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BP Oil Leak Aftermath: Slow-Motion Tragedy Unfolds for Marine Life
The wildlife haven Grand Isle is at the heart of the environmental catastrophe engulfing Louisiana
Out on the water, it starts as a slight rainbow shimmer, then turns to wide orange streamers of oil whipping through the waves. Later, on the beach, we witness a vast, Olympic-sized swimming pool of dark chocolatey syrup left behind at low tide, and thick dark patches of crude bubbling on the sand.
A dead crab sits among the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a beach in Grand Isle. (Photograph: Lee Celano/Reuters) The
smell of the oil on the beach is so strong it burns your nostrils, and
leaves you feeling dizzy and headachey even after a few minutes away
from it.
According to marine biologist Rick Steiner, my companion on a boat ride through the slick, this is the most volatile and toxic form of crude oil in the waters and lapping on to the beaches of Grand Isle, the area at the heart of the slowly unfolding environmental apocalypse that has engulfed Louisiana, and is now moving eastwards, threatening Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle.
Fifty-three days after BP's ruptured well began spewing crude oil from 5,000ft below the sea, the wholesale slaughter of dolphins, pelicans, hermit crab and other marine life is only now becoming readily visible to humans.
So too is the futility of the Obama administration's response effort, with protective boom left to float uselessly at sea or – in the case of the Queen Bess pelican sanctuary which we visit – trapping the oil in vulnerable nesting grounds.
Steiner, 57, a marine biologist from the University of Alaska and a veteran of America's last oil spill disaster, the Exxon Valdez, says he is in the Gulf of Mexico "to bear witness", and for days he has been taking to the beaches and the waters in a Greenpeace boat gathering evidence.
The first casualties on Steiner's tour appear minutes after our boat leaves the marina and moves through Barataria Pass, prime feeding ground for bottlenose dolphins. Several appear, swimming, eating, even mating in waters criss-crossed by wide burnt-orange streamers of oil. All are at risk of absorbing toxins, from the original spill and from more than 1.2m gallons of chemicals dumped into the Gulf to try to break up the slick, says Steiner.
"They get it in their eyes. They get it in the fish they eat and it is also possible when they come to the surface and open their blowhole to breathe that they are inhaling some of it," he says.
The Greenpeace crew turn up the throttle and the boat pulls up to the orange and yellow protective boom around Queen Bess island, which was intended as a haven for the brown pelican. These birds, until recently, were on the federal government's list of endangered species and were doing OK – but now that recovery appears to have been abruptly reversed.
A dark tideline of oil encircles the island, and has crept into the marsh grasses, where the pelican nest. Many, if not most, of the adult birds had patches of oil on their chest feathers. Nearly all are doomed, says Steiner, if not now, then at some point in the future. "The risks in here to birds are not just acute mortality right here right now," he says. "There is mortality we won't see for a month or two months, or even a year."
He points out a pelican standing so still it looks like it's been made out of a slab of chocolate, another frantically flapping its spread wings to try to shake off the oil, and then another manically pecking at the spots on its chest. "He could be a candidate for cleaning, and he may survive," Steiner says. "He obviously won't if he's not cleaned."
Rescue teams have plucked hundreds of birds from the muck. But stripping oil from the feathers of stricken birds is a slow and delicate operation, and there is no assurance of the birds' survival. About a third of the rescued birds have died so far.
As we pull up to Queen Bess island, two crew boats are at work shoring up the two lines of defence for the island: an outer ring of orange and yellow protective boom intended to push the oil back out to sea, as well as an inner ring of white absorbent material that is supposed to suck up any of the crude that gets through.
Since oil began lapping at the Louisiana coast, the government has set down 2.25m ft of containment boom and 2.55m ft of absorbent material. But local sports fishermen on Grand Isle complain response crews bungled the protection zone for Queen Bess because they only put a portion of the island behind the orange and yellow barrier boom. That turned the boom into traps which pushed even greater quantities of oil onshore. Steiner agrees: "I would say 70% or 80% of the booms are doing absolutely nothing at all."
The efforts on the beaches seem equally futile. By day workers in white protective suits march along the sands of the state park on the eastern end of Grand Isle, trying to suck up the oil. But as the tide goes out there is only more oil to be found, and dozens of dead hermit crab that have struggled to flee to shore.
Steiner says he has seen it all before, after the Exxon Valdez went aground in 1989, and then in other oil spills he has monitored around the world from Lebanon to Pakistan. There is, he says, a drearily familiar pattern. "Industry always habitually understate the size of a spill and impact as well as habitually overstate the effectiveness of the response."
In the case of the Exxon Valdez, he says, the environmental impacts persisted for months or years after the tanker went aground. That catastrophe, which saw 11m gallons of crude dumped into the pristine waters of Alaska, occurred within the space of six hours.
This spill is much worse. BP's well on the ocean floor has been spewing greater volumes of crude oil into the water for 53 days. Even by the administration's most optimistic forecasts, it will keep gushing until August, and the clean-up could last well into the autumn.
"This is just the start. It is going to keep coming in even if they shut the damn thing off today," says Steiner.
51 Comments so far
Show All"Fifty-three days after BP's ruptured well began spewing crude oil from 5,000ft below the sea, the wholesale slaughter of dolphins, pelicans, hermit crab and other marine life is only now becoming readily visible to humans.
So too is the futility of the Obama administration's response effort, with protective boom left to float uselessly at sea or – in the case of the Queen Bess pelican sanctuary which we visit – trapping the oil in vulnerable nesting grounds."
It's difficult to those who are at all sensitive to see life in the gulf being destroyed and the pristine waters muddied, while an inept commander in chief sits helpless in the Oval Office. It makes one wonder if he's a coward, out of his depth, or complicit; does BP know something about him that they're holding over his head, something that would destroy his presidency were it revealed? Obama's relative inaction and refusal to take control simply makes no sense.
I was wondering how London would deal with it, were it to happen off UK shores.
>>
It makes one wonder if he's a coward, out of his depth, or complicit; does BP know something about him that they're holding over his head, something that would destroy his presidency were it revealed?
<<
I'd venture to guess all of the above apply.
"Obama's relative inaction and refusal to take control simply makes no sense."
It makes no sense to you because you refuse to admit what was obvious even before Obama was elected President. His overriding ambition from the start was to acquire power, wealth, and fame by faithfully serving our corporate lords and princes while suckering the great mass of U.S. citizens into believing that he's on their side.
That dog doesn't hunt because I was for Nader; I pretty much knew Obama was a fake from the get-go. Still, even given that he serves Wall Street and their ilk, his refusal pull the reigns from BP seems to me to go far beyond that, or as some would say, "seems very fishy."
I never had any illusions about Obama, John, but still hoped as many did that we would be proved wrong.
I'm sorry if I misjudged you. The confusion you expressed seemed typical of people who choose hope over reason and consequently end up supporting one disingenuous corporate whore after another.
My own view is that we shouldn't expect any humane actions from a man who has publicly:
1) promised to protect people at the CIA who organized and engaged in the torture of U.S. prisoners
2) supported the indefinite detention of prisoners without charges
3) claimed the right to assassinate anyone, including U.S. citizens, whom the government considers an enemy, without giving the person a chance to show that he (or she) is innocent, or to be tried by a jury.
If you simply think of Obama as evil, the confusion will evaporate. I realize that many people consider that to be a ridiculous point of view, but in my opinion, the evidence is clear for all those who choose to look.
Yes, could be that he is more evil than weak, rather than more weak than evil. I was on the fence at first believing that the latter was the case, but not I'm leaning to the former.
The first major gulf storm will dump millions of gallons of toxic sludge mixed with dead decaying corpses of birds, turtles, dolphins, fish, and thousands of other creatures, upon an as yet to be determined shore line. We've barely seen the tip of an environmental catastrophe. It will devastate the gulf and may reach the everglades and the east coast with unknown consequences. The gulf could become a giant dead zone.
Yet we read today about the British concern over their image. Obama said "British Petroleum" and the Brits are all in a tizzy. Their main concern? Many British have their pension funds in BP and a tarnished image may damage their value. Many are upset that their dividends may be cut. Cameron is meeting with Obama to try to patch things up and make sure their good image stays intact.
Here in the states one of the main concerns seems to be over the loss of jobs in the gulf where thousands of oil rigs hire thousands of workers, 'Must keep up drilling, no need to be slowed down by some spilled oil, we'll just pay off the fishermen'.
Having a giant dead sea bordering the southern states will make environmental laws there mute. Then they can just drill and spill at will. The damn gulf will be dead anyway, the Brits can keep their pension funds and oil workers can drive to work atop a floating plastic sea.
Q, you nailed it with your post There is no meaningful concern/action by the government. Hell you have Sen. Mary Landriew from Louisiana already calling for the 6 month moratorium on deep water drilling cut drastically back. Its like watching a heroin addict in action. "Please, I need a fix, quick please. Really the stuff is good for me!"
It would not surprise me at all if you have some Oil execs that would like to see the entire Gulf a dead zone so they wouldn't have to worry about environmental controls.
So many of our "leaders" have a complete disconnect with the reality of the environment and are part in it. From what I have seen in the handling of the Gulf spill I have absolutely no doubt that we destroy us all. The people running the show are simply incapable of change or understanding the seriousness of the environmental situation we find ourselves in.
The Louisiana Senator, like many politicians, is blinded by the light of where millions of campaign contributions are coming from. The continual destruction of southern Louisiana by her benefactors is beyond her visibility. What can be done? We must raise enough $ to publicize the need to vote for politicians who raise the least money, and therefore the less bought off. I wish for a coalition of the Democratic Socialists, the Working Families Party, and the Green Party, and the peeling off of the progressive caucus of the Democratic Party. It's a shame that Barry is considered black because it makes it more difficult to mobilize a black movement. But, with enough information it is possible.
Most of the folks over at Black Agenda Report (http://www.blackagendareport.com/) are not fooled by Obama. From day one, there was "a black movement" telling it like it is.
The following was written by Glen Ford, editor of Black Agenda Report, on January 7, 2009. I think it's worthwhile to post part of it here:
"Obama is Lyndon Johnson. National revitalization, including redress of historical African American grievances, is impossible unless military expenditures are dramatically reduced. But Obama is committed to putting 100,000 new pairs of Marine and Army "boots on the ground," an expanded war in Afghanistan/Pakistan, a beefed up AFRICOM, and a generally bigger U.S. military footprint on the planet. This, in the midst of global economic collapse.
Dr. King would find creative ways to confront President Obama's militarism, and to actively resist further diversion of public wealth to the bankers. Were he to survey the current political scene, King would be most impressed, not with the Obamas party plans for the night after his birthday, but with the way that a daughter of Georgia salvaged Black America's moral reputation at the beginning of Israel's assault on Gaza.
Cynthia McKinney's attempted voyage of solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza on the medical relief boat Dignity, rammed and almost sunk by Israeli warships, reminds the world that not all African Americans have morphed into warmongering clones of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Thanks to the presence of the former Georgia congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate on the mission, millions of Arabs have been made aware of a different Black America, one that is not silent, like Barack Obama, in the face of a purposely inflicted human rights catastrophe."
From the article: Who is Black America's Moral Emissary to the World?
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Having a giant dead sea bordering the southern states will make environmental laws there mute. Then they can just drill and spill at will. The damn gulf will be dead anyway,
<<
You nailed it. I believe this has become the goal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruggero_Santilli
this guy makes machines which could clean all the water and get more than (yes, more than) all of the energy out of it.
the reason you don't know about him and his machines is that the oil companies don't want you to.
So they have the solution (though they can't bring dead species back to life) at hand, but they sure won't think about using it.
Santilli's machine normally cleans water full of human waste, but can certainly work with oily water as well.
Did you ever wonder what the discussion was like, as they cut down the last tree on Easter Island? After all, the stone cutters needed them to transport statues, and you couldn't simply leave all the stone cutter families to starve.
Seeing us fret over job loss if we stop drilling, as we destroy the Gulf of Mexico with the inevitable spilled oil, I imagine comes pretty close.
I sadly predict that powerful voices will continue chanting "drill baby drill", as we poison the water, the air and the web of life that we depend on for our survival. Then, like Easter Island, we will descend into political chaos from which there is no recovery. How tragic.
I am going to look into it more deeply, but I am now hearing that BP is going to get off the hook paying for the full extent of the damages to the environment and to people's lives and that the american taxpayer is going to pay for most of this.
Can this be true?! Can the ruling elites be any more blatant in their total disregard for the people of this country? On top of everything else - the illegal wars, bankster bailout, universal health care stopped dead, and now this? This is too much!
Well, just checked Huffpo, and sure enough, there is a headline and talk of the American people paying for a lot of this. This is unbelievable!
Just as we paid to bail out the Wall St. banksters and as we fill the coffers of Big Insurance and Pharma so they can make billions off our illnesses, many of them caused by corporate malfeasance like BP's. It's all a lovely circle of greed, and we must pay for it. After all, who else can they steal from?
Phony health care reform, no financial reform at all, except taxpayers handing over money to the pirates of Wall Street, rewarding them for wrecking the economy, and now we'll be forced to pay BP to "clean up" its own murderous mess. Of course it will never be cleaned up, though BP will clean up by profiting from it. Disaster capitalism at its best.
As they proceed to destroy the entire world for profit, these corporations can't possibly be held accountable. Of course now all the talk is about how much MONEY BP will have to pay, as if that's going to rectify the insane sea-trashing damage they've done. How many billions of $ does it take to bring back the loss of countless marine species? Can we buy back the sea turtles, dolphins, whales, the numerous fish species, the pelicans and otters, the nesting birds? Where will that money from fines BP may or may not ever pay ultimately go? Most likely to explore more areas for oil drilling. Meanwhile, 48,000 oil rigs continue chugging away in the Gulf. Obama won't stop ANY of the drilling any more than Dick Cheney would. The United States of Insanity.
Talk by Tom Donohue-R of the US Chamber of Commerce and John Boehner-R of the House of Representatives. It could happen if Obama sin Cojones allows the House of Representatives to raid the US treasury for the cleanup, or if he himself instigates such a raid. They are all corporate socialists. But it wont be the contemporary tax payers (who pays taxes anyway - those who have W2 withholding - not the oligarchs), the US is already up to it's ears in dept, the money isn't there. I will just be more debt. We'll just print more money. I've noticed in a fresh fish store in NY that the "wild caught shrimp" of all sizes have been replaced by just "shrimp", that the price of shrimp has gone up, and there are less there. We'll already smelling the BP stench in NY.
Yes, this IS too much! Now WHAT are we going to do?
this may help http://www.collapsenet.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1042&Itemid=28
I recommend this show on KPFA, aired this afternoon.
Caroline Casey.The Visionary Activist - Dark of Oil Regime with Mike Ruppert
how many gallons a minute does this disaster generate? there are 86,400 seconds in a day. if you look at this oily valcano, at least one barrell of oil (42 gallons) spews forth every 2 seconds. and that's being generopus to bp. so if it's spewing out 50,000 barrels a day, that's 2,100,000 gallons of oil every day, for a total of 108,000,000 gallons during the 52 days that have passed since april 20, 2010.
BP pumped 80 barrels of mud per minute into the well to try to stem the outflow. As we all could see the mud was ejected from the well as quickly as it was pumped in. This means that at least 80 barrels a minute of matter are spewing from that well. 80 barrels a minute. There are 1440 minutes in a day. Do the math. BP lies. Obama lies. Everybody lies. Meanwhile the Gulf of Mexico is dead.
Why does GreenPeace have to do this????????
BP should be shelling out billions to protect the wildlife
rather than worry about some beaches.
They all belong in jail, along with the Obama and Bush
administrations, that ain't gonna happen because we now
live in a fascist state, get used used to it.....if you can!!
BP does not want to plug this well, because that means they have lost their investment in it. They want to bring it into full production and they do not give one shit about the people or the environment. God damned fascist bastards.
I wonder if that is totally true..
"Slow-Motion Tragedy Unfolds for Marine Life"
This f***ing slow suicide we're in - the human tribe, that is. The pain keeps coming.
Like an accidental suicide having cut a vein, not an artery, just sitting around waiting, while the bloodletting slowly kills, the person already too anemic to bother with stopping the bleeding - 'cause stopping would reveal it made a mistake in the first place by cutting into itself at all.
Better to die than to admit being on the wrong course.
Humanity won't die out, entirely. But our current sophisticated culture is about to lose a few thousand years of experience and cleverness.
Not back to the stone age. No such luck. More like back to the bronze age full of strife, with an added depressing feeling of "we have all been here before".
It's not like the Mexican gulf spill is the only eco-catastrophy we're running.
Slow-Motion Tragedy Unfolds for Human Life... With Mexican Gulf spill as highlight.
The US Government and BP are slowly, grudgingly releasing updated numbers on the disaster. The Government is now saying that twice the amount previously reported has been released into the Gulf, equivalent to seven Exxon Valdez spills.
That number, like all other information released by the Government and BP is still grossly understating the truth. Most honest analysts have been using a flow rate of 100,000 bbl/day, equal to 2.62 Exxon Valdez a day. 52 days at 2.62 Exxon Valdez a day = 136.2 Exxon Valdez equivalents. To give you an idea of how many gallons of crude oil have entered the Gulf is simple: 136.2 Exxon Valdez equivalents x 11,000,000 gallons (the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez) = 1,498,095,238 gallons of oil. To date.
So, there you go. Now how does this relate to how much oil the US consumes every day? The US consumes 20,680,000 bbl/day, or 868,560,000 gallons/day. Using that figure, the Gulf disaster has expelled 1.723 days of US oil use into the Gulf.
Just under two average days of the US consumption of oil has resulted in the single greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of man.
During the "top kill" attempt BP was pushing 80 barrels of mud a minute into the well to try to overwhelm the outflow. The well regurgitated the mud as quickly as it could be pumped in (by a thirty thousand horsepower powerplant). Eighty barrels a minute. You do the math.
What will be even worse is if British Petroleum (yes, they are British, and yes it's about petroleum) goes away without severe punishment.
1. Interior head Salazar orders no more US contracts for at least a year or longer.
2. Some BP execs do serious jail time.
3. BP is taken down. Yes, they would not be able to pay us if they are erased from the market place, do we really want payment from a crook ? ?
Our society will need some closure on this soon-2 or three weeks at top. Otherwise the government will fall. Does it deserve to? Film and story at 11.
The amount of oil that has spewed from this volcano in the Earth's mantle and the toxic dispersants being used could be enough to render the entire Gulf uninhabitable for hundreds of years.
What is most sad, it didn’t have to be this way. These rapacious nefarious bastards at BP knew full well the ramifications of tinkering with the Earth’s mantle at these depths. With BP’s abhorrent track record, how is it they were allowed to even drill in the Gulf?
The horror unfolding for the people and the sea life all along the Gulf is beyond sad.
There is open speculation in Britain that BP might be declaring bankruptcy, based on the simple math that the cleanup cost of $50 billion minimum far exceeds their profits of $5-10 billion.
Bankruptcy would be a true major disaster that would get the fuckers off the hook entirely, as their preferred shareholders and bondholders would get preference over the rig workers' families, the fisher people, the wildlife rescue, the cleanup.
Can someone better versed in the intricacies of financial legalities confirm this?
Not sure where you're getting this 'open speculation' unless it's at your neighbourhood bar. Try reading this: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/06/07/the-money-gusher/
I just skimmed this article. Will go back and read it later. It looks like profits are a lot higher than I had thought. So, the same logic applies. We can take all the profits from BP for as long as it takes to cover the costs. I would say flatly that the US taxpayer should not be responsible, but you know it would be very hard to turn our backs on the urgent needs of the Gulf families who are losing their way of life. But it should all be totted up and recovered from BP in the near future.
The Patriot Game, updated
Come all ye young lawyers
Who can't get a job
File suits against BP
And the stinking oil globs...
We know it's this firm
From cruel England to blame
It should make you a part of
The Patriot Game
Here is the tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zoh-5RnEbHA
Write more verses. DeValera can be Obama.
Joe
Another innocent group whose interests might need protection are those whose pension fund managers invested in BP. Here in the US we have the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, PBGC, which is supposed to make sure that pensions are protected when a company goes bankrupt. I believe that going forward and building on this example, all unions and pension funds should make an effort to invest in non-criminal companies who have a decent track record in social responsibility, rare as that might be.
I do not know much about what obligations get preference during a bankruptcy, especially in Britian. But we should not be frightened by bankruptcy. Keep in mind that bankruptcy is only a legal state and people are free to contend over the assets. The oil will still be flowing and someone will take possession of the existing rigs and processing plants, so that there should be an ample supply of cash going forward to satisfy all who were injured physically or financially, even if the facilities were required to operate in a somewhat slower and safer manner. The profits are 5 - 10 billion per year, so I say as long as it takes, we can wait. They should never get their profits back.
Nothing can be done about the dead people, the plants and animals of the Gulf. It is a total loss. The families will never get their loved ones back. My stomach turns whenever I think about it, imagining all the beautiful life which is being turned into a stinking mess of death and decay so that BP could make money a little faster.
Update - some say profits are more like 25 billion per year. In any case, there is plenty to compensate fisherman's families and other Gulf residents for lost income for years. There is no way to compensate for loss of a way of life and for recklessly delivering the final bullet to the head of an already wounded ecosystem.
Joe
i COMPLETELY AGREE.
So another BP tanker is on the way to the Gulf. Could they not foresee that they'd need more than one tanker to put the recovered oil in? Seems like BP would limit the oil recovery process if they don't have tankers in place to actually pump the oil in.
Obama is now in trouble? We are ALL in trouble on this day and no one will be left to tell the story, don't you know? The open well is the proverbial Pandora's Box for all the World to...die for.
CORPORATION wants to oversee its own calamity which is not mathmatically possible. It is out of my hands now. Before the open well I wanted a Grinch moment. I wanted the evil Grinch to get all it could then reach the top of the mountain, look back and come to its senses(sp). Too late for this now.
It is Pandora's Box that is now open in the Gulf. On this day, You and I are equal and plunder is groundless. 'Decorum' is out, Justice is in. Billions will still be spent to convince you and I to continue to stick our heads up our asses...FOR NOTHING!!! OOPS,...'in the name of Jesus'. Right.
Big oil legislated demand for a commodity and its use, but that commodity now is destroying the planet. My grammar is bad, how do I say that? Thanks guys.
GULF TRAGEDY MANDATE
The Gulf of Mexico tragedy underscores the crucial need to force meaningful regulations, which the industry has impeded, along with efforts to reduce our dangerous fossil fuel dependency, through decades of lobbying, misinformation, & fabricated science.
Sadly, it requires severe calamities, such as this and 9/11, to force regulations that were obviously needed beforehand. What may be history's worst artificial environmental disaster, could have been averted had they been required to drill relief wells simultaneously with offshore production wells.
This tragedy provides our president with the opportunity to detooth the energy cartel, and force vital measures for fossil fuel reduction as well as for drilling safety.
If he defaults, history will treat him harshly.
now it's a flaming blow out http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DUDsX3nFo4_M
I am 61, and have never known about a disaster
like this in my life.
That big gush I saw the Fri. of Mem. day,
it had flames too.
here is a life boat http://www.collapsenet.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1042&Itemid=28
Since the previous administration forbid Britain to dig up facts concerning the illegal invasion of Iraq, and buddies with Halliburton, perhaps since Halliburton was in the area,--the oil spill was due to Sabostag???
Maybe they can not see the gravity of our situation.
I think that I would see that though, what it would mean if I set the world aflame...if I were able to do anything like that.
It may be that this whole narrative thing is done now, it doesnt work in the least. You cant destroy the planet to prove anything. Unfortunately it took a global ecological disaster to do it.
Betrayed by an Oil Giant
25-Mar-04
Environment
"Shortly after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, a senior Exxon representative visited the devastated fishing communities of southern Alaska and promised them the company would do everything in its power to restore their livelihoods and 'make them whole.' 'We're Exxon, we do it right..Exxon, whose net income for 2003 is expected to top $21bn, has not paid out a penny of the $5bn in damages originally awarded to the fishing communities a decade ago, launching appeal after appeal and deluging the courts with paperwork. Despite intensive clean-up efforts, Prince William Sound remains polluted by large oil deposits that have destroyed its herring fisheries and wreaked havoc with the once-flourishing wildlife...They are making all these promises about treading with a light footprint and respecting the environment if they open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration, yet they refuse to settle up on a mess they've already made,' Dune Lankard said."
03/25/04
Reading the article below on what British MEDIA says about the Disaster and Obama, it should be noted that while it stands for British Petroleum - and can be presumed to have plenty of british shareholders , as the report says, 40 percent of its investors are Americans.
=================
UK MEDIA ATTACK OBAMA FOR COMMENTS ABOUT BP
JUNE 11, 2010 -- Updated 1501 GMT (2301 HKT)
UK newspapers have criticized president Barack Obama for his comments about BP following the Gulf Coast oil disaster.
UK newspapers have criticized president Barack Obama for his comments about BP following the Gulf Coast oil disaster.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* UK media and politicians have criticized attitude of U.S. politicians toward BP
* Several point out that U.S. companies have ppreviouslycaused environmental damage
* UK Prime Minister David Cameron urged to be more robust in defense of BP
* Analysts question the true value of the UK-U.S. "special relationship"
(CNN) -- British media have leapt to the defense of beleaguered BP following attacks by the White House over its handling of the Gulf Coast disaster.
President Barack Obama has taken a tough stance against the company and its response to the April 20 explosion, which killed 11 workers and has spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, threatening livelihoods and wildlife.
But now UK opinion formers have weighed in, attacking Obama's approach, warning of the threat to pension funds and questioning relations with the United States.
Barack Obama, David Cameron, to discuss BP
Cameron is told to "stand up for your country" by the Daily Mail, which backed the Conservative leader at last month's UK election. It points out while "British marines continue to die in Afghanistan -- fighting valiantly alongside their American colleagues," relations between the respective leaders means the phrase "special relationship" sounds increasingly hollow.
In a leader column the newspaper says Obama's attacks are "rank hypocrisy," coming only weeks after the president advocated deepwater drilling. Elsewhere it highlights oil disasters off the UK coast involving U.S. companies, including the Piper Alpha oil rig explosion of 1988, in which 167 people died.
Video: A look at BP leader's background history
Video: Coast Guard critical of BP claims process
Video: BP under fire
Video: BP will open up its own city on the Gulf
RELATED TOPICS
* Gulf Coast Oil Spill
* BP plc
The Lex column in The Financial Times says that the manner in which the crisis is "moving into the diplomatic sphere is surely a positive for BP -- providing a much needed counterweight to Mr Obama's swinging boot."
Meanwhile Philip Stephens, also writing in the same paper under the headline "Some home truths for a president showing the strain", says that "Deepwater is only there because the U.S., with a twentieth of the world's population, consumes one-quarter of world oil."
The leader opinion in The Daily Telegraph points out that BP is a multinational company, 40 percent of whose shareholders are American.
"The long-term relationship between Britain and America should not be jeopardized by a presidential response that has been more petulant than statesmanlike," it continues.
The Telegraph says it is disappointed that Obama, "a politician whose reputation was built on his powers of persuasion should be so quick to inflame a difficult situation for his own political ends. We had thought better of him."
Obama is told to "stop ranting against BP" by the Daily Express, which leads with the headline: "Obama is killing all our pensions." Many British retirement funds, both public and private, invest in the oil company, which has seen billions wiped off its share price this week.
"Nobody disputes that an environmental catastrophe has taken place," the Express says. "But BP is only one of three major companies involved. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it is being persecuted because its first initial stands for 'British' and Britain should not put up with that."
Malcolm Rifkind, foreign minister under the last Conservative government, asks in The Times whether "the great British love-in with Barack Obama may be coming to an end."
"While there has been deep understanding of the environmental catastrophe that has struck the United States and of BP's responsibility, there is also growing concern that the President's angry rhetoric is going over the top and risks dividing the United States and the United Kingdom.
"Mr Obama must understand," continues Rifkind, "that an American president does not just have a domestic audience. Whatever their political purpose for his own electorate, his words resonate throughout the world and, however unintended, can have serious and damaging consequences."
In The London Evening Standard Chris Blackhurst wrote: "There are three words to be thrown back at President Obama: Bhopal and Agent Orange. In both instances, the U.S. inflicted huge suffering on others -- and did precious little to remove the toxic pollution it left behind."
Nearly 4,000 died in the Indian city of Bhopal in 1984 following the escape of lethal methyl isocyanate at a plant owned by Union Carbide India Limited -- the now-defunct local subsidiary of the American chemical company.
Agent Orange was used as a defoliant during the Vietnam War -- but its toxins have been linked to thousands of deaths and illnesses.
"BP has not called itself British Petroleum for more than 10 years," adds Blackhurst. "It's not the only one to not use its full name. Barack Hussein Obama is another."
A friendly suggestion please-next time give the link for the article and a very brief precise summary of what the link is about, we all pay for server space for Common Dreams with our contributions.
That was in fact a very useful posting, however longish. Server space on CD cannot be measured in fractions of a cent for that posting. Give us a break.
We could have followed the link, for whatever it was worth-which is not what the server space costs.
What powers those GP boats, used cooking oil from Micky D's???
This is not "slow motion" tragedy...this is "slow motion" MURDER!!! BOYCOTT BP!!!