Ma Nature, the Happy Toilet:
BP on Trial at the Occupation

By Greg Palast (for Greenpeace)

[Occupy Wall Street Climate Trial, New York.  November 27, 2011]

This is not the first courtroom where I've faced off against BP, British Petroleum. But this 
time, I was outdoors, with a patrol car's red lights spinning.

Occupy Wall Street asked me to act as "prosecutor" in the Climate Court in their relocated 
locale in a New York park.

I have the cold, hard, documentary evidence in my hand, gathered with the help of Green-
peace and their submarine (no kidding) in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Caspian Sea, in Alaska.

But first, BP's defense.  It goes like this:  "Mother Nature is just one big happy toilet. You 
can just crap in her as much as you like -- oil from the Deepwater Horizon, the Exxon 
Valdez, and all the blow-outs you've never heard of  -- and Ma Nature will just swallow it 
all up, no problem.  Nature has miracle bacteria that eat up all the oil and it's all gone. 
Gone from the Gulf, gone from Alaska."

It's jive. But jive the US media swallows, washed down by millions in ad bucks.

Just six months after the spill, NPR, on a program called "Science Friday," announced 
that Nature was almost done cleaning up all the Deepwater Horizon crud and crude. 

Then Greenpeace took me out on a screaming-fast Zodiac dinghy, shot  out a mile off 
the Mississippi coast and told me to jump overboard. Hey, thanks. I plopped right into 
an oil mat as big as a sofa. And this was six months after the Deepwater Horizon spill 
and 150 miles away from it. Sludge all over the place: miles and miles and miles of it. 
"All gone," my patoot.

[Palast will bring the evidence to Madison, New 
Mexico, New York, DC, Texas and beyond, 
starting today in Chicago.  Check out tour cities 
by clicking here]

I wasn't surprised.  I had chartered a plane into 
the Prince William Sound, Alaska, two weeks 
earlier and jumped into pools of oil from the 
Exxon Valdez -- dumped there 21 years earlier.

What the Occupiers didn't know is that I really 
had been the prosecutor, actually, the lead 
investigator of fraud, in a real federal courtroom trial of British Petroleum some two 
decades earlier.  Well, that's another story. All I can tell you is, BP walked, giggling, 
after poisoning the coast of Alaska.

This time, in Washington Square Park, the Occupiers listened, looked at my evidence
that ...

... BP had covered up an identical blow-out, just like the Deepwater Horizon rig's, two 
years earlier, on the other side of the planet. BP covered it up -- with the connivance 
of the Bush State Department. I have the film.

... BP's Alaska Pipeline, like the XL Keystone Pipeline, is using deliberately faulty safety 
measurement equipment.  Why the hell would they do that? It's cheaper, that's why. 
Saves them billions. I have the eye-witness statements.

... The Deepwater Horizon oil is all over the place -- carcinogens spewed over 600 miles 
of coastline still uncleaned. Sure, they have a few crews of Black men (see the film) 
skimming the beaches with kitty-litter scoopers (no kidding). But that's clean-up theater.
A fraud. A con.

... and and and and and ...

But I couldn't go on, as I have in "real" courtrooms, for hours and days on end with the 
evidence. I was on the "Peoples' Microphone," no amplifiers allowed by the patrol car 
with the spinning red light. So every word had to be chanted by the crowd for all to hear.

Well, OK then. They've got Fox and CBS and the Petroleum Broadcast System and we've 
got the Peoples' Microphone.

And that is WHY we occupy.

Anyway, don't take my word for it. Join the jury, join the Occupation and read the damn 
evidence yourself.

It's right here:  Vultures' Picnic: in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-
Finance Carnivores. Here's the video from the film-amplified version of Chapter 4. The 
Coon-Ass (Cajun) Riviera on YouTube 

[Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance 
Carnivores, released this week in the US and Canada by Penguin. http://vulturespicnic.org. You can read 
Vultures' Picnic, "Chapter 1: Goldfinger," or download it, at no charge: http://www.gregpalast.com/
vulturespicnic/documents/Vultures_Picnic_Chapter1_Goldfinger.pdf]

GLOBAL OUTLOOK is one of the very few great investigative journals that exposes 
not only the truth behind mainstream media's lies and propaganda, but the methods by 
which the media and gov't operate, from disinformation to false-flag operations.

You can get this Collector's Edition through the SHADOW for only $5.00 + $2.00 
postage (the cover price of this 296 page issue is $14.95!) Send payment by money order
to: SHADOW Press, P.O. Box 20298, New York, NY 10009