Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Cover-up: BP's Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega-Disaster

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Cover-up: BP's Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega-Disaster

by Wayne Madsen from OilPrice. The author chronicles the efforts by the Obama administration to collude with BP and associated companies to downplay and limit the information regarding the spill, and to limit the damages to these corporations. Also he looks at the ominous longer term consequences of the spill.

WMR [Wayne Madsen Report] has been informed by sources in the US Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Florida Department of Environmental Protection that the Obama White House and British Petroleum (BP), which pumped $71,000 into Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign -- more than John McCain or Hillary Clinton, are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP's liability for damage caused by what can be called a "mega-disaster."