Watch the aerial maps. See the terrible more-than-a-“slick” move closer and closer to the coast, spreading wider and deeper toward Alabama’s coast. The dreaded Loop Current’s is poised to snare the oil and push it toward Florida and the Eastern Seaboard. What’s to become of us at the dirty hands of BP? They’re fast getting away with the homicide of the American continent. Is the Gulf Disaster eco-terroism-by-neglect? Do these companies really believe that if they destroy everything in their path, that there will be anything left for their version of commerce? Do they not get that they are destroying themselves along with the rest of us?
Corporatists and Republicans (which are mostly the same thing) have flagrantly abused the term eco-terrorist. They’ve wantonly misapplied the term to anyone who cares about the environment and works within the system to protect it. That there are some fringe fanatics who are, in fact, eco-terrorists does not justify the wrongful overlay of defamatory labels on a huge sector of Americans who believe resource protection is simply good stewardship of our country. But, like everything else they hypocritically decry, it is the radical so-called “right,” and the corporations which love them, which increasingly morph into something approaching eco-terrorism. This spill may not have been directly intentional, but it happened by intentional neglect. And the result is analogous to a homicide, a homicide of our nation’s coastline, its fishing, its tourist industries, and even, potentially much more… but their “solution” is even less regulation.
And this comes from the former company of the previous Vice President of the US, who had better not “rear his head” in “our airspace” to condemn anyone else, ever again. Indeed, the radical “right” seems more interested in making excuses, defending Big Oil and continuing the free pass for BP. You wouldn’t want to “interfere” with business (snark). A British multinational (BP), Transocean, and Halliburton are fast destroying us. This happens at the hands of a a company from a country of a supposed ally. Where are they?
Even as the GOP corporatists lie about their party, which gets more than 65% of the oil industry’s donations (71% in the past year), and try to blame everyone else, they cannot escape the fact that it is Halliburton which is tied to this devastation, Halliburton, to which the former VP of these United States and Halliburton’s former CEO as well, gave a Halliburton and BP a free pass. And yet they fulminate on. Given recent history, any of us could have told them that the company is run by fools and exploiters. The same people who FUBAR’d this country after 9-11 have done it again. And they have the nerve to call anyone else an eco-terrorist.
All the while, we know that once an off-shore spill off Saudi Arabia resulted in numerous tanker ships all changing direction, heading for that country, to siphon up and later clean the oil-water mess. Where are all the tankers now? The US stands alone.
The United States sold its soul to the oil devil. Why, a former BP oil exec is Deputy Sec of the Interior! Such insider fox-in-the-hen-house “management,” must stop. Yet our own admin appointed her.
Though much of the groundwork for this disaster was in place long before President Obama took office, now he needs to act much more aggressively to solve this crisis and increase the wall between corporations and the agencies that are supposed to provide oversight of them.
It is true that the Inspector General reports (the most recent two of them) found fault in the previous administration. I do not expect the President to resolve all the corruption and reverse all the dismantling conducted by the previous administration within a year or so. But Thursday is at least a day (possibly a month) late to impose new needed regs.
In the President’s defense, I also believe that much of the positive work he is doing has been unreported or misreported by the media, which likes soundbites rather than real coverage (“Plug the damn hole,” it quoted the President, but carried little honest coverage of what was being done constructively). Rather the “reporters,” at least most of them, have served as pawns of the corporate media, blaming him, while, at the same time, exonerating the real culprits and quietly wanting him to do nothing to upset the corporate ad buyers and their revenue stream.
I also believe that while Obama is not to blame for this, should he continue to conduct business as usual, including fund raising, then he would make a serious blunder, which may hurt him in 2012. The time for aggressive action is more than upon us. At the same time, the time for worrying about politics is gone.
We don’t need troops on the border in AZ. (We need border patrol.) We need to focus on this rather than on building the case for war in Iran or North Korea. This is a national emergency and we need to act like it. We need all hands on deck.
Oil execs are too corrupt, manipulative and selfish to dispatch sufficient help our way. They could be of enormous help in siphoning the oil destroying the coastline of the Gulf and threatening ultimately the Eastern Seaboard. In the absence of the oil industry doing the right thing and dispatching vessels themselves, the president should temporarily nationalize enough tankers and direct them to the area. Should the disaster destroy the Eastern Seaboard, then the crisis in America will be more vast than many people have contemplated (which is bad enough).
Additionally, BP should be banished from operation in the United States. It wont’ be, but it should be. It has bought and insinuated itself everywhere, even the flagship University of California at Berkley, where the conglomerate, hoping for a makeover of its image and ownership of research, spent $500,000,000 buying a University research program.
Please, President Obama, we are under attack by the willful neglect of an irresponsible industry. The time to defend us is NOW. The time to fund raise is definitely not (now).
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