That’s a 21-inch pipe blowing oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s 5,000 feet underwater and it’s a doomsday hole. There’s something very strange about the information coming out of the Gulf oil spill. It’s minimal. Some scientists who have technology for precisely measuring the rate of flow from the pipe are being turned away from the spill area by BP and the United States government. BP didn’t even want the video to get released because they didn’t want anyone to know how much oil was leaking. They are still saying that knowing how much oil is coming out is irrelevant. Really? Some experts are trying to warn people that over 75 million gallons of oil have already poured into the Gulf waters. 75 million. That’s almost seven times the Exxon Valdez spill already.
What happens when you spill all that oil into an ocean? Everything dies. It’s a blanket of black poisonous death.
For the next few decades at least, if you order seafood at a restaurant that may have been caught in the Gulf of Mexico, you are either very brave or very stupid. The first thing I’m going to ask about seafood at the market or a restaurant is, ‘Where does this come from?’ You better believe it. The oil spill is loaded with poisons like benzene. The Gulf is turning into a puddle of death. Thanks to a multi-national corporation, British Petroleum. In fact, BP is telling workers hired to help with cleanup and containment not to worry about the foul petroleum odors, headaches, and nausea they are suffering out on the water. BP wants them to think it’s all perfectly ok. It’s not. Even the cleanup chemicals and oil dispersants contain hazardous chemicals. I would not set foot anywhere near the Gulf spill without breathing gear. Remember what the U.S. EPA did right after the September 11 World Trade Center attacks? They told all the rescue workers at ground zero that the air was safe to breath. Those workers are now dropping dead. There are smart heroes and there are dumb heroes.
If you think Mr. Obama is just a little bit more forthright than Mr. Bush was, you better think again and think fast if you are down there on the Gulf. Invite our President on down to spend a week on a fishing boat dropping oil booms in front of that slick. He’ll tell you he has dinner plans.
But there’s something more than this that is being hidden by BP and the U.S. I think it might have to do with the other 4,000 or so rigs in the Gulf. Perhaps they know that BP got away with drilling without any real engineering that would prevent a disaster underwater. Do you really think there was a ‘blowout preventer’ down there? Do you really think that any of the other oil rigs have these ‘preventers?’ What if several wells have catastrophic failures? What if there are many wells that are just time bombs out of sight out of mind?
Where is the U.S. military? Why are they not down there verifying what this British Petroleum company is telling us? Are they unable to? Why would that be? Why would a president of the United States believe what he was being told by an oil company? Don’t these companies lie? Don’t they commit crimes? We hear strange comments from U.S. government sources about supper-duper secret gatherings of the world’s best scientists and engineers working on this spill problem. Sounds like a script from a fifties science fiction film. Doesn’t sound real. Let’s see this committee of scientists, Mr. Obama. Produce them for us. We’re all wondering which scientists you are talking about. Is Captain Kirk involved too?
The United States and BP were totally unprepared for every part of this disaster. They had no plans, no knowledge of what actions to take, no backups, no skills, no equipment, and possibly no ‘blowout preventers’ at all. Nothing. This is scary. But these things never work just in a single area. Let’s expand this sheer incompetence and total lack of preparedness into another area altogether. The nuclear area.
It is my guess, based on my observation of the reaction to the Gulf spill, that we are just as incapable of preventing a massive launch of nuclear weapons as we are at preventing a massive oil spill. I would be willing to bet that a nuclear accident beyond anyone’s ability to control is just a hair’s breadth away. Because the ‘launch preventer’ will undoubtedly and inexplicably fail. What BP and the U.S. government don’t want you to know is just how close to the bleeding edge of incompetence everything really is. Companies like BP aren’t interested in being safe. They are interested in being rich.
BP will pay Obama his allowance and he’ll go home happy.