Good comment on the Washington Times Story

Oh yeah, also – I saw this comment on today's Washington Times story about Chevron in Ecuador. Thought it did a good job laying out the factual problems with the story.

Take a look:

The article clearly shows how weak Chevron has become in Washington. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce seems to be down about the company's prospects. That said, there is inaccurate information that needs to be clarified:

*The article reports that Chevron says the legal case was moved from U.S. court (where it was filed in 1993) to Ecuador at the request of the plaintiffs. This is incorrect. The case was moved to Ecuador at Chevron's request after the company submitted ten sworn affidavits from experts claiming the courts in Ecuador were fair. Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc., 142 F.Supp.2d 534 (S.D.N.Y.2001). Once the evidence started to show Chevron's culpability, the company began to claim the Ecuador courts it had previously praised as fair were suddenly unfair.

*The article indicates that the plaintiffs "produced" a documentary film (called Crude, by Emmy award-winning director Joe Berlinger). The plaintiffs had nothing to do with the production of the film, which was made independently.

*The article indicates that lawsuit was filed by only 50 Ecuadorean residents. These individuals, however, represent a class of 30,000 Ecuadorean residents. The damages are almost entirely for environmental clean-up of what many experts consider the worst oil-related contamination on earth – one that resulted from the dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest.

Read More

Film Documenting Chevron’s Toxic Legacy in Ecuador Gaining Momentum

Crude, the documentary at the Sundance film festival we blogged about earlier this week seems to be getting some huge momentum. Over the past week we've seen a ton of stories come across our computer about the film, the outpouring of celebrity support for the film and for the people who are suffering from Chevron's pollution. There just seems to be a ton of buzz around the film – the NY Times, Page 6, US Weekly, People, the Associated Press, FoxNews, and other news outlets all wrote about the film. And now that I've seen the film, we've can understand why. While the movie is remarkably even-handed in its portrayal of the issue, the film does the one thing Chevron has tried to stop more than anything else: it simply shows the facts. And even though the film goes to great lengths to be unbiased, it'll be incredibly difficult for anyone to walk away from a screening of the film feeling anything but disgust for Chevron.

Lucy Danziger, editor of Self Magazine, blogged about their magazine's sponsorship of a party honoring the film. An excerpt:

Here is why I was in Park City: to host a dinner in honor of Trudie Styler, who is championing the cause of a little known but disastrous oil spill in Ecuador that needs to be cleaned up. Chevron, the company at the center of the dispute, has not stepped up to take the lead. The spill occurred a generation ago, when Texaco was the dumper, but Chevron owns the former company and isn't willing to pay to clean up the mess.

Meanwhile, the people of Ecuador are getting sick, developing rare cancers at alarming rates, and the water supply is so tainted that Styler is trying to bring in rain-collecting systems and installing them throughout the villages in order to give the women, children and families an alternative to the tainted water supply. UNICEF first got her involved, and she not only visited the spill site and was in the center of the documentary Crude (it's directed by the talented Joe Berlinger and produced by Entendre films and Netflix), but she also has helped to get 60 schools built and offered educational resources to More than 700 children who, when she first visited the region, worked in toxic-waste dumps.

To read more, check out: http://www.self.com/magazine/blogs/lucysblog.

Read More

Chevron’s Amazon Disaster Lands at Sundance; "Crude" - Press Kit Attached

Apparently a new documentary – appropriately entitled "Crude" - from Emmy-award winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger highlighting the legal battle to hold Chevron accountable is premiering at the famous Sundance film festival today. The film has generated some significant buzz – I saw articles mentioning it in the New York Times and the Boston Globe, among other news outlets. From the film's Sundance page:

Filmmaker Joe Berlinger's latest documentary picks up the thread of the infamous ""Amazon Chernobyl"" case, a 13-year-old battle between communities nearly destroyed by oil drilling and development and one of the biggest companies on earth. In a sophisticated take on the classic David and Goliath story, Berlinger took three years to craft a cinema vérité portrait centering on the charismatic lawyers in the U.S. and Ecuador who have doggedly pursued the case against all of the forces a corporation can bring into courts of law.

We managed to get our hands on one of the press kits about this "David and Goliath" story that are floating around the festival. The press kit has some good stuff about the subject matter of the film – including a press release from which I borrowed the title for this post. The press packet is attached below - take a look.

Press Kit Cover Page
Sundance/Crude Press Release
Q&A about the Case
Letter from Congressman Jim McGovern
Associated Press story on the Case
Bios of the Lawyers featured in "Crude"
Entire Press Kit - .rar file

Read More