Category: Uncategorized

Below are the links and clips that first appeared in the announcements section of the Texas Civil Rights Review before we read an analysis at The Oil Drum which is altogether logical and depressing. We are at a death watch now, praying for a miracle.–gm

Link to critcal: TCRR Critical Calendar

Our timeline of events for the first seven weeks with notes, press clips, and commentary. Our chief interest in the facts pertained to calculation of an oil containment and recovery “deficit” derived from subtracting official figures of millions of gallons of “oily water” recovered from official estimates of oil gushing up.

But already by week eight the deficit figures calculated during week seven have become obsolete. As Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson reports, we should be considering the number that a NOAA group wrote on a white board shortly after the fatal blowout: 60,000 to 100,000 barrels per day. Since this is the moral equivalent of war, we should take the higher limit as the challenge before us.

100,000 barrels per day is 4.2 million gallons per day, which means that oil containment and recovery capacities are missing at least 90 percent of the threat. By day 48 we calculated an average “oily water” recovery rate of about 400,000 gallons, but we do not know how to gauge the percent of oil to water, which could be as low (or lower than) 10 percent.–gm (updated June 13).

Official Date of Blowout: Apr. 20, 2010

Forecast for June 16, 2010

deepwaterhorizon.noaa.gov

See Also

New Orleans IndyMedia

UGA GulfBlog

Plume Detectives: “Think of it as gas-saturated oil that has been shot out of a deep sea cannon under intense pressure – it’s like putting olive oil in a spray can, pressurizing it and pushing the spray button. What comes out when you push that button? A mist of olive oil. This well is leaking a mist of oil that is settling out in the deep sea.”

Louisiana Bucket Brigade Crisis Map Reports

Grassroots Reports from Gulf Coast Community.

Misdirection Exposed: Dylan Ratigan Clip

Are we seeing the whole truth?

Gulf Tribunal

“We urge all readers to research the activities of Halliburton and BP in the months leading up to DeepWater Horizon’s explosion on April 20, and then sinking on April 22, which happens to be Earth Day.”

Gulf Restoration Network

See Latest Footage BP Doesn’t Want You to See: The amount of oil we encountered (on June 4 flyover) is staggering. The lack of response vessels working to contain this oil is bitterly disappointing. At the “source” we counted at most a dozen boats with boom working to contain the oil. However, the source is the only place we found these boats and none of them appeared to be skimmer vessels. Other than the “source” itself, we spotted no other containment efforts until we flew along the Louisiana coast from East Bay to Grand Isle.

Defend New Orleans

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In an effort to provide regular news updates and accurate information about Louisiana seafood to journalists and the general public, the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board has launched a new website, www.louisianaseafoodnews.com.

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Gov

USCG National Strike Force / Gulf Strike Team / Official DeepWater Horizon Response Website / US Navy SUPSALV / MMS

Com

Abanaki Oil Skimmers / CINC / ITOPF / Desmi Ro-Clean / Koseq / Lamor-Slickbar / RecoveredEnergy

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Watch the latest news video at video.foxnews.com

More Video Resources

Long Road to Restoration: PBS interview with RALPH PORTIER, Professor of Environmental Sciences, Louisiana State University (expert on microbial approaches to oil cleanup); and AARON VILES, Gulf Restoration Network (“this is going to be a years and decades problem”).

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The Oil Drum: A Busted Well Bore — All the Way Down?

What does this mean? It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot…the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?…the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?…it doesn’t leak so bad, you close the nozzle?…it leaks real bad, same dynamics.

We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.

Not so Fast: A Cracked Well Bore Would Already Have Done More Damage

if there was a crack, in the same way as with the BOP, then over time that would have been eaten away as oil, gas and mud flowed through it. Once a flow starts it will rapidly eat out a larger passage, as the above has demonstrated. Once that passage was created then oil flow through it to the surface would make it impossible to see what was going on around the well (look at the cloud above the BOP). In fact there are very clear pictures from under the BOP. This would seem to show that there is no oil leaking there at present.

Early Warning: Dylan Ratigan Clip

Are
we seeing the whole truth?

Gulf Emergency Summit

Saturday June 19

Doors open 10:00 am

First Unitarian Universalist Church, New Orleans

5212 South Claiborne Avenue

Join Cindy Sheehan, John Clark, Larry Everest, and Gulf region activists, independent of the government and BP in making an ACTION plan. The People Must Act to STOP the Gulf Catastrophe!

The BP oil blowout is an environmental catastrophe, bringing great peril to marine and wildlife in the Gulf and threatening ecosystems of the planet. The spill is still out of control and spreading. It jeopardizes communities and livelihoods.

The government and BP have proven unable and unwilling to stop the disaster, protect the Gulf,or even tell the truth.

The people must come together now to stop this nightmare.

Millions are sick at heart and looking for ways to act. Many individuals and groups have spoken out, offered suggestions, volunteered to help, protested.

BP and the government – pursuing their own interests – have ignored people’s ideas, blocked public participation, suppressed and
harassed scientists, and prevented people on the Gulf from taking initiative to keep oil away from shore. This must not continue.

A broad, determined, and powerful “peoples’ response” is urgently needed – to get thetruth out, to protect the shores and oceans and deal with the ecological impacts, while exploring deeper causes and solutions.

The Emergency Summit will bring together scientists, people from fishing communities, environmental activists, progressives, radicals and revolutionaries, artists, intellectuals and all who want to halt this horror.

There will be testimony on the true scope and impact of the disaster and on what can be done to protect ecosystems, wildlife, and people. We’ll thrash out ways for people to act now – on different fronts and in different ways – and to galvanize many, many more, across the Gulf and beyond. The world is watching. We must not allow the Gulf and oceans to be devastated. Our mission is nothing less than stopping this catastrophe.

Draft Demands:

1. Stop oil drilling in the Gulf

2. The government and entire oil industry must allocate all necessary resources to stop the spill and clean up the devastation. Full support, including by compensation, must be given to efforts by people to save the Gulf.

3. No punishment to those taking independent initiative; no gag orders on people hired, contracted, or who volunteer.

4. Full mobilization of scientists and engineers. Release scientific and technical data to the public; no more lying and covering up. Full and open scientific evaluation of emergency measures like the use of dispersants. Fund all necessary scientific and medical research.

5. Full compensation for all losing livelihood and income from the disaster.

6. Provide necessary medical services to those suffering health effects of the spill. Protect the health of and provide necessary equipment for everyone involved in clean up operations. Full disclosure of medical and scientific studies about the effects of the oil disaster.

Some of the hundreds of endorsers:

William Quigley, Loyola University; Legal Dir., Center for Constitutional Rights*

Michael G. Hadfield, Marine Biologist, University of Hawaii*

Larry Everest, author Oil, Power & Empire, Revolution newspaper

John Pearse, Prof. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz*

Eloise Williams, Lower Algiers Environmental Committee, New Orleans

Elizabeth Cook, Women United for Social Justice, New Orleans

Andy Washington, Civil Rights Activist, New Orleans

Survivors Village, New Orleans

Ben Gordon, Pax Cristi, New Orleans

Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait

Sharon Jasper, public housing activist, New Orleans

C3-Hands Off Iberville, New Orleans

George Mahdi, Social Worker, New Orleans

Endesha Juakeli, housing activist, New Orleans

Randy Poindexter, New Orleans

Rebecca Austen, New Orleans

Gilda & Sain Reed, New Orleans

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report

Dahr Jamail, journalist

Mark J. Davis, Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy

Raymond Lotta, Revolution contributor, environment, socialist sustainable development

Everyone’s voice, ideas and energy are needed. If you can’t come, contact the Summit for next steps. Endorse the Summit & you’ll be contacted about the ACTION plan

By David Swanson

Way back in January, the ocean was still ocean, oil still oil, and combining the two had not yet occurred to us. The Conch Republic, the Florida Keys, was — in retrospect — a secure and pristine paradise.

The danger was of sunburn, not of crude oil on your skin or toxic chemicals in the air you breathed.

While I was there with my family, we enjoyed the sand, sun, and sea. But we wanted to see more pelicans. We wanted to see lots of pelicans.

So we went to the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center.

Well, it turns out that pelicans know what time it is. And if someone hands out buckets of fish on the shore at the same time every day, any pelican in the greater metropolitan area is going to be there right on time.

And that’s what they do there on Tavernier Key. They know the pelicans. They tag them. They doctor injured ones. And, if they want to check on how they’re doing, all it takes is several buckets of fish and predictable timing.

The pelicans didn’t have everything perfect, even pre-oil. The effects on the weather of our burning of oil we’re hitting the pelicans hard before the oil itself hit the water. These birds require a finely calibrated climate. They migrate from the U.S. gulf coast to the Keys with the seasons. And they need fish, fresh, healthy fish, and lots of it.

When the weather goes freaky with unusually cold or hot or dry periods, and when fish die, the pelicans are in danger too. We just didn’t know how good they had it before BP-USA dipped them and their world in oil.

At lunchtime, hundreds of pelicans show up with one thing on their minds.

If you watch CNN you’ll see heartwarming stories of how purchasing the proper brand of dishwashing soap at your local supermarket will contribute to the work of washing the pelicans off before dipping them back in the oil to die. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is horseshit.

The ocean is filling up with oil, which kills the fish, which kills the pelicans, and which — with a few more steps — kills all of us. The pelicans are canaries in this coalmine, and they are expiring.

There will be no more human enjoyment of the pelicans if this continues, and no more pelican enjoyment of anything at all. They will be gone, along with the world they lived in.

This does not strike me as yet another ho-hum project for the president to create a commission on or the oil baron primarily responsible to be annoyed by when he’s not yachting in another ocean. This is the worst damage we have yet imposed on the earth, an ongoing explosion of black liquid death pumping into paradise, and we’re taking it all pretty coolly.

Oh, but what can we do?

What would the pelicans do? When they want something, they don’t hesitate. If you don’t toss them the fish fast enough, they grab your legs. If that doesn’t work, they try to knock the bucket over. These are birds on a mission to survive. We’re on a mission to nap.

What should we be doing? Not yachting. Not golfing. Not deferring as people to our government or as Congress to a president or as that president to the criminals responsible.

There should be an all-out night-and-day effort to stop this oil gusher. The national guard should be brought home to guard the nation. The trillions of dollars being put into wars for oil should be reinvested (ending the wars) into a war against the oil we do not want and cannot survive, and into an all-out crusade to create a renewable energy economy.

The oil should be claimed by our nation, and our nation should seize the assets of the company responsible.

The state of Delaware should decharter the US branch of BP.

BP and the government regulators who did not regulate it should be prosecuted.

The military and the rest of the government should end all contracts with BP.

All offshore drilling should be banned.

All restrictions on journalists in the Gulf of Mexico should be lifted.

Corporations should be denied their dangerous status of possessing the privileges of people with none of the responsibilities.

If anyone should be given the protections afforded flesh and blood people, it is the pelicans.

* * * * * *

David Swanson is the author of the new book “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town.

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In a perfect world the health insurance industry would be liquidated overnight, replaced by a universal care fund, aka single payer. But until last week, the reason for abolition wasn’t so clearly phrased by the insurance industry itself. Now they say it plain: “You can’t make us cover Tiny Tim.”

If the insurance industry wants to boast that it can cut Tiny Tim out of its future, then it should expect the righteous judgment that falls upon the head of each and every Scroogelike creature–a lonesome and cold gravestone. Nor should we forget to pick their corporate pockets thoroughly as we ready their legacies for the burial that their recent history so richly deserves.

For a day or two anyway, Washington danced enthusiastically with the profiteering managers of our health care economy. And from a distance it looked like a partnership that had half a chance. Then the creeps started whispering little things in Washington’s ear.

But situations like this are what elbows are made for, and it would be interesting to see who would vote against a little old law of one sentence only. “Any insurance company who refuses to cover a child will forfeit all of its assets immediately to the US Treasury.”

Oh, and “God bless us all, every one!”–gm