All Over, Time To Move On Says BP's New Boss

Signs of oil spill recovery entering new phase

"BILOXI, Miss. — BP's new boss says it's time for a "scaleback" in cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Federal officials say there is no way the crude could reach the East Coast. And fishing areas are starting to reopen.
There were several signs Friday that the era of thousands of oil-skimming boats and hazmat-suited beach crews is giving way to long-term efforts to clean up, compensate people for their losses and understand the damage wrought.
Local fishermen are doubtful, however, and say oil remains a bigger problem than BP and the federal government are letting on.
Other people contend the impact of the spill has been overblown, given that little oil remains on the Gulf surface, but Bob Dudley, who heads BP's oil spill recovery and will take over as CEO in October, rejected those claims.
"Anyone who thinks this wasn't a catastrophe must be far away from it," he said in Biloxi, where he announced that former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief James Lee Witt will be supporting BP's Gulf restoration work."

"Seafood industry representatives hailed the reopening, but Rusty Graybill, a boat captain from Yscloskey, La., who fishes for crab, oysters and shrimp, said "it's a joke."
"I'm pretty sure I'll go out, and I'll get oil-covered shrimp."

Good Little Fascists Summer Camp

Calling all cadets

"KALAMA — Free time ended when police officer Mike Powell yelled a short command.
All 10 cadets attending the Kalama Junior Police Academy on Thursday quickly dropped their ping pong and air-hockey paddles, ran to him and formed a line.
Cadets stood at attention as Powell, a former Forks, Wash., police chief who is running the Kalama cadet program for the summer, strolled in front of the group with the authority of a drill sergeant.
He was greeted with a firm, "Sir, yes sir!" whenever he spoke to a cadet.
"What was your favorite part of yesterday's program," he asked one cadet in the line.
"When we saw a man getting Tasered!" the youngster said, referring to a demonstration at the Kalama Community Building Wednesday.
"Did you like that?" Powell asked.
"Yes, sir!"
"Did he like that?" Powell asked.
"No, sir!" the cadet quickly replied.
"At ease," Powell told the group, who let out a sigh of relief.
Powell said it's taken several weeks to groom cadets into responding quickly and listen carefully to his instructions. The idea is to keep the cadets alert and busy during their summer breaks, while giving a taste of what police academy is like for officers, Powell said.
The academy also is an opportunity for young people to build positive views of police officers and their work, he said.
"Also, it shows them that police officers are people. ... It's really been a good community outreach," he said.
This is the first junior police academy offered in Kalama. It runs Mondays through Thursday, from July 7 to Aug. 25, from 12:30 to 5 p.m. in the Kalama Community Building.
The program, which is paid for by a federal Safe Schools grant, is open to anyone in grades three through nine. It costs $50 per child. As many as 17 cadets have arrived in one day, but attendance can be sporadic due to summer activities and vacations, Powell said.
Cadets say they're enjoying the summer program because they're learning about police work and getting plenty of exercise, which sometimes includes games like dodgeball or soccer. Each day is a blend of physical training and learning — either from Powell and Kalama Police officer Jeff Skeie, or a guest speaker.
Guests have included a police sketch artist and a K-9 officer. Cowlitz County Sheriff's Deputy Brad Bauman on Thursday spoke about his work with Lower Columbia SWAT and let the cadets tour his SWAT vehicle. The group also is expecting visits from an FBI agent, bomb squad agent and an employee of the U.S. Marshall's Service.
Kalama resident Nick Beintker, 11, said he joined the police academy on a whim and has grown to really enjoy the program. He's thinking about becoming a police officer some day."

How Bad Is It?

Marc Faber Questions if Dow Could Hit 1,000

"In the August edition of the ‘The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report’ Marc Faber questions whether the Dow could hit 1,000 as predicted by Robert Prechter, based on his interpretation of Elliot Waves, Fibonacci numbers and socioeconomic trends.
Prechter, who has written 13 books on finance, believes that the stock market is historically overvalued in terms of dividends and earnings, because of a "great rise in positive social mood."
But the mood changed in 2000 and the "trend toward negative social mood will lead to an economic contraction," according to Prechter.
"Small bear markets lead to recessions, big bear markets lead to depressions. The current bear market will be the biggest in nearly 300 years, so the depression will be correspondingly deep," Prechter said.
Prechter goes onto to suggest the bear market is of super-cycle degree, the biggest since 1720-1784 and will therefore see a decline for equities deeper than the decline during the great depression, which saw the Dow fall 89 percent."

"And how do you trade the Dow at 1,000?
One suggestion from Faber is buying a self-sustainable farm in the middle of nowhere surrounded by high voltage fences and barbed wire and equipped with booby traps and an arsenal of machine guns, hand grenades and armed vehicles guarded by vicious Dobermans."

Why Are There Suddenly So Many Oil Disasters?

China oil spill doubles in size, called 'severe threat'

Oil spill closes part of St. Lawrence Seaway

Alaska Oil Spill: Trans-Alaska Pipeline Shuts Down 800 Mile Area

Michigan Oil Spill Among Largest In Midwest History

Denmark says oil spill observed in North Sea

Red Sea oil spill continuing

Coast Guard: New Gulf Oil Spill Will Take More Than a Week to Plug

In Nigeria, Oil Spills Are a Longtime Scourge

And of course the gulf catastrophe. Prices need to be kept at a certain level or something?

Obfuscation, Delay and Diversion

Thousands in Gulf Suffer from Misdiagnosed Skin Lesions

"Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana—Area residents have begun to show up at clinics and hospitals with mysterious scabs and pustules covering their extremities, as reported from residents to non-profit relief organizations in the Gulf.

One thirty-three year-old woman, who wished to remain anonymous, has disclosed to Project Gulf Impact that upon seeking medical advice at a clinic, she was told she had scabies. Hours later, she was told by an area hospital that she had a staph infection. The woman was treated with a shot of penicillin and Elimite cream, a topical agent for the treatment of scabies mite infestations, and an oral antibiotic. In addition to the lesions, the woman reported aching bones, weight loss, stomach pains, inflammation in her leg and sties developing in her eyes.

Other residents have shown up at local doctors and area hospitals reporting similar symptoms. According to area residents suffering from the mysterious rash, patients feel like they are not being given the proper medical treatment. Doctors have told area patients they are suffering from scabies with no clear diagnosis and from Staphylococcus infections with no underlying cause.
Exposure to chemicals, such as those being used to break down oil in the region, like the dispersant, Corexit, may be the cause of such infections. Corexit is an agent that has been proven to break down lipid membranes, which cover and protect human skin. Human skin is composed of a thin layer of lipids and Corexit, by nature, breaks down these organized barriers into smaller individual molecules allowing the barrier to become permeable to pathogens. The skin irritation could be caused by prolonged exposure to these chemicals and could break down the ability of the body to fight off infection."

The whole reason to dump that vile corexit, and who knows what else into gulf waters, was to minimize BP's court liability by sinking the slime out of sight. This is also why they're just throwing sand on top of severely polluted beaches. It's just one giant coverup. The less oil that's visible, the less the fucking corporate scum have to pay for environmental damage. Corexit, of course, is so toxic it was banned in Europe but that hasn't stopped Bp, nor did the Pussy administration's timid instructions have any weight. The corporate/governmental/media criminality is so putridly evil that they even claim corexit is as benign as Ivory:

drink it, please

Basically everyone in that video should be lined up against a wall.

What's going on isn't new; it's the techno fascist mentality at work that goes back to at least WW1. The point is to spend more effort covering up crimes than to address them, and endless delay is the name of the game in regard to the effects of the crimes. The longer you can string out owning up to what's been done the less liability you'll have, because not only do passions wane but you can blame the damage on other things and frankly, they wait for people to die. After four decades and millions of Vietnamese civilians suffering terrible birth defects and dying horrrible deaths, the fascists recently sent a few thousand dollars to study the Agent Orange problem. Twenty years after snuffing 4,000 people and sickening another 100,000 in India, Union Carbide has yet to get compensation directly to the victims. Of course a shitload of them couldn't be bothered at this point because they're six feet under. In the days after 9/11 Christie Todd Whitman looked New Yorkers in the eye and lied about the toxicity of what they were breathing, and to this day the traitorous congress refuses to help people who went to the aid of victims in that false flag murder. It took twenty years for Exxon to pay out for the Valdez disaster, but hey, stringing it out meant they shelled out 1/10 of what the court ordered and just about all the oil cleanup workers are now dead.

The toxic petrochemical soup in the gulf is an extinction level event that the fascist criminals want to string out for a long, long time. Their idea of damage control is managing PR, with no concern for peopls' health or protection of the environment. They mean to have this catastrophe last for generations. What the corpgov is doing is so despicably heinous that some are speculating the oil eruption was manufactured to justify dumping millions of gallons of corexit into gulf waters, for reasons only the chemtrail supervisors might know. The "cleanup" is fucking laughable. And the dispersant dump meant that the oil droplets are now suspended as an emulsion that cannot be skimmed or separated from the seawater by conventional means. Which means the entire Gulf of Mexico is a poisonous cauldron the contents of which will eventually be picked up and spread far inland by storms.

We tend to forget how vicious strong hurricanes can become. Essentially the gulf and the atmosphere become as one with water churned deeply. When this happens, and it will, probably numerous times, it's possible the southeast and the east coast of the US will be destroyed for generations. It'll have been done on purpose, despite the asinine bullshit spewing from MSM that this is all "an experiment". And as millions of americans get sick and vomit and perish while vast swaths of land become barren chemical wastes, BP will shrug and say "How were we to know?" and the courts will be clogged for decades as the government sends in it's goons with machine guns if the enraged populations get a little too uppity. Before they keel over and die.

5 Things To Know About Celebrity/Royalty Worship That Pretends It's News

5 Things to Know About Chelsea's Wedding Town, Rhinebeck, N.Y.

"Chelsea Clinton could have chosen just about any town for her Saturday wedding to investment banker Marc Mevinsky – but since she chose Rhinebeck, N.Y., the small town north of Manhattan is suddenly in the spotlight. Here are five fun facts about the town where the former First Daughter will become a bride."

I have nothing against this woman and whatever she's doing. I don't even care a whit about what her royal wedding will cost. It's not important to me, but what's important is how the media wants us to focus on this stuff as if we should be paying attention to celebrity as if it's our daily bread. It's been going on a long time. Search Tricia Nixon.

Cancer Has To Grow

Netanyahu: Extending settlement freeze will cause government to collapse

"Continuing the construction freeze in West Bank settlements after it expires on September 26 would be impossible politically and would bring down the coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos in Jerusalem on Wednesday."

And Americans Enable It.

Activists work to stop tax-exempt donations to Israeli settlements

"Most of the construction work in the settlements is in the hands of American, Canadian and European developers. Much of the money needed for settlement development comes from private American donations. It is estimated that tens of millions of dollars reach the settlements in the form of charity, contributions that by virtue of their philanthropic nature enjoy tax-exempt status under the US' Internal Revenue Code."

Serious WTF

Did Faux just make this up?

Only 21 Shopping Weeks Left

Apparently The Stupids Are Still In Charge

Senate Votes to Double Fines, Jail Time for Pot Brownies

"Last night the United States Senate voted to double the penalties for the nation’s newest existential threat: brownies made with marijuana!
The Senate unanimously passed Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)’s “Saving Kids from Dangerous Drugs Act of 2009″ (S. 258) that targets pot brownies and other marijuana edibles preferred by some medical marijuana patients. The bill next moves to the House; if it passes that chamber, anyone making pot brownies or similar products could be subject to double the fines and jail time for regular marijuana.
This bill’s passage marks a step backwards for Congress, which this week also passed the Fair Sentencing Act that reduced the sentencing disparities between cocaine and crack from 100:1 to 18:1. Now we have a new disparity: pot brownies and other marijuana edibles are now treated as something twice as bad as just distributing marijuana."

Police destroy marijuana plants worth £1.1billion in California farm raids

"Marijuana plants worth £1.1billion have been destroyed on farms in California with links to Mexican drug traffickers.
More than 270 acres of crops were found during police raids involving 450 officers in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Ninety-seven people have been arrested over the past three weeks, most of them Mexican nationals believed to have ties with Mexican drug barons.
It is believed marijuana is increasingly being grown in the U.S. by Mexican cartels rather than smuggling it there.
Madera County Sheriff John Anderson said: ‘The mission is a collective fight against organised crime.’

Notice how it's morphed from 'combating a public health menace' to 'fighting against organized crime'? And we better watch out for those brown skinned criminals?

white women are still in danger

added - Cannabinoids Kill Cancer and Our Government Has Known for 36 Years

Sometimes Waking Up Is Extremely Hard To Do

Army Suicides Reach One a Day; Epidemic Spreads to National Guard and Reserves

"The U.S. Army, along with the National Guard and Army Reserves, averaged a suicide a day in June, making what already was a bad year even worse.

Thirty-two soldiers, including 11 in the Guard and Reserve, killed themselves last month, a rate of suicide not seen since the Vietnam War. Seven of the suicides took place I Iraq or Afghanistan.

During the first six months of 2010, 65 members of the Guard and Reserve took their own lives, compared with 42 for the same period in 2009."

Articles like these invariably go on to prattle about deployment stress and the like, when the real factor is forcing them to be amoral, murderous psychos. Waking up and realizing, in fact, you're one of the bad guys is just going to be too devastating to endure. I'm sick and tired of hearing otherwise.

What Happens When You Attempt To Film Police

In the US:





In Sweden:

Yes Of Course, This Can Go On Forever

Afghanistan: U.S. Spends $20 Billion Per Year for Air Conditioning in Tents

"The term we were looking for is “Forward Operating Base” or FOB. The US has many FOBs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The large ones have many tents and other structures where personnel live and work. And all of them need to be heated in the winter, and cooled in the summer. That can take a lot of fuel."

Gallon of gas in Afghanistan costs $400

"Pentagon officials have told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400 by the time it arrives in the remote locations in Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate."

$1.05 trillion dollars have been allocated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

My Personal Litmus Test For Intelligence In Others

The morning of 9/11 I heard about it on a car radio on the way to a store. When I got back home I was all over the internet while listening to a radio and my wife was glued to the television.
I remember yelling to her in the other room "Why the hell are they repeating Osama Bin Laden's name over and over again?"

What was happening was that a vast conspiracy, carefully planned, was being executed right in front of our eyes. In the minutes and hours after our own government and Israeli agents blew buildings up and we were horrified by people leaping to their deaths over and over on TV, carefully placed assets were drilling the myth of Osama and AQ into our subconsciousness during that critical window of opportunity for them, while we were at our most vulnerable.

Obscene Feeding Frenzy

Government Has Run Amok Since 9/11

"Those who understand the exploitative nature of big government suspected that the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks had little to do with the security of the American people and much to do with power and money. Still, the magnitude of the scam, as revealed by the Washington Post last week, is astonishing.

Naturally, the politicians justify the growth in intelligence operations on national security grounds. To make sure such attacks never happen again, they said, new powers, agencies, personnel, and facilities were imperative.

Now the truth is out: the post–9/11 activity has been an obscene feeding frenzy at the public trough. Any resemblance to efforts at keeping Americans safe is strictly coincidental.

“The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work” the Post’s Dana Priest and William Arkin write. “After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

”It would be a mistake to chalk up the government’s conduct to bureaucratic bumbling. This is not bumbling. It is highway robbery. Everyone who was well connected, either in government or the “private” sector, wanted a piece of the action, and chances are that he — and many others — got it. It doesn’t matter that multiple agencies do the same work and keep their findings secret from one another. It doesn’t matter that the volume of paperwork is beyond anyone’s capacity to absorb it. What matters is money, power, and prestige. This is the mother of all boondoggles."

Pray to jeebus for an outsized X class solar flare.
TEOTWAWKI has a beat we can dance to.

Survival Pods All The Rage Again

Doomsday shelters making a comeback

"Jason Hodge, father of four children from Barstow, Calif., says he's "not paranoid" but he is concerned, and that's why he bought space in what might be labeled a doomsday shelter.
Hodge bought into the first of a proposed nationwide group of 20 fortified, underground shelters — the Vivos shelter network — that are intended to protect those inside for up to a year from catastrophes such as a nuclear attack, killer asteroids or tsunamis, according to the project's developers.
"It's an investment in life," says Hodge, a Teamsters union representative. "I want to make sure I have a place I can take me and my family if that worst-case scenario were to happen."
There are signs that underground shelters, almost-forgotten relics of the Cold War era, are making a comeback.
The Vivos network, which offers partial ownerships similar to a timeshare in underground shelter communities, is one of several ventures touting escape from a surface-level calamity.
Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas, has built underground shelters for more than three decades, and business has never been better, says Walton McCarthy, company president.
The company sells fiberglass shelters that can accommodate 10 to 2,000 adults to live underground for one to five years with power, food, water and filtered air, McCarthy says.
The shelters range from $400,000 to a $41 million facility Radius built and installed underground that is suitable for 750 people, McCarthy says. He declined to disclose the client or location of the shelter.
"We've doubled sales every year for five years," he says.Other shelter manufacturers include Hardened Structures of Colorado and Utah Shelter Systems, which also report increased sales."

The apparent trend now is to bunker up with a whole bunch of people in what I see as pretty expensive units, rather than the far cheaper single family pods from sixty years ago. I don't know about anybody else, but I wouldn't relish the thought of being cooped up with hundreds of strangers for extended periods of time.

But of course the elite super rich among us have their own versions - floating ark palaces where accommodations start at $4 million.

What Is It Good For?

Absolutely nothing.



Edwin Starr, 41 years ago

Our Bestest Little Racist Buddy

Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev

"A menacing convoy of bulldozers was heading back to Be'er Sheva as I drove towards al-Arakib, a Bedouin village located not more than 10 minutes from the city. Once I entered the dirt road leading to the village I saw scores of vans with heavily armed policemen getting ready to leave. Their mission, it seems, had been accomplished.
The signs of destruction were immediately evident. I first noticed the chickens and geese running loose near a bulldozed house, and then saw another house and then another one, all of them in rubble. A few children were trying to find a shaded spot to hide from the scorching desert sun, while behind them a stream of black smoke rose from the burning hay. The sheep, goats and the cattle were nowhere to be seen – perhaps because the police had confiscated them.
Scores of Bedouin men were standing on a yellow hill, sharing their experiences from the early morning hours, while all around them uprooted olive trees lay on the ground. A whole village comprising between 40 and 45 houses had been completely razed in less than three hours.
I suddenly experienced deja vu: an image of myself walking in the rubbles of a destroyed village somewhere on the outskirts of the Lebanese city of Sidon emerged. It was over 25 years ago, during my service in the Israeli paratroopers. But in Lebanon the residents had all fled long before my platoon came, and we simply walked in the debris. There was something surreal about the experience, which prevented me from fully understanding its significance for several years. At the time, it felt like I was walking on the moon.
This time the impact of the destruction sank in immediately. Perhaps because the 300 people who resided in al-Arakib, including their children, were sitting in the rubble when I arrived, and their anguish was evident; or perhaps because the village is located only 10 minutes from my home in Be'er Sheva and I drive past it every time I go to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; or perhaps because the Bedouins are Israeli citizens, and I suddenly understood how far the state is ready to go to accomplish its objective of Judaising the Negev region; what I witnessed was, after all, an act of ethnic cleansing.
They say the next intifada will be the Bedouin intifada. There are 155,000 Bedouins in the Negev, and more than half of them live in unrecognized villages without electricity or running water. I do not know what they might do, but by making 300 people homeless, 200 of them children, Israel is surely sowing dragon's teeth for the future."

Reverend Ted's Back To His Old Tricks

But really - who hasn't done crank and had hot monkey sex with a stranger during a massage and then started a church?

Ted Haggard: 'I Over-Repented' For My Meth-Gay Prostitute 'Crisis'

"Rev. Ted Haggard has been leading his own new church for the past few months, and in a Wall Street Journal profile says he thinks he "over-repented" for an affair with a male prostitute, which he refers to as "my crisis." He also insists he's not gay -- and that his affair was just a massage gone wrong.
The profile describes Haggard's new backyard barn church, which features bags of cement and a pulpit made of buckets.
Haggard, who announced his new St. James Church in June, told the Journal: "Tiger Woods needs to golf. Michael Vick needs to be playing football. Ted Haggard needs to be leading a church."
Haggard was founder and leader of the powerful evangelical New Life Church, before he was forced to resign in 2006 after he admitted to buying meth from a male prostitute, with whom he also had an affair.
As recently as November 2008, Haggard's former friends in the New Life church expressed skepticism regarding Haggard's ability to lead, releasing a statement saying that "we cannot endorse his return to vocational ministry."
From the Journal:
Mr. Haggard said that is ridiculous. He portrays his encounter with the prostitute as a massage that went awry and said he doesn't have same-sex attractions. He dismisses as a "witch hunt" the findings of his former church that he engaged in a pattern of misconduct, including sordid talk and inappropriate relationships. (He said his only fault was cracking a few crude jokes.) But his assurances have raised some eyebrows.
Haggard now says his scandal is helping him reach out to people: "It's amazing. People tell me everything. That never happened when we were respectable."
"I cuss now," he also boasts."

How Are Booms Supposed To Work With All The Dispersant Mixed With Oil?

They're working to make some people filthy rich.

BP Response Workers Report Low Morale, Lack of Pay, Sickness

"BP oil disaster response workers are reporting endemic problems, such as not being paid on time, low morale, rampant sickness, equipment failures and being lied to regularly.
"Yesterday was a catastrophe," one worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Truthout. "People are waiting 2-3 hours for their paychecks to be brought to them and I know for a fact three people that didn't get paid and no reason was given."
The woman has been working as a clerk for Gulf Asphalt Contractors (GAC), a company that describes itself as "the leading provider of sitework (sic) and building construction services in the Florida Panhandle." The company, based in Panama City, Florida, is a BP contractor.
While she said she had never been ordered not to talk to the media, she admitted to working amid a climate of fear and believed she would lose her job if her company found out she had done so. "When GAC finds people who have talked to the media, they fire them."
She spoke with Truthout on what she explained was "my first day off work in 45 days." She and her co-workers were instructed to take the weekend off due to Tropical Depression Bonnie, but have yet to be called back to work."The last thing I heard them say was not to come into work until we call you," she explained, "What does that mean? We were promised we'd have this work for two years. I don't even know if we have worker's compensation. They are firing people left and right."
She works at Port Saint Joe, Florida, which is about a three-hour drive east of Pensacola on the coast.
"People are being laid off for no reason," she added, then went on to explain that people working on the beaches cleaning up oil "are getting sick, then they go to the emergency rooms, but they come back and we are always told it was because of food poisoning."
"Everybody I know has bad morale and is confused and doesn't know what is going on," she continued, "Because I work in the TRG trailer, people come to me thinking I know more than they know, but I don't. I'm coming up with shorter hours and having to wait weeks to be paid. They shorted me 12 hours three checks ago, then when they finally paid me for it, they paid me at a lower wage."
Truthout also spoke with a worker in the so-called Vessels of Opportunity program. The program is what BP set up to hire fisherman who are out of work because of the oil disaster, so that they are paid to use their boats in the response effort to do things like laying out oil boom and skimming.
"They're leaving gaps between the booms and the oil is going straight through them," the man, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Truthout in Lafitte, Louisiana, "This is on top of the fact that the booms don't work anyway. The oil is going over and under them."
The man is working on a boat laying out oil boom in the Bay Jimmy region of southeast Louisiana, about an hour's drive south of New Orleans.
He told Truthout that the small plastic booms that BP is using to stop the oil from reaching the marsh areas "are a waste of time and money. Some company is making lots of money off of this, when in reality they need booms that are five feet tall above the water with at least a six-foot deep skirt under the water. What they have now is a load of crap."
After pausing to look out at the water, he added, "Somebody is getting filthy ass rich off these red and yellow booms that don't do shit. Some politicians' got a buddy manufacturing that crap."

Celebration Begins At BP Headquarters

No no, most of the oil is from THIS.



New Gulf Oil Spill

"An abandoned oil well is leaking into a Louisiana bay about 35 miles south of New Orleans after a barge crashed into the well head early Tuesday, the U.S. Coast Guard said."

The Wikileaks Story Has An Odor To It

Much as I like the idea of a "Pentagon Papers" expose of government perfidy in foreign wars of fascist convenience there's something, actually a bunch of things, that should give us pause for thought.

The first thing that speaks volumes is the amount of play it's gotten in MSM. Of course pack jouirnalism means if a story seems to have a whiff of broad appeal the execrable media has to try to cover it before the competition, a la Lindsay Lohan's latest vagina tattoo. But it can also mean that this is information, or disinformation, that the PTB want in front of the great unwashed as pure propaganda to further an agenda. Remember the Jessica Lynch idiocy? Or go back further to the first gulf slaughter and the widely disseminated and repeated incubator baby hoax to kick off the beginning of the end of Iraq. Now on the face of it these 90,000+ leaked pages are different in that it's damning testimony to the corrupt and sickeningly brutal Afghan occupation, but we always have to remember the people who run the show play chess while we're still sitting around thinking we're playing checkers. As far as the MSM is concerned, there seems to have been close cooporation with the administration about what was going to be "exposed".
We have to treat anything like this as disinformation.

But what exactly does it all "expose"?
Chris Floyd lists the main points:

"That the occupation forces kill lots of civilians at checkpoints and botched raids, then lie about it afterward.
That these killings make Afghans angry and fuel the insurgency.
That elements of Pakistani intelligence are involved with some elements of the many resistance groups known collectively (and incorrectly) in the West as the Taliban.
That the Americans are using more and more robot drones to kill people.
That the Americans are running death squads in Afghanistan aimed at Taliban leaders.
That Afghan officials are corrupt, and that Afghan police and military forces are woefully inadequate."

Is there anything new here to people who've been paying attention? Apparently not, we've known all this from reportage, eyewitnesses and the american military itself. Actually the intent of disseminating this old news seems to make people resonate with what they already know while insinuating the true message, involvement of Pakistani and Iranian governments in Afghanistan in aiding the Taliban against the US military. In fact getting this spin inserted into 'left wing media' seems to be the intent here as the war machine gears up for it's much prepared for Iranian Lollapalooza. The whole point for empire is to prolong it's conflicts, to maintain the murderous occupation, to keep the drugs moving and the funding flowing. If the intent of the Wikileaks data dump was to bring the war criminals to justice nobody in his or her right mind should believe it will ever happen.

And what about Assange himself? In retrospect the ballyhoo about the CIA hunting down the Wikileaks founder last month seems to have been just more bullshit, a story to set the stage for coming out of his hideyhole with his data dump. I've got to say, anybody who dismisses 9/11 as a distraction and a false conspiracy doesn't pass my personal litmus test.
And as for 9/11, is it a coincidence that now we see a story in MSM like this?

Wikileaks Afghanistan: Osama bin Laden alive

"Osama bin Laden is alive and playing a key role in directing the war in Afghanistan, leaked US military files suggest.
Multiple intelligence reports on the whereabouts of the al-Qaeda leader are contained among the documents."

It Might Have Been Worth A Lot Of Money

This article jiggled a memory loose.

Remnants of lost polar expedition sought

"Lost in the Canadian Arctic, two British polar exploration ships more than 150 years old are frozen in some icy nook and cranny.
Despite more than 30 search and rescue missions for Captain Sir John Franklin and his crew, only scraps of evidence -- forks and spoons, shoes, a letter -- have been found of the 1845 expedition.
Now a team of Canadian archaeologists is setting off with modern sonar sea-floor mapping instruments, along with historical records to locate HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, reports a BBC News article. The researchers hope to finally piece together what happened to the shipwrecked crew.
Veteran explorer Franklin led two ships and 128 men north in search of the legendary North-West Passage -- a narrow channel that connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
The existence of such a channel would revolutionize trading; ships would no longer need to circumnavigate around the Americas to reach the West Coast or Asia. For this reason, the Royal Navy was offering a £10,000 reward for finding the North-West Passage.
The passage was eventually discovered by Captain Robert McClure in 1855 during a failed rescue mission for Franklin’s crew. Today ships can use the iceberg-filled pathway, but only in the dead of summer.
When Franklin set off on his final voyage, he was motivated by the prize money, adventure and glory. No stranger to the harsh, cold conditions of the Arctic, Franklin had already mapped 1,200 miles of Canadian coastline on previous expeditions.
The crew outfitted the front tips of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus with iron so the ships could bust through any icy barriers. The ships also featured the latest technology at the time -- small steam engines.
But the Arctic proved a formidable foe. The ships crashed, and whether due to lead poisoning from poorly packaged food, scurvy or simply not enough food, the entire crew perished.
Interviews with Inuits during early rescue missions revealed that some members of the crew got crazed and desperate, resorting to cannibalism.
The mystery of how all the explorers died is one of the many questions the Canadian archaeologists hope to resolve.
The archaeologists are following the same sea route used by Franklin and his crew in 1845: entering the Arctic from the East and maneuvering past Greenland into the vast Canadian Arctic archipelago."

In the late 60s I had a girlfriend in high school whose father worked in a funiture store in New York City. I guess they put items on consignment too because he found something in an old chest of drawers that came in. It was a map that was wrapped up in other papers and he had no use for it so he gave it all to me.
It was an original map of the rescue mission sent after the Franklin expedition, showing the new northern passage. It was pretty big, about two feet by three feet, and I remember at the time it was about a hundred years old, making it published in the 1860s.
I hung on to it for five or six years until I became curious and sent a letter to some museum in Toronto or Montreal including a copy of the legend. They immediately sent one back saying "Gosh we already have one of those, but oh well, we'll send you ten bucks for it."
Being a total idiot I never got a second opinion and sent the thing in to them. It's probably preserved in nitrogen in a glass case somewhere, prominently displayed in the museum's Franklin wing.
I no doubt bought a couple six packs.

Beware The Cardinal Climax

Market Astrology

"But the opening of Crawford's July issue is definitely the sort of thing that upsets people: "NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE JULY! We mean, of course, the planetary pictures in the sky which are developing towards the tightest harmonic alignments in the most potent areas of the zodiacal circle ever recorded in Earth's written history. These portend increasing and maximizing intensity and rapidity of 'change' on every level of existence: mineral, vegetable, animal, human and spirit. Will Capitalism survive? Will Democracy survive? Will our markets survive? Will governments survive? Will humanity survive? Will Earth survive?
"We don't know, but we'll be SHORT for it!"
Crawford -- along with other astrologers, who however are merely worried about nuclear war, the end of the world etc. -- is impressed with an imminent unusual alignment that apparently involves five key planets.
He writes: "Astrologers call it the 'Cardinal Climax.' It is considered to be the most powerful and important planetary alignment of the modern era. Perhaps it heralds the beginning of the real 'Aquarian Age' or the end of the 'Mayan Calendar.' (After all, what's a few months in a 25,600-year cycle?) These energies actually maximize from July 30 through August 3. There have been 'shadows' preceding and will be echoes afterwards for quite some time."
Crawford adds: "This huge alignment will be followed by a Full Moon on the Fall Equinox and a Lunar Eclipse on the Winter Solstice. We expect the depth and scope of dislocations during this period to exceed anything we have ever witnessed, both in otherwise civilized interaction among nations, and likely our fill in natural disasters."
"We continue to recommend extreme caution and proper emergency measures such as extra food, water, medicines and cash over the next 24 months in particular. Do NOT wait any longer!!"

"Over the many years that it has been followed by Hulbert, Crawford's record has been checkered but interspersed with occasional bursts of eerie prescience. Which is it this time?
Crawford Perspectives usually publishes on the first Monday of each month. But its next issue is delayed until August 9 -- possibly to save mailing costs if the world ends."

You're Stealing The Raindrops That Fall Gently On Your Face

They belong to someone else, thief.

Collecting rainwater now illegal in many states as Big Government claims ownership over our water

"(NaturalNews) Many of the freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. are quickly eroding as the nation transforms from the land of the free into the land of the enslaved, but what I'm about to share with you takes the assault on our freedoms to a whole new level. You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.
As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from "diverting" water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use."

Message To The Tools

Print's Dead, Just Hasn't Realized It Yet

Another Of The World's Backwaters Gets The Pre Invasion Treatment

Look for Mali and Antarctica next.

Burma is working on nuclear weapons programme, experts claim

"Burma is working on a nuclear weapons programme, experts have concluded, after its existence was exposed by leaked photographs.
Intelligence monitoring of the country’s arms purchases from North Korea has been intensified as a result.
Satellite tracking and electronic surveillance in particular have been stepped up. Concerns over the regime’s attempts to develop a nuclear bomb prompted the US State Department to demand last week that the ruling junta disclose an inventory of its nuclear technology.
Secret documents and hundreds of photographs smuggled out of the country by a defector indicated that it was intent on developing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Jane’s Intelligence Review published a separate batch of photographs showing similar activities in buildings and behind security fences near the capital, Naypyidaw.
Fears that Burma had joined a clandestine nuclear network linking North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Syria have been growing for some time, but there has not been hard evidence until now."

Being 'The Master Race' Means Never Having To Stress Out

Israel claims "no PTSD in IDF, jews immune to mental illness"

"Today’s Israeli National News Service quoted a study on PTSD from BaMachaneh, the Israeli version of Stars and Stripes stating that IDF soldiers don’t get PTSD due to combat, making them vastly superior to their American counterparts. The IDF study cites that up to 30% of American veterans and active duty alike, suffer flashbacks, outbursts of anger and a host of other symptoms which do not plague Jews who are subjected to similar combat circumstances.
No mention of where or when this alleged combat occurred is made, however. The study alleges that less than five percent of soldiers with stress problem, those Israelis who fought in the “Second Lebanon War” and the attacks on Gaza fare much better under combat stress than their American counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Compared to their counterparts around the globe, IDF soldiers are less likely to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) due to combat, according to a study published in the most recent edition of official military magazine BaMachaneh.
The study compared research into PTSD in IDF soldiers to similar research done in other countries. Less than five percent of the soldiers who fought in the Second Lebanon War and in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza showed signs of post-traumatic stress, researchers found."

Keep Moving

Free airfare back from vaction, if you're the crafty sort. Actually Hawaii should be lauded for addressing a problem that is about ready to explode. Most area are abusive towards the homeless and treat people as criminals.

Homeless In Hawaii Offered Plane Tickets, Free Tents To Get Out Of Sight

"HONOLULU — Every morning, Tony Williams wakes to the sound of waves crashing on Hawaii's famed Waikiki beaches and has a spectacular view of the Pacific. But he's not paying a cent for his priceless vista.
Williams is among the growing number of homeless on Oahu taking advantage of inviting beaches and support services in the islands, where they never have to worry about freezing.
But homeless encampments on the beach could damage tourism, officials fear, and they are currently weighing several proposals that they say would help the homeless, while also moving them from public view.
The proposals include offering plane tickets to the mainland, creating a homeless "tent city" on less visible state land and providing more affordable housing in Honolulu, where rents are among the nation's highest.
"If you're going to be homeless anywhere, it's good to be here," said Williams, a 35-year-old tattoo artist from Long Beach, Calif., as he hung his clothes to dry between two palm trees. "I'm dealing with the cards I got dealt. I don't want to stay here forever."
There were 4,171 homeless on the island of Oahu when a census was taken in January, according to the report released last month, an increase of 15 percent from the same time last year."

Yammering Billboards, Just What We Need

Tokyo trials digital billboards that scan passers-by

"Digital advertising billboards being trialled in Japan are fitted with cameras that read the gender and age group of people looking at them to tailor their commercial messages.
The technology -- reminiscent of the personalised advertisements in Steven Spielberg's sci-fi movie "Minority Report" -- forms part of the Digital Signage Promotion Project, which is currently in a test phase.



A consortium of 11 railway companies launched the one-year pilot project last month, and has set up 27 of the high-tech advertising displays in subway commuter stations around Tokyo.

"The camera can distinguish a person's sex and approximate age, even if the person only walks by in front of the display, at least if he or she looks at the screen for a second," said a spokesman for the project.

If data for different locations is analysed, companies can provide interactive advertisements "which meet the interest of people who use the station at a certain time," the project said in a statement.

While in "Minority Report" advertisers recognise individuals such as Tom Cruise's character by name and make purchasing suggestions, the Japanese project does not identify people and only collates demographic data.

The technology uses face recognition software to glean the gender and age group of passers-by, but operators have promised they will save no recorded images, only the collated data about groups of people."

added - Cops copy the movie too

MSM: ‘Minority Report’ technology used by police to predict crimes

All Things Palinesque

Snarling SarahCuda: MK-Ultra Mind Controlled BETA Programmed Sex Slave/Human Laptop on Auto-Pilot

“when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” — Lewis Sinclair

"For a clear understanding of not who, but “what” Sarah Palin & family are, the reader MUST be familiar w/MK-Ultra Monarch Programming, which created the Palin phenomenon (see MK-Ultra tab on blog header) This page focuses exclusively on: Palin’s MK-Ultra Monarch Programming, State of Alaska Power Structure, Occult-Masonic-Disney Themes, Palin Media Team & Palin Assets…
NO ONE COMES OUT OF NOWHERE
Palin has been hand picked and groomed by Global Mgt. Team (“GMT”) before she was a child –this NSA-CIA “controlled asset” was hidden far away from the masses, in the tiny town of Wasilla. Palin was being trained (prog’md) by sadistic neurosurgeons, behavioral scientists, psychiartists and psychologists working w/in Monarch Prog under aegis of NSA-CIA Military-Industrial-Apparatus and no expense was spared — Hollywood acting coaches, voice coaches and stylists were contracted to make the Alaskan MK’d Kitten sparkle! This was after years of “grooming” — first as Mrs. Wasilla, then runner -up in Mrs. Alaska pageant (worldwide pageant system functions as a smorgasbord of MK’s for GMT. Prog’mrs (quite possiby Dr. Ewen Cameron a.k.a. Dr. White) methodically and skillfully layered in her “alters” (mind files) IAW-SOP rape/torture/trauma, for use in Hollywood scripted fantasy narrative of “local hometown girl makes good” (front page copy), launching her meteoric rise in Alaskan political circles — then her grand entrance on natl. stage, to mesmerize electorate, capture hearts/minds of GOP evangelical base, as their first woman VP candidate, and current role as chief antagonist to Obama/ left-wing of phony political paradigm.
As planned, she performed this “social alchemy” brilliantly. Palin’s unique blend of folksiness, brashness, quirky combativeness, stinging humor, “look-at-me” mannerisms and overt sexiness , knocked voters out! However, as one begins to pull the threads of her fictitious political resume, it quickly becomes clear, “the character” named Sarah L. Palin was carefully constructed to check off boxes on GOP candidate application – the attraction is pure cult of personality…"


praise jeebus, I have arrived

Empire's Bestist Little South American Buddy

In Colombia appears a mass grave containing 2,000 bodies
The unidentified bodies have been deposited by the Army since 2005

"In the small town of La Macarena, Meta, 200 kilometers south of Bogota, one of the hottest areas of the Colombian conflict is the largest mass grave discovered in the recent history of Latin America, with a number of bodies "NN " buried without identification, which could reach 2,000, according to various sources and the residents themselves. Since 2005,the Army whose elite forces are deployed in the vicinity has been burying behind the local cemetery hundreds of bodies with the order that they would be buried without any name.
This is the largest burial of victims of a conflict known until now in the continent. We should have to move to the Nazi Holocaust or the barbarity of Pol Pot in Cambodia to find something of this dimension.
Behind the cemetery of La Macarena, 200 km. Bogota, thousands of bodies were buried without name.
The lawyer Jairo Ramirez is the secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Colombia and accompanied a delegation of British parliamentarians to the site, when a few weeks ago,he began to discover the magnitude of the grave of La Macarena. "What we saw was terrifying," he told public. "Countless bodies, and hundreds of plates of white wood on the surface with NN and registration dates from 2005 until today."

Ramirez adds, "Army Commander told us they were guerrillas killed in combat, but the people of the region speak of many community leaders, farmers and community advocates who disappeared without a trace."

Empire in the andes, the war against the poor

Time To Bring It Home

Weapon testing on the wogs is over.

U.S. withdraws ‘pain ray’ from Afghan war zone

"A ‘pain ray’ that blasts the enemy with unbearable heat waves hasbeen pulled out of Afghanistan by the US military.
The Active Denial System (ADS), which cost about £42 million to develop, was on the brink of being deployed to disperse members of the Taliban as they attacked US forces.
The weapon, which causes immense pain to subjects but no lasting physical damage, was pulled from the war zone last week but US army chiefs in Afghanistan have stayed silent about the reason for the U-turn."

Fascist Congruity

McCain's challenger wants to sound like Israelis

"JD Hayworth, a barnstorming Arizona Republican who is campaigning for the Senate, has strong opinions about his state's new law on illegal immigration.
The law, known as SB1070 and due to come into effect this week, requires police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants and makes it a crime not to have valid immigration papers on your person. It has prompted Hispanics to fear racial profiling, immigrants to flee the state in droves, activists to organise consumer boycotts and the Obama administration to sue in federal court.
Hayworth has an objection, too. He thinks the law is not enough. Speaking to an overwhelmingly white crowd at a "town hall" meeting in suburban Mesa last week, Hayworth said it was time to stop automatically granting citizenship to anyone born in Arizona."

All prospective citizens living in Israel will have to sign a "loyalty oath"

"The new provision is actually an amendment to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law passed in 2003, which makes it all but impossible for Palestinians to obtain Israeli citizenship.
That law was originally passed as a temporary emergency measure, but the Knesset has repeatedly extended it, despite a number of legal challenges from Israeli NGOs.
The law means that many Palestinians married to Israelis actually live in Israel illegally."

Xtian Zionism

Look Out Below

*JUST IN* Geochemist in Gulf says “When it rains, a lot of junk comes down from the particulate”

"University of California Santa Barbara scientist and marine geochemistry expert Dr. David Valentine participated in a 10-day expedition to research the BP oil disaster.
Valentine noted that the area around the spill site “had a cloud of smoke hanging over it at all times”. The cloud was composed of surface burn smoke and the methane flair-up.
He said the burns form “one thick mass of clouds, and when it rains, a lot of junk comes down from the particulate“.
Read the full July 24, 2010 article on Dr. Valentine in the Santa Barbara Independent: Soot in the Sky, Gas in the Water."

As the gulf dies, watch how the news is strictly censored.

Movies

I'm getting spoiled with this internet thing as far as downloading and watching films goes. It's possible to get just about any title one wants and the Mrs and I have watched a good deal of them. Since we've run through all the Oscar winners and A lists, what we're doing now is picking our favorite actresses and actors and rummaging through their bodies of work.

I'm a fan of Kate Winslet's efforts, going all the way back to "Heavenly Creatures" back in 1994. Somehow I overlooked her "Revolutionary Road" with Leo DiCaprio from two years ago and since Sam Mendes was at the helm it was a cinch to spend some time with it. Call it Titanic 2 with Kathy Bates in it also.

If you've never seen RR be prepared for quite a treat if you decide to, especially if America's Rotten Underbelly is one of your favorite sub genres like it is mine. Leo and Kate are a married couple with two curtain monkeys living in Connecticut in the fifties. That was the decade laboratories first mass produced barbiturates, made expressly for bored, stay at home wives, but April Wheeler is determined not to be one of them. She has big dreams and almost convinces her husband to join her in pursuing them. The setup here is being torn between what Joseph Campbell called following your bliss, and the comfortable but stifling fifties suburban lifestyle. With this acceptance/rejection of bland white picket fence mentality comes angst and anger, boiling just beneath the seemingly tranquil surface.

Kate and Leo bounce great off each other, tearing up the screen with outstanding acting. In 2008 she won an Academy Award for her role in "The Reader" but I've come across several opinions that this was the work she should have been noted for, and juxtaposing a strong and willful temperament with a necessary vulnerable potential of having her dreams crushed took some real doing. As the troubles pile up the 'mentally disturbed' son of the couple's real estate agent adds to the mix, being the only person around willing to look truth square in the face, saying out loud the things everybody else is too afraid to put into words in the 1950s.

As a matter of fact Mendes makes the point over and over that in that era there were things you just didn't do and say. Life was supposed to be normal. It was so horrible to be honest that arguments suddenly and catastrophically escalated beyond reason as make believe tranquility ruptured with true feelings boiling through the fault lines. This was punctuated at the end as the real estate agent's husband sat listening to his wife disparage what used to be considered a wholesome, model family that succumbed to tragedy, as he reaches up and slowly turns his hearing aid off.

Some People Go Back For A Second Cup Of Stupid

Florida church sponsors 'International Burn A Koran Day'

"The Dove World Outreach Center, a non-denominational church in Gainesville FL, is planning to mark this year's anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with a little bonfire of Korans, the holy book of Islam. They even have a Facebook page with a mission statement to justify their actions:

"On September 11th, 2010 we will burn the Koran on the property of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL in remembrance of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam. Islam is of the devil!"

The church, which also protests against issues such as homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and abortion, has decorated it's front lawn with signs proclaiming "Islam is of the devil!" and it's pastor, Terry Jones, has even authored a book with that title.

According to Jones, the organizers got the idea from another Facebook event, "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" earlier this year."

Slow News Day

Germany Braces For Smaller French Fries

"BERLIN -- French fries in Germany could be significantly shorter this year due to the heatwave that has baked Germany and much of Europe this month, the German Farmers' Association (DBV) said on Friday.
Hot and dry weather has led to a meager harvest of extra-large potatoes used to produce the ideal-length French fry.
"The French fries industry and consumers will have to brace themselves for shorter fries," said spokeswoman Verena Telaar, adding that smaller potatoes mean that fries will probably be 45 millimeters (1.8 inches) long at best, down from the usual 55 mm (2.2 inches)."

"An Exclusive Jewish State, Excluding Arabs By Any Means"

Israel's New Land Grab Master Plan

"The new plan updates older ones, going back to the first, what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe documented in his 2006 book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," on David Ben-Gurion's Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew), his final master plan following Plans A, B and C, what Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe, commemorated annually to never forget.

By bombarding and besieging villages and population centers, destroying communities, and expelling or killing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, it planned an exclusive Jewish state, excluding Arabs by any means, including mass-murder, dispossession, and persecution, ongoing to this day, what Palestinians heroically resist.

It took six months to complete, expelling or slaughtering about 800,000 people, and destroying 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and other cities. It was barbarous ethnic cleansing, Palestinians shown no mercy, including women and children, yet it was just the beginning, much more yet to come, including new ethnic cleaning plans."

Joe Biden: I am a Zionist

"Bloggers Are Killing The Economy, Our Culture And Our Values"

"An obsession with conspiracy." "The internet is like a giant worldwide bathroom wall."
Blow dried blowhards crying in their beer over the fact their viewership is in a bus plunge and rightly so. They can't take the fact that people won't buy their lying shit anymore and the precious revenue stream is suffering.
Protip to these prevaricating propagandists - if there's one thing you learn early on when you navigate the tubes, you nitwits, it's that you develop a keen sense of discernment and judement. You take things with a grain of salt; you don't fall for Nigerian email scams; you don't automatically believe everything.
Something tells me that's what fightens these pouting propagandists the most, along with their miserable ratings. They're pretending that because everybody has the freedom to say whatever they want on the web they're the only reliable source of information, because we're too stupid to make intelligent decisions. What an insult.

The Corporate Attitude

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle

"In the first few days after BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words "Inmate Labor" printed in large red block letters. Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their livelihoods disappear, expressed outrage at community meetings; why should BP be using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were desperate for work? The outfits disappeared overnight.
Work crews in Grand Isle, Louisiana, still stand out. In a region where nine out of ten residents are white, the cleanup workers are almost exclusively African-American men. The racialized nature of the cleanup is so conspicuous that Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP, sent a public letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward on July 9, demanding to know why black people were over-represented in "the most physically difficult, lowest paying jobs, with the most significant exposure to toxins."
Hiring prison labor is more than a way for BP to save money while cleaning up the biggest oil spill in history. By tapping into the inmate workforce, the company and its subcontractors get workers who are not only cheap but easily silenced—and they get lucrative tax write-offs in the process."

Alarms, detectors disabled so top rig officials could sleep

"Critical fire and gas leak alarm systems had been disabled for at least a year aboard the Deepwater Horizon because the rig's leaders didn't want to wake up to false alarms, a rig chief engineer tech told federal investigators."

BP Bribing Scientists

Rest Of The World Races Ahead Of Dying Empire

India unveils world's cheapest laptop

"India has developed the world's cheapest laptop – a touchscreen device which resembles Apple's wildly popular iPad but will cost just £23.
The prototype was unveiled today by Kapil Sibal, the country's human resource development minister, who said 110 million Indian schoolchildren would be the first recipients.
Then, from next year, the device – designed to bridge the digital divide and boost India's economy – will become available to students in higher education.
Sibal said: "The solutions for tomorrow will emerge from India. We have reached a stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35 [£23], including memory, display, everything."
Past low-cost technologies produced by the country include the £1,450 Tata Nano car and a mobile phone costing less than £11. The iPad retails at about £429 in the UK – 18 times the cost of the Indian laptop."

China Leads U.S. in High Speed Rail

"China's been kicking America's butt for a while now. That much is no secret.
They've got money. They've got development. They probably make half the products sitting in the room you're in right now.
Hell, they even got the Olympics — although Michael Phelps helped steal their thunder.
Sure, they're an oppressive, polluted, Communist nation with severe population problems...
But that doesn't change the fact that when it comes to forward thinking, China has a way of making America look like a bunch of mountain dwellers from Deliverance."

Germany, Russia to sign trade deals

meanwhile..

24 trillion has already been transferred to the banks, and Ben the banker says they need more

Obama seeks U.S. military aid to Israel

US “Surge” in Afghanistan in Disarray

America in Ruins: The Decaying Infrastructure

"Loyalty Oaths To A Jewish, Democratic State"

Fascism in full bloom.



more from the murderous little racist entity - Israel refuses to stop using internationally banned phosphorus bombs

"The Israeli government has refused to provide the United Nations assurance to discontinue its illegal usage of internationally banned white phosphorus bombs, which it used heavily in its latest war on the Gaza Strip, causing hundreds of Palestinian deaths, in addition to serious environmental damage.
Israel submitted an official report to the UN this week admitting its use of white phosphorus bombs in its war on Gaza after having previously denied such allegations, and assuring that it would use the bombs in a "restricted" manner, but refusing to assure complete discontinuation."

This, of course, is fascism. A militarized corporate state, with a dismissive wave of it's hand, will decide on it's own whether to again use internationally banned chemical terror weapons on defenseless cities. Treaties and laws are for lesser people and the master race has the wonderful distinction of being number one in telling the rest of the world to fuck off.
But what the hey, if they decide the negative PR about phosphorous is a little much they've got a big old list of banned weaponry they can run through, with stuff like cluster bombs or flechette nail bombs.

The Charge? Deference Deficit

They decide who gets to walk on their sidewalk.

In Other News, Gerbil Mistaken For Chupacabra

goodbye Copper

Dog Mistaken for Coyote, Released into Wild

"An American Kennel Club-registered dog has been turned loose in the wild after the Frankfort Humane Society mistook her for a coyote. Copper is a female Shiba Inu.
Lori Goodlett told The State-Journal her pet of 11 years disappeared from her fenced back yard on July 3. It was after she put up posters that a police officer recognized Copper as the dog he had taken to the shelter. A shelter worker later called police and said it had to be picked up because coyotes weren't allowed there.
The department turned the animal loose behind a home improvement store after consulting with a wildlife expert who said coyotes were nuisance animals and should be returned to the wild or killed.
Humane Society board chairman John Forbes said he backs the shelter's decision. "If our manager assessed the animal to be a coyote, then it is against the law for it to be at the shelter. We rely on the people who work there,"
Forbes said. Goodlett, however, said she can't understand how her dog was misidentified. "People would say when Copper was young, she looked like a fox with her pointy ears and red coloring," Goodlett said. "But no one has ever mistaken her for a coyote." Frankfort Police Maj. Frank Deaton said the dog didn't have a collar or other identification. He said he doubted it was a coyote since it peacefully went with the officer who released it. "Fortunately, the officer had the foresight to photograph the dog," he said.
Police and volunteers are helping Goodlett search for her pet and have set cages in hopes of capturing her. "I know in my head Copper is gone for good, but in my heart I would like to think some nice family found her and took her in," Goodlett said."

Your Multi Trillion Dollar Defense Is Being Manhandled

U.S. probe ties military workers to child porn

"WASHINGTON — A U.S. government investigation has found that dozens of military officials and defense contractors, including some with top-level security clearances, allegedly bought and downloaded child pornography on private or government computers.
The Pentagon on Friday released investigative reports spanning almost a decade that implicated individuals working with agencies handling some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets, including the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates U.S. spy satellites.
Defense workers who purchased child porn put the Department of Defense, "the military and national security at risk by compromising computer systems, military installations and security clearances," a 2007 investigative report said.
The suspects also put the Defense Department "at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats," one report added. The reports, however, do not point to any specific security breaches.
The Boston Globe disclosed the results of the investigations on Friday after obtaining the documents through the Freedom of Information Act. The Defense Department released the reports, which are heavily redacted, with most names and details about each case omitted.
Several suspects were convicted and sentenced to prison terms of up to about five years and ordered to pay hefty fines — including one of $150,000. But several suspects identified by investigators were never prosecuted."

Bold Entrepreneurship Trumps Failed Bureaucracy

Public approves.

Homeless man breaks into abandoned bar, begins selling alcohol

"A homeless man allegedly broke into a California bar and served drinks to unsuspecting patrons all weekend -- before police came calling.
The bar, called the Valencia Club, had gone out of business for some time and its liquor license had expired, police said this week.
But the suspect, Travis Lloyd Kevie, 29, somehow got into the California establishment in the Penryn area of Sacramento Valley last week. He reopened the bar using beer he bought from a nearby store.
Kevie allegedly started with a six-pack of beer and used money he received to buy more alcohol.
He kept the bar open for a weekend serving about 30 customers a day, authorities said.
He was so successful that a local newspaper did a story about the bar reopening.
"A local newspaper report alerted a Placer County Sheriff's Office Detective of a possible ongoing crime being committed in the Penryn area," the Placer County Sheriff's Office said. "As Detective Jim Hudson read the morning newspaper he recognized an individual pictured on the front page as a local transient who has had numerous contact with the Placer County Sheriff's Office."
A detective went to the bar to determine if Kevie had obtained a liquor license.
"When Detective Hudson arrived at the Valencia Club it was open for business with customers bellied up to the bar. Upon questioning Kevie Detective Hudson determined that he had no connection to the property and he did not have a liquor license," the department said.
Kevie was arrested Tuesday and charged with burglary and selling liquor without a license.
A large amount of alcohol and cash was also confiscated from the bar.
The newspaper, the Auburn Journal, that ran the story about the new "bar owner", reported that Kevie was arraigned on a single misdemeanor charge Thursday and ordered released from jail."



I like this story for several reasons. Very soon we're all going to have to break out of the boxes we've been in for so long and find the initiative to do things in new ways.
Also it shows how the media just can't help looking at life through the system's eyes, from a cop point of view. This guy didn't break in - he was part of a clan up crew and was already in the place. He just took it a step further.
Notice all the smiling and approval in the video. Even a detective.

Hey Kids! Social Security Deductions Are A Scam And You'll Never See A Dime

Poll: Faith in Social Security system tanking

"Battered by high unemployment and record home foreclosures, most Americans seem to have lost faith in another fundamental part of their personal finances: Social Security.
A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that a majority of retirees say they expect their current benefits to be cut, a dramatic increase in the number who hold that view. And a record six of 10 non-retirees predict Social Security won't be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.
Skepticism is highest among the youngest workers: Three-fourths of those 18 to 34 don't expect to get a Social Security check when they retire."

Well, here's the problem. All social contracts are null and void as we lurch into the new world order of our masters' design. Pensions, social security funds, retirement accounts - fuggetaboutit. What our manipulators want is for us to work until we die at our jobs while they have press conferences to announce a five cent increase in the minimum wage.
If you're 60 or younger you'll never see a penny of "social security". For one thing the funding was robbed a long time ago. Would you think for a second that all that money would be preserved for the future? For another the so-called economy will crater shortly and any hope of getting back what you've paid into your account will mean absolute squat.
My advice right now would be to barter for a good water filter.
I fear for the gulf.