There is Something Very Wrong with the “Suicide” of William Kruse

by Scott Creighton 

UPDATE – (H/T to an old friend) - Go here to read about how the local county officials in various areas affected by all this BP made disaster are being co-opted by BP, the new Masters of the Gulf, and are harassing the residents with impunity just like any third-world corporate tyranny would.  BP’s head of security riding around in the taxpayer’s county patrol cars pulling over citizens and interrogating them because they filmed something, stealing their identification, intimidating them… while the deputy sits back and says nothing. This is Coca-Cola and Columbia right here in America. 

William Kruse

 

MSNBC has tried to redeem themselves. Yesterday they scrubbed out any mention of Capt. William Kruse’s death from their early morning article (which I pointed out), so today they are running with a Washington Post article devoted entirely to the subject. The Washington Post article calls Kruse’s death an “apparent” suicide.  I don’t think so.   

Here are the facts as I know them thus far… 

• Kruse showed up in the morning to meet with his deck-hands as usual.
• Kruse sent them to the local store to get ice and other supplies for the day’s work helping clean the oil out of the Gulf.
• When they left Kruse was supposed to start-up his boat and meet them at the store where he would fuel it for the day.
• As they were walking toward the store they heard a “pop” but thought it was nothing more than a firecracker.
• After Kruse didn’t show at the store, they went back and found him in the wheel-house.
• There is no suicide note.
• BP owed Kruse $70,000 and Kruse was very angry about not being paid on time.
• Kruse was an extremely vocal and outgoing man.  He was a community leader who all the other captain’s “looked up to“
• Kruse was on the board of the Orange Beach Fishing Association.
• Other fishing boat captains came to him for advice.
• Kruse had recently told one of them that the entire clean-up effort was a scam, it was “hopeless”, and that they had to just shut up and just do as they were told… that it was like living in “prison”.

Does that sound like a suicide to you? 

MSNBC Deletes Mention of Oil Clean-up Capt. William Allen Kruse’s Death

by Scott Creighton

Earlier this morning, I reported on an MSNBC story about two Gulf oil clean-up workers who had been killed. One had been shot and there were no details on the other.  MSNBC has now changed their story and dropped all mention of both of the deaths.

This is what they wrote this morning and I reported on here.

… The deaths reported Wednesday were not tied to the containment operation. The Coast Guard said the workers had been involved in cleanup operations did that their deaths did not appear to be work related. 

One death was a boat captain who died of a gunshot wound, a Coast Guard spokesman said. Further details were not immediately available. MSNBC 

Now, if you follow that link, the article has been scrubbed up and there is no mention of either of the clean-up worker’s deaths. In fact, instead part of the story is about saving a dolphin.

This is a screen-shot of the link preview which still has the image capture of the original story including a headline that mentions the two deaths: “two clean-up workers die in separate events“.

BP Labor Camps

by Scott Creighton 

UPDATE at the end of the article…  Leak is worse due to an “accident” and two clean-up workers are dead. 

Disaster capitalism is the way of the entire country right now.  Employers large and small are taking advantage of the dismal economic climate and they are padding their profit margins by rolling back pay rates and benefits for the average working man. It’s an all out assault on the standard of living of the blue-collar worker that I personally have seen growing in popularity over the past 24 years. Working Americans undermining other working Americans, literally stealing food right off their families tables, in order to achieve “just a little more” profit for themselves.  I’ve seen good men, men who refused to sell-out their workforce, have to shut down their businesses because the scourges who are competing with them can underbid them by utilizing their ‘off the books”/less than minimum wage workforce.  What has resulted is a kind of reverse natural selection where only the corrupt and morally weak survive and thrive in this new neoliberal Miracle of America.   

I thought I had seen it all… til this.   

BP is hiring contractors to come in and run the clean-up operations. BP of course is a British company but by and large, the sub-contractors in charge of all the clean-up workers are American companies. And you would be surprised what Americans will do to other Americans when the almighty dollar is involved.