[Ed: first posted at Newshoggers]


It appears certain now: the well casing of the Deepwater Horizon bore is and has been leaking into the sea floor at a depth of ~1000 ft. Leaking may not be entirely the proper word. It is not known, nor even discussed, as to when this may have occurred. This was discovered during the top kill drill mud injection, which is now believed to have injected much of the drilling mud into the sea floor where a disk joint failed. Which means, of course, that when the drilling mud isn't in "open communication in the strata or the rock formations below the sea floor," the oil, gushing upward, is.

Well, at least BP had the sense to drill the relief wells to a depth of 10,000 ft.  At least, this is what BP has said they're doing, drilling to 10,00 ft.  Perhaps this, too, is a lie.  One may surmise that, as the costs of the relief wells increase with depth, BP's internal cost-aversion governor could kick and stunt the well depth.  Nonetheless, they've managed to keep this a secret until now, knowing of the problem weeks ago. Still being dicks. Nonetheless, with evidence of yet another problem -- perhaps the problem - it appears that the remote acoustic kill switch would not have actually prevented BP from having to drill relief wells. This subsurface spill appears to be the source of multiple leaks on the sea bed. From one, to many and one.

And what if there should be other

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It looks like a lovely butterfly, if you're Haley Barbour.  Or a Balrog, if you're anyone else.



Some while back, when news first broke that oil in the gulf had streamed into the Loop Current, it was easily imagined that oil could hit the shores of Europe by autumn. Shockfront agents made a bold claim that oil would "hit Ireland by September." 

NCAR has done some modeling of the gulf situation.  Ireland might be a tad north.  The Azores and Portugal look the target.


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The Israeli Navy attacked a flotilla carrying thousands of tons of supplies for Gaza on Monday morning, killing at least 10 people, according to the Israeli military and activists traveling with the flotilla.

Lying sacks of shit that they are, the IDF claimed that, as they ill-legally boarded one of the ships in international waters, they came under "live fire."  And, for it's part, the NY Times does what it can to ensure that the word "humanitarian" or "aid" never make an appearance in their article; everything is "supplies," and "cargo."
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Thousands of Japanese linked hands and encircled a Marine Corps base in Okinawa on Sunday to protest its presence on the island, putting more pressure on Tokyo to resolve an impasse over the base's future.

About 17,000 residents surrounded the Futenma air base early in the afternoon, chanting slogans and completing a human chain twice for several minutes each time, city official Hitoshi Nakou said. The base covers about 1.9 square miles (4.92 sq. kilometers), and sits in the middle of Ginowan, a city of about 93,000.

Locals from Japan's southern Okinawa Island are growing increasingly vocal against the presence of the U.S. military. Residents have long said they must deal with constant noise created by military aircraft and increased crime from U.S. troops in the area.

[more…]

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The Alberta Tar Sands.



And another place.



Compare and contrast.  Well, for one, Isengard has not completely decimated the entirety of the visible planet, as has already been managed in the oil sands project of northern Alberta.  Indeed, the Canadian version appears considerably worse, or better if you are really, really evil.
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It's that simple.

Former NSA executive charged with leaking information to newspaper

A former senior executive with the National Security Agency has been indicted on 10 felony charges related to the leaking of classified information to a national newspaper in 2006 and 2007, the Justice Department announced Thursday morning.

Thomas A. Drake, 52, headed an office in the NSA's signals intelligence and engineering directorates at Fort Meade between 2001 and 2005, U.S. officials said. The indictment alleges that Drake exchanged hundreds of e-mails with a reporter for a national newspaper and served as a source for its articles about Bush administration intelligence policies and agency management failures between February 2006 and November 2007, U.S. officials said.

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Cobbled together from numbers stated in Jo Comerford's article, Tax Day and America’s Wars.



This parameter set  will result in a highly unstable social system, one that, inevitably, will  collapse.
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Gone from the sidebar, Ben Lando's once invaluable Iraq Oil Report, which, under the auspice of some Mooney business mogul, went commercial.  Big time.  In fact, Lando's name is nowhere apparent on the front page, which now looks like every other Wordpress site, featuring targeted ads for, well, let's see, what's up there now?  OILSERVE, Directional Drilling, DST, Slick Line.

So, it is now valuable.  Moon is modeling the Murdoch domain: subscription only, but only on the good shit.  No one pays for news about American politics; propaganda and disinformation are, as always, "free."  Like Disney World, American politics are the distraction, or attraction.  And that crap, well, that crap is free for the masses.

Good bye.

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Monsanto, aided by its various government agency allies, appears to have adopted a catalytic penetration strategy by using "South Africa as a springboard to contaminate the rest of the African continent by allowing multinationals to export from South African soil."  The strategy is not sitting well with much if the rest of Africa.

A shipment of genetically modified (GM) maize has been blocked at the Kenyan port of Mombasa after protests by environmentalists.

The cargo came from South Africa - whose maize exports mainly go to Kenya - and contained maize varieties developed by US multinational Monsanto.

Protestors claimed that safety checks had not been carried out on the maize and that it could contaminate the soil.

GM imports have been banned in several African countries.

The 40,000-tonne shipment contained four varieties of maize, three of which were made by Monsanto.

Anne Maina, a spokeswoman for the Kenyan Biodiversity Coalition, told the BBC that the Kenyan government had not followed due process by carrying out safety checks on the imported maize.

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Report: Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay

Spanish court opens investigation of Guantánamo torture allegations

Spain’s Zapatero to Meet with Obama

"I'm a strong believer that it's important to look forward and not backwards." Barack Obama.

Spain Rejects 'Bush Six' Torture Trial

Spanish judge resumes torture case against six senior Bush lawyers

Spain’s Judge Garzon Charged With Abuse of Power*

Garzon denies any wrongdoing and has defended his probe as legitimate. Varela's charge is that Garzon should never have launched the probe in the first place.

Varela was assigned to the case after the Supreme Court agreed to study complaints against Garzon that were filed by three right-wing groups.

Another "hero to leftists and international human rights groups," effectively taken out.  One wonders whether the powers of the establishment recognize irony at all, or if they relish it.

Meanwhile, the rule of law is now understood to be a leftist plot, designed, as leftist plots are wont, to undermine western capitalism and coddle terrorists.

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While CNN frets over Tiger Woods, a major political upheaval is well underway in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with thousands of protesters storming the streets, taking government officials hostage, burning government buildings.  Much of the Kyrgyz government has either fled, resigned or both. Russia Today has a brief video (below), though RT has a number of stories on the dramatic development.  Note the footage showing the riot police running away from the onslaught of pissed off Kyrgyzs



Opposition to what now appears to be the former regime of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev indicate one of the issues involved is the US military air base in Manas (the "Transit Center at Manas," as the US Air Force likes to call it). Newly regained by Obama, apparently at the behest of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, after the Bush administration had lost the base under likely pressure from Moscow, Manas serves as a crucial pipe joint in the supply lines of the US military mission in Afghanistan.
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[Update below]

One ascertains a diminishing level of surprise with each new fraught, corporately long-sought, proposal emanating from Barack Obama's White House.  Now, the Obama administration has embraced the pre-election GOP chant of "drill baby, drill!" and is now proposing off shore drilling, an historical first, an historical first wherein  "Mr. Obama curries favors with pro-drilling interests."

Change was promised.  And change, baby, change is being delivered, though perhaps its form is somewhat adulterated compared to what may have been inferred or implied, in whole or in part, during the campaign.

But who amongst us can look at this map and see the span and veil of red state coasts about to be blighted by the depredations of the oil industry.  They were, after all, the ones demanding drill, baby drill.

Well, they got it.

The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

The proposal —

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Yet another Barack Obama WTF? moment, brought to you by whoever the fuck is in the "Obama administration."

the U.S. delegation to the IWC [International Whaling Commission] may be supporting a proposal to overturn the ban on commercial whaling.

The position of this "US delegation" would run "counter to campaign pledges made by then presidential candidate Barack Obama."

Oh, repetitious cruelty!  Oh, cruel repetition!

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After a year of thrashing about, the shibboleth of "bipartisanship" brandished like some intransigent, nasty, pointy status quo weapon hacking off various limbs of health care reform, what actually hath health care "reform" wrought for America?

While it may be premature to speculate (actually, it's never to early to speculate)  on what the final health care bill will actually do for or to most Americans, there is a small sector of American society for whom the predictions and prognostications appear fully flushed.  Kaiser Söze "Health News" let's us in on the hopeful details.  Naturally, the news is not so much about health care as it is about health care profits.

Most health industry sectors are winners – some bigger than others -- under sweeping health care legislation that will expand coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans over the next decade, analysts say.

Hospitals, doctors, drug makers and most health insurers will pick up armies of new paying customers. Nursing homes and Medicare's private health plans will face steep government payment cuts, however.

Overall, "the health industry was a growth industry before the bill was approved and it will continue to be a growth industry," said Jonathan Oberlander, a health policy expert at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Quite a bold piece of reform there.  The major problem to be addressed by health care reform  was the very fact that the health industry is a growth industry -- a tumorous growth that will condemn the country.  The new health care bill makes a growth industry [...]More

As the financial crisis lengthens and deepens across Europe, Ukraine is now considering a sell off of state controlled pipelines to various commercial interests, notably Gazprom.

This week he opened negotiations with the Kremlin to sell control over the pipelines’ operations to a consortium including Ukraine’s usual antagonist in these disputes, Russia’s natural gas giant Gazprom, and an unspecified European company.

Russia has already negotiated similar agreements with Belarus and Armenia, where Gazprom owns stakes in the pipeline systems with implied vetoes over strategic energy decisions and in exchange sells gas at steep discounts. Belarus, for example, now pays $168 for 1,000 cubic meters of gas compared with $305 in Ukraine.

If Ukraine had the lower price, it would save about $3.7 billion a year, supporters of Mr. Yanukovich’s proposal say.

Ironically, it is IMF strictures that demand reduction in oil and gas subsidies, as well as state asset privatization, that will potentially net Russia the prize of "supremacy of the Eurasian pipeline network."

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