[Newspoetry] IF

[Anne Bargar]

IF

you are a corporation your sole goal is to acquire units of monetary value
and 
if you are an oil company you drill oil and you try to do it wherever you
can and if you do that you ignore every law and crush every dissenter that
might stand in your way and
if you give a poor military regime the economic incentive to execute
dissidents they're going to do it and if you try to convince the Supreme
Court that victims of that regime shouldn't be able to sue the corporation
in Federal Court because the victims weren't Americans, there's a good
chance you'll succeed because if you can kill Americans with impunity
there's no reason why you can't do it to Nigerians and if you live in the
Nigerian Delta and you're one of the Ogoni you have never had much of a
political voice and your land has been taken over by Shell Oil  and if
you're Shell Oil you've caused 3,000 oil spills in the Nigerian delta and
if you are Shell Oil's lawyer you wrote the following:

"Under the ruling, virtually any multinational corporation with a listing
on a US stock exchange, not to mention numerous foreign officials, will be
at risk of having brought into court in New York to answer for acts having
no connection to the US and not violating any Federal Law." 

in response to a Second US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and if you're
Shell Oil you evidently have more to fear from a writer than you do from
any court anywhere in the world and if you are Ken Saro-Wiwa, John
Kpuinen, or seven others then you are dead because Shell Oil fears you
more than it does the US Supreme Court and if you are the US Supreme court
you occasionally make a good decision and if you voted to let Shell Oil be
sued in Federal Court by the families of dead Nigerians then you actually
voted the right way.