Am I Not Human? BP Oil Spill

We support the 'Am I Not Human?' blogging campaign that lights up the 27th of each month. I encourage all villagers to find a way to support this effort to shine a light on human rights abuses taking place all over the world.

The BP Oil Spill is the major human rights abuse on my mind this month. I watched the president's press conference today. The vast majority of the questions were about the oil spill. It has been more than five weeks since an oil rig leased by BP exploded and sank in the Gulf, and only now does there appear to be progress in plugging the massive leak. Speaking in a more than hour-long press conference in the East Room, President Obama defended his administration’s performance and said he was “angry and frustrated” by the spill.

“This notion that somehow the federal government is sitting on the sidelines and for the last three or four or five weeks we've just been letting BP make a whole bunch of decisions is simply not true,” Obama said.

President Obama doesn't usually get very personal when he speaks to the American people. However, this BP Oil Spill is personal for many villagers in the Gulf Coast ... and it was good to see that it got personal for President Obama as well:

"My job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about – the spill," he said.

On Thursday morning, he said, when he was shaving, his daughter Malia peeked her head into the bathroom and said, "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?"

"I think everybody understands that, you know, when we are fouling the earth like this, it has concrete complications not just for this generation but for future generations.

"I grew up in Hawaii, where the ocean is sacred. And when you see birds flying around with – with oil all over their feathers and turtles dying and – ... that doesn't just speak to the immediate economic consequences of this. This speaks to, you know, how are we caring for this incredible bounty that we have?"

ABC News went underwater off the Gulf Coast to see first-hand what the Deepwater Oil Disaster looks and feels like. It looks like a nightmare.




We’ve seen the oil start to wash up on shore, and we’ve seen satellite images of the slick. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg: You need to take a look at the underwater impact of the oil geyser and the dangerous chemicals BP is using to “disperse” it — effects that could last for decades, even if the risky “Top Kill” maneuver to plug the well works.

This is some nasty shyt. I hope that we can see some positive movement in a few weeks. What are your thoughts on the BP Oil Spill?