The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Stop Me (If You Think That You've Heard This One Before...)

    By quinn esq on Sat, 06/12/2010 - 12:15am |
    I know you know how government & the oilco's & the media are crossbred on this Gulf disaster thing... And that we need fundamental changes in our energy system... This li'l rant was triggered by something simpler - the media jabber on about "How could this possibly happen?" Miguelito noted the Guardian link is a must read, so I've flipped this piece over from the Posterous site.
       

    The Gulf. It's hard to listen to people talk about it. The disaster is enormous, awful, and for those that live there and love the place, unbearable. Just watching from a distance, I see it and think of the salt marshes I grew up on, and know the misery that they'll face.

    But the oil companies have been doing this for a long time. To a lot of people. Burying them in oil. Lying to the public and paying off local officials and oozing their way around the rules. After which, you're knee-deep, hip-deep, neck-deep in the Big Muddy.

    EnGulfed.
        
    With the oil companies, only the names really change. As they devour one another. BP ate ARCO-Amoco-Castrol... Chevron>Texaco-SoCal-Gulf-Unocal... Exxon+Mobil... Conoco+Phillips... Total S.A.>PetroFina. And their subsidiaries, and subcontractors and mercenaries and outsourced services and shell companies. In terms of the impact on human beings and nature, the name doesn't matter.

    They're like Hurricanes. Sooner or later, if you live in the area, you're gonna get one. Maybe a Rita... maybe an Ivan... maybe Katrina. 


    But even with all this history, with examples from all over the world, with books and movies and monuments and no go zones... still, the media and the politicians babble on, sounding like those morons who always wanna stay and face the Hurricane, shirtless and shitfaced, down on the dock.

    As though they don't get that this is how these companies have always, and everywhere, behaved.

    "How could this happen?" they ask. 

    Grown up American adults on TV and in the papers actually ask this, out loud. "How could this happen?" And they think to themselves, "This shows I am an educated person, see? Because here I am, asking this thoughtful question." As thoughtful and perceptive as asking why gravity happened today. Or why the sun set. Or how mountains of money managed - yet again - to corrupt.

    Better question, "What possessed you to fantasize that it wouldn't happen yet again?" 

    I mean... just off my own little head, there's.... The Exxon Valdez. Ixtoc I. The Piper Alpha. The Ocean Ranger. Montara, Australia. The Gulf War. The Bay of Biscay. Santa Barbara. Prudhoe Bay. The Amoco Cadiz. The Torrey Canyon. The Lakeview Gusher, 1909.

    Still. The media are asking other important questions. These days, they ask the most important ones in online polls. Questions like: "Who is to blame? BP... or the Government?" 

    When I see polls like that, I want an additional choice, which asks, "Whether the person that set up this poll should be tarred, feathered, then pulled back out of the Gulf, and cleansed with high-powered jets and Dawn liquid.... Or... maybe Sunlight?"

    "How could this happen?"

    This.Is.How.The.Oilco's.Operate.

    There's no bliss in not knowing this. Our ignorance is just... ignorance.

    See: Ecuador & The Amazon & Oil.

        

    Or See: Nigeria & Saro-Wiwa & Oil.

    9 million barrels of oil spilled in Nigeria. Count 'em. And 7,000 spills over 50 years there begins to not look like a series of unfortunate accidents.

    Spills. What a word. You spill a drink. Get some paper towels - no problem. End of spill. 

    But their spills? In the Delta? Well, life expectancy in these oil-rich areas of Nigeria has fallen to 40 years.

    "Darn those pesky spills, Jenny, looks like you're dying 23 years early. Drat."

    And Saro-Wiwa? The media says, "Whoozzat? Whazzat? Some African word?"

     From The Guardian: "Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it." 

    "We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it....

    Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.

    Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught.... The Chief said, "This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."

    ... More oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico."

    Stop me, oh hoho, stop me... Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before... (Mark Ronson does Smiths)