Rape and Spillage

Jun 15, 2010
By Robert Scheer

What’s with the president’s war analogy on the oil spill? It’s as if some alien force, “The Invasion of the Slippery Sludge,” suddenly attacked us. “Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al-Qaida,” President Barack Obama said Tuesday in his White House speech, “and tonight, I’ve returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.”

What nonsense. The oil was minding its own business until some multinational corporations, enabled by a dysfunctional government regulatory regime, decided to wage war on the ecological balance of the oceans by employing technology that they were not prepared to control. Cleaning up the oil spill mess we made by raping the environment to satiate our consumer gluttony is not a glorious battle against evil but rather obligatory penance for the profound error of our ways.

You wound Mother Nature by punching a hole deep in her pristine ocean where you have no business going and when she bleeds uncontrollably you dare blame her for the assault? This from a president who shortly before this disaster had given the oil companies permission to pillage in the deep seas at will. At least now he admits to having been extremely naive in his belief that they knew what they were doing:

“A few months ago, I approved a proposal to consider new, limited offshore drilling under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe—that the proper technology would be in place and the necessary precautions would be taken. That obviously was not the case on the Deepwater Horizon rig, and I want to know why.”

He already knows why! It’s the same ideological obsession that led to the deregulation of the banking industry based on the assumption that the unfettered pursuit of multinational corporation profits would somehow serve the public good. In every area of federal governance the story is the same; the mammoth corporations, through their lobbyists and campaign contributions, end up controlling the government agencies ostensibly regulating the activities of the military/industrial, health, financial and communications complexes. Why be surprised that the oil conglomerates are also in bed with their pretend Washington regulators?

Obviously Obama cannot be blamed for the bipartisan endorsement of the Reagan Revolution’s siren song, a call to make the world safe for multinational corporations. The radical anti-regulation campaign—endorsed by Bill Clinton as well as the father-and-son Bush team—corrupted rather than improved the efficiency of the entire private sector, and what happened with the oil industry was the rule and not the exception.

In explaining the failure of the Minerals Management Service, responsible for regulating the oil drillers, Obama stated: “Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility—a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.”

That damning indictment of the corporate corruption of our political process should stand as a cautionary tale to those like the majority in those red states now suffering so because of the offshore drilling of which their voters previously approved. Hopefully they, and the president who catered to such impulses, will take away from this very costly mess a justifiable skepticism about the risk assessments of plunderers who treat natural treasures as nothing more than potential profit centers.

The public goes along because, as with the jobs created by military spending and the false wealth of financial bubbles, it is blinded by lavishly funded corporate PR to the true costs of such reckless corporate behavior. It is understandable that folks struggling to get by would fall for that line, but it is inexcusable when the political elite in Washington that know better goes along with such chicanery.

The war that needs to be fought and won is against corporate dominance of every important aspect of our political culture. I hope this disaster, its impact revised upward by the government on Tuesday to represent an Exxon Valdez-size spill of oil into the Gulf every four days, will facilitate that. The difference between the new estimate, 60,000 barrels of oil a day, and BP’s original claim of 5,000 barrels a day is just another example of the systemic corporate deceit that has characterized this immense catastrophe. This is the wakeup call to fight corporate arrogance that we, and our president, desperately needed.

Planet Killer?

(In my gut, I have the worst feeling about this oil spill, about how truly bad it is. At the least, it will cause many species of animals to go extinct, cause many businesses on the coast to go under, and ruin the Gulf of Mexico for decades. But the worst case scenario is that it kills our planet. They drilled deeper than anyone has ever drilled in history. Russia did the same thing, but on dry land. This is the first time anyone was ever foolish enough to try and drill 40,000 ft deep under a mile of seawater. How bizarre is it if this is what starts a chain reaction that leads to the death of the planet by 2012? I don't buy into prophesies of any kind, but wouldn't it be ironic..? Shit...-jef)


BP oil spill planet killer
Michael Webster, Investigative Reporter
June 16, 2010

Millions of listeners heard on the popular Coast to Coast Am radio show recently that the BP oil spill is a planet killer. Talk show host Ian Punnett welcomed two guests, Jim Bell during the second hour and Minister Lindsey Williams in the 3rd hour, for a discussion on the Gulf oil crisis as well as alternative energy. In the second hour, Minister Lindsey Williams, who once served as a chaplain for the oil companies operating in Alaska, shared what he claimed to be the "real story" behind the Gulf oil crisis. He explained that, in the 1970's, Russia drilled over 40,000 feet into the ground and discovered abiotic oil, i.e. oil which replenishes itself via an as-yet-unknown natural chemical process. The off-shore drilling done by BP in the Gulf of Mexico, Williams said, was their attempt to create a similar super-deep well and access this same abiotic oil. However, according to his sources, BP insiders and U.S. Government officials the pressure from this pocket of abiotic oil in the Gulf was so great that it burst all the safety valves on the floating platform.

Williams went on to allege that oil industry insiders believe that the only method to stop the flow of oil in the Gulf is via a nuclear device and even that has potential for catastrophic results. Bell, who rejoined the conversation in the fourth hour, agreed with Williams about the potential danger of using a nuke to thwart the spill because it could "pop the bubble" and cause all of the underground oil to emerge simultaneously. On the potential long term effects of the crisis if the flow of oil is not stopped, Bell speculated that it could reach Europe within three years through the Gulf Stream.

Additionally, Williams observed that the overwhelming amount of dangerous gasses, which are also being released from the disaster, could be swept along the East Coast should a hurricane arrive in the Gulf. Williams stated that those same dangerous pollutants are in the air in alarming amounts and getting more dangerous everyday. He further indicated that the oil pressure coming up the oil deep water pipe was running between 20,000 and 70,000 PSI. Last night on the Coast to coast Am show Science Advisor Richard C. Hoagland commented on the oil spill in the Gulf. He warned listeners that an even worse catastrophe could be looming if a giant gas bubble that has formed at the site of the leak on the ocean floor should blow. Hoagland said the pressure in the pipe is 100,000 or more lbs of pressure per squire inch or PSI. Both agreed that BP nor anyone else knows how to shop this amount of pressure coming from the largest and deepest underwater oil well on earth.

Williams said "that the dangers from this run away well is a planet killer and we may not be able to stop it." Mankind could be doomed.

Bell, who calls himself an "ecological designer," blamed the oil spill on a corporate culture which focuses on making a profit by way of "taking short cuts" that, ultimately, result in situations such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico. He put forward the notion that the ideal scenario to break free of corporate controlled energy is to aggressively pursue efficient solutions which would make the transition away from oil easier and faster. Using solar power as an example, he theorized that, with good leadership, it would take about 40 years for such a transition to take place.

According to writer Jose Lugo in the movie Armageddon, there was a scene where Steve Buscemi who played the part of a reluctant-hero-astronaut and while sitting and waiting for liftoff, he uttered a profound philosophical statement;

"Hey Harry, you know we're sitting on 4 million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder, makes you feel good doesn't it"?

In the movie, this statement was made by an oil drilling roughneck to other roughnecks; but it says so much about the oil business and today's corporate culture. It's the reckless, do it quick, cheap and dirty routine.

Lugo went on to say that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster is a case in point. The disaster started with an explosion that nobody was ready for. Then the oil companies (BP and Transatlantic) discovered that they had absolutely "NO PLANS" to handle the unfolding disaster, they had to think things up as they went along. They had only one shut off station in one location, that malfunctioned! Reckless, quick, cheap and dirty!

Williams said that the amount of oil gushing from the well is much greater than BP and the amount the Government is reporting as only one million gallons a day. Both guests surmised that the more accurate amount gushing from the well is in the millions of barrels. Why didn't they have shut off valves along the pipe line? They did but all the system was overwhelmed by the great pressure of the blow out.

But the most anguishing question remains, "Why didn't they have a back-up plan?" Things happen in the ocean--hurricanes, sinking ships, equipment breakdowns, Murphy's Law etc.. Why didn't they have plans for these possible disasters? Because no commercial company has ever drilled that deep before this is a super-deep well with a mile of sea water on top of it. The pressures alone at those depths are enormous and may have contributed to the failures.

During the program it come out that there are multiple holes in the pipe and that more oil is gushing from fissures as far away from the well head as 20 miles.

Hoagland said that at the sea bed at the well for miles around it is a bubble and it is growing, believed to be pressure from a huge natural gas build up that could blow at any time and kill many there and in the general area working to stop the rush of the largest out of control oil leak that man has ever known.