BP's "GULF KILL" Procedure

Now nearly 85% successful! (Click here for larger, underlying graphic.)

It occurs to me that, like the mining industry and the ecology of West Virginia, if the oil industry can simply kill off the entire Gulf fast enough, there will be nothing left for environmentalists to protect.

Of course, some low-level BP flunkies would have to be ritually sacrificed, and a great political show would have to be made about, oh, let's say, the greatness of America. Or the rule of law.

Or something.

But in the end, other than a few, hardy, independent and poorly-funded documentary film makers, the media would close up shop and go find another runaway blonde or fake scandal to leg-hump for ratings.

The public would shrug.

And the United States of Homer would return to its default factory setting:

Homer Simpson: "Will you all stop worrying about that stupid comet oil spill? It's going to be destroyed. Didn't you hear what that guy in the building said?"

Lisa Simpson: "But dad, don't you think..."

Homer: "Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time. Just like that rain forest global warming scare a few years back. Our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn't they?"

Lisa: "No, Dad, I don't think..."

Homer: "There's that word again!"

Game-set-match, and another triumph for Disaster Capitalism.

Now, do I think that this is the actual plan?

Well, let's just say that I have come to believe corporations should be considered guilty until proven innocent, and that I will reserve judgment until all the evidence is in.

However, if you believe that no institutions operating on the playing field of American democracy would be evil enough to do something that incredibly destructive and reckless just to increase their bottom line...well...first I would warmly welcome you to planet Earth on behalf of my tragic and glorious species.

And then I would direct you to the nearest public library and urge you to look up things like an overview of th the history of the American labor movement, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire,"The Jungle", the Bhopal Disaster, the looting of the American economy by the Banksters


disgraced former Republican House Speaker Tom DeLay's "perfect petri dish of capitalism" and slavery in the Marianas


a company called Enron

and a few hundred other examples that come immediately to mind.

If you doubted that the United States Gummint would sanction the annihilation of a big chunk of the planet to beta test some flaky economic theory pried out of Ayn Rand's cold, dead ass, I would refer you to the entire fucking

Iraq War.

If you could not believe that the American public could be induced to simply forget the destruction of a whole region of their own country, I would hand you a few articles on a place called New Orleans.

Even the most cursory reading of the literature shows that, as machines designed to do nothing but maximize profit, corporations are fundamentally sociopathic and will generally conduct themselves with a sense of public morality no greater or less than the size of the gun the gummint has pointed at their heads.

It is their nature, and as such, if large and well-connected corporations come to believe they can make a buck off your death -- and if they believe they can get away with it under the Conservative figleafs of free market self-regulation -- first they'll secretly insure your home and family, then they'll kill you, then render you down for soap, and then sell the soap to your kids, then kill your kids, then burn your house down, then collect the insurance and use part of the profits to run ads against those evil unions and activist judges and trial lawyers who want to limit their right to treat human life like ass paper and the planet like their personal bidet.

And so, dear visitor, I would urge you read up on my country and its rich and schizophrenic history and decide for yourself.

And I would also urge you to hurry up and get 'er done before the Texas School Book Grand Inquisitors heaves all of that scary "fact" stuff into the always hungry maw of the Wingnut Wood Chipper and replaces it with a line of "Ronald Reagan and Jebus Saves Christian Murrica from the Hippies" Pop-up books.