A Great Punishment for BP Oil Execs

BP execs have lied and lied and lied about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They've lied so much that they're now spreading lies on top of lies on top of yet more lies. Their lies are so thick, one wonders whether these slick corporate officers are even capable of telling the truth. Do they even know what the truth is?

Let's wrestle with the Truth for a moment: This spill is now the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. This spill has already taken a devastating toll on wildlife, with dead sea turtles and fish washing up on the Gulf Coast every day. The oil is now invading the marshlands of the Mississippi Delta and threatens to spread around Florida. The oil might even make its way up the Atlantic Coast. Wildlife is threatened. Aquatic life is threatened. The entire ecosystem of the East Coast of the United States is in jeopardy.

Dollar amount? We don't know and we probably won't know the final amount for years. The toll on the environment and living creatures? Impossible to estimate.

And these Fat Cats with BP - whoops, sorry, I shouldn't use the term cats in such a horrible context... those of you who read this Blog know I love cats. Start over: These fuckers at BP (sorry - sometimes that is the ONLY word one can use) are so full of lies and bullshit that it's oozing out of the little holes in their head called ears. What a transparently sinister collection of amoral, ruling class leeches. And all they care about is the bottom line. Profits. $$$. Don't let them fool you into thinking that they give a rat's ass about the Gulf of Mexico, because they absolutely do not.

Sorry, but I just can't contain my rage anymore, as I'm sure is evident in this Blog Post. At this point, I think it is appropriate to recall the immortal words of the late, great activist and Berkeley Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio (1942 - 1996):

There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop, And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all.

But BP continues to insist, borrowing from Orwellian Double Speak, that the oil spill really isn't that bad (even though they have admitted to initially downplaying the severity of it).

Note the steady stream of lies:

"We are containing the spill." - BP Chief Tony Hayward (Source)

"... and very little of the oil is getting to the shoreline." - BP Chief Tony Hayward (Source)

BP's response has been "extraordinarily successful." - yep, you guessed it, BP Chief Tony Hayward (Source)

Extraordinarily successful???

OK, so if it's extraordinarily successful, here's my advice about a proper form of punishment for these greedy assholes: Make these execs disrobe down to their skivvies and force them to take a dip in the oiliest locations of the Gulf of Mexico. Then maybe they will be able to feel the excruciating pain that animals feel who are forced to swim in this sea of chemicals.

The oil leads to a slow death as it is absorbed into the skin and makes its way into the bloodstream, the lungs, the digestive system, until so much of this poison sludge is in one's body that it is impossible to go on functioning.

So enjoy your swim, BP execs.

Because, as we all now, justice will out and the wrongdoers will pay. Right?

Right?

Anybody?

Right?

(Pictured above: A dead sea turtle, another victim of offshore oil drilling...)

Early Signs of the Devastation on the Gulf Coast

According to The Los Angeles Times, the carcasses of 23 sea turtles have been found along Mississippi's Gulf Coast. The heartbreaking picture on the right is one of those dead sea turtles.

The L.A. Times also cites an Associated Press report of dead turtles found along the beaches of Texas.

If there is a silver lining in this dark cloud, it is that the media are really doing their job. Some of the best investigative reporting I've seen in recent weeks has been coming from the Gulf Coast of the United States.

The right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh managed to piss of a lot of liberals when he suggested that environmentalists were behind this oil spill. (Source) It was dimwitted Limbaugh at his worst - or is it his best? Hard to say. His comments, as usual, are so inane that they defy any sane response. Best to let Nikki Gloudeman of one of my favorite websites, Change.org, have the last say:

He's been spouting anti-environment rhetoric for so long, the Environmental Defense Fund issued a report on errors in his eco-attacks back in 1994. More recently, he hyped coal and overconsumption on Earth Day and said he hoped New York Times environment reporter Andrew Revkin would "kill himself."

The question is: Do these attacks matter? Have they mattered?

In one way, it feels silly to turn Limbaugh's eco-outbursts into news. He says offensive things about different people all the time, so it's hardly shocking. But on a deeper level, his words reveal a sad truth about conservatism and environmentalism; that in some cases, the antagonistic relationship is reactionary rather than ideological.

The Disaster that Looms for Animals in the Gulf of Mexico

The oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last week that resulted in the tragic deaths of 11 workers now threatens to become a disaster of gargantuan proportions. As many as 5,000 barrels of oil per day continue to spill into the Gulf where the rig collapsed and sank into the water. That's 42,000 gallons per day, according to The New York Times. To make matters worse, the oil slick is rapidly moving to the Gulf Coast, despite round-the-clock efforts of workers to stop it.

CNN's Website ran a fantastic story headlined "Oil spill could be a disaster for animals, experts say." The story is absolutely painful to read. The approaching oil threatens huge bird sanctuaries, stretches of coastal inlets where otters live, 400 species of fish, not to mention the blue crab, oysters and turtles along the coast. CNN quotes U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official Tom MacKenzie: "The best case is, the wind shifts and the oil doesn't hit. I'm not real confident about that.... We're doing everything we can to prevent it, but it could be a bad one."

Louisianans still have awful memories of an oil spill a few years ago near the state's Breton Island National Wildlife Refuge that killed about 800 pelicans. This spill could prove far worse.

It is difficult to point fingers in this case. Obviously, nobody meant for this to happen. And no individual was really to blame. It was a tragic accident, and we should not forget the sorrow of the families of the 11 workers who were killed. They deserve our sympathy and compassion at this moment.

Still, I can't help but think of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound, Alaska, back in March of 1989. It was horrific in every sense of the word. I will never get out of my mind the ghastly images of those suffering animals covered in toxic black sludge. We will never know the final death toll from the Valdez disaster. As many as a quarter of a million seabirds died, along with 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles and at least 22 orcas. We will never know how many fish were destroyed. The number is likely staggeringly high.

Flash forward 21 years, to 2010. A headline in The Independent (UK) said: "Oil spill in Gulf of Mexico 'could be worse than Exxon Valdez disaster.'"

Wherever human beings go, we somehow manage to fuck everything up. Sometimes it is exceedingly difficult to be hopeful about people. Sometimes it's impossible to fake optimism and say good things about humanity. And sometimes - just sometimes - one quietly hopes that this short-sighted and selfish race will go the way of the Neanderthal. I know it's impolitic to talk like that or think in those terms, but moments like this certainly seem to justify it.

Post-script: For another excellent articles on the threat of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to animals, see David Knowles' column on AOLNews.