Louisiana Oil Rig Fire / Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill - Page 11 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

roachboy · 06-15-2010, 04:44 PM

i hear that...i just watched obama's curious televised pep talk about the gulf. i may have been hallucinating but i would swear he said something about 90% of the oil being captured within like a month. i am entirely unclear how that is to happen given the reality that appears to be unfolding but it's obvious that we don't know in some basic ways what's going on. besides, we are assured that the boys in the lab are on the case and that it's a really swell lab and lots of smart people are walking purposively about.

but really, i don't know what i expected him to say.
i thought in a sense the entirely tenor of the pep talk absurd, all the military metaphors and references to world war 2 and such.
but i don't know what i would have said. i don't know what i expected him to say---what? that the Leader is personally doing many things and Knows about Many Other Things all of which are happening and there are Plans and these Plans are being Implemented somewhere.

references to shrimp fishing.
references to god.

i dont know what i expected but this clearly was not it.

criminy.

Baraka_Guru · 06-15-2010, 05:01 PM

I know Obama is the president and everything, and public displays of optimism are a part of that, but I can't understand how, at this juncture, anyone can offer---with any confidence---any assurances or lofty goals (if only we would keep our chins up). It's been nearly two months and we still are mostly just figuring out just how bad it is. They still have had next to no impact on the situation.

I mean, a nation can topple a brutal regime in under two months, but we can't stop an oil spill at the bottom of the ocean?

It would be nice to be able to capture 90% of it within a month. I truly hope they figure that out.

roachboy · 06-15-2010, 05:13 PM

i hope it happens too. but i dont see any obvious way from here to there. but maybe today was a bad day to judge by given that there was a fire on a drilling ship so bp stopped collecting oil...which perhaps explains the immense clouds of oil one could see on the multiple feed platforms. but i hope there's tons we don't know and that something can happen.

the main difference between invading iraq and addressing this oil disaster is that the us had the technology and a bad plan in iraq where with the oil spill the us has neither the technology nor a plan because the set-up relied on the corporate sector to tell the us what the technologies needed to be because they made the plan. this is a fundamental reason why this is such a clusterfuck. i don't really see going on television and talking all Presidential about this changes anything. it doesn't. it's a pep talk and, in a sense, a capitulation to the right.

which i was glad to see obama go after and blame squarely for the regulatory fiasco that both enabled this oil spill and prevented anything like a co-ordinated effective strategy to deal with it.

but it still is what it is, a monumental disaster.
and i dunno...a pep talk?....i suppose there may be people who it affected. i wonder where they are.

FuglyStick · 06-15-2010, 05:41 PM

Reading this thread, I am SO GLAD that TFP posters have absolutely zero input into energy, oil spills, or any public safety policy. There is a bad case of "talking above your paygrade" around here, and entirely too much reliance on op/ed rags for pertinent "information".

But carry on, knights of justice.

roachboy · 06-15-2010, 05:57 PM

well gee fugly that sounds like a claim to expertise.

you have Real Information?
so if you're saying anything---which is doubtful----then how about it?

put up or shut up.

FuglyStick · 06-15-2010, 06:05 PM

Demanding information or expertise from me does not excuse a blowhard crusade built on insufficient/faulty information and expertise. That's just illogical.

roachboy · 06-15-2010, 06:18 PM

all i've been doing is gathering information from a range of sources and trying to pull it together.
there's a fair amount of documentation in the thread, but you'd have to actually look at things to know that.
but hey, why bother when you can have no particular information and do none of the work but still see yourself as in a position to drive by and say stupid shit.

whatever.

FuglyStick · 06-15-2010, 06:28 PM

Information that runs through your editorial filter, rb. You are entitled to your opinion--I agree with most of it, to be honest--but portraying yourself as some sort of "watchdog" who's going to give us the "truth" is laughable. I tried to follow this thread, but it rapidly became apparent that this is nothing more than a platform for propaganda. That's fine--this is a message board, not a news outlet--but don't parade it around as an "honest" or "informed" dissertation on the situation in the Gulf.

Frankly, it smacks of the same hand-picking of information that is the trademark of Faux News and other so-called "news" organizations.

Baraka_Guru · 06-15-2010, 07:28 PM

What do you mean? Things aren't so bad in the gulf? Are you actually going to make a counterpoint?

FuglyStick · 06-15-2010, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

What do you mean? Things aren't so bad in the gulf? Are you actually going to make a counterpoint?

Not at all. But this thread has stopped being about the FACTS of what has occurred in the Gulf a long time ago, and has become an agenda, and I don't trust information presented by crusaders. Justice will prevail, and heads will roll; it won't come at the hands of the angry mob carrying pitchforks, though. It certainly won't come as a result of a campaign of half-truths and proselytizing.

And I'm fucking done on this subject, if people don't see the value of reliable information instead of jumping on the village mob bandwagon.

roachboy · 06-16-2010, 04:02 AM

actually fugly, i havent presented myself as anything and i dont think of myself as doing anything particular beyond researching within the limits of the wall of pseudo-information that is the press a disastrous situation. it's happening too fast for there to be many layers of publicly available information: there are reports, there's layers of commentary and there's a scattershot level of documentation. these layers operate in that order in terms of speed. in terms of reliability, it's like anything else, a function of the sources that you isolate and how you use them.

for the news stuff, it's mostly guardian, ny times, financial times, washington post.
for the commentary, the oil drum
for the documents, things are more diffuse, but the links often come from one of the previous two.

there's not a whole lot of original research. if anyone wants to pay me for my time....

anyway, if i think about the thread at this point as anything other than a thread on a messageboard, it's a space that i can use to position a bunch of information in one place and that may help me and maybe other folk figure out ways to make sense of what's happening.

but no-one's stepping outside the media bubble. it's just being organized on the fly in a more horizontal way than it sometimes is.

there is an interpretive line that i've developed anyway that i present, when i do, as an interpretive line. it's pretty accurate within the limits of available information and types of expertise. if you dont think it accurate, make a counter-argument. drive-bys aren't counter-arguments.

the main limitation in that line is the emphasis on the ways bp has set up to control information makes it difficult to treat bp as a viable information source on its own. the same has extended to noaa and the coast guard. so there's a problem in moving into and out of those more official sources. i don't know any more than what i just said about the legitimacy of the suspicion that underpins this. but in any interpretation you take your chances based on the information you have.

i dont know where you get the idea that there's any "watchdog" function happening.
to think that way for real would require being unhinged from reality, confusing posting to a messageboard with political action in meat-space.

when you're writing about political questions it seems almost inevitable that rhetoric will turn up that gives the appearance of a confusion in registers reality of messageboard/reality in meatspace. but thats usually rhetorical. when it stops being that there's meds that can help.

roachboy · 06-16-2010, 06:56 AM

Eyewitness: BP oil spill | World news | guardian.co.uk

ring · 06-16-2010, 09:09 AM

Socrates could not see the beauty of this impurity.

Our glorious sunsets have been tinged, as well.

Thanks, roach.

silent_jay · 06-16-2010, 09:27 AM

roachboy · 06-16-2010, 09:39 AM

FT Alphaville Who’s not trading with BP?

meanwhile:

Quote:

Cuba braces to contend with BP oil spill

Havana calls in Venezuelan experts to combat potential environmental disaster as tarballs spotted off island's coast

Cuba is steadying itself for an ecological and tourism crisis as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill appears to be heading towards its pristine northern coast.

Authorities are preparing coastal communities to respond to the first sign of black slicks and have brought in Venezuelan experts to advise on damage limitation.

Patches of oil were reportedly spotted 100 miles north-west of the island, prompting concern that gulf currents will add Cuba to the list of casualties from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.

Should oil reach Cuba it will be the latest twist to decades of toxic diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington.

"In Cuba, we have had small spills involving tankers on our coasts, but we've never had to confront anything of this magnitude," General Ramon Espinosa, vice-minister of the armed forces, told reporters at a government meeting on natural disaster preparedness.

"Nonetheless we are documenting and studying. We are preparing with everything in our power." It would be a disaster for Cuba if the spill hit, he added.

A relative lack of economic development has kept the north Cuban coast – just 90 miles from Florida – a haven for manatees, migratory sea turtles and sharks. White sand beaches are an important draw for tourists who provide an economic lifeline to the communist state.

Ramon Pardo, head of Cuban civil defence, said Havana was taking all precautions. "The preparation of the coast, vigilance, creating all necessary conditions, preparing the people who live on the coasts that could be impacted."

Officials said Cuba would rely on expertise from Venezuela, an ally that has long experience of offshore oil drilling and its environmental consequences, but that it was also willing to talk to the US. Analysts said "oil diplomacy" could gift Washington and Havana a rare chance to co-operate but details remain sketchy.

The BP spill may give Cubans pause over plans to develop northern offshore deposits estimated at 5bn barrels of oil and 10tn cubic feet of natural gas. The Spanish company Repsol YPF is due to drill exploration wells later this year or early in 2011.

Cuba braces to contend with BP oil spill | World news | The Guardian

meanwhile, bp agreed to the 20 billion dollar escrow account.

washingtonpost.com

i find this curious given that there's no way to know the extent of this mess yet and so i wonder if there's any way in which this is more than symbolically meaningful. it's hard to say at this point, yes?

the dancing continues all the way around. oil continues to pour into the gulf.

people meet
BP bosses arrive at White House for crucial talks with Barack Obama | Environment | guardian.co.uk

they have chats
and other people show up to do something

washingtonpost.com

and so on

while people in chairs debate the presidentialness of obama's speech.

this is french but why not?

Marée noire : Obama part en guerre, mais sans plan d'action - LeMonde.fr
washingtonpost.com

The_Jazz · 06-16-2010, 11:31 AM

I found out today that BP does NOT have any insurance that will cover this sort of loss. So they'll be paying all of this out of their own bottom line.

Cimarron29414 · 06-16-2010, 01:04 PM

Well, they have insurance to cover the rig, but not insurance to cover the damage caused by the oil. Right?

The_Jazz · 06-16-2010, 01:10 PM

No, actually. Transocean owned the rig and they had the insurance to cover any physical damage to it. Since it sank, there will be payments on that, but I suspect that it won't be very much in the greater scheme of things. It certainly won't include any liability payments, just payments for the loss of the rig itself.

roachboy · 06-17-2010, 03:17 AM

another whole cluster of damage vectors:

Quote:

Spill Takes Toll on Gulf Workers’ Psyches
By MIREYA NAVARRO

NEW ORLEANS — On a normal night, Hong Le, a deckhand on a fishing boat, would be miles out on the water laying nets and lines to catch tuna. Instead, he lies awake in his rented room agonizing over the money he is not sending to his wife and children in Vietnam and the delay in his longtime dream of bringing them here, apparently dashed by the oil spill.

At each day passes, Mr. Le, 58, says he feels more hopeless. “I just wait at home,” he said hollowly through an interpreter.

Beyond the environmental and economic damage, the toll of the mammoth spill in the Gulf of Mexico is being measured in hopelessness, anxiety, stress, anger, depression and even suicidal thoughts among those most affected, social workers say.

Mindful of the surge in psychological ailments after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, community groups are trying to tend to the collective psyche of fishermen like Mr. Le even as they address more immediate needs like financial aid.

When fishermen arrive to pick up emergency aid checks at the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit group in this city’s Vietnamese-American enclave, crisis counselors from Catholic Charities are on hand to screen for signs of emotional distress and to offer help.

“Are you having trouble sleeping?” the counselors ask through interpreters. “Do you feel out of energy? Do you have thoughts that you would be better off dead?”

Most of the fishermen trooping to the center lack fluency in English or skills beyond fishing, a vocation they have passed on for generations.

“They’re very distraught,” said the deputy director of the community development corporation, Tuan Nguyen. “For a lot of people, fishing is all they know. They don’t like handouts. They’re very proud. They don’t know how tomorrow is going to be.”

Catholic Charities reported this week that of the 9,800 people the counselors had approached since May 1 in Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes, 1,593 were referred for counseling because of signs of depression.

“It’s the fear of losing everything,” said Representative Anh Cao, a Republican from New Orleans who has assembled a response team to travel along the Gulf Coast to assess constituents’ needs.

Mr. Cao said he had met two fishermen in Plaquemines Parish who told him they were contemplating suicide. While those cases are “extreme,” Mr. Cao said, they reflect how some people “are approaching a point of despair.”

Officials with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said staff members had counseled 749 people in the last week of May and the first week of June to “mitigate” symptoms that could lead to destructive behavior.

“Most people are in disbelief,” said Dr. Tony Speier, deputy assistant secretary of the department’s office of mental health. “There’s fear not just for economic survival, but for a way of life.”

While state officials have emphasized the resiliency of Gulf Coast residents, who suffered through Hurricane Katrina and other major storms like Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008, experts say the region should brace for long-term psychological strain.

Researchers who studied the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill said coastal residents of Alaska saw a higher incidence of suicide, divorce, domestic violence and substance abuse. To this day, many are still dealing with the effects of the environmental damage, economic losses and lawsuits.

At the Center for Wellness and Mental Health in Chalmette, which opened last year to treat cases of post-traumatic stress disorder lingering from Hurricane Katrina, the staff is checking in on fishermen’s families, mining relationships that were forged when volunteers helped rebuild homes after the hurricane.

An effort is under way to invite wives to receive counseling and learn breathing techniques and other skills to cope with stress, said Joycelyn Heintz, the coordinator of the center, which was founded by the nonprofit St. Bernard Project and the Health Sciences Center at Louisiana State University.

Rachel Morris, one of the wives who has agreed to counseling, said her husband, Louis Lund Jr., 34, was a shell of his formerly joyful self.

After the oil spill grounded fishing, Mr. Lund managed to get a job cleaning the gulf waters for BP, the oil company responsible for the spill, Ms. Morris said. But he is stricken by the sight of dead fish on his cleanup outings, she said, and for the first time has started to frequent bars with other fishermen.

Mr. Lund frets over whether he will be able to pass on his trade to his children, a 13-month-old son and 10-year-old daughter, or even remain in New Orleans, where volunteers just finished rebuilding the family’s Katrina-flooded home last October.

“When I saw the oil rig explosion on television, I was, like, ‘O.K., oil rig explosion,’ ” Ms. Morris, 26, said, adding that she told herself to pray for the 11 rig workers who were killed. “Two days later it was, ‘The oil is not stopping.’ That’s when my husband went from a happy guy to a zombie consumed by the oil spill.”

She said Mr. Lund had refused to accept counseling. He has lashed out occasionally, she said, venting his anger one evening last week after waiting in line for nearly four hours at the local civic center to pick up his two-week paycheck.

Asked about his state of mind, Mr. Lund told a reporter: “If you’re not out there in it, you can’t comprehend what this is about. We’re going to be surrounded by it. You’re going to smell it right here.”

Similar frustration was evident one morning last week at the Mary Queen of Vietnam center, where 50 people who had been waiting since as early as 4 a.m. for the doors to open around 9 a.m. suddenly began shouting, pushing and shoving one another. The commotion was soon quelled, but not the expressions of exhaustion and worry.

One of the groups hardest hit by the spill is Vietnamese fishermen, who make up a significant part of the about 12,400 commercial licensed fishermen in Louisiana (state officials had no firm estimate, but locals estimate they are as much as a third).

Having already experienced displacement — emigrating from Vietnam and in some cases losing their homes after Hurricane Katrina — they now face a crisis of epic proportions with an uncertain duration.

Interviewed in a sparsely furnished room he rents for $300 a month in a house with bars on the windows, Mr. Le said he was surviving on handouts after a lifetime of self-sufficiency.

He arrived in the United States in 1979. Nine years ago, he married on a visit home to Phan Thiet in southeastern Vietnam, assuring his wife that one day she would join him here.

Mr. Le said he used to send up to $5,000 a year to his wife and their 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. As his family turns to other relatives for support, he is living on an initial payment of $1,200 from BP and whatever aid comes his way.

In phone conversations, his wife urges him to find a job outside the fishing industry. He applied at two Vietnamese restaurants, but neither would hire him for even the most menial work, Mr. Le said.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he murmured. “Any opportunity for work, I’ll do it.”

Add Psyche of Gulf Workers to Spill?s Toll - NYTimes.com

it's hard to get my head around all this.
the coverage of the story with its focus on bp---particularly on the financial consequences of the disaster---i can't help but think of as a performance of the subordination of human beings to capital.
but it's also part of one fundamental aspect of the narrative.
bp is a (problematic) collective agent in the generation of disaster. but in what way? through a network of subcontracts---where did transocean go in all the coverage? what about halliburton? what other subcontractors were involved? did the people actually running the rig when it blew up work for bp? what is bp anyway?

through corporate policies about cost-cutting.
through informal (?) histories or customs that took shape through a pattern or patterns of getting over on minerals management.
through a particular sequence of actions spread over a specific duration that centered on particular individuals not noticing indicators that a particular set of very very bad things were happening in the well....

bp operated in a regulatory environment and so was as it was in the gulf as a function of a symbiotic relation.

the fixation on the spill itself. this is clearly a Problem. a massive problem. but it's also relatively discrete. the rov feeds show images of clouds of oil billowing into the water sometimes more sometimes less. how much and from where? there's almost no context. (this is why the oil drum is so useful.) there's a drama involving Technology and Problem that's playing out. it's good for television, which can only deal with one thing at a time typically and relies on metonymic devices to account for contexts or structures (the part stands for the whole)
and in this case the part refers back to bp. the drama becomes the leak and stopping it.
the vast amounts of oil spilling into the gulf are secondary to it.

then there's coverage of the adventures of the oil in killing off the gulf. it's a diffuse story because of all the (problematic) dispersants used to keep the oil off the surface (because.....there's a bunch of reasons. we sitting around in chairs are presented with them. we typically don't have context. we can't really choose. is it true that the oil will do less harm at greater depths? isn't it true that oil dissolves and its toxicity decreases? if that's the case, shouldn't it be closer to the surface? but if it's at the surface it's likely to hit shore. that's bad. isn't it also bad in enormous plumes well below the surface? how toxic are the dispersants? is this all a game being played around the theme of visibility/invisibility? how do we know? does anyone know?)

meanwhile, oil drilling gets suspended (which makes sense, yes? the regulatory frame is obviously flawed. environmental concerns have been secondary for a long time. but there's not always massive oil spills...so wait....)

and people's lives are affected directly and indirectly.
and the shore-line is getting fucked up.
and its hot. really really hot outside.

yet it could be worse:

Quote:

Half a World From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old
By ADAM NOSSITER

BODO, Nigeria — Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless.

Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.

Not far away, there is still black crude on Gio Creek from an April spill, and just across the state line in Akwa Ibom the fishermen curse their oil-blackened nets, doubly useless in a barren sea buffeted by a spill from an offshore Exxon Mobil pipe in May that lasted for weeks.

The oil spews from rusted and aging pipes, unchecked by what analysts say is ineffectual or collusive regulation, and abetted by deficient maintenance and sabotage. In the face of this black tide is an infrequent protest — soldiers guarding an Exxon Mobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month, according to witnesses — but mostly resentful resignation.

Small children swim in the polluted estuary here, fishermen take their skiffs out ever farther — “There’s nothing we can catch here,” said Pius Doron, perched anxiously over his boat — and market women trudge through oily streams. “There is Shell oil on my body,” said Hannah Baage, emerging from Gio Creek with a machete to cut the cassava stalks balanced on her head.

That the Gulf of Mexico disaster has transfixed a country and president they so admire is a matter of wonder for people here, living among the palm-fringed estuaries in conditions as abject as any in Nigeria, according to the United Nations. Though their region contributes nearly 80 percent of the government’s revenue, they have hardly benefited from it; life expectancy is the lowest in Nigeria.

“President Obama is worried about that one,” Claytus Kanyie, a local official, said of the gulf spill, standing among dead mangroves in the soft oily muck outside Bodo. “Nobody is worried about this one. The aquatic life of our people is dying off. There used be shrimp. There are no longer any shrimp.”

In the distance, smoke rose from what Mr. Kanyie and environmental activists said was an illegal refining business run by local oil thieves and protected, they said, by Nigerian security forces. The swamp was deserted and quiet, without even bird song; before the spills, Mr. Kanyie said, women from Bodo earned a living gathering mollusks and shellfish among the mangroves.

With new estimates that as many as 2.5 million gallons of oil could be spilling into the Gulf of Mexico each day, the Niger Delta has suddenly become a cautionary tale for the United States.

As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, or nearly 11 million gallons a year, a team of experts for the Nigerian government and international and local environmental groups concluded in a 2006 report. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 dumped an estimated 10.8 million gallons of oil into the waters off Alaska.

So the people here cast a jaundiced, if sympathetic, eye at the spill in the gulf. “We’re sorry for them, but it’s what’s been happening to us for 50 years,” said Emman Mbong, an official in Eket.

The spills here are all the more devastating because this ecologically sensitive wetlands region, the source of 10 percent of American oil imports, has most of Africa’s mangroves and, like the Louisiana coast, has fed the interior for generations with its abundance of fish, shellfish, wildlife and crops.

Local environmentalists have been denouncing the spoliation for years, with little effect. “It’s a dead environment,” said Patrick Naagbanton of the Center for Environment, Human Rights and Development in Port Harcourt, the leading city of the oil region.

Though much here has been destroyed, much remains, with large expanses of vibrant green. Environmentalists say that with intensive restoration, the Niger Delta could again be what it once was.

Nigeria produced more than two million barrels of oil a day last year, and in over 50 years thousands of miles of pipes have been laid through the swamps. Shell, the major player, has operations on thousands of square miles of territory, according to Amnesty International. Aging columns of oil-well valves, known as Christmas trees, pop up improbably in clearings among the palm trees. Oil sometimes shoots out of them, even if the wells are defunct.

“The oil was just shooting up in the air, and it goes up in the sky,” said Amstel M. Gbarakpor, youth president in Kegbara Dere, recalling the spill in April at Gio Creek. “It took them three weeks to secure this well.”

How much of the spillage is due to oil thieves or to sabotage linked to the militant movement active in the Niger Delta, and how much stems from poorly maintained and aging pipes, is a matter of fierce dispute among communities, environmentalists and the oil companies.

Caroline Wittgen, a spokeswoman for Shell in Lagos, said, “We don’t discuss individual spills,” but argued that the “vast majority” were caused by sabotage or theft, with only 2 percent due to equipment failure or human error.

“We do not believe that we behave irresponsibly, but we do operate in a unique environment where security and lawlessness are major problems,” Ms. Wittgen said.

Oil companies also contend that they clean up much of what is lost. A spokesman for Exxon Mobil in Lagos, Nigel A. Cookey-Gam, said that the company’s recent offshore spill leaked only about 8,400 gallons and that “this was effectively cleaned up.”

But many experts and local officials say the companies attribute too much to sabotage, to lessen their culpability. Richard Steiner, a consultant on oil spills, concluded in a 2008 report that historically “the pipeline failure rate in Nigeria is many times that found elsewhere in the world,” and he noted that even Shell acknowledged “almost every year” a spill due to a corroded pipeline.

On the beach at Ibeno, the few fishermen were glum. Far out to sea oil had spilled for weeks from the Exxon Mobil pipe. “We can’t see where to fish; oil is in the sea,” Patrick Okoni said.

“We don’t have an international media to cover us, so nobody cares about it,” said Mr. Mbong, in nearby Eket. “Whatever cry we cry is not heard outside of here.”

In Nigeria, Oil Spills Are a Longtime Scourge - NYTimes.com

these stories about the niger river delta. this is at least the 3rd i've seen over the past couple weeks. what do you imagine their function to be?

personally, i think the implication is clear: if anyone thinks for a minute that big oil gives a shit about people who live near Resources beyond the absolute minimum that political and other pressures force them to, you're dreaming.

you imagine petro-capitalim benign?
look at the niger river delta.
this could be you.

at the same time, it's odd that outside the small world of folk who track the glorious march of capitalism from multi-to-transnational forms of exporting its worst features away from the metropole (a condition of possibility for the neoliberalism and other forms of retro-asshattery) this is how conditions along the delta are getting exposed. a little at a time. here and there.

but if the message is "this could be you"---then what about the folk who live along the delta?

meanwhile.
we all had been hope to whomever one hopes to about such things that this information is not true:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967

aceventura3 · 06-17-2010, 06:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

at the same time, it's odd that outside the small world of folk who track the glorious march of capitalism from multi-to-transnational forms of exporting its worst features away from the metropole (a condition of possibility for the neoliberalism and other forms of retro-asshattery) this is how conditions along the delta are getting exposed. a little at a time. here and there.

What does your commentary on capitalism have to do with the spill, clean up and restitution? I have asked several times and I am not clear on what your point is?

roachboy · 06-17-2010, 06:38 AM

well gee, ace, what words in the comment that you quoted are giving you the trouble?
i'd be happy to decipher any of those english words you don't get.

maybe if you expanded your attention to include the whole section that paragraph comes from you wouldn't have such comprehension problems.

ARTelevision · 06-17-2010, 07:51 AM

Hi rb,

re: "meanwhile.
we all had been hope to whomever one hopes to about such things that this information is not true:"

Yes, I got an eeire sense when reading this account of the items that were being checked off, one-by-one. I recall thinking at the time those statements (essentialy PR attempts by BP to manage the news - still ongoing, of course) were being made that the most amazing thing was that they were obviously false and transparently so. Strange that the gov as well as the "news media" (read "infotainment system") simply takes these statements and runs with them. Of course, lately, there is some skepticism expressed, even while the newest - and obviously execrable - misrepresantations are channeled along as so much documentation and reporting...so much for realism...and the so-called "real world."

This has reached the level of a Debordian spectacle.

aceventura3 · 06-17-2010, 07:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

well gee, ace, what words in the comment that you quoted are giving you the trouble?
i'd be happy to decipher any of those english words you don't get.

maybe if you expanded your attention to include the whole section that paragraph comes from you wouldn't have such comprehension problems.

There is a pattern - it comes from many comments related to capitalism in your posts in this thread - I am not interested in taking the time to outline all of them because I assume you know what you have written. I have presented questions and commented in different ways and your responses have been flip and vague. I get that the nature of these threads is often to be superficial on complex issues - I was just curious about your point of view and looked for something with a bit more meat. I am a die-hard capitalist, when it is attacked, I take note and I prepare to defend it. If, for you, your response is - just because, I say so - I get that too, that I understand.

TNJ4555 · 06-17-2010, 08:08 AM

This is a thread from the website the Oil Drum
Scroll down to the comment by "dougr"
A little too big to copy/paste
A little too scary to ponder

The Oil Drum | Deepwater Oil Spill - A Longer Term Problem, Personnel - and Open Thread 2

roachboy · 06-17-2010, 08:22 AM

art: that is the trick i suppose: the corporate information management system, whatever it's local orientation (so whatever the strategy that's involved) has created enough infotainment chaos that even folk with some degree of expertise are left either piecing together what's happening through the organization of fragments (which is in this case a very very bad thing if what's pieced together turns out to be true) or piecing together reverse images of disinformation through the organization of fragments.

it's a hell of a situation, the extent to which it is obvious that the whole of the infotainment environment we operate in is subject of distortion. we can't get straight information about the well-head situation. we can't get straight information about oil flows. nor about dispersants. nor about oil slicks and what they mean. nor about where exactly this one is. nor about what's happening on the shorelines.

fragments though. that's all. fragments without context.
and this is one of the things that's interested me in the thread, assembling an image of the image-space, trying to find context, failing repeatedly to find it.

the society of the spectacle, but in its disaster-face mode. not the usual happy domination through the colonization of dreams...

====

ace: the superficiality about capitalism is entirely yours.

it is not real interesting to me what your aesthetic relation is to the noun capitalism, nor am i real interested in the arbitrary features you hang around it to make it pretty for yourself.

i'd explain something of the ways in which it's possible to see capitalism as a mode of production, but you wouldn't understand it. you wouldn't see the point if the words explaining it were in bold over and over. you'd "ask simple questions" and wonder why "they don't get answered."

so be as mystified as you like about why the niger river delta material is in the thread. seriously. enjoy yourself.

aceventura3 · 06-17-2010, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

art: that is the trick i suppose: the corporate information management system, whatever it's local orientation (so whatever the strategy that's involved) has created enough infotainment chaos that even folk with some degree of expertise are left either piecing together what's happening through the organization of fragments (which is in this case a very very bad thing if what's pieced together turns out to be true) or piecing together reverse images of disinformation through the organization of fragments.

it's a hell of a situation, the extent to which it is obvious that the whole of the infotainment environment we operate in is subject of distortion. we can't get straight information about the well-head situation. we can't get straight information about oil flows. nor about dispersants. nor about oil slicks and what they mean. nor about where exactly this one is. nor about what's happening on the shorelines.

fragments though. that's all. fragments without context.
and this is one of the things that's interested me in the thread, assembling an image of the image-space, trying to find context, failing repeatedly to find it.

the society of the spectacle, but in its disaster-face mode. not the usual happy domination through the colonization of dreams...

====

ace: the superficiality about capitalism is entirely yours.

it is not real interesting to me what your aesthetic relation is to the noun capitalism, nor am i real interested in the arbitrary features you hang around it to make it pretty for yourself.

i'd explain something of the ways in which it's possible to see capitalism as a mode of production, but you wouldn't understand it. you wouldn't see the point if the words explaining it were in bold over and over. you'd "ask simple questions" and wonder why "they don't get answered."

so be as mystified as you like about why the niger river delta material is in the thread. seriously. enjoy yourself.

Your responses above illustrates a broader problem. A search for specifics while ignoring what is known and a search for conspiracy while being unable to respond to simple questions.

You have often made reference to the regulatory frame work. It is clear that there was no failure in regulation the failure was in enforcement of regulation. You desperately want to believe there was some system failure based on a capitalist frame-work and conspiracy to cover it up. This position can not be supported when challenged.

roachboy · 06-17-2010, 11:22 AM

ace--i don't know how you did it, but you've somehow managed to convince yourself that my interpretation of the regulatory regime is almost the opposite of what it is.

if for some reason you find yourself interested in what i've actually been putting together about the regulatory set-up and the relation between that set-up and this disaster is, read the thread. it's all here.

=============

rather than keep this to a useless post refuting a non-position, i found this business from texas rep. joe barton kinda amusing, in a pathetic-to-craven kinda way.

Quote:

Rep. Barton under fire after apologizing to BP

By Aaron Blake
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 17, 2010; 3:05 PM

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) on Thursday apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the way his company has been treated by the U.S. government, drawing heavy criticism from the left and giving ammunition to an administration on its heels over the gulf oil spill.

Barton, in his opening statement before Hayward's testimony to a House subcommittee, decried the Obama administration for pressuring BP to open a $20 billion escrow account and to suspend dividend payments for the rest of the year.

The ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee said such arrangements have no legal basis, and that the political pressure exerted on the corporation in the midst of an investigation is a "tragedy of the first proportion."

"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Barton said. "I apologize."

Barton called the escrow account, which will be distributed independently, a "slush fund" and said the situation amounted to a "shakedown" by the White House. He said if he, as a congressman, asked for something similar from a corporation he was investigating, he could go to jail.

BP's Hayward said in later testimony at the hearing that he doesn't think the $20 billion escrow account amounts to a "slush fund." Pressed by Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), Hayward repeatedly declined to give a yes-or-no answer about whether he thought the situation represented a "shakedown."

Almost immediately following Barton's comments, the liberal blogs and Democratic campaign operatives sprang into action and the White House denounced Barton. Even before Barton's comments, Democrats had been attempting to connect Republicans to BP, noting the many contributions GOP congressmen have received from it and other oil companies.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement that Barton was taking the side of corporations over the American people.

"Congressman Barton may think that a fund to compensate these Americans is a tragedy, but most Americans know that the real tragedy is what the men and women of the Gulf Coast are going through right now," Gibbs said. "Members from both parties should repudiate his comments."

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said: "Republicans should get their priorities straight: Are they going to keep protecting and apologizing for Big Oil or will they finally stand up for families and businesses whose lives have been upended by the BP oil spill?"

Republicans hoping to pin the problems of the Gulf Coast on Obama were immediately put on the defensive.

Rep. Michael Burgess, a Texas GOP colleague of Barton's, appeared to separate himself from his fellow lawmaker's comments after the committee returned from a brief recess for votes.

"I am not going to apologize to you," Burgess said to Hayward. Burgess referred to the many costs of the environmental disaster: "I don't feel that apologies are in order."

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) distanced himself from Barton in an interview on Fox News.

"I don't know what context Mr. Barton was making that remark, but I'm glad BP has accepted responsibility for their actions," Boehner said.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) spent much of his speaking time at the hearing attacking Barton.

"This is not a shakedown of the company," Markey said. "This is, in my opinion, the American government working at its best."

Democrats point out that Barton, represents a district just south of Dallas, has a history of defending the energy industry and making controversial and colorful comments.

Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) who represents the Gulf Coast area, called on Barton to step down as ranking member of the committee.

Barton has some company in his position. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) also said in a statement Wednesday that the fund amounted to a shakedown.

"These actions are emblematic of a politicization of our economy that has been borne out of this administration's drive for greater power and control," Price said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

the article itself is hotlinked.
no comment seems needed.

live stream of the hearings:
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN3.aspx

aceventura3 · 06-17-2010, 12:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

ace--i don't know how you did it, but you've somehow managed to convince yourself that my interpretation of the regulatory regime is almost the opposite of what it is.

if for some reason you find yourself interested in what i've actually been putting together about the regulatory set-up and the relation between that set-up and this disaster is, read the thread. it's all here.

=============

rather than keep this to a useless post refuting a non-position, i found this business from texas rep. joe barton kinda amusing, in a pathetic-to-craven kinda way.

washingtonpost.com

the article itself is hotlinked.
no comment seems needed.

live stream of the hearings:
C-SPAN3 Live Stream - C-SPAN

From the very beginning BP, government and other experts knew that it would take about 90 days to drill relief wells, the ultimate solution to the leak. Within the first week, I am certain, that the CEO of BP had "best case", "worst case" and "expected" projections of the costs. The pubic became aware of the $20 billion number weeks ago - and BP made clear that they would pay legitimate claims. Our government made the choice to rely on BP to cap the well, be involved in containment/clean-up and claims approvals/payments. The $20 billion fund is smoke and mirrors, purely political. BP can not defend itself against the power of the Federal government - Obama knows it, BP knows it, and almost everyone else with a pulse knows it. This diversionary tactic has nothing to do with stopping the leak, contaiment/clean-up or making people whole. Obama has his boot on the throat of BP and he needs BP to be available to take more of the anger than he does.

Oh, and a news flash....A for profit company makes decisions to increase profits...

Another news flash...A for profit company takes actions to improve public opinion...

Another news flash...A for profit company takes actions to minimize the perception of damages...

BP failed, but there was evidence of BP's failings long before this event, but "we" took no action. According to many BP failed/lied/etc. after the accident, but "we" took no action.

So...

how many links or references do you need to understand this? So, my questions focus on the broader issue of what are the regulatory changes you expect, and why? You make vague references to what you want and take shots at capitalism and I simply seek elaboration.

Barton is 100% correct what Obama did is a shake-down. This is obvious.

{added} On the $20 billion number look at my post#318 on 6/7. I think the $20 billion number was there "expected" cost.

roachboy · 06-17-2010, 12:45 PM

that's funny stuff, ace. apparently you think barton was more correct than barton does:

Quote:

Barton retracts BP apology, regrets 'shakedown' comment

By Aaron Blake

UPDATED at 4:15 p.m.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who touched off a furor Thursday morning by apologizing to BP, has now retracted his remarks -- and is apologizing for accusing the White House of shaking down the oil giant.

Speaking at a House hearing Thursday morning, Barton first apologized to BP chief executive Tony Hayward for the administration's conduct in securing a $20 billion fund for victims of the Gulf oil spill, calling it a "shakedown."

Late in the afternoon, Barton issued a statement that said: "I apologize for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP. As I told my colleagues yesterday and said again this morning, BP should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico.

"I regret the impact that my statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident."

It was Barton's second crack at an apology for his initial apology. During the hearing, he returned to say that he was sorry, but only for any "misconstruction" of his comments. His more recent apology differed in that it actually expressed regrets for the content of his remarks.

House GOP leaders put out a statement around the same time as Barton, distancing themselves from his comments.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) issued a joint statement. They said Barton's comments that that White House coerced BP into agreeing to a $20 billion fund for claims "were wrong."

"BP itself has acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them and has offered an initial pledge of $20 billion dollars for that purpose," the three leaders said.

"The families and businesspeople in the Gulf region want leadership, accountability and action from BP and the Administration," they continued. "It is unacceptable that, 59 days after this crisis began, no solution is forthcoming. Simply put, the American people want all of our resources, time and focus to be directed toward stopping the spill and cleaning up the mess."

The leaders' statement did not mention other members who have offered comments similar to Barton, including Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.). Price has also called the White House's handling of BP a "shakedown."

Barton apologizes for 'misconstruction' of BP apology

3:29 p.m.: Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) is apologizing for any "misconstruction" of his comments this morning, in which he personally apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the White House's "shakedown" of the company.

In Barton's second apology, he said he was sorry if anything he said this morning took the blame for the Gulf oil spill off of BP's shoulders.

"Let the record be clear that I think BP is responsible for this accident, should be held responsible, and should in every way to everything possible to make good on the consequences that have resulted from this accident," Barton said. "And if anything I've said this morning has been misconstrued, in opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction."

Barton has been under considerable pressure ever since apologizing to Hayward this morning for the way in which the White House has treated BP. He said the Obama administration used political pressure to force BP into creating a $20 billion escrow account for claims made against the company.

At least one Republican, Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), has already called for Barton to step down as ranking Republican of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Barton told Politico that he will stay on in his current post.

44 - Barton retracts BP apology, regrets 'shakedown' comment

silent_jay · 06-17-2010, 12:47 PM

aceventura3 · 06-17-2010, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silent_jay

Or maybe Barton apologized to BP because he has taken money from the oil companies, according to a story I just saw on telly to the tune of $319,000 since 2007, as for being '100% correct', even he doesn't think he is, as he's apologized for his comments knowing they were wrong as no gun was held to BP's head. You're just looking for a reason for this to be about 'the evil Obama', rather than at the real problem that your regulations are shitty.

It isn't 'the ultimate solution' ace, the ultimate solution is to have relief well mandatory to be drilled simultaneously along with the working well as I've said from the beginning, 3 months after the fact isn't an 'ultimate solution', it's a we fucked up and need to try and fix this.

I don't get lost in political correctness, and I call things the way I see them.

The $20 billion number was not a number pulled out of thin air. BP projected its costs early on and they refine the number constantly, I expect they have a number now that is going to be in the range of about $30 billion that they will have to set aside over the next decade or so.

Again, looking back at my posts, I illustrated a hypothetical call Obama could have made to the CEO of BP, in that call what I described was a shake-down, pure and simple and it happens every day. Obama's administrations actual actions on their very real call was a shake-down. You and everyone else can play pretend if you want - I prefer not to.

I agree, drilling a relief well in advance would have been a good idea.

---------- Post added at 09:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:25 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

that's funny stuff, ace. apparently you think barton was more correct than barton does:

Actually what is funny is the notion implied in some of your posts that we could possibly have an industry regulated without experts from within the industry. You know the whole ...we let them regulate themselves...argument. I tried to understand your alternative, but it will never happen because the thought is oh, so funny- assuming you have thought about an alternative. I bet you think a bunch of academics with no rig or drilling experience can formulate regulations for rig operations, am I right or what? Keep it superficial.

Oh, and then the thought that a for profit company will make a legal political donation or use a lobbyist...oh my. How about voting for people with integrity and conviction - no amount of money would change my core beliefs.

roachboy · 06-17-2010, 06:01 PM

ace....i haven't implied anything of the sort. i said that the regulatory system was far too passive from the state side. far too reactive to industry. that's what i said.
you could i suppose twist that around to be the simple inverse of your position, but that would be what they call making a straw man.

as for your tedious projections about i think....as quaint as the idea is that you'd bother projecting about little old me, the fact is that you are once again just making stuff up.

---------- Post added at 02:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:05 AM ----------

first i thought a follow-up on the barton escapades

Quote:

GOP rushes to clean up Barton mess
By: Jonathan Allen and Jake Sherman
June 17, 2010 07:46 PM EDT

In the blink of an eye, Texas Rep. Joe Barton handed Democrats just what they wanted: a Republican villain in the oil spill crisis.

“I apologize,” he told BP CEO Tony Hayward — coloring himself “ashamed” that the White House would engage in a “shakedown” to get BP to set up a $20 billion escrow fund to pay damage claims for Gulf Coast businesses and residents.

It would have been bad enough for the GOP if a backbencher had accidentally strayed wildly off message, but Barton, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is the face of the party on energy policy — and his comments were intentional. So rather than talking about BP’s culpability and the Obama administration’s response, Washington was fixated on a Texas Republican’s seemingly tone-deaf comments.

The damage control was swift and the pushback severe — leaders in Barton’s own party threatened to yank his ranking-member status on the committee. Gulf-state Republicans seethed, and the top three GOP House leaders were compelled to put out a joint statement saying, “Congressman Barton’s statements this morning were wrong.”

The Democratic National Committee sent out at least a dozen e-mails blasting Barton, and the White House put out a statement calling his comments “shameful.”

GOP leaders hauled Barton into a Capitol office shortly after midday and gave him an ultimatum, according to aides: Apologize for the apology to BP or face ouster from the Energy and Commerce post. Barton chose the former.

“I apologize for using the term ‘shakedown’ with regard to yesterday’s actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP,” Barton said.

It’s not often that a lawmaker apologizes for pre-written remarks.

But Barton’s still deep in the muck — and no one’s anxious to pull him out, least of all Republican leaders.

“Now that he has apologized, we’ll see what happens going forward,” said a Republican leadership aide, leaving open the possibility that the Republican Steering Committee could still move to oust Barton.

Republican leaders sensed the danger to their party — and the opportunity to rid it of Barton’s leadership — immediately.

Shortly after Barton was told to apologize by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) in Boehner’s office, House Republicans’ BlackBerrys began to buzz with an e-mail from Boehner containing a transcript of his response to Barton’s comments.

His staff filled rank-and-file inboxes with their leader’s remarks to reporters on the matter, a unique way of illustrating that he did not agree with — and would not stand with — Barton.

“People are calling for his head,” one GOP member of the Energy and Commerce Committee told POLITICO at midday.

Republican Rep. Jeff Miller, whose Florida Panhandle district borders the Gulf, made that call public shortly thereafter.

“I condemn Mr. Barton’s statement,” Miller said. “Mr. Barton’s remarks are out of touch with this tragedy, and I feel his comments call into question his judgment and ability to serve in ... leadership on the Energy and Commerce Committee. He should step down as ranking member of the committee.”

But Barton remained stolid — if not defiant — as he failed to immediately grasp the gravity of the situation.

He said calls for his ouster were “news to me” as he went to meet with Boehner and Cantor. Asked whether he planned to stay in his job, he replied, “Damn straight.”

It shouldn’t surprise Barton that Boehner failed to break his fall: The two have a long-developed distaste for each other that peaked when Barton ran against Boehner for the post of minority leader in late 2006. And Barton’s hopes of reversing a Boehner-supported GOP term-limit rule that would force him out the post at the end of this Congress appear more remote than ever now.

Democrats seemed almost to revel in Barton’s remarks.

“Who would the GOP put in charge of overseeing the energy industry & Big Oil if they won control of Congress? Yup, u guessed it — JOE BARTON,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs tweeted to his 66,066 followers Thursday afternoon.

That’s after Gibbs released an official White House statement saying it is “shameful ... that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small-business owners and communities whose lives have been devastated by the destruction” and calling on members of both parties to “repudiate his comments.”

Vice President Joe Biden called Barton’s comments “outrageous.”

Democratic candidates tried to pin the remarks on their opponents.

“We deserve to know if [Rep.] Charlie Dent [R-Pa.] agrees with Congressman Barton’s apology to BP,” said John Callahan, Democratic nominee in Pennsylvania’s Allentown- and Bethlehem-area 15th District. “I think BP should be apologizing to American taxpayers instead of having Republican congressmen apologize to them.”

The worst part for Republicans: Barton knew he was going off-message.

A copy of Barton’s now-infamous opening statement showed that he had every intention to say what he said.

“I’m only speaking for myself — I’m not speaking for anybody else — but I apologize,” Barton said in prepared remarks. “I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or corporation that does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.”

That’s two apologies.

And then, amid the firestorm, there was a third apology, retracting the other apology.

But that may not be enough for his GOP colleagues.

“Whether Mr. Barton realizes it or not, he certainly did no favors to every member of our conference, his Republican colleagues in the Senate, candidates out running and a lot of our vulnerables,” a Republican aide said. “What he did certainly did not help anybody.

GOP rushes to clean up Joe Barton mess - Jonathan Allen and Jake Sherman - POLITICO.com

meanwhile, in another corridor, folk smell a connection to the cheney commission but there's still alot of murk in the way.

Quote:

Dick Cheney's Last Laugh
The oil spill raises new questions about the Bush administration's secret energy task force.

By Kate Sheppard | Thu Jun. 10, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

Dick Cheney hasn't made much time for television appearances lately. But in the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon unleashed a torrent of oil on the Gulf of Mexico [1], his name has been creeping back into the press. "The truth is that right now we have precisely the regulatory system that the Bush-Cheney administration wanted: full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbyists filling the very agencies that are supposed to be overseeing the industry," liberal commentator Arianna Huffington said on ABC's This Week last Sunday. Cheney's daughter, Liz, was on hand to defend her father. "Arianna, I don't know what planet you live on," she shot back. "What you are saying has no relationship to the truth, no relationship to the facts."

The reality is a lot more complicated than that. Many of the policy and regulatory failures that laid the groundwork for the BP catastrophe [1] can be traced back to the Bush-Cheney era. But so far, this question has received relatively little attention—mostly because the task force that developed the former administration's energy policy operated in extreme secrecy. Did the task force's decisions play a role in the BP spill? And could the Gulf disaster finally provoke new scrutiny of the task force's clandestine workings?

The energy task force was created days after onetime oilman George W. Bush took office in 2001, and was headed by Cheney, a former CEO at Halliburton, one of the world's largest providers of oilfield products and services. For months, the task force solicited input on US energy policy. On May 16, 2001, the group issued its final report [2], which was submitted to Congress in June. But the participants and details of the discussions were kept tightly under wraps.

The open-government group Judicial Watch tried to pry details of the task force's deliberations from the administration in June, arguing that the sessions qualified as public information under the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the open-meetings law. The US General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, also sought information on which industry executives and lobbyists had attended the gatherings.

But in the first of many clashes over presidential secrecy, the White House rejected those requests, arguing that it was entitled to conduct the meetings behind closed doors thanks to executive privilege. Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club sued, but the Supreme Court [3] ultimately sided with the administration. Though some information has trickled out in the years since, the vast majority of the task force's deliberations remain hidden from the public eye.

Here's what we know about the task force and offshore drilling. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, was able to obtain 13,500 pages of heavily redacted documents [4] that gave a glimpse into the role industry leaders played in shaping the administration's policies (NRDC also got a list of the documents [5] (PDF) that the administration refused to turn over). In July 2007, the Washington Post got a list of the roughly 300 groups and individuals who met with task force staffers and, in some cases, Cheney himself.

BP officials were among [6] those who "gave detailed energy policy recommendations" to the administration, though when that fact came to light, the company refused to comment on those meetings. We still don't know what specific policy areas BP execs weighed in on. Perhaps it's little surprise that BP recently hired [7] Cheney's former press secretary, a public defender of the secret task force, to help the company with crisis communication after the spill.

But we do have a few more details about other oil industry players in the talks. Chevron's CEO contributed a detailed list [8](PDF) of ways in which the government could "eliminate federal barriers to increased energy supplies"—many of which were incorporated in the task force's final report [9]. This included recommendations to ease federal permitting rules for energy development and a request that the administration support opening up new areas of the eastern Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil and gas development. Doing so, wrote Chevron CEO David O'Reilly, would "demonstrate a commitment to reject unjustified opposition to new energy leasing and development."

The American Petroleum Institute offered its own long list [10] of suggestions for energy policy. A March 20, 2001, email from API to an official at the Energy Department included a draft executive order [11] calling for all federal agencies to issue a detailed statement on any regulatory action that "adversely affects energy supply, distribution or use." It was nearly identical to the order Bush issued just two months later [12].

Many of the recommendations from the task force report were adopted in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. That legislation provided $6 billion in subsidies [13] for oil and gas development. Royalty payments for oil and gas development were waived in several regions of the US. Some companies were allowed to pay royalties with oil, rather than money—a less transparent system that was more vulnerable to abuse. The bill also provided $1.5 billion in direct payments to companies to incentivize drilling in deepwater wells, and curtailed the power of states to oversee oil and gas exploration off their coasts under the Coastal Zone Management Act.

In addition, the bill weakened environmental protections for offshore drilling, making it easier to exclude a broad range of exploration and drilling activities from analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act. This has been cited as the reason that the Deepwater Horizon site was not subjected to a thorough environmental analysis [13].

The task force's final report also presented a rosy picture of the offshore drilling industry. Newer oil and gas drilling methods, it said, "practically eliminate spills from offshore platforms" and "enhance worker safety, lower risk of blowouts, and provide better protection of groundwater resources." The report advocated lifting the moratorium on portions of the outer continental shelf, noting that "concerns over the potential impacts of oil spills have been a major factor behind imposition of the OCS moratoria." Bush lifted the executive moratorium in 2008, and the Democratic-controlled Congress allowed its own moratorium [14] to expire.

But there's a lot we still don't know. The task force recommendations included scaling back regulations and oversight of offshore drilling while expanding incentive programs and access to resources, many of which would come to pass in future legislation. But how much the task force may have guided decisions at federal agencies—in particular the notoriously lax Minerals Management Service (MMS)—is unclear. The administration's directives across the agencies actively discouraged any regulations or oversight that might hinder development of resources.

Among the many questions is what role the task force may have played in a 2003 decision by the MMS not to require offshore rigs to install an acoustic shut-off switch, a remote-controlled backup system that seals off an underwater well even if the rig above is destroyed. Countries like Norway and Brazil require this precaution, and MMS considered doing the same. But oil companies complained that the $500,000 devices were too expensive and, they argued, ineffective. Ultimately, MMS made the switches optional. The Deepwater Horizon was not outfitted with such a device, which could have prevented the spill. Other concerns include [15] a failure to implement new cementing policies or act on known concerns about key components on drilling rigs.

The Department of Justice has launched criminal and civil investigations into the disaster, while a presidential commission is looking into both the spill and offshore drilling policy in general. That commission currently lacks subpoena power, though there's an effort underway in Congress [16] to grant the commission that power. Numerous congressional committees have also launched probes of the spill. A congressional aide working for one of those committees indicated that there has been some discussion of revisiting the task force in those investigations, though no concrete steps to do so have been taken.

Open government advocates say this might be the appropriate time to push for more information about his task force. Mandy Smithberger, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, says that it's "definitely a ripe time" to find out more about what went on in the meetings. "I don't think you can understand how we got to where we are without looking back," she says.

"When you have a disaster of this magnitude, it raises the question, if in this whole secretive process, what was discussed, how much did the Bush administration ignore, how much did they allow the oil and gas industry to basically do what they wanted," says AnneWeismann, chief counsel at Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington. "Secrecy is so pernicious that it can continue to damage even when the administration is not in power."

Dick Cheney's Last Laugh | Mother Jones

it feels right but the fit just isn't q u i t e there.

and is this what you meant by lobbyist for bp ace?

Quote:

Judge favored by BP has financial ties to oil industry

More on the investigation into the judge BP wants to oversee lawsuits resulting from the Deepwater Horizon explosion on tonight's AC360 at 10 p.m. ET

Houston, Texas (CNN) -- The judge that BP wants to hear an estimated 200 lawsuits over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster gets tens of thousands of dollars a year in oil royalties and is paid travel expenses to industry conferences, financial disclosure forms show.

Lawyers who practice before U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes say he's tough but fair, and a CNN review of his cases found he ruled in favor of oil companies only slightly more often than he ruled against them. But his connections to the industry have raised eyebrows at a time when BP is under fire for the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Federal financial disclosure forms obtained by CNN show that since 2003, Hughes has consistently been paid annual fees from the oil and gas industry, mostly in the form of lease payments for wells and mineral rights on land he owns. None of the payments comes from BP, but his holdings include mutual funds that draw income from Anadarko Petroleum, a minority owner in the well now pouring up to 2.5 million gallons a day into the Gulf.

In some cases, the amounts are significant. In others, the payments are relatively small.

Oil giant ConocoPhillips paid him between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2008, the last year in which records are publicly available. In a note attached to the 2008 form, Hughes said he expected the amounts to be relatively similar for 2009. He gets smaller amounts from smaller producers such as Sun Oil, Everest Oil and Wagner Oil, which pay for the right to drill oil and gas from lands he owns.

The federal disclosure form does not require exact amounts, only estimates and approximate figures.

A legal expert on ethics, Indiana University professor Charles Geyh, told CNN that judges with financial ties to the oil industry should make their connections crystal clear.

"When you take it together, is there a concern that a reasonable person might say, 'Look-it, he's not a judge that happens to be dabbling -- he's in effect a participant in the industry he's trying to judge,' " Geyh said.

Hughes has been sitting on the federal bench in Houston since the mid-1980s, and BP has asked that he supervise all of the estimated 200 cases filed against it since the April sinking of the offshore drill rig Deepwater Horizon. The sinking left 11 workers dead and uncorked a gusher that has been fouling the Gulf for more than eight weeks.

In court filings in early May, BP requested Hughes be assigned to preside over the spill lawsuits because he already was assigned to one of the first cases, a lawsuit filed on behalf of Vietnamese-American fishermen from Louisiana. According to an e-mail sent to CNN, BP said the judge "is an appropriate choice to provide oversight of these cases."

The Department of Justice has asked that the suits be consolidated in New Orleans, Louisiana, the closest federal court to the spill. The sinking took place in the waters off southeastern Louisiana, about 40 miles off the mouth of the Mississippi River.

BP would not comment on Hughes' financial disclosures. But the judge has held two recent meetings in Houston to discuss possible ethics concerns, a lawyer who attended those meetings told CNN.

"In both of those hearings, the questions have been raised about whether or not he should preside over these cases or whether there will be a conflict," Mark Lanier, a prominent Houston plaintiff attorney, told CNN. "In the second one, the judge explained he had listed online all of his financial disclosure information, so people would be able to look at and probe."

One particular case over which Hughes presided in 2009 is raising questions.

In 2008, Hughes listed royalty payments from about 10 wells leased to Devon Energy, an Oklahoma City-based oil and gas company. The amounts were relatively small -- under $15,000, according to his disclosure form -- and a source told CNN the payments were for a collection of nine or 10 wells scattered in land across two or three states.

In May of 2009, Hughes issued a favorable decision for Devon Energy in a dispute with its insurance company. According to an attorney for the insurance firm, the total amount was $3.9 million. Court records show that Hughes did not disclose his royalty payments from Devon at any point during the proceedings.

No one claims the judge has violated the federal code of judicial ethics, but Geyh says appearances matter.

"I think the best practice that is out there, and I think what judges across the country are encouraged to do, is that if there is any doubt, put some sunshine on the problem," he said. "Turn your cards face up, to mix metaphors, and make it clear to the parties what your potential interests are."

Hughes also travels widely and speaks to meetings held by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, including one held in early June in the Canadian city of Calgary and an earlier conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

He's the association's distinguished lecturer on ethics, having delivered 10 speeches to the trade group in the past three years.

The association doesn't pay him a fee but does supply his travel, accommodation and expenses, said Larry Nation, a spokesman for the trade group.

Federal judges rarely respond to requests for comment from journalists. But Hughes told CNN in an e-mail that while he couldn't speak to past or present cases, he did quote Thomas Jefferson: "Let facts be submitted to a candid world," he wrote.

Lawyers who know him call Hughes a tough but fair judge and say the reference is to a desire for transparency on his part. But attorneys for environmental advocacy groups say that for BP to request Hughes be assigned to the spill lawsuits is "outrageous and unseemly."

CNN examined three years of Hughes' rulings on oil and gas cases, finding he ruled in favor of oil companies only slightly more often than ruling against them. As for other federal judges, a recent survey showed more than 20 federal judges across the Gulf states have a financial interest in oil and gas companies.

Several of them have recused themselves from presiding over cases related to the Gulf spill.

roachboy · 06-18-2010, 03:31 AM

i find this to be an interesting side-bar:

Quote:

Bypassing BP stations won't KO oil giant
Oil's complex route to gas tanks makes it hard to pinpoint target; boycott felt mostly by independent owners

By Gregory Karp, Chicago Tribune

9:08 PM CDT, June 17, 2010

Maybe nothing could feel more satisfying to outraged Americans than watching BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward squirm in front of Thursday's congressional committee — except driving past a BP service station as a personal protest and filling up elsewhere.

But boycotting BP gas stations does not hurt the oil company's coffers much, at least directly. BP doesn't even own the 11,000 BP-branded stations in the United States. The company started getting out of the retail gas-selling business a couple years ago. In fact, all big oil companies did because it wasn't profitable enough.

And because oil is a globally traded commodity, there is no easy way to confirm which exploration company is responsible for that tank of gas you just bought, regardless of what the signage over the pump says.

So, whose bottom line are you hurting with your personal BP boycott? BP gets a little from being a franchise owner, although a BP spokesman would not say how much. Largely, it's independent service station owners who suffer.

If sales volume drops and BP gets stuck with unpurchased gasoline, it can quickly and easily wholesale the excess to stations that sell gas without a brand name, experts said.

Still, consumer-advocacy group Public Citizen has called for a boycott of BP and launched an online petition. A Facebook protest page has more than 600,000 supportive "fans," and some BP stations report that business has slowed.

Vincent Hailey, 52, from Hanover Park, hasn't consciously boycotted BP stations, but he said he feels good about bypassing them.

"I know you're really hurting the independent station owners more than you're hurting BP, but if enough of those individually owned companies begin to hurt, and perhaps switch affiliations, BP will feel it," said Hailey, as he filled up Thursday afternoon at a Shell station in Schaumburg. "It feels like I'm doing a little bit of something. Maybe it's not much, but I feel better about it."

The "mob mentality" forming against BP station owners is frightening, said Paul Fiore, executive vice president of the Service Station Dealers of America and Allied Trades.

He said some BP station owners claim business is down 20 percent recently. "It's a totally misguided attempt by frustrated people," said Fiore, adding that he sympathizes with consumers who want to vote with their dollars. "They are not going to harm BP, I guarantee you."

Not necessarily, said Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen. The point of the BP boycott, as with many boycotts, is not to hurt sales in the short term but to harm the company's image.

BP spent hundreds of millions of dollars advertising itself as "Beyond Petroleum," an environmentally friendly oil company. "That is a value the company thought would provide it with returns — preferential government access, positive community and consumer perception of the company.

"That's what folks don't understand about a boycott campaign. The target here is the image of the company," Slocum said.

While business is off about 10 percent at the BP station in Deerfield, pumps were packed during the noon hour Thursday, and things could be worse, according to Azim Sozer, who manages the gas and mini-convenience store at the corner of Waukegan and Lake Cook roads.

"It's not hurting that much. We can handle it," Sozer said. "A couple of customers have complained, but most are very nice. They are aware that it has nothing to do with us."

The station is about halfway through a 20-year contract to buy gas from BP, so changing affiliations isn't an option.

Regular customer Dan Bogdan, 53, of Northbrook, rejected the premise of a boycott and hasn't stopped filling up his Nissan Maxima at the Deerfield BP station.

"It's an accident. It could have happened to anybody," he said. "I want them to fix the problem, I want our government to be more proactive, but I don't see any reason to boycott."

Driven by proximity to her Deerfield home and accumulated gas rebates on her BP credit card, Linda Elinoff, 55, was nonetheless feeling guilty as she pumped nearly $70 of premium gas into her BMW SUV Thursday morning at the BP station on Deerfield Road in Highland Park.

"It's horrible what's happening. I can't believe I'm doing this," she said. But then she added: "The guy who owns the station isn't BP. If I boycott, I'm not hurting BP, I'm hurting him. If I knew that it was definitely impacting BP, I would stop buying their gas."

For those consumers who are used to voting with their dollars by avoiding companies they dislike, that becomes difficult with BP, or any oil company, because of the complex nature of how oil extracted from the earth gets to automobile gas tanks.

Once crude oil is pulled from the ground by BP or any other large integrated oil company, it might go to a BP refinery or be sold on the world crude-oil market, depending on price and how close to a drilling site a BP refinery is, said Jonathan Cogan, a spokesman for the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The quality of the crude is another factor. Different refineries can handle different grades of crude oil.

At the refinery level, BP processes crude oil of its own and from other drilling companies, based on market conditions. BP has five U.S. refineries, including in Whiting, Ind.

If you don't live near those refineries, it becomes less likely that any service station in your area, BP or not, has gasoline refined by BP, Cogan said.

By the time gasoline is dispensed at the pump, it is often a mixture of refiner brands and country origins. This is because gasoline from different refineries is often combined for shipment by pipeline. Service stations in the same region often get their gasoline at the same bulk terminal. Typically the only factor that makes branded gasoline unique is the small amount of additives placed in the final product.

Several years ago, The Tribune was able to trace the lineage of gas transported in one tanker truck to a suburban Chicago station on a particular day. It found the oil came from all over the globe.

The breakdown included:

- Gulf of Mexico crudes: 31 percent

- Texas crudes: 28 percent

- Nigerian crudes: 17 percent

- Arab Light from Saudi Arabia: 10 percent

As for BP's response to the boycotts, it's asking for a chance.

"We do apologize for what's happened so far," BP spokesman Scott Dean said. "And we would hope they don't take out their frustration on some local business people who really have nothing to do with incident other than they market under our brand."

BP boycott: Should you make the decision to boycott BP? - chicagotribune.com

perhaps i move through peculiar circles but i've not encountered much in the way of "mob mentality" here in tiny town or anywhere else directed against bp. that may be because of the location though--the locals i know are deeply connected to the marsh so much of what gets said, beyond the usual stuff about criminal negligence and unbelievably sort-sighted regulations, is routed through a kind of mourning for the coastal regions of the gulf and the wider ecosystems...there's little doubt this is a form of projection, but so is everything else.

that's one of the beauties, i suppose, of living in a society of the spectacle. projections are all there are.

anyway, i haven't heard much about boycotting bp. folk talk about it, but in general they seem to recognize something of the franchise food chain.

i think the boycott is about a desire to do something to injure the bp logo.
i neither support nor oppose it, frankly.
i just find it curious as a kind of effect of repetition on television.

but this raises a more basic question: how is a transnational corporation to be held accountable to local populations in anything like a democratic manner?
simple answer: they aren't accountable.

what are the mechanisms of democratic power? well, in the us model of democracy-lite there are two basic paths: voting--so acting on the one day every 2-to-4 years when you could argue, with some difficulty (information stream problems you see. they matter) that the american polity is free---or organizing into interest groups. a boycott is an interest group, but one that is in this case trying to act against a logo. without the desired effect. unless the desired effect is to generalize brand damage. THAT would hurt.

fact is that transnationals are not accountable.
o sure, a neoliberal could argue from a position on his knees in front of an imaginary ceo that they are "accountable" through "market mechanisms" or "shareholder actions"---and it's the case in a very general sense that pressure=by=proxy can operate through the channels of economic aristocracy, so that the problems encountered by the little people could be relayed to the Sovereign through the mediation of shareholder organization.

but through demand? horseshit. not if you don't accept the conflation of the economic and political. but that's a center of neoliberal dogma. look where that's got us to...

i find it an interesting question: how can localities--which include nation-states--hold transnationals accountable for their actions?
we all know at least something about what happens when such mechanisms do not exist in the petro-capitalist context---the niger river delta.
but here, in the fading empire, homey dont play that---even though there is no coherent mobilizations to bring pressure from outside the state onto bp AND the state....

except a boycott of gas stations.

maybe we've been convinced that we have no power and that's ok so long as nice corporations continue to provide us with the commodities they say we want and shareholders continue to extract value across the process.
what else could anyone want?
accountability?
proactive concern for stakeholder interests?
proactive concern for the environment? (what is the environment anyway? where does it stop and start?)

aceventura3 · 06-18-2010, 06:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

and is this what you meant by lobbyist for bp ace?

Are you surprised when a company, person or any entity acts in a manner that they think is beneficial to their interest? At one of the most basic levels this question illustrates why I am confused by your posts or at least what I take from them. Isn't it expected that in a adversarial situation both sides have to be diligent to ensure fairness? Is it your expectation that there will or can be a time when fairness can be taken for granted? Given what we know based on the article, it is clear that the advocates for the plaintiffs need to get this judge off of any case where there is a conflict of interest. The "system" is equipped to handle these things.

---------- Post added at 02:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:45 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

[/COLOR]first i thought a follow-up on the barton escapades

Just to be clear. What do you think would have happened to BP if they refused to cooperate with Obama's request for the $20 billion to be administered by his appointee? How would you define, a shake-down?

roachboy · 06-19-2010, 07:09 AM

Quote:

Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world

The Deepwater Horizon disaster is not just an industrial accident – it is a violent wound inflicted on the Earth itself. In this special report from the Gulf coast, a leading author and activist shows how it lays bare the hubris at the heart of capitalism

o Naomi Klein
o The Guardian, Saturday 19 June 2010

Everyone gathered for the town hall meeting had been repeatedly instructed to show civility to the gentlemen from BP and the federal government. These fine folks had made time in their busy schedules to come to a high school gymnasium on a Tuesday night in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, one of many coastal communities where brown poison was slithering through the marshes, part of what has come to be described as the largest environmental disaster in US history.

"Speak to others the way you would want to be spoken to," the chair of the meeting pleaded one last time before opening the floor for questions.

And for a while the crowd, mostly made up of fishing families, showed remarkable restraint. They listened patiently to Larry Thomas, a genial BP public relations flack, as he told them that he was committed to "doing better" to process their claims for lost revenue – then passed all the details off to a markedly less friendly subcontractor. They heard out the suit from the Environmental Protection Agency as he informed them that, contrary to what they have read about the lack of testing and the product being banned in Britain, the chemical dispersant being sprayed on the oil in massive quantities was really perfectly safe.

But patience started running out by the third time Ed Stanton, a coast guard captain, took to the podium to reassure them that "the coast guard intends to make sure that BP cleans it up".

"Put it in writing!" someone shouted out. By now the air conditioning had shut itself off and the coolers of Budweiser were running low. A shrimper named Matt O'Brien approached the mic. "We don't need to hear this anymore," he declared, hands on hips. It didn't matter what assurances they were offered because, he explained, "we just don't trust you guys!" And with that, such a loud cheer rose up from the floor you'd have thought the Oilers (the unfortunately named school football team) had scored a touchdown.

The showdown was cathartic, if nothing else. For weeks residents had been subjected to a barrage of pep talks and extravagant promises coming from Washington, Houston and London. Every time they turned on their TVs, there was the BP boss, Tony Hayward, offering his solemn word that he would "make it right". Or else it was President Barack Obama expressing his absolute confidence that his administration would "leave the Gulf coast in better shape than it was before", that he was "making sure" it "comes back even stronger than it was before this crisis".

It all sounded great. But for people whose livelihoods put them in intimate contact with the delicate chemistry of the wetlands, it also sounded completely ridiculous, painfully so. Once the oil coats the base of the marsh grass, as it had already done just a few miles from here, no miracle machine or chemical concoction could safely get it out. You can skim oil off the surface of open water, and you can rake it off a sandy beach, but an oiled marsh just sits there, slowly dying. The larvae of countless species for which the marsh is a spawning ground – shrimp, crab, oysters and fin fish – will be poisoned.

It was already happening. Earlier that day, I travelled through nearby marshes in a shallow water boat. Fish were jumping in waters encircled by white boom, the strips of thick cotton and mesh BP is using to soak up the oil. The circle of fouled material seemed to be tightening around the fish like a noose. Nearby, a red-winged blackbird perched atop a 2 metre (7ft) blade of oil-contaminated marsh grass. Death was creeping up the cane; the small bird may as well have been standing on a lit stick of dynamite.

And then there is the grass itself, or the Roseau cane, as the tall sharp blades are called. If oil seeps deeply enough into the marsh, it will not only kill the grass above ground but also the roots. Those roots are what hold the marsh together, keeping bright green land from collapsing into the Mississippi River delta and the Gulf of Mexico. So not only do places like Plaquemines Parish stand to lose their fisheries, but also much of the physical barrier that lessens the intensity of fierce storms like hurricane Katrina. Which could mean losing everything.

How long will it take for an ecosystem this ravaged to be "restored and made whole" as Obama's interior secretary has pledged to do? It's not at all clear that such a thing is remotely possible, at least not in a time frame we can easily wrap our heads around. The Alaskan fisheries have yet to fully recover from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and some species of fish never returned. Government scientists now estimate that as much as a Valdez-worth of oil may be entering the Gulf coastal waters every four days. An even worse prognosis emerges from the 1991 Gulf war spill, when an estimated 11m barrels of oil were dumped into the Persian Gulf – the largest spill ever. That oil entered the marshland and stayed there, burrowing deeper and deeper thanks to holes dug by crabs. It's not a perfect comparison, since so little clean-up was done, but according to a study conducted 12 years after the disaster, nearly 90% of the impacted muddy salt marshes and mangroves were still profoundly damaged.

We do know this. Far from being "made whole," the Gulf coast, more than likely, will be diminished. Its rich waters and crowded skies will be less alive than they are today. The physical space many communities occupy on the map will also shrink, thanks to erosion. And the coast's legendary culture will contract and wither. The fishing families up and down the coast do not just gather food, after all. They hold up an intricate network that includes family tradition, cuisine, music, art and endangered languages – much like the roots of grass holding up the land in the marsh. Without fishing, these unique cultures lose their root system, the very ground on which they stand. (BP, for its part, is well aware of the limits of recovery. The company's Gulf of Mexico regional oil spill response plan specifically instructs officials not to make "promises that property, ecology, or anything else will be restored to normal". Which is no doubt why its officials consistently favour folksy terms like "make it right".)

If Katrina pulled back the curtain on the reality of racism in America, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle. BP cannot plug the hole in the Earth that it made. Obama cannot order fish species to survive, or brown pelicans not to go extinct (no matter whose ass he kicks). No amount of money – not BP's recently pledged $20bn (£13.5bn), not $100bn – can replace a culture that has lost its roots. And while our politicians and corporate leaders have yet to come to terms with these humbling truths, the people whose air, water and livelihoods have been contaminated are losing their illusions fast.

"Everything is dying," a woman said as the town hall meeting was finally coming to a close. "How can you honestly tell us that our Gulf is resilient and will bounce back? Because not one of you up here has a hint as to what is going to happen to our Gulf. You sit up here with a straight face and act like you know when you don't know."

This Gulf coast crisis is about many things – corruption, deregulation, the addiction to fossil fuels. But underneath it all, it's about this: our culture's excruciatingly dangerous claim to have such complete understanding and command over nature that we can radically manipulate and re-engineer it with minimal risk to the natural systems that sustain us. But as the BP disaster has revealed, nature is always more unpredictable than the most sophisticated mathematical and geological models imagine. During Thursday's congressional testimony, Hayward said: "The best minds and the deepest expertise are being brought to bear" on the crisis, and that, "with the possible exception of the space programme in the 1960s, it is difficult to imagine the gathering of a larger, more technically proficient team in one place in peacetime." And yet, in the face of what the geologist Jill Schneiderman has described as "Pandora's well", they are like the men at the front of that gymnasium: they act like they know, but they don't know.

BP's mission statement

In the arc of human history, the notion that nature is a machine for us to re-engineer at will is a relatively recent conceit. In her ground-breaking 1980 book The Death of Nature, the environmental historian Carolyn Merchant reminded readers that up until the 1600s, the Earth was alive, usually taking the form of a mother. Europeans – like indigenous people the world over – believed the planet to be a living organism, full of life-giving powers but also wrathful tempers. There were, for this reason, strong taboos against actions that would deform and desecrate "the mother", including mining.

The metaphor changed with the unlocking of some (but by no means all) of nature's mysteries during the scientific revolution of the 1600s. With nature now cast as a machine, devoid of mystery or divinity, its component parts could be dammed, extracted and remade with impunity. Nature still sometimes appeared as a woman, but one easily dominated and subdued. Sir Francis Bacon best encapsulated the new ethos when he wrote in the 1623 De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum that nature is to be "put in constraint, moulded, and made as it were new by art and the hand of man".

Those words may as well have been BP's corporate mission statement. Boldly inhabiting what the company called "the energy frontier", it dabbled in synthesising methane-producing microbes and announced that "a new area of investigation" would be geoengineering. And of course it bragged that, at its Tiber prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, it now had "the deepest well ever drilled by the oil and gas industry" – as deep under the ocean floor as jets fly overhead.

Imagining and preparing for what would happen if these experiments in altering the building blocks of life and geology went wrong occupied precious little space in the corporate imagination. As we have all discovered, after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April, the company had no systems in place to effectively respond to this scenario. Explaining why it did not have even the ultimately unsuccessful containment dome waiting to be activated on shore, a BP spokesman, Steve Rinehart, said: "I don't think anybody foresaw the circumstance that we're faced with now." Apparently, it "seemed inconceivable" that the blowout preventer would ever fail – so why prepare?

This refusal to contemplate failure clearly came straight from the top. A year ago, Hayward told a group of graduate students at Stanford University that he has a plaque on his desk that reads: "If you knew you could not fail, what would you try?" Far from being a benign inspirational slogan, this was actually an accurate description of how BP and its competitors behaved in the real world. In recent hearings on Capitol Hill, congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts grilled representatives from the top oil and gas companies on the revealing ways in which they had allocated resources. Over three years, they had spent "$39bn to explore for new oil and gas. Yet, the average investment in research and development for safety, accident prevention and spill response was a paltry $20m a year."

These priorities go a long way towards explaining why the initial exploration plan that BP submitted to the federal government for the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon well reads like a Greek tragedy about human hubris. The phrase "little risk" appears five times. Even if there is a spill, BP confidently predicts that, thanks to "proven equipment and technology", adverse affects will be minimal. Presenting nature as a predictable and agreeable junior partner (or perhaps subcontractor), the report cheerfully explains that should a spill occur, "Currents and microbial degradation would remove the oil from the water column or dilute the constituents to background levels". The effects on fish, meanwhile, "would likely be sublethal" because of "the capability of adult fish and shellfish to avoid a spill [and] to metabolise hydrocarbons". (In BP's telling, rather than a dire threat, a spill emerges as an all-you-can-eat buffet for aquatic life.)

Best of all, should a major spill occur, there is, apparently, "little risk of contact or impact to the coastline" because of the company's projected speedy response (!) and "due to the distance [of the rig] to shore" – about 48 miles (77km). This is the most astonishing claim of all. In a gulf that often sees winds of more than 70km an hour, not to mention hurricanes, BP had so little respect for the ocean's capacity to ebb and flow, surge and heave, that it did not think oil could make a paltry 77km trip. (Last week, a shard of the exploded Deepwater Horizon showed up on a beach in Florida, 306km away.)

None of this sloppiness would have been possible, however, had BP not been making its predictions to a political class eager to believe that nature had indeed been mastered. Some, like Republican Lisa Murkowski, were more eager than others. The Alaskan senator was so awe-struck by the industry's four-dimensional seismic imaging that she proclaimed deep-sea drilling to have reached the very height of controlled artificiality. "It's better than Disneyland in terms of how you can take technologies and go after a resource that is thousands of years old and do so in an environmentally sound way," she told the Senate energy committee just seven months ago.

Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican party policy since May 2008. With gas prices soaring to unprecedented heights, that's when the conservative leader Newt Gingrich unveiled the slogan "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" – with an emphasis on the now. The wildly popular campaign was a cry against caution, against study, against measured action. In Gingrich's telling, drilling at home wherever the oil and gas might be – locked in Rocky Mountain shale, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and deep offshore – was a surefire way to lower the price at the pump, create jobs, and kick Arab ass all at once. In the face of this triple win, caring about the environment was for sissies: as senator Mitch McConnell put it, "in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas, they think oil rigs are pretty". By the time the infamous "Drill Baby Drill" Republican national convention rolled around, the party base was in such a frenzy for US-made fossil fuels, they would have bored under the convention floor if someone had brought a big enough drill.

Obama, eventually, gave in, as he invariably does. With cosmic bad timing, just three weeks before the Deepwater Horizon blew up, the president announced he would open up previously protected parts of the country to offshore drilling. The practice was not as risky as he had thought, he explained. "Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced." That wasn't enough for Sarah Palin, however, who sneered at the Obama administration's plans to conduct more studies before drilling in some areas. "My goodness, folks, these areas have been studied to death," she told the Southern Republican leadership conference in New Orleans, now just 11 days before the blowout. "Let's drill, baby, drill, not stall, baby, stall!" And there was much rejoicing.

In his congressional testimony, Hayward said: "We and the entire industry will learn from this terrible event." And one might well imagine that a catastrophe of this magnitude would indeed instil BP executives and the "Drill Now" crowd with a new sense of humility. There are, however, no signs that this is the case. The response to the disaster – at the corporate and governmental levels – has been rife with the precise brand of arrogance and overly sunny predictions that created the disaster in the first place.

The ocean is big, she can take it, we heard from Hayward in the early days. While spokesman John Curry insisted that hungry microbes would consume whatever oil was in the water system, because "nature has a way of helping the situation". But nature has not been playing along. The deep-sea gusher has bust out of all BP's top hats, containment domes, and junk shots. The ocean's winds and currents have made a mockery of the lightweight booms BP has laid out to absorb the oil. "We told them," said Byron Encalade, the president of the Louisiana Oysters Association. "The oil's gonna go over the booms or underneath the bottom." Indeed it did. The marine biologist Rick Steiner, who has been following the clean up closely, estimates that "70% or 80% of the booms are doing absolutely nothing at all".

And then there are the controversial chemical dispersants: more than 1.3m gallons dumped with the company's trademark "what could go wrong?" attitude. As the angry residents at the Plaquemines Parish town hall rightly point out, few tests had been conducted, and there is scant research about what this unprecedented amount of dispersed oil will do to marine life. Nor is there a way to clean up the toxic mixture of oil and chemicals below the surface. Yes, fast multiplying microbes do devour underwater oil – but in the process they also absorb the water's oxygen, creating a whole new threat to marine life.

BP had even dared to imagine that it could prevent unflattering images of oil-covered beaches and birds from escaping the disaster zone. When I was on the water with a TV crew, for instance, we were approached by another boat whose captain asked, ""Y'all work for BP?" When we said no, the response – in the open ocean – was "You can't be here then". But of course these heavy-handed tactics, like all the others, have failed. There is simply too much oil in too many places. "You cannot tell God's air where to flow and go, and you can't tell water where to flow and go," I was told by Debra Ramirez. It was a lesson she had learned from living in Mossville, Louisiana, surrounded by 14 emission-spewing petrochemical plants, and watching illness spread from neighbour to neighbour.

Human limitation has been the one constant of this catastrophe. After two months, we still have no idea how much oil is flowing, nor when it will stop. The company's claim that it will complete relief wells by the end of August – repeated by Obama in his Oval Office address – is seen by many scientists as a bluff. The procedure is risky and could fail, and there is a real possibility that the oil could continue to leak for years.

The flow of denial shows no sign of abating either. Louisiana politicians indignantly oppose Obama's temporary freeze on deepwater drilling, accusing him of killing the one big industry left standing now that fishing and tourism are in crisis. Palin mused on Facebook that "no human endeavour is ever without risk", while Texas Republican congressman John Culberson described the disaster as a "statistical anomaly". By far the most sociopathic reaction, however, comes from veteran Washington commentator Llewellyn King: rather than turning away from big engineering risks, we should pause in "wonder that we can build machines so remarkable that they can lift the lid off the underworld".

Make the bleeding stop

Thankfully, many are taking a very different lesson from the disaster, standing not in wonder at humanity's power to reshape nature, but at our powerlessness to cope with the fierce natural forces we unleash. There is something else too. It is the feeling that the hole at the bottom of the ocean is more than an engineering accident or a broken machine. It is a violent wound in a living organism; that it is part of us. And thanks to BP's live camera feed, we can all watch the Earth's guts gush forth, in real time, 24 hours a day.

John Wathen, a conservationist with the Waterkeeper Alliance, was one of the few independent observers to fly over the spill in the early days of the disaster. After filming the thick red streaks of oil that the coast guard politely refers to as "rainbow sheen", he observed what many had felt: "The Gulf seems to be bleeding." This imagery comes up again and again in conversations and interviews. Monique Harden, an environmental rights lawyer in New Orleans, refuses to call the disaster an "oil spill" and instead says, "we are haemorrhaging". Others speak of the need to "make the bleeding stop". And I was personally struck, flying over the stretch of ocean where the Deepwater Horizon sank with the US Coast Guard, that the swirling shapes the oil made in the ocean waves looked remarkably like cave drawings: a feathery lung gasping for air, eyes staring upwards, a prehistoric bird. Messages from the deep.

And this is surely the strangest twist in the Gulf coast saga: it seems to be waking us up to the reality that the Earth never was a machine. After 400 years of being declared dead, and in the middle of so much death, the Earth is coming alive.

The experience of following the oil's progress through the ecosystem is a kind of crash course in deep ecology. Every day we learn more about how what seems to be a terrible problem in one isolated part of the world actually radiates out in ways most of us could never have imagined. One day we learn that the oil could reach Cuba – then Europe. Next we hear that fishermen all the way up the Atlantic in Prince Edward Island, Canada, are worried because the Bluefin tuna they catch off their shores are born thousands of miles away in those oil-stained Gulf waters. And we learn, too, that for birds, the Gulf coast wetlands are the equivalent of a busy airport hub – everyone seems to have a stopover: 110 species of migratory songbirds and 75% of all migratory US waterfowl.

It's one thing to be told by an incomprehensible chaos theorist that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas. It's another to watch chaos theory unfold before your eyes. Carolyn Merchant puts the lesson like this: "The problem as BP has tragically and belatedly discovered is that nature as an active force cannot be so confined." Predictable outcomes are unusual within ecological systems, while "unpredictable, chaotic events [are] usual". And just in case we still didn't get it, a few days ago, a bolt of lightning struck a BP ship like an exclamation mark, forcing it to suspend its containment efforts. And don't even mention what a hurricane would do to BP's toxic soup.

There is, it must be stressed, something uniquely twisted about this particular path to enlightenment. They say that Americans learn where foreign countries are by bombing them. Now it seems we are all learning about nature's circulatory systems by poisoning them.

In the late 90s, an isolated indigenous group in Colombia captured world headlines with an almost Avatar-esque conflict. From their remote home in the Andean cloud forests, the U'wa let it be known that if Occidental Petroleum carried out plans to drill for oil on their territory, they would commit mass ritual suicide by jumping off a cliff. Their elders explained that oil is part of ruiria, "the blood of Mother Earth". They believe that all life, including their own, flows from ruiria, so pulling out the oil would bring on their destruction. (Oxy eventually withdrew from the region, saying there wasn't as much oil as it had previously thought.)

Virtually all indigenous cultures have myths about gods and spirits living in the natural world – in rocks, mountains, glaciers, forests – as did European culture before the scientific revolution. Katja Neves, an anthropologist at Concordia University, points out that the practice serves a practical purpose. Calling the Earth "sacred" is another way of expressing humility in the face of forces we do not fully comprehend. When something is sacred, it demands that we proceed with caution. Even awe.

If we are absorbing this lesson at long last, the implications could be profound. Public support for increased offshore drilling is dropping precipitously, down 22% from the peak of the "Drill Now" frenzy. The issue is not dead, however. It is only a matter of time before the Obama administration announces that, thanks to ingenious new technology and tough new regulations, it is now perfectly safe to drill in the deep sea, even in the Arctic, where an under-ice clean up would be infinitely more complex than the one underway in the Gulf. But perhaps this time we won't be so easily reassured, so quick to gamble with the few remaining protected havens.

Same goes for geoengineering. As climate change negotiations wear on, we should be ready to hear more from Dr Steven Koonin, Obama's undersecretary of energy for science. He is one of the leading proponents of the idea that climate change can be combated with techno tricks like releasing sulphate and aluminium particles into the atmosphere – and of course it's all perfectly safe, just like Disneyland! He also happens to be BP's former chief scientist, the man who just 15 months ago was still overseeing the technology behind BP's supposedly safe charge into deepwater drilling. Maybe this time we will opt not to let the good doctor experiment with the physics and chemistry of the Earth, and choose instead to reduce our consumption and shift to renewable energies that have the virtue that, when they fail, they fail small. As US comedian Bill Maher put it, "You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash."

The most positive possible outcome of this disaster would be not only an acceleration of renewable energy sources like wind, but a full embrace of the precautionary principle in science. The mirror opposite of Hayward's "If you knew you could not fail" credo, the precautionary principle holds that "when an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health" we tread carefully, as if failure were possible, even likely. Perhaps we can even get Hayward a new desk plaque to contemplate as he signs compensation cheques. "You act like you know, but you don't know."

Naomi Klein visited the Gulf coast with a film-crew from Fault Lines, a documentary programme hosted by Avi Lewis on al-Jazeera English Television. She was a consultant on the film

Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world | From the Guardian | The Guardian

ASU2003 · 06-19-2010, 11:21 AM

I just wish Obama had the balls to tell the American people that this was our fault. We demand all this oil, and now we have to go to harder and harder places to get it.

At least Jon Stewart got it right.
Jon Stewart teaches a history lesson on oil dependence | Video Cafe

raging moderate · 06-19-2010, 03:23 PM

yeah, i'm sure once we run out of oil completely we'll change. until that happens, not much will be different. too much entrenched power and money. the infrastructure of the US is designed to promote the use of automobiles, not mass transit (mass transit presumably being the alternative).

aceventura3 · 06-20-2010, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raging moderate

yeah, i'm sure once we run out of oil completely we'll change. until that happens, not much will be different. too much entrenched power and money. the infrastructure of the US is designed to promote the use of automobiles, not mass transit (mass transit presumably being the alternative).

Less than a third of our energy use is transportation.

Use of Energy in the United States - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy

Within that category about a third is automotive:

Oil is a major factor in our way of life and will be for a long time even if you do significantly reduce the amount consumed in automobiles.

{added}

This is an interesting chart also, it shows petroleum use by automobiles staying steady even given more vehicles and miles driven over the period. There has been a focus on automobile fuel efficiency and it is making a difference. And another showing use per vehicle:

Energy Use for Transportation - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy

raging moderate · 06-21-2010, 05:19 PM

Doesn't really change the point: we won't change until we're forced to. All those wide-spread uses are all excellent reasons to continue using fossil fuels to fuel our lives until the last possible second, or until it gets so freakin prohibitively expensive that we finally are forced reluctantly to turn away from our oil lovin' ways.

glad to see my prius is helping in some small way though. I thought I just was one of those suckers who overpaid to accomplish nothing. well not NOTHING but it's hard to tell sometimes.

So to move this along a little, I actually live in Louisiana and was considering signing up for one of these oil-cleanup jobs. The work is hard, and long, but the pay is excellent. No benefits, no long-term guarantee of a job, but definitely an excellent short-term possibility. Do I leave my decent-paying, career-minded job at a good company to chase money? It pays about twice what I make now, but I kinda need the insurance seeing as how my wife and I have a baby on the way.

roachboy · 06-21-2010, 07:08 PM

Quote:

US Gulf oil drilling ban is destroying 'eco-system of businesses'

Oil industry is seeking an injunction against ban after BP spill

* Tim Webb New Orleans
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 June 2010 20.43 BST

The moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is destroying an entire "eco-system of businesses", lawyers from the oil industry seeking to overturn the ban told a court today.

The US government imposed the six-month moratorium in the wake of the oil disaster last month. But oil services companies say the ban is illegal and threatens to wreak further devastation on the local economy, resulting in tens of thousands of job losses.

Louisiana-based Hornbeck Offshore Services, backed by more than a dozen similar firms who work for companies like BP drilling in the Gulf, are seeking an injunction against the ban.

After today's hearing in a New Orleans federal court, independent lawyers said there was a good chance that the judge would rule in favour of the industry. Judge Martin Feldman, in Louisiana, said that he would make his ruling by Wednesday at the latest.

The case pits the oil industry – and state politicians anxious to protect local jobs – against the White House and environmentalists. Attorney Carl Rosenblum, representing the oil services companies, said the "US government failed to consider the human environment of the decision".

Since the ban was imposed on 28 May – more than a month after the Deepwater Horizon accident – all 33 drilling rigs operating in the Gulf have been idled. The rig owners have warned they will tow them elsewhere if the ban remains in place.

"Once these rigs move overseas and enter into long-term contracts, they not going to come back in six months and one day," he said. "That is the problem."

The rigs directly employ around 7,000 people. But, according to the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, each offshore job supports three more onshore, meaning a further 21,000 jobs are at risk. Rosenblum added: "It's an eco-system of businesses which are being harmed even now by this moratorium."

He said the US government had broken the law by not consulting with local politicians about the ban. He compared it to the response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which resulted in the airline industry being shut down for three days. "Never before has the government with a stroke of a pen shut down on entire industry for six months," he said.

Deepwater drilling is vital to the regional oil industry, making up 80% of oil and 45% of gas produced in the Gulf.

After the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, causing the worst US environmental disaster in history, the US government ordered a safety review of deepwater drilling in the Gulf. The regulator, the Mineral Management Services (MMS), inspected 29 rigs and found that 27 of them complied with regulations; there were minor infractions on the other two. It recommended 22 measures to improve safety and the interior secretary Ken Salazar ordered a moratorium on drilling until the safety improvements could be implemented and investigations into the Deepwater Horizon accident had concluded.

But lawyers representing the oil services companies argued that the MMS's findings did not justify a blanket ban as it did not identify a systemic fault that could lead to a similar accident on other rigs.

The judge appeared to have some sympathy with this argument. He asked Guillermo Montero, the attorney representing the US justice department, why the government had not banned oil tankers from Alaska after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Montero said the MMS system for granting permits to drill and carrying out safety inspections was inadequate. He noted that Transocean,the owner of the Deepwater Horizon, had a "stellar inspection record", which was better than the industry average.

Gulf oil drilling ban is destroying 'eco-system of businesses' | Business | The Guardian

i find this rhetoric to be really interesting. on the one hand it indicates the obvious Problem that people whose basic position is fuck it drill anyway there's cash money to be made and popular opinion concerning the rickety-at-best "regulatory" situation be damned...capital is more important than them there fucking people anyway..
but it gets better
because you see corporate persons are now being discriminated against in the way that, say, arab-americans were after 911....

craven bidness i'd say. but hey, that's why you hire lawyers. they are specialists in the legal frame and much of navigating a legal frame is, in the end, rhetorical.

but i wonder what you make of the notion of an ecology of business..

i think it's an interesting move, discursively, to go here. this because i think there's a sense in which an economy is properly understood as a kind of ecology. this is way more accurate than thinking of an ecology in terms of markets or economics (think i'm just making this up? evolutionary psychology or most genetics-based forms of thinking evolution, or even the popular notions of biological evolution which crunch darwin and spenser into each other and rely upon the pervasive, thick cloud of stupid produced by the american educational system to not disentangle the two, and so write neoliberal economic horseshit into popular conceptions of bio-system development)....

do you think the term ecology applies to business?
how?
do you think it should apply?
why or why not?

06-15-2010, 04:44 PM	#401 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i hear that...i just watched obama's curious televised pep talk about the gulf. i may have been hallucinating but i would swear he said something about 90% of the oil being captured within like a month. i am entirely unclear how that is to happen given the reality that appears to be unfolding but it's obvious that we don't know in some basic ways what's going on. besides, we are assured that the boys in the lab are on the case and that it's a really swell lab and lots of smart people are walking purposively about. but really, i don't know what i expected him to say. i thought in a sense the entirely tenor of the pep talk absurd, all the military metaphors and references to world war 2 and such. but i don't know what i would have said. i don't know what i expected him to say---what? that the Leader is personally doing many things and Knows about Many Other Things all of which are happening and there are Plans and these Plans are being Implemented somewhere. references to shrimp fishing. references to god. i dont know what i expected but this clearly was not it. criminy. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-15-2010, 05:01 PM	#402 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	I know Obama is the president and everything, and public displays of optimism are a part of that, but I can't understand how, at this juncture, anyone can offer---with any confidence---any assurances or lofty goals (if only we would keep our chins up). It's been nearly two months and we still are mostly just figuring out just how bad it is. They still have had next to no impact on the situation. I mean, a nation can topple a brutal regime in under two months, but we can't stop an oil spill at the bottom of the ocean? It would be nice to be able to capture 90% of it within a month. I truly hope they figure that out. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

06-15-2010, 05:13 PM	#403 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i hope it happens too. but i dont see any obvious way from here to there. but maybe today was a bad day to judge by given that there was a fire on a drilling ship so bp stopped collecting oil...which perhaps explains the immense clouds of oil one could see on the multiple feed platforms. but i hope there's tons we don't know and that something can happen. the main difference between invading iraq and addressing this oil disaster is that the us had the technology and a bad plan in iraq where with the oil spill the us has neither the technology nor a plan because the set-up relied on the corporate sector to tell the us what the technologies needed to be because they made the plan. this is a fundamental reason why this is such a clusterfuck. i don't really see going on television and talking all Presidential about this changes anything. it doesn't. it's a pep talk and, in a sense, a capitulation to the right. which i was glad to see obama go after and blame squarely for the regulatory fiasco that both enabled this oil spill and prevented anything like a co-ordinated effective strategy to deal with it. but it still is what it is, a monumental disaster. and i dunno...a pep talk?....i suppose there may be people who it affected. i wonder where they are. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-15-2010, 05:57 PM	#405 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	well gee fugly that sounds like a claim to expertise. you have Real Information? so if you're saying anything---which is doubtful----then how about it? put up or shut up. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-15-2010, 06:18 PM	#407 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	all i've been doing is gathering information from a range of sources and trying to pull it together. there's a fair amount of documentation in the thread, but you'd have to actually look at things to know that. but hey, why bother when you can have no particular information and do none of the work but still see yourself as in a position to drive by and say stupid shit. whatever. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-15-2010, 05:41 PM	#404 (permalink)
FuglyStick WHEEEE! Whee! Whee! WHEEEE! Location: Southern Illinois	Reading this thread, I am SO GLAD that TFP posters have absolutely zero input into energy, oil spills, or any public safety policy. There is a bad case of "talking above your paygrade" around here, and entirely too much reliance on op/ed rags for pertinent "information". But carry on, knights of justice.

06-15-2010, 06:05 PM	#406 (permalink)
FuglyStick WHEEEE! Whee! Whee! WHEEEE! Location: Southern Illinois	Demanding information or expertise from me does not excuse a blowhard crusade built on insufficient/faulty information and expertise. That's just illogical.

06-15-2010, 06:28 PM	#408 (permalink)
FuglyStick WHEEEE! Whee! Whee! WHEEEE! Location: Southern Illinois	Information that runs through your editorial filter, rb. You are entitled to your opinion--I agree with most of it, to be honest--but portraying yourself as some sort of "watchdog" who's going to give us the "truth" is laughable. I tried to follow this thread, but it rapidly became apparent that this is nothing more than a platform for propaganda. That's fine--this is a message board, not a news outlet--but don't parade it around as an "honest" or "informed" dissertation on the situation in the Gulf. Frankly, it smacks of the same hand-picking of information that is the trademark of Faux News and other so-called "news" organizations. Last edited by FuglyStick; 06-15-2010 at 06:31 PM..

06-15-2010, 07:28 PM	#409 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	What do you mean? Things aren't so bad in the gulf? Are you actually going to make a counterpoint? __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

06-16-2010, 04:02 AM	#411 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	actually fugly, i havent presented myself as anything and i dont think of myself as doing anything particular beyond researching within the limits of the wall of pseudo-information that is the press a disastrous situation. it's happening too fast for there to be many layers of publicly available information: there are reports, there's layers of commentary and there's a scattershot level of documentation. these layers operate in that order in terms of speed. in terms of reliability, it's like anything else, a function of the sources that you isolate and how you use them. for the news stuff, it's mostly guardian, ny times, financial times, washington post. for the commentary, the oil drum for the documents, things are more diffuse, but the links often come from one of the previous two. there's not a whole lot of original research. if anyone wants to pay me for my time.... anyway, if i think about the thread at this point as anything other than a thread on a messageboard, it's a space that i can use to position a bunch of information in one place and that may help me and maybe other folk figure out ways to make sense of what's happening. but no-one's stepping outside the media bubble. it's just being organized on the fly in a more horizontal way than it sometimes is. there is an interpretive line that i've developed anyway that i present, when i do, as an interpretive line. it's pretty accurate within the limits of available information and types of expertise. if you dont think it accurate, make a counter-argument. drive-bys aren't counter-arguments. the main limitation in that line is the emphasis on the ways bp has set up to control information makes it difficult to treat bp as a viable information source on its own. the same has extended to noaa and the coast guard. so there's a problem in moving into and out of those more official sources. i don't know any more than what i just said about the legitimacy of the suspicion that underpins this. but in any interpretation you take your chances based on the information you have. i dont know where you get the idea that there's any "watchdog" function happening. to think that way for real would require being unhinged from reality, confusing posting to a messageboard with political action in meat-space. when you're writing about political questions it seems almost inevitable that rhetoric will turn up that gives the appearance of a confusion in registers reality of messageboard/reality in meatspace. but thats usually rhetorical. when it stops being that there's meds that can help. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 06-16-2010 at 04:13 AM..

06-16-2010, 06:56 AM	#412 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	Eyewitness: BP oil spill \| World news \| guardian.co.uk __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-16-2010, 09:09 AM	#413 (permalink)
ring ░ Location: ❤	Socrates could not see the beauty of this impurity. Our glorious sunsets have been tinged, as well. Thanks, roach.

06-16-2010, 09:27 AM	#414 (permalink)
silent_jay Her Jay Location: Ontario for now....	... Last edited by silent_jay; 02-13-2011 at 11:10 AM..

06-16-2010, 11:31 AM	#416 (permalink)
The_Jazz Asshole Administrator Location: Chicago	I found out today that BP does NOT have any insurance that will cover this sort of loss. So they'll be paying all of this out of their own bottom line. __________________ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

06-16-2010, 01:04 PM	#417 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	Well, they have insurance to cover the rig, but not insurance to cover the damage caused by the oil. Right? __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

06-16-2010, 01:10 PM	#418 (permalink)
The_Jazz Asshole Administrator Location: Chicago	No, actually. Transocean owned the rig and they had the insurance to cover any physical damage to it. Since it sank, there will be payments on that, but I suspect that it won't be very much in the greater scheme of things. It certainly won't include any liability payments, just payments for the loss of the rig itself. __________________ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

06-17-2010, 06:38 AM	#421 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	well gee, ace, what words in the comment that you quoted are giving you the trouble? i'd be happy to decipher any of those english words you don't get. maybe if you expanded your attention to include the whole section that paragraph comes from you wouldn't have such comprehension problems. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-17-2010, 07:51 AM	#422 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	Hi rb, re: "meanwhile. we all had been hope to whomever one hopes to about such things that this information is not true:" Yes, I got an eeire sense when reading this account of the items that were being checked off, one-by-one. I recall thinking at the time those statements (essentialy PR attempts by BP to manage the news - still ongoing, of course) were being made that the most amazing thing was that they were obviously false and transparently so. Strange that the gov as well as the "news media" (read "infotainment system") simply takes these statements and runs with them. Of course, lately, there is some skepticism expressed, even while the newest - and obviously execrable - misrepresantations are channeled along as so much documentation and reporting...so much for realism...and the so-called "real world." This has reached the level of a Debordian spectacle. __________________ create evolution

06-17-2010, 08:08 AM	#424 (permalink)
TNJ4555 Tilted Location: Jersey	There is still time to get a front row seat for the apocalypse This is a thread from the website the Oil Drum Scroll down to the comment by "dougr" A little too big to copy/paste A little too scary to ponder The Oil Drum \| Deepwater Oil Spill - A Longer Term Problem, Personnel - and Open Thread 2

06-17-2010, 08:22 AM	#425 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	art: that is the trick i suppose: the corporate information management system, whatever it's local orientation (so whatever the strategy that's involved) has created enough infotainment chaos that even folk with some degree of expertise are left either piecing together what's happening through the organization of fragments (which is in this case a very very bad thing if what's pieced together turns out to be true) or piecing together reverse images of disinformation through the organization of fragments. it's a hell of a situation, the extent to which it is obvious that the whole of the infotainment environment we operate in is subject of distortion. we can't get straight information about the well-head situation. we can't get straight information about oil flows. nor about dispersants. nor about oil slicks and what they mean. nor about where exactly this one is. nor about what's happening on the shorelines. fragments though. that's all. fragments without context. and this is one of the things that's interested me in the thread, assembling an image of the image-space, trying to find context, failing repeatedly to find it. the society of the spectacle, but in its disaster-face mode. not the usual happy domination through the colonization of dreams... ==== ace: the superficiality about capitalism is entirely yours. it is not real interesting to me what your aesthetic relation is to the noun capitalism, nor am i real interested in the arbitrary features you hang around it to make it pretty for yourself. i'd explain something of the ways in which it's possible to see capitalism as a mode of production, but you wouldn't understand it. you wouldn't see the point if the words explaining it were in bold over and over. you'd "ask simple questions" and wonder why "they don't get answered." so be as mystified as you like about why the niger river delta material is in the thread. seriously. enjoy yourself. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-17-2010, 12:47 PM	#430 (permalink)
silent_jay Her Jay Location: Ontario for now....	... Last edited by silent_jay; 02-13-2011 at 11:09 AM..

06-19-2010, 11:21 AM	#436 (permalink)
ASU2003 immoral minority Location: Back in Ohio	I just wish Obama had the balls to tell the American people that this was our fault. We demand all this oil, and now we have to go to harder and harder places to get it. At least Jon Stewart got it right. Jon Stewart teaches a history lesson on oil dependence \| Video Cafe

06-19-2010, 03:23 PM	#437 (permalink)
raging moderate Insane Location: Whatever house my keys can get me into	yeah, i'm sure once we run out of oil completely we'll change. until that happens, not much will be different. too much entrenched power and money. the infrastructure of the US is designed to promote the use of automobiles, not mass transit (mass transit presumably being the alternative). __________________ These are the good old days... formerly Murp0434

06-21-2010, 05:19 PM	#439 (permalink)
raging moderate Insane Location: Whatever house my keys can get me into	Doesn't really change the point: we won't change until we're forced to. All those wide-spread uses are all excellent reasons to continue using fossil fuels to fuel our lives until the last possible second, or until it gets so freakin prohibitively expensive that we finally are forced reluctantly to turn away from our oil lovin' ways. glad to see my prius is helping in some small way though. I thought I just was one of those suckers who overpaid to accomplish nothing. well not NOTHING but it's hard to tell sometimes. So to move this along a little, I actually live in Louisiana and was considering signing up for one of these oil-cleanup jobs. The work is hard, and long, but the pay is excellent. No benefits, no long-term guarantee of a job, but definitely an excellent short-term possibility. Do I leave my decent-paying, career-minded job at a good company to chase money? It pays about twice what I make now, but I kinda need the insurance seeing as how my wife and I have a baby on the way. __________________ These are the good old days... formerly Murp0434