Horned dinosaurs ‘island-hopped’ from Asia to Europe BBC
How to sue your tech vendor — and win InfoWorld
“It’s BP’s Oil” Mother Jones (hat tip reader Francois T). From last week, but still relevant
Gulf oil well disaster could mean explosive profits for HalliburtonKansas City Examiner (hat tip reader John D)
Documents Show Early Worries About Safety of Rig New York Times (hat tip reader Glenn Stehle)
Gulf Oil Spill: Media Access ‘Slowly Being Strangled Off’ Associated Press
How Did the CEO Who Presided Over the Company that Paid a $1.7 Billion Fraud Settlement Become a Credible Candidate for a State Governorship? Health Care Renewal (hat tip reader Francois T)
Shot in Iraq, soldier gets bill for missing equipment Raw Story
Dems Kill COBRA For Older Unemployed – Health Care Reform Subsidies Next? Dave Johnson
“Science vs. Religion” discovers what scientists really think about religion Washington Post
3,000 Pages of Financial Reform, but Still Not Enough Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
When Germ Warfare Happened Judith Miller, City Journal (hat tip reader Paul S)
Antidote du jour:
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49 comments
Comments are closed.
Re “It’s BP’s oil”:
(Which of course it’s not. It’s the peoples’ oil. The very concept of privatizing it contradicts the same property theories from which the West derived its concepts of property in resources in the first place.)
I hear about these “Oathkeepers” who claim they’ll refuse to obey tyrannical orders. Does that include taking orders from corporations? It of course should, by definition, since a corporation can never exercise legitimate sovereignty. On the contrary if a government alienates the people’s sovereignty in favor of corporate anarchy then that’s by definition a rogue government which has abdicated all its legitimacy.
Re billing for equipment:
Capt. Stephen Bomar, a spokesman for the Oregon Military Department, told KVAL that it’s standard procedure for soldiers to be billed for unaccounted-for equipment for which they were responsible. But he said there is a process in place that allows soldiers in situations like Pfleider’s to file for reimbursement.
I guess that process involves politically embarrassing cases.
Meanwhile the military contractors like Halliburton are implicitly encouraged to bilk the taxpayers for billions. It’s by now not conventional corruption but systematic corporatist robbery, with the DoD as bagman. (Gates once explicitly told an audience of weapons racketeers that where it comes to them Obama’s top priority is ever-escalating an Pentagon budget as such, as a value in its own right.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31482.html
That’s a prime example of Obama as extremist corporatist ideologue.)
And while I can’t get the above Halliburton link to work, I can probably write it on my own: “Not only won’t Obama penalize Halliburton for its criminal negligence here, but he’ll happliy give Halliburton all sorts of disaster capitalist contracts involved in ‘solving’ this, and won’t object when Halliburton uses the crisis as a pretext to make bloated bids, or will even just hand them a blank check.”
So that sure puts nickeling and diming the troops in perspective. Just like every other example of demanding accountability of non-rich individuals but not of the rich or corporations, demanding such an accounting of the individual soldier while not demanding any accounting of billion-dollar contracts is obviously insane, and it’s no accident. It’s systematic. It’s like the line in Schindler’s List: “Jews shovelling snow has nothing to do with production or reason. It has a richer significance.” So it is with the kleptocracy today.
And yet this army still finds suckers willing to join it out of “patriotism”. Talk about insanity.
Regarding the clamp-down on media access to the Emergent Blob in the Gulf, this was broken by Jeremy Scahill over at the Nation talking with Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis down on the bayous: They have been repeatedly waved off _by private security working for BP_ when trying to reach affected areas or operations centers. Now we read that in multiple incidents the Coast Guard is denying access ‘when reporters and photographers are present’ unless clearance comes _from the White House_. Caught out in THAT, the scum that riseth to the top says, no, it’s Homeland Security at the Command Center that has to clear folks. . . . To which Command Center and clearance procedure Klein and Lewis were barred from any access and inquiry by BP’s rent-a-mercs. Somebody’s feeling the heat. What is well on to being the worst environmental disaster in the country’s history is being shifted into full cover-up mode, not only by BP, which naturally would function in such a way being a self-referential corporate entity, but also by our lickspittle Guvmint obviously more at the beck and call of BP than the nominal citizen electorate. To this point, the White House has put far more evident effort into controlling public perception than in solving the environmental catastrophe: this is the new ‘American way,’ evidently.
I’ve long since gone past thinking of the crude Blob eating the Gulf as dereliction. I’m no longer thinking of it as a crime. I’m thinking of this now as another soft-coup, where the government has ‘outsourced’ its legal responsibility to act in the public’s interest to the selfish party who caused the disaster; where the only function of government has become to buffer that corporate entity from the response to its crimes. When is the American public going to ‘get it’ that we no longer even nominally control the institutions of the state but rather are controlled _by_ them _FOR_ private corporate interests whose behavior is manipulative by any definition and criminal by any analysis?
Under whose authority are these people denying access to these sites? BP and its private mercs are not law enforcement and do not have any authority to arrest or detain anyone. The same goes for the coast guard on land not designated as a coast guard base.
Why isn’t anyone in the press corps pushing this to its logical conclusion- Arrest me, we will then have cause to file for false imprisonment and civil rights abuse. NK, as a canadian citizen is probably in a different boat, but aren’t there any american press people left?
Has the press corps been so neutered so that they will be turned around on the threat of action that is clearly illegal?
And how about a campaign to give simple disposable cameras to the laborers en masse? They are cheap, untraceable and there could be a program set up by “someone” to purchase back the cameras after they were used.
If the US, or the gulf coast in particular has descended into fascism, let it show itself for that. This soft handed, “run the responsiblity around the edges of beaucracy” has to be challenged in order to be defined. Why is no one even attempting to challenge it?
Your suggestion to arm workers with cameras is such a good one. Unfortunately, I can’t get the image of British Petroleum workers standing in line under surveillance being patted and x-rayed as a condition for work – without protective masks of course, as BP works hard to limit their liability as close to zero as possible.
This is a pretty close example of corporations as persons with the right to bear arms.
BP executives act as if they have police rights on public property at the scene of a crime. I can’t imagine anyone wishing to observe the scene who would be willing to test them on this –something they’re certainly counting on.
Apparently there is no journalism left that can stand up to the corporations.
Almost forgot, corporations own not only the government; they own journalism as well. Can’t have one without the other.
Given the predilection of Americans to sue anyone and anything on the slightest cause, and the readiness of US Courts to award $millions compensation for nonsenses such as a burned mouth for drinking coffee served too hot, it’s hardly surprising that BP doesn’t want rubber-neckers getting underfoot, or in the way of the armada of boats they have on the Gulf.
That’s the story they want us to believe. Do they pay you?
You baffle me sir….
Which Law gives such weight to BP’s view of things?
Replying to myself: Well, BP is paying for the work: and he who pays the piper,usually calls the tune.
So “control and safety of the work site” is indeed a reasonable thing: within limits.
This reminds me of the ban on photographing military caskets and funerals, etc. I suppose pretty soon BP/Obama will start embedding journalists who want to cover the spill so that BP/Obama can make sure that the American people hear the story they want to tell.
Richard Kline:
When is the American public going to ‘get it’ that we no longer even nominally control the institutions of the state but rather are controlled _by_ them _FOR_ private corporate interests whose behavior is manipulative by any definition and criminal by any analysis?
Here’s another tidbit of information from the NY Times story that further confirms your assertion:
Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, declined to answer questions about the casings, the blowout preventer and regulators’ oversight of the rig because those matters are part of a continuing investigation.
This is the exact same line uttered ad infinitum by Lamar McKay, president and chairman of BP America, before various senate and congressional committees.
Of course Team Obama has “the-only-function-of-government-is-to-buffer-that-corporate-entity-from-the-response-to-its-crimes” song and dance down pat. It got plenty of practice while protecting the criminals who brought us the GFC.
Team Obama is just that… Team Obama.
They and their supporters are concerned with nothing else than the brand…
Which was..not is…a best seller.
The whole BP Oil Spill story has been one long list of failures,lies and ineptitude by all the major stakeholders involved.The Obama administration,BP and the Oil Regulator have all been guilty of incompetence,procrastination,finger pointing and cover-ups.
Re: Dems Kill COBRA For Older Unemployed – Health Care Reform Subsidies Next?
This is outrageous, and puts the lie to the idea of congress’s commitment to affordable healthcare. BTW, the headline should read “Dems Kill COBRA Subsidies” (it’s explained in the article). I’ve long said that COBRA, while better than nothing, is a pretty f’ed up system. Congratulations, you’re out of work and your health insurance premiums have just gone through the roof (and you loose coverage completely if the company goes out of business). At least this program paid 65% of the premiums for 15 months, but the Dems have suddenly seen the light on “deficit reduction”. In other words, the whole affordable healthcare thing is complete bull.
Has anyone seen any details of this subsidy elimination? Does it eliminate the subsidy for those that are already receiving it, or “only” make the newly unemployed ineligible? I’ve checked a few places in our fabled MSM and they give no detail (can’t have reporters providing useful information instead of personality focused narratives, now can we).
Any veterans here today? If so, I just wanted to pass along a heartfelt thank you for your service.
We owe you more than words can convey. Happy Memorial Day.
How many just wars can you name…that were not a direct result of economic debauchery.
“All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.” -François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
“A solider will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon”. -Napoleon Bonaparte
“Patriots always talk of dying for their Country and never of killing for their Country.” -Bertrand Russel
“War is as much a punishment to the punisher as it is to the sufferer.” -Thomas Jefferson
Lastly…”Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants, we know more about war that we know about people, more about killing than we know about living.”
Skippy…your welcome…I hope, I provided all some modicum of economic benefit.
Don’t be an ass. I opposed the Iraq war from the beginning and have never been inclined to wrap myself in the flag. Nevertheless a “heartfelt thank you for your service” is always appropriate and the least we can do on Memorial Day (or even the day before).
Don’t like some, most or even all of our military actions? Blame our civilian leadership and those who elected them. Whatever else you think of the US military it does, and always has, followed the orders of the civilian leadership. We don’t do coup d’état’s in this country.
We don’t do coup d’état’s in this country.
Correction…we have_not_had successful a coup d’état in this country, IMO some where closer than you think.
In as far as anatomy goes and projecting emotional context I suggest you examine the success’s of the anti war movement in the 60s as compared to the don’t go after the troops memo, you can’t have it both ways alex…. you either sanction it or call it out were ever you see it….DITSFOTP.
Skippy…we are killers of women, children, the old and infirm, with a few bad guys mixed in.
“Correction…we have_not_had successful a coup d’état in this country”
You mean I can’t make guarantees about the future? Guilty as charged. How does that change the fact that Iraq and every other war in this country’s history has been fought under the orders of the civilian leadership?
“IMO some where closer than you think.”
Right. Thankfully Washington was our Cincinnatus, and Smedley Butler helped to foil the Business Plot. I thought “Seven Days in May” was a great movie too.
“In as far as anatomy goes and projecting emotional context I suggest you examine the success’s of the anti war movement in the 60s as compared to the don’t go after the troops memo …”
Examine the blowback from the anti-troops sentiment of the anti-Vietnam War movement and try to remember that history started before you were born. Do you think there was an anti-troop sentiment associated with the anti-war sentiment prior to and following US involvement in WWI? It’s remarkable if you think that Smedley Butler was anti-troop. The same was true of the intense anti-war sentiment following the Civil War.
“Skippy…we are killers of women, children, the old and infirm, with a few bad guys mixed in.”
No kidding. It’s called a war, and you’ve cited a not-so-obscure reason to avoid them. Back in the “good old days” of WWII we leveled entire cities. The difference is in why the war was fought.
Examine the blowback from the anti-troops sentiment of the anti-Vietnam War movement and try to remember that history started before you were born.
….
It is a vivid memory of mine as relatives and family friends served in all branches, many mentors of mine were Veterans starting from WWI and let us not forget that what you call war is more like profiteering and not some break down of political mechanics…its a feature not a bug. Blowback you say…well we can’t have that standing in the way of killing innocents now can we.
Skippy…and since we are so informed about the others knowledge base and ages, I would submit that you have a fine rubber stamped standard vanilla paper page historical outlook…and for your information not all of us vets need a pat on the back for the killing we have done…actualy its a kick in the guts…save it for the REMFs…they like a party as they have seen a bit on TV.
PS. if it good for American business it must be good for the world…right?
Skippy,
‘Anti-vet after the Vietnam War’ is a meme that has been disproven. My brother served in Vietnam 2 tours of duty. I would have noticed.
Suggest you read this here
Newsweek Throws the Spitter The magazine repeats the myth of the gobbed-upon Vietnam vet.
By Jack Shafer Posted Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007, at 4:09 PM ET
The myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran refuses to die. Despite Jerry Lembcke’s debunking book from 1998, Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, and my best efforts to publicize his work, the press continues to repeat the fables as fact.”
MSM was as busy with propaganda then as they are now. It is only the NEW medium of TV that got the baby-boom message across before corporations mobilized with their own messages.
Don’t forget that it was college kids who were exempt from the draft who demonstrated against the war on the TV for the TV, and against every other kind of authority, like college administrators.
One example we’re living with now.
After hypnotizing themselves with their own change not to trust anyone over 30, when they got supervisory authority in the work place they got rid of everyone over 50.
They then had to reinvent the wheel. The powers that be have been happy to accommodate and help direct them for their own purposes.
Just one example; its the likes of daddy Sandy Weill who hired the youngun’s like Robert Rubin fresh from the Clinton administration to accomplish the dirty work of buying Congress to take down regulation for Weill’s own personal purposes that transformed Wall Street into the down and dirty let’s-grab-the-safety-net-and-the-vast fortune-just-sitting-there-in-pension plans enterprise it has become.
correction:
After hypnotizing themselves with their own chant not to trust anyone over 30, …
LeeAnn…My argument is simple:
Point the military in any direction and there will only be one out come.
War is the final act of sovereign economic debate (tie breaker).
Since WWI our military is no longer serving as a constitutional entity.
Blackwater is a terrorist organization/private army and should be not allowed in the Territory’s of the USA.
The remembrance of dead soldiers has turned into a Disneyland Holiday complete with floats, parades, hero worship, marketing opportunity, political opportunity on a war desensitized populace and people are getting rich (war profiteering?) on it…with out an end in sight.
Hell I remember the cheers when bombs hit vague small nonhuman like figures on TVs in pancake houses, bars, trendy restaurants all across America over the last 40 years.
Greek/roman/spartan like glorification of common people serving expationistic tendencies of their masters is not in our best interests as it sets the stage for softening of the populations attitudes towards killing as a solution.
I admit I was wrong in my youth and recognise the significance of my actions…I murdered people for profit.
Skippy…19…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsDvNMaOeEg
lifted from comments:
BrokenVeteran
I believed in Freedom and Liberty.
Can’t barely walk. Hurt all the time. My head is still in the Army.
I realize now, Freedom and Liberty are only gas money.
If you have no gas… You have no Freedom or Liberty.
You are a prisoner of the house…
trigot33
Seeing the carnage is acceptable if we must see it for the right causes. However, nowadays all we seem to fight for is oil riches, wealth and sleazy dirty politicians whilst there own children are educated in the best institutions and ours are sent to die – FUCK POLITICS – FUCK GOVERNMENT – AND FUCK THE NEW WORLD ORDER !!!!
Magnum4800
Only a little bit more and this current war will be the longest war in history. And for what? For a liitle bit more money for the rich. Fuck Iraq and Afghanistan war.
Bring the soldiers home. Stop Imperialism.
Chippychris1
The exact same thing is happening to our boys today in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And for what?
Shout out loud to get our young boys outa there!
Now!!!
blubuhuda
i never got that war out of my head. I was 18 in country IN 69 i WISHED i HAD died there
tubecraft
My father volunteered to go to Vietnam to fight the “commies” when he was 18 but since his elected job classification was in electronic warfare they put him at a DMZ at the N Korean border. He said that he had seen ominous levels of hatred in the eyes of the men sent to Vietnam, and he completed his stint in 1969, married my mother in 1970 and in ’72 I was born. He always discouraged me from military service. I was barely an infant when it was all going on, but this video makes me sad.
mariokluster
still gives me goosebumps. I always wondered if they really sent children to Vietnam, as if the average age was 19 it means that there had to be younger soldiers.
shellcracker7
Our government drafted and sent about 800,000 men to fight marxism in Vietnam. About 50,000 died. Our government has changed its mind and now follows Karl Marx. I am very disappointed with our government regarding that issue, but that is a different subject. Anyway, should some government spokesperson apologize to the Vietnam vets and their families for the damage they were required to endure, now that the government has embraced the ideology those young men were forced to combat?
llothar
Well whats about Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Argentina, Iran (at the time of the Sha), Grenada, Panama City, Iraq, Afghanistan.
In Panama City alone you killed 10000 persons to get rid of your CIA agent Noriega.
Skippy…You should see the ugly other side, the side that condones killing…in my day the glib was…let them pray with their ass to the blast, cuz were going to turn the their desert to glass. LeeAnn I know my people well.
You are wrapping yourself in the flag now….
Individuals must be commended for the shit they put up with for a nation that cared nothing for them…
But not for fucking “serving a nation”…..
The put up with shit and still do because Americas interests are not theirs….
Second Lieutenants make 24,000 a year…
Get your legs blown off and go home…..
Ummm… planning on spending your holiday heading over to Arlington National Cemetery and pissing on some graves?
Well, it’s a free country – I suppose you can….
How does it feel to cheer on a funeral parade for fools lead to slaughter, in and of themselves, and the innocent.
I remember the dead solemnly and with out fanfare, marketing, profit, or hero worship.
Skippy…free country….bawhaha…just remember your rights aka privileges, can be revoked at any time as history has shown us.
Death is profit in this nation….
What doth it profit a man, to gain the world, and lose his soul?
Skippy ‘ …My argument is simple: …’
I wished only to make the point that the Vietnam-vets-personally-insulted-and-slimed-for-their-service MEME has been soundly DEBUNKED. I don’t think you need it for your argument.
LeeAnn your statement should be directed to Alex as it was his inference, I just ran with it.
Respect…
Thanks Yves, you have a great site. I could not get the above HealthCare link to work, it kept looping back to the motherjones article… here it is:
How Did the CEO Who Presided Over the Company that Paid a $1.7 Billion Fraud Settlement Become a Credible Candidate for a State Governorship?
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-did-ceo-who-presided-over-company.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/3axqaf8
Gretchen Morgenson is jammin’. Good to see that in the NY Times. Stopped reading it years ago when it became a Style section for the financial and social elite and their stressed Hamptons lifestyles and City star turns and prep school tuitions and all their little problems. If I had a dog I would have used it to scoop poop. Or under the car to catch the oil drippings.
Newsprint doesn’t work as toilet paper or I’d have used it for that too. But it would have only clogged the pipes with little hard balls of news crap. And I don’t need more shit in my life. ha ha ha ha ha hahahahaha.
Can it be used to plug a leaking deep-water oil well?
Re today’s Antidote du jour, or “Cheese Head” —
does this also explain “stinky cheese” ?
Vote in your primaries. Throw the bums out in the primaries.
But, don’t forget, be SURE to vote for the other Republicrat candidate as ONLY the Republicrats have the experience to lead this great and glorious country to greatness and more glory.
Just a thought exercise …
OK, let’s play make believe – that Congress is really on your team.
Congress is already well on its way to spending $25 Trillion on this “crisis”. It has already put $13T +/- in the pipeline, which is accelerating in the exact wrong direction, feeding the supply-side economy, leaving you with a budget of $12T. Let’s be extremely optimistic, and say that 33% of the working population currently has a real economic function, and the rest are make-work jobs, creating artificial demand to feed the multiplier effect through the efficient global symbiotic relativity circuit.
We easily have food, clothing, and housing in the pipeline to keep everyone, if we let the factory farms operate for another year. With the reductions in costs associated with getting the inertia of gravity out of the way, we can easily pay everyone without an economic function to stay home for two years.
We have a $500T load to pick, and need to build the required motor, under the CAB scenario (CDE has no relative load, and all kinds of motor waiting for a load). Currently, Congress is demanding people to stay in the same social cage, and increase their production as required. That isn’t going to happen. The percentage of the population that can create economic profit, continually educate themselves, present a neutral signal to the ecosystem, and tie their shoes is quite small, due to the gravity of the click gearing system.
If you short around the counter-productive devices, you profit on both ends, in a positive feedback loop, CDE. Money is not the problem. How people direct/deflect the money when it passes through their hands is the problem. At this point, you have virtually disconnected the gearing mechanism, and you need to bring those gears back in to build positive leverage. You pay people to get their gardens and self-education up to speed, so the gears are already moving beyond inertia for transmission re-entry (just a thought experiment so far).
The old system is a sunk cost. If you paid those people for two years and they did absolutely nothing, you would have a smaller net loss at the end of two years. No matter how little you think of human critters, once those social bonds are broken, a small percentage of them are going to quickly re-enter the productivity pipeline, creating an inductive motor. Under the empire’s own assumptions, a reserve currency cannot be broke. It’s like catching a load with the crane boom, and employing the reverse momentum.
Conclusion
The CAB system has to pick a $500T load, and agency is absolutely clueless, which should be obvious by now. The unemployment and social security deficits are trivial, compared to the education and healthcare deficits, which are killing this country. Agency needs to break up, go home, educate itself, get fit, re-think the social delivery mechanism, and re-enter the private sector pipeline.
For every nexus job created, three real private sector jobs are currently being lost, to be replaced by subsidized service sector and low-quality manufacturing jobs, in the old closed loop, and the momentum is still going in that direction. Replace the hospitals and universities, with something, anything, that is productive. They are like two giant pigs, eating everything at the head of the trough, leaving crumbs for the rest of the critters, and the factory farmer, by demand of Congress, has all the critters in a warehouse, dumping the biologically modified waste across the natural habitat, eliminating the competition, the natural food chain.
As far as technology goes, if you don’t need oil, you don’t need the military industrial complex. The problem there is not the professional military. The problem there, again, is Congress. We had that complex killed on more than one occasion, just to have it brought back to life by Congress. The professional military doesn’t like amateurs hanging around its neck any more than you do. The complex is just a political reality, a lesson not learned from Vietnam. Contrary to social psychology, Congress and its aids can be fired.
The construction of bridges to nowhere and financial leverage are downstream bottom feeders / lubricants, symptoms of supply-side “thinking”, pumping the waste back up for another feeding.
Do we expect this problem to be solved? No, which why CDE. Always bet heads, effectiveness wins, tails, gravity blows itself up. Prepare for the best scenario, and expect the worst. Bet on evolution. When they play that stupid both-sides-against-the-middle game, place a double-sided mirror between them. As long as they can see themselves in that reverse looking glass, they will be happy, until their own energy backs them around the circle in a vice, increasing the pressure, decreasing the volume. In the meantime, you can go about your business.
Transition
So, the bosses are behind “schedule”, and they have all left for the long weekend, except the practical one. The boys wrap a cable through all the false work under the bridge, and we pull it out with a motor grader. By the time the other bosses get back, the lumber has already been stacked, bound, loaded and sent to the job where it is needed. The trick of course is to hook the bents so they fall square, and accelerate consistently through the gears, without losing the load. We saved the bosses time already by picking on the fly, and downshifting in reverse to catch and set the same bents in the first place. Conventional wisdom says you’re not supposed to be able to do that without blowing up the equipment. It’s too risky.
Agency “thinks”, and when it falls behind its irrational schedule, because it has no idea what it’s doing, it “thinks” again, and then it takes the wrong risk one too many times, because it saw someone else do it, or heard of someone else doing it. That’s the problem with best agency practice. It assumes it knows, which leads it to assume exponentially increasing risk, and then it doubles down by trying to bypass the cost of quality labor, not realizing that it starting by assuming that it had a backup / exit plan. Assuming America is just going to re-start its industrial base may be a bit off.
Look around. Effective labor cannot be made to order on demand, at a government factory, to operate in corporate-controlled environments. Life just doesn’t work that way. The load is going to fall, swinging, and the torque due to the phase shift has to be metered, which means voltage acceleration and deceleration, along with variable deflection.
Good bosses look down and find a hand full of trump at the end of the game. The reserve currency is already in play, sitting right there on the table, and, if you look, you will see that the currency traders are rounding the rest of the players, in anticipation of the final hand. The flow in the Gulf is horrendous, but it’s the least, only the beginning, of their problems, and there is more going on out in the Gulf than people are being told.
See you at the BRICK wall.
Apparently the Free Gaza flotilla is down to 5 ships, after damage described as sabotage by organisers prevented 2 ships from leaving Cypriot waters. An older (26/5) LA Times report indicated an original flotilla of 9, so there have been quite a few losses already. ETA of the remaining ships in Gaza waters is about midnight Australian Eastern Standard Time (Sydney, Canberra) which is GMT + 10 hrs.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/ships-head-for-gaza-20100530-wnfc.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/05/israel-israel-braces-with-pr-and-navy-for-gaza-flotilla.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+BabylonBeyond+%28Babylon+%26+Beyond+Blog%29
http://www.freegaza.org/
When I scan the news every morning and evening (Ditching COBRA, banksters pissing on us, Oil spill, fraudsters as Governors) I can’t help envisioning two different scenarios for the November elections:
1) The scariest one, IMO, would be a very depressed turnout. That would indicate a sense of hopelessness of the hoi polloi. Whichever way one anticipate the future of such a scenario, it can’t be good.
2) More and more viable challengers read the polls correctly and give a mighty kick in the hindquarters of the incumbents. I sincerely wish this scenario wins. There is a severe need in DC for a painful reality check at all levels.
Maybe a Republican Congress could impeach Obama!
I’m thinking of heading down to the gulf of mexico this summer to get some oil… how sick!
Trust your senses
By Samantha Joye | Published: May 31, 2010 12:38am
May 30th, 18:00. One of the strangest things about these deepwater plumes we’ve been tracking is that we see a strong CDOM signal but there’s been no visible oil in the deepwater. That changed today: we saw oil in the deepwater. We sampled a station about a mile south of our previous stations (you can get our position and our ship track on http://www.marinetraffic.com, just look for the R/V Walton Smith in the Gulf of Mexico sector) and we saw the most intense CDOM signals that we’ve seen so far. The Pelican cruise sampled near here three weeks ago but the CDOM signals we are seeing now are much stronger.
Someone asked whether the deepwater plumes form because of dispersant use at the wellhead or whether this material is settling down from surface waters into the deepwater, again because of dispersant. Considering the plume trajectories, they appear to derive from the wellhead. We do not believe they form from the sinking of oil that was once on the surface. However, that does not mean the plumes are generated because of dispersant use. Quite the contrary, plumes like these most likely form through natural processes. At the temperature and pressure of the reservoir, methane is dissolved in the oil. When the fluid is expelled at the seafloor, the methane comes out of solution in a fairly violent manner. This gas expulsion likely fractionates the oil and it is this fractionation that generates the diffuse oil in the plumes.
http://gulfblog.uga.edu/
Radioactive fish, anyone?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/30/AR2010053001871_pf.html
Actual I prefer my beverage radioactive see…Get Nuclear Wasted at the Rocky Flats Lounge!
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/crovelli5.html
http://denver.metromix.com/bars-and-clubs/biker_bar/rocky-flats-lounge-boulder/328357/content
Skippy…it was more fun getting on the piss with fission bomb builders, from across the road, in the day.
PS. different day same shit….eh.
From the FreeGaza.org website (see link in my earlier comment):
“Civilians Under Attack by Israel
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“Written by Free Gaza Team | 31 May 2010
Posted in Press releases
“(Cyprus, June 1, 2010, 6:30 am) Under darkness of night, Israeli commandoes dropped from a helicopter onto the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began to shoot the moment their feet hit the deck. They fired directly into the crowd of civilians asleep. According to the live video from the ship, two have been killed, and 31 injured. Al Jazeera has just confirmed the numbers.
“Streaming video shows the Israeli soldiers shooting at civilians, and our last SPOT beacon said, “HELP, we are being contacted by the Israelis.”
“We know nothing about the other five boats. Israel says they are taking over the boats.
“The coalition of Free Gaza Movement (FG), European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza (ECESG), Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), the Perdana Global Peace Organisation , Ship to Gaza Greece, Ship to Gaza Sweden, and the International Committee to Lift the Siege on Gaza appeal to the international community to demand that Israel stop their brutal attack on civilians delivering vitally needed aid to the imprisoned Palestinians of Gaza and permit the ships to continue on their way.
“The attack has happened in international waters, 75 miles off the coast of Israel, in direct violation of international law”.
The Al-Jazeera piece is here:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/05/201053133047995359.html
I wrote a post on this.
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/terrorism-vs-humanity-the-freedom-flotilla-is-butchered/
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