http://seizebp.org

Since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig April 20 killed 11 oil rig workers, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to claim the lives of wildlife, like birds and sea turtles, and compromise the fishing and tourism industries, and threaten the culture of the Gulf coast. That, and it’s spawned an awful lot of misconceptions. Here’s a look at a few myths that The Daily Green has been watching:

1. Obama Put a Moratorium on Offshore Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

Myth. President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a moratorium on new oil deepwater drilling permits, and shut down 33 exploratory deepwater wells on May 6. (A similar moratorium on new shallow water drilling lifted three weeks later. “Shallow” in this context means up to 499 feet deep.) Both orders, however, were vague and left 3,600 existing offshore oil wells active in Gulf waters. Since the spill, 17 new offshore oil drilling projects have been permitted. Even the six-month deepwater moratorium was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge June 22, leaving it void if not overturned on appeal or reinstated on different legal grounds. (Nevermind that the judge has invested in Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded, Halliburton, which handled the faulty cementing of the well, and about a dozen other companies involved in offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.) And Obama has always been a supporter of offshore oil, though some of his environmentalist supporters seem to have forgotten that; he made good on a campaign promise shortly before the BP oil spill started and proposed opening additional offshore waters to oil and gas exploration – in the Gulf of Mexico, along the Atlantic coast and off Alaska. (Permits to start drilling in those new waters have been suspended temporarily.)

2. Boycotting BP Gas Stations Boycotts BP

Myth. Lady Gaga is among the leading proponents of a BP boycott, as musicians on summer tours shun the stations, along with Public Citizen and tens of thousands of Facebook fans of a boycott. But while the brand may be offensive and permanently tainted, BP disinvested in its U.S. gasoline chain in 2007, leaving independent owners invested most heavily in local stations. They pay BP a licensing fee and may (or may not) be more likely to carry BP gasoline, but the economics of wholesale oil and gas is such that BP, Britain’s largest company, is unlikely to suffer much from a retail gas boycott, but BP the local station owner could. Anyway, what’s the better alternative? And unfortunately, oil ends up in a lot of products other than gasoline, under a lot of different brands, making it difficult to avoid one company’s product.

3. Offshore Oil Could Make the U.S. Energy Independent

Myth. The U.S. imports 57% of the oil we burn, and two-thirds of those imports come from politically unstable or hostile countries. As a nation, we spend more than $700 million a day on imported oil (the figure was more than $1 billion as recently as 2008, when oil prices were higher). There isn’t enough oil offshore to offset that imbalance. An analysis by the Energy Information Administration, the most credible government voice on energy issues, predicted that new offshore oil drilling would result in a whopping 3-cent difference in the price of gas by 2030. That’s not to say that renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are ready to fill in and plug the gap either, unfortunately. If you’re looking for a better path toward energy independence, conservation is the most lucrative avenue. Three pennies not spent on gas are three pennies earned (and three pennies worth of offshore oil not drilled).

4. The Deepwater Horizon Rig Was Uniquely Vulnerable to Disaster

Myth. The facts keep piling up showing negligence – or at the very least, bad decision-making – by BP, and many of those decisions and conditions may be unique to BP, which has been criticized before this for a culture that put profits far ahead of safety and environmental protection. But disaster preparedness by other oil companies drilling in the Gulf, and oversight by the government, is virtually identical. For instance, other companies’ disaster response plans in the Gulf seem to include notes about protecting the walrus and other Arctic creatures that don’t live in the Gulf; unfortunately they don’t include plans to respond to underwater plumes of oil, failed blowout preventers or other real-world issues. And the Mineral Management Service, the agency in charge of regulating energy exploration on federal lands and in federal waters (yes, you own those) was outed repeatedly by its own inspector general of cavorting with oil companies, failing to inspect rigs, waiving requirements for environmental review and otherwise failing its public service mission in favor of its royalty-collecting mission. The MMS determined in 2009 that an environmental review of the Deepwater Horizon rig wasn’t warranted because it would have “minimal or non-existent environmental effects.” The story is the same with hundreds of other drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico – including 49 projects (including two BP projects) exempted from environmental review since the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Clearly, the assumption that these rigs are safe is dead wrong. (Photo: Pacific walrus, by NOAA)

5. Seafood Is Widely Contaminated

Myth. Certainly, oil can make seafood unsafe to eat, and the Gulf of Mexico is the primary source of domestic shrimp and oysters, and a significant source for other popular fish, like red snapper. And roughly one-third of the Gulf has been closed to fishing as the oil spreads. But much of the seafood for sale in the U.S. is imported, and two-thirds of the Gulf remains open to fishing. While fraud can never be fully discounted, there are systems being put in place to inspect Gulf seafood to ensure that it has been caught from clean waters. That said, the story could change as the longterm contamination of the Gulf food chain is studied.

6. The BP Oil Spill Will Lead to a Strong Senate Energy Bill

Myth. The U.S. Senate has been stalled in its efforts to pass an energy and climate bill to match the one passed months ago by the House. A linchpin in the Kerry-Lieberman bill, which would cap carbon emission and invest in clean energy sources, was the expansion of offshore oil drilling. That, along with investment in nuclear power, the shielding of the coal industry from fully owning up to its pollution and other sweeteners were built into the bill to bring Republicans and reluctant Democrats to the table. The catastrophic oil spill will make an energy bill more likely to pass, but without the offshore oil sweetener, a climate bill is not.

7. It’s a “Spill”

Myth. We keep calling it the Gulf oil spill. But it’s a gusher, a geyser, a “four-dimensional catastrophe,” in the words of one fisheries expert: “‘Leak’ is totally wrong. A leak is something you wrap duct tape around and maybe get to next week, next month or next year. The ‘gusher in the Gulf’ sounds way too cute. It’s not exactly a spill: that’s maybe something between your kitchen and your dining room table. ‘Spill’ sounds like a pool. It’s two-dimensional. This is very much a three-dimensional or, rather, a four-dimensional catastrophe,” said Douglas N. Rader, chief ocean scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund. “I think a whole new language is going to have to be developed to discuss accidents – events – environmental catastrophes of this magnitude. Nothing quite like it exists.”

8. The Gulf Coast Will Heal Itself

Myth. While it’s true that natural systems are remarkably regenerative, there’s still evidence of oil spill damage decades after past oil spills of this (or lesser) magnitude. Further, contamination from oil both on the surface and deep underwater could compromise marine ecosystems in surprising ways – leading to tainted seafood, for instance, or degraded wetlands so that coastal communities will be exposed to greater damage from hurricanes and storm surges. Before the spill (even after decades of degradation) the Mississippi Delta provides $47 billion annually in economically valuable “ecological services” – on par with the value of BP. Time will tell how bad and how long the environmental damage will be, but as the oil (hopefully) stops gushing, Gulf of Mexico ecosystems will find a new equilibrium, not return to a previous state.

9. Now We Know How Much Oil Is Spilling

Myth. Just how big is the Gulf oil spill? Recently leaked internal BP documents show that engineers have estimated a worst-case spill rate of 100,000 barrels a day. That’s two-thirds bigger than the worst-case estimate (60,000 barrels) of independent scientists charged by the government with estimating the spill … which was nearly three times the worst-case estimate (25,000 barrels) released by the government in June … which was five times the worst-case estimate (5,000 barrels) released by the government and BP in May … which was itself five times the estimate (1,000 barrels) released by the government and BP in April. The difference between 1,000 barrels and 100,000 barrels is obvious: It’s the difference from being a spill that’s a fraction of the size of the Exxon Valdez spill (previously the worst spill in U.S. history, at 11 million gallons) to a spill that’s many multiples of that infamous spill.

10. The Gulf of Mexico Is Most at Risk from Offshore Oil Spills

Myth. While the Gulf of Mexico holds all of U.S. offshore oil sites currently, President Obama wants to open the Arctic to offshore oil drilling for the first time. Environmental groups are trying to stop the plan, arguing that not only are ecosystems there fragile – think polar bears, seals and, yes, walruses – but a cleanup in icy waters would be even more difficult than in the Gulf of Mexico, and the icy waters themselves would inhibit the (slow, but natural) breakdown of oil. The Interior Department did halt Shell’s plans to start drilling this year, but it’s not a permanent ban. As for which is more vulnerable, it’s a difficult call; the point is that a spill in either place has the potential to devastate entire regions.

11. Shrimp and Pelicans Represent Wildlife at Risk From the Oil Spill

Myth. While shrimp and oil-soaked pelicans have become icons of the Gulf oil spill, there is a huge range of wildlife at risk, from the Kemp’s ridley turtle (five of the world’s seven sea turtles spend time in the Gulf, but none more than the Kemp’s ridley, which spawns only there) to the snowy plover (and other shorebirds that stopover in the Gulf on their migration flights) to the bluefin tuna (which spawns in the Gulf and is already at risk from overfishing). Each of these species was endangered before the spill, and dozens of birds, turtles, fish, marine mammals, crustaceans, and other species are at risk from the effects of the spill. (Photo: Piping plover, by Ralph Wright/American Bird Conservancy)

12. There’s Nothing Individuals Can Do

Myth. There’s always volunteering, donating to those cleaning birds or arguing for good energy policy, or writing to Congress directly. But beyond that, there’s federal law. The Clean Water Act empowers citizens to bring suits to stop water pollution and hold polluters accountable. It’s hard to argue that BP’s oil spill isn’t polluting water, and several groups – The Center for Biological Diversity, Gulf Restoration Network, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, and Environment America – have filed suit. The potential fine is great, at $4,300 per barrel.

13. On-Shore Drilling is Safer

Myth. It’s hard to compare the risks from different activities, but two forms of oil and gas extraction gaining steam on land are fraught with risk. Natural gas extraction from shale requires hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. “fracking”), a process that injects a chemical stew at high pressure deep underground in order to force natural gas out of the rock. Groundwater becomes contaminated with toxic chemicals, threatening drinking water supplies across a wide swath of country where shale formations exist (like the Marcellus shale through New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia). Another controversial new form of oil extraction comes from so-called “tar sands” like those in Alberta, Canada; extracting oil from tar sands involves open pit mining on a grand scale or heating the land at high temperatures to sort-of melt the oil out of the land. What each of these – deepwater drilling, fracking and tar sands mining – has in common is that they are very difficult, expensive and risky. And that they are made necessary by our appetite for oil; the cheap oil that’s easy to get at is being exhausted, leading us to these highly complex, highly controversial and highly risky methods.

14. Republicans are the Politicians Most in the Pocket of Oil Companies

Myth. Republicans may scream “drill, baby, drill” louder, but when it comes to political money being spent to influence government, it’s more or less a tie. Key Democrats are among the top recipients of political money from oil companies, as are Republicans. The money flows to those in oil-rich states, to high-profile candidates and those with the most power in Congress (ie, the chairs of key committees). Here’s a look at the Friends of Earth tally of opensecrets.org data, showing the biggest recipients of money from BP and other oil companies since 2006:

Senate

• John McCain (R-AZ) – $36,649 from BP; $2.43 million total
• Mary Landrieu (D-LA) – $16,200 from BP; $329,100 total
• Mark Begich (D-AK) – $8,550 from BP; $85,958 total
• Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) – $8,500 from BP; 223,326 total
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY) – $8,500 from BP; 408,400 total

House

• John Culberson (R-TX) – $10,200 from BP; 187,350 total
• Ron Paul (R-TX) – $7,300 from BP; 134,132 total
• Charles Rangel (D-NY) – $6,500 from BP; 40,600 total
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD) – $6,000 from BP; 91,800 total
• Don Young (R-AK) – $5,500 from BP; $45,500 total

15. It Will All Be Over in August

Through each of BP’s failed attempts to cap its well – from the top hat to the top kill – it has maintained that the worst thing that could happen was that the well would continue to gush into August, when the company would complete its relief well. But there’s no guarantee that the relief well will be fully effective. In a June 15 testimony, BP’s Lamar McKay said that “the design of the relief well is very, very similar to the original well.” In addition, there’s speculation that the oil well leak may have caused the sea floor itself to rupture, meaning the shutting off the well may not stop oil from seeping into the Gulf.

The Obama administration has launched a public relations campaign entitled “summer of recovery,” kicked off by Vice President Joe Biden at the White House Thursday, followed by a presidential appearance Friday at a construction site in Columbus, Ohio.

The purpose of this public relations exercise is to mask the dismal reality of mass unemployment and protracted economic stagnation, and to justify a turn to austerity policies and budget-cutting.

The “recovery” campaign coincides with the decision of the US Senate to block the extension of unemployment benefits for millions of workers, with a faction of Senate Democrats using the claimed “recovery” to justify the termination of extended benefits.

The number of unemployed workers losing benefits because of the Senate inaction will hit 1.2 million by the end of this week. An even more dramatic consequence would be the impact on state governments if the bill is not passed by June 30, the last day of the fiscal year for most of the 50 states. As many as 900,000 state government workers could face layoff under emergency measures that would be taken as a result of failure to enact the $24 billion in aid to state-run Medicaid programs.

According to the Department of Labor, nearly 7 million workers have been unemployed for more than six months. Millions have been out of work continuously for more than two years—a phenomenon virtually without precedent in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Foreclosures threaten 5.7 million families. Credit card delinquencies have jumped by 60 percent since 2005.

Young people face a future of long-term joblessness punctuated by short periods of low-paid and insecure labor. A survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that only 24.4 of 2010 graduates had secured a job before graduation, up only slightly from the 19.7 percent for the class of 2009. More than 60 percent of college students are graduating without having received a single job offer.

In their claims of “recovery,” Obama and Biden demonstrate that they are as distant from the real conditions of life for working people as their Republican counterparts. They may mock Republican Congressman Joe Barton for his abject apology to BP, but they are no less subservient to corporate America and the profit system as a whole.

Biden cited figures showing smaller monthly job losses compared to January 2009, when he and Obama took office, and an increase in Gross Domestic Product, boasting “this growth is going to be sustained at that 3 percent-plus range for the indefinite future.” Even if this scenario were to play out—highly unlikely amidst growing signs of a renewed downturn—GDP growth of 3 percent is barely sufficient to provide jobs for new entrants to the work force. It condemns the 17 million now unemployed or underemployed to joblessness “for the indefinite future.”

The vice president boasted of the number of construction projects launched under the stimulus bill enacted by Congress 16 months ago. “Last summer, we started improving just shy of 10,000 miles of highway in this country,” he said. “This summer, we’ll start and ultimately improve 30,000 additional miles.”

This is an insignificant figure. According to a report Sunday in the New York Times, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of the major federal agencies created by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, built from scratch or improved 650,000 miles of road—more than 20 times the scale of the present administration’s program, which will expire this fall.

The contrast with the New Deal is even more glaring, given that the WPA and other New Deal agencies like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Public Works Administration created jobs directly, by hiring the unemployed and the putting them to work on projects to build or maintain the public infrastructure of roads, bridges, dams, buildings and parks.

The Obama-Biden program provides money to state governments to pay private contractors, a process that is both slow and cumbersome, and ensures that the lion’s share of the federal stimulus money has gone into the coffers of private business.

Biden frankly admitted that the goal of the stimulus program was to boost business profits, declaring, “the only engine that’s going to bring us back to total health is the free enterprise system and the American—free enterprise system and the business community.”

Obama’s trip to Columbus the next day was typically perfunctory for a president who can scarcely conceal his indifference to the mass suffering generated by more than two years of economic slump. He spent a grand total of 75 minutes on the ground in Ohio, and about the same length of time traveling to and from the state aboard Air Force One.

The president then devoted his Saturday Internet and radio address to the topic of unemployment, blaming Republican opposition in the US Senate for blocking passage of an extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. The bill would also have provided $24 billion in aid to state governments. “If this obstruction continues, unemployed Americans will see their benefits stop,” Obama said. “Teachers and firefighters will lose their jobs.”

Passage was blocked by procedural votes on Wednesday and Thursday, but in both cases a group of conservative Democrats joined with the unanimous Republican opposition to provide the final margin. Obama said nothing about these Democratic senators, 12 on the first vote, two on the second, who helped block the extension of unemployment benefits.

Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri who sided with the Republicans in the first procedural vote, warned that extended benefits might become a new “entitlement,” and thus cut across the administration’s proposals for “entitlement reform”—slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits to reduce the federal deficit.

The Senate did take action Friday on a six-month extension of increased reimbursements to doctors who treat Medicare payments, which had been part of the larger bill. It passed easily as a separate measure, after the White House agreed to offset the $6.4 billion cost with cuts in other programs.

The legislative maneuvers and finger-pointing between the Democrats and Republicans cannot disguise the fact that neither of the two big business parties has any solution to the social catastrophe of permanent mass unemployment. Both parties agree that the private sector is to be the only source of “job creation.” In other words, the living standards of working people are being held hostage to the profit drive of the capitalist class.

The Socialist Equality Party rejects this perspective and calls on working people and young people to fight for an emergency program to provide full employment, regardless of the profit requirements of the giant corporations and banks. We demand:

* An immediate program of public works to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure and provide jobs for every unemployed worker within six months

* Outlaw plant closures and mass layoffs

* Establish a 30-hour week at 40 hours pay

* The nationalization of the banks and major corporations, under the public ownership and democratic control of the working class

* Provide trillions of dollars to expand education, healthcare and other needed public services.

Such a program can only be carried out through the independent political mobilization of the working class, in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans, and on the basis of socialist program.

Patrick Martin

New Today

• More strikes erupt in China’s auto industry
• Obama celebrates jobless “recovery”
• Louisiana residents report oil-spill related illnesses
• Gulf states’ economies devastated by BP spill
• EU nations divided in run up to G20 summit

more articles »

Perspectives

• Obama celebrates jobless “recovery”
• Obama seeks “inflection point” on Gulf oil disaster
• What is driving the crisis of the German government?
• Chinese workers revolt against the unions
• European trade union head backs austerity measures

more articles »

US Economy

• Obama celebrates jobless “recovery”
• New York enacts sweeping cuts amid threats of state shutdown
• Obama, Democrats abandon stimulus for austerity
• South Carolina budget cuts target education and health care
• The jobs crisis and socialist policies

more articles »

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SEP Australia Meetings

Class struggle in Greece:
The second stage of the global financial crisis

Newcastle, May 30, 1pm
Perth, June 20, 5pm

NAPLAN testing and My School: Rudd’s free market education agenda

Maroubra, June 2, 7pm
Punchbowl, June 3, 7pm

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Philosophy

• The Nation, Jonathan Israel and the Enlightenment
  By Ann Talbot and David North

Important Documents

• Marxism and the Holocaust
  by Nick Beams
• Imperialism and the political economy of the Holocaust
• Political biography and the historical lie: An examination of Robert Service’s Trotsky
  by David North
• Emergency Conference on the Social Crisis & War: Resolutions
• The Greek debt crisis signals a new stage in class conflict
  
• Perspective and tasks of the Socialist Equality Party in 2010
  

//

From Mehring Books

About the SEP and the ISSE

Socialist Equality Party

• About the SEP
• Join the SEP

International Students
for Social Equality

• About the ISSE
• Join the ISSE

מנהל בית ספר צריך להחזיק בעמדה מוסרית, ברורה וחד משמעית לגבי כל נושא ועניין הנמצאים על סדר יומה של החברה הישראלית, הוא איננו פקיד חינוך. כך למשל צריך שתהיה לו אמירה אודות גירוש ילדי העובדים הזרים, סחר בנשים, גדר ההפרדה, הנסיגה מעזה, חוק שכר מינימום, “תג מחיר”, סילוק ערבים מבתיהם בשיח’ ג’ראח, המצור על עזה, שחיתות שלטונית, שאלות דת ומדינה ועוד.

From the People’s Gulf Emergency Summit today in New Orleans, we found out that the

Deepwater Horizon Unified Response Command Center

has moved to New Orleans, near the infamous Superdome where many poor and black people were forced to evacuate to after Hurricane Katrina.

If you are in the area, come out to show your opposition to the collaboration of the destruction of the Gulf.

When : Monday, June 21

Time: Noon to two

Where : 1250 Poydras St (Eni Petroleum)

Bring : your signs, bullhorns, and energy.

(There may be opportunity for Civil Resistance)

for more info email Cindy Sheehan:

Cindy@PeaceoftheAction.org

EVERYONE CAN DO SOMETHING:

Collect and send towels! Laundry CEO Organizes Towel-Collection Drive for Gulf Spill Clean-Up 16 Jun 2010 David Gross, CEO of Gulf Coast Laundry Services in Gulfport, Miss., is coordinating an effort to get much-needed towels to wildlife agencies racing to save birds, turtles, dolphins and other animals affected by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Gross is still reaching out to laundries to gather whatever they can, but the most emergent need is still towels. Gross is also asking laundries to pay for shipping costs of the materials they send.To make a donation or for more information on what or where to send supplies, contact Christie Allen at 288-896-4405 or e-mail christiea@gclaundry.com .

CINDYSSOAPBOX@gmail.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06182010.html

He Should Have Kept His Mouth Shut

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

The French have a phrase, “He missed an excellent opportunity to keep his mouth shut.” That’s certainly true of Obama last Tuesday when he rolled out a big gun from the arsenal of White House crisis management, an Oval Office address. Excluding FDR’s  radio chats of the 1930s, there’s scant evidence  across the past forty years that as a venue for rallying the nation, the presidential sanctum did Obama’s predecessors  as president much good. In Obama’s case many of his stoutest supporters in the press could say little in its favor. Obama would have been advised to say nothing and leave the nation to the evening’s main business, the NBA playoffs.

It was certainly the worst rally-the-nation speech by a US president I’ve ever watched, and that includes Nixon’s cornered-rat addresses of the early 1970s and – an ominous parallel —  Jimmy Carter’s fireside chat on April1977, four months into his presidency, in the Oval Office promoting his plan for Energy Independence. To dramatize the need for conservation Carter wore a cardigan. He said the crusade for energy reduction was “the moral equivalent of war.”  As he said these words he clenched his fist. America was not impressed, but more than they were on Tuesday.

Asked a couple of weeks ago  about the president’s apparent inability to project anger, his pr man, Robert Gibbs said the president had been clenching his jaw. Better that he had continued clenching, and thus been unable to open it to unleash that  windy  homily, ripe with cliché, bare of specifics and without even the pummeling of BP that everyone had been looking forward to. Of course Obama said that there will be a set-aside clean-up and compensation fund  financed by BP. He  tossed the word “recklessness” in BP’s direction. But these were timid little puff-ball punches. There was no mailed fist within the glove, just wadded tissue paper.

Unlike wars and slumps, where a president can invoke inside knowledge proving victory or recovery are imminent, the singularity of this crisis is that there’s no inside story, no disputing the central disastrous facts except to suggest and then have confirmed that they are even worse that BP or the US government admits.

The minimum quantity of crude oil spurting out of the broken riser pipe now up around 60,000 bbd, heading towards the estimate by the Perdue scientists of around 90,000bbd, which is apparently what an internal BP memo suggested back in the immediate aftermath of the explosion on April 20.

There is absolutely no imminent prospect of this situation improving over the immediate future and a distinct possibility it could last the rest of the year and conceivably the rest of Obama’s first term – which in this eventuality will also be his last.

Since there are no immediate solutions to what Obama is now calling the worst environmental crisis in America’s history, and 71 per cent of Americans  polled by Gallup over last  weekend think Obama has not shown enough toughness towards BP,  you would have thought that Obama would have waited to report on what in fact did happen the very next day – the announcement of BP’s $20 billion escrow fund managed by an independent administrator, plus the withholding of BP’s quarterly dividend.  But no. Apparently Rahm Emanuel and the others thought it better to give vapid words a day’s lead over substantive news.

The speech left no banality unturned, from the ritual blue ribbon commission to investigate why the April 20 disaster took place, to the pledge of  a shake-up in federal agencies that had previously been gofers for the oil industry, to the final empty personal guarantee that cleanup efforts will restore the Gulf not just to where it was before this accident happened but to where it was years ago.

Every president since Nixon has tried to sell an energy plan. Carter wore his cardigan and America laughed and turned up the heaters in their SUVs. The only one to yield any tangible results was Reagan’s consummated pledge to rip the Carter-installed solar system off the roof of the White House.

Obama mumbled about windmills and solar panels and renewable energy and ending America’s dependence on fossil fuels.  He barely touched on his energy bill, becalmed in the Congress because Senate leader Harry Reid has told him it will never pass. He didn’t even allude to his actual energy plan which is to accelerate deep-sea drilling (on hold till the blue ribbon commission gives the green light, which it will), issue federal insurance guarantees for a new generation of nuclear plants, sponsor “clean coal” and bail out the ethanol industry.

Nuclear power could make the BP catastrophe look like chickenfeed. So-called “clean, low-sulfur coal”, mined by mountain-top removal, is an environmental disaster. The ethanol industry has long been a big financial backer of Obama and is now in crisis because of over-production of corn, from which the ethanol is distilled.  At the moment the federal government limits the amount of ethanol than can be sold at the pump to 10 per cent of every gallon. Obama may raise the percentage to 15 per cent. The US now has about 250 million motor vehicles.  As Robert Bryce  has pointed out on this site, of that number, “only about 7.5 million are designed to burn gasoline containing more than 10 percent ethanol. And there is evidence that even that much ethanol may be too much. Last year, Toyota recalled more than 200,00 Lexus vehicles due to internal component corrosion that was caused by ethanol-blended fuel.”

Obama could not only lose the important Lexus-owner vote, but also earn the undying hatred of  every American with a mowing machine, a snowblower, or a leafblower. 15 per cent ethanol in the gas means they may not be able to fire up these devices. That’s a hefty chunk of the electorate. You lose the lawn-mower vote, you lose the suburbs.

Obama’s terrible speech showed that even now the White House hasn’t managed to get any productive hold  on the disaster turning the Gulf of Mexico into a sludge pond. Obama doesn’t get it. Rahm Emanuel doesn’t get it. The speech writers don’t get it. At the end of his speech Obama turned to God and told Americans to pray. Here’s a meeting of minds with BP, since the oil company says the blowout was an act of God.

Even God won’t be able to bail out Obama if he  goes on like this.

Remembering Bill Christison

I met Bill Christison and his wife Kathy, both of them former CIA officers, on the high seas off Mazatlan on a Nation cruise in December of 2001. Bill had been pretty high up in the Agency and at one point had been the official charged with discharging national threat assessments and the like into the armor-plated cerebellum of President Gerald Ford.

Bill, a Princeton grad, had joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis side of the Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as National Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he was Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit. He’d met Kathy when they were both doing tours in Saigon.

After leaving the Agency they settled in Santa Fe and began their journey to the left, an itinerary on which they were well advanced by the time I met up with them and invited them to write for CounterPunch.

We published Bill’s first big piece on March 4, 2002, under the title “Former Senior CIA Officer: Why the War on Terror Won’t Work.”  The piece, which created quite a stir,  listed six root causes of terrorism, beginning,

“My number one root cause is the support by the U.S. over recent years for the policies of Israel with respect to the Palestinians, and the belief among Arabs and Muslims that the United States is as much to blame as Israel itself for the continuing, almost 35-year-long Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

My number two root cause is the present drive of the United States to spread its hegemony and its version of big-corporation, free enterprise globalization around the world. …. The gap between rich and poor nations, and rich and poor people within most of the nations, has grown wider during the last 20 years of globalization or, more precisely, the U.S. version of globalization.

Bill’s other prime causes of terrorism included the sanctions on Iraq and daily bombings; the continued presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia and the indiscriminate use of air power, with “missiles launched from a great distance, and now even on drone aircraft with no humans on board…But while few Americans get killed, sizable numbers of other nationalities do.”

This was just over six months after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and Bill’s calm and rational analysis was a huge relief and inspiration for many, after week upon week of ideological saturation bombing in the main stream press.  He followed it up a couple of months later with a series  on what a rational US foreign policy would look like.  He and his wife Kathy, whose chief topic has been Palestine, became important and popular contributors to CounterPunch.

Bill was heading into his late 70s by now, but he was as frisky as a 20-year old as he and Kathy kept up a fierce schedule of talks in the south west and across the US, along with trips to the Middle East, often in somewhat grueling and even perilous circumstances.

He got more radical with each advancing year and chafed sometimes when Jeffrey and I expressed reservations about some of his strategies for direct action.

Kathy told us a few weeks ago that Bill had fallen victim to a rapidly advancing neurological condition – and on Sunday, June 13, he died in Santa Fe at the age of 81.  He was a noble soul and used his later years with an idealism and energy that we should all envy and hope to emulate.

A Deadly 9/11 Cover-Up

In our latest newsletter, hot off the press – What do the W.R. Grace Company, the Trade Towers, Libby Montana and asbestos have in common? Andrea Peacock weaves the fatal threads together in a brilliant investigation. The terrible bottom line:

“If asbestos-related diseases begin showing up in rescue workers and others exposed at Ground Zero in the next few years, there’s little doctors can do about it. There’s medication to ease the symptoms of asbestosis – in which scar tissue caused by asbestos fibers gradually suffocates victims – but no cure. Those with lung disease can forestall the inevitable decline by taking care of themselves: quit smoking, get plenty of exercise to keep their lung capacity as high as possible. It could take another 30 years for mesothelioma cases to manifest – an asbestos-related lung cancer that kills fast once it hits. The full legacy of that day, for which W.R. Grace now bears some responsibility, will be unfolding for decades.“

Also in this  powerful edition: After a mine disaster in western Siberia Russian workers rise up. Boris Kagarlitsky describes the social explosion. Jeffrey Blankfort reviews Quicksand,  the book the Israel lobby doesn’t want you to read.

I urge you to  subscribe now!

Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com.

Pharmaceutical Company Ripoff

http://seizebp.org

The webmaster found these great anti-BP images out on the

‘tubes. The original artist is unknown to the webmaster.

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THE SHORT FILM BP DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE

OlmosProductions — 10 de junio de 2010 — Shot by Robert M. Young and Edward James Olmos on a trip to the heart of the oil spill in the Gulf. Edited by Stephen Cohen.

Robert Young and I jumped on a plane and went to the Gulf of Mexico just to lend our support by documenting what we saw…

Well, the people that we met took up all of our time. It was brutal! I was not ready for the human aspect because no one had prepared me for it.

I thought they would be angry. They are devastated.

Take a look at this video and see for yourself. People are afraid to talk and you will learn why watching this…

Please pass it on, recommend it.

If you feel like doing something, just go down there (anywhere on the Gulf) and support by spending time and energy in the region.

They need our support. Thank you for Caring.

- Edward James Olmos

For More information on what some local organizations are doing on the ground go to:

http://SaveOurGulf.org

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/emcc-a28.shtml

Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord, who is seen running with an Iraqi child in his arms in the video posted by WikiLeaks of a July 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad, talked to the World Socialist Web Site about the impact of this and similar experiences in Iraq.

The video, which records the shocking deaths of at least 12 individuals, including two Iraqi journalists employed by Reuters, has been viewed more than 6 million times on the Internet.

Ethan McCord

McCord, together with another former member of the company, Josh Stieber, have addressed an open “Letter of Reconciliation” to the Iraqi people taking responsibility for their role in this incident and other acts of violence. Both soldiers deployed to Iraq in 2007 and left the Army last year.

In the letter, McCord and Stieber said, “…we acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones.” They insisted that “the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how US-led wars are carried out in this region.”

The night before speaking to the WSWS, Ethan McCord had learned that the widow of one of the dozen men killed—the father of the two children he tried to rescue—had forgiven him and Stieber for their role in the incident.

Ahlam Abdelhussein Tuman, 33, told the Times of London: “I can accept their apology, because they saved my children and if it were not for them, maybe my two little children would be dead.”

Her husband, Saleh Mutashar Tuman, had arrived on the scene of the carnage caused by a US Apache helicopter firing into a crowd and attempted to aid the wounded. The helicopter opened fire again, killing him and at least one wounded man and wounding his two children, who were sitting in his van.

The widow urged the two former soldiers to continue to speak out. “I would like the American people and the whole world to understand what happened here in Iraq. We lost our country and our lives were destroyed.”

Can you explain why you and Josh Stieber wrote the “Letter of Reconciliation” to the Iraqi people?

We originally wanted it to go to the family members of those involved that day in the WikiLeaks video. Then in turn we wanted it to be more along the lines of to all Iraqi people as well. We wanted the Iraqi people to know that not everybody sees them as being dehumanized and that there are plenty of Americans and other people who care for them as human beings and wish for them to live long and happy lives and don’t agree with the war and the policies behind it.

I just found out last night that the letter was shown to the family, the children and the mother as well. She has forgiven myself and Josh and is very happy to see the work that Josh and I are doing. There was a London Times reporter who went there to see what they felt about the letter. And there is one comment from the mother that she could forgive me because if it wasn’t for me her children might be dead.

That must make you feel pretty good.

Definitely, but it doesn’t stop there for me or for Josh. We are definitely going to continue speaking out on this and do everything we can to have our voices heard about the policies, the rules of engagement and the war. As well, we are hoping to set up a trust fund for the children, as we know that they’ve had a pretty rough life afterward due to the injuries and whatnot. Hopefully, it will get them some medical care.

Could you describe the events of that day and what your platoon was doing?

It was much like many of the days in Iraq. The neighborhood we were in was pretty volatile; at least it was on the rise, with IED emplacements and with our platoons being shot at with RPGs and sniper fire. We didn’t know who was attacking us. It was never actually really clear, at least in my eyes, who the supposed “enemy” was.

We were conducting what were called knock-and-searches, where we would knock on the doors of the homes and search for documents pertaining to militias or any weapons they weren’t supposed to have or any bomb-making materials. We didn’t really find anything at all.

We were getting ready to wrap up at about one o’clock in the afternoon. We started to funnel into an alleyway and started to take small arms fire from rooftops from AK-47s. We didn’t know what was happening with the Apache helicopters. They were attached to us from another unit to watch over us for this mission, which was called “Ranger Dominance.”

We could hear them open fire, but those of us who were on the ground, outside of the vehicles, had no idea what was taking place. We couldn’t hear the radio chatter and we were pretty caught up in our own situation.

When that situation was neutralized, we were told to walk up onto the scene. I was one of about six soldiers who were dismounted to first arrive on the scene.

What did you see when you got there?

It was pretty much absolute carnage. I had never seen anybody shot by a 30-millimeter round before, and frankly don’t ever want to see that again. It almost seemed unreal, like something out of a bad B-horror movie. When these rounds hit you they kind of explode—people with their heads half-off, their insides hanging out of their bodies, limbs missing. I did see two RPGs on the scene as well as a few AK-47s.

But then I heard the cries of a child. They weren’t necessarily cries of agony, but more like the cries of a small child who was scared out of her mind. So I ran up to the van where the cries were coming from. You can actually see in the scenes from the video where another soldier and I come up to the driver and the passenger sides of the van.

The soldier I was with, as soon as he saw the children, turned around, started vomiting and ran. He didn’t want any part of that scene with the children anymore.

What I saw when I looked inside the van was a small girl, about three or four years old. She had a belly wound and glass in her hair and eyes. Next to her was a boy about seven or eight years old who had a wound to the right side of the head. He was laying half on the floorboard and half on the bench. I presumed he was dead; he wasn’t moving.

Next to him was who I presumed was the father. He was hunched over sideways, almost in a protective way, trying to protect his children. And you could tell that he had taken a 30-millimeter round to the chest. I pretty much knew that he was deceased.

I grabbed the little girl and yelled for a medic. Me and the medic ran into the houses behind where the van crashed to check whether there were any other wounds. I was trying to take as much glass out of her eyes as I could. We dressed the wound and then the medic ran the girl to the Bradley. You can hear in the video where he says, “there’s nothing else I can do here; we need to evacuate the child.”

I then went back outside and went to the van. I don’t know why. I thought both of them were dead, but something told me to go back. That’s when I saw the boy move with what appeared to be a labored breath. So I stated screaming, “The boy’s alive.” I grabbed him and cradled him in my arms and kept telling him, “Don’t die, don’t die.” He opened his eyes, looked up at me. I told him, “It’s OK, I have you.” His eyes rolled back into his head, and I kept telling him, “It’s OK, I’ve got you.” I ran up to the Bradley and placed him inside.

My platoon leader was standing there at the time, and he yelled at me for doing what I did. He told me to “stop worrying about these motherfucking kids and start worrying about pulling security.” So after that I went up and pulled security on a rooftop.

Did you face further repercussions for what you did that day?

After coming back to the FOB [forward operating base], nobody really talked about what had happened that day. Everybody went to their rooms; they were tired. Some of them went to make phone calls. And I was in my room because I had to clean the blood off of my IBA [body armor] and my uniform—the blood from these children. And I was having a flood of emotions and having a real hard time dealing with having seen children this way, as I’m sure most caring human beings would.

So I went to see a staff sergeant who was in my chain of command and told him I needed to see mental health about what was going on in my head. He told me to “quit being a pussy” and to “suck it up and be a soldier.” He told me that if I wanted to go to mental health, there would be repercussions, one of them being labeled a “malingerer,” which is actually a crime in the US Army.

For fear of that happening to me, I in turn went back to my room and tried to bottle up as much emotion as I could and pretty much just suck it up and drive on.

You had another nine months or more still to go in your tour then?

That’s right. It was a pretty long time with having to deal with the emotions, not only of that, but of many other days. What happened then was not an isolated incident. Stuff like that happens on a daily basis in Iraq.

Are there other incidents that took place in the following months of your tour that bear this out?

Yes. Our rules of engagement were changing on an almost daily basis. But we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].

He goes, “If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherfucker on the street.” Myself and Josh and a lot of other soldiers were just sitting there looking at each other like, “Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?”

And you couldn’t just disobey orders to shoot, because they could just make your life hell in Iraq. So like with myself, I would shoot up into the roof of a building instead of down on the ground toward civilians. But I’ve seen it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes off and the troops open fire and kill them.

During this period were you conscious that you were suffering from post-traumatic stress?

Yes I knew, because I would be angry at everyone and everything and at myself even more. I would watch movies and listen to music as much as possible just to escape reality. I didn’t really talk to many people.

The other problem I had is that before the incident shown in the WikiLeaks video, I was the gung-ho soldier. I thought I was going over there to do the greater good. I thought my job over there was to protect the Iraqi people and that this was a job with honor and courage and duty.

I was hit by an IED within two weeks of my being in Iraq. And I didn’t understand why people were throwing rocks at us, why I was being shot at and why we’re being blown up, when I have it in my head that I was here to help these people.

But the first real serious doubt, where I could no longer justify to myself being in Iraq or serving in the Army, was on that day in July 2007.

How did you come to join the military?

I had always wanted to be in the military, even as a child. My grandfather and my uncles were military. Then September 11 happened, and I decided it was my duty as an American to join the military, so that’s what I did in 2002. I joined the Navy. In 2005, when the Army had what they called “Operation Blue to Green,” pulling sailors and airmen into the Army with bigger bonuses, I made a lateral transfer.

I had pretty much had it in my head that I was going to make a career out of the military. But going to Iraq and dealing with the Army completely changed my outlook.

What was your reaction when you saw the WikiLeaks video?

Shock. I had dropped my children off at school one morning, came home and turned on MSNBC, and there I am running across the screen carrying a child.

I knew immediately it was me. I know the scene. It is burned into my head. I relive it almost every day. It was just a shock that it was up there, and it angered me. I was angry because it was in my face again.

I had actually started to get a little bit better before the tape was released. I wasn’t thinking about it as often; it was getting a little bit easier to go to sleep. But then everything that I had buried and pushed away came bubbling back to the surface. And the nightmares began again, the anger, the feeling of being used. It all came back. It wasn’t a good feeling; it was like a huge slap in the face.

Do you think that the way you were told to forget about the kids and suck it up is indicative of the general culture in the military?

Yes, there is such a stigma placed on soldiers seeking mental health. It’s like you’re showing a huge sign of weakness for needing to speak about things or for seeking help even for getting to sleep. There’s fear of being chastised or being made fun of. So you end up self-medicating on alcohol. And as you probably know, alcohol is a depressant and just makes it worse.

I was self-medicating when I came home, and I was hospitalized in a mental institute by the Army because of my problems with PTSD and self-medication.

There were many times when I felt that I could no longer take what was going on in my head and the best thing for me to do would be to put a bullet in my head. But each time I thought about that, I would look at the pictures of my children and think back on that day and how the father of those children was taken away and how horrible it must be for them. And if I were to do that, I would be putting my children in the same position.

Do you think that the pressure to bury these problems is driven by a fear that if you are allowed to question your own experiences, it can call into question the nature of the war itself?

I was not able to talk about it, not able to get answers to like how I was feeling about this, why were we doing this, what are we doing here? It was just straight up, “You’re going to do this, and you’re going to shut up about it.”

Soldiers aren’t mindless drones. They have feelings. They have emotions. You can’t just make them go out and do something without telling them, this is why we’re doing it. And the pressure just builds up.

You hear in the video the Apache helicopter crew saying some things that are pretty heart-wrenching and cold. I’m guilty of it too. We all are. It’s kind of a coping mechanism. You feel bad at the time for what you did and you take those emotions and push them down. That’s what the Army teaches you to do, just push them down. And in a sense it works. It helps you get through the hard times. But unfortunately, there’s no outlet for that anymore, once you get out of the Army. When you get back home, there’s no one to joke around with, nobody you can talk to about these instances.

What happens to that soldier? He’s going to blow up. And when he blows up, more than likely it’s going to be on his family, his close friends or on himself. So I think that’s why soldiers end up killing themselves.

So a terrible price is being paid for this war in the US itself?

Yes, I feel that just as the Iraqis, the soldiers are victims of this war as well. Like we say in our letter to the Iraqis, the government is ignoring them and it is also ignoring us. Instead of people being upset at a few soldiers in a video who were doing what they were trained to do, I think people need to be more upset at the system that trained these soldiers. They are doing exactly what the Army wants them to do. Getting angry and calling these soldiers names and saying how callous and cold-hearted they are isn’t going to change the system.

What do you think drives this system? Why are they sent to do this?

As far as the hidden agenda behind the war, I couldn’t even begin to guess what that is. I do know that the system is being driven by some people with pretty low morals and values, and they attempt to instill those values in the soldiers.

But the people who are driving the system don’t have to deal with the repercussions. It’s the American people who have to deal with them. They’re the ones who have to deal with all of these soldiers who come back from war, have no outlets and blow up.

I still live with this every day. When I close my eyes I see what happened that day and many other days like a slide show in my head. The smells come back to me. The cries of the children come back to me. The people driving this big war machine, they don’t have to deal with this. They live in their $36 million mansions and sleep well at night.

Were you hopeful that with the 2008 election these kinds of things would be brought to a halt. Were you disappointed that they have continued and escalated?

I am not part of any party. Was I hopeful? Yes. Was I surprised that we are still there? No. I’m not surprised at all. There’s something else lying underneath there. It’s not Republican or Democrat; it’s money. There’s something else lying underneath it where Republicans and Democrats together want to keep us in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am hopeful that the video and our speaking out will help. There’s the old adage that war is hell, but I don’t think people really understand just what a hell war is. Until you see it first-hand, you don’t really know what’s going on. Like I said, this video shows you an every-day occurrence in Iraq, and I can only assume, in Afghanistan. So I hope people wake up and see the actual hells of war.

The video can be viewed below:

Helen Thomas: an Appreciation

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06162010.html

The propagandists for the Israel Lobby, who occupy the Wall Street Journal editorial page while pretending to be journalists, are determined to remove Helen Thomas from the annals of journalism. In case you have already forgotten, a few days ago the distinguished career of Helen Thomas, the 89-year-old doyen of the White House Press Corps, was ended by the Israel Lobby, which made an issue about her opinion that immigrant Jews should leave Palestine and go back to their home countries.

The White House Correspondents’ Association fell in line with the demands of the Israel Lobby, and the cowardly president of the organization added the association’s disapprobation to that of the neoconservative cabal.

Having removed Helen Thomas from the journalism scene, the Israel Lobby is now  working with its agents on the Wall Street Journal editorial page to eliminate the Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society of Professional Journalists.

A nonentity in the world of journalism, James Taranto, apparently is associated with the Wall Street Journal editorial page, although Wikipedia reports that he was incapable of graduating from journalism school at California State University, Northridge. On a Wall Street Journal web site, Taranto writes: “We’ve been calling Thomas ‘American journalism’s crazy old aunt in the attic’ for years,” and he asks who would now accept the Helen Thomas award after Ms. Thomas revealed she really was crazy by criticizing Israel.

I would for one.  Of course the Society of Professional Journalists would never give the award, assuming the distinguished award survives the assault of the Israel Lobby’s assassins, to a critic of Israel. Helen excepted, American journalists are cowards. With the concentrated ownership of the corporate media today, no independently-minded journalist can have a career in print or TV media. You defend the Washington/Tel Aviv line, or you are out of work.

The absence of independently-minded journalists on the Wall Street Journal editorial page is an extraordinary change from my days as Associate Editor of that page. The editorial page editor, Robert Bartley was ambitious and forced himself to tolerate talented colleagues. Mere opinion was not our task. Often we scooped the reporters on the news side of the paper. Our editorials reported new developments and provided factual analysis.

I was hired as Jude Wanniski’s replacement. Jude, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, was fired, allegedly because the journal’s brass caught him handing out election campaign literature on a train platform, but if you believe American journalism was ever that pure, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.

Jude was fired, because the neoconservatives got rid of him by telling Bartley that Wanniski was over-shadowing him. That was too much for Bob’s ego.  Jude, of course, being a real journalist, was objective toward the Palestinians and thus had earned the enmity of the Israel Lobby.

Once Bob was rapidly declining with prostate cancer, neoconservatives engineered the takeover of the editorial page. Today the once proud Wall Street Journal editorial page is a leading apologist for Israeli/American war crimes and police states.

To return to the nonentity, James Taranto, who wants to throw Helen Thomas down the memory hole:  Helen Thomas’ opinion that Israelis should stop stealing the villages, homes, and lands of Palestinians, while confining Palestinians to the equivalent of the Warsaw Ghetto, is equated by Taranto to the advocacy of “ethnic cleansing” by Helen.

Of course, it is the Israelis who are doing the ethnic cleansing. Many Jews have documented Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, such as Uri Avnery, a former member of the Israeli terrorist organization, Irgun, Ilan Pappe, Israel’s most distinguished historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and the Israeli peace group, ICHAD, who have been my house guests. The Israeli newspaper, Haaratz, is far more critical of Israeli policy than Helen Thomas, and so is MIT professor Noam Chomsky, the distinguished British journalist and film maker John Pilger, and the distinguished scholar, Norman Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors.

But  Taranto prefers an 89-year old adversary.

Israel is an unnatural state. It was created by terror that was accommodated by craven British and US “diplomacy.”  Israel exists for one reason only: the US government provides the money, weapons, and diplomatic protection. Any other government that murdered thousands of civilians in other countries, as Israel does routinely in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, would have its entire government and military on trial before the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. Israelis have no worst enemy than their own government.

Every time the rest of the world tries to hold the Israeli government accountable for its crimes, the US vetoes the UN resolution. America has become the enabler of the Zionist-hijacked Israeli government.  And the Israeli government knows it. Israeli government leaders have publicly bragged for decades about their control over the US government.  US Admiral Tom Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after whom the F-14 “Tomcat” jet fighter was named, declared publicly: “No American President can stand up to Israel.”  Apparently no American journalist can either.

I am a critic of Israel’s heartless policy toward the Palestinians, but I do not want Israel destroyed. I want it moved or reformed. Bring the small number of Israelis to America before there is a nuclear war over the fact that they are where they should not be. To try to claim a land and dispossess its people on the basis of a spurious two thousand year year old deed is an audacious act of conquest and dispossession.

My proposal to relocate Israelis in the US is rhetorical, but  why not insist that the Israelis, who are heavily dependent on US largess, reform? Why should Americans support an apartheid racist state that denies citizenship to the rightful inhabitants?  What kind of morality, if any, does the Wall Street Journal editorial page represent when it defends Israelis who force Palestinians into ever-shrinking ghettos, deprived of water, food, medical care and schools? Why must Palestinians live in dread of Israeli bulldozers arriving to flatten their homes in order to create space for Zionist “settlers.”

Allegedly, the US is a superpower, but in fact it is a puppet state of the Israeli government. Witness, for example (the examples are numerous), the fate of the Goldstone Report on Israeli war crimes committed in Israel’s assault on Gaza during December 2008-January 2009. Goldstone is a Zionist Jew and a distinguished judge. He was given the task by the United Nations to investigate the Israeli attack on Gaza. Being an honest person, he provided evidence of Israeli war crimes.

What was the result? The bought-and-paid-for US Congress voted, on the instructions of their master, the Israel Lobby, to deep-six the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344 to 36.

Amazing, isn’t it, there were only 36 US Representatives who were not owned by the Israel Lobby.

Of course, James Taranto serves the Israel Lobby. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, not even a shadow of its former self, when it speaks, speaks for Israel and for the Bush/Cheney militarist police state.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has fallen into the low ranks of Brownshirt propaganda. The fact that management tolerates the continuation of totally nonobjective journalism shows why print newspapers are failing everywhere.

The hubris of Taranto, a mere propagandist who will never come close to the league in which Helen Thomas resides, causes him to think that he is fit to pass judgment on a real journalist. Taranto epitomizes the hubris of the neoconservatives. Not a single one of them has the smallest accomplishment. Yet, blinded with arrogance, they remain in ignorant bliss of their status as prostitutes.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Community Forum

Kindra Arneson, the wife of a Gulf Coast fisherman, nearly cries as she grills government officials about the use of dispersants over an oil spill created by the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform on April 20.

The “Seize BP” Demand & Pres. Obama’s Response

Featured guest speaker:
Attorney, Carl Messineo

Friday, June 18 at 7:00 p.m.

Justice Center
617 Florida Ave. NW
Shaw/Howard University Metro
yellow/green line

Noted civil rights attorney and Seize BP spokesperson Carl Messineo will analyze the political, legal and economic consequences of the Obama Administration’s response to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

This special forum offers a unique opportunity to hear a penetrating analysis of the deeper issues hidden beneath the headlines and the public relations propaganda of BP and the federal government.

Messineo and the Seize BP movement present the case for the expansion of a mass grassroots movement for justice against BP, Big Oil and a government policy that has put corporate super-profits before the needs of working families and the environment.

Bring your questions and comments. Join the discussion and get involved!

Sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation
202-234-2828—PSLweb.org —dc@pslweb.org

Israeli Raid Coverage

By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.

http://www.counterpunch.org/washington06152010.html

An American art student loses an eye when struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli Defense Force (IDF) personnel breaking up a demonstration in the occupied West Bank which itself is a protest against the deadly commando raid on the Free Gaza flotilla.

No, you didn’t miss U.S. news media coverage of this IDF attack on 21-year-old Emily Henchowicz, a student at Cooper Union in New York City who was standing with a group of foreigners during that demonstration near a checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

You didn’t miss it because the mainstream media in the U.S. ignored it.
Apparently news of Henchowicz’s maiming was not news deemed worthy enough for print in the New York Times or Washington Post or meriting broadcast network/cable news attention.

It’s no surprise that the avowedly right-wing FOX ignored this incident, but the liberal-leaning MSNBC ignored this story also.

The blackout of this partial blinding of an American citizen darkens the already black eye the mainstream American news media has giving itself by its crimped coverage of the deadly Israeli raid on that flotilla attempting to bring humanitarian supplies to the Israeli-besieged Gaza and of the international fallout in the wake of that illegal raid.

The same major U.S. newspapers that found space during the two weeks after that May 31st assault in international waters for over 1,200 articles about the Tea Party or that “movement’s” darling du jour Rand Paul, carried only 58 references to the American-born teen killed during that raid, according to a review of articles in the LexisNexis database of U.S. newspapers and wires.

So, what would explain why the fatal shooting of Troy, NY-born Furkan Dogan’s merits only one-ninth of the 500+ article coverage devoted to prattle from Sarah Palin, all of which was published during that same two week post-raid period?

Maybe it’s the fact that the 19-year-old Dogan, who had dual US/Turkish citizenship, lived the last 17-years of his short life in Turkey. Did his “Turkishness” trump the news that autopsy results showed the young Dogan had died from multiple gun shots including four shots to the head, one of them from the back?

Or maybe this minimalist coverage of Dogan’s death, as documented by a Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) anylisis, results from the fact that much of the “U.S. press coverage takes Israeli government claims at face value…”

If FAIR’s criticism that the media exhibited a lack of “skepticism” toward Israeli government spin is on target, maybe media managers simply embraced Israeli government claims that their crack commandos only boarded the Mavi Marmara armed with paint-ball guns and small caliber pistols, and then concluded that perhaps Dogan must have died either from gunfire from his fellow peace activists, or that he had shot himself four times in the head?

FAIR cited a Washington Post editorial as an “appalling” example of the U.S. news media’s penchant for reporting on the Israeli assault exclusively through Israel’s eyes.

That Post editorial characterized participants in the flotilla as a “motley collection,” deserving no sympathy due to their ulterior motive on “provoking a confrontation.”

Acknowledging that the Israeli raid was “misguided and badly executed,” this editorial in one of the nation’s major newspapers (a paper that did not report on the blinding of Emily Henchowicz) took a pro-Israeli perspective, inferring that calls for an international investigation into the flotilla raid could potentially become part of a campaign to “de-legitimize the Jewish State.” Such language is a talking-point lifted straight from the Israeli government and its American lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Irrespective of the sympathy many Americans have for Israel, the Ethics Code of America’s Society of Professional Journalists states that journalists should: support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.

Any fair-and-balanced report on the flotilla raid would have to have to include the perspective of flotilla participant and Israel Parliament member Hanin Zoabi, an Israeli-Arab, which ran in an AP article, and which was thus available to virtually every news editor in the country. In that AP story, which ran on June 10, she said, “The Israeli military is like a rapist that gets scratched and then blames the victim…Israel acts like a bull.”

According to a LexisNexis review condcted three days later, Zoabi’s words had still not been published in any major American newspaper.

Many American journalists – like many Americans – may feel Israel is justified in taking military actions in its professed self-defense, even as other Americans might consider those actions to be war crimes. Yet the point remains that support for the Israeli position does not justify suppression by the media of information integral to the story that conflicts with that position. At that point, the “news” becomes simply propaganda.

As George Curry, columnist for the BlackPressUSA site, noted in a recent article about the FAIR analysis, “For years, Palestinians have been unable to get their side fairly reported in the U.S. media and the latest international incident is yet another example.”

The critiques of Curry, FAIR and many others about the pro-Israeli/anti-Palestinian slant in America’s news media echoes a decades-old finding about news media failings to adequately cover race-related matters in the United States.
America’s news media have “not communicated to the majority of their audience – which is white – a sense of the degradation, misery, and hopelessness of living in the ghetto,” stated the March 1968 report of the Kerner Commission, which examined the causes of urban riots during the 1960s.

The Kerner Commission’s examination of news media practices criticized exclusionary coverage that consistently failed to provide context critical for a full understandings of race-related issues.

“If what the white American reads in the newspapers or sees on television conditions his expectations of what is ordinary and normal in the larger society, he will neither understand nor accept the black American,” the Kerner Report noted, concluding that slanted news coverage had “contributed to the black-white schism in this country.”

Slanted coverage on Palestinian issues similarly deprives Americans of the context needed to understand the complicated controversy that keeps the Middle East volatile and keeps America as a primary target of terrorists.

While accounts of that blinding injury to Emily Henchowicz are available in the blogosphere, the Inter Press Service is the only major U.S. news organization listed in the LexisNexis database to carry a story specifically reporting on the incident.

A June 1, 2010 IPS report from Ramallah stated that Henchowicz “…appeared to be deliberately targeted when a teargas canister was fired at her head, causing her to lose an eye.”

That same IPS article included context about IDF personnel regularly violating regulations barring firing those powerful gas canisters directly at protestors…violations that have produced in a number of deaths and serious injuries.

That Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Code urges journalists to “Tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience boldly, even when it’s unpopular to do so.”

The failure of many American media organizations to adhere to SPJ Code provisions produces the dynamic of: text without context is pretext.

LINN WASHINGTON is a founding member of the new independent collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper ThisCantBeHappening.net. His work, and that of colleagues John Grant, Dave Lindorff and Charles Young, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Islamic groups have condemned a government crackdown on a Texan telecoms company as part of a “witch-hunt”, writes Brian Whitaker

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The Congressional hearings on the spill left no doubt that the CEO’s of the world’s five largest oil companies are oblivious as to what to do next.  After the other CEO’s threw BP under the bus, they admitted as much.

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson told Congress we must do everything possible to prevent offshore drilling disasters, because once they occur, there is not any way to stop the damage. By admitting the unavoidable risk of catastrophe, Tillerson exploded the myths — promoted by the oil industry and right-wing supporters — that offshore drilling is “environmentally safe,” and that the industry can handle these disasters when they occur. Tillerson made the shocking admission that the industry is “not well equipped to prevent any and all damage” under questioning from Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), the chair of the oversight subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, during a hearing that featured top executives from the five largest private oil companies:

There will be impacts as we are seeing. We have never represented anything different than that. That’s why the emphasis is always on preventing these things from occurring because when they happen we are not well equipped to deal with them. And that’s just a fact of the enormity of what we’re dealing with.

Watch it:

The only fail-safe way to prevent oil drilling disasters, in fact, is to stop drilling for oil — in other words, “The only winning move is not to play.” This is yet another reason this nation needs an energy policy that puts a cap on oil pollution and ends our toxic addiction… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

These clowns would not even admit to having heard of IXTOC.

The industry had demonstrated with dozens of spills, not even mentioning the thousands of barrels currently flowing into and befouling the Gulf, that their ability to prevent leaks is no better than that to clean up after them.  As sympathetic as I am for those who will lose their jobs, there must be no more deep water drilling until such time as the oil industry can unequivocally demonstrate the ability to both prevent deep water spills and prevent environmental damage in case there is one.

The rules of the deep water drilling fame are now clear.  The only winning move is not to play.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/blackwaters-erik-prince-moving-united-arab-emirates

Sources close to Blackwater and its secretive owner Erik Prince claim that the embattled head of the world’s most infamous mercenary firm is planning to move to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Middle Eastern nation, a major hub for the US war industry, has no extradition treaty with the United States. In April, five of Prince’s top deputies were hit with a fifteen-count indictment [1] by a federal grand jury on conspiracy, weapons and obstruction of justice charges. Among those indicted were Prince’s longtime number-two man, former Blackwater president Gary Jackson, former vice presidents William Matthews and Ana Bundy and Prince’s former legal counsel Andrew Howell.

The Blackwater/Erik Prince saga took yet another dramatic turn last week, when Prince abruptly announced [2] that he was putting his company up for sale.

While Prince has not personally been charged with any crimes, federal investigators and several Congressional committees clearly have his company and inner circle in their sights. The Nation learned of Prince’s alleged plans to move to the UAE from three separate sources. One Blackwater source told The Nation that Prince intends to sell his company quickly, saying the “sale is going to be a fast move within a couple of months.”

Mark Corallo, a trusted Prince advisor and Blackwater spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny the allegation that Prince is planning to move to the United Arab Emirates. “I have a policy on not discussing my client’s personal lives—especially when that client is a private citizen,” Corallo, who runs his own crisis management and PR firm [3], said in an e-mail to The Nation. ”It is nobody’s business where Mr. Prince (or anyone else) chooses to live. So I’m afraid I will not be able to confirm any rumors.”

A source with knowledge of the federal criminal probe into Blackwater’s activities told The Nation that none of Prince’s indicted colleagues have flipped on Prince since being formally charged, but rumors abound in Blackwater and legal circles that Prince may one day find himself in legal trouble. Former Blackwater employees claim they have provided federal prosecutors with testimony about what they allege is Prince’s involvement in illegal activity.

If Prince’s rumored future move is linked to concerns over possible indictment, the United Arab Emirates would be an interesting choice for a new home—particularly because it does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. “If Prince were not living in the US, it would be far more complicated for US prosecutors to commence an action against him,” says Scott Horton [4], a Columbia University Law lecturer and international law expert who has long tracked Blackwater. “There is a long history of people thwarting prosecutors simply by living overseas.” The UAE, Horton says, is “definitely a jurisdiction where Prince could count on it not being simple for the US to pursue him legally.”

The UAE is made up of seven states, the most powerful among them being Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Since 9/11, they have emerged as hubs for the US war industry. “Global service providers” account for some three-quarters of Dubai’s GDP, while oil represents only 3 percent. “They have established themselves as the premiere location in the Middle East for offshore banking and professional services,” says Horton, who has legal experience in the UAE. “If you have connections to the royal families, then the law doesn’t really apply to you. I would be very surprised if Erik Prince does not have those kinds of connections there.”

As a matter of policy the Justice Department will not discuss possible investigations of people who have not yet been charged with a crime.

Two former employees made serious allegations against Prince last August in sworn declarations [5] filed as part of a civil lawsuit against Prince and Blackwater. One former employee alleged that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into Iraq on his private planes. A four-year employee of Blackwater, identified in his declaration as “John Doe #2,” stated that “it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct.” He also stated that “Mr. Prince feared, and continues to fear, that the federal authorities will detect and prosecute his various criminal deeds,” adding: “On more than one occasion, Mr. Prince and his top managers gave orders to destroy emails and other documents. Many incriminating videotapes, documents and emails have been shredded and destroyed.”

John Doe #2′s identity was concealed in the sworn declaration because he “fear[s] violence against me in retaliation for submitting this Declaration.” He also alleged, “On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince’s employ, Mr. Prince’s management has personally threatened me with death and violence.” Doe #2 stated in his declaration that he provided the information contained in his statement “in grand jury proceedings convened by the United States Department of Justice.”

Prince is also facing civil lawsuits brought by Iraqi victims of Blackwater. Among these is a suit filed in North Carolina by the family of 9-year-old Ali Kinani [6]. Kinani’s family alleges he was shot in the head and killed by Blackwater operatives in the infamous Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007. Earlier this year, Prince claimed [7] he was spending $2 million a month in legal fees and on what he described as a “giant proctological exam” by nearly a dozen federal agencies.

Even if prosecutors believed they had enough evidence to charge Prince with a crime, because of the classified nature of some of Blackwater and Prince’s work for the CIA and other agencies of the US government, prosecuting him could prove challenging. Prince has deep knowledge of covert US actions that the US government or military may not want public, which could be revealed as part of a potential defense Prince could offer. Blackwater—and Prince specifically—long worked on the CIA’s assassination program.

Some observers believe that Prince has already engaged in “graymail [8]” by revealing some details of his classified work for the CIA and military, specifically in a January 2010 article [7] in Vanity Fair, written by a former CIA lawyer. Graymail is a legal tactic that has been used for years by intelligence operatives or assets who are facing prosecution or fear they soon will be. In short, these operatives or assets threaten to reveal details of sensitive or classified operations in order to ward off indictments or criminal charges, based on the belief that the government would not want these details revealed.

After Jackson and the other former Blackwater executives were indicted, their lawyers claimed [9] that the US government approved of their conduct. “All of this was with the knowledge of, the request of, for the convenience of, an agency of the US government,” Jackson’s lawyer Ken Bell told the judge during a bond hearing in April. Bell did not reveal which agency he was referring to and did not answer questions from reporters.

The latest developments in the Blackwater story come after a two-year campaign by Blackwater to rebrand itself [10] as “Xe Services” and the “US Training Center.” In March 2009, Prince announced [11] he was stepping down as CEO of the company, though he has remained its sole owner. While Blackwater continues to be a significant player in US operations in Afghanistan under the Obama administration—working for the State Department, Defense Department and CIA—it is facing increased scrutiny [12] on Capitol Hill and continued pressure from the Justice Department.

On June 11, federal prosecutors filed a massive brief in their appeal of last year’s dismissal [13] by a federal judge of manslaughter charges against the Blackwater operatives alleged to be the “shooters” at Nisour Square. In the brief, prosecutors asked that the indictment of the Blackwater men be reinstated. Meanwhile, two other Blackwater operatives were indicted [14] in January on murder charges [15] stemming from a shooting in Afghanistan in May 2008. Senator Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee has called on the Justice Department [16] to investigate Blackwater’s use of a shell company, Paravant, to win training contracts in Afghanistan.

Blackwater has been spending heavily this year on lobbyists—particularly Democratic ones. In the first quarter of 2010, the company spent more than $500,000 [17] for the services of Stuart Eizenstat [18], a well-connected Democratic lobbyist who served in the Clinton and Carter administrations. Eizenstat heads the international practice for the powerhouse law and lobbying firm Covington and Burling.

Prince sold [19] Blackwater’s aviation division earlier this year for $200 million. In announcing last week that the rest of Blackwater was up for sale, the company said in a statement [20] that Blackwater’s “new management team has made significant changes and improvements to the company over the last 15 months, which have enabled the company to better serve the US government and other customers, and will deliver additional value to a purchaser.” While Blackwater has tried to shed the Blackwater name in many aspects of its business, the company has recently opened a series of Blackwater “Pro-Shop” retail stores [21], offering merchandise bearing the Blackwater name and original logo. Among the items for sale: pink Blackwater baby onesies [22], Blackwater pint glasses [23], Blackwater beach towels [24] and, of course, rifles [25].

In a speech in January [26], obtained by The Nation, Prince said that he intends to publish a book this fall. He was originally slated [27] to come out with a book in June 2008 with the title We Are Blackwater.

Links:
[1] http://www.justice.gov/usao/nce/press/2010-apr-16_2.html
[2] http://www.thenation.com/blog/blackwater-sale
[3] http://www.corallocomstock.com/
[4] http://harpers.org/subjects/NoComment
[5] http://www.thenation.com/article/blackwater-founder-implicated-murder
[6] http://www.thenation.com/article/blackwaters-youngest-victim
[7] http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/01/blackwater-201001?printable=true
[8] http://www.thenation.com/article/erik-prince-graymailing-us-government
[9] http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/04/22/448778/blackwater-exec-blames-feds.html
[10] http://www.alternet.org/blogs/waroniraq/126863/
[11] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/mercenary-king-erik-princ_b_171105.html
[12] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030803706.html
[13] http://www.thenation.com/article/federal-judge-dismisses-all-charges-iraq-massacre
[14] http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/January/10-crm-011.html
[15] http://rebelreports.com/post/322008047/two-blackwater-guards-arrested-by-fbi-on-murder-charges
[16] http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=322765
[17] http://www.thenation.com/blog/bipartisan-mercs-blackwater-hires-powerful-democratic-lobbyist
[18] http://www.cov.com/seizenstat/
[19] http://www.thenation.com/blog/mercenary-owners-they-are-changin-sort
[20] http://www.wtop.com/?nid=111&amp;sid=1974791
[21] http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/retail-guns-for-hire-blackwater-opens-storefronts/
[22] http://proshop.blackwaterusa.com/Babys-Onesies-P1781.aspx
[23] http://proshop.blackwaterusa.com/BW-Pint-Glass-P1507.aspx
[24] http://proshop.blackwaterusa.com/BW-Beach-Towel-P1747.aspx
[25] http://proshop.blackwaterusa.com/bw15.aspx
[26] http://www.thenation.com/blog/secret-erik-prince-tape-exposed
[27] http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24834