‘Crude’: A David-Goliath documentary | 3 stars

[Blue_Tires]

It may be impossible for a documentary filmmaker to present a totally unbiased look at the court case in which 30,000 indigenous Ecuadoreans are suing oil giant Chevron for massive pollution.

To start with, your heart goes out to the simple people whose world was turned upside down by the arrival of oil companies back in the ’70s. Their lives continue to be scarred by a soaring cancer rate; in some villages near sludge-filled containment pits, three-fourths of newborns enter this world with a hideous and painful skin rash.

You want to cheer the efforts of a handful of low-paid local litigators to take on an international heavyweight with very deep pockets and to keep gnawing away at the giant’s ankles for the better part of 20 years.

And who are you going to side with — the scrappy class-action lawyers who allow their strategy sessions to be filmed or Chevron’s high-priced legal team, which operates behind closed doors?

So the fact that Joe Berlinger’s “Crude” doesn’t come off as a one-sided smear job is a bit of a miracle. To the extent that it’s possible, Berlinger (“Brother’s Keeper,” “Paradise Lost”) tries to present both sides of the controversy.

But you’ve got to wonder if anyone other than a Halliburton type could watch this movie and still root for the oilmen.

Shot over the last four years, “Crude” gives a kaleidoscopic view of the problem and the legal machinations involved in bringing the case to a conclusion.

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/story/1607168.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Chevron-Texaco pulled a classic corpo-fascist switcheroo. When Texaco got into trouble

with their enormous toxic oil spill in the Ecuadoran rainforest, Chevron bought them out and now claims that it was not their fault. That's pretty much their legal argument. They also claim that Texaco cleaned up this oil spill--which dwarfs the Exxon-Valdez and has been called the "Rainforest Chernoybl"--but they merely covered up some of the toxic spills which are now seeping up from underground, still poisoning people, fish, water, everything. I've seen the photos. This was not a clean-up. And it furthermore leaves the 30,000 indigenous who live in this region, without a fishery, without clean water, without the environment that is their living, and with huge cancer rates and other impacts. What Texaco did was in fact genocide. It's just that they didn't kill everyone at once, with bullets and bombs. The other thin reed that Chevron-Texaco stands on is that the previous government "signed off on" the "clean-up." But that government--like many in South America before the leftist democracy revolution of the last decade--was extremely corrupt and repressive and had enriched themselves by selling their country and its resources to global corporate predators like Texaco. Of course that "bought-and-paid-for" government would "certify" whatever they were told to "certify." Just think of the EPA under the Bush junta.

Chevron-Texaco has no case that I can discern, no matter how "objective" the filmmaker tries to be. But I suppose it's good to lay out their false arguments and evasions of responsibility. In characteristic fashion, they recently tried to get out of it with the grossest of deceptions--a doctored tape that forced the presiding judge (who had heard the whole case and whose preliminary rulings indicated that he was about to rule against Chevron-Texaco) to recuse himself from the case. A new judge had to take over this ten-year-plus case and I think we can be certain that Chevron's psyops team, no doubt aided by official or unofficial US disinformation experts, are even now trying to concoct something with which to blackmail, cajole or eliminate the second judge.

This reminds me of the doctored "miracle laptop"--supposedly containing evidence that the leftist president of Ecuador is a "terrorist lover." This laptop supposedly survived ten 500 lb US "smart bombs" dropped on a FARC guerrilla camp in March 2008 just inside Ecuador's territory (--an action that nearly started a war, then and there, between the US/Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela). US/Colombia psyops and disinformation are prevalent and very intense in this region, with Colombia adjacent to two big oil countries with leftist governments, Venezuela to the north, Ecuador to the south. Colombia just invited the US military to establish SEVEN new US military bases in Colombia, with NO LIMIT on the number of US troops and 'contractors' who can be deployed there, total diplomatic immunity for whatever US troops and 'contractors' do in Colombia, and US military use of all Colombian civilian airports and other facilities. This looks to me like the 'South Vietnamization' of Colombia, and I think the Pentagon has a war plan to take over Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil rich states which border Colombia (where fascist politicians openly talk of secession).

So, if Chevron-Texaco loses this case, it has other options--the US toppling the government and invalidating the ruling, and furthermore giving Exxon Mobil and Chevron-Texaco new oil supplies to charge the US military (US taxpayers) $500 a barrel for. (I read that figure somewhere, for Exxon Mobil delivering oil to the US war machine in Afghanistan--haven't been able to verify it, but I don't doubt that it's some humungous price.)

I don't have a lot of hope that, if justice prevails, justice will in fact ever be realized, and that Chevron-Texaco will actually clean up their disaster and pay damages to the poorest people on earth.

[Braulio]

2. Baloney

The word genocide is so overused. Ever since Clinton lied about it and used it in Kosovo, genocide is just another word for "couple of guys get killed".

[bemildred]

3. Unbiased is a PR horseshit term, accurate and illuminating is what you should look for, nt