This video courtesy of the BP live webcam addicts at the Oil Drum.  http://www.theoildrum.com/node…

When we last left our ongoing story of why The Brightest Minds in Govt. Science were giving BP permission to keep  ****ing around playing with their broken oil well, instead of completing the Bottom Kill cementing, BP was observed to be moving Giant Tools towards the Macondo 252 Deepwater Horizon oil well again, then Adm. Allen had to give out matching narrative after a few news cycles as to what the fooking h*ll they were really doing.

We’ll do the bottom kill when we’re ready, Harry.  – Adm. Thad “Patton” Allen  

They wanted to look inside the old BOP, and go fishing and pull the old drill pipe out of the well bore. Bottom kill, schmottom kill, the Lawyers need evidence to sue each other for the next 2 decades.

So far, they took the very top lid off the new BOP and Stacking Ram they mounted on the old one,  and peered inside, and noticed that the brand new BOP and 3 blade Stacking Ram had 1 Shear Ram that was stuck in a half open, half shut position so they couldn’t get down and look into the other parts.

Yes, their brand new BOP toy wasn’t working already.

Okay.  No problemo.  Just spend a week trying to jimmy the the thing open again.  

The Pentagon/CIA’s office of Dirty Tricks fires the first round, “neutral”  Sweden decides it doesn’t want to be portrayed as their right wing accomplice this early.   Last night they began circulating a fake story that the founder of wikileaks was being charged with rape in Sweden and was wanted for arrest.

Assange had visited Sweden recently and some of wikileak’s servers are located there.

Today Sweden decided to walk it back and dropped the arrest warrant.

http://english.aljazeera.net/n…

I ran the Swedish version of their Dept of Justice (“Aklagare.se “) webpage through an online translator and it comes up with this:

Chief District Prosecutor Eva Finné has revoked anhållningsbeslutet of Julian Assange. She does not consider that there be reasons in order to he will be continued detained.

– I do not consider that there be reason to suspect that he has carried out an act rape, Eva says Finné.

Eva Finné submits none additional comments during the Saturday.

Because the Original is always so much better than anything I could ever hope to make up:

The Further Adventures of Macondo 252, Oil Well of Doom

Hit the theme music:

If I had to do the same again, I would, my friend, Fernando !  

Remember this, back in June on the 23rd ?

Uncapped BP Well before installation of new blow out protector assembly.

And then in July, they finally got a new spool, cap n stack and a spankin’ new Blow Out Protector on the thing to cap the well and shut it off almost 3 months after it blew ?  And everybody went Halleleujah ?

You are so going to love this.  Another in the series, Macondo, Oil Well of Doom.

I have wrestled an image from the balko puter onto photomucket.  Look what I found on the BP webcams this evening.

What the bleep is this on Rov Enterprise 2 cam  Tues evening Aug 17th ?

Check the official BP twitter feed.  http://twitter.com/BP_America    

As part of a #BP tourism grant, Gulf resort giving free night’s stay and $250 gift card: http://bit.ly/bV9XKC

about 4 hours ago via HootSuite

Retweeted by 5 people

BP_America

http://twitter.com/BP_America/…

That’s not a Motel 6.  WTF.    

Yesterday evening the news broke that Omar Khadr’s only attorney, Lt Col Jon Jackson, collapsed in the Guantanamo courtroom during the beginning of the trial !

(previous diary on the trial & background history here: https://www.docudharma.com/diar…  )

A witness posted this at Huffpo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

On Thursday afternoon I watched Omar Khadr’s sole defense lawyer, Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, collapse in the Guantanamo Bay courtroom in the middle of conducting a cross-examination of a key government witness. He was taken away on a stretcher by ambulance, hooked up to an I.V. Fortunately Jackson, who’s only 39 years old, was breathing normally at the time, though as an observer in the courtroom I was stunned. It all happened so suddenly and he seemed to be in perfect health and in complete control of his questioning. I learned Friday morning that the trial has been suspended indefinitely.

This morning’s update says that Lt Col Jackson suffered a gall stone attack (after having had surgery 2 months ago)  and is being evacuated from Guantanamo to a hospital in the US for medical treatment.   Reporters were told by an official that the trial has been suspended for at least 30 days.  

Emptywheel at FDL also has this:

http://emptywheel.firedoglake….

There is a comment about removing one of the jurors from the case for having so called pre conceived notions

He said he thought that some earlier policies had lost America its “reputation for being a beacon of freedom.”

Asked specifically which policies had led him to this conclusion he authoritatively cited examples including; charge without trial, torture, rendition and the denial of access to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross to detainees held in secret locations. He went on to say that he believed a small number of detainees may have been killed while in American custody but added: “I don’t think my views differ from those of the President.”

By the time he had admitted that he would be “suspicious” of any evidence obtained under torture his fate was sealed.

Carol Rosenberg’s McClatchy Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/201…

We know from her report Khadr was in the courtroom after all,

Jackson was put on “convalescent leave,” according to Broyles, a status that allows him to continue to draw a salary and not use up vacation days.

He cited privacy reasons for not releasing the lieutenant colonel’s health condition but said he was likely being airlifted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Pentagon’s premier hospital. He was on a morphine drip Thursday night at the base hospital.

Jackson, who has been on the case for about a year, became Khadr’s lone lawyer within a week of his surgery after the Toronto-born teen fired volunteer civilian attorneys Barry Coburn and Kobie Flowers from Washington D.C.

Parrish ordered the Army defender to stay on the case, but the Pentagon Defense Office provided him no additional assistance beyond two enlisted paralegals who had already been on the case.

Khadr, who sits in court with three guards behind him, leaped to his feet when his Army defender collapsed about 4 p.m. Thursday, according to Khadr family lawyer Dennis Edney, who functions in the war court only as a consultant because he is not a U.S. citizen. The guards didn’t interfere.

“We were all shocked,” Edney said.

Canadian:

http://www.torontosun.com/news…

Ottawa Citizen

We Should Be Embarrassed 8/13/2010

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/n…

A United Nations special representative for children and armed conflict issued a statement on Aug. 9, saying “the Omar Khadr case will set a precedent that may endanger the status of child soldiers all over the world.”

“Even if Omar Khadr were to be tried in a national jurisdiction, juvenile justice standards are clear; children should not be tried before military tribunals,” the statement from Radhika Coomaraswamy explains. “The United States and Canada have led the way in creating and implementing these norms. … I urge both governments to come to a mutually acceptable solution on the future of Omar Khadr that would prevent him from being convicted of a war crime that he allegedly committed when he was a child.”

Canada’s government has ignored this, as it has ignored questions about the implications of Khadr’s age all along.

His age, though, is not the only factor that makes many observers of his trial queasy.

There is also the fact that the judge has ruled that statements Khadr made to his interrogators are admissible, even though they were, as Khadr’s defence argued, “fruit of a poisonous tree.” Khadr was, in the words of a defence submission, “asphyxiated, terrorized by dogs, doused with freezing water and left in the cold.” He was threatened with rape.  

More Canadian opinion from Chantal Hébert at Toronto Star 8/11/2010

Canada’s top court described Khadr’s treatment as “. . . state conduct that violates the principles of fundamental justice.” It added: “Interrogation of a youth, to elicit statements about the most serious criminal charges while detained in these conditions and without access to counsel (. . .) offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”

About violations of Khadr’s Charter rights, the Court found that: “. . . their impact on Mr. Khadr’s liberty and security continue to this day and may redound into the future.”

Despite those prescient words, the ruling stopped short of prescribing a remedy to the federal government.

On the face of it, the absence of Supreme Court prescriptions in the Khadr case falls short of its own, recently reaffirmed, deterrence principle. In a matter that involves state abuse of the right to liberty and security of a person in a fundamental way, that absence has ultimately tipped the scale towards virtually unfettered government discretion.

Got to love our northern sisters and brothers, “unfettered government discretion” is used to describe being held without charges or legal counsel, then put on trial in a foreign country in front of a jury of military officers, apparently selected to have no pre conceived notions about whether your age was relevant years ago, or how the “confessions” or just witness statements were obtained –  by shooting you in the back, first, then isolating you for years in the disgrace of Bush & Cheney’s little waterboarding gulag where you no doubt heard what happened to the prisoners who didn’t cooperate– or sometimes did.

No wonder poor Lt Col Jon Jackson might be feeling some physical stress attempting to navigate this.  Kids don’t get to select their parents.  

My contention is that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is doing the Kildeer maneuver, like the bird who cries to draw you away from its nest,  as a distraction from what is going on with the trial of Omar Khadr, who has been held in U.S. custody as an enemy combatant for 8 years and since he was only 15 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O…

Since Khadr was not yet of legal age when he was nearly killed then revived by the U.S. military, then used as part of Bush and Cheney’s sadistic little game to “prove” that this country needed to invade Iraq on false pretenses, it looks really awkward, not to mention immoral, to be trying the prisoner with the idea of permanent incarceration or the death penalty. (if the prosecution is to be believed, the maximum penalty in this case is life imprisonment)  Even more so that he was born in Canada.

Hence Kildeer Gibb’s dig about not being satisfied until we had Canadian healthcare.  Obviously we have the finest healthcare in the world because we can revive almost indefinitely people who have nearly been tortured to death.

Because I checked the usual suspects on the kick a hippie sh*t stirring list, the OFA/DNC paid campaigner and Beltway insider types, the ones who like to use the word “firebaggers,”   and they’re all ignoring this like it’s his turn.  Like they radioed in the strike coordinates to the WH @ PressSec office.

Or they are going to actually proxy bomb Iran next.  But then I remembered the game right wing people like to play called “you’re insincere in your concerns.”

Maybe Kildeer Gibbs could diss the Canadians’ troops next and they could pull out of Afghanistan like the Dutch did.

http://www.aolnews.com/world/a…

Aug 3 2010

“This is the start,” an Afghan political analyst, Haroon Mir, told Agence France-Presse. “It’s a chain — the Dutch start to withdraw, followed by the Canadians, then the British by 2014. In the middle I think we will see a number of other NATO members… setting a timetable to leave.”

The Dutch will be replaced by U.S. and Australian, Slovak and Singaporean soldiers.

Canadian press, this am:

Montreal Gazette Aug 12, 2010

Khadr trial to hear first arguments

http://www.montrealgazette.com…

More than eight years after U.S. forces captured a 15-year-old Omar Khadr on an Afghan battlefield, prosecution and defence lawyers present their opening arguments today in his war crimes trial -the first such case proceeding under the Obama administration.

Seven U.S. military officers will sit in judgment of the Canadian-born terror suspect after the military judge in the case yesterday excused eight others from the initial jury pool, acting on requests and challenges from either the defence or prosecution.

Postmedia News has also learned that the defence has been seeking to present two Canadian government officials as defence witnesses – a request likely to rankle the Conservative government, which has resisted calls from human- rights and other activist groups calling for Khadr’s immediate repatriation.

The officials – Sabine Nolke and Suneeta Millington – have over the years been dispatched to visit Khadr at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of the Canadian government’s bid to monitor his confinement conditions and other aspects of his treatment.  

Omar Khadr is so far intending on being tried in absentia because he considers the entire proceedings a sham and has fired his U.S. civilian lawyers. He has a Pentagon appointed attorney.

The highly esteemed chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tim Kaine, gives The Hill and the Democratic Congressional candidates a pep talk before the August recess, and was allegedly sighted on the NBC’s Today Show with Matt Lauer this morning.  

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-…

“If you distance yourself from the president, you can pour cold water on the excitement about what he is doing,” said Kaine, who alluded to Democrat Creigh Deeds’s problems

“What is the alternative?” he said. “When the – when the Republicans were in control during the Lost Decade, Americans lost 8 million jobs. We gained 700,000 private-sector jobs this year. We’re growing again.”

{Historical footnote for Kaine’s spotty memory.  Creigh Deeds ran for the Governor of the state of Virginia.  Creigh Deeds actually was against the Public Option in the health insurance bail out bill, just like President Barack Obama turned out to be.  He lost.  

I believe the saying is, re Blue Dogs trying to be relabeled Republican Lites,  if you are presented with the choice of an imitation or an original, if they cost the same, voters will pick the original every time. }

From the transcript of the Today Show Mon Aug 9, 2010

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/…

Matt Lauer NBC:

so the president is out there campaigning for some candidates. others don’t want anything to do with him. i want to take you back to election night 2008 in that scenic grant park when the president walked out onto that stage. i mean, you had to hope — democrats had to hope — this was going to be a president who was going to open up new political territory for the party. and here you’ve got a president and some candidates don’t want to be seen with him. what happened?

Tim Kaine, DNC Chairman:

well, i think the candidates who are worried about it are making a mistake because i think this president still is doing the great work that the americans expect of him. the president and i met a month after that in grant park , and we talked about the fact that midterms will be very tough because they always are. since teddy roosevelt was president, the average midterm involves the party in power losing 28 house seats, losing 4 senate seats. and look, it’s a tough time economically, and that means it’s volatile. but the democrats have been doing the work necessary to get the nation going again. as the president says, the car was in the ditch. we’re getting it out of the ditch with job creation , with a new energy strategy, with infrastructure investments.

Matt Lauer:

here’s what frank rich wrote in the paper over the weekend concerning the democrats’ prospects for the midterm elections . he said, quote, they are doomed to fall short if they don’t address the cancer in the american heart , and that’s joblessness. we saw the latest figures come out. 9.5% unemployment as of friday. even if there is a series of small miracles between now and the midterm elections , governor, you know that number is going to be unacceptably high when people go to the polls. so why shouldn’t they hold democrats accountable?

Tim Kaine:

because, matt, what is the alternative?

/snip

well, i think, matt, what they mostly want to hear is the record of accomplishment. and so whether it’s health reform that helps the middle class with medical bills, credit reform, wall street reform or recovery that’s investing in green energy and made in america jobs, we always lead with the things we’ve done.

This week in Trickle Down Oilonomics:

First, remember this ?

  Screen shot from June 1, 2010 of ROVs cutting the old riser pipe off the old top of the BOP, showing the underwater plume.

Two months later:

Tues,  Aug 3, 2010,  BP pumped drilling mud into the capped Macondo 252 Deepwater Horizon well from the top.

http://www.bp.com/genericartic…

BP announces Static pressure stabilization from  Mud Pump into well a success on Wed Aug 4th.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/n…

Federal Government and NOAA’s Lubchenco & team of expert scientists announce rest of oil in Gulf of Mexico is naturally biodegrading. Oil is disappeared !    As of Wed, Aug 4th.  https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

From Plume to Pie Chart, 6/1/2010 to 8/4/2010.  In Amerika, Oil Spill Cleans You !  

Except that 650 miles of shoreline in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida remained oiled, and 57,539 square miles, or 24% of the Gulf of Mexico, is closed to fishing, per their own press release.  http://ht.ly/2loZg

BPravda Today

Macno Nc4e3aet !

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Because the original documents are always so much better than anything I could hope to make up:

http://ht.ly/2kWkj

August 4, 2010, Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response, Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center

Federal Science Report Details Fate of Oil from BP Spill

WASHINGTON – The vast majority of the oil from the BP oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed using chemicals –  much of which is in the process of being degraded. Much of this is the direct result of the federal response efforts.

A third (33 percent) of the total amount of oil released in the Deepwater Horizon/BP spill was captured or mitigated by the Unified Command recovery operations, including burning, skimming, chemical dispersion and direct recovery from the wellhead, according to a federal science report released today.

An additional 25 percent of the total oil naturally evaporated or dissolved, and 16 percent was dispersed naturally into microscopic droplets.  The residual amount, just over one quarter (26 percent), is either on or just below the surface as residue and weathered tarballs, has washed ashore or been collected from the shore, or is buried in sand and sediments.  Dispersed and residual oil remain in the system until they degrade through a number of natural processes.  Early indications are that the oil is degrading quickly.

These estimates were derived by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of the Interior (DOI), who jointly developed what’s known as an Oil Budget Calculator, to provide measurements and best estimates of what happened to the spilled oil.   The calculator is based on 4.9 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf, the government’s Flow Rate Technical Group estimate from Monday. More than 25 of the best government and independent scientists contributed to or reviewed the calculator and its calculation methods.

“Teams of scientists and experts have been carefully tracking the oil since day one of this spill, and based on the data from those efforts and their collective expertise, they have been able to provide these useful and educated estimates about the fate of the oil,” says Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.  “Less oil on the surface does not mean that there isn’t oil still in the water column or that our beaches and marshes aren’t still at risk.  Knowing generally what happened to the oil helps us better understand areas of risk and likely impacts.”

The estimates do not make conclusions about the long-term impacts of oil on the Gulf.  Fully understanding the damages and impacts of the spill on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem is something that will take time and continued monitoring and research.

Dispersion increases the likelihood that the oil will be biodegraded, both in the water column and at the surface.  While there is more analysis to be done to quantify the rate of biodegradation in the Gulf, early observations and preliminary research results from a number of scientists show that the oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill is biodegrading quickly.  Scientists from NOAA, EPA, DOE, and academic scientists are working to calculate more precise estimates of this rate.

It is well known that bacteria that break down the dispersed and weathered surface oil are abundant in the Gulf of Mexico in large part because of the warm water, the favorable nutrient and oxygen levels, and the fact that oil enters the Gulf of Mexico through natural seeps regularly.

Residual oil is also degraded and weathered by a number of physical and biological processes.  Microbes consume the oil, and wave action, sun, currents and continued evaporation and dissolution continue to break down the residual oil in the water and on shorelines.

The oil budget calculations are based on direct measurements wherever possible and the best available scientific estimates where measurements were not possible.  The numbers for direct recovery and burns were measured directly and reported in daily operational reports.  The skimming numbers were also based on daily reported estimates.  The rest of the numbers were based on previous scientific analyses, best available information and a broad range of scientific expertise.  These estimates will continue to be refined as additional information becomes available.

7/9/2010 Gulf of Mexico  6 days before the leaking well was capped. photo NASA

67% of this is going to go away all by itself, naturally, according to the finest scientific minds available. Image from NOAA and the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center.