Saturday, October 9, 2010

BP Then and Now



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 41 -- October 10, 2010

This week in New World Notes, radio program #136, October 12:

BP Then and Now

In brief

British oil company BP specializes in disasters--political as well as ecological. The U.S. government then helps by making the disaster worse.

Reporting from the Gulf, Anne McClintock details how the government is reducing BP's legal liability for the blowout by sinking the oil with millions of gallons of the extremely toxic "dispersant" Corexit. This unprecedented policy is greatly compounding the damage.

In 1953, Iran was a democracy with an anti-Soviet, pro-American government. They tried to negotiate a new oil contract that would require BP to pay some royalties for taking Iran's oil. The CIA helped BP by overthrowing the democratic government and installing the Shah as dictator of Iran. (Then they gave Iran's oil to the Rockefeller empire.) Strategic analyst William Engdahl tells this fascinating and outrageous story.

Top: Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, on a state
visit to the U.S., reverently touches the Liberty Bell. At the far
left is Philadelphia Mayor Bernard Samuels. In 1953, the U.S.
overthrew Iran's pro-American, democratically elected
government and installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
(bottom)
as dictator. The Iranian government had threatened BP's profits.
Most photos: Click to enlarge
.


Notes, credits, & links

This week's music: Tom Lehrer, Pollution (1965).

Anne McClintock's article from CounterPunch, August 23, 2010. http://www.english.wisc.edu/amcclintock/index.htm

William Engdahl interview from Ken MacDermotRoe's "History Counts" radio series.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "Executive Dining Room") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

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You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. New World Notes' main audio archive is at radio4all.net. Installments beginning with #90 are archived also at The Internet Archive, in a variety of file formats. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Top: recent scholarly book by Anne McClintock. Bottom: An iconic
image of the Vietnam War: Police General Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily
executes a man believed to be a Viet Cong guerilla. The photo is the
inspiration for the graphic at the top of the page.

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut date shown)

  • October 12 on WWUH -- Special hour-long live broadcast for Pledge Marathon week.
  • October 12 elsewhere -- Corporations (R)
Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):



A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net


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