The Ruthless Truth blog

by Riki Ott

Global Research, June 13, 2010

The Huffington Post – 2010-06-11

Orange Beach, Alabama — While President Obama insists that the federal government is firmly in control of the response to BP’s spill in the Gulf, people in coastal communities where I visited last week in Louisiana and Alabama know an inconvenient truth: BP — not our president — controls the response. In fact, people on the ground say things are out of control in the gulf.

Even worse, as my latest week of adventures illustrate, BP is using federal agencies to shield itself from public accountability.

For example, while flying on a small plane from New Orleans to Orange Beach, the pilot suddenly exclaimed, "Look at that!" The thin red line marking the federal flight restrictions of 3,000 feet over the oiled Gulf region had just jumped to include the coastal barrier islands off Alabama.

"There’s only one reason for that," the pilot said. "BP doesn’t want the media taking pictures of oil on the beaches. You should see the oil that’s about six miles off the coast," he said grimly. We looked down at the wavy orange boom surrounding the islands below us. The pilot shook his head. "There’s no way those booms are going to stop what’s offshore from hitting those beaches."

BP knows this as well — boom can only deflect oil under the calmest of sea conditions, not barricade it — so they have stepped up their already aggressive effort to control what the public sees.

At the same time I was en route to Orange Beach, Clint Guidry with the Louisiana Shrimp Association and Dean Blanchard, who owns the largest shrimp processor in Louisiana, were in Grand Isle taking Anderson Cooper out in a small boat to see the oiled beaches. The U.S. Coast Guard held up the boat for 20 minutes – an intimidation tactic intended to stop the cameras from recording BP’s damage. Luckily for Cooper and the viewing public, Dean Blanchard is not easily intimidated.

A few days later, the gig was up with the booms. Oil was making landfall in four states and even BP can’t be everywhere at once. CBS 60 Minutes Australia found entire sections of boom hung up in marsh grasses two feet above the water off Venice. On the same day on the other side of Barataria Bay, Louisiana Bayoukeeper documented pools of oil and oiled pelicans inside the boom — on the supposedly protected landward side — of Queen Bess Island off Grand Isle.

With oil undisputedly hitting the beaches and the number of dead wildlife mounting, BP is switching tactics. In Orange Beach, people told me BP wouldn’t let them collect carcasses. Instead, the company was raking up carcasses of oiled seabirds. "The heads separate from the bodies," one upset resident told me. "There’s no way those birds are going to be autopsied. BP is destroying evidence!"
also serves as an invaluable tool to evaluate damages to public property — the dolphins, sea turtles, whales, sea birds, fish, and more, that are owned by the American public. Disappeared body counts means disappeared damages — and disappeared liability for BP. BP should not be collecting carcasses. The job should be given to NOAA, a federal agency, and volunteers, as was done during the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

NOAA should also be conducting carcass drift studies. Only one percent of the dead sea birds made landfall in the Gulf of Alaska, for example. That means for every one bird that was found, another 99 were carried out to sea by currents. Further, NOAA should be conducting aerial surveys to look for carcasses in the offshore rips where the currents converge. That’s where the carcasses will pile up — a fact we learned during the Exxon Valdez spill. Maybe that’s another reason for BP’s "no camera" policy and the flight restrictions.

On Saturday June 12, people across America will stand up and speak out with one voice to protest BP’s treatment of the Gulf, neglect for the response workers, and their response to government authority. President Obama needs to hear and see the people waving cameras and respirators. Until the media is allowed unrestricted access to the Gulf and impacted beaches, BP — not the President of United States — will remain in charge of the Gulf response.

For more information on community rallies, please visit HERE.

Marine toxicologist and Exxon Valdez survivor Riki Ott, PhD, shares stories of oil spill impact to cleanup workers in Sound Truth and Corporate Myths. Her latest book, Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez (Chelsea Green, 2008) is on social trauma of this disaster. She is a national spokesperson with Move To Amend, a grassroots coalition working to abolish the legal doctrine that allows corporations to claim constitutional rights and undermine legitimate democracy.

Global Research Articles by Riki Ott

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19707

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READ THIS: Deregulation is the real (underlying) reason / cause behind the US oil spill by British Petroleum (BP) in 2010 off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. Deregulation coupled with lax government oversight (lackies appointed by Dick Cheney at the helm) lead to the omission of key safety features and protocols, a free pass for drilling licenses, emphasis on profit over safety, and absolutely NO PLAN for containment of blowouts.
For example, George W Bush and Dick Cheney helped block a 2002/03 Bill that would have required the use of acoustic switches to activate the blowout preventer (BOP). When the rig blew up, they had to MANUALLY activate the switch by sending robotic submersibles. This was all but impossible since the rig was in flames and the priority was putting it out and saving lives; this was easily foreseen.
In addition, BP did not want to lose an oil well (by activating the BOP); this would have cost them future profit in addition to the costs for exploration and preparation of the well. Eventually the rig collapsed and sank to the ocean floor. Because the rig was STILL ATTACHED to the well head / BOP, it bent or damaged the BOP making it unusable. Again, this is something that could have been foreseen; i.e. the need to activate the BOP immediately in the case of catastrophic rig failure, to avoid potential damage to the BOP. Profit wins over safety; BP must avoid activating the BOP at all costs.
An acoustic switch would have allowed them to IMMEDIATELY stop the well head (activate the BOP) as soon as the explosion happened. The BOP would not have been at risk for failure (due to rig collapsing); but, the lack of a remote switch and need to save the well (for profit and avoidance of loss) meant that they delayed trying to activate it. By that time the damage to the BOP had been done.
Lastly, all of the post-blowout efforts have been focused on SAVING the well; i.e. it was only after more than a month before BP attempted the TOPKILL method, which would have sealed the well. Attempts before that were about slowing the flow of oil or collecting it. Why did BP not try the TOPKILL method right away?
Drill Baby, Drill! Spill Baby, Spill. Now, clean it the fock up!
Some links:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/29/bl…

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(NaturalNews) After weeks of silence on the issue, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally decided to go public with the list of ingredients used to manufacture Corexit, the chemical dispersant used by BP in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. There are two things about this announcement that deserve our attention: First, the ingredients that have been disclosed are extremely toxic, and second, why did the EPA protect the oil industry’s "trade secrets" for so long by refusing to disclose these ingredients until now?
As reported in the New York Times, Brian Turnbaugh, a policy analyst at OMB Watch said, "EPA had the authority to act all along; its decision to now disclose the ingredients demonstrates this. Yet it took a public outcry and weeks of complaints for the agency to act and place the public’s interest ahead of corporate interests."
On the toxicity question, you could hardly find a more dangerous combination of poisons to dump into the Gulf of Mexico than what has been revealed in Corexit. The Corexit 9527 product has been designated a "chronic and acute health hazard" by the EPA. It is made with 2-butoxyethanol, a highly toxic chemical that has long been linked to the health problems of cleanup crews who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill.
A newer Corexit recipe dubbed the "9500 formula" contains dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, a detergent chemical that’s also found in laxatives. What do you suppose happens to the marine ecosystem when fish and sea turtles ingest this chemical through their gills and skin? And just as importantly, what do you think happens to the human beings who are working around this chemical, breathing in its fumes and touching it with their skin?
The answers are currently unknown, which is exactly why it is so inexcusable that Nalco and the oil industry giants would for so long refuse to disclose the chemical ingredients they’re dumping into the Gulf of Mexico in huge quantities (over a million gallons dumped into the ocean to date).
But it gets even more interesting when you look at just how widespread this "chemical secrecy" is across Big Business in the USA… and how the U.S. government more often than not conspires with industry to keep these chemicals a secret.

It’s time to end chemical trade secrets

Armed with the accomplices in the FDA, EPA, FTC and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, powerful corporations have been keeping secrets from us all. It’s not just the toxic chemicals in Corexit, either: Large manufacturers of consumers products — such as Unilever, Proctor & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson — routinely use toxic chemical ingredients in their products — ingredients which are usually kept secret from the public.
Similarly, virtually every perfume, cologne and fragrance product on the market is made with cancer-causing chemicals that their manufacturers refuse to disclose, claiming their formulas are "trade secrets."
Throughout Big Business in America, the toxic chemicals used in everyday products such as household cleaners, cosmetics and yard care remain a dangerous secret, and the U.S. government actually colludes with industry to keep these chemical ingredients a secret by, for example, refusing to require full disclosure of ingredients for personal care products. The FDA offers us virtually no enforcement in this area, depending almost entirely on companies to declare their own chemicals are safe rather than requiring actual safety testing to be conducted.
This is why the following statement is frightening yet true: What BP is doing to the Gulf of Mexico, companies like Proctor & Gamble are doing to the entire population. We are all being mass poisoned by the toxic chemicals in personal care products, foods, medicines, fragrance products and other concoctions created by powerful corporations that use toxic chemicals throughout their product lines… but who refuse to disclose those ingredients in the public.
Thanks to the widespread use of secret chemicals in foods, medicines and personal care products, we are awash in synthetic toxic chemicals that have already reached the shores of public health. The rates of cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and infertility that we’re seeing right now are a reflection of the devastating health cost associated with ongoing the ongoing chemical contamination of our population. Even public water fluoridation policies are a kind of "water contamination disaster" where chemicals from an undisclosed source are dumped into the water supply (on purpose, no less!).
What’s doubly disturbing about all this is that many of the chemicals used in foods, medicines, household cleaners and personal care products end up in the Gulf of Mexico as well because they get flushed down stream. So now the Gulf isn’t just polluted with crude oil and dispersant chemicals; it’s also heavily contaminated with all the chemical runoff from the products made by large corporations that refuse to disclose the actual chemical ingredients, claiming they’re trade secrets.

It’s time to end the chemical secrecy

As this Gulf of Mexico oil disaster clearly demonstrates, it’s time to end the chemical secrecy maintained by Big Business. We must demand that all ingredients be fully disclosed for all products so that the curtain of chemical secrecy is lifted once a for all.
Neither oil companies nor consumer product companies should be able to hide behind the excuse of "trade secrets" to avoid disclosing the actual chemicals contained in the products they sell. As consumers, we must demand chemical transparency from these companies or refuse to buy their products.
Legislatively, we must demand new laws that require full disclosure on all consumer products so that ordinary people can see what’s contained in the products they buy.
In a world where one person’s chemical runoff impacts every other person, there is no justification for chemical secrecy. We all have the right to know what we’re putting on (or in) our bodies, and if companies refuse to be honest with us, we should boycott their products and publicly shame them for engaging in deceptive, secretive behavior.
Because the truth is that consumer product companies don’t dare want you to know what’s actually found in their products. And that’s because most of their products are made with poison. If the average perfume product listed its chemical ingredients on the label, for example, product sales would plummet as consumers realized just how many of those ingredients are linked to cancer and liver disorders.
Big Business wants us all to remain ignorant… blinded to the truth of what poisons they’re slathering on our skin or dripping down our throats. But it’s time to halt this dark era of chemical secrets in our modern world. It’s time to demand transparency, clean up our waterways and stop poisoning ourselves and our planet.
Sources for this story include:
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/0…

http://www.naturalnews.com/028974_Corexit_dispersants.html

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Ron Beasley
Newshoggers
Sat, 29 May 2010 22:10 EDT

© Bagley
It’s no different under Obama

It would appear that Obama has a personalty flaw – he sees good where there is none. He actually thought he could work with the Republicans and that turned out to be fantasy. Bob Herbert sees this same flaw at work with the oil spill disaster.

"Where I was wrong," said President Obama at his press conference on Thursday, "was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios."
With all due respect to the president, who is a very smart man, how is it possible for anyone with any reasonable awareness of the nonstop carnage that has accompanied the entire history of giant corporations to believe that the oil companies, which are among the most rapacious players on the planet, somehow "had their act together" with regard to worst-case scenarios.
These are not Little Lord Fauntleroys who can be trusted to abide by some fanciful honor system. These are greedy merchant armies drilling blindly at depths a mile and more beneath the seas while at the same time doing all they can to stifle the government oversight that is necessary to protect human lives and preserve the integrity of the environment.

BP has a long history of cutting corners to save time and money. The Wall Street Journal makes the case that it was just such cutting corners that are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon blowout.
Cheaper Well Design:

The cement job was especially important on this well because of a BP design choice that some petroleum engineers call unusual. BP ran a single long pipe, made up of sections screwed together, all the way from the sea floor to the oil reservoir.
Companies often use two pipes, one inside another, sealed together, with the smaller one sticking into the oil reservoir. With this system, if gas tries to get up the outside of the pipe, it has to break through not just cement but also the seal connecting the pipes. This more typical design provides an extra level of protection, but also requires another long, expensive piece of pipe.

Preparation Before Cementing:

Halliburton, the cementing contractor, advised BP to install numerous devices to make sure the pipe was centered in the well before pumping cement, according to Halliburton documents, provided to congressional investigators and seen by the Journal. Otherwise, the cement might develop small channels that gas could squeeze through.
In an April 18 report to BP, Halliburton warned that if BP didn’t use more centering devices, the well would likely have "a SEVERE gas flow problem." Still, BP decided to install fewer of the devices than Halliburton recommended – six instead of 21.

Pre-cementing:

Before doing a cement job on a well, common industry practice is to circulate the drilling mud through the well, bringing the mud at the bottom all the way up to the drilling rig. This procedure, known as "bottoms up," lets workers check the mud to see if it is absorbing gas. If so, they can clean the gas out of the mud before putting it back down into the well to maintain the pressure. The American Petroleum Institute says it is "common cementing best practice" to circulate the mud at least once.
Circulating all the mud in a well of 18,360 feet, as this one was, takes six to 12 hours, say people who’ve run the procedure. But mud circulation on this well was done for just 30 minutes on April 19, drilling logs say, not nearly long enough to bring mud to the surface.

Post cementing test skipped:

BP also didn’t run tests to check on the last of the cement after it was pumped into the well, despite the importance of cement to this well design and despite Halliburton’s warning that the cement might not seal properly.

The Journal also reports that when things did go wrong no one was prepared.

An examination by The Wall Street Journal of what happened aboard the Deepwater Horizon just before and after the explosions suggests the rig was unprepared for the kind of disaster that struck and was overwhelmed when it occurred. The events on the bridge raise questions about whether the rig’s leaders were prepared for handling such a fast-moving emergency and for evacuating the rig – and, more broadly, whether the U.S. has sufficient safety rules for such complex drilling operations in very deep water.
The chain of command broke down at times during the crisis, according to many crew members. They report that there was disarray on the bridge and pandemonium in the lifeboat area, where some people jumped overboard and others called for boats to be launched only partially filled.

The oil companies are run by sociopaths who’s only concern is profit. They can’t be trusted and must constantly be monitored and regulated. As for BP – it should receive the corporate death penalty.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/209605-Ruled-By-Sociopaths-BP-Should-Receive-the-Death-Penalty

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by Elizabeth Allen

Global Research, May 31, 2010

Rense – 2010-05-28

Why does BP refuse to stop using the chemical dispersants the EPA ordered BP to stop using?

According to scientists studying the massive underwater oil plumes, the dispersants keep the oil underwater, away from the naked eye and satellite view. Some of the oil plumes are over 30 foot deep and 26 miles long.

One scientist said about using dispersants on oil: "You don’t want to put soap into a fish tank."

This discovery seems to confirm the fears of some scientists that — because of the depth of the leak and the heavy use of chemical "dispersants" — this spill was behaving differently than others. Instead of floating on top of the water, it may be moving beneath it.

That would be troubling because it could mean the oil would slip past coastal defenses such as "containment booms" designed to stop it on the surface. Already, scientists and officials in Louisiana have reported finding thick oil washing ashore despite the presence of floating booms.

It would also be a problem for hidden ecosystems deep under the gulf. There, scientists say, the oil could be absorbed by tiny animals and enter a food chain that builds to large, beloved sport-fish like red snapper. It might also glom on to deep-water coral formations, and cover the small animals that make up each piece of coral.

"It kills them because it prevents them from feeding," said Professor James H. Cowan Jr., of Louisiana State University. "It could essentially starve them to death."

The University of South Florida vessel, the Weatherbird II, used sonar and other devices to sample the water below it. Other scientists have said they have little of the equipment necessary to find oil under the water — leading to debates about whether the underwater plumes were even there.

Global Research Articles by Elizabeth Allen

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19434

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