Headlines of the Day

Fishermen Hospitalized: BP Not Allowing Clean-Up Workers to Use Respirators

Hazmat suits but no respirators. That arrogant Limey bastard CEO says it may be 'food poisoning' from 'unsanitary conditions' in the temporary worker camps. Hey, asshole, if there's one thing Americans know that Limeys don't, it's how to cook in outdoor situations. Fuck, the English can't cook in a kitchen. Yeesh.

Someone said on TV last night that BP may not have had a clean-up strategy, but they sure as hell had a legal strategy ready to go. The respirator thing is just another plan that's going to backfire on them.

Their larger plan is that they know there are going to be tens of thousands of claims, lawsuits, litigation of all sorts. Their plan? Keep 'em all tied up in court until all the plaintiffs are dead.

Let's hope the prosecutions go a little quicker.

Update:

Fisherman who fell ill during oil spill clean-up alleges BP tried to cover-up evidence.

“At West Jefferson, there were tents set up outside the hospital, where I was stripped of my clothing, washed with water and several showers, before I was allowed into the hospital,” Wunstell said. “When I asked for my clothing, I was told that BP had confiscated all of my clothing and it would not be returned.”

Knowingly exposing workers to toxins and carcinogens without safety equipment due to their (well-founded) fears of legal liability that is going to come back and bite them on the ass and rightly so. We're a very litigious society. This time, that's a good thing.

BP's gotta go down over all this.

Update II:

From the 1953 CIA Overthrow of Democracy in Iran, to the Iraq War, to the Criminal Gulf Catastrophe and Deaths, BP Was There

If you were to draw an oily line from the first exploitation of oil in the Middle East by the British in 1901 (they were in the process of converting their then world dominating naval fleet from coal to oil and were in desperate need of it) to the overthrow of the secular democratic leader in Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1953, to the Iraq War, to the criminal environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, BP would have been there.

BP and its American counterparts are part of the corporate oligarchy that run governments when it comes to energy policy. They don't take orders from sovereign nations; they give them. [...] There is no brake on their malfeasance, greed and criminal behavior, nor their ability to get nations to go to war, overthrow democratically elected leaders, and to get away with pollution of proportions beyond the imagination.

It's way past time for that to change. More.