June 2, 2010 archive

Vroom, vroom, vroom whirrr whirrr whirrrr ……

whoopsie !  

PORT FOURCHON, La.  The risky effort to contain the nation’s worst oil spill hit a snag Wednesday when a diamond-edged saw became stuck in a thick pipe on a blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the goal was to free the saw and finish the cut later in the day. This is the latest attempt to contain, not plug,  the gusher. The best chance at stopping the leak is a relief well, which is at least two months from completion.

“I don’t think the issue is whether or not we can make the second cut. It’s about how fine we can make it, how smooth we can make it,” Allen said.

The saw and framework have now been freed from the BOP’s riser pipe, from what I have watched on the live feed, and are being hauled back up to the surface.  Here’s the photo sequence I took. The first photo is from last night, which shows the pipe saw in action on the BOP riser.  I added contrast to these pictures.

The Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, stated that in an interview, on the NPR Diane Rehm show this morning, 2 June 2010.  “Particular ship was too large to stop by non-violent means.”. The discussion with the ambassador starts at about the 13:40 point in the show, at around the 30:22 min mark is when he makes the statement above near the end of that discussion, it was picked up quickly as they came back to the other guests and it was commented on.

I’ve called him a few names here, because of his nuke the well idea.

But he also said:

The main leak is 5 or 6 miles away.

And, that BP is chasing a mouse, while ignoring the tiger behind it.  He claims that this leak could not be the cause of as much oil as is being seen in the Gulf alone.

Now, BP has just said today that the reason the top kill did not work, is because of a leak way down in the well.  

Officials suspect that the mud could have been escaping from the well far below the ocean floor, possibly through a rupture disk, a built-in weak point in the steel pipe that lines the well.

– NYT

A rupture disk.

These things are  put in the subsurface well to pop off and basically start leaking if the pressure reaches an overload point. Of course, BP is not saying what pressure the one’s in this well were set to.   But, it seems pretty likely that if they leak from the mud, they’ll leak from the oil. Even if they weren’t before-they might well be now after the mud. Seems like it would have to be a pretty big leak to stop a 30,000 horse power pump (the top kill mud pump) from filling the well.   If that’s in fact happening, oil would have to wind it’s way up, and certainly could be coming out at a point far distant from the well itself.  

It’s easy to be outraged at Israel’s outlandish, criminal and immoral behavior. Israel murdered a bunch of peace activists on the high seas with total disregard for international and maritime law. Israel runs the biggest prison camp in the world. Israel is an apartheid state. The current government of Israel is a global pariah.

What’s not to be outraged about?

But what I want to know is where is the outrage against the United States of America who makes Israel look like Utopia?

I am filled with a sense of sickness in the pit of my stomach, in my soul.

Greece to Sell State Assets to Raise 3 Billion Euros (Update1)

By Christos Ziotis and Natalie Weeks

June 2 (Bloomberg) — Greece plans to sell stakes in railway and water companies and the postal service to raise 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) and help reduce a budget deficit that sparked the debt crisis across southern Europe.

“We decided to accelerate the privatizations process,” Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told reporters in Athens today. The government aims to raise 1 billion euros a year for the next three year from the sales.

Bloomberg – Greece

You should understand that this is “The Plan”

The plan was that by cutting the funding for government, government would have to cut back on what it does: regulating business, protecting regular people against powerful interests, building infrastructure, educating kids, taking care of the poor and elderly. With government (We, the People) out of the way businesses could be unleashed and really start to make money. And for those who could afford to pay, private companies would take over those other functions. That was called “privatization.”

Neo-Liberalism: The Plan

By Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier

June 2, 2010

Islamabad– “Our situation is like a football match. The superpower countries are the players, and we are just the ball to be kicked around.” This sentiment, expressed by a young man from North Waziristan, has been echoed throughout many of our conversations with ordinary people here in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Most are baffled that the United States, with the largest and most modern military in the world, can’t put a stop to a few thousand militants hiding out in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.  

Just about everyone we have spoken with, Pashtuns included, has little to no sympathy for the Taliban or their tactics. Many people have lost limbs, homes and loved ones to the brutal assaults of suicide bombers or the indiscriminate violence of IEDs. Yet, people expressed frustrated confusion over uncertainties regarding U.S. government goals in relation to the Taliban. Some believe that the United States might be working with the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence Services) or at least not working against them, to enable continued Taliban resistance. If there is no resistance, according to this view, a military presence in the region cannot be justified. Nor can a so-called humanitarian presence further flood the Pakistani and Afghan economies with millions of dollars in aid that most often lines the pockets of the politicians, elite bureaucrats, and United States corporations involved in construction and security.

The fact that very little aid money has reached the impoverished and war weary people who need it most has been confirmed to us by members of the Afghan and Pakistani governments, human rights organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations and several very unfortunate families forced to live as refugees. As Hyder Akbar, a Pashtun working on NGO assessments in Afghanistan, said to us, “If you are pouring 100 million dollars into a tiny and impoverished province like Kunar and seeing no results, you’re obviously doing something wrong.” With a population of less than 500,000, you could easily give each Kunar resident over a million dollars. But, several seasoned analysts agree that money alone can’t solve problems faced by impoverished people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.    

Both Dr. Mubashir Hassan, former finance minister of the Peoples Party of Pakistan, and Nur Agha Akbari, from the Ministry of Agriculture in Afghanistan, strongly believe that efforts to bring people out of poverty in South Asia must be initiated, at district and village levels, through consultation with grass roots, indigenous community groups. Mr. Akbari stressed that there is still an opportunity for the United States government and people to play a positive role in Afghanistan, but that role will not be possible until the United States stops giving orders and starts listening to community groups living in Afghanistan.

Photo by Joshua Brollier: Hillside near Kabul.