NIGERIAN TIMES

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Chevron's Human Rights Problems Span Three Continents

9 Oct 2007 01:07 Africa/Lagos

Chevron's Human Rights Problems Span Three Continents, According to The Coalition to Defend the Amazon

Oil Giant Under Fire in Burma, Nigeria and Ecuador for Rights Abuses and Environmental Neglect

Still No Defined Human Rights Policy Despite Shareholder Pressure

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ --

The Coalition to Defend the Amazon issued the following statement: Repression in Burma, an environmental disaster in Ecuador's rainforest, and a federal judge's decision last month to force Chevron to stand trial in the U.S. for the massacre of Nigerian villagers highlight the oil giant's growing human rights liabilities around the world.

In Burma, the company's ties to the military junta carrying out a brutal crackdown against peaceful street protests has brought international scorn. As a result of its recent take-over of Unocal, Chevron now owns the Yadana gas operation in Burma. Yadana is allowed to operate by a loophole in existing U.S. sanctions against the country, and has provided significant revenues to Burma's military regime.

Chevron's human rights liabilities are both financial but also to an even larger degree reputational, as Chevron is now the target of multiple grass roots campaigns asking it to withdraw from Burma, say experts in corporate governance.

Simon Billenness, Co-Chair of the US Campaign for Burma, said: "Having a positive brand image is vital for oil companies when searching for supplies in a tightening global market where average citizens have a greater say in investment policies. Chevron's deteriorating human rights image can easily put it at a competitive disadvantage."

In Ecuadorian courts, Chevron (formerly Texaco) is accused of intentionally dumping 18 billon gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest during the 28 years (1964 to 1992) it operated an oil concession there. Thousands of people are considered at risk of developing cancer, and four indigenous groups report they are on the verge of extinction in areas of the rainforest where Chevron operated.

A decision in the case is expected in 2008. Representatives of the tens of thousands of plaintiffs in the class action say they are seeking more than $10 billion in damages.

Chevron also faces a trial in U.S. federal court in San Francisco on charges it paid Nigerian military and police personnel to fire weapons at villagers staging a protest at a Chevron oil platform in 1998, killing two. Nigerian villagers also charge the company with being complicit in an attack on two villages that left four others dead.

Unlike most oil companies, Chevron operates without an official human rights policy. A shareholder resolution calling for such a policy has been filed with the company for the last two years, but management has rejected it each time.

"By failing to develop an effective global human rights policy, Chevron is lagging behind most other large oil companies. Given the company's burgeoning human rights problems this might be a calculated effort to avoid being held to account," said Kevin Koenig, of environmental group Amazon Watch.

"It is astounding that the company has let the trials in Ecuador and Nigeria get as far as they have," added Koenig. "These are case studies in how not to handle human rights and environmental lawsuits. They represent a red alert to shareholders, of gross company mismanagement and the failure of basic corporate governance."

Marco Simons, of legal non-profit Earthrights International, which recently won human rights settlement from Unocal regarding its Burmese operations, said: "Chevron's controversial stake in Burmais symptomatic of a general disregard for human rights around the globe. What were once minor distractions for the company in countries such as Ecuador, Nigeria, and now Burma, have evolved into sizable legal and public relations problems for Chevron that could start to affect the bottom line in multiple ways. While Chevron invests millions avoiding responsibility, people on the ground continue to suffer."

Source: The Coalition to Defend the Amazon

CONTACT: Simeon Tegel, +1-510-962-0195, or Kevin Koenig, Ecuador,
+011-593-9-794-9041, both of The Coalition to Defend the Amazon

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Blogger is Off The Hook!

Blogger has just taken blogging to another level with the latest applications in the features such as the simple drag-and-drop template editing interface and has made blogging so exciting and thrilling that even any smart kid in Kindergarten can use blogger! And it is free!

I love sharing information and the easier the means of communication, the better.

Google has transformed Blogger into the matrix of the 10 Commandments of Google, the foundation of the Google Empire, has defined in the following explanation:
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Ten things Google has found to be true
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1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site:

The interface is clear and simple.
Pages load instantly.
Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.
By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.

Google does search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we've been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service already considered the best on the web at making finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of users. Our dedication to improving search has also allowed us to apply what we've learned to new products, including Gmail, Google Desktop, and Google Maps. As we continue to build new products* while making search better, our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help users access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives.

3. Fast is better than slow.

Google believes in instant gratification. You want answers and you want them right now. Who are we to argue? Google may be the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have users leave its website as quickly as possible. By fanatically obsessing on shaving every excess bit and byte from our pages and increasing the efficiency of our serving environment, Google has broken its own speed records time and again. Others assumed large servers were the fastest way to handle massive amounts of data. Google found networked PCs to be faster. Where others accepted apparent speed limits imposed by search algorithms, Google wrote new algorithms that proved there were no limits. And Google continues to work on making it all go even faster.

4. Democracy on the web works.

Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. Google assesses the importance of every web page using a variety of techniques, including its patented PageRank™ algorithm which analyzes which sites have been "voted" the best sources of information by other pages across the web. This technique actually improves as the web gets bigger, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

The world is increasingly mobile and unwilling to be constrained to a fixed location. Whether it's through their PDAs, their wireless phones or even their automobiles, people want information to come to them. Google's innovations in this area include Google Number Search, which reduces the number of keypad strokes required to find data from a web-enabled cellular phone and an on-the-fly translation system that converts pages written in HTML to a format that can be read by phone browsers. This system opens up billions of pages for viewing from devices that would otherwise not be able to display them, including Palm PDAs and Japanese i-mode, J-Sky, and EZWeb devices. Wherever search is likely to help users obtain the information they seek, Google is pioneering new technologies and offering new solutions.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

Google is a business. The revenue the company generates is derived from offering its search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on Google and on other sites across the web. However, you may have never seen an ad on Google. That's because Google does not allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they're relevant to the results page on which they're shown. So, only certain searches produce sponsored links above or to the right of the results. Google firmly believes that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find.

Google has also proven that advertising can be effective without being flashy. Google does not accept pop-up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you've requested. We've found that text ads (AdWords) that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Google's maximization group works with advertisers to improve clickthrough rates over the life of a campaign, because high clickthrough rates are an indication that ads are relevant to a user's interests. Any advertiser, no matter how small or how large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium, whether through our self-service advertising program that puts ads online within minutes, or with the assistance of a Google advertising representative.

Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a "Sponsored Link." It is a core value for Google that there be no compromising of the integrity of our results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results. No one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust Google's objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.

Thousands of advertisers use our Google AdWords program to promote their products; we believe AdWords is the largest program of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of our Google AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users.

7. There's always more information out there.

Once Google had indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new databases, such as adding a phone number and address lookup and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like adding the ability to search billions of images and a way to view pages that were originally created as PDF files. The popularity of PDF results led us to expand the list of file types searched to include documents produced in a dozen formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. For wireless users, Google developed a unique way to translate HTML formatted files into a format that could be read by mobile devices. The list is not likely to end there as Google's researchers continue looking into ways to bring all the world's information to users seeking answers.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

Though Google is headquartered in California, our mission is to facilitate access to information for the entire world, so we have offices around the globe. To that end we maintain dozens of Internet domains and serve more than half of our results to users living outside the United States. Google search results can be restricted to pages written in more than 35 languages according to a user's preference. We also offer a translation feature to make content available to users regardless of their native tongue and for those who prefer not to search in English, Google's interface can be customized into more than 100 languages. To accelerate the addition of new languages, Google offers volunteers the opportunity to help in the translation through an automated tool available on the Google.com website. This process has greatly improved both the variety and quality of service we're able to offer users in even the most far flung corners of the globe.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

Google's founders have often stated that the company is not serious about anything but search. They built a company around the idea that work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun. To that end, Google's culture is unlike any in corporate America, and it's not because of the ubiquitous lava lamps and large rubber balls, or the fact that the company's chef used to cook for the Grateful Dead. In the same way Google puts users first when it comes to our online service, Google Inc. puts employees first when it comes to daily life in all of our offices. There is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to the company's overall success. Ideas are traded, tested and put into practice with an alacrity that can be dizzying. Meetings that would take hours elsewhere are frequently little more than a conversation in line for lunch and few walls separate those who write the code from those who write the checks. This highly communicative environment fosters a productivity and camaraderie fueled by the realization that millions of people rely on Google results. Give the proper tools to a group of people who like to make a difference, and they will.

10. Great just isn't good enough.

Always deliver more than expected. Google does not accept being the best as an endpoint, but a starting point. Through innovation and iteration, Google takes something that works well and improves upon it in unexpected ways. Search works well for properly spelled words, but what about typos? One engineer saw a need and created a spell checker that seems to read a user's mind. It takes too long to search from a WAP phone? Our wireless group developed Google Number Search to reduce entries from three keystrokes per letter to one. With a user base in the millions, Google is able to identify points of friction quickly and smooth them out. Google's point of distinction however, is anticipating needs not yet articulated by our global audience, then meeting them with products and services that set new standards. This constant dissatisfaction with the way things are is ultimately the driving force behind the world's best search engine.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Blackwater Stinks From America To Iraq

Let us call a spade a spade, Blackwater is blackwater indeed as defined by Wikipedia:

Blackwater (waste) is a relatively recent term used to describe water containing fecal matter and urine. It is also known as brown water, foul water, or sewage. It is distinct from greywater or sullage, the residues of washing processes.
Blackwater is heavily polluted and difficult to treat because of the high concentrations of mostly organic pollution.
The term is commonly used on recreational vehicles where separate tanks collect blackwater and greywater wastes.

American taxpayers are paying $445,000 per year for each Blackwater guard in Iraq.
A total waste of public fund in a lost cause.

The fact is, Blackwater is guilty of the violations of the Rule of Engagement in the war in Iraq. This is another glaring evidence that President George Walker Bush has bungled the mission in Iraq. Blackwater is a failure of military strategy by the US Armed Forces in Iraq.

When Bush knew that he would fail woefully, he passed the buck to Erik Prince and Al-Clark. The dummb and dumber have completed the mess. And Blackwater stinks from North Carolina to Iraq.
Finis.

"America used to be the beacon of the world, but under the Bush administration and people like Blackwater, the beacon is flickering."

"We can restore democracy to our military decisions about war. And we can make sure that scandals like Blackwater become, forever, a thing of the past."

~ Sen. John Edwards

"We cannot win a fight for hearts and minds when we outsource critical missions to unaccountable contractors," Obama said. "To add insult to injury, these contractors are charging taxpayers up to nine times more to do the same jobs as soldiers, a disparity that damages troop morale."

"Last week, I pushed through a provision to improve transparency by requiring our federal government to inform the public about how many contractors they're using, what it's costing us, and what their functions are."

"I've also proposed tougher government reform than any other candidate in this race -reforms that would eliminate the kind of no-bid contracts that this administration has given to Blackwater."
~ Sen. Barack Obama

Saturday, September 15, 2007

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Monday, August 6, 2007

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