9/11 families' fury as Obama compares BP oil spill to Twin Towers attack … Shares plummet by 9% wiping £7billion off firm's value. British families of 9/11 victims described Barack Obama (left) as 'cruel' yesterday for comparing the terrorist outrage to the BP oil spill. The U.S. president said there were 'echoes' between the Gulf of Mexico disaster and the Al Qaeda suicide attacks which killed 2,995 people, including 67 Britons. He said that just as the events of September 11, 2001, had profoundly shaped 'our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy', so the oil disaster would shape thinking on the environment and energy for years to come. Mr Obama compared 9/11 to the disaster in an interview with the respected US political website Politico. 'In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11,' he said, 'I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.' – UK Mail Online
Dominant Social Theme: Another game-changing tragedy.
Free-Market Analysis: Ordinarily we don't like to cover stories that are already receiving a great deal of coverage, and this one has been splashed all over the blogosphere. But we have to cover it, really, because it deals so directly with the Bell's brief, which is to report on the formation and evolution of power-elite dominant social themes. In this case there is no doubt from our point of view that the disastrous BP rig catastrophe and subsequent oil spill is in the process of being used as fodder to further an American – and Western – green agenda.
In fact, according to reports we've read, the Obama administration is seizing on the disaster to move forward with cap-and-trade legislation. The 9/11 comment is merely one aspect of the larger promotional campaign. Cap-and-trade, in fact, is a cornerstone of an authoritarian regime that will seek to monitor every aspect of American energy usage via a taxing authority. Obama, in this sense, is acting as a kind of errand-boy for Western elites and its "corporatocracy." Here's an excerpt of a recent e-mail that the administration apparently sent out to supporters on the subject:
The BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast is the worst environmental disaster of its kind in our nation's history … Today, we consume more than 20 percent of the world's oil, but have less than two percent of the world's oil reserves. Beyond the risks inherent in drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month — including many in dangerous and unstable regions. … Please stand with me today in backing clean energy … The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive energy and climate bill, and there is currently a plan in the Senate — a plan that was developed with ideas from Democrats and Republicans — that would achieve the same goal. But this is an issue that Washington has long ignored in favor of protecting the status quo. So I'm asking for your help today to show that the American people are ready for a clean-energy future.
While such rhetoric sounds reasonable, we can go back in time to see how such arguments evolve. We pointed out in an article written around the beginning of May that the spill would be used to push for additional regulations. "How convenient!" we wrote, "This in turn, creates more legislative activity to further regulate drilling. And the largest oil companies are not averse to increased regulation that helps drive out smaller players … Here's an excerpt we found on the Internet – adapted from Chapter 10 of the Holes in the Ozone Scare: The Scientific Evidence That the Sky Isn't Falling, published in June 1992 by 21st Century by Rogelio A. Maduro and Ralf Schauerhammer:"
Who Owns the Environmentalist Movement? … Far from a grass roots movement, environmentalism is a big business, funded and directed by the leading families of the U.S. and European establishments … Twenty-five years ago, those who believed that Mother Nature comes first and humankind second were part of an insignificant fringe, considered radical by most Americans. … Official lore from the environmental movement's publications asserts that the movement emerged from the grass roots. The truth, however, is that funding and policy lines comes from the most prestigious institutions of the Eastern Liberal Establishment, centered around the New York Council on Foreign Relations, and including the Trilateral commission, the Aspen Institute, and a host of private family foundations. …
The vast wealth of the environmentalist groups may come as a shock to most readers who believe that these groups are made up of "public interest", "nonprofit" organizations that are making great sacrifices to save the Earth from a looming doomsday caused by man's activities. In fact, the environmental movement is one of the most powerful and lucrative businesses in the world today. …
Where do the environmental groups get their money? Dues from members represent an average of 50 percent of the income of most groups; most of the rest of the income comes from foundation grants, corporate contributions, and U.S. government funds. Almost every one of today's land-trust, environmental, animal-rights, and population-control groups was created with grants from one of the elite foundations, like the Ford foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. These "seed grants" enable the radical groups to become established and start their own fundraising operations. These grants are also a seal-of-approval for the other foundations. …
From the scant information publicly available (largely annual reports from the major environmental groups), one can conservatively estimate that corporations contribute more than $200 million a year to the environmentalist movement. This should come as no surprise. Over the past 20 years, giant corporations have discovered that by using environmental regulations they can bankrupt their competition, the small- and medium-sized firms that are the most active and technologically innovative part of the U.S. economy.
Here's the rest of the article: Real Story of Offshore Drilling
We can see from the above how aggressively Big Oil and American big industry in general funded the environmental movement. The result, in the case of Big Oil, was to move exploration from land to sea – where sooner or later there was bound to be a big environmental catastrophe. Of course this logic chain is avoided by the mainstream media. The most obvious story line is in vogue: Big Bad BP versus the government, the Gulf Coast fishermen and everyone else.
As a result of this story line, the Obama Administration can rev up its loony cap-and-trade policy – a giant-sized scam if there ever was one. Leaving aside the insanity of "taxing" carbon dioxide – human exhalations, in other words – those that benefit will be those who can "trade" carbon dioxide credits and take advantage of tax breaks, and have the critical mass to do so. But what is even more ridiculous than the legislation itself is the lack of linkage. There is no connection between the BP spill and regulating the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. That will be conveniently ignored of course in the thousands of articles that will be soon be written about the revived cap-and-trade initiative and its relationship to BP.
Over and over again, surely we shall read – and hear and see – that the BP spill has somehow made cap-and-trade legislation necessary and inevitable. Neither Republicans, nor Democrats, nor the media itself shall examine the idiocy of linking the BP disaster to legislation that attempts to minimize carbon dioxide. In fact there is no denying now what it is evident, that cap-and-trade itself and the larger environmental movement is a kind of power-elite fear-based promotion. Global warming didn't do the trick, so perhaps the BP disaster will move along this horrid legislation that will only further diminish what is left of entrepreneurial capitalism in America.
We have not discussed in any great detail the culpability of BP as regards this disaster. We will not attempt to further delineate what is surely obvious to many who might pause at this blog or read some of its contents – that there is suspicion throughout the alternative media that BP (an elite-controlled corporation if there ever was one) in some sense generated this disaster to build sentiment for the elitist cap-and-trade measure and other horrible environmental regulations. No, we won't "go there." But we do find Obama's 9/11 comparison fitting. There are plenty of lingering questions about 9/11 and how it occurred and why it happened. The same questions will haunt the BP disaster. And answers will be just as hard to come by.
