Its bad enough that British Petroleum has not mourned the ELEVEN DEAD WORKERS who died in the blast on the oil rig that is responsible for the gushing toxic spill…
One of the youngest workers on the rig, Shane Roshto, 22, is survived by his son and his wife, Natalie, who has filed a lawsuit against BP, Transocean and Halliburton. An inspiration to his friends, he wrote two dates — his wedding day and his son’s birthday — inside of his hard hat, referring to these dates when he was having a bad day.
But now, on American soil, British Petroleum is in charge of law enforcement, puppet-mastering the local sheriffs’ offices and the Coast Guard, keeping reporters from the beaches. Americans are being kept from the beaches by a foreign corporation.
So much for the ‘new’ logo, the earth-friendly ‘Beyond Petroleum’ public relations campaign of a few years ago, BP’s attempt to win over environmentally aware consumers, designed to show the company’s commitment to, get this, the environment and solar power…
British Petroleum is firmly an oil company. It is dodging responsibility for its epic, monumental, continuing spill and its degradation of the US coastline, AND its running our own sovereign law enforcement agencies. How can Americans know the extent of damage, if reporters are turned away from American soil by a British conglomerate?
Ok, by now you know that the ‘family values’, ‘abstinence only’, ‘marriage is between a man and a woman’ Republican Congressman Mark Souder from Indiana is resigning for having an affair with a staffer, but did you know she was ‘PART TIME’?
He made a big point of the fact that it was mutual (she helped him film his abstinence video – shades of John Edwards and his videographer) and that she works PART TIME for him. You know what that means?
Probably NO HEALTH INSURANCE, no benefits… He was messing with a woman who probably didn’t have a safety net.
That’s not ‘mutual’, buddy, when you’ve got lifetime health benefits and retirement pay…
Oh, and his first response to the affair allegations was ‘it’s revenge politics’.
No, its not, Mark, it’s integrity, which you lack. YOU’VE GOT HER INTERVIEWING YOU ABOUT TEEN ABSTINENCE EDUCATION!!! Hmmm, Abstinence, Affair, Adultery. Mark, get your A words straight. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out…
He said, “In the poisonous environment of Washington, DC, any personal failing is seized upon and twisted for political gain.’
Um, Mark? No. Your affair, which, once CAUGHT, you now call a personal failing, is seized on because of your epic hypocrisy. Your affair is used for political gain because you stand for nothing anymore, you’ve gone against every word you’ve uttered.
With your morality politics, through your 8 terms, you’ve made decisions that have impacted the lives of all Americans, yet you can’t even walk your own walk. You’ve voted for the nuclear family, over other definitions of ‘family’ and yet you betrayed yours. You filmed yourself talking about abstinence-only education, but committed adultery. You say marriage can only be between a man and a woman, but you can’t even stay faithful to your own marriage, how can you judge the intent and fidelity of others?
Time for all of you who represent us in Congress to fess up, clean out your closets and act from integrity.
It’s no longer a surprise that the Representative from Indiana had an affair in his office, its so cliché…
Yet he and his brethren are the ‘deciders’ for the morality of the rest of Americans. We’ve got infidels in charge.
Time to sweep them out and bring in representatives who act from the truth of their lives, caring enough not to throw the PART TIME worker under the bus…
Look, I completely believe that this generation of kids has their finger on the pulse of the massive change needed to bring us to a more humane, connected, responsible world. I give a LOT of leeway to young thinkers, precisely BECAUSE they are not tied up yet in societal rules. The George Lucas Educational Foundation (glef.org) has great insight into the kind of education we need to provide to these kids, so that they can use their out-of-the-box thinking to get us, well, you know, out of the box. Clearly, our pseudo-capitalist financial system (really more of an oligarchy) needs dramatic change; our food production system is making Americans fat (and is really more socialist, with its multi-billion dollar big-farm subsidies); our criminal justice system spends more to incarcerate our young than we do to educate them. We need young minds to ponder and act on their instincts, since bandaids aren’t enough to fix our current mess.
But Zuckerberg is WRONG. There IS a place for privacy on the web, and most of his users completely believe that Facebook WILL protect their privacy. A few days ago, supposedly, Facebook bigwigs sat down for a quickly pulled together meeting, because of the global backlash against Facebook’s ‘we own you’ draconian privacy intrusions.
You know Facebook will deny they’re up against a wall, but they are up against a proverbial wall.
The kid who allegedly texted while at Harvard saying that people who gave him personal information on the internet are dumb f**ks, is now in charge of the largest-ever cache of human information in history. Is he acting with maturity, with foresight and with hindsight?
No.
Because he’s too young to understand the implications of his actions. He’s literally selling the individual proprietary stories of millions of human lives, in the interest of money making. He’s enacting a social experiment that he doesn’t understand, and he’s destroying any trust that Facebook users have in him.
What he doesn’t see is that he’s already created the most successful (yet) global brain. People from all over the planet connect on his platform. He’s gone from ‘fringe’ to ‘mainstream’, in less than a decade. He has a caretaking, leadership responsibility to all his users, and he fails them when he makes them take 20 steps to protect their privacy. I went on to my account and my daughter’s account and shut the spy hole on us, but I was able to do it because I’m tech savvy. Regular social users of Facebook are being sold upriver.
So let’s hope there’s a bit of ‘Dude, you don’t know enough to have made this decision’ conversation today. Let’s hope that Facebook has some wise, more life-experienced people at the meeting, who can tell the Emperor that he’s accidentally stripped all the people instead of himself.
At this point in the growth of the social web, it DOES matter that each individual assumes that they are protected by apps and websites and platforms that they use.
Zuckerberg, and sadly Facebook, have not shown maturity and consideration and due diligence in caring for their community. This just-turned 26 year old clearly doesn’t understand what he’s done and hopefully SOMEone at Facebook can get him to do what’s right, not sell his users.
One of the youngest workers on the rig, Shane Roshto, 22, is survived by his son and his wife, Natalie, who has filed a lawsuit against BP, Transocean and Halliburton. An inspiration to his friends, he wrote two dates — his wedding day and his son’s birthday — inside of his hard hat, referring to these dates when he was having a bad day.
