Please stop with the non-substantive personal attacks.
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Their very first case was deciding that Mexico owed the USA $44m (todayâs dollars) for the trouble of stealing half their country. I wonder how often this international court of arbitration helped rich countries take from poor countries.
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Who is stupider?
- Mendoza
- Microbet
0 voters
You mean the judge who moved to the USA, received $12k/month from Chevron and recanted his accusation?
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If Micro wants to call me a fascist for pointing out that Donziger is a liar and a fraud, I feel itâs perfectly fair to point out his worldview is largely shaped by people who cried when the Gang of Four were arrested.
Plenty of things sound pretty corrupt to be honest. Some might focus on Texpet leaking millions of barrels of oil into the Amazon while broadly getting away with it via the same judicial system Donziger was then invited to use. That would seem to be the basic issue - that attempting to win fairly was a fools errand from the start.
I donât want to call you a fascist because you call Donzinger a liar and a fraud. I called you a fascist because you are taking the fascist side in a clear example of fascism.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.
â Benito Mussolini
Except the only side Iâm taking is that Donziger is a liar and a fraud and the left can and should do better than use him as a martyr.
I donât see any cognitive dissonance between agreeing Chevron and other multinationals do bad things and should be held accountable, while also noting that Donziger is a liar and a fraud. Both things can be, and are, true. It does a disservice to seeking handwave the malfeasance, PARTICULARLY when it goes to the heart of the litigation.
The other side here wants it to be one way.
I donât care who is and isnât a martyr and who is and isnât âthe leftâ, but when I see an actual flesh and blood human in conflict with his natural enemy, Chevron, I donât have to ask myself what side Iâm on.
Ok, thatâs playing around a little with a quote and not exactly what I mean. But, if the state and corporate power want to slander and/or prosecute someone threatening them (Ellsberg, Manning, Snowden, Assange, Reality Winner, Donziger) they do it. These are real things that happen. People end up in jail or whatever. Most people go along because they side with authority and most media sides with authority. And if you have a problem with Donziger here? Thatâs Ikes talking about Michael Brown stealing skittles. Now I donât think Donziger did that shit. The fucking judge that accused him was on Chevronâs payroll and recanted. The state and Chevron engaged in extremely offensive shit to lock him up. But you still donât have to go full Ikes.
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Ok I get that but I donât think the main issue here should be whether or not Donziger is a paragon of virtue. Iâd say the difficulty in fairly holding multinationals to account is far more pernicious than one lawyerâs individual actions; which I still believe were misguided efforts to mitigate a quite obviously rigged system. I mean Chevron paying their star witness a $12k monthly stipend for a later recanted confession sort of highlights how dubious this entire process was. Focusing on Donziger here takes attention away from the system in which he was forced to operate, the system which then so pointedly aggravated norms in order to pursue him, and draws attention away from the previous malfeasance of Texaco.
I dunno it just seems like making Donziger the central character in this tale of woe is sort of doing Chevronâs bidding.
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And Chevron never denied doing the pollution. They just said they did enough to clean it up and the Ecuadorian state and companies were contractually liable to do the rest - as if contracts between the largest companies in the world and developing countries are ever fair. And Chevron is pure scum. I donât know that they did this here, but they have hired death squads to protect their ability to pollute in ways we havenât seen in the US since the days rivers were catching fire. (see Nigeria). That on top of fucking up the whole planet and it is kind of offensive to even debate when some oil pollution might not happen to be their responsibility to pay for.
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The key witness in the case you keep talking about was on Chevronâs payroll and recanted.
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This isnât a thread about the virtues of Chevron, as much as Micro wants that to be the case.
I wouldnât know who Steven Donziger is but for his own PR campaign. I get people seek to present themselves in a positive light, but at some point it is dishonest. If something is too good to be true etc.
He sought to get justice for Chevronâs victims. Honorable. Thereâs a ton of evidence he exploited Ecuadorâs lack of rule of law to get justice for Chevronâs victims. At the very least arguably defensible.
Just donât piss on my leg and tell me itâs raining.
A party that loses a corrupt case in a foreign country having a venue for recompense in the USâwhere US-based assets are at issueâbeing fascism is laughable. Itâs a stain on US society that legal remedies require money, but Iâm sure Donziger wasnât reliant on the equivalent of a public pretender.
I donât feel bad for Gawker. Peter Thiel funding the lawsuit may have been petty and pathetic. An example of the pervasive inequality in the US. But what fact in the trial hinged on that?
Anyone who tries to do anything to harm Chevron up to and including NBZing their CEO (in a video game) is a hero regardless of any other characteristics they may posses.
Of course having a venue of recourse from corrupt findings isnât fascism. Being capable of weaponizing those venues, though, is certainly a feature.
You would expect a trial entitled âThe United States of America vs Steven Donzigerâ to be undertaken by public prosecutors on behalf of the state. You would not expect for the state to decline to prosecute only for a judge to engage lawyers known to work for Chevron itself. This sort of practice obscures the division between state and corporation and turns the judge from a disinterested party into an activist acting on behalf of a corporation.
Were this a disinterested venue of recourse alone the case would have foundered as soon as the Southern District of New York refused to prosecute. Instead what we got was essentially a private prosecution masquerading as one brought by the state.
Strictly speaking this case was pursuing Donziger for criminal contempt, not corruption - a misdemeanor charge with a maximum sentence of 6 months. For this misdemeanor Donziger was deemed a flight risk, tagged, held under house arrest for 2 years, denied a jury, refused his preferred lawyers and appointed one he didnât want. Instead of the usual practise of random assignment the judge overseeing the case was hand picked. Once found guilty he was forced to prison immediately instead of the usual practice of allowing a misdemeanor defendant to remain at liberty pending the outcome of appeal.
You can think Donziger is a corrupt asshole that deserves punishment while at the same time recognising that the methods used to pursue him are at least as weird and corrupt as anything he did while being a thousand times more deleterious to a just society.
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Really excellent post Twist.
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ZĂ© Roberto
Then perhaps you should direct your ire at Donziger. He has assumed the role enthusiastically.
Oh, good.
I would think bribing a judge to obtain a favorable ruling would fall into this category. It seems many disagree.