I really have no quarrel with this being a separate thread, but I wanted to point out that there is a question whether it should be a new thread or a continuation of an earlier one. What I DO disagree with completely, is the original thread title. I believe that a thread title should be a factual and unbiased statement of the topic of discussion, and not a political statement. AND, at the very least, the original thread title should have mentioned that the thread had to do with the old spill.

And now back to the topic of discussion. As has been said above, BP is a multinational conglomerate, not really a representative of the United Kingdom. Trying to make this into a US insult to the UK is a deception. And, as has also been stated above - the work may have been done by a BP subcontractor, but Obama and others are absolutely correct in looking through the smokescreen and pointing the finger at BP because it IS a BP project.

This whole thing illustrates twin evils that are very pervasive in today's corporate world:

the multinational nature of corporations that allows them to evade the legal control of any nation

outsourcing, which allows corporations to evade responsibility for their actions and liability for their mistakes

These two aspects of multinational corporate chicanery allow corporations to be completely above legal control. Corporations no longer have to honor labor laws, or pay for benefits and pensions and vacations for employees - they get their workers from "job shops" that never allow employees to work long enough to get benefits or pensions. Corporations no longer have liability for mistakes, since their risky work is performed by short-lived "limited liability corporations." If a nation enacts statutes to protect workers, multinationals just move the work to another country. And the list of evasions goes on and on and on.

Our multinational corporations are morally and ethically bankrupt. And this oil spill is a good illustration of how they have developed tactics that allow them to screw the entire world, cheating all of humanity and doing irreparable damage to nature - totally evading all responsibility and liability.

Governments do the same things nowadays. I worked 25 years of the 30 I needed to earn a full U.S. Government pension. But the Clinton administration privatized my job, so now I'm trying to live on half the pension I expected.

-Joe Offer-