Mike Uehlein's blog

We've shared a lot of posts lately about Kiobel v. Shell, including several about the perverse moral gymnastics Shell has employed in their defense. When Shell filed a brief in the case, we called out how it misstated the law and demeaned human rights victims, particularly survivors of Apartheid in South Africa. Later, one of our interns noticed a passage in Shell's brief that, frankly, sounded like childish selfishness rather than a legal argument. And last week we shared two posts about Shell's misrepresentation of the position of Professor John Ruggie, a prominent human rights expert and the former U.N. Special Representative on Business & Human Rights. 

We could blog about these issues forever (and we might!), but it will be hard to write anything that cuts to the heart of the matter quite as effectively as the 97 second video below. We posted it today, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, to call attention to Shell's twisted pirate morals.

If you love this video as much as we do, please share it on Facebook and on Twitter. Here's a suggested tweet:

This is how Shell Oil celebrates Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day http://t.co/pxQAjPlR #TLAPD #HumanRights #ShameOnShell

If you want to share it on Facebook, go to our post and share directly from there to make sure we have the largest combined impact.

This past week, coinciding with Shell's annual shareholder meeting, human rights groups in Europe have been demanding answers from the Dutch and U.K. governments, who recently came to Shell's defense in the Kiobel case, which accuses shell of complicity in human rights violations in Nigeria. When pressed for answers, the U.K. government issued a jaw-dropping statement: "We believe that human rights obligations rest with states and not with non-state actors such as corporations."

For any government to make this statement in the 21st Century is just unfathomable. As multi-national corporations wield more power and influence across the world, we must ensure they are held accountable for their actions, especially when their pursuit of profits wreaks havoc on local communities.  Katie Redford, ERI's Co-Founder, wrote an impassioned blog post on these developments on the Huffington Post. She writes:

Have they not heard of Nuremberg, where corporate executives from IG Farben and other companies were prosecuted for their contributions to Nazi atrocities? We expect all actors -- including corporations -- to refrain from complicity in human rights abuses and to be held accountable if they fail to do so. 

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to re-hear the Kiobel case in November, you can expect to hear a lot more from us about these issues, especially the increasingly far-fetched claims that corporations deserve special exemptions from human rights law.

In related news, our friends at Milieudefensie posted a satirical video this week, adding clever visual commentary to a video of Shell's CEO discussing sustainability. Shell convinced YouTube to take the video down, alleging copyright violation, but it is still available on other sites and has been viewed more than 35 thousand times: