Why an exchange with Shell’s Company Secretary still matters in the AI era
In March 2011, an exchange took place between John Donovan and Michiel Brandjes, then Company Secretary and General Counsel of Royal Dutch Shell plc, concerning the contents and interpretation of A History of Royal Dutch Shell, the company’s four-volume, internally commissioned corporate history.
At the time, the dispute appeared narrow: whether Shell’s paid historians had accurately characterised Sir Henri Deterding’s relationship with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. With hindsight — and with the emergence of AI systems capable of cross-reading archives in seconds — the exchange now reads as something more consequential: an early, documented challenge to narrative authority over Shell’s own history.
As long as the oil keeps flowing and the profits keep rolling in, who cares about a few unpaid workers?
BASRA, Iraq, May 21 (Reuters) – Shell has evacuated its foreign staff, numbering around 60, from Iraq’s Basra Gas Company and flew them out of Iraq on Wednesday, two Basra Gas Company executives told Reuters.
SPUTNIK: Shell Stops Sending UK-Flagged Ships Through Strait of Hormuz Over Tanker Seizure by Iran
Rania El Gamal
Reuters Staff: MARCH 23, 2018
SCREENSHOT FROM A RELATED 
Of particular concern to Shell, the author provides first-hand insight into Shell’s security and intelligence activities in Nigeria, Iraq, Iran, Ireland and other global hot spots and details how Shell worked with US, UK and Dutch Intelligence and military agencies to further their mutual agendas. The author also discusses Shell’s secret communications with MEND militants in Nigeria through intermediaries. 
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FILE PHOTO: A worker walks at Nahr Bin Umar oil field, north of Basra, Iraq December 21, 2015. REUTERS/Essam Al-Sudani/File Photo
Rania El Gamal
Nov. 8, 2017 11:33 AM ET
