Good ol' boys probably think it's mighty funny parading Angola's black prisoners across the teevee, at the whim of an all-white Reality TV corrections officer caste. Inmates are portrayed like the channel's animal kingdom predators, dangerous and unpredictable, but what misconduct is feared, the program doesn't dare tell. For being menacing recidivists, Angola's felons lead the life of choirboys apparently, no mention of the sexual slavery reported in a notorious memoir. What's the HIV transmission rate in Angola? No one's talking about racism. Was "Angola" named for its African population? We've already learned "The Farm" is an immense rural labor camp with a famous gladiatorial rodeo. Hopefully "Louisiana Lockdown" will disclose the reality side of its genre. Until then, the watchdog group most familiar with the mistreatment of Angola's inmates is the humane society.
Tag: Louisiana
BP Says “top-kill” worked, but drilling wells right next to it
Supposedly to ease the pressure. How about THIS supposition instead. BP trashed the ocean very thoroughly, the bottom-up killoff of marine life is in progress, the species that are being more than merely decimated provide the food for every other life form. There's an investigation supposedly happening in the area of the well collapse. An investigation BP has stalled for months by "fumbling" around "trying" to stop the oil. Knowing full well that in doing so they were stomping all around the Crime Scene. Which is what it IS. Even cutting out the obvious crime of destroying what looks like the damn how to put this? OK so I'll put it where a Far Right Profit-is-God Money Worshiper like Rush Limbaugh can understand. Economic crime in the theft of Trillions. Put a dollar value on what's going to happen to just the Seafood Industry. The fisheries are trashed and going to get worse. Rush was on the air just before the non-enforcement of existing regulations and cutting even those down to where they wouldn't make a difference... WHINING that regulations to protect some of the species that form the web of life in the sea would limit "Sport Fishing". And screaming like the bitch that he is about how "all those poor Fishing Boat outiftters and Fishing Tour providers were going to be losing money". Where's the concern for them NOW, on the far right? And that's just one small facet of fisheries management. The corals, not pretty rocks on the bottom but the living coral, the organisms that build the reefs. Endangered by a shrimping practice that was destroying the reefs, killing the living coral, and in a chain reaction, was killing off the shrimp. Not So? Read on... One of the processes was to promote the growth of organisms that the coral normally feed on. Some of which are to shrimp what anthrax is to humans. And of course the whole food web. Maybe food web is too complex for a Right Wing so-called "mind" to fathom.<<nautical joke. So we go with their more familiar linear Food Chain. Which goes straight up, never sideways and of course, never down. The part of the "bottom" supposedly magically regenerates itself, and placing one species on the "top" is kind of chauvinistic. Which affected every other aspect of the food linear "chain" including the Sport Fishermen that Rush boo-hooed about so much. Oh, that's right, it's Glenn Beck who does the fake crying. The process is just beginning, the vast majority of the oil is still in the water, combined with chemical dispersants... which are Toxic. Hidden away where most people won't see it. Trillions of dollars later they'll see it. And of course, in the Right wing so-called "mind" nothing that happens in the sea could ever possibly have any effect on the Food Chain web of life on land. According to their screed, events on LAND don't affect life on land. Just ask the bees, bats and frogs before they all
Latest BP offer: Fire the employees who wear protective gear while cleaning up their toxins
Because it looks bad on television reports if people around the world see that their Toxic Waste is actually Toxic Waste. There's more to it than just threatening their (Temporary) Workers, those who are being forced to choose between risking their lives for the Good Image of BP and starving, losing their homes, money and eventually their freedom. There are unenforceable laws on the books in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida that make it illegal to be unemployed and in debt, and they're punishable by confinement at Hard Labor. Meaning, they'll be GIVEN, with no charge to the company, as Slaves, administered by BP affiliate corporations like WackenHut and Corrections Corporation of America. Private prisons built partly with Inmate Slave Labor by another Affiliate Corporation, Halliburton KBR. Seems the TeaBags and other Corporate Suck Groups back Governors Jindal, Crist, and Rick GoodHair (and probably the Alabama and Mississippi governors) to be able to annul and over-ride Supreme Court Decisions, like the ones which made the Vagrancy Laws and Debt-as-a-crime laws unenforceable. They're already using Texas and the other states' Prisoners, unpaid Inmate Slave Labor, pressed into working on the oil spill. And using Public Funded Police and courts as Private Enforcement of their "right" to censor reporting on the Real Story. The Horror Show story, not the commercials for Sea World showing happy, sparkling clean Healthy Pelicans and other marine animals being released onto a sparkling, pristine beach. Meanwhile, Lake Pontchartrain, staple of the non-Oil industries in Acadiana... contaminated. Those of you who have traveled east on I-10 recognize that as "that huge freakin' lake with the bridge over it" The link at the top is a video that was aired on Olberman and a petition to the President to actively enforce workplace safety laws over the objections of BP. As it looks now, the Chairman of BP is Bitch SlaPping the Obama administration and the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy. That SHOULD get even the far-right lunatic fringe on board, because the last time the British bitch slapped the U.S. Navy was during the war of 1812. (by American naming standards and by U.S. military tradition) Meanwhile Queen Bess2 addressed the UN and laid a wreath at the 9-Eleven monument. Maybe she should be publicly offered a plate of Fresh Caught Gulf Seafood. I hear the Sea Turtle Flambee is excellent. She could legally dine on Endangered Species for the first time in 50 years. Peasant under Glass excluded.
Not yet a hurricane, probably won’t be, but Alex…
Tropical Depression Alex. If it stays out over the water it'll become a Tropical Storm, which for the purposes of the Oil S(l)ick is a moot reference. It might as well be a hurricane. And we're still in the "A"s. Haiti meanwhile has been pushed off the news. Well, they were pushed off long ago, by the Tiger Woods story among others.
Fox can now re-add climate change denial to their Daily Spews
BP of course. "Show me the oil" "Oil? What Oil?" (though the Republican governors of the Gulf states are shitting white about what's happening, their anointed mouthpieces at Fox still insist on downplaying it). But to the Nonexistent eco-disaster of the poisoning of the ocean (and a third of the waters of the world were turned to blood and all that lived within the sea died) (Did somebody ask for a religious perspective? No? Got one anyway didn't we.) We get to add the Nonexistent Climate Change that the Fox Propagandists loudly denounced especially this winter) is going to Not Produce twice as many named tropical storms and 75% more hurricanes this year than normal. In Fox-speak, this was Not Announced this morning by NOAA, who were set up and funded through such Liberal institutions as the Military and the Shipping Industry. Oh, and for a big bonus, these non-existent hurricanes won't be in the Gulf where the Other non-existent hurricanes never were either. This of course won't affect the non-existent environmental rescue operations that aren't going on all along the Gulf coast. Did somebody say "Katrina"? I don't even want to hear what Hume or Limbaugh or Palin or O'Reilly or the rest of the Professional Liars at Fox have to say. I used the word "Propaganda" although that's not entirely accurate. Propaganda is a Church (RCC) term that's Latin for planting seeds. They're not exactly planting. They're spreading the fertilizer. That's a more graphic and fitting analogy anyway. But they're good at it. Other people have to travel all the way to Egypt to swim in De Nile.
Now the US Coast Guard will know you know how oil cleanup is f-cking done
As icky sneaky toxic crude permeates Louisiana marches, now experts tell us the eco-stain won't ever come out. No really. The oil assault has been mounting steadily, BP poised dutifully with "booms" and it isn't working. Exasperated oil spill cleanup professionals are not a bit surprised, one has even released a video throwing down expletives as much for humor as heartbreak. Accusations go beyond BP, calling the US Coast Guard head a "shameless piece of shit, and so's President Obama if he can't see that." --But brightly, it's all in the delivery. About the looming oil invasion. We can't see the oil, but we can see the bright orange boom ringing our coastlines in apparent preparedness against the oil. When you watch the video you'll learn that the boom is colored bright orange for you to see it, for the media cameras to allay our concerns that the prophylactic is in place. But from this video you'll see that the boom is being deployed like a movie set facade, with little hope of effectiveness. The key is in the "catch bassins." Boom isn't just Maxi-pad we stick into the water like a quicker-picker-upper. It's meant to corral the oil into catch bassins. Absent those receptacles the oil is left for waves to push it up and over like trench warriors going over the top, wave after wave, to hit the beach, "all of it." You'll note the major concern about oil spills is landfall, and it should be. Oil floats and thus isn't as much a disaster on the surface until it hits populous surfaces. Of course, BP's use of chemical dispersants breaks up the oil while it's in the water, rendering the underwater a deadly war zone too. The dispersant of choice has long been banned in the UK for its toxicity. COREXIT is named not after a chemical compound but as a phonetic abbreviation for what it does, Corexit "corrects-it" haha. It's a cuncoxen applied to cover up the visible horror of a spill. HIDEZIT is apparently its nickname, acknowledging the darker humor. Watch this video and you'll know how boom technology works and you'll understand what we need to ask of BP and government oversight. The schoolroom-like lecture is delivered by an anonymous professional with straightforward simplicity and humor, but with palpable emotion. You hear the break in her voice especially as the oil industry is taken to task for its utter disregard for what's happened. There's not enough boom, rope or anchor on this planet to properly boom the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico. There should be. It's not that much of an expense. Really it's not. They said they were ready. Having enough materials to perform fucking proper fucking booming is part of being ready. They're not ready, are they?" This message could be subversive reassurance that oil spills can be contained, and thus, offshore drilling needn't be restrained, but let's burn that PR slick when we come to it. I'm also a little wary when the preface mentions
Be prepared, BP best plan not so good
Not that it comes as any kind of surprise. They hope, with the containment to cut the daily poison gusher to 15%. Which would be what, 10 times the original report? BP gets to replace the ONE well with 5 others. Excusez moi, add five more, as "bleeders" but only to ease the pressure, not in any way to have a 500% increase in the number of wells they were allowed on that one lease. They'll also get to pump 85% capacity without ANY regulation or for that matter oversight.Heavy Sigh... they'll also get to destroy evidence in the process. Who knows, in the coming months they might be able to keep bullshitting the regulators, such as they be, into letting them "stabilize" the wells with even more and more wells. Wouldn't that be a pleasant reward for their malfeasance? Matriarchal incest mongers. They get to rape Mother Earth on Mother's Day.
Gulf oil spill is SO Obama’s Katrina
Which parallel is not analogous? Off New Orleans, massive devastation to environment and human health, predictable failure of flawed technology, inadequate official response which broadens tragedy. Leaving BP to shoulder cleanup is like tasking arsonists to extinguish their fire. BP is responsible, but needn't be put in charge. Put every government resource into addressing this calamity, make oil industry write the checks. By any standards of a failed rescue, Obama's watch is proving as laggard as Bush's. We can all express our awe at the scale of the spill, but who can believe the professionals couldn't foresee it? The media ramped its estimates incrementally, but department first responders were theorizing 100,000 barrels a day right from the start. I'm amused that conservative critics use "Katrina" in the pejorative, where they didn't hold it against Bush. Katrina has come to mean colossal fail, but what did it mean for Bush? It wasn't his Waterloo, it didn't even stub his toe. Those who pretend Katrina was Dubya's downfall are the same pundits who describe Iraq as a blunder. Lies. To tar President Obama with a tragedy of like magnitude of a predecessor is to remind the electorate how bad Bush was. I'm pleased by the comparison because it pollutes your perception that voting matters. The choice of lesser of two evils means relative degrees of industrial strength toxicity. Why aren't Obama hopefuls confident enough to let their leader take this "Katrina" on? Let him own it and beat Bush's legacy of indifferent passivity. Are you provoked because "Katrina" presumes a callous failure, as yet in your opinion unmerited by Team Obama? I'd rather say it means disaster in the sense of a test which proved this nation's horribly misplaced priorities. Has Obama's administration brought better preparedness in the face of unforeseen peril coming in with the tide? In such a manner alone this oil spill will rival Katrina. If you are measuring only loss of human lives, look to the health impact which the crude infusion will bring. Now if you're asking if the oil spill is a "Katrina" land grab of coastal real estate, and excuse to gentrify New Orleans and remake gambling regulations to suit the casinos, perhaps not. But count the same relief contractors to make themselves spillionaires. Once again the residents will bear the burden of the labor and disruption, ultimately to lose their livelihoods and homes. This time instead of praising "Brownie" the president will praise BP for doing their best, as the media will assure us it was. The spill's magnitude could never have been predicted, they'll say, a mitigation of the damage beyond anyone's capability. Was "Katrina" a repudiation of our reliance on old levees? Not really. Will this Katrina mean a rekindled moratorium against new offshore drilling capers? I doubt it. Americans inland will probably write off the oceans. No longer pristine, what with mercury, hypoxia and now oil, why not Drill Baby Drill with what is there left to lose aplomb?
Sky is falling you commerce Pollyanas
"If you talk about the sky falling too early, then people stop buying Louisiana oysters, blue crabs, and shrimp," says LSU environmental scientist. We're expected to believe the rate of the BP oil spill has only been deduced by hobbyists looking at foreign satellite images. At a possible 25,000 barrels a day, they calculate the Exxon Valdez benchmark has already been surpassed. The EPA has a site to crowdsource concern, while US space images are embargoed because damage control to consumer confidence is more important than protecting nature. Alas for those sardonic Gulf-is-half-empty types, the Deepwater Horizon oil missed the half already decimated by hypoxia.
Oil spill photos free of offending oil rig
The US Coast Guard has confirmed that an oil spill has indeed ensued after the Louisiana drilling platform explosion which claimed 11 lives. Suspicions now grow that Deepwater Horizon may have deliberately scuttled the damaged offshore rig yesterday lest images of the inevitable spill would depict the cause, reigniting the damning imagery that has long tarred oil industry efforts to pollute America's coasts with the hazardous rigs. Instead of seeing a platform atop a massive oil slick, the public will see a despoiled patch of undefined size and origin; lacking a structure from which viewers could derive the disaster's scale, or the felonious facility to damn for the deed.
Remember the horrendous scandal and the Media Blitz(es) That followed?
Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina... Used government money to finance Argentine Tryst. A full Seven Hours every day for a month analyzing the story and berating him.... woops didn't happen... Sorry. Senator Larry Craig, (R) Idaho (I da pimp! bad joke) practicing the unsafest of all Sex Acts, random anonymous sex, in a Mens Room at the Minneapolis Airport, Married, family man, cheating on his wife. They followed him everywhere, then when he disappeared they staked out his boat, his house, his mom's house and his kids school trying to get pictures of him... ooopsie... That didn't happen either. Bob Allen of Florida, State Representative, (R) in a men's room repeatedly, so afraid of Black Dudes raping and robbing him that he followed them into the John and paid them 20 a piece to fellate them... Married, Cheating on his wife... When he went in to Sex Rehab the National Enquirer poked cameras into every opening in the fence looking to catch a picture of him. Nope, not that either... My favorite, Vitter of Louisiana getting caught with his diapers down... He of "Family Values" and Unimpeachable Morals fame. All of them, when they apologized, did so clearly, succinctly and humbly, then submitted themselves to the questions of the repor... Wait a minute. None of them apologized, at all, ever. Since they were all members of the Bu'ush Regime and active supporters of the War Of Terror, their actions DID affect more than just their families and thus, they DID owe America an apology. Not merely for being Sexual Hypocrites, but for the God-Damn 8 year killing Spree "their" troops have been engaged in. That's pretty damn major. All of them made a big hoo-hah over criminalizing Sex between Consenting Adults and de-criminalizing Hate Crimes. (not just the Hate Crimes against gay People either) None of them bothered with Rehab, none of them hounded and their families hounded for what's now 3 Freakin' Months, mon... nothing at all like what a guy who plays the dorkiest game in existence for a living is subjected to. People PAY the government officials for leadership and for being Role Models for their kids. It's one of the Job REQUIREMENTS for Christ's Sake. But a guy who plays a game for a living, is really required to do nothing but smack a very small ball with a very crooked stick into a very small hole that's anywhere between 75 and 200 yards away. And do it consistently. It doesn't matter if they have a messed up politicial, social or personal life. Some of the courses he plays on had never had a Black golfer in any of their tournaments EVER when he started. Some of them at the time still forbad blacks to actually play there, pay to play there, with no chance at winning money. So why the anger? Are they really such shitty parents that they need a middle aged black man who they've never met to be a Role Model for their piglets? Since WHEN? Would they walk into the Midnight