Somebody, please, talk me down

[Knothead]

Boy, I sure hope that work picks up soon. I’m starting to think that I have too much time on my hands.

 

I don’t usually have a problem with coincidences. As long as there aren’t too many of them connected to a single event.

So I didn’t really have a hard time with the fact that “Eleven days prior to the April 20 Deepwater Horizon blowout, Halliburton Co., the contractor in charge of cementing the rig's well, agreed to purchase a little-known company. The firm, Boots and Coots, focuses on oil spill prevention and blowout response. Now, it is assisting with the relief well work – under contract to BP – to help stop the Gulf oil spill.

As oil firms grow, response may slow to crises like Gulf oil spill - CSMonitor.com

Halliburton Snaps Up Boots & Coots - DailyFinance

 

Then I discovered that Goldman Sachs sold about half of it’s stock in BP back in January and March of this year.

“Goldman sold 4.9 million shares across three separate funds — 58% of the bank's total holding”

Goldman Sachs beat oil spill debacle with BP shares sell-off | Business

 

Ok, now I’m getting interested. Then I read that “Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on the Deepwater Horizon rig burst, causing an environmental disaster.”

BP chief Tony Hayward sold shares weeks before oil spill - Telegraph

 

This many coincidences kind of bothers me. Still, I just can’t wrap my head around the concept that anyone or any group of people could have known and allowed or God forbid even precipitated this disaster.

But it goes on.

I discovered that “BP PLC and other big oil companies based their plans for responding to a big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on U.S. government projections that gave very low odds of oil hitting shore, even in the case of a spill much larger than the current one.

The government models, which oil companies are required to use but have not been updated since 2004, assumed that most of the oil would rapidly evaporate or get broken up by waves or weather”

BP Based Spill Plans on Outdated Government Models - WSJ.com

 

Now come on. As hot button a topic as off shore drilling is and the feds don’t update their models for six years in a region that is known to be environmentally sensitive?

Bet You Didn’t Know ~ Gulf of Mexico Scientific Knowledge Base Continually Expanding: The Environmental Studies Program Assists MMS In Its Mission Of Leasing, Regulating And Protecting Offshore Environment

That’s starting to stretch the limits of my credulity.

 

But on the other hand, I guess it’s like Rahm Emanuel said last November (hmmm): “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before”.

Rahm Emanuel Quotes

 

I wonder who stands to gain here. Hmmmm. Maybe the Bilderberg group?

The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an annual, unofficial, invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are people of influence in the fields of politics, banking, business, the military and media. Each conference is closed to the public.

Bilderberg Group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Bilderberg names! Cabal peeks out from shadows

 

 

Naaaaa. Couldn't happen. Right?

[Qfwfq]

Halliburton Co.

Gosh we've heard that name before, haven't we? They seem to have irons in every fire.

 

If you're out of work, you'd better find another way of doing your duty as a good citizen of Oceania, remaining blissfully blind to all that goes on behind the scenes. Don't you know it's Goldstein you're supposed to hate?.....

[JMJones0424]

Talk you down? Why? Whether or not your conspiracy theories are true... the fact remains that there exists a fundamental problem in the way the US government handles corporations.

 

If an individual private contractor, through his own negligence, caused the death of 11 people and untold billions of environmental damage and economic hardship in the area, there would be no debate over whether or not he should face trial for manslaughter and other charges. Mechanical engineers and others in the building industry use their stamp of approval to not only assert that they have gone over blueprints to the best of their ability, but they also take personal and professional responsibility for any damages due to negligence. A quick google search led to the recent manslaughter trial of a rigger who, according to the prosecution, failed to correctly support a portion of the crane that collapsed in New York in 2008, killing seven people.

 

BP has a history of blatant safety violations, some of them, had they been committed by an individual, would have been prosecutable for manslaughter among other crimes. But politicians, prosecutors, and public regulators seem to soak up the rain of money from large corporations resulting in a failure to agressively regulate and prosecute violations as much as they would against private individuals. Fines alone have not so far provided a large enough incentive for BP to clean up its act. And BP by far is not the only guilty party in this mess.

 

Yet, you can not lock up a corporation for manslaughter. One of the primary reasons for creating a corporation in the first place is to limit personal liability. If fines are not substantial enough to cause severe economic harm to a corporation and its investors, they do not provide the same deterrent as they do against individuals. When an industry can buy the loyalty of its regulators, as seems to have been the case with MMS for years, then the entire regulation structure is nothing but an inconvenient joke.

 

The US Supreme Court has recently reversed some election campaign restrictions for corporations citing first ammendment protections of free speech. It seems to me that we are headed for even more preferrential acces and control of our politicians by those who can most afford it, and have the most to gain. Where's Teddy when we need him?

[REASON]

Apparently the concept of Corporate Personhood is good at conveying the rights of individuals to corporations, but not the responsibility.

[belovelife]

I think the arguement at the beginning here is similar to saying neo-Nazis

planned it to tar and feather the coast

 

but I agree, this has affected so many people and ocean animals, something

has to be done, there has to be some sort of accountability

the economics are going to hit bp heavily, what they need to do is

have a valve at the base that can cutoff flow for every rig,

stop using gas, or have a safe nuclear plan

the latter being a decent debate

 

although I may not agree with the nuclear option it still beats what we have today

[modest]

what they need to do is

have a valve at the base that can cutoff flow for every rig,

 

That is what a blowout preventer is. The macondo well had a state of the art BOP with redundant rams to cut off the flow. It somehow failed.

 

~modest

[Qfwfq]

Yet, you can not lock up a corporation for manslaughter. One of the primary reasons for creating a corporation in the first place is to limit personal liability.

I don't know about the US (and Reason's link makes it look tenebrous over there) but over here any organization that is a legal person must have a legal representative. If the organization commits a crime, it might or might not be possible to determine blame more specifically but somebody has the criminal responsibility.

[Knothead]

If it's not too much trouble, could the moderator in charge please move this thread to the strange claims forum?

I realize now that I should have posted it there from the outset, but I actually didn't realize that it existed. My bad.

 

But I think I'm going to have a few more wacky thoughts to share and I would feel better to have it moved before hand.

 

Thanks,

Steve

[Knothead]

Another coincidence.

 

BP oil critic and oil expert, Matt Simmons, has died from an apparent heart attack while soaking in hot tub. Simmons, who founded Simmons & Co. International, had recently retired. He was known as a vocal critic of BP and it’s bad practices which led to the recent oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. “One month ago he said estimated a flow rate from the uncontrolled well of 120,000 barrels per day instead of the initially official number of just 5,000 barrel per day”. (Australian News Net)

 

BP Critic and Oil Expert Dies Suddenly « American Pendulum

 

What Matt Simmons said about the gulf oil spill before his death (six interviews) | Before It's News

 

YouTube - CIA secret weapon of assassination Heart Attack Gun, Declassified 1975 New World Order Report http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSEnurBApdM

[Theory5]

That is what a blowout preventer is. The macondo well had a state of the art BOP with redundant rams to cut off the flow. It somehow failed.

I would be anything that the BOP wasn't properly maintained.

 

This many coincidences kind of bothers me. Still, I just can’t wrap my head around the concept that anyone or any group of people could have known and allowed or God forbid even precipitated this disaster.

From what i understand most corporations like this care more about their bottom line then their workers, hence why they shut off the alarms (so the workers wouldn't be bothered by "false alarms").

What bothers me even more is that a larger oil spill than this happened a few years ago off Australia, and from what I hear it took a few months to seal it off and when they did they used the mud thing that they used now.

 

I agree with how your looking at things, this seems awfully planned out for an entire accident. Failsafes failing, shareholders dumping their shares, predictions that have no basis in reality. And what really bothers me is that these same companies keep doing horrible things, and they all seems intertwined. If I believed in conspiracies this would be on the very top of my list. Or proof of some sort of shadow group of leaders or CEO's or something.

And IF it was some sort of conspiracy it bothers me that nobody has pieced this together before. But I need solid proof for things like this, fortunately I don't need solid proof not to trust these companies.

Maybe we should pool some money together and get the yes men into some of those private meetings :-)