Déjà vu [Deja vu] is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously (an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the recent past), although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain.
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The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of “eeriness,” “strangeness,” “weirdness,” or what Sigmund Freud and other psychologists call “the uncanny.” The “previous” experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past.
Lead guitar: Eric McFadden. Tenor Sax: Federico Martinez.
Carpets of crinoids – cousins of the sea-star – stretched their long limbs languidly into the current for morsels of planktonic food. Colorful tropical fish drifted among gracefully spiraling wire corals. Somber-faced grouper hovered warily while jacks and sharks cruised by, curious about the submersibles lights. Fifty miles south of Mississippi, I was the first human ever to lay eyes on the teeming, thriving, dazzling undersea metropolis that was Salt Dome Mountain. As rich and diverse as Texas Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary to the west, or Floridas coral reefs to the south, but a little deeper, and totally unexplored.
It was July 29, 2002, and I was a submersible pilot with the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, a joint project of National Geographic and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, led by my mother, Dr. Sylvia Earle. Fishermen and oilmen have long known the Gulf of Mexico by what they could extract from it with their nets and their drilling rigs. We were there to study it from the inside out.
Salt Dome Mountain is an unexpectedly shallow seamount rising from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico to within 200 feet of the surface. Its just south of the Mississippi coast, just north of where a raging gusher of oil now spews death and destruction with no end in sight. And no beginning in sight either, as the vast majority of this catastrophe is occurring underwater, beyond the reach of television news cameras. The video below is a compilation of images from my dive eight years ago, posted with permission from Sustainable Seas Expeditions. You can find more videos of the undersea life near the blowout by using Google Ocean.
It remains to be seen when or even whether the raging torrent of oil can be stopped, but even in the best case scenario, the damage already done far exceeds what most of us can yet get our minds around. May it at least not pass unnoticed. And may we at long last consider that the consequences of our actions should be weighed before, and not after, the damage is done.
Saturday May 21, 2010 One month and one day past the destruction of the drilling rig of the Deepwater Horizon, with BP unable to stop the oil blowout destroying the Gulf, President Obama’s anonymous source announced he will appoint former Senator Bob Graham (D, FL) and former EPA head William K Reilly to a commission to study the cause of the spill, federal oversight, and the potential risks.
William K Reilly was administrator at the EPA under the first George Bush administration, George H W “Poppy” Bush, the one who invaded the Middle East the First Time and went to war against Iraq the First Time, which was called the …… Gulf War.
The commission, modeled on ones which investigated the Challenger shuttle explosion and the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, will not include any federal officials, administration officials said this week.
“It seems baffling that we don’t know how much oil is being spilled,” Sylvia Earle, a famed oceanographer, said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “It seems baffling that we don’t know where the oil is in the water column.”
The administration acknowledges that its scientific resources are stretched by the disaster, but contends that it is moving to get better information, including a more complete picture of the underwater plumes.
“We’re in the early stages of doing that, and we do not have a comprehensive understanding as of yet of where that oil is,” Jane Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator, told Congress on Wednesday. “But we are devoting all possible resources to understanding where the oil is and what its impact might be.”
Four weeks ago today, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded and sank, breaking the pipe connecting to the wellhead a mile below on the floor of the Gulf in Mississippi Canyon Block 252, referred to as the Macondo Prospect.
Former EPA Criminal Division Special Agent Scott West led a 2006 investigation of British Petroleum following a major oil pipeline leak in Alaska’s North Slope that spilled 250,000 gallons of oil on the Alaskan tundra. His story hopefully will not prove to be somewhat prophetic for BP’s prospects following the Deepwater Horizon environmental catstrophe, but it is very much worth hearing and reflecting upon.
As Jason Leopold wrote yesterday May 19 in a very detailed historical and investigative article at Truthout.org:
Mention the name of the corporation BP to Scott West and two words immediately come to mind: Beyond Prosecution.
West was the special agent in charge with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) criminal division who had been probing alleged crimes committed by BP and the company’s senior officials in connection with a March 2006 pipeline rupture at the company’s Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska’s North Slope that spilled 267,000 gallons of crude oil across two acres of frozen tundra – the second largest spill in Alaska’s history – which went undetected for nearly a week.
West was confident that the thousands of hours he invested into the criminal probe would result in felony charges against the company and the senior executives who received advanced warnings from dozens of employees at the Prudhoe Bay facility that unless immediate steps were taken to repair the severely corroded pipeline, a disaster on par with that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill was only a matter of time.
In fact, West, who spent more than two decades at the EPA’s criminal division, was also told the pipeline was going to rupture – about six months before it happened.
In a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, West described how the Justice Department (DOJ) abruptly shut down his investigation into BP in August 2007 and gave the company a “slap on the wrist” for what he says were serious environmental crimes that should have sent some BP executives to jail.
He first aired his frustrations after he retired from the agency in 2008. But he said his story is ripe for retelling because the same questions about BP’s record are now being raised again after a catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and ruptured an oil well 5,000 feet below the surface that has been spewing upwards of 200,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf waters for a month.
Today Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of DemocracyNow.org interviewed Scott West about his experiences investigating and attempting to bring criminal charges against BP:
One month after the BP oil spill, we speak to Scott West, a former top investigator at the Environmental Protection Agency who led an investigation of BP following a major oil pipeline leak in Alaska’s North Slope that spilled 250,000 gallons of oil on the Alaskan tundra.
Before West finished his investigation, the Bush Justice Department reached a settlement with BP, and the oil company agreed to pay $20 million. At the same time, BP managed to avoid prosecution for the Texas City refinery explosion that killed fifteen workers by paying a $50 million settlement.
Fmr. EPA Investigator Scott West:
US Has Told BP “It Can Do Whatever It Wants and Won’t Be Held Accountable”
The Real News Network’s Jesse Freeston interviews journalists at McClatchy’s DC bureau to for their latest on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Journalists believe that BP and the Government may be hiding information on the severity of the leak. Those who fish for a living in the Gulf of Mexico are after BP for compensation. The central question yet to be answered to help resolve the question of how the explosion happened. And, the Cuban government is concerned but not vocal, given it’s own aspirations for deep sea drilling.
BP has claimed that the new 4 inch Pipe inserted into the 21 Riser pipe is siphoning off 20% of the leaking oil. And then they updated that figure to 40% the next day.
Sounds good on the Morning News, but how did they get those numbers?
And those calcs ended up: roughly 4.4% of the larger [inner] area would be covered by the smaller [outer] area — BUT all that was just a Red Herring — it turns out due to this BP picture (and its large rubber gaskets)
Looks good on Paper. Could the insert pipe with its many rubber stoppers actually be blocking up to 40% of the leaking oil from the larger pipe?
Yet one wonders, where did that 40% number come from, especially since BP is not all that keen on measuring and monitoring?
This is the unseen world imperiled by the uncapped oil well a mile below the surface of the gulf. The millions of gallons of crude, and the introduction of chemicals to disperse it, have thrown this underwater ecosystem into chaos, and scientists have no answer to the question of how this unintended and uncontrolled experiment in marine biology and chemistry will ultimately play out.
Some of the press may be wondering why we are announcing offshore drilling in a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. Well, if there’s any doubt about the leadership that our military is showing, you just need to look at this F-18 fighter and the light-armored vehicle behind me. The Army and Marine Corps have been testing this vehicle on a mixture of biofuels. And this Navy fighter jet — appropriately called the Green Hornet — will be flown for the first time in just a few days, on Earth Day.
5/15/2010 video by your govt and Lt Scott Sagisi of JPASE
This is the government’s version of what’s going on with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill Saturday.
The following is a partial transcript. Everyone was speaking very quickly today, where they were repeating phrases that didn’t add much meaning, I left it out, a few phrases are transposed in order. Salazar starts out strong like somebody had a Come to Geebus talk with him, tries to sound like Winston Churchill before his Dunkirk of the Tar Balls, then reverts to mumbles. Adm. Landry is concise, and by God, if a Tarball breaches her boom deployment she’s gonna have they Navy and Coast Guard rendition that thing so fast it’s never going to know what hit it. BP’s Suttles. I think everybody would like to smack Suttles by now, but are holding back. He did acknowledge Mother Nature was cutting them a break, which was interesting.
When the neo-con-man Barack Obama opens millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere for offshore drilling, he isn’t really an anti-environmental shit-head like George W. Bush.
He’s only appeasing “moderate Republicans,” who may vote for his ridiculously weak climate bill.
And when the neo-con-man Barack Obama intensifies our hopeless war in Afghanistan, he isn’t really a chicken-hawk mass-murderer like George W. Bush.
He’s only making peace by making more war, or withdrawing our brave soldiers from Afghanistan by sending in tens of thousands more of them, or some other self-contradictory bullshit!
And when the Harry-and-Louise-lovin’ con-man Obama takes single-payer off the table before debate about healthcare reform even begins, because it would be impossible to override a filibuster of single-payer, and Democrats would have to resort to passing single-payer by “reconciliation,” and then…
The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species – and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.
Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.
Under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) is required to get permits to allow drilling where it might harm endangered species or marine mammals.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is responsible for protecting endangered species and marine mammals. It has said on repeated occasions that drilling in the gulf affects these animals, but the minerals agency since January 2009 has approved at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic blasting projects and 346 drilling plans.
Agency records also show that permission for those projects and plans was granted without getting the permits required under federal law.
And it wasn’t exactly a secret in Washington that Obama/Salazar were allowing BP to risk “catastrophic operator errors” in the Gulf of Mexico.
