Irish Time

Monday, May 24, 2010

GERRY ADAM'S COUSIN DYING ON CENSORED HUNGER STRIKE


Gerry Adam's cousin the former republican and current leader of Provisional Sinn Fein, is in his 40th day on hunger strike in solitary confinement and has signed legal papers stating that he should not be revived if he slips into a coma anytime now. At 40 days today, permanent, damage is being done to his body. It doesn't appear as if Adams or his associates are doing anything to save his life. 

Liam Hannaway, a Republican a traditional republican prisoner started his hunger strike in Maghaberry high security prison in protest at being held in a special segregation unit with loyalist prisoners who want to murder him and are tampering with his food. He wants to be moved into the republican wing of the prison.

Hannaway is a member of a well-known traditional Belfast republican family and his grandfather Liam, was one of the founders of the Provisional IRA which brought his cousin Gerry Adams to power along with the 10 IRA and INLA prisoners who died on hunger strike

Supporters of the prisoner belong to Saor Uladh(Free Ulster) a republican splinter group who regard  the Bad Friday Agreement as a sell out and a surrender negotiated by Adams, confirmed he had left instructions that he should not be revived in the prison hospital and let die like Bobby Sands and his comrades.

Carl Reilly from the Republican Network for Unity, said he had spoken to Hannaway’s father on Friday evening. Asked about reports that Hannaway had left instructions not to revived he said: “Yes, I am led to believe that.”

“We are entering a critical phase, Liam was already being treated for coronary problems before he went on his hunger strike. The prison authorities and the Northern Ireland Office have been trying to play this situation down but now it has reached a serious turning point.”

Mr Reilly said Liam Hannaway alleged he had been subject to brutality in the special segregation unit. He also alleged his food had been tampered with by loyalists working in the kitchens.

Liam is serving 10 years for Republicans activities including possessing explosives, has demanded a transfer to a part of the jail that holds 32 republicans aligned to the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA.

“The Northern Ireland Office and the prison service claim there is intelligence from the British police, that Liam’s life would be under threat from rival republicans if he was transferred to their wings,” Reilly said. “Republican Unity Network has spoken to all the major republican organisations with prisoners in Roe houses 3 and 4 in Maghaberry and all of them say there is absolutely no threat to Liam Hannaway.”

In 1981, ten Young Irish republicans sacrificed their lives in a hunger strike at the H-Blocks of Long Kesh Prison in Occupied North of Ireland.  One by one the ten young men embarked on an agonizing hunger strike until death for the basic human rights of Political Status for all Irish Republican Political Prisoners.  

As young men with everything to live for, these volunteers would never have been in prison but for the presence of an occupation British army in their country.  As traditional Irish Republican Political Prisoners, they  recognized that the pursuit of freedom and sovereignty for their country was not a crime.  They refused to be labeled as criminals, and the fight for Political Status was launched from their prison cells.

Efforts earlier efforts at restoring political status had met with promises reneged by the British government.  A blanket protest with no-wash protest, followed by a horrific dirty protest had rallied the male and female republican prisoners for five long hard years but resulted in no advance toward political status. A decision was made by the prisoners to  hunger strike which resulted in deaths of the ten young Irish freedom fighters.Nothing obviously has changed, as Liam Hannaway is dying in a solitary cell, on his 40th day without any food.

Ireland has truly become a fascist military state with a censorship lock down by the mainstream British controlled media. Most of Ireland are not aware of this hunger strike because of almost complete censorship.





Thursday, May 20, 2010

CALLING ALL REBELS ANOTHER HUNGER STRIKE IN IRELAND

LINK TO CALLING ALL REBELS ANOTHER HUNGER STRIKE IN IRELAND




In the seas of time you float serene,
Oh! silver stars of nations born,
And you draw a tear to free men's eyes,
Through dungeon bars forlorn.

Oh! star of Erin, queen of tears,
Black clouds have beset thy birth,
And your people die like morning stars,
That your light may grace the earth. 



BobbY Sands died in 1981, in prison after 66 days of hunger-striking, aged 27. The significance of the hunger strike was the prisoners' aim of being declared as political prisoners (or prisoners of war) and not to be classed as criminals. Today Liam Hannaway is 38 days on Hunger Strike, he needs your support and help!












Friday, May 14, 2010

Thailand Bangkok Censorship and Another Eton Rifle Bloodbath

Websites are blocked by Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or IP address. However, only about 20% of blocked sites are identified by IP; the remaining 80% are unable to be identified at a physical location. Sites identified as being located in Thailand have legal action taken against their operators.

 

Several technologies are employed to censor the Internet such as caching, blacklisting domain name or IP address, or simply redirection to a government homepage. Blacklisting the website is beneficial for this kind of web censorship as the webmasters would be unaware that their websites are being blocked. This measure is said to be used to make websites appear unavailable.

 

Because of the above my articles are either scrambled or unavailable here in Thailand. Certain mainstream outlets are still available but all objective commentary or opposition censored which runs into the thousands now. TV stations of the people or those reporting events objectively have been closed down.

 

 Several reporters critical of the establishment are serving sentences of up to 20 years presently here. I have been fiercely critical of the BBC's coverage of occupied Ireland in the past but I must acknowledge their coverage of events here have generally been reasonably balanced. In the absence of being able publish his articles presently BFClarke a usual anchor here has asked me to publish this on his behalf, to try to describe events exactly, as he has been forced to furnish the links below long with an article that was scrambled last night because of present circumstance.

Latest Update : 3 dead +,  Hundreds injured.

Maj-Gen Khattiya Sawasdipol, or Seh Daeng, the head of Redshirt security has been shot in the head at the protest site in central Bangkok . He was admitted to Hua Chiew hospital and is receiving an emergency treatment for a gunshot wound where his condition is said to be stable. At least 10 people were also njured in the clashes between the army and protesters near Lumpini Park. Demonstrators threw stones at close circuit television cameras and blockaded the area with steel fences.

 

Immediately after he was shot at Sala Daeng intersection, Seh Daeng was rushed to Hua Chiew hospital. He is still receiving emergency treatment.

 

Snipers carrying weapons and live ammunition moved into position prior to the shooting. Gunfire and loud explosions were heard near the area where the Redshirts are camped out at their protest site in Bangkok. The gunfire started after the 6pm (1100 GMT) deadline set by the government passed without the protesters moving off the scene.

 

Sean Boonpracong a Redshirts spokesperson earlier said, "We believe that this is the beginning of the army plan to crack down on us. We have been prepared for this for a long time,"

 

"We will send out groups to surround these vehicles to prevent them from advancing," Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader said. "We believe the army will try to crack down this evening or tomorrow morning."

 


Earlier reports said army chief Gen Anupong Paojinda on Wednesday approved "Operation Ratchaprasong" involving 32,000 troops and 120 APCs to seal off the rally site.

 

The government had threatened to cut off power and water supplies to the Rajprasong neighbourhood of Bangkok, where the demonstrators are massed, if the protesters did not disperse by midnight local time (1700 GMT) on Wednesday.

 

The Prime minister's spokesperson Korbsak Sabhavsau said,
"It's clear that the red shirts have only verbally accepted to join the reconciliation roadmap but have not agreed to end the protests," In Thai culture a verbal agreement, is very different to a formal written one with an official presence.

 


It is clear that the Redshirts will not back down, that there will be a bloodbath if the army and APCs move in to the protest site. It is likely that marksmen are going to take out the hardcore leaders, as is usual with Eton educated British leadership with protest movements like occupied Ireland and other neo-colonies.

 

 

Earlier in the day, Seh Daeng or Commander Red said in an interview before he was shot,

"I'm not afraid of dying. They've marked my head. If I'm afraid, it is who will lead the Redshirts?. All I have on me is a small pistol and a stick ... ..If anyone comes to arrest me, I can assure you I'll shoot and fight to the end ..... Soldiers are on to me. There are snipers out there. But they'll never get me, I'm a Redshirt security commander-in-chief, I can't fear anything, I will not wear protective armour, such dress would make me feel like one who fears death and would prevent me from leading others who do not have protective clothing."

 


NEWS on The HOUR Link Livestation

 

 

COMMANDER RED

 

 

UPDATE ;

"We will continue to rally here at Ratchaprasong. If the government wants to disperse us, do it tonight and don't wait till tomorrow because we'll fight to the end," Redshirt Leader Jatuporn declared.
He said army specialist Maj-Gen Khattiya Sawadipol, also known as Seh Daeng, was now in a stable condition after he was shot in the head. While he was giving the speech, Redshirts were shining spotlights at nearby buildings to prevent snipers from attacking the red-shirt leaders.

 

Link to troops and protesters clash

 

Link to Thailand's red-shirts Staying Power

 

Live event: Unrest in Bangkok - Link

 

 

Thursday, May 13, 2010

CRACKDOWN ON THE REDS BANGKOK THAILAND


Latest Update : I dead, I critically injured.


Maj-Gen Khattiya Sawasdipol, or Seh Daeng, the head of Redshirt security has been shot in the head at the protest site in central Bangkok . He was admitted to Hua Chiew hospital and is receiving an emergency treatment for a gunshot wound where his condition is said to be stable. At least 10 people were also njured in the clashes between the army and protesters near Lumpini Park. Demonstrators threw stones at close circuit television cameras and blockaded the area with steel fences.


Immediately after he was shot at Sala Daeng intersection, Seh Daeng was rushed to Hua Chiew hospital. He is still receiving emergency treatment.

Snipers carrying weapons and live ammunition moved into position prior to the shooting. Gunfire and loud explosions were heard near the area where the Redshirts are camped out at their protest site in Bangkok. The gunfire started after the 6pm (1100 GMT) deadline set by the government passed without the protesters moving off the scene.



Sean Boonpracong a Redshirts spokesperson earlier said, "We believe that this is the beginning of the army plan to crack down on us. We have been prepared for this for a long time,"


"We will send out groups to surround these vehicles to prevent them from advancing," Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader said. "We believe the army will try to crack down this evening or tomorrow morning."


Earlier reports said army chief Gen Anupong Paojinda on Wednesday approved "Operation Ratchaprasong" involving 32,000 troops and 120 APCs to seal off the rally site.



The government had threatened to cut off power and water supplies to the Rajprasong neighbourhood of Bangkok, where the demonstrators are massed, if the protesters did not disperse by midnight local time (1700 GMT) on Wednesday.



The Prime minister's spokesperson Korbsak Sabhavsau said,
"It's clear that the red shirts have only verbally accepted to join the reconciliation roadmap but have not agreed to end the protests," In Thai culture a verbal agreement, is very different to a formal written one with an official presence.



It is clear that the Redshirts will not back down, that there will be a bloodbath if the army and APCs move in to the protest site. It is likely that marksmen are going to take out the hardcore leaders, as is usual with Eton educated British leadership with protest movements like occupied Ireland and other neo-colonies.



Earlier in the day, Seh Daeng or Commander Red said in an interview before he was shot,
"I'm not afraid of dying. They've marked my head. If I'm afraid, it is who will lead the Redshirts?. All I have on me is a small pistol and a stick ... ..If anyone comes to arrest me, I can assure you I'll shoot and fight to the end ..... Soldiers are on to me. There are snipers out there. But they'll never get me, I'm a Redshirt security commander-in-chief, I can't fear anything, I will not wear protective armour, such dress would make me feel like one who fears death and would prevent me from leading others who do not have protective clothing."




NEWS on The HOUR Link Livestation


COMMANDER RED


UPDATE ;
"We will continue to rally here at Ratchaprasong. If the government wants to disperse us, do it tonight and don't wait till tomorrow because we'll fight to the end," Redshirt Leader Jatuporn declared.
He said army specialist Maj-Gen Khattiya Sawadipol, also known as Seh Daeng, was now in a stable condition after he was shot in the head. While he was giving the speech, Redshirts were shining spotlights at nearby buildings to prevent snipers from attacking the red-shirt leaders.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Undiluted Truth - inglan is a bitch




Everyone, Republican or otherwise, has their own particular part to play. No part is too great or too small; no one is too old or too young to do something.


Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.



They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken.



They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.

Quotes of Bobby Sands

''I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom. I shall not settle until I achieve liberation of my country, until Ireland becomes a sovereign, independent socialist republic. ''

Irish Activist

Date of Birth:

March 9, 1954

Date of Death

May 5, 1981

For the first seventeen days of his hunger strike in prison Bobby Sands kept a secret diary mostly in English but occasionally breaking into Gaelic. He saw the hunger-strike as something much larger than the Irish prisoner's five demands and having major repercussions for British rule in Ireland. His diary was written on toilet paper and had to be hidden, mostly carried inside Bobby's own body, you see even in prison there is British censorship to this very day.

On March 30th as he lay on hunger strike in Long Kesh internment camp in occupied Ireland, he was nominated as candidate for Fermanagh South Tyrone by-election.

On day thirty-one of his hunger-strike, he was visited by Owen Carron who acted as his election agent. Owen said of that visit, 'Instead of meeting that young man of the poster with long hair and a fresh face, even at that time when Bobby wasn't too bad he was radically changed. He was very thin and bony and his hair was cut short.'

After the result was announced where Bobby wss elected by more than 30,000 voters, Owen visited Bobby again. "He had already heard the result on the radio. He was in good form alright but he always used to keep saying, 'In my position you can't afford to be optimistic.' In other words, he didn't take it that because he'd won an election that his life would be saved. He thought that the British would need their pound of flesh. I think he was always working on the premise that he would have to die."

At 1.17 a.m. on Tuesday, May 5th, having completed sixty-five days on hunger-strike, Bobby Sands Member of the British Parliament, died in the H-Block prison hospital at Long Kesh concentration camp. In his own words: "of course I can be murdered but I remain what I am, a political POW and no-one, not even the British, can change that." Nine loyal young comrades of Bobby were to follow him to early graves in solidarity with his beliefs.




Voting In Britain For War. Take Your Pick

By John Pilger

May 06, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Staring at the vast military history section in the airport shop, I had a choice: the derring-do of psychopaths or scholarly tomes with their illicit devotion to the cult of organised killing. There was nothing I recognised from reporting war. Nothing on the spectacle of children’s limbs hanging in trees and nothing on the burden of shit in your trousers. War is a good read. War is fun. More war please.

The day before I flew out of Australia, 25 April, I sat in a bar beneath the great sails of the Sydney Opera House. It was Anzac Day, the 95th anniversary of the invasion of Ottoman Turkey by Australian and New Zealand troops at the behest of British imperialism. The landing was an incompetent stunt of blood sacrifice conjured by Winston Churchill; yet it is celebrated in Australia as an unofficial national day. The ABC evening news always comes live from the sacred shore at Gallipoli, in Turkey, where this year some 8000 flag-wrapped Antipodeans listened, dewy-eyed, to the Australian governor-general Quentin Bryce, who is the Queen’s viceroy, describe the point of pointless mass killing. It was, she said, all about a “love of nation, of service, of family, the love we give and the love we receive and the love we allow ourselves to receive. [It is a love that] rejoices in the truth, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And it never fails”.

Of all the attempts at justifying state murder I can recall, this drivel of DIY therapy, clearly aimed at the young, takes the blue riband. Not once did Bryce honour the fallen with the two words that the survivors of 1915 brought home with them: “Never again”. Not once did she refer to a truly heroic anti-conscription campaign, led by women, that stemmed the flow of Australian blood in the first world war, the product not of a gormlessness that “believes all things” but of anger in defence of life.

The next item on the TV news was an Australian government minister, John Faulkner, with the troops in Afghanistan. Bathed in the light of a perfect sunrise, he made the Anzac connection to the illegal invasion of Afghanistan in which, on 13 February last year, Australian soldiers killed five children. No mention was made of them. On cue, this was followed by an item that a war memorial in Sydney had been “defaced by men of Middle Eastern appearance”. More war please.

In the Opera House bar a young man wore campaign medals which were not his. That is the fashion now. Smashing his beer glass on the floor, he stepped over the mess which was cleaned up another young man whom the TV newsreader would say was of Middle Eastern appearance. Once again, war is a fashionable extremism for those suckered by the Edwardian notion that a man needs to prove himself “under fire” in a country whose people he derides as “gooks” or “rag-heads” or simply “scum”. (The current public inquiry in London into the torture and murder of an Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, by British troops has heard that “the attitude held” was that “all Iraqis were scum”).

There is a hitch. In the ninth year of the thoroughly Edwardian invasion of Afghanistan, more than two thirds of the home populations of the invaders want their troops to get out of where they have no right to be. This is true of Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada and Germany. What this says is that, behind the media façade of politicised ritual – such as the parade of military coffins through the English town of Wootton Bassett -- millions of people are trusting their own critical and moral intelligence and ignoring propaganda that has militarised contemporary history, journalism and parliamentary politics – Australia’s Labor prime minister, Kevin Rudd, for instance, describes the military as his country’s “highest calling”.

Here in Britain, the war criminal Tony Blair is anointed by the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee as “the perfect emblem for his people’s own contradictory whims”. No, he was the perfect emblem for a liberal intelligentsia prepared cynically to indulge his crime. That is the unsaid of the British election campaign, along with the fact that 77 per cent of the British people want the troops home. In Iraq, duly forgotten, what has been done is a holocaust. More than a million people are dead and four million have been driven from their homes. Not a single mention has been made of them in the entire campaign. Rather, the news is that Blair is Labour’s “secret weapon”.

All three party leaders are warmongers. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats leader and darling of former Blair lovers, says that as prime minister he will “participate” in another invasion of a “failed state” provided there is “the right equipment, the right resources”. His one condition is the standard genuflection towards a military now scandalised by a colonial cruelty of which the Baha Mousa case is but one of many.

For Clegg, as for Gordon Brown and David Cameron, the horrific weapons used by British forces, such as clusters, depleted uranium and the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of its victims’ lungs, do not exist. The limbs of children in trees do not exist. This year alone Britain will spend £4 billion on the war in Afghanistan, and that is what Brown and Cameron almost certainly intend to cut from the National Health Service.

Edward S Herman explained this genteel extremism in his essay, The Banality of Evil. There is a strict division of labour, ranging from the scientists working in the laboratories of the weapons industry, to the intelligence and “national security” personnel who supply the paranoia and “strategies”, to the politicians who approve them. As for journalists, our task is to censor by omission and make the crime seem normal for you, the public. For it is your understanding and your awakening that are feared, above all.

www.johnpilger.com


Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Sunday, May 2, 2010

THAILAND'S BLOODY SUNDAY IRISH CONNECTION



Thousands of people stop and listen attentively to the Irish-born Aussie ``military'' man as he reads his speeches, which are immediately translated into Thai.

“The criminality on that day was very similar to Bloody Sunday in Ireland, it was an insult to any soldier, it was an insult to any rules of engagement, it was an insult to any manly sense of honour that they tear-gassed a crowd of monks and businessmen.'' Conor Purcell

Mr Purcell says he became "radicalised'' and "very angry'' at the Thai government, after what he witnessed during the April 10 fighting, which left 25 people dead.

He says he was injured by two silicon-coated bullets while trying to shelter behind an APC secured by the reds and now has a ``dirty wound'' which cannot be stitched and has to be treated with antibiotics.

In his latest speech he asked the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Bangkok to the International Criminal Court and for the court to investigate the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation.

Mr Purcell says that when the protests are over he plans to continue his attempts to set up a charity here.

26 People Died and over a Thousand were injured as a result of the attack on the 10 April in Bangkok Thailand, according to Thai Government figures which still have to be verified. Like Bloody Sunday in Ireland the Thai attack AS in Ireland was ordered by A British born, Eton educated, military installed Prime minister, in this instance called Abhisit.



Saturday, May 1, 2010

BRITISH PETROLEUM THE SCUM OF THE EARTH


America's coastline is hurting badly from BP's lack of maintenance practices, do Americans really care ???

Satellite images reveal British Petroleum's oil slick expanding, from 1,150 square miles to some 3,850 square miles in just the last day alone. 
The spill is affecting the wetlands of the state's coastline and animal rescue groups have already started to receive seabirds coated in thick, black oil. 
There are predictions that winds will push the slick closer to the coasts of Alabama, Mississippi and Florida later today. 
The slick has begun to wash ashore in Louisiana, crossing barriers designed to stop its flow.
T
he southern states of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana have declared a state of emergency.

BP like it did inits other American disasters, downplayed the possibility of a catastrophic accident at the rig and did not make plans for any oil spill. T
he British firm stated it was unlikely or virtually impossible, for an accident to occur, which would lead to a crude oil spill or serious damage to beaches, fish, mammals but now threatens virtually all of the southern American coastline. 
BP's plan filed for the well in February 2009, emphasized  that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities." 


Remember BP's Alaskan pipeline debacle, remember BP's  part in the Exxon Valdez spill ? Remember the 15 deaths and damage in Texas.Was the Alaska Pipeline corroded? You bet it was. It had been for more than a decade. Did British Petroleum shut the pipe  to turn a quick dollar on its negligence and profit off the disaster it created? Ask the "smart pig."

The government inspectors and pipeline workers who screamed at the time about corrosion all through the pipeline that BP owned 46% of, was supposed to maintain the system, but instead had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warned of pipeline maintenance problems.

Meantime BP executives spent millions of pounds on champagne sex parties to help secure lucrative oil contracts. BP worked alongside MI6 the British international intelligence service to bring about changes in government.  A certain Mr Abrahams who worked for them tells how he spent £45 million in expenses over just four months of negotiations. He was given a no-limit company credit card while he ordered huge supplies of champagne and caviar to be flown on BP company jets to be consumed at the "sex parties".

The hospitality would also continue in London, where prostitutes were rented on his BP credit card to entertain. He tells of a wild west world of BP oil executives with briefcases stuffed full of US dollars rubbing shoulders with mafia Dons, prostitutes and deal fixers in dark back rooms. "Caviar and champagne were consumed at the parties, which would start in the bars but inevitably end with the girls in the rooms. 

"We had a company American Express card with no name on it which we could use to draw out $10,000 a time to pay for entertaining without ever having to account for it." Mr Abraham's BP's guests of luxury, included, British Members of Parliament, including Harold Elletson then a Tory MP but now a Liberal Democrat, former Home Secretary John Reid who also minister for British Occupied Ireland. "John flew out in the BP Gulfstream jet," he said. "After dinner, we went drinking in the hard currency bar. He was drinking a lot, this was a year before he gave up for good and I grew worried as it got closer to the time of the curfew imposed because of the tense political situation at the time. 


I said, 'Come on John, we have to get back to the hotel.' But as we left, he was swaying around and being very noisy. I urged him not to draw attention to us because we weren't meant to be still on the streets. But then a van load of police armed with Kalashnikovs pulled up and asked us what we were doing. He said, 'I am a British politician...' I urged him to be quiet, but then he said to one of the policemen, 'If you don't take that f***ing Kalashnikov out of my face I'm going to stick it up your f***ing a***.'


Mr Abrahams claims alleged co-operation between BP and the British intelligence services to secure more business. A spokesperson for John Reid said she had no comment and the British Foreign Office said of Mr Abrahams' claims: "We neither confirm nor deny anyone's allegations in relation to intelligence matters."


BP's CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of  Chuck Hamel who complained about  the condition of the pipe's tanker facility. BP tapped the phone calls with a US congressman and ran surveillance with smear campaigns against him. When it was revealed in court, a US federal judge said BP's behaviour were "reminiscent of Nazi Germany."

Neither was this an isolated case. Captain J Woodle, once responsible for the pipe's Valdez terminus, was blackmailed into resigning when he complained of its disastrous condition. The weapon used with Woodle was faked evidence of marital infidelity.

Suddenly BP discovered corrosion necessitating an emergency shut-down of the same corrosion Dan Lawn had screamed about for 15 years. Lawn a government inspector kept his job only because his lawyers kept BP from firing him. BP claimed  surprise to find corrosion when Lawn issued a report on corrosion right after a leak and spill were discovered much earlier..

The timing of a sudden fix of a decade-long problem had a bad smell. A shutdown in mid-summer, in the middle of a Middle East war guaranteed to raise prices and reap monster profits for BP once again. The price of crude oil jumped more than $2 a barrel on the shutdown news. How lucky for BP which was selling four million barrels of oil a day to the American consumer. Had BP completed repairs a couple years beforehand after Dan Lawn's tenth warning, the market would hardly have noticed. BP could have fixed the pipeline problem after their corrosion caused the oil spill. But they would have lost the  seasonal supply squeeze windfall.

Did BP manipulate the market in such a crude manner? Lord Browne, the CEO of BP apologized for that particular scam and the Alaska spill and for the deaths of 15 workers at the company's deadly sloppy refinery operation at Texas City, Texas back in 2005.

The company's US CEO, Bob Malone, was Co-Chairman of the Bush re-election campaign in Alaska. Mr. Bush, in turn, was so impressed with BP's care of Alaska's environment, that he pushed again to open the state's arctic wildlife refuge to drilling by the BP consortium, Obama gave it the all clear just last week. You can go to Alaska right now and see for yourself BP's care of the wilderness. You can smell crude oil still on the beaches from the Exxon Valdez spill.

Exxon took all the blame for the spill because they had the company's name on the ship. But it was BP's pipeline managers who filed the reports that oil spill containment equipment was situated at the site of grounding near Bligh Island. The reports were bogus, the equipment wasn't there and all the beaches were poisoned. Investigators found four-volume's of faked safety reports and concluded  BP was as responsible as Exxon, for the 1,200 miles of oil-destroyed coastline.

Nevertheless, the British Lord Browne boasted of his corporation's environmental record.  BP cares about nature because they have painted every one of their gas stations green. The green paint-job represents to gullible Americans the British oil giant's love of Mother Nature. But the British Lord, Mr. Browne, knows in his heart,  it represents the colour of the Yankee dollar, as he laughs all the way to the bank while consumers pay exorbitant prices at the pump.

BP claims their very profitable timing of the Alaska pipe shutdown is explained by now running a "smart pig" through the oil pipes to locate corrosion. The "pig" is an electronic drone which BP should have used all along, though they did not do so for more than 10 years. They chose shutdown instead, in the middle of an oil crisis to run it, forcing a shutdown when BP's Lord Browne was so close to  the Bush oil famly and the British company's pig is indeed, very, very smart even in Bush/Blair instigated Iraq war.

There are fears the present BP slick could soon rival the Exxon Valdez disaster as the worst oil spill in US history. The  Gulf coast is one of the most sensitive wildlife areas in the US and home to a fishing industry of massive concern to people in the area. Once again the finger-pointing between the Obama administration and BP distracts the American public..Although it is  clearly Btitish Petroleum's responsibility, there spin doctors in the corporate media and political lobbyists like the bankers, will ensure that the government and ordinary people pick up the tab.


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