The United States of Nigeria

Nigeria has next to no protections for its people, and so it has been trashed.

The government is bought and paid for by giant corporations to rape and pillage at will instead of working for its own people.

For example, the government, Shell and Chevron support paramilitary "kill and go" squads which brutally murder people who protest the wholesale destruction of their homes and environs for oil extraction, especially since the people get almost no share in the oil profits.

The proud country of America has been turned into the United States of Nigeria.

While there are no paramilitary death squads in America (although such squads are used by the U.S. government against American citizens abroad - and see this), there are many other similarities.

BP is destroying the Gulf, because the government has supported BP without regulating it in any meaningful way.

BP is covering up its blunders by lowballing spill estimates, keeping reporters out of areas hardest hit by the oil (and see this, this, this and this) and threatening to arrest them if they try to take pictures, hiding dead birds and other sealife, telling cleanup workers they'll be fired if they use respirators, and using dispersants to hide the amount of spilled oil (the dispersants are only worsening the damage caused by the spill).

And the government - despite some occasional tough talk - is letting BP do whatever it wants.

Indeed, some even speculate that BP has been given emergency powers which supersede those of local police and other law enforcement.

Welcome to the United States of Nigeria.