by Robert Mckenna

Created on: July 31, 2010   Last Updated: August 01, 2010

People everywhere are talking with heartfelt joy about how this country has, to a large part, successfully cleaned up the worst oil spill in American history.  Who is kidding whom?

You do not have to have any education to realize how ridiculous, irresponsible, and damaging such false information is to the country.  Perhaps the comments made during the recent news cycle were based on desperate optimism.  However, there is also a dark side, a more insidious reason for misinformation about the BP Oil spill.  If it looks clean, then it must be clean enough to resume swimming, tourism, and open the fishing industry, stopping the ever-mounting civil claims for damages, and lost income against BP and its partners in crime.

After all the years since the Exxon Valdez oil spill, a drop in the bucket compared to the spill in the Gulf, the oil remains.  The oil still causes severe ecological damage, all just below the surface of the visually pristine Prince William Sound.  The dispersants used during the Exxon debacle have killed people, people who volunteered to help contain and clean up the Prince William Sound after the shameful actions of Exxon employees.  The spill was avoidable, and the clean up could have been accomplished if Exxon paid for the mess they created, instead of spending the vast sums of money and wasted time on legal battles and propaganda.

Smoke and mirrors, misdirection perpetrated by the best legal defense money can buy, a corporation’s way to deal with the American people, because at the end of the day, they need the people they abuse to buy their products.  Corporate actions demonstrate repeatedly they believe consumers are too stupid to see the truth.  Package a lie in a brightly colored bow, and call it the truth; it is all about the bottom line.  BP and the US government have taken extraordinary strides in the right direction toward cleaning this disaster, unlike the US government and Exxon in Alaska.  These gargantuan cleanup efforts were only pursued because the people of Louisiana held both the US government and BP Oil accountable, with the support of the rest of the country, through intense news media scrutiny.  As the news media turn away from the old story about the largest oil spill in American history, looking for something new and juicy for viewers, coincidentally stories change tactics.  Suddenly there are news releases about how the Gulf’s warm waters can

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