Recent court documents reveal that Chevron has paid Borja $2.2 million for his work. You have to wonder: What exactly is Chevron paying Borja to do?

Ostensibly, that $2.2 million is for retainer fees, living expenses, income taxes and legal fees. But given that those same court documents also reveal that Borja was one of several Chevron workers employed to help hide contaminated soil samples taken from the company’s well sites in the Ecuadorean Amazon, there’s plenty of room to suspect the official explanation Chevron has offered for the large sums of cash it’s paying Borja does not tell the whole story.

After all, Borja was once caught on tape saying that he had threatened to testify against Chevron if the company didn’t compensate him for his botched attempt to bribe an Ecuadorean judge. That particular dirty trick earned Borja a spot on our list of Chevron’s Human Rights Hitmen — and an all-expenses-paid trip out of Ecuador, once the Ecuadorean government started looking into Borja-the-Chevron-contractor’s attempts to corrupt the Ecuadorean judiciary.

The Chevron Pit has the scoop on the hush money Chevron is paying Borja, plus this background for those who are new to the strange and sordid saga of Chevron’s dirty tricks guy:

In 2009 Borja, along with his mysterious partner Wayne Hansen, secretly videotaped a judge in a failed effort to derail the trial that charged Chevron with deliberately contaminating the rainforest and resulted in an $18 billion judgment against the company.

Chevron whisked Borja and his family out of Ecuador and into the U.S. after Borja turned over the tapes to Chevron. Later, though, Borja threatened to turn evidence against Chevron if he was not paid handsomely for them.

Since that revelation, the Borjas have been practically under house arrest in Houston, but the money ain’t shabby so maybe they don’t mind. See court documents here.

Chevron has picked up their rent, the car payments and the costs for a washer, dryer, and all their furniture. Both Borjas get retainer checks every month. The wife has a job with Chevron but nobody seems to know what she does exactly. Borja is unemployed.

Why is this a problem? Borja is likely to be a witness in pending litigation and hearings about the $18 billion judgment. Will Borja bite the hand that feeds him? We doubt it, and that’s exactly the Chevron plan.

We hope the news media won’t let Chevron get away with it. Hats are off to the reporters who have taken the time to peruse these documents.

See articles by Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones, Adam Klasfeld of Courthouse News, Rebecca Beyer of the Daily Journal and Braden Reddall and Dan Levine of Reuters.

We’ve received thousands of submissions for new excuses Chevron can use, but we’re sure there are plenty more where those came from. So we compiled some of the most ridiculous things Chevron spokespeople have said over the years in this video, to give you a little inspiration. These are truly some of the stupidest moments in Chevron PR:

As you can see, Chevron’s PR hacks are struggling to come up with a valid excuse for why their company refuses to do the right thing in Ecuador. Go to www.ran.org/chevron-excuses now and suggest a new excuse they can use.

Of course, sending their PR zombies out to spout their ludicrous talking points is not the only response Chevron has come up with. Many more of Chevron’s shameless tactics are detailed here.

Reuters reports:

Ecuador court upholds $18 bln ruling against Chevron

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador Jan 3 (Reuters) – An Ecuadorean appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling that Chevron Corp should pay $18 billion in damages to plaintiffs who accused the U.S. oil giant of polluting the Amazon jungle and damaging their health.

A judge ordered Chevron to pay $8.6 billion in environmental damages last February, but the amount was more than doubled to about $18 billion because Chevron failed to make a public apology as required by the original ruling.

“We ratify the ruling of February 14 2011 in all its parts, including the sentence for moral reparation,” said the ruling issued on Tuesday, which was obtained by Reuters.

Plaintiffs accused Texaco, which was bought by Chevron in 2001, of dumping oil-drilling waste in unlined pits, polluting the forest and causing illness and deaths among indigenous people. They appealed the original court ruling, claiming that more money would be needed for the cleanup.

Chevron had argued that Texaco cleaned up all waste pits for which it was responsible, and said that the Ecuadorean judge in the original case had ignored evidence of fraud on the part of the plaintiffs. (Reporting by Victor Gomez; Writing by Eduardo Garcia; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Paul Simao)

About that cleanup Chevron claims it did:

Chevron Used Secret Lab to Hide Dirty Soil Samples from Ecuador Court, Say Company Documents

Oil Giant Also Duped Its Own Paid Experts To Give False Testimony About Deceptive Sampling

Chevron found no contamination in its testing at this well site in Ecuador.

NEW YORK, Dec. 20 /CSRwire/ – In an ever more stunning expose of Chevron’s fraud before the Ecuador court, a U.S. federal judge has ordered the disclosure of documents that demonstrate Chevron used a secret lab in the United States to hide the existence of dirty soil samples taken from the company’s contaminated former well sites in the Amazon.

The documents also show that Chevron’s scientific experts in the Ecuador trial — one of whom is a respected professor at the University of California — executed a scheme that guaranteed the company would find only “clean” soil samples from contaminated well sites while all “dirty” samples would be sent to a lab called NewFields, where they would not be disclosed to the court.

The existence of the NewFields lab, which is based in Atlanta, was not disclosed by Chevron to either the plaintiffs or the Ecuador trial court before it ruled in February that the company was liable for $18 billion in clean-up damages. Even though Chevron tried to present a false picture of the evidence to the court, the Ecuador judge found that scientific samples from the plaintiffs and other court-appointed experts clearly demonstrated extensive pollution at all of the 94 former Chevron well sites and production stations inspected during the trial.

Chevron executed its deceptive sampling plan by secretly and unilaterally pre-inspecting well sites in the days before court-supervised judicial inspections of the same sites, which were attended by both parties and the judge. Chevron used the pre-inspections to plot areas on ground higher than the contaminated waste pits where soil samples would come up “clean” during the official inspections process.  See here and here.

As a general matter, the documents show that only Chevron’s “clean” soil samples were submitted to the Ecuador court despite rampant pollution on the ground and in streams and rivers near all Chevron well sites that were inspected by the parties during the trial, which lasted from 2003 to 2011.  As an example, see this photo of Shushufindi 38, a former Chevron well site where Chevron in contrast to the plaintiffs reported that it found no contamination in its soil samples.

Other documents (here and here) show Chevron committed fraud by lying to some of its own technical experts so they would laud the company’s deceptive sampling practices even though they were designed to mislead the court.

At this point, Chevron’s attempts to justify why it won’t take responsibility for its environmental and human rights crisis in the Ecuadorean Amazon are just ridiculous. Given the especially poor job they’ve done in the past, Chevron’ PR folks definitely can’t handle this. So we’ve created this little tool to help you suggest a new ridiculous justification for Chevron’s callous disregard for the health and well-being of the Ecuadorean Amazon communities it has contaminated in its reckless pursuit of profits.

As a refresher: Diego Borja is the guy who claimed in 2009 that he had video showing the Ecuadorean judge presiding over the lawsuit against Chevron accepting a bribe. Chevron breathlessly announced the bribery “scandal” and claimed Borja was just a concerned citizen with no connection to the company.

Diego Borja - Chevron Human Rights Hitman

As it turned out, Borja was a Chevron contractor. And the video didn’t actually show any bribe taking place – because there had not actually been any bribe. Borja’s attempt to entrap the judge failed. Though he’d done nothing wrong, the Ecuadorean judge did recuse himself in order to ensure the trial was not tainted by the false allegations against him. His recusal caused at least a two-year delay in the trial.

For these shameful actions, we named Borja one of Chevron’s “Human Rights Hitmen.”

Borja’s lawyer, San Francisco-based Ted Cassman, has now made the rather unusual admission that his client could face potential criminal liability for his role in the failed sting operation.

The Amazon Defense Coalition has the scoop:

Borja, who Chevron moved to the United States just before the scandal became public in August 2009, is already under investigation by criminal prosecutors in Ecuador. He lives in an undisclosed location in Houston, where Chevron pays him a salary to maintain his loyalty while he does no work, said [Karen] Hinton, [U.S. spokesperson for the Ecuadorians who are fighting Chevron to clean-up their ancestral lands].

Casselman made the comments about Borja’s potential criminal liability in the U.S. on September 28th in San Francisco during a discovery hearing where Chevron’s lawyers are fighting feverishly to prevent the release of documents related to the entrapment scheme. The Ecuadorian plaintiffs believe Borja’s actions on behalf of Chevron could violate the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American businesses from bribing foreign officials, said Hinton.

The plaintiffs also believe Chevron helped Borja secure political asylum in the United States under false pretenses so he would be out of reach of Ecuadorian investigative authorities, Hinton added.

The plaintiffs assert that the documents sought from Borja and the Mason Investigative Group will shed light on what they call Chevron’s Nixon-style “dirty tricks” campaign to undermine the Ecuador trial. In phone conversations taped by a friend after the sting became public, Borja confessed that he had set up dummy corporations for Chevron, doctored scientific sampling results that were submitted to the court, and had information that would allow the plaintiffs to win the litigation immediately. He also bragged to his friend on the tapes that “crime does pay.”

Specifically, Gheit is saying that a recent decision by the US Supreme Court to hear a case over Shell’s alleged violations of human rights in Nigeria has clear implications for Chevron. “If you open the case for Shell, you have to open it for Ecuador,” Gheit told Platts. He also claimed that the trial over Chevron’s massive oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon had become a “distraction” for the company’s management and that it’s time for Chevron’s legal team to “rethink their position.”

Another analyst, Mark Gilman of Benchmark Capital, adds that the unresolved Ecuador case puts a “3-5% ‘discount’” on Chevron’s stock. Gilman goes even further, saying that he believes “the shares are undervalued significantly more than that.”

But the absolute best quote of the Platts article was from Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson, who said: “I’m not sure I see how a ruling from the US Supreme Court, regardless of which way it goes, would have any influence over Ecuador’s courts.” This from a guy whose whole job has been to defend Chevron’s aggressive, endless litigation strategy with regards to its pollution in Ecuador, which has included seeking to get a court in New York to establish a “worldwide injunction” barring enforcement of the $18 billion judgment Chevron is facing in Ecuador.

US federal judge Lewis Kaplan did issue an injunction at Chevron’s behest, but the injunction was thrown out by an appeals court this past September, clearing the way for the Ecuadorean plaintiffs to seek enforcement of the judgment in countries where Chevron has assets should Chevron continue to refuse to pay to clean up its mess.

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli

Of course, it’s not just analysts expressing concerns over Chevron’s Ecuador liability: Shareholders are also requesting that the company reevaluate its endless litigation strategy. Many shareholders feel a more productive approach might be to reach a settlement that would provide proper remediation for past damages and allow Chevron to put this controversy behind it.

Thomas DiNapoli, the New York State Comptroller and trustee for the $146.9 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund, recently raised this issue in a Huffington Post op-ed entitled “What Chevron Owes the People of Lago Agrio,” in which he stated: “Chevron must do what’s right for its investors, and its future viability, by negotiating a fair settlement that restores the company’s reputation. Chevron, its shareholders and the general public have not and will not benefit from a never-ending courtroom drama.”

The cables, written by U.S. officials, show that Chevron engaged in a covert lobbying campaign aimed at getting the Ecuadorean government to intervene in the lawsuit brought against the company by thousands of rural and Indigenous Ecuadoreans over massive oil contamination in the Amazon (see the cables here, here, here and here). Intervention in judicial matters by the government of Ecuador is, of course, forbidden by the country’s Constitution. Nonetheless, Chevron tried to barter with the administration of President Raphael Correa: If the administration would break the law and save Chevron from having to clean up its mess, the company would return the favor by funding “social projects” in Ecuador. (Which begs the question: Why not just fund clean up of your mess, Chevron?)

But that’s not even why these revelations are so embarrassing for the company. You might recall that Chevron filed racketeering charges against the Ecuadorean plaintiffs and their US lawyers earlier this year. Those charges were based in part on allegations that the plaintiffs were colluding with the government of Ecuador to improperly influence the judiciary to rule against Chevron. You see where I’m going with this: At the very same time that Chevron’s lawyers in the US were attempting to build a racketeering case, Chevron’s operatives in Ecuador were engaging in the very criminal conduct Chevron was accusing the plaintiffs of.

Those racketeering charges were part of Chevron’s aggressive “Blame The Victim” legal strategy, which all came toppling down on Monday. When the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in NYC threw out a preliminary injunction that barred enforcement of an $18 billion judgment finding Chevron guilty of polluting the Amazon, it also indefinitely postponed the trial over the racketeering charges.

No wonder Oppenheimer oil and gas analyst Fadel Gheit is speculating that Chevron CEO “John Watson is not a happy camper today.” Watson was a key player in Chevron’s purchase of Texaco in 2001, and the appeals court’s decision clears the way for seizure of Chevron assets to pay off the $18 billion judgment if the company continues to refuse to take responsibility for its environmental and human rights catastrophe in the Amazon.

Not a good week for Chevron at all. Which means the Ecuadoreans suffering from Chevron’s oil pollution are that much closer to seeing justice served at long last.

Earthdance has partnered with Critical Beats and Cyberset Music to create this one-of-a-kind compilation featuring contributions from Govinda, Bluetech and DJ Spooky in collaboration with Amazon indigenous musicians. Download the new album today!

Some of the world’s hottest DJs, including Govinda, Bluetech, and DJ Spooky, teamed up with Indigenous musicians from the Amazon to create some truly inspirational music. Now it’s your turn to inspire and be inspired by their beats.

Earthdance International, Critical Beats for the Climate, and Rainforest Action Network are teaming up to promote the new compilation, called Critical Beats For Gaia. Proceeds will directly benefit frontline rainforest communities through RAN’s Protect-An-Acre grants program.

RAN’s most recent Protect-An-Acre grantshave supported everything from deforestation mapping and case studies in Indonesia to the Achual community’s permaculture project in the Peruvian Amazon. This work is central to RAN’s mission, as this is where real change happens: on the ground, from community to community. While we can shift markets and demand accountability for U.S.-based corporations, it’s vital to do this work in solidarity with and in support of frontline and Indigenous communities most impacted by the destructive practices we are all trying to stop.

Each year, Earthdance International organizes people around the world to promote synchronized world-wide “events for peace” in September. This fantastic group helps connect activists, meditation communities, peacemakers, and organizations to grow a just and sustainable world, starting with ourselves and our communities and then working to spread the peace globally.

Now, Earthdance and Critical Beats for the Climate have teamed up to create even more possibilities to support frontline communities through the release of this beautiful new compilation. Critical Beats for Gaia features so many incredible DJs and producers, it is the perfect opportunity to spread awareness through music and reach out to people who want to be part of the solution.

The decision comes after a hearing last Friday in which Chevron’s lawyers were all but laughed out of a New York courtroom while attempting to defend the “worldwide injunction” that barred enforcement of the judgment.

I had the pleasure of being in the courtroom that day, and needless to say, I left feeling some justice was finally served. After months of watching Chevron’s lawyers have their way in their attempts to shield the company from having to clean up its mess in Ecuador, it finally seems there is an American court willing to hear both sides.

The legal details: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the preliminary injunction ordered by US Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, which would have prohibited the Ecuadorean plaintiffs from enforcing the $18 billion judgment outside of Ecuador. This is a major victory for the 30,000 Ecuadoreans affected by Chevron’s oil pollution in the Amazon. It’s unusual for a court of appeals to completely reverse a lower court’s decision, but in this case it was obvious that Chevron and their legal hacks have continued to abuse the law and that Judge Kaplan rushed to implement a judgment without considering the overwhelming evidence against Chevron.

Jim Tyrrell, the attorney who argued for the Ecuadoreans before the Second Circuit, said of the court’s ruling: “We are very excited that the court has reached this decision,” calling it “a triumph of the rule of law over the sensationalism created by Chevron’s PR department.”

The preliminary injunction was probably futile and potentially illegal anyway, according to several international law scholars who reviewed the case. Why Judge Kaplan issued an injunction so far outside of his jurisdiction is anyone’s guess. He continually refers to the plaintiffs as the “so-called Ecuadorean plaintiffs,” as if their existence or the horrifying conditions they live in is somehow in question. He even allegedly suggested to Chevron’s lawyers that they should file racketeering charges against the Ecuadoreans and their US lawyers – which Chevron did.

In its decision, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals also indefinitely stayed the trial over the racketeering charges, which was scheduled to begin later this month.

In the meantime, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who shared Servio Curipoma’s story last week to let Chevron and Judge Kaplan know that the Ecuadorean plaintiffs are very real and for over 20 years have continued to fight for justice.

It’s important that we celebrate this historic milestone, but just as important that we continue to push Chevron to redirect the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on litigation and PR into cleaning up its toxic legacy in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson

Chevron PR spokesman Kent Robertson’s constant efforts to spin court proceedings to fit his company’s twisted version of events in Ecuador may be about to blow up in his face in a big way.

Perceiving a small victory for his obscenely profitable oil company over the Indigenous and rural Ecuadoreans seeking justice for the deliberate polluting of their rainforest home, Robertson sent sealed court materials to a reporter for Courthouse News. This in and of itself was illegal and possibly punishable by sanctions.

But it’s what Robertson inadvertently revealed to the Courthouse News reporter that was the real blunder. The sealed materials include emails from Wayne Hansen to an unnamed Chevron contact. Hansen is a cohort of Chevron’s self-described “dirty tricks guy,” Diego Borja. That means that, in effect, Kent Robertson might have just waived the attorney-client privilege Chevron has been claiming in order to keep Borja and Hansen’s actions under wraps throughout the process of “discovery” in the courts. Lawyers for the Ecuadorean plaintiffs have already filed motions asking the court to “dissolve the protective order governing disclosure of Diego Borja’s discovery materials.”

The contents of Hansen’s emails to his Chevron handler clearly show that he was engaged in some sort of underhanded activity on behalf of the company, was expecting a big payday, and, at the time of writing, fears he may have been left out in the cold. Han Shan reports over at the Chevron In Ecuador blog:

Wayne Hansen, now 62, as a young convict. Hansen was once convicted for drug trafficking.

Explosive emails from Wayne Hansen, an American con-man who partnered with a Chevron contractor in an attempt to entrap a judge presiding in the trial over the company’s contamination, reveal that Hansen believes he has been “duped” by the oil giant, “left out” of a “deal” offered to his Ecuadorian partner-in-crime, and now fears for his life.

In the weeks after he and an Ecuadorian Chevron contractor named Diego Borja executed their scheme, Hansen writes to his contact at Chevron:

“I have been waiting for your call, you said you would call me. … It seems that the oil co has cut a deal with Diego and I have not heard a word from anyone but Diego. What am I to think?”

As you can tell, there’s got to be more where that came from. Kent Robertson’s mistake might ultimately end up unraveling Chevron’s entire legal strategy for denying justice to the residents of the Ecuadorean Amazon. Once the full scope of Borja and Hansen’s actions on behalf of Chevron are exposed, it’s almost certain to be very damaging for the Big Oil behemoth, and very good for the Ecuadorean plaintiffs.

Chevron contractor and "dirty tricks guy" Diego Borja

Borja once bragged to a friend that he has evidence that could win the case for the plaintiffs “just like that”– and it’s caught on tape. He’s also on tape discussing cooking evidence on behalf of Chevron and setting up dummy corporations to hide his efforts on behalf of the company. But it was Borja’s attempted bribe of an Ecuadorean judge, along with Hansen, that is his most notorious endeavor yet.

You might recall Borja went to great lengths to avoid being compelled to testify before the court in the first place. After his attempted bribery of the Ecuadorean judge fell apart (which didn’t stop Chevron from trying to pass it off as legitimate evidence of corruption in Ecuador’s judicial system anyway, certainly one of the company’s most shameful PR stunts to date), Borja was whisked away to the USA, where he was put up in a posh condo in the shadow of Chevron’s California headquarters. But when news of the impending subpoena reached Borja, he fled his fancy Chevron-sponsored digs to avoid being served. Ultimately Borja was dragged before a judge, who ordered him to divulge what he knows.

Since then, we’ve heard very little of Borja or Hansen, thanks to the court order sealing his testimony. But Kent Robertson may have just made it a lot easier for us to discover what secrets Borja is keeping for Chevron. Stay tuned.

The three members of the Ecuadorean delegation outside Chevron's shareholder meeting on May 25th (in foreground, from left): Servio Curipoma, Humberto Piaguaje, Carmen Zambrano.

Over the past few weeks we’ve told you a lot about the courageous Ecuadoreans who traveled to America to take their calls for justice directly to Chevron’s management and board at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. But it’s important to note that the members of the Ecuadorean delegation were only the latest generation battling the oil company that has devastated their home in the Ecuadorean Amazon, lest we lose sight of the fact that the struggle for justice in the Amazon has spanned generations.

It takes an incredible amount of resolve and courage for forest-dwelling peoples and farmers to stand up to one of the largest multinational companies on Earth and prevail. But that’s just what Humberto Piaguaje and the rest of the Ecuadorean plaintiffs did when the verdict came down in February finding Chevron guilty of its pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon and ordering the company to pay $18 billion to clean it up. Humberto’s uncle, Elias Piaguaje, helped pave the road to this historic victory when, in 1993, he traveled from Ecuador to New York to represent the Secoya people of the Ecuadorean Amazon.

Elias joined representatives of other indigenous tribes and campesino communities to file a landmark lawsuit demanding that Texaco — which Chevron bought in 2001 — clean up the oil contamination that had devastated the Secoya people’s rainforest home. Now Humberto, himself a leader of the Secoya people, followed in his uncle’s footsteps and traveled to New York prior to coming to California for the shareholder meeting. Check out this video about the journey:

Humberto was joined in the delegation by Carmen Zambrano and Servio Curipoma. Both were inspiring to work with, but I especially can’t stop thinking about Servio’s incredibly moving speech outside of Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting. Servio lost both of his parents to cancer caused by Chevron’s oil contamination: His mother succumbed to uterine cancer, and his father died of stomach cancer. You can read an interview with Servio’s mother, Rosana Sisalima, who took part in a project to tell the stories of people affected by Chevron’s oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Rosana passed away in May 2006, but Servio is honoring the memories of his mother and father by carrying on their fight.

Like Servio, we must be unwavering in our resolve to hold Chevron accountable. As an American, I think it’s incredibly important that we hold this American company accountable for its crimes in foreign countries. When BP, a UK-based company, came to our country and devastated the Gulf Coast ecosystem, the Obama Administration forced the company to set aside $20 billion to compensate the victims of the oil spill. We should expect no less from an American company that went down to Ecuador and did the same thing — the fact that Chevron/Texaco deliberately dumped over 18 billion gallons of oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon makes it all the more important to hold the company responsible.

Not one more generation of Ecuadoreans should have to live with Chevron’s oil pollution and the cancer, birth defects, and other diseases and health problems that are a direct result. Enough is enough.

In the early days of the environmental movement, I didn’t know there was an environmental movement. Didn’t even know anyone who considered these issues.

It was the early 70′s, I was traveling around in an old jeep, and, at one point, wound up at a friend’s house in Miami – his name was actually Green, and he lived in a jungle in Coconut Grove.

One day I got a call from another friend who’d tracked me there. He was ready to travel around the world, and did I want to come?

I was not planning more than a day ahead at this time, but said, “Well, I’m in Miami. If you want to start in South America, I’m in for a couple of months.”

I forgot about it. He showed up a few days later with tickets – a night flight, Miami to Bogata. Some two-bit prop plane. I think it didn’t even use a runway. There was a highway behind the airport, and when the cross traffic was stopped by a red light, we taxied out and took off.

The plane was delayed because the airport in Bogata was “broken,” so we spent the day in Barranquilla where we met the Assistant Minister of Something, a fellow traveler, drinking strong coffee and stronger brandy. By the time we landed in Bogata, he insisted on taking us out, with dates.

I was already exhausted, but that night I forced myself, for the last time in my life, to dance. My friend, to impress his date, ordered a Scotch with ice cream in Spanish.

We finally got back to the hotel, and even though we were feeling Bogata’s altitude and were beyond tired, we were unable to sleep. So, I looked at my friend’s brand new copy of the South American Handbook (the friend was Whitehill, the real guy the fictional Whitehill in the A Guest In The Jungle is modeled after) and read about some frontier town where it was possible to find a guide and go into the jungle. I had previously not considered such a thing could be done without 50 porters and a National Geographic expedition.

So it began. We went to where civilization stopped, and kept going, always learning as much as we could along the way. We went about as deep as it was possible to go. And, a guide? Who needs a guide?

By the time I came out, it was clear to me that there were problems looming ahead for the Indigenous population. There seemed to be nobody doing anything about it.

When I got back to the States, I visited some anthropologists, then went to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation – glorious meetings, with no results.

I still had not gotten into the science. For me it seemed political, protecting the land, protecting the hunt and a way of life.

I kept going back, and one day, in Surinam, I ran into a biologist at a restaurant in Paramaribo. We were the only two guys in the place who did not look like locals.

His job was to go into the jungle, climb trees, and look around. When he saw something, like a bug, he knew almost instantly if it was a new species. He explained deforestation to me over a single beer.

It had been right there, but I had not put two and two together – the slash and burn, the greenhouse effect. I was stunned. The plants were so huge, I’d been in canopy jungle several stories high. Who ever thought it could disappear?

When I got home, I put a piece of paper in the typewriter, and began: “…High noon over the Amazon. Tropical rainstorm skirting the Andes…”

My thought was to write an adventure-comedy about an everyday guy who gets lost in the jungle and learns about the rainforest.

When A Guest In The Jungle came out, someone gave it to this Randy Hayes guy, and it was off and running. I had to cram for my media interviews like college finals to make sure I could properly explain the issues.

Now, two great things have happened. Twenty-five years later, Amazon the bookseller has become Amazon the publisher and reissued my novel about Amazon the jungle.

And most kids in middle school know more now than I ever knew then.

I wrote a post last Wednesday discussing the anger, frustration, and unwavering resolve that the Ecuadoreans expressed upon leaving the shareholder meeting. Servio Curipoma, a farmer who lost both his parents and his sister to cancer after Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001, dumped a massive amount of oil pollution near their home in the Ecuadorean Amazon, gave the most impassioned and moving speech of the day. See for yourself (Servio starts speaking at about 00:40):

What was Chevron’s response when confronted with the very face of the human suffering it has caused in Ecuador? CEO John Watson responded that it is the oil giant that is the victim in Ecuador. Then, in an even more cowardly move, the husband of a senior Chevron employee posing as an independent journalist emailed some donors to RAN and Amazon Watch to get quotes for a hit piece he was planning on publishing.

Humberto Piaguaje, a leader of the Secoya people in the Ecuadorean Amazon, stood up at Chevron’s shareholder meeting to tell Watson and Chevron’s shareholders, ‎”I want to remind you that our fight in Ecuador is for life and justice. You must own up to your responsibility to the people in the Amazon.” As the SF Chronicle reported, Watson later responded to these pleas for justice by saying that Chevron is the one “being victimized.”

It was a shameful attempt to distract from the overwhelming evidence of Chevron’s guilt — evidence that led to a conviction in February and a judgment of $18 billion that the company has been ordered to pay to clean up its mess in the Amazon. But it was only one of the heartless and cowardly responses Chevron cooked up last week.

Servio Curipoma outside Chevron AGM. Click image to see more photos from the protest.

As reported by Triple Pundit, Alex Thorne — husband of Kristen Thorne, Chevron’s senior policy advisor on environment and energy issues — “decided that he would help his wife out” by emailing donors to RAN and Amazon Watch while representing himself as an independent journalist to ask them if it was time to reconsider their support of both organizations given the fraud allegations made as part of Chevron’s attack-the-victims legal strategy. Thorne conveniently left out his last name and didn’t mention the publication he was writing for in his emails.

Thorne’s came out the next day and it was every bit as factually challenged and one-sided as you’d expect. There’s no doubt he was working purely to regurgitate Chevron’s talking points, whether he is actually paid by Chevron or not. The piece was so bad, in fact, that Thorne didn’t even put his name on it. He also didn’t allow comments on the post. What does it say about Chevron’s PR and legal strategy when even the guy doing the company’s dirty work won’t put his name on it or allow feedback from his audience? I think we all know exactly what that says.

This was no doubt retaliation by Chevron after some of the truths RAN and Amazon Watch have helped expose about the company led to several influential investors calling on Chevron to settle with the Ecuadoreans. “In failing to negotiate a reasonable settlement prior to the Ecuadorian court’s ruling against the company, we believe that Chevron displayed poor judgment that has led investors to question whether our Company’s leadership can properly manage the array of environmental challenges and risks that it faces,” the investors wrote in a letter to Chevron.

All of which just supports what I described last week as “my main takeaway” from the protests inside and outside of Chevron’s shareholder meeting: There is no amount of human suffering so great that Chevron can’t ignore all that in its quest for power and money.

UPDATE (7:34PM PST): The seven activists who pulled off today’s action at Chevron’s Richmond refinery are in Contra Costa County Jail being processed. They’re all in good spirits and proud of what they accomplished today.

Show your support by sharing this totally awesome video featuring the activists who pulled off today’s action and many of the Ecuadoreans whose call for Americans to stand in solidarity they were responding to:

You can stand with the Ecuadoreans too. Sign the petition at www.RAN.org/StandUp.

Original post follows:

Climbers are hanging from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge right now, calling on Chevron to take responsibility for its oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

Last week, the 30,000 Ecuadoreans affected by Chevron’s toxic legacy in the Amazon issued a moving “Open Letter to the United States” calling on Americans to stand with them in demanding justice. Today, a group of RAN activists heeded their call by unfurling a banner reading “Chevron Guilty, Clean Up Ecuador” from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge in the shadow of Chevron’s Richmond refinery:

© Copyright 2011 by Eric Slomanson

Climber Matt Leonard reports while hanging from the Richmond Bridge:

My report from near the Richmond Bridge:

Stay tuned, more video is coming soon.

You can stand up to Chevron too by signing this solidarity petition right now.

Wednesday is Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting, and I’ll be joining a delegation of Ecuadoreans who will be in attendance in order to take their calls for justice directly to the company’s management, shareholders, and board members. (If you’re in the Bay Area, you can join the protest outside of Chevron’s shareholder meeting.)

In February, Chevron was found guilty by an Ecuadorean court of one of the largest environmental disasters of our time and ordered to pay $18 billion in compensatory and punitive damages. This is a historic judgment that is comparable in size only to BP’s promised $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

But Chevron has vowed that it will never pay to clean up its mess in Ecuador. That’s why it’s so important that we all stand in solidarity with the Ecuadoreans.

We’re trying to get 30,000 Americans to sign a solidarity petition, one for each of the Ecuadoreans affected by Chevron’s reckless pursuit of profits. The petition will be delivered to Chevron by me and the Ecuadorean delegation. It can be found at www.RAN.org/StandUp.

Our friends at Amazon Watch made a multimedia presentation out of the open letter. Check it out:

You too can heed the Ecuadoreans’ call for Americans to stand in solidarity with them by signing the petition now. But hurry! There are only 48 hours left for you to sign.

A delegation of Ecuadoreans will be coming up for the shareholder meeting so that they can take their calls for justice directly to Chevron’s shareholders, management, and board members. They’ve just issued a passionate appeal to Americans to stand in solidarity with them. Together with the folks at Amazon Watch, we’re trying to get 30,000 Americans to sign this petition, one for each of the Ecuadoreans affected by Chevron’s business operations — and we only have a week to do it!

Check out the “Open letter to America” video below, and sign the petition. The Ecuadorean delegation will be delivering this petition with all its signatures to Chevron’s management at the shareholder meeting.

Why am I standing up to Chevron? Because it’s the right thing to do. When BP, a UK-based company, came to the US and devastated the Gulf Coast, the company was forced to pay $20 billion to clean up and compensate the victims of its pollution. When Chevron or any other American company goes to a foreign country and does the same thing — and in this case, the pollution was DELIBERATELY dumped in the Ecuadorean Amazon — we should hold it to the same standard.

I’ll be attending the protest outside Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting next week, demanding accountability from the company in Ecuador; in Richmond, California; in Nigeria; in Australia; and in countless other communities around the world that have been impacted by Chevron’s reckless pursuit of profits.

We can only hold Chevron accountable if we all stand up together. Please sign the petition so the Ecuadorean delegation can deliver your call for justice directly to Chevron on May 25th. And if you’re in the Bay Area, come to the protest outside Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting.

Here’s the transcript of the open letter in English:

To the citizens of the United States,

We are the mothers of families.
We are fathers who work very hard every day.
We are grandparents who hold on to many memories.

We imagine that you are the same as us,
With hearts that beat,
With eyes that appreciate the beauty of the world around us,
With feet that walk on the same planet as ours.

We would like to share with you a story
that you all should know.

It occurred in a place called the Ecuadorean Amazon almost 50 years ago.

We had clean water, a healthy source of food, medicinal plants to cure our ailments.

In other words, we lived with dignity and in harmony with nature.

But in that moment an oil company arrived whose name we remember well: Texaco.

We were not familiar with oil.
They told us that oil was good, that it would bring progress for the future.

We remember the oil spills, almost daily.
The crude oil would come down the rivers like black sheets.
We remember the toxic waters they dumped in our rivers.
We remember the pain our children felt after bathing
in the rivers contaminated with oil.
We remember the illnesses, the deformations, the cancer.

We remember those who died.

We do not know you.
We only know the company Texaco, now called Chevron.

We are a people of great courage and humility who have been in a struggle for many years to demand justice, asking that the company take responsibility for all the harm they have caused.

Last February, Chevron was found guilty by an Ecuadorean court for the harm they caused to our people, and to our lands.
But the company has said it will never respect the court’s decision, that it will never take responsibility for the damages,
and that it will keep fighting until Hell freezes over.

We want to reach your hearts, so that you know the truth.
Chevron has poisoned us. It has also poisoned the image of the United States and of its citizens.

On behalf of the thousands of victims in Ecuador, we write this letter to you, so that you can do something, now, and demand that Chevron clean up the poison that they left in our Amazon, and clean up the image of you and your country.

Thank you.

Protesters from communities around the world impacted by Chevron's business operations at the company's 2010 shareholder meeting in Houston.

No, this is not the latest brilliant satirical piece written by the folks over at The Onion. Chevron really has just released a “Corporate Responsibility Report” to highlight “companywide [sic] performance including safety, environmental stewardship, social investments and human rights.”

Having read that, you’re probably thinking, “Come on, Mike, give us a break. This has to be a joke.” And in a way, I agree: It kind of is a joke. A really, really sick joke.

I suspect “corporate responsibility” is more of a game to Chevron than a joke, however. It’s a PR game the company plays to try and convince us that its business operations aren’t having a dire impact on communities around the world. Anyone who regularly reads this blog or ChevronToxico.org knows all too well the destruction and misery that Chevron leaves in its wake. To really appreciate the full scale of the company’s human rights and environmental abuses around the world, check out the True Cost of Chevron site, as well.

Then let the company know what you think of its “Corporate Responsibility Report” on this Chevron Facebook post. You’ll have to “Like” the company to comment, but don’t worry, you can unlike them right away.

You really have to marvel at the depths of Chevron’s hypocrisy — and you certainly would not be alone if you thought this report seemed too bitterly ironic to be real. The report claims: “Through ongoing stakeholder engagement, Chevron is promoting respect for global human rights.” But of course there is no mention of the guilty verdict or the $9.5 billion judgment Chevron refuses to comply with to clean up the Ecuadorean Amazon. While the company plays its PR games, thousands of Ecuadoreans don’t have clean water to drink thanks to Chevron’s oil pollution. Some 1,400 Ecuadoreans have died already and as many as 10,000 more are at risk of cancer and other life-threatening diseases in the coming decades if the company continues to refuse to clean up its mess.

Click image to read more about the impacts of Chevron's dirty business operations on communities around the world.

Far from engaging with them as stakeholders, Chevron has actually accused the victims of its pollution in Ecuador of being involved in a conspiracy to extort money from the company. In fact, Chevron has enlisted an entire squad of Human Rights Hitmen to deny basic human rights to the 30,000 Ecuadoreans who have been living with the company’s deliberate contamination of the Amazon rainforest for several decades now.

So post your thoughts on Chevron’s Facebook page, and if you’re in the Bay Area help us call for some real responsibility — not just self-congratulatory and thoroughly bogus reports — by attending our protest outside of Chevron HQ during the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

There’s really only one thing you need to know, though: Chevron has been found guilty of deliberately dumping over 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in the Ecuadorean Amazon, but the company refuses to pay to clean up its mess even though people are sick and dying this very second thanks to Chevron’s pollution.

The current cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek magazine is a lengthy and thorough report on the case, if you still want more info. In his attempt to be impartial, the writer, Paul Barrett, some times regurgitates Chevron’s spin, but he definitely did his research, and he got many things exactly right.

In particular, the piece rightly dismisses Chevron’s allegations that the lawsuit is nothing but an attempt to extort money from the company led by US plaintiff lawyer Steven Donziger:

[Donziger] has been paid a total of about $1 million since 2003, which works out to $125,000 annually for round-the-clock, 365-days-a-year labor. Even with the Feb. 14 judgment, the odds remain iffy that he will collect a fat paycheck by class-action standards. His diary indicates that what drives him has more to do with true devotion and an ornery refusal to quit than it does with the accumulation of lucre. “I think it is a miracle how much we have accomplished with so little,” he wrote in May 2006. “But in the end of the day that means nothing if we don’t win.”

Barrett also highlighted the fact that U.S. federal judge Lewis Kaplan’s biased decisions in Chevron’s favor have perhaps tested the limits of judicial propriety. Of Kaplan’s restraining order against enforcement of any verdict against Chevron — which came out before the court in Ecuador even issued a verdict — Barrett writes:

It was highly unusual for a federal judge to block the effect of a foreign court’s action before it occurred. (He has since turned his order into a preliminary injunction, which remains in effect.) Kaplan didn’t rule on the merits of the environmental claims; in fact, he stressed that he didn’t know much about the underlying equities. He didn’t sound sympathetic, however: “Among the obvious facts here are that the Ecuadorian plaintiffs are in this for money. They may be in it for other things, but they are in it for money.”

Kaplan “didn’t know much” about the actual facts of the case? Not surprising, since that is exactly how Chevron wants it. Barrett makes this point too: “As the mud flies, the degradation at the heart of the Chevron case grows increasingly obscure.” The less anyone knows about the actual facts of the case the better it suits Chevron, because the facts clearly show the company is guilty.

Chevron is not acting alone to evade its responsibility to clean up Ecuador, of course. We recently launched a new website detailing the bad actors helping Chevron deny justice to the Ecuadorean plaintiffs. Check out the site — Chevron’s Human Rights Hitmen — and help us name and shame the folks doing Chevron’s dirty work.

Click this image to send Chevron CEO John Watson an email urging him to clean up his company's oily mess in Ecuador immediately.

After a long and often bitter 18-year struggle, the Indigenous and rural Ecuadoreans suing Chevron to force the company to clean up its oil contamination in the Amazon have prevailed. Earlier today, in a historic ruling, the court in Lago Agrio, Ecuador found Chevron guilty and ordered the company to pay $8 billion to clean up its mess in Ecuador.

Write to Chevron CEO John Watson right now and urge him to finally see that justice is done in Ecuador by cleaning up his company’s oil pollution immediately.

Chevron of course immediately fired off a statement claiming that the judgment was fraudulent and the company would appeal the decision. Enough is enough. The plaintiffs have withstood the impacts of Chevron’s oil pollution on their health and the local environment at the same time that they had to contend with Chevron’s bullying and abusive legal tactics. For nearly two decades, they’ve been living with Chevron’s attempts to deny them basic human rights and a clean and healthy environment. It’s time for Chevron to take responsibility for its oily mess.

Chevron waged an unprecedented PR and legal campaign, but in the end the evidence overwhelmingly proved the company’s guilt. This is a historic moment. It’s one of the largest judgment against Big Oil ever awarded. The battle is won, but the war is far from over. More than ever, the people of Ecuador need us to stand with them.

Over 1,400 Ecuadoreans have already died as a result of the contamination in the Amazon, and some 30,000 more are at risk. They don’t have time to wait for Chevron to continue trying to hide its guilt with legal maneuvering and PR campaigns. John Watson can put an end to the human rights and environmental abuses in Ecuador. Write to Watson now.

Members of the Kichwa Indigenous community listen to their names being read from Chevron legal complaint.

At this point, Chevron’s legal strategy in Ecuador has been described many ways: it’s been called a “smear campaign,” it uses “scorched earth tactics,” it amounts to what you might call a “kitchen sink defense,” it adds “insult to injury” for the Ecuadorean plaintiffs. But the company’s latest maneuver is really the most egregious intimidation tactic we’ve seen yet — Chevron has given up on arguing on the basis of evidence altogether, and is just trying to bully its way out of its responsibility to clean up the Ecuadorean rainforest.

I refer, of course, to the RICO lawsuit Chevron filed against the plaintiffs in Ecuador who filed the original lawsuit — the one Chevron is trying to distract all our attention from — to force the company to clean up its 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

The video below is of several victims of Chevron’s contamination learning that, of all things, they are now being sued by Chevron. These people are all from the Kichwa village of Rumipamba. (The video is all in Spanish and Kichwa, but there are English subtitles. Transcript below).

Please help us spread this video. These are the people Chevron is trying to smear, people who have been injured and now insulted by Chevron. It’s time we all stand up to Big Oil — we can’t let companies like Chevron get away with poisoning this Kichwa community, or any community.

Transcript of the video is as follows:

Speaker: Look brothers and sisters this document has come from the United States. This is the lawsuit they have filed against us, the plaintiffs. Here is everything they have sent from there.

Here are our names, brothers and sisters, as you will see.

So that you see that this is real, you’ll see our names here, we’re listed here. What we’re seeing are these names:

Here is: Maria Aguinda Salazar, you’re named here too, sued by Texaco.

Carlos Grefa Huatatoca, you’re being sued as well.

Catalina Antonia Aguinda Salazar, you’re also being sued.

Lidia Alexandra Aguinda Aguinda, being sued.

Patricio Alberto Chimbo Yumbo, also being sued.

Clide Ramiro Aguinda Aguinda, from what I’m reading here, also being sued.

Luis Armando Chimbo Yumbo, Beatriz Mercedes Grefa Tanguila, also being sued.

Brother Lucio Enrique Grefa Tanguila, also being sued, but he’s not here.

Patricio Wilson Aguinda Aguinda, also being sued.

These are our brothers and sisters from this region, from this area, from this community of Rumipamba.

There are a whole lot of other people listed here but they are from different communities, from different regions who are also being sued.

They also live in the region, in the affected area.

So that’s what we’re seeing brothers and sisters…

Now we have to stay alert so that we can fight this.

All together in Kichwa: We reject this! We reject this! We reject this!

Have you ever seen the movies Erin Brokovich or The Rainmaker? Basic plotline: evil company dumps poison into town’s drinking water, for years people get sick while the company denies any wrongdoing, but then someone decides it’s time to fight back. The big company has a band of lawyers and dirty tricks up its sleeve. But, in the end, the community wins. The underdog town prevails and restores our belief that bullies, even the rich and powerful, don’t win in the end.

Let’s hope the upcoming verdict in a landmark case against Chevron — brought by an Ecuadorean community in the Amazon for decades of drinking water contamination — has the same victorious end. Unfortunately, right now all I see is a big, rich company and a lot of dirty legal tricks.

This week, Chevron slapped the Ecuadorean community and their lawyers with a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit. Congress enacted the RICO Act in 1970 in an effort to rein in the Mafia. That’s right — Chevron is accusing a remote rainforest community in the Amazon of racketeering.

Ines Suarez, 33, and her daughter Angie Christina Castillo Suarez, 2, outside their home near San Carlos, Ecuador. Angie and her family suffer severe health problems from drinking water contaminated by the oil waste that was dumped into local watercourses when Texaco (now Chevron) drilled for oil in the area. Photo by Caroline Bennett / Rainforest Action Network. View more images of Chevron’s Toxic Legacy in the Ecuadorean Rainforest.

Quick straw poll: between the multi-billion dollar oil company and the Indigenous rainforest community in Ecuador, who do you think has more in common with a gangster? The company’s attempts to deflect attention from the overwhelming evidence of its guilt in polluting the Ecuadorean Amazon is looking as desperate as a Mafia Boss running from tax evasion.

As the New York Times put it:

Chevron Corp.’s racketeering suit…is likely part of a wider strategy aimed at helping the oil giant reach a more favorable settlement, according to legal experts. A judge in Ecuador is close to issuing a decision in the long-running case there, and Chevron is becoming ever more desperate to undermine the plaintiffs in U.S. courts. The company could face billions of dollars in damages, potentially making the case the biggest environmental verdict of all time.

Chevron is facing a multi-billion dollar lawsuit in Ecuador after failing to properly clean up billions of gallons of toxic oil waste the company dumped in the Amazon. The lawsuit has been ongoing for eighteen years, and during that time many have died from toxic exposure. What is at stake for the people in Ecuador is the cleanup and remediation of a fragile eco-system that the community depends on for their basic survival. What’s at stake is justice.

For Chevron the stakes include the billions of dollars in assessed damages, the company’s self-ascribed do-gooder reputation, and a precedent for how corporations are held accountable for environmental and human rights crimes. The precedent this case will set for corporate accountability explains why it is the environmental lawsuit that scholars, advocates and the industry are closely watching. With so much on the line for Chevron, the company is ramping up its efforts to absolve itself of any liability, including prosecuting the very victims its actions have harmed.

Ultimately, Chevron’s executives and lawyers have shown that they are willing to do whatever it takes to avoid responsibility for cleaning up the oily mess left in the Amazon, a mess that is making people seriously sick. The RICO suit is the latest in a growing list of corporate bullying efforts aimed at discrediting the case and the affected communities. Chevron’s aim: to shroud the case with enough suspicion and controversy that, should the court rule in favor of the Amazonian communities, a guilty judgment would be difficult to enforce in the U.S. or other countries where Chevron has assets. Basically, even if the company is found guilty, which its recent behavior seems to indicate is likely, the oil giant has positioned itself to avoid paying a cent.

So, who’s the real gangster here? The Chevron Godfathers with their team of fancy legal consiglieres and PR wise guys, engaged in a whole host of cons and intimidation tactics? Or the Ecuadorean plaintiffs, who are largely poor, forest villagers who have literally seen their families and neighbors poisoned?

It’s hopeful to remember that the movie Erin Brokovich was based on a real person and a real story. Dirty companies making people sick is not just a Hollywood phenomenon. Luckily, neither is justice.

Victor Tanguila, one of the two dozen plaintiffs who gathered to repudiate Chevron's forgery claims and -- once again -- sign his support for a lawsuit against Chevron to demand clean up of Ecuador.

If you’ve been following the dramatic turns of the historic class action environmental lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador, then you’re aware of Chevron’s aggressive public relations and legal campaign to derail the case. Their latest antic, though, is as morally reprehensible as any I’ve seen.

Chevron is claiming that some of the plaintiffs’ signatures on the document authorizing the class action lawsuit against the company were forged. What’s more, they hired a so-called “expert” to prove it — and then attempted to present this “evidence” to the court in Ecuador to declare the lawsuit null and void.

Seriously, Chevron? Let’s take a step back for a moment and review some of the facts:

You knowingly dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste in the middle of pristine Amazon rainforest, endangering the health and livelihoods of thousands of people. For the Indigenous residents, you’ve also threatened their very cultural survival. Then, when these people stand up for themselves and demand you clean up your mess, you perform a sham remediation that amounts to little more than a sprinkling of top soil on your oily mess, get some corrupt government officials to sign off on it (who are now, along with two of your scheming employees, facing a criminal indictment in Ecuador), and call it a day.

So, not getting proper redress from you, these people turn around and file a lawsuit in the U.S., where your company is based. You fight tooth and nail to have the case moved to Ecuador, because you thought you’d win the case. As it turns out, however, because of the mountains of scientific evidence proving your guilt — much of which was collected by you, by the way — you realize you will likely lose the case.

Meanwhile, during the eighteen years that the lawsuit has now been ongoing, people have died of oil-attributed cancers, women have miscarried, children have been born with developmental disabilities…

And now, adding insult to injury, you claim the very victims you have harmed — the very heroes who have endured so much for so long — have lied and faked their fight for justice?!?

Pablo Fajardo, the lead attorney on the case, said a wise thing some years back — he said it’s easier to tell the truth than to fabricate a web of lies. This is certainly advice you could have used, Chevron. Your web of lies is unraveling, and this desperate forgeries scandal you’ve concocted is evidence of that.

To prove that Chevron’s latest made-up controversy is completely bogus, some of the same people whose signatures Chevron claims were forged gathered yesterday at Lago 20, one of the hundreds of toxic oil waste pits abandoned by Chevron (then Texaco), to once again give their consent and — in front of a notary public, video cameras, and press — sign their names.

The company’s response?  James Craig, one of Chevron’s human rights hitmen, called the event a “media circus.” Classy.

The case for justice in Ecuador is in its final stage.  We’re counting down to a verdict. Last month Ecuadorean judge Nicolas Zambrano declared a close to the evidentiary phase of the trial, paving the way for both sides to present closing arguments and a final ruling in this historic case to finally be issued.

The people of Ecuador need our support, now more than ever. They are standing strong because they recognize that justice in Ecuador will not only benefit them, but will have a rippling effect in the way multinational corporations are held accountable for their crimes. Their fight is our fight.