BHO & BP: L’impressionnante inaction

BP & BHO : L’impressionnante inaction

Ce 4 mai 2010, le site WSWS.org donne une analyse de l’attitude de l’administration Obama depuis le début de la catastrophe de la plate-forme off-shore BP du Golfe du Mexique, le 20 avril. La description est celle d’une impressionnante lenteur, de retard constant sur l’événement, d’une exceptionnelle inconscience de la catastrophe autant que de l’enjeu de communication, – pour une administration qui devrait être éclairée, intellectuellement, médiatiquement et symboliquement, par le souvenir de la catastrophe (naturelle et de communication) de Katrina. On a l’impression d’une impuissance, au sens biologique, à saisir les termes et les impératifs de la réalité, pour son propre intérêt (c’est-à-dire pour l’intérêt de la “bonne image” de l’administration). C’est une impressionnante représentation de la robotisation des psychologies par le système qui les enferme.

«In the face of the disaster, the Obama administration’s indifference and disarray has prompted numerous comparisons to the Bush administration’s response to Katrina. After first dismissing the gravity of the explosion and its potential environmental impact, the Obama administration has over the past few days mobilized to contain the resulting political damage and social anger—even as its efforts to contain the actual spill remain woefully inadequate.

»Obama’s secretaries of Homeland Security and the Interior, Janet Napolitano and Ken Salazar, made the rounds on Sunday morning talk shows explicitly dismissing any comparison to Katrina. In fact the comparisons are apt.

»On April 22, two days after the explosion—with the fate of 11 missing men still unknown—a reporter asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs if Obama had yet “reached out to anyone in Louisiana over the oil rig explosion.” Gibbs responded, “Let me check on that. I don’t believe so.”

»For more than a week after the blast on Deepwater Horizon, owned by rig operator Transocean, the Obama administration limited its public comments largely to reiterating its support for the lifting of moratoriums on offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic coast from Delaware to Florida, the northern waters of Alaska, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico off Florida’s beaches. When asked at an April 23 news conference whether this disaster would cause Obama to reconsider these policies, Gibbs flatly said “no.”

» “We’ve taken swift action to ensure the safety of those that are there and to ensure the safety to the environment by capping the exploratory well,” Gibbs declared. “We need the increased production. The president still continues to believe the great majority of that can be done safely, securely and without any harm to the environment.”

» “I don’t honestly think [the disaster] opens up a whole new series of questions, because, you know, in all honesty I doubt this is the first accident that has happened and I doubt it will be the last,” Gibbs concluded.

»It was only after it was revealed that the oil well was discharging oil at a rate of 210,000 gallons per day—and possibly far more—that Obama held a press conference on the spill: This was on April 30, ten days after the explosion. Obama declared that no offshore drilling would begin for 30 days while Interior Secretary Salazar reviewed whether or not new safeguards were needed.

»This was a patently “symbolic gesture,” the Associated Press admitted, since “no new leases are scheduled for the coming months.” The aim of the press conference was to protect Obama’s “planned expansion of offshore drilling,” according to the AP.

»Obama did not make his way to the Gulf until Sunday, May 2, nearly two weeks after the explosion. According to an attorney for one of the families of one of those killed in the blast, the administration has yet to extend condolences…»

dedefensa.org