Re: bloody oil...is chevron clean?

[Seattle RAG <tribal@earthlink.net>]

  ernie yacub wrote:
  > 
  > sid tan of vancouver ogoni solidarity network and sierra club recently
  > reported the good news that vancouver city council awarded contracts to
  > chevron rather than shell...he asked whether chevron was clean?
  > 
  > the following report of u.s. financed terrorism in colombia illustrates the
  > difficulty of finding clean oil.
  > 
  > and how many people were slaughtered in the gulf war for which oil companies?
  > 
  > ernie yacub
  > comox valley osn
  
  									
  							Ernie et al.,
  
  I concure with your sentiment regarding the fact that neither of these 
  major oil corporations are "clean". Shell, Chevron, Texaco, Oxy, Total, 
  Unocal all illustrate a sick web of corporate destruction that is 
  currently taking place within our global society.
  
  There are presently at least four oil boycotts that I know of taking 
  place: Shell, Texaco, Unocal, Total. Any I missed?!! My point is that 
  regardless what major petroleum company we are dealing with there is a 
  pattern of abuse that will only be reversed if we stop relying on car 
  culture. 	STOP DRIVING FRIGGIN' CARS! GET IT!	
  
  By creating a unified network of activists and concerned individuals, 
  some who are already working on one or more of the above mentioned oil 
  corporations, we can concentrate on the underlying consumption levels 
  that drive corporations to exploit oil extraction. There are too many 
  NGO's and activist affinity groups that are focusing on the "brush 
  fires", i.e., Shell's actions in Nigeria and Peru, Texaco in the Amazon 
  and Burma, Oxy in the Amazon, the various spills and operations of 
  Chevron.
  
  Consumption is the Pandora's box that is driving the destruction. Let's 
  work on closing the box. I'm not saying stop working on the individual 
  oil companies, but focus some of that energy into alternative 
  transportation, energy, and conservation. We can't fix the symptoms if 
  we don't identify and cure the disease. 
  
  Some feed back on this is welcome and wanted!
  
  Peaceful,
  
  Shannon Mayorga
  Seattle Rainforest Action Group  
  
        
  > Date: Tue, 8 Jul 97 10:47:45 -0500
  > From: M-J Milloy <mjmilloy@dsuper.net>
  > To: canada-alt-newswire <can@dsuper.net>
  > 
  > [although this copy only discusses American media, it seems relevant to
  > Canadian coverage of the recent transition in Hong Kong, which was
  > similar to American -- ed.]
  > 
  > U.S. MEDIA MISCAST AS HUMAN-RIGHTS WATCHDOGS
  > 
  > By Norman Solomon
  > 
  >      During Hong Kong's first days under the Chinese flag, many
  > American journalists speculated on the future of human rights in
  > the former British colony.
  > 
  >      As the royal yacht Britannia sped away from Hong Kong,
  > network anchors worried aloud. A front-page New York Times
  > headline asked: "Will Beijing Honor Vows?" And so on.
  > 
  >      Recent coverage might leave the impression that U.S. media
  > outlets are vigilant watchdogs for human rights in other
  > countries. That's a pleasant image -- but it has little to do
  > with reality.
  > 
  >      For instance, the media establishment in the United States
  > has barely stifled a yawn at the Western Hemisphere's worst
  > ongoing human-rights disaster. In Colombia, many lives are
  > shadowed by carnage:
  > 
  >      * Journalism is a hazardous profession for Colombians. Last
  > spring, attackers took the lives of newspaper editor Gerardo
  > Bedoya and photographer Freddy Ahumada. The U.S.-based Committee
  > to Protect Journalists cites "evidence of renewed violence."
  > 
  >      The committee says that Colombia's journalists face "death
  > threats, physical attack, bombings and kidnapping at the hands of
  > a broad range of players -- drug barons, the military,
  > paramilitary groups and guerrilla terrorists -- all intent on
  > silencing them."
  > 
  >      * While receiving $169 million in annual military aid from
  > Washington, the Bogota government maintains direct ties with
  > paramilitary death squads in the Colombian countryside.
  > Abductions, torture and grisly mutilations are common. Punishment
  > is rare.
  > 
  >      A Human Rights Watch report -- released last fall but
  > virtually ignored by the U.S. press -- showed that the Clinton
  > administration is equipping "killer networks" operated by
  > Colombian military and paramilitary units.
  > 
  >      * The media myth is that drug traffickers are to blame for
  > most of Colombia's murder and mayhem. Guerrilla insurgents, who
  > are guilty of atrocities, also get a lot of bad press.
  > 
  >      But independent monitors, such as the Colombian Commission
  > of Jurists, have documented that the government's army, police
  > and allied armed groups commit about two-thirds of Colombia's
  > political murders -- which occur at an average rate of 11 per
  > day. Among those killed in recent years: more than 3,000 elected
  > members of the alternative Union Patriotica party.
  > 
  >      * "The most atrocious violence that we are experiencing
  > comes from the state and its secret affiliates, which are the
  > paramilitary groups," says Father Javier Giraldo. He's a Jesuit
  > priest who heads the Inter-Congregational Commission for Justice
  > and Peace, a panel formed by 55 Catholic religious orders in
  > Colombia.
  > 
  >      Father Giraldo points out that "the United States continues
  > sending military aid to our government without conditioning it on
  > respect for basic human rights."
  > 
  >      Irked at Colombian President Ernesto Samper's drug policies,
  > Washington has halted some assistance to his government. But the
  > cutoff hasn't interrupted the flow of U.S. aid to Colombia's
  > military and police.
  > 
  >      In theory, the Yankee dollars are earmarked for anti-drug
  > efforts -- but in practice, they fund militarized repression
  > aimed largely at popular organizations, labor unions and the
  > poor. For good measure, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence
  > agencies keep hundreds of advisers in Colombia.
  > 
  >      Such aid is reassuring to foreigners with a huge economic
  > stake in Colombia. These days, the country's biggest legal export
  > isn't coffee -- it's oil. Companies like Texaco, Chevron and
  > Occidental Petroleum are heavily invested.
  > 
  >      Overall, as the Wall Street Journal noted last year, U.S.
  > firms "are responsible for more than half of all foreign direct
  > investment in the country." As far as they're concerned,
  > Colombia's status quo is worthy of protection.
  > 
  >      In contrast to Hong Kong's uncertainties, some nightmarish
  > realities arrived long ago in Colombia -- where violence takes
  > about 35,000 lives yearly in a country of 37 million people.
  > 
  >      The dire shortage of media attention to those realities is
  > especially tragic because the Colombian military is hyper-
  > sensitive to negative publicity in the United States.
  > 
  >      A few months ago, a high-ranking Colombian officer, General
  > Rito del Rio, angrily denounced a World Wide Web site operated by
  > the Colombia Support Network based in Madison, Wisconsin. The
  > human-rights information on the web -- at www.igc.org/csn -- has
  > infuriated commanders of the Colombian armed forces.
  > 
  >      But the top brass of Colombia's murderous military don't
  > have much to complain about when it comes to U.S. media coverage
  > of human rights.
  > 
  > _______________________________________________
  > 
  > Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist. His book "Wizards of
  > Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News" (co-authored
  > with Jeff Cohen) has just been published by Common Courage Press.
  > 
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  ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
  Mitsubishi Corporation is one of the largest corporate destroyers of the 
  world's forests. It fully or partially owns logging  operations around 
  the world. It also buys millions of cubic feet of timber from other 
  logging companies, making it one of the largest importers of timber in 
  the world. Mitsubishi is devastating thousands of square miles of 
  forests and broadly contributing to cultural disintegration.
  
  Mitsubishi Corporation is the trading company of the Mitsubishi Group, 
  which consists of 190 interlinked companies. These include Mitsubishi 
  Motors, Union Bank of California, Kirin Beer, Nippon Kogaku (maker of 
  Nikon cameras), Mitsubishi Heavy industries, Bishi Metals, and many 
  more......
  
  Seattle Rainforest Action Group
  tribal@earthlink.net
  http://home.earthlink.net/~tribal/