US Supreme Court will decide on NO EXEMPTION FOR GENOCIDE for Corporations

The Supreme Court will weigh next week whether corporations can be sued in the United States for complicity in human rights abuses abroad.

The high court on Tuesday will consider the reach of a 1789 U.S. law that had been largely dormant until 1980, when human rights lawyers started using it, at first to sue foreign government officials. Then, over the next 20 years, the lawyers used the law to target multinational corporations.

The case before the court pits the Obama administration and human rights advocates against large companies and foreign governments over allegations that Royal Dutch Shell Plc helped Nigeria crush oil exploration protests in the 1990s.

Administration attorneys and lawyers for the plaintiffs contend corporations can be held accountable in U.S. courts for committing or assisting foreign governments in torture, executions or other human rights abuses.  Other courts ruled corporations can be held liable.

The justices will hear an appeal by a group of Nigerians who argue they should be allowed to proceed with a lawsuit accusing Shell of aiding the Nigerian government in human rights violations between 1992 and 1995.

California attorney Paul Hoffman, who will argue on behalf of the plaintiffs, said corporations, under the 1789 law, were permissible defendants and that corporate civil liability was a general principle of international law.

"Businesses involved in genocide, crimes against humanity or other serious human rights violations deserve no exemption from tort liability," he said in a brief filed with the court.

The Obama administration supported the corporate liability argument, as did international human rights organizations and Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Backing Shell are various multinational corporations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce business lobby.

In the past two decades, more than 120 lawsuits have been filed in U.S. courts against 59 corporations for alleged wrongful acts in 60 foreign countries, lawyers in the case said.

Among the cases: Indonesia villagers accused Exxon Mobil Corp's security forces of murder, torture and other abuses in 1999-2001; Firestone tire company was accused of using child labor in Liberia; and Ford Motor Co and other firms were accused of aiding South Africa's apartheid system.

The Alien Tort Statute from 1789 states that U.S. courts shall have jurisdiction over any civil lawsuit "by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."

In its first substantive look at the law in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled it can be used for certain well-established international law violations.

A ruling in the case is expected by the end of June.

The Supreme Court case is Esther Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co, No. 10-1491.

Shell spills 1.7 mln gallons of oil on Nigerian Coast

Nigerian officials have suspended fishing off the southern coast after about 40,000 barrels (1.7 million gallons) of crude oil was spilled from a Shell production platform in the Bonga oil field.



The oil leaked into the Atlantic Ocean on December 20, 2011 during what the company called a "routine operation" to transfer oil to a tanker from Shell's Bonga floating production, storage and off-take vessel.

The oily sheen covered an estimated 350-square-mile area off the oil-rich Niger Delta. Shell has shut down the entire Bonga oil field, a site 75 miles off the coast that produces 200,000 barrels of oil and gas a day.


An investigation is underway to determine how 40,000 barrels of oil spilled while being loaded onto the tanker. Shell says a break in a transfer line is to blame.

Funny how all the radical Islamic countries have oil....could it be that the Mullahs & Imans like money too...all in the name of Allah/GOD/Ra/Yaweh/Krishna/Zeus of course

Islamist militants set off bombs across Nigeria on Christmas Day - three targeting churches including one that killed at least 27 people - raising fears that they are trying to ignite sectarian civil war.



The Boko Haram Islamist sect, which aims to impose sharia law across the country, claimed responsibility for the three church bombs, the second Christmas in a row the group has caused mass carnage with deadly bombings of churches. Security forces also blamed the sect for two other blasts in the north.



St Theresa's Catholic Church in Madala, a satellite town about 40 km (25 miles) from the center of the capital Abuja, was packed when the bomb exploded just outside.


"We were in the church with my family when we heard the explosion. I just ran out," Timothy Onyekwere told Reuters. "Now I don't even know where my children or my wife are. I don't know how many were killed but there were many dead."


Hours after the first bomb, blasts were reported at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church in the central, ethnically and religiously mixed town of Jos, and at a church in northern Yobe state at the town of Gadaka. Residents said many were wounded in Gadaka, but there were no immediate further details.


A suicide bomber killed four security officials at the State Security Service in one of the other bombs, which struck the northeastern town of Damaturu, police said. Residents heard two loud explosions and gunfire in the town.

A Reuters reporter at the church near Abuja saw the front roof had been destroyed, as had several houses nearby. Five burnt out cars were still smouldering. There were scenes of chaos, as shocked residents stared at the wreckage in disbelief.


"Mass just ended and people were rushing out of the church and suddenly I heard a loud sound: 'Gbam!' Cars were in flames and bodies littered everywhere," Nnana Nwachukwu told Reuters.

Father Christopher Barde, Assistant priest of the church, said: "The officials who counted told me they have picked up 27 bodies so far."


Police cordoned off the area around the church. Thousands of furious youths set up burning road blocks on the highway from Abuja leading to Nigeria's largely Muslim north.


Police and the military tried to disperse them by firing live rounds into the air with tear gas.

"We are so angry," shouted Kingsley Ukpabi, as a queue of hooting vehicles lined up behind his flaming barrage.

2011 the year governments woke up to the good money in oil spills!!! (oh yeah and they're bad for the environment/community too)

Brazil’s threatened indictment of Chevron Corp. (CVX) and Transocean Ltd. (RIG) executives after offshore oil leaks shows that regulators from the North Sea to the Indian Ocean are stepping up scrutiny after BP Plc’s 2010 disaster.



Brazilian authorities have said they may prosecute employees, shut operations and exact more than $10 billion in fines after the leaks at the Frade field 230 miles (370 kilometers) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The spill occurred 19 months after an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and triggered the biggest offshore U.S. oil spill.

Governments around the world are paying closer attention to how energy explorers drill into high-pressure deposits of crude and natural gas as much as 8 miles beneath the sea surface. Chevron’s Brazil incident took place after a ConocoPhillips (COP) leak in China and prior to what may be Nigeria’s biggest spill in a decade at a Royal Dutch Shell Plc facility.


“There’s been just such a rash of them that governments have got to act tough” with oil companies, Allen Brooks, a managing director at energy-investment bank PPHB LP in Houston and Chevron shareholder, said in a phone interview. Since the BP accident “every spill after that is heightened in terms of media attention and obviously government concern.”


ConocoPhillips was criticized by the People’s Daily, China’s Communist Party newspaper, for “negligence, cover-ups and cheating” in its handling of a June leak in Bohai Bay. Premier Wen Jiabao ordered a “thorough” investigation in September.

In Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) shut its 200,000 barrel-a-day Bonga field this week after a tanker-loading accident caused less than 40,000 barrels of crude to leak.

A Financially Inclusive World...you may call us dreamers but we're not the only ones....come and join us!!!

Letter from the CEO of ACCION:


Fifty years ago this year, ACCION was founded on the belief that we can create a better world by helping people to help themselves. Half a century later, we continue to fulfill this mission by providing high-quality, affordable financial services with dignity to those who need it most – those living in poverty.



Our vision is to build a financially inclusive world with access to economic opportunity for all. Over the last year, your support has enabled us to advance our mission and vision in many ways, including the provision of loans and other key financial services to millions.


Despite this progress, more than 2.7 billion people remain excluded from the world’s financial systems and the opportunity such access can create. With your support we can continue to bridge this gap, bringing life-changing microfinance services to the poor.

This year, ACCION made significant progress in all three of our strategic focus areas.


First, we are building the next generation of top-tier microfinance institutions – enabling these institutions to deliver a range of high-quality, affordable financial services. Highlights include:

• Inaugurating ACCION Microfinanças in Brazil, in June – a new MFI in the heart of the Amazon, where half of the region’s 14 million inhabitants live in poverty.

• Creating microfinance services for rural clients in Latin America through a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank. Over 130,000 clients in Peru, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Colombia and Ecuador have already been reached with rural credit products. Micro-savings programs that help clients recover from natural disasters and other unexpected events have been rolled out in Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
• Building and strengthening EB-ACCION Microfinance, a new microfinance institution in Cameroon, where more than 65 percent of the actively employed population lacks access to any form of secure, financial services.

• Providing secure savings accounts for more than 250,000 low-income people served by our partners in Tanzania, Nigeria and Cameroon, and proudly recognizing the achievement of both ACCION Microfinance Bank (AMfB) in Nigeria as ‘Microfinance Bank of the Year,' and EB-ACCION Savings and Loans in Ghana as African Banker’s ‘Microfinance Institution/Project of the Year 2011.’

• Strengthening our pioneering microfinance work in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, China through partnership with the International Finance Corporation.

• Redoubling our commitment to the future of Indian microfinance, through equity investments and guarantees for our Mumbai- and Bihar-based partners, Swadhaar and Saija.

• Increasing opportunity here at home by working ever more closely with the ACCION U.S. Network – the largest microlending network in the country. Since inception, the Network has extended more than $300 million in small, working-capital loans.

• Continuing to explore un-served and underserved countries and regions of the world, such as Kenya, the Philippines, Pakistan and beyond, where our management, investment and governance skills can help foster financial inclusion.

Second, we are fueling innovation in financial inclusion, providing funding and technical assistance to promising start-ups and sustainable technologies beyond MFIs that serve people at the bottom of the pyramid:

• ACCION’s Frontier Investments Group continued to invest in ground-breaking financial services this year, such as mobile payments in Zambia, cashless payments in Peru, and a new technology services company in India staffed by people with disabilities.

• We are developing plans for the launch of a new venture capital fund that will provide patient capital to very small start-ups whose experimental but promising business models could catalyze the next leap in financial inclusion.

Third, we are proud to report that your support is helping us to build a strong microfinance industry with the highest possible standards:

• Through the Smart Campaign, ACCION’s Center for Financial Inclusion is helping to direct the industry’s first-ever, global consumer-protection initiative. With over 2,400 signatories serving more than 40 million clients in 130 countries, the Campaign is helping to ensure quality delivery of services, worldwide.

• We are helping to build industry capacity at training centers in India, Ghana and China, and in the last three years have taught more than 3,000 industry professionals new skills for delivering high-quality services.

• We continue to publish leading-edge, thought-provoking research on the industry, such as the recent reports on the state of client protection, and ‘opportunities and obstacles’ to financial inclusion.

• And we are expanding our collaboration with other industry leaders, including the ACCION Network of partners in Latin America and a working group of microfinance organization CEOs, on a common agenda to address key industry challenges. Our goal is to redouble the industry’s commitment to consumer protection, pricing transparency and meaningful measurement of social impact.

ACCION’s work has helped the microfinance industry to grow by orders of magnitude – from reaching tens of thousands of the world’s poor a few decades ago, to approximately 200 million today. Yet we know that much more remains to be done. That is why we are asking you for your continued support for our work around the globe.

As we look ahead to our next 50 years, we renew our pledge to build a truly financially inclusive world, where all of society can benefit from all that society offers. Thank you again for your participation. It has already made a difference; together, we can do so much more.

Guess who's listening? (But not to your laws...)

The Emirati Telecommunication firm Etisalat is facing a major legal claim by Majestic Infracon Private, the Emerati telecom firms’ partner in Etislat DB, a joint venture into the Indian mobile market.


The firm could be facing $1.6 billion in fines for foreign exchange violations.

Two directors at Etislat DB, Shadhid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, filed the claim.

The Indian press reported that the allegations include that Etisalat didn’t fulfill management obligations. Etisalat has a 44.73 percent share in Etisalat DB.

Balwa and Goenka are both in jail after corruption charges related to bribing officials to obtain licensing for mobile phone networks.

The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). also expressed concerns about the telecom surveillance software Etisalat had used in a Blackberry service it had introduced in the UAE and recommended that the company should not be allowed to offer Blackberry services in India.

India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) has rejected Etisalat investment proposals on grounds of possibility of “round tripping”. Round tripping refers to routing of investments by a resident of one country through another country back to its own country to evade taxes.

------------IN NIGERIA

Etisalat, one of Nigeria’s Cellular phone service providers has been slammed with a N10 Million law suit for illegally swapping a subscriber’s active number without his consent.
Taiwo Egbon, an Etisalat subscriber claim that he woke up one morning and discovered his Etisalat line which he uses in communicating with family members who frequently sends him money from overseas had been cloned.

Nigeria: Christians and Muslims have shared the same soil for centuries.

None of the violence has to do with the revelations of Christ or Mohammed. The violence has to do with greed. Man’s desire for control and dominate shrouded in a veil of theocracy to exploit the weak and illiterate.
Several people were wounded in a bomb blast in Maiduguri on Saturday, a city in remote northeastern Nigeria which has been plagued by almost daily attacks from a radical Islamist sect.

"Three soldiers have been injured in the Saturday evening bomb blast that occurred close to the Palace of the Shehu of Borno," Hassan Mohammed, an officer in the Joint Task Force (JTF) told Reuters.

The Shehu is a traditional ruler in Borno state, one of the poorest regions in Africa's most populous nation, close to borders with Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

Witnesses at a local hospital said at least one body from the blast site had been brought to the mortuary.

Boko Haram, which wants sharia law more widely applied across Nigeria, has claimed responsibility for almost daily bombings and shootings in Borno, mostly targeting police, churches and drinking spots.

The JTF have been accused of using indiscriminate force in retaliation to the attacks, leading to the deaths of civilians and the destruction of homes. The government said there have been only isolated misdemeanors by soldiers.

The heightened clashes between the JTF and Boko Haram forced thousands to flee Maiduguri earlier this month. Violence has killed more than 150 people in the city this year.

Bomb blasts in the north have replaced militant attacks on oil facilities hundreds of kilometers (miles) away in the southern Niger Delta as the main security threat in Nigeria. The United States and European Union have condemned the violence.

Boko Haram strikes have spread farther afield in recent months, including a bomb in the car park of national police headquarters in the capital, Abuja, last month.

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“The car belonging to Goodluck Jonathan was stoned by mobs in Uganda,” said Fred Opolot, director of the government media center. “The security shot around the area, and one person was shot dead.”

It must be recalled that Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Attahiru Jega declared Jonathan winner of controversial Nigeria April 16, polls. INEC documented that Jonathan polled more than 30. 2. Million votes, followed by distance CPC-candidate, Buhari with 10.3 Million of votes cast. Buhari draws majority of his support from Muslim Islamic States up North. Nigeria pre-polls and post elections were marred with rioters led by Islamic zealots in twelve Shariah Northern states. Reports say, more than 3,000 was killed culminating to the chaotic polls, with thousands currently displaced internally in Northern States of what is called Nigeria.

Meanwhile, between 3,000 to 5,000 Nigeria Youth Service Corps (NYSC) remain stranded in Bauchi alone, and other places, with many Corpers murdered in cold-blood by CPC-supporters and rioters. Curiously, the country appears divided by North and South. Coincidentally, Museveni’s victory in Uganda has been marred by massive protests by opposition groups who claimed the Uganda polls were rigged ruling party led by Museveni.

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The violence in Nigeria cuts across 13 states, demonstrating the religious and ethnic tensions that divide Africa’s most populous nation.

Heavy gunfire echoes through the cities. Crowds burn buildings and tires and throw stones at security forces.

A nation endowed with vast resources is unable to evolve from barbarism = welcome to the 21st Century.