Obama is a man I feel I should admire as the first black US president but when I look at his self seeking actions I can fnd nothing to admire. A sordid US politician with a black skin is underneath just another sordid politician. I will never forget how he used the Gulf oil spill to castigate British Petroleum althugh the company had traded as BP for the previous 20 years for his sordid re-election campaign. He gave a nod and a wink for every Gulf con man to pile in wiith unsubstantiated claims against BP up held in dodgy US courts and bringing BP to its knees a position it may never recpver from and makes it easy prey for its US competitors.
The US firms involved, Halliburton who supllied the cement and Trans Ocean whose rig it was and Cameron Iron who supplied the blow out preventer were not pursued with anything like the same vindictiveness. They got off very lightly. Huge punishment was reserved for the Brits whom Obama hates I presume because they banged up his Mau Mau gran pappy during a murderous terrorist campaign in Kenya. How many uncharged Islamic terrorist suspects do you still hold in Guantanamo Bay Mr President 8 years after you promised to close it? No wonder ISIL grows and flourishes with such a sordid US president who cannot keep his word,
The Piper Alpha disaster which killed 167 workers on 6 July 1988 off the coast of Aberdeen is the world's deadliest ever oil rig accident. The UK PM Thatcher ignored the US angle.
Piper Alpha was owned by a consortium of foreign companies including Texaco and operated by Los Angeles-based Occidental, which sold off its UK interests soon after the disaster to concentrate on the US and Middle East. I they scuttled back to their own jurisiction something BP should have done.
In 1984 in Bhopal India a chemical plant partly owned and run by the US firm Union Carbide exploded killing an estimated 8000 within two weeks. Children deformed in utero by the chemicals made at this plant were born many years afterwards. Union Carbide paid less than 1 billion dollsrs in 2014 terms in compensation. BP's bill is 50 billion and rising.
A few years later after this relatively tiny settlement Union Carbide pulled the usual American disappearing act and sold up and left.
BP still operates in the US.
The Obama interview was given to the BBC's fervent Europhile Sopel previously based in Brussels and put out by the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC employs a small army of jounalists can not one be found to critically assess Obama's motives?
The US wants to keep its UK poodle in its Brussels kennel for US big business interests. He cares as much about UK citizens as US industry cares about the dead of Piper Alpha and Bhopal. Think on that as you listen to Obama's fine words.
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