Wendell Berry

This is such a great quote that challenges the idea that we are always blameless victims of various oppressive powers when in fact we often bedfellows to systems of exploitation—whether it be other people, animals, the earth, etc.

A good recent example is the BP oil disaster. Though we ourselves didn’t cause the platform to explode, our ravenous consumption of fossil fuels creates the demand for more resources. And as viable sources become emptied, companies fight tooth and nail to try offshore deep sea drilling to procure what our consumption demands.

In essence, a modification of such systems of exploitation demand a modification in ourselves. We cannot point our fingers outwardly, but not into the mirror.

A man walks past barrels of oil scooped from the sea in Dalian, China on July 24, 2010.

As one commenter noted, alluding to the US government-backed ban of journalists and photographers from getting close to the BP Oil Disaster, “How ironic that we are seeing the pictures of damage from China, but not from the US. Which country is more open?”

(AP Photo/Greenpeace, Arthur JD)

+ startling images here

UnF—kTheGulf: F-Bomb-a-Thon Video

A.FUCKING.MAZING! Support those affected by BP’s Oil Disater! If you buy a t-shirt, send us a pic of you wearing it and we’ll post it on danielextra!

Hiring prison labor is more than a way for BP to save money while cleaning up the biggest oil spill in history. By tapping into the inmate workforce, the company and its subcontractors get workers who are not only cheap but easily silenced—and they get lucrative tax write-offs in the process. Known to some as “the inmate state,” Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration of any other state in the country. Seventy percent of its 39,000 inmates are African-American men. The Louisiana Department of Corrections (DOC) only has beds for half that many prisoners, so 20,000 inmates live in parish jails, privately run contract facilities and for-profit work release centers. Prisons and parish jails provide free daily labor to the state and private companies like BP, while also operating their own factories and farms, where inmates earn between zero and forty cents an hour.

+ at The Nation

But then again, BP doesn’t need a PR flak when they have the government helping them keep the media out of “its business.” Obama administration FAIL.

[via:azspot:Rob Rogers]

BP wants to plug the media, sure, but so does the government. The Obama administration has colluded with BP to enforce restrictions on access to the clean up effort (and in fact, criminalizing it), which amounts to de facto censorship on the media. So much for transparency.

[via:brooklynmutt]

BP oil spill now mucking up media coverage of the disaster

Anderson Cooper reports how the government is essentially criminalizing transparency of the BP Oil Disaster.

“We are not the enemy,” Cooper repeats, referring to journalists, the media.

But Anderson, apparently you are the enemy if transparency demands timely accountability.

[via:jambos6]