Doha, Qatar - FIFA's executive committee has met in Zurich, Switzerland to discuss whether to move the 2022 World Cup to the winter, so that footballers can avoid playing in Qatar's scorching summer heat.

But the scheduling issue was overshadowed by concerns that the migrant workers building the infrastructure in the run-up to the event are being subjected to abusive labour conditions, verging on what one report called "modern-day slavery".

Nepalis comprise one of the biggest groups of blue-collar workers in Qatar. Drawn by plentiful jobs in the state, especially in the booming construction sector, about 400,000 Nepalis work in Qatar today - making up 20 percent of Qatar's roughly two million people. On a per-capita basis, more Nepalis probably live in Qatar than any other country aside from Nepal itself.

But an article published last week in British newspaper the Guardian stated that dozens of Nepalese workers in Qatar died there this summer, and that thousands more toil under abusive conditions - reporting instances of employers confiscating workers' passports and denying labourers access to free drinking water.

The report, titled "Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'", also said it found "evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project", describing the situation as "one of the richest nations exploiting one of the poorest to get ready for the world's most popular sporting tournament".

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/10/qatar-under-spotlight-for-workers-rights-2013103133435476752.html

 

The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.

 

The companies range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon and BP – to state-owned and government-run firms.

 

The analysis, which was welcomed by the former vice-president Al Gore as a "crucial step forward" found that the vast majority of the firms were in the business of producing oil, gas or coal, found the analysis, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Climatic Change.

 

"There are thousands of oil, gas and coal producers in the world," climate researcher and author Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in Colorado said. "But the decision makers, the CEOs, or the ministers of coal and oil if you narrow it down to just one person, they could all fit on a Greyhound bus or two."

 

Half of the estimated emissions were produced just in the past 25 years – well past the date when governments and corporations became aware that rising greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal and oil were causing dangerous climate change.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-man-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change

 

Invasive questions on a Chevron job application form have been dropped from the document following complaints, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) says.

The union said the recruitment form included questions about sexually transmitted diseases, missed menstrual periods and breast lumps – and a disclaimer saying that not answering them truthfully could result in the applicant being rejected.

CFMEU WA state secretary Mick Buchan said job applicants should not have to hand over private information.

"What have these questions got to do with anyone carrying out their job?" Buchan asked.

The union cited Slater and Gordon industrial and employment lawyer Simon Millman as saying the form breached several discrimination and privacy laws.

The questions have now been dropped from Chevron's job applications, the union says.

Chevron has been asked to comment.

In August, the Maritime Union of Australia lodged a complaint with the Equal Opportunity Commission against recruitment company Skilled for its use of forms asking female members about menstruation and pregnancy.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/13/invasive-questions-dropped-from-chevron-job-application-form

 

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Chevron has been accused of turning a tragedy into farce, after it tried to make amends for a fatal fracking explosion by offering people pizza.

One of the US energy giant's hydraulic fracturing wells exploded last week in a field just outside the small towns of Bobtown and Dunkard, Pennsylvania, killing a man and starting a fire that burned for four days.

The man was identified from fragments of bone as 27-year-old Ian Mckee, who was working for one of Chevron's contractors, Cameron International. He was engaged to be married and his fiancee was expecting their first child.

Stefan Radwansky, vice-president and general manager at Cameron International, said it was committed to providing for the family, and felt "deeply saddened" by the "devastating" incident.

However, his sombre words were undercut by the response from Chevron. The oil giant wrote to 100 residents of Bobtown and Dunkard and offered them a voucher for pizza and a two-litre drink, as a "token of appreciation for their patience".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/chevron-apologises-for-fatal-fracking-explosion-with-free-pizza-20140221-336kx.html#ixzz2tw78kmEM

My brain bleeds...

Firing employees is usually nothing to brag about, but Chevron has reportedly branded its belt-tightening layoffs as a way to increase the number of senior-level positions held by women and ethnic minorities.

The oil major has been forced to cut spending due to the recent economic downturn. In an internal email seen by Reuters, Chevron reportedly explained to employees that the company’s decision to sack management had a very woke silver lining: Less white males, more women and minorities in senior jobs.

Chevron is said to be reducing the “dominance of white males” in company management by increasing the percentage of top jobs held by women and minorities to 44%, up from 38% last year.

Women and non-white men represented nearly half of the oil industry’s workforce as of 2019, but they are still a minority in senior management roles. However, through the firing of more top-level people during an economic recession, these minority groups will become a larger segment of the industry’s workforce.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/495844-chevron-layoffs-woke-white-diversity/

 

 

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From DemocracyNow!

 

Protests across the United States are calling for the immediate release of environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who has been held under house arrest in New York for two years after being targeted by the oil giant Chevron. Donziger sued the oil giant in Ecuador on behalf of 30,000 Amazonian Indigenous people for dumping 16 billion gallons of oil into their ancestral lands. Ecuador’s Supreme Court ordered Chevron to pay $18 billion a decade ago, a major victory for the environment and corporate accountability. But Chevron refused to pay or clean up the land, and instead launched a legal attack targeting Donziger in the United States. A federal judge in July found Donziger guilty of six counts of criminal contempt of court after he refused to turn over his computer and cellphone. In an unusual legal twist, the judge appointed a private law firm with ties to Chevron to prosecute Donziger, after federal prosecutors declined to bring charges. “This is a broader threat to our society,” says Donziger. “We cannot allow in any rule-of-law country, or any country, private prosecutions run by corporations.”

TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. If you’d like to get our Daily Digest, you can get it emailed by texting the word “democracynow” — one word — to 66866. That’s “democracynow” to 66866.

Protesters are rallying in several cities today to call for the immediate release of environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who’s been held under house arrest in New York for two years, after being targeted by the oil giant Chevron.

The case stems from Donziger’s role in suing Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Amazonian Indigenous people for dumping 16 billion gallons of oil into their ancestral land in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Ten years ago, Ecuador’s Supreme Court ordered Chevron to pay $18 billion. The landmark ruling was seen as a major victory for the environment and corporate accountability.

But Chevron refused to pay or clean up the land. Instead, Chevron launched a legal attack targeting Donziger. Last month, a federal judge found Donziger guilty of six counts of criminal contempt of court, after he refused to turn over his computer and cellphone. In an unusual legal twist, the judge appointed a private law firm with ties to Chevron to prosecute Donziger, after federal prosecutors declined to bring charges. Today marks two years — 730 days — since Steve Donziger has been on house arrest.

Steve Donziger joins us from his New York home. We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Steve. If you can start off by speaking about the trial that just took place? We talked to you right before the trial. You’ve since gone to trial and been found guilty. But talk about who prosecuted you and what the courtroom and the trial were all about.

STEVEN DONZIGER: Thank you, Amy, for having me.

You know, it wasn’t a trial as trials are commonly understood. There was no jury. The judge, who had already locked me up pretrial — I’m the only lawyer in American history ever locked up pretrial on a misdemeanor. I want to emphasize: This is a misdemeanor case, a petty crime case. And I assert my innocence, but even if I were guilty, it’s a very minor case. No one’s ever been locked up pretrial but me. So the same judge who locked me up now for two years — I haven’t, you know, been sentenced to anything — is the judge who denied me a jury and alone decided my supposed guilt or innocence.

It was intended, really, to be sort of a show trial, where a decision that had previously been made by the Chevron prosecutor — the judge, Judge Preska, allowed a private law firm, Seward & Kissel, which has Chevron as a client, to prosecute me, after the government refused to prosecute me. It was all just precooked. And you kind of felt it watching it in the courtroom. During the trial, Judge Preska was reading the newspaper during witness testimony. All the main witnesses were Chevron lawyers. They testified that Chevron had paid them, Chevron private lawyers from a second law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher — Chevron had paid them $1,300 an hour and more to help the other Chevron private prosecutor try to convict me. It was all kind of run by Chevron.

And the dangerous part about this, beyond the fact that my liberty has been deprived and I’ve been unable to work and help my clients in Ecuador and work, do my human rights work, is that this is a broader threat to our society. I mean, we cannot allow in any rule-of-law country, or any country, private prosecutions run by corporations. It’s just extraordinary. You know, if this were run by a normal prosecutor, the case never would have happened, or at a minimum I never would have been locked up prior to trial.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I mean, the federal prosecutors refused to prosecute you, is that right?

STEVEN DONZIGER: That’s exactly right. You know, what happened was, underneath all of this is the fact that I worked on a team of lawyers for years to hold Chevron accountable for the Amazon Chernobyl, this massive, deliberate dumping of cancer-causing oil waste down in Ecuador, where Indigenous groups have been decimated. And Chevron wanted that trial held in Ecuador’s courts. And we fought for eight years against Chevron, won this big judgment in 2011. And rather than pay the judgment, they decided to try to demonize me and try to criminalize lawyering, criminalize human rights lawyering.

They’ve had this planned for 10 years. We know for a fact — and they’ve admitted it — that way back in 2010 they went to the SDNY, which is the federal prosecutor in Manhattan, seeking to prosecute me for this supposed fraud in Ecuador, which is just hogwash. And they refused to prosecute me then. And, you know, I kept going, along with other lawyers, to try to enforce the judgment against Chevron that we had won in Ecuador, which, by the way, has been affirmed by six appellate courts in Ecuador and Canada. I mean, this is a real judgment.

And they then went back to this U.S. federal judge, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who’s a former tobacco industry defense lawyer, and got him to demand I turn over my computer and cellphone and electronic devices to Chevron. Again, no one’s ever heard of such a thing in the middle of a litigation. When I appealed that order, he then charged me with criminal contempt of court for appealing the lawfulness of his own order. No lawyer in American history who’s appealed a civil discovery order in this fashion has ever been charged with criminal contempt but me. You know, no lawyer charged with any criminal contempt in New York has ever been held pretrial. And the longest sentence ever given a lawyer convicted of this supposed crime is 90 days of home detention. And I’ve now been over eight times that amount in my home.

So, what’s really driving this, Amy, is, I believe, Chevron and its judicial allies want to, you know, A, protect Chevron from having to pay the liability to the people of Ecuador that the company poisoned, and, B, they want to send a larger message to lawyers and the legal profession and environmental defenders and water protectors that you’re not allowed to do this work, at least not at this level. You will be attacked, and we’ll throw everything we can at you. And, by the way, Chevron has used 60 law firms and 2,000 lawyers to target me.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you were sentenced to six months in jail, six months more?

STEVEN DONZIGER: Yes. So, Judge Preska, who’s driving this, has set a sentencing date for October 1st. You know, I’m very fortunate, because there’s a massive amount of support, as you acknowledged in the opening to this segment, growing around the world. We have rallies today in 15 cities around the world demanding my release, including Seattle, San Francisco, L.A., New York, Boston, Toronto, Tel Aviv and Quito, among them, Melbourne. So, you know, we are building a movement to not only demand my release and to protect the freedom of me and my family, but also to protect this idea that you can do corporate accountability lawyering and not be attacked by right-wing judges and corporations that can take over the public machinery of the prosecution.

You know, this is a serious issue. Like, having a corporation prosecute someone and have the power to deprive someone of their liberty in the United States can’t happen. This is the first time. And, of course, if they get away with it with me, this, I believe, is a part of the playbook of the fossil fuel industry to do this to other activists and lawyers.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Steve, we want to thank you for being with us. Six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including AOC, Cori Bush, Rules Committee Chair Jim McGovern and others, Jamie Raskin, have called for the DOJto review everything that’s happened to you. Steve Donziger, human rights lawyer, who successfully sued Chevron in Ecuador for dumping oil and toxic waste in the Amazon. He’s been under house arrest for two years today. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Stay safe.

 

Read more:

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/8/6/steven_donziger_house_arrest_chevron

 

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