BP has been given substantial access to BP operations and meetings to a Louisiana shrimper's wife named Kindra Arnesen. What she is now saying won't make BP happy. BP is putting on lots of dog and pony shows in the Gulf, and Arnesen is voicing safety concerns too.
What happened to democracy in Iran? It didn't die a natural death. Iranian democracy was killed by well known actors that included British Petroleum and the United States. You can learn more by listening to Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times reporter, who was 
interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now (video interview). From the 1920's through the 1940's Great Britain controlled all of the oil in Iran, thanks to "a corrupt deal that they had struck with a few representatives of the old declining Iranian monarchy, all of whom had been paid off." The troubles began when Iran began to assert ownership of its own oil:
[A]fter World War II, when the winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism were blowing throughout the developing world, Iranians developed this idea: we’ve got to take our oil back. And that was the general—the kind of national passion that brought to power Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was the most prominent figure in the democratic period of Iran during the late '40s and early ’50s. It was Mosaddegh's desire, supported by a unanimous vote of the democratically elected parliament of Iran, to nationalize what was then the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. They carried out the nationalization. The British and their partners in the United States fiercely resisted this. And when they were unable to prevent it from happening, they organized the overthrow of Mosaddegh in 1953. So that overthrow not only produced the end of the Mosaddegh government, but the end of democracy in Iran, and that set off all these other following consequences. The Shah ruled for twenty-five years with increasing repression. His rule produced the explosion of the late '70s that produced the Islamic regime. So, it was to protect the interests of the oil company we now know as BP that the CIA and the British Secret Service joined together to overthrow the democratic government in Iran and produce all the consequences we've seen in Iran over the last half-century.Why was the United States willing to get involved in this despicable overthrow? Kinzer suggests that the U.S. was more than willing to believe that there were "communists" in Iran, despite any supporting evidence. The British merely took advantage of this American paranoia. Therefore, the U.S. facilitated the overthrow of a sovereign Middle Eastern country without any justification.
No one elected BP to run any level of American government. But we are a government by the money, not the People, so that is a big invitation to British Petroleum to control entire beaches to prevent the news media from from reporting the full extent of the damage resulting from the Gulf of Mexico oil leakage. Mother Jones reports. In the meantime, most Americans passively sit and watch, along with our politicians, giving a well-documented irresponsible company endless opportunity to operate in relative secrecy while 65 miles of delicate Gulf Coast ecosystem has been ruined by oil. If a "terrorist" with brown skin from the Middle East had caused all of this immense damage, we would have declared yet another "war." But it's a bunch of Caucasian men wearing suits who crapped up the Gulf waters and beaches, and they have given huge amounts of money to Congress, so it's all so very very different . . . And keep in mind that this disaster does not simply affect the Gulf Coast. Did you see the photos of the oil-soaked pelicans? The "White Pelicans" aren't simply "Gulf Coast" birds--they migrate all the way from the Gulf Coast up to Minnesota--it has been quite the spectacle to see them passing through St. Louis twice each year. We'll see how many survive to fly next year. And that's merely one species. There is no reason for trusting that BP will do the clean-up job correctly, putting the environment before its profits. From the Mother Jones article (above), we've seen that BP will "fix" the problem by hiding information. News is now breaking that the oil has now penetrated 12 miles into the Louisiana marshes. I'm feeling sick about this disaster and sick about the lack of action by our federal government--Why is the Obama Administration continuing to defer to the "government" of British Petroleum? As soon as the first drops of oil escaped into the Gulf waters, this was no longer BP's disaster; it became an immense American tragedy. You've heard of "too big to fail." Lots of bank money is making sure that we will continue to have "too big to fail banks." If these Gulf oil rigs are too dangerous to fail, we shouldn't have them either (here's the obvious alternative). But no logic, no evidence and no earnest well-directed passion to preserve the environment will overcome huge corporate election contributions. I'm feeling the frustration of Chris Matthews:
