(Videos embedded in version at my blog)
BP has been trying to hide dead birds and other sealife.
Fox News reports that BP is trying to keep animal carcasses away from public view:
Local Gulf Coast residents and those monitoring turtles say that BP is removing carcasses at night to hide them from the public:
Jerry Cope and Charles Hambleton report:
The numbers of birds, fish, turtles, and mammals killed by the use of Corexit will never be known as the evidence strongly suggests that BP worked with the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA, private security contractors, and local law enforcement, all of which cooperated to conceal the operations disposing of the animals from the media and the public.The majority of the disposal operations were carried out under cover of darkness. The areas along the beaches and coastal Islands where the dead animals were collected were closed off by the U.S. Coast Guard. On shore, private contractors and local law enforcement officials kept off limits the areas where the remains of the dead animals were dumped, mainly at the Magnolia Springs landfill by Waste Management where armed guards controlled access. The nearby weigh station where the Waste Management trucks passed through with their cargoes was also restricted by at least one sheriff’s deputies in a patrol car, 24/7.
Robyn Hill, who was Beach Ambassador for the City of Gulf Shores until she became so ill she collapsed on the job one morning, was at a residential condominium property adjacent to the Gulf Shores beach when she smelled an overwhelming stench. She went to see where the odor was coming from and witnessed two contract workers dumping plastic bags full of dead birds and fish in a residential Waste Management dumpster, which was then protected by a security guard. Within five minutes, a Waste Management collection truck emptied the contents and the guard departed.
Independent biologists are also being blocked from investigating wildlife.
What’s the reason for this cover up?
I had assumed that all such shenanigans were just to keep the dead wildlife away from public view.
But as the Christian Science Monitor pointed out in June:
Federal laws makes BP liable for up to $50,000 per dead animal on the endangered species list, such as a Kemp’s Ridley turtle.
It’s not just the Kemp’s Ridley. Sperm whales and hawksbill turtles are also endangered animals living in the Gulf.
So are Brown pelicans, which have been hit hard by the oil spill.
In fact, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service lists 29 endangered species in the Gulf which could be harmed by the spill.
You already know that BP is trying to hide the amount of oil which has leaked into the Gulf in order to reduce the amount of fines it has to pay under the Clean Water Act (see this and this).
Similarly, BP is also trying to secretly dispose of endangered animals killed by the spill in order reduce its fines under the Endangered Species Act.
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Imagine, the government working with business to cover up wrong doings! Like that has never happened before! Let’s talk about doing away with Mark to Market, TARP, off balance sheet accounting in corporate and government books, and a long list of others going back to the Iran contra affair or the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Don’t worry, this too will fade into the past with no one being held accountable.
Amazing. We humans are capable of anything. Once we realize that the enlightenment values(however flawed and attenuated) that once to some extent animated the american polity/nation state/business/ have long left the scene its not surprising that these things go on. At a certain level the core ethical difference (save for far better media and well paid intellectual rationalizers) between some 3rd world despotic regime and the U.S. is minimal. What is troubling is the ever present “well they have to make a living” refrain in the U.S. Hiding animals, rioting for housing vouchers, attacking release of the wiki leaks on some tortured legalistic basis rather than alarm for the murder of women and children, the list goes on and on…..Frankly, 9th century Rome would have been a lot more pleasant, no ever present Obama, Clinton faces on 24/7, no Barey frank, no T.V. Oh and based on actual evidence would have lived longer (reduction in life expectancy was due to industrial revolution, the Athenians even urged men over 60 to stop fathering children–really the whole this is the best of times meme is tiresome as well as ignorant.
Hiding dead turtles–this is what its come to.
This is dumb, BP already burned up most of the animals they could find….
Also see: http://www.salon.com/news/louisiana_oil_spill/?story=/politics/war_room/2010/08/12/oil_spill_mother_jones
Sometimes when someone says, “there’s nothing to see here,” it is because there really is nothing to see.
Those pelicans, allegedly “hit hard”…how many have actually died? A couple of hundred. Sad, for sure. But nothing near the hysteria y’all have been fed.
There are over 60,000 pelicans in the Gulf. A handful of photos do not constitute a tragedy.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64N5L020100525
http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/Birds/Archives/2010/Pelicans-Oil.aspx
How could you arrive at your toll of “a couple of hundred” when BP (and government “security”) has so rigorously kept people from the coastline to prevent this very kind of monitoring? And 60,000 sounds like a small number for an entire species reliant on the Gulf as habitat, habitat now flooded with toxic chemicals, first oil (by accident?) and later with “Corexit,” deliberately for profit. There is no defence for BP, or the US corporate governance cartel in this very definite tragedy, nor for indefensible apologists like you.
Victoria, B.C. Canada
Check the links.
I’m not defending BP, I’m attacking the lazy media and the idiots who buy their factless storylines.
If you have better numbers, link to them.
Everytime I read an article about BP arguing there is some conspiracy to cover up the destruction from dispersants or the spill itself, I’m torn. The author, bless his heart, comes off as a crank agitating just to be irritating. BP and the government come off as incompetent at best. And the commenters pose and posture in a parallel universe.
I no longer know what to think. If the author is right, then I fear for our future because America is beyond redemption – and I get depressed. If the author is wrong, then I fear for our future because these people are destroying civil society with their delusions and partisan agendas – and I get depressed.
I comfort myself with the knowledge that whatever damage has occurred will be apparent soon enough. If BP et al. are successful in covering it up, then it must not have been very bad to begin with.
Neil D,
Do you work for the U.S. Department of the Interior? Or for BP?
If you don’t, you certainly could have fooled me.
To counter George Washington’s substantive argument, you give us a rhetorical argument.
Why would you try to counter substance (facts, evidence, documentation) with rhetoric (talk, persuasion), and not substance? Could it be that there is no substantive argument you can make in defense of your position?
DownSouth wrote:
“Why would you try to counter substance (facts, evidence, documentation) with rhetoric (talk, persuasion), and not substance?”
Fact doesn’t equal Truth
Evidence doesn’t equal Truth
Documentation doesn’t equal Truth
George’s post equals Talk/Persuasion
You are guilty of the same sin of which you accuse NeilD based on your reply. Do you work for a special interest group that is against the energy sector?
Confirmation bias is tough to overcome isn’t it?
Neil voices some skepticism about a grand conspiracy and you call him out as a propagandist and a fool. Your, and others, belief about this being a long-term catastrophe are just opinion and conjecture. Time will be the final arbiter.
The spill was awful and humans and animals died. That is tragic. However, there is enough uncertainty to the ultimate cost to nature to not berate those that disagree with your preconceived notion of the situation. In fact, Yves even posted a link to a seemingly very balanced assessment of the situation some time ago http://financialnewsexpress.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-oil-spill-too-shall-pass.html
In reality no one knows the truth yet. Don’t bash someone just because they don’t see things exactly the way you see them. It is concievable that this is an unmitigated disaster but it is also possible that it will turn out to be a non-event in a historical context.
Disclosure: I have no affiliation with anything related to the energy industry, I do have a second home on Ochlocknee Bay near Panacea, FL (a house maybe an overstatement but my family loves it), and I have a lot more faith in mother nature’s ability to heal than I do in humanity’s ability to irreparably harm her.
You should look into natures shelf life (ability to heal) some time ie hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands years, sure the kids might not get sick or misdiagnosed. Although we already know the propensity for large corporate hand washing now…don’t we.
Skippy…ahh green shoots never tested…nevermind eat it up.
“You should look into natures shelf life (ability to heal) some time ie hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands years”
Yes maybe and just maybe in a lot, I mean a lot, less time. Other oil spills haven’t required that scale of time anywhere that close for healing. Who knows in this situation? I guess you do! I will stand by my belief that you/”experts” and I don’t really know. Most of the time people have an agenda to promote. The oil companies, certainly. The environmentalists, certainly. I am in neither camp and will wait to see. Maybe I will die prematurely as a result of my being so naive, oh well.
Its you and other’s (people and wildlife) that I’m concerned about, your life[s and your offspring for generations to come. Just remember arsenic given in small doses over a long period will kill, it does not have to be one fatal dose and we are administering multiples of dose over a long time line….when will it be enough to kill us all or almost.
Skippy…personally I don’t…trust.
R.U. Kidding said:
“Fact doesn’t equal Truth
Evidence doesn’t equal Truth
Documentation doesn’t equal Truth”
Well I guess we’re just as well turn the clock back to the Dark Ages then, and forget all that silly nonsense about the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
BO believes in equal treatment under the law
He is treating BP the same way he treated wall street
This is a terrible disaster, but the fact that dead animals are removed at night does not necessarily mean that it’s done to avoid government oversight and possible fines. One would have to provide more evidence to prove that — otherwise, what we have is that the cleanup goes on day and night, as it should.
All activity at the spill site is being done under government oversight. It is hard to believe that the responsible agencies do not keep daily photographic record of dead animals on the beach. And when they are removed, available evidence suggests that they go to federal labs, where they are counted and examined:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64N5L020100525
Here is a fact sheet from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which employs hundreds of animal rescuers at the spill site:
If what “George Washington” says is correct, then all the above is fiction. Without more specific evidence, all we have is that some people saw that some dead animals were removed at night. I wouldn’t assume that this was done without the government’s knowledge.
BRITISH PETROLEUM has committed an ABOMINATION against the people and environment of the GULF of MEXICO. They have done it in the ordinary course of their routine business practices with government regulators in bed with them -in their case, literally.
You cite a ‘fact sheet’ and claim that “One would have to provide more evidence to prove that — otherwise, what we have is that the cleanup goes on day and night, as it should.”
The evidence British Petroleum needs for any credibility is the exercise of a FREE PRESS which has been refused illegally by British Petroleum at the point of a gun.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a rogue agency which, along with its equally ugly twin in the U.S. Department of the Interior, the MMS, is bought and paid for.
Funny how you so conveniently forgot about this:
The federal agency [Fish and Wildlife Service] charged with protecting endangered species like the brown pelican and the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle signed off on the Minerals Management Service’s conclusion that deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico posed no significant risk to wildlife, despite evidence that a spill of even moderate size could be disastrous, according to federal documents.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/us/06wildlife.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=2007%20september%20fish%20and%20wildlife&st=cse
Some more information on this from nola.com:
It is just possible, in other words, that Fox News is not the most reliable source of information on this either.
Amazing how the BP shills come out of the woodwork.
The propaganda campaign, a joint effort of BP and various government agencies, began the moment the spill began. Remember the 5,000 BOPD estimates touted both by BP and NOAA as sure truth? Then the next wave of lies and deceit used the same rhetorical strategy you use: “We don’t know what the true flow rate is, it’s impossible to estimate with any reliablility.”
And if BP didn’t have anything to hide, why were reporters refused access?
Well, so who is more believable? Fox or BP? Tough call there.
Fox News is only one of several sources that GW cites.
And again, if BP didn’t have anything to hide, why were reporters refused access?
Propaganda is issued by all sides. Learn to think critically.
Do you really believe “reporters” are interested in some Platonic truth?
Exactly! That is why I originally posted the Fact/Evidence/Documentation does not equal Truth to DownSouth. Both sides have “facts” to substantiate/confirm their own argument. However, just like in litigation both sides assemble facts with hopes for victory but only one side can have the truth.
Is BP downplaying the impact-most likely? Are environmentalists and/or end-of-worlders playing up the impact-most likely? Most everyone has an agenda.
“Amazing how the BP shills come out of the woodwork.”
Well this makes clear how good you are are figuring things out.
The issue being discussed was not BP’s role, but the alleged Obama administration’s collusion with BP to hide damage to wildlife. I find the “evidence” for this lacking at this point. George Washington presents two videos with his article, which he seems to find convincing. One is from Fox, which has some guy talking about currently circulating rumors. The other has an interview of Riki Ott with Olbermann. At the end of the interview, Olbermann appears somewhat uncomfortable and asks Ott for her evidence. The MSNBC transcript:
There may be evidence for the allegations out there, and we may see it some day, but I don’t think we have seen anything convincing yet, unless you consider the above convincing (Olbermann did not seem to). Another “interview” on HuffPo has someone who claims thousands of dead large animals on the outer islands, only every time word about that comes from a fisherman and they send out a plane they find that all the dead animals have all been stealthily removed overnight. At this point, all these rumors are of a truther/birther quality. I’m not taking a position — only stating that convincing evidence for US government corruption on this does not seem to be available at this point.
It’s ridiculous that BP gets the blame for every dead fish or turtle. Animals die ALL THE TIME. And then new ones come along. It’s perfectly natural. We call it “The Cycle of Life”. You can’t pin that one on BP. Of course people working to clean up the gulf will encounter the caracasses of dead animals, birds and fish as they do so. There is absolutely no evidence that any creature is dying in any greater numbers than usual.
Wait — that’s stretching things in the other direction. I think there is plenty of evidence that the oil has killed a lot of wildlife before its time. I don’t see how one can argue that this hasn’t been a major environmental disaster in many ways. But the conspiracy theories, especially the ones involving active government complicity in a cover-up — those are, I think, “not proven”.
Hmm. People die all the time too and then new ones come along. Why worry! No need to sweat muurders and disease…
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