Tom Eley of WSWS reveals that the newly elected interim prime minister of Libya is a faculty member of the Petroleum Institute, a think tank funded by BP and other salivating Brit, French and American oil companies prepping the carve up of Libya’s oil resources.
QUITE THE COINKY-DINK, eh?
The Libyan War. The regime change from Gaddafi. The destruction of a country. Humanitarianism? The Arab spring?
“It’s the oil, stupid!”
BP? Hmmmmm. That name rings a bell even in, as Gore Vidal proclaimed it, the United States of Amnesia!
Tom Eley:
The granting of new exploratory drilling rights to BP takes to a new level of shamelessness the subordination of the Obama administration to corporate interests. Not only has there has been no punishment for any executive from BP, Transocean, or Halliburton—the three corporations whose profit-driven negligence caused the April 20, 2010 blowout—but BP has now been given the green light to launch four new wells engaging in the same sort of deep-sea exploration as took place at the Macondo well.
It is only 18 friggin’ months after the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout which killed 11 workers. Which also, Eley reminds, caused the WORST OIL SPILL IN US HISTORY!
Eley explains that the permits were granted by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), replacement to Minerals Management Service (MMS). The new acronym, Eley speculates, is the most serious “change” the Obama administration seems capable of in answer to the BP atrocities.
Change enough it would seem to our “butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth-NOT” Obama for witless America. Hell, 18 months is plenty of time for witless America to reach numbness once again from that particular disaster.
Citizen inertia and political propaganda are Obama’s best friends. Along with his corporate, fellow one percenters.
Michael Bromwich is Obama’s choice as chief of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. Get a load of what he recently asserted:
“BP has a GOOD offshore drilling record.”
Eley discloses Bromwich went even farther:
“They don’t have a deeply flawed record offshore,” he said “The question is: ‘Do you administer the administrative death penalty based on one incident?’, and we have concluded that’s not appropriate.”
Eley posits:
Far from a “death penalty,” BP has suffered no penalty at the hands of the federal government. According to Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, BP has yet to pay any fine.
You know, I heard an idiot, talking head on the news recently asserting that Obama should not be taken to task at all for the disastrous conditions in the United States because he is not, after all, a “messiah.”
Say what?
Now that is a serious re-framing rationalization. What’s wrong with you???? You expect Obama to be a MESSIAH???? How dare you criticize so much that is criticizable and lamentable in Obama. You don’t have the right because he is not, after all, a messiah!!!! You are apparently WRONG and unentitled to have higher expectations of him.
I’m thinking there is the high level Messiah bar and then there is the bar where the Obama administration is at. And there is considerable space between the two. I’m thinking MILES!
“BP shouldn’t be subject to the death penalty” is Mr. Bromwich’s LAME and IDIOTIC justification for granting BP exploratory drilling rights.
Eley frames the INCREDIBLE ACCOUNTABILITY-FREE PROFITEERING CAKE WALK (aside from the simultaneous one in Libya). This one right back to the actual scene of BP’s horrific recent crimes:
“In July 2011, BP announced additional safety enhancements and performance standards they would voluntarily implement in connection with its deep water drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico. BOEM has verified that BP has met the relevant voluntary performance standards.”
This “self-compliance” to “voluntary” regulations is the same concept of regulation that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster and that prevails in every branch of US industry, including food processing (which has made millions sick in recent years) and finance (which set the stage for the global economic crisis begun in 2007).
Financial analysts are now confident that the Obama administration will not pursue BP for “gross negligence” in the Gulf oil disaster, in spite of overwhelming evidence, including a lengthy paper trail and survivor testimony documenting the short cuts and reckless decisions taken to speed the Macondo Well into production. If BP is found to have been grossly negligent, under the Clean Water Act it could face billions in additional fines.
BP’s share prices rallied last month after one of the other corporations implicated in the Gulf disaster, Anadarko Petroleum, paid out $4 billion to settle all claims between the two companies. “The settlement [was] also an indication that BP was not guilty of gross negligence for the spill,” according to a financial commentator.
The Anadarko settlement will also allow BP to end payments into the escrow fund set up by the Obama administration as a means of shielding the oil giant from lawsuits. The “claims facility” fund is overseen by Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who previously has protected the federal government from inquiries into the 9/11 terrorist attacks by victims’ families, and chemical firms from veterans made sick by the defoliant Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War. BP’s payments into Feinberg’s fund “will finish in 2012, a year ahead of schedule,” according to the British Daily Express.
Obamaworld, where anything goes for the one percenters!
Still goes, as Kenneth Feinberg proves. Agent Orange to 9/11 to the BP disaster. Kenneth Feinberg, by the way, one more seriously craven choice of OBAMA!!!
Speaking of accountability free cakewalks, Obama will enjoy one himself in 2012 because .... because ... because ... it is the Republicans who are just too corrupt!
[cross-posted at correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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Gonna go out on a limb here---betting you're not gonna vote vor the president next year.
Wow I'm picking you first for my dodge ball team! Grrrrrrrate!
I'm reasonably sure that it is not just "one incident" and that I could easily find more evidence with a minimal amount of research; however in all fairness to BP that doesn't necessarily mean that BP is the worst oil company out there since many other oil companies also have atrocious records.
Which means that BP may not be quite so bad as long as many other oil companies are doing their part to destroy the planet and they can take the blame, as long as there are still people around to give and take blame.
Which means that BP may not be quite so bad as long as many other oil companies are doing their part to destroy the planet and they can take the blame, as long as there are still people around to give and take blame.
Yeah. I guess there is something so eccentrically judgmental about me in getting so very pissed off at this stuff. But consider. I figure I better get my licks in before I am completely hungry and jobless, because then I will be too distracted and desperately narcissistic to rally against anyone. Which is how fascism actually works.
Thanks for visiting strident me, jw and tg. You, too, Zachd! So Obama had an opportunity to seriously SEND A MESSAGE to not just oil companies but all corporations. Well, I guess he is sending a message to them all with BP's cakewalks. RELAX, fellas!!!! YOU ARE SAFE WITH ME. I will rhetorically reassure the masses wink wink and then I will give away the store once again to you all. Not the message the 99 percenters needed, but why are we surprised? We aren't represented in our government. Kabuki penalties and more juicy opportunities for the perpetrators. The bipartisanship of evil. Corporate community organizing. We don't get a place at the table. We lack the power and the money and the ruthless gamesmanship! What does a company have to do to be seriously sanctioned, penalized, arrested in Obamaworld? I don't think there is anything bad enough they can do, seriously. How many 99 percenters in America's prisons? Now lots of dissenters are beginning to get a taste of that as they beef up the police state. How many executive fraudsters and accessories (and more than that) to mass murder are in prison? In the state prisons AND the highly profiteering PRIVATIZED ones?
This is what Hugh at correntewire shared re BP:
"BP was supposed to pay $20 billion into a compensation fund. This was supposed to be an initial down payment on its liabilities but as it has turned out only about $5 billion has been paid out. Feinberg who is overseeing the assessment and dispersal of funds has been making out like a bandit with his firm now pulling down $1.25 million a month for running the program. Oh and so far, Feinberg has paid out on only about 200,000 of more than 500,000 claims. So I'm thinking at best maybe only about $10 billion is ever going to be paid out, and I believe BP is claiming any and all payouts as tax deductions so they are paying even less. It's really all just a scam on a scam on a scam."
SCAM ON SCAM ON SCAM. That about says it.
I even forgot to mention re Libya's new prime minister, that Karzai in Afghanistan was an oil man from Unocol (Union Oil Company of California). Remember? Just one big happy corporate incestuous puppet leader family in the NEW GLOBAL VILLAGE ORDER! Whether enabled by Repubs or Dems!
Obama should be primaried.
Thanks for visiting strident me, jw and tg. You, too, Zachd! So Obama had an opportunity to seriously SEND A MESSAGE to not just oil companies but all corporations. Well, I guess he is sending a message to them all with BP's cakewalks. RELAX, fellas!!!! YOU ARE SAFE WITH ME. I will rhetorically reassure the masses wink wink and then I will give away the store once again to you all. Not the message the 99 percenters needed, but why are we surprised? We aren't represented in our government. Kabuki penalties and more juicy opportunities for the perpetrators. The bipartisanship of evil. Corporate community organizing. We don't get a place at the table. We lack the power and the money and the ruthless gamesmanship! What does a company have to do to be seriously sanctioned, penalized, arrested in Obamaworld? I don't think there is anything bad enough they can do, seriously. How many 99 percenters in America's prisons? Now lots of dissenters are beginning to get a taste of that as they beef up the police state. How many executive fraudsters and accessories (and more than that) to mass murder are in prison? In the state prisons AND the highly profiteering PRIVATIZED ones?
This is what Hugh at correntewire shared re BP:
"BP was supposed to pay $20 billion into a compensation fund. This was supposed to be an initial down payment on its liabilities but as it has turned out only about $5 billion has been paid out. Feinberg who is overseeing the assessment and dispersal of funds has been making out like a bandit with his firm now pulling down $1.25 million a month for running the program. Oh and so far, Feinberg has paid out on only about 200,000 of more than 500,000 claims. So I'm thinking at best maybe only about $10 billion is ever going to be paid out, and I believe BP is claiming any and all payouts as tax deductions so they are paying even less. It's really all just a scam on a scam on a scam."
SCAM ON SCAM ON SCAM. That about says it.
I even forgot to mention re Libya's new prime minister, that Karzai in Afghanistan was an oil man from Unocol (Union Oil Company of California). Remember? Just one big happy corporate incestuous puppet leader family in the NEW GLOBAL VILLAGE ORDER! Whether enabled by Repubs or Dems!
Obama should be primaried.
Obama's "change" seems to always be a boon for the corporatocracy.
I had no idea so I'm glad you posted this, your ability to put it all together and get my rant out for me is gratifying. I'm tired of only being able to write letters and rant. No one seems to care until things can't be undone.
Yeah, I'm pretty tired of people telling me to lower my expectations. Then they whine like infants when less is delivered. Keep it up, you're like the old style liberals, not the prissy ones. There's no time for prissy, we are past crisis now.
Thank you for another outstanding post. You've quickly become one of my favorites on political blogs.
Yeah, I'm pretty tired of people telling me to lower my expectations. Then they whine like infants when less is delivered. Keep it up, you're like the old style liberals, not the prissy ones. There's no time for prissy, we are past crisis now.
Thank you for another outstanding post. You've quickly become one of my favorites on political blogs.
sean, I'd venture "corporatocracy" is a religion to BO.
Bleue, aw, you warm my heart. Thanks. I am such a feeler/intuiter I can get intensely angry which I know is offputting to some. I was writing someone today that I feel it is vital to go after the ENTIRE evil matrix overcoming this country and globe. Only recognizing the Repub matrix is dangerous, because it strengthens and further hids the Dem dimension of the corporate matrix. And the faux-liberal media version of it.
I was googling about and found this wsws article on BP and was stunned myself. There are so many fronts. That works for the profiteering pirates and interrupts focus for all of us on the ongoing chronic economic terrorism. How many fresh hells!!!! But the fresh hell that was BP atrocity deserves some memory and accountability for sure!!!! my RL is demanding a lot and I am not reading my favorites as much on OS and want to get back soon! You are indeed one of mine! Thanks for your morale enhancing comment! best, libby
Bleue, aw, you warm my heart. Thanks. I am such a feeler/intuiter I can get intensely angry which I know is offputting to some. I was writing someone today that I feel it is vital to go after the ENTIRE evil matrix overcoming this country and globe. Only recognizing the Repub matrix is dangerous, because it strengthens and further hids the Dem dimension of the corporate matrix. And the faux-liberal media version of it.
I was googling about and found this wsws article on BP and was stunned myself. There are so many fronts. That works for the profiteering pirates and interrupts focus for all of us on the ongoing chronic economic terrorism. How many fresh hells!!!! But the fresh hell that was BP atrocity deserves some memory and accountability for sure!!!! my RL is demanding a lot and I am not reading my favorites as much on OS and want to get back soon! You are indeed one of mine! Thanks for your morale enhancing comment! best, libby
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