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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.
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National Days of Action
Seize BP's Assets NOW! Protests in 50+ cities
San Francisco Protest: Tues. June 8, 5pm
90 New Montgomery St.
The Seize BP! Campaign is garnering media attention nationwide! On June 3, CNN featured the Seize BP Week of Action on television. "We know millions of people are deeply concerned about what's going on in the Gulf right now," a Seize BP organizer told CNN. Click here to read the CNN article:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/03/gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=T1
The response to the call to action has been amazing. People across the country are mobilizing to take to the streets over the next seven days and demand: Seize BP! It is now clear that BP is incapable of solving the crisis, and oil will continue to gush until at least August. BP and the government are stalling, but the people of the Gulf coast and the environment can't wait. The time to take action is now!
More than 50 demonstrations that we know of are taking place. Among the cities that are holding protests are Atlanta, GA.; Tampa, FL.; Irving, TX; St. Joseph, Michigan; Front Royal and Virginia Beach, VA; Washington DC, New York Chicago and many more.
In San Francisco, the protest will take place on Tuesday, June 8, 5 pm at the BP offices, 90 New Montgomery St. (between Mission and Market St.). For more information call 415-821-6545. Volunteers are needed to help with the protest and the Seize BP campaign.
Be a part of this movement and help it grow! A partial list of recently announced actions can be found below, and a list that is being frequently updated can be found here:
http://www.pephost.org/site/News2?news_iv_ctrl=-1&page=NewsArticle&id=9593#demos
If you are organizing an activity in your area, or if you know of one that's being organized, be sure to click here and let us know so that we can post it to the website:
http://www.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=7080&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS
Volunteers are working around the clock in cities throughout the country. But we can't do it without funds. Please make your donation today by clicking this link:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=2541&JServSessionIdr004=f9feb3ohv1.app209a
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.answersf.org
answer@answersf.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
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THE INNER TOUR - A touching film about the Palestinian right of return
June 10, 2010, 7:30 P.M.
ANSWER: San Francisco Bay Area
ATA Theater, 992 Valencia St. at 21st St., SF
$6 donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
At time of the film's production in 2000-just months before the second Intifada-Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and were allowed into '48 Palestine on sightseeing tours.
The Inner Tour documents a three-day trip through Galilee to the Lebanon border, Tel Aviv and Jaffa where many of the passengers once lived. We hear conversations about occupation and loss. Several have been in Israeli prisons. Another sees his mother in Lebanon through barbed wire, unable to visit her. One woman tells how her husband was gunned down by Israeli soldiers while walking home. One man locates the site where his village once stood before it was destroyed by occupation forces, and finds his father's grave. 2002, Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles, 98 min.
For more info, call 415-821-6545.
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Please forward widely
Dear Friends of Lynne Stewart,
Forgive this hasty note updating Lynne's situation. I am off to Brazil shortly and must catch a plane soon.
I just spoke with Lynne's husband Ralph Poynter last night and learned the following.
A regularly scheduled follow up test to check on whether Lynne's breast cancel had reappeared revealed that Lynne now had a spot on her liver. Lynne struggled with prison authorities to have a required biopsy and related tests conducted at her regular, that is, non-prison, Roosevelt Hospital. Her requests were denied and she was compelled to have the biopsy done in a notoriously inferior facility where the results could not be determined for a week as compared to the almost immediate lab tests available at Roosevelt.
During Lynne's prison hospital stay she was shackled and handcuffed making rest and sleep virtually impossible. A horrified doctor ordered the shackles removed but immediately following his departure they were fastened on Lynne's feet and hands once again.
She is now back in her New York City prison cell. Her attorneys have filed for a postponement of her scheduled July 15 court appearance where Federal District Court sentencing Judge John Koeltl is to review the original 28-month jail sentence that he imposed last year.
This sentence was appealed by government prosecutors, who sought to order Koelt to impose a 30-year sentence. The U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, was sympathetic to the government's position and essentially stated that Koeltl's 28-month sentence exceeded the bounds of "reasonableness." Koeltl was ordered to reconsider. A relatively recent Supreme Court decision granted federal district court judges wide discretion in determining the length of internment. Koeltl's decision took into consideration many factors that the court system allows in determining Lynne's sentence. These included Lynne's character, her service to the community, her health and financial history and more. He ruled, among other things that Lynne's service to the community was indeed a "credit to her profession and to the nation."
Contrariwise, the government and prison authorities see Lynne as a convicted terrorist. Lynne was the victim of a frame-up trial held in the post-911 context. She was convicted on four counts of "aiding and abetting terrorism" stemming from a single act, Lynne's issuance of a press release on behalf of her client, the "blind" Egyptian Shreik Omar Abdel Rachman. The press release, that the government claimed violated a Special Administrative Order (SAM), was originally ignored as essentially trivial by the Clinton administration and then Attorney General Janet Reno. But the Bush administration's Attorney General John Ashcroft decided to go after Lynne with a sledge hammer.
A monstrous trial saw government attorney's pulling out all the stops to convince an intimidated jury that Lynne was associated in some way with terrorist acts across the globe, not to mention with Osama bin Laden. Both the judge and government were compelled to admit in court that there were no such "associations," but press clippings found in Lynne's office were nevertheless admitted as "hearsay" evidence even though they were given to Lynne by the government under the rules of discovery.
It is likely that Lynne's request for a postponement will be granted, assuming the government holds to the law that a prisoner has the right to partake in her/his own defense. Lynne's illness has certainly prevented her from doing so.
In the meantime, Lynne would like nothing more than to hear from her friends and associates. Down the road her defense team will also be looking for appropriate letters to the judge on Lynne's behalf. More later on the suggested content of these letters.
Please write Lynne to express your love and solidarity:
Lynne Stewart 53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, New York 10007
In Solidarity,
Jeff Mackler, West Coast Coordinator
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
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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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Education 4 the People!
October 7 Day of Action in Defense of Public Education - California
http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/
MORE THAN 100 activists from across California gathered in Los Angeles April 24 to debate next steps for the fight against the devastating cutbacks facing public education.
The main achievements of the conference were to set a date and location for the next statewide mass action-October 7-and for the next anti-cuts conference, which will happen October 16 at San Francisco State University. The other key outcome was the first steps toward the formation of an ad hoc volunteer coordinating committee to plan for the fall conference.
These decisions were a crucial step toward deepening and broadening the movement. For example, the fall conference will be the key venue for uniting activists from all sectors of public education, and especially from those schools and campuses which saw action on March 4, but which have yet to plug into the broader movement.
This will be crucial for extending the scope and increasing the strength of our movement, as well as for helping us strategize and prepare for what is certain to be a tough year ahead. Similarly, the fall mass action will be crucial to re-igniting the movement following the summer months.
http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/
Organizing for the next Statewide Public Education Mobilization Conference at SFSU on OCT 16th
Posted on May 24, 2010 by ooofireballooo
Organizing for the next Statewide Public Education Mobilization Conference
@ San Francisco State University on October 16th
MORE THAN 100 activists from across California gathered in Los Angeles April 24 to debate next steps for the fight against the devastating cutbacks facing public education.
The main achievements of the conference were to set a date and location for the next statewide mass action-October 7-and for the next anti-cuts conference, which will happen October 16 at San Francisco State University. The other key outcome was the first steps toward the formation of an ad hoc volunteer coordinating committee to plan for the fall conference.
These decisions were a crucial step toward deepening and broadening the movement. For example, the fall conference will be the key venue for uniting activists from all sectors of public education, and especially from those schools and campuses which saw action on March 4, but which have yet to plug into the broader movement.
This will be crucial for extending the scope and increasing the strength of our movement, as well as for helping us strategize and prepare for what is certain to be a tough year ahead. Similarly, the fall mass action will be crucial to re-igniting the movement following the summer months.
Proposal: Form a conference organizing listserve immediately!
Please join the google group today.
* Group home page: http://groups.google.com/group/fallconferencesfsu
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Gulf Oil Spill?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAHS5z6QKok
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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POEM ON WHAT ISRAEL DOES NOT ALLOW INTO GAZA - FROM THE IRISH TIMES / CARDOMAN AS A BIOLOGICAL WARFARE WEAPON
[ The poem does not mention that the popular herb cardamom is banned from importation into Gaza. Israel probably fears that cardamom can be used as a biological weapon. Rockets with cardamom filled projectiles landing in Israel could cause Israeli soldiers 'guarding' the border to succumb to pangs of hunger, leave their posts to go get something eat, and leave Israel defenseless. - Howard Keylor]
Richard Tillinghast is an American poet who lives in Co Tipperary. He is the author of eight books of poetry, the latest of which is Selected Poems (Dedalus Press, 2010 ), as well as several works of non-fiction
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No tinned meat is allowed, no tomato paste,
no clothing, no shoes, no notebooks.
These will be stored in our warehouses at Kerem Shalom
until further notice.
Bananas, apples, and persimmons are allowed into Gaza,
peaches and dates, and now macaroni
(after the American Senator's visit).
These are vital for daily sustenance.
But no apricots, no plums, no grapes, no avocados, no jam.
These are luxuries and are not allowed.
Paper for textbooks is not allowed.
The terrorists could use it to print seditious material.
And why do you need textbooks
now that your schools are rubble?
No steel is allowed, no building supplies, no plastic pipe.
These the terrorists could use to launch rockets
against us.
Pumpkins and carrots you may have, but no delicacies,
no cherries, no pomegranates, no watermelon, no onions,
no chocolate.
We have a list of three dozen items that are allowed,
but we are not obliged to disclose its contents.
This is the decision arrived at
by Colonel Levi, Colonel Rosenzweig, and Colonel Segal.
Our motto:
'No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.'
You may fish in the Mediterranean,
but only as far as three km from shore.
Beyond that and we open fire.
It is a great pity the waters are polluted
twenty million gallons of raw sewage dumped into the sea every day
is the figure given.
Our rockets struck the sewage treatments plants,
and at this point spare parts to repair them are not allowed.
As long as Hamas threatens us,
no cement is allowed, no glass, no medical equipment.
We are watching you from our pilotless drones
as you cook your sparse meals over open fires
and bed down
in the ruins of houses destroyed by tank shells.
And if your children can't sleep,
missing the ones who were killed in our incursion,
or cry out in the night, or wet their beds
in your makeshift refugee tents,
or scream, feeling pain in their amputated limbs -
that's the price you pay for harbouring terrorists.
God gave us this land.
A land without a people for a people without a land.
--
Greta Berlin, Co-Founder
+357 99 18 72 75
witnessgaza.com
www.freegaza.org
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freegaza
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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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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) Messing With Miranda To Fight Terrorism: Obama's Playing Politics With Limited Options
By John W. Dean
Created Jun 3 2010 - 11:16am
- from FindLaw [1]
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/
2) New Ship Heads to Gaza, and Israel Vows to Stop It
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:57 a.m. ET
June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/04/world/middleeast/AP-EU-Turkey-Israel.html?hp
3) Another Torrent BP Works to Stem: Its C.E.O.
By JAD MOUAWAD and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
June 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/us/04image.html?hp
4) Florida Beaches Full as Playtime Runs Short
By JOHN LELAND
June 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/us/04pensacola.html?ref=us
5)Kellogg to Restrict Ads to Settle U.S. Inquiry Into Health Claims for Cereal
By SEWELL CHAN
June 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/business/04ftc.html?ref=health
6) Disaster in the Amazon
By BOB HERBERT
June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp
7) Pelicans, Back From Brink of Extinction, Face Oil Threat
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF and LESLIE KAUFMAN
June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05pelican.html?hp
8) Israeli Military Boards Gaza-Bound Aid Ship
By ETHAN BRONNER
June 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/world/middleeast/06flotilla.html?hp
9) Autopsy shows Gaza activists were hit 30 times: report
(Reuters) - Nine Turkish activists killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot a total of 30 times and five died of gunshot wounds to the head, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Friday.
by Adrian Croft
World
June 4, 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6536MF20100604
10) The Next Deepwater Horizon?
Obama halted new offshore drilling, but allowed existing production to continue-including another BP Gulf rig flying numerous red flags.
By Kate Sheppard
Fri Jun. 4, 2010 3:00 AM PDT
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/06/next-deepwater-horizon
11) Colombian Army Attacks Striking BP Workers
By Claire Hall, Espacio Bristol-Colombia
June 4, 2010
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2524-colombian-army-attacks-striking-bp-workers
12) In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig
"Despite noticing cementing problems, BP skipped a quality test of the cement around the pipe. Federal regulators also gave the rig a pass at several critical moments. After the rig encountered several problems, including the gas kicks and the pipe stuck in the well, the regulators did not demand a halt to the operation. Instead, they gave permission for a delay in a safety test of the blowout preventer."
By IAN URBINA
June 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06rig.html?hp
13) Even With a Cleanup, Spilled Oil Stays With Us
"...the cleanup by BP workers will capture only a fraction of the crude belched up by the broken well. Much of the oil will be taken care of by nature; the rest is likely to stay with us for decades.... REMOVAL Armies of workers at the Exxon Valdez disaster - 11,000 at the effort's peak - removed less than half the oil that didn't evaporate or biodegrade."
By BILL MARSH
June 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/weekinreview/06marsh.html
14) Changes in China Could Raise Prices Worldwide
By DAVID BARBOZA
June 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/business/global/08wages.html?hp
15) Cameron Warns Britons of 'Decades' of Austerity
By SARAH LYALL
June 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/world/europe/08britain.html?hp
16) Coast Guard Sees Cleanup of Spill Lasting Until the Fall
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JOHN M. BRODER
June 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/us/07spill.html?hp
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1) Messing With Miranda To Fight Terrorism: Obama's Playing Politics With Limited Options
By John W. Dean
Created Jun 3 2010 - 11:16am
- from FindLaw [1]
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/
This is the second in a two-part series of columns on the Obama Administration's apparent plans to create an exception to the 1966 Supreme Court ruling in Miranda v. Arizona to deal with terrorists. - Ed.
As I noted in my prior column in this series [2], Attorney General Eric Holder (sort of) announced on May 9th that the Obama Administration was considering a request to Congress for changes in the public-safety exception to the requirement that Miranda warnings be given, when it comes to terror suspects. On May 13th Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee [3], which was very interested in his announcement about Miranda, but he had little to add to his prior comments. Nonetheless, something seems to be cooking.
Sam Stein, of the Huffington Post, reported [4] earlier this week that on May 25th South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsay Graham told reporters that he been in talks with the administration "for quite a while now" to find a way to "statutorily codify the public-safety provision." It is not clear if the Senator's talk preceded or followed the Attorney General's comments (or both), but the fact that Graham is involved could be troubling, because he wants to deny anyone suspected of a terror tactic his or her Miranda warning. Indeed, he wants much more. More generally, he does not want suspected terrorists dealt with by our criminal-justice system.
Eliminating Miranda By Making All Terror Suspects "Enemy Combatants"
At a Senate hearing on May 5th, following the arrest of Faisal Shahzad - the prime suspect in the attempt to detonate a car-bomb in Times Square - and before Shahzad had confessed, Senator Graham mounted his soapbox to proclaim that this naturalized American citizen should not be Mirandized. When "a suspect ... represents a military threat to our country even though they're a citizen, [we must] be able to gather intelligence before you [do] anything else," Graham demanded. For Graham, who constantly boasts his credentials as an attorney, suspected terrorists have lesser rights than run-of-the-mill serial killers.
Graham, and other like-minded conservatives, want terrorist suspects treated as "enemy combatants." And Graham lectured Attorney General Holder at length about his position during a hearing [5] late last year. Basically, Graham claims that if an American citizen is suspected of supporting declared enemies of the United States who employ terror tactics, then that citizen should not be entitled to the same rights that our system affords to the worst of criminals. Graham was one of the most active supporters of the Military Commission Act of 2006, which sought to give presidents this option. For Graham, to be an enemy of the United States and at war with the United States is more heinous than any crime and the Obama Administration - by not making terror suspects persons without rights - is downgrading war by criminalizing it. It is a powerful, but deeply flawed argument.
My fellow FindLaw columnist Joanne Mariner, a human rights attorney, explained (here [6] and here [7]) many of the problems that arise when analyzing the Military Commission Act of 2009, a law that Senator Graham seems to overlook, and the fact that it amended (read: cleaned up) the Military Commission Act of 2006. Not to draw too fine a point, but notwithstanding the Senator's call for designating terror suspects as Congressionally-defined "enemy combatants," they are now to be designated, if the president believes necessary, "unprivileged enemy belligerents." As Mariner notes, however, the difference is largely semantic: Unprivileged enemy belligerents, too, do not receive Miranda warnings, and are processed outside the criminal justice system.
Clearly, treating anyone who is suspected of terrorist activity or of providing support for such activity, and designating that person an unprivileged enemy belligerent, passes over any real presumption of innocence, which is the hallmark of our criminal justice system, and a component of the Constitution's promise of due process. As Chairman Leahy pointed out after Senator Graham lectured Attorney General Holder about how he should deal with terror suspects, designating them all "unprivileged enemy belligerents" is out of step with the views of most of the military leadership and the approach of the Bush and Obama Justice Departments, not to mention the conclusions of most Americans who have thought seriously about the prospect of the military policing and prosecuting Americans as terror suspects.
It strikes me - after observing Senator Graham's mode of operation since his days in the House of Representatives - that he is negotiating with the Obama Administration to codify the public-safety exception to the Miranda warning as a first step toward also codifying the stance that terror suspects do not belong in the criminal justice system at all. In short, Graham is not to be trusted, for he is simply trying to move the administration closer to his view of the world. Surely the Obama team knows this, so what are they doing messing with Miranda?
The Obama Administration's Terrorism Politics, Within Limited Options
After Eric Holder shared his thinking about the Miranda public-safety exception when he appeared on "Meet the Press" on May 9th, I have been asking people in Washington who know these things what, in fact, is going on. The short, and repeated answer, has been that this is mostly about politics, but the belief is also that, since there is an acknowledged public-safety exception to the Miranda requirements, it would not only be good politics but good law enforcement to try to codify that exception for the problem of dealing with terrorists.
I am told that the Obama Administration fully understands that it cannot ever please the Republicans, who were unhappy that George Bush pulled back from the efforts of his Vice President to think about waterboarding terror suspects first, and asking questions later. President Bush realized the damage he was doing to the image of America throughout the world - and his father no doubt had a few choice words to say about his concern about the excesses his son's presidency was employing in the name of fighting terrorists.
Obama's administration has, in fact, largely picked up where the Bush Administration left off, which is to abandon Dick Cheney's policies - but not George Bush's. While this approach has provoked squeals of displeasure from the former Vice President, Obama has been praised by the rest of the world. In fact, he has largely made public George Bush's approach, which he has only slightly modified. Obama appears totally uninterested, for the good of the nation, in the sort of world-wrath that Cheney's thinking produces, for Cheney's over-reaction not only hurts us, but was counterproductive to our goal of fighting terrorism. What Lindsey Graham and those who share his view are doing is to continue to embrace the Cheney approach. However, rather than lessening the risk of terrorism, these tactics proved in the past to be remarkably good recruiting tools for terrorists' leaders. The Obama team is not going to go there again.
I understand that the Obama Administration is working on an effort to provide law enforcement officers who are dealing with obvious terror suspects clear guidelines as to the type of questioning they can undertake to determine the threat to Americans, before giving Miranda warnings, without jeopardizing a future criminal prosecution in our criminal justice system - which was, of course, developed long before the current prevalence of terrorism. The thinking is that if there is bipartisan support for such a narrowly-drawn, but potentially important, proposal, then the Supreme Court - which created both the Miranda rule and the current exception - will likely make that proposal the law of the land.
Those who are working on this effort believe that bringing on board the Lindsey- Graham-type thinkers brings them closer to the worldview of President Obama, and further from the thinking of former Vice President Dick Cheney. They also explained that what can be done by Congress is very limited, since only the Supreme Court can resolve the question of the scope of the public-safety exception. But it is important that they do this, because the nation's appellate courts have reached no consensus as to the scope of this exception to Miranda.
I am told that we will see the resolution of this matter soon. Balancing the "rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" against one another has never been easy, nor simple, for each has inherent conflicts with the others. To protect life, history tells us, it may be necessary to sacrifice liberty and happiness. But without liberty and happiness, life itself has less value. During my own life, I have witnessed Hitler's fascism, Stalin's communism, and now Bin Laden's terrorism all threaten our fundamental rights, not to mention our ability to appropriately adjust the tensions between them. I trust the Obama Administration to find that balance.
Links:
[1] http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20100528.html
[2] http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20100514.html
[3] http://judiciary.edgeboss.net/real/judiciary/full/full05132010.smi
[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/26/obama-and-graham-in-talks_n_590129.html
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTmLKUT817Y
[6] http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20091104.html
[7] http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20091130.html
[8] http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-w-dean/29225/messing-with-miranda-to-fight-terrorism-obamas-playing-politics-with-limited-options&title=Messing With Miranda To Fight Terrorism: Obama's Playing Politics With Limited Options
[9] http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-w-dean/29225/messing-with-miranda-to-fight-terrorism-obamas-playing-politics-with-limited-options&title=Messing With Miranda To Fight Terrorism: Obama's Playing Politics With Limited Options
[10] http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-w-dean/29225/messing-with-miranda-to-fight-terrorism-obamas-playing-politics-with-limited-options&title=Messing With Miranda To Fight Terrorism: Obama's Playing Politics With Limited Options
[11] http://www.newsvine.com/_tools/seed&save?u=http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-w-dean/29225/messing-with-miranda-to-fight-terrorism-obamas-playing-politics-with-limited-options&h=Messing With Miranda To Fight Terrorism: Obama's Playing Politics With Limited Options
[12] http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=add&bkmk=http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-w-dean/29225/messing-with-miranda-to-fight-terrorism-obamas-playing-politics-with-limited-options&title=Messing With Miranda To Fight Terrorism: Obama's Playing Politics With Limited Options
[13] http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-w-dean/29225/messing-with-miranda-to-fight-terrorism-obamas-playing-politics-with-limited-options&t=Messing With Miranda To Fight Terrorism: Obama's Playing Politics With Limited Options
[14] http://technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?url=http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-w-dean/29225/messing-with-miranda-to-fight-terrorism-obamas-playing-politics-with-limited-options
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2) New Ship Heads to Gaza, and Israel Vows to Stop It
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:57 a.m. ET
June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/04/world/middleeast/AP-EU-Turkey-Israel.html?hp
ISTANBUL (AP) -- An aid ship trying to break the blockade of Gaza could reach Israel's 20-mile (32-kilometer) exclusion zone by Friday afternoon, an activist said, but Israel's prime minister has vowed the ship will not reach land.
The dueling comments suggest a potential new clash over Israel's three-year-old blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip -- and come only four days after an Israeli commando raid on a larger aid flotilla left nine activists dead.
Greta Berlin, a spokesman for the Free Gaza group, says the 1,200-ton Rachel Corrie is heading directly to Gaza and will not stop in any port on the way. It is trying to deliver hundreds of tons of aid, including wheelchairs, medical supplies and concrete.
Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead McGuire and the former head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, Denis Halliday, are among the 11 passengers on board, she said.
The Irish vessel is named after an American college student crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting house demolitions in Gaza.
Israel will not allow the aid ship to reach Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told senior Cabinet ministers late Thursday. According to a participant in the meeting, he said Israel made several offers to direct the ship to an Israeli port, where the aid supplies would be unloaded, inspected and transferred to Gaza by land, but the offers were rejected.
Netanyahu has hotly rejected calls to lift the blockade on Gaza, insisting that it prevents missile attacks on Israel. The Rachel Corrie's cargo of concrete is also a problem, because Israel considers that to have military uses.
Netanyahu also instructed the military to act with sensitivity in preventing the Rachel Corrie from landing and avoid harming those on board the ship, the participant said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.
Israel has rejected demands for an international panel to probe Monday's deadly commando raid on the aid ships, saying it can conduct a professional, impartial investigation on its own.
Activists say Israel sabotaged the previous aid flotilla, and Israeli defense officials said Friday only that unspecified ''actions'' were taken when the boats were still far from Gaza.
Without explicitly confirming sabotage, the officials say the Israeli actions only delayed the flotilla. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was classified.
In Istanbul, Turkey's deputy prime minister said Friday that economic and defense cooperation with Israel will be reduced amid tensions after the killing of nine Turkish activists by Israeli commandos on an aid ship.
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said all deals with Israel are being evaluated.
''We are serious on this issue. New cooperation will not start and relations with Israel will be reduced,'' he said.
Energy Minister Taner Yildiz has said discussions about extending a Russian natural gas pipeline to Israel and providing fresh drinking water to Israel from the Manavgat river were being shelved.
The pro-Palestinian activists' deaths on the aid ship increased tensions in the Mideast, especially with Turkey, an important ally of Israel. On Thursday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel's actions ''a historic mistake.''
Israel maintains its commandos opened fire Monday as a last resort after they were attacked, and released a video showing soldiers in riot gear descending from a helicopter into a crowd of men with clubs. Three or four activists overpowered each soldier as he landed.
Returning activists admitted fighting with the Israelis but insisted their actions were in self defense because the ships were being boarded in international waters by a military force.
Thousands jammed Istanbul on Thursday to pay tribute to those killed on the ship at a funeral service outside the Fatih mosque, and larger services were expected on Friday.
The youngest of the nine activists killed, Furkan Dogan, was to be buried Friday in his family's hometown in Kayseri in central Turkey.
Dogan, who was born in Troy, New York, moved to Turkey when he was two. The other eight activists were all Turkish nationals.
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Hadjicostis reported from Nicosia. Associated Press writers Mark Lavie and Matti Friedman in Jerusalem and Selcan Hacaoglu in Istanbul also contributed to this report.
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3) Another Torrent BP Works to Stem: Its C.E.O.
By JAD MOUAWAD and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
June 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/us/04image.html?hp
BP, already bedeviled by an out-of-control well spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, now finds itself with one more problem: Tony Hayward, its gaffe-prone chief executive.
Among his memorable lines: The spill is not going to cause big problems because the gulf "is a very big ocean" and "the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest." And this week, he apologized to the families of 11 men who died on the rig for having said, "You know, I'd like my life back."
But rather than receiving a limited public role, Mr. Hayward, a geologist who has led the company for three years, has become even more the public face of the company. On Thursday, BP began showing a new television ad in which Mr. Hayward, speaking directly into a camera, pledges to spare no effort to clean up the spill.
It ends with a heartfelt promise: "We will get it done. We will make this right." (The same day, in an interview published in The Financial Times, he said, "What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool kit.")
Instead of reassuring the public, critics say, Mr. Hayward has turned into a day-after-day reminder of BP's public relations missteps in responding to the crisis, which began six weeks ago and looks likely to continue well into the summer.
Mr. Hayward and the company have repeatedly played down the size of the spill, the company's own role in the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, and the environmental damage that has occurred. At the same time, they have projected a tone of unrelenting optimism despite repeated failures to plug the well.
The chief executive's tendency to utter provocative statements has prompted a surge of criticism from politicians, bloggers and television pundits, who took particular offense at the "I'd like my life back" comment.
But Mr. Hayward, an earnest-looking man with cherubic red cheeks and a soft British accent, remains ever present in BP's response efforts.
One Louisiana congressman, Charlie Melancon, has started a petition campaign calling on BP's board of directors to fire Mr. Hayward, and financial analysts are increasingly predicting that he will get the boot before the crisis is over.
"People want to know someone is in charge, that the right person is there, but someone who says the stuff that Hayward has said doesn't engender confidence," said Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of strategy and leadership at Dartmouth University's Tuck School of Business. "We understand he is overwhelmed, but that also might suggest he's not the right man for the job."
Robert Wine, a BP spokesman, said that Mr. Hayward "has the full support of the board, and he is very much at the heart of the response managing everything we are doing."
Mr. Hayward, 53, ascended to the top job when his predecessor, John Browne, resigned after a personal scandal and a series of major accidents. Mr. Hayward promised to refocus the company culture on safety.
Much is at stake for BP, the top oil and gas producer in the United States and the largest deepwater operator in the Gulf of Mexico. The company has already spent about $1 billion to deal with the accident, and it faces billions of dollars in additional damage claims and government penalties, with the liability growing every day that the leak continues. In addition, the Justice Department, an independent panel and numerous Congressional committees are investigating the company.
Shareholders are worried about the cost to the company, based in London, whose stock has fallen about 35 percent since the explosion.
To be sure, BP is facing an unprecedented technological and engineering challenge, battling formidable odds in trying to plug a damaged oil well in the darkness and pressure found 5,000 feet below the ocean surface. After several efforts to stop the oil flow failed, the company is now seeking to install a temporary dome to capture most of the spilled oil until it can drill two relief wells.
Those relief wells, which would be used to inject cement into the damaged well to permanently kill it, are not expected to be completed before August, and the environmental damage would linger well after that - which means that the company and Mr. Hayward face a public relations crisis that will last for many months.
The company has enlisted the help of the Brunswick Group, a public relations and crisis management firm, to deal with the accident. It has dedicated the home page of its Web site, BP.com, to the crisis and taken out full-page advertisements in major newspapers.
BP has also hired a new head of media relations in the United States, Anne Womack Kolton, who worked at Brunswick and is a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and Energy Department spokeswoman.
In Washington, BP has become a toxic political symbol that is a target on all fronts, even as it is seeking to work with the government get out of its current predicament.
Before the spill, BP had maintained a low profile in Washington relative to other companies, with its lobbying work and political contributions usually trailing other oil-and-gas giants like Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Conoco Phillips. Unlike many other companies with federal interests, BP kept most of its lobbying work in-house, although it had retained several prominent Washington lobbyists, including Ken Duberstein and Tony Podesta, to make its case on issues including tax incentives for gas production and climate control regulations.
From the start, BP promised to be transparent about the spill. But the company has wavered between providing information to the public and strictly limiting it. For example, it resisted for weeks putting up a live video feed of the underwater spill, agreeing to it only after intense pressure from Congress. The company has consistently refused to use widely used scientific techniques to measure the spill, saying it was focused on shutting down the well.
Administration officials and Congressional leaders have accused BP of hiding the true dimensions of the leak for financial reasons. Carol M. Browner, the White House energy and environment adviser, has noted that BP has a "vested financial interest" in minimizing the size of the leak because the fines the company will eventually pay will in part be based on the amount of oil that has escaped.
BP and the government initially estimated the well was leaking 1,000 barrels a day. But since then, government scientists have come up with a new and much larger rate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.
"They have tried to control the message, including controlling facts, because they have a direct financial interest in this," said David Pettit, a senior lawyer with Natural Resources Defense Council. "The government is letting BP clean up their own crime scene. On TV cop shows, they don't do that."
Perhaps trying to tamp down the outcry over his own comments, Mr. Hayward's remarks to reporters on Thursday in Houston were more tame. He promised that the company would clean up every drop of oil and "restore the shoreline to its original state."
The chief executive added: "We will be here for a very long time. We realize this is just the beginning."
Jad Mouawad reported from New York and Clifford Krauss from Houston. Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting from Washington and Stuart Elliott from New York.
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4) Florida Beaches Full as Playtime Runs Short
By JOHN LELAND
June 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/us/04pensacola.html?ref=us
PENSACOLA, Fla. - When Tony and Jodie Delatte watched the gloomy news Wednesday night - sticky blobs of oil landing on the white beaches of Mississippi and Alabama - they knew right away what they had to do.
The next morning they left their home in Gonzalez, Miss., for Pensacola Beach in Florida. By afternoon they were on the beach and in the water, not even waiting for a morning thunderstorm to shed its last drops.
"It might be our last chance to come," Mr. Delatte said.
The oil from the Deepwater Horizon is now on collision course with one of America's money-making icons, Florida tourism, threatening a core business of a state already in the throes of a severe fiscal crisis.
But this week, Pensacola Beach is reveling in what may be its last glory days of summer. Hotel prices were higher than last year and discounts were rare.
The Hilton on the beach sold out in midweek. Julian McQueen, head of Innisfree Hotels, which owns the Hilton and three other beachfront hotels in Pensacola and Gulf Shores, Al., with a total of 1,000 rooms, said his hotels had lost half or more of their advance reservations since the start of the oil spill on April 20. But sudden arrivals had made up much of this loss.
At the Fish House, which serves 10,000 people a week, Shelly Yates, the marketing director, said "the bar business has been good."
"It's hard to say if the crisis in the gulf is contributing to that," she added. "We're all on pins and needles."
Pensacola Beach has not needed cleanup crews to walk the beaches (no tar balls yet). But it is still woefully underprepared, said Buck Lee, executive director of the Santa Rosa Island Authority, which governs the shoreline.
"We should've done everything we needed to have done in two weeks," postspill, he said, including getting sifters to remove oil from sand and absorbent material to soak up oil. "That's the problem with having BP and the federal government running the recovery." He feels they have been unresponsive to local needs.
The Delattes probably would have to cancel their plans to come back in July, they said. But for now? "I did tell him if he found a glob of oil he had to throw it at someone else," Ms. Delatte said.
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5)Kellogg to Restrict Ads to Settle U.S. Inquiry Into Health Claims for Cereal
By SEWELL CHAN
June 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/business/04ftc.html?ref=health
WASHINGTON - Maybe it should have just stuck with Snap, Crackle and Pop.
The Kellogg Company has agreed to advertising restrictions to resolve an investigation into its claims about the health benefits of its Rice Krispies cereal, the Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday.
The agreement expands on a settlement order that Kellogg agreed to last July over similar claims that another cereal, Frosted Mini-Wheats, was "clinically shown to improve kids' attentiveness by nearly 20 percent."
The commission acted against Kellogg as public health researchers and obesity opponents have intensified their challenges to the marketing of sugary foods.
"We expect more from a great American company than making dubious claims - not once, but twice - that its cereals improve children's health," Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the F.T.C., said in a statement.
Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University, said it was unusual for the commission to act in a case involving health claims made for food products, an area traditionally handled by the Food and Drug Administration.
Last summer, Kellogg unveiled product packaging claiming that Rice Krispies "now helps support your child's immunity" and that the cereal "has been improved to include antioxidants and nutrients that your family needs to help them stay healthy."
In the order covering Frosted Mini-Wheats, Kellogg had agreed to stop making claims about benefits to "cognitive health, process or function provided by any cereal or any morning food or snack food" unless the claims were true and substantiated.
The new expanded order bars the company from making "claims about any health benefit of any food unless the claims are backed by scientific evidence and not misleading."
In a statement, Kellogg, based in Battle Creek, Mich., said it had "a long history of responsible advertising," but did not specifically address the latest accusations.
"We stand behind the validity of our product claims and research, so we agreed to an order that covers those claims," the company said. "We believe that the revisions to the existing consent agreement satisfied any remaining concerns."
Jennifer L. Harris, a psychologist who studies food marketing at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, said the agreement highlighted the need to tighten requirements so that all health-related claims on packaging are based on scientific evidence, which is not the case now.
"As parents become more health-conscious, these claims try to make high-sugar cereals healthier than they really are," she said.
A study by the Rudd Center found that the least healthful cereals were the ones most heavily marketed to children, and that children were exposed to more advertising for highly sweetened cereals than for any other kind of packaged food.
William Neuman contributed reporting from New York.
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6) Disaster in the Amazon
By BOB HERBERT
June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp
BP's calamitous behavior in the Gulf of Mexico is the big oil story of the moment. But for many years, indigenous people from a formerly pristine region of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador have been trying to get relief from an American company, Texaco (which later merged with Chevron), for what has been described as the largest oil-related environmental catastrophe ever.
"As horrible as the gulf spill has been, what happened in the Amazon was worse," said Jonathan Abady, a New York lawyer who is part of the legal team that is suing Chevron on behalf of the rainforest inhabitants.
It has been a long and ugly legal fight and the outcome is uncertain. But what has happened in the rainforest is heartbreaking, although it has not gotten nearly the coverage that the BP spill has.
What's not in dispute is that Texaco operated more than 300 oil wells for the better part of three decades in a vast swath of Ecuador's northern Amazon region, just south of the border with Colombia. Much of that area has been horribly polluted. The lives and culture of the local inhabitants, who fished in the intricate waterways and cultivated the land as their ancestors had done for generations, have been upended in ways that have led to widespread misery.
Texaco came barreling into this delicate ancient landscape in the early 1960s with all the subtlety and grace of an invading army. And when it left in 1992, it left behind, according to the lawsuit, widespread toxic contamination that devastated the livelihoods and traditions of the local people, and took a severe toll on their physical well-being.
A brief filed by the plaintiffs said: "It deliberately dumped many billions of gallons of waste byproduct from oil drilling directly into the rivers and streams of the rainforest covering an area the size of Rhode Island. It gouged more than 900 unlined waste pits out of the jungle floor - pits which to this day leach toxic waste into soils and groundwater. It burned hundreds of millions of cubic feet of gas and waste oil into the atmosphere, poisoning the air and creating 'black rain' which inundated the area during tropical thunderstorms."
The quest for oil is, by its nature, colossally destructive. And the giant oil companies, when left to their own devices, will treat even the most magnificent of nature's wonders like a sewer. But the riches to be made are so vastly corrupting that governments refuse to impose the kinds of rigid oversight and safeguards that would mitigate the damage to the environment and its human and animal inhabitants.
Pick your venue. The families whose lives and culture are dependent upon the intricate web of waterways along the Gulf Coast of the United States are in a fix similar to that of the indigenous people zapped by nonstop oil spills and the oil-related pollution in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Each group is fearful about its future. Both have been treated contemptuously.
The oil companies don't care. Shell can't wait to begin drilling in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska, an area that would pose monumental problems for anyone trying to deal with a catastrophic spill. The companies pretend that the spills won't happen. They always say that their drilling operations are safe. They said that before drilling off Santa Barbara, and in the rainforest in Ecuador, and in the Gulf of Mexico, and everywhere else they drill.
Their assurances mean nothing.
President Obama has suspended Shell's Arctic drilling permits and has temporarily halted the so-called Arctic oil rush. What we've learned from the BP debacle in the gulf, and from the rainforest, and so many other places, is just how reckless and inept the oil companies can be when it comes to safeguarding life, limb and the environment.
They're dangerous. They need the most stringent kind of oversight, and swift and severe sanctions for serious wrongdoing. At the same time, we need to be searching with a much, much greater sense of urgency for viable energy alternatives. Treating the Amazon and the gulf and the Arctic as if they were nothing more than toxic waste sites is an affront to the planet and all life-forms that inhabit it.
Chevron doesn't believe it should be called to account for any of the sins Texaco may have committed in the Amazon. A spokesman told me that the allegations of environmental damage were wildly overstated and that even if Texaco had caused some pollution, it had cleaned it up and reached an agreement with the Ecuadorian government that precluded further liability.
The indigenous residents may be suffering (they're in much worse shape than the people on the gulf coast) but the Chevron-Texaco crowd feels real good about itself. The big money was made, and the trash was left behind.
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7) Pelicans, Back From Brink of Extinction, Face Oil Threat
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF and LESLIE KAUFMAN
June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05pelican.html?hp
FORT JACKSON, La. - For more than a decade, the hundreds of brown pelicans that nested among the mangrove shrubs on Queen Bess Island west of here were living proof that a species brought to the edge of extinction could come back and thrive.
The island was one of three sites in Louisiana where the large, long-billed birds were reintroduced after pesticides wiped them out in the state in the 1960s.
But on Thursday, 29 of the birds, their feathers so coated in thick brown sludge that their natural white and gray markings were totally obscured, were airlifted to a bird rehabilitation center in Fort Jackson, the latest victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Another dozen were taken to other rescue centers.
Six more pelicans were brought here on Friday, and as visitors to the center looked on, the birds huddled together in makeshift plywood cages and, in their unnatural stillness, looked as if the gooey muck had frozen them solid. The 29 pelicans brought in Thursday were being treated in hot rooms by workers in protective clothing.
"The pelicans are in dire trouble," said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, who worried that the oil spill could put an end to the bird's recovery in Louisiana.
The images of oil-covered birds - pelicans, northern gannets, laughing gulls and others - are eerily reminiscent of the Exxon Valdez disaster 21 years ago, and have in recent days have become the most vivid symbol of the damage wrought by the hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil that have poured into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20. Since the spill, 612 damaged birds had been cataloged as of Friday, most dead but some alive and drenched in oil, federal officials said.
Yet the brown pelican, because of its history of robust recovery in the face of extreme peril, has a special significance for the public.
The birds were once so common on the coastline here that they grace the state flag. They were frequent companions for fishermen, who shared their waters and admired their skill at spotting fish from afar and diving from great heights to scoop them up in their bills.
At the turn of the 20th century, observers estimated the brown pelican population in Louisiana at close to 50,000. But by 1961, no nesting pair could be spotted along the state's entire coast, according to LaCoast, a Coast Guard Web site. Like another subspecies of the brown pelican found in California, the local birds had been hard hit by DDT and other pesticides, which acted to thin the shells of their eggs. The eggs were crushed when the adults sat on them. (DDT was banned in the United States in 1972.)
In 1968, Louisiana took birds from a surviving Florida colony and reintroduced them along the state's southern coast in three spots. One was Queen Bess Island, which had been the site of one of the last breeding pairs before extinction, said Kerry St. Pé, program director of the nearby Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.
Still, the birds struggled, threatened this time by the loss of their habitat. The local wetlands, hurt by levees in the Mississippi that blocked sediment from flowing downstream and by canals cut by oil companies looking to lay pipe, were sinking into the gulf at an astonishing rate. Queen Bess was going under as well until 1990, when a coastal restoration project financed a rock barrier around the island, which stabilized it. The pelican colony began to flourish and the birds' offspring helped repopulate the coastline, Mr. St. Pé said.
Last year, the birds were officially taken off the endangered species list. But the oil spill, experts said, could change that. Like all birds, pelicans are very sensitive to oil, said Melanie Driscoll, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society's Louisiana Coastal Initiative. It prevents them from regulating their body temperature when it gets on their feathers, she said, and in Louisiana the pelicans are subject to overheating. The oil can also poison the fish the pelicans feed on and seep through the shells of pelican eggs, killing the embryos.
The potential for damage was frighteningly apparent at the rescue center set up here by the International Bird Rescue Research Center with BP and federal and state officials. All day Thursday, oiled birds, including the 29 brown pelicans, arrived at the makeshift veterinary emergency room built in a hangar on a former military base. They were carried from Coast Guard helicopters in dog kennels and cardboard boxes with air holes punched in them.
Most of the birds were so thoroughly coated in crude that they could not stand up. Some were stuck to the floor of their cages. Workers wiped off thick globs of oil with towels, then gave them fluids and fed them a fish slurry.
The pelicans were placed in plywood pens covered with blankets. The next morning, workers began to clean them using hot water and Dawn, a mild dish detergent.
So far, even the most heavily oiled pelicans have survived. Had they not been treated immediately, however, they would have almost certainly drowned or died of starvation or exposure, according to a veterinarian with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
The birds at the rehabilitation center, said Sharon Taylor, a veterinarian here, represent a lucky few - far more are certain to die in the wild.
"A lot of them will just disappear into the environment," she said. "We will probably only find a very, very small percentage of what's been impacted out there."
Still, she worried that because there are so many large rookeries nearby, far more pelicans would soon be headed to the center.
"Tomorrow or tonight we could get a hundred pelicans, we could get a thousand pelicans," Ms. Taylor said.
John Collins Rudolf reported from Fort Jackson, La., and Leslie Kaufman from New York.
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8) Israeli Military Boards Gaza-Bound Aid Ship
By ETHAN BRONNER
June 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/world/middleeast/06flotilla.html?hp
ASHDOD, Israel - Israel prevented a new attempt to break its blockade of Gaza on Saturday when its naval commandos boarded an Irish-owned vessel carrying humanitarian supplies and prominent activists and steered it to this Israeli port.
There were no attempts at resistance or reports of violence, the Israeli military said.
The interception, 23 miles off the coast, took place less than a week after an Israeli commando raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish ship turned violent, leaving nine Turkish activists dead and creating an international crisis that severely damaged Israeli-Turkish relations.
On Friday, the Israeli and Irish governments reached an agreement to unload the vessel's cargo in Ashdod, in southern Israel, and transport most of it to Gaza, but the group sponsoring both this ship and the Turkish flotilla, the Free Gaza Movement, rejected the deal. The 11 activists and 8 crew members on board the 1,200-ton cargo ship had made clear at the outset that they would not resist and that they had no arms. The passengers included Mairead Maguire, an Irish Nobel Peace laureate; Denis Halliday, a former United Nations assistant secretary general from Ireland; and Mohd Nizar bin Zakaria, a member of the Malaysia's Parliament.
It was not possible to reach the boat because communications were jammed but an Israeli journalist embedded with the navy filed an account of the takeover that confirmed the military's report of the events.
The journalist, Ron Ben-Yishai of Ynet News, said the takeover, shortly before 12:30 p.m., took five minutes and involved two missile boats carrying about 20 combat soldiers.
A spokeswoman for the Free Gaza group, Greta Berlin, told The Associated Press that the takeover was "another outrage to add to the nine murdered," and that the group would be sending more ships to Gaza. The group aims to end the three-year blockade of Gaza, which Israel says is intended to prevent the infiltration of weapons and militants into the Hamas-run territory.
The Israeli military said that the ship, Rachel Corrie, had been asked three times to dock in Ashdod, change course or face a naval takeover and that the requests had been ignored. The operation did not involve an airdrop as in the raid last Monday.
A military spokeswoman here, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, said the passengers would be questioned by the police, processed through customs and deported. Those who refused deportation could face jail, she said.
A senior naval commander said that the cargo would be inspected here and that anything that would not serve Hamas for weapons or defense would be sent over land to Gaza.
The commander, who spoke by telephone to journalists under military rules of anonymity, was asked why Israel did not agree to inspect the cargo at sea and then permit the boat to reach Gaza.
"It is not possible to inspect thousands of bags inside a vessel," he said. "You have to unload it in port and examine it there."
He said everything the boat was carrying, except items like cement that could be used to build bunkers, tunnels or rockets, would be delivered to Gaza.
Defending Israel's blockade of Gaza, which some experts in international law say is illegal, he said, "Everyone understands that the regime there is in a state of armed conflict with us and that with such material they can build more rockets."
Israel has been widely condemned for its blockade. After last Monday's raid, when Israeli commandos met fierce resistance and opened fire on the anti-blockade activists, Israel has said it is open to new ways to ensure that civilian goods can enter Gaza while meeting Israeli security needs. It is unclear what the new ways would include.
The Rachel Corrie, named after an American activist killed in 2003 as she tried to prevent an Israeli bulldozer from razing a Palestinian home, had been due to join the other boats in the flotilla last week but was delayed by technical problems.
Hamas, which rejects Israel's existence, won Palestinian parliamentary elections in early 2006. Israel then began to reduce trade and relations with Gaza. When Hamas militants seized an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in a raid that June, Israel further reduced what was permitted in and out of the coastal territory.
A year later, after Hamas fighters drove the more moderate Fatah movement from Gaza, Israel imposed a full closure on Gaza, permitting in only basic humanitarian goods.
While international aid agencies say there is no starvation or acute medical crisis there, malnutrition is creeping up, water treatment and sewage are problematic and the economy has been almost entirely shut down by the blockade, which is also enforced by Egypt. The United States and other world powers say that the situation is untenable and that a new approach must be found.
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9) Autopsy shows Gaza activists were hit 30 times: report
(Reuters) - Nine Turkish activists killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot a total of 30 times and five died of gunshot wounds to the head, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Friday.
by Adrian Croft
World
June 4, 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6536MF20100604
Autopsy results showed the men were hit mostly with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range, the Guardian said, quoting Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine which carried out the autopsies on Friday.
Israeli commandos stormed a flotilla of aid ships planning to break the Israeli sea blockade of Gaza on Monday. The deaths, which all took place on one ship, the Mavi Marmara, drew widespread condemnation.
Israel said the marines who rappelled onto the Mavi Marmara fired in self-defense after activists attacked them with clubs and knives as well as two pistols snatched from the commandos.
The autopsy results showed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back, the Guardian said.
A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has U.S. citizenship, was shot five times from less than 45 cm (18 inches) away, in the face, the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back, it said.
Two other men were shot four times. Five of those killed were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, the Guardian quoted Buyuk as saying.
In addition to those killed, 48 others suffered gunshot wounds and six activists were still missing, he added.
Israel said the multiple gunshot wounds did not mean the shots were fired other than in self defense.
"The only situation when a soldier shot was when it was a clearly a life-threatening situation," the Guardian quoted a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London as saying.
"Pulling the trigger quickly can result in a few bullets being in the same body, but does not change the fact they were in a life-threatening situation," the spokesman said.
The newspaper quoted Haluk Ince, chairman of the council of forensic medicine in Istanbul, as saying that in only one case was there a single bullet wound, to the forehead from a distant shot, while every other body showed multiple wounds.
He said all but one of the bullets retrieved from the bodies came from 9mm rounds. Of the other round, Ince said: "It was the first time we have seen this kind of material used in firearms. It was just a container including many types of pellets usually used in shotguns. It penetrated the head region in the temple and we found it intact in the brain."
No-one at Turkey's forensic laboratory could immediately be reached for comment.
Turkey, Israel's only Muslim ally, stepped up its rhetoric over the killings on Friday, accusing the Jewish state of betraying its own biblical law.
(Reporting by Adrian Croft)
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10) The Next Deepwater Horizon?
Obama halted new offshore drilling, but allowed existing production to continue-including another BP Gulf rig flying numerous red flags.
By Kate Sheppard
Fri Jun. 4, 2010 3:00 AM PDT
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/06/next-deepwater-horizon
Last week, President Barack Obama put new deepwater drilling operations on hold [1] for another six months. With the Gulf of Mexico spill entering its fifth week, this move was meant to show that the administration is taking a more cautious approach to offshore drilling, after it had announced a vast expansion just weeks before the BP disaster.
Many news accounts on the moratorium extension implied that all deepwater Gulf operations had been shut down. But that's not the case. The administration is allowing deepwater drilling operations already in production in the Gulf to continue-including some that may pose a greater risk than the Deepwater Horizon. Exhibit A: BP's other major Gulf operation, the Atlantis, which sits 124 miles off the Louisiana coast.
Kenneth Abbott, a project control supervisor BP contracted to work on the Atlantis, and the environmental group Food & Water Watch filed suit against the federal government on May 17 [2] seeking a temporary injunction to force the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to shut down the platform. Abbott claims that his contract was terminated shortly after he alerted management to the rig's lack of crucial engineering documents in late 2008.
According to Abbott, the BP Atlantis lacks more than 6,000 documents that are key to operating the rig safely. Abbott has said that the vast majority of the project's subsea piping and instrument diagrams were not approved by engineers, and the safety systems are out of date. In March 2009, Abbott took his concerns about the rig to MMS, the Department of Interior office responsible for regulating offshore drilling. He says the agency requested some of these documents from BP, but failed to seek specific diagrams of key components necessary for ensuring the rig's secure operation.
An internal BP email that came out in the course of Abbott's dispute refers to the potential for "catastrophic operator errors" on the rig due to these lapses. The suit argues that without these documents, the rig operators "are flying blind, and have no way to assure the safety of offshore drilling operations." Food & Water Watch began pushing for lawmakers to intervene on the rig back in August 2009.
A group of 19 Democratic House lawmakers raised concerns about the Atlantis in a letter to MMS in February [3], noting "disturbing reports" of safety lapses and warning of the "risk of a catastrophic accident." In a May 19 letter, those lawmakers, led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), urged Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to call for "an immediate shutdown [of the Atlantis rig] until it can be shown that this platform is operating safely." The Atlantis, which produces 200,000 barrels of oil a day, operates 7,000 feet below the sea surface-2,000 feet deeper than the Deepwater rig. That suggests that if a blowout occurred, the Atlantis could release far more oil than the Deepwater well. "We are very concerned that the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon could foreshadow an accident at BP Atlantis," the House members wrote.
MMS promised House members after their initial letter that the agency would conduct an audit of the Atlantis and issue a report by the end of May. But that report has been delayed due to the Gulf disaster, according to the agency.
Elizabeth Birnbaum, who served as head of MMS until she resigned amid criticism [4] of the beleaguered agency last month, told a House panel on May 26 that the agency has reviewed operations at the Atlantis and has "not found anything" indicating that the rig should be shut down. But Grijalva believes that the agency may just be inspecting the inadequate paperwork that it has already approved without giving the rig any closer scrutiny.
This contention is also supported by Food & Water Watch, which submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on March 1 to MMS for records related to agency employees conducting inspections of the Atlantis rig's subsea documents. The request was rejected-an MMS FOIA officer stated that the agency [5] doesn't require documentation of the subsea components as they were built. Food & Water Watch says that without reviewing those documents, MMS would be unable to truly determine whether or not the rig was safe.
In the past weeks, Obama has repeatedly criticized the "cozy" relationship between oil companies and federal regulators. And the Department of Interior's report on the offshore operations calls for new inspection and reporting procedures, tighter enforcement of existing rules, and the development of "new, faster ways of stopping blowouts in deepwater," among other recommendations. Yet at a Senate hearing last month, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar shrugged off the suggestion that the administration should pause operations that were approved under the same lax system that allowed the Deepwater rig in the first place. "We were not going to have those stopped mid-way," Salazar told senators.
"We're missing an opportunity, the administration is, by not insisting that production be suspended until we fully investigate the allegations," says Grijalva in an interview. "There's not only urgency to it, but it would be a prudent, politically smart thing for them to do as well."
"It's clear to us that while there are problems with the entire industry, BP is probably the worst actor in terms of cutting corners, not having safety procedures, not having the necessary safety tech for operating platforms," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. "There should be a review by MMS of all the operating platforms to make sure safety documents and procedures are in place." (A spokesperson for Abbott could not be reached for comment.) The Center for Biological Diversity has also filed suit against the Department of Interior for granting waivers to the National Environmental Protection Act for Gulf leases, and has signaled that it intends to sue over non-enforcement of both the Marine Mammals Protection Act and Endangered Species Act in the Gulf.
Meanwhile, the group of House members are going to continue to push for a halt on all drilling operations. Says Grijalva, "Given the track record of industry and the track record of the agency in charge of oversight, it just seems to be the one safe route to take right now to assure the American people that another catastrophe won't happen."
Links:
[1] http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/05/obama-faces-press-bp-spill
[2] http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/press/press-releases/food-water-watch-sues-feds-for-ignoring-problems-at-operating-bp-platform/
[3] http://motherjones.com/files/Congressional_Letter_re_BP-1.pdf
[4] http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/05/mms-head-fired
[5] http://motherjones.com/files/MMS_response_to_fww_third_Foia_request.pdf
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11) Colombian Army Attacks Striking BP Workers
By Claire Hall, Espacio Bristol-Colombia
June 4, 2010
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2524-colombian-army-attacks-striking-bp-workers
A five month long mobilisation against BP in the Casanare region of Colombia has escalated after the Colombian army entered the BP installations with force this week and confronted workers who have been peacefully occupying BP installations since May 23 to protest BP´s failure to conclude negotiations with the workers and community.
At midday on Wednesday a heavily armed commando group of the National Colombian Army leapt over the security fence of the Tauramena Central Processing Facility and subjected the group of workers to physical and verbal aggression. Oscar Garcia, of the National Oil Workers Union said "this war-like handling of a group of workers is an excessive use of force and treats a labour conflict as though it were an issue of public order. This shows how BP is bent on war against workers who are only demanding that their fundamental rights be respected."[i]
The calm response by the striking workers brought the situation temporarily under control but the army remains present and tensions are high. Colombia continues to have the highest level of trade union murders in the world with 17 trade unionists murdered so far this year.
"It is no secret that since BP arrived in the early nineties we have not been able to organize workers until now due to the presence of paramilitary groups operating in the oil fields," said Edgar Mojica from the National Oil Workers Union.
At night workers sleep chained to machinery under temporary shelters as a precaution against any further attempts to violently remove them.
"BP thinks that we will give up, tired and afraid but we will put up with these conditions as this is a struggle for everyone," said Ramiro from the Movement for Dignity of Casanare. "We will only leave here when BP signs an agreement on salary increases, more dignified working conditions, security guarantees for all involved in the mobilisations, and honours the pre-agreements made in the environmental, human rights, social investment and goods and services commissions."
The workers are saddened but not surprised at the measures they are forced to take to try to reach agreements with BP. The mobilisation started in February of this year. Workers were forced to take direct action and block access roads to BP's installations after the oil corporation refused to recognise the workers rights to a union and to a collective bargaining agreement. The blockades were violently attacked by ESMAD, the notorious Colombian riot police, in an operation to end the protest.[ii]
This is not the first time that civil society movements against BP have been met with violence. In 2003, communities protested against BP, demanding action on ecological, social and labour issues. BP refused to negotiate. In the months following community leaders involved in the mobilisation were assassinated (2004 Oswaldo Vargas, 2005 Parmenio Parra).[iii] Furthermore, a preliminary public hearing held in 2007 in the UK on BP's activities in Colombia confirmed that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that BP has a case to answer that it is complicit in the extermination of social organisations in Casanare as part of direct strategy to maximise profits."[iv]
Despite the history of repression, the response to the ESMAD attack in February was overwhelming. Two thousand people marched in support, fifteen more road blockades spontaneously sprung up, community members and local businesses joined the strike and the Movement for the Dignity of Casanare was born. BP was forced to listen and agreed to participate in the five commissions. Popular assemblies where held to decide on the bargaining demands which were later presented to BP on March 23. However, after two months of dialogue, the labour commission had made no advances and the current strike began.
Casanare is a region characterised by extreme levels of poverty, in spite of the oil that flows out of the region to the United States. This poverty has been worsened by the environmental degradation caused by the oil exploration and extraction, and the susbequent contamination and loss of water sources, according to local farmers whose livelihoods depend on water.
"We have heard about the BP incident in the USA. We send our condolences to the families and fellow workers of those who died due to the failure of BP to take the necessary measures to ensure safe operations and protect the lives of people working for them," said Garcia of the National Oil Workers Union. "Here in Colombia, BP has also shown their lack of respect for life. They have brought about a war that has left over 9000 people dead."
He added, "We categorically hold BP to blame for this latest catastrophe in the USA and we demand that BP repairs to the extent possible the damage they have caused. We extend our solidarity to the Northamerican people affected and we ask for your solidarity with the Casanarean people and you are welcome to visit and see how things are here."
BP continues to provide support to the 16th Brigade, which was created in 1991 in order to provide security to the oilfields in Casanare. They have a long, cruel and documented history of human rights violations, including: extrajudicial executions, disappearances, murders, torture, rape and the forced displacement of campesino communities. However the grave humanitarian crisis in Casanare and its relationship to the oil industry - in particular to BP - is not deterring the Movement for the Dignity of Casanare.
"Despite BP´s misinformation campaign we are determined and united and we will keep resisting with dignity," said Ramiro. "And if we can unite with people from the USA we will be even stronger and achieve much more."
Notes:
[i] http://usofrenteobrero.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=840:arremetida-del-ejercito-nacional-contra-trabajadores-en-tauramena-casanare&catid=35:nacional&Itemid=143
[ii] http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/events/26-upcoming-events/493-police-assault-bp-oil-workers-in-colombia
[iii] http://espacio.org.uk/bp/CasanareMission2007Report.pdf
[iv] http://espacio.org.uk/bp/PUBLIC_DECLARATION_Glasgow.pdf
Espacio Bristol-Colombia is an autonomous collective of people working in solidarity with communities and organisations fighting for peace with social justice in Colombia. We are based in and around the city of Bristol (England), with a growing membership from across the country, and are part of the international Network of Friendship and Solidarity with Colombia (Red de Hermandad).
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12) In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig
"Despite noticing cementing problems, BP skipped a quality test of the cement around the pipe. Federal regulators also gave the rig a pass at several critical moments. After the rig encountered several problems, including the gas kicks and the pipe stuck in the well, the regulators did not demand a halt to the operation. Instead, they gave permission for a delay in a safety test of the blowout preventer."
By IAN URBINA
June 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06rig.html?hp
NEW ORLEANS - Over six days in May, far from the familiar choreography of Washington hearings, federal investigators grilled workers involved in the Deepwater Horizon disaster in a chilly, sterile conference room at a hotel near the airport here.
The six-member panel of Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service officials pressed for answers about what occurred on the rig on April 20 before it exploded. They wanted to know who was in charge, and heard conflicting answers.
They pushed for more insight into an argument on the rig that day between a manager for BP, the well's owner, and one for Transocean, the rig's owner, and asked Curt R. Kuchta, the rig's captain, how the crew knew who was in charge.
"It's pretty well understood amongst the crew who's in charge," he said.
"How do they know that?" a Coast Guard investigator asked.
"I guess, I don't know," Captain Kuchta said. "But it's pretty well - everyone knows."
Looking annoyed, Capt. Hung Nguyen of the Coast Guard, one of the chief federal investigators, shook his head. The exchange confirmed an observation he had made earlier in the day at the hearing.
"A lot of activities seem not very tightly coordinated in the way that would make me comfortable," he said. "Maybe that's just the way of business out there."
Investigators have focused on the minute-to-minute decisions and breakdowns to understand what led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, killing 11 people and setting off the largest oil spill in United States history and an environmental disaster. But the lack of coordination was not limited to the day of the explosion.
New government and BP documents, interviews with experts and testimony by witnesses provide the clearest indication to date that a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig, particularly with a mix of different companies operating on the Deepwater whose interests were not always in sync.
And in the aftermath, arguments about who is in charge of the cleanup - often a signal that no one is in charge - have led to delays, distractions and disagreements over how to cap the well and defend the coastline. As a result, with oil continuing to gush a mile below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, the laws of physics are largely in control, creating the daunting challenge of trying to plug a hole at depths where equipment is straining under more than a ton of pressure per square inch.
Tad W. Patzek, chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas, Austin, has analyzed reports of what led to the explosion. "It's a very complex operation in which the human element has not been aligned with the complexity of the system," he said in an interview last week.
His conclusion could also apply to what occurred long before the disaster.
Exceptions Are the Rule
Deepwater oil production in the gulf, which started in 1979 but expanded much faster in the mid-1990s with new technology and federal incentives, is governed as much by exceptions to rules as by the rules themselves.
Under a process called "alternative compliance," much of the technology used on deepwater rigs has been approved piecemeal, with regulators cooperating with industry groups to make small adjustments to guidelines that were drawn up decades ago for shallow-water drilling.
Of roughly 3,500 drilling rigs and production platforms in the gulf, fewer than 50 are in waters deeper than 1,000 feet. But the risks and challenges associated with this deeper water are much greater.
"The pace of technology has definitely outrun the regulations," Lt. Cmdr. Michael Odom of the Coast Guard, who inspects the rigs, said last month at a hearing.
As a result, deepwater rigs operate under an ad hoc system of exceptions. The deeper the water, the further the exceptions stretch, not just from federal guidelines but also often from company policy.
So, for example, when BP officials first set their sights on extracting the oily riches under what is known as Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico, they asked for and received permission from federal regulators to exempt the drilling project from federal law that requires a rigorous type of environmental review, internal documents and federal records indicate.
As BP engineers planned to set certain pipes and casings for lining the well in place in the ocean floor, they had to get permission from company managers to use riskier equipment because that equipment deviated from the company's own design and safety policies, according to internal BP documents obtained by The New York Times.
And when company officials wanted to test the blowout preventer, a crucial fail-safe mechanism on the pipe near the ocean floor, at a lower pressure than was federally required, regulators granted an exception, documents released last week show.
Regulators granted yet another exception when BP sought to delay mandatory testing of that blowout preventer because they had lost "well control," weeks before the rig exploded, BP e-mail messages show.
The Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling, went along with these requests partly because the agency has for years had a dual role of both fostering and policing the industry - collecting royalty payments from the drilling companies while also levying fines on them for violations of law.
Its safety inspections usually consist of helicopter visits to offshore rigs to sift through company reports of self-administered tests.
Even Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, who oversees the minerals agency, has said that oil companies have a history of "running the show" at the agency, a problem he has vowed to correct.
The minerals agency shares responsibility for oversight of drilling in the gulf with many others. The Environmental Protection Agency and others review offshore drilling for potential damage to wildlife and the environment. The Coast Guard inspects vessels for seaworthiness and licenses crew members to work on the rigs. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration monitors dangerous weather conditions over deep seas.
And regulatory duties extend even past the federal government. Foreign countries, or "flag states," where many oil rigs are registered, have their own sets of safety requirements and inspections.
Regulations have not kept up with the risks that deepwater drilling poses.
On the Deepwater Horizon, for example, the minerals agency approved a drilling plan for BP that cited the "worst case" for a blowout as one that might produce 250,000 barrels of oil per day, federal records show. But the agency did not require the rig to create a response plan for such a situation.
If a blowout were to occur, BP said in its plan, the first choice would be to use a containment dome to capture the leaking oil. But regulators did not require that a containment dome be kept on the rig to speed the response to a spill. After the rig explosion, BP took two weeks to build one on shore and three days to ship it out to sea before it was lowered over the gushing pipe on May 7. It did not work.
(The rig's "spill response plan," provided to The Times, includes a Web link for a contractor that goes to an Asian shopping Web site and also mentions the importance of protecting walruses, seals and sea lions, none of which inhabit the area of drilling. The agency approved the plan.)
More broadly, regulators have not required technology and strategies for dealing with deepwater spills to be improved.
Engineers trying to control the blowout are using the same tactics they used in 1979 when the Ixtoc I well blew up in the Bay of Campeche off the coast of Mexico. In the earlier blowout, they first tried lowering a containment dome over the leak. When that failed, they unsuccessfully tried to inject golf balls and other material in a move called a junk shot, which was also tried and abandoned for the Deepwater Horizon.
Questions of oversight also came up in the New Orleans hearings last month. For example, Michael J. Saucier, an official with the Minerals Management Service, said that his agency "highly encouraged" - but did not require - companies to have backup systems to trigger blowout preventers in case of an emergency.
"Highly encourage?" Captain Nguyen of the Coast Guard asked. "How does that translate to enforcement?"
"There is no enforcement," Mr. Saucier answered.
Problems Early On
In some ways it was jinxed from the start.
As early as June 2009, BP engineers had expressed concerns in internal documents about using certain casings for the well because they violated the company's safety and design guidelines. But they proceeded with those casings.
Mechanical problems started in March with the Deepwater, setting the stage for the April 20 explosion.
More than five weeks before disaster, the rig was hit by several sudden pulsations of gas called "kicks" and a pipe had become stuck in the well. The blowout preventer, designed to seal the well in an emergency, had been discovered to be leaking fluids at least three times.
Dealing with these problems required teamwork, a challenge to the throng of different companies with responsibilities on the rig. Of the 126 people present on the day of the explosion, only eight were employees of BP. The interests of the workers did not always align.
In testimony to government investigators, rig workers repeatedly described a "natural conflict" between BP, which can make more money by completing drilling jobs quickly, and Transocean, which receives a leasing fee from BP every day that it continues drilling.
Halliburton was also on hand to provide cementing services, while a subsidiary monitored various drilling fluids. A different company provided drilling fluid systems, another provided technicians to operate the remote-control vehicles that are they eyes of the rig crew deep underwater, and yet another provided the well casing.
Amid this tangle of overlapping authority and competing interests, no one was solely responsible for ensuring the rig's safety, and communication was a constant challenge.
"I don't have a feeling that there is somebody who has a handle on the coordination of all the activities on this vessel, going from routine to crisis," Captain Nguyen said during one hearing. "BP is in charge of certain things, Transocean is in charge of certain things."
Financial concerns added pressures on the rig.
BP had fallen behind schedule and over budget, paying roughly $500,000 a day to lease the rig from Transocean. The rig was 43 days late for starting a new drilling job for BP by the day of the explosion, a delay that had already cost the company more than $21 million.
With the clock ticking, bad decisions went unchecked, warning signs went unheeded and small lapses compounded.
On April 1, a job log written by a Halliburton employee, Marvin Volek, warns that BP's use of cement "was against our best practices."
An April 18 internal Halliburton memorandum indicates that Halliburton again warned BP about its practices, this time saying that a "severe" gas flow problem would occur if the casings were not centered more carefully.
Around that same time, a BP document shows, company officials chose a type of casing with a greater risk of collapsing.
Despite noticing cementing problems, BP skipped a quality test of the cement around the pipe. Federal regulators also gave the rig a pass at several critical moments. After the rig encountered several problems, including the gas kicks and the pipe stuck in the well, the regulators did not demand a halt to the operation. Instead, they gave permission for a delay in a safety test of the blowout preventer.
An initial investigation by BP points to a range of missteps.
Tests shortly before the well blew out found a buildup of pressure that was an "indicator of a very large abnormality," BP concluded and disclosed to Congress in a preliminary report last month. Yet, the rig team was satisfied after another test was deemed successful, and it proceeded.
About 10 hours before the explosion, the challenges of trying to keep the pressure in the well under control led to an argument among the workers about how best to finish the well and move the rig to the next site.
Douglas Brown, a Transocean mechanic on the rig, told investigators that an unnamed BP official whom he called "the company man" had instructed rig workers to execute a new plan for removing the riser and sealing the well. Mr. Brown testified that workers thought the plan was too risky. But he could not hear details of the argument that ensued.
"The company man was basically saying, 'Well, this is how it's going to be,' " Mr. Brown told investigators at a hearing on May 26 near New Orleans, adding that the Transocean rig workers "reluctantly agreed."
When the explosion occurred around 9:50 p.m. on April 20, there was pandemonium on the rig. Most workers headed for lifeboats. Others rescued shipmates trapped under equipment. On the bridge, Captain Kuchta gathered with at least eight other managers and crew members to decide on an emergency plan.
Steve Bertone, the chief engineer for Transocean, wrote in his witness statement that he ran up to the bridge where he heard Captain Kuchta screaming at a worker, Andrea Fleytas, because she had pressed the distress button without authorization.
Mr. Bertone turned to another worker and asked him if he had called to shore for help but was told he did not have permission to do so. Another manager tried to give the go-ahead, the testimony said, but someone else said the order needed to come from the rig's offshore installation manager.
A Strained Partnership
After the spill, the government and BP were supposed to cooperate, partly a consequence of laws written after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill that were intended to make polluters more accountable for cleaning up their own messes.
One example of what was supposed to be a unified front was the Joint Information Center. Housed in a Shell-owned training and conference center in Robert, La., the center includes roughly 65 employees, 10 of whom work for BP. Together, they write and issue news releases and coordinate posts on a Web site, Facebook and Twitter.
But the partnership between BP and the government has strained along with the failure of efforts to plug the well. Mr. Salazar, for example, assured the public on May 2 that the administration was keeping its "boot on the neck" of BP. Next he was being publicly chastised by President Obama for using antagonistic language.
BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, told reporters at one point that the spill was "relatively tiny." Federal officials soon released estimates indicating that the spill had far outpaced the Exxon Valdez disaster.
Under intense media scrutiny, at least a dozen federal agencies have taken part in the spill response, making decision-making slow, conflicted and confused, as they sought to apply numerous federal statutes.
In one stark example of government disputes, internal e-mail messages from the minerals agency obtained by The Times reveal a heated debate over whether to ignore some federal environmental laws about gas emissions in an effort to speed the drilling of relief wells.
One agency official, Michael Tolbert, warned colleagues on April 24 that emissions of nitrous oxide from the well were "pretty far over the exemption level," an issue that his colleague Tommy Broussard said could result in "BP wasting time" on environmental safeguards in a way that would be "completely stupid."
But a third colleague, Elizabeth Peuler, intervened to demand that the agency take "no shortcuts."
"Not even for this one," she said. "Perhaps even especially for this one."
Debates over the speed - or lack thereof - of the government response have also played out in Louisiana, where state officials spent much of May repeatedly seeking permission from the federal government to construct up to 90 miles of sand barriers to prevent oil from reaching the wetlands.
For three weeks, as the giant slick crept closer to shore, officials from the White House, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Environmental Protection Agency debated the best approach.
They ultimately approved the use of only one barrier, called a berm, to be paid for by BP.
Comparing the federal government's response to "telling a drowning man to wait," Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana asked: If one berm is safe, then why not the 23 others that he had requested? Slowly, the federal government approved more berms.
From the start, BP had played down the extent of the problem in miscalculating the rate of the leak and in denying the existence of underwater oil plumes. By deferring to the company, federal officials underestimated the problem they were facing and thus what was needed to respond to it.
It took more than a week after the explosion for the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, to declare, on April 29, "a spill of national significance" a legal categorization that was needed before certain federal assistance could be authorized.
Because of such delays, critics have charged, more coastline will be hit, more animals will die, more habitats will be ruined and more money will be lost in tourism, fishing and real estate.
And yet, the administration is limited in its ability to divorce itself from BP, because federal officials rely on the company for technology, personnel and financing for the cleanup. The relationship reached a turning point last week when the administration said the national incident commander, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, would start giving solo briefings. He will no longer share a podium with BP, which will offer its own briefings.
That move, however, does not resolve the matter of who is actually in charge in the gulf - of ensuring safety and regulating the dangerous extraction of vast riches under the deepest waters there, as well as of handling the continuing emergency.
The question is proving equally vexing as investigators try to place blame for events on the rig the day of the explosion- as was clear on Tuesday when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that he had begun a criminal investigation.
Citing "a wide range of possible violations," Mr. Holder declined to specify the target of the investigation, because, he said, the authorities were still not clear on "who should ultimately be held liable."
Robbie Brown contributed reporting from New Orleans, and Tom Zeller from New York.
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13) Even With a Cleanup, Spilled Oil Stays With Us
"...the cleanup by BP workers will capture only a fraction of the crude belched up by the broken well. Much of the oil will be taken care of by nature; the rest is likely to stay with us for decades."
By BILL MARSH
June 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/weekinreview/06marsh.html
BP, in a series of newspaper advertisements about the Deepwater Horizon disaster, says it is "working around the clock to contain and collect most of the leak" and it will "take full responsibility for cleaning up the spill."
But if past catastrophes are guides, the cleanup by BP workers will capture only a fraction of the crude belched up by the broken well. Much of the oil will be taken care of by nature; the rest is likely to stay with us for decades.
In Alaskan coastal zones fouled by the Exxon Valdez in 1989, scientists discovered oil, scarcely changed, 16 years later. In some areas, its composition had not altered much from the toxic clumps and goo that had formed just weeks after the spill.
Contrary to early expectations, oil still oozes from Alaska's beaches, toxins intact, and is expected to remain - perhaps even for centuries.
The BP disaster differs greatly from the Valdez. In the Gulf of Mexico, vast plumes of oil, attacked with harsh chemical dispersants, churn up from mile-deep waters. In Alaska, a surface slick swept over more than a thousand miles of rocky coast. Spilled oil behaves in many ways, but here, based on sad experience, is some of what to expect in the gulf.
How it Disappears
EVAPORATION Some oil on the water surface evaporates within days. The lighter the oil, the more evaporation: half or more of light crudes can evaporate; medium crudes, up to 40 percent evaporate; heavy crudes as low as 10 percent. The spilled oil in the gulf is light crude, according to Edward B. Overton, an environmental sciences professor at Louisiana State University; Exxon Valdez oil was heavier.
DISPERSAL Oil may be reduced to tiny droplets by wave action or chemicals. Droplets are more readily consumed by microbes, but the effects of toxic chemical dispersants used in the gulf are not known.
EATEN BY BACTERIA If conditions are right, microbes can consume a great deal of spilled oil. But this is not always possible in oxygen-starved environments, like the deep sea or where oil has seeped into beach sediments.
REMOVAL Armies of workers at the Exxon Valdez disaster - 11,000 at the effort's peak - removed less than half the oil that didn't evaporate or biodegrade. Here is what happened to the more than 40,000 tons of Valdez oil, according to a study conducted three years after the spill.
What Remains
OIL 'MOUSSE' Residual emulsified oil - a gooey mix of crude from the Exxon disaster and water, remains in beaches in Alaska.
BURIED OIL Crude that penetrated into coastal sediments remains in dismaying amounts in Alaska. When sand and rock is disturbed - by burrowing or foraging animals, or surf - oil may leach out. Otherwise the oil remains intact and resistant to degradation. Pictured above: oil from a small hole dug on May 5 on Eleanor Island, Alaska.
TAR BALLS AND ASPHALT Congealed oil forms tar balls that resist weathering and can last for years; mix sand or beach gravel with oil and you get asphalt, which also resists erosion. Tar balls washed up on Florida beaches in the early days of the gulf spill, but they were not from Deepwater Horizon - they may have formed from other spills, or occurred naturally from oil seeps in the ocean. Pictured above: a tar ball in Pensacola, Fla. on Friday.
INTO THE FOOD CHAIN Oil and toxins concentrate in filtering animals like mussels, oysters and clams and are then ingested by their predators. The long-term effects of this are not fully understood, but oil ingestion is known to damage animals' immune systems and organs and cause behavioral changes that affect the ability to find food or avoid predators.
SLOWED RATES OF OIL LOSS Most of the oil from the 1989 Valdez disaster disappeared in the first few years. Scientists had hoped that almost all the remaining oil would disappear soon after, based on how quickly the oil was degrading in the early 1990s.
But later surveys showed that this oil was much slower to degrade, leading scientists to fear that it may persist for decades. About 100 tons of oil was still in the beaches of Prince William Sound as of 2001, out of more than 20,000 tons deposited there. And it is easily uncovered there today.
Sources: Gail V. Irvine, U.S. Geological Survey; Lisa Suatoni, Natural Resources Defense Council; Edward B. Overton, Louisiana State University; Chris Reddy, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; United States Fish and Wildlife Service; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council; Environmental Science and Technology
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14) Changes in China Could Raise Prices Worldwide
By DAVID BARBOZA
June 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/business/global/08wages.html?hp
SHANGHAI - The cost of doing business in China is going up.
Coastal factories are raising salaries, local governments are hiking minimum wage standards and if China allows its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate against the U.S. dollar later this year, as many economists are predicting, the cost of manufacturing in China will almost certainly rise.
Although the salaries of factory workers in China are still low compared to those in the United States and Europe (the minimum wage in southern China is close to $125 a month), economists say the changes will eventually ripple through the global economy, driving up the prices of everything from T-shirts and sneakers to computer servers and smart phones.
"For a long time, China has been the anchor of global disinflation," said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse, referring to how the two decade-long shift to manufacturing in China helped many global companies lower costs and prices. "But this may be the beginning of the end of an era."
The shift was dramatized Sunday, when Foxconn Technology, one of the world's largest contract electronics manufacturers and the maker of everything from the Apple iPhone to Dell computer parts, said that within three months it would double the salaries of many of its assembly line workers.
The announcement follows a spate of suicides at two Foxconn campuses in southern China and criticism of the company's labor practices.
Taiwan-based Foxconn, which has more than 800,000 workers in China, said the salary increases are meant to improve the lives of its workers.
Last week, the Japanese auto maker Honda said it had agreed to give about 1,900 workers at one of its plants in southern China raises of between 24 percent and 32 percent in the hopes of ending a two week-long strike, according to people briefed on the agreement.
The changes are coming about because of the growing clout of workers in China's sizzling economy, analysts say, and because soaring food and housing prices are eroding the spending power of migrant workers.
But there are other reasons. Analysts say Beijing is backing wage increases as a way to spur domestic consumption and make the country less dependent on low-priced exports. The government hopes the move will force some export-oriented companies to invest in more innovative or higher-value goods.
But Chinese policymakers also favor higher wages because they could help ease a widening income gap between the rich and the poor.
Last Thursday, the Beijing municipal government said it would raise its minimum wage 20 percent to about $140 a month; several other cities are preparing to implement similar increases.
Big manufacturers are moving to raise salaries because they are desperate to attract new workers at a time when many coastal factory cities are struggling with labor shortages.
A Foxconn executive said last week that the turnover rate at its two Shenzhen campuses - which employ over 400,000 - is about five percent a month, meaning that an astounding 20,000 workers are leaving every month and need to be replaced.
Marshall W. Meyer, a China specialist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, says demographic changes in China are reducing the supply of young workers entering the labor force, and that's behind some of the wage pressure.
"Demography will do what the Strategic & Economic Dialogue hasn't: raise the cost of Chinese goods," he said, referring to U.S.-China talks on Chinese currency reform and other economic issues. "There is no way out."
Economists say many of the same forces that were at work in 2007 and 2008 - when China's economy was overheating - have returned and even intensified this year.
Local governments have stepped up enforcement of labor and environmental regulations, driving up production costs.
And perhaps most troubling for companies here is the prospect of an appreciating Chinese currency, which would make their exports more expensive overseas.
Beijing has long promised to allow its currency to fluctuate more freely. But when the global financial crisis shuttered many Chinese factories, the government effectively re-pegged the renminbi to the dollar. That was a way to protect exporters.
Even though labor accounts for a small percentage of the final cost of many products, salary increases are expected to affect much of the supply chain and force companies to raise prices.
For many exporters, profit margins are already razor thin, and raising prices could hurt business.
"They're going to have to find a way to pass this on to the end user," says Mr. Tao at Credit Suisse.
Still, economists say a necessary restructuring is under way, one that should allow the nation's huge "floating population" of migrant workers to better share in the benefits of growth and spur domestic consumption.
United States and European Union officials have been pressing China to help improve the health of the global economy by consuming more and reducing the country's massive trade surpluses.
Rising labor costs here aren't the end of cheap production in China, analysts say, but they are likely to help change the country's manufacturing mix.
"China isn't going to lose its manufacturing base because it's got a huge domestic market," said Mary Gallagher, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. "But it will move them toward higher-end goods. And that matches the Chinese government's ambition. They don't just want to be the workshop of the world. They want to produce high-tech goods."
Chen Xiaoduan contributed research.
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15) Cameron Warns Britons of 'Decades' of Austerity
By SARAH LYALL
June 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/world/europe/08britain.html?hp
LONDON - Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday that Britain's financial situation was "even worse than we thought" and that the country would have to make savage spending cuts to bring its swelling deficit under control.
Stern and grim-faced in a speech in Milton Keynes, just north of London, Mr. Cameron said, "How we deal with these things will affect our economy, our society - indeed our whole way of life."
"The decisions we make will affect every single person in our country," he said. "And the effects of those decisions will stay with us for years, perhaps decades, to come."
Mr. Cameron said that at more than 11 percent, Britain's budget deficit was the largest ever faced by the country in peacetime. But he warned that the structural deficit was more worrisome. Britain currently owes a total of more than $1.12 trillion , he said, and in five years will owe nearly double that if nothing is done now.
The country already spends more on interest payments on its debt than it does running its schools, he said, adding that how to reduce the deficit and cut down on borrowing was "the most urgent issue facing Britain today."
Mr. Cameron's government, a coalition of Conservatives from his party and Liberal Democrats led by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, faces a difficult political road. With its grip on power untested, it will have to contend with critics on the right and left of both parties to get its spending plans through Parliament.
At the same time, the government risks alienating Britons, particularly workers in the state sector, which Mr. Cameron singled out as an example of a public spending run amok.
Mr. Cameron tried to soften the blow by saying that the cuts would not disproportionately affect the vulnerable. Mr. Clegg told The Observer newspaper over the weekend that Britain would not face "a repeat of the 1980s" and the budget cuts of the Margaret Thatcher years.
Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, a union that represents many public service workers, nonetheless told the Press Association news agency that Mr. Cameron's speech was "a chilling attack on the public sector, public sector workers, the poor, the sick and the vulnerable, and a warning that their way of life will change."
The prime minister laid the blame for the situation squarely on what he called "reckless" spending by the Labour government, which was in power for 13 years before being defeated in last month's election. He said that as the financial crisis was "Labour's legacy," so, too, would be the spending cuts.
"Nothing illustrates better the total irresponsibility of the last government's approach than the fact that they kept ratcheting up unaffordable government spending even when the economy was shrinking," he said.
Labour argued that spending would help boost the economy, Mr. Cameron said, "conveniently forgetting that if you start with a large structural deficit, ramping up spending even further is likely to undermine confidence and investment, not encourage it."
Details of proposed spending cuts have not been public. The chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, plans to set out the principles underlying his spending plans on Tuesday and to announce an emergency budget on June 22.
Mr. Cameron said that the cuts would come after wide consultation with members of the British public, driving home a recurring theme in his election campaign that "we're all in this together."
"It is precisely because these decisions are so momentous, because they will have such enormous implications, and because we cannot afford either to duck them or to get them wrong that I want to make sure we go about the urgent task of cutting our deficit in a way that is open, responsible and fair," he said.
He said the financial situation had been worsened by the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. "The global financial markets are no longer focusing simply on the financial position of the banks," he said. "They want to know that the governments that have supported the banks over the last 18 months are taking the actions to bring their own finances under control."
As a cautionary tale, he mentioned Greece, where profligate spending led to a huge budget deficit and eventually a downgrading on financial markets.
While Britain's economic position is stronger than that of Greece, he said, "Greece stands as a warning of what happens to countries that lose their credibility, or whose governments pretend that difficult decisions can be avoided."
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16) Coast Guard Sees Cleanup of Spill Lasting Until the Fall
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JOHN M. BRODER
June 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/us/07spill.html?hp
HOUSTON - The Coast Guard commander in charge of the federal response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico warned on Sunday that even if the flow of crude was stopped by summer, it could take well into autumn - and maybe much longer- to deal with the slick spreading relentlessly across the gulf.
The assessment came as the sheer volume of oil gushing from the out-of-control well forced BP to temporarily halt its attempts to close all four vents on a capping device designed to capture the oil. Even with three vents still open, the cap was capturing so much oil - more than 10,000 barrels a day, an improvement over any previous containment attempt - that the company did not have adequate equipment at hand to process any more.
The well, like a raging undersea beast, has continued to stymie BP and government officials. One technician, amazed at the power of the oil gushing from its depths, called it "one hell of a well."
Adm. Thad W. Allen, the Coast Guard commander, said on "Face the Nation" on CBS that BP officials were working to secure the cap over the wellhead and to gradually increase the amount of oil recovered. But he said the only solution to the problem would be the successful completion of relief wells to finally stop the flow from the bottom of the 18,000-foot-deep well, a job that will not be completed until August at the earliest.
"The spill will not be contained until that happens," Admiral Allen said. "But even after that, there will be oil out there for months to come. This will be well into the fall."
He added: "This is a siege across the entire gulf. This spill is holding everybody hostage, not only economically but physically. And it has to be attacked on all fronts."
Officials said Sunday that they were collecting more than 10,000 barrels a day from the well, but it was impossible to gauge what fraction of the total flow that represented.
A federal panel has estimated that 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day is flowing from the well. But those calculations were made before BP cut the riser pipe last week to accommodate the capping device, which administration officials have said could increase the flow rate by as much as 20 percent.
The area of gulf shoreline potentially affected by the spill has continued to grow, extending from central Louisiana to Port St. Joe in the middle of the Florida Panhandle, a 400-mile front in a widening sea, air and land war. Admiral Allen, who appeared on four television programs on Sunday morning to discuss the disaster, said he was fighting the oil and the elements with a flotilla of skimmers and boom-laying boats to try to keep the oil from making landfall.
"The problem we have, this is not a large, monolithic spill anymore," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "It is an aggregation of thousands of smaller spills that could come ashore at any particular time based on wind and current."
It was too early to judge the degree of success of BP's latest maneuver to control the leak, although company officials continued to express optimism that the containment cap and a new device to be installed later in the week could eventually collect the majority of the oil.
After two days of trying to gradually close the four vents on the capping device, engineers on Sunday decided to keep some open when they realized that more oil was being captured than could be processed on a drill ship floating in the gulf above. In a statement late Sunday, the company said it "may leave some" of the valves open "to ensure system stability."
Engineers had feared that the volume and velocity of oil escaping might create so much friction on the new pipe that it might force it entirely off the cap. All day Saturday they worked to shut two of the vents, and they spent the afternoon measuring the results, mindful that if they closed the vents too quickly, water could rush in and form the kind of icy hydrates that doomed a previous containment effort.
But while the cap remained snugly in place and there were no signs of significant hydrate formation, by nightfall Saturday the engineers suddenly were forced to deal with another problem: the Discoverer Enterprise drill ship can only handle 15,000 barrels a day, and the capping device was trapping almost that amount without the vents shut.
"We're maxed out," said the technician, who is working on the operation and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. He said the capping device was capturing 10,000 to 15,000 barrels a day.
"There is no chance to close the vents when you are at maximum production," he said. "You wish desperately you could capture it all, but it depends on the volume coming out of well. And you know how people are arguing about that."
The problem may be only a temporary one. The limitations of the Discoverer Enterprise to handle oil are mainly due to the size and capacity of the machines it has on board to separate the oil, gas and water for storage. The ship has the capacity to store 139,000 barrels of oil, a quantity that may be reached in a matter of days. Shuttle barges carry oil from the ship to storage tanks on shore.
BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, in a British television interview broadcast Sunday, said another containment device would be deployed by next weekend. That device is a free-standing riser pipe that would siphon oil through the manifold that was built during a failed operation known as top kill. Another pipe will be also used to take oil from the well to a second container ship, the Q4000.
Taken together, BP executives say, they should be able to eventually contain a vast majority of the leaking oil. By early July, BP plans to replace the new containment cap with another device called an "overshot tool," which is heavier and more tightly sealed. "That would capture even more oil" than the current cap, said Toby Odone, a BP spokesman.
The struggle to fully deploy the new containment device has raised renewed questions about just how much oil is spewing from the well. Official government and BP estimates began at 1,000 barrels a day, then increased to 5,000 barrels a day.
In recent days government scientists estimated the leak at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels, and Admiral Allen on Sunday put the upper range at 25,000 barrels. Some independent scientists say the number could be far higher, and they question why BP has not made an active effort to estimate the size of the leak.
Some questioned whether BP knew or even wanted to know how much oil was escaping.
"BP still does not appear to know precisely how much oil is actually escaping, which is discouraging," Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a letter he wrote to BP on Sunday.
Government officials and BP executives say the containment efforts should help them come up with a more solid number.
Clifford Krauss reported from Houston, and John M. Broder from Washington. Henry Fountain contributed reporting from New York.
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