The Gulf Crisis is Not Over: Slow Violence and the BP Coverups

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.

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.

A CounterPunch Special Report

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.”

Keep Reading...

Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed

punditman says...

Punditman has learned over time that things are rarely as they appear to be in the Big media, with the exception of perhaps sports scores (they usually get that right). The rest is usually spin.

How can punditman make such a broad statement? Easily. The "spin" on any given story fulfills certain assumptions about the way journalists, editors and owners look at the world. Granted, this varies somewhat across the spectrum, from centre-right to centre-left to further right with a few token lefties, libertarians and odd balls thrown in to make it all seem fun and fair.

But the range of allowable thought is actually a lot narrower than many people assume, especially when one starts digging into specific stories that play out when new information comes to light. Big Media don't like to admit they were wrong or lazy; in particular when getting it right the first time involves prowling around the edges of the "dark side" of government espionage, covert deception and official malfeasance. For the most part, these institutions are heavily invested in the status quo's way of looking at the world. They don't like complexity if complexity puts egg on their face. It's much easier to toe the White House/White Hall line.

What externality is punditman babbling about? The recent release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahiin in the Lockerbie bombing case is a perfect example of what punditman is prattling about. If you have fifteen minutes to spare and the ability to employ elementary logic you will easily see that this act of mass murder, this tragedy, this "court case," wreaked of intrigue, coverups and "more than meets the eye" from the very beginning. The "powers that be" were definitely up to something. But what? And why? Eric Margolis believes this case was a frame up and said so in his August 30th column, Muammar Qaddafi: Mad Like a Fox. He ends it with "Happy birthday, Moammar." That makes punditman feel a bit uncomfortable and slightly perplexed. After all, Margolis believes that Libya was "guilty as hell" of another atrocity—the bombing of the French UTA airliner in 1989—but the column is well researched. And it is in the Toronto Sun, an example of one of those contrarian columnists that occasionally break the mold.

But for the most part the rest of the media remain in la la land when it comes to the background intrigue to this case. A sense of renewed rage about Megrahi's release is understandable only if it is a clear-cut case, which it is not.

So what was the Lockerbie bombing all about? Was Iran behind it, in a tit-for-tat response to this:

1988: The U.S. intervenes on Iraq's side in its eight-year war against Iran. A U.S. navy Aegis cruiser, Vincennes, violates Iranian waters and "mistakenly" shoots down an Iranian civilian Airbus airliner in Iran's air space. All 288 civilians aboard die. Then vice-president George H.W. Bush vows, "I'll never apologize ... I don't care what the facts are."

The Vincennes' trigger-happy captain is decorated with the Legion of Merit medal for this crime by Bush after he becomes president. Washington quietly pays Iran $131.8 million US in damages.

If indeed Iran was culpable, why the kangaroo court case that followed? What "bigger" issues were involved? Did the West need Iran all of a sudden as it prepared to launch the Gulf War against Iraq? What facts and suppressed evidence do Western governments not want exposed to the light of day? Is it all about oil?

John Pilger scolds the media, who aside from a few notable exceptions, have put on a disgraceful performance in the service of state power. Good job, John.

by John Pilger

The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Britain. From Gordon Brown’s "repulsion" to Barack Obama’s "outrage," the theater of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those who call themselves journalists. "But what if Megrahi lives longer than three months?" whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. "What will you say to your constituents, then?"

Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before he "pays" for his "heinous crime": the description of the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose "compassion" allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to "face justice from a higher power." Amen.

The American satirist Larry David once addressed a voluble crony as "a babbling brook of bullsh*t." Such eloquence summarizes the circus of Megrahi’s release.

No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of "strategic interests."

Keep Reading...

Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?

by Mike Whitney

The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.

CBS's Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and "submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense". After 4 months they received a document which showed--that between 1995 and 2007-- there were 2,200 suicides among "active duty" soldiers.

Baloney.

The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the "suicide epidemic". Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans' suicide data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone "there were at least 6,256 among those who served in the armed forces. That's 120 each and every week in just one year."

That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.

If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the "official" 3,865 reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.

That's right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that--as yet--has no legal or moral justification.

CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in veteran suicides saying, "There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem."

Maybe Katz is right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it's perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it's normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it's normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm's-way for their country.

It's not normal; it is a pandemic--an outbreak of despair which is the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one's friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.

The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of the U.S. war on Iraq. Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that before we invaded.

Check it out the video at: CBS News "Suicide Epidemic among Veterans."

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com

punditman says: Mike Whitney pens denunciatory tracts against the Bush administration on a regular basis.

Kucinich Wins Debate Poll, ABC Covers Up Results

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich's supporters (and, according to his website, even some non-supporters) are demanding that ABC explain its actions of the last few days.

On Monday afternoon, Congressman Kucinich took a significant lead in the ABC online poll: Who won the Democratic debate? About the time that he took that lead, ABC removed the poll from its prominent position on the ABC website. Then a new poll suddenly went up, "Who is winning the Democratic debate?"

Those events could be seen as technical glitches, but there was more to come. Kucinich took the lead in the second poll, also, and that poll, too, was dropped. ABC also "forgot" to announce the results (Kucinich tied with Sen. Hillary Clinton as the winner), and news about the poll is nowhere to be seen on the ABC website. Kucinich was also cut out of a group photo of all the candidates in the debate.

Keep Reading...

punditman says: The media deliverately slanting things? Imagine my shock!