This oil thing is finaly exspsing to people how littel thay are and how worthless your average every day citisen is when compared to the super ritch .

large companies ARE the goverment i cannot belive that manny people are unaware of this.

But BP provides jobs, so it's okay.

holy smokes, the president now has to go to sleep at night knowing he is is letting thousands of people die early deaths because a company donated money to his party. What an awesome job.

How is this not illegal? They're killing people...that's legal?

>> ^Yogi:

How is this not illegal? They're killing people...that's legal?


Since corporations are considered people in most cases, you have to prove murder, negligence, etc, just like you'd have to prove it against an individual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

Problem is, who are you putting on trial? Obviously the entire company's worth of people isn't responsible for any deaths. Who had the malice, who was negligent?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

Hence...controversy and awfulness.

Is this statement really true? o_O

There's more than one video floating around on this site talking about what the Exxon spill did to animals and people alike. What is said in this video is very similar to those, and all of them are from different people that I've seen. I think it's more likely that government is full of shit in anything they do to downplay it versus what these individuals are saying that are in the medical field and have been studying it trying to cure people since Exxon.

Because we already know that government and oil have not invested in new methods to clean up oil spills, so it's very unlikely they would also invest money into research on what exposure does to people during and after clean up from the Exxon.

If this oil leak is not taken of when they estimate it will be which from what I've read is late July and August for the relief wells to come online. If it keeps spilling out even with the additional wells, I don't see how anyone in this part of the world will be safe from it's effects given weather patterns and ocean currents. I saw on Craig Fergeson they had I believe his name is Jean Cousteau, son of Jacques Cousteau, who was talking about how the oil in the gulf would begin appearing in England due to the water currents and how saturated the water column is because of the disperants.

Lots of very disturbing videos out there regarding what the oil spill has done already. People on the water who were vomiting over the side because the fumes from the water was cutting off the oxygen and causing nausea. Fish so disoriented they were swimming into boats, swimming on their sides and upside down with their mouths sticking out of the water trying to breath. No sightings of dolphins in Florida for a long while, so they are either dead, dieing, or left the area. Kids breaking out in rashes who mysteriously recover shortly after leaving the areas in proximity to tainted zones. Fishermen who are aiding in the clean up, coming down with upper respiratory problems, going to their doctors and being told their lungs look like they've been smoking 3 packs a day when they are in fact non-smokers.

The same responders who at 911 telling people they should wear respirators for the clean up, who say that firemen who refused to wear them in 911 rescues came down with "the crud" from exposure to toxins. They say every person helping clean up the oil spill is offered a respirator, but BP took over distribution of them. And they won't allow people to have respirators without proper training in how to use them, which they will provide. But they won't begin the training until they feel people need the respirators. So you have the right to a respirator, they will give you one when you are trained, but they won't provide training until you need one. Makes perfect sense, like everything else associated with the handling of this.

Crops are diseased and dieing already from just the rain carrying the chemicals used to "clean up" the oil spill. I can't imagine that people out on the water aren't already severely exposed to these same chemicals if it can travel via water evaporation into the clouds to come down as rain...it has to be in the air for them all.

From other sources, they call exposure in Exxon and 911 "the crud" or "The Exxon crud". And people exposed to it have it for the rest of their life and eventually die because of it. I could see people in 911 being exposed just because it was a fast response situation and people were trying to do the right thing in a very short period of time. But there is no excuse for what is happening now, especially with the Exxon spill being there as evidence and proof of what can and will happen to people exposed to the oil and the chemicals used in it's clean up. A disaster caused by BP for money/time saving measures is one thing, but then allowing people trying to help contain a problem they had nothing to do with but bear all of the consequences of it to become ill and probably die from their efforts to help....that's something that can not stand.

*quality to see this on CNN

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Krupo.

>> ^mgittle:
Problem is, who are you putting on trial? Obviously the entire company's worth of people isn't responsible for any deaths. Who had the malice, who was negligent?


Okay. I'm a person, and when my behavior indicates that I am a danger to myself and others, there are legal remedies that exist which can make sure the damage I do to society is minimized. I can be involuntarily committed, until such a time that I can prove that I am not a threat to myself or others, and that I can care for myself. So BP's a company that's shown a depraved indifference to human life and the welfare of others. It's a person. I say we file papers to have it committed.

See, this personhood has some cons, as well as the obvious pros. If you can't do this one thing, then you're not really a person.

Ya know where are those Hackers you hear soo much about? You'd think a few good nice hackers could do something cool like shut down all the Exxon and BP pumps in the US just by computer. Or reek havoc on their mainframes, bringing productivity to zero. We need some Hackers dag-blasted!

No. We need some armed militants.

I want the heads of the decision makers at BP.

What about 10 years from now when we're all eating food from an ocean contaminated with oil?

The salmon eat the shrimp covered in oil etc. etc. Won't this have an affect on all of us down the line?

As in shortening the lifespan of millions(billions?) of people? For the next century ?

>> ^timtoner:

>> ^mgittle:
Problem is, who are you putting on trial? Obviously the entire company's worth of people isn't responsible for any deaths. Who had the malice, who was negligent?

Okay. I'm a person, and when my behavior indicates that I am a danger to myself and others, there are legal remedies that exist which can make sure the damage I do to society is minimized. I can be involuntarily committed, until such a time that I can prove that I am not a threat to myself or others, and that I can care for myself. So BP's a company that's shown a depraved indifference to human life and the welfare of others. It's a person. I say we file papers to have it committed.
See, this personhood has some cons, as well as the obvious pros. If you can't do this one thing, then you're not really a person.


I agree, but in court you need to prove a crime was committed. You need to show evidence, convince a jury, etc. But, you can't put a corporation in jail, and you're going to have a really hard time proving that the entire upper management was culpable in whatever event/crime/etc occurred. At best, you're going to find one or two people who you can stick it to in court. But, this means everyone else escapes with their giant salaries and bonuses. Maybe some stockholders lose some, but the actual people involved in the decision making and creation of the company's culture are not penalized.

Corporate structure is extremely good at insulating everyone involved, which means lowering everyone's risk of losing their investment. The basic idea is that this encourages lots of investment because people aren't as worried about losing their money. So, the stock exchange thrives when people aren't worried. This has created a ton of wealth for western nations in recent history.

I'm not disagreeing with you in principle...one of the arguments against corporations being treated as people is that their structure tends to cause that corporate "person" to act like a psychopath, literally, in psychological terms, not the generic kind. A corporate entity is not required to have empathy, and if you think about it, the vast majority of our laws are designed to punish/fine/etc people who have low empathy. I agree that if corporations are going to be treated as people under the law, then they need to be punished when they lack empathy. Currently, they are not, so people tend to have a problem with their actions since they are a group of people treated as an indivudual...and it just feels "wrong".

Execute these corporations, they are people right?

[redacted]

I'd agree with this, if BP were making it possible. They were withholding the numbers, giving lowball estimates of how much oil was pumping out of the break. They began dumping chemicals into the oil to disperse it to the bottom of the ocean, but that just made the problem worse. When they were told to stop, they continued, and as far as I know they are still dumping chemicals into the water today. These are the same chemicals used in the Exxon spill where workers got sick, and there has never been much looking into it because back them Exxon withheld the information on the chemicals used in making these concoctions. So, now BP is using the same or similar mix of chemicals with no idea how if they were the very thing that caused all those workers to get "the crud" and all the cancers that came about from exposure 10 years down the line.

As said before BP is withholding respirators from clean up workers, even though by accounts they have enough to outfit nearly everyone provided by aid agencies (but controlled by BP). They are letting people go out into these environments where the EPA is saying the level of chemicals in the air alone is dangerous, and people are already beginning to show signs of health impact from being out on the water running boats and ships without the proper gear that BP holds distribution control over.

The crops in the area are beginning to develop spots and wilt from the chemicals raining down on them. There is no official statement on this yet from BP or the government. I have seen no information on how you could even volunteer to help down there, or how you could apply to be compensated for expenses to bring machinery or operators down to run machinery to help in the clean up. It's been 2 months, there are hundreds if not thousands of miles of beach that need to be cleaned up. There miles and miles of ocean to clean up. There is just no possible way they have the man power, machinery needed, and organization needed to make any of this happen without an open exchange of information.

I think the general thinking here is that once they cap the well, or at least stop the spillage via relief well...that the trouble will be over. At least in the eyes of government and BP. But that will just be the beginning of the shit storm they have unleashed and because they delayed information and didn't prepare for something like this to happen or for it to continue happening....we can not reasonably clean it up now. The oil itself will be coming back to haunt us for decades, and the chemicals they dumped into it? Who knows, the scientists who could possibly look into it are employed by BP because BP won't release the information to others. And BP has demonstrated a complete lack of being able to deal with this situation, if this is the best they have to offer. A situation where volunteers are ALREADY becoming sick, crops are sick, and the clean up technologies are not installed, maintained, or monitored properly.

I wish I could remember the video off the top of my head but there was a Rachel Maddows video where she said the oil companies said they could deal with a spill 2 or 3 times as big as this one easily. If this is "dealing with it"......I am not sure why BP is left in charge. Them paying 20 billion dollars and a few million a day for clean up is something they have to bear, and in any reasonable world they should have to bear all costs that the oil spill has caused. If it puts them out of business? Cautionary tale to the rest of the oil industry who make hundreds of billions in profits each year. Invest into research and bettering technology, don't operate in unsafe conditions, be prepared for problems, if you can't handle certain problems...don't tell the government you can just so you can drill.

Costner's water/oil centrifuge machine? He couldn't get oil companies or governments regulating oil companies to even take them for free on a trial basis when they had minor spills. And now that a major spill has happened, when they could have implemented them from the beginning if they had researched and tested them prior...they had to test them DURING the crisis and order more (which I doubt they ordered enough).

Relief well waiting in the wings? Other areas of the world require oil companies to do this. Perhaps they should have insisted on having relief wells to the government, perhaps the government should have made them do it. Either way, paying off your regulation body and running fast and loose with your company for high profits does not absolve you when something goes wrong.

Imagine if another well on any other coast line in the US or neighboring nations were to catastrophically fail right now, or even in 2 years. With this one fresh in the public's mind...do you think they would tolerate misinformation, delays, and mysterious chemicals being dumped into the water again? They shouldn't have to tolerate it in the first place because doing so creates a problem no one but BP can attempt to solve because no one but BP has the numbers. And no one but BP can visit the site without BPs permission, which they are not going to allow because they are intentionally withholding the information..............to keep their stock prices up.


>> ^Mcboinkens:

I am as pissed about this as anyone else, but can we stop and think for a minute? The Deep Water Horizon spill was largely caused by mechanical failure. Sure, a few people gave orders to pick up the pace. But what were they supposed to say? Slow down, everybody! We don't like being productive! Everyone's company is like that, time is money. Some of the people(even here on the Sift) want to take down BP as a whole. That would result in hundreds of thousands of job losses, all because of a few people at the company. Imagine you are at work, and someone from your same company that you don't even know screwed up something. Now your company goes under and you lose your job. You had nothing to do with it, but now you are unemployed. That would be the case for almost all of the workers at BP. Even the people directly involved could not really have done anything different, since it was such a freak accident. They set aside $20,000,000,000 for recovery and lawsuits, plus the millions of dollars each day for the actual clean-up. They screwed up, big. But now the nation has its top scientists and engineers trying to clean it up, and I hope for all of us that they find a way to clean it up.

I wonder if that's true about most of the Valdez workers being dead. Anyone know what her source was for those numbers? There were several thousand Exxon Valdez cleanup workers, it seems like this should be a huge story at the moment if most of them are dead, and most related to causes that could conceivably be linked to chemical exposure.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2003/03/valdez-crud
According to the above article Exxon went to great efforts to avoid reporting respiratory illness, releasing medical records of cleanup workers, or granting access to the workers. As a result they completely blocked the federal investigation. There was never a class-action suit, but every worker who managed form a case good enough to go to trial was given a settlement ensuring non-disclosure and no admission of fault. However towards the end the article states that activists are trying to track down the old workers, and that was in 2003. So maybe they really have done a proper survey since then.

>> ^Porksandwich:
An awesome novel.



I just can't do it, sorry man.

Shrug, maybe you'll get bored enough to read it sometime.
>> ^Xax:

>> ^Porksandwich:
An awesome novel.


I just can't do it, sorry man.

Apart from everything else, how can it be that the content of the chemicals is secret and can't be provided to doctors treating affected employees? Is this not covered by some sort of WHMIS thing in the U.S.? If not, then the "land of the free" seems more like they never got rid of slavery. Government, industry, whatever you want to call it, it's all run by a few pathologically greedy bastards with no natural sense of empathy it seems.