USS Liberty: American Servicemen Expendable; Don’t Embarrass Israel. By Tammy Obeidallah

Via: The Palestine Chronicle.

In two hours, 34 American sailors died. Another 172 were injured. (USS Liberty)

Within the United States, there has been a growing awareness of Palestinian suffering. This has been manifested in the many demonstrations held during Israel’s assault on Gaza from December 2008-January 2009. The boycott of Israeli goods is gaining speed, as well as the campaign to recognize the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians as apartheid.

Yet there is one tragic and shameful event in particular which serves to discourage Palestinian rights activists. If so-called “patriotic” Americans viciously suppress the concerns of veterans and their families by covering up the murder of their own sailors, what hope is there to recognize the voices of oft-maligned Arabs half a world away?

June 8 will mark the 43rd anniversary of the heaviest attack on an American ship that inflicted the highest number of casualties since World War II. The USS Liberty was an intelligence vessel, patrolling international waters in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

The day was clear and sunny; the ship flying the American flag, as was standard. Suddenly and simultaneously, out of that clear azure sky and sea came a two-pronged attack by Israeli air and naval forces. Napalm, gunfire and missiles rained hell on Liberty’s crew for two hours while Israeli torpedo boats closed in.

In that two hours, 34 American sailors died. Another 172 were injured.

The Liberty crew managed to send an SOS, heard by nearby U.S. Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers. Fighter planes launched immediately, however turned back on orders from President Johnson. Naval personnel listening to radio relays heard Johnson say “I don’t care if the ship sinks, I’m not going to embarrass an ally.”

Thailand – a Mirror of World Developments. By John Reimann

Via: Daily Censored.

The developments in Thailand, leading up to and including the recent mass murder carried out by the regime, perfectly embody the major processes under way in world capitalism of recent decades.

During the Vietnam War and shortly thereafter, the US maintained an important air force base in Thailand. This was mainly to check Chinese communism. With the collapse of Stalinism as a world force, the base was abandoned, but the US military still maintains close ties with its Thai counterpart, including helping train the Thai air force.

Globalization and “Asian Tigers”

Perhaps more important than the military link are the developments of world capitalism, first and foremost its famous “globalization”. No region of the world was more affected and saw more economic changes from this than did the “Asian Tigers” in 1980s and early ‘90s, and Thailand perhaps more so than any of the other “Tigers”. However, the working class did not share in the benefits of this development. “Between 1985 and 1991 the real value of manufacturing production rose by 100%, yet the real value of the minimum wage paid to many factory workers stayed the same.” (Thailand: Class Struggle in an Era of Economic Crisis by Ji Giles Ungpakorn) As is always the case under capitalism, the development of the real economy of the Tigers was accompanied by massive speculation, including land speculation. This speculation led to the financial crisis of all the Tigers in 1997, a collapse which led to political turmoil in Thailand.

Thaksin Shinawatra and “Tais Love Tais” Party to Power

Despite the fact that workers did not receive major benefits from the growth, they were expected to pay for the crisis, and pay they did, as dictated by the International Monetary Fund. The year after the economic collapse, a media billionaire, Thaksin Shinawatra, organized a new political party the Tai Rak Tai (TRT, Tais Love Tais) Party. With massive financial backing from Thaksin, the TRT rocketed to the top and won the elections in 2001. Its program was a mixture of nationalist and economic populism, appealing to prejudices against immigrant workers from Myanmar and Cambodia at the same time as it campaigned against the IMF “reforms”. Thaksin pushed through a national health care system as well as legislation providing cheap credit to small farmers. As such, he built a strong base amongst the rural as well as urban poor.

Thaksin’s program was similar to that of the left populists who were rising to the top in Latin America, and as such must have caused concern to US and world capitalism. Another cause of concern was his closer ties to the Chinese regime – also similar to what is developing in both Latin America and parts of Africa and the Mid East.

Thus it was that when a military coup ousted him, with the backing of the Thai monarchy, in 2006, the US regime uttered not a word of protest. Leading opponents of the coup, such as Ji Giles Ungpakorn, were driven into exile under the threat of 15 year prison sentences for allegedly criticizing the monarchy.

Obama Talks Left To Move Right, As Wall Street Criminals Are Given A Free Pass And Reforms Are Watered Down. By Danny Schechter

Via: Media Channel.

Is The President The Kind of Leader Chairman Mao Warned Us About?

We now know that it was the Obama Administration, led by the President himself, who used techniques well understood and denounced decades earlier by none other than Mao Tse Tung.

He talked left, to move right.

In several high profile speeches, he lashed out at Wall Street for its greed and mendacity, proposing financial reforms that appeared to be hard hitting, if only because of the way the lobbyists for the financial services industry squealed about them.

But even as he was feigning left, he and his main economic operative, Tim Geithner, were moving right, to kill off amendments that the bankers hated, like Senator Bernie Sanders’s proposal for a deep audit of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Brown-Kaufman Amendment that would have broken up the six biggest banks in America.

As John Heilman explained in New York Magazine, “Geithner’s team spent much of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd kill off or modify amendments being offered by more-progressive Democrats.”

He used an old trick: embracing reform publicly while modifying its toughest provisions privately.

No wonder bank stocks went up when the bill passed.

Humanitarian Flotilla Vs Evil Navy. By Gilad Atzmon

Via: Gilad Atzmon.

Haaretz reports today that Israel will attempt to block the humanitarian  Freedom Flotilla heading toward Gaza. However, according to the Israeli paper, the humanitarian cargo would then be  unloaded, inspected and sent to Gaza overland via the United Nations.

Typical for Israel, it tries to win a lost battle. On the one hand, by stopping the flotilla Israel attempts to maintain its regional  status as an omnipotent super power that controls the land, the air and the sea.  On the other hand, the Jewish state pathetically also  wants to evoke sympathy for being  ‘sensitive’ to humanitarian issues  and the Palestinian plight.

The Israeli government fails to gather that the tide has changed.  We see through them. We all know what the Jewish state stands for. We  all know about the devastation in Gaza, we know about the siege, the destruction and  the crimes against humanity.  We all watch the  Israeli  separation wall cutting through Palestinian family’s houses and  olive orchards. We also follow the racist ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem. The Israelis better save us from their spins and manipulations.

In case the Israelis still fail to see it, they  are dealing this  time  with an international  flotilla that is sailing under Turkish  and Greek flags, a fleet that carries 800 enthusiast activists from  all over the world. The Israelis are dealing with peace  lovers who are determined to break  through the  siege and deliver  medical aid, cement, paper and food. On the deck we have 35 European parliamentarians who must have  decided to say NO to Zionist fund  raisers. This flotilla is a clear signal to Israel that the game is  over. Israel is now all but officially isolated. All that is left for Israel is to  come to terms with its true nature: a shameless racist, murderous and  terrorist state.

Militarily and politically Israel  locked itself  into a limbo. For  the Israelis it is a “no win situation. The Israelis may have the military means to stop the flotilla from accomplishing its humanitarian mission. The Israeli Navy can easily block the flotilla’s way, it can also impose an electronic blackout around the ships, such an act may lead to the loss of communication with the  humanitarian mission. Israel would then have to act militarily.

Yet, taking control over 8 ships and 800 activists armed with relentless will and backed by many cameras is not going to serve the Israeli interest. If Israel dare use force, this will backfire.  We also have to bear in mind  that this time the Turkish  Government is closely monitoring the situation and openly supporting  the mission. Israeli aggression at sea could lead to an evolving incident with some unpredictable consequences. Israel better give up on any attempt to stop the flotilla.

On a further note, the Israeli Government and the Israeli people better start to come to terms with the fact that the game is soon to be over. The Zionist project and the Israeli state is in a state of moral  bankruptcy. From that perspective the flotilla is not just a humanitarian mission, it is actually a reminder for all of us of the  true meaning of humanism.

From One Apartheid State To Another. By Stephen Gowans

Via: What’s Left.

Israel has been called an apartheid state. Now its links to the original apartheid state have been brought to light. In a new book, The Unspoken Alliance, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a senior editor at Foreign Affairs, the principal journal of the US foreign policy establishment, cites declassified South African documents that reveal that Israel forged a secret military alliance with South Africa in the 1970s, and offered to sell the apartheid state nuclear weapons. (1)

From its founding in 1948 until the mid 1970s, Israel was critical of South Africa’s apartheid, and sought allies among the newly independent black African states. But for many African countries, Israel was the replication in Palestine of the same European colonial settler model they had struggled to break free from. They weren’t going to become allies of a colonial power.

Then Israeli defense minister (and now president) Shimon Peres, accompanied South African prime minister John Vorster, a Hitler-admirer who had been jailed during the war for supporting the Nazis and belonging to the fascist Ossewabrandwag, on a 1975 visit to the Holocaust memorial. Peres signed an agreement with Vorster’s government to establish a secret military alliance, and offered to sell Pretoria nuclear warheads.

South Africa, a white racist state, proved to be more amenable to Israel’s offers of alliance, seeing in the Zionist state a kindred country of European settlers “situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark people.”

The cementing of the alliance was helped along by an existing relationship: South Africa was already shipping yellow cake to Israel. Now, safeguards against nuclear proliferation were lifted, allowing the Israelis to divert the yellow cake to their nuclear weapons program.

The strength of the new relationship was signalled by the 1976 visit to Jerusalem of South Africa’s prime minister, John Vorster. Accompanied by Yitzhak Rabin and then defense minister (now president) Shimon Peres, Vorster visited the Holocaust memorial, a grotesque spectacle considering the South African prime minister was a Hitler-admirer who had been jailed during the war for supporting the Nazis and belonging to the fascist Ossewabrandwag.

In 1975, South Africa’s defense minister, P.W. Botha met with Peres to buy Israeli nuclear warheads. While the deal fell through – the South Africans thought the asking price too high – the two men signed an agreement to establish a secret military alliance. Israel also arranged to send Pretoria 30 grams of tritium, which South Africa later used to build a number of atomic bombs.

Alon Liel, a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, told the British newspaper The Guardian that South Africa used its mineral wealth (based on the exploitation of oppressed black miners) to fund joint military projects while the Israelis provided the technical know-how. South Africa would soon become Israel’s largest arms customer. According to Liel, “After 1976, there was a love affair between the security establishments of the two countries and their armies. We were involved in Angola as consultants to the [South African] army. You had Israeli officers there cooperating with the army. The link was very intimate.”

Israel regarded the relationship as based on more than just convenience, but on a common position as colonial oppressor, under pressure from national liberation movements.

Terrorism — Cause and Effect. By Jack A. Smith

Via: AntiWar.

“Terrorists” and “terrorism” have become Washington’s monomania since 9/11, guiding the foreign/military policies of the American superstate and holding its population in thrall.

“The single biggest threat to U.S. security, both short-term, medium-term and long-term,” President Barack Obama said April 11, is the possibility that terrorists might obtain a nuclear weapon. The second biggest threat to world history’s mightiest military state, it goes without saying, are terrorists without nuclear weapons but armed with box-cutters, rifles or homemade explosives.

It’s “terrorism” 24/7 in the United States — the product of a conscious effort by the Bush Administration to keep the American people in the constant clutches of existential fear, in large part to justify launching endless aggressive wars. Anything goes if the target is said to be “terrorism,” as long as the Pentagon’s violence takes place in smaller, weaker countries usually populated by non-Europeans.

But does the U.S. government really want to defeat terrorism? This is a serious question. All its major efforts so far have been focused on the effects of terrorism but not on its much more profound causes. In this article we shall discuss the causes, particularly the actions of the U.S. in the Middle East over the decades which contributed significantly to the rise of terror as a weapon.

After almost a decade, the Bush Administration’s “War on Terrorism” — at a cost of trillions of dollars, the erosion of a substantial portion of America’s civil liberties and its worldwide reputation, and the deaths of over a million foreign civilians — has not succeeded in its stated objectives.

And yet, judging by the Obama Administration’s 2011 war budget request, the recently released Quadrennial Defense Report and the Nuclear Posture report, and the widening of the wars, it is clear that President Barack Obama has no intention of deviating significantly from President George W. Bush’s unjust and failed policies.

President Obama’s troop buildup, implied nuclear threats against Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and his order to the CIA to assassinate an American citizen without a trial are but some of the most recent examples.

Erasing Iraq. By Ludwig Watzal

Via: MWC News.

The Human Costs of Carnage

Nobody seems to talk anymore about the human sufferings and the costs of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Under President Barack Obama the US is still unwilling to end the illegal occupation of this country and take the partners of the “coalition of the willing” and live the country. All the talk about a prospective “withdrawal” from Iraq seems mere rhetoric.

Large military facilities are popping up like mushrooms all over the place, and in Baghdad they are building an embassy of the size of Vatican City. Modern history tells us that when the US takes over a country it will stay until it is thrown out like was the case in Vietnam or Iran. The long-term prospects of remaining an occupier in Iraq or Afghanistan are rather dim, taking the history of resistance against foreign occupation in both countries into account.

It takes three Australians, a freelance journalist and two scholars, to ask questions about the costs of carnage not only of the US attack on Iraq in 2003 but also of the deadly sanctions period that started days after Saddam Hussein’s invasion into Kuwait in 1990 and remained in place for more than 11 years after the restoration of Kuwait’s sovereignty in February 1991. The authors present a terrifying picture of this devastated country, whose population has paid a heavy price in blood and impoverishment. The authors visited Syria, Jordan, and Sweden, where the largest community of Iraqis live in exile, and talked to the refugees. They also analyze the writings on Iraqi blogs.

For almost two decades the US and its “willing executioners”, especially the United Kingdom, have persecuted war and aggression in Iraq. They turned a county that was once the most secular of Arab countries, in which nation resources were used to increase literacy, industrialization and women emanzipation, that it was a major center of Arab learning – students from all over the Arab world went to study in Baghdad, into a living hell. In earlier times, the colonialist carried with them missionaries who converted the pagans into Christians. Today, the neo-colonialists not only invade a country with their superior militarily forces, but bring along tens of thousands of mercenaries, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), colonial feminists, and US-evangelical fundamentalists. They intent to take care of those human beings who survived the military assault. What Frantz Fanon writes in “The Wretched of the Earth” that ”colonialism shamelessly pulls every string ” paradicmatically holds true for Iraq and Afghanistan.

The authors point out that Saddam Hussein was a creation of the US – “a regional strongman charged with checking Soviet and Iranian influence in the Middle East”. The earliest contacts between the US and Saddam stretch back to the Cold War era. In 1959, Saddam was part of a six-men team recruited by the CIA to assassinate Prime minister Abd al Karim Qasim. Since then, the US administration maintained close relations with Saddam, especially after he became Iraq’s president in 1979.

Time to Boycott Products from Illegal Israeli Settlements. By Bahija Réghaï

Via: rabble.

They are illegal, “a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and … constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace,” said Minister Lawrence Cannon to the Foreign Affairs committee on March 16, 2010. He was referring to the Israeli settlements, colonies for Jews only, many of them built on privately owned Palestinian land.

The settlements have been Israeli policy since 1967, and still are, irrespective of the government of the day.

Palestinians have now decided to counter this illegal policy in a peaceful way. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has recently enacted a law banning Palestinians from working in settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and the sale of settlement products, the idea being that Palestinians shall no longer contribute to the economic growth of these Israeli colonies.

The settlements in the OPT [and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights] are illegal, and therefore settlement products are illegal. Settlements not only violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49(6), which prohibits the Occupying Power from deporting or transferring parts of its civilian population into the territory it occupies, but also the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which consider such a population transfer a war crime.

As importantly, settlements violate Canadian law as well: the Geneva Conventions Act, and the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. In its 2004 Advisory Opinion on Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) confirmed that “the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law.”

The Palestinian Law to Ban and Combat Settlement Products defines the settlements as “any residential, industrial, agricultural, or service providing consortium which is built on the 1967 A.D.-occupied Palestinian territory.” There are about 200 illegal colonies covering about 40 per cent of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and more than 500,000 settlers. Most Israeli settlers have immigrated into the OPT to take advantage of government financial incentives and low-cost housing. Incentives were also offered to industries.

Since the Oslo agreement, which was supposed to lead to an independent Palestine, Israel has accelerated its colonization of the Palestinian Territory and built what Jeff Halper calls the “Matrix of Control.” This complex web of settlements, roads and no-man’s land zones have divided Palestinian villages, cut off farmers from their land, and generally translated into increased restrictions and a strangled Palestinian economy.

The Tragedy of Somalia. By Explo Nani-Kofi

Via: Counter Fire.

When Barack Obama was elected President of the US, it was supposed to be the end of the bad old days of George W Bush. But in Somalia, the war on terror continues.

March this year saw the start of a new US operation in support of the transitional government in Somalia.

According to the New York Times, American advisors had spent the last several months training Somali forces to be deployed in the offensive against factions of the Union of Islamic Courts movement, and the US had provided ‘covert training to Somali intelligence officers, logistical support to the peacekeepers, fuel for the maneuvers, surveillance information about insurgent positions and money for bullets and guns.’

This was something of a covert operation from the US point of view: a US official who told the paper ‘what you’re likely to see is air strikes and Special Ops moving in, hitting and getting out’ said he was not allowed to speak publicly about it.

The Somali government, however, was happy to boast of US involvement. General Mohamed Gelle Kahiye, the new chief of staff of the armed forces, said of a military surveillance plane over Mogadishu ‘It’s the Americans. They’re helping us’.

On 2^nd May, explosions in a mosque in Mogadishu’s Bakara market, a stronghold of the US-targeted Al Shabaab group, killed 45 people and triggered fighting between a pro-government militia and Al Shabaab and Hizbal al Islam, both factions of the Union of Islamic Courts movement. It’s not clear who actually set off the explosions, but it is beginning to seem that Somalia could be the US Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) first overt war.

The Obama administration’s 2011 budget request for security assistance programs in Africa includes $38 million for arms sales to African states, $21 million for training African officers and $24 million for anti-terrorism programs. This is in addition to the 40 tonnes of arms and ammunition supplied to the Somali transitional government in 2009, and military aid of Ethiopia, which fronted for the USA in the fight against the Union of Islamic Courts in 2006. AFRICOM has now taken over US security assistance programmes with Mali, Niger, Chad and Senegal, and the Defense Department is now considering forming a 1,000-strong Marine rapid deployment force for Africa. Although AFRICOM gives the impression it is not a combat force, it looks as if this may change.

The justification for US involvement in Somalia is ‘Islamic extremism’. Al Shabaab is on the US list of terrorist organisations as a supposed part of Al Qaeda.

The Audacity of the Free Gaza Flotilla. By Ann Wright

Via: Common Dreams.

Breaking the Israeli Siege of Gaza May Lead to an Attack at Sea, Detention Camps and Deportation

By the time you read this, we will be on the high seas of the Mediterranean (we hope the seas will not be too high).

Our two U.S. flagged Free Gaza boats, will join two other passenger ships, a 600 passenger ship from Turkey sponsored by the Turkish humanitarian organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH) and a 50 passenger ship from Athens sponsored by the European Campaign Against the Siege and the Greek/Swedish Ships to Gaza campaign, to sail to the shores of Gaza to break the Israeli naval blockade of the 1.5 million citizens in Gaza.

Four cargo ships from Ireland, Greece, Algeria and Turkey, will carry a total of 10,000 tons or 2 million pounds of construction materials for the housing of 50,000 made homeless during the 22 day Israeli attack on Gaza that killed 1440 Palestinians and wounded 5,000.

Many of us would like to see our boat renamed “The Audacity of Hope” as that is what we want to see from the Obama administration– courage to challenge the Israeli government on the siege of Gaza.  It would be a really brave, bold move as every U.S. presidential administration since the formation of the State of Israeli in 1948 has blindly given free-rein to Israel in whatever actions it wishes to undertake no matter if the actions are a violation of international law.  The carte blanche given to Israel by the United States has been dangerous for Israel’s national security as well as for the national security of the United States.

Probable reaction of Israeli Navy Ships-Bow shots, ramming or boarding

In less than 48 hours, the Israeli Navy will probably fire U.S. made ammunition and rockets in international waters over the bows of two U.S. flagged boats and one Greek boat with U.S. citizens aboard as well as citizens from 13 other countries and over the bows of the Turkish 600 passenger ship.

Ironically, on one passenger ship will be Joe Meaders, a U.S. citizen who is a survivor of the Israeli air and naval attack on a United States Navy ship, the USS Liberty, in 1967 killed 34 U.S. sailors and wounded 173. The Israeli government has never acknowledged, much less apologized for, the deaths of these sailors, nor the destruction of the USS Liberty.

Israel’s New ‘Best Friend’? By Jon Elmer

Via: Al Jazeera.

When Binyamin Netanyahu arrives in Canada on Friday, immediately following the ceremony in Paris to introduce Israel to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it will mark the first visit to Ottawa by a sitting Israeli prime minister since Yitzhak Rabin in 1994.

During his last visit, in 2002, Netanyahu’s closed door speech at Concordia University in Montreal sparked a riot that made headlines around the world.

In the years since, as Israel has found itself increasingly isolated on the world stage, successive Canadian governments have moved against the trend and deepened ties with Israel – something that Netanyahu is keen to protect.

“What Netanyahu is trying to do is cement the base,” said Dr David Bercuson, the director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary and author of Canada and the Birth of Israel.

“The Israeli diplomatic position is deteriorating and he’s trying to keep the stalwarts in place.”

A peak in relations

While key Canadian diplomatic support for Israel dates back to the creation of the state, relations have never been stronger.

In early 2006, immediately following the election of Hamas, Canada was the first country in the world to boycott the new government, ahead even of Israel.

“Not a red cent to Hamas,” said Peter MacKay, the then Canadian foreign minister, setting the tone for a crippling blockade that the United Nations has called “possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times”.

Perhaps the high-water mark came in the summer of 2006, as Israel launched a massive military response to a Hezbollah raid on an Israeli patrol on the border with Lebanon.

As Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, was en route to the G8 summit in St Petersburg, Russia – during the first week of a war that saw some 1,400 Lebanese killed, the majority of them civilians – he made an impromptu three minute speech to the reporters on his plane, expressing unequivocal support for Israel’s bombing of Lebanon.

“I think Israel’s response under the circumstances has been measured,” he said, backing Israel’s right to defend itself and placing the “onus” for the war on Hezbollah.

As the death toll mounted in the days and weeks that followed, Harper did not budge from his position. In fact, he used the G8 summit and the subsequent gathering of the Francophonie to actively block ceasefire resolutions that were increasingly supported, even by the US.

Gulf Oil Spill: Why is BP in Charge? By Tom Eley

Via: WSWS.

BP’s criminal actions in causing the deadly explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, documented in recent congressional testimony, and its incompetence and greed in response to the resulting oil spill have provoked growing popular anger. Millions are wondering why they have yet to see television footage of executives handcuffed and hauled away in police cars, their passports revoked, their assets seized, and BP’s vast resources devoted fully to stopping the spill and cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico.

Instead, the Obama administration has insisted from the beginning that BP remain in command of the spill site and cleanup. Only BP has the “expertise” to handle the spill, administration officials have repeatedly claimed.

This is absurd on its face. It is tantamount to putting the perpetrator in control of the crime scene—at the expense of tens of thousands of jobs and the compounding of an environmental and ecological catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.

In its efforts to stop the hemorrhaging on the ocean floor 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, the oil giant has floundered from one debacle to the next, its efforts fatally compromised at every turn by the profit concerns that trump all other questions under capitalism. Just as the Deepwater Horizon disaster was created by the blind drive for profit, so BP’s response has been predicated on the defense of its bottom line.

For nearly a month after the explosion, BP hid video evidence that contradicted its claim that the impact of the spill would be “very, very modest,” as CEO Tony Hayward put it last week.

Thousands of Gulf Coast fishermen have been made jobless by the spill, many with no access to unemployment insurance. They and their boats stand ready to join the cleanup, but BP has hired only a small percentage—at first on condition that the fishermen renounce their right to sue for damages.

BP has used nearly 800,000 gallons of a chemical dispersant, Corexit, that is more toxic and less effective than other dispersants readily available on the market. Corexit’s only apparent advantage is that the company selling it, Nalco, is dominated by executives with close ties to BP and Exxon.