Today's 33: BP Edition
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Dedicated to fighting authoritarianism, bigotry, greed, corruption, climate change denial, white supremacy, racism, stupidity and general evil, as well as the exploration of interesting ideas and conspiracy theories including 9/11, UFOs, ET's, the paranormal and the general unknown.
EPA: 1st Tests Show Dispersants Equally ToxicThe NYTimes seems to have posted it at 3:30, not AP, as other outlets have this piece at other times.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 30, 2010
Filed at 3:30 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- EPA officials say their first round of testing on chemicals used to break apart the oil in the Gulf of Mexico shows all the available dispersants are generally equally toxic.
Paul Anastas, EPA's assistant administrator for research and development, said Wednesday that the testing also showed the chemicals are far less toxic than oil. He said none of the chemicals had dangerous effects on the sea life tested.
The chemicals break oil into smaller particles that are easier for microbes to consume.
Anastas says the chemicals break down in weeks or months, while it takes oil years to biodegrade.
This month, the Congressional Oversight Panel, a body charged with reviewing the state of financial markets and the regulators that monitor them, published a 337-page report on the A.I.G. bailout. It concluded that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York did not give enough consideration to alternatives before sinking more and more taxpayer money into A.I.G.
The move to shut down and regulate the Internet under a new government-controlled system has accelerated into high gear with the announcement that the government’s cybersecurity strategy revolves around issuing Internet users with ID “tokens” without which they will not be able to visit websites, the latest salvo against web freedom which, in combination with Senator Joe Lieberman’s ‘kill switch’ bill, will serve to eviscerate the free Internet as we know it.First of all, fuck Joe Lieberman. Second, the fact that lots of people in the govt here are trying to enact these changes is disgusting but not too surprising. Third, this piece is typical Alex Jones hyperbole. Fourth, I am moderately optimistic that the worst of the censorship won't occur, at least in the exact way described in the article.
Under the guise of “cybersecurity,” the government is moving to discredit and shut down the existing Internet infrastructure in the pursuit of a new, centralized, regulated world wide web.
It is important to stress that “cybersecurity” has nothing to do with protecting the infrastructure of the United States and everything to do with taking over the Internet. Cybersecurity is about attacking non-compliant Internet users, not defending against hackers. Non-compliance equates as using the Internet as a political tool to dissent against the policies of the U.S. government. (snip)“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” said Lieberman.
The Senator’s reference to China is a telling revelation of what the cybersecurity agenda is really all about. China’s vice-like grip over its Internet systems has very little to do with “war” and everything to do with silencing all dissent against the state.
Chinese Internet censorship is imposed via a centralized government blacklist of any websites that contain criticism of the state, porn, or any other content deemed unsuitable by the authorities. Every time you attempt to visit a website, you are re-routed through the government firewall, often making for long delays and crippling speeds.
China has exercised its power to shut down the Internet, something that Lieberman wants to introduce in the U.S., at politically sensitive times in order to stem the flow of information about government abuse and atrocities.
Bradley, the magazine's owner, wrote flattering letters. He courted Goldberg at a McDonald's on Wisconsin Avenue. He proffered a hefty signing bonus. And when the New Yorker's Washington correspondent finally seemed receptive to making the move, Bradley sent in the ponies.Note also, Bradley is a piece of work too:
"He's incredibly persistent and makes you feel like you're God's gift to journalism," says Goldberg, who had turned Bradley down once before. But that was before the horses showed up at his home to entertain his children. "The charm is incredibly disarming," says Goldberg, who joined the Atlantic last month.
Bradley ... was, he says, "a neocon guy" who was "dead certain about the rightness" of invading Iraq.
Just two or so dump trucks filled with never-before sifted debris from Ground Zero have yielded 72 new fragments of human remains in an almost three-month operation that could bring closure to more families of victims of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center terror attack. Because of the size and condition of some of the remains the NYC Medical Examiner's office told ABC News there was a good chance of obtaining DNA samples that could lead to new IDs once DNA testing is completed. The remains of about 1,000 victims of the almost 3,000 killed at Ground Zero have still not been identified. (snip)There's something wrong with this picture...
The sifting operation took place at Fresh Kill Landfills in Staten Island, where the new debris was brought and run through a series of conveyor belts that sort debris by size. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the debris from the site yielded driver's licenses, rings, watches, wallets, shoes -- boxes and boxes of poignant reminders of the cost in human lives. This time, the sorting yielded bone fragments. (snip)
The debris sifted in the current operation came from excavations over the past two years from the following areas in and around Ground Zero including: N.Y. State Route 9A (West Street), Haul Road, Cedar Street, Washington Street, Vesey Street, the rooftop of Fiterman Hall and various subterranean structures, according to a memo written to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg by Deputy Mayor for Operations Edward Skyler on Jan. 28.
By The Anonymous Physicist
By The Anonymous Physicist
The media has had a frenzy with Aruban/Dutch citizen Joran Van Der Sloot, age 22. The first frenzy was when he was 17, and American Natalee Holloway, age 18, went missing at the end of her graduation celebration trip to Aruba. Supposedly she went in a car with Joran and the Kalpoe brothers, on May 30, 2005, and was never seen again. Joran would be arrested twice over the next two years in Aruba, and in the Netherlands. Joran’s father was also arrested and held for a few days in Aruba in 2005, for his possible involvement and/or knowledge. Others were also arrested in Aruba initially. Everyone was released and not charged. Insufficient evidence was usually cited. The most recent alleged murder by Joran, in Peru, of Stephany Flores Ramirez is detailed below.Forty-three years ago, when the nation lived in fear of Communist sympathizers and saboteurs, the Supreme Court said that even the need for national defense could not reduce the First Amendment rights of those associating with American Communists.That logic is simply twisted. First, even assuming these are truly independent "terrorist" groups, NOTHING gives them more legitimacy than being placed on the State Department’s official list of terrorist groups. So the US already gives them all the legitimacy they need. Second, ANY GROUP can "pretend" to negotiate while secretly plotting violence. It's not like every govt in the world hasn't done this at some point. The truly sick and Orwellian aspect to this ruling is that a good faith effort to promote peace can be construed as promoting terrorism, if the US govt wishes. That is just wrong.
On Monday, in the first case since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to test free speech against the demands of national security in the age of terrorism, the ideals of an earlier time were eroded and free speech lost. By preserving an extremely vague prohibition on aiding and associating with terrorist groups, the court reduced the First Amendment rights of American citizens. (snip)
The case arose after an American human rights group, the Humanitarian Law Project, challenged the law prohibiting “material support” to terror groups, which was defined in the 2001 Patriot Act to include “expert advice or assistance.” The law project wanted to provide advice to two terrorist groups on how to peacefully resolve their disputes and work with the United Nations. The two groups — the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — have violent histories and their presence on the State Department’s official list of terrorist groups is not in dispute.
But though the law project was actually trying to reduce the violence of the two groups, the court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. on behalf of five other justices, said that did not matter and ruled the project’s efforts illegal. Even peaceful assistance to a terror group can further terrorism, the chief justice wrote, in part by lending them legitimacy and allowing them to pretend to be negotiating while plotting violence.
According to a former 31-year IBM employee, the highly-publicized, mandatory switch from analog to digital television is mainly being done to free up analog frequencies and make room for scanners used to read implantable RFID microchips and track people and products throughout the world.
There is no way humans will go completely extinct in 100 years, at least in terms of dying out from natural resource depletion and pollution. That is pure bull, in my opinion. A massive die-off seems quite possible due to global warming/pollution and global depletion of the environment, but even then, some significant number of humans will survive. The only way humans would be wiped out completely is a planet-wide nuclear bombing/quarantine escape attempt by the PTB.As the scientist who helped eradicate smallpox he certainly know a thing or two about extinction.
And now Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.
He has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and 'unbridled consumption.’ (snip)
'It's an irreversible situation. I think it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.'
With the emerging evidence of fissures, the quiet fear now is the methane bubble rupturing the seabed and exploding into the Gulf waters. If the bubble escapes, every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will instantaneously sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists measuring the oil plumes' advance will instantly perish.Obviously a worst case scenario, and I doubt it will happen... hard to believe exploding methane would have that much power to move so much water... but still, it's hard to say that it can't happen.
As horrible as that is, what would follow is an event so potentially horrific that it equals in its fury the Indonesian tsunami that killed more than 600,000, or the destruction of Pompeii by Mt. Vesuvius.
The ultimate Gulf disaster, however, would make even those historical horrors pale by comparison. If the huge methane bubble breaches the seabed, it will erupt with an explosive fury similar to that experienced during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in the Pacific Northwest. A gas gusher will surge upwards through miles of ancient sedimentary rock—layer after layer—past the oil reservoir. It will explode upwards propelled by 50 tons psi, burst through the cracks and fissures of the compromised sea floor, and rupture miles of ocean bottom with one titanic explosion.
The burgeoning methane gas cloud will surface, killing everything it touches, and set off a supersonic tsunami with the wave traveling somewhere between 400 to 600 miles per hour.
While the entire Gulf coastline is vulnerable, the state most exposed to the fury of a supersonic wave towering 150 to 200 feet or more is Florida. The Sunshine State only averages about 100 feet above sea level with much of the coastline and lowlands and swamps near zero elevation. A supersonic tsunami would literally sweep away everything from Miami to the panhandle in a matter of minutes. Loss of human life would be virtually instantaneous and measured in the millions. Of course the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and southern region of Georgia—a state with no Gulf coastline— would also experience tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Loss of property is virtually incalculable and the days of the US position as the world's superpower would be literally gone in a flash...of detonating methane.
BP Oil Spill: Against Gov. Jindal's Wishes, Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard
Eight days ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state's oil-soaked waters. Today, against the governor's wishes, those barges sat idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore.
"It's the most frustrating thing," the Republican governor said today in Buras, La. "Literally, yesterday morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges."
Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP's oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.
"These barges work. You've seen them work. You've seen them suck oil out of the water," said Jindal.
(snip)
"The Coast Guard came and shut them down," Jindal said. "You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, 'Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.'"
(snip)
But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told senators Wednesday that the Pentagon will have to do “stupid things” if Congress doesn’t approve a $33 billion supplemental spending request by July 4.It's not at all clear what Gates means here-- this is the only thing the article talks about the military doing, and it doesn't seem "stupid"--
Funding for the Navy and Marine Corps will begin to run out in July, forcing the Pentagon to disrupt other programs. And by early to mid-August, the military may have to start furloughing civilians and might not be able to pay members of the active-duty military.Is Gates making a threat?
New York Times reporter James Risen is fighting back against critics who have cast a skeptical eye on his Page One story yesterday about Afghanistan's mineral deposits. In an interview with Yahoo! News, Risen dismissed suspicions that the story was part of an orchestrated campaign to rescue the troubled American effort there and derided critical bloggers as pajama-clad layabouts with no reporting chops.Nice 33 insertion there.
(snip)
Risen didn't take kindly to the blogospheric criticism. "Bloggers should do their own reporting instead of sitting around in their pajamas," Risen said.
"The thing that amazes me is that the blogosphere thinks they can deconstruct other people's stories," Risen told Yahoo! News during an increasingly hostile interview, which he called back to apologize for almost immediately after it ended. "Do you even know anything about me? Maybe you were still in school when I broke the NSA story, I don't know. It was back when you were in kindergarten, I think." (Risen and fellow Times reporter Eric Lichtblau shared a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the Bush administration's secret wiretapping program; this reporter was 33 years old at the time.)
"Several months ago, Milt started telling me about what they were finding," Risen said. "At the beginning of the year, I said I wanted to do a story on it." At first both Bearden and Brinkley resisted, Risen said, but he eventually wore them down. "Milt convinced Brinkley to talk to me," he said, "and Brinkley convinced other Pentagon officials to go on the record. I think Milt realized that things were going so badly in Afghanistan that people would be willing to talk about this."
Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure's on to allow them in the skies over the United States.Though, frankly, the CIA is probably already running their drones over us anyway. I know I've posted something on drones being used to spy on Americans here, but can't find it right now.
The Obama Administration has stepped up the use of drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, killing hundreds, but concern to date about their use in the United States has focused on their potential collision threat to civilian aircraft.
The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act.
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.And if you didn't know, or guess, the war is totally bogus, and rigged:
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
Although the investigation is not complete, the officials suspect that at least some of these security companies — many of which have ties to top Afghan officials — are using American money to bribe the Taliban. The officials suspect that the security companies may also engage in fake fighting to increase the sense of risk on the roads, and that they may sometimes stage attacks against competitors.
The suspicions raise fundamental questions about the conduct of operations here, since the convoys, and the supplies they deliver, are the lifeblood of the war effort.
“We’re funding both sides of the war,” a NATO official in Kabul said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was incomplete, said he believed millions of dollars were making their way to the Taliban.
Were it not for the byline of James Risen, a New York Times reporter currently in a legal battle with the Obama administration over the identity of his sources, a second read of his blockbuster A1 story this morning, U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan, would engender some fairly acute skepticism. For one, a simple Google search identifies any number of previous stories with similar details.
The Bush Administration concluded in 2007 that Afghanistan was potentially sitting on a goldmine of mineral resources and that this fact ought to become a central point of U.S. policy in bolstering the government.
The Soviets knew this in 1985 (snip).
A former senior State Department official said that regular discussions between the U.S. and the Karzai government over how to best exploit the resources for potential future use were ongoing when he was privy to those discussions around 2006.
By 2009, the government had already begun to solicit bids for various mining opportunities.
Jonathan Landay of McClatchy was on to the geopolitical importance of Afghanistan's mineral reserves in 2009, writing that China's thirst for coal might be the key to regional stabilization.
Already, there are accusations that the REAL reason the US is in Afghanistan is because WE want to exploit those mines. (snip)
The general perception about the war here and overseas is that the counterinsurgency strategy has failed to prop up Hamid Karzai's government in critical areas, and is destined to ultimately fail. This is not how the war was supposed to be going, according to the theorists and policy planners in the Pentagon's policy shop.
What better way to remind people about the country's potential bright future -- and by people I mean the Chinese, the Russians, the Pakistanis, and the Americans -- than by publicizing or re-publicizing valid (but already public) information about the region's potential wealth?
The Obama administration and the military know that a page-one, throat-clearing New York Times story will get instant worldwide attention. The story is accurate, but the news is not that new; let's think a bit harder about the context.
ramir233 — May 10, 2010 — More than a few people have noted the Illuminati symbolism in the film Knowing starring Nicholas Cage. But as the video above demonstrates, there may also be predictive programming in the film in regard to the recent oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.Interesting, to be sure, though I'm not thrilled about "ramir233" as a username.
Also, Notice that 666 is the first recognizable number when Cage picks up the sheet of paper.
Another inside job?
There is something odd about the number eleven too. 11.. "11 people missing."
"The entire World Trade Center event was underlined with the occultic number 11. Occultists all over the world knew exactly what had happened and who did it." Further on, "The Illuminati ended the First World War according to Albert Pike's occult plan to produce Antichrist. They deliberately ended it on the 11th hour, on the 11th day, on the 11th month. (11 x 3 = 33) The signing of the Armistice agreement was undergirded by three eleven's!"
Peter Sutherland is chairman of BP plc (1997 - current). He is also chairman of Goldman Sachs International (1995 - current). He was appointed chairman of the London School of Economics in 2008.... Before these appointments, he was the founding director-general of the World Trade Organisation. He had previously served as director general of GATT since July 1993 [and was] chairman of the Board of Governors of the European Institute of Public Administration (Maastricht) 1991-1996.Sutherland resigned as BP's chairman in 2009, but apparently still serves in various key capacities.
Sutherland is managing director - as well as chairman - of Goldman Sachs International (Goldman Sachs International is the very powerful subsidiary of the Goldman Sachs Group, of which Lloyd Blankfein is CEO). Sutherland is also an Advisory Director of the Goldman Sachs Group itself.
And he was/is European Chairman for the Trilateral Commission.
He has, at various times, attended meetings of the Bilderberg group.
He is also one of the chief financial advisers to the Vatican.
As if that is not enough, Sutherland also serves in the following capacities (click on "Read Full Background"):Mr. Sutherland served as an Attorney General of Ireland and also served as European Commissioner from 1985 to 1989 where he was responsible for competition policy....
There is no good news coming out of the depressing and endless war in Afghanistan. There once was merit to our incursion there, but that was long ago. Now we’re just going through the tragic motions, flailing at this and that, with no real strategy or decent end in sight.
The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military.
Seven American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Monday but hardly anyone noticed. Far more concern is being expressed for the wildlife threatened by the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico than for the G.I.’s being blown up in the wilds of Afghanistan.
Early this year, we were told that at long last the tide had turned in Afghanistan, that the biggest offensive of the war by American, British and Afghan troops was under way in Marja, a town in Helmand Province in the southern part of the country. The goal, as outlined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, our senior military commander in Afghanistan, was to rout the Taliban and install a splendid new government that would be responsive to the people and beloved by them.
(snip)
What’s happening in Afghanistan is not only tragic, it’s embarrassing. The American troops will fight, but the Afghan troops who are supposed to be their allies are a lost cause. The government of President Hamid Karzai is breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent — and widely unpopular to boot. And now, as The Times’s Dexter Filkins is reporting, the erratic Mr. Karzai seems to be giving up hope that the U.S. can prevail in the war and is making nice with the Taliban.
There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It’s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year.
Lawyers for the city and some 10,000 rescue and cleanup workers at ground zero said Thursday that they had negotiated a new settlement that would give the workers more compensation for health damages and reduce the fees paid to their lawyers.The double 33 almost certainly signifies the destruction of the WTC by multiple small nuclear bombs.
(snip)
Under the new accord, the plaintiffs’ lawyers have agreed to reduce their fees to a maximum of 25 percent of the settlement amount, down from the 33.33 percent called for in agreements their clients had signed. As a result, the plaintiffs will get to keep an additional $50 million, their lawyers said.