Capitalism At Work: The Gulf Coast

Just because you do not hear about it on the news doesn't mean it's not happening.  The effects of the Gulf Coast/BP oil spill disaster will be felt for a lifetime–many peoples' lifetimes.  


So far, we've seen BP lie about the severity of the disaster, the federal government protecting BP and limiting their total financial liablilty, BP and Obama in cahoots to limit payments to individuals, strong-arming them into unfair "take it or leave it" deals, media blockades, local residents' livelihoods seriously disrupted, serious possible cover-up of human deaths and all-around deception, malfeasance and incompetence both before and after the disaster.  These are the workings of capitalism.  


Here's the latest word on the situation in the Gulf and ramifications for humans, their economy and the world in which they take for granted (article from  Uruknet):

BP oil disaster’s effects will ‘go global,’ Gulf Coast activist warns [ 73551 ] -

By Nathan Diebenow

Raw Story , Janaury 3, 2011 The effects of the disaster that poured millions and millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico last spring will have global ramifications, a Gulf Coast activist recently warned. "What's been done in the Gulf is going to eventually affect every single American citizen," Kindra Arnesen told Project Gulf Impact in a recent interview. She continued, "This is still going to go global because as the economy and the United States goes under the sledgehammer... the rest of the world is going to feel it." "This isn't just about the United States. This isn't just about the Gulf Coast. This is about a whole planet because one hand washes the other," she added. Arnesen, a South Louisiana mother who with BP's invitation toured areas devastated by the Macondo Well explosion, described the negative health effects to which she and others, including oil spill clean up crews, were exposed around the Gulf Coast. One such crew she encountered had brown spots on their bodies. Her friend on the same crew currently has bruising across her stomach, she said. "It didn't look like someone punched her in the stomach," Arnesen explained. "It looked like the blood vessels underneath the skin surface were literally breaking and the blood was slowly coming to the surface." "People are getting sick all over the Gulf Coast," she added. "If people who live here can get sick, then people who come here can very well get sick." Arnesen also noted that the chemicals used in the clean up are known to make animals sterile. "We're not that much different than a species in the Gulf," she said, taking into account the area's children. According to the coastal zone director of Plaquemine Parish, the oil spread across the Louisiana shoreline after the well was capped in September from 287 miles in July to 320 miles in late November. "The government does not have a plan," Arnesen said. "BP is about to pull the response efforts out of the gulf. We've got to step up to the plate and say something." This video is from Project Gulf Impact, broadcast Dec. 31, 2010.

See also:

Abracadabra! BP's Disappearing Act

Coersion: Feinburg/Obama to force gulf victims to take minimal compensation from BP, stripping their right to further compensatory redress.

First Amendment Has been Outlawed in Gulf

Gulf Oil Spill

Photographers Say BP Restricts Access to Oil Spill (Newsweek)

"This is a Nightmare" -- Clean-up Efforts Proving Costly for Wildlife and Human Health

Kucinich speech regarding Gulf oil spill

Could Millions Die From Gulf OIL SPILL?

Seize BP

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Abracadabra! BP's Disappearing Act

So a few weeks ago, it was reported that the oil in the Gulf of Mexico had seemingly  disappeared and BP and the government were having trouble finding it in the great masses that had been floating around for months before.  The article reprinted below tells us why.  

First hand accounts tell us that people who had been hired to find the oil slicks, report it AND remove it, are actually being told NOT to remove the oil from the water once they report it. They are sent away after reporting it and BP has outside contractors come in and use chemical dispersants on it under cover of darkness, something that had reportedly been stopped weeks ago.  

The reason for using dispersants?  As reported previously on this blog, the dispersants make the oil cluster into blobs, which then sink beneath the surface of the water. Well no wonder why the oil is disappearing!  Also reported in the same article is the fact that the oil beneath the surface is just as, if not more, harmful to the local ecosystem as it is when it's floating.  

Another concern of using chemical dispersants is the harmful heath effects caused to humans, as also reported previously in this blog. The chemicals used seem to possibly be "frying the brains" of local fishermen and rendering their lungs to look like they were multi-packs-a-day smokers.

The conclusion of the article below is that BP is still using chemical dispersants to hide the oil, because if the oil is actually cleaned up, it can be quantified.  If it can be quantified, BP will be fined even more ($4 000 a barrel, by one account). Apparently this is too great a cost for a company who reported 2010 first quarter profits of 5.598 billion dollars (that is about 56 million dollars a day in profit).


The following article is reprinted from the Zero Hedge website.

BP Vessel of Opportunity Workers Allege that Oil Is Not Being Cleaned Up During the Day ... Instead, Corexit Is Being Sprayed at Night

Submitted by George Washington on 08/16/2010 18:32 -0500

• Florida
 

→ Washington’s Blog

The government and BP have said that no dispersants have been sprayed in the Gulf since the well was partially capped on July 15th.

However, local residents have been saying for weeks that Corexit is still being sprayed.

Admiral Allen wouldn't deny this allegation unequivocally as of August 9th.

On August 10th, the Destin Log reported:

Lt. Cmdr. Dale Vogelsang, liaison officer with the United State Coast Guard, told The Log he had contacted Unified Command and they had “confirmed” that dispersants were not being used in Florida waters. “Dispersants are only being used over the wellhead in Louisiana,” Vogelsang said. “We are working with Eglin and Hurlburt to confirm what the flight pattern may be. But right now, it appears to be a normal flight.”

Vogelsang also said Unified Command confirmed to him that C-130s have never been used to distribute dispersants, as they “typically use smaller aircraft.”

But according to an article by the 910^th Airlift Wing Public Affairs Office, based in Youngstown, OH., C-130H Hercules aircraft started aerial spray operations Saturday, May 1, under the direction of the president of the United States and Secretary of Defense. “The objective of the aerial spray operation is to neutralize the oil spill with oil dispersing agents,” the article states.

A July Lockheed Martin Newsletter states that “Lockheed Martin aircraft, including C-130s and P-3s, have been deployed to the Gulf region by the Air Force, Coast Guard and other government customers to perform a variety of tasks, such as monitoring, mapping and dispersant spraying.”

Neither of the articles specify the operations have taken place in Florida.

After The Log spoke with Vogelsang Friday morning, he once again reiterated that “no dispersants were being used in Florida waters,” and no dispersants have been used anywhere since mid-July. When The Log asked Vogelsang about the two articles, which state C-130s have been used for dispersant spraying, he said “if they were being used here locally to spray dispersants, then Unified Command didn’t know about it.”

In fact, there are photos and video of C-130s dropping dispersant in the Gulf.

On August 9th, award-winning journalist Dahr Jamail wrote:

Dean Blanchard, one of the most important seafood purchasers in Louisiana, recently attended a Town Hall Meeting with a BP representative in Grand Isle, Louisiana.

In the meeting, Blanchard stands up and addresses the BP representative at length.

***

Blanchard had clearly heard enough of BP’s propaganda. To the representatives’ request to have someone explain to him why BP would not want to clean up the oil, Blanchard angrily obliged:

“Because it’s more cost effective for ya’ll to come at night and sink the son-of-a-bitch! When the oil’s coming around, they call ya’ll, they tell ya’ll where the oil’s at, and the first thing ya’ll do is tell them to go the other way, ya’ll send the planes, and ya’ll fucking sink it! [Spray dispersants from the air] That’s what ya’ll are doing, come on man!” He sits back down angrily. “Let’s quit playing over here and tell the truth. Ya’ll are sinking the oil, Jason! You know ya’ll are sinking it. You know what ya’ll are doing. Ya’ll are sending all the boats, you’re putting them all in a group at night, we all hear the planes, and the next morning there’s nothing but white bubbles! What do you think, we’re stupid? We’re not stupid! Ya’ll are putting the oil on the bottom of my fishing grounds! Ya’ll not only messing me up now, ya’ll are messing me up for the rest of my life! I ain’t gonna live long enough to buy anymore shrimp!”

Today, Jamail reports that several people working with BP's Vessels-of-Opportunity program have confirmed this allegation:

[PhD marine biologist Ed Cake, who has worked for the past couple of decades growing the Gulf oyster industry along side the oil business, usually working for both industries simultaneously] wrote of the experience: "When the vessel was stopped for sampling, small, 0.5- to 1.0-inch-diameter bubbles would periodically rise to the surface and shortly thereafter they would pop leaving a small oil sheen. According to the fishermen, several of BP's Vessels-Of-Opportunity  (Carolina Skiffs with tanks of dispersants [Corexit]) were hand spraying in Mississippi Sound off the Pass Christian Harbor in prior days/nights. It appears to this observer that the dispersants are still in the area and are continuing to react with oil in the waters off Pass Christian Harbor."

***

A resident, who has a yacht in the harbor, spoke with Truthout on condition of anonymity due to fears of reprisal from BP. "Last week we were sitting on our boat and you could smell the chemicals," he explained. "It smelt like death. It was like mosquito spray, but ten times stronger. The next day I was hoarse and my lungs felt like I'd been in a smoky bar the night before."

***

Truthout spoke with another man, who was recently laid off from the VOO program. He also spoke on condition of anonymity. "Just the other day one of the Carolina Skiffs passed us spraying something," he said. "We went west instead of east as we turned and a group of Carolina Skiffs was spraying something over the water."

A Carolina Skiff is a type of boat, usually between 13' and 30' long, very versatile and can function well in shallow or deep waters. They are known for having a large payload capacity and a lot of interior space.

Alarmed by what he saw, the former VOO worker called the Coast Guard to report what he believed was a private contractor company spraying dispersants. "We were later told by the Coast Guard they'd investigated the incident and told us what we saw were vacuum boats sucking oil, and they were rinsing their tanks," he said. "But we know this is a lie and that BP is using these out of state contractors to come in and spray the dispersant at night and they are using planes to drop it as well."

He worked in the VOO program looking for oil. When his team would find oil, upon reporting it, they would consistently be sent away without explanation or the opportunity to clean it. "They made us abort these missions," he said. "Two days ago I put out boom in a bunch of oil for five minutes, they told me to abort the mission, so I pulled up boom soaked in oil. What the hell are we doing out there if they won't let us work to clean up the oil?"

He told Truthout that as his and other VOO teams would be going out to work on the water in the morning, they would pass the out-of-state contractors in Carolina Skiffs coming in from what he believed to be a covert spraying of the oil with dispersant in order to sink it. He believes this was done to deliberately prevent the VOO teams from finding and collecting oil. By doing so, BP's liability would be lessened since the oil giant will be fined for the amount of oil collected.

"BP brings in the Carolina Skiffs to spray the dispersant at night," he added, "And they are not accountable to the Coast Guard."

James Miller, who had taken the group out into the Mississippi Sound that found the oil/dispersants on August 11, told Truthout that the Carolina Skiff teams spraying dispersants were "common" and that it "happened all the time."

Miller, who was in the VOO, is an eyewitness to planes spraying dispersants, as well as the Carolina Skiff crews doing the same.

"We'd roll up on a patch of oil ½ mile wide by one mile long and they'd hold us off from cleaning it up," Miller, speaking with Truthout at his home in D'Iberville, Mississippi, said. "We'd leave and the Carolina Skiffs would pull up and start spraying dispersants on the oil. The guys doing the spraying would wear respirators and safety glasses. Their boats have 375 gallon white drums full of the stuff and they could spray it out 150 feet. The next day there'd be the white foam that's always there after they hit the oil with dispersants."

Some nights VOO crews would sleep out near the work sites. "We'd sleep out there and some nights the planes would come in so close the noise would wake us from a dead sleep," Miller added. "Again, we'd call in the oiled areas during the day and at night the planes would come in and hit the hell out of it with dispersants. That was the drill. We'd spot it and report it. They'd call us off it and send guys out in the skiffs or planes to sink it."

Mark Stewart, from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was in the VOO program for 70 days before being laid off on August 2. The last weeks has seen BP decreasing the number of response workers from around 45,000 down to around 30,000. The number is decreasing by the day.

Stewart, a third generation commercial fisherman, ... like Miller, is an eyewitness to planes dispensing dispersant at night, as well as the Carolina Skiff crews spraying dispersant. "I worked out off the barrier islands of Mississippi," Stewart said. "They would relentlessly carpet bomb the oil we found with dispersants, day and night."

Stewart, echoing what VOO employees across the Gulf Coast are saying, told Truthout his crew would regularly find oil, report it, be sent away, then either watch as planes or Carolina Skiffs would arrive to apply dispersants, or come back the next day to find the white foamy emulsified oil remnant that is left on the surface after oil has been hit with dispersants.

Stewart added, "Whenever government people, state or federal, would be flying over us, we'd be instructed to put out all our boom and start skimming, acting like we were gathering oil, even when we weren't in the oil."

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Coersion: Feinburg/Obama to force gulf victims to take minimal compensation from BP, stripping their right to further compensatory redress.

The following is an email received from the Seize BP Campaign reprinted here at their request.


Seize BP Campaign
www.SeizeBP.org

****************

** Please circulate this message widely by email and through social
networking sites. **


BP IS LYING. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS LYING.

SEND A LETTER TO YOUR NEWSPAPER EDITOR:
Continued collusion between the government and BP must be condemned!



BP is lying. The federal government is lying. Kenneth Feinberg is ...
well, let's call it flip-flopping.

Out-of-work fishers and others from the Gulf Coast are enraged about
the double dealing of BP and the Feinberg-led escrow fund. They have
just learned that if they earned any income or wages from BP as part
of the clean-up effort, the money would be subtracted from any claim
they make against the so-called $20 billion escrow fund. That is a
direct contradiction from what they had been told earlier.

But the latest lie turns out be the tip of the iceberg.

The Obama administration has done an about face on the function of the
BP/Obama escrow account plan.

When Obama announced the escrow account in order to vent the rising
tide of political anger that was increasingly directed at his
disengaged response to the suffering in the Gulf, he promised and
assured the people of the Gulf that "Dissatisfied claimants
maintain all current rights under law ..." (See White House
Fact Sheet: Claims and Escrow, June 16, Office of the Press Secretary)

Now, Feinberg, the Obama/BP escrow administrator, has announced that
in order to receive lump sum payments, claimants will have to execute
a waiver of their rights to sue for full or additional relief in the
courts. (New York Times, July 16)

The choice is: Take what is offered, even if it is a portion of what
you are entitled to, or else risk ending up like the victims of the
Exxon Valdez disaster, fighting it out in court for decades to receive
a pittance.

Responding to criticism, Feinberg has stressed that people have a
choice. But this leaves people with a choice driven by desperation,
fear and uncertainty.

This is exactly what BP wants. Is this any different than if
individuals were forced to negotiate alone against BP's army of
lawyer-sharks? Here, Obama and Feinberg are doing BP's bidding
for it.

Is Feinberg BP's lawyer? Technically, he is a "claims
administrator." But he refuses even to disclose how much his
firm is getting paid from BP.

The choice the Obama/BP escrow account foists upon people is the same
that you would expect from a BP lawyer.

Faced with the need to put food on the table, to pay this
month's rent or mortgage, or the note on a fishing trawler or
meet other critical needs, many will feel that they have no choice at
all but to take whatever the Obama/BP account offers even if it is far
less than what is fair.

Yet, the fact is: The impact of the damage will not be fully known for
years.

Obama is doing just what BP wants: Force a decision now, in a crisis
of desperation and economic pressure, and take away or
"waive" thousands of people's rights.

Collecting compensation was promised to not come with legal strings
attached. The escrow account is looking more to be a vehicle to limit
BP's liability than to distribute compensation.

What would a fair escrow account do? Compensate in full. No waivers of
rights.

BP and Feinberg are employing a smoke and mirrors propaganda ploy
designed to hide their true intention to shield BP. They argue that
people shouldn't be allowed to be "paid twice"--once from the escrow
fund and then later from a lawsuit. That is utter nonsense. The fact is:
A person cannot recover from a court lawsuit any additional
compensatory damages if the escrow account has already paid
full compensation.

The protection BP has against lawsuits is for the escrow account to
pay claims in full. Instead they - and Feinberg on behalf of
President Obama-want a system for partial compensation that
denies desperate people on the Gulf Coast the ability to litigate
against BP for full recovery and compensation for losses incurred
beyond the next few months.

The Seize BP! movement has to hold BP, the federal government and
Feinberg's feet to the fire or the working people of the Gulf
Coast will be swindled at the very moment that BP's big shot
investors begin to rake in record profits once again.

TAKE ACTION NOW!
Send a letter to editor to condemn the continued
collusion between the federal government and BP.

Please make a donation to support Seize BP

Follow us on FACEBOOK

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First Amendment Has been Outlawed in Gulf

All Media Have Been Banned From Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill Cleanup Sites

In an amazing development, all media have been banned from Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup sites. Yes, you read that correctly. All media have been banned. In yet another sign of just how far free speech rights in the United States have fallen, "National Incident Commander" Thad Allen has banned all media access to oil clean up sites in or around the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of devoting all of their energy to trying to save the environment in the Gulf of Mexico, BP and the U.S. government seem absolutely obsessed from keeping people away from seeing what is really going on. It is now a class B felony that carries a fine of up to $40,000 for any media representative to come within the 65 foot "exclusion zone" that has been established. That means that all members of the media - print, television, radio and bloggers - are banned from coming within 65 feet of anything important down in the Gulf of Mexico.

The media are being treated like the enemy. Already there have been many reports of how the media have been harassed and intimidated down in the Gulf of Mexico. But now BP and the U.S. government have just decided to shut free speech down altogether in the Gulf. Apparently they are much more comfortable when their inaction and incompetence is not exposed for the entire world to see.

But what harm is the media really doing down there in the Gulf? Well, other than showing how badly the U.S. government and BP are handling the situation. The truth is that the American people deserve to know what is going on. But now the media will not be able to get pictures or video of anything important.

In a recent article, columnist Yobie Benjamin described the dramatic impact that this new order is going to have on media coverage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis....

Allen's orders effectively bans all media - print, television, radio and Internet bloggers from talking to to any clean-up worker or to even come close to take pictures or videos of booms, clean-up workers, oil soaked birds, dead dolphins, dead marine life, burned and dead endangered sea turtles.

Needless to say, many in the media are absolutely outraged. Not being able to get within 65 feet of any oil spill clean up site is going to severely restrict media personnel from doing their jobs. Not that they were doing such a great job of covering this oil spill crisis anyway, but now they are basically going to have no access.
In the video posted below, you can really feel Anderson Cooper's outrage as he described what this new order means. Is this another huge indication that free speech in America is just about dead?....

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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Gulf Oil Spill

Bush, Cheney and the oil industry were the architects of this disaster. A disaster that never needed to happen if we had a strict rules as Norway and Brazil have.
-ry


Read all about it here:
Dubya : The Gift That Keeps on Giving: Bush, Cheney and Halliburton: The making of a disaster.

x

Photographers Say BP Restricts Access to Oil Spill (Newsweek)

The ability to document a disaster, particularly through images, is key to focusing the nation’s attention on it, and the resulting clean-up efforts. Within days of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, pictures of dead otters, fish, and birds, as well as oil-covered shorelines, ignited nationwide outrage and led to a backlash against Exxon. Consumers returned some 10,000 of Exxon’s 7 million credit cards. Forty days after the spill, protestors organized a national boycott of Exxon. So far, no national boycott of BP is in the works, despite growing frustration over the company’s inability to cap the leaking well. Obviously, pictures are emerging from this spill, but much of the images are coming from BP and government sources.


-ry


Read the Newsweek article

x

"This is a Nightmare" -- Clean-up Efforts Proving Costly for Wildlife and Human Health

ABC sends divers in Gulf only to find the OIL SPILL is WORSE than we thought. CHEMICAL DISPERSANTS are NOT WORKING as thought. Meanwhile, PLANS TO PLUG THE LEAK with earth and cement HAVE A 40% CHANCE OF FAILURE (by BP's own estimates)! If you're not pissed now, WTH is wrong with you?!


The chemical dispersants aren't making the oil disappear, they're sending it into droplets that are suspended below the surface. The drops will enter the gills or seep into the skin of any sea creatures swimming through it!


Capitalism stinks! Literally.


-ry



Shared via this article

I hate the smell of oil and chemical dispersants in the morning. It smells like failure. Hmm, Apocolypse Now?


Shocked by the events occuring in the Gulf? Want to know more and find out how to help?


Join us on Thursday, May 27th at 8pm EST for a tele-townhall on how the BP oil spill is impacting wildlife and what you can do.


Experts from the National Wildlife Federation, including President and CEO Larry Schweiger, will give first-hand accounts of the damage and the latest news on one of the worst environmental disasters in our nation's history.


You MUST register for this call! So be sure to click HERE.

All reservations must be received by NOON (EST) on WEDNESDAY in order to be on the call!


-ry

Kucinich speech regarding Gulf oil spill

As gallons of oil continue to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) invoked God on the House floor Friday in an impassioned 90-second plea to end our dependence on fossil fuels and preserve "mother earth" with a clean energy economy.



KUCINICH 2012!!!

Could Millions Die From Gulf OIL SPILL?

CHEMICALS that BP is using in the OIL SPILL may be ENDANGERING local fisherman's LIVES; could "FRY THE BRAIN." One fishman's lungs looked like those of a 3-pack-a-day smoker. Watch news report: