All this piss and wind! I have read most of this thread (got tedious) but I do think the spill is an envioronmental disaster and the book is getting passed around like a red hot potato. Of course BP is a multinational tax dodging money grabbing company and, apart from who is going to pick up the tab, ultimately people will want to know how it was allowed to happen. It has happened on the US politicians patch/watch and people will want to know if they were regulating the operation. To claim it was a foriegn company and out of their regulatory authority would be a good way of externalising blame and stop the shit sticking to their coat and also keep Joe public devided vertically. A sort of fascism, blaming a group or another country for ones own ills to focus the attention away from the real problem that large multi national institutions are above natural law of any country, see money as the godhead and, apart from the chosen few, the rest of us are flotsam and jetsom with a vote that means bugger all in the real world. How else could a handful of banks bring the whole world economy to it's knees? A world problem requires a world government, in your dreams.........divide and rule is the mantra......drifting thread here, but it isn't bigotry it's self preservation! And forget about nation states and consider the state of it's peoples