Why is the Lockerbie bomber still alive? This week Senator Robert Menendez, Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into why someone (or indeed everyone) isn’t dead yet announced plans to send a team of yankee investigators to Scotland. This we can understand as it clear that protocol has been breached on this matter. When someone in Scotland commits a crime like say theft or in the case of the accused, Bertybasset al-Megrahi being spotted buying a jumper (or another one the same colour) which was found on a plane, they are tried by a group of vote hungry senators in the run up to mid-term elections. The only hope of clemency for those found guilty comes in the form of a Christmas pardon from our Lord and Saviour, Obama H. Christ.
Kenny McAskill chose to bypass the time honoured tradition of doing exactly what America wanted and instead exercised a strange form of indigenous justice. Under this crazed system us savage Scots occasionally demonstrate that we have different values to those who seek to destroy us…or America…or is that the same thing?
Anyways understandably pissed off Menendez is sending a crack team to Scotland to investigate what’s wrong with this crazy country and what we can learn from our American brethren. SSY meets the men who hope to save us.
Leading the group will be Frank “Freaky Sheik” McDeak (Dem.) Frank will investigate the disgraceful link between oil and political power in Scotland. “This all came as a shock for me, I had to cut short my Saudi holiday…I was watching 50 virgins spray oil out their whatnots while I threw dollars at them…and now I hear these Scotch have been cutting deals in exchange for oil…America would never cut deals with those who tried to blow us up in exchange for oil and money. The Sheik just wouldn’t have it.”
Perry: If you can't hang 'em - Shoot 'em!
Controversial Texas Governor Rick Perry (Rep.) is to investigate the woefully inhumane Scottish Justice system. “Sure I’ve killed a few people….well a few hundred…and I’ve fired all those in the justice system who questioned my decision to execute a man who according to all my closest advisors and scientists was asleep at the time he is supposed to have murdered his kids…but these Scotch! I tell you…letting someone go who allegedly bought a jumper, a strand of which was allegedly found on a plane that Iran Libya blew up…monsters I say…the lotta them!”
The final senator will be Hawky Pearson (Rep) well known international peace activist. He is concerned by what he sees as a continuation of a trend. “We should have seen the warning signs in Darien. For centuries Scots have been dragging their junior partners in the US around on a series of imperial adventures. They dragged us into their conflict with Libya then just like we sent our young men to die for Scottish oil companies in Iraq and Afghanistan. I say no more American blood should be spilled for Scottish interests!”
We also understand that the Senators are to be accompanied by other progressive Americans concerned that Scotland is slipping into an authoritarian nightmare.
Pat “McGroin” Robertson, gay rights activist, is looking into allegations that crazy, Christian homophobes are funded the very same SNP government who freed the terrorist plotter. “We believe some rightwing bus bandit may have influenced the Scottish regime with his insane ranting about the gays. I’ve never been to Scotland but as I’ve always said there are definitely lots of homos there. We can’t allow these people to influence the government.”
SSY preparing for the American Heroes
The group will be rounded off by asylum campaigner and renowned anti-racist Pat Buchanan. He is expected to directly challenge the racism of the Scottish regime by visiting the controversial “Border Wall” constructed all the way along the border to prevent the flow of poor southerners crossing the border to Scotland to access free personal care for the elderly and lower tuition fees. “I intend to deliver a message to the racists in Scotland. I will invoke the spirit of Reagan and say ‘Mr Hadrien! Tear down this wall!’”
In the US Mr al-Megrahi, convicted on, quite literally, a shred of evidence would have been taken out and shot thus saving the need for all these pesky investigations and all this pish chat about “the truth” “justice” and “closure.” The SSY is ecstatic that these Americans want to visit our depraved nation and show us the light.
We shall greet them on the tarmac waving our Saltires and asking…Why isn’t Scotland more like America?
Monday morning's headlines after SSY's legalise cannabis march
Every human society since we first evolved has experimented with drugs, pyschoactive substances, and altered states of consciousness.
Many leading psychologists and anthropologists believe that this is a normal part of human life, and experimenting with substances like cannabis or magic mushrooms has actually played a role in the evolution of modern, intelligent humans.
But in the last 200 years human society has changed dramatically. With the arrival of capitalism came the rise of modern states, with their borders, armies and police forces. As the technology to control their own people developed, states have had an ever increasing urge to monitor and discipline their populations.
One of the ways they have done this is implement a worldwide system of prohibition of drugs. While the two biggest drug killers, alcohol and tobacco, remain legal billion pound industries, relatively harmless drugs like cannabis and ecstasy remain the target of expensive police operations, and users are turned into criminals who can face imprisonment for doing nothing but experimenting with their own bodies.
The drugs laws we have in Britain and throughout the developed world have never borne any relation to real medical or scientific information, but instead have been shaped by the prejudices and scapegoats created by elites to divide and control the people. One of the main ways they have done this is to use racism, associating certain substances with foreigners or ethnic minorities.
Now, in the 21st century, many countries around the world are finally beginning to wake up to the fact that prohibition has been a costly disaster that has caused untold misery across the planet. The time has at last come to begin treating drugs as a health and social issue, not a criminal one, and base our drugs policies on real scientific evidence, not prejudice and racism.
Have you ever wondered what motivates people who are rampant homophobes? What lies behind the desperate attempts of some people to prove their heterosexuality by denying freedom to others based on their sexual orientation?
It’s actually supported by scientific evidence that a major cause of homophobia is the desire to repress unacknowledged or unwanted homosexual feelings. In August 1996 the American Psychological Association did a study in which they used penile plethysmography (basically the technological measurement of hard ons) to “precisely measure and record male tumescence” of men who were avowedly straight’s reactions to to erotic images. Some of the men were professed homophobes, and some were not, who acted as a control group. The homophobic group basically got a lot more aroused by gay imagery than the control group. Questioned afterwards, the homophobes consistently underrated how much they responded to homosexuality.
One group of activists even cleverly wrote to homophobic MPs who voted against equalising the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex, and challenged them to take the same test of their knob’s reaction to gay stimuli.
Basically, the homophobes experienced severe anxiety and a sense of threat from gay images, which the non-homophobic control group did not. While this is in many ways tragic, and would lead us to the conclusion that many homophobes need help and support to come to terms with themselves and their own feelings, it doesn’t give an excuse for some of the truly awful things people do as a result of that anxiety.
There are many cases of prominent and powerful people who were driving a homophobic agenda in religion, politics or society in general who were actually gay themselves. While this self-loathing is tragic, the harm that these people do to the rights and freedoms of others is inexcusable. To celebrate today’s gay pride march, Leftfield brings you a selection of some of the world’s greatest sexual hypocrites (apologies for them all being American, if you’d like us help expand our list to the UK and around the world then give us some extras in the comments!):
A National Health Service. A welfare state. Letting 18 year olds get legally bevvied. Not bombing countries that haven’t attacked you. There’s a lot of things which are quite popular around the world which the United States hasn’t quite got into yet. But the biggest international phenomenon to go straight over the heads of Americans right now is the World Cup. It’s not exactly surprising given that Americans don’t even call football by it’s right name; they call it “Soccer” cos they already nicked the word football for their own version, which has nothing to do with actual football, kind of like how their Republican Party has fuck all to do with actual Republicanism.
Still each to their own, it’s not like many/any other countries are interested in American Football is it? Surely we can just leave it at that, and enjoy the relaxing and unending serenade of the vuvuzuela while Americans try to make sense of their own insane, overhyped, Michael Bay-directed, body-armour version of football? Unfortunately, some US nutters -- as previously featured in Leftfield -- go beyond leaving it at a simple sporting disagreement. They’ve seen the true nature of “Soccer” -- another part of the World Socialist Conspiracy to dominate and undermine traditional American sporting events. Check this guy out,
You can see that Barack Osama Homo Bin Laden, to give him his full Presidential title, managed to get the United States into the World Cup because he wants to discourage Americans from using their arms, as you obviously can’t use your hands in football (unless you’re part of the French/Uruguayan team).
Is it possible for this man to be any more awesome?
And it’s not just mentals on youtube who have declared war on football -- other people on the Right in the US media have attacked it as a “poor man’s sport” and said “baseball fans don’t riot”. Fair point but then again 13 year old Brazilian kids are unlikely to methodically mow down their fellow classmates in school with an M-16 assault rifle either.
A lot of American disinterest in football is because it’s quite different from other US sports like American football, baseball, basketball etc in that there is much less ’scoring’. The last US Superbowl result was 31 -- 17 to the New Orleans Colts over the Indianapolis Colts, while the last World Cup Final result was a 1-1 draw between Italy and France which Italy won 5 -- 3 on penalties.
Other opposition to football is based on the structure of the sport being less advertising friendly than mainstream US sports. The Superbowl in the United States is notorious for being among if not the most expensive television spot in the world -- a 30 second TV ad during this years superbowl will cost in the region of $2.6 million.
In football however you can’t squeeze a lot of adverts in 90 minutes with only a short break after 45 minutes (and even then a lot of that space is taken up by Alan Hansen desperately trying to find some way to kill himself with his own shoelaces in despair at the England squad). The last time the USA hosted the World Cup in 1994 they tried to break the game into quarters to make it more advertiser friendly, before being told to fuck off by FIFA.
There is a nastier edge to some opposition to football in the US though, which has it’s base in racism and prejudice against the working people throughout the world who support it. Conservatives in the US have attacked football as being part of the “browning” of America due to it’s widespread support among hispanics in the states, along with accusing football of being founded by Indians who used a head as a ball. There is also an association of football with Europe, which US conservatives believe is hell because it has a welfare state, Labour parties and nationalised healthcare. Also the riots associated with football are not as widespread as in US sports, which gives some right-wingers the opportunity to smear football as being intrinsically associated with hooliganism and criminality.
You get some of those arguments in the UK as well which go on to this day, over the Hillsborough Disaster, where a Tory minister repeated the slur that it was due to Liverpool’s predominantly working class support acting as hooligans that led to the deaths, and not incompetent police.
The reason why some Conservatives in the US dislike and slander football is because of the nature of the game -- anyone can play it if you have the skill for it. You don’t need expensive gear and equipment for it -- as one of the nutters in an earlier video said, it’s a sport poor people can enjoy, all you need is 11 folk and a ball and not lots of athletic equipment. You don’t need to have a knowledge of extensive regulations (bar the offisde rule). And you don’t even need to have a lot of space for the basics of it. You can master the basics of football in a school playground, then take it to a stadium. Put simply football is one of the easiest sports for people around the world who aren’t rich to pick up and enjoy.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
You can see that when you look at the results of which teams have won the World Cup in it’s history -- 7 teams have picked up the trophy, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Italy, France, West Germany and England (and even then the English cheated). While 4 out of the 7 countries that have picked up the trophy are developed Western countries, the other 3 are teams from the poorer global south. Brazil has picked up the trophy more times than any other country in the world despite the money the west has available to spend on education and sport. And anti-imperialist Chavez supporter Maradonna is correctly recognised as one of the best football players in the history of the sport, for his stunning, magnificent and inspired handball against England followed by an acceptable second goal later on which unfortunately was still well within the technical rules of the game. Socialist intellectual and popstar John Barnes is bang on when he says that England will not win the World Cup until they adopt Socialism -- just compare the individualistic, Thatcherite millionaires of the Premier League with the austere, cooperative and hardworking German football team. No contest.
You can’t buy the skills to be good at football. You can’t be at an advantage from having a western diet that allows you to bulk up and ram through your opposing team or from have the money to buy the helmets or education you need to understand it all. It’s instinctive, demands self-sacrifice, commitment, vision and hope when you’re losing, and teamwork. That’s why football is socialist and the nutter right-wingers in the USA are right to hate it!
Here are some of the best moments in football Socialists have enjoyed over the years,
Scotland’s national sweetheart Diego Maradonna strikes a blow against English Imperialism.
James McFadden knocks one past the Zodiac-obsessed Domenech’s handballing cheats.
This week Obama sacked his top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. What the affair proves is that, for US commanders, it doesn’t matter how many innocent civilians you kill, or deaths you cover up; what really matters is slagging off colleagues.
McChrystal had given exclusive access to a reporter from Rolling Stone, who went on to report some of the stuff he said about other top US officials in Afghanistan. Basically, he and his team don’t think very highly of them.
McChrystal and his aides said of Obama that he was “unprepared” and “intimidated”, and of US Vice-President Joe Biden, “Who’s that? Joe Bite Me?” They called a meeting with a French minister about war policy “fucking gay.” They say the President’s national security adviser is “a joke”. They call the President’s special adviser to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, “a wounded animal”, and react to him contacting them with “Not another fucking email from Holbrooke!”
The comments are so extraordinary they have made some people ask if McChrystal was actually trying to get fired to avoid taking the blame for failure in Afghanistan. Obama has made a promise to start pulling out troops next July, but this is of course dependent on the situation being stabilised to the US’ liking, something which looks just as unlikely as it has done for the last few years. Certainly there seems to be a recognition by pretty much everyone interviewed in the article that the US is not going to succeed in getting what it wants from Afghanistan. In a long piece, the words “win” or “victory” are not uttered by the general or his team. One commander who does say win says:
“It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win. This is going to end in an argument.”
But a perhaps more convincing explanation is that McChrystal is a product of a society that now accepts permanent war as a part of reality, and glorifies the soldier above the political “wimps” and “pen pushers” back home. The US is an incredibly militarised society, a process which has accelerated dramatically over the past decade. The idea of unending war for global dominance has become acceptable in a way that it wouldn’t have been not that long ago. McChrystal spoke out as part of a culture that loves “mavericks” who ignore what those above them think, causing maximum destruction in the process.
Movies and popular culture help create the context in which McChrystal felt he could publicly speak his mind so dramatically. His backstory reads a perfect action movie character. As a student he defied authorities and was a hard drinker, before going into the special forces to command black ops on behalf of the US government. This is the kind of character who is constantly glorified to the American public. His team of special advisers, who surely must share some of the blame for his gaffes, was composed of special forces veterans, and called themselves ‘Team America.’
The reporter for Rolling Stone himself was suckered into this atmosphere, gleefully describing how, after the “fucking gay” dinner, Team America found the “least Gucci” (unfancy) Paris bar to get “shit faced”, dance, sing incoherent songs about Afghanistan and declare how they would die for each other.
America's top people in Afghanistan
What the tales of macho heroism ignore however is the truth of what a special forces based, counter insurgency strategy actually means. Sacking McChrystal, Obama declared he was making “a change of personnel not of policy.” That is, the plan that McChrystal fought for in Afghanistan remains in place.
The plan is basically to flood Afghanistan with US troops, who will carry out special forces missions to assassinate the networks of opposition, gaining intelligence on how people organise against the US presence and eliminating them. In Iraq, McChrystal headed death squads that systematically hunted US opponents. The article refers to this operation as a “killing machine”, and McChrystal as “a terrorist hunter.”
The only problem with this plan is that it’s been shown again and again not to work. Leave aside all your preconceptions of Jack Bauer lone warrior types from movies, and examine the places were these kinds of tactics have been used before. Algeria, where the French were defeated by the national resistance and independence achieved in 1962. Or Vietnam, where year upon year of American actions failed to remove the political support for the National Liberation Front among the people.
The new US commander, veteran of death squads in Iraq General David Petraeus, wrote a manual on counter insurgency that praises Operation Phoenix in Vietnam. This programme used capture, torture, assassinations, terrorism and infiltration to disrupt the civilian population of Vietnam who supported the Communist resistance to the US. It targeted civilian members of the Communist Party, and led to untold deaths and misery. At least 26,000 people were killed. One former US serviceman called it “a sterile depersonalised murder programme.”
Insurgencies, or guerilla wars, fundamentally depend on the support of the people. Mao famously once wrote that “the guerilla must swim in the people as the fish swim in the sea.” Therefore, counter insurgency programmes inevitably end up killing a lot of civilians.
A good example of what the policy means for people in Afghanistan is a night time raid in Khataba earlier this year. US special forces attacked a home, killing a teenage girl, two pregnant women, alongside an Afghan police officer and government prosecutor who were on their fucking side.
On discovering they had made a mistake, the soldiers then carved their bullets out of the bodies with knives, and carved more out of the walls of their home. They washed blood from the scene with alcohol, and went on to tie up the corpses, claiming that was how they had found the scene. McChrystal, as overall commander, supported this cover up. It was only exposed because of journalists who were willing to dig a little deeper. However, McChrystal has suffered no reprimand as a result. If it had turned out that the men in the house had been “enemy combatants,” you can bet they wouldn’t even have bothered with the cover up.
Death covered up: Pat Tillman
McChrystal’s only other major previous brush with trouble was the affair of Pat Tillman. Tillman was a celebrity recruit for the military, a former NFL American Football player, who very publicly joined the special forces after 9/11, in what was a propaganda coup for the military and government. He was later accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan, something which McChrystal helped cover up by signing off on a falsified report aiming to make it look like he had been killed by hostile fire. But even when this was exposed he got away with it, even though this time it was an American celebrity dead rather than a (to the US public) anonymous Afghan girl.
So the conclusion to take away from all this is clear: the US government doesn’t care about civilian deaths, or even that much about the deaths of their own grunts. Deaths are what they send commanders abroad to cause. But when you start fucking with your fellow officials and commanders, well then your job really is on the line.
As we’ve previouslyreported, the US is currently facing probably its worst environmental disaster of all time, in the shape of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A disaster caused by the corporate greed of BP, determined to drill no matter the consequences, and the incompetence of government regulators compromised by oil company money.
But just how big is the oil slick? Well, over at If it was my home they can use google maps to show you compared to your local familiar terrain. Here’s the spill compared to Scotland. Oh dear.
Now, America doesn’t do trade unions a whole lot. Despite a militant and often bloody labour tradition stretching back 200 years, trade union membership in the United States is now under 15% of the total workforce, and militancy in the workplace is rare. However, when it does do unions, it manages to get them SO FUCKING RIGHT.
Covering a Lady GaGa song perhaps isn’t the most original idea in the world. It’s been done by everyone from American GIs in Afghanistan to erm, some topless guy jumping about his room on chatroulette. But how about charging into the hotel you work in, THEN performing the song with rewritten lyrics that highlight the poor pay and conditions being served to you by your employer? SSY thinks the labour movement in the UK could learn much from our forward-thinking American friends. No doubt the BA dispute would have been solved months ago, if only Unite union leaders Derek Simpson and Len McLuskey had taken it upon themselves to star in a reworked version of Busted’s ‘Air Hostess’. And indeed, we’re sure that the posties would have their battle ages ago if CWU leader Billy Hayes had thought about doing a hilarious youtube spoof of the Postman Pat theme song. Until then, we’ll just have to make do with watching the awe-inspiring attempts of our comrades across the Atlantic. Workers’ rights are hot!
UPDATE: in the interests of balance, here’s a nice bit of union-busting from Wal-Mart:
A sign put up by people in Louisiana who face the destruction of their environment and livelihoods
As Leftfield previously reported, the US is currently undergoing one of its worst environmental disasters of all time. Last month, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico started an oil spill of gargantuan proportions. For weeks huge quantities of oil have been pouring into a pristine natural environment, devastating the species that live in it as well as the lives of the people living along the Gulf coast. Gulf fishermen are likely to be left without a livelihood.
As the full weight of this catastrophe sinks in, attention is increasingly turning to the role of the Obama administration in supporting BP, the company that operated Deepwater Horizon.
BP is the fourth largest company on Planet Earth. As of 2007 it had $292 billion in revenue. They use some of that money to directly influence the American political process. In 2008, the year of the last Presidential elections, the biggest recipient of BP’s cash was Barack Obama, who got $71,051 for his campaign.
In 2009 BP allocated $16 million for lobbying Congress. They allocated another $3.5 million for the first quarter of 2010.
The year following Obama’s election, the US Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service exempted the Deepwater Horizon from a detailed environmental assessment, concluding that the risk of a massive spill was unlikely. This followed intense lobbying by BP to have their rig exempted from the rules of environmental protection laws. In a letter to the White House, BP said the waiver would “avoid unnecessary paperwork and delays.” Those assessments that did take place claimed, in accordance with BP, that a spill like the one currently going on was impossible.
The massive spill seen from space: note the scale
Considering the billions to be gained in profits, BP must have considered the money they put towards getting Barack Obama elected money well spent.
In their application to drill, BP themselves admitted they weren’t going to put in place any further environmental protection measures than the bare minimum required by regulations.
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver “put BP entirely in control” of the way it conducted its drilling.
“The agency’s oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum’s self-serving drilling plans,” Suckling said.
Freed from the possibility of proper inspection, it turns out that BP then went on to drill deeper than they had been licensed to. And a safety valve to turn off the oil in case of an explosion was not installed, because it was considered too expensive.
Since the disaster, Obama has struggled to look tough on the issue, claiming BP were completely responsible and will be made to pay. But this distracts from his own role, and the role of his government, in allowing this disaster to happen.
Since the US government declared Deepwater Horizon safe, 11 workers have gone missing, presumed dead. Oil gushes from the sea bed at the rate of 4000 barrels a day, and already covers an area larger than Puerto Rico. Efforts to cap the spill with a specially manufactured tower have so far failed, and the tower has had to be pulled out. Hundreds of people have already been made unemployed due to the devastation of fisheries, and as time goes on many more will lose their jobs. The damage to unique ecosystem of the Gulf will likely last centuries.
It seems unbelievable that BP or the Obama administration thought you could drill through 13,000 feet of rock below 5,000 feet of water without significant risk. But that’s the corrosive effect of capitalism: the people running BP, an entity with more power than most countries, cared more about the short term profits to be made than the centuries of damage they could do. The US government is corrupted and controlled by these powerful companies, and can’t be relied on to protect its own people.
Its beyond urgent that the global energy economy is taken out of these hands of these corporations. Putting energy in the hands of people, and meeting our needs on a not for profit basis is one of the most crucial issues facing the human race.
Updates: The Centre for Biological Diversity reports that even after the spill had begun, the Minerals Management Service has been offering waivers on detailed inspections, and continues to be nothing more than a rubber stamp for the drilling industry. So far, nothing has changed in the government’s pro-oil stance, which comes at the expense of living things that live near oil fields, including human beings.
In his latest column, Fidel Castro (the retired leader of the Cuban revolution) mentions the spill:
“Such developments as the recent environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico show how little the governments can do against those in control of capital. These are the ones who, both in the United States and in Europe, through the economy of our globalized planet decide the fate of the peoples.”
One of the worst environmental disasters in US history is currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, and the reactions to it are an indictment of the capitalist oil industry and their bought-and-paid-for politicians.
After an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig, operated by BP, an underwater oil well is currently discharging 790,000 – 4 million litres of oil a day into a precious marine wilderness that is home to a whole range of species that have already been pushed to the brink of extinction by human activity, such as loggerhead turtles. Eleven workers are missing, presumed dead. The spill already covers an area the size of Puerto Rico.
The US government has put the blame for the disaster on the shoulders of BP, who recently announced a 135% increase in profits for the first quarter of 2010. Although BP have accepted responsibility, also involved were the notorious Halliburton of Dick Cheney/privatising Iraq fame, who were responsible for placing a concrete cap on the undersea well. But what all of this ignores is the responsibility of the government itself, after just last month Obama announced permission for further offshore oil drilling in US waters, a decision that was slammed by environmentalists.
The burning, sinking Deepwater Horizon rig
The fact of the matter is that accidents like this are inevitable with offshore oil drilling. Just last year, a similar blowout took place in the Timor sea off Australia, but unlike the current disaster, didn’t receive the same worldwide media coverage. Obama rejected calls from environmentalists to cancel planned lease sales in the mid-Atlantic for more offshore oil drilling in the aftermath of the disaster. His was just the most public face of a massive PR offensive to try and keep the offshore oil drilling programme on schedule.
Obama’s stated motivation is to reduce the dependence of the US on foreign oil, primarily from the Middle East, which is a real strategic consideration for US imperialism. But more simply, politicians in the US need millions of dollars to be able to fight and in election campaigns, and most of that money comes from corporate donors such as the oil industry.
Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, a state whose Gulf coastline will be devastated by the oil, told the Senate on Friday “I don’t believe we should retreat” on offshore drilling. In a complete betrayal of the ordinary people of her state, who are set to face the destruction of their environment and livelihoods, she pushed hard for continued extraction. She has repeatedly tried to downplay the disaster to the media, claiming it will soon be resolved, rather than the truth which is that this will devastate the Gulf of Mexico for years to come.
The reason for her hard work? Between 2000-8, Landrieu received $547,000 from oil companies, making her one of the highest recipients of oil money in the US Congress.
The spill seen from space. See the tiny white dot of a plane in the upper left for a sense of scale.
Mainstream media outlets have also picked up the slack, with articles such as the New York Times’ ‘The spill vs. a need to drill,’ which claimed that a fossil fuel free future is “decades away”. The fact remains however that this propaganda is only required to cover up the obvious: the huge amounts of investment being poured into the offshore drilling programme could be used to transform the US and world energy economy to one dependent on wind, solar and other non-deadly forms of power.
BP itself has also been busy. Although the costs of the clean up have already wiped 6% off their market value, federal law itself limits the non cleanup costs for BP to $75 million. But BP have found an ingenious way to try and get out of their obligations to the communities they have devastated: they are tricking local fishermen out of the right to sue them for the damage to their livelihoods.
It works like this: BP are paying local fishermen to help with the cleanup operation. These fishermen, who very shortly aren’t going to have virtually any fish left to catch in the dead waters, are desperate for cash and sign up. But the contracts contain clauses exempting BP from responsibility, meaning the fishermen are waiving their right to make BP pay for their environmental crimes. BP claim this is just a legal mixup, but the consequences will be the same.
The Gulf of Mexico is a region of incredible ecological diversity and natural beauty. But it is also home to fascinating human cultural diversity, with a people who are the products of waves of settlement over centuries, including the Cajun people descended from French colonists, Native Americans, descendants of African slaves and other European peoples. These human communities have already faced the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, and the failure of capitalism to protect them from natural disaster. Now, they have to face a disaster directly caused by the actions of the capitalist oil industry. For the sake of humans and the ecological homes they inhabit, it’s time for the world to start bringing the oil industry to a conclusion, and taking energy industries out of the hands of profit making corporations in order to transform the energy economy into an ecologically sustainable future.
Have you ever wondered what motivates people who are rampant homophobes? What lies behind the desperate attempts of some people to prove their heterosexuality by denying freedom to others based on their sexual orientation?
It seems unbelievable that BP or the Obama administration thought you could drill through 13,000 feet of rock below 5,000 feet of water without significant risk. But that’s the corrosive effect of capitalism: the people running BP, an entity with more power than most countries, cared more about the short term profits to be made than the centuries of damage they could do. The US government is corrupted and controlled by these powerful companies, and can’t be relied on to protect its own people.
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