Author: BobHiggins

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

I read a piece last night by Jason Linkins at Huff Post in which he describes the experience of CNN correspondent Michael Ware and Ware’s difficulty in dealing with the memory of the death of a presumably innocent young Iraqi shot execution style by US troops in 2007.

Mr Ware tells of the alleged incident he says he witnessed and filmed in  2007 when working for US news giant CNN, but claims the network decided  the footage was too graphic to go to air.

He alleges that a teenager in a remote Iraqi village run by the militant  Islamist group, al-Qaeda was carrying a weapon to protect himself.

“(The boy) approached the house we were in and the (US) soldiers who  were watching our backs, one of them put a bullet right in the back of  his head. Unfortunately it didn’t kill him,” he tells Australian Story.

“We all spent the next 20 minutes listening to his tortured breath as he died.”

From: Former CNN War Correspondent, Speaks Out On Alleged War Crime CNN Refused To Air

Ware left CNN last spring after being denied extended time off when apparently suffering from PTSD from his experiences. I respected Ware’s work as a corespondent and wish him well. I also know that he has an important story to tell when the time is right.

Thousands of our kids, if they come home at all, are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan physically wounded and carrying the enormous weight of the emotional baggage picked up during their experience of war. This is nothing new, we brought back the same cargo from Vietnam, Korea and WW2. All wars provide their participants with a dismal tide of dark memories, the material of a lifetime of tortured nightmares.
Before the war in Vietnam the technology didn’t exist to enable the media to share graphically, on a nightly basis, much of the horror of war with a populace that voted for its architects, supported its escalation and cashed in on investments in defense technology. As the anti -war movement grew during the 60’s the powers that be, of the time, were slow to recognize that the graphic coverage of the realities of war were tending to make it less popular and further inflaming the protests.

After Vietnam they sought to shield a sensitive public from the potential trauma of witnessing some of the more unsavory sights and sounds of war in the comfort of their rec rooms. Hence the “embedding” of journalists with the troops, where their movements, access, and message could be tightly controlled and the taxpayers could be spared any overly depressing news and the screams could be erased or overdubbed with patriotic music or happy anchor chatter.

It seems to me that the people who pay for all this carnage, whose taxes fund the blood spatter and the limbs flying about, who have deducted from their paychecks the cost of cleaning up the brain matter smeared on those expensive armored Humvees, these folks have the right to see what they’re paying for. They have a right to see for themselves what their money and flag waving and blustering and chest thumping patriotic chanting produces.

I’ll go farther down that path and say that they have the duty, the solemn responsibility, to bear witness to what they have paid for and voted for and vocally supported. The general public should be required to help the troops they so blithely send into harm’s way carry the baggage that they bring home, all of it.

Help carry the sea bag, the big green heavy one, the one containing a large ball of fear and terror, and pain, and guilt and shame and yes, adrenaline and rage and overwhelming sadness. Parade a few blocks with that on your shoulders, wave a flag and whistle a happy tune.

Unfortunately the damages of war are not erased by a parade down Main Street.

A people that can’t tolerate the sights and sounds of war, the tortured  screams of the victims, the faces of the dead and dying, of the  orphaned and bereft, should probably stop investing in war industries and voting for chicken hawks who send other people’s kids to die and to kill in the racket that is war.

If we can’t revel in our murderous and bestial behavior, if we can’t wallow in the filth and gore, in the misery and degradation that is war, then it’s time to give it up.

Bob Higgins

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

The current hoo-hah over President Obama’s public statement of the obvious, that Muslims have the same rights as everyone else, to worship, to speak, to petition the government for redress, to get jiggy, and just about whatever, Dude, has had the media, the Republicans and a few chicken shit Democrats obsessing through the weekend and deep into today, with no end in sight.

This is, as usual, being driven by the same gang of Republicans who really don’t give a damn about the siting of this Islamic cultural center but do care deeply about sticking a knife in every vulnerable patch of flesh that the President and his party expose to their efforts.

They hope only to drive a wedge between the electorate, at least the fraction of it that cares about this sort of nonsense and the Prez and Democrats in general.

It is also, of course, being fanned by the completely irresponsible news media whose only concerns are notoriety, ratings, advertising dollars and maintaining a shallow pretext of objectivity.

This sort of behavior is a constant with Republicans, creating a large issue out of nothing, finding a mountain where all that exists is a molehill and wasting the public’s time picking fly shit out of pepper.

As a personal matter I don’t give a damn where mosques, churches, temples or other religious shrines and symbols are built as long as they don’t tear down decent saloons in the process.

To me, some things are more sacred than any of this religiosity.
Tim McVeigh, you remember Tim, the self identified Christian and follower of Richard Butler’s Aryan Nation and Neo Nazi aligned Christian Identity movement? I’m not sure Jesus Christ would have taken much pride in that outfit.

After McVeigh, the Identity Christian and certifiable patriot blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City there was no outcry to get Christian churches away from that hallowed ground.

We don’t bar Japanese tourists from visiting the USS Arizona Memorial although 1102 of our Sailors are entombed there, having been dispatched to the bottom of the harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

There is a large statue of Robert E Lee overlooking the graves of the dead of the Grand Army of the Republic as well as his own rebellious troops at Gettysburg. The dead don’t seem to care whose statues the pigeons defile.

I understand the objections expressed by many of the families of the victims of the al Qaeda attack but even among the families there is no unanimity on this issue, many of them welcome this project and have no objections to it.

I read Obama’s brief comments as a thoroughly responsible statement by a President seeking to uphold the law and the principles of the Constitution. By making an unequivocal statement on the legality and constitutional issues of the proposed construction, in the face of reprehensible and inflammatory commentary from the right, he performed an act of personal political courage.

For those who say that he walked the statement back a day later and waffled by saying that he did not, and would not speak to the wisdom of placing the Islamic cultural center at “Ground Zero,” that is a stance that he is required to take under the strictures of the establishment clause. He is not allowed to pick religious favorites before the law, nor is any one else in the government of the United   States.

Attend the church of your choice but don’t try to sell it around here, on company time, is the damn rule, it was penned by James Madison 233 years ago.

The nutcase right, driven like a “B” movie lynch mob by ill intentioned ideologues Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, John Cornyn, Sharron Angle and others of that “ilk” and abetted by acts of cowardice from a few Democrats, is once again being used as a tool to create yet another red herring to distract from the fact that they are without solutions, vision, ideas and simply suck at governance.

Their only message over the last three decades has been “cut taxes on the wealthy,” while working overtime to divide the electorate into manageable factions and keep them warring against each other.

Have a border problem; amend the Constitution, someone burns a flag, rewrite the Constitution, Civil rights inconvenient, trample them, disagree with someone’s method of prayer, change the law, make it illegal to be different, that guy got a free tuna sandwich, take to the streets for God, country and the American way. Lock them up, throw away the key… cue Superman theme.

In my primitive studies of history and in my time on this tortured and often ridiculous planet I’ve encountered no force more destructive to human life, to peace and harmony between peoples than religion and its various true believers.

For more than six decades, from the Suez Crisis and the eternal struggle in the Middle East in my childhood, through the burning Buddhists in Saigon as a young man, down to the present, where the fire of sectarian zeal burns as brightly as ever, I have found little to admire in any of the world’s religions.

I quit looking a long time ago.

You might be wondering about the apparent incongruity of the photograph attached to this piece but there is method afoot.

In the middle of this mosque deal, Obama spent a few days in the Gulf with his family in a combination mini vacation and Gulf coast cheer leading photo-op. While there he took his youngest daughter Sasha for a swim in the Gulf, off Alligator Point in St Andrews Bay just southeast of Panama City, Florida.

I’ve read a dozen mentions in the press of the fact that this is not in the “actual” Gulf of Mexico but an arm of it. The “event,” for those who would make an “event” out of a dip in the bay with one’s child, was photographed only by the White House photographer.

The president’s swim happened out of sight of the news media. The White House released an official photo, but The Associated Press does not publish such handout images. According to the White House, the Obamas swam off Alligator Point, which is in Saint Andrews Bay, not the Gulf. From: Julie Pace, Associated Press – Obamas take boat ride during Gulf vacation

The photograph is a screen capture from Google Earth and shows the proximity of Alligator Point and the “Actual Gulf of Mexico,” and the quarter mile wide inlet which connects the “two.” Click on the picture for a larger version and you will see that they share the same water, the same tides, the same fish and boats, and, now, the same oil and toxic Corexit. It looks to be about a half mile boat ride from Alligator Point to the “actual” Gulf.

Other reports from more rational sources are that rip tides kept the Obamas from the “actual” Gulf exposing them to further pettiness and more steely knives.
Bob Higgins

Related stories:
The Constitution and the Mosque

President Obama and Sasha Swim in the Gulf

With mosque remarks, Obama purposefully walks against the traffic

(Promoted by Steven D — title revised again to allow comments)

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

Sharron Angle, the Tea Bagger running against Harry Reid for the Senate in Nevada says that we should use Augusto Pinochet’s model of privatization as a guide for reforming our social security system.

Yes, Pinochet, the infamous fascist dictator and Nixon/Kissinger ally who engineered the subjugation of Chilean democracy in the 1970s.

Pinochet seized power from the democratically elected government of  Salvador Allende in a bloody, US backed military coup d’état in 1973.

Through torture, terror, murder, with the assistance of the CIA and corporate America his brutal regime held power until 1990.

This may be where Angle discovered her admiration for the “Second Amendment Solution” that she has recommended for removing Harry Reid and other people she deems “socialists.”

She wants to privatize Social Security along the Chilean model. This from Oskar Garcia at the Associated Press yesterday:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate says the  nation’s Social Security system needs to be privatized, and that it was  done before in the South American country of Chile.

Angle referred  to Chile at the opening of a campaign office in North Las Vegas while  explaining previous statements that the United States should phase out  its Social Security system.

“When I said privatize, that’s what I meant,” she said Thursday.

“I  thought we would have to go just to the private sector for a template  on how this is supposed to be done,” Angle said. “However, I’ve since  been studying, and Chile has done this.”

The Angle campaign quite naturally tried to walk her statements back a few paces but this puff of steam ain’t going back in the kettle.
Messing with Social Security and Medicare, two of the most successful social programs in our history is not a good path to travel in the upcoming election. Anyone who is watching the mood of the electorate from a vantage point within the confines of say, the inner solar system,  should be aware that an attempt to gut or cut these programs could be suicidal.

In addition to wanting to remodel Social Security according to the template provided by a notorious South American  Dictator,  she wants us to cut ties with the UN, shut down the IRS, the EPA and the Department of Energy.

She also wants to deny abortions to women even in cases of rape, and fired a barrage across my personal bow when she said that she’s against legal alcohol.  Give me a minute here, I’m a bit unsteady.

From a transcript of an interview with conservative talk show host Bill Manders:

Manders: I, too, am pro life but I’m also pro choice, do you understand what I mean when I say that.

Angle:  I’m pro responsible choice. There is choice to abstain choice to do contraception. There are all kind of good choices.

Manders:  Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

Angle:  Not in my book.

Manders:  So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?

Angle:  You know, I’m a Christian and I believe that God has a plan  and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all  kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

The Department of Education is also on her hit list, and she had  harsh criticism for the BP oil spill compensation fund, calling it a  “slush fund.”

As an election year this one is fast becoming a major “silly season” with all the comic opera tea bagger costumes and addle witted participants.

In addition to Angle we have the constant media barrage of Sarah Palin and her Wasillabilly clan,  Marg Baker the state rep candidate from Florida who wants to round up the brown ones “walking among us,” and put them in “internment camps, ” Rand Paul, and the hits just keep on coming.

I was going to mention Louie Gohmert, you know the idiot from Texas who is worried (or says he is… on the floor of the House of Reps) about “terrorist babies.”

I’m pretty sure that when that phrase exited the mouth of this knucklehead it was the first time I had ever heard the words “terrorist and babies” used together.

These people are silly but they’re also very scary, they don’t know the X-files was fiction.

But I’ll save that for another day, I need a drink, while it’s still legal.

I sure wouldn’t want to violate any laws, not with all these “Second Amendment Solutions” in the air.

Bob Higgins

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

Before I had a chance to finish my first cup of coffee this morning I was swatted with the news (from Al Jazeera) that Iraq says we “must stay until 2020.”

This shocking news came from Lieutenant General Babaker Zerbari and therein lies the crux of the problem. Zerbari is a Lieutenant General and Iraq’s most senior military officer.

We send Lieutenant Generals out for coffee and donuts in the morning. We have Bird Colonels sharpening pencils and Major Generals escorting defense lobbyists to strip clubs.
The Iraqis obviously know nothing about running a military operation and haven’t been paying attention these last seven years.

Why they would expect to get significant results, the record of victories that our military leadership is known for with such junior people running the show is beyond me.

Zerbari says that his forces aren’t ready to take over, this in spite of our years of rigorous training and the payment of countless billions of dollars to every level of Iraq’s military just to get them to fall in at roll call in the morning.

Zerbari says that our withdrawal will increase instability in the country and heaven knows the last thing we want to be responsible for is an unstable Iraq.

This will almost certainly put a glitch in our plans to leave Iraq before Labor Day.

“At this point, the withdrawal is going well, because they are still here,” Zerbari told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.

“But the problem will start after 2011 -the  politicians must find  other ways to fill the void after 2011. If I were  asked about the  withdrawal, I would say to politicians: the US army must  stay until the  Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020.”

Get it? In order to have a proper and orderly withdrawal we have to stay.

This is what happens when you put junior people in charge.

Bob Higgins

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

I turned on the news this morning and instantly received my first commercial message of the day. You’ve probably seen it, it’s a pitch from Time Warner which offers up well scrubbed “employees” who spend thirty seconds or so reading a script designed to convince us that they are “Moms,” “Dads,” and regular working schleps, just like us… pardon that – just like me.

The ad is an attempt to put a face on the faceless, to create the illusion that the giant soulless organization is really warm and fuzzy with a friendly beating heart and smells like fresh baked cookies.

Not to single out Time Warner here, they are no better or worse than the average avaricious media giant or the other corrupt and abusive corporations that rule our lives and will soon take complete control of our public affairs following the infamous “Citizens United” case.

There is a lot of this, I guess it’s Astroturf marketing, the attempt to convince the Rubes that “Citizens for Fair Taxes,” or “Patriots for Freedom,” (two fictional groups that I just made up) were created by, and are composed of, Ma and Pa Kettle “American Gothic” types rather than plutocrats and public relations land sharks with agendas and vested interests completely inimical to the facade created by their homey and benign sounding names, like… “Citizens United.”

BP, the oil spill company,is doing a lot of this, actually a mountain of it, spending 50 million bucks and perhaps much more in their attempt to put a local “Bubba” personality and a NOLA accent in front of the public as the face of their “massive cleanup” operation and the fulfillment of their responsibilities as “good corporate citizens.” That “cookie” thing again.
BP’s oil spill may end up costing them more in the repair of the public perception of their “brand” than they spend on the cleanup operation. There are reports from the Gulf that they are already scaling back, cutting the cleanup workforce by 10,000 people recently, and have been working hard at renaming the spill to either the “Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill,” or the “Deepwater Horizon Incident.”

Gotta protect that old corporate legacy but I like the original name, “The BP Oil Spill,” and I’ll continue using it thank you.

This stuff works though, this Astroturfing, this Orwellian practice of recasting snake oil as ambrosia. The “fair tax” is an example, I have heard a dozen of my saloon acquaintances express their preference for this nearly mythical program to replace the progressive income tax with something more to the liking of the fattest of the fat. The only appeal it has for them, that I can see, because I’ve never encountered anyone who can describe this “fair tax,” is the word fair. “Now that sounds good, fair… right?

Examples abound, the cleverly and cynically named “Patriot Act” which set a match to due process and the Bill of Rights is one, “Fair and Balanced at Fox “News” is another. In fact there is so much of this doublespeak in our culture right now that after a few hours of TV exposure to it my head begins to swell in confusion. But that’s a personal problem.

Not an example of “Astroturfing” but possibly an example of our modern gullibility and mindless acceptance of the crap we are bombarded with smacked me in the face in conversation with a friend the other day. We were talking about the “BP Oil Spill” and I mentioned the story I was working on at the time about the magically disappearing BP oil in the Gulf.

He told me that he wasn’t surprised by how fast the oil had left the scene because “after all” it was “light sweet crude.”

I was speechless for a moment, his comment had slapped me to a full stop in time.

“Light sweet crude,” I thought… I’ll bet it goes good with “fresh baked cookies,” … and “Kool Aid.”

Bob Higgins

Related stories and sources:

BP tries to rename oil spill

BP Fire 10,000 Cleanup Workers

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

For the last several days I’ve watched and read a steady stream of media coverage on the miraculous disappearance of more than a hundred million gallons of oil from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank on April 20 killing 11 workers the NOAA estimates that 206 million gallons of “light sweet crude” spewed  

from BP’s Macondo well field, fouling the waters of the Gulf,  shutting down much of the commerce of the surrounding region and creating a giant toxic bouillabaisse in which now swim whatever critters managed to survive poisoning, suffocation,  or being roasted alive.

The Feds now say, as reported by the NYT,
that 76% of the mess has either been picked up on the beaches, skimmed from the surface, captured by the containment process or burned off.  (I suppose breathing this stuff in the air as particulates is “perfectly safe.”)

At the risk of seeming a “Chicken Little” I’d like to point out that even if the reports of this “great disappearing” are true what is left is something on the order of 50 million gallons of crud in the Gulf or about the same as 5 Exxon Valdez spills.

So, while BP, the Government and our happy-go-lucky news media are fighting for places on the “where did all the oil go” bandwagon I see no cause for celebration.

I completely understand that everyone in the area wants to look out their windows and see people thronging to the beaches and fighting for restaurant
reservations.

They naturally “want their lives back,” and deservedly so, but because I have long experience (due to my status as a “geezer”) listening to lies from government, lies from business and lies from the media, I’m not buying it just yet.
I also know that government at all levels wants to put this disaster in the “solved” column and watch it diminish in the rear view mirror as the election approaches. The approach seems to be “if we say it is gone and no one can see it, then it must be gone.” It’s the “big lie” just repeat it often enough and the public will buy it, the media, after all,  will help in any way they can.

What happened to the giant underwater plumes of submerged oil that were reported late in June? Did they sink to the bottom under the influence of the mass quantities of dispersants injected into the gusher at the wellhead? Is this massive layer of sludge lying on the bottom,  stirred by currents and slowly being absorbed into the food chain? I don’t know the answers but I do know that everyone stopped talking about “underwater plumes of water” weeks ago.

We are being urged to return to the beaches, frolic in the waters, build castles in the sand, eat seafood in the restaurants, get back to work at fishing and above
all… continue drilling, before our hard pressed oil companies get frustrated with our excess of caution and leave the country for friendlier climes.

The well is temporarily capped and a relief well is in the process and this beast may be stopped completely in a few weeks. BP is so encouraged by this that they
are considering reopening the well because the reservoir still contains about 4 billion dollars worth of marketable crap:

BP left open the possibility that it could  someday drill a new path into the same undersea reservoir of oil, still  believed to hold nearly $4 billion worth of crude. Chief Operating  Officer Doug Suttles said that BP hadn’t considered the option yet but  that “we’re going to have to think about what to do with that at some  point.” St Petersburg Times

Four billion dollars worth of oil, hmm, at today’s prices, $80 a barrel and at our current rate of consumption  that’s nearly three days worth of oil for the thirsty old USA.  My, all this bother and trouble over three days worth of oil is beginning to make renewables look attractive.

I love seafood, nearly all of it. Living as I do in Ohio makes enjoying good seafood a rare event and given the prices this far inland, only an occasional treat. Prices for what is available since the shut down of Gulf fisheries have gone out of sight and the prospect of contamination has been real.

“If I put fish in a barrel of water and poured  oil and  Dove   detergent over that, and mixed it up, would you eat  that fish?”    asked Rusty
Graybill, an oysterman and shrimp and crab  fisherman    from Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish. “I wouldn’t feed it to  you   or my  family. I’m afraid someone’s going to get sick.” St Petersburg Times

My confidence in the safety of what is now being prepared for shipment is not buoyed by the “information” provided in the CNN video linked here.

The ponderously named National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is testing seafood as it is brought in, they sniff it. Honest, they have “experts”
for this and they are training more “experts as fast as they can.”If it doesn’t smell like oil it is sent to Seattle for further testing and chemical analysis. We are flying thousands of samples to Seattle for testing, we use jet fuel for this.

I have to stop here for a second and ask, “Isn’t this how we got into this awful oil dependency trap in the first place?” Why not fly in a lab or use the facilities at one of the Universities or research institutions in the Gulf area?

Beyond the oil contamination there remain the dispersant chemicals which were sprayed into the gusher with wild, wanton abandon, a practice which now looks like an attempt to create what is being celebrated as “the great disappearance.”

No one yet knows much about the toxicity and dangers to the environment, the threat to wildlife and human health of these products the foremost of which was
Corexit, a compound produced by an affiliate of BP and Exxon.  (They seem to be making money on this from every direction.)

“The relative toxicity of Corexit and other dispersants are difficult to determine due to a scarcity of scientific data.According to the manufacturer’s website, workers
applying Corexit should wear breathing protection and work in a ventilated area.  Compared with 12 other dispersants listed by the EPA, Corexit 9500 and  9527
are either similarly toxic or 10 to 20 times more toxic.  In another preliminary EPA study of eight different dispersants,  Corexit 9500 was found to be less toxic to some marine life than other  dispersants and to break down within weeks, rather than settling to the  bottom of the ocean or collecting in the water. None of the eight products tested are “without toxicity”, according to  an EPA administrator, and the ecological effect of mixing the  dispersants with oil is unknown, as is the toxicity of the breakdown  products of the dispersant. ”  From Wikipedia

There is little information about this product because the information is “proprietary” and BP and Exxon won’t release it, nor, it seems will they do the research to discover the facts about its potential dangers, or if they have done the research they aren’t divulging the results because, I guess … “its proprietary?”  The manufacturer’s safety data sheet states; with simple declarative audacity:

“No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product,” and later concludes “The potential human hazard is: Low.

As it stands the word from Seattle is that there are no procedures or protocols for testing the dispersants but according to NOAA official David Westerholm “tests show that, so far, “seafood reaching the marketplace is safe to eat.” Gulp.

In the past when I ordered my favorite crab cakes I didn’t have to choose between “Regular or Hi Test.”

Bon Appetit… Urp.

Bob Higgins

Related stories:  
Responders to Gulf
oil spill wrap up defining week
Seattle’s NOAA operation testing safety of Gulf fish
Scientists say dispersants haven’t made Gulf more toxic
U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk
Nelson blasts BP over ‘toxic brew’ of oil and dispersants in gulf

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins
I read a brief story yesterday from the AP about a restaurant in Phoenix, Mesa actually, .. that’s in Arizona … an upscale Mediterranean eatery, that in celebration of, or as a tribute to the Wold Cup of Football … that’s soccer… began serving Lion Burgers on their Mediterranean menu.

You read it right … Lion Burgers, the friggin’ “King of Beasts” on a friggin’ bun.

Cameron Selogie, the owner of “il Vinaio” (that means “The Wine Seller,” I had to look it up) reported that he couldn’t fry these babies up fast enough and had a waiting list of 100 eager customers licking their chops in anticipation of a taste of Leo.

Like many others around the globe who were aghast at loin of lion for lunch I expressed my outrage in an email and last night I received the following reply:

We do not serve lion at il Vinaio any longer.
Thank you for your  time. We do respect your opinion and apologize for offending you.

This was a polite and measured response to my email which, I admit, was penned (with my trademark subtlety) after a few beers:

I hope that your “lion burgers” kill several customers and you sick bastards are sued out of existence. Bob Higgins

Mr. Selogie probably didn’t expect the international disdain, the pickets outside his establishment, the hundreds of emails (some of them from sober people) and the death threats that ensued as a result of his exotic entrée.

As he said:

“I was led to believe they were not hunted, they were not shot, they were not abused,” Selogie said. “I feel I was misled by this.”

Speaking of subtlety, I have to appreciate “not hunted not shot, not abused,” as if being tossed on a plate and served up as lunch with a side of fries seems sensitive enough.

Apparently this is all perfectly legal as the Lions in question weren’t endangered (no, actually they were … dead) and the importation of African lions is permitted.

The meat is reported to have come from a “free range farm,” where the animals get fresh air and exercise before they are dispatched in an unknown but certainly non abusive manner and tenderly and respectfully placed on a sesame bun.

So, Arizona, where nannies or gardeners without papers are seen as a grave threat to the American dream, where driving while brown is probable cause for detention and arrest, adds to it’s list of quaint and curious behaviors.

Serving Lion meat is legal, according to the FDA, (a branch of our government) which makes sense when you realize that BP’s drilling and disaster response plan was approved by the Materials Management Service another branch of our government.

We are, after all, a nation of laws.

Bob Higgins

Source: Phoenix restaurant serves lion burgers despite protests

[Editor’s note: This began as a comment this morning to “Oil spill: The nightmare becomes reality” a Carl Hiaasen piece on the arrival of BP’s poisonous gusher of crud on the shores of Pensacola.]

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

Carl,

You’re right; it is difficult for people living far from our coasts to feel the horrible weight of this disaster.

I live in Ohio but have lived on the coasts of California and North Carolina. I have also lived through and helped clean up an oil spill near San Francisco in 1970 or thereabouts. I have friends and family though who have never seen or at least never lived near the sea and had it become, as seems inevitable to me, a part of them.
If you sit on a hill overlooking your local harbor or coastal area (a fat dune will do) and watch the ebb and flow of the ocean, its cycle of life, through days and nights, its tides, the winds shifting from onshore to offshore, the ceaseless march of crabs and gulls of all the limitless life of the sea you will soon notice another ebb and flow.

If you watch carefully you will see the people of the coast as they come to the water for their food, for their work, for play, for the simple enrichment of their souls. Watch them as their boats go to sea and return, as shops and restaurants and parking lots fill and empty, as beaches are walked and waves are ridden and music wafts on the salt breeze, as lines are cast and reeled in, as castles are built in the morning sand and washed away by the evening tide.

It is greed that interrupted this human tide, greed and arrogance and haste and insensitivity to life beyond my understanding.

Sickening? Yes, this oil, this poison brings a sickness of the senses, of sight and touch and smell … it poisons air and water, killing all it contacts, but it also brings a sickness of the soul, of the heart which many will not survive.

Some who do not survive this outrage, this insult to Earth and man, live far from the coast but still hear the surf and feel the spray and the wind and the laughing gulls and the sounds of children at play with castles and kites.

This evil event, this tragedy of human irresponsibility, this monstrous crime of rampant greed kills the idea, the very memories of Earth and peace and safe tranquil places and replaces them with a horizon of derricks, a landscape of refineries, terrible vistas of smog and smoke and burning choking realities of filth and death.

The wars that we wage against each other will never be won. They are not meant to be won, only waged, to be carried on continuously, gathering resources and wealth and power in an ugly and lustful cycle of futility.

The war that we wage against this Earth, our earth, can only be lost.

Bob Higgins

Related story:
You Are Still Underestimating How Deadly the BP Gulf Oil Spill Will Be

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

Oil giant Chevron, in the wake of one of the world’s worst environmental disasters in the Gulf of Mexico is dragging its corporate feet over Canadian requests for increased safety procedures at a deep water well off the coast of Newfoundland. The company’s Lona O-55 exploratory well is about 258 miles northeast of St. John’s, in the Orphan Basin.

BP’s out of control gusher in the gulf is just over 5000 feet deep while the Chevron well off the Canadian coast is 8,530 feet beneath the surface.
If the pressure of the water column at the site of the BP wellhead is 40,000 lbs per square foot (277 lbs/sq. in.)  the pressure of the water column at the site of the  Chevron well would be over 68,000 lbs per square foot (473 lbs/sq. in.) The pressures in the reservoir of BPs Gulf well are in the  neighborhood of 12,000 lbs/sq. in. after you add up the weight of the  water column and the thousands of feet of mud and rock above the  reservoir. (water at 8 lbs/cu. ft – rock at 160 lbs/ cu. ft.)

Chevron says that a relief well isn’t necessary; according to their “Atlantic Manager,” Mark McLeod:

“We believe all wells  can be drilled incident free. We believe this  well will be drilled  incident free and we won’t need a relief well.”

Apparently Chevron’s managers and technocrats are suffering under the same the same level of arrogance as their counterparts at BP.  I mean really “what could go wrong?”

Canada’s regulations for offshore drilling are more stringent than those called for here in the oil coddling US and require that the planning and equipment necessary to drill a relief well be in place as the main hole is being drilled. This is a costly requirement but one that in a rear view mirror image of the Gulf of Mexico now looks like a bargain.

As depths and pressures increase the farther below the surface and the deeper into the guts of the Earth we drill, the difficulties, dangers and potential for catastrophic outcomes increase at an even greater rate.

Given what we have seen with BP’s disastrous gusher, their failures of management and physical systems, I think that we should require the drilling of a relief well concurrent with the main bore and redundancy in blow out prevention and other safety systems, in all deep offshore wells no matter what the expense, or,  stop drilling at such depths and under such conditions.

If these requirements drive up the price at the pump, so be it.  We are going to pay the costs of catastrophe anyway by the time BP does their taxes and sticks us up at the refinery and the pump.  After all is said and done, applying such realities to the price of oil will make renewable energy sources more competitive and help to hasten the end of our use of fossil fuels.

It seems to me that we should be less concerned with the odds of “an incident” occurring and much more concerned with the potential for catastrophic outcomes resulting from the occurrence of  “any incident.”

This ain’t “beanbag” they’re playing in our oceans, this game is for keeps, ask the people who depend on the Gulf for their livelihood;  hell, ask a pelican or a dolphin.

I don’t really care what Mark McCleod “believes.” We know from the record so far what BP’s management “believed,” we know that they dragged their feet over safety, over planning and other considerations for undesired outcomes, and we are now paying the costs of their arrogance and will continue to do so for many years.

McLeod also made this statement which I find doubly strange in light of his earlier statement declaring that all wells would be drilled “incident free:”

“I will have to say as you’re drilling a second  well you’re exposing people to the risk of drilling each well, so you’re effectively doubling the risk,” MacLeod said.

What should be immediately placed under serious consideration is the establishment of a National Energy Trust modeled along the lines of Norway’s program which would place all Energy under federal control and guidance and begin the formulation of a sane plan for our successful transition beyond the fossil fuel age.

With continued growth of population, the onset of climate change, and increased competition for all resources including food and water it is time for us to protect the commons from corporate usury while we still have something left to protect.

Bob Higgins

Related story:
Chevron: No relief well needed off Newfoundland

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins

“We need to be realistic about operating in a mile of water”

Tony Hayward, the cherubic little weasel who serves as the front man for British Petroleum, BP, Beyond Pathetic or whatever they are calling their ‘brand’ this week, made the statement above, on camera to reporters while standing on an oil fouled Louisiana beach a couple of weeks ago.

Earlier that day I had a fairly heated argument with an elderly acquaintance who recently became enraptured by the ‘Teabaggers.’ This giddy political infatuation has had the gruesome effect of making him more of a pain in the ass than he was previously.  At one point in the ‘discussion’ he asked me why BP was drilling at 5000 feet below the surface and I told him that most of the ‘easy oil’ has been used up and drilling is increasingly taking place in ever riskier and more technologically challenging sites.

His angry retort was ‘Bullshit, the tree huggers won’t let them drill in shallow water.’

I tried to point out that there are nearly 4000 active oil platforms in the Gulf at depths ranging from a few feet to more than two miles but it was like talking to a wall… or a Teabagger; I gave up and drank my beer.

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are:
‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Ronald Reagan used the line above at campaign stops from coast to coast during the 1980 election and all the yokels got a big kick out of it.  By yokels I mean the thirty percent of the electorate that believes in free markets, creationism, drill baby drill and the Tooth Fairy.

Yokels, the people who appeared as ‘hard hats,’ the ‘silent majority’ who supported the war in Vietnam and Nixon’s ‘peace with honor,’ then morphed into anti government Reaganites, who stood and saluted when they heard the quote above. It was the same crowd, following the same ‘message’ of ‘get big gubament off our backs’ that became backers of the Cheney/Bush administration and today get all gooey eyed in the presence of knuckleheads like Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Michelle Bachman and other purveyors of far right quackery.

You know them … yokels.

For more than thirty years I’ve watched the antics of this crowd of semi literate, anti social yahoos as they resisted every social program, every attempt by government to regulate the excesses of business, fought against civil rights and equal rights for women against every scientific step forward, and created a dangerously toxic atmosphere of nativist intolerance, jingoistic American exceptionalism and anti intellectualism that today clouds every corner of our public discourse from the halls of congress to the corner tavern.

After the OPEC blockade of 73-74 many people awoke to the realities and dangers of our near total dependence on oil and fossil fuels and turned their thoughts and efforts toward renewable energy solutions like solar, wind and geothermal. Visionaries of the time even spoke of tidal and wave energy as future sources; this was thirty five years ago.

Upon taking up residence in the White House Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof, spoke out on behalf of a national energy policy, expanded the strategic petroleum reserve and began to lead the dialogue on America’s renewable energy future.  I began to hope that we were finally boarding the right train.

And then the yokels, led by their noses by the oil driven and money hungry business community and an out of control defense establishment elected Ronald Reagan.

“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles,” declared Reagan; then, in a classic example of leading from the front, he had the solar panels removed from his roof. It was a clear statement that would set the tone for future energy policy and place control of the game in the hands of the energy moguls.

Control of the nation’s energy ‘policy’ by corporations solidified with the election of the Cheney/Bush administration, a time when the oiligarchs of ‘Cheney’s ‘Energy Task Force‘ were practically installed in offices down the hall from the Co-President from Halliburton.

And then along came al Qaeda.

A glance through the headlines of the last month or any equal period in the last decade should reveal an enemy far more sinister and dangerous than anyone fitting some stereotypical profile of the swarthy Middle Eastern zealot with bombs in his shoes, anthrax laced baby powder or incendiary skivvies.

No terrorist or terrorist organization has ever dreamed and certainly never succeeded in wreaking the financial havoc on this country, and the world at large, as have the bankers and brokers of our ‘business’ community. (For those old and unlucky enough to remember 1929; this was their second shot at our destruction) The harm caused by their carefully crafted schemes to enrich themselves at the expense of citizens, taxpayers,and their own shareholders and customers exceed by orders of magnitude anything conjured up by the most fanciful “terror movie of the week” screenwriter.

No terrorist in memory has managed to pull off the environmental damage and potential suffering of BP’s epic fouling of one of the world’s most productive, beautiful and important bodies of water in a toxic spill caused by a sordid combination of institutional negligence, criminal penny pinching, regulatory corruption, and felonious irresponsibility.

“But the terrorists killed almost 3000 of our citizens on 9/11,” you may say.

How many people died and are still dying due to Union Carbide’s crimes in Bhopal. How many died and are still dying in Nigeria, in Ecuador and dozens of other locations on nearly every continent due to the criminal behavior of large corporations.

The unholy collusion between insurance companies, their lobbyists, the US Chamber of Commerce and the resulting lack of health insurance for forty million of our people kills an estimated 45,000 people every year and I have seen no “War on Insurance Companies.”

Faisal Shahzad, the “wanna bomber” whose almost comically bungled attempt to plant a car bomb in Times Square fizzled in every way, occupied the bubble heads of cable news for weeks. In terms of actual destruction his caper was a big zilch but it completely upstaged the gushing toxic plume that even then was spreading inexorably through the Gulf of Mexico and now threatens the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions and the ecosystem of most of our southern coast.

I would like someone to spend a day on a research project for which there will be no reward but my profound gratitude:

1. Take out a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle creating two columns. Label one column ‘Terrorists’ and the other ‘Corporations.’
2. Now, using Google and the Internet and beginning with the year 1950 or 1984 (Bhopal) or any date of your choosing,list all the acts, events, ‘accidents’ and crimes historically attributed to corporations or terrorists and enter them on your paper in the appropriate column.

I’ve done this as a thought experiment (I’m too lazy and disorganized to write the list) and when I have, the same pattern always emerges. Large corporations are more dangerous, by far, than al Qaeda or any other non state terrorist groups that you can name… in the aggregate.

This brings to mind the often misquoted line from the bandit in the Huston/ Bogart classic ‘Treasure of the Sierra Madre: ”We don’t need no badges.’

Real life villains don’t always fit the visual bill as if sent over from the casting department. The real villains aren’t necessarily swarthy, shifty eyed guys wearing turbans or sombreros, swinging from monkey bars with AK’s in their teeth, draped with bandoleers of bullets. Most of the really, really bad guys look like Tony Hayward, like shitweasels with silk neckties, Gucci shoes and MBAs.

Terrorists, who needs them? Corporations are doing a better, far more efficient job of destroying the world, its economy, its ecology and its people than a bunch of ‘stinking’ terrorists.

Bob Higgins