May 28, 2010

BP's Criminal Record

Environmental Criminals need to be treated the same as rapists and murderers.



Watch CBS News Videos Online

3 comments:

  1. Did you catch that at the end? The Justi9ce Dept has "requested" (not required?) that BP retain records? either sloppy choice of words or else another failing, either in action by the administration or (as in the case of existing law only allowing the govt 30 days to do an environmental impact, thus making one virtually impossible, thus basically forcing the govt to rubber-stamp approval) possibly a failing in the laws on the books, or both.

    The video makes it sound as if BP is the problem; not those super nice friendly angels at, say, ExxonMobil, which has committed crimes just one of which (massive funding of lies about global warming) might, ultimately, in the end, prove more devastating in its consequences to the entire planet than this (already huge) disaster by BP.

    By the way I agree polluters should be treated the same as murderers and rapists, if by that you mean, that we should rehabilitate the latter...methinks perhaps that's not what you meant. To be progressive rather than right-wing means that I know the difference between what your gut impulse is (which might be death penalty or to personally strangle or even torture someone) versus what it best public policy and law. That's one reason I oppose the death penalty even though I might personally have an impulse to murder someone who murdered someone I loved, for example. The real insanity is that the laws on the books not only don't protect the public enough, the corporate laws pretty much require not just BP but all corporations to put profits first, and to not break, but certainly to bend every last damn law they possibly can imagine bending, in order to maximize profits, that's not what they're just allowed, that's what they are legally required to do on penalty of being sued. That insanity is our present law. And it's also insanity by society to "keep doing the same thing and expect that something different will happen" That "doing the same thing" is keeping corporate law as it is (or even allowing corporation to exist in their present form, but I'm in a moderate mood)

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  2. By the way, good luck with donations...one revolutionary way to improve donations to grassroots groups is suggested at:

    http://economicdemocracy.org/thresholdware.html

    Also helps with grassroots actions like draft resistance and actions in the streets. How can the same idea help with the latter as well as with donations? Read the above piece. Peace.

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  3. What I meant about treating them the same, is that the crimes are the same.

    They rape the land, they force themselves on communities and have their way with them, and they quite literally murder people over the course of decades as their bodies succumb to toxic pollution.

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