How to spend $1 billion on G20 security

The question as to how Canada could possibly spend C$1 billion ($960 million) protecting world leaders for just three days becomes progressively easier to answer the longer you spend in southern Ontario, the central province where the Group of Eight and then the Group of 20 are meeting this weekend.

G20 leaders will gather on Saturday and Sunday in central Toronto and a large area around the city center venue has been sealed off with high-tech fencing designed to deter even the most ardent climbers. The government, on the defensive about the security bill after critics accused Ottawa of wasting money, isn't giving a detailed breakdown of security costs. Ministers do admit that policing alone will cost C$450 million, most of which will go on overtime.

That isn't surprising when you work out how money will be needed to pay the 10,000 police who could be called up. My taxi driver was fuming when he picked me up at the airport and his mood didn't improve as we crawled past large groups of police not doing very much. "Look at that horse. He probably earns more than I do," he fumed.

This morning we got on a bus for the two-hour drive north to the lakeside resort of Deerhurst, in the middle of prime cottage country deep in the woods, where the Group of Eight leaders are meeting. At first we could see the occasional police car here and there but the closer we approached our target, the more security we saw. Every path leading into the forest seemed to have a black and while Ontario police car blocking the way.

Then the checkpoints started. At the first one we were waved through by no fewer than seven tanned policemen, who didn't seem to be doing very much. Just outside the resort a large grey observation balloon hovered in the air. Our bus stopped and waited and waited and all we could see were barricades and police, many of whom were watching the fence which had been erected around Deerhurst. About two dozen police motorcycles sat deserted outside the Algonquin Animal Hospital.

http://blogs.reuters.com/macroscope/2010/06/25/how-to-spend-1-billion-on-g20-security/

Monsanto, Big Brother of the New World Agricultural Order: An Interview With Marie-Monique Robin

by Mickey Z.

Award-winning French journalist and filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin is the author of "The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of Our Food Supply" (The New Press) and the creator of the film by the same name.

In a review of these two projects, Leslie Thatcher writes: "What Marie-Monique Robin most effectively documents are the perverse effects - the moral, social, technological, economic and market failures - of Western society's economic organization, most specifically with respect to science and the products of science and, ultimately, with respect to the preservation of the public commons and human life on the planet."

My conversation with Marie-Monique Robin follows:

Mickey Z.: Was there an initial spark that led you to this project that took three years and investigations on four continents to complete?

Marie-Monique Robin: My "story" with Monsanto began in 2003, when I made three documentaries for the Franco-German channel ARTE (to which I pay a tribute for the quality of its programs) about the reduction of biodiversity.

MZ: Please take us through those documentaries and their connection to Monsanto.

MMR: The first, "Biopirates," told how corporations like Monsanto were holding abusive patents on living organisms which are contributing to a new drastic reduction of biodiversity. At that I time, I heard about a company called Monsanto which already held more than 600 patents on living organisms. The second documentary, called "Wheat: Chronicle of a Death Foretold," told the story of cultivation of that golden cereal, from the very beginning 10,000 years ago until today and explained how the practices of industrial agriculture that brought the "green revolution," made thousands of local landraces and varieties disappear, a dramatic evolution which will be accelerated by GMOs [genetically modified organisms]. At the same time the so-called green revolution provoked a huge contamination of the environment through the massive use of chemical pesticides, "biocides," which "entered into living organisms, passing one to another in a chain of poisoning and death," as Rachel Carson wrote in "Silent Spring." Finally, I made a documentary, called "Argentina: The Soybeans of Hunger," about the cultivation of Roundup Ready soybeans in Argentina, where I depicted the environmental, social and health disasters which the introduction of Monsanto's GMOs represent. Today, they cover 60% of the area under cultivation in the country.

http://www.truth-out.org/monsanto-big-brother-new-world-agricultural-order-an-interview-with-marie-monique-robin60776

Close encounter with socialized medicine

By Bruce Dancis

A blustery London breeze knocked a large wooden plank loose from a construction site and into a heavy steel barrier, which in turn fell over and hit me on the right side of my head, sending me crashing into the stone wall of a British government building.

At least that's what the onlookers who witnessed the incident and pulled the barrier off me said as I lay on the ground, bleeding from head and knee on King Charles Street, only a block from 10 Downing Street and just outside a museum honoring Winston Churchill and his World War II Cabinet.

Still conscious but a little bit woozy, I hadn't yet realized I was about to have a close encounter with the National Health Service, a.k.a. the United Kingdom's form of socialized medicine.

My wife, Karen, and I were in London on vacation, visiting the usual tourist attractions, including the Cabinet war rooms where Churchill and his advisers gallantly organized the defense of their country against Adolf Hitler's rampaging armed forces. Getting injured in a freak accident on a Saturday afternoon was not part of our vacation agenda.

I kept telling my worried wife and the gathering crowd that I was OK, despite all that blood. Another tourist, a doctor from Florida, assisted Karen in applying facial tissues to the gash in my head.

He began asking me questions: "Who is the prime minister?"

Before I could answer "David Cameron," he realized I was an American and changed the question to, "Who is the president of the United States?" adding, "Not that you have to like him."

"But I do," I replied, "for the most part."

The good doctor was trying to find out how badly injured I was, and when he could see that I hadn't lost either consciousness or most of my blood and marbles, he jokingly informed me, "I am indeed a doctor, but I'm a gynecologist." He said I probably needed to go to the hospital, but warned – with an unstated but obviously negative attitude toward what the Brits call the NHS – "you'll most likely be there for seven hours (before they get to you)."

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/06/26/2850249/close-encounter-with-socialized.html#ixzz0sBHe1SUf

What if Rolling Stone Had Covered Gen. Douglas MacArthur?

By Don Davis

"THANKS, MR. HASTINGS, FOR SHARING THIS WONDERFUL NEW 'TOBACCO' WITH ME — IT MAKES ME FEEL AS IF MAYBE WE SHOULD SIT DOWN AND TALK WITH THE CHINESE."

http://satiricalpolitical.com/2010/06/27/rolling-stone-mcchrystal-douglas-macarthur/

How to run your family like a corporation

The Coming Era of Energy Disasters

 

by Michael Klare

Isn't it strange that, no matter how terrible the news from the Gulf, the media still can't help offering a lurking, BP-influenced narrative of hope?  Here's a recent headline from my hometown paper, for instance: "Signs of Hope as BP Captures Record Oil Amounts."  The piece is based on a BP report that, last Thursday, its woefully inadequate, ill-fitting "top hat" had captured more than 25,000 barrels of the gushing oil -- that is, five times more than it long claimed was spewing from its busted well (25 times more than it originally suggested). 

With semi-official estimates in the range of 35,000-60,000 barrels escaping a day (and those numbers regularly on the rise), this represents a strange version of hopeful news.  Ominously enough, by the end of July, with a new, larger, "tighter" cap theoretically in place, BP is aiming to capture up to 80,000 barrels a day (that is, 20,000 barrels more than it has publicly acknowledged might possibly be spewing from the floor of the Gulf).  In all such articles, the real narrative of hope, however, involves the relief wells, the first of which is now within "200 feet" of the busted well.  Usually, the date for one of those wells to plug the leak is given as "early August" or "mid-August" and it's regularly said that the drilling of those wells is advancing "ahead of schedule."

Whatever "signs of hope" do exist, however, they're already badly beslimed by on-gushing reality.  On the very day that BP announced its 25,000-barrel capture, huge amounts of methane were also reported to be pouring into the Gulf.  Until now, this had evidently been largely overlooked (or under-reported), even though methane in high concentrations can deplete water of its oxygen and so suffocate marine life, creating vast dead zones and inhibiting the natural breakdown of the spilling oil.  According to John Kessler, a Texas A&M oceanographer, the Deepwater Horizon spill represents "the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history."

Meanwhile, if you read carefully, you'll note that those relief wells are no sure thing.  They might not do the job until the fall or even, worst-case scenario, Christmas, or (even-worse-case scenario) they might fail entirely, leaving the well to spew oil and natural gas (with its methane) for an estimated two to four more years.  And let's not forget general bad weather, as well as hurricane season bearing down on the Gulf, the possibility that the well's casing might be cracking or eroding -- meaning even more spillage or seepage -- and  that a "clean-up" in which, in Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's words, the Gulf ecosystem would be "restored and made whole," may not, as Naomi Klein wrote recently, be "remotely possible, at least not in a time frame we can easily wrap our heads around." 

Worse yet, the disaster in the Gulf is largely being dealt with as a one-shot nightmare.  It isn't.  Consider our potential American Chernobyl as just a precursor to a future filled with "unexpected" energy mega-disasters, as Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author of the invaluable Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, suggests.  (To catch him discussing our dystopian energy future on the latest TomCast audio interview, click here, or to download it to your iPod, click here.)  Tom

BP-Style Extreme Energy Nightmares to Come
Four Scenarios for the Next Energy Mega-Disaster 
By Michael T. Klare

On June 15^th, in their testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the chief executives of America's leading oil companies argued that BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was an aberration -- something that would not have occurred with proper corporate oversight and will not happen again once proper safeguards are put in place.  This is fallacious, if not an outright lie.  The Deep Horizon explosion was the inevitable result of a relentless effort to extract oil from ever deeper and more hazardous locations.  In fact, as long as the industry continues its relentless, reckless pursuit of "extreme energy" -- oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium obtained from geologically, environmentally, and politically unsafe areas -- more such calamities are destined to occur.

At the onset of the modern industrial era, basic fuels were easy to obtain from large, near-at-hand energy deposits in relatively safe and friendly locations.  The rise of the automobile and the spread of suburbia, for example, were made possible by the availability of cheap and abundant oil from large reservoirs in California, Texas, and Oklahoma, and from the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  But these and equivalent deposits of coal, gas, and uranium have been depleted.  This means the survival of our energy-centric civilization increasingly relies on supplies obtained from risky locations -- deep underground, far at sea, north of the Arctic circle, in complex geological formations, or in unsafe political environments.  That guarantees the equivalent of two, three, four, or more Gulf-oil-spill-style disasters in our energy future.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175264/tomgram:_michael_klare,_the_coming_era_of_energy_disasters/#more

Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans

This undated file photo provided by by Michael Moore of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution …

 

By ARTHUR MAX

AGADIR, Morocco – Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.

A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

"These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean," said biologist Roger Payne, founder and president of Ocean Alliance, the research and conservation group that produced the report.

The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the whales. Fish high in mercury such as shark and swordfish — the types health experts warn children and pregnant women to avoid — typically have levels of about 1 part per million.

The whales studied averaged 2.4 parts of mercury per million, but the report's authors said their internal organs probably had much higher levels than the skin samples contained.

"The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings," Payne said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.

Payne said sperm whales, which occupy the top of the food chain, absorb the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses her calf. "What she's actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby," he said, and each generation passes on more to the next.

Ultimately, he said, the contaminants could jeopardize seafood, a primary source of animal protein for 1 billion people.

"You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_sc/whaling

BP to cleanup workers: "We don't care if you die of leukemia or brain damage. Wear a respirator and you're fired!"

by New York Crank

The headline on Racewire is chilling. "BP Threatens to Fire Cleanup Workers Who Wear Their Own Safety Gear."

But at the same time, BP is not supplying respirators and other safety equipment to its cleanup crews.

Already the symptoms of illness are spreading. They include nausea, dizziness and breathing problems.

The article points out that both the oil and dispersants getting sprayed on it are "highly toxic" and contain compounds that include benzene, tolulene and xylene. In the long run these can cause leukemia and brain damage.

So why is BP refusing to let its workers wear respirators? Your guess is as good as mine, and what I'm guessing is that BP doesn't want any "negative looking" photographs of people wearing respirators or hazmat suits — even though the workers are clearly dealing with hazardous materials. That kind of photograph in the media would intensify the well-deserved rage against BP.

So for the sake of nicer-looking publicity photographs, BP is willing to kill off some of the workers.

http://thenewyorkcrank.blogspot.com/2010/06/bp-to-cleanup-workers-we-dont-care-if.html

It Begins… Plans to Evacuate Tampa Bay Are Put Into Place …Update: Pensacola Beach Closed

Large slicks of oil and tarry mats floated in on the Florida shore on Wednesday.

As Barack Obama continues to golf, hit the ballpark, BBQ and party, the BP oil slick is now threatening Tampa Bay. Authorities have set up plans for evacuation.
Veterans Today reported:

Gulf Oil Spill 2010: Plans to evacuate Tampa Bay area are in place.

As FEMA and other government agencies prepare for what is now being called the worst oil spill disaster in history, plans to evacuate the Tampa Bay area are in place.

The plans would be announced in the event of a controlled burn of surface oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or if wind or other conditions are expected to take toxic fumes through Tampa Bay.

This practice has been used by the US Forestry service, when fire and smoke threaten the health and well being of people.

The elderly and those with respiratory problems would be more susceptible to health risks, in the event of a controlled burn.

http://waronyou.com/topics/it-begins%E2%80%A6-plans-to-evacuate-tampa-bay-are-put-into-place-%E2%80%A6update-pensacola-beach-closed/

Behind 'Seattle Times' winning a Pulitzer

By John Hamer

Who, what, where, when, why and — most importantly — how did The Seattle Times win a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for "Breaking News" for its coverage of the Lakewood police shootings and the Maurice Clemmons manhunt?

Those questions were asked — and well-answered — at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce first Executive Speaker Series event, "Anatomy of a Pulitzer Prize" on Tuesday (June 22) at The Westin. (The Washington News Council was a "promotional partner" for the luncheon, along with the Public Relations Society of America and The Times.)

Lori Matsukawa, longtime KING-5 TV anchor, moderated the all-Times panel: Executive Editor David Boardman, and Managing Editors Suki Dardarian and Kathy Best, who oversaw the coverage. When Matsukawa asked Boardman why they won the Pulitzer, he replied: "First of all, I want to say this belongs to all of you. We want the whole community to share in this prize."

Indeed, this was an unprecedented example of a newspaper networking with citizens in what some call the new news ecosystem. No newspaper has ever made such extensive use of the web to cover a breaking news story. That's why this Pulitzer was so richly deserved.

Dardarian noted that the shootings happened on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving, when only one reporter and one editor were in The Times' newsroom. "Within a few hours, the newsroom was full," she said. Before long, they were "on the front lines."

Boardman said The Times "got a four-to-five-hour jump on every other news organization" because reporter Jennifer Sullivan, working from her sickbed, identified Maurice Clemmons as the shooter through her sources. When The Times reported that, Dardarian said, she got a call from a police spokesman saying "we got it wrong … That got my adrenaline going." The Times checked again, and confirmed it was Clemmons. Later, the police confirmed on television that The Times was right, Dardarian said.

The Times created a "#washooting" hashtag on Twitter and the digital flood began. They invited citizens to contribute tips, photos and videos, using Google Wave and other online sources.

They did "cutting-edge use of all these new tools," Boardman said, using their "quick-twitch muscles." Boardman, who had not used Twitter much before, tweeted for 15 straight hours.

"The Seattle Times jumped into digital news with both feet," Matsukawa said, noting that many bloggers and dot-commers were "shocked" that The Seattle Times could become so "digitally nimble" in such a short time.

http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/19591/Behind--Seattle-Times--winning-a-Pulitzer/

RNC staffer fired in sex scandal paid $100,000 to ‘keep quiet’

 

By John Byrne

The former chief of staff to the Republican National Committee received more than $100,000 in a "severance payment" after he was fired for his role relating to the discovery that the party had signed off on $2,000 in reimbursements for a sex-themed Beverly Hills club.

RNC insiders say the money was approved as "hush money" to keep the former staffer, Kenneth McKay, from divulging details of GOP Chairman Michael Steele's leadership practices.

The severance payment and hush money allegation was first reported Tuesday by ABC News.

One GOP insider described the six-figure payment to outgoing RNC Chief of Staff Kenneth K. McKay IV  negotiated even though McKay had scarcely a year on the job -- as "hush money" to keep a former employee from divulging details of Michael Steele's controversial tenure as RNC chair.

Party insiders told ABC News the six-figure payout represented McKay's severance package, and came in exchange for him signing a strict confidentiality agreement. Two RNC sources, both of whom spoke on the condition they not be identified, said similar deals were struck with others who had been forced out in the last few months. Both sources have been critical of Steele's leadership. They said in separate interviews that, while they were not alleging that anything illegal took place, they believe the McKay agreement and others like it are aimed at preventing the departing cast of employees from disparaging Steele. McKay, who had received $163,000 in salary payments, did not respond to messages left at his home in Rhode Island....

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0623/rnc-staffer-fired-sex-scandal-paid-100000-keep-quiet/

The rise of hugely insufferable women

By Mark Morford

Not all grown men are suave, sexy, progressive George Clooney/Viggo Mortensen/Colin Farrell lookalikes with sharp blue eyes, stubbly outgrowths and abs like World Cup forwards, all hearts of gold, full heads of hair and perfectly sculpted genitalia custom designed to satisfy a small harem, make birds sing and goddesses purr.

Not all adult men are strong and dependable, loyal and true, able to make you laugh, sigh, moan, buy you a drink, jump start your Mini in the rain, smell good all over, build a deck, parallel park a tractor-trailer, and feel sufficiently secure in their masculinity and humanity to champion gay rights and women's rights and pelican rights.

Conversely, not all men are of the other ilk either, the sweaty, overweight, woman-hating Republican homophobes in titanic SUVs, bad marriages and sad comb-overs, twitchy fearmongers who hate all foreigners and wear their baseball hats and grubby hoodies in fancy restaurants, men who spit on the sidewalk and blow their noses like open trumpets into the street, immature adulterers as eager for a war and a beatdown as they are for 20 minutes with a meth dealing gay hooker.

Did you already know all this about men? Does it seem forehead-slappingly obvious to suggest, despite all the clichés, lousy track records and Tiger Woods, that men come in such a huge array of shapes, styles and configurations?

Well of course it is. After all, the male creature has been dissected and bisected and demonized since time immemorial, from hero to Great Oppressor, father to magnate, hunk to egomaniac and back again in the time it took you to read this sentence.

But oh, is it ever worth remembering in light of what is right now being dubbed, with various degrees of pleasure and concern, confusion and delight, "the rise of the woman," "the new conservative feminism," "the end of men," and on and on, all sorts of amazing, disorienting pro-female bellwethers and signs, indicators and shifts.

It is something to behold. Right now I'm vainly attempting to cross-reference Hanna Rosin's fascinating mixed-bag article from the Atlantic that ran under the delightfully obnoxious headline "The End of Men: How Women are Taking Control of Everything," and mixing it with all the feverish stories about California's landmark political races, Carly and Meg and Pelosi, too, influenced by everyone's favorite winkin' ditzball from hell, Sarah Palin.

And I'm tossing in a dash of pop culture, all the MIAs and Lady Gagas and Miley Cyruses, the Kathryn Bigelows and the ditzbombs of "Sex and the City," trying to parse and understand and see some sort of through-line.

I am not having much success. Most women -- and many of us men -- are cheering madly at all the newfound roles, powers, titles, successes and attentions, from Hillary's stunning presidential run to Bigelow's Oscar to (even) Meg Whitman's pile of billions that could very well buy her the election.

But holy hell with the lost gospels of Mary Magdalene, many are also booing, hissing, screaming their frustration, entirely furious that many of third-wave feminism's cornerstone values -- abortion rights, humanitarianism, anti-racism, don't kill stuff -- are being violently, stupidly co-opted, inverted, perverted, repackaged, skinned like a moose and shot from a helicopter like a wolf skittering across the Alaskan tundra.

In short, most progressive women are right now discovering a brutally painful truth, one that men have known for millennia: With power, glory and long overdue cultural advancement, comes a whole delightful s--bag of downsides, drawbacks, jackals and bitches to poison the party. Fun!

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/23/notes062310.DTL#ixzz0rmhnsaLH

NASCAR Continues Campaign Against Marijuana, Suspends “Spotter”

by Morgan Fox

Once again, the top brass at NASCAR have taken a stand against marijuana users. Yesterday, officials for the racing organization suspended crewmember and former driver Randy LaJoie indefinitely after he tested positive for marijuana. The test was not to make sure that he could be a driver, but that he could be a spotter. For those of you not familiar with racing, the spotter sits in the stands and relays car positions to his or her driver through a headset. Please forgive my ignorance of the details of racing, but it seems as if this is basically a professional spectator, with the enviable bonus of getting to yell at the driver.

Seriously, a drug test is required for this job.

LaJolie now joins the massive ranks of athletes and celebrities forced to apologize for using a substance safer than alcohol.

"I screwed up," LaJolie said in an interview the day he was suspended.

NASCAR's behavior is not that surprising. Back in March, officials waited until the last minute to deny Cannabis Planet TV the opportunity to sponsor, and place advertisements on, one of the cars. The car was allowed to race, but with different sponsors.

http://blog.mpp.org/prohibition/nascar-continues-campaign-against-marijuana-suspends-%E2%80%9Cspotter%E2%80%9D/06232010/

WHO to tax your internet usage to fund vaccines in third-world countries

 

by Mike Adams

 

 

(The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) is pushing hard to impose global consumer taxes to help fund its various programs, including a new proposal that would tax the internet in order to pay for vaccines and other pharmaceutical medicines for third-world countries. Yes, you read that right - WHO wants every person in the world to help pay for drugs that make Big Pharma even richer.

Consider it a reverse Robin Hood ploy: They're stealing from the working class and giving to the ultra wealthy drug companies!

Of course this isn't the first time the UN has petitioned governments around the world to illegally tax citizens in order to further its own agenda. This body of unelected officials tried to push "cap and trade" legislation for supposed climate change just last year (but failed to do so because many countries simply refused the idea).

In the current scheme, WHO appointed a so-called panel of "medical experts" to prepare a report highlighting various financing ideas that would fund all the projects WHO is trying to accomplish in the world. One of those ideas is to have governments tax internet usage in their countries and give the money to WHO for "medical research and development" in poorer, developing countries. (This is code-speak for unlawfully pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of Big Pharma in the name of charity).

 

http://www.naturalnews.com/029066_World_Health_Organization_vaccines.html

It’s only being a parasite when other people do it

by Iron Knee

This guy has to be a winner in the "do as I say, not as I do" contest. David Jungerman of Raytown, Missouri posted a large sign on a semi-truck along a major highway. The sign reads:

Are You A Producer or Parasite
Democrats – Party of Parasites

However, a quick check of a farm subsidy database shows that Jungerman has received over a million dollars in government aid. Jungerman claims "Crop subsidies are different."

Well, yes, obviously. They are different because you receive them.

http://politicalirony.com/2010/06/24/its-only-being-a-parasite-when-other-people-do-it/

Clint Webb for Senate

Urgent message to all sentient beings

BP oil leak setback: 'Top hat' removed, oil flow unhindered

 

By Mark Seibel

WASHINGTON — Workers removed the "top hat" device collecting crude oil from BP's gushing Deepwater Horizon well Wednesday morning in a major setback to efforts to contain the leak.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration's point man on the BP oil leak, told reporters in his daily briefing that the long term impact of the decision was uncertain, but video from the leak showed crude gushing unhindered into the water for the first time since the "top hat" device, also referred to as the Lower Marine Riser Package, was set in place June 3.

It was unclear how soon the top hat might be put back in place, Allen said. He said he had only learned of the problem as he was headed to the Coast Guard headquarters briefing room in Washington. A BP press statement later said the incident had occured at 8:45 a.m. Central time.

BP called the measure temporary, but provided no information on when the device might be reinstalled.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/23/96411/bp-oil-leak-setback-top-hat-removed.html#ixzz0rmq7zo2K

From Great Man to Great Screwup: Behind the McChrystal Uproar

by Norman Solomon

(Photo: US Army; Edited: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

When the wheels are coming off, it doesn't do much good to change the driver.

Whatever the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan, the US war effort will continue its carnage and futility.

Between the lines, some news accounts are implying as much. Hours before Gen. Stanley McChrystal's meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, The New York Times reported, "the firestorm was fueled by increasing doubts - even in the military - that Afghanistan can be won and by crumbling public support for the nine-year war as American casualties rise."

It now does McChrystal little good that news media have trumpeted everything from his Spartan personal habits (scarcely eats or sleeps) to his physical stamina (runs a lot) to his steel-trap alloy of military smarts and scholarship (reads history). Any individual is expendable.

For months, the McChrystal star had been slipping. A few days before the Rolling Stone piece caused a sudden plunge from war-making grace, Time magazine's conventional-wisdom weathervane Joe Klein was notably down on McChrystal's results: "Six months after Barack Obama announced his new Afghan strategy in a speech at West Point, the policy seems stymied."

Now, words like "stymied" and "stalemate" are often applied to the Afghanistan war. But that hardly means the US military is anywhere near withdrawal.

Walter Cronkite used the word "stalemate" in his famous February 1968 declaration to CBS viewers that the Vietnam War couldn't be won. "We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders both in Vietnam and Washington to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds," he said. And: "It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."

Yet, the US war on Vietnam continued for another five years, inflicting more unspeakable horrors on a vast scale.

Like thousands of other US activists, I've been warning against escalation of the Afghanistan war for a long time. Opposition has grown, but today the situation isn't much different than what I described in an article on December 9, 2008: "Bedrock faith in the Pentagon's massive capacity for inflicting violence is implicit in the nostrums from anointed foreign-policy experts. The echo chamber is echoing: the Afghanistan war is worth the cost that others will pay."

The latest events reflect unwritten rules for top military commanders: Escalating a terrible war is fine. Just don't say anything mean about your boss.

http://www.truth-out.org/from-great-man-great-screwup-behind-mcchrystal-uproar60701

Massey sues federal regulators over mine ventilation rules

 

By Brian Bowling,

Massey Energy claims in a federal lawsuit that it should be able to ventilate its underground mines as it sees fit unless the Mine Safety and Health Administration can prove the company is endangering miners' health and safety.

The Richmond, Va.-based company filed the lawsuit yesterday in Washington, D.C., against MSHA, the Department of Labor and three administrators.

MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere said today the agency is reviewing the lawsuit.

"While we find the timing and substance of some of the arguments curious, we generally do not comment on pending or ongoing litigation," she said.

Currently, Massey has to convince federal mine regulators that each mine's individually designed ventilation plan will dilute methane, reduce coal dust and otherwise mitigate or eliminate conditions that could kill or injure the people working there.

MSHA cited the company's Upper Big Branch mine near Montcoal, W.Va., six times in March for violating its ventilation plans. Four of the citations were because air was blowing the wrong way in a mine section. Another was because the volume of air moving through a mine section was less than half of the minimum required by the ventilation plan.

The sixth violation was for operating a continuous mining machine when half of its water sprays were inoperable. The water sprays both reduce the amount of coal dust in the air and reduce the likelihood of friction igniting the methane-dust mixture produced by cutting into the coal.

An April 5 explosion at the mine killed 29 miners and injured two others. Federal and company investigators are still inspecting the mine to determine what happened.

Since the explosion, Massey CEO Don Blankenship repeatedly raised the issue of MSHA ordering it to turn off the scrubbers on about half of its continuous mining machines.

The scrubbers are designed to remove coal dust from the air pulled from where the continuing mining machine is digging into the coal seam. Massey claims in the lawsuit that the scrubbers also help prevent methane buildups at the mine face.

Massey claims in the lawsuit that MSHA bases its approval of ventilation plans on a "generic view" of what should be in a plan rather than conditions at the specific mine, but it doesn't provide any examples of where a ventilation plan didn't factor in a mine's specific conditions. The lawsuit also claims MSHA has arbitrarily denied the use of scrubbers, but doesn't explain why the agency allows them in some areas but not others.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_687311.html

Texas GOP Wishes to Punish Straight People Who Support Gay Rights

 

By Ivan Garcia

The 2010 GOP platform in Texas supports laws that criminalize sodomy and suggests that straight people who support same-sex marriage should be penalized with jail time.The GOP platform was quoted as openly stating:

"We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy," the GOP platform reads. Meaning that even though the U.S. Supreme Court overturned sodomy laws last decade (ironically in a case that stemmed from Texas), Texas Republicans would like the state to have the power to criminalize LGBT folks for having sex.

"We support legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for such," reads the GOP platform.

http://gltnewsnow.com/2010/06/19/texas-gop-wishes-to-punish-straight-people-who-support-gay-rights/

Is it raining oil in Metro New Orleans?

River Ridge, LA
Just south of the airport

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This video was posted to YouTube on June 22, 2010.

The town River Ridge is up river from New Orleans and near the city's airport.

It rains nearly everyday in New Orleans during the summer months.

What the Bush-Cheney administration failed to do with the levee failures and the non-relief and non-rebuilding efforts, they accomplished by permitting BP to commence an insanely reckless drilling project

This was NOT a normal well.

It's in 5,000 feet of water and is reputed to be close to 30,000 into the earth.

In Russia, where such super deep wells were pioneered, they are only drilled on land and far from human habitations.

At least one prominent oil industry safety specialist warned in writing against the drilling of this well.

This permit was made possible by Dick Cheney's gutting of the federal Minerals Management Service and the Obama administration's very cosy relationship with the oil industry.

Not an "Act of God," not an accident, not an unlucky break.

This catastrophe, which will prove to be bigger than Chernobyl, is the natural outcome of corruption completely out of control.

 

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/874.html

Comanche Nation: The Rise And Fall Of An 'Empire'

 by Michael Belk

In 1836, a 9-year-old pioneer girl named Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped during a Comanche raid in North Texas. She was strapped onto the back of a horse and taken north, back into the Plains where the powerful American Indian tribe lived.

Parker became a ward of the chief and later, a full member of the Comanches. She eventually married a highly respected Comanche chief and gave birth to three children, including Quanah — who would grow up to become the last and greatest Comanche leader.

The story of Cynthia Ann and her son, Chief Quanah Parker, is told in S.C. Gwynne's book, Empire of the Summer Moon. Gwynne traces the rise and fall of the Comanche Nation against the backdrop of the fight for control of the American Midwest.

Gwynne tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he became interested in telling the Comanche story because of their integral role in preventing — and then opening up — the American West to white settlers.

"If you go back through Comanche history, you see that they were the ones who stopped the Spanish from coming North," he explains. "Why did the French stop coming west from Louisiana? Comanches. ... Here was why the West Coast and the East Coast settled before the middle of the country. Here was why there was basically a 40-year wait before you could develop the state of Texas or before other Plain states could be developed."

Interview Highlights

On telling the story of Quanta and his mother

"I grew up in the Northeast and I moved to Texas about 16 years ago and I started hearing stories about Comanches and I really didn't know what a Comanche was. I think I had heard about Comanches in a John Wayne movie or something but I really didn't know who they were. When I started to read a little bit about them, I realized that they were just this enormous force — this enormous force of nature sitting in the middle of the North American continent who determined how the West opened."

On what the raid on the Parker fort was like

"This is what Indians did to Indians and this just happened to be Indians meeting whites. But the automatic thing in battle is that all the adult males would be killed. That was automatic. That was one of the reasons that Indians fought to the death. The white men were astonished by it but they were assumed that they would be killed. Small children were killed. Very small children were killed. A lot of the children in say, the 3-10 range were often taken as captives. The women were often raped and often killed. And all of the people in those settlements back in those years knew what a Comanche raid was — knew what a Comanche raid meant. ... And it's an interesting kind of moral question as a historian about Plains Indians or American Indians in general. You have to come to terms with this — with torture, which they practiced all across the West — and these kind of grisly practices that scared white people to death."

On rewriting history to leave out Native American atrocities

"There was even an attempt at one point to deny that Indians were warlike. Comanches were incredibly warlike. They swept everyone off the Southern plains. They nearly exterminated the Apaches. And you know, if you look at the Comanches and you look back in history at Goths and Vikings or Mongols or Celts — old Celts are actually a very good parallel. In a lot of ways, I think we're looking back at earlier versions of ourselves. We — being white European — did all of those things. Not only that but torture was institutionalized during things like the Counter-Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition and the Russian Revolution."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127930650

More Companies Knew About Tainted Drywall but Stayed Quiet—and Kept Selling It

by Joaquin Sapien

Foster's Run, a WCI Communities Inc. development in McLean, Va. The homebuilder filed for bankruptcy protection. (Jay Premack/Bloomberg News)

At least a half-dozen homebuilders, installers and environmental consultants knew as early as 2006 that foul smells were coming from drywall imported from China – but they didn't share their early concerns with the public, even when homeowners began complaining about the drywall in 2008.

ProPublica and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported last month that two U.S. companies – WCI Communities, a major Florida homebuilder, and Banner Supply, a Miami-based distributor – knew about the problem in 2006. But according to recently released sworn depositions by current and former executives at Banner, other companies also were aware of the problem.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has since linked the foul odor to sulfur gases that can corrode electrical wiring and household appliances, including air conditioners and refrigerators. The long-term health effects of the air are still being studied, although homeowners have complained of respiratory problems, bloody noses and severe headaches.

As WCI was ripping the smelly drywall out of homes on Florida's east coast, the company was selling houses built with the same material on the west coast. Several homeowners in the Sun City Center and the Venetian Golf and River Club in North Venice told ProPublica and the Herald-Tribune that they bought homes from WCI as late as March 2007 — eight months after the builder had found problems with Chinese drywall — but received no warning.

When WCI filed for bankruptcy protection [2] in 2008, it promised many homeowners it would fix the contaminated homes once it emerged from bankruptcy. The company exited [3] Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last September as a privately held company and recently announced plans to build new homes throughout Florida. Meanwhile, scores of its former customers are still living in WCI homes built with Chinese drywall.

http://www.propublica.org/feature/chinese-drywall-stinks-mums-the-word

Maywood to lay off all city employees, dismantle Police Department

 

The city of Maywood will lay off all city employees and begin contracting police services with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department effective July 1, officials said.

In addition to contracting with the Sheriff's Department, the Maywood City Council voted unanimously Monday night to lay off an estimated 100 employees and contract with neighboring Bell, which will handle other city services such as finance, records management, parks and recreation, street maintenance and others. Maywood will be billed about $50,833 monthly, which officials said will save $164,375 annually.

"We will become 100% a contracted city," said Angela Spaccia, Maywood's interim city manager.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/sheriffs-dept-to-patrol-maywood-while-city-employees-now-face-lay-offs.html

U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study

by Maggie Fox

 

A patient waits in the hallway for a room to open up in the emergency room at a hospital in Houston, Texas, July 27, 2009.

Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.

"As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it," Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Previous reports by the nonprofit fund, which conducts research into healthcare performance and promotes changes in the U.S. system, have been heavily used by policymakers and politicians pressing for healthcare reform.

Davis said she hoped health reform legislation passed in March would lead to improvements.

The current report uses data from nationally representative patient and physician surveys in seven countries in 2007, 2008, and 2009. It is available here

In 2007, health spending was $7,290 per person in the United States, more than double that of any other country in the survey.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65M0SU20100623

Nations fail to limit whaling, Japan still hunts

By ARTHUR MAX

AGADIR, Morocco – An international effort to truly limit whale hunting collapsed Wednesday, leaving Japan, Norway and Iceland free to keep killing hundreds of mammals a year, even raiding a marine sanctuary in Antarctic waters unchecked.

The breakdown put diplomatic efforts on ice for at least a year, raised the possibility that South Korea might join the whaling nations and raised questions about the global drive to prevent the extinction of the most endangered whale species.

It also revived doubts about the effectiveness and future of the International Whaling Commission. The agency was created after World War II to oversee the hunting of tens of thousands of whales a year but gradually evolved into a body at least partly dedicated to keeping whales from vanishing from the Earth's oceans.

"I think ultimately if we don't make some changes to this organization in the next few years it may be very serious, possibly fatal for the organization — and the whales will be worse off," former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer told the hundreds of delegates.

"We need this organization to function," U.S. whaling commissioner Monica Medina told The Associated Press later. "It certainly is in need of repair."

Japanese officials and environmentalists traded charges of blame after two days of intense, closed-door talks failed to break a deadlock in which the three whaling nations offered to limit their catch but refused to phase it out completely.

About 1,500 animals are killed each year by the three countries. Japan, which kills the majority of whales, insists its hunt is for scientific research — but more whale meat and whale products end up in Japanese restaurants than in laboratories.

Several whale species have been hunted to near extinction, gradually recovering since the ban on commercial whaling went into effect in 1986, while other species like the smaller minke whale are still abundant. But the whale arouses deep passions around the world, because it was one of the first icons of the animal conservation movement, starting with the popular Save The Whale campaign of the 1970s.

A key sticking point is the sanctity of an ocean region south of Australia that the agency declared a whaling sanctuary in 1994. Despite that declaration, Japanese whalers regularly hunt in Antarctic waters, a feeding ground for 80 percent of the world's whales, and the commission has no enforcement powers to stop them.

Australia has already launched a complaint against Japanese whaling at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the U.N.'s highest court.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100623/ap_on_bi_ge/whaling

Jesus will return by 2050, say 40pc of Americans

More than 40 per cent of Americans believe Jesus Christ will return to Earth by 2050, according to a poll.

 

Americans are largely optimistic about the future, according to the poll from the Pew Research Center For The People and The Press/Smithsonian Magazine.

By mid century, 71 per cent believe cancer will be cured, 66 per cent say artificial limbs will work better than real ones and 81 per cent believe computers will be able to converse like humans.

But Americans are also braced for a major energy crisis and a warming planet, according to the survey. More than half, or 58 per cent, fear another world war in the next 40 years and 53 per cent expect a terrorist attack against the United States using a nuclear weapon.

The poll also shows a sharp dip in overall optimism from 1999, when 81 per cent said they were optimistic about life for themselves and their families. The current poll found just 64 per cent were.

Sixty-one percent said they were optimistic about the future of the United States, compared to 70 percent in 1999. And 56 percent predicted the US economy would be stronger in 40 years, compared to 64 percent of those polled in 1999.

The results were compiled from telephone and online interviews with 1,546 adults in April. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, according to Pew.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7847625/Jesus-will-return-by-2050-say-40pc-of-Americans.html

Solstice

Tillman mother sought to warn Obama of McChrystal

The mother of the slain football player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman sought to warn President Obama against making General Stanley McChrystal his commander in Afghanistan.

Mary Tillman said in an unpublished interview this year that she wrote to Obama and called Senators and members of Congress seeking to block McChrystal's appointment when she learned that he was under consideration for the post.

She called the lack of deliberation leading to his appointment "disgusting" in the interview, given before today's Rolling Stone article spurred intense tension between the general and the White House.  An audio recording of the interview was provided to POLITICO by the interviewer, who asked to remain anonymous.

McChrystal has been accused of involvement in covering up of the fact that Tillman had been shot by his own comrades, having approved a citation for a posthumous medal that attributed his death to "enemy fire," though the general also penned a memo warning the White House against describing the circumstance of Tillman's death for fear of future embarrassment.

An official investigation blamed McChrystal for "inaccurate and misleading assertions" in the formal recommendation of Tillman for a Silver Star.

Mary Tillman said she emailed Obama a short letter saying that McChrystal was not what he seemed.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0610/Tillman_mother_sought_to_warn_Obama_of_McChrystal.html?showall