British Petroleum BP: A History Part I, Colonial Waster

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May 3, 2010 — Dean Henderson

“Drill Baby Drill”, cried the Caribou Barbie. And her corporate lap dog minions concurred. Glenn Beck played the fiddle, O’ Reilly on bass and Rush tooted sax between Oxycontin episodes. Then came the Birthers, the Bigots and all manner of the well-heeled disgruntled. Former Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX and why not) smelled money and was soon conducting the Tea Party orchestra on behalf of Big Bank, Big Insurance, Big Pharma and, of course, Big Oil.

Obama the Pleaser, tired of the noise, decided to throw the hungry poodles a bone, announcing one month ago that we would open our oceans to the drill rigs of those oft-dispossessed oil barons. Then last week, the oldest of these misunderstood benefactors, a company which has spared not a single advertising nickel to convince us ignorant country folk that it’s BP logo actually now stands, you see, for “Beyond Petroleum”, hit a real gusher of not so beyond petroleum in 5,000 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico.

Never mind that this multinational behemoth, which signs its generous PAC-money contribution checks “British Petroleum”, had assured government permitters that such a catastrophe could not occur, or that there seems to be no end to the petroleum which “Beyond Petroleum” has unleashed into not just the Gulf of Mexico, but the entire Atlantic Basin. Never mind that the BP board of directors is chock full of Dukes and Lords and Sirs, whose ancestors no doubt filled the ranks of the British Imperial Army, which our Founding Fathers soundly defeated on the heels of a revolutionary, let’s see, was it a… Tea Party.

And the treasonous right-wing bent-over corporate poodle orchestra ground to a halt. Indeed a deafening silence fell over the Fox News land. Yeah, it’s fairly difficult to square this phony patriotism, which makes its living bashing the very concept of government, the very essence of democracy, the very idea of America; with a total subservience to an agenda designed and financed by Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil. This Benedict Arnoldian task becomes even more cumbersome when these shills lock step behind the likes of British Petroleum. Can somebody turn down those lights?

Never mind the apocalyptic environmental disaster unleashed by our willingness to allow a foreign oil company to mine our seabed as if we are some Third World country. Instead consider what British Petroleum has done to the livelihood of US coastal shrimpers, fisherman and farmers. Then consider their sordid history.

British Petroleum, formerly known as first Anglo-Persian Oil and then Anglo-Iranian Oil, hatched Operation Ajax in 1953, employing CIA, Israeli Mossad and British M16 agents to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohamed Mossadegh in Iran. This event lies at the root of US/Iranian tension still today.

In Columbia, BP has been implicated with funding the right-wing death squads that terrorize that nation. In the late 1990?s it was BP which was given the majority stake in the formerly nationalized Russian oil company Lukoil. BP’s assets quadrupled, while Russia was robbed of its oil resources and spun into a severe financial crisis. And it was BP who offloaded its toxic cleanup liabilities via its ARCO subsidiary at Milltown, MT onto US taxpayers when that badly polluted area was made into a Superfund site.

BP is one of four gigantic oil companies which now control the global oil industry from well-head to gas nozzle. In my book, Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf… I call them the Four Horsemen. They are BP Amoco, ExxonMobil, Chevron Texaco and Royal Dutch/Shell. After decades of merger-mania, these Four Horsemen, owned largely by the Rockefeller and Rothschild families and European nobility, have not only vertically integrated the oil industry, but have horizontally integrated the entire energy sector, since they are also the biggest owners of coal, methane and natural gas on the planet.

Caribou Barbie be damned. It’s time to break up Big Oil, launch a US Energy Company under the Department of Energy, and focus on alternative energy production. If this BP fiasco isn’t a wake up call, then consider the economic thoughts of one Daniel Webster,

“The freest government cannot long endure when the tendency of the law is to create a rapid accumulation of property in the hands of a few, and to render the masses poor and dependent”.

http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/british-petroleum-colonial-waster/#more-573

About the author:
Dean Henderson was born in Faulkton, South Dakota. He earned an M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana, where he edited The Missoula Paper and was a columnist for the Montana Kaimin. His articles have appeared in Multinational Monitor, In These Times, Paranoia and several other magazines.

A life long political activist and traveler to fifty countries, Henderson co-founded of the University of Montana Green Party and the Ozark Heritage Region Peace and Justice Network. He is former Vice-President of the Central Ozarks Farmer’s Union and former President of the Howell County Democrats.

In 2004 he won the Democratic nomination for Congress in Missouri’s 8th District.

Dean’s Books Available in print and e-book formats:

Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf…
https://www.createspace.com/3476183
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DeanHenderson

The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries
www.createspace.com/3477016
www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DeanHenderson

Dean Henderson is the author of Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network and The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries.

His Left Hook blog is at http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/category/left-hook-columns/
Dean Henderson is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Dean Henderson: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=listByAuthor&authorFirst=Dean&authorName=Henderson