Hot Gossip From A Global Warmer!
This is some seriously underrated tea on #Chevron, the oil company acting like Regina George (actually though).
By Eamon Levesque | Jul 31, 2023
From the article:
#Donziger ’s three-decade legal battle with #Chevron is a pain to summarize. Key to understand is that he represented 30,000 #Ecuadorian #indigenous residents of the #Amazon in a lawsuit against oil giant Chevron.
1/10
https://www.bylinebyline.com/articles/hot-gossip-from-a-global-warmer
Per coverage at the time, #Donziger and his team argued that a company #Chevron purchased dumped “18 billion gallons of #ToxicWaste … leading to 1,000-plus #deaths from #cancer and to #EcologicalDamage beyond repair.” In a landmark 2013 victory, courts in #Ecuador ordered Chevron pay $9.5 billion in damages.
2/10
#Chevron responded by suing #Donziger in the U.S. for $60 billion — for scale, that’s roughly one Koch brother. #TheIntercept and others have noted that Chevron’s case against Steven hinged on a witness that Chevron had paid “hundreds of thousands” of dollars, and a judge with “a soft spot” for the #OilCompany. Though damages were dropped, Donziger was found guilty, disbarred, imprisoned, placed on house arrest, and remains unable to leave the country.
3/10
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/
The legal moves #Chevron has made against #Donziger are no laughing matter. On the other hand, their attempts to beat him down in the court of #PublicOpinion are… different.
“They had to create a #FakeNarrative ,” said Donziger. “At that point, they really crossed the line in terms of the things they started do… to lie, to #deceive the #public, to deceive #journalists and their own #employees.”
4/10
In 2009, an internal memo at #Chevron spoke of a “long-term” plan to “demonize” #Donziger. The same year, Chevron created #TheAmazonPost. Skimmed in a #Twitter Feed, the name is obviously designed to look like some sort of news outlet. But clicking through, you’ll see the subtitle: “Chevron’s Views on the #Ecuador #Lawsuit.”
5/10
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6661647-Demonize-Donziger.html
For fourteen years, #Chevron has played Regina George by using the Amazon Post (and its Spanish-language affiliate websites) as their Big Oil Burn Book. Their mission statement of sorts is viewable on the Wayback Machine:
The #FalseNews and misleading information 30,000 #Indigenous Peasant Farmers put out deserves to be corrected-and the public has a right to know the truth. This is Chevron’s blog to set the record straight!
6/10
https://web.archive.org/web/20100128201513/http://theamazonpost.com/
Certain U.S. trial lawyers, political operatives and activists are waging a campaign of misinformation against Chevron. Without evidence, facts or sound science that will stand up to international scrutiny, these trial lawyers and their representatives continue to freely release false and misleading information to defame Chevron in an attempt to force a large financial settlement.
To date, the #WallStreetJournal has run nine pro-Chevron, anti-Donziger opinion pieces. Plenty of other major outlets have argued in their favor.
#Chevron is still putting paid spend behind the website on #Twitter. Spend too much time researching Steven , you’ll likely start to see them. As recently as October 2022, academic (and NeoliberalHell pod co-host) Matthew J. Donovan confirmed that Chevron had created approximately 9,000 #backlinks to the #AmazonPost.
7/10
(#Google ranks websites based on the number of other websites that link back to them — manufacturing “ #backlinks ” is a way to #boost credibility and #visibility). Calculating the price of an effort like this is difficult. But with a reasonable price per backlink at about $500, it wouldn’t be unrealistic to estimate total spend on promoting the #AmazonPost at north of $4.5 million dollars — that’s before factoring in fees paid to an agency providing these services.
8/
Take the #BayArea city of #Richmond, where #Chevron maintains an #OilRefinery . Under the “Incidents” section for the refinery’s Wikipedia page: “1989 #explosion and #fire,” “1999 explosion and fire,” “2012 fire,” “2014 incident,” “2016 incident.” In the wake of the 2014 incident, Chevron brought a news outlet called the #RichmondStandard to the town. In 2022 they launched #PermianProud, a news outlet for the area between #Texas and #NewMexico around #Lubbock, #Midland and #Odessa.
9/10
In this region, #Chevron has a net daily average production of 303,000 #barrels of #CrudeOil per day.
In the last several years, the effects of #ClimateChange have become increasingly impossible to ignore.
In the same way, the tools used by #OilCompanies to maintain the status quo are also making their way home. Yes, it’s hilarious that Chevron is spending millions of dollars on what amounts to a fuck-you Tumblr dedicated to a single guy.
10/10
anna_lillith 🇺🇦🌱🐖
