Louisiana deep oil drilling disaster

[Ed Jewett]

Open Thread: Various BP Oil Spill Theories

May 25th, 2010 Want to discuss BP oil spill theories that are percolating though the rumor sphere? Go for it here.
I’ve seen all of the ones that you guys have submitted (and then some!), but I can’t find any sources that I feel are worth mentioning here.
Oil Spill Card from Illuminati Role Playing Game
This is not to say that I think we’re getting the full picture from the corporate media on this cataclysm. As per routine, it’s probably not that bad, it’s worse. But, from long experience, I avoid posting stuff from sites that generate in excess of 95% noise and rat poison, consider Sucha Fool to be an authoritative source of information and have roll playing/social engineering games running as factual threads (complete with teams of trolls egging on the peanut gallery).
However, there is that other 5% of information that might represent legitimate signal… Think you have a grip on that 5%, well, shine on you wild diamond. This is the place.
If you want to mention something about the sea floor, the alleged looped video, space based beam weapons, etc. go for it.

[Peter Lemkin]

http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/2010/05...below.html

I am sure there are people here who can evaluate this. It appears that the ocean bed has blown.

So, as expected by environmental scientists and oil engineers [with enough courage to speak the truth!] IT has already happened! The broken pipe is rupturing in a new location and will now be spewing out more oil per unit time. This will continue for a while and multiple times, no doubt. So, take my one billion gallons and double it for now.

If you have a fishtank in your home and would like to perform a test, at the risk of you pet fish: take just one drop of unrefined oil and drop it into your tank [no matter how large] and watch the results....and extrapolate that to the Gulf of Mexico, and to a growing extent along the conveyor known as the Gulf Stream.....:aetsch:

Oh, and if the concrete and heavy barium sludge they plan to use today doesn't work, even BP admits it will not only be a failure, but will damage the pipe further and cause greater leakage....they calculate a 60% chance of success. I calculate something of the order of 5% - at this depth and with methane hydrates involved.....stay tuned, we'll know in the next 24-48 hours. :flute:

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, what the biologist Rick Steiner now calls the Gulf of Oil. Our guests are Abrahm Lustgarten, reporter with ProPublica, and Zygmunt Plater, an environmental law professor at Boston College. But more relevant to this discussion is he headed the legal team that investigated the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

What does the Exxon Valdez spill, Zyg Plater, have to do with BP?

ZYGMUNT PLATER: It’s so damnably frustrating to see this happening again, because BP dominated the Alyeska consortium, that our commission said, "Don’t just look at the aftermath. The preconditions were created by the Alyeska company, not just by Exxon." And BP got no notice. In retrospect, our commission report should have mentioned BP by name. We just said Alyeska, Alyeska which was the entity that made all those decisions, but BP dominated Alyeska with a majority holding.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain, though, what Alyeska had to do with Exxon Valdez?

ZYGMUNT PLATER: Well, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System was organized by a consortium of seven companies, not one company. It was more like a partnership, and it ran everything, from the North Slope through the pipeline 800 miles down to Valdez to the tank loading areas and then the system of getting tankers down to California. It was a mega-system, we talked about. And the frustrating thing we found is that the same kind of mega-system problems that we learned lessons from then continued for twenty years with the lessons unlearned. And BP was there in the beginning of Exxon Valdez by creating the preconditions that had hazards. It wasn’t a question of if there would be a spill, but only when it would happen. And it was Exxon. We were happy it wasn’t Amerada Hess, because Amerada didn’t have any money. But the point was that this was not just a problem of an intoxicated captain, it was not just a problem of Exxon; it was through the mega-system. And the same problems we see in the Gulf now, twenty years later, lessons unlearned.

AMY GOODMAN: And for people who aren’t familiar with the Exxon Valdez, the supertanker spilled at least 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s pristine Prince William Sound. The consequences of the spill were epic, continue to this day. The massive spill stretched 1,200 miles from the accident site, covered 3,200 miles of shoreline, an incredible 10,000 square miles overall. Compare what happened twenty years ago, Zyg Plater, to what we’re seeing in the Gulf of Mexico today.

ZYGMUNT PLATER: Well, of course, every spill is somewhat different, and every coastline tends to be different. But the images of wildlife and fishermen with their living destroyed are the same. There are differences in Alaska. There was only one major current to deal with. In the Gulf, there are multiple dangers presented by multiple currents. And in the Gulf, unfortunately, eleven people died. That means that the legal response is going to be even more complicated in the Gulf than it was in Alaska. But the images that we’re getting are sadly the same. And probably most of the harm is out of sight, out of mind, in the water column, as Mr. Lustgarten was talking about, and in the multiplier indirect effects that take place throughout the human and the ecological networks around the Gulf.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain exactly what happened twenty years ago, in terms of your investigation, your regret now that you didn’t name BP. Well, what went on inside? Why wasn’t there a full discussion of who was responsible, what corporations needed to have done before and after, and then the issue of criminal responsibility?

ZYGMUNT PLATER: Well, the commission’s report is a marvelous document. I’m not taking credit for it. The commission worked hard on it. But it didn’t want to be seen as extreme, I believe. By the way, there are two important information resources that have been overlooked. One of them is the spill report, and I could tell you and your listeners how to find that. But we felt that by mentioning Alyeska, people would look into it and discover, oh, yes, it was dominated by BP, so we didn’t name those names. In retrospect, I wish dearly we had, because it could have caused a change in the internal corporate climate. Transparency, public attention makes a huge difference. And in the Exxon Valdez case, the attention was diverted almost entirely on a captain who had had a few drinks.

AMY GOODMAN: Where can you find the report?

ZYGMUNT PLATER: The Alaska Resource Library and Information Systems, ARLIS, A-R-L-I-S, Alaska. If you Google that, you will find the source, and ask for "Spill: The Wreck of the Exxon Valdez," the February 1990 report of the State of Alaska Oil Spill Commission. The other book on epidemiology, because—and toxicology, because it’s those long-term system harms that people tend to overlook, was written by Dr. Riki Ott, O-T-T. It’s called Sound Truths, and it’s available on Amazon. As I say, both of these have been massively overlooked.

But if the lessons we had learned twenty years ago had received the public notoriety of the captain’s drinking, it seems to me people would have realized this was a much bigger problem, it was a systemic problem, and it wasn’t just Exxon. It was BP down in Houston that was making the decisions, calling the shots, that made the Exxon Valdez inevitable.

And then, remember also, after an incident, there’s the question of response. If you look at the contingency planning, it was clear to us that, both before and after, this mega-system was characterized by, we said, complacency, collusion, neglect. Does that sound familiar? Complacency, collusion, neglect. The official players, corporate and governmental, for a variety of reasons, as Mr. Lustgarten hinted, just were not able to keep the public interest in mind. And twenty years later, we are finding ourselves retracing the same path.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to talk about the issue of prosecution and bring one more person into this, this broader issue of prosecuting corporations that ignore health and safety standards and cause environmental disasters.

A group of citizen activists has just launched a campaign calling on the state of West Virginia to prosecute Massey Energy for manslaughter in connection with the April 5th explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine that claimed the lives of twenty-nine coal miners. The group has set up a website, prosecutemassey.org, that allows citizens to petition the state prosecutor to bring manslaughter charges against Massey Energy. They’re also putting up billboards publicizing the campaign across West Virginia. Last month, Kristen Keller, the prosecuting attorney for Raleigh County, said she would not hesitate to prosecute if there was evidence to support a homicide prosecution.

Well, for more on prosecuting corporate crime, we’re joined now in Washington, DC by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter. He’s involved with the campaign to prosecute Massey Energy.

And as we talk about BP and what is being—the question being asked, "Is BP beyond prosecution?"—and we look at what happened just before, the reason that we’re not seeing much about Upper Big Branch Mine is simply because this greater catastrophe has occurred in the Gulf of Mexico—for some, greater; for others, certainly in West Virginia, not greater. Russell, talk about this issue of why we talk about fining, but not criminal prosecution.

RUSSELL MOKHIBER: Good morning, Amy.

BP is not beyond prosecution. Massey Energy is not beyond prosecution. It’s a question of resources and political will. If I’m driving recklessly in West Virginia, say, ninety miles an hour in a fifty-five speed zone, and I lose control of the vehicle and accidentally kill someone, even though I didn’t intend to kill someone, I will be criminally charged for involuntary manslaughter, and I will be thrown in prison. Now, BP operated this mine in a reckless manner, and as a result, twenty-nine coal miners are dead, and—I’m sorry, Massey Energy operated this mine in a reckless manner; as a result, twenty-nine coal miners are dead. We’re calling on Kristen Keller, the prosecuting attorney in Raleigh County, to bring this prosecution. We should not live in a society where the rich and powerful are treated one way and individual citizens are treated another.

Now, what’s the evidence that Massey Energy operated this mine in a reckless manner? Number one, Washington Post reported that earlier this year a federal mine inspector said that Massey was operating this mine with reckless disregard for the safety of the workers. Just this week, in an eye-opening hearing in Beckley, West Virginia, a hearing of the House Education, Labor and Pension Committee, it was a field hearing in Beckley where workers who survived the explosion and families of those who died in the explosion testified. And it was really quite remarkable.

Stanley Stewart survived it, and he said the place was like a ticking time bomb. He said that prior to the explosion, the mine experienced two fireballs, and he wondered how could this have happened if the methane detectors had been working. He said that the workers there, which was a non-union mine, were like marked men. You would be fired if you spoke up. Union workers in union mines have a right not to work, to walk off the job, if there’s an unsafe condition. Not true at Massey. If you did that, you would be fired. Maybe not that day or that week, he said, but you would be fired. And he told his wife, prior to the explosion, he felt like it was—he was like—it was working for the Gestapo.

Alice Peters testified. She lost her son-in-law, Dean Jones, who was a section foreman at the mine. Now why—Dean Jones knew this was a highly dangerous workplace because of the way Massey was operating it. Why did he continue to work there? He continued to work there because his son had cystic fibrosis. He continued to work there for the health insurance. That was the only reason he was there, Alice Peters said. And she was so concerned about him that she would call the workplace and make up a story that her son was in an emergency situation, to get him out of the mine, to save his life. Unfortunately, she did not make that call on April 5th, and he perished in that mine.

So we’re urging all Americans who are concerned about this to go to prosecutemassey.org and click on the petition in the upper-right and sign that petition, because we have to educate our prosecutors about the history of corporate crime prosecution in this country.

You know, there are prosecutors who prosecute these cases. There was the famous 1942 fire, the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts, that killed 492 people. And the prosecuting attorney in Massachusetts charged the owner of that nightclub with fifteen counts of involuntary manslaughter, and he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

In Chicago, the Film Recovery case, executives who ran that operation, where a worker was breathing—died from cyanide poisoning, were prosecuted and convicted and went to jail in that case.

And perhaps in the most famous of these cases, had to do with consumer deaths, the Ford Motor Company was charged with homicide in connection with the deaths of three teenage girls who were riding in a Ford Pinto in 1978, and their Pinto was rear-ended in a collision at slow speeds. And they weren’t crushed to death. They were burned to death, because the fuel tank collapsed, and gas was spilled, caught fire, and there was an explosion, and these three girls were burned to death. Now, a Republican prosecutor in northern Indiana, a very conservative prosecutor, Michael Constantino, convened a grand jury and presented evidence that Ford cut corners on safety in building the Pinto, and he indicted and that grand jury indicted Ford Motor Company for reckless homicide. And the company was eventually found not guilty, but it sent a message to corporate America that if you engage in reckless activity and, as a result, workers or consumers are killed, that you, too, will be criminally prosecuted.

Now, Massey has created a culture of intimidation in the coal fields and throughout West Virginia. And so, we’re seeking to break that by putting up billboards throughout the state that say, "29 coal miners [dead], prosecute Massey for manslaughter," and urging people to go to prosecutemassey.org and sign the petition to the prosecutor. I interviewed her and asked her about this case, and she said—and she wasn’t familiar with the history of these kinds of prosecutions. And one problem is that there are very few resources to investigate these. But she said that if there was evidence, she would prosecute. She has one year to do it from the time of the accidents. That’s the statute of limitation. So we have one year to build a campaign to get her to do the right thing.

Ira Reiner, who was the district attorney in Los Angeles County for many years in the 1980s, had a policy of every time there was a death on the job, he would investigate it as a homicide. He wouldn’t charge every case, but at least he had an investigative rollout team that would go out and collect evidence and see if there was enough evidence to prove a homicide charge. And he brought a number of these cases, and a number of executives went to jail as a result of worker deaths and a resulting homicide prosecution.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go back to Zyg Plater, this issue of criminal liability, from Exxon Valdez—and that wasn’t just Exxon involved there—to what we’re seeing now in the Gulf of Mexico. This isn’t any major part—and certainly it hasn’t been, of Massey—of the discussion, is criminal responsibility, executives put in handcuffs, executives arrested. Zyg Plater?

ZYGMUNT PLATER: No. There will be—there will be criminal prosecution in the BP case, I’m convinced, as there was in the Exxon Valdez case. In fact, Rick Steiner, whom you spoke to in Alaska, played an important role in making sure that the first Bush administration prosecuted that—excuse me, Rick Steiner played a major role in pushing the prosecution of Exxon in that case under pollution statutes.

But here, where people have died, we’re reminded that complacency is not only about causing the risks of spills and harms to the economy, but also complacency about human life. And a system that runs that kind of risks clearly is going to risk a criminal liability for manslaughter prosecutions, at the very least. In the Film Recovery case that Russ was talking about, that was a homicide conviction in Illinois. I don’t think we’re going to see that, because that was a small company, and it’s very hard to talk in those terms about a large company. But there will be criminal prosecution, and I would be very surprised if manslaughter was not part of the charges.

AMY GOODMAN: And Abrahm Lustgarten, the whole debate in the Senate now, this isn’t about criminal charges, but it’s about lifting that liability cap from $75 million to $10 billion, and still it hasn’t happened.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: No. It’ll be interesting to see what does unfold there. And BP has pledged repeatedly that they will pay whatever it takes. I think it remains to be seen whether they actually will. They’re not—

AMY GOODMAN: But that’s a pledge. That’s a corporation promise. That’s not being held accountable. That’s not a requirement.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: Exactly. And if Congress passed legislation that lifted that ceiling, it’s not clear that it would apply in this case anyway, because it’s after the fact. So we will rely, to some degree, on what BP chooses to do. And they’re not a company that has shown in the past a willingness to spend money where not forced to do so by courts or prosecutors.

AMY GOODMAN: Has BP ever—executives been jailed for criminal responsibility in a disaster?

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: I’m not aware of any case where BP executives have been jailed; however, the company has four criminal convictions. It has been criminally prosecuted in each of its last four cases—the Prudhoe Bay pipeline spill in 2006, its refinery fire which killed fifteen workers in Texas City in 2005, a hazardous waste disposal case in 2000. So I also believe that there will eventually be a criminal prosecution in this case. Whether the executives are personally held accountable remains to be seen.

AMY GOODMAN: Because when you say a corporation has criminal charges, has been found criminally responsible—Russell Mokhiber, let me put that question to you. What does that mean? Not a corporate executive, but a corporation?

RUSSELL MOKHIBER: Well, you know, we have a two-tier system here, Amy: for individuals and for corporations. And for—between big corporations and smaller corporations. So, for example, yes, we could—the federal government could go after—and, by the way, you said, you know, we’re not hearing that much about criminal prosecution. We’re not hearing it in the mainstream media, but when you talk to regular folks, the first thing you hear is, about Massey and BP, "Put these people in jail." These people belong in jail. And there’s a way to do it.

So, for example, the federal government in 1996 prosecuted executives from the largest meatpacking plant in South Dakota, and they were dumping slaughterhouse waste into the Sioux River. And the executives were thrown in jail for water pollution. So where there’s a will, there’s a way.

AMY GOODMAN: So you’re talking about Don Blankenship.

RUSSELL MOKHIBER: And executives can be—executives can—under the current law, executives can be thrown in jail. But unfortunately, we’ve set up a system where we either plea to misdemeanors or we enter in deferred non-prosecution agreements. It’s all pretty much a love tap. And there’s this revolving door where prosecutors, young federal prosecutors, are looking to jump ship and go and work to defend white-collar and corporate crime. So the system is set up so that there’s no serious punishment against the executives responsible for these disasters.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re calling for Don Blankenship himself to be charged with manslaughter?

RUSSELL MOKHIBER: If there’s the evidence there that he was involved. Now, one of the—part of the testimony that we heard in Beckley earlier this week was from Alice Peters, and she said she was so concerned about the air levels and the methane buildup at the Upper Big Branch Mine that her and her daughter faxed complaints directly to Don Blankenship prior to the explosion. And so, you know, Don Blankenship is known as a hands-on kind of manager. So that’s why we need a full investigation here. But, yes, we’re calling for prosecution of Massey Energy for involuntary manslaughter, prosecution of Massey Energy and the responsible executives.

AMY GOODMAN: Russell Mokhiber, I want to thank you for being with us, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter. The campaign website is prosecutemassey.org. And I want to thank Zyg Plater for being with us from Boston, environmental law professor at Boston College, headed up the commission that investigated Exxon Valdez.

Abrahm Lustgarten, on a wholly different issue, someone asked me the other day, why don’t they just bomb the pipe where the oil is gushing out? And the person suggested it’s because if it was ever to be used again, BP didn’t want to destroy it in that way. Have you heard this suggestion of bombing the pipe?

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: I’ve heard the suggestion. I’ve heard rumors.

AMY GOODMAN: The hole.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: It’s not really clear whether that’s a practical approach. BP did say, within the past few days, that they had ruled such an approach out, not clear what they were referring to exactly, and they didn’t say why. There’s just a whole lot of questions around that.

[Peter Lemkin]

Watch the Circus Live on Webcam.....c/o BP

http://www.energyboom.com/policy/watch-l...l-stop-oil

[Ed Jewett]

Oil Wars Come Home to Roost

Looking for the Moral Equivalent of a President, Still
by Greg Moses / May 26th, 2010
Even the birds are pissed. Whether it’s the Mockingbird who guards the footpath down by the bus stop. Or the Blue Jay who cusses across my back deck. Or even the frigging Grackle who buzzed me early morning at the grocery-store parking lot. This week I‘m a Hitchcock player and these birds come straight for my neck.
AP says 333 birds have been found dead along the Gulf Coast with no oil on them. Well, the birds I know are telling me what their fellows died from. The lead weight of grief. As if the oil companies hadn’t wrecked every other week this century. As if this must be nothing but the century of dirty oil. Suddenly the oil wars have come home to roost and there is nothing to do about it except what everybody else has done who gets smacked by this dark force of history. You just stand there and cry.
It’s like shock and awe bounced back off the dark side of the moon. All the wealth and brains and power of the mighty American empire sucked into a vacuum of arrogant corruption and relayed back to earth in the form of a blob that will not be stopped until the death of it all finally sinks in. You call this stinking mess democracy?
“I would be betting the plan is to let us die,” says St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro. And Plaquemine Parish President Billy Nungesser tells a wicked little story about what happens when your messenger comes back from the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The grassroots people were ready to defend their shores, Nungesser says to CNN’s Campbell Brown, but the Corps of Engineers was not. The American people expected to see ships and uniforms lining the shores with resources and action, but the Coast Guard did not. Everyone who loves the waters and sands and skies and breezes of the Gulf of Mexico expected a moral equivalent of war to be mobilized by the White House, but the President of the United States did not.
A boot heel on the neck of BP? Is this how Democrats have come to brag about what real power feels like? The US Navy has a fleet of nuclear submarines that can erase all human life from the planet in 90 seconds or less but only BP can be trusted to lead the world when the water gets that deep? And even in this emergency the only thing that Constitutional authorities know how to do is look for some neck to stand on? No wonder even the birds have had enough of this nonsense. If it’s necks that count for power these days, I can tell you, even the birds are ready to go.
No doubt a lot of good folks feel they have to behave properly in front of the television cameras, but thank god for Billy Nungesser cussing right in the Governor’s face. I know he spoke for me. Even the vaunted James Carville is stupefied at the obscenities of neglect that are killing our dearly beloved Gulf of Mexico. If the plan is not to kill the Gulf, why did the President spend the weekend at West Point– ideological home base of The Corps? If the plan is not to let it die, why wasn’t West Point spending the weekend with Nungesser and Taffaro? I paid my taxes so that West Point could keep its frigging graduation schedule? Somebody ought to go up there to Newburgh, New York and take pictures of all the new cars on the West Point campus this week.
If Plaquemine and St. Bernard Parishes secede from the union this week, you can count me in. The world is badly in need of a moral equivalent of a President. And today, the Parish Presidents of the Gulf Coast are working for me.
Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg's website.
This article was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 7:59am and is filed under Obama, Oil, Gas, Pipelines.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/05/oil-wa...-to-roost/

[Peter Lemkin]

Watch the Circus Live on Webcam.....c/o BP

http://www.energyboom.com/policy/watch-l...l-stop-oil

I've been watching....they have two robot craft with cameras on the leak and NOT a single change while all this hype about 'killing' it with barium mud and concrete....haven't even seen a puff of either....I doubt completely this latest 'effort' will have any effect whatsoever. Bye Bye life in the Gulf :ciao::ciao::ciao:

[Ed Jewett]

As I said elsewhere:

One of the thoughts that occurs to me when I think about, read other comments about, or watch the "live video feed" of crude, gas and God knows what else pouring out "faster than the red ink pouring out of Washington DC" is what I have learned about the purposeful repetitive traumatization of people to gradually insure their numbed-out compliance and availability to suggestion, control, servitude and submission.

This isn't the time to explain this if you aren't already aware (and if you aren't already aware, you are a victim) but you can trace it back through a range of programs, systems, technologies, etc, including the Tavistock Institute, the MK-Ultra and similar programs developed by the USofA, the works of a number of psychologists and psychiatrists, various studies of trauma, post-traumatic stress, and numerous other disorders, and through the experiences of Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram (among other places as yet unknown in the vast gulag operated on our behalf), and perhaps evident in the repeated airing of the traumatizing videos and photos from an event almost a decade ago on a bright, clear morning. "Snuff films", I've called them, which along with the "war porn", the video game genre of death and destruction, various other mediated outlets and now 24/7 live video of an ecosystem being decimated."

[Ed Jewett]

Special Reports Last Updated: May 27th, 2010 - 00:41:00
Obama doesn't want to own oil disaster
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


May 27, 2010, 00:22

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(WMR) -- WMR has learned from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that President Obama has avoided taking responsibility for the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico because he would rather have BP "own" the disaster than his administration.
Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen is to retire at the end of this month. He was named as national incident commander for the oil spill and President Obama has stated that Allen will continue in his position after he retires. However, WMR's sources in FEMA report that Allen has been in post-retirement employment discussions with BP. Under his watch, the Coast Guard has been accused of shilling for BP's public relations efforts, including having armed Coast Guard personnel chase away a CBS camera crew from filming the oil spill's effects in Louisiana and claiming that tests of oil tar balls in Florida have not come from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The oil spewing from the Mocondo Prospect in the Mississippi Canyon Block is estimated to contain about 3 billion barrels of oil but there are some indications that it may contain as much as 10 billion barrels.
President Obama recently indicated that the federal government may take over efforts to stop the oil leak from BP. Obama is actually required by federal law, the Clean Water Act of 1972, to bring criminal charges against companies that commit environmental crimes. Obama's failure to take control of the oil disaster from BP leaves Obama open to criminal and civil charges from affected parties. What most incenses those in the Gulf who are trying to deal with the magnitude of the disaster is Obama's failure to order the U.S. military to take immediate action, including the call up of National Guard and other resources.
The Obama administration is also faulted for failing to send medical teams to coastal Louisiana to treat residents in towns, like Grand Isle, who are falling sick from the effects of the toxic oil fumes. There are reports of people experiencing dizziness and nausea.
WMR has also been informed that BP and Halliburton have hired foreign nationals for oil clean-up efforts, passing over local coastal residents whose jobs in the fishing and shrimping industry have been idled by the oil spill.
FEMA points out that its resources to deal with the oil disaster are limited due to lack of material and equipment. FEMA points out that when it was placed under the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), following 9/11, FEMA directors Joseph Allbaugh and Michael Brown, and DHS secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, inked lucrative contracts with security companies that provided worthless junk. FEMA paid the price for not having the capabilities to deal with a major event like the present oil disaster in the Gulf.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright � 2010 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal


http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/...5923.shtml

[Ed Jewett]

New Satellite Analysis Reveals: The Oil Spill Is Now 29,000 Square Miles


John Amos | May 26, 2010, 11:21 AM | 2,973 | 12

The MODIS / Terra satellite image of the Gulf taken yesterday (May 24, 2010) is a relatively cloud-free look at the ongoing oil spill in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Areas covered by oil slick and sheen are marked with a solid orange line. Areas where we think there may be slicks and sheen, but our analysis is of lower confidence, are shown by dashed orange lines. All together, slicks and sheen are possibly covering as much as 28,958 square miles (75,000 km2). That's an area as big as the state of South Carolina:

(MODIS / Terra image, May 24, 2010, with SkyTruth analysis)
We also though it would be interesting to produce a matching version of this image with none of our annoying annotation:

It's Day 36 of this fatal incident. Our estimated spill rate of 1.1 million gallons (26,500 barrels) per day, now on the conservative end of the scientific estimates, leads us to conclude that almost 40 million gallons of [COLOR=#1D637D ! important][B][COLOR=#1D637D ! important][B]oil[/B][/B][/COLOR] have spilled into the Gulf so far[/COLOR]. BP and the federal government had said that they would announce a new official estimate of the daily spill rate on May 22, but we've heard nothing more about that. As far as we can tell, they are still claiming the spill rate is 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) per day. At that much lower rate, the total amount spilled would be 7.56 million gallons.
John Amos is a geologist and the president of SkyTruth. Read more here -->

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-oil-s...z0p6tQ3z2E

[Mark Stapleton]

Ed,

Many thanks for your comprehensive coverage of this disaster. You've been all over it from day 1.

Couple of quick questions from someone with no expertise in this area:

1. Would I be right in assuming that this oil slick will find its way into the Gulf Stream and thus could potentially spread to any ocean on the planet?

2. If the oil continues to vent unchecked for another 6 months or more, and grows to a massive size, is it possible that lightning strikes could set it, or parts of it, ablaze?