Yes, that was an ad for Chevron. Chevron. On Daily Kos.
It was there one minute and now it's gone.
There was quite the little discussion about that Chevron ad, including the infamous 'Start your own fucking Blog' in response to the diarist's complaint about the ad being on the site and the usual defence of 'but Markos needs the money!'.
Yes. Complain about a corporation that has committed grievous human rights abuses and you'd better SYFPH or just buy a subscription to make those pesky dkos ads disappear because the biggest so-called progressive blog can shill for whoever the hell it wants to.
The petrochemical company Chevron is guilty of some of the worst environmental and human rights abuses in the world. From 1964 to 1992, Texaco (which transferred operations to Chevron after being bought out in 2001) unleashed a toxic "Rainforest Chernobyl" in Ecuador by leaving more than 600 unlined oil pits in pristine northern Amazon rainforest and dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic production water into rivers used for bathing water. The toxic crude oil and formation water seeped into the subsoil, contaminating surrounding freshwater and farmland. As a result, local communities have suffered severe health effects, including cancer, skin lesions, birth defects, and spontaneous abortions. Indigenous communities have been dispossessed of their lands, and millions of hectares of rainforest have been destroyed to make way for the company's pipelines and oil wells.
Chevron is also responsible for the violent repression of nonviolent opposition to oil extraction. In Nigeria, Chevron has collaborated with the Nigerian police and military who have opened fire on peaceful protestors who oppose oil extraction in the Niger Delta. In 1998, two indigenous Ilaje activists were killed by Nigerian military officers flown in by the company while protesting at an oil platform in Ondo state. In 1999, two people from Opia village were killed by military personnel paid by Chevron, after soliciting a meeting to complain about the company's harmful effects on local fishing. And in 2005, Nigerian soldiers fired upon protestors at Escravos oil terminal, leaving one protestor dead.
Additionally Chevron is responsible for widespread health problems in Richmond, California, where one of Chevron's largest refineries is located. Processing 350,000 barrels of oil a day, the Richmond refinery produces oil flares and toxic waste in the Richmond area. As a result, local residents suffer from high rates of lupus, skin rashes, rheumatic fever, liver problems, kidney problems, tumors, cancer, asthma, and eye problems.
In December 2004, the Unocal Corporation, which recently became a subsidiary of Chevron, settled a lawsuit filed by 15 Burmese villagers, in which the villagers alleged Unocal's complicity in a range of human rights violations in Burma, including rape, summary execution, torture, forced labor and forced migration. Despite the settlement, human rights abuses continue along the oil pipeline in Burma, which is still "secured" by the Burmese military. Chevron is responsible for the risks associated with this pipeline.
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Update: 14.11.2006 kos has finally addressed this issue. Bottom line: controversial ads can stay.
16 comments:
And you have to love the old "Kos is playing a trick on Chevron by taking their money on a site where people can write angry diaries about them" line.
Call me old school, or whatever, but whatever happened to principles? Should I accept ads on my site from Halliburton just because I need the money? Sheesh.
The whole thing stinks to me of the myriad excuses also made for continually supporting a Democratic party that's also sold out to corporate interests. (Was that too Lou Dobbsish?)
No Blog for Oil. :)
Good slogan!
You go with the ads you get - not the ads you want.
Garwsh this is just toooooo easy. :D
Oh. There it is again. Apparently the ad is in a rotation sort of loop.
Yes, Chevron Oil. 'Would you like some lives with that?'
(You're right - it is easy, Janet.) ;)
Sheesh. Here's another reason why dkos drives me nuts. MSOC writes a diary stating that she won't vote for Hillary in 2008 which is met with cries of "2008 is 2 years away! We don't want to talk about that until after these elections! SYFPH!"
And then, of course, when Mark Warner declared on Thursday that he won't run in 2008 and suddenly it's automagically okay for kossacks to speculate endlessly about the 2008 election to the tune of 600+ comments.
My head hurts when I visit that site.
Heh. I can just imagine!
what did expect from the libertarian. the bottom line always comes first.
High impact now apparently requires high octane.
I'll take herding frogs at BooTrib over herding the oily cats over at dKos anyday.
But now that I have found this blog that has a lot of familiar faces I think I might have to bookmark and Blogroll it.
I wondered where many of you had disappered to...
Thankfully, blogtopia is a big enough space for the lot of us and then some. :-)
You are all fucking joking right? Right?
Has anyone had any communication with DTF in the last few weeks?
Didn't skippy coin the term 'blogtopia'. ;)
I still haven't heard from DTF, cb. I'm worried.
You are all fucking joking right? Right?
You think it's a fucking joke that dkos pimps for Chevron? I don't find that very funny.
No-ones fucking joking, anonymous asswipe.
No one's heard a peep out of DTF in a month now. I'm worried too, but I think if something were really wrong one of his closer associates might post a comment to his blog.
Anonymous, you dKos slag,
no, we're not joking. You might have compromised your principles, but we haven't.
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