TotalFina (French 'Erika' oil catas

[dawnstar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: TotalFina (French 'Erika' oil catastrophe)

French transport minister is putting the blame on "the maritime system",
and appealing to European Council to change the system so that boats
like Erika, 'bateaux poubelles" (old dumpy ships) wont do more of the
same, break up and drop their pollutants. Well, thats part of the
governement line now, as the french government is linking up with Total
Fina CEO Thierry Desmarest, who after two weeks of silence, is going on
national radio tomorrow morning, France Inter, (tel 33 1 42 20 40 40) to
tell you how its not his fault and he's just the guy in the middle of
all the noise and black glue flying all over the french north western
seacoast. It is his oil, even if its not his boat! And the court cases
are already being prepared, before and after the oil hit the shores. Le
Monde editorial yesterday linked TotalFina and Desmarest to supporting
the Burmese dictatorship, as another sign of his arrogance and
insensitivty denying human rights organisaitions of complicity, and
here, now, another example, the oil saga of french oil tyranny.

You should know that TF1, the major french television station, broadcast
Greenpeace smearing oil on Total Fina french headquarters, in Paris, La
Defense, while some 30 Greenpeace demonstrators held up dead black oiled
birds!

So, now that the oil has been thrown back in their faces, CEO Thierry
Desmarest will go to the nation, on Wednesday morning French radio, and
tell it like it is, as he sees it, the Total Fina Erika story. 

And only because, now, with the French prime minister suddenly deciding
he had better return from vacation in Morroco (Chirac is in Egypt - the
French just love arabs and muslims!), and after editorials in FRench
papers cried out "Where is the Government? Who is running this
country?", so that the Environmental minister and latest fan of
Desmarest, Dominique Voynot, came back from her out of France vacation,
now, the story is going to get the TotalFina JospinDesmarest line.

Today 13 000 dead birds.
69 people killed in two storms.
Some 100 + people killed in Europe by storms.
6000 tress uprooted at Versailles palace.
Over 25 000 people killed in Venezuela.
A hijacked plane about to blow.
Remember Grozny? With all the dead birds, the french forgot?
2.9 million french homes still without electricity.
300 000 mobile phones not working -no electricity.
The biggest disaster in French Telecom history.
And the french stock market hits new records...

Stay tuned.

ds*