Netanyahu is an absolute disaster for Israel. Netanyahu can be a disaster for American national interests. The sooner the Israeli get rid of this regime the better it will be for Israel and everyone else.
Read this article from the Guardian and tell us what part is not true. Who is the propagandist? Who is damaged by
the actions of Netanyahu? Hamas, not likely.
Can anyone, any serious person, claim that militant Islam is being hurt by the actions and deeds of the Netanyahu Government? Are US security interests being helped by this group of clumsy amateurs?
The same government under Netanyahu is now claiming that they are the only ones capable and credible to investigate the Gaza flotilla calamity. Israel and the families and victims of the shooting deserve an impartial review of the facts.
The jury pool should not include the UN or the government of Benjamin Hetanyahu. Fearing the truth is not an option.
______________________
Israel forced to apologise for YouTube spoof of Gaza flotilla
Israeli government press office distributed video link featuring Arabs and activists singing
Rachel Shabi in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 June 2010 22.44 BST
Article history
The Israeli government has been forced to apologise for circulating a spoof video mocking activists aboard the Gaza flotilla, nine of who were shot dead by Israeli forces last week.s.
The YouTube clip, set to the tune of the 1985 charity single We Are the World, features Israelis dressed as Arabs and activists, waving weapons while singing: "We con the world, we con the people. We'll make them all believe the IDF (Israel Defence Force) is Jack the Ripper."
It continues: "There's no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the biggest bluff of all."
The Israeli government press office distributed the video link to foreign journalists at the weekend, but within hours emailed them an apology, saying it had been an error. Press office director Danny Seaman said the video did not reflect official state opinion, but in his personal capacity he thought it was "fantastic".
Government spokesman Mark Regev said the video reflected how Israelis felt about the incident. "I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny," he said. "It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it."
The clip features a group led by the Jerusalem Post's deputy managing editor Caroline Glick, wearing keffiyehs and calling themselves the Flotilla Choir. The footage is interspersed with clips from the recent Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid ship, the Mavi Marmara.The clip has been praised in Israel, where the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot said the singers "defended Israel better than any of the experts".
But Didi Remez, an Israeli who runs the liberal-left news analysis blog Coteret, said the clip was "repulsive" and reflected how out of touch Israeli opinion was with the rest of the world. "It shows a complete lack of understanding of how the incident is being perceived abroad," she said. Award-winning Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport said the clip demonstrated prejudice against Muslims. "It's roughly done, not very sophisticated, anti-Muslim – and childish for the government to be behind such a clip," he said.
A similar press office email was sent to foreign journalists two weeks ago, recommending a gourmet restaurant and Olympic-sized swimming pool in Gaza to highlight Israel's claim there is no humanitarian crisis there. Journalists who complained the email was in poor taste were told they had "no sense of humour".
Last week, the Israel Defence Force had to issue a retraction over an audio clip it had claimed was a conversation between Israeli naval officials and people on the Mavi Marmara, in which an activist told soldiers to "go back to Auschwitz". The clip was carried by Israeli and international press, but today the army released a "clarification/correction", explaining that it had edited the footage and that it was not clear who had made the comment.
The Israeli army also backed down last week from an earlier claim that soldiers were attacked by al-Qaida "mercenaries" aboard the Gaza flotilla. An article appearing on the IDF spokesperson's website with the headline: "Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be al-Qaida mercenaries", was later changed to "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers found without identification papers," with the information about al-Qaida removed from the main article. An army spokesperson told the Guardian there was no evidence proving such a link to the terror organisation.
e
Miserable mofo ate my comment, and I'm too pissed to do it over.
ReplyDeleteUpshot:
MSM and this admin promote a false, pro-Muslim storyline, making an Israeli PR victory impossible.
Israel needs to avoid another namby pamby boarding, but must intercept these phoney Flotillas, or not, which would be suicidal.
3. Haven't of anything Bibbi has done that is remotely as damaging as this Admin denying Islam's role in this war, and regularly promoting a false, pro Muslim narrative of events.
4. Have yet to see Bibbi bow to Hamas or the Sauds, or Chinese.
etc.
The Bar Giveth, and the Bar Taketh Away.
ReplyDeleteHaven't kept up too closely:
ReplyDeleteWhat was the source of the claims of multiple short range head wounds, and etc?
desert rat said...
ReplyDelete"Why should all the motorists of the United States pay for BP's folly, Deuce?
Why socialize their ineptitude?"
---
Agreed.
Also agree with 'Rat that losses are gonna be unprecedented.
As to how long it will take, much will depend on God/Weather.
If a majority of it gets blown up the estuaries, it'll be more than a decade.
If it mostly gets carried out to sea, we'll never know what the true cost will be.
As to Bob and Whit and Turkey.
ReplyDeleteI've heard the lower ranks of the military now resemble the general populace wrt how much they dislike the West.
...and the law was changed denying the military it's right to intervene as it previously was allowed to.
Quirk should set up shop over at Walt's Poetry Factory.
ReplyDelete2 Lines of Creativity at one site.
They got the cap working a lot better.
ReplyDeleteNext step is to use the choke and kill lines as additional risers.
Every little bit helps.
Hewitt could tell us what the lawyers should get.
ReplyDelete...lot less than 40 percent.
If BHO can fire GM's President, he can sure as Hell cap the lawyers.
But would he???
Damned Robots are amazing.
ReplyDeleteLooks like they're delivering some kind of anchoring weights maybe.
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:44287.asx?bkup=44668
I'll try to post all twelve feeds separately.
When I go to the page with 12 on one page, it crashes the browser.
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:44287.asx?bkup=44668
ReplyDeletehttp://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:44838.asx?bkup=45135
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:46566.asx?bkup=54013
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:55030.asx?bkup=56646
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:31499.asx?bkup=31500
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:22458.asx?bkup=2372
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:45685.asx?bkup=49182
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:45683.asx?bkup=45684
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:47175.asx?bkup=21144
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:21145.asx?bkup=21327
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:37235.asx?bkup=37270
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:35523.asx?bkup=35624
Halfway through:
ReplyDeleteno new video streams
Boo Hoo
These two live:
ReplyDeletehttp://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:44287.asx?bkup=44668
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:22458.asx?bkup=23729
I would say, with regards BP:
ReplyDeleteThey were working well beyond their technological capacity. They were not breaking "new ground" they were operating in a "Broken" mode. Pushing on well beyond what would or could be considered reasonable risk reward factors.
11 people died.
Tens of billions USD in civil losses.
All due to BP's lack of capacity to do the job they said they could do, safely and cleanly.
There is a very good probability that the managers of BP will be found criminally libel for the disaster.
If they are found to be criminally culpable, of committing a fraud when applying for the permit. Of operating the Deep Horizon in an unsafe manner.
Of any number of other points of criminal culpability. All of which would rightly doom BP as an ongoing organization, at least with assets in the United States.
Like Enron, it should cease to exist, rightfully so.
The stockholders in BP, they should have bought US savings bonds, not an equity position in what may prove to be a criminal enterprise.
Buyer beware!
This Deep Horizon is no hurricane, nor tornado.
ReplyDeleteNot an earthquake nor tsunami.
No, those are "Acts of God".
Over which no living person has control.
That is not the case with BP and the Deep Horizon. That was not an "Act of God" but of men.
100% man made.
100% of the decisions concerning the placement and operation of that platform were made by people.
People who must be held responsible for the fruits of their labors.
Well before the general ppublic should pay a dime, BP should be liquidated to cover the losses incurred through their mismanagement of their own operations.
If it is found that the Federal overseers were behaving in a criminal manner, that they were conspiring with BP, to violate safety and cleanliness standards, then I could see there being some general public liability.
ReplyDeleteBut those Federals would need to be fully prosecuted, too.
The damn blow out preventor was not being properly maintained, had been damaged and not repaired, required tests were missed and run at reduced pressures.
ReplyDeleteBP used a cheaper, but more risky casing, and did not utilize all of Schlumberger's expertise, dispensing with some monitering.
Schlumberger's crew left the rig on the morning of the accident.
Bhopal trial: Eight convicted over India gas disaster
ReplyDeleteBBC News -
A court in the Indian city of Bhopal has sentenced eight people to two years each in jail over a gas plant leak that killed thousands of people in 1984.
26 years to reach a decision on criminal culpability, in Bhopal, India.
Will the wheels of justice turn quicker, here?
104. Doug
ReplyDeleteAt “THE DRUM” there was talk of a Schlumberger crew coptering off the platform the morning of the blowout.
Some claimed they were dismissed just when they were needed most, others claim they evacuated for their own safety.
June 1, 2010 - 5:05 pm Link to this Comment
***
Doug –they would have been dismissed most likely –intial task done, and their wire-line services no longer needed, the cement-bond log having been –unbelievably under the circumstances –declined. I don’t think any safety evac would have pertained, the whole problem was the ignoring of that factor.
---
"the cement-bond log having been –unbelievably under the circumstances –declined"
(Buddy Larsen)
ReplyDelete...he used to moniter the mud.
102. buddy larsen
ReplyDeletepapa ray, i think you just rang my bell why this is bothering me so much –that drilling rig, fifty miles out to sea all alone, is a world of its own. America is the crew on duty –that’s the papa rays there on the brake handle hitting the horn and cussin’. the pressure coming up is the well known foreign you know whos, and the BP company men giving those insane orders letting the pressure come hit the crew –the head honcho who was ‘in the shower’ when they needed his word, and is now sequestered under doctor’s orders (with his two trainees having ‘taken the fifth’ at the hearings last two weeks) are obama & the current administration. the derrick hand, up there rackin pipe and the first to go to the promised land, why that’s Ben Israel. We have got to check the blowout preventers. i wish i knew how.
Hewitt said those guys taking the fifth was like an admission of culpability, under the circumstances.
ReplyDelete98. Papa Ray
ReplyDelete94. buddy larsen
Yea, we entertained what went through the Driller’s and others minds during those last few minutes. Most likely he was on the horn trying to tell someone that he needed to hit the button. Or maybe he did hit that button, and nothing happened. How many times did he hit it.
Cursing all the while.
Until God opened his arms and accepted him?
We will never know, but like any good hand he stayed in the fight and didn’t run.
Papa Ray
This one is a killer:
ReplyDelete95. buddy larsen
Darren/84; if i may quibble with a small part of your fine post, you and papa ray are both correct in saying more or less that it is very difficult to avoid a bullet that you can’t see coming at you. Detail here is that after the well was bottom sealed, the proper procedure is to test the seal. Long and certain and expensive, a wire-line cement-bond electric log –a Schlumberger job. A short cut with just marginal decrease in reliability is a negative-pressure test –an isolated wellbore not circulating shut-in will with a good seal show negative pressure at the top of the borehole, at the casing head. They ran this test, amnd a LOT of pressure developed –meaning there is a wellbore intrusion. As far as i can tell, this test was rerun, and a compensation was made for the gas-entrained mud. This test was accepted as showing a proper seal, and the rest is history.
but -it’s hard to even put into words how necessary it was to have circulated the well –’bottoms up’ –before making any assumptions of contaminated mud. Everybody on the rig save the mess hands would’ve known this. had they done so, the pump strokes vs pump pressure would’ve told them immediately that there was an inrrusion –at a point in time the kick could’ve been caught easily, even with the unknown BOP problems. Pumping ‘bottoms up’ is always the automatic procedure after any event changing the wellbore, even any long stoppage of circulation, as the round-trip on a bit change. Bottoms up, you always pump bottoms up,
you always pump bottoms up. it took a specific ‘or-else’ demand from the company man, the BP man, to skip this –and it sparked a fight being reported by witnesses.
The seawater weight vs mud weight is what pulled the kick up thru the rig, but the displacement would not have been done had they pumped bottoms up and noted that the pumps were stroking higher at lower pressure, indicated something light and expanding in volume moving up the wellbore. At one point, the sign of signs came –mud flowing out of wellbore with the pumps off. this happened –as reported –18 minutes before the blowout. That’s the two seconds you mention, with a thousand or so left over. but still, no order to shut the preventers. It’s almost as if BP had been holding a gun on those guys and making them jump off a cliff. of course even those who knew a kick was coming –like the driller who was at the dispute meeting, and ‘on the brake’ when it blew, and is also among the dead, followed orders. BP was paying the bills, and most of those guys have young children who need stuff.
71. buddy larsen
ReplyDeletePapa ray –thanks –and you’re probably right. There’s just some crazy things about the job. i speak from the perspective of having worked deep hot ‘trouble’ holes all over the Gulf of Mexico (and elsewhere), as a drilling fluid tech –a ‘mud engineer’ (i won several ‘top hand’ performance awards in the deepwater Gulf) –as well as served as a district tech mgr for a gulf coast drlng fluid outfit –and have dug into some of the details –i’ll get more, too, i hope, when some feelers come back, from some of the old contacts who know the rig personnel. I’m not pushing, understandably.
But BP and Oxy –partnering in Colombia and Pakistan, have some ’splainin’ to do re several topics, not the least of which is the futures mkt gyrations of summer ‘08. In the last four or five years, BP has trashed the industry in two sensitive areas already, before this latest, which will close the Mississippi Canyon and layer on so much FedGov to the oilpatch as to measurably strengthen global oil exporters. Both on the Alaska Pipeline and in a Texas refinery trying to expand output, BP has had accidents big enough to change the politics (reported last three years OSHA “willful and egregious safety/maintenance violations” –BP leads with 760, followed ny Conoco and Sunoco with 8 each).
BP has a paid-for cash cow field in Colombia worth 8 bbl/yr bottom line, and as “Chiquita Banana death squad defender” Eric Holder can tell you, the FARC influences anyone who has to “work the monte” in FARC-land. Iran has supposedly been sending agents to FARC-land, to learn and teach, and even on the surface, BP has heavy trade going with Iranian oil intersts –look it up.
The Hez are in Mexico, too. One could almost imagine a USA gulf coast front from the Pacific to the Atlantic, in the minds of the Mullahs.
as he announced a few hours ago, in addition to the several new panels of oil-patch regulators, Obama has just started sending in ‘work-release’ inmates from i guess federal prisons, to the beaches to help clean. He wanrts 20,000 nat’l guardsmen sent, too. this spill is gonna federalize the coastline of the south at least thru the summer.
oh, and to anyone following the Citi-to-Oxy at unexplainably-low price saga of Citi/Phibro: The ‘too big to fail’ trader Anthony Hall that Obama evidently needed pay-czar Ken Feinberg to cleanse Citi of, came to Phibro (now Oxy) from BP, right after the 2006 election. Phibro, one of the handful of high-frequency oil futures traders, fronting the dark-pool (secret) hedge fund clients, that so spooked the markets –and demoralized the people at the gas pumps –in the summer before the 2008 election.
58. buddy larsen
ReplyDeletePeterike/50; the so-called “Mississippi Canyon” horizon has been known for decades to be potentially the big game-changer for American oil production, if and when the deep-water technology became well-enough developed, and oil prices high and stable enough, to justify the exploration & production costs. The operation that blew up was one of the two or three main forces trying to open the Mississippi Canyon. no light game there.
Hence it’s all the more mind-blowing that the disaster was brought on –proximately –by the lowliest kindergarten level mistake imaginable, that is, letting the weight of the column of fluid fall below what was needed to contain formation pressures. All these weights were known, and the rig crew knew (see harsh arguments at April 20 11am meeting) what was going to have to happen, though not that the BOP would fail. The BP error behavior is unexplainable.
Knowing this, then one reads that the block is named (these drilling sites are named by the winning secret bid for them, at the bid auctions, often held at the Houston Astrodome) after a town destroyed by the hand of God, for the sins of market capitalist usurpers.
Makes ya wonder *who* named it, and *who* told that now-sequestered rig company man to just go ahead and displace, and to ignore the reality of the hole in the ground.
The impetus to wonder about these weird questions comes from either a feeling of nefarious plans converging (“Love Canal, sequence II”), or a compulsion to appear idiotic in blog comments, one or the other, or both, for sure.
Performance counts.
ReplyDeleteMore so than good wishes.
Sounds like criminal negligence, to me. But then I'm just watchin' from the sidelines.
Three years worth of tourist dollars, on the Emerald Coast, even if the oil does not wash ashore, the propaganda message has already been sent.
Halley Barbour was on the TV, this very morning making that point. That even where the beaches are clean, BP has damaged the environment.
The business environment.
Here's the link If you are still interested.
ReplyDeleteI'll quit filling the thread with off topics...
Sorry, I find it fascinating, like a high tech whodunnit.
Sure beats the Hell out of the MSM for honest, informed, info.
At one point, the sign of signs came –mud flowing out of wellbore with the pumps off. this happened –as reported –18 minutes before the blowout.
ReplyDeletebut still, no order to shut the preventers. It’s almost as if BP had been holding a gun on those guys and making them jump off a cliff. of course even those who knew a kick was coming –like the driller who was at the dispute meeting, and ‘on the brake’ when it blew, and is also among the dead, followed orders.
BP was paying the bills, and most of those guys have young children who need stuff.
There is a solution to the energy challenge. It is found in bio-engineering and agriculture.
ReplyDeleteBoth strong suites of the United States.
Pivot hard and co-opt the oppositions political reserve.
Go Green.
Bringing 250 million acres into energy production, with the associated infrastructure build outs, providing a true economic stimulus, on both short and long terms.
An energy source that does not endanger the economic and environmental security of the US.
But enhances our natural strengths, instead.
Reads like the decision makers, that they did it, on purpose, doug.
ReplyDelete"Pivot hard and co-opt the oppositions political reserve.
ReplyDeleteGo Green."
Hard pivots are a thing of the past, like short wars.
Consider WWII:
You could sum up all other wars in modern times, from WW I to Afghanistan, and they come up smaller than WWII.
And WWII involved the USA for about 5 years.
Will I live to see the completion of the new towers in Manhatten?
Only time, bureaucrats, and God will determine that.
Woulda been something to watch, as an adult, Empire State, and Golden Gate go up quick like.
With that era's tools and tech.
Only high tech advances that fast today.
Tax em out of the country, I say!
...tax and REGULATE.
ReplyDeleteIf you have been checking out this feed, it best shows that a significant amount of oil is being reclaimed.
ReplyDeletePray for BP and the weather.
Carl Rove came out for DeVore in CA. surpising to me.
ReplyDeleteHasn't got a chance against Fiorina - she's got money and sex on her side.
Care to bet against money and sex?
'World News' Political Insights: Tea Party Boil May Save Harry Reid
ReplyDeleteIt's 'Careful What You Wish For,' as Primaries Test Incumbents, Grass-Roots Energy
---
In this year of strange political bedfellows and stranger political outcomes, consider the case of Harry Reid and the tea partiers.
The Senate majority leader is about as loathed a figure as there is in the tea party rank-and-file. The fact that he's up for reelection in Nevada this year leaves him as perhaps the top target of the still-emerging movement.
All three Republicans vying to win the nomination Tuesday to take on Reid, D-Nev., consider themselves tea partiers. And therein rests a potential problem for the GOP that could cost them the chance to take down Reid this year.
The late momentum going into Tuesday's primary is with Sharron Angle, who has sought to claim tea party enthusiasm by endorsing a phasing-out of the Social Security system and a shuttering of the Department of Education.
Recent polls show either of the other two Republicans -- establishment choice Sue Lowden or Danny Tarkanian, the son of former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian -- as stronger general-election candidates against Reid in Nevada, a classic purple state these days. Angle's fiery candidacy is the latest manifestation of the potential for the tea party movement to cut both ways for Republicans. Its vast political energy already defeated the party establishment's choice in Kentucky earlier this month, and helped spark a three-way race for the Senate in Florida.
Now, in Nevada, Democrats hope tea partiers leave Republicans with a weaker general-election candidate against the Senate's top Democrat.
Here are some other big storylines likely to emerge Tuesday, in the single biggest day of voting until Election Day 2010...
Egypt restricts marriage to Israelis
ReplyDeleteCitizenship to be revoked from those wedding Israeli women.
CAIRO — Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court upheld a ruling on Saturday, that orders the country's Interior Ministry to strip citizenship from Egyptians married to Israeli women.
The court said that the Interior Ministry should present each marriage case to the Cabinet on an individual basis. The Cabinet will then rule on whether to strip the Egyptian of his citizenship, taking into consideration whether a man married an Israeli Arab or a Jew when making its decision to revoke citizenship.
Saturday's decision, which cannot be appealed, comes more than year after a lower court ruled that the Interior Ministry, which deals with citizenship documents, must implement the 1976 article of the citizenship law. That bill revokes citizenship of Egyptians who married Israelis who have served in the army or embrace Zionism as an ideology. The Interior Ministry appealed that ruling.
The lawyer who brought the original suit to court, Nabih el-Wahsh, celebrated Saturday's ruling, saying it "is aimed at protecting Egyptian youth and Egypt's national security."
The government has not released figures of Egyptians married to Israeli women, but some estimates put the number around 30,000.
Israeli officials said they had no comment on Saturday's ruling.
In 2005, former Grand Mufti Nasr Farid Wasel issued a religious edict, or fatwa, saying Muslim Egyptians may not marry Israeli nationals, "whether Arab, Muslim, or Christian." The possibility of a Jewish spouse was not mentioned.
Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the late Grand Sheik of Cairo's Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's premier institution and oldest university, has said that while marriage between an Egyptian man and an Israeli woman is not religiously forbidden, the government has the right to strip the man of his citizenship for marrying a woman from "an enemy state."
Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel at Camp David in 1978....
Wish I knew about Mexico spill aftermath...
ReplyDeleteNo contemporary stories I've seen.
Will have to google.
No doubt the coast down there was far less critical than our Gulf Coast.
...very few coasts in the World that are.
"Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel at Camp David in 1978...."
ReplyDeleteThat was then.
In my lifetime, Egypt has gone from being a relatively modern society to an America Hating nation of Towelheads.
...in the 50's Egyptians dressed like humans.
...just repeat quietly,
ReplyDelete"Turkey is our friend."
All Day Long
That'll git her done.
Bush policy converted Iraq from a country with large swaths of modernity in Baghdad, to (another) nation of Towelheads.
ReplyDeleteShia, in this case.
Women dressed like women and Christians survived.
...wonder what percent of Christians are left?
Turkey and the Pakis could cause quite a commotion!
ReplyDeleteDo we control the keys to those Turk Nukes?
...oh, I forgot, Holder sold the code during the Clinton Admin.
ReplyDeleteStill miss Ron Brown.
The programme for tonight's performance was just handed out:
ReplyDeleteTy Burrell, welcome
Kelly Clarkson, "Everybody Got Their Something" and "Way Over Yonder"
George Lopez
From the Ford's Theatre production of Little Shop of Horrors
Christopher Kale Jones and Jenna Coker-Jones, "Suddenly, Seymour"
Soldiers' Chorus of the United States Army Field Band
"My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and "America the Beautiful" Robin Roberts, family life in the White House
Dick Van Dyke and The Vantastix, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Medley"
Lionel Richie, "Three Times a Lady" and "All Night Long" with the Joyce Garrett Celebration Singers
INTERMISSION
Presentation of the Lincoln Medals
Renee Fleming, "Soul Meets Body" and "In Your Eyes"
Cast members from Disney and Cameron Mackintosh's Broadway musical Mary Poppins
Laura Kelly and Gavin Lee, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"
From the Broadway musical Memphis Montego Glover, "Colored Woman"
General Colin Powell, a special tribute Renee Fleming, Soldiers' Chorus of the United States Army Field Band, Bill Conti and the Spirit of America Orchestra with the Entire Company "Battle Hymn of the Republic"
...even Trish's heartthrob, the Human Colon will be there!
Volume and extent of spill
ReplyDeleteIn the initial stages of the spill, an estimated 30,000 barrels of oil per day were flowing from the well. In July 1979, the pumping of mud into the well reduced the flow to 20,000 barrels per day, and early in August the pumping of nearly 100,000 steel, iron, and lead balls into the well reduced the flow to 10,000 barrels per day. Pemex claimed that half of the released oil burned when it reached the surface, a third of it evaporated, and the rest was contained or dispersed.[7] Mexican authorities also drilled two relief wells into the main well to lower the pressure of the blowout, however the oil continued to flow for three months following the completion of the first relief well.[8]
Pemex contracted Conair Aviation to spray the chemical dispersant Corexit 9527 on the oil. A total of 493 aerial missions were flown, treating 1,100 square miles of oil slick. Dispersants were not used in the U.S. area of the spill because of the dispersant's inability to treat weathered oil. Eventually the on-scene coordinator (OSC) requested that Mexico stop using dispersants north of 25°N.[7]
In Texas, an emphasis was placed on coastal countermeasures protecting the bays and lagoons formed by the barrier islands. Impacts of oil to the barrier island beaches were ranked as second in importance to protecting inlets to the bays and lagoons. This was done with the placement of skimmers and booms. Efforts were concentrated on the Brazos-Santiago Pass, Port Mansfield Channel, Aransas Pass, and Cedar Bayou which during the course of the spill was sealed with sand. Economically and environmentally sensitive barrier island beaches were cleaned daily. Laborers used rakes and shovels to clean beaches rather than heavier equipment which removed too much sand. Ultimately, 71,500 barrels of oil impacted 162 miles of U.S. beaches, and over 10,000 cubic yards of oiled material were removed.[7]
[edit] Containment
In the next nine months, experts and divers including Red Adair were brought in to contain and cap the oil well.[7] An average of approximately ten thousand to thirty thousand barrels per day were discharged into the Gulf until it was finally capped on 23 March 1980, nearly 10 months later.[9]
[edit] Aftermath
Prevailing currents carried the oil towards the Texas coastline. The US government had two months to prepare booms to protect major inlets. Pemex spent $100 million to clean up the spill and avoided paying compensation by asserting sovereign immunity.[10]
The oil slick surrounded Rancho Nuevo, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which is one of the few nesting sites for Kemp's Ridley sea turtles.
Thousands of baby sea turtles were airlifted to a clean portion of the Gulf of Mexico to help save the rare species.
---
They had the sense to burn off a lot of it, fancy that!
...sounds like a lot less damage than this is likely to cause.
And Texas got to dredge and berm.
The good old days.
Ted Koppel's son, Andrew, found dead after night of boozing in NYC:
ReplyDeleteProbly trying to blot out the flashbacks of dad inserting that stick up his ass every nite before he did nightline.
Finding humor in the horror of her hubby's sex scandal, the 45-year-old actress declared she's checked out of heartbreak hotel.
ReplyDeleteJohansson, who helped present the award, asked "Miss Congeniality" for a liplock like the one she gave Meryl Streep at the Critics' Choice Movie Awards in January.
After accommodating Johansson, Bullock said, "Now that we have done that, can we please go back to normal, because therapy is really expensive."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/06/06/2010-06-06_americas_sweetheart_is_back_sandra_bullock_receives_mtvs_honorable_generation_aw.html#ixzz0qBAgntTm
Dougo's thread:
ReplyDeleteWhere is everybod?
Doug, you seem to be tottering into the realm of boobie.
ReplyDeleteHighway Patrolman Toyota Takeover 911 call.
ReplyDeleteDoug's public service announcement:
PUT THE CAR IN NEUTRAL IMMEDIATELY, and gently start to brake, being aware of the traffic around you, and pull the car to the side of the street or road as soon as possible.
He says that's step 2, I say step 1.
No margin for error.
How so, Ashie?
ReplyDeleteOh, I know:
ReplyDelete"Towelheads"
Towelheads is us.
Who is "us" White Man?
Mon Jun 07, 10:48:00 AM EDT
ReplyDeleteMiserable, backward, hate-filled, women hating POS "religion."
ReplyDeleteNo doubt morally equiv in Ashie's "mind."
My ode to Ted???
ReplyDelete...I'm e-mailing him to suggest he use that stick to hold up his message to us over his grave.
Plus,
ReplyDeleteTed dissed my Man Jimmy re:
Them peace-loving Shias.
Aquavelvajad, et al.
i would guess there are some pretty sophisticated unlock codes to get a nuke to work assuming they could get past the US forces billeted with the nukes and get their hands on the suckers.
ReplyDeleteCRAP
ReplyDeleteRush married that 32 year old hottie.
Now he'll go off the air for months tending to his "sex addiction"
Love to see THAT pre-nup.
Limbaugh lawyers up.
All in the family, ya know.
Double CRAP!
ReplyDeleteNow I'm agreeing with Ash!
Mon Jun 07, 11:31:00 AM EDT
Thr Rodent is a Nuke-Slinging Rabble Rouser.
ReplyDeletethe
ReplyDeleteLot'sa good posts, DougO. Those comments of Buddy's were especially enlightening.
ReplyDeleteQuite the mess.
Grow, Baby, Grow.
Go Green.
Thanks, Ruf.
ReplyDeleteI learned more from Buddy than at the Drum.
Got a good old Drum link, tho, if I can find it.
Those oil guys don't like to say negative things about their own, and that's understandable. A strong brotherhood will always develop between men that work dangerous, difficult jobs in difficult to reach places.
ReplyDeleteThat guys like Buddy, and Rockman have said as much as they have is telling. BP was really messing up, bigtime, and endangering the lives of the hands while doing it, is obvious.
Nothing has changed. I worked with a Raytheon contract to the USAF in 1969 on A US Army post in Germany. Raytheon had 15 engineers and there were three air force officers.
ReplyDeleteWe all worked out of three double wides. The USAF out of Colorado decided they wanted it all USAF and needed a hard site.
They ended up with 115 officers and men, attached dependents probably another 150 and a building that looked like Star Wars from the inside.
Not one decibel of performance changed, but it did look good. Raytheon upped their men to 25.
Nothing has changed.
_______
During the sixties most of the big USAF bases in England, Lakenheath, Bentwaters and Woodbridge had Victor Alert areas where F4's with tactical nukes armed at their bellies were always five minutes away from takeof. The pilots just waited for the word, but the systems made it impossible to have a rogue strike. Hopefully the control systems are even better than they were then.
In my local newspaper there was a story about the Israeli government backtracking on those radio conversations they had released - the ones where they were told to go back to Auschwitz and the 911 reference. It seems the IDF can't verify where those communications came from.
ReplyDeleteI never heard of the Pixies, but they are some music group that cancelled a concert in Israel.
ReplyDeleteThey do not exactly sound like a terrorist group, but again, hold on. We are all victims these days:
After the announcement of the Pixies’ cancellation, Shuki Weiss, the promoter of the Pic.Nic festival, said in a statement, “I am full of both sorrow and pain in light of the fact that our repeated attempts to present quality acts and festivals in Israel have increasingly been falling victim to what I can only describe as a form of cultural terrorism which is targeting Israel and the arts worldwide.”
He added: “These ‘sudden’ decisions affect thousands of Israeli music lovers turning them into victims and robbing them of a handful of hours of joy, adrenalin and culture, in the name of suffering they have neither caused nor wish for.”
I may have to revise and resubmit after actually hearing the pixies.
ReplyDeleteHard to believe that I never listened to them before.
Here in Toronto the organizers of the Gay Pride Parade banned the phrase "Israeli Apartheid" from this years parade. There is a group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid who have had a float in the parade the last couple of years. A number of high profile gays that received awards and such have declined to participate because of that censorship. Ironically I'm hearing in the news constant references to the issue and thus am hearing "Israeli Apartheid" regularly these days.
ReplyDeleteAsh said...
ReplyDeleteHere in Toronto the organizers of the Gay Pride Parade banned the phrase "Israeli Apartheid" from this years parade. There is a group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid who have had a float in the parade the last couple of years.
I hope they all move to Gaza and have their throats slit...
Deuce said...
ReplyDeleteI never heard of the Pixies, but they are some music group that cancelled a concert in Israel.
They should go and PLAY in Gaza...
Oh Yeah, MUSIC has been outlawed..
Nitwits
Sold Out a World Tour, eh?
ReplyDeleteI think I went into the wrong bizness.
The Pixies has done turned "thousand of Israelis into Victims."
ReplyDeleteBy "NOT" playing?
I wonder how many "Thousands of Israelis" they'd have turned into "Victims" if they Had Played?
ReplyDeleteI've got a Helen Thomas must go post queued up and ready.
ReplyDeleteI guess we won't be needing it. Just for the heck of it, I posted it one post back
Convoy Guards in Afghanistan Face an Inquiry
ReplyDeleteBy DEXTER FILKINS
The security firms are suspected of using U.S. funds to bribe the Taliban and fake attacks to make their services sought after.
BP security Inc!
No more Helen Thomas
ReplyDeleteBoo Hoo.
POLL: BP Oil Spill Response Rated Worse than Katrina...
ReplyDeleteHelen and all of her people should be driven back to Lebanon, where they can live, sing and dance...
ReplyDeleteAnd if I want to see a woman that is as attractive as Helen?
I'll shave the ass of a donkey and teach it to walk backwards..
h/t Trish
ReplyDeleteJohn Mauldin, "The Doctor and the Dealman: An Energy Update"
Doug,
ReplyDeleteBack in my merchant marine daze I heard the old guys tell of bribing GIs in Vietnam to spray some machine gun fire their way while anchored in harbor...
Got'em a 50% hazard bonus iirc.
Good ol' Murican ingenuity...
The market is suffering from the "awful stench of fear" and closed at its lowest level in seven months.
ReplyDeleteEuropean contagion is killing stocks whirled-wide. They're cheap and expected to get cheaper.
Buying opportunities or a sucker's market?
Debt is the big, dark, looming cloud.
We need growth but the economic indicators across the globe indicate a slowdown.
ReplyDeleteThe Euros are warning about the coming welfare cuts.
So long NATO.
Speaking of NATO:
ReplyDeleteMonday, June 7, 2010 | 1:28 p.m.
Ten NATO service members, seven of them American, were killed in separate attacks Monday on the deadliest day of the year for foreign forces in Afghanistan. A U.S. civilian contractor who trains Afghan police also died in a suicide attack.
The bloodshed comes as insurgents step up bombings and other attacks ahead of a major NATO operation in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar that Washington hopes will turn the tide of the war.
Half the NATO deaths _ five Americans _ occurred in a single blast in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said without giving further details. It was a grim reminder that the insurgents can strike throughout the country _ not simply in the south, which has become the main focus of the U.S. campaign.
From a news story about Egypt partially opening it's border with Gaza, comes this reminder:
ReplyDeleteEgypt was not exactly a reluctant participant in imposing the blockade. Like Israel, Egypt watched with concern as Hamas militants wrenched control of Gaza from their rivals in the Fatah movement of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas during bloody street battles in 2007.
Egypt, which had its own war against Islamic radicals in the 1990s, fears sharing a border with a territory controlled by Islamic militants who have the backing of rising regional rival Iran. Just to the south, Egypt's Sinai peninsula has been the scene of major terrorist attacks against tourist hotels, the last one in 2006.
Obama's new vision of Jewish state guarantees rights of Israeli Arabs
ReplyDeleteU.S. President Barack Obama has updated America's official vision of Israel's future to stress that the Jewish state must ensure equal rights for Israeli Arabs. His new National Security Strategy, released by the White House last month, defines the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a way that differs from the terminology used by previous American administrations. According to the document, the U.S. seeks two states that will live side by side in peace and security: "a Jewish state of Israel, with true security, acceptance, and rights for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestine with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people."
The NYTimes, the ydo not think that BP is "To big to fail":
ReplyDeleteThe idea that BP might one day file for bankruptcy, particularly as part of a merger that would enable it to cordon off its liabilities from the spill, is starting to percolate on Wall Street. Bankers and lawyers are already sizing up potential deals (and counting their potential fees).
...
BP’s costs for the cleanup could run as high as $23 billion, according to Credit Suisse. On top of that, BP could face an additional $14 billion in claims from gulf fisherman and the tourism industry. So while conservative estimates put the bill at $15 billion, something approaching $40 billion is not out of the question. After all, little about this spill has turned out as expected.
The company has about $12 billion in cash and short-term investments, but there is already a debate about whether it should cut its dividend out of fear that it could run out of money. Of course, it could sell assets or seek loans, which in this environment is still not that easy.
$40 billion will be a low ball estimate, when this is viewed in hindsight.
ReplyDeleteAs Admiral Allen says, the costs of this disaster will extend into the future, for years to come.
Thanks Quirk. Sure I think life's worth living, wouldn't be here if I didn't. Schope isn't really my man, though mother loved him. A misogynist from birth, not from experience, like many men, a political reactionary, born into one of the richest families in Germany, he was pleased with himself when he found he had arrived at a position remarkably like that of the Hindus, by a western route. He may have been down on this world, but he was a metaphysical optimist of the higher sort. I just like the argument from Berkeley to Hume to Kant to Schope and on these days to maybe biocentrism. He had the insight that compassion, not explainable in Darwinian terms, was a proof that, at bottom, we are all one, behind the scene, so to speak, we've just forgotten it. Thanks for the blog tip.
ReplyDeleteYou fully recovered from your taxing trip yet?
"So what does all this mean for life after death? Schope admits that when we die our bodies decay and our individuality is lost. S. denies personal immortality of the kind that Jews, Christians and Muslims believe in. When we die the phenomenal world comes to an end for us. 'As far as you as an individual, death will be the end of you.' No wonder that death is perceived by us as an annihilation. It scares us because it jeopardizes the will to live that S. acknowledged to be the driving force of our terrestrial existence. But S. contends that this fear of death is itself an illusion because the real or noumenal part of us cannot die. So far from denying the afterlife, S. affirms it. 'Your real being knows neither, nor beginning, nor end...Your immortal part is indestructible.' In other words, at death we are fully integrated into the realm of the noumenal from which we originally came. For S., a pessimist about life in this world, death is a kind of liberation, a discarding of the veil of phenomenal existence and a discovery of our true oneness with each other and with infinite reality itself. When we die, our separateness is over and we live on as part of the absolute reality that is the only reality there is."
ReplyDeleteDinesh d'Souza
"Schope's afterlife is not the Christian one, but we should not miss the significance of his accomplishment. S., like Kant, is a thinker of incontestable greatness who formulated his ideas within the rational tradition that is the basis of Western thought. S. was an atheist and Kant was a Christian, yet both men made secular arguments, without appeals to revelation or God, to show the existence and characteristics of the noumenon, the world behind the world. Christians, Jews and Muslims, no less than Hindus and Buddhists, affirm the existence of this unseen reality. Ironically, S. and Kant provide a rational route to the same destination that religious believers have arrived at by a very different route. In a sense, they provide solid intellectual grounding for what previously was affirmed only on the basis of faith. Our conclusion, then, is that there is good reason to believe in the afterlife. S., the first modern atheist, has shown through his philosophy that on this crucial point the atheists are wrong and the religious believers are right."
ReplyDelete"Life After Death: The Evidence"
Dinesh D'Souza
Allen assumes nothing of the sort. Allen does observe to see what reaction fools such as Helen and DR garner...very disappointing...
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete