punditman says...
War, human rights, unemployment, corrupt economics, crazy viruses, wingnut right wingers running for office—even on a "good" news day these concerns are enough to make you choke on your organic beer! Throw in an environmental crisis here and there and it just may be too much to take.
War, human rights, unemployment, corrupt economics, crazy viruses, wingnut right wingers running for office—even on a "good" news day these concerns are enough to make you choke on your organic beer! Throw in an environmental crisis here and there and it just may be too much to take.
Yet we ignore ongoing environmental catastrophes such as the BP oil spill at our peril. One cannot depend on the mainstream media to do the necessary follow-up investigations once an issue has fallen off their news cycle's radar. This article caught punditman's eye not only because of the magnitude of the ongoing apocalypse continuing in the Gulf of Mexico but because it definitely falls under punditman's mission statement to cut through fog, expose lies and help unravel the Media-Industrial-Military-Financial complex. So read this article by Anne McClintock. It's long, but it exposes the health and environmental consequences of spraying dispersant while dispersing lies and the ongoing cover-up by BP and the US government, and the complicity of the mass media. Hopefully it will inform, enlighten and enable. Try not to choke on your beer—organic or otherwise.
By ANNE McCLINTOCK
Three vanishing acts are being played out in the Gulf: the disappearing of the oil from the ocean surface by Corexit, the disappearing of the story by the media blockade, and the disappearing from view of the shadowy private contractors who are making a mint helping BP and the Coast Guard keep a cover on the clean-up. This triple vanishing trick, collectively choreographed by BP and sundry federal agencies, culminated on August 4th in a report released by NOAA that claimed 75% of the oil spill had been captured, burned, evaporated or broken down. The White House hailed the report as something to celebrate. Energy advisor Carol Browne announced: “the vast majority of the oil is gone.”
A clamor of outrage immediately rose from the Gulf, as residents refused to dance the crisis-is-over, happy-feet dance. Hundreds of locals furiously insisted that they were still seeing masses of oil on ocean, beaches and marshes, and dead fish, dolphins, sharks, birds and other marine life washing ashore. Then on August 18th scientists from the Universities of Georgia and South Florida produced an open challenge to the White House report, asserting that 70% to 79% of the oil in the Gulf still remained in the water. Charles Hopkinson, a professor of marine science at the University of Georgia declared: “The idea that 75% of the oil is gone and of no concern to the environment is just absolutely incorrect.”
Spike Lee, filming in the Gulf, scoffed at what he called the BP/White House “abracabra kawabanga” trick and called on journalists to stay with the story. A few weeks earlier, the triple vanishing act had come together personally for me in a story that Steve, a private contractor, told in the shadows of a southern Louisiana bar. I call the contractor Steve, though that is not his real name. I cannot tell you his real name because he has assured me that he will kill me if I do. I had been in the Gulf for three days with Karin Hayes, a film-maker, documenting the oil-spill when Steve approached us in the bar, urgently wanting to tell us something.
“It’s as if a nuclear apocalypse has gone off in the Gulf,” he said. “The media is not telling the truth. No one is telling the truth. Let me tell you something. Yesterday on the beach where we work, my crew cleaned up seven hundred bags of oil. Today we went back and the beach was completely covered in oil, as if we had never been there. Today we carried away another seven hundred and fifty bags. Every day we clean up, then the tide brings it in again. The oil is everywhere, deep under the sand. Today I wanted to measure the oil, so I stuck my shovel into the sand and the oil was down there eight inches deep.”
