Fwd: Media Cowers not Covers Chevron Prosecution

Jochen Stremmel jstremmel at gmail.com
Fri Nov 12 20:04:54 UTC 2021 

since you are talking about big oil: what about this guy?

---------- Forwarded message ---------
Von: Greg Palast <PalastReport at gregpalast.com>
Date: Do., 11. Nov. 2021 um 20:21 Uhr
Subject: Media Cowers not Covers Chevron Prosecution
To: <jstremmel at gmail.com>


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US Media Cowers not Covers Chevron’s Prosecution of Human Rights Lawyer
Donziger *by Greg Palast Zach D. Roberts for BuzzFlash*

Famed indigenous human rights lawyer Steven Donziger had already been under
house arrest for over 800 days when he reported to prison on October 27 to
begin a six-month sentence. His crime: winning the largest single pollution
judgment in history, $9.5 billion, for the Cofan people of the Amazon
rain-forest in Ecuador.

Was the human rights hero jailed in Brazil or China? No, he was sentenced
to prison in the USA.


*Steven Donziger (L) and his lawyer, Ron Kuby (R), outside the NYC court
house before his sentencing on October 1, 2021. Photo: Zach D. Roberts,
2021*

AmazonWatch, 60 Nobel Prize winners and the bar associations of a dozen
nations have called for an end to this political prosecution. And, after a
two-year judicial review, the United Nations Human Rights Commission
<https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=1848df89d6&e=d35fcb0440>
has ordered the US to release the human rights lawyer.

The Donziger case has received worldwide attention, from Britain’s
*Guardian* to France’s *Canal Plus*. But in America’s papers and network
news, there is silence about this officially recognized political
imprisonment — except for a couple of smear pieces on Donziger in the *Wall
Street Journal* and the *New York Times*.

We have written about the Donziger case elsewhere
<https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=91b547df40&e=d35fcb0440>.
This is about the silence of the US media lambs over this extraordinary,
unprecedented human rights story. The mainstream press *omerta*, punctuated
by a few hit jobs, shamelessly repeat the talking points of Donziger’s
prosecutor, Chevron Oil Corp.

And therein lies the only conceivable source of the silence: Chevron,
Donziger’s nemesis, the oil giant against whom he won the multi-billion
dollar judgment to pay for the clean-up of the putrid, poisonous, mess in
the Amazon.

The US press covered the UN’s demand that President Putin release dissident
Alexei Navalny
<https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=de141b7588&e=d35fcb0440>,
but failed to report that the same panel ordered Biden to release Donziger.


*Amazon farmer Manuel Salinas shows reporter Greg Palast the oil sludge
slathering his property—and the pustules on his arms from the hydrocarbons.
Photo: Rick Rowley, from "Rumble in the Jungle" BBC/Palast Fund.*
  America’s first-ever corporate criminal prosecution And making the story
even more significant: This is the first case in US history of a criminal
prosecution by a corporation.
That Donziger has been prosecuted and imprisoned by Chevron is no metaphor.
After Donziger won the judgment against Chevron in 2011 in Ecuador, the oil
giant filed a racketeering suit in New York against Donziger, claiming he
won the Cofan case by offering a bribe to an Ecuadoran judge.

(The Ecuadorian judge admits he never got a dime from Donziger but did take
an estimated $2 million from Chevron for "expenses.")

In the US, Chevron found a judge, former tobacco industry lawyer Lewis A.
Kaplan, who denied Donziger a jury trial on Chevron’s civil racketeering
claim.  Kaplan found for Chevron, then ordered Donziger to pay the oil
company millions of dollars for their legal fees, thereby bankrupting the
him.

When the judge ordered Donziger to turn over his personal computer to
Chevron — the company claimed Donziger was was hiding funds — Donziger
asked for an unbiased expert to protect confidential information about his
clients.

For Donziger's temerity, the judge charged him with criminal contempt and
placed Donziger under house arrest — an unprecedented punishment for an
attorney.

It gets worse: when the Justice Department failed to prosecute Donziger,
the judge hired, at public expense, a private lawyer to prosecute
Donziger.  And still worse:  the attorney worked for a firm that that
represented Chevron!

Once again, Donziger, despite facing jail time, was denied a jury trial.

This should have drawn media coverage if only because of the unheard of
nature of the legal proceedings; never before in US history had a
corporation been allowed to criminally prosecute its own accuser.

Yet….*crickets*. This story is perfect for PBS *Newshour*, but there was …
*nada*. Could that be because the national sponsor of the PBS Newshour has
been Chevron Oil? Where was MSNBC? NBC? *Nada*.  *Bloomberg* dismissed
Donziger as a “TikTok hero.”

There was one primetime in-depth story — on *The Daily Show* on Comedy
Central.

Just after Donziger entered Danbury Federal Prison last week to begin
a six-month
sentence
<https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=e464e4be27&e=d35fcb0440>,
the *New York Times* ran a hit job on him by Joe Nocera. The *Times* smarmily
pitches the majesty of the US judicial system against Donziger supporters
AOC and other liberal stars. You can hear the sneer:

“Mr. Donziger’s victory in Ecuador was praised as legitimate, and he was
widely viewed by progressives as an environmental hero. Sting, the
musician, helped raise money for his defense. Greta Thunberg offered her
support. Representative Alexandrea Ocasio-Cortez….”

And on it goes.

Nocera, reporting for the self-styled Paper of Record, mischaracterized and
downplayed the UN’s judicial ruling and did not mention that Harvard law
professor Charles Nesson had filed a formal complaint against Judge Kaplan.
(Nesson teaches *Chevron v. Donziger* to his students as a textbook case of
judicial misconduct).

Nor did the *Times* reporter bother to meet with Donziger, nor attend the
court hearing, both just a subway ride away from the *Times* building,

It is worth noting that the *Times* assigned Nocera, a writer for the
notorious, CEO-licking Business section, while passing over a true expert
on the case, *The Times*‘ own contributing editor William Langewiesche.
Perhaps this is because Langewiesche, who for years has followed the trial
and reviewed the evidence in Ecuador, portrayed Donziger in heroic
terms in *Vanity
Fair
<https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=05123c57a8&e=d35fcb0440>*
.


*Roger Waters of Pink Floyd (L) and Steven Donziger (L) address the crowd
at a #FreeDonziger rally outside the NYC court house on October 1, 2021.
Photo: Zach D. Roberts, 2021*
  Donziger in his own words, Chevron in theirs Unlike the *Times*, The
Palast Investigative Fund has spent years tracking the case, including
reporting
from the Cofan villages in the Amazon for BBC Television
<https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=7648b339da&e=d35fcb0440>
.

We met with Chevron lawyers who told us, “First you have to prove crude
causes cancer and, then, you have to prove is it our crude oil…which is
impossible.” But Ecuador’s courts, and nearly unanimous scientific experts,
did find Chevron’s oil spoiled and poisoned the Amazonians.

*Donziger’s house arrest ankle claw. Photo: Zach D. Roberts, 2021*
And, unlike the *Times*, we spoke to Donziger in his apartment in New York
where, just before sentencing, he was “celebrating” his 800th day under
house arrest wearing an ankle bracelet — completely unprecedented for what
is, after all, just the misdemeanor crime of contempt.

Donziger was working with his small team to get the word out about this
case via his social media accounts. He is thankful that celebs like Roger
Waters
<https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=b462e4a5fb&e=d35fcb0440>
(Pink Floyd) and Lucy Lawless (*Xena: Warrior Princess*) have been using
their fame to gain attention to the case.

He is not surprised that the American mainstream media hasn’t taken the
cramped elevator up to his 2 bedroom on the Upper West Side.

"The corporate media has a hard time explaining how a guy like me can be
abused by two US federal judges," says Donziger. "I mean, it just doesn't
add up and the framework with which they look at the world. They also are
heavily dependent [on] advertising money from the fossil fuel industry,
including from Chevron. And, in the case of the *New York Times*, their
main law firm representing the whole institution on First Amendment issues
is none other than Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, which is Chevron's law firm."
While the case got some early publicity on CBS and elsewhere, once Chevron
started its attack on Donziger, US network coverage ended swiftly. Few
media outlets outside of progressive and environmental media have covered
the case, and the pro-business *Wall Street Journal‘s* reporting on
Donziger’s “criminal conviction” was pretty much a re-write of Chevron’s
talking points.

It seems that Chevron’s wall of money has paid off. The company, notes
Donziger, admits it spent more than a billion dollars in legal bills
fighting him and the Cofan.

One can only guess the amount spent by Chevron to buy the silence, if not
complicity, of the US media.

*Photojournalist Zach D. Roberts is a fellow of the Palast Investigative
Fund. Reporter Greg Palast investigated Chevron’s pollution in the Amazon
for the British Broadcasting Corporation.*
------------------------------

* Palast in New York for the Donziger trial. Photo: Zach D. Roberts, 2021*
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Your $10 or $20 allows us to cover stories like the prosecution of Steven
Donziger.
Every monthly contributor
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While the NY Times didn’t bother to walk down the street to cover the
story, we flew to New York — after we flew to Ecuador. Real investigative
reporting requires travel and much more: a team dedicated to months-long,
years-long, fact digging.

------------------------------
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   <https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=dd110132da&e=d35fcb0440>
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   <https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=7411048324&e=d35fcb0440>

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