Well done, BP -- you guys are the best!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From The Guardian:

Striking resemblances between BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster and a little-reported giant gas leak in Azerbaijan experienced by the UK firm 18 months beforehand have emerged from leaked US embassy cables.

The cables reveal that some of BP's partners in the gas field were upset that the company was so secretive about the incident that it even allegedly withheld information from them. They also say that BP was lucky that it was able to evacuate its 212 workers safely after the incident, which resulted in two fields being shut and output being cut by at least 500,000 barrels a day with production disrupted for months.

Other cables leaked tonight claim that the president of Azerbaijan accused BP of stealing $10bn of oil from his country and using "mild blackmail" to secure the rights to develop vast gas reserves in the Caspian Sea region.

And how do we know this? Because WikiLeaks leaked the cables.

The more WikiLeaks leaks, the better. Otherwise, we are all just kept in the dark by an authoritarian system that remains in power, and exerts its power, by sustaining mass ignorance

It is the truth, and only the truth, that can bring down such a system. And the reason governments are for the most part opposed to what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are doing is that the truth can bring them down -- and they know it.

Whether it's what BP is doing, or Goldman Sachs is doing, or the U.S. government is doing.

Because if the truth gets out, we might just fight back. Yes, we might just say we're as mad as hell and aren't taking it anymore.

And we can't have that, can we?