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Dear Readers,
If you are wondering why an antiwar newsletter is giving full coverage to the oil spill, it's because:
(1) "Supplying the US army with oil is one of BP's biggest markets, and further exploration in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico is part of its long-term strategy."*
(2) "The Senate on Thursday, [May 27, 2010] approved a nearly $60 billion measure to pay for continuing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq..."**
The two are inextricably entwined and interdependent.
--Bonnie Weinstein
*The black hole at the bottom of the Gulf
No one seems to know the extent of the BP disaster
By David Randall and Margareta Pagano
Sunday, 23 May 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-black-hole-at-the-bottom-of-the-gulf-1980693.html
**Senate Approves Nearly $60 Billion for Wars
By CARL HULSE
May 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/politics/28cong.html?ref=us
Watch BP Live Video Webcam Camera Feed of Gulf Oil Spill Here! (Update 7)
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/05/20/live-video-feed-webcam-gulf-oil-spill/
What BP does not want you to see:
ABC News went underwater in the Gulf with Philippe Cousteau Jr., grandson of famous explorer Jacques Cousteau, and he described what he saw as "one of the most horrible things I've ever seen underwater."
Check out what BP does not want you to see. And please share this widely -- every American should see what's happening under the surface in the Gulf.
http://acp.repoweramerica.org/page/invite/oilspillvideo?source=sprd-fwd&utm_source=crm_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=oilspillvideo20100527&utm_content=link1
Live BP Gulf Oil Spill Webcam Video Reveals 5 Leaks
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/05/24/live-bp-gulf-oil-spill-webcam-video-reveals-5-leaks/
Stop Shell Oil's Offshore Drilling Plans in the Arctic
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/308597489?z00m=19844689
Sign the Petition to Ban Offshore Drilling Now!
http://na.oceana.org/en/stopthedrill?key=31522015
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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YES ON F, GIVE RENTERS A BREAK!
Just two weeks before the June 8 election and if we are going to give renters a break from rent increases we need your help now!
Thousands of San Francisco renters are unemployed and at risk of losing their homes--Prop F will let them delay any new rent increases and give them a chance to stay housed. Here's how you can help pass Prop F:
YES on F Door-To-Door Literature Delivery, Saturday, May 29, 10:00 AM-1:00 PM
Just Cause (formerly St. Peter's Housing Committee), 474 Valencia (at 16th St.), Room 120, Saturday, June 5th, 11 AM at 24th/ Mission
Phonebanking, 5-7pm, Mon and Wed at SOMCAN, 1070 Howard Street
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Lynne Stewart and the Guantanamo Lawyers: Same Fact Patterns, Same Opponent, Different Endings?
Lynne Stewart will be re-sentenced sometime in July, in NYC.
By Ralph Poynter
(Ralph Poynter is the Life partner of Lynne Stewart. He is presently dedicated 24/7 to her defense, as well as other causes.)
Ralph.Poynter@yahoo.com
In the Spring of 2002, Lynne Stewart was arrested by the FBI, at her home in Brooklyn, for materially aiding terrorism by virtue of making a public press release to Reuters on behalf of her client, Sheik Abdel Omar Rahman of Egypt. This was done after she had signed a Special Administrative Measure issued by the Bureau of Prisons not permitting her to communicate with the media, on his behalf.
In 2006, a number of attorneys appointed and working pro bono for detainees at Guantanamo were discovered to be acting in a manner that disobeyed a Federal Judge's protective court order. The adversary in both cases was the United States Department of Justice. The results in each case were very different.
In March of 2010, a right wing group "Keep America Safe" led by Lynne Cheney, hoping to dilute Guantanamo representation and impugn the reputations and careers of the volunteer lawyers, launched a campaign. Initially they attacked the right of the detainees to be represented at all. This was met with a massive denouncement by Press, other media, Civil rights organizations ,and rightly so, as being a threat to the Constitution and particularly the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
A second attack on the Gitmo lawyers was made in the Wall Street Journal of March 16. This has been totally ignored in the media and by civil and human rights groups. This latter revelation about the violations, by these lawyers, of the Judge's protective orders and was revealed via litigation and the Freedom of Information Act. These pro bono lawyers serving clients assigned to them at Gitmo used privileged attorney client mail to send banned materials. They carried in news report of US failures in Afghanistan and Iraq . One lawyer drew a map of the prison. Another delivered lists to his client of all the suspects held there. They placed on the internet a facsimile of the badges worn by the Guards. Some lawyers "provided news outlets with 'interviews' of their clients using questions provided in advance by the news organizations." When a partner at one of the large Wall Street law firms sent in multiple copies of an Amnesty International brochure, which her client was to distribute to other prisoners, she was relieved from her representation and barred by the Military Commander from visiting her client.
This case is significant to interpret not because of the right wing line to punish these lawyers and manipulate their corporate clients to stop patronizing such "wayward" firms. Instead it is significant because, Lynne Stewart, a left wing progressive lawyer who had dedicated her thirty year career to defending the poor, the despised, the political prisoner and those ensnared by reason of race, gender, ethnicity, religion , who was dealt with by the same Department of Justice, in such a draconian fashion, confirms our deepest suspicions that she was targeted for prosecution and punishment because of who she is and who she represented so ably and not because of any misdeed.
Let me be very clear, I am not saying that the Gitmo lawyers acted in any "criminal" manner. The great tradition of the defense bar is to be able to make crucial decisions for and with the client without interference by the adversary Government.
I believe that they were acting as zealous attorneys trying to establish rapport and trust with their clients. That said, the moment the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice tried to remove Julia Tarver Mason from her client, the playing field tilted. Ms Tarver Mason was not led out of her home in handcuffs to the full glare of publicity. There was no press conference. The Attorney General did not go on the David Letterman show to gloat about the latest strike in the War on Terror, the purge of the Gitmo lawyer...NO.
Instead an "armada" of corporate lawyers went to Court against the Government. They, in the terms of the litigation trade, papered the US District Courthouse in Washington D.C. They brought to bear the full force of their Money and Power-- derived from the corporate world--and in 2006 "settled" the case with the government, restoring their clients to Guantanamo without any punishment at all, not to say any Indictment. Lynne Stewart, without corporate connections and coming from a working class background, was tried and convicted for issuing, on behalf of her client, a public press release to Reuters. There was no injury, no harm, no attacks, no deaths.
Yet that same Department of Justice that dealt so favorably and capitulated to the Gitmo corporate lawyers, wants to sentence Lynne Stewart to thirty (30) YEARS in prison. It is the equivalent of asking for a death sentence since she is 70 years old.
This vast disparity in treatment between Lynne and the Gitmo lawyers reveals the deep contradictions of the system ---those who derive power from rich and potent corporations, those whose day to day work maintains and increases that power--are treated differently. Is it because the Corporate Power is intertwined with Government Power???
Lynne Stewart deserves Justice... equal justice under law. Her present sentence of 28 months incarceration (she is in Federal Prison) should at least be maintained, if not made equal to the punishment that was meted out to the Gitmo lawyers. The thirty year sentence, assiduously pursued by DOJ under both Bush and Obama, is an obscenity and an affront to fundamental fairness. They wanted to make her career and dedication to individual clients, a warning, to the defense bar that the Government can arrest any lawyer on any pretext. The sharp contrasts between the cases of Lynne and the Gitmo lawyers just confirm that she is getting a raw deal--one that should be protested actively, visibly and with the full force of our righteous resistance.
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INVITATION TO A NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
United National Peace Conference
July 23 - 25, 2010, Albany , NY
Unac2010@aol.com
UNAC, P.O. Box 21675
Cleveland, OH 44121
518-227-6947
www.nationalpeaceconference.org
Greetings:
Twenty co-sponsoring national organizations urge you to attend this conference scheduled for Albany , New York July 23-25, 2010. They are After Downing Street, Arab American Union Members Council, Bailout the People Movement, Black Agenda Report, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Campus Antiwar Network, Code Pink, International Action Center, Iraq Veterans Against the War, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, National Lawyers Guild, Peace Action, Peace of the Action, Progressive Democrats of America, The Fellowship of Reconciliation, U.S. Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and World Can't Wait.
The purpose of the conference is to plan united actions in the months ahead in support of demands for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. military forces and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq , and money for human needs, not for wars, occupations, and bail-outs. The peace movement is strongest and most effective when plans for united actions are made by the whole range of antiwar and social justice organizations meeting together and deciding together dates and places for national mobilizations.
Each person attending the conference will have voice and vote. Attendees will have the opportunity to amend the action proposal submitted by conference co-sponsors, add demands, and submit resolutions for consideration by the conference.
Keynoters will be NOAM CHOMSKY, internationally renowned political activist, author, and critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policies, MIT Professor Emeritus of Linguistics; and DONNA DEWITT, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO; Co-Chair, South Carolina Progressive Network; Steering Committee, U.S. Labor Against the War; Administrative Body, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations.
The conference's website is www.nationalpeaceconference.org and you will find there details regarding other speakers, workshops, registration, hotel and travel information, and how to submit amendments, demands, and resolutions. The action proposal has also been published on the website.
Please write us at UNAC2010@aol.com for further information or call 518-227-6947. We can fill orders for copies of the conference brochure. Tables for display and sale of materials can be reserved.
We look forward to seeing you in Albany on July 23-25.
In peace,
Jerry Gordon
Secretary, National Peace Conference
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Program) and the Murder of Black Panther Leaders
http://www.averdade.org.br/modules/news/article.php?storyid=451
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From Gary Bledsoe, Texas President of the NAACP:
Have you heard about what's going on here in Texas? History is being rewritten. And not in a good way.
The state of Texas sets national standards for school textbooks -- and on Friday, the State Board of Education is casting its vote on updated social studies and history textbooks.
Those books are changing the record on slavery, celebrating the Confederacy and shedding a positive light on Jim Crow laws. And the Texas NAACP has spent the past several months fighting back. We've written thousands of emails, placed hundreds of calls, and people are starting to notice.
I'm writing because we need your help. No matter the result of tomorrow's vote, make sure these bad ideas don't spread into your state. Sign the Not in My State Pledge:
http://action.naacp.org/NotInMyState
The civil rights era was, and remains, one of the most significant and defining moments in U.S. history. Its leaders were true patriots -- fighting against oppression and for equality.
But if the proposed textbook changes happen, our children won't learn about them. They won't learn about brave men like Sam McCollough, who gave his life for Texas independence. And they won't learn that Texas seceded from the Union to fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War.
Rewriting history in the name of national pride isn't patriotic. It's ignorant.
Make it known throughout your state that if Texas textbook standards pass, they won't be coming into your classrooms. Sign the Not in My State Pledge to stop history from being rewritten:
http://action.naacp.org/NotInMyState
American history -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- is what makes our country what it is today. A reminder of that past helps ensure a better future for all of us.
Thank you for speaking out,
Gary Bledsoe
Texas President
NAACP
P.S. To find out the voting results and watch an interview with NAACP President, Benjamin Todd Jealous, tune in to NBC Nightly News tomorrow (Friday) at 6:30/5:30 p.m. ET/CT.
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This is just inspiring! You have to watch it! ...bw
Don't Get Caught in a Bad Hotel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-79pX1IOqPU
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SEIZE BP!
[While this is a good beginning to a fight to put safety first--for workers and the planet--we must recognize that the whole thrust of capitalism is to get the job done quicker and cheaper, workers and the world be damned!
It is workers who are intimately aware of the dangers of production and the ways those dangers could be eliminated. And, if, say, a particular mine, factory, industry can't be made to be safe, then it should be abandoned. Those workers effected should simply be "retired" with full pay and benefits. They have already been subjected to the toxins, dangers, etc., on the job.
Basically, safety must be under worker's control. Workers must have first dibs on profits to insure safety first.
It not only means nationalizing industry--but internationalizing industry--and placing it under the control and operation of the workers themselves. Governmental controls of safety regulations are notoriously ineffectual because the politicians themselves are the corporation's paid defenders. It only makes sense that corporate profits should be utilized--under the worker's control--to put safety first or stop production altogether. Safety first has to be interpreted as "safety before profits and profits for safety first!" We can only hope it is not too late! ...bw]
SEIZE BP!
The government of the United States must seize BP and freeze its assets, and place those funds in trust to begin providing immediate relief to the working people throughout the Gulf states whose jobs, communities, homes and businesses are being harmed or destroyed by the criminally negligent actions of the CEO, Board of Directors and senior management of BP.
Take action now! Sign the Seize BP petition to demand the seizure of BP!
200,000 gallons of oil a day, or more, are gushing into the Gulf of Mexico with the flow of oil growing. The poisonous devastation to human beings, wildlife, natural habitat and fragile ecosystems will go on for decades. It constitutes an act of environmental violence, the consequences of which will be catastrophic.
BP's Unmitigated Greed
This was a manufactured disaster. It was neither an "Act of God" nor Nature that caused this devastation, but rather the unmitigated greed of Big Oil's most powerful executives in their reckless search for ever-greater profits.
Under BP's CEO Tony Hayward's aggressive leadership, BP made a record $5.6 billion in pure profits just in the first three months of 2010. BP made $163 billion in profits from 2001-09. It has a long history of safety violations and slap-on-the-wrist fines.
BP's Materially False and Misleading Statements
BP filed a 52-page exploration plan and environmental impact analysis with the U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service for the Deepwater Horizon well, dated February 2009, which repeatedly assured the government that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities." In the filing, BP stated over and over that it was unlikely for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill causing serious damage to beaches, mammals and fisheries and that as such it did not require a response plan for such an event.
BP's executives are thus either guilty of making materially false statements to the government to obtain the license, of consciously misleading a government that was all too ready to be misled, and/or they are guilty of criminal negligence. At a bare minimum, their representations constitute gross negligence. Whichever the case, BP must be held accountable for its criminal actions that have harmed so many.
Protecting BP's Super-Profits
BP executives are banking that they can ride out the storm of bad publicity and still come out far ahead in terms of the billions in profit that BP will pocket. In 1990, in response to the Exxon Valdez disaster, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the Oil Pollution Act, which immunizes oil companies for the damages they cause beyond immediate cleanup costs.
Under the Oil Pollution Act, oil companies are responsible for oil removal and cleanup costs for massive spills, and their liability for all other forms of damages is capped at $75 million-a pittance for a company that made $5.6 billion in profits in just the last three months, and is expected to make $23 billion in pure profit this year. Some in Congress suggest the cap should be set at $10 billion, still less than the potential cost of this devastation-but why should the oil companies have any immunity from responsibility for the damage they cause?
The Oil Pollution Act is an outrage, and it will be used by BP to keep on doing business as usual.
People are up in arms because thousands of workers who have lost their jobs and livelihoods as a result of BP's actions have to wait in line to compete for lower wage and hazardous clean-up jobs from BP. BP's multi-millionaire executives are not asked to sacrifice one penny while working people have to plead for clean-up jobs.
Take Action Now
It is imperative that the government seize BP's assets now for their criminal negligence and begin providing immediate relief for the immense suffering and harm they have caused.
Seize BP Petition button*: http://www.seizebp.org/
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Neil Young - Ohio - Live at Massey Hall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV0rAwk4lFE&feature=player_embedded#
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Rachel Carson's Warnings in "The Sea Around Us":
"It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself. . ." http://www.savethesea.org/quotes
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Operation Small Axe - Trailer
http://www.blockreportradio.com/news-mainmenu-26/820-us-school-district-to-begin-microchipping-students.html
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Shame on Arizona
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer just signed a law that will authorize officers to pull over, question, and detain anyone they have a "reasonable suspicion" to believe is in this country without proper documentation. It's legalized racial profiling, and it's an affront on all of our civil rights, especially Latinos. It's completely unacceptable.
Join us in letting Arizona's leaders know how we feel, and that there will be consequences. A state that dehumanizes its own people does not deserve our economic support
"As long as racial profiling is legal in Arizona, I will do what I can to not visit the state and to avoid spending dollars there."
Sign Petition Here:
http://presente.org/campaigns/shame?populate=1
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
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Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501c)3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Collateral Murder
[COLD-BLOODED, OUTRIGHT MURDER OF UNARMED CIVILIANS--AND THEY LAUGH ABOUT IT AS THEY SHOOT! THIS IS A BLOOD-CURTLING, VIOLENT AND BRUTAL VIDEO THAT SHOULD BE VIEWED BY EVERYONE! IT EXPOSES, AS MARTIN LUTHER KING SAID, "THE BIGGEST PURVEYORS OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD," THE U.S. BI-PARTISAN GOVERNMENT AND THE MILITARY THEY COMMAND. --BW]
Overview
5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
http://www.collateralmurder.com/
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San Francisco City and County Tramples on Civil Liberties
A Letter to Antiwar Activists
Dear Activists:
On Saturday, March 20, the San Francisco City and County Recreation and Parks Department's Park Rangers patrolled a large public antiwar demonstration, shutting down the distribution of Socialist Viewpoint magazine. The rally in Civic Center Plaza was held in protest of the illegal and immoral U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, and to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Park Rangers went table-to-table examining each one. They photographed the Socialist Viewpoint table and the person attending it-me. My sister, Debbie and I, had set up the table. We had a sign on the table that asked for a donation of $1.25 for the magazine. The Park Rangers demanded that I "pack it up" and go, because selling or even asking for donations for newspapers or magazines is no longer permitted without the purchase of a new and expensive "vendors license." Their rationale for this denial of free speech is that the distribution of newspapers, magazines, T-shirts-and even food-would make the political protest a "festival" and not a political protest demonstration!
This City's action is clearly a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution-the right to free speech and freedom of the press-and can't be tolerated.
While they are firing teachers and other San Francisco workers, closing schools, cutting back healthcare access, cutting services to the disabled and elderly, it is outrageous that the Mayor and City Government chose to spend thousands of dollars to police tables at an antiwar rally-a protest demonstration by the people!
We can't let this become the norm. It is so fundamentally anti-democratic. The costs of the permits for the rally, the march, the amplified sound, is already prohibitive. Protest is not a privilege we should have to pay for. It's a basic right in this country and we should reclaim it!
Personally, I experienced a deep feeling of alienation as the crisply-uniformed Park Ranger told me I had to "pack it up"-especially when I knew that they were being paid by the City to do this at this demonstration!
I hope you will join this protest of the violation of the right to distribute and, therefore, the right to read Socialist Viewpoint, by writing or emailing the City officials who are listed below.1
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Editorial Board Member, Socialist Viewpoint
www.socialistviewpoint.org
60 - 29th Street, #429
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-824-8730
1 Mayor Gavin Newsom
City Hall, Room 200
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org
Board of Supervisors
City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 244
San Francisco, Ca 94102-4689
Board.of.supervisors@sfgov.org
San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department Park Rangers
McLaren Lodge & Annex
501 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
Park.patrol@sfgov.org
San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission
501 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
recpark.commission@sfgov.org
Chief of Police George Gascón
850 Bryant Street, #525
San Francisco, CA 94103
(I could not find an email address for him.).
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FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
Mail tax free contributions payable to National Lawyers Guild Foundation. Write in memo box: "Lynne Stewart Defense." Mail to: Lynne Stewart Defense, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.
SEND RESOLUTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT TO DEFENSE ATTORNEY JOSHUA L. DRATEL, ESQ. FAX: 212) 571 3792 AND EMAIL: jdratel@aol.com
SEND PROTESTS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Department of Justice Main Switchboard - 202-514-2000
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line - 202-353-1555
To send Lynne a letter, write:
Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
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On June 30, an innocent man will be given a second chance.
In 1991, Troy Davis was sentenced to death for allegedly killing a police officer in Savannah, Georgia. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, and seven out of nine witnesses recanted or contradicted their testimony.
He was sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. But it's not too late to change Troy's fate.
We just learned today that Troy has been granted an evidentiary hearing -- an opportunity to right this wrong. Help give him a second chance by telling your friends to pledge their support for Troy:
http://www.iamtroy.com/
Troy Davis may just be one man, but his situation represents an injustice experienced by thousands. And suffering this kind of injustice, by even one man, is one person too many.
Thanks to you and 35,000 other NAACP members and supporters who spoke out last August, the U.S. Supreme Court is granting Troy Davis his day in court--and a chance to make his case after 19 years on death row.
This hearing is the first step.
We appreciate your continued support of Troy. If you have not yet done so, please visit our website, sign the petition, then tell your friends to do the same.
http://www.iamtroy.com
I will be in touch soon to let you know how else you can help.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Fishermen Say BP Not Allowing Protective Gear to Fight Oil
By Rocky Kistner
switchboard.nrdc.org, Rocky Kistner's Blog
May 25, 2010
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/fishermen_say_bp_not_allowing.html
2) Oil Flow Is Stemmed, but Could Resume, Official Says
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JOHN M. BRODER
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/29spill.html?hp
3) The Subprime Crisis of Student Debt
By RON LIEBER
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?hp
4) U.N. Official to Ask U.S. to End C.I.A. Drone Strikes
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
May 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/world/asia/28drones.html?hpw
5) BP's Effort to Plug Oil Leak Suspended a Second Time
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/29spill.html?ref=us
6) [Are you worried no one is paying attention to the war?...bw]
Senate Approves Nearly $60 Billion for Wars
By CARL HULSE
May 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/politics/28cong.html?ref=us
7) Workers on doomed rig: Corners cut to save money
By BEN EVANS and MIKE KUNZELMAN (AP) -
May 27, 2010 -- 21 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h1LUMz2sj2uHiXQi0THdy71DzzmQD9FVG6203
8) An Unnatural Disaster
By BOB HERBERT
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/opinion/29herbert.html
9) Latest Attempt by BP to Plug Oil Leak in Gulf of Mexico Fails
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and LESLIE KAUFMAN
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30spill.html?hp
10) Operators of Drones Are Faulted in Afghan Deaths
By DEXTER FILKINS
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/asia/30drone.html?hp
11) Rubble of a Broken City Strains Haitians' Patience
By DAMIEN CAVE
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/americas/30haiti.html?hp
12) No Terror Evidence Against Some Detainees
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/politics/29gitmo.html?ref=world
13) Communists Could Gain in Czech Vote
By DAN BILEFSKY
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/world/europe/29czech.html?ref=world
14) Documents Show Earlier Worries About Safety of Rig
By IAN URBINA
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30rig.html?ref=us
15) Island's Trout Rodeo Is Victim of Spill, and That's Not the Least of It
By AMY HARMON
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/29scene.html?ref=us
16) Scientists Build Case for Undersea Plumes
By JUSTIN GILLIS
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/science/earth/29plume.html?ref=us
17) BP Prepares to Take New Tack on Leak After 'Top Kill' Fails
[Except this isn't a "New Tack" but a repeat of the first try to cap the leak, which, didn't work. Clearly no one in charge knows what to do. ...bw]
By LESLIE KAUFMAN and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30spill.html?hp
18) Our Fix-It Faith and the Oil Spill
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/weekinreview/30rosenthal.html?hp
19) Fishermen Fear Disruption of Their Way of Life
By AMY HARMON
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30fishermen.html?hp
20) Foes and Supporters of New Immigration Law Gather in Arizona
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30immig.html?ref=world
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1) Fishermen Say BP Not Allowing Protective Gear to Fight Oil
By Rocky Kistner
switchboard.nrdc.org, Rocky Kistner's Blog
May 25, 2010
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/fishermen_say_bp_not_allowing.html
As the oily tide washes over the bayous and fragile marshlands of Louisiana, fishermen are complaining they are not allowed to wear proper protective gear on cleanup jobs in the middle of the oil plume miles out to sea.
Clint Guidry, acting president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, testified yesterday before a delegation of U.S. senators and state and federal officials that fishermen are being told not to wear respirators while working in potentially dangerous pools of oil.
"I am being told by workers and family members that reparatory equipment is not being provided to fishermen workers," Guidry told the delegation in Galliano, LA. "There has been no respiratory protective PPE [1] (personal protective equipment) issued to workers working over this most dangerous area, even as a precaution to have available given they are working 60 miles offshore. In fact when some individuals brought their own respirators, they were told by BP representatives on site that if they wore the respirators they would be released from the job. That disturbs me greatly."
Guidry worries there is not proper health and safety monitoring being done out at sea.
"These are third party contractors paid by BP to do safety monitoring. They are reporting what BP tells them to do," he says. "The same thing happened with the Exxon Valdez."
Other residents of the bayou also are reporting problems with the fishermen who are now contracted by BP to do oil cleanup work but are told not to talk publicly about it. Venice, LA, resident Kindra Arnesen says she spoke to a fisherman today whose sinuses were burning from doing oil clean up far out at sea in the thick of the oil.
"He went out and purchased his own respirator and he was told if he wears the respirator his charter (boat) would be terminated. BP is telling them not to wear them. People here are scared to talk about it because they don't want to lose their jobs."
Tonight residents of Venice will have a chance to sound out their concerns in a meeting with Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.
Shrimp fisherman Clint Guidry says, despite the dangers, fishermen feel they don't have a choice but to go out anyway to get by. "Guys are refusing my advice. They can't fish and they have families to feed."
Guidry says for the fishing communities that survived the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, this disaster is turning out to be even a worse nightmare, one that doesn't look like it will end anytime soon. "It's like a bad dream. I can't believe it's happening."
Meanwhile, deep in the lush estuaries of the delta, the oil just keeps coming.
[1] Check out this informative video by NRDC Senior Scientist Gina Solomon who describes the health risks associated with oil exposure and demonstrates ways to use proper protective gear. Scroll to bottom of page at:
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/fishermen_say_bp_not_allowing.html
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2) Oil Flow Is Stemmed, but Could Resume, Official Says
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JOHN M. BRODER
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/29spill.html?hp
HOUSTON - By injecting solid objects overnight as well as heavy drilling fluid into the stricken well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, engineers appeared to have stemmed the flow of oil, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the leader of the government effort, said on Friday morning. But he stressed that the next 12 to 18 hours would be "very critical" in permanently stanching what is already the worst oil spill in United States history.
Admiral Allen, who spoke on ABC's "Good Morning America," said the biggest challenge would be to sustain the "top kill" effort, which involves pumping material into the well to counteract the upward pressure of the gushing oil so that the well can be sealed.
"They've been able to push the hydrocarbons and the oil down with the mud," he said, referring to the heavy drilling fluid. "The real challenge is to put enough mud into the well to keep the pressure where they can put a cement plug over the top."
Admiral Allen was accompanying President Obama on a tour Friday of the area. In Port Fourchon, the president and Admiral Allen were joined by the Lafourche parish president Charlotte Randolph. Mr. Obama walked along a beach dotted with balls of tar and covered with booms that looked like a line of cheerleader pom-poms strung together. Next, the president was heading Grand Isle for a formal briefing from Admiral Allen. The governors of Louisiana, Florida and Alabama are expected to join him there.
As the president surveyed the damage and cleanup effort, the top kill effort continued.
Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, said on "Good Morning America" that efforts to plug the well were "going pretty well according to plan."
"Much of the volume you see coming out of the well in the last 36 hours is mud," he said, referring to live video shots of the oil leak.
He said that overnight, workers pumped what is known as "junk shot," a mix of more substantial materials, like golf balls and shredded tires, into the well, and he said they would follow with more mud later Friday. The junk shot serves as a "bridge," he said, for the mud injections, to strengthen their ability to counteract the leaking oil.
While he was optimistic, Mr. Hayward gave the effort a 60 percent to 70 percent chance of success because it had never been tried in water this deep.
On CNN Friday, Mr. Hayward said it would be at least 48 hours before the success of the effort could be fully assessed, but he acknowledged that much damage had already been done.
"This is clearly an environmental catastrophe," he said. "There is no two ways about it." The effort to plug the well has proceeded in fits and starts. BP officials, who along with government officials created the impression early Thursday that the strategy was working, disclosed later that they had stopped pumping on Wednesday night when engineers saw that too much of the drilling fluid was escaping along with the oil. At a news conference in Washington on Thursday, the president said he was angry and frustrated about the catastrophe, and he shouldered much of the responsibility for the continuing crisis.
"Those who think we were either slow on the response or lacked urgency, don't know the facts," Mr. Obama said. "This has been our highest priority."
But he also blamed BP, which owns the stricken well, and the Bush administration, which he said had fostered a "cozy and sometimes corrupt" relationship between oil companies and regulators at the Minerals Management Service. Earlier Thursday, the chief of the Minerals Management Service for the past 11 months, S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, resigned, less than a week after her boss, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, announced a broad restructuring of the office.
Mr. Salazar on Friday said he would name Bob Abbey, the director of the department's Bureau of Land Management, as interim director of the scandal-ridden agency responsible for oversight of offshore drilling.
Mr. Abbey, a longtime state and federal lands public lands official will run the agency as it is being dismantled over the next several months. Mr. Salazar announced last week that he intends to break the agency into three parts to handle leasing and oil extraction; safety and environmental oversight; and revenue collection. Currently all those functions are combined, leading to numerous conflicts of interests, with the same group of officials responsible for collecting fees from oil drilling on public lands and offshore while also policing their operations.Mr. Obama ordered a suspension on Thursday of virtually all current and new offshore oil drilling activity pending a comprehensive safety review, acknowledging that oversight until now had been seriously deficient.
Mr. Obama's trip Friday to inspect the efforts in Louisiana to stop the leak and clean up after it, will be his second trip to the region since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20. He will also visit with people affected by the spreading slick that has washed ashore over scores of miles of beaches and wetlands.
Even as Mr. Obama acknowledged that his efforts to improve regulation of offshore drilling had fallen short, he said oil and gas from beneath the Gulf, now about 30 percent of total domestic production, would be a part of the nation's energy supply for years to come.
"It has to be part of an overall energy strategy," Mr. Obama said. "I mean, we're still years off and some technological breakthroughs away from being able to operate on purely a clean-energy grid. During that time, we're going to be using oil. And to the extent that we're using oil, it makes sense for us to develop our oil and natural gas resources here in the United States and not simply rely on imports."
In the top kill maneuver, a 30,000-horsepower engine aboard a ship injected heavy drill liquids through two narrow flow lines into the stack of pipes and other equipment above the well to push the escaping oil and gas back down below the sea floor.
As hour after hour passed after the top kill began early Wednesday afternoon, technicians along with millions of television and Internet viewers watched live video images showing that the dark oil escaping into the gulf waters was giving way to a mud-colored plume.
That seemed to be an indication that the heavy liquids known as "drilling mud" were filling the chambers of the blowout preventer, replacing the escaping oil.
Thursday morning, federal officials expressed optimism that all was going well. "The top kill procedure is going as planned, and it is moving along as everyone had hoped," Admiral Allen told CNN.
And Robert Dudley, BP's managing director, said on the "Today" program on NBC that the top kill "was moving the way we want it to."
It was not until late Thursday afternoon that BP acknowledged that the operation was not succeeding and that pumping had halted at 11 p.m. Wednesday.
After the resumption, Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, struggled to offer guidance on whether the latest effort was likely to succeed.
"It's quite a roller coaster," Mr. Suttles said. "It's difficult to be optimistic or pessimistic. We have not stopped the flow."
Engineers had feared the top kill was risky because the high-pressure mud could have punctured another gaping hole in the pipes, or dislodged debris clogging the blowout preventer and pipes and intensified the flow.
The engineers also said that the problem they encountered was not entirely unexpected, and that they believed that they would ultimately succeed.
Mr. Obama's action halted planned exploratory wells in the Arctic due to be drilled this summer and planned lease sales off the coast of Virginia and in the Gulf of Mexico. It also halts work on 33 exploratory wells now being drilled in the gulf.
The impact of the new moratorium on offshore drilling remains uncertain. Mr. Obama ordered a halt to new leasing and drilling permits shortly after the spill, but Minerals Management Service officials continued to issue permits for modifications to existing wells and to grant waivers from environmental assessments for other wells.
Shell Oil had been hoping to begin an exploratory drilling project this summer in the Arctic Ocean, which the new restrictions would delay. Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska and a staunch supporter of drilling in the Arctic, said he was frustrated because the decision "will cause more delays and higher costs for domestic oil and gas production to meet the nation's energy needs."
"The Gulf of Mexico tragedy has highlighted the need for much stronger oversight and accountability of oil companies working offshore," Mr. Begich said in a statement. "But Shell has updated its plans at the administration's request and made significant investments to address the concerns raised by the gulf spill."
Environmental advocates, however, expressed relief.
"We need to know what happened in the gulf to cause the disaster, so that a similar catastrophe doesn't befall our Arctic waters," said William H. Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society.
Admiral Allen on Thursday approved portions of Louisiana's $350 million plan to use walls of sand in an effort to protect vulnerable sections of coastline.
The approved portion involves a two-mile sand berm to be built off Scofield Island in Plaquemines Parish - one of six projects that the Corps of Engineers has approved out of 24 proposed by Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.
"What Admiral Allen told us today is that if the first one is effective, then they will consider moving on to the next one," Mr. Jindal, a Republican, said at an afternoon news conference in Fourchon, La.
Investigators also continued their efforts to understand what caused the explosion of the rig, which killed 11 workers.
At a hearing in New Orleans, the highest ranking official on the Deepwater Horizon testified that he had a disagreement with BP officials on the rig before the explosion.
Jimmy Harrell, a manager who was in charge of the rig, owned by Transocean, said he had expressed concern that BP did not plan to conduct a pressure test before sealing the well closed.
It was unclear from Mr. Harrell's testimony whether the disagreement took place on the day of the explosion or the previous day.
The investigative hearings have grown increasingly combative. Three scheduled witnesses have changed their plans to testify, according to the Coast Guard. Robert Kaluza, a BP official on the rig on the day of the explosion, declined to testify on Thursday by invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.
Another top ranking BP official, Donald Vidrine, and James Mansfield, Transocean's assistant marine engineer on the Deepwater Horizon, both told the Coast Guard that they had medical conditions.
Jackie Calmes contributed from Port Fourchon, La.; Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Kenner, La.; Campbell Robertson from Venice, La.; Maria Newman from New York; and John Collins Rudolf from New York.
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3) The Subprime Crisis of Student Debt
By RON LIEBER
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?hp
Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it.
Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she's been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments.
This is not a long-term solution, because the interest on the loans continues to pile up. So in an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning. They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as subprime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up.
Meanwhile, universities like N.Y.U. enrolled students without asking many questions about whether they could afford a $50,000 annual bill. Then the colleges introduced the students to lenders who underwrote big loans without any idea of what the students might earn someday - just like the mortgage lenders who didn't ask borrowers to verify their incomes.
Ms. Munna does not want to walk away from her loans in the same way many mortgage holders are. It would be difficult in any event because federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts. But unless she manages to improve her income quickly, she doesn't have a lot of good options for digging out.
It is utterly depressing that there are so many people like her facing decades of payments, limited capacity to buy a home and a debt burden that can repel potential life partners. For starters, it's a shared failure of parenting and loan underwriting.
But perhaps the biggest share lies with colleges and universities because they have the most knowledge of the financial aid process. And I would argue that they had an obligation to counsel students like Ms. Munna, who got in too far over their heads.
How many people are like her? According to the College Board's Trends in Student Aid study, 10 percent of people who graduated in 2007-8 with student loans had borrowed $40,000 or more. The median debt for bachelor's degree recipients who borrowed while attending private, nonprofit colleges was $22,380.
The Project on Student Debt, a research and advocacy organization in Oakland, Calif., used federal data to estimate that 206,000 people graduated from college (including many from for-profit universities) with more than $40,000 in student loan debt in that same period. That's a ninefold increase over the number of people in 1996, using 2008 dollars.
The Family
No one forces borrowers to take out these loans, and Ms. Munna and her mother, Cathryn, have spent the years since her graduation trying to understand where they went wrong. Ms. Munna's father died when she was 13, after a series of illnesses.
She started college at age 17 and borrowed as much money as she could under the federal loan program. To make up the difference between her grants and work study money and the total cost of attending, her mother co-signed two private loans with Sallie Mae totaling about $20,000.
When they applied for a third loan, however, Sallie Mae rejected the application, citing Cathryn's credit history. She had returned to college herself to finish her bachelor's degree and was also borrowing money. N.Y.U. suggested a federal Plus loan for parents, but that would have required immediate payments, something the mother couldn't afford. So before Cortney's junior year, N.Y.U. recommended that she apply for a private student loan on her own with Citibank.
Over the course of the next two years, starting when she was still a teenager, she borrowed about $40,000 from Citibank without thinking much about how she would pay it back. How could her mother have let her run up that debt, and why didn't she try to make her daughter transfer to, say, the best school in the much cheaper state university system in New York? "All I could see was college, and a good college and how proud I was of her," Cathryn said. "All we needed to do was get this education and get the good job. This is the thing that eats away at me, the naïveté on my part."
But Cortney resists the idea that this is a tale of bad parenting. "To me, it would be an uncharitable reading," she said. "My mother has tried her best, and I don't blame her for anything in this."
The Lender
Sallie Mae gets a pass here, in my view. A responsible grownup co-signed for its loans to the Munnas, and the company eventually cut them off.
But what was Citi thinking, handing over $40,000 to an undergraduate who had already amassed debt well into the five figures? This was, in effect, a "no doc" or at least a "low doc" subprime mortgage loan.
A Citi spokesman declined comment, even though Ms. Munna was willing to sign a waiver giving Citi permission to talk about her loans. Perhaps the bank worried that once it approved one loan, cutting her off would have led her to drop out or transfer and have trouble paying back the loan.
Today, someone like Ms. Munna might not qualify for the $40,000 she borrowed. But as the economy rebounds, there is little doubt that plenty of lenders will step forward to roll the dice on desperate students, especially because the students generally can't get rid of the debt in bankruptcy court.
The University
The financial aid office often has the best picture of what students like Ms. Munna are up against, because they see their families' financial situation splayed out on the federal financial aid form. So why didn't N.Y.U. tell Ms. Munna that she simply did not belong there once she'd passed, say, $60,000 in total debt?
"Had somebody called me and said, 'Do you have a clue where this is all headed?', it would have been a slap in the face, but a slap in the face that I needed," said Cathryn Munna. "When financial aid told her that they could get her $2,000 more in loans, they should have been saying 'You are in deep doo-doo, little girl.' "
That's not a role that the university wants to take on, though. "I think that would be completely inappropriate," said Randall Deike, the vice president of enrollment management for N.Y.U., who oversees admissions and financial aid. "Some families will do whatever it takes for their son or daughter to be not just at N.Y.U., but any first-choice college. I'm not sure that's always the best decision, but it's one that they really have to make themselves."
The complications here go well beyond the propriety of suggesting that a student enroll elsewhere. Colleges don't always know how much debt its students are taking on, which makes it hard to offer good counsel. (N.Y.U. does appear to have known about all of Ms. Munna's loans, though.)
Then there's a branding problem. Urging students to attend a cheaper college or leave altogether suggests a lack of confidence about the earning potential of alumni. Nobody wants to admit that. And once a university starts encouraging middle-class students to go elsewhere, it must fill its classes with more children of the wealthy and a much smaller number of low-income students to whom it can afford to offer enormous scholarships. That's hardly an ideal outcome either.
Finally, universities exist to enroll students, not turn them away. "Aid administrators want to keep their jobs," said Joan H. Crissman, interim president and chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. "If the administration finds out that you're encouraging students to go to a cheaper school just because you don't think they can handle the debt load, I don't think that's going to mesh very well."
That doesn't change the fact, however, that the financial aid office is still in the best position to see trouble coming and do something to stop it. University officials should take on this obligation, even if they aren't willing to advise students to attend another college.
Instead, they might deputize a gang of M.B.A. candidates or alumni in the financial services industry to offer free financial planning to admitted students and their families. Mr. Deike also noted that the bigger problem here is one of financial literacy. Fine. He and N.Y.U. are in a great position to solve for that by making every financial aid recipient take a financial planning class. The students could even use their families as the case study.
The Options
The balance on Cortney Munna's loans is about $97,000, including all of her federal loans and her private debt from Sallie Mae and Citibank. What are her options for digging out?
Her mother can't help without selling her bed and breakfast, and then she'd have no home. She could take her daughter in, but there aren't good ways for her to earn a living in Alexandria Bay, in upstate New York.
Cortney could move someplace cheaper than her current home city of San Francisco, but she worries about her job prospects, even with her N.Y.U. diploma.
She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It's the highest salary she's earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies. After taxes, she takes home about $2,300 a month. Rent runs $750, and the full monthly payments on her student loans would be about $700 if they weren't being deferred, which would not leave a lot left over.
She may finally be earning enough to barely scrape by while still making the payments for the first time since she graduated, at least until interest rates rise and the payments on her loans with variable rates spiral up. And while her job requires her to work nights and weekends sometimes, she probably should find a flexible second job to try to bring in a few extra hundred dollars a month.
Ms. Munna understands this tough love, buck up, buckle-down advice. But she also badly wants to call a do-over on the last decade. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back," she said. "It feels wrong to me."
Correction: An earlier version of this column online misstated the benchmark year in a study by the Project on Student Debt.
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4) U.N. Official to Ask U.S. to End C.I.A. Drone Strikes
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
May 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/world/asia/28drones.html?hpw
WASHINGTON - A senior United Nations official is expected to call on the United States next week to stop Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes against people suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda, complicating the Obama administration's growing reliance on that tactic in Pakistan.
Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said Thursday that he would deliver a report on June 3 to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that the "life and death power" of drones should be entrusted to regular armed forces, not intelligence agencies. He contrasted how the military and the C.I.A. responded to allegations that strikes had killed civilians by mistake.
"With the Defense Department you've got maybe not perfect but quite abundant accountability as demonstrated by what happens when a bombing goes wrong in Afghanistan," he said in an interview. "The whole process that follows is very open. Whereas if the C.I.A. is doing it, by definition they are not going to answer questions, not provide any information, and not do any follow-up that we know about."
Mr. Alston's views are not legally binding, and his report will not assert that the operation of combat drones by nonmilitary personnel is a war crime, he said. But the mounting international concern over drones comes as the Obama administration legal team has been quietly struggling over how to justify such counterterrorism efforts while obeying the laws of war.
In recent months, top lawyers for the State Department and the Defense Department have tried to square the idea that the C.I.A.'s drone program is lawful with the United States' efforts to prosecute Guantánamo Bay detainees accused of killing American soldiers in combat, according to interviews and a review of military documents.
Under the laws of war, soldiers in traditional armies cannot be prosecuted and punished for killing enemy forces in battle. The United States has argued that because Qaeda fighters do not obey the requirements laid out in the Geneva Conventions - like wearing uniforms - they are not "privileged combatants" entitled to such battlefield immunity. But C.I.A. drone operators also wear no uniforms.
Paula Weiss, a C.I.A. spokeswoman, called into question the notion that the agency lacked accountability, noting that it was overseen by the White House and Congress. "While we don't discuss or confirm specific activities, this agency's operations take place in a framework of both law and government oversight," Ms. Weiss said. "It would be wrong to suggest the C.I.A. is not accountable."
Still, the Obama administration legal team confronted the issue as the Pentagon prepared to restart military commission trials at Guantánamo Bay. The commissions began with pretrial hearings in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian detainee accused of killing an Army sergeant during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, when Mr. Khadr was 15.
The Pentagon delayed issuing a 281-page manual laying out commission rules until the eve of the hearing. The reason, officials say, is that government lawyers had been scrambling to rewrite a section about murder because it has implications for the C.I.A. drone program.
An earlier version of the manual, issued in 2007 by the Bush administration, defined the charge of "murder in violation of the laws of war" as a killing by someone who did not meet "the requirements for lawful combatancy" - like being part of a regular army or otherwise wearing a uniform. Similar language was incorporated into a draft of the new manual.
But as the Khadr hearing approached, Harold Koh, the State Department legal adviser, pointed out that such a definition could be construed as a concession by the United States that C.I.A. drone operators were war criminals. Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department general counsel, and his staff ultimately agreed with that concern. They redrafted the manual so that murder by an unprivileged combatant would instead be treated like espionage - an offense under domestic law not considered a war crime.
"An accused may be convicted," the final manual states, if he "engaged in conduct traditionally triable by military commission (e.g., spying; murder committed while the accused did not meet the requirements of privileged belligerency) even if such conduct does not violate the international law of war."
Under that reformulation, the C.I.A. drone operators - who reportedly fly the aircraft from agency headquarters in Langley, Va. - might theoretically be subject to prosecution in a Pakistani courtroom. But regardless, the United States can argue to allies that it is not violating the laws of war.
Mr. Alston, the United Nations official, said he agreed with the Obama legal team that "it is not per se illegal" under the laws of war for C.I.A. operatives to fire drone missiles "because anyone can stand up and start to act as a belligerent." Still, he emphasized, they would not be entitled to battlefield immunity like soldiers.
Mary Ellen O'Connell, a Notre Dame University law professor who has criticized the use of drones away from combat zones, also agreed with the Obama administration's legal theory in this case. She said it could provide a "small modicum" of protection for C.I.A. operatives, noting that Germany had a statute allowing it to prosecute violations of the Geneva Conventions, but it does not enforce domestic Pakistani laws against murder.
In March, Mr. Koh delivered a speech in which he argued that the drone program was lawful because of the armed conflict with Al Qaeda and the principle of self-defense. He did not address several other murky legal issues, like whether Pakistani officials had secretly consented to the strikes. Mr. Alston, who is a New York University law professor, said his report would analyze such questions in detail, which may increase pressure on the United States to discuss them.
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5) BP's Effort to Plug Oil Leak Suspended a Second Time
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/29spill.html?ref=us
HOUSTON - BP's renewed efforts at plugging the flow of oil from its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico stalled again on Friday, as the company suspended pumping operations for the second time in two days, according to a technician involved with the response effort.
In an operation known as a "junk shot," BP engineers poured pieces of rubber, golf balls and other materials into the crippled blowout preventer, trying to clog the device that sits atop the wellhead. The maneuver was designed to work in conjunction with the continuing "top kill" operation, in which heavy drilling liquids are pumped into the well to counteract the pressure of the gushing oil.
If the efforts succeeded, officials intended to pump cement into the well to seal it. But the company suspended pumping operations at 2:30 a.m. Friday after two "junk shot" attempts, said the technician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the efforts.
The suspension of the effort was not announced, and appeared to again contradict statements by company and government officials that suggested the top kill procedure was progressing Friday.
Admiral Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the leader of the government effort, said Friday on ABC's Good Morning America" that, "They've been able to push the hydrocarbons and the oil down with the mud."
But the technician working on the effort said that despite the injections at various pressure levels, engineers had been able to keep less than 10 percent of the injection fluids inside the stack of pipes above the well. He said that was barely an improvement on Wednesday's results when the operation began and was suspended in its 11th hour of operations. BP resumed the pumping effort Thursday evening for about 10 more hours.
"I won't say progress was zero, but I don't know if we can round up enough mud to make it work," said the technician. "Everyone is disappointed at this time."
Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman, said he would not give "blow by blow commentaries." He added, "the operation is by definition a series of phases of pumping mud and shooting bridging materials and junk and reading pressure gauges. It is going to keep going, perhaps 48 more hours."
If the top kill and junk shots options fail, BP officials planned to try again to place a containment vessel over the leak, which might allow them to capture the oil but would not stop the leak. A previous attempt to do this failed.
Admiral Allen was accompanying President Obama on a tour Friday of the area. In Port Fourchon, the president and Admiral Allen were joined by the Lafourche parish president Charlotte Randolph. Mr. Obama walked along a beach dotted with balls of tar and covered with booms that looked like a line of cheerleader pom-poms strung together. Next, the president was heading Grand Isle for a formal briefing from Admiral Allen. The governors of Louisiana, Florida and Alabama are expected to join him there. As the president surveyed the damage and cleanup effort, the top kill effort continued.
Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, said on "Good Morning America" that efforts to plug the well were "going pretty well according to plan."
"Much of the volume you see coming out of the well in the last 36 hours is mud," he said, referring to live video shots of the oil leak.
While he was optimistic, Mr. Hayward gave the effort a 60 percent to 70 percent chance of success because it had never been tried in water this deep.
"Those who think we were either slow on the response or lacked urgency, don't know the facts," Mr. Obama said. "This has been our highest priority."
But he also blamed BP, which owns the stricken well, and the Bush administration, which he said had fostered a "cozy and sometimes corrupt" relationship between oil companies and regulators at the Minerals Management Service. Earlier Thursday, the chief of the Minerals Management Service for the past 11 months, S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, resigned, less than a week after her boss, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, announced a broad restructuring of the office.
Mr. Salazar on Friday said he would name Bob Abbey, the director of the department's Bureau of Land Management, as interim director of the scandal-ridden agency responsible for oversight of offshore drilling.
Mr. Abbey, a longtime state and federal lands public lands official will run the agency as it is being dismantled over the next several months. Mr. Salazar announced last week that he intends to break the agency into three parts to handle leasing and oil extraction; safety and environmental oversight; and revenue collection. Currently all those functions are combined, leading to numerous conflicts of interests, with the same group of officials responsible for collecting fees from oil drilling on public lands and offshore while also policing their operations.Mr. Obama ordered a suspension on Thursday of virtually all current and new offshore oil drilling activity pending a comprehensive safety review, acknowledging that oversight until now had been seriously deficient.
Mr. Obama's trip Friday to inspect the efforts in Louisiana to stop the leak and clean up after it, will be his second trip to the region since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20. He will also visit with people affected by the spreading slick that has washed ashore over scores of miles of beaches and wetlands.
Even as Mr. Obama acknowledged that his efforts to improve regulation of offshore drilling had fallen short, he said oil and gas from beneath the Gulf, now about 30 percent of total domestic production, would be a part of the nation's energy supply for years to come.
"It has to be part of an overall energy strategy," Mr. Obama said. "I mean, we're still years off and some technological breakthroughs away from being able to operate on purely a clean-energy grid. During that time, we're going to be using oil. And to the extent that we're using oil, it makes sense for us to develop our oil and natural gas resources here in the United States and not simply rely on imports."
In the top kill maneuver, a 30,000-horsepower engine aboard a ship injected heavy drill liquids through two narrow flow lines into the stack of pipes and other equipment above the well to push the escaping oil and gas back down below the sea floor.
As hour after hour passed after the top kill began early Wednesday afternoon, technicians along with millions of television and Internet viewers watched live video images showing that the dark oil escaping into the gulf waters was giving way to a mud-colored plume.
That seemed to be an indication that the heavy liquids known as "drilling mud" were filling the chambers of the blowout preventer, replacing the escaping oil.
Thursday morning, federal officials expressed optimism that all was going well. "The top kill procedure is going as planned, and it is moving along as everyone had hoped," Admiral Allen told CNN.
And Robert Dudley, BP's managing director, said on the "Today" program on NBC that the top kill "was moving the way we want it to."
It was not until late Thursday afternoon that BP acknowledged that the operation was not succeeding and that pumping had halted at 11 p.m. Wednesday.
After the resumption, Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, struggled to offer guidance on whether the latest effort was likely to succeed.
"It's quite a roller coaster," Mr. Suttles said. "It's difficult to be optimistic or pessimistic. We have not stopped the flow."
Engineers had feared the top kill was risky because the high-pressure mud could have punctured another gaping hole in the pipes, or dislodged debris clogging the blowout preventer and pipes and intensified the flow.
The engineers also said that the problem they encountered was not entirely unexpected, and that they believed that they would ultimately succeed.
Mr. Obama's action halted planned exploratory wells in the Arctic due to be drilled this summer and planned lease sales off the coast of Virginia and in the Gulf of Mexico. It also halts work on 33 exploratory wells now being drilled in the gulf.
The impact of the new moratorium on offshore drilling remains uncertain. Mr. Obama ordered a halt to new leasing and drilling permits shortly after the spill, but Minerals Management Service officials continued to issue permits for modifications to existing wells and to grant waivers from environmental assessments for other wells.
Shell Oil had been hoping to begin an exploratory drilling project this summer in the Arctic Ocean, which the new restrictions would delay. Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska and a staunch supporter of drilling in the Arctic, said he was frustrated because the decision "will cause more delays and higher costs for domestic oil and gas production to meet the nation's energy needs."
"The Gulf of Mexico tragedy has highlighted the need for much stronger oversight and accountability of oil companies working offshore," Mr. Begich said in a statement. "But Shell has updated its plans at the administration's request and made significant investments to address the concerns raised by the gulf spill."
Environmental advocates, however, expressed relief.
"We need to know what happened in the gulf to cause the disaster, so that a similar catastrophe doesn't befall our Arctic waters," said William H. Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society.
Admiral Allen on Thursday approved portions of Louisiana's $350 million plan to use walls of sand in an effort to protect vulnerable sections of coastline.
The approved portion involves a two-mile sand berm to be built off Scofield Island in Plaquemines Parish - one of six projects that the Corps of Engineers has approved out of 24 proposed by Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.
"What Admiral Allen told us today is that if the first one is effective, then they will consider moving on to the next one," Mr. Jindal, a Republican, said at an afternoon news conference in Fourchon, La.
Investigators also continued their efforts to understand what caused the explosion of the rig, which killed 11 workers.
At a hearing in New Orleans, the highest ranking official on the Deepwater Horizon testified that he had a disagreement with BP officials on the rig before the explosion.
Jimmy Harrell, a manager who was in charge of the rig, owned by Transocean, said he had expressed concern that BP did not plan to conduct a pressure test before sealing the well closed.
It was unclear from Mr. Harrell's testimony whether the disagreement took place on the day of the explosion or the previous day.
The investigative hearings have grown increasingly combative. Three scheduled witnesses have changed their plans to testify, according to the Coast Guard. Robert Kaluza, a BP official on the rig on the day of the explosion, declined to testify on Thursday by invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.
Another top ranking BP official, Donald Vidrine, and James Mansfield, Transocean's assistant marine engineer on the Deepwater Horizon, both told the Coast Guard that they had medical conditions.
John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington; Jackie Calmes from Port Fourchon, La.; Robbie Brown from Kenner, La.; Campbell Robertson from Venice, La.; Maria Newman from New York; and John Collins Rudolf from New York.
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6) [Are you worried no one is paying attention to the war?...bw]
Senate Approves Nearly $60 Billion for Wars
By CARL HULSE
May 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/politics/28cong.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The Senate on Thursday approved a nearly $60 billion measure to pay for continuing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as House Democrats struggled to round up votes for a major package of business tax breaks and safety-net programs for the long-term unemployed.
Senators delivered a bipartisan 67-to-28 vote for the war financing bill after rejecting a series of Republican proposals on border protection as well as a plan by Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to require President Obama to produce a timetable for withdrawing from Afghanistan.
With lawmakers eager to begin a Memorial Day recess, House Democratic leaders ran into stiff resistance from rank-and-file members uneasy about supporting the approximately $143 billion tax and unemployment measure. More than $80 billion of it would be deficit spending - a hot-button issue in the midterm Congressional campaigns and an increasingly frequent line of Republican attack.
"Democrats are still committed to their out-of-control spending spree," Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said Thursday.
Trying to win over moderate and conservative Democrats by reducing the legislation's impact on the deficit, Democratic leaders said they intended to break up the measure and jettison some provisions like health insurance subsidies for the unemployed. Votes were expected Friday.
Even if the House passes the legislation, no final action will occur for at least a week since Senate leaders said Thursday night that they would be unable to consider the measure before the Memorial Day break. As a result, tens of thousands of Americans could face an interruption in their unemployment benefits as of next week. The House bill would extend jobless pay through November for those who have exhausted their initial benefits. Senate officials said they would try to restore the jobless pay when Congress reconvenes on June 7.
Besides the aid to the unemployed, the House measure included about $32 billion in tax breaks, including a popular business credit for research and development.
The Senate spending measure provides $33.5 billion for the Pentagon and fully pays for the additional 30,000 troops in the administration's buildup in Afghanistan. It also sets aside $13 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs to treat veterans disabled by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. It shifts $5 billion to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to prevent it from running out of disaster relief. The bill would also give Haiti more than $1 billion for earthquake relief and recovery.
The effort by Mr. Feingold, an opponent of the war in Afghanistan, was defeated on a vote of 80 to 18. He noted that his proposal was nonbinding and decried the lack of discussion about the nation's role in Afghanistan even as Congress was providing new financing for the almost nine-year-old conflict.
"I'm disappointed we are about to pass a bill providing tens of billions of dollars to keep this war going with so little public debate about whether this approach even makes sense," Mr. Feingold said. "I hope my colleagues will agree that the American people deserve an answer to the question: How much longer?"
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called Mr. Feingold's plan ill advised and noted that Mr. Obama had already said he would begin withdrawing forces in July 2011.
"It is already a deep-seated fear in Afghanistan that the United States will abandon the region," Mr. Levin said. He said it would be a mistake to exacerbate those fears "while our forces are still deploying to Afghanistan and while the Taliban is doing everything it can to convince the Afghan people that U.S. forces are unable to protect them."
The debate over the timeline put some Democrats in the position of opposing a proposal that they had supported during the Bush administration's management of the war. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said the current situation was different since Mr. Obama had already outlined a withdrawal plan.
"I have always believed that our commitment in Afghanistan should not be open-ended, which is why I continue to support the president's plan," Mr. Reid said.
During the debate, the Senate also rejected Republican proposals that would have gone beyond the new White House plan to send 1,200 members of the National Guard to increase security along the border with Mexico in the Southwest.
The House is just beginning its consideration of a much more costly war financing measure that includes a series of domestic initiatives not considered by the Senate. As a result a final version of the legislation is not likely to be sent to the president's desk until later this summer.
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7) Workers on doomed rig: Corners cut to save money
By BEN EVANS and MIKE KUNZELMAN (AP) -
May 27, 2010 -- 21 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h1LUMz2sj2uHiXQi0THdy71DzzmQD9FVG6203
WASHINGTON - Two workers injured when an oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico told Congress on Thursday that the companies in charge of the doomed drilling operation cut corners and neglected maintenance in a race toward higher profits.
Oil has been spewing since the Deepwater Horizon blew up off the coast of Louisiana April 20, killing 11 workers. More than 100 others escaped.
"They gambled with our lives," laborer Stephen Stone told the House Judiciary Committee. He said the accident was "set in motion years ago by these companies needlessly rushing to make money faster, while cutting corners to save money."
The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd. and operated by oil giant BP PLC.
But the Transocean employee in charge of drilling said at a separate hearing near New Orleans that he never felt pressure to accelerate the pace at the expense of safety.
"Not at all," Jimmy Harrell, the rig's offshore installation manager, told a panel of Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service officials.
MMS official Jason Mathews, one of the panelists who questioned Harrell, noted that the project was several weeks behind schedule, a delay that had cost more than $20 million at a daily rate of $525,000.
"I'm sure at times people want to get it done and meet timelines, but (we) never jeopardize safety," Harrell responded.
Harrell also denied reports he engaged in a "heated debate" with a BP official on the day of the accident over a decision to displace drilling fluid with seawater in the rig's riser pipe. Seawater would have provided less weight to counteract the surging pressure from the ocean depths.
"There's a big difference between an argument and a disagreement," Harrell said. "Everything was sorted out, and the proper tests were being performed."
Harrell's assurances were at odds with testimony in Washington from Stone and Doug Brown, the rig's chief mechanic.
Brown, an Army veteran who suffered a broken leg and other injuries, told lawmakers the crew was often weeks or months behind on preventative maintenance because Transocean had cut the engine-room staff in half from the initial number or six workers in 2002.
"Three people were left to do six people's jobs," he said. Workers complained but didn't get anywhere, he said. "They just kept telling us they would see what they could do," said Brown, who says he witnessed a dispute among managers on the day of the explosion.
Stone said the Deepwater operation showed signs of problems leading up to the accident as the well continued leaking mud that he and others were pumping into it. The operation plowed ahead even though workers on four occasions had to stop pumping mud and instead used a heavy sealant to try to stop the leaks - either because drilling too quickly caused cracks or because the underground formation was unstable, he said.
Keith Jones, whose 28-year-old son, rig engineer Gordon Jones, was killed in the accident, urged the lawmakers to rewrite the law's governing liability limits for such events. Jones, a Louisiana attorney, said current laws making the companies responsible only for economic damages, such as loss of income, are "offensive."
"No amount of money will ever compensate us for Gordon's loss. But reckless acts by employees of corporations performed to try to make the most money the fastest will never be deterred by the payment of mere compensatory damages," Jones said. "You must make certain they are exposed to pain in the only place they can feel it - their bank accounts."
Edward "Ned" Kohnke, a lawyer representing Transocean at the hearing outside New Orleans, expressed frustration that the panel has been grilling Transocean employees but isn't able to question at least one top BP worker who was aboard the rig.
Robert Kaluza, BP's well site leader on the Deepwater Horizon, was scheduled to testify but has exercised his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself.
Kohnke also said BP has balked at sharing critical documents with Transocean, including well pressure data.
"What was going on down in the hole? They know that. We're not seeing what they know," Kohnke said. "I don't know that it's a stall tactic. I don't know what it is. All I know is that we want this information."
Kunzelman reported from Kenner, La.
Copyright (c) 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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8) An Unnatural Disaster
By BOB HERBERT
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/opinion/29herbert.html
"Where I was wrong," said President Obama at his press conference on Thursday, "was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios."
With all due respect to the president, who is a very smart man, how is it possible for anyone with any reasonable awareness of the nonstop carnage that has accompanied the entire history of giant corporations to believe that the oil companies, which are among the most rapacious players on the planet, somehow "had their act together" with regard to worst-case scenarios.
These are not Little Lord Fauntleroys who can be trusted to abide by some fanciful honor system. These are greedy merchant armies drilling blindly at depths a mile and more beneath the seas while at the same time doing all they can to stifle the government oversight that is necessary to protect human lives and preserve the integrity of the environment.
President Obama knows that. He knows - or should know - that the biggest, most powerful companies do not have the best interests of the American people in mind when they are closing in on the kinds of profits that ancient kingdoms could only envy. BP's profits are counted in the billions annually. They are like stacks and stacks of gold glittering beneath a brilliant sun. You don't want to know what people will do for that kind of money.
There is nothing new to us about this. Haven't we just seen how the giant financial firms almost destroyed the American economy? Wasn't it just a few weeks before this hideous Deepwater Horizon disaster that a devastating mine explosion in West Virginia - at a mine run by a company with its own hideous safety record - killed 29 coal miners and ripped the heart out of yet another hard-working local community?
The idea of relying on the assurances of these corporate predators that they are looking out for the safety of their workers and the health of surrounding communities and the environment is beyond absurd. Even after the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon site, BP officials were telling us (as their noses grew longer and longer) that about only 1,000 barrels of oil a day were escaping into the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly a month into the disaster, BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, was publicly offering the comforting assessment that the environmental damage resulting from the spill would likely be "very, very modest."
They were somewhat wide of the mark (as reputable scientists were telling us day after day after day). We now know, of course, that this is the worst spill in U.S. history, that instead of 1,000 barrels a day, something in the range of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day have likely been spewing into the gulf. And the environmental impact can fairly be described as catastrophic.
The oil companies and other giant corporations have a stranglehold on American policies and behavior, and are choking off the prospects of a viable social and economic future for working people and their families.
President Obama spoke critically a couple of weeks ago about the "cozy relationship" between the oil companies and the federal government. It's not just a cozy relationship. It's an unholy alliance. And that alliance includes not just the oil companies but the entire spectrum of giant corporations that have used vast wealth to turn democratically elected officials into handmaidens, thus undermining not just the day-to-day interests of the people but the very essence of democracy itself.
Forget BP for a moment. When is the United States going to get its act together? Will we learn anything from this disaster or will we simply express our collective dismay, ignore the inevitable commission reports (no one pays attention to study commissions), and bury our heads back in the oily sand?
President Obama said on Thursday that his administration was "moving quickly on steps to ensure that a catastrophe like this never happens again." Well, he can't ensure anything of the kind. And, in fact, his corporate-friendly policy of opening up new regions for offshore drilling (that policy is only temporarily halted) will all but guarantee future disastrous spills.
The U.S. will never get its act together until we develop the courage and the will to crack down hard on these giant corporations. They need to be tamed, closely monitored and regulated, and constrained in ways that no longer allow them to trample the best interests of the American people.
Mr. Hayward of BP was on television on Friday referring to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent fouling of the Gulf of Mexico as a "natural disaster." He was wrong, as usual. Like the unholy alliance of government and big business, this tragedy set in motion by Mr. Hayward's corporation is a grotesquely harmful and wholly unnatural disaster.
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9) Latest Attempt by BP to Plug Oil Leak in Gulf of Mexico Fails
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and LESLIE KAUFMAN
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30spill.html?hp
HOUSTON - BP engineers failed again to plug the gushing oil well on Saturday, a technician working on the project said, representing yet another setback in a series of unsuccessful procedures the company has tried a mile under the sea to stem the flow spreading into the Gulf of Mexico.
BP made a third attempt at what is termed the "junk shot" Friday night, a procedure that involves pumping odds and ends like plastic cubes, knotted rope, and golf balls into the blowout preventer, the five-story safety device atop the well. The maneuver is complementary to the heavily scrutinized effort known as a "top kill,"which began four days ago and involves pumping heavy mud into the well to counteract the push of the escaping oil. If the well is sealed, the company plans to then fill it with cement.
The technician working on the project said Saturday pumping has again been halted and a review of the data so far is underway after engineers failed again to restrict or plug the well.
"Right now, I would not be optimistic," the technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly about the effort. But he added, that if another attempt at the junk shot were to succeed, "that would turn things around."
BP said Saturday it would not comment on the technician's assertions. Officials have said they will continue the process into Sunday before they declare it a success or failure.
In previous days, BP officials have been more optimistic than not about the effort working. Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, told CNN on Friday morning that he believes there is a 60 to 70 percent chance this effort to plug the well will succeed And Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said Friday that the attempt to plug the gushing oil well is going basically according to plan even though there have been stops and starts to the actual pumping. "We're going to stay with this as long as we need to," he said. "We're not going to rush."
The top kill remains the company's best option for stopping the massive leak that is polluting gulf water's at an estimated 12,000 to 19,000 gallons a day. If it fails, the company has said it will try and build a containment dome again. A first attempt with a containment dome failed earlier this month. Otherwise, it may take until August to drill a relief well, the option experts say is most reliably going to stop the current catastrophe. President Obama, who visited the Gulf Coast on Friday, spoke broadly about the government's response to the environmental disaster, saying that "not every judgment we make will be right the first time out."
He also added, seemingly capturing the mood of engineers working to plug the well: "There are going to be a lot of judgment calls here. There are not going to be silver bullets or perfect answers."
The technician said that engineers had come up with a variety of theories about why efforts have failed so far, and they were trying different sizes of objects. He said the process required trial and error - and sifting through various theories among engineers in the operation's control room - about the best way to clog the "internal geometry" of the damaged equipment.
BP said pumping operations resumed around 3:45 p.m. Friday.
The technician said Friday that despite all the injections, at various pressure levels, engineers had been able to keep less than 10 percent of the injection fluids inside the stack of pipes above the well. He said that was barely an improvement on the results Wednesday, when the operation began and was suspended after about 10 hours.
"I won't say progress was zero, but I don't know if we can round up enough mud to make it work," said another technician on the project. "Everyone is disappointed at this time."
The technician also said that there were disagreements among engineers about why efforts had been unsuccessful so far, but that those disagreements were based on a lack of a clear understanding of what was happening inside the pipes on the sea floor.
Meanwhile, anticipating that the top kill may not succeed, BP began preparations to try to place a second containment vessel over the leak. Mr. Suttles said BP was also preparing to replace the damaged blowout preventer.
In Grand Isle, La., President Obama promised to triple the federal personnel along the most threatened stretches of the coast.
"We're in this together," he said, gesturing to the three governors, two Louisiana senators, a congressman and other officials he had just met with for more than two hours.
Even if the leak is stopped, "we face a long-term recovery and restoration effort," Mr. Obama added. "America has never experienced an event like this before," he said.
Such sentiment plainly was aimed at answering "the anger and frustration" that Mr. Obama acknowledged many residents and political leaders here are feeling, and at blunting charges that his administration had abandoned them as the Bush administration was accused of doing after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"I ultimately take responsibility for solving this crisis. I'm the president, and the buck stops with me," Mr. Obama said.
For the president, who has been on the defensive about his and his administration's role in trying to stop the spill and prevent oil from reaching the coasts, Friday's trip was his second since the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20.
Clifford Krauss reported from Houston and Leslie Kaufman from New Orleans. Liz Robbins contributed reporting from New York and Jackie Calmes from Grand Isle, La.
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10) Operators of Drones Are Faulted in Afghan Deaths
By DEXTER FILKINS
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/asia/30drone.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - The American military on Saturday released a scathing report on the deaths of 23 Afghan civilians, saying that "inaccurate and unprofessional" reporting by a team of Predator drone operators helped lead to an airstrike this year on a group of innocent men, women and children.
The report said that four American officers, including a brigade and battalion commander, had been reprimanded, and that two junior officers had also been disciplined. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who apologized to President Hamid Karzai after the attack, announced a series of training measures intended to reduce the chances of similar events.
The episode, in which three vehicles were attacked and destroyed in February, illustrated the extraordinary sensitivity to the inadvertent killing of noncombatants by NATO forces. Since taking command here last June, General McChrystal has made the protection of Afghan civilians a priority, and he has sharply restricted the use of airstrikes.
The overwhelming majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan are caused by insurgents, but the growing intensity of the fighting, and the big push by American and NATO forces, has sent civilian casualties to their highest levels since 2001.
General McChrystal's concern is that NATO forces, in their ninth year of operations in Afghanistan, are rapidly wearing out their welcome. Opinion polls here appear to reflect that.
"When we make a mistake, we must be forthright," General McChrystal said in a statement. "And we must do everything in our power to correct that mistake."
The civilian deaths highlighted the hazards in relying on remotely piloted aircraft to track suspected insurgents. In this case, as in many others where drones are employed by the military, the people steering and spotting the targets sat at a console in Creech Air Force Base, Nev.
The attack occurred on the morning of Feb. 21, near the village of Shahidi Hassas in Oruzgan Province, a Taliban-dominated area in southern Afghanistan. An American Special Operations team was tracking a group of insurgents when a pickup and two sport utility vehicles moving through the area began heading in their direction.
The Predator operator reported seeing only military-age males in the truck, the report said. The ground commander concurred, the report said, and the Special Operations team asked for an airstrike. An OH-58D Kiowa helicopter fired Hellfire missiles and rockets, destroying the vehicles and killing 23 civilians. Twelve others were wounded.
The report, signed by Maj. Gen. Timothy P. McHale, found that the Predator operators in Nevada, as well as the ground commander in the area, made several grave errors that led to the airstrikes. The "tragic loss of life," General McHale found, was compounded by the failure of the ground commander and others to report in a timely manner that they might have killed civilians.
"The strike occurred because the ground force commander lacked a clear understanding of who was in the vehicles, the location, direction of travel, and the likely course of action of the vehicles," General McHale wrote.
That fatal lack of understanding, General McHale wrote, stemmed from "poorly functioning command posts" in the area that failed to provide the evidence that there were civilians in the trucks. In addition, General McHale blamed the "inaccurate and unprofessional reporting of the Predator crew operating out of Creech A.F.B., Nevada, which deprived the ground force commander of vital information."
Because of that, General McHale said, the officer on the ground believed that the vehicles, then seven miles away, contained insurgents who were trying to reinforce the fighters he and his men were tracking.
Predator drones and similar aircraft carry powerful cameras that beam real-time images to their operators, and some are armed with missiles, as well. The C.I.A. operates its own drone operation, mostly focused on Pakistan and separate from the military's.
In this case, the military Predator operators in Nevada tracked the convoy for three and a half hours but failed to notice any of the women who were riding along, the report said. The report said that two children were spotted near the vehicles, but the drone operators reported that the convoy contained only military-age men.
"Information that the convoy was anything other than an attacking force was ignored or downplayed by the Predator crew," General McHale wrote.
Immediately after the initial attack, the Kiowa helicopter's crew spotted brightly colored clothing at the scene, and, suspecting that civilians might have been in the trucks, stopped firing.
After the attack, the Special Operations team turned over the bodies to local Afghans. Even so, General McHale said, officers on the ground failed to report the possibility of civilian casualties in a timely manner, despite clear evidence suggesting that something like that might have happened.
The report, which had previously been classified, contains several words, phrases and sections that are blacked out.
On receiving the results of the investigation, General McChrystal recommended a battery of additional training exercises for military personnel coming to Afghanistan, and additional training for those already here.
In addition to reprimanding the four officers and admonishing the other two, General McChrystal asked Air Force commanders to open an investigation into the Predator operators.
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11) Rubble of a Broken City Strains Haitians' Patience
By DAMIEN CAVE
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/americas/30haiti.html?hp
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - With graffiti and protests, from sweltering tents to air-conditioned offices, Haitians are desperately trying to get a message to their government and the world: enough with the status quo.
The simple phrase "Aba Préval" (Down with Préval, a reference to Haiti's president, René Préval) has become shorthand for a long list of frustrations, and an epithet expressing a broader fear - that Haitians will be stuck in limbo indefinitely, and that the opportunity to reinvent Haiti is being lost.
While few have given up entirely on the dream that a more efficient, more just Haiti might rise from the rubble, increasingly, hope is giving way to stalemate and bitterness. "Is this really it?" Haitians ask. They complain that the politically connected are benefiting most from reconstruction work that has barely begun. They shake their heads at crime's coming back, unproductive politicians and aid groups that are struggling with tarpaulin metropolises that look more permanent every day.
"We're going to be in this position forever," said Patrick Moussignac, the owner of Radio Caraïbes, a popular station broadcasting from a tent downtown. "We could be living on the streets for 10 or 20 years."
Government officials have repeatedly called for patience. And among American and United Nations officials, there is a sense that Mr. Préval and his deputies have become more engaged, putting in long days at an annex behind the damaged presidential palace.
United Nations officials now calmly predict that elections will take place by the end of the year, but no clear alternative to Mr. Préval has emerged.
But in the meantime, until the next government takes office? "We are in a period of perilous stagnation," said Robert Fatton Jr., a historian at the University of Virginia who was born in Haiti but is now an American citizen.
Parliament is now essentially disbanded; power lies with Mr. Préval, his cabinet and a reconstruction commission led by the Haitian prime minister and former President Bill Clinton.
Haitians are not especially pleased. Freshly painted graffiti on main thoroughfares now declare "Aba Okipasyon" (Down With the Occupation) and call for the ouster of NGOs, or nongovernmental organizations.
Mostly, Haitians say they just want someone in charge, telling them what to expect. "The people need a response," said Michèle Pierre-Louis, the prime minister under Mr. Préval until last year. Because the president has not told families in tents or business owners what they might receive to rebuild, she said, "they do not know where he is leading them."
Missed opportunities are beginning to mount. Immediately after the earthquake, Ms. Pierre-Louis said, Haiti's central bank should have guaranteed loans or loosened its collateral requirements to help small businesses trying to reopen.
Before Parliament closed, she added, lawmakers could have made it easier for members of the Haitian diaspora to invest - perhaps by easing rules requiring that joint ventures be 51 percent Haitian-owned.
That might have opened the country to more people like Alain Armand, 36, a Haitian-American lawyer from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who is now trying to open several businesses here in Port-au-Prince, the capital, including a bed and breakfast.
Trying is the operative word, he said: "It costs $3,000, and it takes at least three months to get incorporated. There is no organized structure in which we, outsiders to NGO-land, can operate."
Even within "NGO-land," disappointment is settling in. Complaints about the government dragging its feet over decision-making are common. Reconstruction so far has mostly amounted to an emergency response in the form of plastic. About 564,000 tarpaulins had been distributed as of early May, enough to cover an estimated 1.7 million people; or laid out lengthwise, to run from New York City to past Albuquerque.
The tarpaulins are an enormous help, as the drenching afternoon rains begin, but they are they are not safe or strong homes. "In the beginning, we felt like it was fine for us," said Gaela Rifort, 30, outside her tent in Pétionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. "But now, they are not enough."
The urgent demand for more can also be seen in the perfectly formed piles of bricks that suddenly appear each day, like giant termite mounds, in the middle of major streets. Initially, rubble in the roads came from the earthquake; now it is a sign of property owners clearing their land.
Garnier Daudin, 69, a taxi driver who owns an apartment building tipped on its side in Carrefour-Feuille, a neighborhood in the capital, said he had no choice but to move it to the street. "I have renters," he said. "It's been five months, and the government hasn't told me anything."
Looking toward a nearby intersection, he added, "When we drop it there on the main street, the government will have to come get it."
Or so he hopes. In many areas, piles that were once on the street have been pushed closer to the curb, and left there. One large mound on Route de Delmas has been walked over so many times in the past few months that bricks have been flattened into a dusty gray path - which runs by shoe sellers like Manoucheka Walker, 22, who said "the government left the pile with us" because "the government doesn't care."
Just behind her, on a rusty blue fence, a large "Aba Préval" had been painted in the bright red of the Haitian flag.
Reconstruction workers seem to be just as exasperated. The United Nations estimates that the quake destroyed 105,000 homes, and damaged 208,000 others, mostly in Port-au-Prince. That is a lot of rubble for the roads.
Indeed, when this reporter followed one of the new mango-colored dump trucks assigned to reconstruction, it rerouted around several of them, delaying its arrival at a canal where it collected trash pulled from the ravine to prevent flooding.
Haitian professionals like Frank St.-Juste, 48, an engineer who owns a construction company, had hoped for more. He said he thought the earthquake would lead to a more open, pragmatic government with stricter bidding procedures, urban planning and international standards.
Instead, he said he was being paid to clear damaged homes by a friend who has a contract with a nongovernmental organization that he declined to name. "It's not the right way to do it," he said.
At the time, he stood beside a backhoe that he owns, on a hilltop beside Fort National, which is one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the quake. He said his company was the only one assigned to the area. It was nearly dark and he was still working, but his temporarily broken-down backhoe and four trucks were hardly adequate for the densely packed neighborhood with hundreds of pulverized homes.
Asked how he chose which property to clear first, he said, "We have to start somewhere." Later, like so many others, his mood darkened.
"There is no sense of priorities or sequencing," he said. "There is no master plan."
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12) No Terror Evidence Against Some Detainees
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/politics/29gitmo.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - The 48 Guantánamo Bay detainees whom the Obama administration has decided to keep holding without trial include several for whom there is no evidence of involvement in any specific terrorist plot, according to a report disclosed Friday.
The report was a 32-page summary of the findings of a task force whose members were drawn from national security agencies across the executive branch. The group worked throughout 2009 to evaluate each of the 240 detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, when the Obama administration took office and to decide their fates.
The task force's general findings have been known since its report was completed in January. But the report itself was not made public. It was obtained Friday by The Washington Post, which posted the report on its Web site.
Of the 240 detainees, it recommended transferring 126 home or to a third country, prosecuting 36 for crimes, and holding 48 without trial under the laws of war because they are believed to be members of an enemy force. Thirty were Yemenis who have been deemed safe to release as individuals but will continue to be held until security conditions in Yemen stabilize.
About 180 detainees remain at the base today. Of that group, the 48 whom the administration has designated for continued indefinite detention without trial have attracted the greatest controversy, in part because many Democrats sharply criticized that policy when the Bush administration created it after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The report said most such detainees fell into at least one of four categories: they had had a significant organizational role in Al Qaeda or the Taliban; "advanced training or experience" in matters like explosives; they had "expressly stated or otherwise exhibited an intent to reengage in extremist activity upon release;" or they had a "history of engaging in extremist activities or particularly strong ties (either directly or through family members) to extremist organizations."
The report also cited two primary reasons why the 48 detainees could not be prosecuted. First, it said, the vast majority were captured in combat zones when the focus was warfare, not court cases. While the intelligence against them was deemed credible, it said, evidence was not collected or preserved about them in a form that would be deemed admissible in court or that could prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
"One common problem is that for many of the detainees, there are no witnesses who are available to testify in any proceeding against them," it said.
Legal limitations also posed a problem for prosecutions, the report said. For example, the task force found no evidence that some detainees had "participated in a specific terrorist plot" or that they had acted to support Al Qaeda after October 2001, when laws criminalizing the general provision of material support to a terrorist group were extended to apply to foreigners overseas. Furthermore, it noted, the statute of limitations for providing material support to terrorists expires after eight years.
The report's disclosure comes as the Senate Armed Services Committee said it had voted to bar the construction of a military detention facility in Thomson, Ill., in a further blow to the Obama administration's fading hopes to shutter the Guantánamo prison.
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13) Communists Could Gain in Czech Vote
By DAN BILEFSKY
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/world/europe/29czech.html?ref=world
PRAGUE - A popular online video here called "Convince Granny" urges young Czechs to withhold visits to their grandparents unless the old folks agree not to vote for leftist parties like the Communists in Saturday's elections.
Modeled on the American comic Sarah Silverman's video "The Great Schlep," which in 2008 appealed to young Jewish voters to persuade their grandparents to support Barack Obama in the swing state of Florida, the Czech video is a testament to the Communist Party's enduring influence here.
The creators of "Convince Granny" say they conceived the video, which has had more than 600,000 hits since it was posted on YouTube about a month ago, as a necessary weapon against the ascent of the unreconstructed Communist Party, which recent polls indicate could win up to 15 percent of the vote.
In addition to the jokes about Grandma's selective memory, the video implores young viewers not to forget the insidious transgressions of the former Communist government, from the exile of the country's leading intellectuals and artists to the execution of its political enemies.
In an election that is unlikely to yield a majority for either the leftist Social Democrats or the rightist Civic Democrats, analysts say the Communist Party could come closer to real power than at any other time since the Velvet Revolution here overthrew Communism in 1989.
"We hate the Communists," said Marek Prchal, 35, an advertising executive who helped create the video. "The Communists should have been banned a long time ago."
Analysts say the Communist Party is benefiting from a regionwide disappointment over the failure of liberal parties to live up to the promises of 1989.
"The theme across the region is the politics of disillusionment," said Anna Matuskova, a political consultant here. "In the Czech Republic, there is a new generation of young people with iPhones who don't remember Communism and will vote for them as a protest vote."
The Communist Party in this country remains the only one surviving in the former Eastern Bloc and, to its many critics, is a dangerous anachronism. The Communists still extol Lenin and Marx, and advocate the redistribution of wealth and the country's disengagement from NATO, making the party a potential spoiler for good relations with the rest of Europe and the United States.
Eager to keep the Communists out of power, the Social Democrats and Civic Democrats may come together in a grand coalition that could lead to gridlock, political experts here say. But it is also possible that a minority Social Democratic government could come to power dependent on the Communist Party's tacit support.
Several new political parties could also prove to be decisive in these elections: the recently created TOP 09, a fiscally conservative party led by Karel Schwarzenberg, a pipe-smoking prince and former foreign minister; and Public Matters, which has instituted patrols in Prague removing drug addicts and homeless people from the street.
The Communists' secret weapon is Katerina Konecna, the youngest member of the Czech Parliament, who at age 28 says she feels as at home wearing designer black stiletto heels as she does reading Das Kapital. The daughter of Communist Party members, Ms. Konecna says that the current crisis of capitalism has proved a boon to the Communist Party among the young, who were drawn by its promises of free education and guaranteed jobs.
"People would rather queue up for bananas, than today, when they have to stand in the unemployment line," she said.
Yet the limits of the contemporary Communists' appeal were all too apparent at a rally held Thursday in front of one of the capital's largest shopping malls. Jana Kocianova, 18, a would-be Czech Britney Spears, gyrated and belted out Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" in Czech, as a group of 80-something men swayed to the beat, tapping their canes on the pavement.
Speaking between sets, Ms. Kocianova commended the Communists' social egalitarianism, even as she acknowledged that singing for them was problematic for her. "It's not cool to be young and to support the Communist Party," she lamented.
But she quickly added, "I wasn't alive during Communism, so I don't really remember anything."
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14) Documents Show Earlier Worries About Safety of Rig
By IAN URBINA
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30rig.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - Internal documents from BP show that there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon far earlier than those the company described to Congress this week.
The problems involved the well casing and the blowout preventer, which are considered key pieces in the chain of events that led to the disaster on that rig.
The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of "well control." And as far back as 11 months ago, the company was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.
On June 22, 2009, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal well casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.
"This would certainly be a worst case scenario," warned Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP in an internal report. "However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur."
The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission from BP colleagues because the casing violated the company's own safety policies and design standards. The internal reports do not explain why the company allowed for an exception to its guidelines. BP documents released earlier this week to The Times revealed that company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options.
Though his report indicates the company was aware of certain risks and that it made the exception, Mr. Hafle, testifying before a panel on Friday in Louisiana about the cause of the rig disaster, rejected the notion that the company had taken risks.
"Nobody believed there was going to be a safety issue," Mr. Hafle told a six-member panel of Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service officials.
"All the risks had been addressed, all the concerns had been addressed, and we had a model that suggested if executed properly we would have a successful job," he said.
Mr. Hafle, asked for comment by a reporter after his testimony Friday about the internal report, declined to answer questions.
BP's concerns about the casing did not go away after Mr. Hafle's 2009 report.
In April of this year, BP engineers concluded that the casing was "unlikely to be a successful cement job," according to a document, referring to how the casing would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well.
The document also says that the plan for casing the well is "unable to fulfill M.M.S. regulations," referring to the Minerals Management Service.
A second version of the same document says, "It is possible to obtain a successful cement job," and "It is possible to fulfill M.M.S. regulations."
Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman, said the second document was produced after further testing had been done.
On Tuesday Congress released a memorandum with preliminary findings from BP's internal investigation which indicated that there were warning signs immediately before the explosion on April 20, including equipment readings suggesting that gas was bubbling into the well, a potential sign of an impending blowout.
A parade of witnesses at hearings last week told about bad decisions and cut corners in the days and hours before the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last month, but BP's internal documents provide a clearer picture of when company and federal officials saw problems emerging.
In addition to focusing on the casing, investigators are also focusing on the blow-out preventer, a fail-safe device that was supposed to slice through a drill pipe in a last-ditch effort to close off the well when the disaster struck. The blow-out preventer did not work, though the reason it failed remains unclear, which is one of the reasons oil has continued to spill into the gulf.
Federal drilling records and well reports obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and BP's internal documents, including more than 50,000 pages of company e-mail messages, inspection reports, engineering studies and other company records obtained by The Times from Congressional investigators, shed new light on the extent and timing of problems with the blow-out preventer and the casing long before the explosion.
Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Department of Interior, declined to answer questions about the casings, the blowout preventer and regulators' oversight of the rig because those matters are part of a continuing investigation.
The documents show that in March, after problems on the rig that included drilling mud falling into the formation, sudden gas releases known as "kicks," and a pipe falling into the well, BP officials informed federal regulators that they were struggling with a loss of "well control."
On at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventer was leaking fluid, which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to operate properly.
"The most important thing at a time like this is to stop everything and get the operation under control," said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas at Austin, offering his assessment about the documents.
He added that he was surprised regulators and company officials did not commence a review of whether drilling should continue after the well was brought under control.
After informing regulators of their struggles, company officials asked for permission to delay their federally mandated test of the blow-out preventer, which is supposed to occur every two weeks, until the problems were resolved, BP documents say.
At first, the minerals agency declined.
"Sorry, we cannot grant a departure on the B.O.P. test further than when you get the well under control," wrote Frank Patton, a minerals agency official. But BP officials pressed harder, citing "major concerns" about doing the test the next day. And by 10:58 pm, David Trocquet, another M.M.S. official, acquiesced.
"After further consideration," Mr. Trocquet wrote, "an extension is approved to delay the BOP test until the lower cement plug is set."
When the blow-out preventer was eventually tested again, it was tested at a lower pressure, 6,500 pounds per square inch, than the 10,000-pounds-per-square-inch tests it had used on the device before the delay. It tested at this lower pressure until the explosion.
A review of Minerals Management Services data of all BOP tests done in deepwater in the Gulf of Mexico for five years shows B.O.P. tests rarely dropped so sharply, and, in general, either continued at the same threshold or were done at increasing levels.
The manufacturer of the blowout preventer, Cameron, declined to say what the appropriate testing pressure was for the device.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Gowers of BP wrote that until their investigation was complete it was premature to answer questions about the casings or the blowout preventer.
Even though the documents asking regulators about testing the blowout preventer are from BP, Mr. Gowers said that any questions regarding the device should be directed to Transocean, which owns the rig and, he said, was responsible for maintenance and testing of the device. Transocean officials declined to comment.
Bob Sherrill, an expert on blowout preventers and the owner of Blackwater Subsea, an engineering consulting firm, said the conditions on the rig in February and March and the language used by the operator referring to a loss of well control "sounds like they were facing a blowout scenario."
Mr. Sherrill said federal regulators made the right call in delaying the blowout test, because doing a test before the well is stable risks gas kicks. But once the well was stable, he added, it would have made sense for regulators to investigate the problems further.
In April, the month the rig exploded, workers encountered obstructions in the well. Most of the problems were conveyed to federal regulators, according to federal records. Many of the incidents required that BP get a permit for a new tactic for dealing with the problem.
One of the final indications of such problems was an April 15 request for a permit to revise its plan to deal with a blockage, according to federal documents obtained from Congress by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group.
In the documents, company officials apologized to federal regulators for not having mentioned the type of casing they were using earlier, adding that they had "inadvertently" failed to include it. In the permit request, they did not disclose BP's own internal concerns about the design of the casing.
Less than 10 minutes after the request was submitted, federal regulators approved the permit.
Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Kenner, La., and Andy Lehren from New York.
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15) Island's Trout Rodeo Is Victim of Spill, and That's Not the Least of It
By AMY HARMON
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/29scene.html?ref=us
GRAND ISLE, La. - The directors of the Grand Isle Speckled Trout Rodeo had sold 500 tickets to the Memorial Day weekend event when the oil washed up on the beach here last week. They had paid for the band and the food, the visors and the door prizes.
So it may be understandable that a visit from the president of the United States, when they would ordinarily have been out on the water fishing for the Big One, seemed like small consolation for the closing of the beaches, the sudden decline in their real estate values - and the cancellation of their 14th annual rodeo.
"Do you think the fish are out there or what?" Jim Tatum, 52, a civil engineer from Baton Rouge, asked Friday, starting wistfully out at the gulf from the deck of the Bridge Side Marina at 8 a.m.
"The moon is full, the tide is running and I'm sick," replied Bob Sevin, 72, who serves as the president of the rodeo, which raises money for scholarships and civic improvements on this seven-mile stretch of barrier island.
All was not necessarily lost. So far, no one had taken Mr. Sevin up on the offer to refund the price of their tickets. And to recoup expenses, he had decided to go ahead with the party planned for Saturday night, without the fish. If they were lucky, they would sell a few more tickets. President Obama, perhaps?
A retired chemical engineer who was born and raised here, Mr. Sevin has walked the beach every morning since the crude oil from BP's leaking offshore well first appeared. A crew of about 30 hired by BP worked diligently to clean it up, he said, but more oil washed up each morning faster than they could whisk it away.
As it happened, the day before Mr. Obama was set to visit, a crew of perhaps 300 reinforcements arrived to speed the effort. For that, at least, Mr. Sevin was happy to see the motorcade whiz by the summer home he shares with his wife, Joyce, at midmorning.
His worst fear, he said, is that BP is not moving fast enough to clean up its mess in the marshes where the young fish hide from predators, leading to the loss of a whole generation.
Mr. Sevin's daughter-in-law, Deborah Sevin, has a different fear.
"My worst fear is that this won't be cleaned up in his lifetime," said Ms. Sevin, who had planned a trip from Texas with her husband and children so that they could participate in the rodeo. "If there's no fish, there's no Grand Isle, and if this is a ghost town, then what is the rest of his life?"
To pass the time, Ms. Sevin's husband, Brian Sevin, shot baskets with his son and son-in-law. With no one lining up for bait, Rene Vegas, the owner of the marina, had time to explain the finer details of a trout rodeo to the members of the news media pursuing the president.
"You don't ride the fish," he admonished. "You just go out there and catch the biggest."
All but three of the 65 slips in the marina were empty, and two of those were Mr. Vegas's. Despite the 90-degree weather, it felt like winter on the island, instead of the start of summer, when the population of 900 swells to nearly 5,000.
Still, by 1 p.m., when the rodeo contestants - last year there were more than 1,000 - would have been heading back to shore, Mr. Vegas at the marina called Mr. Sevin with good news: He needed more rodeo visors.
Tickets to the fishless fish rodeo party were selling.
An hour later in their kitchen, the Sevins watched the president on CNN when he spoke from the Coast Guard station at the end of the island. Anyone, he pledged, could pick up the phone and reach him if they felt there was a bottleneck in the cleanup, or if they needed to deliver a suggestion.
Mr. Sevin picked up his telephone.
"O.K.," he said to the television. "What's your number? We need help."
The Grand Isle rule, he often reminded visitors, is that you must leave your troubles at the foot of the milelong bridge that connects the island to the mainland.
But there is another rule. You have to pick them back up when you leave. Soon after, Mr. Obama's motorcade passed again, this time heading back over that bridge.
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16) Scientists Build Case for Undersea Plumes
By JUSTIN GILLIS
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/science/earth/29plume.html?ref=us
IN THE GULF OF MEXICO - The ocean caught fire.
As it blazed, a dense column of black smoke rose toward the sky. Oily water, the color of strong tea, slopped up the sides of boats. The breeze carried an acrid smell, like gasoline fumes.
Aboard the research vessel F.G. Walton Smith, anxiety was growing.
Five scientists and six students had come to study the oil leak and its effect on the sea. They brought flasks and gloves, refrigerators and freezers, tiny tools and huge cylinders of gas.
They were not looking for oil on the surface, where it was so thick in places that it was being burned off, but for plumes of fine oil droplets far beneath the waves.
The stakes were high. Two weeks earlier, when some of these scientists had disclosed evidence of undersea oil plumes, their claim had been greeted skeptically by the government. The scientists' credibility was on the line.
If the plumes did exist, much of the wisdom about combating oil spills might need to be reconsidered. The plumes would suggest that any future oil leak in deep water could be expected to do much of its damage in the sea, not on shore.
But where were the plumes?
After a slow start, American science is finally beginning to tackle the oil disaster in earnest. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency charged with monitoring the health of the oceans, is sending multiple boats into the gulf. The National Science Foundation, another arm of the government, is issuing rapid grants to finance academic teams, including the one aboard the Walton Smith. BP, the oil company responsible for the spill, has pledged $500 million for research. And scientists like those aboard the Walton Smith are getting emergency financing from the government for their studies.
This stepped-up effort is starting to bear fruit. This week, another research vessel confirmed the existence of a huge undersea plume. And on Thursday, a team of scientists appointed by the Obama administration offered a more credible estimate of the flow rate at the broken well, putting it at two to four times the previous calculation.
That higher estimate only added to the sense among academic scientists that much of the oil must be hovering in the deep sea, instead of surfacing. The goal of the researchers aboard the Walton Smith was to nail the existence of such deep-sea plumes beyond any doubt.
They sailed early this week from Gulfport, Miss., and went back to the spot where they had originally discovered a large plume. It was no longer there.
All one afternoon, the Walton Smith hopscotched across the gulf. The top scientists on board, Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia and Vernon Asper of the University of Southern Mississippi, peered intently at instrument readouts, hoping for a signal.
Down to the bottom of the sea went a huge apparatus designed to test the water and grab samples of it. The results kept coming up clean.
Then, late in the afternoon of the second day at sea, the entire scientific crew suddenly leapt to attention.
The boat had arrived at a new sampling site, west of the oil leak, and the instruments were traveling once again to the bottom. In a clean ocean, they would be expected to produce fairly straight lines on a graph.
Instead, wild squiggles were showing up. The display looked like one of those seismograph readings taken in the throes of an earthquake. At three different depths, the instruments picked up plumes of material drifting through the deep ocean.
Dr. Asper stood back, arms crossed, watching the squiggles appear. "To see something like this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing," he said. "It's really remarkable."
Soon, a giant winch on the rear of the boat hauled special bottles back from the deep, carrying water samples. The younger researchers rushed to the rear deck.
Working quickly in a daisy chain, circling the bottles, they filled small vials and other containers, then hustled back to their makeshift laboratory on the main deck of the Walton Smith.
Over the next few hours, they filtered some of the water. They shook some samples. They stirred some. They pickled some. They bubbled gases through the water. They refrigerated some vials. They froze some more.
Then they got ready to do it all again.
Within a day, word would come that a separate university vessel, the Weatherbird II, had discovered a giant plume stretching in the other direction from the broken well, toward Mobile Bay. That one threatens some of the finest fishing territory in the gulf.
It will take weeks of laboratory work to confirm with certainty that the plumes are made of oil droplets, or more likely, some complex mixture of oil and natural gas. If that idea holds up, the existence of these undersea plumes may well turn out to be the major scientific discovery of the great oil spill of 2010.
It could take years for scientists to assess the deep-sea damage fully, if that is even possible. Among other problems, gulf researchers have long been hobbled by a critical shortage of vessels equipped for oceanography.
Only a handful of such ships ply the Gulf of Mexico, and the best-outfitted boats tend to work for the oil industry. Exploring and protecting the gulf has simply not been as high a national priority as drilling it for oil.
Still uncertain are the fates of deep coral reefs that live in the gulf, as well as the condition of a unique cluster of bottom-dwelling organisms only nine miles from the damaged well. The ultimate impact the spill will have on commercially important fish like tuna and snapper is anyone's guess.
As the week wore on, the Joye-Asper team found more and more evidence for the existence of the plumes.
The water samples they pulled up suggested that any oil in the plumes was highly diffuse - not even visible to the naked eye. But when several gallons of the water were forced through a fine filter, tiny black oil droplets appeared.
Even in that diffuse form, the plumes were having a drastic impact on the chemistry of the ocean, with dissolved oxygen levels plunging as each plume drifted through the sea.
That, Dr. Joye said, was most likely because bacteria were ramping up to consume the oil and gas - a good thing, over all, but it was creating a heavy demand for oxygen and other nutrients. Aside from the toxic effect of the oil, the declining oxygen was a potential threat to sea life.
Slowly, as the Walton Smith and other boats worked the gulf this past week, the weird physics of a deep-water well blowout came into better focus. The idea that oil rises quickly to the surface of an ocean may be one of the casualties of this disaster.
"Nothing really makes sense out here," Dr. Joye said as her ship plowed through orange slicks of oil. "I don't know that you can necessarily trust your intuition."
From the bridge of the ship, Capt. Shawn Lake made an announcement. Everyone rushed to the outside decks.
Once again, in the middle distance, the ocean was burning.
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17) BP Prepares to Take New Tack on Leak After 'Top Kill' Fails
[Except this isn't a "New Tack" but a repeat of the first try to cap the leak, which, didn't work. Clearly no one in charge knows what to do. ...bw]
By LESLIE KAUFMAN and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30spill.html?hp
NEW ORLEANS - In another serious setback in the effort to stem the flow of oil gushing from a well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers said Saturday that the "top kill" technique had failed and, after consultation with government officials, they had decided to move on to another strategy.
Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, said at a news conference that the engineers would try once again to solve the problem with a containment cap and that it could take four to seven days for the device to be in place.
"After three full days of attempting top kill, we now believe it is time to move on to the next of our options," Mr. Suttles said.
The abandonment of the top kill technique, the most ambitious effort yet to plug the well, was the latest in a series of failures. First, BP failed in efforts to repair a blowout preventer with submarine robots. Then its initial efforts to cap the well with a containment dome failed when it became clogged with a frothy mix of frigid water and gas. Efforts to use a hose to gather escaping oil have managed to catch only a fraction of the spill.
BP has started work on two relief wells, but officials have said that they will not be completed until August - further contributing to what is already the worst oil spill in United States history.
The latest failure will undoubtedly put more pressure - both politically and from the public - on the Obama administration to take some sort of action, perhaps taking control of the repair effort completely from BP.
President Obama, who is spending the Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, issued a statement Saturday evening on the decision to abandon the top kill.
"While we initially received optimistic reports about the procedure, it is now clear that it has not worked," Mr. Obama said.
He said that Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard had "directed BP to launch a new procedure whereby the riser pipe will be cut and a containment structure fitted over the leak."
"This approach is not without risk and has never been attempted before at this depth," Mr. Obama said. "That is why it was not activated until other methods had been exhausted."
The president continued, "We will continue to pursue any and all responsible means of stopping this leak until the completion of the two relief wells currently being drilled."
For BP, the besieged British company, the failure could mean billions of dollars of additional liabilities, as the spill potentially worsens in the weeks and months ahead.
"I am disappointed that this operation did not work," Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, said in a statement. "We remain committed to doing everything we can to make this situation right."
A technician who has been working on the project to stem the oil leak said Saturday that neither the top kill nor the "junk shot" came close to succeeding because the pressure of oil and gas escaping from the well was simply too powerful to overcome. He added that engineers never had a complete enough understanding of the inner workings of drill pipe casing or blowout preventer mechanisms to make the efforts work.
"Simply too much of what we pumped in was escaping," said the technician, who spoke on condition of remaining unnamed because he is not authorized to speak publicly for the company.
"The engineers are disappointed, and management is upset," said the technician. "Nothing is good, nothing is good."
The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 people. Since then, it has dumped an estimated 18 million to 40 million gallons into the gulf.
After the announcement Saturday, the disappointment was palpable along the Louisiana shoreline, where the oil has increasingly washed up in sticky, rusty globs.
Michel Claudet, the president of Terrebonne Parish, 60 miles southwest of New Orleans, said that when he heard the news, he felt "sorrow, despair and like this ordeal will never finish. If you go around the parish, it is all our folks talk about."
Mr. Claudet said that he was trying to remain hopeful, but that it was increasingly difficult. "As every item fails," he said, "I am less and less optimistic."
In New Orleans, Margaret Shockey, 67, a retired teacher, said, "One thing's for sure, this is the last city that deserved this."
Last week, BP described the top kill - which was an effort to pump heavy mud into the well to counter the flow of oil - as its best hope for stopping the spill. During the course of the operation, BP officials had often expressed optimism that it would work.
But on Saturday, Mr. Suttles said the operation had pumped 30,000 barrels of mud into the well and yet failed to stop it from flowing.
Admiral Landry called the failure "very disappointing."
The new strategy is to smoothly cut the riser from which the oil is leaking and then place a cap over it. Pipes attached to the cap would take the oil to a storage boat on the surface.
Though a first effort at a containment dome failed, Mr. Suttles said BP had learned from that experience and now believed that this cap, which is custom fitted to the riser, would be more successful.
He said it would capture most but not all of the oil leaking from the well, which is believed to be gushing 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.
He would not give odds for the operation's success, but said he had "a lot of confidence" that it would work.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Suttles said preparations for such an alternative plan were already under way, just in case. "That equipment is on stage and ready to go," he said. Equipment is being deployed on land and on the seabed, he said.
If the new cap is not successful, the company has said it will look into attaching another blowout preventer to the one that already exists at the wellhead and has not functioned.
But officials emphasized that the real solution to the spill was the relief well. They said one of the relief wells was currently proceeding ahead of schedule, but was still at least a month away.
"It's like a bad movie that just won't end," said Billy Altman, 45, a mechanic in New Orleans. "You know, you think they finally killed the bad guy, and then he comes back to life. It's crazy."
Clifford Krauss reported from Houston, and Leslie Kaufman from New Orleans. Robbie Brown contributed from New Orleans, and Sarah Wheaton from New York.
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18) Our Fix-It Faith and the Oil Spill
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/weekinreview/30rosenthal.html?hp
"IF we've learned anything so far about the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, it is that it contains surprises. And that means an operator needs depth - depth in terms of resources and expertise - to create the capability to respond to the unexpected. "
These prophetic words came from a 2005 presentation by David Eyton, who was then vice president for BP's deepwater developments in the Gulf of Mexico. Reprinted that year in a journal of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, the speech acknowledged that oil companies "did somewhat underestimate the full nature of the challenges we were taking on in the deep waters of the gulf."
Still, Mr. Eyton expressed buoyant optimism that BP's risk management expertise, as well as its new technologies, would play a "critical role" in allowing the company to triumph over nature's daunting obstacles.
As the world now knows, it did not turn out that way.
As BP struggled last week to stanch the flow of spewing oil at the Deepwater Horizon rig, it has become clear that the pressure to dig deeper and faster from what Mr. Eyton then called a "frontier province" of oil exploration has in some ways outpaced the knowledge about how to do that safely. (And there is still the question of whether BP used all the tools and safety mechanisms available.)
Americans have long had an unswerving belief that technology will save us - it is the cavalry coming over the hill, just as we are about to lose the battle. And yet, as Americans watched scientists struggle to plug the undersea well over the past month, it became apparent that our great belief in technology was perhaps misplaced.
"Americans have a lot of faith that over the long run technology will solve everything, a sense that somehow we're going to find a way to fix it," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. He said Pew polling in 1999 - before the September 2001 terror attacks - found that 64 percent of Americans pessimistically believed that a terrorist attack on the United States probably or definitely would happen. But they were naïvely optimistic about the fruits of technology: 81 percent said there would be a cure for cancer, 76 percent said we would put men on Mars.
Our experience of technology has been largely wondrous and positive: The green revolution ameliorated the problem of world hunger (for a time at least) with better seeds and fertilizers to increase harvests. When childhood diseases were ravaging the world, vaccines came along and (nearly) eliminated them. There are medicines for the human immunodeficiency virus and AIDS. There is the iPad.
Many experts in the field of undersea oil exploration believe that technology can also resolve the risks of operating tens of thousands of feet under the seabed, despite BP's current problems.
"We're pushing the envelope, but I personally believe that the technology, in terms of equipment and processes, will be able to keep up with what we're doing - though this experience may slow things down," said Stefan Mrozewski, a senior staff associate at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, whose research involves projects like drilling boreholes in deep water to study chemicals under the seafloor.
He previously worked as an engineer in the oil industry on deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
He said the blowout on the rig and the apparent failure of the blowout preventer was "beyond the realm of expectation," most likely a combination of unimaginable human and mechanical error. Noting that rigorous planning precedes deepwater drilling, yet "the risk is still not zero," he said the accident last month would encourage designers and engineers to improve the technology and procedures, so that a disaster like the Deepwater Horizon explosion could not happen again.
Still, as he watched a live feed of drilling mud being pumped into the leaking well on the seabed, he acknowledged that the science of repair and cleanup seemed lacking. "My impression is that we were unprepared for this," he said. "There were not a lot of good technologies and techniques ready."
William Jackson, deputy director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland, said abstract devotion was misguided: "At this time in history we have great faith in having the technological ability to solve problems, and that faith has proved incorrect in this place."
He said that even good new ideas needed funding and testing to make sure they worked. He pointed out that pledges by the coal industry and some countries to curb future carbon dioxide emissions often assume the successful evolution of technologies that are as yet unproven or have never been tried on a large scale.
"There is this belief that an engineering solution can be found as you move along," he said, noting that carbon capture and storage - which involves pumping CO2 emissions underground rather than releasing them to the air - may be "there" as a science, but the costs prevent it from being a practical answer.
By all accounts, the oil industry is infused with this "can do" attitude: Oil running low? "Oil wells will run dry, but advances in technologies can put off the inevitable," said a 2006 article in a newsletter of the American Oil and Gas Historical Society. In his 2005 talk, Mr. Eyton, now BP's group head of research and technology, was not so cavalier, discussing the need for vigilant risk management.
"We find ourselves designing floating systems for 10,000 feet of water depth before the lessons of working in 6,000 feet have been fully identified," he said.
He sang the benefits of technology while acknowledging its danger, expressing hope that fail-safe features and computer modeling could decrease the risk: "We know the premium associated with hardware reliability is high, but at this stage, operators still have a limited failure database for forecasting the required levels of intervention in ever-deeper and more remote environments."
Technology, he added, "becomes both an enabler, while at the same time being itself a source of risk."
In the beginning of May, a few weeks after the rig explosion, the Pew Research Center asked 994 Americans about the oil spill: 55 percent saw it as a major environmental disaster, and 37 percent as a serious problem. But at that time, at least, 51 percent also believed that efforts to prevent the spill from spreading would be successful. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil later, federal officials last week released a new estimate of the spill - 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day - establishing it as the largest in American history. As Richard Feynman, the physicist, once observed, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Sometimes ingenuity may not help us.
Indeed, think of all the planes grounded for nearly a week in northern Europe last month, as a volcano poured ash in the atmosphere. There was no technological fix, and many passengers couldn't believe it. Said Mr. Kohut, of Pew Research, "The reaction was: 'Fix this. Fix this. This is outrageous.' "
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19) Fishermen Fear Disruption of Their Way of Life
By AMY HARMON
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30fishermen.html?hp
CHALMETTE, La. - Like thousands of other fishermen along Louisiana's befouled coast, Buddy Greco's son Aaron was itching to take his family's boat out to the marshes as yet untainted by the oil gushing from a BP well offshore.
But the elder Mr. Greco insisted that Aaron, 19, accompany him instead last week to three days of BP training classes required for new jobs cleaning up the oil slicks.
"If we don't get in now, we'll be locked out," Mr. Greco, who began fishing some 30 years ago with his own father, told his son. "And this could be the only job we have for a long time."
Five weeks after the deadly explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, many fishermen here are grappling with the realization that their way of life might be disrupted for a long time to come.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration extended the closed fishing area in the Gulf of Mexico last week, and about 25 percent of federal waters, nearly 60,000 square miles, is now off limits to commercial fishermen.
The notion that the spill would not be cleaned up in a few months, or possibly years, has hit "like the death of a family member," said Connie Townsend, the owner of a fishing boat charter service in Terrebonne Parish. And in interviews across southern Louisiana last week, the responses included anger, denial and naked grief.
"A lot of times I want to go stand in a corner and cry - not so much for me, because I've done it a long time, but for him," said Mr. Greco, 43, nodding at Aaron as they stood in line at Kentucky Fried Chicken during a lunch break from their training classes on Thursday.
Biologists said that the fishermen's fears were not unwarranted, especially as the oil advances into the marshes that served as nurseries for many species of marine life. If the populations are significantly diminished, the fisheries will remain closed. While it is still too early to determine the toll, in Alaska, experts note, fishermen are still seeing the effects of the Exxon Valdez spill 20 years later.
"We're hoping we can find a way to clean it up faster, but it's very realistic that they will be feeling the impact of this for multiple years," said Julie Anderson, a fishery specialist at Louisiana State University.
Mr. Greco's longtime fishing partner, Stacy Geraci, 55, said his dread of the changes that might be coming woke him up at night.
"You know how your life is," Mr. Geraci said. "Well what if someone came in and said, 'You're not going to be like this anymore.' How do you make that adjustment?"
Some are turning the question on BP, the multibillion-dollar corporation whose deepwater drilling accident has upended their lives.
"Are you going to take care of all the oysters I lost?" demanded Anthony Zupanovic, 30, of Belle Chasse, La., at a town-hall-style meeting with BP and Coast Guard officials in Plaquemines Parish on Wednesday evening. Because oysters cannot crawl or swim away, they are thought to be particularly vulnerable.
Yet the affirmative answer from Bob Fryar, a BP senior vice president, did little to assuage Mr. Zupanovic, whose oyster beds were among many near the Mississippi River's western bank, where black oil recently appeared.
"It makes you want to throw up when you see it," Mr. Zupanovic said. "Because you know it's coming and you can't do anything about it."
Just how BP will assess claims for lost income is the source of much anxiety along the Louisiana coast. Will the company also account for the upfront investment in oysters, where beds are seeded nearly two years before they are harvested, in a system more like farming than fishing? What if this shrimping season was shaping up to be the best since the early 1990s, as many fishermen contend?
"That's a shrimping moon," said Albone Rogers, a fourth-generation shrimper, gesturing at the nearly full orb glowing orange behind the clouds after the meeting. "You could make $8,000 in six or seven hours on a night like tonight."
BP's recruitment of local fishermen and their boats for the cleanup efforts has spawned its own set of concerns. Some worry that they will not pass the company's physical exam. Others complain that the company has failed to include their boats in the Orwellian-named "Vessels of Opportunity" program, even after they registered.
But even adequate financial compensation might not mute the loss that many fishermen say centers on the nature of what they did as much as on the money they made doing it.
"You can give me all the money you want to give me, but you can't give me that life back, because it's a good life," Mr. Rogers said. "It's a very good life."
Fishing offers a peace rarely found on shore and the pleasure of deciding each morning whether to go out. And then there is the addictive quality of hoisting huge nets full of creatures from the watery depths.
"When you pull up that drudge and it's full of oysters, you get that rush," Mr. Greco said during lunch last Thursday.
"You never lose the urge to want to shrimp once you're a shrimper," agreed Henry Martin, 66, who joined the Grecos for lunch. "When the season comes, you want to go."
On Thursday, some fishermen were forging ahead. Luke Cibilich was preparing to drop a pile of rocks that he had bought before the spill into his oyster bed so that baby oysters might attach to them and grow. "They're not going to do me any good sitting here," he said.
Others were not sure what to do.
"They would make a lot of oysters," ventured Judy Kieff, 57, referring to a similar pile she had bought.
In a region where residents tick off the disasters they have survived (Betsy, Katrina, Rita, Gustav) the way people might tick off their favorite rock bands, this one offers no obvious way to rebuild.
Michael Roberts, a fisherman from Lafitte, La., said he had to hide tears from his grandson on a recent boat ride in Barataria Bay when he saw oil staining his fishing grounds. "None of this will be the same, for decades to come," Mr. Roberts wrote in an account he distributed by e-mail.
Mr. Roberts and his wife, Tracy Kuhns, also took video of the oil to distribute on the Internet, because they were frustrated with the lack of information from government agencies. Like many residents of the coastal areas, Ms. Kuhns worries that the dispersants being used to break up the oil will do more harm than good.
Her anger is not directed at BP but at what she considers lax oversight that contributed to the spill.
"BP is a corporation, it's going to protect its bottom line," Ms. Kuhns said. "But where are the government agencies who are supposed to protect the health and safety of our citizens?"
On Grand Isle, where tar balls washed ashore on the beach this month, President Obama on Friday promised to redouble the cleanup efforts.
That did not mean much to the Grecos, who having been taught how to safely extinguish chemical gases and why they needed protective clothing might take part later this week.
But meanwhile Aaron has prevailed on his father to go crabbing. While they still can.
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20) Foes and Supporters of New Immigration Law Gather in Arizona
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
May 29, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30immig.html?ref=world
PHOENIX - Two sides of the immigration debate converged here Saturday: a throng of several thousand marching for five miles opposed to Arizona's new immigration law, and several thousand nearly filling a nearby stadium in the evening in support of it.
Organizers said the timing was coincidental, with both sides taking advantage of a holiday weekend to bring out the masses. But the gatherings encapsulated in a single day the passions surrounding the national immigration debate, recharged by the new law, which will expand the state's role in immigration enforcement.
Both demonstrations made a point of waving a large number of American flags and issuing pleas for a national overhaul of immigration law, but they offered a jarring study in how polarized the debate has become here.
The demonstrators against the law were mostly Latino, with young people and families making up a large share. They played drums, whistled and chanted and gave speeches in Spanish and English denouncing the perceived racism behind the law. Many carried posters or wore T-shirts with the message: "Do I look illegal?"
At the rally in favor of the law, which began with the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, any mention of Mexico or supporters of the law brought lusty boos - a video clip of President Felipe Calderón of Mexico especially fired up the crowd, which was mostly white and middle-aged or older. Placards like "Illegals out of the U.S.A." were typical, though speaker after speaker ridiculed the idea that the crowd was racist.
Far more attended the earlier rally opposed to the law, which included a five-mile march to the Capitol in withering heat. It was one of the largest since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law April 23.
Some were citizens, like Armando Diaz, 33, a mechanic born and raised here who believes the law has helped spread anti-Latino fervor in the state.
"This is not what Arizona is about, hate," Mr. Diaz said as he neared the capitol, where people fled for what little shade they could find. "But that is what this law is about."
The later rally, at sundown, was organized by Tea Party groups from St. Louis and Dallas who said they decided to take the lead and support the state against a wave of boycotts protesting the law, some by cities like San Francisco and Seattle.
"We are doing this to crush any boycott against the free market," said Tina Loudon, a Tea Party member from St. Louis who helped organize the rally. "Arizona has a sovereign right to enforce immigration laws on the books."
The law - barring any successful legal challenges - will take effect July 29. It would allow the police to check the immigration status of people they suspect are illegal immigrants when they have been stopped for another reason. It also makes it a state crime, not just a federal one, to not carry immigration papers.
Advocates see it as a tool for law enforcement to weed out illegal immigrants, while five lawsuits filed against it call it an infringement on federal authority and suggest that Latino citizens and legal residents will be swept up for questioning.
On another front, the governor and attorney general are disputing who will defend the state against the legal challenges and possible litigation by the United States Justice Department.
Ms. Brewer, a Republican, said Friday she had removed the state's attorney general, a Democrat and vocal opponent of the law, from defending it, accusing him of colluding with the Justice Department as it nears a decision on whether to challenge the law in court.
But the matter remained in dispute on Saturday, as the attorney general, Terry Goddard, a Democrat and potential challenger in her re-election bid, said in an e-mail message that he was "definitely defending the state" in legal challenges to the law.
Ms. Brewer said she took action after Mr. Goddard met Friday with Justice Department lawyers, who then met with her legal advisers.
Justice Department officials said they routinely meet with a state's attorney general and governor when considering legal action against their state.
"We continue to have concerns that the law drives a wedge between law enforcement and the communities they serve, and are examining it to see what options are available to the federal government," said Tracy Schmaler, a department spokeswoman.
The United States attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., has said he worries that the law may intrude on federal authority and lead to racial profiling.
Protest rallies were also held Saturday at the state capitols in Texas and Oregon, as well as in San Francisco, according to The Associated Press.
At the Arizona demonstrations, opinions could not be further apart.
Mireya Chavez Cerna, 43, an illegal immigrant who works as a maid, marched with her 9-year-old son, who was born in the United States and wore a shirt reading "Made in America."
She denounced the climate of fear in the state and said immigrants like her could not abide the wait of a decade or more for a legal visa while their families grow hungry.
"Do you think we would risk losing our lives crossing the border if we didn't have a need to come here for a better life?" she said. Supporters of the law "don't know," she added. "They don't understand. They don't live in Mexico. They don't know how it is."
But Ann Hyde, a radiological technologist from Chandler, said she grew frustrated at supporters being tarred as prejudiced or worse.
"We are not racists," she said. "This law is about respecting the laws of the nation and the economic impact of illegal immigration, which is enormous. My state is broke and they cost us with spending on schools, hospitals and other services."
Though violent crime is declining in Arizona, as in most other states, and illegal immigration is down at the border, speakers played up crimes that illegal immigrants have been charged with over the years, including shooting of police officers.
"One is too many," said Mark Spencer, the chairman of a union representing rank-and-file police officers in Phoenix.
Ana Facio Contreras contributed from Phoenix.
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