U.S. oil hypocrisy over Gulf of Mexico disaster makes me slick..
As Obama Barack says that "BP will pay" and American rednecks disgracefully and offensively trample on the British flag in protests against the Gulf of Mexico oil slick, it's time to say this: America's hypocrisy is overwhelming.
Apart from the fact that BP merely owned the oil rig and that the firm who were actually doing the drilling which caused the disaster were Halliburton, an American firm, it's a fact that this disaster may not have happened if the US wasn't so incredibly hooked on oil.
The US has just 5% of the world's population but consumes a quarter of the world's oil.
And it's not as if the US itself hasn't been to blame for major industrial catrastrophes. The US firm Union Carbide killed 15,000 people in India in 1984, and the survivors got less compensation that they would have got if they were Americans.
And, when British soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, trampling on the Union Jack is, quite frankly, offensive.
U.S. oil hypocrisy over Gulf of Mexico disaster makes me slick..
By Brian Reade
3/06/2010
Daily Mirror
As they were the ones who were actually doing the drilling, US firm Halliburton are more to blame over the disaster than BP, who merely owned the rig - but it's suitable for Americans to blame the foreign company.
I don't claim to be the most patriotic of citizens.
I'd rather sing God Save The Natterjack Toad than God Save The Queen and during the World Cup there's as much chance of me flying an Israeli flag from my car as the Cross of St Dixons.
But the sight of American rednecks stomping on Union Jacks in Louisiana, chanting "British scum" and calling us "oil pigs" - simply because one of the world's biggest multinationals has British in its title - almost had me crocheting John Bull underpants.
US firm Union Carbide killed 15,000 people in India in 1984
BP has cocked up bigtime and deserves all the billion-dollar lawsuits heading its way for causing an ecological nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico.
But it's an industrial accident and they happen. (Remember the 15,000 Indians that US firm Union Carbide killed in Bhopal?)
And there will be more of them as companies dig deeper for the Earth's last few trillion gallons of oil to satisfy our insatiable consumerist thirst.
For Americans to blame foreigners for birds washing up on their shore like Al Jolson impersonators takes their blind hypocrisy to dizzying heights.
Yanks are hooked on oil like heroin junkies.
They believe their constitution gives them the right to fill their gas-guzzling Chevvies up for a few dollars less. They view cheap oil as their birthright, consuming 25% of the world's supply despite having only 5% of its population.
They condemn climate change data as an updated communist manifesto.
They were happy to impose lax regulations on firms like BP, encouraging them to dig for oil one mile below the seabed in the hazardous Gulf of Mexico, as long as they piped it to their gas stations.
They turn a blind eye to West Africa where American firm Exxon is overseeing spillages on a worse scale and regularity than the Gulf disaster, because it supplies almost half their oil imports.
They were happy to send their sons to die in an illegal war in Aye-Rack if it meant getting their paws on the second-biggest supply of oil in the world.
Oil production is now flowing so bountifully in post-war Iraq, America's puppet government has just awarded the contract to its biggest oilfield at Rumaila.
And which firm has been given the biggest chunk of it because of its unparalleled expertise at bringing up black gold? Those Limey Oil Pigs BP.
Americans are in denial. About their own lifestyles, about their reliance on oil to fuel those lifestyles, about the increasing risks needed to extract it and about what it's doing to the planet.
Don't take the British out of BP and blame us.
You live by the black stuff, you die by the black stuff.
And now those beached birds in body bags threaten to outnumber beached whales in swimwear on your shores, maybe you'll start to realise it's YOU who is killing the world.
U.S. must jack in British oil protests
Tony Parsons
5/06/2010
The Mirror
Disgraceful: Yank rednecks trample on the Union Jack during a protest over the oil spill
It was touching to see Barack Obama giving Paul McCartney an award at the White House and to hear the President say that: “America was grateful a young Englishman shared his dreams with us.”
I have never seen McCartney so visibly moved. It was almost as if the special relationship was still special. But at anti-BP demonstrations in the States, it is now routine for Union Jacks to be trampled under foot.
As the United States struggles to cope with the worst environmental disaster in its history, we can all understand the frustration of ordinary Americans who have had their livelihoods destroyed by the BP oil spill.
But they are wiping their cowboy boots on the Union Jack at the very moment that British soldiers are fighting and dying alongside American soldiers in Afghanistan.
It’s nothing to do with us, buddy.
No more than the explosion of the American-owned Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea in 1988, which killed 167 people, had anything to do with the average American.
So don’t disrespect the Union Jack, mac. Not when British soldiers are dying in Afghanistan.
mirror.co.uk
