Hey there, and thanks for showing up! Just wanted to pop back in and post the rest of the links to the days' stories on my radio show. No narratives just the links, okay? Feel free to drop me a note from time to time - you could tell me what kind of stories you'd like to see/hear more of and what kind you could do without.

The Gulf spill doesn't get as much coverage as it should in the media so you have to go digging to find out what's been happening there of late. For starters, the Obama administration announced Monday that it is no longer fast-tracking offshore drilling projects in deep water by exempting them from detailed environmental review.

Two weeks ago, as federal officials prepared to declare that some three-quarters of the estimated 5 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf over three months had disappeared, Mark Williams, a fishing boat captain hired by BP to help with the spill cleanup, encountered tar balls as large as three inches wide floating off the Florida coast -- he has been instructed by BP not to report them.

No matter what you hear or read in the MSM the oil spill still poses threats to human health and seafood safety, according to a study published Monday by the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association.

No doubt you've heard about the NY mosque controversy. It really shouldn't be an issue, but that's not how it works any longer. The right screams and whines about some trumped up nonsense and eventually the MSM covers it. To get an idea of how overheated the rhetoric can get go read what Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove have to say about the issue. Gird your loins for those nazi comparisons.

Don Lemon of CNN demonstrates his absolute whorishness in an interview he conducted with Eboo Patel (video below). As Glenn Greenwald notes, it's sad that the point has to be made but Muslims did not attack on 9/11 - terrorists did. Muslims died on 9/11 and some were 1st responders. Fanatics come in all sizes and of all stripes as far as religions go - if you want to demonize all because of the reprehensible actions of a few the consequences could be more severe than the original attacks and plays into the hands of extremists. There are some unlikely allies on the side of defending the rights of the people who want to build the mosque.



A little something to confuse the climate science denier in your life -- the paradox of Antarctic sea ice. While Arctic sea ice has been diminishing in recent decades, the Antarctic sea ice extent has been increasing slightly. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology provide an explanation for the seeming paradox of increasing Antarctic sea ice in a warming climate.

A Week That Defies Categoriazation

Starting with the dispersants BP has been using to hide the enormity of the spill in the Gulf. The real reason BP has used nearly 2 million gallons of the dispersant Corexit in the Gulf is to hide the oil and save themselves money in possible fines, says Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. He explains that the dispersant is used to atomize the oil and force it down the water column so that it’s invisible to the eye. 

He also feels that , the government—both EPA, NOAA, etc.—have been sock puppets for BP in this cover-up. Now, by hiding the amount of spill, BP is saving hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in fines, and so, from day one, there was tremendous economic incentive to use these dispersants to hide the magnitude of the gusher that’s been going on for almost three months. You can listen to his full interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman below:



In what should be considered alarming news, oil and dispersant have entered the food chain, and hydrocarbons have been detected in crab larvae. A Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries biologist expressed this concern recently:"We are quite concerned that we will see significant mortality of larvae as they encounter oil or dispersants." (Times Picayune, Bob Marshall, 7/20/2010) Further, it is a known fact that oil mixed with dispersant can actually prove to be more toxic than oil, or dispersant, alone. (See fact sheet at the link).

There's so much BP has done wrong - so many acts for which they will hopefully be criminally liable it's no surprise to read that they've been screwing up the cleanup of the Gulf on top of everything else.



As far as capping the well, that's been the good news this week as the gusher seems to be under control and they're getting closer to having the relief wells done. In a bit of bad news on this front, efforts will be suspended this weekend as they wait out a tropical storm Bonnie which could potentially develop into a hurricane.

On the environmental front, some good news beginning with Obama signing an executive order creating a new national ocean policy to protect and restore America's oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes. Followed by terrible news today, from TPM: At a press conference this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the Democrats' top climate and energy negotiator, acknowledged officially, and with obvious disappointment, that they lack the votes to pass legislation limiting carbon pollution, and that forthcoming energy legislation will be extremely narrow, in a bid to overcome a GOP filibuster.

Now there are those who want to blame this failure on Obama and I unsderstand that but it is not his fault. Says Harry Reid about the fate of the bill, "Unfortunately at this time we don't have a single Republican to work with in achieving this goal."

Not one single Republican to work with on legislation that is probaby more important than any other issue out there. Joe Romm believes averting catastrophic climate change is the singular most important problem we face as a society.

The Criminals at British Petroleum

It has been hard to not get overly emotional about what British Petroleum has done to the Gulf of Mexico and the marine life and animals that make up those fragile eco-systems. Something that I expected to be mitigated by an outcry for sanity and clean energy policies, and stricter observance to the regulations that already exist. My hopes have sadly gone unanswered.

Instead the right has shamelessly ramped up calls for more drilling, more tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuel companies and less regulation. This, even even though they are the most profitable corporations in the history of modern capitalism. Some have even wanted to shield BP from paying the full costs of the clean-up.

The extent of BP's criminality is not yet known but, near as I can tell, by direct comparison they make the Mafia look like pikers. They cut corners on safety and design, and their negligence seems to have been the cause of the catastrophe in the first place. Now they're trying to buy up scientists and by extension their silence on Gulf coast studies - The Press-Register obtained a copy of a contract offered to scientists by BP. It prohibits the scientists from publishing their research, sharing it with other scientists or speaking about the data that they collect for at least the next three years.

Listen to Rachel's report on how they're trying to accomplish this:

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The really sad thing about this post is that it comes at a time when there should be a bit of relief that they got that damned well capped! They found a way to close the lid on that oil gushing volcano and they're close (by the only accounts available to one and all) to having those relief wells dug. We don't know if it'll hold as there are concerns about the wellbore's integrity and besides, this would just mark the end of the first part of the disaster anyhow.

The millions of gallons of oil and dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico waters, the toll they take on the Gulf region, and the length of time it takes for the region to recover is what follows and will take far more than three months to wrap up. The stories to keep your eye on are the ones about BP's continuing cover-up of the truth. Their continuous maneuvering to try and lessen the financial costs of their criminality and the politicians who are in their thrall and will work on their behalf and not for their constituents.

Follow-up

Just to follow up on the Corexit dispersant story and the videos posted below - the people over at Video Café have this story and chat with a marine toxicologist about the effects of Corexit on the metabolism: Shrimpers who were exposed to a mixture of oil and Corexit dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico suffered severe symptoms such as muscle spasms, heart palpitations, headaches that last for weeks and bleeding from the rectum...



The media doesn't give it a lot of coverage, but it's old news that Corexit is 4 times more toxic than the oil itself, it's old news that there are better and less toxic dispersant available,  it's old news that the EPA asked BP to stop using Corexit and BP told them to stuff it.

Corporate Criminals

If BP does manage to get the spill contained there's so much that they still have to answer for - Like cutting 40,000 claimants off for having incomplete files. Oh yeah, they're going to make it right all right... for themselves. Take a look at this video with images that aren't being showed much in the MSM:




There's their use of the dispersant Corexit that's described as being four times as toxic as the oil itself:



And from our good friend Laffy over at the Political Carnival, comes this video of BP hiding the toxic sludge that they're collecting - the waste management facility reminds me of something I once saw in the X-Files. Sadly though, the truth is nowhere to be found.

Waiting All Day...

On the radio show today I talked about BP taking off the containment cap - a massive spew of course ensued - and were getting ready to put a new one on that they hoped was going to staunch the flow considerably if not completely. I'm the last person to be taken in by these criminal propagandists but I have to admit all day long I've had a feeling that this really might come to an end soon. Surely BP couldn't be dense enough to raise people's hopes yet again only to let them down. So I've been waiting all day to post on their progress and so far are all signs are positive.

While the original cap only caught about half of the estimated oil spewing into the Gulf, the new cap will divert the entire oil flow into a containment system so it can be disposed of. As of Saturday, BP said the total volume of oil that has been collected by the existing system was roughly 3/4 of a million barrels. The new system that it is being introduced should be able to deal with 60,000 to 80,000 barrels a day and should be ready by the end of the month.


Capping the well and collecting the oil is not going to solve the long-term problem. Stopping the flow of oil is still dependent upon two relief wells that BP has been digging since May and are designed to join up with the original well, about 18,000ft under the sea floor. They will then pump the specialised heavy fluids down the relief well and bring the first part of the catastrophe to a merciful end. What will follow can only be guessed at.

Here's something that'll take the edge off if you're half as angry as I am about this criminal and negligent behaviour on the part of BP.

What The Hell Were They Waiting For?

Katia Moskvitch the science reporter for the BBC reports that the captain, Yevgenii Chernyaev, of one of two Russian-built submersibles built to go down to depths of 6,000 metres, has said his vessel, the Mir-2 would be able to cap the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. "Of the four vessels in the world that can go down to 6,000m - the Mirs, French Nautile and Japanese Shinkai. The Mirs are known to be the best," the captain said.

The submersible's pilot also said that the Russians were very surprised that BP and the US government had not asked them for help from the beginning.

"And we would not refuse to help, even though for us it would be very complicated, especially right now, when we're already working on Baikal. But it doesn't look like anyone seriously wants our help," he added.

There are some fishermen in the Gulf who would disagree.

Police State Redux

Remember that story I blogged yesterday about the corporatist Police State that we're now all inhabitants of (yeah, that includes Canada)? well, today over at ProPublica.org there's a story of a photographer who was followed and detained by BP security and the Police for taking innocuous photographs of signs in and around a BP refinery in Texas City. It's a story of attempted bullying and intimidation.

Lance Rosenfield was taking pictures for two stories being covered by ProPublica. One was about a BP refinery illegally releasing 538,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the air (aren't they beautiful people?) and the other about the refinery where 15 people died as result of BP negligence 5 years ago that continues to have safety violations to this day. He is first hemmed in by two Texas City police cars at a gas station, then ordered to show the pictures he took or, the police officer threatens, ...he could handle this another way, including calling Homeland Security and taking me in. The BP security guard shows up and is given Mr. Rosenfield's personal information by the police and finally the Homeland Security/FBI agent Tom Robison is called in to help assist in the police-state like tactics.

Fortunately Mr. Rosenfield was well aware of his rights as he stood his ground and remained calm, polite and on point until they released him 20-30 minutes later. A good lesson for us all in these strange times.

World's Largest Oil Skimmer Tested In Gulf Of Mexico

Taiwanese billionaire Nobu Su owner of TMT Shipping has retrofitted an oil tanker into the worlds largest oil skimmer named, "A Whale". Without the knowledge of BP or the U.S. government Mr. Su  sent the ship to the Gulf of Mexico to help in the clean up. According to Mr. Su the ship would travel across the Gulf, "like a lawn mower cutting grass." The vessel is ten stories high, three Canadian Football fields in length and can process twenty-one million gallons of oil tainted water a day.

Due to choppy waters test done over the weekend  were deemed inconclusive by TMT Shipping. Too bad it took four weeks for the U.S. administration to ask for foreign help or they might have got the "Whale" working before hurricane season.

The Gusher in the Gulf

The New York Times is reporting this morning that the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with protecting endangered species, signed off on the Mineral Management Service's conclusion that deep water drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico posed no serious threat to wildlife. The agency signed off on the minerals service’s biological evaluation, even though that assessment considered only the risks to wildlife based on spills of 1,000 to 15,000 barrels — a minuscule amount compared with the hundreds of thousands of barrels now spewing into the gulf.

The explanation from Deborah Fuller, the endangered species program coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s office in Lafayette, La., that “We all know an oil spill is catastrophic, but what is the likelihood it will happen?” defies reason, like most news related to the disaster. She said her office had considered that any likelihood under 50 percent would not be enough to require the protections of her office. I find myself dumbfounded as I read those words - anything less than a 50-50 chance was okay? That's an absurd and obviously dangerous amount of leeway for a region whose eco-systems are as fragile as those of the Gulf region are.

Keep in mind that American taxpayers are paying for the spill's costs by giving tax breaks and direct payouts to BP and Haliburton and the oil industry in the US is receiving all sorts of subsidies, while at the same time raking in billions and soiling beaches.

Dumber Than You Thought!

When Joe Barton apologized to BP most people thought he was merely doing his work as a highly paid shill for big oil. Other than being completely tone-deaf to how people were really feeling about the criminals over at BP there was nothing unusual about his kind of behaviour for a Republican - meaning no one thought he actually believed what he was saying. No one could be that stupid, right? Wrong!

Dan Quayle would look like an intellectual giant standing next to this half-wit who says of the wind: Wind is God's way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it's hotter to areas where it's cooler. That's what wind is. Wouldn't it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense.

Here's what he has to say about clouds: (Caution: Be sure to have nothing in your mouth while viewing)



On Global Warming as a net benefit for mankind:



The really important thing to remember is that if the Republicans take back the House in November this sack of hammers would be the chair of the House energy committee.

(with apologies to sacks of hammers everywhere)

The Worst Propagandists in the World!

Before you watch this clip courtesy of the always wonderful and incisive Rachel Maddow, you might want to get yourself a little bag you can heave your disgust into. There are few words that don't delve into the scatological to describe the people at BP as they try find the upside of ecocide.

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May I Have Another?

Today's 1st story link is what the title is about. The relationship the people of the Gulf have with BP is like that of an abused spouse. The beatings are hard on the system but the only thing worse would be if the spouse left or was forced to leave. Alternet asks, when will we end our abusive relationship with big oil? Abusive can hardly be viewed as hyperbolic when we are looking at a dead zone the size of Lake Ontario being created - and I actually think that's optimistic given yesterday's report of methane concentrations 100,000 times more than normal that have been detected in parts of the Gulf.

As has been well documented BP was in no way ready for a catastrophic occurrence - although they claimed that they were, but then neither are any of the oil companies currently drilling in the Gulf. Just to complicate the current clean-up efforts, Tropical Storm Alex is strengthening and moving towards the coast - it could turn onto a category 3 hurricane. here's a Q & A from the NOAA on what is likely to happen if a hurricane hits the area of the spill.

A reminder that 21 years after the Valdez spill many species there are still struggling to survive.

In non-gusher related news, Iraq still twirling towards... heaven knows what as Monday sees 7 killed and 19 wounded. This is not unusual and is the price Iraqis pay daily for US occupation.

The leaders at the G-20 took the decision to screw the poor around the world.

Concerns raised about carbon sequestration - how effective will it be?

Marijuana in a nasal spray? I've said it before, it's a miracle drug!

Ecosystem of Businesses

If there was anything that was ever emblematic of our corporate fellating culture it was this story from the Guardian about the lawyers fighting to put an end to the moratorium on deep sea drilling in the Gulf. They had the unmitigated gall to say that the ban on drilling was "...destroying an entire "ecosystem of businesses." This in the wake of actual destroyed ecosystems, uncounted dead and dying animals and species that may disappear forever. I say this all the time on my show when I mention the Valdez spill of 21 years ago - the herring never returned.

My only conclusion can be is that they are sociopathic, lying idiots who have no children and never intend to have any. Their entire reason for being is to assist in the rape of the planet, consume all that they possibly can and die, and to hell with life on this planet. They threaten people's jobs even while the have destroyed the livelihoods of untold millions. The amazing thing is that these arguments have resonance with the right and the teaparty and today these arguments stuck and a judge with connections to big oil ruled in their favour and drilling may continue.
This push back by the right and the right-wing media and their uninformed supporters comes amid numerous stories that BP was negligent and even lied to Congress about it.

There is late breaking word on Keith's show that Ken Salazar and the Obama administration will re-impose the ban. Hooray for a modicum of sanity!

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Worst Case Scenarios

I try to avoid anything I can't verify with multiple sources here at the blog. Even when I can find them, if what I'm reading is out there (alarmist), I'll take my time to verify before posting it, knowing that the blogosphere will always be ahead of the MSM.

For the last month I've been tripping across information about the worst case scenario for the spew in the Gulf of Mexico - as if 60,000 barrels pouring in daily weren't bad enough - and been waiting to confirm it. There's no point to my freaking out, right?

So this weekend the MSM manages to stay roughly even with the blogosphere on the oil spew story and report on a document (that somehow got leaked) and reveal BP is worried that the gusher in the Gulf (BP hates it when you call it that) could leak or be leaking as many as 100,000 barrels a day - 4 million gallons or the equivalent of a spill the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez every 3 days. Problem is that's not the worst case scenario I've been reading about. The worst case involves the integrity of the hole itself collapsing and oil gushing into the Gulf at the rate of 150,000 barrels a day. Trust BP to low ball the figures one more time!

The emotional and psychological toll the Exxon Valdez spill took on the residents of the Alaska coastline has been chronicled in some detail, and the same things are expected to occur to Gulf residents but on a much larger scale.

I guess you'll be shocked to read that BP were told of a s safety fault weeks before the explosion.

This makes me smile, kinda'. While the right-wing media, including Limbaugh, double down on the idiocy of Barton's apology to BP and the use of words like "shakedown," to describe the $20 billion escrow account Obama got BP to fund,  Haley Barbour (Gov. R-Miss.) admits it was a smart idea.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

I don't want to get Pollyannish here or maudlin. It's just a pretty song by the cast from Glee against the backdrop of the catastrophe in the Gulf. Any song with those images would be moving. It's a pleasant thought on the last weekend of spring to imagine a world where public policy debates aren't some dreadful political football game all about scoring points at someone else's expense. Instead, the implementation of thoughtful and reasonable ideas based on the best empirical evidence available that benefits the greater good and is not the product of superstition and age old prejudices. That people care about their fellow man and would never make fun of a hungry child or resort to torturing one's enemies. That such behaviour would be deemed unthinkable and the perpetrators of such cowardly acts could never show their faces in public again - that's if they could first escape prosecution.

Pity. The 21st Century had such promise.

Tone Deaf Or Just Plain Stupid?

Today's Congressional hearing on the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster included an apology from Congressman Joe Barton (R-Tex) to Tony Hayward, the BP CEO who has been a walking talking PR nightmare for the oil giant. He was apologizing for what he called the US government "shakedown" of BP forcing them to open that $20 billion dollar escrow account to help compensate the victims. Really, what could be worse than being held responsible for your own actions? Anyhow it inspired the thought, are the Republicans just astoundingly tone-deaf, genuinely stupid or are they merely whores for oil money? Judge for yourself as the same Joe Barton asks the Secretary of Energy, Nobel award winning scientist Stephen Chu, "How did all that oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic ocean?"



Joe Barton actually went further with his idiocy and called it a "slush fund," a comment with which even Tony Hayward disagreed.

Obama's Speech Universally Panned

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It's hard not to like Rachel's version better.

Still, there were some good things in the speech. Not in specifics but the long term goals and the over-arching theme that it is time to get off oil dependence is a good start. Other than that though, the speech offered little reassurance to  progressives who have been waiting action on AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). But Obama doesn't directly address climate change or global warming in his speech because no one wants to hear about it. There are allusions, but that is all. No sticking his chin out and laying it on the line. Vague assurances that BP will pay and they'll never give up on the people of the Gulf coast. Is that the voice of a politician who believes he can sell his vision to his constituents?

Has a year-and-a-half of non-stop demagoguery by the right neutered the President to the point that he only speaks in vague platitudes for fear of the next day's backlash? Or is this the first step towards a clean energy bill and future? Maybe he's not trying to reach the choir with this speech. Maybe he just wants the average person who doesn't get embroiled in the day to day madness of partisan politics to understand something very serious is going on here and it will take time and effort and a change of direction to fix it.

I'm the first guy to cut Obama slack. I know it. I read the complaints of other liberals and progressives and worry that they're forgetting what the alternative is - and it was eight long years of murderous god-awful. The sad thing is that there has been a carryover. Not just of the debts and two unfinished wars, but some of the policies as well. He has not undone rendition or put an end to torture or Gitmo or a lot of the other things he said he's do - he has even  defended the Bush administration's handling of the Mahar Arar case though it was clearly demonstrated Arar was guilty of no crimes. He was arrested and renditioned to Syria where he was tortured. No apology, no prosecutions for wrongful imprisonment, nothing! The NYT's calls it disgraceful, and they're right.

As for BP though, he seems to be making good on his promise to make them pay as today they agreed to the $20 billion dollar escrow account to meet the mounting claims that will be administered by a third party. So that's a victory, but it's not clear if it's the pressure Obama is bringing to bear, or if BP has finally come to their senses and are going to try and salvage what they can of their reputation so that next year they can still remain in business. Their credit rating was downgraded by six notches today to just above junk status.

News on the spill itself has the well gushing as much as 60,000 barrels per day into the ocean but there's hope that a second containment system may help to mitigate 90% of that by as early as next week. That's pretty much where the good news ends. There's talk over at The Oil Drum, a sounding board for petroleum geologists, that the gusher may be unstoppable and get far worse before the relief wells are dug. I've seen hints at this elsewhere, let's hope they're wrong.

As for wankery on the subject, well that continues at the regular rate. Palin lies about what Obama's said on the subject - this should come under the heading of water is wet. BP, in yet another winning move, hired mercenaries to keep people away from the despoiled beaches. And just yesterday, big oil executives were lobbying for tax breaks and subsidies. These are the most profitable corporations in the history of the world and they want welfare.

 To close on a perfect note, the Sierra Club reports that clean beaches in New Jersey make more money than off-shore drilling will. The only god is the god of irony - do not trifle with him!

The BP Valdez - Nothing Has Changed

This is going to be a quick hitter (for me). Here's some video of Rachel Maddow making the point, in no uncertain terms, that oil companies (still) do not know how, nor do they have the technology to stop a spill 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. And a reminder that 21 years after the fact Exxon still has not paid the full amount of their fine for the Valdez spill. In fact before dime one was ever paid as compensation to victims of Valdez oil spill 8,000 of the potential recipients died.

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There are very good reasons for Obama to force BP to set up a $20 billion dollar escrow account for the financial victims in the Gulf states. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, especially with the Republicans most beholden to their big oil donors.

What We're Up Against

Hello to whomever shows up here!

We've only been doing this a short while and we're trying to establish ourselves as reliable and on top of the news. Between the three of us we haven't as yet developed the facility to take the stories on one at a time so mostly it's daily news wraps. Occasionally there's been the perfect video or article to bring to the attention of whatever reader happens by and we've run a couple of those - but mostly wraps.

We've been way ahead of the curve on our first real effort to bring a story that the MSM wasn't telling the truth about: the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf on a daily basis. Go back to our posting of May the 1st and you'll find, using the information available to us and all, we were informing people who were dropping by that a million gallons (25,000 barrels) or more were pouring into the Gulf. We took umbrage along the way as the numbers were continuously low-balled by BP and the government.

I'm not sure more accurate reporting would have changed things as they now stand but there's a chance that with numbers so large and frightening there might have been a greater sense of urgency - not from BP or government officials - but from the public at large. We still have the power to move these idiots you know. We are not under any obligation to be in their thrall, in fact quite the opposite. Governments get to set policy on our behalf as long as we are satisfied with their behaviour and corporations get to reap from the fat of the land provided they put back, employ, be good citizens and pay their damned taxes!

When they fail to do these things on our behalf we have the power and the duty to act appropriately. Not sit on our asses and take it. "Can I have another sir?" are not the words the people who fought and died to establish western civilization would think suitable for the current state of affairs. We have to act or become extinct before this century concludes.



To celebrate our 100th post, here's a National Geographic video that illustrates why it's important to keep fighting for a cleaner environment and smarter public policy.