There's that nice Chevron ad again, well . . . .

Here's a nice Chevron story that dates back to at least 1972, when Texaco (since acquired by Chevron) started drilling in the home of the indigenous Cofan tribe in Ecuador.

The Cofan tribe is still pursuing justice and the clean-up of oil residue polluting their land and water, now via a $12 billion lawsuit against Chevron.

As recently reported for the BBC by Greg Palast -- you can see the video here

The Cofan’s leader, Emergildo Criollo, tells Palast that when Texaco Oil, now part of Chevron, came to the village in 1972, it obtained permission to drill by offering the Indians candy and cheese. The indigenous folk threw the funny-selling cheese into the jungle.

Criollo says his three-year son died from oil contamination after, "He went swimming, then began vomiting blood."

This diary is neither a rant nor an attempt to call attention to the fireblog which provided four days of coverage of the California Wildfires last week.  It is my attempt to understand considerations regarding the Front Paging of particular diaries.

The fireblog, and other important liveblogs are kept alive by numerous individuals who create the original diary -- now known as the Mothership, edit the Mothership for new information and links to subsequent diaries, volunteers who draft those subsequent diaries and dedicated (and daring individuals who shamelessly pimp everywhere to keep the liveblogs alive).  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, "it's already been diaried." But I haven't been here for years, like other people; I saw the famous Chevron front page ad for the first time today--and I burst out laughing. Then I went through the Chevron tag on someone's diary and found out that accepting Chevron advertising is an accepted practice at the Kos.

I figure if the Kos regularly gets new people, and they're regularly stunned by this particular ad--(continued)

I hope someone is paying attention to who is paying the bills at DailyKos. Does Chevron actually believe Kossacks are a sympathetic audience?

Saw the Chevron ad this am, so as the 59% majority voted in my poll recently, here's a bit of news on Chevron.

The Chevron Richmond Refinery in Richmond, California, (map) just north of Berkeley, is one of the oldest and largest refineries in the United States.   Built in 1902, (wonder how much it's been updated since...) the refinery sits on nearly 3,000 acres of land. To refine its capacity of 87.6 million barrels of crude oil per year  – 240,000 barrels a day – the refinery produces over two million pounds of waste a year.  These stats are from the Chevron website.
And what else?

I'm sorry, but I thought the prime motivator of this site was the protection and defense of DEMOCRACY, irregardless of where it may be threatened.
While there is always a diary or two about the situation currently taking place in "Burma", actually Myanmar, the vast majority of diaries are still only concerned with Larry Craig, Hilary's latest poll, what John Edwards said yesterday or some other minutiae. In the face of the atrocities taking place in Burma/Myanmar, all of these things pale in comparison.
While we rail at even the implication of some political slight or misstep that offends our sense of what is right, whether by a Republican or Democrat, we still tolerate that CHEVRON ad at the top of the page.

Today is International Blogger Day For Burma, organized by a worldwide coalition of bloggers, there is more information here.

This past Monday, I launched the Burma NewsLadder and I greatly appreciate everyone who has visited, signed up and posted links on the site. However, of all the links posted, some hopeful, many tragic, here's the one that absolutely chaps my ass.

Chevron, an American company, owns the pipeline that was built by slave labor that provides the Burmese junta with their cash.

But wait, there's more.

Does this look familiar?

Chevron Oil, natural gas and coal have been the energy workhorses for the last 100 years. To meet the world’s future demand, we have to expand these old sources and begin making the new ones viable. By working together, we can prepare for this next era of energy. www.willyoujoinus.com

I've been doing double-takes for the past few weeks every time I see this on the front page of Kos, but after the recent events in Burma, I decided it was time to say something.

Kos needs to dump Chevron as an advertiser.

According to Burmacampaign.org:

Since its 2005 takeover of Unocal, US oil giant Chevron has been one of the joint venture partners developing the Yadana offshore gas field in Burma, which earns the military regime millions of dollars.

I read on Truthout that Chevron (aka Unocal) is behind the Myanmar military junta that is currently making a totalitarian mess out of Burma.

How is it therefore possible that Chevron is one of this blog's advertisers?? You guys are surely aware of this???

We've all been hearing about the protests in Myanmar, about peaceful monks and other civilians standing up against the military Junta that has held their country in a lock for decades.  Now that Junta has been killing protesters in cold blood, including a Japanese journalist, and has shut down the internet to silence bloggers daring to report the atrocities committed by soldiers under their command.

In the midst of this, even that do-nothing worthless cheerleader President Bush is doing something...not enough, because these restrictions are subject to a grandfather clause.  Guess who is one of the biggest benefactors of this clause?

Follow me for the unfortunate truth...

I looked at the DailyKos.com front page at about 11:00 PM, EDT, and at the top of the page - just under the DailyKos banner - was Chevron Corporation's logo, and a link to willyoujoinus.com.

This website, willyoujoinus.com, is... well, it's basically a little game that you play in your browser. (It opens a few new windows.) I think this is fairly innocuous and I'm very sure it is not a malicious link. Maybe I shouldn't be, but whatever.

It's like Nationstates.net, only for energy demand. See? But I think it's a little more than that. Something like, oh, an ad for an oil company. On our front page, although it disappeared pretty quickly. I find myself a bit uncomfortable with that. How about you?

Last fall, several others and I criticized Daily Kos for running ads from Chevron for an "Astroturf" campaign opposing a California initiative to combat climate change. Every environmentalist in the country strongly supported the California initiative, but it failed, in part due to the opposition from oil giants.

After DK chose not to remove the ads, I wrote a pissy diary announcing that I was quitting the site, and I did. For 6 months, I refrained from reading the site, posting comments and writing diaries.

My purpose today isn’t to rehash all that, which is in the old diaries. Good times.

My purpose today is to say...I’m back! (Actually, I came back in March, but then left again.) The point is...I’m back, again! Can I hear a "Wahoo!"? Nothing but crickets? OK.

I know ZERO of you even knew that I was gone (a tear), but I still want to explain why I’m returning, because I think my reason is relevant to more people than just me.

Simply stated, Daily Kos is the most important thing to happen to progressive politics in our country in a generation. Its benefits far outweigh its flaws. And everyone needs to support it. Including advertisers.

OMG!

Here I am typing in a diary entry with a baby seal on the right side of my screen.  Meanwhile, an oil company is sponsoring the semi-public space on which I imprint my personal views.

Does anyone else recognize this disconnect?

If only I could sentence the individual who decided it would be a good idea to post Chevron ads on a liberal blogsite to a repetitive viewing of Gore's congressional testimony!

Please look at the seal again!  Chevron is helping to end this creature's existence.

I would rather a semi-reputable porn-site sponsor this space then an oil company.

feels dirty suddenly

I own and operate a publication, and I accept ads from all kinds of companies, many of which do plenty of scummy things. So I have no reason to be holier-than-thou about the ads that Kos runs on his site.

However, in light of the fact that we currently have an ad on the front page from a virulently racist Muslim-basher like Glenn Beck, and in light of the fact that, in the run-up to the recent election, we had a front page ad from Chevron, a company whose greed has resulted not only in the despoiling and polluting of our planet but in the deaths of tens of thousands of people (and let's not forget that the ad was against Prop 87, a California initiative that I would guess was supported by most people on this site), I have a question: What kinds of ads should Daily Kos not accept?

I know that this question has been raised before. And it seems that...

     (Courtesy of D. Abides News Service)

     Giant oil corporation Chevron today announced that it will be naming one of its ships the "Kos-aleeza Rice", to complement its "Condoleeza Rice" oil tanker. Asked what this meant, Chevron spokesman Grease E. Fellow said, "We are so happy that our new 'komrade' Kos at Daily Kos is running our ads, we're naming a ship (partially) after him!!"

     In other news, Kos wil now be renaming his website "Daily Pie", and accepting ads from Hustler, Penthouse and "Girls Gone Wild". Queried about the rationale for this, the liberal Web-pundit declared, "Well, they're giving me money for a corps of fellows to effect positive social change!!" The "corps" could be seen dressing in the background, although the dressing did not take long, since all they were wearing was bright orange G-strings and pasties.

3 words: The Chevron Ad. It links to an astroturf website whose purpose is to discourage California voters from supporting increased regulations of climate changing gases.

My explanation is on the flip.

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Chevron Oil, natural gas and coal have been the energy workhorses for the last 100 years. To meet the world's future energy demand, we have to expand these old sources and begin making the new ones viable. By working together, we can prepare for this next era of energy. www.willyoujoinus.com

i wont.