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July 16th, 2010 :: Year 7, Issue 25

Aug-06-2010 | Comments (0)

Followups

* Oil Spills: Big Picture has an amazing photo series on the recent Chinese oil spill in Dalian and the human scale efforts to clean it up.

* BDS perspectives. Rabbi Lynn Gottleib has ideas that are worth reading on the issue, “As a forty year veteran of this issue, I, too have witnessed what is happening on the ground and I am moved to be part of the effort to change Israeli policy. I do this from a love of people. I believe that Jewish tradition stands with me. Not profiting or benefiting from the fruits of violence is a central tenet of a life committed to nonviolence. Since the Jewish state is acting in my name, I am forced to withdraw support for Israeli food products until the closure is lifted, the policy of land seizure ends and negotiations are taken up in a meaningful way. This does not mean I am cutting off my relationships to the people I love on both sides….”

June 11th, 2010 Year 7, Issue 19

Jun-11-2010 | Comments (0)

Followups

* Your editor’s expansion of last week’s piece looking at what writers say about Israel and its shadow made it up to #1 on the Tikkun Daily Blog’s most read list this week. “Denial and projection walk hand in hand, or perhaps they are conjoined twins, with a shared brain that can never be separated.”

* Naqba The fears are true! There are terrorists, who hide their identity behind the naqba (or burka). The twist? They’re Afghani women, fighting the Taliban. As a committed feminist, there are few symbols of women’s oppression that Parween hates more than the burqa. But compromises are necessary in a country where fighting for women’s rights can be a controversial and dangerous business, and she is not above donning the all-concealing garment if it helps her to stay one step ahead of the authorities. “I don’t like the burqa, but sometimes I have no choice when I’m moving around Kabul – it’s a great disguise.” Read about RAWA

* Oil Spill Two brief visuals for you. The first is a wonderful schematic showing the heights of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean, with the BP well, and how deep it goes added on. Quick and valuable way to get a perspective. The second is a three minute AP video of scuba diving through the spill.

5. BP: Still Gushing After All These Weeks

Jun-04-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: “Bird’s-Eye” has an ironically sad tone to it, as the amount of wildlife killed by the oil spill continues to rise, and no one seems to have any quick fix. We look at the Globe and Mail’s coverage (sic) of the spill, at BP’s post-spill suggestion that they don’t need emergency shut-off wells in the arctic (“chutzpah” is too mild!), at a collection of the best cartoons, and at Big Picture’s images of the Louisiana coast

* BP’s latest slip-up has U.S. ‘preparing for the worst’ of oil spill - The Globe and Mail

“They are going to destroy south Louisiana. We are dying a slow death here,” Billy Nungesser, the parish president, told The Associated Press. “We don’t have time to wait while they try solutions. Hurricane season starts Tuesday.”…The BP blowout could be to the oil industry what 2008 meltdown was to the financial industry: a fundamental re-evaluation of risk.

“Will the government be able to regulate risks of deep-water drilling without shutting it down?” said Robert Johnston, director of the energy practice at Eurasian Group, a risk management consultancy. In addition to more stringent and costly regulation, he said the offshore industry may face a flight of capital as investors seek to avoid the now-obvious risks inherent in extracting oil at such depths.

* BP and the Audacity of Greed Dave Lindorff, counterpunch

[BP] is demanding that Canada lift its tight rules for drilling in the icy Beaufort Sea portion of the Arctic Ocean. In an incredible display of corporate arrogance, BP is claiming that a current safety requirement that undersea wells drilled during the newly ice-free summer must also include a side relief well, so as to have a preventive measure in place that could shut down a blown well, is “too expensive” and should be eliminated.

Yet clearly, if the US had had such a provision in place, the Deepwater Horizon blowout could have been shut down right almost immediately after it blew out, just by turning of a valve or two, and then sealing off the blown wellhead.

A relief well is ”too expensive”?

* Editorial Cartoons on BP

Here and here and here

* Oil Reaches Louisiana Shores The Big Picture

4. No Use Crying Over Spilt Oil

May-07-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: It was the week when “Drill, baby, drill” became “Roost, chickens, roost”. Suggestions ranging from the lunatic (“Nuke the slick!”) to the desperate. The extent of the danger and the success of the attempts will become clearer, and will get local press, so we won’t cover them here and now. Instead, some background on BP’s actions, a Big Picture view of the disaster from explosion to shoreline, and a cri-de-coeur from Juan Cole.

* Reports Show BP Opposed New Safety Rules WSJ.com

As BP PLC defended its handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, documents show it argued against new, stricter safety rules proposed last year by the U.S. agency that oversees offshore drilling. The British oil giant was one of several companies that wrote to the U.S. Minerals Management Service this past September saying additional regulation of the oil industry was unnecessary. In a letter, BP said the current voluntary system of safety procedures was adequate.

* BP’s Payoffs Backfire - The Daily Beast

The oil giant behind the spill is now apologizing after trying to get local fishermen to waive legal rights in exchange for $5,000.

* Oil spill approaches Louisiana coast The Big Picture

* I want My Country back from Big Oil Juan Cole Informed Comment

I want my country back. I want back the country of Teddy Roosevelt, who cared about our natural environment. I want back the country of Harry Truman, who wasn’t afraid to give em hell. I don’t want an administration that authorizes offshore drilling to make political deals with the most despicable forces in American society. I know that Big Oil is making billions in untaxed profits that it uses to buy my government so that it can despoil America the beautiful, and I want my country back.

Do you doubt the reality of global climate change, caused by human beings pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? You are the victim of propaganda and foot-dragging by big oil corporations. Virtually all the peer-reviewed academic articles published on global warming acknowledge carbon-fuelled climate change,, but a majority of press reports quite a scientist on “one side” and another on the “other side.” The “other side” is bought and paid for and lacks a scientific leg to stand on– the equivalent of the “scientists” who denied that smoking causes lung cancer.