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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
Cue speech from the President on need for real change. We're rooting for him. Let's hope he can be as good as his word. Remember one of the reasons he's going after BP hammer and tong is it's been 21 years and Exxon still has not paid even the piddling amount (for them) they were fined. In fact before dime one was ever paid as compensation to victims of Valdez oil spill, 8,000 of the potential recipients died.
Cue Republicans telling Obama not to use this fossil fuel disaster as an excuse to push for legislation that tries to end dependency on fossil fuels. They're so astoundingly anti-science on the right and in some cases just so stupid, that I wonder where their credibility comes from. Oh yeah, the corporate media enables these idiots by never making any connections between what we're witnessing, for example, extreme storms and global warming. The evidence can be right in front of them and still they deny it.
One of the Republican governors (Haley Barbour of Miss.) is always alluding to oil naturally seeping into the oceans and how that isn't the end of the world and so the spill in the Gulf shouldn't be either. Well, that's 'cause it's a different animal.
Here's 15 unsettling facts about wealth and inequality in America (spoiler: the rich have been getting way richer and the poor less than nothing).
The most despicable man in the world (Glenn Beck) lies some more.
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.
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.
Usually I like to intro any video I post but I thought this spoke rather eloquently for itself.
The disaster in the Gulf continues apace and as the news gets worse, word is Obama is going to address the nation on Tuesday and take concrete steps to make sure BP pays for what the have wrought. I can hear the caterwauling from the right already. One such whore in the thrall of bigoil spent last week trying to undermine EPA regulations. Murkowski (R Alaska) failed but still managed to get 47 votes.
The scariest thing is now that they've finally admitted the actual amounts of oil spilling daily into the Gulf from the blown well head, word comes that there may be other problems with the damaged well that may mean oil is leaking up from the sea floor. Evidence is growing stronger and stronger that there is substantial damage beneath the sea floor. Indeed, it appears that BP officials themselves have admitted to such damage. This has enormous impacts on both the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, and the prospects for quickly stopping the leak this summer.
Chevron feeling left out of bad publicity extravaganza decides to cover a few birds in oil. It is time to move away from dependence and addiction to oil - a reminder of exactly how difficult that will be.
News out of Afghanistan that maybe explains why everyone wants to stay and fight in a hopeless war, a place often characterized as the graveyard of empires: U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan! In the meantime US intelligence is busy focusing on Afghan graft and corruption - Karzai and his brother-in-law are probably in trouble if that's true. And in Iraq things are fabulously still twirling, ever twirling towards freedom as five Iraqis, including 2 who were standing on their rooftop witnessing the arrival of US infantrymen, have lost their lives after their house was attacked by the troops!
The Pentagon have their priorities straight amidst all this though, they are busy hunting for Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder.
I can remember being a kid and watching the film about a future dystopia, "Soylent Green," and thinking it quaint. I don't get that same sense of kitschy fun now when I view it. Characters portrayed by Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson live in a world where complete desertification has taken over the planet, destroyed the environment, and the inhabitants live a hard-scrabble life in a world completely depleted of all its' wonders and natural resources. It's (quite famously and literally) a dog eat dog world.
Today, as I busy myself posting the news links to stories I covered on my radio show, stories that are not getting enough MSM coverage because the medias are far too busy focusing on fake scandals like Obama using the word "ass," I find myself thinking of that fictional world. (My only problem with Obama's use of that word is that he did not direct it those truly responsible for the continuing disaster in the Gulf and those who really lower the level of discourse, especially when it comes to policy and politics.) Anyhow, as I continue following the nightmarish stories that are coming out of the Gulf while those on the right continue to push for an end to the moratorium on drilling, I see nothing but people blind to the real potential of this disaster in concert with everything else that is taking place around the globe. So much so that an entertainment I once regarded as a B-movie fantasy now seems prophetic and frightening.
Listen to how short-sighted and ignorant this man sounds now in the light of what's taking place:
Been trying not to make all my posts about the disaster in the Gulf of late. It's playing out long, slowly and painfully. We made pretty good calls here based on common sense and decent internet sources. The first being that there was no way the rate of flow was anything like only 5,000 barrel a day. The figure has now been set at 19,000 or so and that's still low-balling the true figure - as is pointed out in the video below by CBS legal correspondent Sharyl Attkisson on Face the Nation:
Maybe BP thinks by playing games with the figures they're going to get away with paying a smaller fine - and maybe they will. They certainly have the resources and wherewithal to try. Corporate citizens are never taken to task the way the rest of us are - or would be if any of us were responsible for the deaths of 11 people and destruction of various flora and fauna that has robbed tens of thousands of people of their livelihoods.
Speaking of corporate accountability in these instances, or lack thereof, word today that those responsible for the tragedy at Bhopal were finally convicted - 25 1/2 years later, of negligence. The seven surviving defendants were sentenced to two years in prison and fined 100,000 rupees, or $2,100.
They were the first criminal convictions from the leak at the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, a central Indian city. The leak killed 3,000 people almost instantly, and thousands more died later from the aftereffects of the toxic gas, an ingredient in pesticides the plant produced.
Maybe BP will get the same deal. Or maybe they'll get the same deal as Exxon, 'cause that's what they really want. They want the rough estimates to be off by 2/3's and to fight it in court for 20 years and then dole out pocket change and pretend they've paid their debt.
The President has been doing his part near as we can tell, but will get little credit as there is little he can do other than try and make the accountable - seems unlikely if BP finds ways to drag it through the courts for 20 years. The reality is that they will have to wait until August when the relief wells have been dug, and even that's not a sure thing, before oil stops gushing into the Gulf. Meanwhile, he's out-numbered by the whores and spinmeisters and those in the pockets of big oil.
For comic relief from all this, try reading about an under-reported spill stemming from the BP offices in the UK.
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