Tag: Oil Spill
Media conference misses inconvenient lesson: coverage of Arkansas oil spill is coming from illegals
DENVER, COLO.- It's day three of the 2013 NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MEDIA REFORM and I haven't heard one mention of perhaps the media story most pertinent to this gathering: the tar sands oil spill in Mayflower Arkansas that is and isn't in the headlines. Because the media is being denied access to the story, because the media isn't making a story of that censorship, and because most relevant to the media reform crowd, the scarce images that are emerging are coming from activist video streamers breaking the law to get the story. I'm especially excited by that development because it renders my exhortations mute, that journalists look with skepticism on the oath of "objectivity" which binds them to the corporate spun narrative. "You can't be neutral on a moving train" was Howard Zinn's entreaty. "Neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim" said a Zionist without irony. But when reporting means having to break the law, then wanting to tell the story means becoming an activist. I use the expression "illegals" in accordance to the AP's new stylebook, to connote an illegal act, and to poke fun. "The I-word" is no longer acceptable to describe undocumented immigrants, but speaker after speaker at the conference heralded the announcement as if it had not just been explained by the previous. It was apparently "the applause line" of this year's conference. Too bad, because in a year of unending Obama betrayals, the victory is meager cause for celebration.
Bernie HerPin, Billionaire Propagandist Rush Limbaugh, have a lot in common
--Like business ties to BP. The USOC deal the City Council made was also a BP front. Then there's their Anti-Worker ARROGANCE like this. Neither I nor Miss Johnnie can actually WALK anywhere. Both of us thrown to the wolves by the Corporatists, told that the medical treatments that could have kept us from becoming this badly disabled were “Too Expensive” and the Governments which THEY own, and are going to spend BILLIONS to stack with even more of their Greedy Political Whores, such as at local level our entire City Council, enforce that Corporate Welfare decision with "right to work" Slavery and "Tort Reform". My feet were broken by negligence on the part of Halliburton, who were making 4 times as much from my labor as I was paid, and wouldn’t pay so much as Workmans Compensation Insurance before the fact, fat chance they’d pay any of their bills for their Negligence afterwards. AP and other Tame Propaganda “news” sources for BP come off with an “aw, gee shucks, it ain’t that bad, look, the Seafood Industry isn’t suffering as bad (at one level) See, there’s these chefs who are proving the shrimps and such are safe to eat, don’t y’all worry your heads”. Not mentioning the massive hole the Bastards Punched into the Ecosystem. Miss Johnnie and I were in a cab going to the store. When I travel around town with her, because she can’t ride a bicycle anymore, it would be a choice of WALK which NEITHER of us can do, ride the Bus which doesn’t run on weekends or after 6 any other day, or take a cab. The Cabby is one of those Socially Inept types who feels he has to make his passengers listen to Rush Limbaugh spout his SHIT about how those Poor, poor misunderstood Rich BITCHES at BP are taking such a huge hit from all these Greedy Freeloaders who expect to Be Paid for the damage that BP did to their lives. The Billionaire Pussy Professional Liar claims he’s fighting for the “little people” who had invested their money into BP. Had to fix the code on it because everything from this point was in All Bold fonts. Why should THEY have to pay for the damages which were caused by the Business Practices, just because for years they’ve had a comfortable living off exploiting the workers not only in their own corporation but every ancillary and auxiliary industry around them? Claiming that they’re Being Punished By President “socialist” Obama, the one who has obviously Been Punked by the Oil Companies, Hell, he’s extending the wars Being Publicly funded for their Private Benefit. That somehow all the Corporate Welfare that has been funneled into their pockets and by extension HIS pockets is just their due reward. And the Taxpayers who have supported their Parasite Class for so long don't have any right to demand compensation when they break OUR ocean and OUR planet. Meanwhile “our”
Sea Shepherd flyover sneaks banned footage of active neglect at BP oil spill
If there's no containing what will soon be the largest oil spill ever, who can blame BP for sitting out the cleanup and ordering the coast guard to keep everyone from seeing? When Hurricane Alex had BP's protectors distracted, Sea Shepherd environmental actionists got aerial footage of the unimagined devastation and the perps still loitering about.
What you CAN do about the gulf oil spil
We may be powerless to advise the experts or force the perps to walk the plank. And we are not to blame for the industrial orgy of consumerism foisted on our modern livestyles. But turning this around is up to us; not heading to the Gulf, or saving oiled birds. This disaster spills over our pitiful remedies. We'll have our hands full battling the attack it presents on human survival and biodiversity. For the right now: stop using oil. Impossible? Well then we're spilt milk. BP is entirely right to ignore better efforts to protect the coast from contamination. No amount of boom will insulate us from the oil barrage receiving continuous reinforcement from the blown well. Like paper towels to clean a bathtub, it's make-work window dressing. There's a perfectly apt Titanic idiom, but here's another: are you really going to worry about passengers putting their wet shoes on the deck chairs?
Oil spill sized profits in the other gulf
We notice oil spills, not because oil comes up missing, but when the accumulation overflows our ability to excuse it. What can we say about the embarrassment of riches piling up as development in the United Arab Emirates? It's from oil profit, yes, but also reconstruction billions siphoned from Iraq and Afghanistan. On the heels of the loot follow the miscreants stashing it there, confident they can evade eventual US extradition. Halliburton is now headquartered there, and Blackwater's Erik Prince is reported to be packing his bags.
Think of it as enhanced evolution, Un-natural selection, cull the gulls…
The debate turns now to whether or not to rescue marine animals from the oil. Pelicans and gulls specifically, but there's more. Of course, animals that took millions of years to be what they are, should learn to mutate themselves a lot faster. Seagulls and turtles and manatees and sea-otters, fish, crustaceans, jellyfish, plankton, all need to mutate in a matter of days rather than eons. True, it would be a LOT simpler for the HUMAN species to modify our behavior, not set our entire economic plan on one focus, like Fossil Fuels. The plan with a built in Self-Destruct button that gets armed and starts ticking away once we drill the first well. Of course that first well was "well" over a century ago, BUT there's still time to ramp down the madness, get back to a point where we can actually turn off he Self Destruct switch. Of course, it would take eliminating some of the things the Oil Industry advertising partners have been selling us as "essential to the American Lifestyle". Things like easily available in large quantities "food" that our bodies don't have the ability to process correctly, at least not in the concentrations which are being sold to us as a "normal" diet. Thus diabetes, colon cancers, increased. Also increased are heart disease, respiratory, kidney, thyroid, liver, just every part of the Human Biotic System that depends on a certain chemical balance that the McDiet not only doesn't provide but actively disrupts. The private automobile, sure, if you could afford to drive it, but, really, the cost to The Rest Of Us to maintain YOUR "right" to a private car is long since out of control. Witness, for instance the Oil Spills. Witness the wars being fought to secure more Oil, publicly subsidized wars. If the person driving sole occupant in a car made for 8 actually had to Pay His Way he wouldn't be able to do it. The ultimate Welfare Cadillac. We're required to provide "cheap" oil to the Consumer or be called Terrorist and Traitor. A system where everybody in the entire world is required to chip in to make a really expensive activity "affordable".... for a privileged few. People in nations where starvation is in the top 5 causes of death have to chip in for YOUR automotive pleasure. But things like Public Transportation and subsidizing better forms of energy harvesting and use, that the bad ol' wicked "Socialism". Summary of that, Public support of the entire population, BAD. The entire World Population support of an elite minority GOOD. Public Support of Mega Corporations like McDonalds altering the agricultural economy, GOOD. Public criticism of the fact that this impoverishes other PEOPLE in other nations, to the point of people who live on gigantic plantation style "food" factory farms starve.... that's Bolshevism and BAD. The Oil Corporations have been for the past year putting out some very expensive publicity campaigns saying that actually requiring the Corporations (mainly) and the Consumers to PAY what isn't anywhere near the Real Cost
And behold, a Star fell from the heavens onto the face of the seas.
And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. To be fair, the second picture isn't of the BP spill, it's the Ixtoxl spill. Which is the name of a MesoAmerican religious figure. And, yes, this one is for the Drill, Baby, Drill! Palin fans. Since she is a Lay Minister in a Pentecost church, something the Assemblies of God churches used to strictly prohibit, along with women wearing pantsuits. In my lifetime I've heard the AOG and others use the term "Whore of Babylon" to describe people who dress a lot more conservatively. Not that I think she's (very much) more of a candidate for that Exalted Dishonor, also from The Revelation to St John the Divine than many others. They called Nancy Reagan that when Ronnie dumped his first ol' lady for her. Just, you know, sayin' is all. And since both chez Reagan and chez Palin belong to a particularly strong blasphemy within Fundamentalism called Dominionism, which preaches that the world is Ours and we can do whatever the literal Hell we want with it. If you want to hear some truly retarded dominionist thinking tune in DumFox Noose Nutwerx and listen to Sarah and Hannity and Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Bill Oh, Really? They're advancing the notion that it was the fault of Environmentalists. Everything ranging from "Oh, if those Environmentalists had simply allowed us to poison the waters flowing from the Great Divide by cooking Oil Shale, this wouldn't have happened (yet)!" to some really paranoid theories about sabotage. But, according to them, it's environmental protection legislation that caused the problem. Because they don't want to pay the Bill, baby, Bill! Or more importantly their Corporate Masters don't.
Forget worrying if gulf spill is Obama’s Katrina. Obama is America’s Katrina.
President Obama let America know at a press conference today that he OWNS this Katrina. BP's failure is his failure. BP's lie is now superseded by a minimalization of his own. More bad news about attempts to halt it, nevermind, the Federal Government's in charge. What does it mean to say the buck stops here if all you're really doing is stopping it? We've got a president playing the bag man on this environmental catastrophe, just as he's taking responsibility for Bush's foreign policy and Wall Street's theft. Instead of pursuing our interests, he's taking the fall. Except he's in the position to say "so sue me." It's not that Obama pretends he's made of Teflon. From where he sits, he can be fly paper. And doesn't that appear to be his role? It was his most celebrated accomplishment his first year in office. Make American hegemony a little more palatable to our overseas markets. He did it. If anything's changed, everything as gotten monumentally worse, with no turning back either. The oil's leaving of the well, the economy's only going to get worse before it gets worse. Obama's right, no good is served trying to assign blame, horses, doors, the barn's on fire.
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
Easy for Hume to say: Show me the oil
Brit Hume can say that, can't he? --confident that skeptical viewers can't produce the evidence because it's hogtied by dispersants at the bottom of the sea, for now, as effectively as a state witness in cement shoes. Actually, voluminous plumes of them, with countless victims suspended about them deprived of atmosphere. Anything incriminating that has reached the beach is kept from view by BP thugs, intimidating the gulf communities with the menace of Blackwater after Katrina. Mercenary mall cops with the cinematic malevolence of the Terminator. What a mobster to stand behind armed thugs and taunt your accusers for evidence of your wrongdoings. Get your dispersant out of the crime scene and I'll show you oil. Keep your oil-industry-decides the law -enforcement officers' hands off reporters trying to reach the beaches and I'll show you oil. Unhand the submersible video footage from which any oil drilling professional can deduce the rate of flow of the oil and I'll show you oil. As one commenter put it, let's drown those responsible in the oily uck, and those covering it up, with the same callous indifference which the culprits are condemning birds, mammals, fish and reptiles.
Obama wants his Katrina kept on QT
President Obama rationalizes not prosecuting his Bush predecessors because he wants to look forward not back. Who knew that he meant "back" to the future as well? The Obama administration has get-out-of-jail-free cards for Goldman Sachs et al, and they're already fouling the evidence that could be used against BP. It serves BP's interest to pretend their Gulf spill is spewing only five thousand barrels a day. Now even the government is pretending everyone is too busy with the cleanup to measure exactly. It can't be for want of a lesser-decimal soundbite, experts have the blowout pinned at a similar-syllable'd four million gallons per day. The government and BP's incuriosity ignores current estimates that the flow of crude oil escaping the well is between 76,000 and 104,000 barrels, 95,000 being the mean which yields a figure of 1/3 of the Exxon Valdez disaster PER DAY. Of course as the spill grows to round Florida and reach Cuba and the Atlantic coast, the White House is prepared to forecast that the flow has gotten worse. So far chemical dispersants are diluting the muck that is the public's only measure of the catastrophe. The Miami Herald quotes Houston engineer and blogger Bob Cavnar who suggests that industry approximations which the media has been parroting are simply bullshit: "I'm sitting here looking at it right now, and it ain't 5,000 barrels a day, I'll guarantee it ... In Houston, there's about 125,000, 150,000 engineers. And all the engineers can calculate what the flow is."
Why does media minimize the oil spill?
Until yesterday, how many barrels of oil per day had you been informed were fueling the Deepwater Horizon oil spill calamity? a) 1,000 b) 5,000 c) 50,000 d) 100,000 + Experts who aren't BP said the answer from the beginning was D. The media is only now warming the public to C, even as analysis qualify it's "at least" that, but BP is refuting revision of their original estimates saying now that it's impossible to calculate the rate of flow at such great depth. They're estimating the oil leak like a potential civil liability. Until a claim is made, appealed and/or settled, on the books it's nothing. The bigger question: why is the media standing between you and the ugly truth?
Seize BP put cleanup fund in escrow
Colorado Springs isn't big on anti-corporate indignation. We tried Wall Street rallies, stood beneath WaMu with posters crying JUMP YOU FUCKERS! but got no takers. Not much understanding of finance fraud in the provinces: our teabaggers are so used to heckling hippies, they forget which side of the class war they're on. So when ANSWER called on its grassroots to RALLY MAY 12 to SEIZE BP, we thought we better phone this one in. No, the oil giant shouldn't be let to slip out of its liability for the ongoing environmental havoc at its Transocean well blowout. They can call it nationalizing big oil, or a government takeover, but hold British Petroleum to account.
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.
BP Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout
At up to 30 gallons per second, is it a spill, a leak, or a torrent? Of course "Oil Spill" no longer means substance fallen out, nor leak, amount escaped. It describes the mess that's left, and the Deepwater Horizon is still being downplayed as potentially worse than the Exxon Valdez, but nowhere near the biggest, in the other Gulf, during its 1990 namesake war, the deliberate draining of a pipeline. The second largest oil "spill" occurred just down our coast in 1979, and is referenced more descriptively as the IXTOC I Blowout. As the BP/Transocean well empties into the Gulf of Mexico, wouldn't our emergency response be better served to call this disaster a "blowout?" Spew, gush, geyser, the imprecision of these words tend to sputter, BP's ongoing environmental fiasco a BLOWOUT! We have no one's word but British Petroleum's to trust about the rate at which their oil is polluting the sea. First they said 1,000 barrels, then 5,000, though we learn 100,000 was being discussed as not outside the realm of possibility. Outside experts had only the telltale expansion rate of the initial oil slick to derive a candid measure of the outflow. Now that the oil has reached the coast, the measure is once again up to those who command the deep water submersibles. They can tell us they've capped a third leak, or a fourth or fifth, they could tell us the Madonna directed them where to deposit their giant concrete dome and how would we know? Let's call BP's latest spill a "blowout." With no help forthcoming for three months if that, we might as well project this blowout's probable record-setting impact. How large did BP concede was the capacity of this well? No need to calculate the spill when we know the size of the bucket. We don't down-class hurricanes just because they haven't reached us yet, then upgrade them as we feel their effect. Minimizing the size of this disaster can only justify being less prepared.
Transoceans 911
Something familiar about this image, oddly singular, behind the massive column of smoke a vanished structure, eleven oil rig workers missing, an unfathomable denouement and cover-up, this found tweet was inevitable. Not a Katrina raging against us, but a terrorist attack on man and nature coordinated by corporate indifference.
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.
Tesoro Anacortes fire not offshore spill
Pfw- Oil industry spokesmen report that the deadly Tesoro refinery fire at Anacortes, Washington has been contained and no damage spilled outside their property, counting sky, earth and shoreline as their property. Does the same environmental indemnity apply to offshore oil rigs?