Who are the spin doctors trying to fool?

The problem with multinational companies or, for that matter, any big company is hubris. They think they own the world.

The problem with giant companies is also that they operate in a "free market" that is run either by them or their cohorts. Their only guiding principle is dividend or profit. And since sea animals and plants don't pay any dividend (except with their lives), British energy giant BP had for almost a month refused to share data on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. No wonder even John Maynard Keynes, that champion of capitalism, wrote: "In a sort of parody of an accountant's nightmare, we are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend."

The Deepwater Horizon, a semi-submersible oil rig, in the Gulf of Mexico sank exactly a month ago, spilling thousands of tons of crude oil. It became evident in less than a week that the spill could become one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. For almost a month, environmental activists and scientists - and even some US Congressmen - kept asking BP to provide complete data on the spill. And for almost a month BP refused to, thwarting independent scientists' efforts to estimate the amount of crude flowing into the Gulf each day.