Tell American Public Media to Stop Letting Monsanto Leverage Its Reputation!

If you listen to NPR stations that carry the program Marketplace, you've probably heard the 12 second ad that Monsanto has been running that says:

Marketplace is supported by Monsanto, committed to sustainable agriculture, creating hybrid and biotech seeds designed to increase crop yields and conserve natural resources. Learn more at ProduceMoreConserveMore.com.

Use the form found @
http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/alert/?alertid=13418576
to tell American Public Media, which produces the Marketplace program, to stop spreading Monsanto's lies.

http://www.dangerousoldwomen.com
"Women are considered dangerous, as Eve was, when they are daring enough to follow their deepest inner longing to step forth into the unknown, despite patriarchal, cultural, or familial prohibitions, and go toward consciousness and truth-telling. Consciousness and truth-telling, even to ourselves, is dangerous to old, fear-based structures, inner and outer, personal and cultural. Dangerous old women are courageous, willing, and fiercely committed to Truth."

Former Interrogator Rebukes Cheney for Torture Speech

The repeated lies are finally bleeding the truth........

WAKE UP AMERICA.

Listen to the interview with Amy Goodman.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/26/shell_on_trial_landmark_trial_set

Shell on Trial: Landmark Trial Set to Begin Over Shell’s Role in 1995 Execution of Nigerian Human Rights Activist Ken Saro-Wiwa
A landmark trial against oil giant Royal Dutch Shell’s alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta begins this Wednesday in a federal court in New York. Fourteen years after the widely condemned execution of the acclaimed Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the court will hear allegations that Shell was complicit in his torture and execution.

Isn't it interesting how all of these stories are interrelated to outrageous crimes against humanity, but the real perpetrators are hailed as hero's and the victims as terrorists....this story is getting old....Oil corporations are the real terrorists ..
http://www.sweetcrudemovie.com/
Sweet Crude is the story of Nigeria’s Niger Delta – a story that’s never been captured in a feature-length film.
Beginning with the filmmaker’s initial trip to document the building of a library in a remote village, Sweet Crude is a journey of multilayered revelation and ever-deepening questions. It’s about survival, corruption, greed and armed resistance. It’s about one place in one moment, with themes that echo many places throughout history. Sweet Crude shows the humanity behind the statistics, events and highly sensationalized media portrayal of the region. Set against a stunning backdrop of Niger Delta footage, the film gives voice to the region’s complex mix of stakeholders and invites the audience to learn the deeper story.
The issues are local and human, yet they have far-reaching political, environmental and economic implications. It’s a powder-keg situation that affects the daily lives and futures of the people who live there. Left unchecked, its consequences will be felt around the globe. Yet barely anyone outside the Delta knows what’s really happening.
Why do we care enough to make this movie? Because raising awareness just might be the tipping point it takes to head off civil war. Because the kids of the Delta deserve a future. Because what happens in Nigeria ripples through African political stability and global economic markets. Because Nigeria produces more than 10 percent of the U.S. oil supply. Ultimately, the events unfolding in the Niger Delta affect us all.
It will take a vigilant world community to advocate for nonviolent political solutions. With this independent documentary, we take a stand for a more truthful conversation, with the hope that a more educated public will hold governments and big oil accountable to peaceful and just resolution.
What is sweet crude?
Petroleum (crude oil) comes out of the ground with varying chemical composition. “Sweet” refers to low levels of sulfur and hydrogen. This less corrosive make-up allows for simpler facilities and equipment, thus easier and cheaper refining. Sweet crude is typically preferred for gasoline processing – and is the most popular type of oil futures commodity contracts. The Niger Delta produces some of the “sweetest” crude in the world.
© 2007 Sweet Crude Movie LLC. All rights reserved.
Website designed by Xolara LLC

Amy Goodman interviews Antonia Juhasz regarding the newly published report: The true cost of Chevron....find the interview here:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/26/antonia_juhasz_on_the_true_cost

http://www.truecostofchevron.com/

"A visually stunning website using our ChevWrong “Inhumane Energy” ads that reveal the hypocrisy of Chevron’s human energy ad campaign. The report and the ads can be downloaded for free from the website, which also provides action steps, links to the organizations involved in the True Cost of Chevron campaign, and more. ."

This is peoples politics at work....Resist, Reclaim, Restore.

The True Cost of Chevron: An Alternative Annual Reportby Antonia Juhasz

Chevron's 2008 annual report is a glossy celebration of the company's most profitable year in its history. What Chevron's annual report does not tell its shareholders is the true cost paid for those financial returns, or the global movement gaining voice and strength against Chevron's abuses. Thus, we, the communities and our allies who bear the consequences of Chevron’s oil and natural gas production, refineries, depots, pipelines, exploration, offshore drilling rigs, coal fields, chemical plants, political control, consumer abuse, false promises, and much more, have prepared an Alternative Annual Report for Chevron.

Chevron, Shell and the True Cost of Oil
by Amy Goodman
The economy is a shambles, unemployment is soaring, the auto industry is collapsing. But profits are higher than ever at oil companies Chevron and Shell. Yet across the globe, from the Ecuadorian jungle, to the Niger Delta in Nigeria, to the courtrooms and streets of New York and San Ramon, Calif., people are fighting back against the world's oil giants.
Shell and Chevron are in the spotlight this week, with shareholder meetings and a historic trial being held.
On May 13, the Nigerian military launched an assault on villages in that nation's oil-rich Niger Delta. Hundreds of civilians are feared killed in the attack. According to Amnesty International, a celebration in the delta village of Oporoza was attacked. An eyewitness told the organization: "I heard the sound of aircraft; I saw two military helicopters, shooting at the houses, at the palace, shooting at us. We had to run for safety into the forest. In the bush, I heard adults crying, so many mothers could not find their children; everybody ran for their life."
Shell is facing a lawsuit in U.S. federal court, Wiwa v. Shell, based on Shell's alleged collaboration with the Nigerian dictatorship in the 1990s in the violent suppression of the grass-roots movement of the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta. Shell exploits the oil riches there, causing displacement, pollution and deforestation. The suit also alleges that Shell helped suppress the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People and its charismatic leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Saro-Wiwa had been the writer of the most famous soap opera in Nigeria, but decided to throw his lot in with the Ogoni, whose land near the Niger Delta was crisscrossed with pipelines. The children of Ogoniland did not know a dark night, living beneath the flame-apartment-building-size gas flares that burned day and night, and that are illegal in the U.S.
I interviewed Saro-Wiwa in 1994. He told me: "The oil companies like military dictatorships, because basically they can cheat with these dictatorships. The dictatorships are brutal to people, and they can deny the human rights of individuals and of communities quite easily, without compunction." He added, "I am a marked man." Saro-Wiwa returned to Nigeria and was arrested by the military junta. On Nov. 10, 1995, after a kangaroo show trial, Saro-Wiwa was hanged with eight other Ogoni activists.
In 1998, I traveled to the Niger Delta with journalist Jeremy Scahill. A Chevron executive there told us that Chevron flew troops from Nigeria's notorious mobile police, the "kill ‘n' go," in a Chevron company helicopter to an oil barge that had been occupied by nonviolent protesters. Two protesters were killed, and many more were arrested and tortured.
Oronto Douglas, one of Saro-Wiwa's lawyers, told us: "It is very clear that Chevron, just like Shell, uses the military to protect its oil activities. They drill and they kill."
Chevron is the second-largest stakeholder (after French oil company Total) of the Yadana natural gas field and pipeline project, based in Burma (which the military junta renamed Myanmar). The pipeline provides the single largest source of income to the military junta, amounting to close to $1 billion in 2007. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, popularly elected the leader of Burma in 1990, has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years, and is standing trial again this week. [On Tuesday the government said it had ended the house arrest of Suu Kyi, but she remains in detention pending the outcome of the trial.] The U.S. government has barred U.S. companies from investing in Burma since 1997, but Chevron has a waiver, inherited when it acquired the oil company Unocal.
Chevron's litany of similar abuses, from the Philippines to Kazakhstan, Chad-Cameroon, Iraq, Ecuador and Angola and across the U.S. and Canada, is detailed in an "alternative annual report" prepared by a consortium of nongovernmental organizations and is being distributed to Chevron shareholders at this week's annual meeting, and to the public at TrueCostofChevron.com.
Chevron is being investigated by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo about whether the company was "accurate and complete" in describing potential legal liabilities. It enjoys, though, a long tradition of hiring politically powerful people. Condoleezza Rice was a longtime director of the company (there was even a supertanker named after her), and the recently hired general counsel is none other than disgraced Pentagon lawyer William J. Haynes, who advocated for "harsh interrogation techniques," including waterboarding. Gen. James L. Jones, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, sat on the Chevron board of directors for most of 2008, until he received his high-level White House appointment.
Saro-Wiwa said before he died, "We are going to demand our rights peacefully, nonviolently, and we shall win." A global grass-roots movement is growing to do just that.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© 2009 Amy Goodman

The True Cost of Chevron: An Alternative Annual
by Antonia Juhasz, http://www.TrueCostofChevron.com/
May 26th, 2009
Chevron's 2008 annual report is a glossy celebration of the company's most profitable year in its history. What Chevron's annual report does not tell its shareholders is the true cost paid for those financial returns, or the global movement gaining voice and strength against Chevron's abuses. Thus, we, the communities and our allies who bear the consequences of Chevron’s oil and natural gas production, refineries, depots, pipelines, exploration, offshore drilling rigs, coal fields, chemical plants, political control, consumer abuse, false promises, and much more, have prepared an Alternative Annual Report for Chevron.

The 44-page report is available to download at www.TrueCostofChevron.com -- a visually stunning website using our ChevWrong “Inhumane Energy” ads that reveal the hypocrisy of Chevron’s human energy ad campaign. The report and the ads can be downloaded for free from the website, which also provides action steps, links to the organizations involved in the True Cost of Chevron campaign, and more. Hard copies of the report can also be ordered for a small fee from the website.

Chevron, Shell and the True Cost of Oil
by Amy Goodman

The economy is a shambles, unemployment is soaring, the auto industry is collapsing. But profits are higher than ever at oil companies Chevron and Shell. Yet across the globe, from the Ecuadorian jungle, to the Niger Delta in Nigeria, to the courtrooms and streets of New York and San Ramon, Calif., people are fighting back against the world's oil giants.

Shell and Chevron are in the spotlight this week, with shareholder meetings and a historic trial being held.

On May 13, the Nigerian military launched an assault on villages in that nation's oil-rich Niger Delta. Hundreds of civilians are feared killed in the attack. According to Amnesty International, a celebration in the delta village of Oporoza was attacked. An eyewitness told the organization: "I heard the sound of aircraft; I saw two military helicopters, shooting at the houses, at the palace, shooting at us. We had to run for safety into the forest. In the bush, I heard adults crying, so many mothers could not find their children; everybody ran for their life."

Shell is facing a lawsuit in U.S. federal court, Wiwa v. Shell, based on Shell's alleged collaboration with the Nigerian dictatorship in the 1990s in the violent suppression of the grass-roots movement of the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta. Shell exploits the oil riches there, causing displacement, pollution and deforestation. The suit also alleges that Shell helped suppress the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People and its charismatic leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Saro-Wiwa had been the writer of the most famous soap opera in Nigeria, but decided to throw his lot in with the Ogoni, whose land near the Niger Delta was crisscrossed with pipelines. The children of Ogoniland did not know a dark night, living beneath the flame-apartment-building-size gas flares that burned day and night, and that are illegal in the U.S.

I interviewed Saro-Wiwa in 1994. He told me: "The oil companies like military dictatorships, because basically they can cheat with these dictatorships. The dictatorships are brutal to people, and they can deny the human rights of individuals and of communities quite easily, without compunction." He added, "I am a marked man." Saro-Wiwa returned to Nigeria and was arrested by the military junta. On Nov. 10, 1995, after a kangaroo show trial, Saro-Wiwa was hanged with eight other Ogoni activists.

In 1998, I traveled to the Niger Delta with journalist Jeremy Scahill. A Chevron executive there told us that Chevron flew troops from Nigeria's notorious mobile police, the "kill ‘n' go," in a Chevron company helicopter to an oil barge that had been occupied by nonviolent protesters. Two protesters were killed, and many more were arrested and tortured.

Oronto Douglas, one of Saro-Wiwa's lawyers, told us: "It is very clear that Chevron, just like Shell, uses the military to protect its oil activities. They drill and they kill."

Chevron is the second-largest stakeholder (after French oil company Total) of the Yadana natural gas field and pipeline project, based in Burma (which the military junta renamed Myanmar). The pipeline provides the single largest source of income to the military junta, amounting to close to $1 billion in 2007. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, popularly elected the leader of Burma in 1990, has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years, and is standing trial again this week. [On Tuesday the government said it had ended the house arrest of Suu Kyi, but she remains in detention pending the outcome of the trial.] The U.S. government has barred U.S. companies from investing in Burma since 1997, but Chevron has a waiver, inherited when it acquired the oil company Unocal.

Chevron's litany of similar abuses, from the Philippines to Kazakhstan, Chad-Cameroon, Iraq, Ecuador and Angola and across the U.S. and Canada, is detailed in an "alternative annual report" prepared by a consortium of nongovernmental organizations and is being distributed to Chevron shareholders at this week's annual meeting, and to the public at TrueCostofChevron.com.

Chevron is being investigated by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo about whether the company was "accurate and complete" in describing potential legal liabilities. It enjoys, though, a long tradition of hiring politically powerful people. Condoleezza Rice was a longtime director of the company (there was even a supertanker named after her), and the recently hired general counsel is none other than disgraced Pentagon lawyer William J. Haynes, who advocated for "harsh interrogation techniques," including waterboarding. Gen. James L. Jones, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, sat on the Chevron board of directors for most of 2008, until he received his high-level White House appointment.

Saro-Wiwa said before he died, "We are going to demand our rights peacefully, nonviolently, and we shall win." A global grass-roots movement is growing to do just that.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

© 2009 Amy Goodman