Chevron grant for Kiva

[Guest]

.

[YowieFreak]

crack dealer drops his stash of cash and drugs....  lady with starving children finds the cash flushes the drugs... feeds family, they live happy ever after

difference?

crack dealer uses profits from his/her on-going sales to provide support to lady with starving children.


I think the big question is what Chevron's motives are:

• If they are doing this to salve their conscience so that they continue to do bad things in the future, then I think Kiva should not have taken the money.
• If they are doing this to atone for actions they have undertaken in the past which they now regret (but obviously can't fully undo - although spending money to support the people they have affected goes some little way to ameliorate the effect), then I think Kiva should have taken the money.

[Peter S]

If they are doing this to atone for actions they have undertaken in the past which they now regret (but obviously can't fully undo - although spending money to support the people they have affected goes some little way to ameliorate the effect),

being a multinational oil corporation means never having to say you're sorry.  It's just not in their vocabulary. That's not just Chevron by the way, it's all of them, Exxon, Shell, BP, Total, the lot.  Chevron is probably no better or worse than the other oil majors in this respect.

If Chevron really wanted to atone for its past actions, it wouldn't within the past year have used the California courts to pursue Nigerian villagers for nearly half a million dollars, and it would be actively seeking ways to mend the damage it did in Ecuador, rather than spending millions of dollars on Washington lobbyists in a campaign to evade its responsibilities for the environmental disaster it inflicted on Ecuadorians.

Again, I have no problem with the Chevron money.  I don't think it matters what motivated the Kiva grant, as long as Kiva has the cash and acknowledges the source of it, so the funding is out in the open and exposed to scrutiny and potentially criticism, rather than furtively accepted as seems to have been the case here.

P

[Sengbe Pieh]

crack dealer drops his stash of cash and drugs....  lady with starving children finds the cash flushes the drugs... feeds family, they live happy ever after

difference?

Somewhere in Alabama, possibly Montgomery or Birmingham, a gay man is walking down the street late at night when he is attacked by some skinhead homophobes who beat him to death. Crime is witnessed by a lady with starving children. She approaches the dying man in an attempt to help but discovers he has an enormous stash of cash. Instead of calling the police, reporting the crime & identifying the perpetrators because she is afraid the police will confiscate the money, she decides to keep quiet, keep the money for herself & to feed her children. Everyone, including the skinheads, lives happily ever after  

But wait, 6 months later..... A neighbor realizes the formerly destitute woman has plenty of money to spend & is living beyond her means. This jealous neighbor calls the police & reports the woman. The police investigate, discover the woman has a huge amount of cash that she hasn't earned & won't/can't explain & arrest her. Once the money is tested, it is found to contain large traces of cocaine & other drugs. She is charged with possession of the ill-gotten gains from an illegal enterprise. The IRS is notified & she is also charged with tax fraud. Due to the drug connection, the large amount of cash & the tax fraud, the woman is convicted and sentenced to jail for the rest of her life without the possibility of parole. Her children are turned over to the Dept. of Children Services. The children are never placed with a foster family or adopted & when they are released from the system at the age of 21 they are filled with anger, resentment & antisocial behavior. All 3 of the children, now adults, become serial killers.

NOW EVERYONE LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER    

[Henry]

Too complicated!!!  Crack dealer snatches money back from woman, children die, police don't care - chevron give money to "People with a harmless wart on the butt" - they throw a party!

all fun, you know I really don't care, if KIVA doesn't want it, I'll take it and use it to medicate people living with HIV/AIDS in Birmingham! 

p.s.  our local Birmingham Aids Outreach operates on 3-6% of it's income from donations/grants.....  rest goes to clients...amazing!!! and it's still not enough- the not amazing part - wish Chevron would give them the money!  I don't think the clients needing help would give a flying ....  where it came from.

But i'm good to agree to disagree with anything, except how good I'll look in this bal costume!  oh, and I won't agree that a church with a political agenda deserves a tax break!

[Kathy]

Kiva told us they received money. What more do they need to do?


The angst filled thinking of this site makes me wonder about our world and my own thinking. People who need help are receiving it through this grant. Aren't they? I know two wrongs don't make a right. I get that. However, Chevron, like all corporations and business, small or big,  have done many right things along with doing wrong things. Nothing and nobody is perfect in this world.

Chevron is in a legal fight and I'm hopeful that more money will go to people who need it. I don't know enough about the legal fight. Perhaps Chevron is being mean spirited and evil. Perhaps the local government was supposed to do more. From what I can gather this was work done by a different Oil & Gas company which Chevron later bought and is now their fight. Regardless, bad things happened in Ecuador. It could be more than Chevron's fault. Why not let the legal system do its job?

I'd be more than happy to take this money, not buy direct products from Chevron, and live happily ever after. Only thing is...unless you live in a cave and don't need glasses or clothes you use products made from oil & gas every day:

"Transportation needs require 66% of all available petroleum to fuel cars, buses, trucks, and jets.That means 34% of oil is used for items such as:

•Ammonia
 •Packaging for cough syrup and shampoo
 
•Asphalt for paving roads
 •Pain reliever coating to protect the stomach
 
•Automobiles
 •Paint binder and solvent
 
•Balls
 •Resealable bags and containers
 
•Bicycles
 •Detergent containers
 
•Bubblegum
 •Dishwashing liquids
 
•Child safety gates
 •Deodorants
 
•Coolers
 •Electricity
 
•Crayons
 •Eyeglasses
 
•Heart valves
 •Fertilizers
 
•Heat for houses
 •Garden hoses
 
•Heavy-duty plastic (toolbox)
 •Gas ranges
 
•Helmets
 •Pesticides
 
•Ink
 •Plastic plates
 
•Plastic wrap
 •Portable radios, CD and MP3 players
 
•Medicines
 •Lubricants for machinery large and small, such as bicycles or printing presses
 
•Outlet covers
 •Propane grills
 
•Propane for heat
 •Refrigerators
 
•Protective coating on inside of juice boxes
 •Tires
 
•Toys
 •Varnishes
 
•Vinyl siding
 •Rugs

from www.energy4me.org

[Mona]

Chevron is now listed as one of the official Kiva supporters on the page: http://www.kiva.org/about/supporters

The Company: Chevron Corporation is one of the world's leading integrated energy companies, with subsidiaries that conduct business worldwide. The company's success is driven by the ingenuity and commitment of approximately 62,000 employees who operate across the energy spectrum. Chevron explores for, produces and transports crude oil and natural gas; refines, markets and distributes transportation fuels and other energy products; manufactures and sells petrochemical products; generates power and produces geothermal energy; provides energy efficiency solutions; and develops the energy resources of the future, including biofuels and other renewables. Chevron has been headquartered in California for 130 years and is the state's largest company. The company generated $9.2 billion in economic output in California in 2007, and has spent nearly $2 billion with small businesses in the state since 2007, approximately 40 percent of which are minority- and women-owned. More information is available at (www.chevron.com/CA)

The Partnership: Chevron was Kiva’s leading corporate contributor in 2009. As part of its California Partnership initiative, Chevron Corporation awarded a one-year $500,000 grant to Kiva to assist with operational needs across the organization. As both Kiva and Chevron are California-based organizations with a shared goal of improving access to resources for small businesses and entrepreneurs, the primary use of the grant will be to expand and improve the Kiva platform to economically empower individuals in California, across the U.S. and around the world.
The partnership came about through mutual participation in the California 2009 Women’s Conference where Chevron pledged to match $100,000 in Kiva loans. The partnership has since grown into a grant that will enable Kiva to make much needed investments in engineering and microfinance partnership staff across the organization. These investments will not only strengthen Kiva, they will also help Kiva reach many more partners and entrepreneurs in an effort to meet our goal of 400,000 total borrowers by the end of 2010.

[Kathy]

Washinton Examiner
Hague slams banana republic’s shakedown lawyers
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor
03/31/10 4:57 PM EDT
Chevron has just won a key battle in its 15-year legal struggle with the government of Ecuador and embarrassed some greedy American trial lawyers in the process.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague awarded the oil company $700 million in damages after ruling that Ecuadorian courts violated an international agreement by ignoring seven breach-of-contract lawsuits.

The lawsuits were filed by Texaco Petroleum (which was later bought by Chevron) over a 1998 contract in which Ecuadorian officials certified Texaco’s environmental remediation in drilling operations with the government-owned Petroecuador. Texaco was a minority partner in the venture, which harvested 1.7 billion barrels of oil between 1972 and 1992. The Ecuadorean government got 95 percent of the profits.

Despite the certification, a group of American lawyers led by Philadelphia attorney Joseph Kohn convinced Ecuadorian officials that they could squeeze $27 billion out of Chevron by insisting that Texaco left the North Amazon drilling site a mess, even though this was contrary to their own certification (Ecuador’s energy secretary had signed off on the $40 million clean-up operation). Kohn and his team even wanted Chevron to pay for oil pits that had been constructed and operated solely by Petroecuador.

Ecuador’s claim got even shakier last year when Chevron released undercover videos allegedly showing the presiding judge in the case agreeing to a $3 million bribe to “guarantee” a guilty verdict. Since the Ecuadorean legal system does not use juries, the deck was stacked against Chevron, which was never involved in any drilling operations in Ecuador.

This attempted legal shakedown was stopped in its tracks when Chevron insisted that  Ecuador’s refusal to hear the legal challenges filed by Texaco officials was a violation of a bilateral treaty with the U.S. that guarantees both countries a way to assert and enforce their contractual rights.  The international arbitration panel agreed.

Ecuador’s crooked judges and imported legal sharks should have read their own contract.

[PetraH]

A Dutch article is less positive about Chevron's role in this sticky episode...
http://www.noticias.nl/achtergrond_artikel.php?id=2450

Here's another English article:
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201003311156dowjonesdjonline000551&title=ecuador-rejects-hague-ruling-in-chevron-case

[Harvey:)]

Washinton Examiner
Hague slams banana republic’s shakedown lawyers
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor
03/31/10 4:57 PM EDT
Chevron has just won a key battle in its 15-year legal struggle with the government of Ecuador and embarrassed some greedy American trial lawyers in the process.

There are at least two separate court battles going on in Ecuador and the above quote and article are unrelated to the environmental lawsuit brought against Chevron in Ecuador by residents of the country's oil-producing Amazon region.

"The ruling is unrelated to another long-running environmental lawsuit brought against Chevron in Ecuador by residents of the country's oil-producing Amazon region. The lawsuit addresses alleged contamination by Texaco in the Amazon city of Lago Agrio before its 2001 merger with Chevron. The company is accused of having used out-of-date technology that led to the environmental damage. Chevron denies the accusations. A court-appointed expert has estimated Chevron's liability in this case to be $27 billion. Chevron has challenged the expert's qualifications."
-By Mercedes Alvaro, Dow Jones Newswires;

Link to full article:
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201003311156dowjonesdjonline000551&title=ecuador-rejects-hague-ruling-in-chevron-case


Judy

[Sengbe Pieh]

Washinton Examiner
Hague slams banana republic’s shakedown lawyers
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor
03/31/10 4:57 PM EDT
Chevron has just won a key(?) battle in its 15-year legal struggle with the government of Ecuador and embarrassed some greedy American trial lawyers in the process.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague awarded the oil company $700 million in damages after ruling that Ecuadorian courts violated an international agreement by ignoring seven breach-of-contract lawsuits.
(The court found that Ecuador's courts violated international law by delaying rulings on certain commercial disputes between Texaco and the government.
The court also ruled that Ecuador had violated the US-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty by failing to provide effective means of asserting claims and enforcing rights.
Texaco brought seven lawsuits against Ecuador's government in the 1990’s. When Ecuador's courts moved too slowly to take up the cases, Chevron sued for arbitration in The Hague under the investment treaty.

The ruling is unrelated to another long-running environmental lawsuit brought against Chevron in Ecuador by residents of the country's oil-producing Amazon region.
A court-appointed expert has estimated Chevron's liability in this case to be $27 billion.
Chevron has challenged the expert's qualifications.)
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article210809.ece

The lawsuits were filed by Texaco Petroleum (which was later bought by Chevron) over a 1998 contract in which Ecuadorian officials certified Texaco’s environmental remediation in drilling operations with the government-owned Petroecuador. Texaco was a minority partner in the venture, which harvested 1.7 billion barrels of oil between 1972 and 1992. The Ecuadorean government got 95 percent of the profits.

Despite the certification, a group of American lawyers led by Philadelphia attorney Joseph Kohn convinced Ecuadorian officials that they could squeeze $27 billion out of Chevron by insisting that Texaco left the North Amazon drilling site a mess, even though this was contrary to their own certification (Ecuador’s energy secretary had signed off on the $40 million clean-up operation). Kohn and his team even wanted Chevron to pay for oil pits that had been constructed and operated solely by Petroecuador.
(Big oil's dirty secrets - Oil's dark side.

05/10/2003
The Economist
(c) The Economist Newspaper Limited, London 2003. All rights reserved
Big oil is also facing legal troubles over its famed love of nature. This week, lawyers for aggrieved indigenous folk filed suit against Chevron Texaco in Ecuador. For a decade, legal activists have been trying to sue Texaco for dumping contaminated water in open ponds in that country's rain forest that, they claim, harmed both health and the environment. The firm denies wrongdoing, noting that there were no specific laws in Ecuador when it operated there that forbade its practices.

At first, the litigants pursued their claim in American courts, but a judge finally bounced the case back to Ecuador as the proper jurisdiction for the matter. That appeared to be a victory for the oil firm, but in order to have the trial moved south, Chevron Texaco had to agree to respect the ruling of the Ecuadorian court.
http://www.texacorainforest.org/economist.htm

Ecuador’s claim got even shakier last year when Chevron released undercover videos allegedly showing the presiding judge in the case agreeing to a $3 million bribe to “guarantee” a guilty verdict. Since the Ecuadorean legal system does not use juries, the deck was stacked against Chevron, which was never involved in any drilling operations in Ecuador.
(NYT - Published: August 31, 2009
The recordings indicate that an Ecuadoran political operative was working to obtain $3 million in bribes related to environmental cleanup contracts to be awarded in the event of a ruling against Chevron.

It was not clear from the recordings and transcripts provided by Chevron, however, whether any bribes discussed in the recordings were actually paid or whether Judge Núñez was even aware of plans to try to bribe him. The tapes also did not demonstrate whether the president’s sister was aware of the scheme or had participated in it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/world/americas/01ecuador.html

(Last year, before the Ecuador court could issue its ruling, Chevron released secretly recorded videos that it claims show that the judge had already decided to rule against Chevron. The Ecuador government quickly disputed those claims and said the video appeared to be manipulated.

Judge Juan Evangelista Nunez recused himself from the case, nevertheless.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/11/more-dirty-tricks-from-ch_n_458076.html

This attempted legal shakedown was stopped in its tracks when Chevron insisted that  Ecuador’s refusal to hear the legal challenges filed by Texaco officials was a violation of a bilateral treaty with the U.S. that guarantees both countries a way to assert and enforce their contractual rights.  The international arbitration panel agreed.
("They're losing the case based on the evidence," said Steven R. Donziger, an American legal adviser to the plaintiffs. "So they're trying to fabricate issues to try to taint the image of the trial."

Karen Hinton, a spokeswoman for the Amazon Defense Coalition, pointed out that the company previously praised the fairness and competency of Ecuador's courts and lobbied to have the case moved there from a U.S. federal court.

"They change their argument depending on how desperate they are at any given time," Hinton said.

"What you have now is a judicial charade in which the government is pretending" the lawsuit came from private interests, Chevron attorney Hewitt Pate told The Associated Press. But the government intends to collect most of the fine, he said.

Pate said Chevron would refuse to pay any fine out of the Ecuador court. Chevron wants an international arbitrator to hear the case.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/11/more-dirty-tricks-from-ch_n_458076.html

( Wall Street Journal
March 12, 2010
In September, Chevron filed an international arbitration claim against Ecuadorean before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague under the Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, citing violations of the country's obligations under the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty, investment agreements, and international law.

Ecuador filed a lawsuit against Chevron in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in December, seeking to stop the arbitration.

Chevron has said that Ecuador's government was interfering in the long-running lawsuit brought by local indigenous groups over alleged environmental damage caused by Texaco Inc. and is violating a prior agreement releasing Texaco from environmental claims.

This agreement, according to plaintiffs, didn't release the company from third-party claims.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100312-705982.html

Ecuador’s crooked judges and imported legal sharks should have read their own contract.

Whenever one is trying to determine the validity of any "news story"/op-ed piece, it is always important to consider the source.

I formerly lived in Northern Va. for 18 years, attended the U. of Md. in the early 70s & have family that has lived their continuously since 1969, so I know a little something about the area & the Washington Examiner (and its political views).

Here is the info from Wikipedia:

The Washington Examiner is a free daily newspaper with a conservative viewpoint published in Springfield, Virginia, and distributed around Washington, D.C. and its suburbs. It is owned by Denver businessman Philip Anschutz* who is one of the world's richest men.

The newspaper was formerly distributed only in the suburbs of Washington, under the titles of Montgomery Journal, Prince George's Journal, and Northern Virginia Journal. Anschutz purchased their parent company, Journal Newspapers Inc., in October 2004. On February 1, 2005, the paper's name changed to the Washington Examiner, and it adopted a logo and format similar to that of another newspaper owned by Anschutz, the San Francisco Examiner. The Examiner's parent company, Clarity Media Group, also owns the conservative opinion magazine, The Weekly Standard.

Political views

When Anschutz started the Examiner in its current format, he envisioned creating a conservative competitor to the The Washington Post. According to Politico.com, "When it came to the editorial page, Anschutz’s instructions were explicit — he 'wanted nothing but conservative columns and conservative op-ed writers,' said one former employee." The Examiner added more conservative writers and columnists, including Byron York (National Review), Michael Barone (American Enterprise Institute, Fox News) David Freddoso (National Review, author of The Case Against Barack Obama).

Distribution

In the past, some people complained of difficulty unsubscribing from the paper, despite in many cases never having subscribed. (Anschutz wouldn't be trying to shove his unwanted opinion down people's throats, would he?  )  In response to more than 100 citizens' complaints, Alexandria, Virginia initially proposed a "Do Not Deliver" list in 2006, but that measure was deemed unworkable or possibly in violation of the First Amendment. In March 2009, the Alexandria City Council, at the urging of the City Manager's Office, passed Alexandria City Code §9-14, a Model Newspaper Delivery Ordinance.

*Philip Anschutz

Political and Christian activism

Often identified as "Christian billionaire Phil Anschutz", he is a Republican donor who supported George W. Bush's administration. He has been an active patron of a number of religious and conservative causes:

    * Helped fund Colorado's 1992 Amendment 2, a ballot initiative designed to overturn local and state laws that prohibit discrimination against individuals on the basis of sexual orientation but was invalidated by Romer v. Evans after it passed.
    * Helped fund the Discovery Institute, a think tank based in Seattle, Washington that promotes intelligent design and criticizes evolution.
    * Supported the Parents Television Council, a group that protests against television indecency.
    * Financed and distributed films with Christian themes, such as Amazing Grace and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for mass audiences through his two film production companies and ownership of much of the Regal, Edwards and United Artists theater chains.
    * Financed The Foundation for a Better Life.
    * In 2009 Anschutz purchased the conservative American opinion magazine The Weekly Standard from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Anschutz

So we have a very conservative Republican billionaire businessman using his wealth to disseminate his political point of view & propaganda. Not very surprising that his "conservative op-ed writer" went out of her way to write a piece in said billionaire's tabloid that spins* this story in Chevron's favor:
Hague slams banana republic’s shakedown lawyers
Ecuador’s crooked judges and imported legal sharks....
It seems if one has enough money then almost anything can be called "journalism" these days.

Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language:
jour·nal·ism
4. writing that reflects superficial thought and research, a popular slant, and hurried composition, conceived of as exemplifying topical newspaper or popular magazine writing as distinguished from scholarly writing

*I'm being kind using the word "spin"; several others came to mind.