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Subject: US bigots attack British Company From: Richard Bridge Date: 13 May 10 - 04:24 PM From Reuters "On the Deepwater Horizon, three of those systems -- the blowout preventer, the metal casing within the well and the cement that held it in place -- all likely failed, according to testimony from company officials and data gathered by investigators from the House Energy and Commerce Committee." US politicians including Obama blame BP. BP made and operated NONE of those things. George III was right. |
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Subject: RE: US bigots attack British Company From: Richard Bridge Date: 13 May 10 - 04:24 PM OH shit, that should be BS please. |
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Subject: RE: US bigots attack British Company From: Anglo Date: 13 May 10 - 04:40 PM BP isn't even "British Petroleum" any more, it's just BP. Is it still British? |
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Subject: RE: US bigots attack British Company From: PoppaGator Date: 13 May 10 - 04:48 PM While it may be true that "BP made and operated NONE of those things," BP was ultimately responsible. because they hired the various suppliers and subcontractors in question. They also, one might reasonably presume, instructed said subs about how much they were allowed to spend on safety precaustions. BP's record of recent operations worldwide seems to indicate a notable reluctance to take safety regulations seriously, and a general habit of cutting corners (financially) whenever possible. And, really, they're not "British Company" any more than Exxon/Mobile is "American." They're all multinational corporations, able to elude most of the controls, taxes, etc.,. that any one national government might wish to impose upon them. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: michaelr Date: 13 May 10 - 04:57 PM Which US bigots are you talking about, Richard? |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Richard Bridge Date: 13 May 10 - 05:26 PM The ones in congress. I've seen the speeches. The problems are due to US companies and their defaults. If they could not do the job for the price they should not have taken it on. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Ed T Date: 13 May 10 - 05:29 PM who are the us in "us bigots"? |
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Subject: RE: US bigots attack British Company From: Joe Offer Date: 13 May 10 - 05:32 PM Well, now we have THREE threads on this subject:
I think there was another oil spill thread, one questioning Obama's statement that deep-water oil drilling is failsafe these days - but I couldn't find that thread because the title didn't mention oil. Seems to me that all of these discussions could be contained in a thread titled Louisiana Oil Spill, April, 2010 - and there would be far less duplication of comments. Maybe not, maybe there IS justification for having a number of threads on this oil spill - but I would ask for a bit of Truth In Titling. If you'r starting a thread about the oil spill, say so - don't title your thread with some sort of propaganda statement. We've had the same thing recently in threads about the Governor of Arizona, whom some Mudcatter seems to have a sexual fixation on because of her anti-Latino actions. Instead of actually stating what the thread was about, this Mudcatter titled the threads with statements about what a fine American she is, standing up for truth, justice, and the American Way. And then there is the pair of threads on Gay/Lesbian/Transgender folkies in the UK, and I'm still left wondering why there have to be TWO threads active on such closely related subjects in the same week. So, friends and neighbors, when you start a new thread, please try to think about two things:
Thank you. -Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Richard Bridge Date: 13 May 10 - 05:39 PM I had not read the others in that they seemed to be irrelevant to my perspective. I was an am infuriated by the clips I saw of partisan comment by US politicians. I am content if this thread is combined with others - but my perspective at present remains the same. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: gnu Date: 13 May 10 - 05:51 PM Wrap em up, Joe. Good idea. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: PoppaGator Date: 13 May 10 - 06:07 PM I agree with Richard that this is a "separate" topic, about the national identity (or lack thereof) of the corporation, and whether or not people's reaction indicates some sort of nationalism or bigotry. (The fact that I do NOT completely agree with his position on the question is another matter entirely.) This oil spill is a pretty BIG topic, and (unfortunately) will probably continue to be relevant for a very long time. I don't think that it's at all inappropriate to maintain a few "subtopics," if they're well defined. I believe that the question of whether multinationals should ever be thought of as "belonging" to one nation or another is important, and that better understanding of the answer(s) can lead to deeper insight into a whole passel of contemporary socioeconomic and global-political issues. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 13 May 10 - 06:14 PM After the fire and loss of life at the BP refinery in Texas, many Americans question the safety record of BP. More lives unfortunately lost in this Texas blowout. But I also think most Americans throw BP in the same pot as Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Chevron, Total, Petronas, Petrochina, what have you, rather than regarding it as particularly British. Just another big oil company. The blame game gets us nowhere. The well, in 5000 feet of water and drilling into a seismic prospect at great sedimentary depth, was at the limit of engineering knowledge. A blowout from the high pressure encountered in the formation may not have neen controllable. BP, as operator, is 'responsible', but the regulatory body, MMS, should bear blame for not questioning the objective and requiring more stringent controls. BP is trying to spread the blame (statements in the Senate hearing) because the cost is going to be huge; I would guess that legal proceedings will be prolonged. But the cost to individuals and wildlife damaged by the blowout will never be fully compensated. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Joe Offer Date: 13 May 10 - 06:18 PM 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: 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- |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Richard Bridge Date: 13 May 10 - 07:11 PM Joe - you are right about multinationals evading responsibility - but wrong about the thread title. Who do you think Big Oil predominantly owns? |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Richard Bridge Date: 13 May 10 - 07:12 PM Oh, and who do you think are the truly guilty companies and where are they based? |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: catspaw49 Date: 13 May 10 - 07:25 PM I really don't get the "bigot" part Richard. There is a general hatred for ALL of the oil companies no matter where they are or who owns them. What the average Joe sees here is that they rake in windfall profits and don't give a damn about the consumer. While there were probably hundreds of sub-contractors, the profits from that rig go to BP so we tend to believe they need to pay for the mess. Exxon didn't build the Valdez but the responsibility was theirs. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Bill D Date: 13 May 10 - 07:35 PM "BP made and operated NONE of those things." As owner and organizer of the operation, BP is ultimately responsible for oversight of those they hire to design, build & operate the platform. (Just as NASA was responsible for being sure Morton-Thiacol provided safe O-ring seals for the space shuttle) The supposed 'bigots' have noted the culpability of ALL relevant parties to this disaster. It really doesn't matter whether you 'believe' US congressmen are bigots or not, for even bigots can sometimes see the areas of responsibility in such cases. There is plenty of blame to go around on this one. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: kendall Date: 13 May 10 - 07:36 PM As I understand it, BP is now a Dutch company. Secondly, BP has a history of sloppy operations with numerous fines being laid on them. So, who should we blame? it is OUR coastline they are destroying and now they want us to limit their liability to a measly 27 million! |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Riginslinger Date: 13 May 10 - 07:40 PM I've come to side with the folks who want to raise the price of fuel--either through taxes or some mechanism--to lower the demand. As long as there's a demand for this much petroleum, these things are going to happen more frequently, in my opinion. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Joe Offer Date: 13 May 10 - 07:53 PM OK, Richard, so where is the truth in your (original) thread title: US bigots attack British Company?? For one thing you neglected to say this was another oil spill thread. For another, you "spun" things by calling the American accusers "bigots" and BP "British." And thirdly, you bought BP's denial of responsibility - when what they did was evade responsibility by clouding the problem in subcontracts. You ask: Who do you think Big Oil predominantly owns? and Oh, and who do you think are the truly guilty companies and where are they based? I gave my answer - the multinational oil companies are not located in any one nation, and consider themselves to be immune to the control of any nation. What's your answer? -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Tootler Date: 13 May 10 - 08:10 PM Richard, I think you are wrong. It seems that all the companies concerned are in the blame shifting business. All furiously trying to pass the buck on to someone else. Surely, BP as the ultimate contractor are ultimately responsible as they hired the others. If BP had been prepared to accept their share of the responsibility for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, then I might have had some sympathy with them, but as they did not, then all power to Obama I say. Don't forget that it is the US that is suffering from the spill, so the US Senators are quite rightly concerned. If it had happened over here, I am sure our politicians would have responded in exactly the same way. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spil From: Charley Noble Date: 13 May 10 - 08:56 PM There's plenty of blame to spread around to the subcontractors, including Haliburton, but as people have pointed out BP bears the primary responsibility. To their credit BP executives have assured the public that they are also not going to hide behind the shield of $27 million in this instance. However, the detailed reports that surfaced yesterday in hearings spell out that in this instance there were warnings that were ignored in basic problems with the "blow-out preventer" system prior to well eruption and pipe rupture: 1. pipe integrity problems indicated from pressure tests 2. a significant hydraulic leak in the ram driver system 3. a dead battery that was supposed to activate the so-called "deadman" trigger 4. evidently the ram drive the operators spent a day trying to use after the blowout was the one especially re-configured to test the system and was no longer operational for any other purpose. I suppose that it's disturbing to some BP supporters that politicians in the US are racking them over the coals for this environmental disaster. But, gee, what the f**k should they expect? And in what way should politicians raising such questions in the House and Commerce Committee hearings be characterized as "bigots"? Joe, please delete this self-indulgent thread. Two threads are more than enough. And Mr. Bridge should apologize for initiating it. Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 13 May 10 - 09:25 PM First to Kendall- Royal Dutch Shell is the one you are thinking of. Joe, you are wrong about the hiring policies of the major oil companies. Their workers are highly paid. They get good pensions upon retirement- I am one of the pensioners. The man in charge of the BP well receives six figures, and the chief technician gets close to that or the same. The professionals are the best that universities can produce with at least four years engineering or earth sciences degrees. The procedures and exploration programs are usually led by Ph.D. level specialists. I was with an Exxon company, but I worked on cooperative projects with employees of other major companies; their training was equivalent. As a geological exploration specialist, I worked with other Ph. D graduates- in my own group one from London Univ. and one from Utrecht; my own from a Big Ten University. Our technicians were 2-4 year program graduates of approved technical schools. I hesitate to sort out blame- but the decision-makers, often econonics-finance-business graduates as well as the Board- sometimes take short-cuts to reduce expenses or to maximize profits (which could be for me, my next-door neighbor, employees, my daughter's teacher's pension fund, etc.- and we all want more). I also blame the regulatory agency of the government, MMS, which allowed short-cuts on this and several other BP wells which were breaking new ground, and hence should have been required to have the best and latest (but even that may have been not enough in this case). |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Ed T Date: 13 May 10 - 09:59 PM Has anything been learned? "It has yet to announce plans to drill in the region but shortly before the U.S. disaster, BP and other oil companies urged Canadian regulators to drop a requirement stipulating that companies operating in the Arctic had to drill relief wells in the same season as the primary well. Cullen argued the companies had made this request because drilling a relief well within the required time limit would be too expensive, given the difficult Arctic conditions". Full story: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1326556220100513?type=marketsNews |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Joe Offer Date: 14 May 10 - 12:54 AM That was then, Q, but this is now. Do the oil companies still employ most of their workers, or have they followed the corporate ethics changes of the 1990s and contracted out most of the work. You're right that once upon a time, oil companies were very good in their treatment of employees, and reasonably good employees could count on having a lifelong career and good benefits and a good pension. But corporate ethics began to chance in the 1980s. By the mid-1990s, corporations no longer seemed to have any loyalty toward employees - and I found out the hard way that my employer, the U.S. Government, no longer had loyalty to me as an employee. Nowadays, corporations and the government have loyalty only to their management personnel. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Richard Bridge Date: 14 May 10 - 03:37 AM The speeches that I heard were attacks on BP ("British Petroleum"). They were by Americans. The faults were the faults of the subcontractors. The subcontractors were American, but not attacked in the speeches. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Joe Offer Date: 14 May 10 - 03:58 AM BP shows their ownership as 39% US, 44% UK. Since UK-US ownership is almost equal, it would seem not to be an insult to Britain for a US President to criticize the company. This article says
In back-to-back Senate inquiries, lawmakers chastised executives of the three companies at the heart of the massive spill over attempts to shift the blame to each other. And they were asked to explain why better preparations had not been made to head off the accident. "Let me be really clear," Lamar McKay, chairman of BP America, told the hearing. "Liability, blame, fault – put it over here." He said: "Our obligation is to deal with the spill, clean it up and make sure the impacts of that spill are compensated, and we're going to do that." By "over here," McKay meant the witness table at which BP, Transocean and Halliburton executives sat shoulder to shoulder. And despite his acknowledgment of responsibility, each company defended its own operations and raised questions about its partners in the project gone awry. Seems to me, Richard, that all three companies acknowledge their responsibility. Why can't you? -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Dave the Gnome Date: 14 May 10 - 04:20 AM On my various visits to rural Illinois and Urban St Louis I have been led to believe that BP was not seein a British company anyway - This was mainly from my Cousin who is an ex-pat British national since 1962. He did back up his claim by asking some friends what they believed BP stood for and 100% of the half dozen said 'Better Petrolium'. Now, I know 6 or 7 is not representative of the US. Neither is the Mudcat but I ask here whether anyone else thought it was British. If the general population and/or the politicians in question do not see BP as British I think it hardly fair to say that they are bigoted againts the British. Not saying thta your are wrong, Richard. Just it is possible that you may be misplacing your ire! Cheers DeG |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spil From: Stu Date: 14 May 10 - 04:23 AM I agree with Joe - I really don't see why anyone's a bigot or why BP shouldn't be blamed. Why would it be insult for Obama to criticise? As far as I'm concerned he's bang on the money. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: kendall Date: 14 May 10 - 06:13 AM We have a disaster of major proportions here and we have a right to be pissed off! |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Greg F. Date: 14 May 10 - 07:50 AM i...t is OUR coastline they are destroying... Actually, Kendall, its our coastline WE are destroying by permitting off-shore drilling without the technology to prevent this sort of thing. Never should have been allowed in the firt place. A classic case of "We have met the enemy, and he is us". |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Richard Bridge Date: 14 May 10 - 09:02 AM Be pissed off with the people at fault. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: kendall Date: 14 May 10 - 11:30 AM We are. Big oil no matter who they are or where they are trying to hide. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 14 May 10 - 01:10 PM Joe, Alberta requirements- Alberta requirements for drilling rig technicians- (applies whether hired by oil company doing the drilling or registered contractor) Rig technician 1- must be registered apprentice,certified journeyman (journeyperson in AB Occupational profiles), or holds a recognized trades certificate. Base pay $27.50/hr. plus living allowance. Rig technician 3- the driller- 3 years experience minimum, trade school diploma or equivalent. Base pay $38.50/hr. plus living allowance. A professional engineer is in charge of the field, and makes daily visits to a drilling well- often staying on site during critical intervals. A geologist (analyzes samples, etc.) may be on site for critical wells, but usually receives samples sent to him daily. Back-up- With major companies, professionals in Exploration Division and research personnel at a central laboratory. Lowest rung on the well- Leasehands, floorhands, motorhands; usually highschool level. Do the 'joe-work' around the rig. Pay $27.50/hr. plus living allowance (may be bunk and mess hall food, while the driller gets a house or trailer home, a car, etc.). On an offshore rig, the crews are professional technicians, a professional engineer, and rig crew of the rig owner, that takes care of everything not directly related to the well itself. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Tootler Date: 14 May 10 - 05:29 PM By the mid-1990s, corporations no longer seemed to have any loyalty toward employees Very true. I was a lecturer in a Chemical Engineering department at that time. In the late 1980s, the big chemical companies started putting graduates on six or twelve month rolling contracts rather than employing them on a permanent basis. A local senior manager of a major company complained bitterly that recent graduates showed no loyalty to the company and was most put out when a colleague of mine said he wasn't surprised when they, as employers, were showing no loyalty to their employees. Loyalty is a two way thing and if you are not loyal to your employees, why should they be loyal to you? My daughter experienced the rolling contract business at first hand and eventually got fed up and left her employer, a major chemical company, and went to train as a teacher. She said that about a third of her intake were from industry and many had similar experiences to her. While the examples I have first hand knowledge of are from the chemical industry, I have no reason to doubt that the oil industry behaved in a similar manner. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: mousethief Date: 14 May 10 - 05:47 PM BP had a responsibility to make sure their subcontractors were doing the work right. If they can't do that, they have no business hiring subcontractors. Holding their feet to the fire has to do with their corporate responsibility and nothing to do with what nation they represent or used to be owned by or whatever. Are you saying that if they were a wholly-American-owned company, they would not be coming in for criticism? What is your evidence for this? We held Exxon responsible for the Valdez spill, and they were majority American. You're taking offense where none exists. Playing the pond card. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: kendall Date: 14 May 10 - 09:43 PM Seems to me that the word "Bigot" is out of place here. No one is allowed to trash Brits in my house. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 14 May 10 - 10:18 PM The word was unnecessary, RB got hot under the collar about some derogatory statements about BP in Congress, but the senators did nothing more than make a lot of noise. Par for the course. But perhaps some legislation to strengthen the MMS and other regulators and place restrictions on drilling in sensitive areas will result, as least I hope so. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: mousethief Date: 15 May 10 - 12:40 AM What do senators do besides accepting bribes from big business, and making a lot of noise? |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spil From: GUEST,Goose Gander Date: 15 May 10 - 01:56 AM So now it's bigotry to get mad at an oil company for a spill? Richard Bridge, you are beyond parody. My dog has more common sense than you. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Joe Offer Date: 15 May 10 - 02:50 AM Q, the Alberta wages sound similar to the pay for oil well workers in Bakersfield. But the work is extremely hard, and it's rare for an oil worker to work steadily. It's a tough life - and it results in lots of alcohol and spousal abuse, and lots of financial problems. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Backwoodsman Date: 15 May 10 - 04:31 AM "No one is allowed to trash Brits in my house" LOL! I should hope not! |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Richard Bridge Date: 15 May 10 - 05:11 AM The relevant point about subcontractors is that you subcontract to them. Therefore in classic tort theory a hirer is not ipso facto liable for the negligence of his subcontractor, although he is liable in negligence if the choice of subcontractor was negligent. Vicarious liability only arises if the negligent worker is an employee acting in the course of his employment. Example 1. You engage a chimney sweep to sweep your chimney in your semi-detached house. He ses the chimney is badly sooted and decides to do a draught test with lighted paper. The lighted paper goes up the chimney (showing good draught) but sets light to a deposit of soot which burns both your house and your neighbour's house down. Assuming that doing the draught test before sweeping was itself negligent, the sweep is liable to you and to your neighbour for his negligence, but you are not liable to your neighbour in negligence unless engaging that subcontractor was negligent. Example 2. You employ an employee to deliver a lorryload of stuff. It is your lorry. He takes the lorryload of stuff home with him overnight to make the delivery the next day. At 11pm he decides he wants a kebab and drives the lorry to the kebab shop but runs over a nun on a zebra crossing. You are not liable to the nun for his negligent driving for he was not acting in the course of his employment. Exapmple 3. You employ an employee as before. He collects your lorry and load at 11 am and while driving by the correct route tomake the delivery he runs over another nun on a zebra crossing. You are liable for his negligence in the course of his employment. Both Transocean and Halliburton were subcontractors. BP (widely and correctly referred to in reports as "London-based BP") is quite correct to seek to place blame for their failures on them. Barack Obama as a lawyer should appreciate that, and his criticisms of "a "ridiculous spectacle" of publicly trading blame over the accident" are out of place and must I think be an attempt to play to the gallery of prejudice against "foreign corporations". Try to keep up at the back (that means you Goosey - you seem pretty ignorant). My original thread title still seems pretty accurate to me. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Teribus Date: 15 May 10 - 06:39 AM I know it doesn't happen often but Richard Bridge on this is totally correct. Another couple of things from the way Barack Obama has "grandstanded" this one he has been reported as saying he will keep his foot on the neck of BP; he has been extremely vocal in insisting and making sure that BP will pay. Now from what I have seen, heard and read: BP has always accepted responsibility as the Operator Company, it has never said anything else. Now whether through contractual means or through insurances BP can in turn recoup some of those costs from Transocean and halliburton that is a completely separate matter. But Obama does not have to keep his foot on anybodys neck, as he first must remove it from his mouth. BP has always stated very clearly that it will pay any legitimate claim for compensation and for the clean up, it has never said anything to the contrary Oh Kendall as one of the oldest international oil companies in the world and the independent that produces more oil than any of the others, BP's safety record is pretty good considering the scale of its operations. Its other claim to fame is that no other oil company is better at finding oil than BP, in its history it has found more "Elephants" than any other oil company. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: kendall Date: 15 May 10 - 07:04 AM They are still motivated by profit first and safety second. So, in this case I am with the President. Was it Shakespere who said in a perfect world the first thing to do is kill the lawyers? He never mentioned oil company CEOs. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: steve in ottawa Date: 15 May 10 - 07:06 AM I think Richard Bridge has touched on a bit of truth. I say this because when Continental Connection Flight 3407 went down near Buffalo, NY in Feb 2009 the U.S. media quickly jumped on the bandwagon of solely blaming the sub-contractor, Colgan Air, even though all the passengers had bought their tickets through Continental and most probably would not have known, even after boarding, that they were not flying on a Continental plane, or that the air crew was not Continental trained, certified, or even monitored, and that Continental would claim not to accept any liability for the crash of the plane. I remember hearing "commuter airline" over and over. Even here in Canada. Which is disturbing. I think calling the disaster the BRITISH Petroleum Oil Spill rather than the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, or the Offshore Deep-Sea Drilling Disaster is re-assuring to most Americans. Mainstream news media seem to like to alarm and then reassure people to the point where they probably won't take any action. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: stallion Date: 15 May 10 - 07:15 AM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Richard Bridge Date: 15 May 10 - 07:43 AM FFS! It happened because the two subcontractors screwed up. Many in the US are trying to outsource the blame presumably to make themselves more comfortable with being the world's number 1 polluter - and of course the inventor of "big oil" - and for permitting drilling and plenty of other energy extraction exploits in sensitive places - primarily to feed the world's number 1 energy (particularly petroleum product) user. US - this happened because of you. Don't even think of sending a gunboat. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: Ed T Date: 15 May 10 - 09:21 AM BP now means 'Beyond Petroleum', as they are no longer British, and are as much US as any global multi-company. They likely absorbed as more US firms as their original British base....a very long time ago. |
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Subject: RE: BS: US bigots attack British Company (oil spill) From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Date: 15 May 10 - 09:36 AM I think the word 'bigot' is thrown around way too loosely..and very ignorantly. The U.S. is not bigoted towards the British, therefore the title of this thread is too stupid to even comment on. Richard, wake up, and get a life! GfS |
