By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 28, 2010; 4:37 PM
A day after scientists reported finding a huge "plume" of oil extending miles east of the leaking BP well, on Friday a Louisiana scientist said his crew had located another vast plume of oily globs, miles in the opposite direction.
James H. Cowan Jr., a professor at Louisiana State University, said his crew on Wednesday found a plume of oil in a section of the gulf 75 miles northwest of the source of the leak. MORE...
Friday, May 28, 2010
REBUTTAL TO ISRAEL'S DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN REGARDING GAZA FREEDOM FLOTILLA
by flacafina on Fri, 2010-05-28 11:26 am
Israel has threatened to stop the peaceful flotilla from reaching the shores of Gaza in violation of international law. Hedy Epstein, an 85 year old Holocaust survivor is on board along with retired US diplomat Ann Wright, Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and peace activists from more than 20 countries. MORE...
Israel has threatened to stop the peaceful flotilla from reaching the shores of Gaza in violation of international law. Hedy Epstein, an 85 year old Holocaust survivor is on board along with retired US diplomat Ann Wright, Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and peace activists from more than 20 countries. MORE...
Thursday, May 27, 2010
David Swanson of "After Downing Street.org" on the History of the Bush Dynasty
Bush Fulfills His Grandfather's Dream
By David Swanson
Posted on 27 June 2008
(Originally published in July 2007, and to be published every summer until the right to do so is gone.)
It's remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather's major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl's grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd, 2007, documenting President George W. Bush's grandfather's involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.
Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He sent letters home from World War I claiming he'd received medals for heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to retract his claims.
If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush's early business efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the origin of Dubya's middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott's business dealings went better, and he entered politics.
Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred to in the New York Herald-Tribune as "Hitler's Angel." During the 1930s and early 1940s, and even as late as 1951, Prescott Bush was involved in business dealings with Thyssen, and was inevitably aware of both Thyssen's political activities and the fact that the companies involved were financially benefiting the nation of Germany. In addition, the companies Prescott Bush profited from included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers have sued the U.S. government and the heirs of Prescott Bush for $40 billion.
Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush's businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to America. (Is this starting to remind anyone of our current president's relationship to the freedom of the press?)
The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate a homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933. Here's how the BBC promoted its recent story:
"Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy." (This is news to me but bears checking out further, JPH).
Actually, if you listen to the 30-minute BBC story, there is not one word of so much as speculation as to why this story is so little known. I think a clue to the answer can be found by looking into why this BBC report has not led to any U.S. media outlets picking up the story this week.
The BBC report provides a good account of the basic story. Some of the wealthiest men in America approached Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, beloved of many World War I veterans, many of them embittered by the government's treatment of them. Prescott Bush's group asked Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a take-over of Washington and the White House. Butler refused and recounted the affair to the congressional committee. His account was corroborated in part by a number of witnesses, and the committee concluded that the plot was real. But the names of wealthy backers of the plot were blacked out in the committee's records, and nobody was prosecuted. According to the BBC, President Roosevelt cut a deal. He refrained from prosecuting some of the wealthiest men in America for treason. They agreed to end Wall Street's opposition to the New Deal.
Clearly the lack of accountability in Washington, D.C., did not begin with Nancy Pelosi taking Dubya's impeachment off the table, or with Congress' decision to avoid impeachment for President Ronald Reagan (a decision that arguably played a large role in installing Prescott Bush's son George H.W. Bush as president), or with the failure to investigate the apparent deal that George H.W. Bush and others made with Iran to not release American hostages until Reagan was made president, or with the failure to prosecute Richard Nixon after he resigned. Lack of accountability is a proud tradition in our nation's capital. Or maybe I should say our former nation's capital. I don't recognize the place anymore, and I credit that to George W. Bush's efforts to fulfill his grandfather's dream using far subtler and more effective means than a military coup.
Bush the grandson took office through a highly fraudulent election that he nonetheless lost. The Supreme Court blocked a recount of the vote and installed Dubya.
Prescott's grandson proceeded to weaken or eliminate most of the Bill of Rights in the name of protection from a dark foreign enemy. He even tossed out habeas corpus. The grandson of Prescott, that dreamer of the 1930s, established with very little resistance that the U.S. government can kidnap, detain indefinitely on no charge, torture, and murder. The United States under Prescott Bush's grandson adopted policies that heretofore had been considered only Nazi policies, most strikingly the willingness to openly plan and engage in aggressive wars on other nations.
At the same time, Dubya has accomplished a huge transfer of wealth within the United States from the rest of us to the extremely wealthy. He's also effected a major privatization of public operations, including the military. And he's kept tight control over the media.
Dubya has given himself the power to rewrite all laws with signing statements. He's established that intentionally misleading the Congress about the need for a war is not a crime that carries any penalty. He's given himself the right (just as Hitler did) to open anyone's mail. He's created illegal spying programs and then proposed to legalize them. Prescott would be so proud!
The current President Bush has accomplished much more smoothly than his grandfather could have imagined a feat that was one of the goals of Prescott's gang, namely the elimination of Congress.
Did Bush Sr. Kill Kennedy and Frame Nixon?
By David Swanson
Submitted on Fri, 2008-12-26 08:01
Russ Baker's new book presents an account of the U.S. government that is both remarkably new and extensively documented. According to this account, George H. W. Bush, the father of the current president, devoted his career to secret intelligence work with the CIA many years before he became the CIA director, and the network of spies and petroleum plutocrats he began working with early on has played a powerful but hidden role in determining the direction of the U.S. government up to the current day.
New research and newly highlighted information assembled by Baker presents at least the strong possibility that Bush was involved in assassinating President Kennedy, and that Bush was involved in staging the Watergate break-in (and the break-in at Dan Ellsberg's psychiatrist's) with the purpose of having these break-ins exposed and the blame placed on President Nixon. In this account, those in on the get-Nixon plot included John Dean and Bob Woodward. While this retelling of history would make a certain Robert Redford movie look really, really silly, it would -- on the other hand -- make Woodward's performance during Watergate fit more coherently with everything he's known to have done before and since. It would also give new meaning to Dean's recent book title "Conservatives Without a Conscience." I would love to see either of these men's response to Baker's book.
Many readers of this review may now be rushing off to declare Baker either profoundly insane or (probably in fewer cases) indisputably correct in his views regarding the removal of Kennedy and Nixon from the White House, but I would strongly urge reading the book before doing so. It's called "Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It In The White House, And What Their Influence Means for America."
available HERE...
Those of us who have pushed for years now to have Bush Jr. impeached or prosecuted have heard all imaginable excuses and then some. One has been this: "Punishing the figurehead puppet president would amount to excusing the real powers behind the throne." And, of course, some of us have never doubted that such powers existed, but considered letting Bush and Cheney walk free as a surer way to protect other guilty parties than punishing them would be. There are guilty parties in Congress too, of course, but how the pervasiveness of guilt justifies letting everyone off the hook has always escaped me. The arrests have to begin somewhere. In any case, I bring up the image of presidents as puppets because Baker provides a new variation on that theme. In his account, Bush Jr. is indeed not the driving force, but a clique centered around his father is.
Baker does not focus on Bush Jr.'s grandfather, Prescott Bush, and does not even mention his role in the plot to overthrow President Roosevelt in 1933 (discussed above). Baker's focus is on Poppy, although Prescott and his anger toward Kennedy are in the background. It is not a completely new idea to suppose that Kennedy was killed because he angered the CIA and powerful Americans with business interests in Cuba. It is, as far as I know, new to show, as Baker extensively documents and then summarizes, that:
"Poppy Bush was closely tied to key members of the intelligence community including the deposed CIA head with a known grudge against JFK; he was also tied to Texas oligarchs who hated Kennedy's politics and whose wealth was directly threatened by Kennedy; this network was part of the military/intelligence elite with a history of using assassination as an instrument of policy.
"Poppy Bush was in Dallas on November 21 and most likely the morning of November 22. He hid that fact, he lied about knowing where he was, then he created an alibi based on a lead he knew was false. And he never acknowledged the closeness of his relationship with Oswald's handler George de Mohrenschildt.
"Poppy's business partner Thomas Devine met with de Mohrenschildt during that period, on behalf of the CIA.
"Poppy's eventual Texas running mate in the 1964 election, Jack Crichton, was connected to the military intelligence figures who led Kennedy's motorcade.
"Crichton and D. Harold Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository building, were both connected to de Mohrenschildt -- and directly to each other through oil-business dealings.
"Byrd brought in the tenant that hired Oswald shortly before the assassination.
"Oswald got his job in the building through a friend of de Mohrenschildt's with her own intelligence connections -- including family ties to Allen Dulles."
You start to get a taste of the sort of case Baker builds. It's persuasive, but not conclusive. If you buy into the basic outlines of it, you come up against a history of American politics in which our top "elected" officials are not just chosen through a process openly corrupted by money and media and parties, but are also chosen through a process of covert ops. Kennedy was replaced by Johnson because he was more obedient to Texas oilmen. Nixon was replaced by Ford for similar reasons. Bush Sr. made a deal with Iran not to release American hostages until Reagan defeated Carter. (Baker recounts but adds nothing new to this story, already reported elsewhere.) Bush Sr. and Jr. ran election campaigns that employed CIA-like techniques. It's a compelling narrative with probably a great deal of truth to it, and the viciousness of Republican attacks on President Clinton fits into it. So does the reluctance of Carter, Clinton, Obama, and others to stray too far from positions acceptable to those (like Robert Gates) with places in the more permanent power structure. So does the possibility that Michael Connell was murdered last week.
The interesting thing about Baker's claims regarding Kennedy and Nixon is that they would suggest that the CIA actually succeeded at something, that -- in fact -- the CIA or members thereof managed to keep major secrets for decades. Of course, they were morally reprehensible secrets and provide further rationale for eliminating the CIA and all secret government agencies, not any sort of justification for keeping them going.
While Nixon and Kennedy appear in this account almost exclusively in the role of victims, we should remember that their failures to please a certain powerful group do not absolve them of their own sins, even if that group may have done them in. While Kennedy may have courted the wrath of certain powers by refusing to do to Cuba what Dubya later did to Iraq, Nixon's failing was not any deficiency in the area of war criminality. While part of what Nixon was covering up may have been staged to frame him, his most serious offenses -- those involving the mass slaughter of human beings -- have been marginalized in all accounts, old and new, of our attempts to hold him accountable. And Nixon himself secretly derailed a possible peace agreement in order to get himself into the same White House that he was later chased out of in disgrace.
NOTE:
Afterdowningstreet.org has been re-named WarIsaCrime.org but the old url is still in use. see THIS...
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
By David Swanson
Posted on 27 June 2008
(Originally published in July 2007, and to be published every summer until the right to do so is gone.)
It's remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather's major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl's grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd, 2007, documenting President George W. Bush's grandfather's involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.
Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He sent letters home from World War I claiming he'd received medals for heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to retract his claims.
If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush's early business efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the origin of Dubya's middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott's business dealings went better, and he entered politics.
Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred to in the New York Herald-Tribune as "Hitler's Angel." During the 1930s and early 1940s, and even as late as 1951, Prescott Bush was involved in business dealings with Thyssen, and was inevitably aware of both Thyssen's political activities and the fact that the companies involved were financially benefiting the nation of Germany. In addition, the companies Prescott Bush profited from included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers have sued the U.S. government and the heirs of Prescott Bush for $40 billion.
Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush's businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to America. (Is this starting to remind anyone of our current president's relationship to the freedom of the press?)
The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate a homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933. Here's how the BBC promoted its recent story:
"Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy." (This is news to me but bears checking out further, JPH).
Actually, if you listen to the 30-minute BBC story, there is not one word of so much as speculation as to why this story is so little known. I think a clue to the answer can be found by looking into why this BBC report has not led to any U.S. media outlets picking up the story this week.
The BBC report provides a good account of the basic story. Some of the wealthiest men in America approached Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, beloved of many World War I veterans, many of them embittered by the government's treatment of them. Prescott Bush's group asked Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a take-over of Washington and the White House. Butler refused and recounted the affair to the congressional committee. His account was corroborated in part by a number of witnesses, and the committee concluded that the plot was real. But the names of wealthy backers of the plot were blacked out in the committee's records, and nobody was prosecuted. According to the BBC, President Roosevelt cut a deal. He refrained from prosecuting some of the wealthiest men in America for treason. They agreed to end Wall Street's opposition to the New Deal.
Clearly the lack of accountability in Washington, D.C., did not begin with Nancy Pelosi taking Dubya's impeachment off the table, or with Congress' decision to avoid impeachment for President Ronald Reagan (a decision that arguably played a large role in installing Prescott Bush's son George H.W. Bush as president), or with the failure to investigate the apparent deal that George H.W. Bush and others made with Iran to not release American hostages until Reagan was made president, or with the failure to prosecute Richard Nixon after he resigned. Lack of accountability is a proud tradition in our nation's capital. Or maybe I should say our former nation's capital. I don't recognize the place anymore, and I credit that to George W. Bush's efforts to fulfill his grandfather's dream using far subtler and more effective means than a military coup.
Bush the grandson took office through a highly fraudulent election that he nonetheless lost. The Supreme Court blocked a recount of the vote and installed Dubya.
Prescott's grandson proceeded to weaken or eliminate most of the Bill of Rights in the name of protection from a dark foreign enemy. He even tossed out habeas corpus. The grandson of Prescott, that dreamer of the 1930s, established with very little resistance that the U.S. government can kidnap, detain indefinitely on no charge, torture, and murder. The United States under Prescott Bush's grandson adopted policies that heretofore had been considered only Nazi policies, most strikingly the willingness to openly plan and engage in aggressive wars on other nations.
At the same time, Dubya has accomplished a huge transfer of wealth within the United States from the rest of us to the extremely wealthy. He's also effected a major privatization of public operations, including the military. And he's kept tight control over the media.
Dubya has given himself the power to rewrite all laws with signing statements. He's established that intentionally misleading the Congress about the need for a war is not a crime that carries any penalty. He's given himself the right (just as Hitler did) to open anyone's mail. He's created illegal spying programs and then proposed to legalize them. Prescott would be so proud!
The current President Bush has accomplished much more smoothly than his grandfather could have imagined a feat that was one of the goals of Prescott's gang, namely the elimination of Congress.
Did Bush Sr. Kill Kennedy and Frame Nixon?
By David Swanson
Submitted on Fri, 2008-12-26 08:01
Russ Baker's new book presents an account of the U.S. government that is both remarkably new and extensively documented. According to this account, George H. W. Bush, the father of the current president, devoted his career to secret intelligence work with the CIA many years before he became the CIA director, and the network of spies and petroleum plutocrats he began working with early on has played a powerful but hidden role in determining the direction of the U.S. government up to the current day.
New research and newly highlighted information assembled by Baker presents at least the strong possibility that Bush was involved in assassinating President Kennedy, and that Bush was involved in staging the Watergate break-in (and the break-in at Dan Ellsberg's psychiatrist's) with the purpose of having these break-ins exposed and the blame placed on President Nixon. In this account, those in on the get-Nixon plot included John Dean and Bob Woodward. While this retelling of history would make a certain Robert Redford movie look really, really silly, it would -- on the other hand -- make Woodward's performance during Watergate fit more coherently with everything he's known to have done before and since. It would also give new meaning to Dean's recent book title "Conservatives Without a Conscience." I would love to see either of these men's response to Baker's book.
Many readers of this review may now be rushing off to declare Baker either profoundly insane or (probably in fewer cases) indisputably correct in his views regarding the removal of Kennedy and Nixon from the White House, but I would strongly urge reading the book before doing so. It's called "Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It In The White House, And What Their Influence Means for America."
available HERE...
Those of us who have pushed for years now to have Bush Jr. impeached or prosecuted have heard all imaginable excuses and then some. One has been this: "Punishing the figurehead puppet president would amount to excusing the real powers behind the throne." And, of course, some of us have never doubted that such powers existed, but considered letting Bush and Cheney walk free as a surer way to protect other guilty parties than punishing them would be. There are guilty parties in Congress too, of course, but how the pervasiveness of guilt justifies letting everyone off the hook has always escaped me. The arrests have to begin somewhere. In any case, I bring up the image of presidents as puppets because Baker provides a new variation on that theme. In his account, Bush Jr. is indeed not the driving force, but a clique centered around his father is.
Baker does not focus on Bush Jr.'s grandfather, Prescott Bush, and does not even mention his role in the plot to overthrow President Roosevelt in 1933 (discussed above). Baker's focus is on Poppy, although Prescott and his anger toward Kennedy are in the background. It is not a completely new idea to suppose that Kennedy was killed because he angered the CIA and powerful Americans with business interests in Cuba. It is, as far as I know, new to show, as Baker extensively documents and then summarizes, that:
"Poppy Bush was closely tied to key members of the intelligence community including the deposed CIA head with a known grudge against JFK; he was also tied to Texas oligarchs who hated Kennedy's politics and whose wealth was directly threatened by Kennedy; this network was part of the military/intelligence elite with a history of using assassination as an instrument of policy.
"Poppy Bush was in Dallas on November 21 and most likely the morning of November 22. He hid that fact, he lied about knowing where he was, then he created an alibi based on a lead he knew was false. And he never acknowledged the closeness of his relationship with Oswald's handler George de Mohrenschildt.
"Poppy's business partner Thomas Devine met with de Mohrenschildt during that period, on behalf of the CIA.
"Poppy's eventual Texas running mate in the 1964 election, Jack Crichton, was connected to the military intelligence figures who led Kennedy's motorcade.
"Crichton and D. Harold Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository building, were both connected to de Mohrenschildt -- and directly to each other through oil-business dealings.
"Byrd brought in the tenant that hired Oswald shortly before the assassination.
"Oswald got his job in the building through a friend of de Mohrenschildt's with her own intelligence connections -- including family ties to Allen Dulles."
You start to get a taste of the sort of case Baker builds. It's persuasive, but not conclusive. If you buy into the basic outlines of it, you come up against a history of American politics in which our top "elected" officials are not just chosen through a process openly corrupted by money and media and parties, but are also chosen through a process of covert ops. Kennedy was replaced by Johnson because he was more obedient to Texas oilmen. Nixon was replaced by Ford for similar reasons. Bush Sr. made a deal with Iran not to release American hostages until Reagan defeated Carter. (Baker recounts but adds nothing new to this story, already reported elsewhere.) Bush Sr. and Jr. ran election campaigns that employed CIA-like techniques. It's a compelling narrative with probably a great deal of truth to it, and the viciousness of Republican attacks on President Clinton fits into it. So does the reluctance of Carter, Clinton, Obama, and others to stray too far from positions acceptable to those (like Robert Gates) with places in the more permanent power structure. So does the possibility that Michael Connell was murdered last week.
The interesting thing about Baker's claims regarding Kennedy and Nixon is that they would suggest that the CIA actually succeeded at something, that -- in fact -- the CIA or members thereof managed to keep major secrets for decades. Of course, they were morally reprehensible secrets and provide further rationale for eliminating the CIA and all secret government agencies, not any sort of justification for keeping them going.
While Nixon and Kennedy appear in this account almost exclusively in the role of victims, we should remember that their failures to please a certain powerful group do not absolve them of their own sins, even if that group may have done them in. While Kennedy may have courted the wrath of certain powers by refusing to do to Cuba what Dubya later did to Iraq, Nixon's failing was not any deficiency in the area of war criminality. While part of what Nixon was covering up may have been staged to frame him, his most serious offenses -- those involving the mass slaughter of human beings -- have been marginalized in all accounts, old and new, of our attempts to hold him accountable. And Nixon himself secretly derailed a possible peace agreement in order to get himself into the same White House that he was later chased out of in disgrace.
NOTE:
Afterdowningstreet.org has been re-named WarIsaCrime.org but the old url is still in use. see THIS...
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Ed Schultz: "Unfortunately, Big Corporations Run this Country not Congress"
It is rare when one hears truth from a member of the elite media. In the wake of President Obama's press conference on the Gulf Oil Spill today, Ed Schultz on his MSNBC program tonight just admitted that the large multi-national corporations control the USA not Congress or the President. He joins Dylan Ratigan also of MSNBC in being willing to risk unemployment in order to speak the truth.
So far, it appears the "Top-Kill" attempt to stop the oil from leaking appears to have been unsuccessful. BP just announced that it has ceased the effort in order to assess the affect. I predict that BP will soon admit that the attempt failed.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
So far, it appears the "Top-Kill" attempt to stop the oil from leaking appears to have been unsuccessful. BP just announced that it has ceased the effort in order to assess the affect. I predict that BP will soon admit that the attempt failed.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Key Segments of "Banned" History Channel Documentary: "The Men Who Killed Kennedy"
Smoking Guns:
Secret Service Standown:
NOTE:
Professor James H. Fetzer who appeared in the first clip above has calculated the probability (utilizing extremely conservative assumptions) at less than 1 chance in a trillion [1/10(12)] that 15 Secret Service errors/alterations could be made in their Presidential protection protocol by chance alone. The chance that the US Secret Service purposely "stood down" is 999,999,999,999/1,000,000,000,000 or 99.9999999999%.
The conclusion that JFK was killed by a well organized conspiracy (based only on the behavior of the Secret Service) is true beyond reasonable doubt (BRD). When one adds the new information resulting from the JFK Records Act of 1992 and the work of the ARRB (Assassination Records Review Board) that Douglas P. Horne has presented in his seminal work Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, (2009) available HERE..., the likelihood achieves metaphysical certainty.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Secret Service Standown:
NOTE:
Professor James H. Fetzer who appeared in the first clip above has calculated the probability (utilizing extremely conservative assumptions) at less than 1 chance in a trillion [1/10(12)] that 15 Secret Service errors/alterations could be made in their Presidential protection protocol by chance alone. The chance that the US Secret Service purposely "stood down" is 999,999,999,999/1,000,000,000,000 or 99.9999999999%.
The conclusion that JFK was killed by a well organized conspiracy (based only on the behavior of the Secret Service) is true beyond reasonable doubt (BRD). When one adds the new information resulting from the JFK Records Act of 1992 and the work of the ARRB (Assassination Records Review Board) that Douglas P. Horne has presented in his seminal work Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, (2009) available HERE..., the likelihood achieves metaphysical certainty.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Inspector General's Report Shows Minerals Management Service Corrupted by Big Oil Industry
Interior Probe Finds Fraternizing, Porn and Drugs at MMS Office in La.
By NOELLE STRAUB of Greenwire
May 25, 2010 "NY Times" - - Federal officials who oversaw drilling in the Gulf of Mexico accepted gifts from oil companies, viewed pornography at work and even considered themselves part of industry, the Interior Department inspector general says in a new report (pdf).
Those revelations, sure to intensify criticism of federal oversight of offshore drilling as the massive Gulf leak continues, will take a starring role at a congressional hearing tomorrow.
The investigation uncovered violations of federal regulations and ethics rules by employees of the Lake Charles, La., office of the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling.
Interior Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall said her greatest concern is "the environment in which these inspectors operate -- particularly the ease with which they move between industry and government."
She added: "We discovered that the individuals involved in the fraternizing and gift exchange -- both government and industry -- have often known one another since childhood."
MMS Lake Charles District Manager Larry Williamson told IG investigators that many of the MMS inspectors had worked for the oil and gas industry and continued to be friends with industry representatives.
"Obviously, we're all oil industry," he said. "Almost all of our inspectors have worked for oil companies out on these same platforms. They grew up in the same towns. Some of these people, they've been friends with all their life. They've been with these people since they were kids. They've hunted together. They fish together. They skeet shoot together. ... They do this all the time."
A source told IG investigators that oil and gas officials on the platform had filled out inspection forms, which would then be completed or signed by an MMS inspector.
The IG also "found a culture where the acceptance of gifts from oil and gas companies were widespread throughout that office," although that has improved in recent years, the report says.
Two employees at the Lake Charles office also admitted to using illegal drugs during their employment at MMS. The IG found that many of the inspectors had e-mails that contained inappropriate humor and pornography on their government computers. And between June and July 2008, one MMS inspector conducted four inspections of offshore platforms while in the process of negotiating and later accepting employment with that company.
While the report was not due to be released yet, Kendall said in light of the Gulf disaster, she felt compelled to release it now. The investigation was sparked by an anonymous letter in October 2008 to the U.S. attorney's office in New Orleans alleging that a number of MMS employees had accepted gifts from companies.
The IG presented the findings to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Louisiana, which declined prosecution, the report says.
The report is a follow-up to a blockbuster IG report released in 2008 that detailed a sex, drugs and illegal gifts scandal at MMS (E&ENews PM, Sept. 10, 2008).
Details
A former MMS inspector sent an e-mail with pictures of the company plane on which he, an oil company official and others flew to Atlanta for the 2005 Peach Bowl game.
"E-mails for MMS inspectors from the Lake Charles office revealed that in 2005, 2006, and 2007, various offshore companies invited MMS personnel to events such as skeet-shooting contests, hunting and fishing trips, golf tournaments, crawfish boils, and Christmas parties," the report says.
One former MMS official wrote an e-mail saying he had "good friends" in the industry that he "wouldn't write up."
The gift culture declined after Don Howard, the former regional supervisor at the MMS office in New Orleans, was fired in 2007 for accepting a gift, the report says.
"Prior to our investigation of Howard, receiving gifts such as hunting trips, fishing trips, and meals from oil companies appears to have been a generally accepted practice by MMS inspectors and supervisors in the Gulf of Mexico region," it says.
The IG found numerous instances of pornography and other inappropriate material on the e-mail accounts of 13 employees, six of whom have resigned. There were 314 instances in which the seven remaining employees received or forwarded pornographic images and links from their government e-mail.
An MMS clerical employee told investigators that she began using cocaine and methamphetamine with an inspector when she started working at the agency about two years ago. The MMS inspector admitted that while he did not use the drug at work, he might have been under the influence of crystal methamphetamine at work after using it the night before.
A source told IG inspectors that company personnel completed inspection forms using pencils, and MMS inspectors would write on top of the pencil in ink and turn in the completed form. While IG inspectors reviewed a total of 556 files to look for any alteration of pencil and ink markings, notations or signatures and found a small number with pencil and ink variations, they could not discern if any fraudulent alterations were present on these forms.
Interior response
Kendall will testify tomorrow before the House Natural Resources Committee at an oversight hearing on the oil spill, the panel announced today. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had already been scheduled to appear before the committee.
"The Inspector General report describes reprehensible activities of employees of MMS between 2000 and 2008," Salazar said in a statement. "This deeply disturbing report is further evidence of the cozy relationship between some elements of MMS and the oil and gas industry."
"I appreciate and fully support the Inspector General's strong work to root out the bad apples in MMS, and we will follow through on her recommendations, including taking any and all appropriate personnel actions," he added. "In addition, I have asked the Inspector General to expand her investigation to determine whether any of this reprehensible behavior persisted after the new ethics rules I implemented in 2009."
Salazar noted that within 10 days of becoming Interior secretary, he asked the Justice Department to reopen criminal investigations of employees involved in the 2008 report and promised to update departmental ethics policies and overhaul MMS's royalty collection system (E&ENews PM, Jan. 29, 2009).
Several of the employees mentioned in the new report have resigned, been fired or been referred for prosecution, Interior said. Those who are still working at MMS will be placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of a personnel review, the department added.
Salazar also has asked the inspector general to investigate whether there was a failure of MMS personnel to adequately enforce standards or inspect the Deepwater Horizon offshore facility and whether there are deficiencies in MMS policies or practices that need to be addressed to ensure offshore operations are conducted in a safe and environmentally sensitive manner, Interior said.
Salazar has signed a secretarial order splitting MMS into three agencies to separate its energy development, enforcement and revenue collecting functions. The three jobs currently performed by MMS, which collects $13 billion in revenue every year, "are conflicting missions and must be separated," he said last week (E&ENews PM, May 19).
Reaction
The report drew swift rebukes from lawmakers.
"As if catching MMS employees literally in bed with industry officials wasn't enough, MMS safety inspectors were flying high in private jets taking bribes while allowing oil and gas companies to fill out their own safety inspection forms," said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.). "It's past time for MMS to stop acting as a farm team for the industry -- the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion is proof that this isn't just a game."
Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said her panel will hold a hearing on the administration's proposed restructuring of MMS on June 16.
"This new Inspector General report is yet another black eye for the Minerals Management Service," Feinstein said. "Once again, MMS employees have been found culpable of performing shoddy oversight of offshore drilling. The report reveals an overly cozy culture between MMS regulators and the oil industry. ... The agency clearly falls short of providing effective oversight of the safety of deepwater drilling or the ethical collection of drilling royalties."
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said there have been 10 IG reports and nine Government Accountability Office reports on MMS, but it took a "massive catastrophe to get anyone to read these reports and agree on the need for a massive bureaucratic overhaul."
"In typical Washington fashion, it takes something going horribly wrong, yet entirely avoidable before anyone pays attention to the long-standing need for reform," Issa added in a statement. "The report released today echoes the same problems that have been exhaustively reported on for years. From Toyota to Tylenol to BP, we are seeing the consequences of what can happen when the Congress and the Administration abdicate their obligations to scrutinize the bureaucracy and conduct ongoing and vigilant oversight." (Editor's bold emphasis)
By NOELLE STRAUB of Greenwire
May 25, 2010 "NY Times" - - Federal officials who oversaw drilling in the Gulf of Mexico accepted gifts from oil companies, viewed pornography at work and even considered themselves part of industry, the Interior Department inspector general says in a new report (pdf).
Those revelations, sure to intensify criticism of federal oversight of offshore drilling as the massive Gulf leak continues, will take a starring role at a congressional hearing tomorrow.
The investigation uncovered violations of federal regulations and ethics rules by employees of the Lake Charles, La., office of the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling.
Interior Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall said her greatest concern is "the environment in which these inspectors operate -- particularly the ease with which they move between industry and government."
She added: "We discovered that the individuals involved in the fraternizing and gift exchange -- both government and industry -- have often known one another since childhood."
MMS Lake Charles District Manager Larry Williamson told IG investigators that many of the MMS inspectors had worked for the oil and gas industry and continued to be friends with industry representatives.
"Obviously, we're all oil industry," he said. "Almost all of our inspectors have worked for oil companies out on these same platforms. They grew up in the same towns. Some of these people, they've been friends with all their life. They've been with these people since they were kids. They've hunted together. They fish together. They skeet shoot together. ... They do this all the time."
A source told IG investigators that oil and gas officials on the platform had filled out inspection forms, which would then be completed or signed by an MMS inspector.
The IG also "found a culture where the acceptance of gifts from oil and gas companies were widespread throughout that office," although that has improved in recent years, the report says.
Two employees at the Lake Charles office also admitted to using illegal drugs during their employment at MMS. The IG found that many of the inspectors had e-mails that contained inappropriate humor and pornography on their government computers. And between June and July 2008, one MMS inspector conducted four inspections of offshore platforms while in the process of negotiating and later accepting employment with that company.
While the report was not due to be released yet, Kendall said in light of the Gulf disaster, she felt compelled to release it now. The investigation was sparked by an anonymous letter in October 2008 to the U.S. attorney's office in New Orleans alleging that a number of MMS employees had accepted gifts from companies.
The IG presented the findings to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Louisiana, which declined prosecution, the report says.
The report is a follow-up to a blockbuster IG report released in 2008 that detailed a sex, drugs and illegal gifts scandal at MMS (E&ENews PM, Sept. 10, 2008).
Details
A former MMS inspector sent an e-mail with pictures of the company plane on which he, an oil company official and others flew to Atlanta for the 2005 Peach Bowl game.
"E-mails for MMS inspectors from the Lake Charles office revealed that in 2005, 2006, and 2007, various offshore companies invited MMS personnel to events such as skeet-shooting contests, hunting and fishing trips, golf tournaments, crawfish boils, and Christmas parties," the report says.
One former MMS official wrote an e-mail saying he had "good friends" in the industry that he "wouldn't write up."
The gift culture declined after Don Howard, the former regional supervisor at the MMS office in New Orleans, was fired in 2007 for accepting a gift, the report says.
"Prior to our investigation of Howard, receiving gifts such as hunting trips, fishing trips, and meals from oil companies appears to have been a generally accepted practice by MMS inspectors and supervisors in the Gulf of Mexico region," it says.
The IG found numerous instances of pornography and other inappropriate material on the e-mail accounts of 13 employees, six of whom have resigned. There were 314 instances in which the seven remaining employees received or forwarded pornographic images and links from their government e-mail.
An MMS clerical employee told investigators that she began using cocaine and methamphetamine with an inspector when she started working at the agency about two years ago. The MMS inspector admitted that while he did not use the drug at work, he might have been under the influence of crystal methamphetamine at work after using it the night before.
A source told IG inspectors that company personnel completed inspection forms using pencils, and MMS inspectors would write on top of the pencil in ink and turn in the completed form. While IG inspectors reviewed a total of 556 files to look for any alteration of pencil and ink markings, notations or signatures and found a small number with pencil and ink variations, they could not discern if any fraudulent alterations were present on these forms.
Interior response
Kendall will testify tomorrow before the House Natural Resources Committee at an oversight hearing on the oil spill, the panel announced today. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had already been scheduled to appear before the committee.
"The Inspector General report describes reprehensible activities of employees of MMS between 2000 and 2008," Salazar said in a statement. "This deeply disturbing report is further evidence of the cozy relationship between some elements of MMS and the oil and gas industry."
"I appreciate and fully support the Inspector General's strong work to root out the bad apples in MMS, and we will follow through on her recommendations, including taking any and all appropriate personnel actions," he added. "In addition, I have asked the Inspector General to expand her investigation to determine whether any of this reprehensible behavior persisted after the new ethics rules I implemented in 2009."
Salazar noted that within 10 days of becoming Interior secretary, he asked the Justice Department to reopen criminal investigations of employees involved in the 2008 report and promised to update departmental ethics policies and overhaul MMS's royalty collection system (E&ENews PM, Jan. 29, 2009).
Several of the employees mentioned in the new report have resigned, been fired or been referred for prosecution, Interior said. Those who are still working at MMS will be placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of a personnel review, the department added.
Salazar also has asked the inspector general to investigate whether there was a failure of MMS personnel to adequately enforce standards or inspect the Deepwater Horizon offshore facility and whether there are deficiencies in MMS policies or practices that need to be addressed to ensure offshore operations are conducted in a safe and environmentally sensitive manner, Interior said.
Salazar has signed a secretarial order splitting MMS into three agencies to separate its energy development, enforcement and revenue collecting functions. The three jobs currently performed by MMS, which collects $13 billion in revenue every year, "are conflicting missions and must be separated," he said last week (E&ENews PM, May 19).
Reaction
The report drew swift rebukes from lawmakers.
"As if catching MMS employees literally in bed with industry officials wasn't enough, MMS safety inspectors were flying high in private jets taking bribes while allowing oil and gas companies to fill out their own safety inspection forms," said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.). "It's past time for MMS to stop acting as a farm team for the industry -- the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion is proof that this isn't just a game."
Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said her panel will hold a hearing on the administration's proposed restructuring of MMS on June 16.
"This new Inspector General report is yet another black eye for the Minerals Management Service," Feinstein said. "Once again, MMS employees have been found culpable of performing shoddy oversight of offshore drilling. The report reveals an overly cozy culture between MMS regulators and the oil industry. ... The agency clearly falls short of providing effective oversight of the safety of deepwater drilling or the ethical collection of drilling royalties."
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said there have been 10 IG reports and nine Government Accountability Office reports on MMS, but it took a "massive catastrophe to get anyone to read these reports and agree on the need for a massive bureaucratic overhaul."
"In typical Washington fashion, it takes something going horribly wrong, yet entirely avoidable before anyone pays attention to the long-standing need for reform," Issa added in a statement. "The report released today echoes the same problems that have been exhaustively reported on for years. From Toyota to Tylenol to BP, we are seeing the consequences of what can happen when the Congress and the Administration abdicate their obligations to scrutinize the bureaucracy and conduct ongoing and vigilant oversight." (Editor's bold emphasis)
Grayson's Smart Calculus Makes War Cost Real for Taxpayers
By John Nichols
May 25, 2010 "Huffington Post" -- Congressman Alan Grayson is at it again. This time, the Florida Democrat who shook up the health-care debate by saying Republicans were the real death-panel party and who shook up the bank reform debate by leading (with Texas Congressman Ron Paul) the “Audit the Fed” fight, is shaking up the debate about so-called “emergency” supplemental spending to fund the occupations of foreign lands.
Grayson’s mad because the Pentagon and its allies in the White House (be they Bush and Cheney or Obama and Biden) keep demanding tens of billions in additional allocations to fund the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. And they do so in a manner that makes debate difficult and dissent rare.
But Grayson is out to provoke a debate – and he is definitely dissenting.
“What George Orwell wrote about in 1984 has come true. What Eisenhower warned us about concerning the ‘military-industrial complex’ has come true,” the congressman argues. “War is a permanent feature of our societal landscape, so much so that no one notices it anymore.”
Grayson proposes to change this circumstance with a bill he has introduced: “The War Is Making You Poor Act.”
“The purpose of this bill is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars,” he explains.
To make the cost of war real for working Americans, Grayson performs a simple calculus:
“Next year's budget allocates $159,000,000,000 to perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's enough money to eliminate federal income taxes for the first $35,000 of every American's income. Beyond that, (it) leaves over $15 billion to cut the deficit."
“And that's what this bill does. It eliminates separate funding for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and eliminates federal income taxes for everyone's first $35,000 of income ($70,000 for couples). Plus it pays down the national debt.”
The congressman is betting – with good reason –that the key to opening up a real debate about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is to make real the cost of these occupations to American families.
“The costs of the war have been rendered invisible. There's no draft. Instead, we take the most vulnerable elements of our population, and give them a choice between unemployment and missile fodder. Government deficits conceal the need to pay in cash for the war,” explains Grayson, with a reference to the mounting trade deficit with China. “We put the cost of both guns and butter on our Chinese credit card. In fact, we don't even put these wars on budget; they are still passed using 'emergency supplemental'. A nine-year 'emergency.’”(Editor's emphasis throughout)
If Americans recognize what they are personally paying to maintain occupations of distant lands, Grayson argues that Americans will tell Congress: “the cost of these wars is too much for us.”
It’s a good bet.
In the first 72 hours after Grayson introduced his legislation, more than 22,000 Americans signed an online petition endorsing it.
May 25, 2010 "Huffington Post" -- Congressman Alan Grayson is at it again. This time, the Florida Democrat who shook up the health-care debate by saying Republicans were the real death-panel party and who shook up the bank reform debate by leading (with Texas Congressman Ron Paul) the “Audit the Fed” fight, is shaking up the debate about so-called “emergency” supplemental spending to fund the occupations of foreign lands.
Grayson’s mad because the Pentagon and its allies in the White House (be they Bush and Cheney or Obama and Biden) keep demanding tens of billions in additional allocations to fund the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. And they do so in a manner that makes debate difficult and dissent rare.
But Grayson is out to provoke a debate – and he is definitely dissenting.
“What George Orwell wrote about in 1984 has come true. What Eisenhower warned us about concerning the ‘military-industrial complex’ has come true,” the congressman argues. “War is a permanent feature of our societal landscape, so much so that no one notices it anymore.”
Grayson proposes to change this circumstance with a bill he has introduced: “The War Is Making You Poor Act.”
“The purpose of this bill is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars,” he explains.
To make the cost of war real for working Americans, Grayson performs a simple calculus:
“Next year's budget allocates $159,000,000,000 to perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's enough money to eliminate federal income taxes for the first $35,000 of every American's income. Beyond that, (it) leaves over $15 billion to cut the deficit."
“And that's what this bill does. It eliminates separate funding for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and eliminates federal income taxes for everyone's first $35,000 of income ($70,000 for couples). Plus it pays down the national debt.”
The congressman is betting – with good reason –that the key to opening up a real debate about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is to make real the cost of these occupations to American families.
“The costs of the war have been rendered invisible. There's no draft. Instead, we take the most vulnerable elements of our population, and give them a choice between unemployment and missile fodder. Government deficits conceal the need to pay in cash for the war,” explains Grayson, with a reference to the mounting trade deficit with China. “We put the cost of both guns and butter on our Chinese credit card. In fact, we don't even put these wars on budget; they are still passed using 'emergency supplemental'. A nine-year 'emergency.’”(Editor's emphasis throughout)
If Americans recognize what they are personally paying to maintain occupations of distant lands, Grayson argues that Americans will tell Congress: “the cost of these wars is too much for us.”
It’s a good bet.
In the first 72 hours after Grayson introduced his legislation, more than 22,000 Americans signed an online petition endorsing it.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Obama's Gulf Commission: Distortion, Obstruction and Whitewash Assured
"On May 22, Obama announced the creation of seven-member commission...Instead of prosecuting culpable government and industry offenders, more lies, deceit and coverup are coming, the customary investigatory commission mandate to suppress truths too disturbing to reveal, letting mega-criminals again get off."
by Stephen Lendman who can be found at
sjlendman.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
"The Deepwater Horizon site is a crime scene. But instead of demanding prosecutions for culpable industry and Interior Department officials, Obama announced a commission to assuage public concern and anger, suppress vital truths, and obstruct justice, America's customary response to major government and corporate crimes - to wit, the notorious Warren, 9/11, and Space Shuttle Challenger Commissions." Read Mr. Lendman's entire piece HERE...
by Stephen Lendman who can be found at
sjlendman.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
"The Deepwater Horizon site is a crime scene. But instead of demanding prosecutions for culpable industry and Interior Department officials, Obama announced a commission to assuage public concern and anger, suppress vital truths, and obstruct justice, America's customary response to major government and corporate crimes - to wit, the notorious Warren, 9/11, and Space Shuttle Challenger Commissions." Read Mr. Lendman's entire piece HERE...
It's Time to Rid the World of Nuclear Weapons
By Desmond Tutu
May 23, 2010 "The Guardian" -- This year the nuclear bomb turns 65 – an appropriate age, by international standards, for compulsory retirement. But do our leaders have the courage and wisdom to rid the planet of this ultimate menace? The five-yearly review of the ailing nuclear non-proliferation treaty, currently under way at the United Nations in New York, will test the strength of governments' commitment to a nuclear-weapon-free world.
If they are serious about realising this vision, they will work now to shift the focus from the failed policy of nuclear arms control, which assumes that a select few states can be trusted with these weapons, to nuclear abolition. Just as we have outlawed other categories of particularly inhuman and indiscriminate weapons – from biological and chemical agents to anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions – we must now turn our attention to outlawing the most iniquitous weapons of all.
Gains in nuclear disarmament to date have come much too slowly. More than 23,000 nuclear arms remain in global stockpiles, breeding enmity and mistrust among nations, and casting a shadow over us all. None of the nuclear-armed countries appears to be preparing for a future without these terrifying devices. Their failure to disarm has spurred nuclear proliferation, and will continue to destabilise the planet unless we radically alter our trajectory now. Forty years after the NPT entered into force, we should seriously question whether we are on track to abolition.
Disarmament is not an option for governments to take up or ignore. It is a moral duty owed by them to their own citizens, and to humanity as a whole. We must not await another Hiroshima or Nagasaki before finally mustering the political will to banish these weapons from global arsenals. Governments should agree at this NPT review conference to toss their nuclear arms into the dustbin of history, along with those other monstrous evils of our time – slavery and apartheid.
Sceptics tell us, and have told us for many years, that we are wasting our time pursuing the dream of a world without nuclear weapons, as it can never be realised. But more than a few people said the same about ending entrenched racial segregation in South Africa and abolishing slavery in the United States. Often they had a perceived interest in maintaining the status quo. Systems and policies that devalue human life, and deprive us all of our right to live in peace with each other, are rarely able to withstand the pressure created by a highly organised public that is determined to see change.
The most obvious and realistic path to a nuclear-weapon-free world is for nations to negotiate a legally binding ban, which would include a timeline for elimination and establish an institutional framework to ensure compliance. Two-thirds of all governments have called for such a treaty, known as a nuclear weapons convention, and UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has voiced his support for the idea. Only the nuclear weapon states and Nato members are holding us back.
Successful efforts to prohibit other classes of weapons provide evidence that, where there is political momentum and widespread popular support, obstacles which may at first appear insurmountable can very often be torn down. Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration.
Last April in the Czech capital, Prague, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, but he warned that nations probably would not eliminate their arsenals in his lifetime. I am three decades older than the US president, yet I am confident that both of us will live to see the day when the last nuclear weapon is dismantled. We just need to think outside the bomb.
May 23, 2010 "The Guardian" -- This year the nuclear bomb turns 65 – an appropriate age, by international standards, for compulsory retirement. But do our leaders have the courage and wisdom to rid the planet of this ultimate menace? The five-yearly review of the ailing nuclear non-proliferation treaty, currently under way at the United Nations in New York, will test the strength of governments' commitment to a nuclear-weapon-free world.
If they are serious about realising this vision, they will work now to shift the focus from the failed policy of nuclear arms control, which assumes that a select few states can be trusted with these weapons, to nuclear abolition. Just as we have outlawed other categories of particularly inhuman and indiscriminate weapons – from biological and chemical agents to anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions – we must now turn our attention to outlawing the most iniquitous weapons of all.
Gains in nuclear disarmament to date have come much too slowly. More than 23,000 nuclear arms remain in global stockpiles, breeding enmity and mistrust among nations, and casting a shadow over us all. None of the nuclear-armed countries appears to be preparing for a future without these terrifying devices. Their failure to disarm has spurred nuclear proliferation, and will continue to destabilise the planet unless we radically alter our trajectory now. Forty years after the NPT entered into force, we should seriously question whether we are on track to abolition.
Disarmament is not an option for governments to take up or ignore. It is a moral duty owed by them to their own citizens, and to humanity as a whole. We must not await another Hiroshima or Nagasaki before finally mustering the political will to banish these weapons from global arsenals. Governments should agree at this NPT review conference to toss their nuclear arms into the dustbin of history, along with those other monstrous evils of our time – slavery and apartheid.
Sceptics tell us, and have told us for many years, that we are wasting our time pursuing the dream of a world without nuclear weapons, as it can never be realised. But more than a few people said the same about ending entrenched racial segregation in South Africa and abolishing slavery in the United States. Often they had a perceived interest in maintaining the status quo. Systems and policies that devalue human life, and deprive us all of our right to live in peace with each other, are rarely able to withstand the pressure created by a highly organised public that is determined to see change.
The most obvious and realistic path to a nuclear-weapon-free world is for nations to negotiate a legally binding ban, which would include a timeline for elimination and establish an institutional framework to ensure compliance. Two-thirds of all governments have called for such a treaty, known as a nuclear weapons convention, and UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has voiced his support for the idea. Only the nuclear weapon states and Nato members are holding us back.
Successful efforts to prohibit other classes of weapons provide evidence that, where there is political momentum and widespread popular support, obstacles which may at first appear insurmountable can very often be torn down. Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration.
Last April in the Czech capital, Prague, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, but he warned that nations probably would not eliminate their arsenals in his lifetime. I am three decades older than the US president, yet I am confident that both of us will live to see the day when the last nuclear weapon is dismantled. We just need to think outside the bomb.
Rand Paul and Israel
Tea Party Candidates Are Owned By Israel?
By Philip Klein
May 23, 2010 "American Spectator" 04/22/10 -- I've obtained a document that the Rand Paul campaign is circulating to those interested in his views on Israel, and it's interesting to see how the positions he's taking as a Republican Senate candidate in Kentucky differ from those adopted by his father, Rep. Ron Paul, a harsh critic of U.S.-Israel ties.
"Israel and the United States have a special relationship," Rand's position paper begins. "With our shared history and common values, the American and Israeli people have formed a bond that unites us across the many thousands of miles between our countries and calls us to work together towards peace and prosperity for our countries."
Rand goes on to support free trade with Israel, call for divestment from Iran, and "strongly object to the arrogant approach of (the) Obama administration" toward the peace process. "Only Israel can decide what is in her security interest, not America and certainly not the United Nations," he asserts.
In one clear departure from his father, Rand states that:
"As a United States Senator, I would never vote to condemn Israel for defending herself.
Whether it is fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, combating Hamas-linked terrorists in Gaza or dealing with potential nuclear threats in the Persian Gulf, Israeli military actions are completely up to the leaders and military of Israel, and Israel alone."
By contrast, when Israel retaliated against Hamas in Gaza to stop rockets from being fired toward Israeli civilians, his father rushed to condemn Israel. In a YouTube video, Ron Paul called it a "pretty sad day for the whole world" that he said reflected the spread of the idea of pre-emptive war. He went further, by saying the fact that the United States provides aid to Israel and did nothing to try and stop the military action made the U.S. complicit. He said the action would "antagonize" the Arab-Muslim world and warned that "we’ll suffer the consequences."
Continued U.S. support for Israel is part of Ron Paul's broader view of foreign policy and the concept of "blowback." Rand Paul focuses his statement on condemning foreign aid to enemies of Israel, saying that, "In the Senate, I would strive to eliminate all aid to countries that threaten Israel." But he doesn't address the issue of aid to Israel itself.
Read the full statement HERE...
Ron Paul Condemns Israeli Preventive War Strategy, US Militarism/Empire Building:
By Philip Klein
May 23, 2010 "American Spectator" 04/22/10 -- I've obtained a document that the Rand Paul campaign is circulating to those interested in his views on Israel, and it's interesting to see how the positions he's taking as a Republican Senate candidate in Kentucky differ from those adopted by his father, Rep. Ron Paul, a harsh critic of U.S.-Israel ties.
"Israel and the United States have a special relationship," Rand's position paper begins. "With our shared history and common values, the American and Israeli people have formed a bond that unites us across the many thousands of miles between our countries and calls us to work together towards peace and prosperity for our countries."
Rand goes on to support free trade with Israel, call for divestment from Iran, and "strongly object to the arrogant approach of (the) Obama administration" toward the peace process. "Only Israel can decide what is in her security interest, not America and certainly not the United Nations," he asserts.
In one clear departure from his father, Rand states that:
"As a United States Senator, I would never vote to condemn Israel for defending herself.
Whether it is fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, combating Hamas-linked terrorists in Gaza or dealing with potential nuclear threats in the Persian Gulf, Israeli military actions are completely up to the leaders and military of Israel, and Israel alone."
By contrast, when Israel retaliated against Hamas in Gaza to stop rockets from being fired toward Israeli civilians, his father rushed to condemn Israel. In a YouTube video, Ron Paul called it a "pretty sad day for the whole world" that he said reflected the spread of the idea of pre-emptive war. He went further, by saying the fact that the United States provides aid to Israel and did nothing to try and stop the military action made the U.S. complicit. He said the action would "antagonize" the Arab-Muslim world and warned that "we’ll suffer the consequences."
Continued U.S. support for Israel is part of Ron Paul's broader view of foreign policy and the concept of "blowback." Rand Paul focuses his statement on condemning foreign aid to enemies of Israel, saying that, "In the Senate, I would strive to eliminate all aid to countries that threaten Israel." But he doesn't address the issue of aid to Israel itself.
Read the full statement HERE...
Ron Paul Condemns Israeli Preventive War Strategy, US Militarism/Empire Building:
Monday, May 24, 2010
Dylan Ratigan on the Gulf Oil Spill
"BP has managed to Privatize the profits and socialize the risk..."
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The Dylan Ratigan Show: A Truth-Teller in a Sea of Corporate Mendacity
Dylan Ratigan on Financial Reform Legislation:
MSNBC host critiques President Barack Obama's speech to Wall Street
Msnbc's Dylan Ratigan offers his analysis of President Barack Obama's speech to Wall Street about financial reform.
The Good: The president had strong language for backing real derivative reforms.
The Bad: Vague language about the “Volcker Rule” will not stop too big to fail; but a plan like this for breaking up the current mega-banks and limiting their liabilities will.
The Missing: None of this matters while our cops still work for the crooks.
To wit: Our main form of protection against these kinds of financial criminals, the SEC, remains woefully underfunded. The revolving door between government regulators and the high-paying banks they supposedly regulate remains as fluid as ever. Does it get any scarier than White House counsel jumping from President Obama’s side one day to Lloyd Blankfein’s the next? Actually, I guess it does when institutions that should fear the government instead now just declare all out war.
Meanwhile, the complicit ratings agencies remain a government-sponsored cartel paid by the banks for their favorable grades.
But what is the final backstop that is supposed to protect us next time around under this new plan? Well, Secretary Timothy Geithner explained today on "Morning Joe" that they would be able to stop the next bailout if only they had the authority to do so. Then finally, they could do things like wipe out equity holders, replace management; you know, kind of like the same steps that they were somehow magically able to do with GM.
But we all know the truth – no one will do that to the banks until they are no longer "too big to fail." As William Black so eloquently told Congress this week, Mr. Geithner and Chairman Bernanke already had that chance to do this to the big banks last time around and they chickened out.
The only way to keep this from happening again is to break up these big banks now and it is up to us to find people with the guts to do so. Hopefully, one of them will be our current President.
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Ratigan: Break up big banks, nowMSNBC host critiques President Barack Obama's speech to Wall Street
Msnbc's Dylan Ratigan offers his analysis of President Barack Obama's speech to Wall Street about financial reform.
The Good: The president had strong language for backing real derivative reforms.
The Bad: Vague language about the “Volcker Rule” will not stop too big to fail; but a plan like this for breaking up the current mega-banks and limiting their liabilities will.
The Missing: None of this matters while our cops still work for the crooks.
To wit: Our main form of protection against these kinds of financial criminals, the SEC, remains woefully underfunded. The revolving door between government regulators and the high-paying banks they supposedly regulate remains as fluid as ever. Does it get any scarier than White House counsel jumping from President Obama’s side one day to Lloyd Blankfein’s the next? Actually, I guess it does when institutions that should fear the government instead now just declare all out war.
Meanwhile, the complicit ratings agencies remain a government-sponsored cartel paid by the banks for their favorable grades.
But what is the final backstop that is supposed to protect us next time around under this new plan? Well, Secretary Timothy Geithner explained today on "Morning Joe" that they would be able to stop the next bailout if only they had the authority to do so. Then finally, they could do things like wipe out equity holders, replace management; you know, kind of like the same steps that they were somehow magically able to do with GM.
But we all know the truth – no one will do that to the banks until they are no longer "too big to fail." As William Black so eloquently told Congress this week, Mr. Geithner and Chairman Bernanke already had that chance to do this to the big banks last time around and they chickened out.
The only way to keep this from happening again is to break up these big banks now and it is up to us to find people with the guts to do so. Hopefully, one of them will be our current President.
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Update
Video - Times-Picayune - NOLA.com
The Times-Picayune's Bob Marshall gives latest news on the oil spill
The Times-Picayune's Bob Marshall gives latest news on the oil spill
| Gulf of Mexico oil spill update May 22 |
Graphic Shows How Leaking Oil Well Could be Plugged by 'top kill' method
By Dan Swenson,
The Times-Picayune
May 18, 2010, 8:30AM
Later this week, BP will perform a "top kill" on the oil well. The process requires injecting 40 barrels a minute of "kill mud" into the broken well and then sealing it with cement. The material will be pumped at high pressure down the choke and kill lines of the blowout preventer, which failed to seal the well after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20. Choke and kill lines are used to control the amount and pressure of drilling mud in the wellbore, so that surges of oil and natural gas can be kept under control.
BP had initially planned to precede the top kill with a "junk shot," pumping debris such as golf balls and shredded tires into the blowout preventer to clog the leak, before adding the mud. But BP decided not to do the junk shot under concerns that it might cause more damage. BP spokesman Mark Proegler said the junk shot carried certain risks, specifically that the debris could shoot through the well causing more oil to leak.
The Times-Picayune
May 18, 2010, 8:30AM
Later this week, BP will perform a "top kill" on the oil well. The process requires injecting 40 barrels a minute of "kill mud" into the broken well and then sealing it with cement. The material will be pumped at high pressure down the choke and kill lines of the blowout preventer, which failed to seal the well after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20. Choke and kill lines are used to control the amount and pressure of drilling mud in the wellbore, so that surges of oil and natural gas can be kept under control.
BP had initially planned to precede the top kill with a "junk shot," pumping debris such as golf balls and shredded tires into the blowout preventer to clog the leak, before adding the mud. But BP decided not to do the junk shot under concerns that it might cause more damage. BP spokesman Mark Proegler said the junk shot carried certain risks, specifically that the debris could shoot through the well causing more oil to leak.
As spill grows, oil soaks delicate marshes, birds
By GREG BLUESTEIN and MATTHEW BROWN,
Associated Press
Sunday, May 23, 2010
BARATARIA BAY, La. – As officials approached to survey the damage the Gulf oil spill caused in coastal marshes, some brown pelicans couldn't fly away Sunday. All they could do was hobble.
Several pelicans were coated in oil on Barataria Bay off Louisiana, their usually brown and white feathers now jet black. Pelican eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk, and new hatchlings and nests were also coated with crude.
It is unclear if the area can even be cleaned, or if the birds can be saved. It is also unknown how much of the Gulf Coast will end up looking the same way because of a well that has spewed untold millions of gallons of oil since an offshore rig exploded more than a month ago.
"As we talk, a total of more than 65 miles of our shoreline now has been oiled," said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who announced new efforts to keep the spill from spreading.
A mile-long tube operating for about a week has siphoned off more than half a million gallons in the past week, but it began sucking up oil at a slower rate over the weekend. Even at its best the effort did not capture all the oil leaking, and the next attempt to stanch the flow won't be put into action until at least Tuesday.
With oil pushing at least 12 miles into Louisiana's marshes and two major pelican rookeries now coated in crude, Jindal said the state has begun work on chain of berms, reinforced with containment booms, that would skirt the state's coastline.
Jindal, who visited one of the affected nesting grounds Sunday, said the berms would close the door on oil still pouring from a mile-deep gusher about 50 miles out in the Gulf. The berms would be made with sandbags and sand hauled in; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also is considering a broader plan that would use dredging to build sand berms across more of the barrier islands.
At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf, though some scientists have said they believe the spill already surpasses the 11 million-gallon 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska as the worst in U.S. history.
Obama administration officials continued defending their response while criticizing that of BP PLC, which leased the rig and is responsible for the cleanup. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he is "not completely" confident that BP knows what it's doing.
"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said. But federal officials have acknowledged that BP has expertise that they lack in stopping the deep-water leak.
In Barataria Bay, orange oil had made its way a good 6 inches onto the shore, coating grasses and the nests of brown pelicans in mangrove trees. Just six months ago, the birds had been removed from the federal endangered species list.
The pelicans struggled to clean the crude from their bodies, splashing in the water and preening themselves. One stood at the edge of the island with its wings lifted slightly, its head drooping — so encrusted in oil it couldn't fly.
Wildlife officials tried to rescue oil-soaked pelicans Sunday, but they suspended their efforts after spooking the birds. They weren't sure whether they would try again. U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Stacy Shelton said it is sometimes better to leave the animals alone than to disturb their colony.
Pelicans are especially vulnerable to oil. Not only could they eat tainted fish and feed it to their young, but they could die of hypothermia or drowning if they're soaked in oil.
Globs of oil have soaked through containment booms set up in the area. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said BP needed to send more booms. He said it would be up to federal wildlife authorities to decide whether to try to clean the oil that has already washed ashore.
"The question is, will it do more damage because this island is covered with the mess?" Nungesser said.
Officials have considered some drastic solutions for cleaning the oil — like burning or flooding the marshes — but they may have to sit back and let nature take care of it.
Plants and pelican eggs could wind up trampled to death by well-meaning humans. If the marshes are too dry, setting them ablaze could burn plants to the roots and obliterate the wetlands.
Flooding might help by floating out the oil, but it also could wash away the natural barriers to flooding from hurricanes and other disasters — much like hurricanes Katrina and Rita washed away marshlands in 2005. State and federal officials spent millions rebuilding the much-needed buffer against tropical storms.
The spill's impact now stretches across 150 miles, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.
On Sunday, oil reached an 1,150-acre oyster ground leased by Belle Chasse, La., fisherman Dave Cvitanovich. He said cleanup crews were stringing lines of absorbent boom along the surrounding marshes, but that still left large clumps of rust-colored oil floating over his oyster beds. Mature oysters might eventually filter out the crude and become fit for sale, but this year's crop of spate, or young oysters, will perish.
"Those will die in the oil," Cvitanovich said. "It's inevitable."
Each day the spill grows, so does anger with the government and BP. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa P. Jackson was headed Sunday to Louisiana, where she planned to visit with frustrated residents.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region on Monday to fly over affected areas and keep an eye on the response.
The leak may not be completely stopped until a relief well is dug, a project that could take months. Another effort that BP said will begin Tuesday at the earliest will shoot heavy mud, and then cement, into the blown well, but that method has never been attempted before in mile-deep water and engineers are not sure it will work.
The only thing that has kept leaking oil out of the Gulf so far is the mile-long tube siphoning oil from the well to a ship. BP spokesman John Curry told The Associated Press on Sunday that it siphoned some 57,120 gallons of oil within the past 24 hours, a sharp drop from the 92,400 gallons of oil a day that the device was sucking up on Friday.
The amount BP has collected in the mile-long tube has varied since it was installed last week. The device was siphoning 42,000 gallons of oil a day early that week, but at times Thursday, the siphon was collecting oil at a rate of as much as 210,000 gallons a day.
BP refused to provide day-by-day figures on how much oil the tube was diverting. Curry said the rate is expected to vary widely, in part because it is not just oil but also natural gas that is leaking. On Sunday, for instance, the siphon collected more than 7 million cubic feet of gas.
The head of the Senate's environmental committee, Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, has asked the Justice Department to determine whether BP made false and misleading claims about its ability to prevent a serious oil spill.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs also told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that Justice Department officials have been to the region gathering information about the spill. However, he wouldn't say whether the department has opened a criminal investigation.
President Barack Obama has named a special independent commission to review what happened. The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers; the rig sank two days later.
The 6 million-gallon figure for the spill is based on an initial BP estimate that about 210,000 gallons were spilling out each day. It became obvious the company had been underestimating the leak Thursday, when it started siphoning the oil at a 210,000-gallon-a-day rate while more crude spilled into the water. (Editor's emphasis throughout)
NOTE:
To date, the BP and Federal response to the Gulf Oil Disaster has been totally inadequate. It defies logic to believe that in over one month the best scientists and engineers in the world could not have devised a plan to completely shut off the flow of oil even if it meant destroying the well. For example, how about a non-nuclear bunker buster bomb strategically placed at the site of the vertical oil pipe's exit from the floor of the Gulf? Perhaps the problem has been an unwillingess to lose the potential revenue. At this point nothing would be beyond the realm of possibility where money is at stake. At the current rate of over 2 million gallons per day being spilled, the potential damage is virtually inestimable. The key here is to completely stop the flow of oil as soon as possible!
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Associated Press
Sunday, May 23, 2010
BARATARIA BAY, La. – As officials approached to survey the damage the Gulf oil spill caused in coastal marshes, some brown pelicans couldn't fly away Sunday. All they could do was hobble.
Several pelicans were coated in oil on Barataria Bay off Louisiana, their usually brown and white feathers now jet black. Pelican eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk, and new hatchlings and nests were also coated with crude.
It is unclear if the area can even be cleaned, or if the birds can be saved. It is also unknown how much of the Gulf Coast will end up looking the same way because of a well that has spewed untold millions of gallons of oil since an offshore rig exploded more than a month ago.
"As we talk, a total of more than 65 miles of our shoreline now has been oiled," said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who announced new efforts to keep the spill from spreading.
A mile-long tube operating for about a week has siphoned off more than half a million gallons in the past week, but it began sucking up oil at a slower rate over the weekend. Even at its best the effort did not capture all the oil leaking, and the next attempt to stanch the flow won't be put into action until at least Tuesday.
With oil pushing at least 12 miles into Louisiana's marshes and two major pelican rookeries now coated in crude, Jindal said the state has begun work on chain of berms, reinforced with containment booms, that would skirt the state's coastline.
Jindal, who visited one of the affected nesting grounds Sunday, said the berms would close the door on oil still pouring from a mile-deep gusher about 50 miles out in the Gulf. The berms would be made with sandbags and sand hauled in; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also is considering a broader plan that would use dredging to build sand berms across more of the barrier islands.
At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf, though some scientists have said they believe the spill already surpasses the 11 million-gallon 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska as the worst in U.S. history.
Obama administration officials continued defending their response while criticizing that of BP PLC, which leased the rig and is responsible for the cleanup. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he is "not completely" confident that BP knows what it's doing.
"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said. But federal officials have acknowledged that BP has expertise that they lack in stopping the deep-water leak.
In Barataria Bay, orange oil had made its way a good 6 inches onto the shore, coating grasses and the nests of brown pelicans in mangrove trees. Just six months ago, the birds had been removed from the federal endangered species list.
The pelicans struggled to clean the crude from their bodies, splashing in the water and preening themselves. One stood at the edge of the island with its wings lifted slightly, its head drooping — so encrusted in oil it couldn't fly.
Wildlife officials tried to rescue oil-soaked pelicans Sunday, but they suspended their efforts after spooking the birds. They weren't sure whether they would try again. U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Stacy Shelton said it is sometimes better to leave the animals alone than to disturb their colony.
Pelicans are especially vulnerable to oil. Not only could they eat tainted fish and feed it to their young, but they could die of hypothermia or drowning if they're soaked in oil.
Globs of oil have soaked through containment booms set up in the area. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said BP needed to send more booms. He said it would be up to federal wildlife authorities to decide whether to try to clean the oil that has already washed ashore.
"The question is, will it do more damage because this island is covered with the mess?" Nungesser said.
Officials have considered some drastic solutions for cleaning the oil — like burning or flooding the marshes — but they may have to sit back and let nature take care of it.
Plants and pelican eggs could wind up trampled to death by well-meaning humans. If the marshes are too dry, setting them ablaze could burn plants to the roots and obliterate the wetlands.
Flooding might help by floating out the oil, but it also could wash away the natural barriers to flooding from hurricanes and other disasters — much like hurricanes Katrina and Rita washed away marshlands in 2005. State and federal officials spent millions rebuilding the much-needed buffer against tropical storms.
The spill's impact now stretches across 150 miles, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.
On Sunday, oil reached an 1,150-acre oyster ground leased by Belle Chasse, La., fisherman Dave Cvitanovich. He said cleanup crews were stringing lines of absorbent boom along the surrounding marshes, but that still left large clumps of rust-colored oil floating over his oyster beds. Mature oysters might eventually filter out the crude and become fit for sale, but this year's crop of spate, or young oysters, will perish.
"Those will die in the oil," Cvitanovich said. "It's inevitable."
Each day the spill grows, so does anger with the government and BP. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa P. Jackson was headed Sunday to Louisiana, where she planned to visit with frustrated residents.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region on Monday to fly over affected areas and keep an eye on the response.
The leak may not be completely stopped until a relief well is dug, a project that could take months. Another effort that BP said will begin Tuesday at the earliest will shoot heavy mud, and then cement, into the blown well, but that method has never been attempted before in mile-deep water and engineers are not sure it will work.
The only thing that has kept leaking oil out of the Gulf so far is the mile-long tube siphoning oil from the well to a ship. BP spokesman John Curry told The Associated Press on Sunday that it siphoned some 57,120 gallons of oil within the past 24 hours, a sharp drop from the 92,400 gallons of oil a day that the device was sucking up on Friday.
The amount BP has collected in the mile-long tube has varied since it was installed last week. The device was siphoning 42,000 gallons of oil a day early that week, but at times Thursday, the siphon was collecting oil at a rate of as much as 210,000 gallons a day.
BP refused to provide day-by-day figures on how much oil the tube was diverting. Curry said the rate is expected to vary widely, in part because it is not just oil but also natural gas that is leaking. On Sunday, for instance, the siphon collected more than 7 million cubic feet of gas.
The head of the Senate's environmental committee, Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, has asked the Justice Department to determine whether BP made false and misleading claims about its ability to prevent a serious oil spill.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs also told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that Justice Department officials have been to the region gathering information about the spill. However, he wouldn't say whether the department has opened a criminal investigation.
President Barack Obama has named a special independent commission to review what happened. The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers; the rig sank two days later.
The 6 million-gallon figure for the spill is based on an initial BP estimate that about 210,000 gallons were spilling out each day. It became obvious the company had been underestimating the leak Thursday, when it started siphoning the oil at a 210,000-gallon-a-day rate while more crude spilled into the water. (Editor's emphasis throughout)
NOTE:
To date, the BP and Federal response to the Gulf Oil Disaster has been totally inadequate. It defies logic to believe that in over one month the best scientists and engineers in the world could not have devised a plan to completely shut off the flow of oil even if it meant destroying the well. For example, how about a non-nuclear bunker buster bomb strategically placed at the site of the vertical oil pipe's exit from the floor of the Gulf? Perhaps the problem has been an unwillingess to lose the potential revenue. At this point nothing would be beyond the realm of possibility where money is at stake. At the current rate of over 2 million gallons per day being spilled, the potential damage is virtually inestimable. The key here is to completely stop the flow of oil as soon as possible!
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Creeping Terror: The New American Way of War
By Chris Floyd
May 20, 2010 "Empire Burlesque" -- The American way of war is a marvelously ingenious thing. And thoroughly modern too. No more of that "don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes" jazz; your modern "warfighter" (they aren't called "soldiers" anymore, you know) prefers to view his targets through, say, a computer screen safely ensconced back in the Homeland or thousands of feet in the sky, or else through the unearthly greenish glow of night-vision scopes. And open combat? Forget it. The new American way is the sneak attack on civilian homes in the dead of night. You creep up, you break in, you cap a few ragheads, then you run away. What glory! What magnificent valor!
The Washington Post reports on yet another glorious page in the annals of the exceptional nation "intended by God to be a light set on a hill to serve as a beacon of hope and Christian charity to a lost and dying world." It's the usual story. Secret "warfighters" suddenly attack a civilian compound in the middle of the night. This, not surprisingly, provokes a few shots from some of the inhabitants, who have no idea who is attacking their home. The superior firepower of the beacons of hope and Christian charity quickly overcome the piddling arms of the demonic heathens, however, and in a trice, there are dead gook – sorry, raghead – bodies all around. Including children – you've got to have children in your body count these days, if you want to be a thoroughly modern Christian beacon warfighter. Then you and your brave band of secret warriors run away and prepare for the next bold raid.
Naturally, the local losers come out and boo-hoo-hoo over their dead relatives, as if no one had ever seen their son shot to death in front of their eyes before. They trot out all their evidence that the victims had nothing to do with the "insurgents" (which is what your modern warfighter calls anyone who objects to the presence of armed foreigners prowling all over their land), they keen and wail and do all the other animalistic stuff that primitives do when one of the pack snuffs it. "Oh, I lost my son, oh my son, my precious son," etc., etc. – as if there's not a dozen more when he came from; you know how those people breed.
But anyway, here's the beauty part: if the local dorky darkies start to complain, you just say, "Hey man, we came under fire! Those monkeys shot at us when we came sneaking up on their house in the middle of the night with our guns drawn. That proves they were bad guys. We had to take them out."
That's it. That's the drill. It happens virtually every week now in Afghanistan – just as it happened time and again in Iraq, back when some guy named Stanley McChrystal was in charge of covert ops for that evil, reactionary throwback, George W. Bush. Whatever happened to old Stan anyway? Oh yeah; the nice, progressive, thoroughly modern Barack Obama put him in charge of the whole shooting match in Afghanistan, as well as the not-so-secret war of assassination in Pakistan. And oddly enough, the slaughter of civilians in both of these target countries has been rising ever since.
But hey, that's just how we roll nowadays. That's the American way of war. Creep, sneak, kill, run, lie – repeat. Sure, it only makes things worse, creates more enemies, keeps the wars going. But isn't that the point? Check it out, baby: they're piling an extra $33.5 billion of prime war pork on top of the mountain of Terror War funding already laid out for this year! And you need a whole lot of blood to wash down that meat – and a whole lot of new enemies to make sure the feast never ends.
NOTE:
What Americans seem to have forgotten is the default moral position that war should only be resorted to as a very last resort ala "Just War Doctrinal" principles. Since 1963, a state of constant war has been accepted as normal by the populace. This must be changed. What is being done in our names is morally reprehensible and completely unjustifiable. To change it however, given the power of the MIMIC, the grass roots of American society must rise to the challenge of insisting on a moral/ethical foreign policy.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
May 20, 2010 "Empire Burlesque" -- The American way of war is a marvelously ingenious thing. And thoroughly modern too. No more of that "don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes" jazz; your modern "warfighter" (they aren't called "soldiers" anymore, you know) prefers to view his targets through, say, a computer screen safely ensconced back in the Homeland or thousands of feet in the sky, or else through the unearthly greenish glow of night-vision scopes. And open combat? Forget it. The new American way is the sneak attack on civilian homes in the dead of night. You creep up, you break in, you cap a few ragheads, then you run away. What glory! What magnificent valor!
The Washington Post reports on yet another glorious page in the annals of the exceptional nation "intended by God to be a light set on a hill to serve as a beacon of hope and Christian charity to a lost and dying world." It's the usual story. Secret "warfighters" suddenly attack a civilian compound in the middle of the night. This, not surprisingly, provokes a few shots from some of the inhabitants, who have no idea who is attacking their home. The superior firepower of the beacons of hope and Christian charity quickly overcome the piddling arms of the demonic heathens, however, and in a trice, there are dead gook – sorry, raghead – bodies all around. Including children – you've got to have children in your body count these days, if you want to be a thoroughly modern Christian beacon warfighter. Then you and your brave band of secret warriors run away and prepare for the next bold raid.
Naturally, the local losers come out and boo-hoo-hoo over their dead relatives, as if no one had ever seen their son shot to death in front of their eyes before. They trot out all their evidence that the victims had nothing to do with the "insurgents" (which is what your modern warfighter calls anyone who objects to the presence of armed foreigners prowling all over their land), they keen and wail and do all the other animalistic stuff that primitives do when one of the pack snuffs it. "Oh, I lost my son, oh my son, my precious son," etc., etc. – as if there's not a dozen more when he came from; you know how those people breed.
But anyway, here's the beauty part: if the local dorky darkies start to complain, you just say, "Hey man, we came under fire! Those monkeys shot at us when we came sneaking up on their house in the middle of the night with our guns drawn. That proves they were bad guys. We had to take them out."
That's it. That's the drill. It happens virtually every week now in Afghanistan – just as it happened time and again in Iraq, back when some guy named Stanley McChrystal was in charge of covert ops for that evil, reactionary throwback, George W. Bush. Whatever happened to old Stan anyway? Oh yeah; the nice, progressive, thoroughly modern Barack Obama put him in charge of the whole shooting match in Afghanistan, as well as the not-so-secret war of assassination in Pakistan. And oddly enough, the slaughter of civilians in both of these target countries has been rising ever since.
But hey, that's just how we roll nowadays. That's the American way of war. Creep, sneak, kill, run, lie – repeat. Sure, it only makes things worse, creates more enemies, keeps the wars going. But isn't that the point? Check it out, baby: they're piling an extra $33.5 billion of prime war pork on top of the mountain of Terror War funding already laid out for this year! And you need a whole lot of blood to wash down that meat – and a whole lot of new enemies to make sure the feast never ends.
NOTE:
What Americans seem to have forgotten is the default moral position that war should only be resorted to as a very last resort ala "Just War Doctrinal" principles. Since 1963, a state of constant war has been accepted as normal by the populace. This must be changed. What is being done in our names is morally reprehensible and completely unjustifiable. To change it however, given the power of the MIMIC, the grass roots of American society must rise to the challenge of insisting on a moral/ethical foreign policy.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Wesley Clark Warns that AIPAC is Pushing for War with Iran
Zionist Lobby Pursues American attack on Iran for "benefit" of Israel...
"Israel Told US to Bomb Iran or the Jewish State would do so..."
"Israel Told US to Bomb Iran or the Jewish State would do so..."
Congressman Ron Paul Warns of Iranian "Gulf of Tonkin" Incident
"Rumors abound about when not if Iran will be bombed by either the United States or Israel, possibly with Nuclear Weapons..."
BP: Mile-long tube collecting less oil than before
By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer
May 23, 2010
Associated Press
AP – Pelicans stand in oily water and grass on island that is home to hundreds of brown pelican nests as …
COVINGTON, La. – Three top Obama administration officials are returning to the Gulf Coast to monitor the massive oil spill that seems to have no end in sight, as BP PLC officials said Sunday that one of their efforts to slow the leak wasn't working as effectively as before.
BP spokesman John Curry told The Associated Press on Sunday that a mile-long tube inserted into the leaking well siphoned some 57,120 gallons of oil within the past 24 hours, a sharp drop from the 92,400 gallons of oil a day that the device was sucking up on Friday. However, the company has said the amount of oil siphoned will vary widely from day to day.
Engineers are working furiously to stem the growing ooze as more wildlife and delicate coastal wetlands are tainted despite the oil-absorbing booms placed around shorelines to protect them.
A pelican colony off Louisiana's coast was awash in oil Saturday, and an Associated Press photographer saw several birds and their eggs coated in the ooze while nests rested in mangroves precariously close to the crude that had washed in. Workers had surrounded the island with the booms, but puddles of oil had seeped through the barrier.
Anger with the government and BP, which leased the rig and is responsible for the cleanup, has boiled over as the spill spreads. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa P. Jackson was headed Sunday to Louisiana, where she planned to visit with frustrated residents.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region on Monday to fly over affected areas and keep an eye on the response.
Meanwhile, the official responsible for the oversight of the month-old spill response said he understands the discontent among residents who want to know what's next.
"If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I'm frustrated, too," said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen. "Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can't do something about a very big problem."
President Barack Obama also has named a special independent commission to review what happened. The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers, and sank two days later. At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico since, though a growing number of scientists have said they believe it's more.
The visits from top Obama chiefs come as BP said it will be at least Tuesday before engineers can shoot mud into the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf, yet another delay in the effort to stop the oil.
A so-called "top kill" has been tried on land but never 5,000 feet underwater, so scientists and engineers have spent the past week preparing and taking measurements to make sure it will stop the oil that has been spewing into the sea for a month. They originally hoped to try it as early as this weekend.
"It's taking time to get everything set up," BP spokesman Tom Mueller said. "They're taking their time. It's never been done before. We've got to make sure everything is right."
Crews will shoot heavy mud into a crippled piece of equipment atop the well. Then engineers will direct cement at the well to permanently stop the oil.
As the spill spreads deeper into vulnerable marshes, some have called for federal officials to take over the response. But Allen said the government must hold BP accountable. After the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Alaska, Congress dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents — including paying for all cleanup — with oversight by federal agencies.
BP has tried and failed several times to halt the gusher, and has had some success with the mile-long tube.
Engineers are also developing several other plans in case the top kill doesn't work, including an effort to shoot knotted rope, pieces of tire and other material — known as a junk shot — to plug the blowout preventer, which was meant to shut off the oil in case of an accident but did not work.
___
May 23, 2010
Associated Press
AP – Pelicans stand in oily water and grass on island that is home to hundreds of brown pelican nests as …
COVINGTON, La. – Three top Obama administration officials are returning to the Gulf Coast to monitor the massive oil spill that seems to have no end in sight, as BP PLC officials said Sunday that one of their efforts to slow the leak wasn't working as effectively as before.
BP spokesman John Curry told The Associated Press on Sunday that a mile-long tube inserted into the leaking well siphoned some 57,120 gallons of oil within the past 24 hours, a sharp drop from the 92,400 gallons of oil a day that the device was sucking up on Friday. However, the company has said the amount of oil siphoned will vary widely from day to day.
Engineers are working furiously to stem the growing ooze as more wildlife and delicate coastal wetlands are tainted despite the oil-absorbing booms placed around shorelines to protect them.
A pelican colony off Louisiana's coast was awash in oil Saturday, and an Associated Press photographer saw several birds and their eggs coated in the ooze while nests rested in mangroves precariously close to the crude that had washed in. Workers had surrounded the island with the booms, but puddles of oil had seeped through the barrier.
Anger with the government and BP, which leased the rig and is responsible for the cleanup, has boiled over as the spill spreads. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa P. Jackson was headed Sunday to Louisiana, where she planned to visit with frustrated residents.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region on Monday to fly over affected areas and keep an eye on the response.
Meanwhile, the official responsible for the oversight of the month-old spill response said he understands the discontent among residents who want to know what's next.
"If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I'm frustrated, too," said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen. "Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can't do something about a very big problem."
President Barack Obama also has named a special independent commission to review what happened. The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers, and sank two days later. At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico since, though a growing number of scientists have said they believe it's more.
The visits from top Obama chiefs come as BP said it will be at least Tuesday before engineers can shoot mud into the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf, yet another delay in the effort to stop the oil.
A so-called "top kill" has been tried on land but never 5,000 feet underwater, so scientists and engineers have spent the past week preparing and taking measurements to make sure it will stop the oil that has been spewing into the sea for a month. They originally hoped to try it as early as this weekend.
"It's taking time to get everything set up," BP spokesman Tom Mueller said. "They're taking their time. It's never been done before. We've got to make sure everything is right."
Crews will shoot heavy mud into a crippled piece of equipment atop the well. Then engineers will direct cement at the well to permanently stop the oil.
As the spill spreads deeper into vulnerable marshes, some have called for federal officials to take over the response. But Allen said the government must hold BP accountable. After the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Alaska, Congress dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents — including paying for all cleanup — with oversight by federal agencies.
BP has tried and failed several times to halt the gusher, and has had some success with the mile-long tube.
Engineers are also developing several other plans in case the top kill doesn't work, including an effort to shoot knotted rope, pieces of tire and other material — known as a junk shot — to plug the blowout preventer, which was meant to shut off the oil in case of an accident but did not work.
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A Reader Asks: "When did Things Start Going South?"
This is not your Grandfather's America:
A motivated reader asked how things could have gotten to this point in the United States. Unfortunately, it largely dates to the end of WWII when Congress passed the National Security Act and in 1947 the former OSS was refashioned as the CIA. In the wake of Congressional action, the National Security Council was established which along with the CIA's clandestine services "branch" initiated a 60+ year slide into extra-constitutional government.
The heinous murder of John F. Kennedy in 1963 by his own National Security State marks the beginning of rule by shadow government the so-called "MIMIC" which has presided over the creation of a global empire and the Pax Americana which JFK rejected in the interest of true Peace. His undeniable turn away from constant war marked him for Assassination. A trillion+ dollar/year military budget has been utilized to enforce/maintain American hegemony throughout the world. Readers will not hear of it in the "Elite Media" which has been completely co-opted by the MIMIC.
It is tragic that both political parties in the United States are controlled by the MIMIC. To a large extent it is immaterial which party controls Congress or the White House. Should any President or candidate for President begin to threaten the ruling oligarchy, the fate which befell President Kennedy likely awaits them. The implications are obvious.
For those readers who wish to learn more about the Shadow/silent government which began in 1947 see the slide show carousel of recommended reference works featured on this site.
A motivated reader asked how things could have gotten to this point in the United States. Unfortunately, it largely dates to the end of WWII when Congress passed the National Security Act and in 1947 the former OSS was refashioned as the CIA. In the wake of Congressional action, the National Security Council was established which along with the CIA's clandestine services "branch" initiated a 60+ year slide into extra-constitutional government.
The heinous murder of John F. Kennedy in 1963 by his own National Security State marks the beginning of rule by shadow government the so-called "MIMIC" which has presided over the creation of a global empire and the Pax Americana which JFK rejected in the interest of true Peace. His undeniable turn away from constant war marked him for Assassination. A trillion+ dollar/year military budget has been utilized to enforce/maintain American hegemony throughout the world. Readers will not hear of it in the "Elite Media" which has been completely co-opted by the MIMIC.
It is tragic that both political parties in the United States are controlled by the MIMIC. To a large extent it is immaterial which party controls Congress or the White House. Should any President or candidate for President begin to threaten the ruling oligarchy, the fate which befell President Kennedy likely awaits them. The implications are obvious.
For those readers who wish to learn more about the Shadow/silent government which began in 1947 see the slide show carousel of recommended reference works featured on this site.
The Origin of America's Secret Government
The CIA and the Beginning of the American National Security State
NOTE:
It is amazing that PBS was able to produce a program like the above in 1987. It could not be done today where the elite media is completely under the control of the "MIMIC."
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
NOTE:
It is amazing that PBS was able to produce a program like the above in 1987. It could not be done today where the elite media is completely under the control of the "MIMIC."
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
More on False Flag Attacks at Jim Fetzer's Site
The Real Reasons Nation States Institute "False-Flag" Attacks and the Context of Principles by which they Occur
By Preston James*/ May 19, 2010
Throughout history the existence and reasons for the use of "false-flag" attacks have been understood only by insiders within the highest levels of government, the military and intel. Recently, after the 9/11 attacks the Internet (World Wide Web, WWW) has allowed citizen researchers to connect the dots and dig out and share information which previously would never have been so easily discovered and so widely available. Read it all...
FALSE FLAG - Operation "Gladio" - Worldwide Terror Campaign is but one example
By Preston James*/ May 19, 2010
Throughout history the existence and reasons for the use of "false-flag" attacks have been understood only by insiders within the highest levels of government, the military and intel. Recently, after the 9/11 attacks the Internet (World Wide Web, WWW) has allowed citizen researchers to connect the dots and dig out and share information which previously would never have been so easily discovered and so widely available. Read it all...
FALSE FLAG - Operation "Gladio" - Worldwide Terror Campaign is but one example
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