It's time for another edition of "Evil Corporations", a fun game in which we expose and lambast those slimy sons of bitches we all love to hate. These are the folks who wantonly ruin the planet with their activities and would gladly curb-stomp your grandmother if it meant another dollar of profit for them. Most importantly, they outright depend on YOUR ignorance so that they can continue to reap in whirlwind profits without too many uncomfortable questions getting asked.

So, who's in our sights today? (drumroll please).....

Chevron/Texaco!

Why did I say two companies? Because in 2001 Texaco merged with Chevron. But let's not split hairs and instead get down to the nitty-gritty of the crime.

In 1964 Texaco discovered oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Now we're not talking a little bit of oil but the veritable motherlode, the jackpot. Texaco, in conjunction with the friendly urgings of the local U.S ambassador, convinced the Ecuador government that drilling for oil in the rainforest would be good for everyone. They convinced them that it could be done safely by a modern U.S oil company with years of experience and technical know-how.

So, they were off to the races. For 28 years, Texaco drilled in the Ecuadorian Amazon and reaped a nice profit from it. We're not talking a tidy little profit of a few tens of millions of dollars. We're talking several billion, all pure profit after expenses.

Sounds pretty cool right? Well, it turns out that Texaco wasn't happy to just sit back and pull in billions of dollars. They wanted MORE. Lots more. What's one easy way to do that? Lower your operating costs. And that's exactly what they did, unbeknownst to most of the world for decades.

One thing that most folks don't realize about resource extraction is that it generally creates a massive amount of toxic by-products that need to be dealt with properly. From a corporate perspective however, dealing with these  by-products is the last thing anyone wants to bother with because it is a 100% loss- all of the money that goes to cleaning it up only detracts from the bottom line. The end result depends greatly on the morals of the corporation and how stringent the government is in REGULATING the company's activities.

On a side note, if you ever want to see what happens when proper regulation breaks down and corporate greed reigns supreme, take a little side trip to Kingsville, Texas, where the local water tables are pretty much permanently contaminated with uranium. But that's another story, let's get back to Texaco and Ecuador.

The company crunched the numbers and realized that they could save about 3 dollars per barrel if they cut a few corners. They consciously made the decision to cut those corners and the resulting catastrophe it caused is almost beyond words.

18 billion gallons of toxic waste-water was pumped directly back into local rivers and streams, entirely un-treated. They dug open air holes, without any kind of liners or containment mechanism and dumped toxic sludge into them. These kinds of pits are incredibly dangerous as the toxins simply leach through the soil and get into the water tables, and it's for this reason that in the United States laws have been around since the 1930's banning exactly that. Texaco knew exactly what they were doing, but again, did so with the rationale of shaving 3 dollars off the price of each barrel they produced.

How did they get away with all this? For the same reason that Monsanto got away with pumping toxic PCB's into rivers and streams in the United States for decades without nary a peep until a swiss scientist took note notice.

Many oil officials in Ecuador's government were ignorant and naive, believing that Texaco was using the same state of the art techniques being applied to U.S domestic oil extraction. Also, like U.S factory towns during the Monsanto years, there was always the looming threat over the heads of officials not to anger the company, as it then might just choose to pack up it's operations and go elsewhere. Lastly, for most of the time that Texaco operated in country the government was a military dictatorship that was friendly to any foreign business that gave them a slice of the pie.

What was the end result? Due to actions carried out by Texaco in a deliberate and calculated matter, the lives of thousands of people were ruined and one of the most diverse and important eco-systems on the planet was left in tatters.

For people living in the area, the occurrence of all kinds of cancers, birth defects and miscarriages is astronomically higher than it should be. Independent experts estimated that at absolute minimum, Texaco/Chevron is directly responsible for 1400 cancer deaths. The indigenous people in the area who, prior to 1964 lived entirely off the land and their local surroundings can no longer do so thanks to the massive amounts of contamination. It is, in all definitions of the word, a complete disaster. What's worse, it's a disaster that was completely avoidable but was deliberately committed in order to maximize profit.

To get the whole story, go take a look-see here:

http://chevrontoxico.com/

When Chevron merged with Texaco in 2001, they knew full well what they were getting into. Thousands of independent tests have been done which have verified that yes, Texaco's actions are directly responsible for the humanitarian and ecological disaster in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Rather than "man up" and do the right thing, what has happened? Texaco, and now Chevron, have kept the whole matter tied up in court for 15 years.

They've tried every trick in the book, at first claiming that there was no real proof their actions had any harm.

Then, when undeniable proof was presented, they claimed that it was not all due to their oil operations but that the cancers and death rates were due to "other" factors and it was just a coincidence.

Once that was dis-credited, they then claimed that when they left the country they had lived up to their legal obligations to clean up various sites (which involved shovelling some dirt over a fraction of the open waste pits and calling it a day)

It goes on and on. Most recently, with court proceedings turning against them they claimed that the case should be thrown out as they had proof of massive bribes going to the judges. This blew up in their faces, as upon closer scrutinization evidence surfaced which suggested that the company itself could be connected to the bribes, in essence trying to sabotage the proceedings through an artificial scandal.

Even now, Chevron will not admit culpability, but has gone to the lengths of hiring no less than six ultra-major Public Relations firms to try and spin the story in their favour... they're failing miserably at this too, by the way... and they've put out press releases and media statements that are basically outright lies that are easily contradicted by a cursory search of their "facts"

At any rate, the lawsuit underway today is one of the largest in corporate history. Chevron is being sued by 30,000 Ecuadorian citizens for a sum of 27 billion dollars, a sum I hope is awarded in full to the victims. It would also be nice if Chevron's corporate charter would be revoked and it's board of directors sent to jail, but sadly it's just a pipe dream.

IF the case is ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, the good news is that this could set a precedent. It could very well send a message to Mega companies that they can no longer piss all over foreign countries in the name of profit and get away with it.

At least, one can hope.