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I am stroking out here. Dial 911.
In New York last Thursday, Federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered documentary producer and director Joe Berlinger to turn over to Chevron more than 600 hours of raw footage used to create a film titled CRUDE: THE REAL PRICE OF OIL.I am SO going back to Gaunzi now.
Released last year, it's the story of how 30,000 Ecuadorians rose up to challenge the pollution of their bodies, livestock, rivers and wells from Texaco's drilling for oil there, a rainforest disaster that has been described as the Amazon's Chernobyl. When Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001 and attempted to dismiss claims that it was now responsible, the indigenous people and their lawyers fought back in court.
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Jesus crap! It better be soon! I'm losing it here, man. I want to run out into the streets... except all that's out there are cows, and the battered homeless guy under the bridge! Dial 911. Dial 911! Dial 911!
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UPDATE THE NEXT DAY
The hitch seems to be that the plaintiffs' lawyers solicited the filmmaker to do the documentary, which is a little shaky, opens the door for such a move, but should have been a rock solid means of both getting the public awareness to help them survive in court and, probably, the money for it... a way for penniless natives to get satisfaction out of our judicial system. They would have been relying on the First Amendment freedom of the press protections to keep this from coming to this pass, but this judge seems to interpret the begging for the publicity to be equal to paying for it, commissioning it, turning it into material that must be shared with the defense in discovery.
If this order is allowed to stand, this case can be used against every journalist out there trying to expose the multifarious wrongdoings of the multifarious corporate titans currently tightening the noose around the world's, the planet's, neck.
If you have bothered to read the order, you will see that this decision is heavily weighted by antipathy toward the socialist Rafael Correa. Where discretion is allowed, the politics of the President of Ecuador seem to be the issue weighing on the judge's bias, and Correa's friendliness with plaintiffs' counsel taken as evidence of impropriety—as though attorneys here do not pal around with any government officials, yet still manage to be assumed not to be using those relationships toward improper or illegal ends. Incendiary language is used in this order a few times, almost as though the judge were intending to sway the higher court to uphold his First-Amendment-bashing order because some upstart socialist is trying to have satisfaction for his fleas from our titans.
This is cause to be even more afraid for our Bill of Rights.
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Wasn't Condalezza Rice plucked from Chevron's board room ?
ReplyDeleteI'm just sayin'
Yes.
ReplyDeleteAnd somewhere I just saw a long list of people plucked from boardrooms to be in this administration.
A federal judge just ordered an investigative journalist to hand over to Chevron everything he had on them, all the outtakes of interviews, everything, so Chevron can use it to defend the indefensible AND SO PEOPLE WILL BE AFRAID TO GIVE INFORMATION AGAINST THE BIG BOYS IN THE FUTURE.
Luckily, the order is on hold pending a writ to a higher court, but, these days, we don't have much hope the higher court will slap down this psychedelically fascist order.
This is why so many people are having kittens about Obama's picks for the Supreme Court... all the judges he's picking/not-picking.
He's W on steroids, to use the vernacular.
99,
ReplyDeleteYep Tim Geitner and Larry Summers lead the Obama appointees corporate stinker parade...there are many others...
I'm hoping you read my update.
ReplyDeleteI don't have much confidence anymore that people are reading my links, let alone going to the core links at the links. I was too beside myself last night, and running for a second logger martini, to try to make SURE people here grok the seriousness of this.
MY HAIR IS ON FIRE! DIAL 911!