Why is BP Trying to KILL the Fishermen?

In this interview from Democracy Now, Clint Guidry who is head of the Louisiana Fishermen's Association states that his 20 years of experience working in the Oil Industry with KBR (yes, That KBR) tells him that the seven fishermen who were Hospitalized during the cleanup were deliberately put at risk by BP.

Clint: I bought respirators, took them out to these people ... BP told them if they wore respirators they'd be taken off the job

This is a video that people need to see.

A Full Transcript of this discussion is Here.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now in New Orleans by Clint Guidry, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. He’s a third-generation shrimp fisherman.

This is Democracy Now! We welcome you to the studios of Democracy Now!, though we’re speaking to you in New Orleans. Tell us what’s happening, Clint.

CLINT GUIDRY: Well, good morning. Thanks for having me.

This is a situation that has been ongoing for several weeks now. Having had prior training and experience working with the oil and the chemicals in oil and their danger—[no audio]—several of the fishermen out on the worksite, they were complaining of burning eyes and strong smells. And my experience told me that they were getting exposed to dangerous chemicals—the benzenes, all the light ends off the crude—and this Corexit is a new experience for me. I have been doing some research. It contains a substance called 2-butoxyethanol, up to 60 percent by volume, which is a very, very dangerous chemical. I don’t have a lot of experience with it, but just doing the research. And I knew that they spraying this chemical in the same area where my fishermen were working. And I have brought this to light. I have tried to make public. As a matter of fact, just a couple of days ago, three days ago, I met with a Washington delegation in Galliano and expressed my concerns that this was happening.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, Clint Guidry, what about OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration? Aren’t they supposed to be monitoring worksites that involve US companies, even if they’re offshore?

CLINT GUIDRY: I’m not sure about that, but I’m understanding it’s MMS and US Coast Guard in this situation.

AMY GOODMAN: What about respirators? Are people wearing respirators?

CLINT GUIDRY: No, ma’am. Having had prior experience, I know these people. They’re friends. They’re family. I bought respirators, and I brought them down to these people. And when they tried to wear them, the BP representatives on site told them that it wasn’t a dangerous situation, and they didn’t need to wear them, and if they did, they would be taken off the job.

Why would BP do that?

Well, because if BP admits that there is a health hazard it opens itself up for liability claims for the longterm health care of the workers and citizens of the Gulf - and they simply don't want to Pay for Those People.

Hmm, sounds kind Tea Baggery to me.

In part 2, Clint Describes how he himself have seen Corexit being sprayed into the air in Venice, LA near the mouth of the Mississippi - near private homes where kids live, like a sick replay of those old DDT spraying in the 70's. He's been so concerned that he has already personally brought this issue up to wigh Governor Jindal and both Secretary Napolitano and Secretary Salazar. Clearly he hasn't been impressed with the level of response so far.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Your governor, Governor Bobby Jindal, has been very outspoken in his criticisms of how some aspects of the response have been conducted. Have you appealed to Louisiana health officials or to your local government to intercede in one way or another about the issues, these health issues, with the fishermen?

CLINT GUIDRY: Yes, I have. But, you know, their hands—you know, I spoke the other day—Bobby Jindal is a very good man. I meet with him—I’ve met with him several times. He’s done a lot for the shrimp fishery and the state. But when BP is the entity in charge, there’s not a lot that local people can do, including the governor. I met with two cabinet-ranked people from Washington, Secretary Napolitano, Secretary Salazar. I sat six feet from them three days ago and told them this was going to happen. If they can’t do anything about it, or won’t do anything about it, how do you expect our governor to?

Ok, well - so much they "Nobody could have anticipated the burning eyes, burning skin, nausea, dizziness, long term respiratory problem and Ocean of Dead FISH from exposure to dispersant" gambit.

For some reason the EPA has continued to sign-off on the use of dispersant which do little more than hide the oil under the surface turning into dark death plumes dozens of miles long. Some of those plums have even begun to turn clear, even though they still OIL in them.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You mentioned earlier the dispersant. There are some critics who say that the long-term impact of the dispersant could be even greater than the actual oil spill itself, in terms of marine life. Your sense of what the dispersant is doing in terms of the potential for destruction of the fisheries in that area?

CLINT GUIDRY: The trade-off position is a false one, because eventually this dispersant is going to cause whole species to collapse. This is going to be, you know, a collapse of some of the shrimp species, the fish, the turtles, tuna. I mean, this is unbelievable that we did this. You just added poison on top of a bad situation.

This is going to call entire species to collapse?

Toward the end of this interview Clint suggests that the Cleanup Operations be taken out of BP's hands - which are NOT getting the job done and are mostly trying to cover their ass - and handled by the Military.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But what do you say to those even in the government who has say that the government doesn’t have the expertise, that only the oil companies themselves have the expertise, and that the whole cry for a federal takeover would not really change anything?

CLINT GUIDRY: If the oil company is such experts, why are they trying to kill my fishermen?

Because their cost benefit analysis indicates it's cheaper than admitting the truth and doing something about it. Just like it was cheaper to rush through the test procedures on the blow out preventer, just as it was cheaper to skip drilling a relief well ahead of time, just as it was cheaper not to do the cementing properly, just as it was cheaper not to use the proper drilling mud in the first place... and we can all see what that has already led to from space!.

Vyan

The 100 Miile Underwater Death Cloud

As BP is attempting it's "Top Kill" to end the ecological disaster that they themselves fostered and created, and we see the oil coming ashore turning the State Bird of Louisiana into the Brown Petro Pelican there's something happening that we can't see - something that may actually be far worse than the oil spill itself.

It's the Oil Mixed with tens of thousands of gallons of Corexit 9500, a substance which is actually banned in Britain - while British Petroleum is dumping it off of our shores to break up hide the true size of their Oil Volcano.

The other day Sam Champion of Good Morning America and Phillipe Cousteau Jr., grandson of Oceanagrapher Jacques documented just when is going under beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, and it's frankly "A Nightmare".



Using Hazmat Dry-Diving Suits Champion and Cousteau documented the flecks of oil which are gradually sinking into the water column about 20 miles off the coast of Louisiana. These are huge greasy oil, diesel and gasoline-like toxic plumes which can burn the skin and easily be absorbed into the gills and skin of marine life, including shrimp, dolphins, oysters, kelp and other elements of the food chain.

How you like your Tuna served? Regular or Unleaded?

Cousteau: This is the worse thing I've ever seen underwater in my life. It's a Nightmare

Even though Good Morning America is a National Show, and even though this footage is fairly explosive we still continue to listen to wan platitudes from BP and the Administration that they're' "Doing all they can..." and "the impact will be fairly mild", yet this footage makes it clear this might causes damage that will spread through the eco-system quite easily for decades.

And it's not like BP and the government have been helpful at helping recognize and identify the amount of damage taking place as one CBS crew discovered as they were threatened by arrest by the Coast Guard while exploring public waters off the coast of Louisiana.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Emerging reports are raising the question of just how much of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill journalists are able to document.

When CBS tried to film a beach with heavy oil on the shore in South Pass, Louisiana, a boat of BP contractors, and two Coast Guard officers, told them to turn around, or be arrested.

"This is BP's rules, it's not ours," someone aboard the boat said. Coast Guard officials told CBS that they're looking into it.

So the U.S. Coast Guard is now a wholely owned subsidiary of BP? Exactly when did that happen?

How is it that BP gets to defy the EPA when they request a less toxic alternative to Corexit 9500, particularly when a former BP Exec and Board member for 45 years is the current head of Nalco (Hm, Incest is Best?), the company that provides Corexit 9500, which in turn is owned by in part by that bastion of corporate compassion - Goldman Sachs? So far Nalco has sold $40 Million worth of Corexit to BP.

Not to be all Beckian about it but, Coincidence? I think not.

Similarly stocks for Transocean, the Offshore Oil Drilling company that is headquartered in a the completely landlocked country of Sweden Switzerland for tax purposes, has issued a $1 Billion bonus to it's Stock-holders after the Deep Horizon Catastrophe, and even been awarded over $200 Million in insurance benefits from the loss of the oil rig.

Talk about selling short and cleaning up while making a huge fracking mess, they've made a profit from this.

Meanwhile as they make $Billions BP is still too chincy and cheap to provide adequate protection to Fishermen who've they hired to help clean up the spill.

Like other cleanup workers, Jackson had attended a training class where he was told not to pick up oil-related waste. But he said he wasn’t provided with protective equipment and wore leather boots and regular clothes on his boat.

“They [BP officials] told us if we ran into oil, it wasn’t supposed to bother us,” Jackson said. “As far as gloves, no, we haven’t been wearing any gloves.”

Some of those workers, dealing with the toxic stew of oil and Corexit have been suffering from headaches and nausea - and after the long term respiratory problems we've seen among people who worked the cleanup at ground zero - we should all know better than this by now.

Imagine if that cloud was airborne, and hanging over the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama like a Plume of Death? Now, just remember that the fish don't have any protection either, and that all that toxicity isn't going to magically disappear, it's going to work it's way through the food chain, then be evaporated into the atmosphere and come back down as rainwater - just in time for Hurricane season. Good Bye Water Table - Hello Cancer Clusters.

I agree with Randi Rhodes, in 10 to 20 years were going to be hearing Larry H. Parker Styled Commercials about Corexit Exposure Settlements, just as we have previously for DDT, Agent Orange, Malathion and Mesothemiola from Asbestos.

Today President Obama is scheduled to take his first press conference in 10 Months and announce a round of sweeping now mining and drilling regulations. Hopefully among those regulations are a requirement for Relief Wells to be drilled in tandem with the primary exploratory well - as is required by Canada and other countries. Accidents do happen, but being completely unprepared for one - just to save $500,000 in extra drilling coasts - doesn't have to.

It also might be nice if corporate employees aren't allowed to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil, only to have them copied over in ink by regulators after the fact, beside y'know doing Chrystal Meth and Boinking the people they're supposed to be regulating.

Quite a bit of focus has been on the MMS in the past months, but we also should hope to have the issue of burrowed in Bush Moles who philosophically object to the mission of the department. Moles such as Climat-Change denier Liberterian Cato Instititue Fellow, and American Enterprise Institute member Indur Goklany who still retains a high position in the Interior Dept despite Bush's Presidency being over for over 2 years.

Admittedly it's easy to point fingers, and like Limbaugh or Brownie who - without any evidence - argued that either Greenpeace sabotaged the oil rigged, or the Obama administration has slow walked the response in order to support their "secret true agenda" of derailing offshore drilling, it could be easy to surmise that the Bush Mole's may still have an influence on the spill response, like a stuck parking brake on a speeding car...

But in the end we have to admit the the ultimate responsibility for this mess, both above and below the water, falls directly in Obama's lap.

The argument of the need for government to step in and address personal and corporate malfeasance and Crimes should be over, money-grubbing corporations are NOT going to regulate themselves and a public that as easily distracted by shiny vapid objects such as Teen UnRapper Justin Beiber, Kim Kardashian's huge bulbous ass and a Skate-boarding dog are not going to bring them to heel, but the question of the governments ability to actually implement correction and justice in the wake of those crimes remains sadly in question.

Obama has to take control of this situation, personally if necessary.

First on the list, whether the "Top Kill" works or not, is the fact that there is no legitimate reason to use ANY dispersant to hide the oil spills actual size and disable the ability to vacuum the oil up from the surface as has been suggested by former head of Shell Oil. Sure we have to fix the spill, but we also need to clean it up and we can't do that with it hiding under the surface or sinking slowly to the bottom into the ecosphere.

However it turns outs, now is the time for the Obama Administration and President Obama personally to truly show what's they're made of, now is the time for him to Step the Frack Up and show the we can still do great things, even though they are incredibly difficult - or else suffer the electoral consequences.

Is this "Obama's Katrina"? Frack No, but if he doesn't get his SHIT together, it could be worse. Much Worse.

Still praying "Obama Fails" Rush? I'm not. We can't afford it, none of us can.

Vyan

Update: Amid all the Doom and Gloom - I've heard two good things this morning. So far the "Top Kill" is holding and working according to Adm Thad Allen of the Coast Guard, and the head of the Offshore Drilling Oversight Agency has been fired retired.

WASHINGTON (AP) - AP sources: Elizabeth Birnbaum fired as director of the U.S. Minerals Management Service.

How's that for change?

Update 2 BP is contesting the Coast Guard report, saying the top kill hasn't stopped the leak - yet, but it is "working as planned". An independent task force says that this spilled somewhere between 17-39 Million Gallons of Oil into the Gulf, and could be as much as 5 Times the size of the Exxon-Valdez.