On another thread you blamed Clinton for the mess created by Bush during his 8 years in the White House.
B.P.'s Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Thread (it's all here).....
- Thread starter Praxius
- Start date
On another thread you blamed Clinton for the mess created by Bush during his 8 years in the White House.
BP Official Admits to Damage BENEATH THE SEA FLOOR
Sunday, 13 June 2010 07:13
'As I noted Tuesday, there is growing evidence that BP's oil well - technically called the "well casing" or "well bore" - has suffered damage beneath the level of the sea floor.
The evidence is growing stronger and stronger that there is substantial damage beneath the sea floor. Indeed, it appears that BP officials themselves have admitted to such damage. This has enormous impacts on both the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, and the prospects for quickly stopping the leak this summer.'
Read more: BP Official Admits to Damage BENEATH THE SEA FLOOR
Sunday, 13 June 2010 07:13
'As I noted Tuesday, there is growing evidence that BP's oil well - technically called the "well casing" or "well bore" - has suffered damage beneath the level of the sea floor.
The evidence is growing stronger and stronger that there is substantial damage beneath the sea floor. Indeed, it appears that BP officials themselves have admitted to such damage. This has enormous impacts on both the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, and the prospects for quickly stopping the leak this summer.'
Read more: BP Official Admits to Damage BENEATH THE SEA FLOOR
One of the annoying things about the disgusting anti-British rhetoric coming out of the United States, even coming from its joke of a president, is the fact that Americans keep referring to BP as "British Petroleum", despite the fact it hasn't officially been called that since 1998 (it's almost as much an American-owned company as a British-owned company and it has more US employees than British ones). I'm also hard-pressed to find similar anti-Americanism coming from the UK when the American-owned Piper Alpha oil rig exploded off the British coast in 1988 killing 167 people.
The fact is that BP is almost as much an American company, if not more, than a British company. 40% of BP shareholders are British and almost the same amount - 39% - are American. There are more Amerians working for BP than Britons. And not only do millions of British pensioners rely on BP, but so do millions of American pensioners (I don't how many Yanks knew that), so the United States had better watch its step or millions of its pensioners will suffer. But, despite all this, it's convenient for Americans to pretend that BP is a wholly foreign company for them to blame.
And Obama, with his anti-British tone, now suddenly getting all personal, threatening to "kick ass", is a disgrace to his office.
Slick operator in a sea of mistrust
The News of the World
13th June 2010
FRASER Nelson, Editor of The Spectator.
DISGRACE: Obama
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig was built in South Korea. Its owners are based in Geneva. It is operated by a firm in the USA whose owners are BP which is 39% owned by Americans.
WHEN David Cameron phoned Barack Obama yesterday, he didn't have to shout. He just had to say where he'd been.
Visiting British troops, soon to be under US command in Afghanistan. A reminder that Britain is America's most dependable ally.
I'm starting to wonder if Obama cares. Because to listen to his anti-British language, it seems the "special relationship" is dead.
The way Obama has behaved - threatening "kick ass" at BP over the oil spill - simply disgraces the office of president.
Americans keep referring to BP as "British Petroleum" even though it is no longer oficially called that. Maybe BP - which is 39% owned by Americans - should change its name to Amoco, the US company it bought 12 years ago. That should shut Obama and the Americans up.
Sure, disaster has struck. An oil rig leased by BP blew up, sending up to 40,000 barrels of oil a day spewing into American waters.
It's been going on for weeks, and Obama's response had been confused and lethargic. So he and his Cabinet lash out at Britain.
They vow to do things like "keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum". But there's no such company.
BP changed its name a decade ago. But Obama is good at language (if little else).
The president knows he's blowing an anti-British dog whistle, and stirring up a little bit of hatred. And it's working a treat.
Ignorant Americans need to know the truth.
BP has 24,000 American employees and just 10,000 British employees. Of the 126 people working on the Deepwater Horizon, only eight were BP employees. BP had a 65% share in the well, while a partner, Anadarko, had 25%. The rig was owned and operated by a US firm, Transocean. A failed blow-out preventer was made by another US firm, Cameron, while Halliburton, the oil services firm once run by Dick Cheney, carried out cement work that was supposed to seal the well. Some 40% of BP's shares are held in the UK, while 39% are held in the US. A collapse of BP would destroy livelihoods, damage pension funds and wipe out savings in the US as well as the UK.
British visitors in America, and UK firms trying to do business, report how the mood has hardened.
The blown-up oil rig was built in South Korea, owned by a Geneva-based company and operated by an American company owned by BP.
But BP, 39 per cent owned by Americans, is led by a British plonker named Tony Hayward. Calamitously, the public face of the disaster has an English accent.
Gaffe-prone Hayward whines: "I'd like my life back." Americans think: "Sure. Life plus 20 - and no parole."
BP should rename itself Amoco - the US company it bought 12 years ago. That should shut Obama up.
We can have no idea exactly what Cameron and Obama said yesterday. But Cam is clearly confident Obama will now pipe down.
Specifically, we are told, Obama has agreed never to use the phrase "British Petroleum" again.
Cam is right not to pick a fight with Obama over a multinational company. As PM, he defends Britain. And that means gently pointing out the harm Obama's words do to British interests in America. If Cam wanted to lower himself to Obama's level, he could point out how Britain was hit by fraud at US investment banks.
newsoftheworld.co.uk
The fact is that BP is almost as much an American company, if not more, than a British company. 40% of BP shareholders are British and almost the same amount - 39% - are American. There are more Amerians working for BP than Britons. And not only do millions of British pensioners rely on BP, but so do millions of American pensioners (I don't how many Yanks knew that), so the United States had better watch its step or millions of its pensioners will suffer. But, despite all this, it's convenient for Americans to pretend that BP is a wholly foreign company for them to blame.
And Obama, with his anti-British tone, now suddenly getting all personal, threatening to "kick ass", is a disgrace to his office.
Slick operator in a sea of mistrust
The News of the World
13th June 2010
FRASER Nelson, Editor of The Spectator.
DISGRACE: Obama
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig was built in South Korea. Its owners are based in Geneva. It is operated by a firm in the USA whose owners are BP which is 39% owned by Americans.
WHEN David Cameron phoned Barack Obama yesterday, he didn't have to shout. He just had to say where he'd been.
Visiting British troops, soon to be under US command in Afghanistan. A reminder that Britain is America's most dependable ally.
I'm starting to wonder if Obama cares. Because to listen to his anti-British language, it seems the "special relationship" is dead.
The way Obama has behaved - threatening "kick ass" at BP over the oil spill - simply disgraces the office of president.
Americans keep referring to BP as "British Petroleum" even though it is no longer oficially called that. Maybe BP - which is 39% owned by Americans - should change its name to Amoco, the US company it bought 12 years ago. That should shut Obama and the Americans up.
Sure, disaster has struck. An oil rig leased by BP blew up, sending up to 40,000 barrels of oil a day spewing into American waters.
It's been going on for weeks, and Obama's response had been confused and lethargic. So he and his Cabinet lash out at Britain.
They vow to do things like "keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum". But there's no such company.
BP changed its name a decade ago. But Obama is good at language (if little else).
The president knows he's blowing an anti-British dog whistle, and stirring up a little bit of hatred. And it's working a treat.
Ignorant Americans need to know the truth.
BP has 24,000 American employees and just 10,000 British employees. Of the 126 people working on the Deepwater Horizon, only eight were BP employees. BP had a 65% share in the well, while a partner, Anadarko, had 25%. The rig was owned and operated by a US firm, Transocean. A failed blow-out preventer was made by another US firm, Cameron, while Halliburton, the oil services firm once run by Dick Cheney, carried out cement work that was supposed to seal the well. Some 40% of BP's shares are held in the UK, while 39% are held in the US. A collapse of BP would destroy livelihoods, damage pension funds and wipe out savings in the US as well as the UK.
British visitors in America, and UK firms trying to do business, report how the mood has hardened.
The blown-up oil rig was built in South Korea, owned by a Geneva-based company and operated by an American company owned by BP.
But BP, 39 per cent owned by Americans, is led by a British plonker named Tony Hayward. Calamitously, the public face of the disaster has an English accent.
Gaffe-prone Hayward whines: "I'd like my life back." Americans think: "Sure. Life plus 20 - and no parole."
BP should rename itself Amoco - the US company it bought 12 years ago. That should shut Obama up.
We can have no idea exactly what Cameron and Obama said yesterday. But Cam is clearly confident Obama will now pipe down.
Specifically, we are told, Obama has agreed never to use the phrase "British Petroleum" again.
Cam is right not to pick a fight with Obama over a multinational company. As PM, he defends Britain. And that means gently pointing out the harm Obama's words do to British interests in America. If Cam wanted to lower himself to Obama's level, he could point out how Britain was hit by fraud at US investment banks.
newsoftheworld.co.uk
Last edited:
You are thinking of that dike in Holland, this might need something a little bigger and heavier.
That will change once Britain's sea-birds start washing up on their own shore covered in sludge. Quite likely as soon as it escapes into the Atlantic their subs will get their launch orders. Europe isn't going to go down to save an America that is beyond repair.
Blackleaf: Nobody said Americans are well educated.Or even smart. The fact that the people responsible for this disaster which is the Republican party in the US are pushing their own agenda which is to remove Obama from the white house. Don't forget that the noise is coming from the same LMCs(low marble count) that decided that calling french fries freedom fries when they were POed at France would bother France. Mostly it is called spin.
Here are another two great articles, which again illustrate why the US is in the wrong during this debacle and that it has no right to preach to other nations over environmental disasters (the US has a poor track record).
Both articles are a bit of a history lesson. The first explains why, despite all the nonsense about a "Special relationship", the US has ALWAYS tried to do Britain down. Obama in particular seems excessively anti-British, and that will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever read his memoirs, Dreams Of My Father, in which he mentions that his father was once tortured by the British in Kenya, an event which he appears to have entirely invented.
The article also has a close look at the so-called "special relationship" of Britain and the US for the last 200 years and finds that the relationship hasn't been special at all.
The second article lists some of the many US-caused environmental catastrophes which have hit the world but which the US has refused to take the blame for, such as the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India which killed almost 4,000 people; the 1967 Torrey Canyon oil spill off the British coast which was the worst oil spill in British history (and the world's first major maritime environmental incident); and the 1988 Piper Alpha oil rig disaster which killed 167 people off the British coast in the North Sea.
America's ALWAYS tried to do down Britain
By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
11th June 2010
Daily Mail
Friend or foe? As the oil continues to gush in the Gulf of Mexico, angry rhetoric has gushed from President Barack Obama's lips
Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, calls Obama's rhetoric 'extreme and unhelpful'; London mayor Boris Johnson says it's 'anti-British', adding that 'BP is paying a very, very heavy price indeed'.
Bemusingly, David Cameron says only that he understands the U.S. administration's 'frustration', although he promises to take up the matter with Obama, after the Prime Minister returns from Afghanistan - where British troops are fighting and dying on behalf of the United States, it may be recalled.
'Extreme and unhelpful' is no exaggeration. Obama has played to the gallery by saying that he would like to sack Tony Hayward, head of BP; the president talks in a cheap way about 'kicking ass'. Whether or not the American president can kick our asses, he can certainly hurt our wallets and purses.
As BP's share price has plummeted, it has lost £55billion of its market value, and the company's entire outlook is very bleak, which affects most of us. Every British insurance company, building society and pension fund has large holdings of BP shares in its portfolio.
If you have a pension, at present or in prospect, your income falls with every sour word Obama speaks. It's a fine way for a friend to behave, if indeed we should regard the president as a friend.
His rhetoric is repellently hypocritical as well as demagogic. Quite apart from the fact that Hayward and his colleagues have every interest in plugging the spill, for years past BP has filled Washington's coffers with tax revenue, and fed the American people's unquenchable thirst for cheap petrol.
When Obama continually refers to BP as 'British Petroleum', which is no longer its formal name, he is saying something revealing about himself, and his Anglophobic spite will come as no surprise to those who have followed his career, and read his memoir Dreams From My Father.
He seems to have made up the part about his father being tortured by the British in Kenya, but there's no question that Obama nurses a disdain for and even dislike of this country.
Safety measures: Pelicans fly over a small island off the coast of Louisiana which has been surrounded by a boom to protect it from the oil spill. The disaster has wiped billions off BP's value
Instead of reciprocating his feelings, we should maybe take the opportunity to look harder at our connection with the United States, and at that ridiculous phrase 'special relationship'. On the whole Englishmen have used the phrase much more than Americans, although one exception was the affable if inept Senator John McCain.
A few years before he was defeated for the presidency by Obama, he visited England, and was interviewed. 'The special relationship between our two countries will endure throughout the 21st century,' McCain said. 'I say that with total confidence because it's lasted for 200 years.'
It has what? The senator's '200 years' would take us back to the beginning of the 19th century, or let's say to 1812. What was special about the relationship that year was that the two countries were at war.
Shortly after he had taken us into the appalling Iraq war, by way of telling a pack of porkies with Alastair Campbell's sordid help, Tony Blair visited Washington to be greeted by President Bush - 'Thank you, friend' - and cheered to the echo by Congress for services rendered. In his smarmy speech, Blair mentioned the burning of Washington by the British in 1814 and obsequiously said: 'I know it's kinda late, but sorry.'
Had he known more history, he might have been aware that this was only one episode in a very fraught story. For most of the 19th century a large part of the British Army had to be stationed in Canada to protect it from its southern neighbour, and at one point Sir Robert Peel warned Parliament about the grave danger of a war with the United States.
Environmental disaster: President Obama and National Incident Commander Thad Allen make a statement after being briefed on the BP oil spill. Obama has been accused of handling the crisis in an 'anti-British' way
In 1895 the two countries nearly went to war again over an incomprehensible border dispute in South America, and bloodshed was avoided only by the forbearance of Lord Salisbury, the prime minister.
A certain kind of fawning Tory likes to talk about the way the Americans have generously rescued us in the past century. This is historical claptrap. When the Great War began in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson worried that he might need to intervene - on the German side.
In 1917, the United States did at last enter the war, after the British had suffered hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded. Even then the Americans sustained very few casualties by European standards, as they did in the next war.
This time they waited from September 1939 until December 1941, and then they went to war only because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on the United States (not the other way round).
And before that, the supposedly generous Lend-Lease agreement had
stripped us of overseas assets and destroyed the British exporting economy for decades to come.
Any idea of a special relationship should have been ended in 1956 when Washington pulled the rug from under the British and French when their troops had gone to Suez. That didn't stop President Johnson from subsequently demanding British troops to serve in Vietnam. Mercifully, Harold Wilson, in his one good deed as prime minister, politely declined.
Since then we have been taken into another terrible war in which we had no reason to fight by Tony Blair, who throughout his career assiduously served the interests of another country. Our rewards from Washington have ranged from a tariff likely to destroy what's left of the British steel industry, to studied American neutrality over the Falklands, to Obama's grandstanding attacks on BP.
A year ago Gordon Brown visited Washington to be publicly humiliated by Obama (remember the exchange of gifts: thoughtful presents for the president and his children, trashy DVDs and toys for the Browns in return).
Rescue: The Discover Enterprise sits over the leak site as it burns off crude oil in Gulf Shores, Alabama
If a dark cloud of oil can now have a silver lining, then it might at least lead us to reassess our ignoble relationship with Washington. If the American president is going to ignore or even damage British interests, then let him.
But might not our own government stand up for those interests? For a start, some of the money we've all lost through the BP debacle, and presidential venom, could at least be recouped by bringing our troops home from a hopeless American war in Afghanistan.
When disaster strikes, the U.S. will NEVER take the blame
By Michael Hanlon , Science Editor
11th June 2010
Daily Mail
America's hands are far from clean when it comes to environmental disasters, as the list of examples here shows. Whenever U.S. firms have caused death and mayhem around the world, the response from their executives has been to call their lawyers and to deny any liability. And Washington's priority has usually been to protect its citizens and, especially, its shareholders at all costs.
Bhopal Tragedy: The chemical explosion blinded thousands, including this young mother seen here with her baby
• BHOPAL TRAGEDY
On the night of December 2 and 3, 1984, a 40-ton leak of methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, caused the immediate deaths of at least 3,787 people, as a pale mist settled over the town. Thousands more were blinded and crippled by the disaster.
In the intervening years at least 20,000 have died prematurely from the leak, and 150,000 have suffered permanent health problems.
Union Carbide, now a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company, was a U.S. firm, and its officials have consistently refused to take full liability for the accident.
Immediately after the disaster the CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, was arrested by Indian police when he visited Bhopal. He was released on bail and left the country.
Since then Anderson, who lives in comfortable retirement in the U.S., has avoided an international arrest warrant, and India has no extradition treaty with the U.S.
Indeed the U.S. government and American courts have repeatedly blocked attempts by survivors' groups and the Indian government to bring Anderson and other American executives to account, and very little of the $450million compensation package paid by Union Carbide has gone to the survivors (money that came not from the company but from its insurers).
This week, seven former Union Carbide managers, some in their seventies, were found guilty by an Indian court of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years in prison. All were Indian nationals.
Not a single U.S. citizen has been punished for the disaster despite evidence emerging that the plant's owners were aware, before the tragedy took place, that faults existed in the Indian plant.
Exxon Valdez: The oil spill ravaged the Alaskan coast
• EXXON VALDEZ
When a quarter of a million barrels of oil leaked from the stricken supertanker Exxon Valdez in March 1989, it was considered the worst maritime environmental disaster in history.
The affected area lay wholly in U.S. territory, Prince William Sound in Alaska, and the ship was owned and operated by a U.S. firm.
Despite the impact on seals, birds, fish and other wildlife, Exxon fought hard to avoid paying the massive compensation decreed by the American courts, reducing an original penalty of $5billion to just $500million on appeal.
As usual, the American legal system acted fast to defend the interests of American corporations, even when their victims were American citizens (and sea creatures).
• TORREY CANYON
The worst oil spill in British history (and the world's first major maritime environmental incident) polluted miles of Cornish coastline, and cost the local tourist industry tens of millions of pounds.
The 1967 disaster involved an American supertanker, the Torrey Canyon, which had been chartered by British Petroleum. It ran aground on a reef off the Scilly Isles, and broke up; the subsequent clean-up operation cost the UK and French governments tens of millions of pounds.
Attempts to recover any cash from the tanker's owners proved almost impossible. At one point, a young British lawyer, Anthony O'Connor, served a writ against the owners by sneaking aboard the Torrey Canyon's sister ship, the Lake Palourde, when she was moored in Singapore. He got aboard by pretending to be a whisky salesman and stuck his writ to the mast.
French naval speedboats chased the Lake Palourde but were unable to board her and serve their writ on behalf of Paris.
Sir Elwyn Jones, the Attorney General, told Parliament, seven months after the disaster that the Barracuda Tanker Corporation was trying to limit its liability in the U.S. courts to just $50.
In the end, compensation of £3million was paid, a small fraction of the clean-up costs and costs to the tourism industry.
Torrey Canyon: The worst spill in UK history
• PIPER ALPHA
On July 6, 1988, 167 people were killed when the North Sea oil rig Piper Alpha exploded in a sheet of flame.
The rig lay about 120 miles northeast of Aberdeen, in the British North Sea Sector. It was wholly owned by Occidental Petroleum, based in Los Angeles, California.
An inquiry found Occidental Petroleum partially liable, on the grounds of inadequate safety and maintenance procedures, but no prosecutions followed.
Despite the catastrophic loss of life (more than 15 times as many were killed as by Deepwater Horizon) and the devastating economic consequences of losing some 10 per cent of total North Sea production, there was no anti-American rhetoric at the time from the Thatcher government.
dailymail.co.uk
Both articles are a bit of a history lesson. The first explains why, despite all the nonsense about a "Special relationship", the US has ALWAYS tried to do Britain down. Obama in particular seems excessively anti-British, and that will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever read his memoirs, Dreams Of My Father, in which he mentions that his father was once tortured by the British in Kenya, an event which he appears to have entirely invented.
The article also has a close look at the so-called "special relationship" of Britain and the US for the last 200 years and finds that the relationship hasn't been special at all.
The second article lists some of the many US-caused environmental catastrophes which have hit the world but which the US has refused to take the blame for, such as the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India which killed almost 4,000 people; the 1967 Torrey Canyon oil spill off the British coast which was the worst oil spill in British history (and the world's first major maritime environmental incident); and the 1988 Piper Alpha oil rig disaster which killed 167 people off the British coast in the North Sea.
America's ALWAYS tried to do down Britain
By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
11th June 2010
Daily Mail
Friend or foe? As the oil continues to gush in the Gulf of Mexico, angry rhetoric has gushed from President Barack Obama's lips
Has the worm turned at last? As the oil continues to gush in the Gulf of Mexico, angry rhetoric has gushed from President Barack Obama's lips. His rabid denunciations of BP have damaged the interests not only of that company but of most British people, in a way that must make us wonder whether he leads a friendly country.
Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, calls Obama's rhetoric 'extreme and unhelpful'; London mayor Boris Johnson says it's 'anti-British', adding that 'BP is paying a very, very heavy price indeed'.
Bemusingly, David Cameron says only that he understands the U.S. administration's 'frustration', although he promises to take up the matter with Obama, after the Prime Minister returns from Afghanistan - where British troops are fighting and dying on behalf of the United States, it may be recalled.
'Extreme and unhelpful' is no exaggeration. Obama has played to the gallery by saying that he would like to sack Tony Hayward, head of BP; the president talks in a cheap way about 'kicking ass'. Whether or not the American president can kick our asses, he can certainly hurt our wallets and purses.
As BP's share price has plummeted, it has lost £55billion of its market value, and the company's entire outlook is very bleak, which affects most of us. Every British insurance company, building society and pension fund has large holdings of BP shares in its portfolio.
If you have a pension, at present or in prospect, your income falls with every sour word Obama speaks. It's a fine way for a friend to behave, if indeed we should regard the president as a friend.
His rhetoric is repellently hypocritical as well as demagogic. Quite apart from the fact that Hayward and his colleagues have every interest in plugging the spill, for years past BP has filled Washington's coffers with tax revenue, and fed the American people's unquenchable thirst for cheap petrol.
When Obama continually refers to BP as 'British Petroleum', which is no longer its formal name, he is saying something revealing about himself, and his Anglophobic spite will come as no surprise to those who have followed his career, and read his memoir Dreams From My Father.
He seems to have made up the part about his father being tortured by the British in Kenya, but there's no question that Obama nurses a disdain for and even dislike of this country.
Safety measures: Pelicans fly over a small island off the coast of Louisiana which has been surrounded by a boom to protect it from the oil spill. The disaster has wiped billions off BP's value
Instead of reciprocating his feelings, we should maybe take the opportunity to look harder at our connection with the United States, and at that ridiculous phrase 'special relationship'. On the whole Englishmen have used the phrase much more than Americans, although one exception was the affable if inept Senator John McCain.
A few years before he was defeated for the presidency by Obama, he visited England, and was interviewed. 'The special relationship between our two countries will endure throughout the 21st century,' McCain said. 'I say that with total confidence because it's lasted for 200 years.'
It has what? The senator's '200 years' would take us back to the beginning of the 19th century, or let's say to 1812. What was special about the relationship that year was that the two countries were at war.
Shortly after he had taken us into the appalling Iraq war, by way of telling a pack of porkies with Alastair Campbell's sordid help, Tony Blair visited Washington to be greeted by President Bush - 'Thank you, friend' - and cheered to the echo by Congress for services rendered. In his smarmy speech, Blair mentioned the burning of Washington by the British in 1814 and obsequiously said: 'I know it's kinda late, but sorry.'
Had he known more history, he might have been aware that this was only one episode in a very fraught story. For most of the 19th century a large part of the British Army had to be stationed in Canada to protect it from its southern neighbour, and at one point Sir Robert Peel warned Parliament about the grave danger of a war with the United States.
Environmental disaster: President Obama and National Incident Commander Thad Allen make a statement after being briefed on the BP oil spill. Obama has been accused of handling the crisis in an 'anti-British' way
In 1895 the two countries nearly went to war again over an incomprehensible border dispute in South America, and bloodshed was avoided only by the forbearance of Lord Salisbury, the prime minister.
A certain kind of fawning Tory likes to talk about the way the Americans have generously rescued us in the past century. This is historical claptrap. When the Great War began in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson worried that he might need to intervene - on the German side.
In 1917, the United States did at last enter the war, after the British had suffered hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded. Even then the Americans sustained very few casualties by European standards, as they did in the next war.
This time they waited from September 1939 until December 1941, and then they went to war only because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on the United States (not the other way round).
And before that, the supposedly generous Lend-Lease agreement had
stripped us of overseas assets and destroyed the British exporting economy for decades to come.
Any idea of a special relationship should have been ended in 1956 when Washington pulled the rug from under the British and French when their troops had gone to Suez. That didn't stop President Johnson from subsequently demanding British troops to serve in Vietnam. Mercifully, Harold Wilson, in his one good deed as prime minister, politely declined.
Since then we have been taken into another terrible war in which we had no reason to fight by Tony Blair, who throughout his career assiduously served the interests of another country. Our rewards from Washington have ranged from a tariff likely to destroy what's left of the British steel industry, to studied American neutrality over the Falklands, to Obama's grandstanding attacks on BP.
A year ago Gordon Brown visited Washington to be publicly humiliated by Obama (remember the exchange of gifts: thoughtful presents for the president and his children, trashy DVDs and toys for the Browns in return).
Rescue: The Discover Enterprise sits over the leak site as it burns off crude oil in Gulf Shores, Alabama
If a dark cloud of oil can now have a silver lining, then it might at least lead us to reassess our ignoble relationship with Washington. If the American president is going to ignore or even damage British interests, then let him.
But might not our own government stand up for those interests? For a start, some of the money we've all lost through the BP debacle, and presidential venom, could at least be recouped by bringing our troops home from a hopeless American war in Afghanistan.
When disaster strikes, the U.S. will NEVER take the blame
By Michael Hanlon , Science Editor
11th June 2010
Daily Mail
America's hands are far from clean when it comes to environmental disasters, as the list of examples here shows. Whenever U.S. firms have caused death and mayhem around the world, the response from their executives has been to call their lawyers and to deny any liability. And Washington's priority has usually been to protect its citizens and, especially, its shareholders at all costs.
Bhopal Tragedy: The chemical explosion blinded thousands, including this young mother seen here with her baby
• BHOPAL TRAGEDY
On the night of December 2 and 3, 1984, a 40-ton leak of methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, caused the immediate deaths of at least 3,787 people, as a pale mist settled over the town. Thousands more were blinded and crippled by the disaster.
In the intervening years at least 20,000 have died prematurely from the leak, and 150,000 have suffered permanent health problems.
Union Carbide, now a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company, was a U.S. firm, and its officials have consistently refused to take full liability for the accident.
Immediately after the disaster the CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, was arrested by Indian police when he visited Bhopal. He was released on bail and left the country.
Since then Anderson, who lives in comfortable retirement in the U.S., has avoided an international arrest warrant, and India has no extradition treaty with the U.S.
Indeed the U.S. government and American courts have repeatedly blocked attempts by survivors' groups and the Indian government to bring Anderson and other American executives to account, and very little of the $450million compensation package paid by Union Carbide has gone to the survivors (money that came not from the company but from its insurers).
This week, seven former Union Carbide managers, some in their seventies, were found guilty by an Indian court of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years in prison. All were Indian nationals.
Not a single U.S. citizen has been punished for the disaster despite evidence emerging that the plant's owners were aware, before the tragedy took place, that faults existed in the Indian plant.
Exxon Valdez: The oil spill ravaged the Alaskan coast
• EXXON VALDEZ
When a quarter of a million barrels of oil leaked from the stricken supertanker Exxon Valdez in March 1989, it was considered the worst maritime environmental disaster in history.
The affected area lay wholly in U.S. territory, Prince William Sound in Alaska, and the ship was owned and operated by a U.S. firm.
Despite the impact on seals, birds, fish and other wildlife, Exxon fought hard to avoid paying the massive compensation decreed by the American courts, reducing an original penalty of $5billion to just $500million on appeal.
As usual, the American legal system acted fast to defend the interests of American corporations, even when their victims were American citizens (and sea creatures).
• TORREY CANYON
The worst oil spill in British history (and the world's first major maritime environmental incident) polluted miles of Cornish coastline, and cost the local tourist industry tens of millions of pounds.
The 1967 disaster involved an American supertanker, the Torrey Canyon, which had been chartered by British Petroleum. It ran aground on a reef off the Scilly Isles, and broke up; the subsequent clean-up operation cost the UK and French governments tens of millions of pounds.
Attempts to recover any cash from the tanker's owners proved almost impossible. At one point, a young British lawyer, Anthony O'Connor, served a writ against the owners by sneaking aboard the Torrey Canyon's sister ship, the Lake Palourde, when she was moored in Singapore. He got aboard by pretending to be a whisky salesman and stuck his writ to the mast.
French naval speedboats chased the Lake Palourde but were unable to board her and serve their writ on behalf of Paris.
Sir Elwyn Jones, the Attorney General, told Parliament, seven months after the disaster that the Barracuda Tanker Corporation was trying to limit its liability in the U.S. courts to just $50.
In the end, compensation of £3million was paid, a small fraction of the clean-up costs and costs to the tourism industry.
Torrey Canyon: The worst spill in UK history
• PIPER ALPHA
On July 6, 1988, 167 people were killed when the North Sea oil rig Piper Alpha exploded in a sheet of flame.
The rig lay about 120 miles northeast of Aberdeen, in the British North Sea Sector. It was wholly owned by Occidental Petroleum, based in Los Angeles, California.
An inquiry found Occidental Petroleum partially liable, on the grounds of inadequate safety and maintenance procedures, but no prosecutions followed.
Despite the catastrophic loss of life (more than 15 times as many were killed as by Deepwater Horizon) and the devastating economic consequences of losing some 10 per cent of total North Sea production, there was no anti-American rhetoric at the time from the Thatcher government.
dailymail.co.uk
Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on Years and Years" ...
Tags:
The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The Obama/PB "strategy" on this appears to be much like touching up an xray to hide a metastasizing cancer.
Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on Years and Years" ...
Tags:
The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The Obama/PB "strategy" on this appears to be much like touching up an xray to hide a metastasizing cancer.
Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on Years and Years" ...
"why the US is in the wrong during this debacle
the response from their executives has been to call their lawyers and to deny any liability."
This is precisely what we are seeing from BP as well.
the response from their executives has been to call their lawyers and to deny any liability."
This is precisely what we are seeing from BP as well.
I wasn't aware of 'anti British' ranting, just that people are pissed off at bp. Which, incidentally, is headquartered in London.
Are you upset because BP will actually have to pay money to fix the mess?
'Cutting the dividend would have a big impact in Britain, where the company accounts for about an eighth of dividend payments from companies in that country's blue-chip stock index, providing crucial income for retirees.'
People are pissed at BP, and rightfully so, but I hear very little mentioned about Haliburton who, in my opinion, should be bearing the brunt of the responsibility.
In terms of paying to "fix" this mess, BP is doing exactly that to the point that they are acting as their own insurer despite having applicable insurance in place prior to the event.
You might have a good point here, morgan.
Gulf Oil Spill: Who's to Blame? BP, Halliburton and the Feds Are All Implicated | BNET Energy Blog | BNET
BP Bailout Proposal Coming Soon
Monday, 14 June 2010 06:42
'Get ready for the BP bailout debate. As the most hated company in America led by the most despised CEO in business continues its systematic deceptions about the magnitude of the catastrophe, its systematic secrecy and threats of reprisal against employees who speak the truth in public and its systematic blockade against reporters seeking the basic facts, get ready for the mother of all political debates.
When the full damage of the oil is calculated, and the full payment of restitution is required and the full consequences of lawsuits are understood and the monetary consequences of such enormous personal and economic misery are realized, BP will tell us that we face the choice of BP going bankrupt and being unable to pay its debts or receiving a government bailout so it can meet its obligations from the damage it has done.'
Read more: BP Bailout Proposal Coming Soon
Monday, 14 June 2010 06:42
'Get ready for the BP bailout debate. As the most hated company in America led by the most despised CEO in business continues its systematic deceptions about the magnitude of the catastrophe, its systematic secrecy and threats of reprisal against employees who speak the truth in public and its systematic blockade against reporters seeking the basic facts, get ready for the mother of all political debates.
When the full damage of the oil is calculated, and the full payment of restitution is required and the full consequences of lawsuits are understood and the monetary consequences of such enormous personal and economic misery are realized, BP will tell us that we face the choice of BP going bankrupt and being unable to pay its debts or receiving a government bailout so it can meet its obligations from the damage it has done.'
Read more: BP Bailout Proposal Coming Soon
I think you are right, but they will wait long enough to pay out big dividends and bonuses first.
Again, I really wouldn't be confident that those dividends get paid out. This is recent news, shares plunged almost 10% today on the lack of news from a Board meeting which was meeting to recommend suspending dividend payouts:
Lack of news on dividend sees shares in BP plunge - Business News, Business - The Independent
Lack of news on dividend sees shares in BP plunge - Business News, Business - The Independent