Do corporations gets away with murder?

What's most striking about the present BP oil catastrophe is not that it is an aberration but rather part of a dangerous pattern of mankind's propensity to destroy nature. Whether it's Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Food or Big Agriculture, every large and powerful corporation gets away with murder because laws are never properly applied to them. BP is destroying an entire ocean -- and the livelihoods of millions of people -- and will probably get off with a large fine and a slap on the wrist. In two years, it will all be back to business as usual, polluting the oceans, destroying life and ignoring safety rules and regulations once again while the American people suffer.
Natural News.com June 18, 2010

'Tis a pity

Politics Daily

BP: Relief well is ahead of schedule

BP's ongoing effort to tap into the busted well head with a shaft and plug it with mud and cement is moving forward, Allen said. The interception shaft was about 1,000 feet away from the well on Thursday. BP has said that the relief will be complete in August.
LA Times June 17, 2010

USA Today: How bad could it get?

So how bad could it get? The numbers point to an unprecedented ecological disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico and possibly along the Eastern Seaboard. An in-depth analysis of the long-term effects of the spill.
USA Today

Joe Barton recants

"I apologize for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP. As I told my colleagues yesterday and said again this morning, BP should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico. BP should fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt by this accident. BP and the federal government need to stop the leak, clean up the damage, and take whatever steps necessary to prevent a similar accident in the future. "I regret the impact that my statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident."
Huff Post 6/18/2010

We're talkin nukes again, folks

A reader sent me this NYT interview with Christopher J. Brownfield, whose credentials in the field of underwater demolition I am unable to establish:
You’re a veteran of the Iraq war and a former Navy submarine officer who’s now a scholar of nuclear policy at Columbia University. You’re also among the newly emergent big-bang crowd that wants to blow up the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico.
I advocate the demolition of the well. It’s feasible to use nuclear explosives. The Russians did it four times with a 100-percent success rate. But I fear the mere mention of the nuclear option has only given opponents and unnamed oil engineers a straw man to attack.
New York Times June 7, 2010

Getting Oiled: Cuba's next

Cuba is steadying itself for an ecological and tourism crisis as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill appears to be heading towards its pristine northern coast. Authorities are preparing coastal communities to respond to the first sign of black slicks and have brought in Venezuelan experts to advise on damage limitation. Patches of oil were reportedly spotted 100 miles north-west of the island, prompting concern that gulf currents will add Cuba to the list of casualties from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.
guardian.co.uk

Rep. Barton accuses Obama of "shaking down" BP: I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday."

For your viewing pleasure

Watch live streaming video from wkrg_oil_spill at livestream.com

Oil's landfall as of today

Big spills no news to Nigeria

BODO, Nigeria - Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless. Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.
New York Times June 17 2010

Sea creatures flee spill, gather near shore

GULF SHORES, Ala. — Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water off Florida beaches, like forest animals fleeing a fire. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again. Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange phenomena. Fish and other wildlife seem to be fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast in a trend that some researchers see as a potentially troubling sign.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Burn Boxes Bake Unwary Sea Lfe

So-called burn boxes are torching oil from the water's surface at the sacrifice of turtles, crabs, sea slugs and other sea life. Wildlife researchers operating here, in the regions closest to the spill, are witnesses to a disquieting choice: Protecting shorebirds, delicate marshes and prime tourist beaches along the coast by stopping the oil before it moves ashore has meant the largely unseen sacrifice of some wildlife out at sea, poisoned with chemical dispersants and sometimes boiled by the burning of spilled oil on the water's surface. When the weather is calm and the sea is placid, ships trailing fireproof booms corral the black oil, the coated seaweed and whatever may be caught in it, and torch it into hundred-foot flames, sending plumes of smoke skyward in ebony mushrooms. This patch of unmarked ocean gets designated over the radio as "the burn box."
LA Times June 17 2010

Charlie Checks the Oil

LA Times June 16, 2010

5000 BBl per day may now be 60,000!

As many as 60,000 barrels of oil per day may be flowing from the blown-out wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the newest government estimates. Basing their calculations partly on pressure readings from the wellhead and acoustic soundings, a team of federal and independent scientists said Tuesday the current daily well flow ranges from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day.
LA Times Blogs June 15, 2010

No shit: Obama declares BP "reckless"

Fifty-seven days into the crisis, oil continues to gush from the broken wellhead, millions of gallons a day, and Obama has been powerless to stem the leak. The sad episode has raised doubts about his leadership and his administration's response to what Obama has called the nation's worst environmental disaster.
NOLA.com June 16, 2010

Prez sez: just the fax, pleeze

"I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deep water drilling to continue," Obama said. "And while I urge the commission to complete its work as quickly as possible, I expect them to do that work thoroughly and impartially." But the president, who called the spill "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," said his administration has responded with the "largest environmental clean-up effort in our nation's history" - removing millions of gallons of oil "through burning, skimming and other collection methods.

Cleanup is in Chaos

From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.
New York Times June 15, 2010

Supply shortages slow spill cleanup

MOBILE, Ala. — As countless tar balls washed ashore on a beach along Alabama's Gulf Coast, cleanup workers sat and watched because they didn't have the proper plastic covers to protect their shoes. Elsewhere, a crew using shovels and garden rakes worked for hours on a long stretch of sand that a machine could have cleaned in minutes. Almost two months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, shortages of government-required protective gear and cleaning equipment are slowing work to remove the sticky mess and keep beaches and marshes along the Gulf Coast safe and oil-free.
Associated Press June 14, 2010