For Immediate Release: March 5th, 2012
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Democracy Now! on BP settlement negotiations.
Democracy Now! Video Clip (click here to view video on Democracy Now! site)
Investigative journalists Greg Palast and Antonia
Juhasz examine who wins and who loses in BP’s settlement. "[BP is]
basically being told, if you’re like a bank robber, you put the money
back in the vault, and everything’s forgiven," says Palast, who also
investigated the Exxon Valdez settlement. Meanwhile, state and federal
governments are still pursuing separate civil claims against BP for
environmental damage. "That’s when we’re going to hopefully uncover
those 72 million pages of investigation that will include wrongdoing not
just by BP, not just by Transocean, not just by Halliburton, but every
major oil company involved the offshore—and, very likely, at least based
on my research, wrongdoing by the Obama administration," says Juhasz.
"It’s the desire to keep that out of the public that has pushed this
settlement process forward." We also speak with Florida State University
oceanography professor Ian MacDonald about what it means to restore the
Gulf of Mexico. In the wake of the oil spill, BP pledged up to $500
million over a decade to conduct independent scientific research on the
environmental effects. But MacDonald notes, “When oil was gushing, there
were literally hundreds of ships […] in place studying this disaster
and trying to respond. Now, as we try to learn what happened and prepare
ourselves for the next catastrophe, we have nothing like those kinds of
resources present." [includes rush transcript]
Antonia Juhasz, reporting on the BP Gulf oil spill trial for The Nation magazine on a grant from the Nation Investigative Fund. She’s an oil and energy analyst and author of the book Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.
Greg Palast, an investigative reporter with the BBC.
His latest piece at Truthout.org is "BP Settlement Sells Out Victims:
Deal Buries Evidence of Oil Company Willful Negligence." Following the
Deepwater Horizon disaster, Palast, with cameraman Rick Rowley,
investigated the BP oil company over four continents for British TV. His
new book about this investigation is called Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores.
Ian Macdonald, professor of oceanography at Florida State University.
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