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Saturday, August 7, 2010

Louisiana oil disaster: the more I read/watch, the more pessimistic I am


In theory they have capped it and that's about it. In practice it is extremely worrisome that they are systematically falsifying, hiding, photoshopping the truth.


Like this bubbling methane seep captured yesterday by one of BP ROVs but hidden by something as simple as darkening the image:



It's just an example. There's a lot more really depressing and hidden-under-the-carpet stuff at Florida Oil Spill Law and Alexander Higgins' blogs. You have to like research journalism though.

It is also worrisome, beyond the immediate disaster the consequences that the lack of a grassroots political organization of the working class can carry: millions of people are being affected by this, including not just the disaster as such but criminal mismanagement at all levels, directly affecting health and jobs, as well as the whole ecological balance of one of the most diverse seas on which these rely and where is the response?

There is only limited response because there are not class organizations beyond unions and sectorial activist groups in the USA. As some member of the fishing community of Louisiana put it already months ago: "we are expendable". It only matters to pretend that everything is under control and to minimize losses to the big corporations.

Even if the doomsday scenario forecast by several people of the oceanic bottom ripping off and causing a huge tsunami and releasing cataclysmic amounts of usually frozen methane to the atmosphere fails to happen (I really hope so), the damage caused by corporate interests is already immense and will grow in the following months as the remainder and future residues of oil and corexit poison spread around. This should warrant people going out to the streets in protest at least every other weekend... but nobody is mobilizing this anger and frustration and the corporative masters and their politician and judiciary minions do as they please therefore.

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