil fields – the aggregate cost of excess cancer deaths is still estimated at $12.1 billion based on 1,732 deaths from cancer. (The earlier Cabrera report estimated 1,401 deaths from cancer, but he did not project future deaths.)

• Natural Resources Losses: This estimate is based on the evidence that concentrations of petroleum hydrocarbons and harmful metals in soil, groundwater, and surface water have exceeded levels considered to be toxic to terrestrial and aquatic biota. While determining the exact values of service losses in the rainforest with precision is not possible, it is not clear that further studies would produce a range of plausible values different from the range posited earlier by Mr. Cabrera – approximately $874 million to $1.7 billion, depending on the methodology employed.

• Unjust Enrichment: Chevron’s unjust enrichment ranges from $4.57 billion to $9.46 billionassuming a 100% probability of detection and ultimate payment, and from $18.26 billion to $37.86 billion assuming a 25% probability of detection and ultimate payment. Given the evidence of Chevron’s malfeasance in Ecuador, the plaintiffs assume the company had at best a 25% probability of detection and ultimate payment, and therefore the unjust enrichment award should at minimum range from $18.26 billion to $37.86 billion. This is a conservative figure, as in reality it is highly unlikely that Chevron believed it had more than a 10% probability of detection and ultimate payment.

• Cultural Impacts on Indigenous Groups: Representatives of the Amazonian communities, noting the acute interdependence between indigenous groups and the rainforest ecosystem, analyzed the impact of hydrocarbon contamination on indigenous culture. The team reviewed economic valuations to repair the loss of cultural and ancestral practices, including a program to purchase unspoiled land, and to construct pools of native fishes and centers to restore flora and fauna. The cost for this restoration is estimated at $481.5 million.

Diego Borja! Time To Speak!

Diego Borja was supposed to help Chevron. He was the person responsible for the recordings of the Ecuadorian judge and now we have recordings of him bragging about knowing all of Chevron’s dirty secrets and how Chevron is paying for his nice house and a very comfortable life. Well, time has come for him to tell the court all the details. How ironic that Chevron’s own “secret agent”, will have to reveal Chevron’s dark side.

Chevron has been trying very hard to hide the truth but it seems the harder Chevron’s people try, the more trouble they get into. Truth will always come out. Right now, Chevron even refuses to submit its damage assessment reports. If I was working for Chevron, I’d want to hide it too. The damage in Ecuador is so immense, it’s sickening!

The Power of Manipulation

Even though evidence is mounting against Chevron and it has been scientifically proven that Chevron is guilty of the contamination in Ecuador, Chevron still manages to trick some people into believing Chevron's false arguments. This time it's a reporter Roger Parloff. His story ran on Fortune.

But, I recently ran across an excellent response to his story. The post on Chevron In Ecuador.com says it all.

WITH DISCOVERY BID, ECUADOR TURNS TABLES ON CHEVRON

September 14, 2010 By Rebecca Beyer
Daily Journal Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO - The Republic of Ecuador, which has seen its judicial system come under attack by Chevron Corp. in the last year, has taken a strategy from the oil giant's legal playbook in an effort to defend itself in an arbitration in The Hague.

Home to a massive environmental lawsuit against the San Ramon-based company, the South American country has stood by for nearly a year while Chevron - armed with a law dating back to the 1800s - has filed multiple discovery requests in federal courts across the United States aimed at proving the Ecuadorean judicial system is corrupt. In Ecuador, Chevron is fighting plaintiffs' claims that the company should be held responsible for cleaning up the devastation from nearly 30 years of drilling by Texaco in the Amazon rainforest (Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001).

On Friday, Ecuador filed its own discovery request in San Francisco federal court under the same law Chevron has been using - 28 U.S.C. 1782, a statute designed to help parties obtain U.S.-based evidence for use in foreign proceedings. Ecuador is seeking to depose Diego Borja, one of two men who secretly videotaped a conversation with the original Ecuadorean judge in the case. In re Application of the Republic of Ecuador, 10-80225. Chevron claims the tapes showed the judge - who denied wrongdoing but recused himself - had already made up his mind to rule in the plaintiffs' favor as part of a bribery scheme. But Ecuador cites a report made by an investigator hired by the plaintiffs that suggests Borja is improperly linked to Chevron.

A spokesman for Chevron said the Borja videos were authenticated by forensic experts and that it was too soon to say whether the company would oppose Ecuador's deposition request. Ecuador's filing is just the latest chapter in litigation that dates back 17 years, spans three continents and includes allegations of corruption and collusion on both sides. The country's 1782 petition also comes after Chevron has had great success using the law to obtain discovery from people involved in the Ecuadorean case on the plaintiffs' side.

"Turn-around is certainly fair play," said Georgene M. Vairo, a professor at Loyola Law School. "It's appropriate for Ecuador to try to protect itself by looking into the alleged wrongdoing of Chevron. 1782 is there to do that."

Although Ecuador is not a party in the litigation within its borders, it is a defendant in an international arbitration Chevron initiated in The Hague last year under the Bilateral Investment Treaty between Ecuador and the United States. There, Chevron is seeking, among other things, a declaration that it has no liability for the damage in the Amazon because of a settlement Texaco signed with Ecuador in 1995 in which the oil company agreed to do some environmental clean-up and Ecuador agreed to release any claims against the company.

In the arbitration, Chevron alleges that it is being denied due process in Ecuador because of a corrupt judicial system. For its part, Ecuador wants to depose Borja about his employment history, his relationship to Chevron, his wife's relationship to Chevron and his meetings with the judge and others. The discovery request is "directly relevant to the Republic's defense in the Treaty Arbitration," Ecuador's attorneys from Winston & Strawn wrote in Friday's filing, and "will help determine the authenticity, importance and relevance of Chevron's videotape evidence, and to discover the underlying motives for Borja to produce such clandestine videotapes."

Ecuador is represented by Washington, D.C. partner Eric W. Bloom and New York partner C. MacNeil Mitchell, who did not respond to a request for comment. Richard A. Lapping, of the firm's San Francisco office, declined to comment. Cristina C. Arguedas, an attorney for Borja from Arguedas, Cassman & Headley in Berkeley, declined to comment.

"I think it is legitimate for [Ecuador] to investigate instances of judicial corruption," said Andrea E. Neuman, a Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner in Irvine and one of Chevron's lead attorneys. "It strikes me that the target of the investigation here would normally be the judge who was seen on these authenticated tapes soliciting a multimillion-dollar bribe."

Edward A. Klein, a partner at Liner Grode Stein Yankelevitz Sunshine Regenstreif & Taylor in Los Angeles who has handled 1782 cases said Chevron would be "pretty hard-pressed to resist Ecuador's efforts to get discovery in the United States given Chevron's liberal use of the 1782 process."

Chevron has used the 1782 statute to get a wide range of discovery - mostly aimed at proving their claim that consultants on the plaintiffs' side were behind the $27 billion damages estimate found in a court-appointed expert's report - for use in the proceedings in Ecuador and The Hague. Its highest-profile use of the law came when a New York federal judge - and later the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - agreed with the company that a documentary filmmaker should turn over hundreds of hours of raw footage from "Crude," a film about the litigation (last week the same judge granted Chevron's request to depose the filmmaker). Earlier this month, a magistrate judge in New Mexico granted a discovery request for Chevron and cited the footage as one reason for doing so.

Karen Hinton, a spokeswoman for the plaintiffs in the Ecuadorean lawsuit, said Chevron's discovery efforts "are nothing but theatrics to draw attention away from what the company cannot deny, the overwhelming evidence that Texaco intentionally contaminated the rainforest and Chevron is now responsible for it."

In court papers, the plaintiffs have called Chevron's assertions that they have improperly colluded with the expert "hypocrisy," claiming Chevron's consultants' work appeared in the report of another court-appointed expert. No hearing date has been set on Ecuador's request to depose Borja.

rebecca_beyer@dailyjournal.com

The List Gets Longer and Longer

The long list of issues that show Chevron's shameless and very often
illegal attempts to hide its crimes in Ecuador and escape the
responsibility keeps on growing. Looks like the real picture of
Chevron is slowly coming out for all of us to see. The Chevron
Pit has posted a short summary of Chevron's
manipulative actions that have backfired and gave us a little preview
of the lengths Chevron will go to hide the truth. Here are some of
them:

· Diego Borja, a Chevron contractor in Ecuador, ran a “dirty tricks”
operation for the oil giant in Ecuador that attempted to ensnare the
trial judge in a corruption scandal, according to taped phone
conversations.

· Borja claimed that Chevron had “cooked” court evidence and that he
would turn against Chevron if company officials did not pay him what
they promised for videotapes he made of the judge in the lawsuit.
Widely covered by the news media, the videotapes were later
discredited.

· Chevron hired Kroll, the publicly traded investigations firm, to try
to pay an American journalist to become an undercover spy for the
company in Ecuador, according to a recent article in The Atlantic.

· Chevron’s lawyers had ex parte meetings with judges and have not
denied having ex-parte meetings with court-appointed experts on the
case – the exact same basis for Chevron’s false claims of “fraud”
against lawyers for the plaintiffs.

· The plaintiffs also produced evidence that a court-appointed expert
adopted many materials wholesale that were prepared by Chevron’s own
expert without citation – the exact same charge that Chevron has
leveled against the plaintiffs.

· Two Chevron officials are under criminal indictment in Ecuador for,
according to the charges, conspiring to defraud the government by
lying about the results of a sham remediation in the mid-1990s.
Chevron’s own tests submitted into evidence show illegal levels of
contamination at the so-called “remediated” sites.

· Due to a series of death threats from unknown sources, lawyers for
the plaintiffs and their families are now protected with armed
bodyguards.

Chevron, Did Cat Get Your Tongue?

Chevron has been very quiet recently and has not commented on the latest findings about Chevron’s manipulations, mistakes and blatant lying about the contamination in Ecuador. The audits I mentioned in my last blog that show Chevron is guilty of the pollution, unbelievable story of trying to hire a journalist spy to write false stories for Chevron and spying on the people whose lives were destroyed by Chevron. Staying quiet will not make it go away. We will not stop talking about it!

Here's what Chevron Pit has to say: Chevron Desperate Over Ecuador Disaster

Proof of Guilt

Two audits have been submitted to a U.S. Federal Court that show that Chevron is guilty of knowingly contaminating Ecuadorian rain forest and then lying about it. Those audits were conducted at Texaco’s request. (Chevron bought Texaco in 2001.) Looks like Chevron is getting lost in its own web of lies!

Read more here: Court Filing: Chevron’s Own Audits Prove Company Lied About Massive Pollution in Ecuador

Real Life Secret Agent Spy Story

One day there will be a movie made about the lengths Chevron has been going to in a desperate effort to avoid responsibility for the disaster in Ecuador. Hiring journalists to spy for Chevron and then write false stories is just one of Chevron’s many unethical and quite often illegal attempts to manipulate the facts. I’ve said that many times, Chevron clearly thinks it’s above law and goes ahead with any crazy idea, no matter the consequences, to get out of its own oily mess. What surprises me is that there are people who can be bought and will willingly get involved in Chevron’s dirty defense tactics. Sam Anson of Kroll is the latest accomplice. To find out more about this man, read Chevron Pit’s latest post

Chevron Says One Thing and Does Another

The Chevron Pit writes about yet another violation and a
shameless move by Chevron. Chevron’s lawyers fought hard to get the
footage from Joe Berlinger’s documentary “Crude” saying it was
necessary for Chevron’s defense and promising it will never be used
for anything else. For anyone who has followed Chevron’s dirty defense
campaign it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that the moment Chevron
got the film outtakes, it passed it along to bloggers.

“60 Minutes” Wins An Award For “Amazon Crude”

Two “60 Minutes” segments received Edward R. Murrow Award for
excellence in journalism. One of them was for the investigation into
the Chevron lawsuit. It is great news since Chevron has been trying
to discredit the report from the very beginning.

Click for more details: Hard-Hitting 60 Minutes Investigation of
Chevron's Toxic Legacy in Ecuador Wins Prestigious Journalism Award

EXPOSED

I blogged a few days ago about Chevron’s own lawyer admitting under oath that Chevron has been lying about so-called “remediation” agreement signed by the Ecuadorian government and using it to avoid paying for the environmental disaster Texaco caused. The Chevron Pit posted some of Perez Pallares’ statements which contradict Chevron’s main defense argument.

Disaster in the Amazon

On June 4th New York Times ran an interesting article about Chevron and Ecuador. You can read it here: Bob Herbert of NYT: Chevron Has Its Own Disaster In Ecuador

CAN YOU STOP US?

I guess Chevron's CEO John Watson wanted to show everyone how much he cares about the environment when he asked the government for stronger safety standards that would prevent disasters like the one happening in the Gulf of Mexico now from happening again. Doesn't it sound though like he is saying that unless the government stops the oil companies, they will do whatever they want? While trying to save money they will put our world at risk and if anything disastrous happens, they will just find ways to escape the responsibility.

Chevron's Watson to Feds: Stop Us Before We Hurt Somebody

DON'T MENTION ECUADOR

Chevron's shareholders should be aware! The company will silence anyone who dares to speak about company's unacceptable behavior and environmental crimes that have been committed around the world. Some shareholders were denied entry to the Chevron's shareholders meeting on May 26th, others were arrested. People expressed concern and Chevron did not want to hear any of it. The only thing Chevron's CEO John Watson had to say was that Ecuadorians can count on his empathy. I guess Chevron still has no plans of taking responsibility for its actions.

Read more here: Chevron Condemned for Human Rights Abuses, Ecuador Disaster at Annual Shareholder Meeting Today

The Truth Always Comes Out

Chevron has been misleading the news media and the US courts about the so-called remediation agreement signed in 1995 by Texaco and the government of Ecuador.

Chevron wants us to believe the agreement releases it from all liability in the lawsuit, but the truth is, it doesn’t. The agreement only applies to government claims, and Chevron’s own attorney said so. Perez Pallares admitted under oath that the release is not valid in this case. Making Chevron look even worse is the fact that Perez Pallares is the lawyer who negotiated and signed the release for Chevron.

The Chevron Pit writes in more detail about Chevron's inability to keep its story straight.

Chevron's Outrageous Demands Criticized

People are speaking up against Chevron's unfair and selfish demands.

An article by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship criticizing Chevron's attempt to force Joe Berlinger to turn over unused footage from his documentary "Crude" appeared on the Huffington Post recently.
More details on The Chevron Pit



Bill Moyers

Double Standards

With the oil gushing its way into our reality, we are all in a panic mode. We are worried about our environment, health and the effect toxic oil might have on our lives. It already happened for the people in Ecuador and they have been fighting hard to get through the thick and high wall of lies and denial Chevron has built.

Now, when it’s our lives that are in danger, maybe everyone will understand better what Ecuadorians fighting Chevron have been going through all these years. We are all appalled to hear BP, Transocean and Halliburton deny and blame one another for the spill. Just like Chevron has been refusing to take responsibility and pointing fingers at others, starting with Petroecuador.

President Obama said BP is to be blamed for this disaster, expressed concern and promised BP will pay for the cleanup. Everyone applauded and was very happy to have their President stand for what is right. When the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa visited oil sites Texaco left behind in the Amazonian jungle, Chevron called the whole Ecuadorian government corrupt and unjust. Is Chevron upset with President Obama for getting involved as well?

More here

Environmental disasters are horrible wherever they happen and there can’t be any double standards when it’s time for the ones who caused them to take care of the damage. This nonsense has to stop; Chevron needs to pay for the cleanup in Ecuador and so should BP for what’s happening in the Gulf Coast right now.

Chevron Must Be Blind. The Evidence Is Right There!

If Chevron wants to see some evidence that tells the truth, a trip to the Ecuadorian jungle will be enough. The oozing oil pits, horrible stories of the families affected by the contamination, test results that show that the levels of toxins are way above legal limits by any standards show a full picture of the blatant environmental crime committed by Texaco.

Nobody, including Chevron, needs Joe Berlinger’s footage to find out the truth and everybody, including Chevron, knows that asking for it is just another cowardly ploy designed to buy some more time.

It was not an accidental spill like the one in Gulf Mexico we are witnessing right now. Texaco wanted to save money and instead of disposing of the toxic waste properly, it dumped it right in the middle of the Amazonian jungle contaminating waterways that 30,000 people depended on for living.

As if deliberately polluting the environment and destroying people’s lives wasn’t embarrassing and shameful enough, Chevron now has the audacity to refuse to take responsibility and keeps coming up with those outrageous schemes.

More here: The Real Corruption Is In The Ground, Not In Film Footage

It Would Take 234 Years To Spill As Much Oil From The Leaking BP Oil Well As Texaco Dumped Into The Ecuadorian Rainforest

So I’ve been reading about BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and that the well is leaking at a rate of 210,000 gallons of oil a day. That sounds like a lot, and it is. But my calculator tells me that it would take the leaking BP oil well 85,714 days or 234 years to spill as much oil into the Gulf as Texaco intentionally dumped into the rainforest of Ecuador from 1968, the year Texaco drilled its first well, to 1990, when it stopped operations there.

Gulf of Mexico

Texaco has admitted pumping 18 billion gallons of oil and formation water into the streams and waterways of the Amazon basin, instead of re-injecting the toxic sludge back where it came from, way underground – the standard practice for the oil industry then and now.

During the 22 years that Texaco drilled for oil in Ecuador, the oil company saved at least $8 billion in expenses by treating the rainforest like its own personal trash heap with an average daily dump of 2.2 million gallons of oil and formation water, with high concentrations of benzene, a known carcinogen, and other hazardous chemicals and minerals.

As the people of the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama know all too well, that much oil and toxic water damages not only the physical environment but also a complete way of life. Families have lost loved ones to the explosion; fisherman and shrimp boaters may have to find another way to make a living; tourists will worry about the safety of the beaches and swimming areas, and scientists will study the area to see how the spill impacts ocean and human life for decades to come.

With no support from their government, the indigenous tribes of the Ecuadorian rainforest faced a much harsher reality when they filed their lawsuit against Texaco in 1993, a year after the oil company left Ecuador. They had been helpless to stop Texaco from wrecking havoc in their homeland. The government never sent in the Navy. The President of Ecuador at that time didn’t demand that Texaco take responsibility and clean up the mess. There were laws against such pollution, but no one enforced them because no one cared.

In 2001 Texaco’s problem became Chevron’s problem with Chevron’s purchase of Texaco. Nothing changed, though. Today the contamination remains, stored in unlined oil pits that continue to leech into the soil and underground water supply. Hopefully a similar fate will not befall the Gulf Coast. Hopefully BP will do the right thing, unlike Chevron, which is using every legal maneuver it can to avoid responsibility for the 18 billion gallons of toxic waste in the rainforest.

As President Obama just did on the Gulf Coast, President Correa visited the contaminated area and expressed his concern for the people who are living near and sometimes on top of toxic pits. Unlike BP, however, Chevron is using the President’s visit to argue in US court that the government is interfering with the lawsuit; that the court system is corrupt, and everyone who has drilled for oil in Ecuador is responsible for the contamination, except, of course, Chevron.

BP may end up scapegoating, too. But right now BP executives look a whole better than Chevron’s who haven’t even bothered to visit Ecuador to see the contamination, conveniently thousands of miles away from its San Ramon, California headquarters.

Chevron’s harassment continues

In an apparent effort to intimidate everyone involved in the lawsuit or whoever dares to mention the contamination in Ecuador, Chevron went to court to ask Joe Berlinger, the director of “Crude” for access to all the footage that was filmed while working on the documentary. There are over 600 hours of film which includes interviews with people involved in the lawsuit on both sides. Most of the material was filmed with an agreement of confidentiality.

Chevron hopes to find some material that can help their case.

The director says it would be a violation of his First Amendment rights and is prepared to fight Chevron’s request.

A hearing is scheduled for April 30 in federal court in New York.

Click here for more details

Joe Berlinger

“Crime Does Pay”

Chevron won’t stop at anything! It bends, breaks and disregards the law left and right.

Not happy about the results of tests showing how extensive the damage caused by Texaco is, Chevron just uses phony tests to produce more favorable test results.



Paying people to create fake companies to cover Texaco’s crimes and then paying them off to keep them quiet is just shameless! We should all sue Chevron for trying to make fools out of all of us.


Read the Chevron Pit blog for more details: http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/2010/04/chevron-paying-whistleblower-diego.html

Lies, Lies, Lies

Shushufindi 38

I am not surprised to hear that Chevron told a whole bunch of lies to Columbia Journalism Review’s Martha Hamilton about the well site Shushufindi 38, featured on 60 Minutes last year. What amazes me is that it took Chevron a whole year to respond to the CBS program.
Chevron is trying to blame Ecuadorian oil company Petroecuador, even though the court documents show that Texaco was the only operator at this site.
Chevron also claims there is no contamination at Shushufindi 38, while the test show that levels of toxins are over 400 higher than legal limits in Ecuador and over 4,000times the legal limit as allowed in most states in the US!

You can read more at The Chevron Pit blog: http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/2010/04/chevron-lied-to-columbia-journalism.html

Chevron has nothing to say

The plaintiffs in the Chevron lawsuit are calling on Chevron to comment on the charges of evidence tampering that its contractor, Diego Borja, made last week. Chevron should speak up and defend itself. Or, maybe it doesn’t because Chevron executives have no defense.

Read more here

Chevron's Con Man Exposed

Recordings of Diego Borja, a man who has been a contractor for Chevron for several years, revealing Chevron's darkest secrets have been released by Grant W. Fine, a lawyer and investigator hired by the plaintiffs. This is beyond shocking! Things Borja talks about prove what we knew all along...Chevron has been lying and hiding the truth to avoid responsibility for the mess in Ecuador.





Diego Borja


Here's a copy of the Amazon Defense Coalition's statement with more details:



Amazon Defense Coalition
For Immediate Release

April 6, 2010
Contact: Karen Hinton,
703-798-3109
karen@hintoncommunications.com

Chevron “Cooked” Evidence in Ecuador Environmental
Trial, According to Oil Giant’s Own Contractor

Diego Borja & Wife Worked For Chevron & Represented Oil Company’s “Independent” Lab To Test Contamination Samples

Washington, DC (April 6, 2010) – In a series of stunning revelations from recorded conversations, longtime Chevron contractor Diego Borja threatened to reveal damaging evidence “cooked” by Chevron in the environmental trial in Ecuador unless he received enough money for turning over secret videotapes to high-ranking Chevron executives in June 2009.

At one point, Borja laughed and said, “Crime does pay.”

Click here for copies of the report and press release http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/borja-report/

Borja’s disclosures are found in a report released today by Grant W. Fine, a lawyer and investigator hired by the plaintiffs. The report covers more than six hours of audiotapes and 25 pages of online chats that were given to the plaintiffs by Santiago Escobar, a childhood friend of Borja who made the recordings.

In the conversations, Borja said Chevron hired him to create four companies so his work for the oil company would appear “independent.” He suggested that the companies were connected to a laboratory to test contamination samples. Borja said the laboratory was not independent, but rather “belonged” to Chevron.

The investigative report also revealed that Borja’s wife, Sara Portilla, worked for Chevron for four years and represented Severn Trent Labs (STL), a US laboratory that Chevron described as an “independent” lab to test its contamination samples. Court documents obtained by Fine cite Borja and Portilla as representatives of STL. They both signed chain of custody documents with the Lago Agrio court that showed how the samples moved from the contamination site to the testing lab.

Borja – who Chevron always has cast as a good Samaritan – also said that Chevron is paying $6,000 a month in rent for his large home with a swimming pool that abuts a golf course in a gated community near Chevron’s headquarters. Borja said that Chevron is paying him the U.S. equivalent of the salary he made in Ecuador, which was $10,000, and is also paying the costs for a lease on an SUV and for personal security.

On the audiotapes, Borja said he has enough evidence to ensure a victory by the Amazon communities if Chevron failed to pay him what he was promised. Before turning over the videotapes to Chevron, Borja said he made sure Chevron “completely understood” he wanted payment for them.

He also said he had incriminating evidence against the oil giant stored on his iPhone and in an undisclosed location in Ecuador that he could use as leverage if Chevron betrayed him. Specifically, Borja said he has a notarized document that contains a version of events that would help the plaintiffs and that Portilla, his wife, is aware of the information.

Representatives of the Amazon communities reacted with shock to the audiotapes. “They prove at a minimum that Diego Borja is a real con man,” said Luis Yanza, President of the Amazon Defense Coalition, which represents the plaintiffs.

Yanza called on Chevron to investigate and disclose the information that Borja has stored on his iPhone and in Ecuador.

Yanza also called on authorities in Ecuador and the U.S. to examine the tapes and include them in their investigation of the videotaping scandal, which Chevron disclosed last August as a way to derail the trial. Chevron also cites the videotapes as evidence of corruption in its arbitration claim against the government of Ecuador, which Chevron filed in September, only four weeks after revealing the videotapes.

Escobar, who said he has known Borja since they were teenagers, said he decided to give the tapes to the plaintiffs because if “I keep quiet about immoral acts, then I become part of the immoral acts.” He said, “Diego always bragged to us about what he was doing with the testing samples to help Chevron avoid prosecution. Everyone knew he was Chevron’s dirty tricks guy. Overtime, I became more disgusted with what Diego was doing. The videotapes and his interest in switching sides was the last straw for me.”

Among other revelations, Borja said:

• If Chevron “tricked” him he would “immediately go to the other side… I have correspondence that talks about things you cannot even imagine, dude… I can’t talk about them here, dude, because I’m afraid, but they’re things that can make the [plaintiffs] win this just like that” at which point he snapped his fingers. He also said, “crime does pay.”




• Chevron had “cooked” the evidence and, if the U.S. judge who sent the case to Ecuador in the first place ever knew, he would “close [Chevron] down.”




• The energy giant used him to set up four dummy companies to make them appear to be independent of Chevron, but in fact they were controlled by Chevron.




• The laboratory that processed soil and water samples for Chevron to submit as evidence in the trial was not “independent” as the company represented to the court. “I have proof that they [the laboratories] were more than connected, they belonged to [Chevron],” said Borja, who also indicated he signed the contract to rent the house where Chevron’s laboratory was located.

Escobar also told Fine that Borja said he and wife stored testing samples in their refrigerator in their Quito office before mailing them to STL. (Test America, Inc., purchased STL in 2007.)

As a contractor for Chevron, Borja often worked at the contamination sites and collected evidence, yet he and Portilla also signed chain of custody documents with the court as STL representatives. Portilla signed them as an STL Project Manger and used the email address, sportilla@stl-inc.com

• Borja indicated that he and a person from Chevron, whom he referred to as his Florida-based boss, lied to gain entry into the independent laboratory that was processing the soil and water samples for the plaintiffs during the trial. (Yanza said he suspects the person is Ricardo Reis Veiga, a longtime Chevron lawyer based in Miami currently under indictment in Ecuador for lying about Texaco’s remediation results.)




• Borja said he has worked for Chevron on the Aguinda trial since 2004 and has signed numerous court documents – contrary to Chevron’s claim at the time it released the videos that Borja was a mere “logistics contractor” for the company. Portilla has worked for Chevron for four years, and his uncle has been employed by Chevron for 30 years. Borja also said he has worked for Chevron since he was 24 years old (nine years ago). Chevron’s legal team, Borja, his wife and uncle have office space in a Quito building his uncle owns.




• Borja conceded there was no bribe of the Ecuador trial judge, Juan Nunez, in the videotapes -- confirming the long held contention of the plaintiffs and contradicting Chevron’s assertions. With the videotapes, Borja said he did in “two days” what Chevron had been trying to do for a year, which was to get the judge dismissed.





• Borja also said Chevron promised to make him a “business partner” for turning over the tapes. When Escobar said he would have it “made” once he became a partner of Chevron, Borja responded: “That’s right, you dog… I mean, it’s a brass ring brother.”

Fine, a lawyer and investigator based in San Francisco, California, conducted the investigation. Fine also conducted an earlier investigation into Wayne Hansen, the so-called American “businessman” who claimed to be in Ecuador to identify contract opportunities for remediation work and partnered with Borja to videotape meetings with Nunez and others, using a spy pen and spy watch. Fine discovered that Hansen had never worked in remediation before, currently has no means of visible financial support and was sentenced to 32 months in a federal prison for drug trafficking over 275,000 pounds of marijuana.


About the Amazon Defense Coalition

The Amazon Defense Coalition represents dozens of rainforest communities and five indigenous groups that inhabit Ecuador’s Northern Amazon region. The mission of the Coalition is to protect the environment and secure social justice through grass roots organizing, political advocacy, and litigation. Two of its leaders, Luis Yanza and Pablo Fajardo, are the 2008 winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Newest Statement of the Amazon Defense Coalition

The Amazon Defense Coalition has released a statement in response to Dr. Charles Calmbacher's bewildering testimony today.

Below are some quotes, you can read the release here:
http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/2010/04/real-fraud-in-27-billion-environmental.html


“Dr. Calmbacher clearly agreed to have his signature placed on materials, including reports, that were to be submitted to the court, and he acknowledged he was actively reviewing the reports with our local, technical team. We are bewildered, frankly, at his testimony."

"On August 27th, 2004, a major media outlet quoted him as saying: ''Their defense is a lot like the tobacco industry saying there is no evidence linking smoking and lung cancer,'' said Charles Calmbacher, a certified industrial hygienist who works as an expert for the plaintiffs.”

Atacapi 5- One of many Chevron's dirty secrets

Chevron needs to stop using the 1995 remediation agreement between Texaco and the Ecuadorian government as its defense. It is useless!!!! It required Texaco to clean up its oil pits but it has never been done.

The Chevron Pit just posted a chart showing that the oil sites Texaco said it remediated still show illegal levels of toxins.

http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/2010/03/next-time-chevron-tells-you-texaco.html

Throwing some dirt on the top does not count as clean up!

Dirt laden with oil, dug only three inches deep from the pit at the well site, Atacapi 5

Stories of the Victims

Rosana Sisalima with her granddaughter, San Carlos on November 24, 2004

The Chevron Pit is featuring stories about people who have been affected by the oil contamination left behind by Texaco in the Ecuadorian rainforest. These stories are incredibly sad and disturbing. I hope you will read them and pass them along to others who care about how our oil companies treat people and their environment in countries where they explore for oil.

Here's the link:
http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/2010/02/texaco-throws-dirt-on-oil-pit-after_18.html

Stories of the victims

Angel Toala

The Chevron Pit has posted another story about people who have been affected by the oil contamination left behind by Texaco. This one is about Luz Maria Martin and her husband Angel Toala, who died of stomach cancer.

You can read the their story here: http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/2010/03/father-of-six-moved-to-find-good-job.html

California Lawmakers moved by Emergildo Criollo’s story promise support

Emergildo Criollo, the Indigenous leader from Ecuador, told the story of how Chevron’s toxic mess killed his wife and two sons and ruined his life to some of the California Senators and Assemblymembers and asked for their help in the fight against Chevron, California’s biggest company.

The reception was held in Sacramento, CA and was packed with California lawmakers who all expressed deep concern about the contamination in Ecuador.

You can read more here:
http://understory.ran.org/2010/03/04/ca-lawmakers-want-to-help-make-chevron-clean-up-ecuador/

At Least The Butler Could Have Taken The Letter

These Chevron people are unbelievable! Two environmental groups, RAN and Amazon Watch, escorted an Ecuadorian tribal leader, Emergildo Criollo, to the house of Chevron CEO John Watson to deliver a letter with the names of over 325,000 people who want Chevron to clean up its toxic waste mess in Ecuador’s rainforest. No one was home, even though Watson knew they would be visiting him. At least Watson’s butler and other domestic help could have taken the letter.

Here are two blogs that tell the whole story:
http://www.chevroninecuador.com/2010/03/emergildo-criollo-delivers-letter-and.html

http://changechevron.org/blog/emergildo-criollo-delivers-petition-to-chevron-headquarters/

Why Doesn’t Chevron Just Clean Up Its Mess?

Charles James

Too bad this Chevron lawyer, Charles James, didn’t take the opportunity to clean up the oil contamination in Ecuador’s rainforest when he was in charge of the legal strategy in the lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador. He could have made Chevron an environmental hero! Instead, the company symbolizes everything that can be wrong with an American corporation. Read this blog on Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/1/11347/48124?new=true

I want Avatar director James Cameron to mention real-life Ecuador struggle against Chevron at Oscars

Avatar's director James Cameron has said that he wants to use the success of his latest movie to direct people's attention to real environmental problems in the world. Yesterday on the San Francisco Chronicle website, Becky Tarbotton of the Rainforest Action Network pleaded with him to help spread the word about Chevron's crimes in Ecuador. She has had this brilliant idea of Cameron mentioning Ecuadorians' fight against Chevron during his Oscars' acceptance speech. Wouldn't that be wonderful?!

You can read more here: http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/02/23/james-cameron-the-oscars-and-the-real-life-avatar/

In the mean time, help spread the word and tweet, post on your facebook page or own blog: I want Avatar director James Cameron to mention real-life Ecuador struggle against #Chevron at #Oscars:http://bit.ly/aOwuNI #realavatar

Stories of the victims

Rosana Sisalima with her granddaughter, San Carlos on November 24, 2004

The Chevron Pit is featuring stories about people who have been affected by the oil contamination left behind by Texaco in the Ecuadorian rainforest. These stories are incredibly sad and disturbing. I hope you will read them and pass them along to others who care about how our oil companies treat people and their environment in countries where they explore for oil.

Here's the link:
http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/2010/02/texaco-throws-dirt-on-oil-pit-after_18.html

Finally Chevron Speaks Truth With Freudian Slip

Ricardo Reis Veiga (Managing Counsel, Chevron Latin America)

Chevron’s Managing Counsel for Latin America finally speaks truth about what Texaco did and did not do in Ecuador. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001 and, with the purchase, acquired a potential $27 billion liability resulting from an oil contamination lawsuit filed by indigenous groups in Ecuador. Texaco has admitted to dumping over 18 billion gallons of oil and toxic water into the rainforest from 1964 to 1990. Check out this blog: http://livinnthebigtime.blogspot.com/2010/02/chevrons-8-steps-ricardo-reis-veiga.html

Chevron's General Counsel reduced to taking out company's trash

Hewitt Pate

If I’m understanding this interesting blog at The Chevron Pit correctly, it means having Chevron’s General Counsel Hewitt Pate roll out a public charge that the court-appointed expert in the contamination lawsuit against Chevron is corrupt is like making President Obama take out his own trash every morning. Speaking of trash, Pate’s announcement stinks to high heaven. Read more here: http://www.thechevronpit.blogspot.com/com

Here we go again

Chevron is at it again-trying to stall the lawsuit. Now it is about Richard Cabrera- the court appointed economist who assessed the damages in Ecuador at 27 billion dollars. Chevron once said Cabrera wasn’t qualified to do the assessment. Now it’s saying he is qualified because he owns a company that does oil cleanup work.

This is not Chevron’s first attempt to exclude Cabrera, but so far the court has rejected Chevron’s motion every time. The oil giant ignores the fact that Cabrera did disclose to the court that he owned the company before he was even appointed as Special Master. Chevron had nothing against Cabrera and accepted him as the court-appointed expert with no objections at the beginning of the lawsuit. Besides, Cabrera would be banned from doing any cleanup work connected to the lawsuit anyway because of his role as Special Master.

Now, as Chevron grows more desperate, it tries to disqualify anyone who has anything to do with the lawsuit.
For more details, visit this site:

itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/02/09/chevron-lies-people-die/

What Chevron’s money can buy…

I just read another story about Chevron using its power and money to influence people’s perception of the oil giant and to hide the unpleasant truths like Chevron’s toxic waste pits leaking oil into Ecuadorian rainforest.

Last month Chevron had the Rainforest Action Network activists kicked out of the Houston Marathon expo because they wanted to spread the message about Chevron’s crimes in Ecuador.

Now Chevron decided that RAN’s ads in the Washington Post and the New York Times do not go with Chevron’s made up, innocent image and the company’s legal team wanted the ads pulled. The New York Times did not give in but The Washington Post did.

RAN's ad from The New York Times and The Washington Post

Three points — One, I don’t think this move will bring any good to Chevron because there’s a new ad that RAN hopes the Washington Times will run, and it’s even better than the first one.

RAN's second ad

Two, this story will probably get more attention than the ads would, and three- again we see that Chevron will stop at nothing to evade responsibility.

Chevron just wants to silence anyone who dares to say anything that had not been approved by Chevron’s PR people.

To read the whole story, go here:

http://understory.ran.org/2010/02/01/chevrons-free-speech-v-ran/

"Crude" nominated for NAACP Image Award!

Great News! Joe Berlinger’s "Crude" has been nominated for NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Documentary (Theatrical /Television) category.

Other nominees in this category are:


• "Capitalism: A Love Story" (Overture Films)
  
  
• "Crips and Bloods: Made in America" (Gravitas Ventures)
  
  
• "Good Hair" (Roadside Attractions)
  
  
• "More than a Game" (Lionsgate)

"Crude" is a remarkable documentary about a $27 billion environmental lawsuit between Texaco and 30,000 Ecuadorians who have spent three decades battling Texaco -now owned by Chevron for contaminating their land and water with toxic oil sludge. It tells a horrifying story of pollution, cancer, illness and death on one side and Chevron's refusal to accept responsibility for it on the other.

"Crude" is a must see for those who care about the environment and social justice!

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1902 and is the nation’s largest and most influential civil rights organization. It advocates social, political, educational equality of all people and stands against racial discrimination.

The annual NAACP Image Award is given to the individuals and groups who promote social justice in the arts and entertainment.

This year, over 1,200 entries were received. From those entries, a special committee of 300 industry professionals and NAACP leaders from across the country selected five nominees in each of the 53 categories. Any artist, manager, publicist, production company, record label, studio, network or publishing house could submit an entry to the NAACP Image Awards. The final selections are voted on by NAACP members.

To become a member and cast your vote as well, visit the NAACP website: http://www.naacpimageawards.net/

The Award Ceremony will air live 8/7 c on FOX Friday February 26, 2010

The Chevron Way: If We Repeat Lies Enough, Maybe Somebody Will Believe Us!

Chevron’s only defense in the massive oil contamination lawsuit brought by Ecuadorians living in the Amazon rainforest is that Texaco cleaned its share of the oil sites in exchange for a liability release in a 1995 agreement with Ecuador. Problem is, this isn’t true: 1) Tests show lethal levels of toxins at 45 of 54 of the so-called “cleaned” pits & 2) The agreement did not release Texaco from individual claims, only those by the government. See the list of the pits below.

In the list below, you’ll see TPH; that stands for total petroleum hydrocarbons. The higher the TPH, the worse the contamination. In the US, a lot of states allow only 100 parts per million of TPH. In Ecuador, it’s 1,000 parts per million. As you can see below, the numbers are thousands of times higher than what the law allows. And, Chevron wants us to believe these pits are clean!

Chevron, though, never lets the facts stand in its way. See this CNN interview by Anchor Rick Sanchez with Chevron attorney Silvia Garrigo, preceded by an interview with human rights activitist Kerry Kennedy who visited the oil pits recently and spoke out against Chevron’s refusal to take responsibility for the contamination.

http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2009/1022-kerry-kennedy-interviewed-on-cnn.html

Before signing off, Garrigo also happily informs Sanchez that some of her best friends are Ecuadorians. If that’s the way she treats her friends, then ......

#	SITE	CHEVRON’S CLAIM	TPH	NUMBER OF TIMES OVER LEGAL LIMIT
1	Sacha 18	Complete Remediation	35,380	35.3
2	Sacha 65	Complete Remediation	32,444	32.4
3	Shushufindi 27	Complete Remediation	26,413	26.4
4	Atacapi 5	Complete Remediation	21,976	21.9
5	Sacha 21	Complete Remediation	17,000	17
6	Shushufindi 21	Complete Remediation	16,033	16
7	Shushufindi 67	Complete Remediation	13,587	13.5
8	Shushufindi 45A	Complete Remediation	13,290	13.2
9	Shushufindi 48	Complete Remediation	13,000	13
10	Shushufindi 7	Complete Remediation	12,715	12.7
11	Shushufindi 25	Complete Remediation	10,956	10.9
12	Shushufindi 27	Complete Remediation	10,452	10.4
13	Ron 1	Complete Remediation	9,632	9.6
14	Lago Agrio 5	Complete Remediation	8,830	8.8
15	Sacha 94	Complete Remediation	8,700	8.7
16	Aguarico 8	Complete Remediation	8,183	8.1
17	Sacha 57	Complete Remediation	8,100	8.1
18	Sacha 65	Complete Remediation	7,519	7.5
19	Sacha 53	Complete Remediation	7,430	7.4
20	Shushufindi 13	Complete Remediation	7,415	7.4
21	Sacha 51	Complete Remediation	7,200	7.2
22	Shushufindi 45A	Complete Remediation	5,721	5.7
23	Sacha 94	Complete Remediation	5,600	5.6
24	Shushufindi 25	Complete Remediation	5,574	5.5
25	Guanta 4	Complete Remediation	5,510	5.5
26	Shushufindi 7	Complete Remediation	5,334	5.3
27	Shushufindi 48	Complete Remediation	5,000	5
28	Shushufindi 18	Complete Remediation	4,881	4.8
29	Lago Agrio 2	Complete Remediation	4,777	4.7
30	Auca 19	Complete Remediation	4,014	4
31	Yuca 28	Complete Remediation	3,876	3.8
32	Shushufindi 46	Complete Remediation	3,697	3.6
33	Sacha 56	Complete Remediation	3,600	3.6
34	Sacha 6	Complete Remediation	3,300	3.3
35	Shushufindi 21	Complete Remediation	3,133	3.1
36	Sacha 51	Complete Remediation	3,100	3.1
37	Shushufindi 48	Complete Remediation	3,000	3
38	Sacha 10	Complete Remediation	2,802	2.8
39	Shushufindi 48	Complete Remediation	2,700	2.7
40	Sacha 57	Complete Remediation	2,400	2.4
41	Shushufindi 24	Complete Remediation	2,180	2.1
42	Parahuacu 3	Complete Remediation	2,065.12	2.065
43	Shushufindi 24	Complete Remediation	2,000	2
44	Shushufindi 8	Complete Remediation	1,600	1.6
45	Lago Agrio 6	Complete Remediation	1,300	1.3