Scene 1: Employees of one of the world’s largest oil companies are found to be in league with a right-wing film producer in an effort to produce a documentary aimed at helping the company fend off a lawsuit in a third-world country’s court that, if lost, could cost the company more than U.S. $100 million.

Scene 2: New York-based lawyers, said to be working on behalf of thousands of poor plaintiffs in their suit against the oil company, ask a U.S. federal court judge to order the right-wing film producer to provide his court with outtakes from the documentary, and the judge says, “Yes.”

Scene 3: Recognizing that the outtakes are now part of the official court record, members of the news media request copies of them. In turn, the federal judge orders that copies of the outtakes should not only be provided to members of the media requesting them but to members of the general public.

Scene 4: After obtaining the outtakes, members of the media spend countless hours airing video snippets, painting the “Big Oil” company in the worst light possible and, in so doing, aiding and abetting the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Unfortunately, a real-world scenario diametrically opposite the one described above seems to be taking place now. Below is a list of the players involved:

• Chevron Corporation is the defendant in a contentious lawsuit — now 17-years-old — being tried in an Ecuadoran court;

• The Amazon Defense Coalition, an Ecuador-based nonprofit that claims to represent thousands of poor citizens of the third-world country, is the plaintiff;

• Representing the plaintiff in the lawsuit is a legal team headed by New York-based trial lawyer Steven Donziger;

• Joseph Berlinger is the man who produced the controversial 2009 documentary, “CRUDE,” which, though only 1 hour and 45 minutes in length, seems endless in its criticism of Chevron; and
  

• Members of the mainstream media have covered the lawsuit in anti-Chevron stories similar to a CBS News 60 Minutes segment, “Amazon Crude,” that aired May 3, 2009.

On April 30, attorneys for the San Ramon, Calif.-based oil giant asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplain in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to order the release of outtakes from Berlinger’s flick, arguing that they might contain incriminating information that might help settle the case sooner than later. Within days, the judge granted Chevron’s request and ordered the release of outtakes from “CRUDE.”

Several months passed until, lo and behold, the folks at Chevron were proven right!

On Aug. 3, I shared a report, the title of which — ‘Crude’ Footage Reveals Lies Behind Trial Lawyers’ Suit Against Chevron — revealed what was uncovered by Carter Wood at the National Association of Manufacturers’ Shop Floor blog.

Fast forward to Oct. 7, 2010, some five months after Judge Kaplan declared the outtakes were fair game. In a memo to his court clerk, he stated that copies of the outtakes should be provided to three requesters — Thomson Reuters, American Lawyer Magazine and ALM Media — as well as to “any member of the public who requests (them) upon payment of the reasonable cost of duplication and blank media.”

As of today, I could find no evidence that any of the outtakes have been published. Not by any of the requesters. Not even by CBS News!

Why? Because the amount Chevron would have to pay if it loses the lawsuit is estimated at $113 billion — up from $27 billion figure reported in previous reports about the case — and nothing would make members of the left-wing media happier than to take a huge financial chunk like that out of “Big Oil.”

I close with two messages:

To the mainstream media, I say, “Your bias is showing!”

To Mr. Berlinger, I say, “I hope you remember how much emphasis you placed on your First Amendment freedom of expression when you were vehemently opposing the release of outtakes from your film [To refresh your memory, click here or here]. When people start to air the outtakes from your film in YouTube videos, remember that those outtakes are now part of the public record and, therefore, protected by federal law.”

Stay tuned!

NOTE: For more background about this case, read more than three-dozen posts I’ve written about it during the past 18 months.

NAMBLA is an organization with a goal to eliminate age-of-consent laws. Arguing those younger than 18 have the mental ability to make decisions, they claim it is unfair to the youth to prevent them from doing so. They oppose forcing sexual relations on anyone, regardless of age. They do not advocate breaking the law, but work to change the law.

On June 15th 2005 the men of NAMBLA rejoiced when the pop singer Michael Jackson was found not guilty of all charges of sexual molestation of boys and of providing minors with alcohol. The group considered Michael Jackson’s acquittal to be a vindication for their Association. “Michael’s innocence is something that is held very dear to us,” said a representative at the time. “We can all relate to wanting to love a child. Many of us have small children that we love and many of us take small children to bed with us every night. Loving a child is not a crime and Michael has proven that to everyone.” Some NAMBLA members felt this was breaking new ground for them and hoped to see laws amended such as mandatory curfews for minors and the legal age of consent lowered to nine years of age.

The NAMBLA website is a cornucopia of at best, instructions on how to love an underage boy in an inappropriate manner, and at worst how to manipulate one into questionable physical experiences with an adult male.

In 2003, Jackson confessed to 60 Minutes about his love of sleeping with children. NAMBLA was founded in 1978, so the question begs; did Jackson get his talking points from NAMBLA for his 60 Minutes interview? In that interview The King of Pop was asked if it was okay to share his bed with children “Of course. Why not? If you’re going to be a pedophile, if you’re going to be Jack the Ripper, if you’re going to be a murderer, it’s not a good idea. That I am not.”

When asked if Jackson would allow his own children to sleep in a bed with a grown man who was not a relative or to sleep in that man’s bedroom, Jackson replied, “Sure, if I know that person, trust them, and love them. That’s happened many times with me when I was little.” This comment too is in lockstep with the mind set of NAMBLA “We feel a special love for children in our own special way and want to express it.” said a representative after the airing of that interview.

NAMBLA members don’t see themselves as Jack the Ripper because in the twisted mindset of its members they feel they’re filling a need they see in a child at the hands of their tormented past or present sickness.

Jackson left many unanswered questions about his past. Was he himself a victim of man boy love as a youth? Was his sick need to be with young boys a sign of arrested development, was he gay, or was Jackson just a modern day pedophiliac Pied Piper moon walking children to his Neverland ranch?

Only in today’s vacuous pop culture would thousands of people and all media outlets raise this man up like a Christ passing, all because he could sing and dance. If what he said about children came from the mouth of people’s neighbor, they’d have his head. On June 25th 2009 when Jackson was pronounced dead NAMBLA lost a man in common, gained a Messiah and children everywhere became safer.

Whether anyone chooses to notice or not, President Obama put himself out on the very edge of a very long and fragile limb on the issue of how to handle terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.  For a guy who is a master at not taking any real position at all (or, when he is really at his “best” taking all possible sides to an issue simultaneously) , Obama showed an absolutely unbelievable recklessness in his response to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of his closing of the prison camp.

In fact, if it turns out that we do have another 9/11 and there is even a shred of evidence that the closing of Guantanamo had anything to do with our inability to prevent it,  I don’t think that Obama could have closed off any more of his plausible escape hatches if he had actually tried to do so.

Let’s go through just some of the highlights of what could end up one day serving as Obama’s political obituary (one so strong that even his many cheerleaders in the news media may have a tough time dismissing it).

Obama told Steve Kroft, “I mean, the fact of the matter is, after all these years how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many– how many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn’t made us safer.”

Was this really the President of the United States speaking?

Since Guantanamo was opened we have a 100% record in fending off terrorist attacks in this country. Do we know that the way we have dealt with terror suspects is the reason for this success rate, or even a main cause for it? No.  But would you really wager your entire Presidency (not to mention the safety of the American people) that it isn’t, especially when the only people who will benefit are likely to be dregs of humanity who have evil intent towards the United States?

Of course this is the same Obama who made a heavy bet against the surge in Iraq and was never forced by the media or the McCain campaign to pay up on that, so perhaps he is not irrational to think he could get away with such a risky and ill-conceived gambit.

Then Obama dropped this little number on the nation, “What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of– Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world.”

Did Obama really just correlate being Arab and Muslim with being a terrorist? I thought that was the exact kind of politically incorrect Bush-ism that supposedly got Arabs and Muslims to hate us in the first place and which, rather ironically, Obama was decrying while making that statement. It should also be pointed out that Mr. “Citizen of the World” doesn’t seem to know or care that many who belong to Al Qaeda consider themselves Asian or African and not Arab.

But then, in typical Obama style, when confronted on what to actually do about the problem that some terror suspects who have been let go even by the draconian Bush Administration have gone right back to the battlefield, the President immediately took refuge in a position that is only possible in the utopia that is Obamaland.

Obama pontificated, “Well there is no doubt that– we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting through who are truly dangerous individuals that we’ve got to– make sure are not a threat to us, who are folks that we just swept up.”

Really? So if we were already being way too hard on these suspects (many of whom obviously just found themselves in Guantanamo by mere accident) before the Messiah got to call the shots, how exactly is it that we are going to finally do a “particularly effective job” of weeding out the truly bad guys when the holes in the filter are going to get demonstratively larger?  

Obama continued, “Do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter– down the block? Of course not.”

Kroft, suddenly remembering for a moment that he is supposed to play the role of a “journalist” (a vocation now usually only seen in museums), asked the obvious question, “What do you do with those people?” Obama responded, “Well, I think we’re going to have to figure out a mechanism to make sure that they’re not released and do us harm.”

You mean like the one we already had before you took office?

In case you are one of those who just has faith that Obama simply knows what he’s doing because he’s so smart, knowledgeable and well-spoken, let me let you in on a little secret. He doesn’t even understand the basic facts of the situation.

No one noticed during the campaign, but just after he secured the nomination Obama revealed how incredibly ignorant he really is on this issue of the history leading up to 9/11 and the terror camp at Guantanamo.  

I know this because I produced a film called “Blocking the Path to 9/11″ which detailed Obama’s massive factual blunder on this issue in the scene below.

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So, instead of any of this “trivia,” the only thing negative most Americans got out of Obama’s “60 Minutes” interview was about his laughter over the economy. Well, if this wasn’t so serious it certainly would be funny. Right now I guess it still is. Let’s hope Obama’s incredible luck helps keeps it that way. Before long, we may not have much more on which to rely to keep us safe.