CBS 60Minutes' Expose' On Deepwater Horizon's Blowout: Profits Before Safety & Chris Hedges "Little Eichmans" & Transocean's $1 Billion Windfall

The corporations, and those who run them, consume, pollute, oppress and kill. The little Eichmanns who manage them reside in a parallel universe of staggering wealth, luxury and splendid isolation that rivals that of the closed court of Versailles. The elite, sheltered and enriched, continue to prosper even as the rest of us and the natural world start to die. They are numb. They will drain the last drop of profit from us until there is nothing left. And our business schools and elite universities churn out tens of thousands of these deaf, dumb and blind systems managers who are endowed with sophisticated skills of management and the incapacity for common sense, compassion or remorse. These technocrats mistake the art of manipulation with knowledge.

Quote by Chris Hedges from article BP and the 'Little Eichmanns' by Chris Hedges Via Commondreams, May 17, 2010

Mainstream Media CBS does an in depth intensive expose on the BP DeepwaterHorizon disaster. There were according to the 60 minutes expose there were a number of technical issues and problems with the drilling several weeks before the disaster. Nothing in the meantime was done to correct these problems. BP told personnel not to worry that these were minor problems. Then BP ignored other safety protocols and seems to have ignored advice from Transocean or Halliburton or other l seasoned experts.

This was a disaster in the making and not some random act of God or some sort of last minute human error. The bosses /CEOs wanted to meet their deadline at any cost. They put profits before safety . They had little concern for the workers on the oil rig and are not heartbroken over the loss of 11 men. For their own conscience if they had one Transocean could have given large payouts to the families of the deceased and compensated those who survived and put more money into the clean up.

So this is the wonderful world of the Neoconservative Utopian dream come true consisting of deregulation and rapacious , unfettered Big Business as promised to the
world by the likes of Dick Cheney, George Bush Jr., Karl Rove , Condolezza Rice , Wolfowitz, Gonzales & Fox News ' Roger Ailes et al. America and the world are going to be living with the Neocon legacy for a long time to come.

BP uninterested in safety issues
There were problems which were known several weeks before the oil well exploded- BP ignores technical and safety issues in order to"expedite' the drilling.
The blowout safety valve was damaged and batteries needed to be replaced
Meanwhile they did not follow proper procedures and protocols in the installation of the pipe which would go down the deepest under the water surface and then below the Ocean floor going deeper than anyone had ever done before.
In a sense BP was still experimenting without enough safe guards

Deepwater Horizon's Blowout, Part 1at CBS News.com 60 Minutes

May 16, 2010


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Deepwater Horizon's Blowout, Part 2
May 16, 2010

Scott Pelley investigates the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that killed 11, causing the ongoing oil leak in the waters off of Louisiana. One survivor talks about his harrowing escape and what happened after he got off the burning rig.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

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And in the clip below from Think Progress talking to the experts who fear the worst case scenario.
Experts fear the disaster could get much worse which is something they are reluctant to talk about.Anyway they are not confident that the clean up will prevent a major environmental catastrophe.

Oilpocalypse Now: Scientists 'Shudder To Think' Of Potential Devastation

climatebrad — May 04, 2010 — http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/201... 5/3/10: Gulf Coast marine scientists agree that the unfolding oil disaster could mean devastation beyond human comprehension.




Chris Hedges makes a telling analogy comparing the CEOs and managers etc. as being equivalent to Hitler's Eichmann.

Most of these Little Eichmanns graduated from a business indoctrination school where they learn to shut down their conscience seeing everything as translated into gains and loses of these corporations as all that matters.

BP and the 'Little Eichmanns' by Chris Hedges Via Commondreams, May 17, 2010

Cultures that do not recognize that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, cannibalize themselves until they die. They ruthlessly exploit the natural world and the members of their society in the name of progress until exhaustion or collapse, blind to the fury of their own self-destruction. The oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, estimated to be perhaps as much as 100,000 barrels a day, is part of our foolish death march. It is one more blow delivered by the corporate state, the trade of life for gold. But this time collapse, when it comes, will not be confined to the geography of a decayed civilization. It will be global.

Those who carry out this global genocide-men like BP's Chief Executive Tony Hayward, who assures us that "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume''-are, to steal a line from Ward Churchill, "little Eichmanns." They serve Thanatos, the forces of death, the dark instinct Sigmund Freud identified within human beings that propels us to annihilate all living things, including ourselves. These deformed individuals lack the capacity for empathy. They are at once banal and dangerous. They possess the peculiar ability to organize vast, destructive bureaucracies and yet remain blind to the ramifications. The death they dispense, whether in the pollutants and carcinogens that have made cancer an epidemic, the dead zone rapidly being created in the Gulf of Mexico, the melting polar ice caps or the deaths last year of 45,000 Americans who could not afford proper medical care, is part of the cold and rational exchange of life for money.

Yes these corporations even make profits on a disaster. Transocean who owned the rig due to increase profits made a payout to shareholders of $ 1 Billion and from their insurance policy they made a whopping $275 Million Profit.

What spill? Rig owner approves $1 billion dividend to shareholders By John Byrne Via The Raw Story.com, May 17th, 2010

Transocean's distribution to shareholders was done quietly on Friday at a "closed door meeting." The company had previously announced that they would vote on the dividend at the event.

To put the distribution in perspective, the amount of profit that Transocean plans to pay out in the next year is half of what Exxon ultimately paid for the Exxon Valdez disaster off the Alaska Coast.
Story continues below...

It's also more than double what BP has said they've spent on the cleanup to date.

The company also made a paper gain from their insurance carrier after the Deepwater Horizon rig collapsed into the ocean aflame.

Transocean had insured the rig for $560 million, but apparently never spent that much money actually building it. The company's CEO told investors on a recent conference call that the firm had book a $270 million "accounting gain" on the difference between the real value of the rig and the amount that they'd insured it for.

Brit Hume on Fox News says there is very little oil washed up on the shores and therefore he can't see that there is any issue if the oil stays at sea. We can only guess that any talk about protecting the environment is just all hogwash, nonsense and horse Feathers. As Bush would say and millions of born again evangelicals that why worry about the environment when God is coming soon and will restore the whole earth to its pristine form.

Brit Hume then claims that most of the oil that enters the ocean is from natural occurring seepage. So BP, Halliburton and Transocean are not to blame but Mother Nature or God.

Brit Hume Shrugs Off Oil Spill: ‘Where Is The Oil?’ via Think Progress , May 16, 2010

This morning, Fox News anchor Brit Hume scoffed at the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, wondering, “Where is the oil?” Hume followed the lead of Rush Limbaugh and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), who have been aggressively downplaying the disaster and bristling at comparisons to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. During the Fox News Sunday roundtable, Hume dismissed the expert analysis that many times more oil have spilled already than the Exxon Valdez disaster, a point raised by fellow panelist Juan Williams:

Brit Hume Mocks Oilpocalypse: 'Where's The Oil?'



Oil and Environmentalist versus Brit Hume & other Oil Industry shils . If these commentators, pundits, politicians or media personalities are in one way or another have connections to the oil industry this information should be shared with the public. The the public can take these factors into account when evaluating their arguments and talking points.

Can't blame them since these shameless oil industry defenders are dependent on the oil industry and some have stocks in these corporations and a few friends like Dick Cheney in big business. It ought to be of public record how much money is handed out to politicians or bureaucrats or media networks and personalities . So if Brit Hume or Limbaugh, or Beck or Malkin or Coulter or Hannity have many connections to the oil industry and makes money off of it one way or another the public has a right to know if these individuals are going to the media defending the oil companies.

The public should be aware of their agenda . The audience also has a duty to check out the public record of these characters and whether they have been big boosters of the oil industry and if they habitually defend the oil companies no matter what.
There ought to be full disclosure.




also see BP screwing up the cleanup with toxic dispersant which may do as much harm to the environment as the oil would have: BP chose more toxic, less effective oil dispersant manufactured by company with ‘close ties’ to oil giant. Via ThinkProgress.org, May 17, 2010

For more related articles see previous post May 16, 2010.

and so it goes,
GORD.