New evidence reveals US downplayed affect of BP spill on wildlife

Dead Sperm Whale after the Gulf disaster

We have written numerous blogs about the tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the consequences of it that will not be fully known for years, including the effect on BlueFin tuna and other marine life that spawn there.

Like Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans as well as the failure of the Bush Administration to respond to it, the BP spill has quietly disappeared from the big business media.  The events of 911 although far less destructive than Katrina or the BP spill are kept in our collective memory as it is the result of foreigners we are told and is always useful in energizing domestic support for US foreign policy and its predatory wars.  The destruction that Katrina and the BP spill caused were results of domestic failure, no need to let the public in on the details of this.

But Greenpeace has information that the US government kept details of the BP spill and its damage to wildlife from the public's eye.  This shouldn't surprise us. 

The Guardian UK reported today:

"The images from the summer of 2010 were undoubtedly gruesome: the carcass of a young sperm whale, decayed and partially eaten by sharks, sighted at sea south of the Deepwater Horizon oil well.
It was the first confirmed sighting of a dead whale since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April that year – a time of huge public interest in the fate of whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other threatened animals – and yet US government officials supressed the first reports of the discovery and blocked all images until now.

The photographs, along with a cache of emails obtained by the campaign group Greenpeace under freedom of information provisions and made available to the Guardian, offer a rare glimpse into how many whales came into close contact with the gushing BP well during the oil spill.

They also show Obama administration officials tightly controlling information about whales and other wildlife caught up in the disaster."

Where the Mississippi meets the Gulf of Mexico for a distance of 150 miles out was referred to as The Dead Zone prior to the BP spill as life was absent there due to the runnoff from farmland with all the poisons and fertilizers used in industrial farming.  Who knows what the BP spill has done, it is likely we will never know the full impact of this catastrophe, or the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.  We can be certain that the government will not inform us as this information provided by Greenpeace shows.

Read the rest of the article at the Guardian UK.

New Study Shows BP Spill in the Gulf of Mexico Worse Than Thought

Who didn’t know this. They want us to forget about it and the 11 workers that died. The spawning grounds of Yellowfin Tuna are here and who knows what that will do to the next generations. There is also the stuff they spray on the oil to dissipate it. But the most important piece of information that is missing is what Facts For Working People pointed out at the time.We wrote:

“The Minerals Management Service is an agency of the Interior Department that was supposed to regulate deep water drilling but left the regulation up to the industry itself."  We quoted the NY Times that said the Interior Dept investigation revealed that: “Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week. The report said that investigators "could not discern if any fraudulent alterations were present on these forms." Inspector General’s Inquiry Faults Regulators, NY Times 5/24/2010

We share this article from the Guardian.com for the interest of our readers.  

Deepwater Horizon disaster had much worse impact than believed, study finds. 

Effects of 2010 BP oil spill were 30% larger than calculated

Satellite images unable to detect full extent of pollution in Gulf

Oil released from the Deepwater Horizon well stains the Gulf of Mexico, on 10 June 2010. A new study argues satellite imagery was unable to detect the full extent of toxic oil. Photograph: Maxar Technologies Handout/EPA

The environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico a decade ago was much worse than previously believed, according to a new study.

The 2010 rig explosion, which killed 11 workers and sent oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, triggered one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. It released 206m gallons of oil from BP’s Macondo well, according to US government estimates, affecting wildlife and water-quality along hundreds of miles of Gulf coastline.

At its height, 88,522 sq miles of sea were closed to fishing because of the spill, according to a federal report.

But a new study published on Thursday in the Science Advances journal says satellite surveillance at the time was unable to detect large areas of oil contamination.

The study’s authors found that the effects of the spill were 30% larger, reaching the Texas shore, the Florida Keys, the coast of Tampa and parts of the east coast of Florida. “The satellite footprint does not necessarily capture the entire oil spill extent,” the study found.

Using in-situ observations, oil spill transport modeling using three-dimensional computer simulations, as well as testing for oil concentration ranges in marine organisms, the paper claims that “that large areas of the GoM were exposed to invisible and toxic oil that extended beyond the boundaries of the satellite footprint and the fishery closures”.

“When the oil comes to the surface, it comes as a thick layer that you can easily see with a satellite,” Claire Paris-Limouzy, one of the study’s authors and a professor of ocean sciences at the University of Miami, told CNN.

The discrepancy between their results and official estimates is because small concentrations of oil are often invisible to satellite imagery. “You can actually smell it but can’t actually see it,” Paris-Limouzy said.

London-based BP, which leased the rig from Transocean, declined to comment on the study’s findings.

A Transocean report into the disaster largely blamed BP, claiming the company failed to properly assess, manage and communicate risk, and said cement contractor Halliburton and BP did not adequately test the cement slurry used to seal the well.

BP’s own internal report placed blame on a cascade of failures by multiple companies. A US government investigation also identified multiple sources for the accident.

BP subsequently spent or committed tens of billions of dollars to clean up the mess and compensate victims, and ultimately sold off its US arm. Transocean reached a $211m settlement with businesses and individuals claiming damages, while Halliburton reached a $1bn settlement.

A bipartisan investigatory commission appointed by the Obama administration pointed to crew and technical failures in the explosion, but cited overall safety shortcomings by regulators and the oil industry.

But safeguards in place to prevent a similar accident in future have been progressively eased by the Trump administration’s push to expand drilling off the country’s coasts.

The new assessment of the Macondo spill’s extent is timely, the authors wrote, because “with a global increase in petroleum production–related activities, a careful assessment of oil spills’ full extent is necessary to maximize environmental and public safety”.

Type BP Oil Spill in to the search box on this blog and read what FFWP wrote about this market driven catastrophe when it happened or go to this link: https://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/search?q=bp+oil+spill

Lessons From The Exxon Valdez Prove That BP's Gulf Spill Will Be Far Worse. Make Sure We Pass This History On To Our Children

Like a scene from the Normandy Invasion isn't it?

Left: Cleaning up after the Exxon Valdez spill, a catastrophe that doesn't receive much air time these days but in some ways a far worse disaster than 911. But why would they whip up anger for this, the enemy is much more clearly a domestic one?

The collapse of Stalinism was not the only major event of 1989. What up until now was the largest oil spill in history occurred when the Exxon Valdez oil tanker rammed a reef off the Alaskan coast. It was later claimed that the captain was drunk.

The Exxon Valdez spill has been dwarfed by the spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the sinking of BP’s Deep Water Horizon rig. The Valdez spill has been estimated at about 11 million gallons. At an estimated  205.8 million gallons the Gulf spill is much much worse.

Serving its corporate masters, the US government paints a very optimistic picture of the Gulf in the aftermath of the catastrophe, claiming that about 75% of the spill has been manually removed or broken down by nature. These figures remind me of the incredible accuracy they attribute to their weapons of mass destruction, you know, the ones that blow up guests at weddings in Afghanistan. The death of Pat Tillman, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or lack thereof, are other examples of government information at its best.

But some scientists dispute the Obama administration’s glowing reports. It seems painfully obvious that we have no idea how much oil was spilled and it is most likely much higher than claimed, scientists also point out that the dispersants used are also environmental contaminants. The effects of these ecological catastrophes will not be fully known for years and will last for centuries. The effects of the BP spill on the Bluefin Tuna that spawn in the Gulf in April will also not be known for some time. A group of people from Louisiana went to Alaska recently and what they discovered can give us a small glimpse of the destruction that these market driven catastrophe’s leave in their wake.

The Washington Post published an account of the visit and what the folks from the Gulf found there. The much smaller Valdez spill changed a community forever and not for the better. It destroyed the lives of fishermen and the lives of indigenous villages not to mention the wildlife. The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council has masses of information on the spill and its aftermath. Twenty years ago the Alaskan government wrote that, “…the human and natural losses were immense-to fisheries, subsistence livelihoods, tourism, wildlife. The most important loss for many who will never visit Prince William Sound was the aesthetic sense that something sacred in the relatively unspoiled land and waters of Alaska had been defiled.” One can only speculate as to how bad it is now.

The Post article gives us some idea, describing how the life of one fisherman was affected: “Platt was 28 when the spill happened. Now he is pushing 50 and has no health insurance, no retirement fund and three sons whom he can't help pay for college. "I am no better off than that 20-some-year-old kid," he says. Platt's undoing didn't come the year of the spill or even the year after it. Herring, a fish the natives call "the grass of the ocean," was still abundant in 1990 when Platt bought a herring fishing permit for about $230,000. No one knew then that the herring were dying. Or that once they were gone, they wouldn't soon come back.

Well isn’t America just the best country in the world. A man works 25 years and ends up with no health care, no retirement and his children have to borrow from moneylenders if they want a decent education. Why doesn’t he just pull himself up by his bootstraps like George Bush and Warren Buffet have done?

Another fisherman describes his observations:
In 1990, he says, they began behaving oddly. Instead of laying their eggs in a row, the herring would leave them in pyramids or in stacks. A year later, they started reabsorbing their eggs. "We were freaking out because they weren't spawning," Renner says. In 1992, he noticed lesions, evidence that disease had taken hold of their population.

"And then they died," Renner says. "So we quit herring fishing, and that was devastating to this town."

I always thought that you don’t necessarily need a PhD in marine biology to figure out that sea life is affected by pollution; 25 years fishing in the ocean for a living teaches us a thing or two.

The Spill Council estimates that 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs were lost in the Exxon disaster although it is really impossible to tell. Apparently, some of the affected have been restored except the Herring population but I do not believe that things can be put back to normal.

The Exxon Valdez spill also destroyed the delicate balance that existed in the communities of native Alaskans also. The Post article describes it:

"The food is what I remember the most," says Meadow Dermer, who was 9 at the time of the spill. Before 1989, she and other children would play on the beach, picking salmonberries from bushes, prying gumboot chitons from rocks and digging clams. But after the spill, she says, she was no longer allowed to walk the beach, let alone eat what she found.

"We couldn't eat the deer, because they ate the oiled seaweed," Dermer says.

"And we couldn't eat seal, because they were swimming in it.

To compensate for the loss of such staples, Exxon started shipping in processed food. Suddenly Dermer was aware of Twinkies and Spam and Cheetos. She tried beef for the first time at age 10.

"That was the year I started to gain a whole bunch of weight," Dermer says."

There will no doubt be more obesity and death connected to Exxon’s new dietary practices.

In the recent class action settlement suit, Exxon was ordered to pay about $1 billion in damages and interest which is far below the $5 billion asked. Typical of the boss, they dragged it out, going through the courts like Union leaders do when worker’s rights are violated so that before the case was settled, 6000 plaintiffs died.

As far as the Gulf spill is concerned, the government’s claim that most of the oil has gone is conscious deception. The government is the government of the “people” but which “people” is the important issue here. The US government, as it did in Alaska, and as it is doing with BP, is defending a global corporation and more importantly, the capitalist system itself and the capitalist class that govern it. Exxon simply had a bad apple, a drunk in charge of an oil tanker, although they refused to charge him for that. BP had an incompetent guy in charge of the Gulf operations so they sent him packing off to Siberia with a guaranteed $1 million a year retirement package. Even when it comes to clean up after these disasters, the money is scarce, “Recognizing that funding for future restoration is limited..” the Spill Council says, “…the Council’s efforts are now focused on making an organized and strategic transition to a modest program.”

We should think long and hard about this so called reality. “Funding is limited”, “modest program.” These terms are not used when it comes to the trillions US capitalism spends on its predatory wars.

The destruction of the environment is an area that the left in particular has not given sufficient attention to, fortunately that is changing as I think, as others do, that the issue of the environment may well be the most important issue workers must take up in our struggle for a better world, after all, if we can’t eat or breathe, a job is not much help. . Capitalism cannot protect the environment, cannot produce the necessities of life ---food, energy, power, housing---in harmony with nature because the object of capitalist production is profit, the area of production that produces this profit is incidental. Profit, and the accumulation of wealth, for the owners of the production process, will always trump safety, the environment and human welfare, even their own.

While the planet will long outlast the economic system we call capitalism, its ability to provide our needs, what we require to live a decent, secure existence is finite. Capitalism even at the present cannot feed most of the world’s people, cannot provide for us a secure life that will allow us to develop our human potential. It will destroy life on this planet as we know it unless we consciously abolish it and replace it with a system of production based on human needs that is in harmony with nature.

Reading the Washington Post article I felt both sadness and anger. But as Joe Hill, who hopefully will one day be more familiar to our youth than a sports or TV personality said:

"Don’t Mourn, Organize. “

With the ban on drilling in the Gulf, big business breathes a sigh of relief, blames the government for hurting workers and our communites. Aren't they nice.

BP spill that killed 11 workers and an ecosystem

You have to hand it to the Wall Street Journal editorial board that has, to use a fellow blogger’s term, some neck on it. A journal editorial today has a go at Obama and his administration for hypocrisy, basically for violating his own promises when he announced back in 2009 that, “The days of science taking a backseat to ideology are over.”

The reason for the Journal’s moral stand is the ban on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that the administration introduced in the wake of the BP oil spill disaster and lifted last month. The Department of Interior’s Inspector General (IG), Mary Kendall, issued her findings last week on the effects of the ban and whether or not it was justified. The Journal seizes on one aspect of what it describes as a “lackluster” investigation, the report’s confirmation that “the moratorium never had any basis in science or safety. It was pure politics.

Apparently, Dept. of the Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar had publicly stated that the drilling ban was made with consultation and “peer review” by experts, seven of them no less, “identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” Well, it appears this is not so, and the Journal can prove it. Some shenanigans went on here. Hence, the moral indignation from the principle journal of US capitalism that the decision to ban drilling was not a scientific one made with the interests of all US society in mind, but a political one serving only the interests of the party in power, trying to shift blame from itself to the oil industry.

The ban was a political decision made to “deflect political blame from the White House and on to industry”, says the Journal------poor old BP. The catastrophic disaster that killed 11 workers increased anger and hatred of the energy industry, the oil companies in particular, and this caused some concern among sections of the capitalist class; after all, it came on the heels of the financial collapse, bankers were already hated and they didn’t want class polarization to increase around an environmental disaster; they want the Exxon Valdez to disappear from memory also and the BP spill wasn’t helping there. The ban was in response to public anger.

The spill thretaened US/Anglo relations

Some opposition was directed in to nationalist channels attacking BP for being a “foreign” corporation, and its CEO not being an American. A bit of a boycott of some BP gas stations developed which was a little safer but the social mood is such that there is always a potential for an explosion, better to blame the government, so the Journal attempts to gain public sympathy and direct the blame away from the industry to the state by attacking the ban for inflicting “government imposed pain on a gulf region hit by the BP oil spill.” To deflect this blame, “thousands of Gulf Coast jobs may have been sacrificed”. The decision “to shut down an entire industry” was done with “a huge cost to jobs and long-term drilling safety” the Journal adds.

How caring, I’m almost convinced that the editors of the Wall Street Journal, and its thuggish owner, Rupert Murdoch, actually care about jobs and the environment.

They are all liars and crooks; we know this. Their entire system is based on lies and robbery. These methods are the standard weapons of the capitalist class as different sections vie for the right to dominate economic and political life in order to plunder the wealth of society. Their principle deceptions are for us, that’s really what this internal difference is about, influencing public opinion. This is evident when the Journal, trying to score points against the present administration, drags in the Minerals Management Service to back up its claim that no experts were consulted on the decision to ban drilling. The former head of the MMS, Elizabeth Birnbaum reveals that she was only told about the decision by a deputy and “after the fact”. The decision was made by the Interior Secretary and Obama, the Journal reveals and wants hearings to delve further. They are intent on rooting out socialism in Washington DC.

The Minerals Management Service is an agency of the Interior Department that was supposed to regulate deep water drilling but left the regulation up to the industry itself. It’s has no credibility either and the Journal knows it. The New York Times pointed out earlier this year that an Interior Dept investigation revealed that “Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week. The report said that investigators "could not discern if any fraudulent alterations were present on these forms." (1)

It’s almost comical were it not part of a social tragedy, “filling in reports in pencil”? Can you imagine it! But allowing the oil industry to regulate itself, there’s one for you. The IG investigation also found that, “inspectors had accepted meals, tickets to sporting events and gifts from at least one oil company while they were overseeing the industry.” And Karzai's corrupt?

The Wall Street Journal’s chutzpa is what amazes. Talk about lies and distortions; this is the same paper that supported Bush’s lies and murderous wars. But there’s no side that working people can support here. Both capitalist parties have been around as the Minerals Management Services allowed the likes of Shell, BP, Exxon and Chevron to have a free reign when it came to their activity. Both parties allowed the S&L crisis, waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and brought the economy to the edge of the abyss with the present Financial Crisis,

At least we can get pleasure being able to witness such events like these, a back and forth between contending bourgeois. It is unfortunate that what's missing is that we don't have our own independent political party that can take advantage of this squabble between thieves.

(1) NYT Inspector General’s Inquiry Faults Regulators

Boeing 737 MAX: Another Sham Senate Investigation

157 people murdered by capitalism: Source

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

It’s very handy that a corporation is a person in the US. That’s why when we read about issues involving their activity, especially concerns about safety and public safety in particular, we often read that GM said this or Google says that.

As far as I can recall, British Petroleum (BP) was quite chatty during the horrendous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This spill was not a “mistake” any more than the crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft were mistakes. In early 2010, the New York Times pointed out in with regards to the BP spill that an Interior Dept investigation revealed that, “Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week. The report said that investigators "could not discern if any fraudulent alterations were present on these forms." (1)

In yesterday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg stated that “Boeing” made mistakes and in response to Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s  (D., Conn.) accusation that Boeing was engaged in a “pattern of deliberate concealment” by blaming pilot error for the crashes and that “Boeing” had lied, Muilenburg replied, “The premise that we would lie or conceal is not consistent with our values.”  They love that phrase don’t they. Muilenburg received about $23 million in total compensation in 2018, including a $13.1 million incentive payment. These are the only values he respects.

There are countless examples of such tragedies. The catastrophic effects of the BP spill will not really be known for decades. It’s almost comical that the US government, one “of the people by the people” would hand over the writing of rules for deep water drilling to the energy company doing the drilling. Eleven workers died due to that “mistake” by BP. 

A dead sea turtle lies in oil in Louisiana's Barataria Bay in 2010. Source

I wrote some time ago about the aftermath of the famous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and what it meant for the local community. In a Washington Post article from September 2010 a fisherman describes his observations about the Herring after the Valdez spill:

“In 1990, he says, they began behaving oddly. Instead of laying their eggs in a row, the herring would leave them in pyramids or in stacks. A year later, they started reabsorbing their eggs.

"We were freaking out because they weren't spawning," Renner says.

In 1992, he noticed lesions, evidence that disease had taken hold of their population.

"And then they died," Renner says. "So we quit herring fishing, and that was devastating to this town."

The Senate investigation is just another sham performance for the public to show in Bob Dylan’s words:

“That the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled” 2

It is not as if the public are not aware of this. There is just a general feeling that we can’t change it and there is no alternative. Workers have no political voice, no political party. We are watching the representatives of capitalism debate among themselves how best to get out of this “mistake” and protect the system they govern.

The system will not be questioned. An individual might be the fall guy, that is a possibility as the death of over 350 people is no small matter and Muilenburg told Trump after the Ethiopian crash that “aircraft was safe and did not need to be grounded” . The Boeing CEO also praised Trump saying, “He cares about business and he creates open communication lines, and we will have differences from time to time, we may not agree on every topic,”

What is more important is the industry itself. Boeing, is the second largest defense contractor receiving $104 billion in unclassified defense contracts between 2014 and 2018 according to reports. US capitalism is the world’s largest purveyor of weapons of mass destruction often supplying both sides in conflicts. What a deal that is.

Like the auto industry, the energy industry, and all the major industries crucial to the needs of what should be a civilized, humane society, Boeing should be taken in to public ownership and its productive capacity used for social need not profits. It is the rapacious quest for profits that is the root cause of these so-called mistakes. They are not “mistakes” they are market driven, an inherent aspect of capitalist production.

A government “for the people by the people” is not a bad slogan. The question though is, which people.

(1) NYT Inspector General’s Inquiry Faults Regulators

(2) The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

BP oil spill and the Bluefin. The Gulf Catastrophe's Global Effects

Left: the Giant Bluefin Tuna
“Once they get to full size, there’s nothing that can catch them other than humans” says Bill Fox of the World Wildlife Fund. He is talking of the giant Bluefin Tuna which can weigh more than 500 pounds by adulthood.  The key issue here is reaching adulthood.

The Japanese consume most of the world’s Bluefin, about 80% or 52,000 tons according to the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. This giant fish spawns in the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico. The debate raging among some scientists now is how much damage has the catastrophic oil spill in the gulf affected the Bluefin population?                             

The Bluefin is an amazing fish that can live up to forty years. The males spawn in the Gulf of Mexico from March to June, around the same time as the spill which began in April. The males spawn at the surface and need clean water to do so. The concern is that while doing so this year, they may have become coated with BP’s oil. The effects will not be easy to gauge for three or four years when the Bluefin born this year will reach adult size according to one scientist. Business Week reports that the Bluefin population worldwide has declined dramatically, as the population of many species have due to overfishing and pollution. One large Tuna in Japan fetched $177,000 dollars---this is a valuable commodity for those capitalists that speculate and invest in food.

All the talk of gulf clean up, which incidentally revolves mostly around cost and the future of BP or the oil industry-----in other words, profits, obscures one basic truth; you cannot “clean up” the effects of such a catastrophic environmental disaster. The effects of these events last for centuries and the damage to the planet’s ecosystem is dire. I don’t believe you have to be a scientist or “expert” to reach this conclusion. It takes nature centuries to recover, and it will never be the same.

Left: What do you think this does to fish?
There are attempts to shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels. Spain and Germany for example now produce almost one third of their electricity from “renewable” sources, like wind and solar power. But this can only go so far, as long as there is money in it. The truth is that Capitalism will destroy the planet if left unchallenged. It has not and never will eliminate the threat to life on earth that its assault on the environment presents.

I find it very difficult to watch any news of the gulf spill on TV as I become overwhelmed with a combination of anger and sadness that the natural world is under such an assault by market forces, and that my grandchildren's future is being determined by moneylenders and speculators.  Like Katrina, the gulf spill is not a natural disaster, it is not one of those “acts of god” that you read about in insurance manuals. The BP spill is a by-product of the market, of the private ownership of the means of production. This is what happens when hedge fund managers and Wall Street Traders decide how human society produces the energy it needs. And let us not forget, 11 workers were killed when Deep Water Horizon went down. This is criminal homicide and it is why a corporation has the same rights as a person in capitalist society; the individuals responsible get off scot free.

It is only by liberating the resources at our disposal from the profit driven “clique” that own and control them that we can take those first steps to developing rational energy policies in harmony with nature.

The economy needs new managers; the planet cries out for it.

Capitalism will destroy the planet. The environment is ours, lets protect it.

They want us to forget this. But it won't forget us

It should come as no surprise that things are not going well in Japan in the aftermath of the worst nuclear disaster in human history.

Apparently, high levels of Strontium 90 have been discovered in the ground water around the Fukushima nuclear power plant after an earthquake and tsunami two years ago caused three reactor meltdowns. Strontium 90 is a by-product of the fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear reactors as well as nuclear weapons according to experts.

Reports say that the level of strontium 90 have increased a hundredfold between December 2012 and May of this year.  This level of strontium 90 is more than 30 times the legal limit.

It is becoming apparent that the Tokyo Electric Power Company, (TEPCO) a private company, cannot adequately clean up the mess that the nuclear facility created.   The Fukushima disaster displaced 50,000 households and caused untold damage.  In fact, the level of environmental degradation will not be known for years, maybe centuries and the same applies to the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

TEPCO has received a massive infusion of taxpayer dollars (or Yen in this case) in order to help it pay claims as a result of the disaster.  Another example of public funds paying for private sector disasters much like the bail out of the banksters after the collapse of the capitalist economy in 2007.

We have blogged about this disaster many times and remind our readers that one has to wonder at why anyone would put a nuclear power plant on an earthquake fault in a region known as the “Ring of Fire” due to its seismic activity and right next to the ocean in a land that gave us the word “Tsunami”. You can check out these pieces here.

With environmental disaster like these we have to recognize that the level of destruction is hardly known.  In the case of Fukushima as well as the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, we will not know the extent of the damage for many years, perhaps decades.  The Blue Fin Tuna for example spawns in the Gulf of Mexico and we cannot possibly tell the extent of the damage to the habitat and lives of these creatures or other marine life until such damage manifests itself but it is obvious to anyone with a brain that it will be extensive. 

More on the BP spill here.

The most important thing for us to understand is that capitalism cannot prevent such disasters.  Capitalism cannot resolve the environmental crisis and, to be honest, environmental catastrophe. By its very nature capitalism is destructive to the environment and to human society.  It is a system of production that is based on the accumulation of capital (or wealth) by private individuals. It is based on continuous and never ending growth.  But the planet cannot sustain such a system.

The capitalist mode of production will always put personal gain and capital accumulation above the need of human beings or the natural world that nurtures us, that we need to survive. It is inherent in its makeup.

We do not yet know the extent of the damage that Fukushima or the BP spill or any of the other numerous environmental catastrophes have caused.  That will manifest itself in the cancers, deaths, deformities, extinctions and other anomalies that arise because of them.

What we do know is that we have to transform our global society from one that produces the necessities of life based on profit to one that produces them based on social needs.

It’s that simple.  The alternative is not a good one: the end of life as we know it.

Don't forget Fukushima: The market at work

The US mass media has scant news these days about the long-term repercussions of the nuclear catastrophe that hit Japan after an earthquake generated tsunami hit the  Fukushima nuclear facility last March.  As with the catastrophic BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the 1% don't really know the extent of such market generated disasters, and what they do know, they don't want to share with the general public.

The effects of the BP spill will continue in to future centuries as will those of Fukushima.  I refer to them as market generated disasters as opposed to the 1 percent's mass media that aims to convince us they were natural, or "acts of god" as they sometimes say.

As far as Fukushima goes, the scenes of homes, ships and huge buildings, in fact entire communities floating along on the crest of a giant wave are no more and the deaths of thousands need not be dwelt upon; it just doesn't make good news sense to keep harping on it after they've gone.  But Fukushima must surely be among the most devastating environmental disasters of all, not just in terms of immediate death and destruction but its long-term affects.

Foreign journalists toured the plant this week and a new independent report investigating the accident has just been published.  The report condemns the plant operator's "lax implementation of security rules" at the plant that left it vulnerable to terrorist attacks.  In addition, "The weaknesses and defects with the electrical and cooling systems were exposed" says Tetsuya Endo, a member of the panel that generated the report, "For terrorists these are among the easiest targets."  ( Wall Street Journal 2-29-12).  The report also reveals "botched efforts" in the response to the disaster including evacuating patients from hospitals in the area that led to a "number" of deaths. Here we go with the "terrorists" again.

The global capitalist class and its media has moved on now.  Reports like the one in the WSJ that sparked my interest are not for mass consumption, it's for their benefit in the main.  We can get an inkling of the severity of the catastrophe by reading these accounts.  The big problem is keeping the reactors cool, "The taming of Fukushima Daiichi has become in large part a quest to control water." the WSJ informs us. There are intricate systems of pumps that are injecting water in to the reactors every day.  The problem is storing the contaminated water and containing leaks in the system.  The Journal gives a glimpse of the enormity of the crisis, "Because that water and groundwater---now contaminated--is leaking out of the reactor at an estimated 10,000 tons a month, cleaning it up and storing the excess is a constant challenge."  Heaters have also been installed to reduce leakage from pipes bursting due to cold weather; 8 tons of contaminated water leaked out from a broken pipe earlier this month.

The Fukushima reactors will have to be continually cooled by this water until the radioactive fuel is removed.  But because of the damage to the reactor buildings and piping system water continues to leak out. Experts estimate that it will take six years to "plug the leaks" and 25 years to remove the fuel.  The water is injected in to the reactors by a pumping system complete with backups in the event of further seismic and/or tsunami activity.  The water is filtered for contaminates and some of it re-used while contaminated water is stored in huge tanks.  Storage capacity is to be expanded from 165,000 tons to 205,000 according to the WSJ.  The real issue now, and it is only the beginning,
is managing the radioactive water and finding places to store it.  Another issue that has been swept under the rug is the contamination of the world's oceans. This is something, like the effects of the BP spill, that will go on for centuries and will only be understood as it manifests itself in its various forms, genetic changes in plants and fishes as well as human cancers etc.

Leaving aside the issue of whether or not we should have nuclear power at all, what is glaringly absent from the discussion about this disaster is the decision to put three nuclear reactors in the middle of an area described by geologists as the "Ring of Fire" due to the level of seismic activity.  I am not an engineer or nuclear scientist but I am not so sure that this was a prudent decision.  On top of that, these reactors were placed next to the ocean in a nation whose language gave birth to the term "Tsunami" from what I understand.

Such decisions are made, this one a very stupid and costly one, by representatives of the 1% and on the basis of how much profit such a decision will yield. While the issue of location is absent from the discussion it is clear that location is everything and the decision makers have taken note.  The water crucial in preventing the reactors from overheating and the pumping system and back up diesel generators that move it through the system are "Set high enough on the hill so that they might remain dry if another big wave comes" a Tepco official tells the WSJ.

Good idea, but a little too little too late isn't it?

Another disaster brewing in the Gulf of Mexico

Biloxi Miss.  Swimming amid globs of oil

An unfortunate discovery in the Gulf of Mexico should have the population of the countries that surround this beautiful area on edge.  Exxon, the largest oil company in the US is in a battle with the US government over leasing rights to extract oil from the giant Julia Field.  The field is a few hundred miles from the site of the Deep-Water Horizon well blowout that killed 11 workers and did untold, and as yet unknown environmental damage.

The Julia Field is estimated to hold “One billion barrels of recoverable oil” the Wall Street Journal reports but the feds say that Exxon’s leases have expired.  Exxon is suing to “retain” these leases and if it loses the suit, the leases, and all the oil underneath them, become the property of the US taxpayer.  The US government has made an issue of these “unused” leases claiming that it is one way the oil companies avoid paying taxes.

Perhaps the most important issue here is whether there should be drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico at all.  But another side of it is the cost to the taxpayers of all this squabbling if the federal government doesn’t concede to Exxon’s demands. With billions of dollars up for grabs we know that the energy corporation will spend considerably to get its way, not just in court but bribing officials, or what they call lobbying, as well as a media campaign to generate support.

Who knows what the development of such an oil field means in profits, but according to the WSJ, the royalties paid to the US government for extraction of the oil would amount to around $11 billion at today’s prices.

Not only Exxon, but the entire oil industry and its flunkies in politics are stunned by the US government’s position as these sort of extensions are “granted as a matter of course” the WSJ writes.  “You state your case and you got it, this was expected,” says Patrick McGinn, an Exxon spokesperson.

The US Interior Department that regulates offshore oil drilling and is the defendant in the suit is in a bit of a different situation in the aftermath of the Deep-Water Horizon catastrophe.  The political power of the oil industry and it’s bribing potential led to the oil industry pretty much regulating its own activities in the Gulf. As I wrote at the time of the BP disaster: The Minerals Management Service is an agency of the Interior Department that was supposed to regulate deep water drilling but left the regulation up to the industry itself.

The New York Times pointed out earlier in 2010 that an Interior Dept. investigation revealed that “Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week. The report said that investigators "could not discern if any fraudulent alterations were present on these forms."

Along with the Katrina disaster, we don’t hear much about the BP spill these days as human and environmental disasters that are a product of market forces and the pursuit of profit tend to undermine the propaganda that capitalism is not at fault. Al Qaeda and the attacks of 911 are different as “foreign” elements are to blame therefore strengthening the false view that our main enemies are external rather than domestic.  In my life I’ve had to deal with a few of them, Communists, Vietnamese invaders, immigrants from far off lands, Somali warlords, and now “terrorism” which is the best as terrorism is a tactic not a nation or entity we can grasp.  The war on terror is better than the red scare as by its very definition it can go on forever, it is infinite like the universe.

The Exxon suit argues that “thousands” of lease extensions have been granted over time and accuses the federal government of interpreting and applying the law in ways that it “had never before applied and never before articulated.” Says the WSJ.  The Norwegian oil company Statoil that owns 50% of the Julia Field has also filed suit claiming that an extension request for deep-water drilling had never “been denied” in the past.

You have to marvel at the arrogance of these companies that they would not even consider that the devastation caused by the BP spill might not have some consequences, even from a corporate friendly government like the US. The reluctance on the part of the government to freely hand over rights to Exxon to drill a few hundred miles from the disaster that nudged the Exxon Valdez spill in to second place for the nation’s worst oil spill is understandable.  The corporate media in the US is the most censored and controlled in the advanced economies and has been very successful in keeping the American public in the dark.  When you read the quotes from the New York Times you have to think for a while about the insanity of it, allowing the energy industry whose activities can have such devastating social and environmental consequences a free rein in how they conduct these activities.

Despite the lies of the mass media,  this doesn’t mean people don’t have a general understanding that the government is in the pockets of the rich and the corporations and in the present economic crisis, yet to be concluded, the potential for social upheaval is considerable.  Warren Buffet’s populist calls for higher taxes on the wealthy is a response to the fear of social unrest that will certainly break out if the extreme right wing agenda gains any traction in the coming elections.

But the bottom line is this; the paltry sum of $11 billion in royalties that the US government would pull in by allowing Exxon to set up a deep-water extraction in the Gulf of Mexico pales when compared to the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars at some $10 billion every month according to some estimates.  A recent study by Brown University estimates the cost of these disastrous and unwinnable offensives at $4 trillion. The US government debt at $14 trillion will hardly notice an $11 billion boost from oil royalties.  The profits to Exxon and the thugs that control the corporation will never really be known of course.

The government is treading cautiously so as not to arouse any fear about further drilling in this once pristine Gulf but does not have the financial will or the political will to defeat Exxon in court using taxpayer funds.  Anyway, from the US government’s point of view it’s a no brainer, private industry is in control of energy production in society.

For the millions of people affected by such decisions it is another matter.  Not just the US population but the populations in other smaller and less influential countries surrounding the gulf who have no say at all in what will happen in their neck of the woods.  The alternative though is to take the production of such a crucial need as energy out of private hands and in to public ownership. There is the issue of revenue---why should a handful of people earn billions through their control of this process, but there is also the issue of social and environmental consequences.  The private energy industry will never genuinely develop more environmentally friendly energy resources unless there’s profit to be made. 

Even within a capitalist economy, taking this industry in to public ownership would be a step forward as anything that undermines their propaganda that the market is the savior of all things is positive.  It would also make alternative energy policy a little easier to introduce.  However, in the last analysis the only real solution to energy production and a more sure way to prevent disasters like the BP spill from happening again is true public ownership and management which must include the workers’ in the industry from those on the ground to engineers, environmentalists and scientists as well as elected representatives from communities that are affected, domestic and foreign.  In other words, the profit motive has to go.

Letting Exxon drill a deep-water well in the Gulf of Mexico is what we call here int eh US a "no brainer"-----don't allow it.

Gallup poll shows gulf residents depressed. And why shouldn't they be? Depression has its roots in the economic system, in capitalism

A young Iraq veteran kills his pregnant wife, their 3 year old and himself. Another guy shoots a bunch of people including his wife because his eggs were too hot apparently. This week there are shootings in Boston, Florida, Austen Texas. What annoys me most about this is that the system is never put forward as the major cause of it all.

In the case of the young Iraq veteran I remember the report I read mentioning that infidelity or financial woes didn’t seem an issue. Er, pardon me! Iraq? This is the elephant in the room that they conveniently ignore. There will be many more disturbed and mentally ill young men and women coming back from these wars fought on behalf of the corporations.

We cannot leave out the effect of society on us as individuals. Plants in polluted soil will be stunted or die and the same happens to humans living in a polluted, insecure and destructive social system. Capitalism makes us sick.

A Gallup survey released this week and covered in the media found that depression cases are up 25% in the gulf coast region of the US since the BP oil spill. I am certain that this trend most likely existed prior to this disaster and was probably intensified by Katrina as well. A National Institute of Mental Health study done before Katrina, found that only 6 percent of area residents had likely mental illnesses. Both Katrina and the BP spill which killed 11 workers were not natural disasters, they were market driven. The casualties in these episodes, both human and environmental, were casualties of the economic system in which we live.

It’s not just the immediate effects of such disasters either, like losing ones home or job. It’s the general insecurity and the witnessing of such catastrophic damage to the world around us, the land, the oceans and the creatures that live on and in them with us. 
“The survey said people along the Gulf reported feeling sad" according to the reports, "people are "worried and stressed after the spill…….. Another survey found that more than 40 percent of people in coastal Mississippi reported feeling stress after the BP geyser blew, a 15 percent increase from before.”

An earlier study found that 13 percent of coastal adults from Louisiana to Florida suffered probable serious mental illnesses after the spill; this means something to me. It shows that people care about the world in which we live and we are not oblivious to the environmental and human crises around us. In Gulfport, Miss., 42 percent of the patients surveyed at one mental health center said they were sad or depressed because of the spill. This is natural for us as humans. Why would we not be depressed? And imagine what sort of numbers we would be talking about if we were discussing Iraqi o families or those living in the slums of Mumbai or Rio.

Symptoms of mental illness are, insomnia, anxiety, depression, anger, substance abuse and domestic violence all of which are among the most common problems reported by mental health agencies. “It’s like a virus,” says one mental health worker whose clinic is receiving twice many patients as in 2009. Another resident who runs a day-care center notices the changes among the children:

"They're throwing desks, kicking chairs," she said. "It's sad. With this, people do not have hope. They cannot see a better time."


“They cannot see a better time” this is an astute observation and is one of the major causes of concern and depression among working people. Endless wars, economic uncertainty and no force in society offering a plausible explanation for it all. It’s either the wrath of god or our own individual fault, explanations that cause people to internalize the anger and blame ourselves for crises that are not of our own making. Not seeing a way out is a major obstacle to eradicating depression. If we don’t see there is a way out, why struggle to change things?

This is why the issue of the system is always left out of the equation. We must not question how society is organized; how we produce the things we need in society and who owns the means for doing this etc. After all, the market knows best, capitalism is the only social system that works; humanity cannot exist without capitalists and their never-ending quest for profit. Capitalism is the end of civilization. It will mean the end of civilization as we know it, that’s for sure.

When the old Soviet Union collapsed they announced it as the failure of communism. Not only was it not communism, it is important to recognize that here they refer to a system that failed even if they called this totalitarian regime by the wrong name. But in the capitalist economy, every mass killing, every oil spill, every economic collapse and the horrors that accompany them; these are all the failings of bad apples and failed or greedy individuals; it is never capitalism’s fault. It is never suggested that these crises are an inherent and unsolvable by-product of the so-called “free market”.

This is a major obstacle to the development of a mass movement for change in the US. It is something the leaders of the trade Unions could change given the resources at their command, but they support in every way the market and its masters; they will not act without massive pressure from below to do so and where we can we must act without them. Their role also holds back the development of a mass movement for change but none of these things will prevent it forever and throughout the world there are major struggles against the horrors of the market. Even in the US people are fighting back, but the media here is among the most censored of all the developed world.

While we must feel for the sadness that surveys like these show exist among the population we should recognize the positive side of it. It shows a very powerful tendency within human beings for decency, security and a respect for community and the natural world that gives us life. It is this tendency that provides the basis for resistance, for the class struggle that is always present but will come to the surface with a vengeance in the future. This is the war that is worth winning, the building of a democratic socialist society and world where each human being can fulfill our highest potential in harmony with nature.

Donald Trump and Bill gates would tell us that this is utopian, that human nature is naturally selfish and greedy. Don’t religious books tell us the same?

Don’t believe any of it.

No apologies say owners of rig that exploded in gulf. $50 billion at stake

The owner of this rig admits no wrongdoing

Transocean, the company that owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico has had quite a stroke of luck. The company made $270 million on the rig, the difference between its value and the insurance payout. Eleven workers died in the explosion and it has caused untold environmental destruction.

Most of the employees on the rig worked for Transocean, 79 out of a total of 126 and nine of the workers killed were Transocean employees. But a report in Business Week points out that while BP has spent $17 billion so far on the clean up, Transocean has adamantly refused to contribute one dime. “Within 12 hours of receiving medical attention…Transocean employees were transported to a hotel in New Orleans, where they were questioned by company lawyers seeking to exonerate the drilling contractor..” plaintiff attorneys for surviving workers say.

The July 4th issue of Bloomberg Business Week has an in depth story on the ongoing war that is being fought over liability for the disaster. It reveals the secretive, dishonest and seedy world of global capitalism.* The various companies are squabbling with each other over responsibility for the catastrophe and in February the first of what will no doubt be many court battles will begin in New Orleans.

There are some global companies, a real den of thieves, whose names we are familiar with, BP, Halliburton, Transocean, as well as some other minor players. But Transocean is the only corporation that is proudly denying any wrongdoing and refusing to pay any of the costs. The whole affair reveals the truly global nature of these corporations and their allegiance only to profit.

Transocean is the world’s largest offshore oil driller with 27% of the world’s floating oil-rig market, “Were never out of our depth” is the company’s motto. While the anonymous folks that own these corporations push American values like nationalism and patriotism to us working slobs; when it comes to them, the world is home. “Even though most of its executives and senior staff work in Houston”, Business Week writes, the company is incorporated “in Switzerland for tax purposes.” Marx explained that workers have no country, something we have to come to understand if we are to win this class war, but capital is truly international, capital doesn’t like borders.

Transocean is attempting to use an 1851 law, the US Limitation of Liability Act to avoid any responsibility for the spill or at least put a cap on it. The same law was used by the owners of the Titanic BW explains, and although they weren’t completely successful, they capped their liability at $95,000 for all the survivors and the estates of the 1500 that drowned.

What is interesting is to read the details of these squabbles and the shamelessness of the combatants, Transocean in particular. To refer to the $270 million that the company made in insurance payments on the rig’s value as “profit”, is inaccurate says a company spokesperson. It is an “accounting gain”. Technically he’s correct I suppose but they love to deceive with language. I recall Enron and MCI’s financial chicanery being describes as “accounting errors”. Not only that, it’s downright “unfair” to bring the Titanic in to the Deepwater Horizon case, the spokesperson says. On top of all this, Transocean announced that it would be paying $1 billion in dividends to its shareholders.

But get this: despite being the owner and operator of the rig that led to 11 deaths and the worst oil spill in the history of humanity, Transocean, as it announced it would pay $1 billion in dividends to shareholders, stated in its annual report that, 2010 was, “the best year in safety performance in our company’s history.” and gave safety bonuses to its executives. “You almost have to admire their chutzpah----almost” says a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

The Business Week article goes in to considerable detail about the events leading up to the explosion and the climate that followed. BP was public enemy number one and we were reminded that the real name of the company was British Petroleum, not Beyond Petroleum as the company’s media efforts tried to convince us. Nationalism and protectionism are always around the corner ready to leap out after events like these. Folks may recall that Obama came out fighting, “BP is responsible for this leak, BP will be paying the bill.” he told the American public as protests and calls for boycotting BP emerged at its gas stations around the country. Interior secretary Kenneth Salazar talked of the need to “keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum” the pressure was on to find a culprit in the face of the worst environmental disaster in US history and they learned from the imbecile Bush’s disastrous trip to the Gulf Coast after Katrina.

But the BW article is clearly a strong assault on Transocean. The magazine goes in to great detail about the company’s past safety record which is far from stellar. In 2009 there was a similar incident on a Transocean rig in the North Sea that the US Presidential spill commission described as “eerily similar” to the Deepwater Horizon spill four months later. There was a climate of fear when it came to reporting safety issues says a former manager. In one incident, a rig suffered three fires within a three-month period and the third one “poured smoke in to the bridge”. The manager’s boss refused to report the third incident to his superiors so the manager reported it. He was informed a week later that the investigation was over; “Everyone was cleared. It was just smoke” he was told. He was transferred to a rig off the coast of Nigeria, a “big demotion” he tells BW.

The Presidential commission discovered that Transocean failed to inform its employees on the Deepwater Horizon of changes it made in safety guidelines in response to the near fatal accident on the North Sea rig. Had it done so, the commission concluded, events on the Deepwater Horizon, “may have unfolded very differently.” These disasters as we have stated many times on this blog are not natural disasters; they are market driven.

As I read this unfavorable article about the role of Transocean during and after the explosion, I am wondering what the motive is. After all, I am sure BP and Halliburton and other companies got to their employees before they said too much just like Transocean did. BP’s record on safety is dismal. From 1995 to 2005 it lead the US refinery industry with 25% of the nation’s fatalities, ten times more than Exxon. It was charged with criminal violations of federal environmental laws after the Texas City Texas refinery accident that killed 15 workers.

But BP and Halliburton have very powerful connections. Transocean is a small business by Wall Street standards. Also, with the catastrophe coming not so long after Katrina and in the aftermath of an economic disaster, the mood in the country was still potentially explosive. The faith in the system had been shattered and hatred for the rich, the corporations and their politicians was widespread and still is. Transocean’s blatant refusal to admit any wrongdoing or contribute any money to clean up the mess while at the same time publicly announcing safety bonuses to its executives and a billion dollars in dividends is not good PR. Despite the failure of any serious mass movement developing in response to the crisis and the ongoing bailout by the taxpayer, the capitalist class recognizes the mood out there and the potential for social explosions.

The other issue to consider is that if forced by the likes of BP and Halliburton to pay any significant amount towards the clean up, Transocean may have to declare bankruptcy. In the murky world of international capital this might be what the bottom feeders want. The name changes but the money stays in the same hand pretty much.

If you get a chance I recommend reading the report and I have added a link to it below or you can go out and get the magazine. It is always worthwhile keeping an eye on the dirty dealings of our enemies.

* Success is Never Having to Say You’re Sorry BW 7-4-11

 More on the Gulf catastrophe
http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2010/08/deepwater-horizon-disaster-will-have.html
http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2010/11/witht-ban-on-drilling-in-gulf-big.html
lhttp://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2010/09/lessons-from-exxon-valdez-prove-that.html
http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2010/07/below-giant-bluefin-tuna-once-they-get.html