Read and produced by Lachlan Fletcher.
Stories written by Emily Brass, Matthew Phelps and Gareth Sloan.
BP is trying another technique to stem the flow of oil into the ocean called "cut and cap" - it is apparently fraught with risk and could actually increase the flow of oil into the Gulf. There are ways to deal with an oil spill other than trying to cap or disperse it: Back in Saudi Arabia, in 1994, they had a 700 million dollars -- 700 million gallon spill. And you know what they did...? They brought in tankers from all over the world and they sucked it up out of the bays, and they treated it. And you know what? They cleaned up 85 percent of it.
I realize that Obama will end up taking most of the heat for the spill but have a look here at politicians who should be getting blame for the short-sighted policies that led to the spill.
From Huffpo, nine animals threatened by the spill. Tony "I want my life back" Hayward claiming BP did a good job cleanig thinngs up.
MSM scrutiny from Joe Romm: Newsweek publishes a fact-free essay on climate change written by their economics editor. Coincidentally on the radio show this morning we cited this National Geographic article about indigenous peoples and what they can teach us about climate change. This is absolutely must read for understanding why the average temperature change across the globe can be so slight, 0.76 C degree increase since the beginning of the 20th century, and the consequences so far-reaching.
Lying and obfuscation not good for BP's bottom line. It might even break them.Who'd a' thunk it? Six more reasons not to trust BP.

On Sunday, June 13th CJLO and Gospel Unlimited in co-presentation with Pinnacle Gospel are proud to present Caribbean Praisefest 2010. This is a concert you won't want to miss, featuring Junior Tucker, international reggae from Jamaica and special guest from the Bahamas, DJ Counseller. Also introducing the pride of St. Lucia, Emrand Henry. The show also features Montreal locals, New Covenent, Ray Johnson & Friends, Zina Edwards and Bibleway Gospel Choir.
Show starts at 6pm and will be held at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall at Concordia University's Loyola campus (7141 Sherbrooke Street West). Advance tickets are $25, $15 for children and $30 at the door. For info or to locate your nearest ticket outlet call 514-475-9370. Don't miss it!
On Monday, Israel outraged the world community by attacking, boarding and murdering nine peace activists aboard a ship that was headed for Gaza in hopes of breaking the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Israeli commandos rappelled down to an aid flotilla sailing to thwart a Gaza blockade on Monday, clashing with pro-Palestinian activists on the lead ship in a botched raid killing nine. Even Israel's allies are having a difficult time with these actions.
Israel intercepted the six ships carrying some 10,000 tons of aid for the isolated territory of Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel for three years, with Egypt's cooperation. The Israeli government urged the flotilla not to try to breach the blockade before the ships set sail from waters off Cyprus on Sunday and offered to take some aid in for them.
To be clear, the blockade of Gaza hurts innocents - A U.N. official said last week that the formal economy in Gaza has “collapsed,” 60 percent of households there were short on food. The Guardian notes that according to UN statistics, “around 70% of Gazans live on less than $1 a day, 75% rely on food aid and 60% have no daily access to water.”
The blockade also cuts off almost 1.5 million Palestinians from the rest of the world, hampering access to health care and education. I'm not sure how you justify that but that's what's being done.
In my lifetime I've viewed everything about the state of Israel through the prism of the Holocaust, and constant Palestinian attacks on the state of Israel, always giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. A state has the right to defend itself. That has changed somewhat recently and I've begun to see Israel as much an enemy of peace as groups like Hammas. With these unconscionable actions they have entered into the territory of state sponsored terrorism and their explanations and rationalizations that they didn't expect the resistance to their attack to be so fierce are absurd.
Army helicopters hover over you while commandos lower themselves onto the boat, is to be greeted how? With Cheney's candy and flowers? If they're clever they'll simply admit they were wrong and try and right the wrong by bringing in the aid and paying immediate recompense to the victims. So far though, it appears as if they are going to try and justify this by saying the invading soldiers were merely protecting themselves. Something they wouldn't have had to do if the hadn't boarded in such an aggressive manner in the first place.
Awoke this morning to the smell of smoke and promptly started looking around my house for its' source. Checked downstairs, asked my wife if she'd burned anything to start the day - no, nothing. Shrugged it off and went to the radio station noticing when I arrived that the smell was present. Turns out there's more than 50 fires burning in the province, 8 of which are out of control and was cause for a city-wide smog warning. Apparently the smoke and haze reached all the way to Ottawa. Funny, I thought the prevailing winds blew the other way.
So, $1 billion plus are to be the costs for security at the upcoming G-8 and G-20 summits, and do you want to know the real reason for the hefty price tag? Logistics? Terrorist threats? Nope. It's the fault of the Liberals. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told CTV’s Question Period yesterday that using the military – which would have been a much cheaper option than the RCMP – would have provoked political outrage from the Liberals. Damn those Liberals!
Speaking of poll watchers, this morning a poll on possible coalition governments was published and with Jack Layton at the head of such a coalition, it would defeat the Conservatives by a 43-37 percent margin. Interestingly, in such a scenario in Quebec, Layton polled ten points more than the Bloc. Michael Ignatieff did not fare as well. With him leading a Liberal NDP coalition, he lost out to Harper by a 40-34 percent margin. Go Jack go!
Mulroney, Schreiber dealings ruled inappropriate - if it were you or me, they would have been ruled criminal.
Word is the Americans are still planning an offensive in the city of Kandahar, located in the spiritual capital of the Taliban and the region where most Canadian soldiers are currently serving.
Read and produced by Nicholas Fiscina.
Stories written by Chris Hanna, Sarah Deshaies and Jose Espinoza.
If BP's attitude towards stopping the oil from gushing into the Gulf, was the same as it is to trying to defend their corporate brand and defray costs, then that wellhead would have long ago been capped.
Astonishingly this morning there was a story of BP's chief wanker (CEO) Tony Hayward proclaiming there's no such thing as oil plumes and those scientific studies that are being reported all over the various medias are wrong. Oil is buoyant - it rises to the surface - anything underneath the surface is not really there nor is it our doing! To paraphrase BP's wanker-in-chief.
Actual scientists disagree however, "There's been enough evidence from enough different sources," said marine scientist James Cowan of Louisiana State University, who reported finding a plume last week about 50 miles from the spill site. Cowan said oil reached to depths of at least 400 feet. As does the physics of deepwater buoyancy:
Large quantities of natural gas may escape into the water column with the oil during undersea well blow-out or leakage events (Rygg & Emilsen, 1998). The dynamics of the contaminant plume -- and, hence, the ultimate dispersion of the contaminants in space -- may be profoundly influenced by the buoyancy of this gas phase.
In the deep ocean environment, ambient pressures and temperatures fall within a range where many hydrocarbon components of natural gas can exist as solid hydrates (Sloan, 1989). In situ observations (Brewer et al., 1997) and laboratory experiments (Maini & Bishnoi, 1981) suggest that natural gas bubbles may transform into solid hydrates as they rise through the water. This transformation produces an increase in density that results in a loss of global plume buoyancy.
Read a very thorough look at the science behind deepwater oil plumes here.
Of course accountability is only for losers like the rest of us. As far as BP is concerned Tony's doing a heckuva' job! It matters not that they lied about their ability to handle a spill ten times this size.
Don't think I'm picking on Tony just because he's an easy target - from the NYT's on BP's culpability: Several days before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, BP officials chose, partly for financial reasons, to use a type of casing for the well that the company knew was the riskier of two options, according to a BP document.
This is the same fellah who declared the effects of the spill would be minimal and that it was merely 5,000 barrels per day spilling into the Gulf. Nothing BP says can be trusted.
In the meantime, they are going to try another unlikely fix and the people in the Gulf who are losing their livelihoods can only look on and hope. And finally, to continue the illustration that this is a usual pattern of behaviour from BP word of an impending lawsuit from UK pension fund alleges that it lost money because of falls in the BP share price after a pipeline leak in the Prudhoe Bay field four years ago.
So first we write up a story about how the only people taking action on doing something about taking the non-budget items out of the tories budget bill, C-9, are members of Canada's normally phlegmatic Senate. Now I'm here to tell you that Jack Layton has jumped aboard the 'let's fix this damned bill,' express. He's calling it a "Trojan horse" bill which seems appropriate enough considering all the nasty things hidden inside it - now if someone would just apply a Trojan to the thing and prevent its conception that'd be about perfect.
Layton is calling for Ignatieff to stop pussy-footing around and behave like a real opposition leader and conduct some tough negotiations with Harper, of whom he believes would do most anything to prevent the government from falling before his very expensive G-8 and G-20 confabs. He may have a point.
Ignatieff really doesn't have anything to lose by trying a new tack like threatening to bring the government down and meaning it. The worst that could happen is that he'd be forced to go to the polls and take a lot of popular stands on issues over which he should have been jumping up and down about in the first place. Two examples: C-9 guts important environmental legislation - Sec. 20 of the bill gives authority to the federal environment minister to unilaterally decide whether an environmental assessment needs to be done for any project, it deregulates Canada Post ...opening up international mailers to competition, Canada Post could lose millions of dollars in annual revenue and inevitably will have to cut services or hike rates.
Layton points out that while regular Canadians are ignored here, there are $15 billion dollars in corporate-tax giveaways - again not an issue likely to be popular with anyone but Harper's corporate palls and his mindless conservative base.
So Iggy? Where are you while this crap is being shoved down our collective throats? This is not something you can sit back and gaze upon from an ivory tower and speculate on where it leads. The answer to that is clear - this leads to GWB style governance and policies. Is that what you really want?
A couple of months ago a weekend spent in the Gulf would probably be part of a pretty desirable vacation package. Now it's a nightmarish thought and getting worse every day. Word Saturday afternoon is the "top kill" procedure absolutely failed and so now it's on to other things.
While it's been a simple and obvious thing from our vantage point here at NM&P to question BP's candor - it's taken the government far longer to come around to the exact position we took three weeks ago: BP has been grossly underestimating (lying) the amount of oil pouring into Gulf waters and media stenographers have been only too happy to go along. Admittedly we had help from the sources we regularly rely on in the blogosphere and even certain MSM outlets.
This morning President Obama calls the leaking volcano "enraging," ...an assault on the people of the Gulf Coast region, their livelihoods, and the natural bounty that belongs to all of us." While BP is making plans for another attempt at stopping the gushing oil - amidst the heartbreak and fury of Gulf residents - there are increasing calls for Obama to use the authority he has and take over the operation from BP to staunch the flow of oil from the wellhead.
And extra kudos to BP for continuing to behave like the biggest arses in the world with their obvious dog and pony show yesterday with 400 bussed in workers for Obama's visit to the Gulf coast.
Go here to see Rachel Maddow does some great investigative reporting that takes us back to the Ixtoc 1 spill 31 years ago and the parallels would be laughable if they weren't so tragic. Same old, same old, comes to mind.
In the end you might ask yourself why are the sources I chose better, more reliable than what the government and many media outlets decided to run with? Everyone has the same information in front of them - in fact MSM outlets have inside sources on top of what's available to you and me, and yet they come up with the wrong answers time and again. If you come to the conclusion it's deliberate and they're just peddling corporate propaganda, I think you might be on to something there. Staying properly informed is now subversive.
Were this the first day of April, I'd hold back on posting this, but the calendar has been checked and the sources too, so I'm running with it. Word from the White House is Halak is awesome and deserves a new long-term contract. Seriously.
The U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, chatted about hockey during a speech in Montreal today and he saluted the Habs' surprising playoff run. The White House envoy also joked that, with his limited French, he understood the word "Halak" to mean "gigantic contract."
Carey Price could not be reached for comment but word is his agent is considering switching his allegiance to the Republican party.