BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle
The Democracy Now! summary of Abe Louise Young’s article in The Nation:
The Nation magazine has revealed new details about how BP is receiving tax credits by relying on cheap or free prison labor to help clean up the Gulf spill. BP’s reliance on prison labor has been criticized by many in the region since the disaster has left so many people out of work. But the hiring of prison labor has apparently been financially beneficial for BP. Each new prisoner hired by BP comes with a tax credit of $2,400. On top of that, BP may earn back up to 40 percent of the wages they pay to prisoners. Prison workers are required to work up to twelve hours a day, six days a week, and are liable to lose earned good time if they refuse the job. Inmates are also forbidden to talk to the public or media. It is unclear…
Offshore Oil Strike: The BP Board Game
Want to teach your kids about the fun of deep-sea drilling? Pick up a copy of the unfortunate 1970 board game Offshore Oil Strike, produced by BP. “The 1st player to make $120,000,000 cash is regarded as the winner.” Via BLDGBLOG:
With this “exciting board game for all the family,” released in 1970, BP delivered all “the thrills of drilling, the hazards and rewards as you bring in your offshore petro-dollars.”
It’s “a race to find and develop the riches ‘neath the seabed,” where no deepwater is beyond the horizon of possible drilling.
Accumulating this fortune, however, is not without its difficulties. Each player has “Hazard” cards to deal with; here are some of the risks BP thought to include:
—”Fire breaks out. Pay $2,500,000 for repairs.”
—”Hit High-Pressure Gas—Rig Damaged. Specialists called in.”
—”Blow-Out! Rig Damaged. Repairs cost $2,000,000″
—”Drill pipe breaks. Pay $500,000 for replacement.”
—”Strike High Pressure Gas. Platform Destroyed.”
—”Blow-Out! Rig Damaged. Oil Slick Clean-Up…
Are We Losing Interest in the Gulf Coast Oil Spill?
Interesting post from Jolie O’Dell on Mashable:
We’re losing interest in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill just a few weeks after it became a big media topic — and long before we’ve even made a dent in cleaning up after this mess — if Internet search and discussion trends are to be believed.
An estimated 100 million gallons or more of oil have surged into the Gulf of Mexico. Spread by wind and underwater currents, the pollution has drifted toward coastal areas, coating wildlife and natural environments in thick layers of crude oil.
Yet on Twitter, Google, blogs and even YouTube, we’re already wrapping up our collective discussion of the oil spill and how to repair its damage.
Steven Seagal Speaks Out Against BP (From The Past)
In the final scene of 1994’s On Deadly Ground, which many call one of the worst movies of all time, Steven Seagal gives an out-of-place speech that now is more relevant than ever. I wish there were a way he could deliver a few well-placed karate kicks to BP execs to underline his argument.
Nothing Good in This One-Year Projection of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill (Video)
Cyriaque Lamar posted on io9.com this interesting research from the University of Hawaii. Cyriaque Lamar writes:
Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa have created a simulation of the potential spread of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill over 360 days. Their hypothetical scenario? All sorts of bad.
Researchers at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) have created a model that charts the oil’s possible path over the course of approximately a year:
The Gulf of Mexico is Awash in 27,000 Abandoned Wells
An example of an abandoned oil well.
File this under: it could get much, much worse, or it’s so bad that we finally want to fix it, once and for all. Your thoughts are welcome. Jeff Donn and Mitch Weiss write in the AP via Google News:
More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.
The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.
The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells — those characterized in federal government records as “temporarily abandoned.”
Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug…
Would You Blow It Up Bill?
Since the oil spill in April, the Gulf of Mexico has witnessed numerous accounts of failed attempts to stop the oil from gushing into the water. With BP’s constant efforts to find a new solution to blocking the well, it is best to see how other nations have dealt with similar instances in the past. Bill Clinton spoke with Wolf Blitzer about the use of explosives to seal the well. This stems from the success that Russia has seen with the use of nuclear weapons to deal with gas well fires, as Jeremy Hsu of Live Science points out:
“The Russians previously used nukes at least five times to seal off gas well fires. A targeted nuclear explosion might similarly help seal off the oil well channel that has leaked oil unchecked since the sinking of a BP oil rig on April 22, according to a translation of the account in the daily…
The Link Between The Oil And Financial Crises
It seems clear that BP can’t seem to fix the catastrophic gusher the press calls a “leak,” and that President Obama can’t fix the economy because its problems are structural and won’t respond to soaring rhetoric emanating from his bully pulpit.
Meanwhile, most of the world’s people really don’t get the fix we are all in. I take that back; the million Americans who have just lost their benefits probably do. The deficit hawks voted that down without doing anything about the growing deficit of jobs.
43 members of the Congress and the Senate are tinkering with an increasingly diluted financial “reform bill.” Lobbies like the powerful Business Roundtable have pushed the White House to weaken proposed curbs on executive compensation while former Fedhead Tim Geithner is maneuvering behind the scenes to save dangerous derivative trading from too much regulation.
It is for this reason that financial writer Ilan Moscovitz worries about a…
The Crusextraction of the Earth
Robert Singer writes:
During the various stages of the energy extraction process, the globe of the earth suffers limitless pain at the area where the drilling occurs. It is gradually being depressurized and cooled internally, causing cycles of constriction, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation and searing pain as they use large drills to puncture pericardium and into the heart, sometimes as deep as 10,000 feet.
As the serum gets sucked from the sediment pores, the surrounding rocks shift positions to fill the newly vacated spaces, causing unbearable agony as the earth automatically contracts in size and goes badly out of shape resulting in a deep crushing pain.
“I Thirst.” “My strength is dried up like a potsherd; my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.”(Psalm 22:15)
Then another agony begins when millions of barrels of vital bodily fluids are produced. This causes deep, crushing pain as the sac surrounding the bowels of the earth slowly fills with hydrocarbon soil and begins to compress the tectonic plates causing (shock) mini-seismic earthquakes.
250,000 Oil Spills in U.S. Waters, 1971-2000
From Care2:
A document produced by the U.S. Coast guard is titled, “Pollution Incidents In and Around US Water, A Spill Release Compendium, 1969-2000“.
Their document states between 1971 and 2000, the U.S. Coast Guard identified more than 250,000 oil spills in U.S. waters. The total amount of oil spilled by these incidents was 6.18 million barrels, or 259,560,000 gallons (a barrel is 42 gallons according to the same document).
One of the fascinating statements from the report: “The number of spills increased in the last decade due to better reporting of spills less than 100 gallons.” The truth though, is the number of spills did not increase so much as the number of spills reported increased. In other words, because of the improvements in reporting, more spills were documented. However, this fact also implies there were probably even more spills occurring in the previous period, but they simply were not documented, because…
Beauty and Horror Found in This Oil Spill Pic
This was taken on Orange Beach, Alabama, more than 90 miles from the BP oil spill …
Source: Dave Martin via the Guardian
The BP Deepwater Horizon, Macondo Well Blowout And What We Are Truly Facing In The Gulf
In my opinion BP and our Govt have not been forthcoming about what is really is going on with this well and the situation we will likely face. Understandably they would not want to create panic, but we also need to prepare for this oil leak getting worse, ignoring the reality that there is good chance it will get worse leaves us vulnerable. Just like we shutter up before a hurricane we should be preparing now because we know that if we don’t, we are going to sustain far more damage than if we did.
Space Solar Energy: Truly Beyond Petroleum
A few days ago I posted a press release from Howard Bloom trumpeting Space Solar Energy as “Unspillable” and endorsed by Buzz Aldrin. Here’s more from Howard and the Space Development Steering Committee:
On Tuesday June 15th President Barack Obama pointed to an energy future in which alternative sources, “ingenious” sources will replace the oil that is now spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.
China and Germany already dominate the traditional green energies. But there is one energy technology in which America leads the world–solar power from space.
Buzz Aldrin and 20 other experts in the space community have urged the president to put space solar power on his energy agenda.
As Mr. Obama points out, “Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil.” Solar power harvested in space can turn America into a net energy exporter.
Obama says, “Now is the moment for this generation to embark…
BP Blocking Media Access to Public Beaches (Video)
I don’t know for sure what President Obama is going to say in his first-ever address from the Oval Office tonight, but I’m still wondering exactly whose ass he is planning on kicking …
Buzz Aldrin’s Answer To The Louisiana Oil Spill
Howard Bloom, one of the stars of the Disinformation TV Series, sent us this press release:
Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, has proposed an answer to the Louisiana oil spill. It’s solar energy harvested in space, known in the space community as Space Solar Power.
“The timing of the oil catastrophe,” says Aldrin, “is a great opportunity for re-evaluating solar energy from space.”
We’ve been harvesting solar power in space and sending it to Earth since 1962, when the first commercial satellite, Telstar, was launched and began transmitting energy harvested by the solar panels studded all over its beach-ball-like surface. Today, the space solar power harvesting business is a quarter of a trillion dollar industry. We call it “the commercial satellite industry.” That industry uses space solar power transmitted to earth for everything from satellite radio and television to direction finding via GPS.
The Japanese space agency, JAXA,…
BP Buys Search Term “Oil Spill” from Google
Reports Reuters:
BP Plc has bought terms such as “oil spill” from search engine providers including Google Inc to help direct Internet users to its website as it attempts to control the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
A spokesman said BP would pay fees so its own website would rank higher or even top in the list of advertisements that appear alongside search results when Internet users search on terms such as “oil spill,” “volunteer” and “claims.”
BP did not say how much it was paying for the service but U.S. President Barack Obama has criticised the company for spending $50 million on TV advertising to bolster its image during the crisis.
BP said it wanted to help people who were trying to access information on the BP website to find it more readily, rather than intending to draw away hits from other sites.
“We know people are looking for those terms on our…
Two Minutes Hate: Spill, Baby, Spill
Nick Pell at Red Star Times writes:
How many of you have woken up over the last couple weeks and almost immediately thought: damn, the world is in the toilet? Me too. The last month or so has been perhaps one of the most horrible times I have ever experienced, with the beginning of the Iraq War being one of the few things that even comes close.
Whether or not it’s a Chinese curse, the adage about living in “interesting times” becomes more and more apt with each passing week. Despite how awful things are, there seems to be a lingering scent of resistance in the air. I concede that this could entirely be wish-fulfillment and solipsism on my part, but it seems as if things could explode at any second.
Explosions in and of themselves go nowhere, however. A political analysis and direction is necessary to make an explosion travel in the right direction.…
Should the U.S. Nuke the Gulf Coast Oil Spill?
Daniel Foster writes in National Review:
It was September of 1966, and gas was gushing uncontrollably from the wells in the Bukhara province of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. But the Reds, at the height of their industrial might, had a novel solution.
They drilled nearly four miles into the sand and rock of the Kyzyl Kum Desert, and lowered a 30-kiloton nuclear warhead — more than half-again as large as “Little Boy,” the crude uranium bomb dropped over Hiroshima — to the depths beneath the wellhead. With the pull of a lever, a fistful of plutonium was introduced to itself under enormous pressure, setting off the chain reaction that starts with E = MC2 and ends in Kaboom! The ensuing blast collapsed the drill channel in on itself, sealing off the well.
Can Hollywood’s James Cameron Fix The Gulf Oil Spill?
Yes that James Cameron, of Titanic and Avatar fame. He revealed his ideas for the Gulf Oil disaster at the All Things Digital D8 conference:
During his D8 appearance Wednesday evening, director James Cameron discusses the role of underwater cinematography in documenting the BP oil spill and how he assembled a global team of deep submergence and underwater film experts to do just that.
Rebranding BP
Greenpeace UK held a rebranding contest to generate fresh new redesigns of the BP logo.
That plain green flower was introduced in 2000, and ten years later … it’s time for an update.
One of my favorites is to the right.
500+ results are included in a Flickr set. Enjoy.
