May 31, 2010

BP - ing the world

A very large lake of crude oil lies under the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico, and all Gulf oil rigs ultimately drill down to it.

At the present rate of oil spill, some four million gallons per day by the best estimates, it seems possible that the entire oil lake may come to the surface. Even if it is successfully plugged, the Gulf will be a dead zone, everyone agrees, where no plant or living thing can survive.

The Gulf Stream, which has made Britain a warmish and wettish place to live for a long time will carry the waters of the Gulf northwards, striking Cornwall and the Welsh coast first.

It is not only the oil that is a problem, however. Possibly a greater disaster are the dispersants being pumped into the Gulf by BP, as the report below makes clear:

The British Petroleum oil spill is threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with "total destruction," reports say.

An ominous report by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources warned of the impending disaster resulting from the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico, calling it the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history, the European Union Times reported.

Russian scientists believe BP is pumping millions of gallons of Corexit 9500, a chemical dispersal agent, under the Gulf of Mexico waters to hide the full extent of the leak, now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.

Experts say Corexit 9500 is a solvent four times more toxic than oil.

The agent, scientists believe, has a 2.61ppm toxicity level, and when mixed with the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, its molecules will be able to “phase transition.”

This transition involves the change of the liquid into a gaseous state, which can be absorbed by clouds. The gas will then be released as “toxic rain” leading to “unimaginable environmental catastrophe” destroying all life forms from the “bottom of the evolutionary chart to the top,” the report said.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=128113§ionid=3510203

The Russian analysts, with a methodology one suspects may owe something to their chess playing experience, have an excellent record of accuracy. Their conclusion, a year ago, that America had the choice between “default[ing], or start[ing] a war” remains valid. That the US administration, under President Obama, has greatly increased the military budget, already greater than the rest of the world combined, while cutting all other programs, indicates the alternative chosen.

Russia under presidents Putin and Medvedev has a very short method of dealing with oil company conglomerates that attempt to enter politics: the owner is imprisoned, and his assets are confiscated by the state, which also seizes the oil company and incorporates it into the state system. As a result, Russia has no oil corporations to wrestle with.

The US, by contrast, has many retired military recycled analysts. As the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court demonstrates, a spine like wet spaghetti is the sole requirement. (In addition, the enormous amounts of their own cash members of congress like Senator Kerry of Massachusetts have invested in military support companies means that if all US troops left Asia, he would lose a great deal of money.)

The only other source of information is the Internet, the blogosphere. Around ninety million blogs, personal diaries or weblogs in many languages, existed world wide at the last count, many of them family affairs for posting photos of the grandchildren.

In its relations with its allies, the US minimum demand is full spectrum dominance. Japan’s efforts to remove the Futenma base from Okinawa have been denied. Worse, the Japanese were humiliatingly obliged to confer their highest honor on General Curtis LeMay, who ordered the fire bombing of Tokyo. Thousands of Japanese were burnt alive in their paper houses. This rubbed their noses in it that Japan was still a conquered country, sixty-five years after the war ended.

The Europeans are no better off; their demand that US nuclear weapons be removed from their soil was met by the reply that Europe must take joint responsibility for the use of nuclear weapons, exactly what they did not wish.

That Corexit 9500 is banned in BP’s home state of Britain, and throughout Europe, is not something that the corporate spokesmen are likely to mention.

There seems every reason to take the Russian report seriously.

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