'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

[seemslikeadream]

"it's Hugh Manatee Wins' world, I just live in it..."

Don't we all, his world and welcome to it

[jingofever]

BP, Coast Guard withheld video showing massive scope of oil spill:

The US Coast Guard, which is coordinating response efforts to the spill on behalf of the government, had hours of video showing the extent of the spill within nine days after the spill began. But by that point, they'd released only a single fuzzy still image.

"But inside the unified command center, where BP and federal agencies were orchestrating the spill response, video monitors had already displayed hours of footage they did not make public," ABC News' veteran investigative reporter Brian Ross reports. "The images showed a far more dire situation unfolding underwater. The footage filmed by submarines showed three separate leaks, including one that was unleashing a torrent of oil into the Gulf."

...

Coast Guard officials contested BP's assertion, saying the oil firm had claimed the video of the spill was "proprietary."

Still, Federal officials made statements that suggested the spill was smaller than it was, even though they had devastating video of the leak.

"I would caution you not to get fixated on an estimate of how much is out there," the top Coast Guard Admiral said of the spill.

"This fixation on the number of barrels is a little bit misleading," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano remarked...

Ken Salazar, corporatism and the BP oil spill:

The Obama White House clearly recognizes how damaging this exemption story could be, because the President, unprompted, raised that issue several times in his Press Conference last week. This is the explanation he gave as to why his Interior Department issued those exemptions to BP:

[T]here is a thorough environmental review as to whether a certain portion of the Gulf should be leased or not. . . . .Under current law, the Interior Department has only 30 days to review an exploration plan submitted by an oil company. That leaves no time for the appropriate environmental review. The result is, they're continually waived. And this is just one example of a law that was tailored by the industry to serve their needs instead of the public's.

...

Even if that 3o-day excuse were true, it reflects very poorly on the administration. But as The Washington Post, in a good piece of reporting, noted on Tuesday: that excuse is false. An appellate court in 2008 rejected the 30-day interpretation now being asserted by Obama officials everywhere. That 9th Circuit ruling, in the case of Alaska Wilderness League, et al. v. Kempthorne, is really quite instructive to read, both because it illustrates how false is the excuse of Obama officials and, more generally, because of what it reveals about how completely co-opted MMS regulators are by the oil industry...

Gulf Oil Spill: Latest Federal Government Estimate Still Understates Oil Flow:

Last week's much-ballyhooed new federal estimate of how much oil is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico -- 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, or two to four times as much as the original estimate -- remains a low-ball figure.

The numbers released by the government last week and quickly adopted by the mass media actually represent the lower range of "lower bounds" generated by using conservative assumptions and flawed measures, according to documents released on Thursday.

The newly-released summary of the report from the Department of Interior's "Flow Rate Technical Group" doesn't disclose the higher bounds, however, declaring that a reliable upper figure was incalculable due to -- get this -- "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns."

...

There's a very good reason one party to all this would want to low-ball flow estimates. As Mother Jones environmental reporter Kate Sheppard recently noted: "The base fine for a spill is $1,100 a barrel, but it can go as high as $4,300 a barrel if a federal court determines that the spill was the result of gross negligence by the responsible party."

Should it come to that, at 12,000 barrels a day for 45 days -- at the base fine amount -- that would amount to $594 million; at 19,000 barrels, that would amount to about $940 million; at, say, 50,000 barrels, that would amount to about $2.5 billion. (And all those numbers would quadruple in case of gross negligence.)

Even for BP, that's real money. The company earned $4.4 billion in profits in 2009.

[Simulist]

The US Coast Guard, which is coordinating response efforts to the spill on behalf of the government, had hours of video showing the extent of the spill within nine days after the spill began. But by that point, they'd released only a single fuzzy still image.

If I still considered the leaders of the U.S. military to be trustworthy to any degree at all, I'd be surprised at this.

They represent the U.S. Oligarchy (Oil-garchy?) just like the rest of this sham-democracy kleptocracy.

[2012 Countdown]

Obama has been meeting w/the Parish presidents for the past 2 hours.
The meeting was held in Louis Armstrong airport.
He is now on his way to Grand Isle.

[seemslikeadream]

A further possible set up to WW III this fall:
Note please that a huge new oil find off the coast of Israel, which has found 50-70-yers worth of gas in what's dubbed ther "Leviathan field".

Israel set to become gas exporter

By JPOST.COM STAFF AND AP
06/03/2010 21:26

Consortium finds enough gas to secure energy needs for 50 - 70 years.

A consortium led by billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva announced on Thursday that it has struck natural gas in a field called 'Leviathan' off the coast of Israel.

The field is estimated to contain 15 trillion cubic feet of gas and is the second large scale gas find in a month. Last month's find, in a field called 'Tamar', is thought to contain enough gas to supply Israel for the next twenty years.

All of which is very disconcerting to Biblical scholars who have long believed that Israel's discovery of exportable oil & gas reserves would lead the oil cartel (which now includes Russia) to seize control of Israeli lands.

What was once thought impossibly large O&G finds takes on important perspective under headlines like "Gas and Oil Rush to Israel - will Russia and her Muslim Allies, too?"

Gas and Oil Rush to Israel–Will Russia and Her Muslim Allies Too?

April 21, 2010

If memory serves, Dallas Seminary Professor John Walvoord writing about middle east oil and end time prophecy, predicted Russia would lead a confederacy of Arab nations against Israel enticed to gain control of Israel’s oil supplies. Like other prophecy teachers, Walvoord believed this was the hook God would use to draw Israel’s enemies to the final showdown at Armageddon.
A recent article in the on-line magazine, Israel Today, announced expectation of Israel becoming the center of a new ‘oil and gas rush’ of western oil producers. According to the Israeli financial newspaper Globes, the largest natural gas reserve (122 trillion cubic feet) was discovered as well as a 1.7 billion barrel crude oil reserve in the Levant Basin.
God has given the people of his covenanted land another weapon potentially of equal power her enemies in the international politics of oil. Just as the Islamic nations use oil against Israel and Russia uses them for their geopolitical agendas, Israel’s new resource may tip the perceive scale of power inciting the response previewed by the prophets like Ezekiel, John, the writer of the book Revelation, and Prof. Walvoord’s Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis.

Under more normal circumstances, this wouldn't be such a big deal BUT remember that the Obama administration has shut down all new offshore drilling in the Gulf, and our sources in the Houston energy complex tell me means this has started a modern kind of Exodus for those leased offshore rigs which are being towed elsewhere in the world now since at their day rates, utilization is mandatory.

Worst of all: These events will put the US in the position of facing huge energy price increases this fall because no new close in supplies will be coming on line.

So, as "'Furious' Obama heading to Gulf for spill update',apparently taking an expectation-setting cue from film director Spike Lee,
to"Go off...this is a disaster!" as Lee correctly figures it, Avatar & Titanic director James Cameron has been politely 'blown off' by BP, who don't seem to comprehend that a genius of film doesn't get the shots featured in his documentaries like Expedition Bismark (2002) and Titanic: Ghosts of thye Abyss (in IMAX 3D) without having their 'poop in a group' when it comes to ultra deep-water robotics.

Most dangerous high tech disease in the world right now? NIH - not invented here disease.

Meantime, by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research has released super-computer-generated predictions about the Gulf spill and in particular I want you to squint at the 130-day projection:



Now ask yourself this: Is this starting to look any more like something out of Revelation 8:8-9: "The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed."

If you're wondering why I put this in the 'snip and save' section rather than above in the 'hard news' section it's because I expect you're want to put this into your 'snip and save' folder so you can refer to it this fall when we get to wars & rumors of wars globally' or when the whole thing 'tips' in November.

Cheery way to kick off the weekend, ain't it?

It's just that Sherlock Holmes said it best: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

And the truth is, November's tipping point has darkened measurably.

"And why is that, George?"

Ever since I was a kid and my father taught me that the Bible has many historically accurate accounts in it = his favorite was that the burning bush was likely a natural gas leak, something Texaco later exploited - I've been reading all kinds of End Times literature from many religions.

The problem for all humans is that if the oil disaster in the Gulf is the 'third of the sea turned into blood', then the part in Revelations 8:11 which explains "the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter" could be trying to tell us all something.

How about this: If you had no idea what radiation was, nor missiles, wouldn't a falling star that turns things 'bitter' and poisons people be a reasonably good story to sum things up?

So if we just take this particular part of prophesy as "What out for oil on waters and then falling stars that poison things" what might we infer from this?

"The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night"?

To me, this sounds like what a pre-nuclear language might have used to describe the dust which would be kicked up into the atmosphere as a result of a large-sized nuclear exchange. Or, put another way, how would you explain high atmosphere dust and possibly something just short of nuclear winter to ancient peoples in language that would have high carry-forward values?

And how then would you describe the return of the planet's original terra-forming ET's, since that's the picture of how we got here (how the Earth was formed) as outlined in the Self Defining Hebrew re-translations over at http://www.thechronicleproject.org?

Makes me seriously ponder a move south of the equator, since most nuclear weapons seem to be owned - and pointed - in the northern latitudes. Something to think about, isn't it? I'm thinking south of 40º.

More this weekend for Peoplenomics subscribers, including a curious anomaly which has popped out of our National Dream Center data that may be a useful timing hint.

If you're not a subscriber just remember "Rachel Corrie Aid Ship To Reach Gaza Tomorrow" will be a biggie. Might even move your tee- time.



A curiously timed reader email this morning reminds this:
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear." ---Mark Twain

[Jeff]

According to that projection the oil could reach Sable Island.



That's going to hit very hard.

[chiggerbit]

All of which is very disconcerting to Biblical scholars who have long believed that Israel's discovery of exportable oil & gas reserves would lead the oil cartel (which now includes Russia) to seize control of Israeli lands.

Er, which country is that that invades other countries for their oil?

[Simulist]

Something else that's often "very disconcerting to Biblical scholars" is real scholarship.

[Iamwhomiam]

http://www.propublica.org/ion/blog/item/former-valdez-cleanup-worker-warns-of-toxic-dangers-in-the-gulf

Former Valdez Cleanup Worker Warns of Toxic Dangers in the Gulf

by Marian Wang, ProPublica - June 4, 2010 10:40 am EDT

At the time, it was the worst oil spill the United States had ever seen.

It was 1989, and Merle Savage, then a healthy 50-year-old, had heard the news about Exxon Valdez. Compelled to help, she spent four months cleaning up Alaska’s oil-contaminated waters and shores.

She has never been the same since. Now 71, Savage still feels the toll that summer took on her health, but as she watches the reports coming out of the Gulf, she’s felt something else:

Déjà vu.

After all, the symptoms [1] seem to line up [2]:

A flu-like illness [3]. Dizziness. Nausea. Nosebleeds. Vomiting. Headaches. Coughing. Difficulty breathing. Many of the same things she experienced two decades ago; some of the same things she still experiences today.

“I had an upset stomach all the time. I was throwing up, fainting, I was having trouble with my lungs,” Savage said. It’s been 21 years. She said her health has improved over the past two decades, but still, “everything is not back to normal. It’s still difficult to breathe.”

Asked if there’s any doubt in her mind that the health problems in the Gulf are due to workers’ chemical exposure, she was certain.

“No. There’s none,” Savage said. “Let’s face it, crude oil is toxic. There’s no question about it. Anybody who says it isn’t has to have some type of interest otherwise. The fact that you’re out there in it, and the heat and humidity and fumes, you breathe it and it’s going into your lungs. I can’t imagine anybody thinking different.”

But there are people who suggest otherwise. The Coast Guard has suggested that heat, fatigue, or the smell of petroleum [4] is causing the symptoms. BP CEO Tony Hayward suggested over the weekend that the symptoms could be caused by food poisoning, which he said was “a really big issue when you’ve got a concentration of this many people [5].”

The comment has prompted public ridicule [6]. But the suggestion that the illness is attributable in some way to crowded quarters is one that dates to the Exxon Valdez, when workers came down with what was then described as “a flu-like upper respiratory illness.”

Here’s an excerpt, from a 1999 article in the Anchorage Daily News [7]:

Exxon and its main cleanup contractor, Anchorage-based Veco, acknowledged that summer that many workers got sick. But Exxon said then, and in the prepared statement now, that the illnesses were “a flu-like upper respiratory illness” that spread because of crowded living conditions on the barges where workers bunked. The illness became known as the “Valdez Crud” and Exxon said it spread even to lawyers and claims adjusters who had little direct exposure to the cleanup and its materials.

Exxon never revealed, and government officials never discovered, precisely how widespread the problem was. But years later, Exxon’s internal medical reports showed up in court records. They revealed that an unspecified number of the 11,000 workers made 5,600 clinic visits for upper respiratory illnesses that summer. The source of the illness was never identified.

Then [7], like now [4], workers were assured by the oil company and the government that tests had been performed to check for harmful chemicals, and that the levels found were permissible by federal standards and were no cause for concern. (On its website, the EPA says it is “concerned about the potential for long-term health problems related to the spill [8],” and that it continues to monitor the air for toxic compounds.)

Then [7], like now, volatile organic compounds such as benzene [9] (PDF) were among the toxic chemical compounds found in air samples, but levels were low, and such chemicals are generally believed to evaporate quickly [8].

And then, like now, there were questions of whether appropriate safety equipment was provided [10]. Savage says she was not given a respirator, but was given a paper mask that “didn’t last long” once wet. Other Valdez cleanup workers, like Jacqueline Payne and her son Jacob, told The Boston Globe in 1992 that they had neither [11].

Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that BP said it is providing protective equipment to workers who need it [12], but BP spokesman Graham MacEwen told Yahoo! News that “we haven’t provided respirators or masks [13] because all the environmental data shows the air is safe.”

BP spokesman Mark Proegler told me this morning that because air sampling results had been within permissible exposure limits set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, “with respect to respirators, since they’re not required, we’re not providing them unless there are indications about volatile organic compounds in the area, which there haven’t been.”

“If volunteers have concerns, we deploy them to a different area,” Proegler said.

But the fact is, in spite of the air sampling data, cleanup workers in the Gulf are getting sick, as did their Valdez counterparts decades before. Numbers are sketchy, but a U.S. News & World Report piece published yesterday noted that reports of illness are on the rise [14].

We’ve reached out to the EPA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, OSHA and the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to obtain better figures on worker health complaints and hospitalizations related to the Gulf oil spill. We have yet to hear back.

I asked BP if it’s enough to say that data show conditions are safe for workers, given that they’re still coming down sick. I also pointed out that workers from Valdez who have been sick for two decades were told the same thing—that testing showed the levels of chemical exposures were safe. Proegler’s answer:

“Obviously it’s in our best interest to make sure everyone is safe, and every organization is here to test it and make sure it is.”

But despite such assurances, some are certain that crucial lessons from Exxon Valdez are going ignored.

“They’re not listening with what happened with Exxon,” said Savage. The workers “have to watch out for themselves. They cannot depend on BP and they cannot depend on the government.”

Savage has written a book, Silence in the Sound [15], about her experience as a female general foreman cleaning up a historic oil spill. I asked if she regretted the experience. She answered right away.

“Oh my goodness, yes, honey. Yes. A thousand times over,” she told me.

And then, as she had so many times, she stopped to cough and clear her throat.
~~~~~~~

There are many links embedded in the text of this article that I have not taken the time to embed. Please consult the source material to access the bounty of information they reveal.

[2012 Countdown]

Panel recommends continued use of dispersants
by Associated Press
wwltv.com
Posted on June 4, 2010 at 2:14 PM
A federal panel of about 50 experts is recommending the continued use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, despite its harm to plankton, larvae and fish.
Panel member Ron Tjeerdema said Friday they decided the animals harmed by the chemicals underwater had a better chance of rebounding quickly than birds and mammals on the shoreline. Tjeerdema chairs the Department of Environmental Toxicology at the University of California, Davis.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asked for the panel to be assembeled to provide the federal government and BP with guidance on whether they should continue to use the controversial dispersants.
Officials have released nearly 1.8 million gallons of chemicals on and in the water since the April 20 blowout.

http://www.wwltv.com/news/gulf-oil-spil ... 36194.html

[82_28]

Truly awe inspiringly, bold and decisive. Take that BP! We gotta prez that ain't gonna take no guff bitch.

Obama to BP: Don't 'nickel and dime'


http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/04/ ... tml?hpt=C1

Good fuck. I don't think words are going to work to describe this anymore and as it goes on.

I've heard a rumor that Hayward is stepping down over IM. Haven't seen mention of it yet. Can anybody confirm?

[Laodicean]

[2012 Countdown]

Obama is boarding the plane and is about to leave.

While Obama went to Grand Isle, Nunguesser brought a seafood plate from Deanie's Seafood to the plane for Obama to eat.


(not actual plate, but it is the seafood plate from Deanie's)
====

Looks like good eating was had down in Grand Isle too...


President Barack Obama visits Camardelle's, a live bait shop and boiled seafood restaurant in Grand Isle, to talk with residents Friday about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. June 4, 2010.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... ow_in.html

[seemslikeadream]

Barbour compares small animals suffocating from oil to people covered in toothpaste.
On Tuesday, “oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster hit Mississippi shores for the first time,” covering about two miles of Petit Bois Island’s beach. As ThinkProgress noted, the appearance of oil onshore led Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour to shift his upbeat rhetoric about the approaching oil, acknowledging that “this could turn out to be something catastrophic and terrible.” But after Barbour visited Petit Bois Island yesterday and saw that the oil that came ashore had “been washed away by storms,” he returned to the positive spin, saying, “I don’t think the island was hurt one iota.” Barbour even downplayed concerns about animals being suffocated by the oil in the ocean, comparing it to humans being covered in toothpaste:

Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality Director Trudy Fisher said samples of what was apparently the same oil slick, taken when it was farther south of the barrier islands, were “nontoxic.” Fisher said water and weather had helped all the volatile chemicals in the oil evaporate. Barbour described the oil as “weathered, emulsified, caramel-colored mousse, like the food mousse.” “Once it gets to this stage, it’s not poisonous,” Barbour said. “But if a small animal got coated enough with it, it could smother it. But if you got enough toothpaste on you, you couldn’t breathe.” Barbour said he spoke with a member of President Barack Obama’s staff on Air Force One while he was on the island, after telling the administration in an early-morning conference call that oil had come ashore in Mississippi.

Despite what Barbour says, it isn’t just small animals that have been killed by the oil gushing into the Gulf. Though not all in Mississippi, as of June 2, “there are 604 dead birds, 253 dead sea turtles, and 29 mammals (including dolphins)” that have been found in relation to the drilling accident.

Where has he been to have seen anyone covered in toothpaste?

[2012 Countdown]

Truly awe inspiringly, bold and decisive. Take that BP! We gotta prez that ain't gonna take no guff bitch.

If this article is accurate, and I believe it may be, the fact that Obama isn't throwing everything we have as the U-S of A to help us down here...well, I am Beyond Pissed! Mad at Carville? FUCK YOU Mr. President, FUCK YOU.

Obama Knew the Spill Was Hopeless
by Richard Wolffe
As the president visits the Gulf anew, Richard Wolffe reports that he was first briefed in April on how bad the spill would be. Plus: the real reason the White House is so mad at Carville—and why Obama would rather talk about the economy.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... pill-was-/


====

Timeline: Coast Guard Logs Show New Details From First Few Days of Spill
U.S. Coast Guard incident logs show that within hours of an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, officials were warning of a massive spill and attempting to repair malfunctioning equipment — events missing from the White House's official timeline. The blue dots represent the White House's reported timeline and the orange dots represent entries in Coast Guard logs obtained by The Center for Public Integrity. Hover your mouse over a dot for more information.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2123

=========


We ARE being left here to die.