Jeanne Pascal turned on her TV April 21 to see a towering spindle of black smoke slithering into the sky from an oil platform on the oceanic expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. For hours she sat, transfixed on an overstuffed couch in her Seattle home, her feelings shifting from shock to anger

Pascal, a career Environmental Protection Agency attorney only seven weeks into her retirement, knew as much as anyone in the federal government about BP, the company that owned the well. She understood in an instant what it would take others months to grasp: In BP’s 15-year quest to compete with the world’s biggest oil companies, its managers had become deaf to risk and systematically gambled with safety at hundreds of facilities and with thousands of employees’ lives.

“God, they just don’t learn,” she remembers thinking.

Just weeks before the explosion, President Obama had announced a historic expansion of deep-water drilling in the Gulf, where BP held the majority of the drilling leases. The administration considered the environmental record of drilling companies in the Gulf to be excellent. It didn’t ask questions about BP, and it didn’t consider that the company’s long record of safety violations and environmental accidents might be important, according to Carol Browner, the White House environmental adviser.

They could have asked Jeanne Pascal.  Read the entire story here

BP has finally made an initial $3 billion deposit to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill compensation fund. The company said it would make an additional $2 billion deposit in the fourth quarter.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, BP and the Obama administration are also close to a deal to use future revenues from the company’s Gulf of Mexico operations to guarantee the $20 billion fund.

Under an agreement it reached with the Obama administration earlier this summer, BP is supposed to put $5 billion a year over the next four years into an account to pay for spill-related costs, such as claims, environmental restoration and cleanup costs. The fund is to be administered by Ken Feinberg, the Washington, D.C. lawyer who oversaw the 9/11 victims compensation fund.

BP was supposed to make an initial deposit to the fund by September 30. But according to the Journal, the company chose to make an early deposit to “show its commitment to restoring the livelihoods of people affected by the worst offshore oil spill in history.”

On Monday, the company and the Justice Department announced they had completed talks to establish the fund, according to the Journal. Discussions continue, however, on how BP will guarantee its remaining obligation of $17 billion. The administration is seeking security in the form of collateral in the event that BP couldn’t meet its obligation due to financial or legal problems.

The founder of Houston-based Simmons & Co. International wrote the 2005 book “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” raising concerns about Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves and laying out his theory that the world was approaching peak oil production.

Two years later, Simmons founded The Ocean Energy Institute, a think tank and venture capital fund in Rockland to promote offshore wind energy research and development.

The institute is a part of the consortium led by the University of Maine, which aims to design and test floating deep-water wind turbine platforms.

“Matt Simmons was an innovative thinker who pushed ideas that have the potential to yield a more environmentally and economically sustainable future for Maine and the world,” said Maine Gov. John Baldacci, who attended the opening of the institute’s headquarters last month.

Simmons’ body was found Sunday night in his hot tub, investigators said.

An autopsy by the state medical examiner’s office concluded Monday that he died from accidental drowning with heart disease as a contributing factor.

In 1974, Simmons founded Simmons & Co. International, which grew into one of the largest investment banking companies serving the energy industry. He continued to serve as chairman emeritus until last month, when he retired to give his full energy to the Ocean Energy Institute.

“We are deeply saddened by the unexpected loss of a true visionary and friend. As a pivotal figure in the lives of many of our employees, and countless others across the energy industry, Matt will be sorely missed,” Simmons & Co. CEO Mike Frazier said in a statement.

Simmons was critical of BP PLC’s handling of the Gulf oil spill and predicted the company would file for bankruptcy. In one interview, he said the cleanup costs could top $1 trillion.

As an international energy expert, Simmons correctly predicted in 2007 that oil would surpass $100 a barrel. The following year, it peaked at $147 a barrel.

On August 4, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a Department of Commerce agency, reported that:

The vast majority of the oil from the BP oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed, much of which is in the process of being degraded… this is the direct result of the robust federal response efforts.

The same day at an AFL/CIO convention, Obama hailed the news, saying “the long battle to stop the leak and contain the oil is finally close to coming to an end.”

False. From the start, the Obama administration conspired with BP, imposing censorship and cover-up, barring the public and news media from coming within 65 feet of clean-up of “booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law” without Coast Guard-authorized permission.

The agency is a virtual BP arm, now retired Admiral Thad Allen, its de facto representative as National Incident Commander, doing its bidding, suppressing the disaster’s severity, including enforcing the FAA’s mid-June announced no-fly zone, not needed if there were nothing to hide. There’s plenty, why journalists and other violators faced up to five years in prison and a $40,000 fine for telling the truth, now mostly hidden, not gone.

On August 4, responding to NOAA, Kieran Suckling, executive director of Center for Biological Diversity, said the following:

The overly rosy tone of (NOAA’s) report may leave the false impression that this crisis is somehow nearing an end. But much of the oil that the government refers to has simply been broken apart and remains in the ecosystem. It’s like taking separated salad dressing and shaking up the bottle so the oil and vinegar mix. You may not be able to see (it), but it’s there.

That unseen oil, though, is what will foul the Gulf for years, (perhaps generations), eating away at the basic elements of the food chain that are the building blocks for fisheries, birds, sea turtles and mammal populations.

Louisiana State University (LSU) biological oceanographer, Robert Carney, says scientists are finding plenty of oil under Louisiana islands, beneath Florida beaches, and in unseen ocean reaches.

Biological oceanographers, Markus Huettel and Joel Kostka, discovered large oil swaths up to two feet deep on a “cleaned” Pensacola beach. With little oxygen, it’ll remain for decades. It gets trapped underground when tiny droplets penetrate porous sand or when waves wash it ashore, burying it. Huettel explained further that previous oil under beaches migrates into groundwater, causing hazards to wildlife and humans, not knowing what they’re drinking is contaminated.

He noted also that deep sea spills are “unchartered territory,” dispersants for the first time used at depths down to 5,000 feet, settling oil on the sea  floor, the mixture suspended and preserved, causing long-term harm for deep-sea animals, and disrupting a large part of the food chain.

University of South Florida (USF) chemical oceanographer, David Hollander, is also alarmed, calling the 75% claim “ludicrous.” USF scientists and Vernon Asper, University of Southern Mississippi oceanographer, were “lambasted” by NOAA and Coast Guard officials when they reported a giant undersea plume, NOAA Administrator, Jane Lubchenco, telling them to stop “speculating” when, according to Asper, “We had solid evidence, rock solid.”

Hollander said “What we learned completely changes the idea of what an oil spill is. It has gone from a two-dimensional disaster to a three-dimensional catastrophe,” NOAA and other government agencies enforcing cover-up, denial, and distorted media reports.

On August 8, Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy Director, Carol Browner, told NBC’s Meet the Press that “the vast majority of oil is gone.” On the same day, Thad Allen, on CBS’ Face the Nation, congratulated BP for a job well done, criticizing only its PR errors, smoothing the way to end the oil drilling moratorium, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation Director Michael Bromwich saying expect it “significantly in advance of November 30.”

Hazardous Toxins Threaten Gulf Coast Residents

Combined with millions of gallons of Corexit, a deadly dispersant, the mix is extremely toxic and dangerous, the Gulf poisoned and potentially lethal for decades, perhaps generations. Nothing in it should be ingested, nor is living close by safe, what BP, Washington and the major media won’t explain. As a result, the health and welfare of millions of residents are at risk as well as anyone eating Gulf seafood. Responsible federal and state officials would ban it. Instead the all-clear’s been given. Don’t be fooled.

Marine toxicologist, Riki Ott, said if she lived in the area with children, she’d leave. On July 31, she flew over affected parts of the Gulf with a documentary filmmaker and local shrimper, a man who grew up the area, fearing his livelihood was destroyed, saying:

I’ve fished in all these waters – everywhere you can see. It’s all oiled. This is the worst I’ve seen. This is a heartbreak….

At low altitudes, oil was visible everywhere, despite most of it submerged. “As far as we could see: Oil…. The official story does not match the reality (below or what local residents report). BP has created a Frankenstein.”

Minimally, over 44,000 square miles of ocean are contaminated, an area comparable to Ohio or Pennsylvania. Some estimates say nearly 80,000, more than Florida and Massachusetts combined, the health hazard immense, the waters causing “internal bleeding and hemorrhaging in workers and dolphins alike,” according to senior EPA analyst, Hugh Kaufman, a rare responsible official.

On Democracy Now, he accused BP and the administration of cover-up and deceit, including using dispersants “to hide the volume of oil that has been released,” far more than official reports, to save BP up to billions in fines. “That’s the purpose of using dispersants, not to protect the public health or environment. Quite the opposite.”

After 9/11, Kaufman was ombudsman investigator for Ground Zero, exposing EPA lies about air safety, causing widespread illnesses and death, seeing a repeat for Gulf residents, “EPA administrators saying the air is safe and the water is safe.”

False, because of “dispersants mixed with oil and air pollution.” The official lie endangers tens of thousands, maybe millions, retired toxicologist and forensic chemist, John Laseter, explaining that the oil-solvent mix sticks on biological tissue, wreaking havoc.

Dispersants make oil penetrate more deeply into skin, a “delivery system” into the anatomies of humans and wildlife, the combination more deadly than either alone, some observers believing far greater quantities of dispersants have been used than reported, J. Speer Williams, for one, in his July 22 Rense.com article titled “Who Killed The Gulf?”

Explaining the ongoing dark side of a disturbing story, Williams cites Christopher Reddy, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution associate scientist of marine chemistry and geochemistry saying BP used one million BARRELS of Corexit or 42 million gallons, not the two million gallons reported, some reports claiming less. If he’s right, the toxicity and long-term threat far exceed the worst estimates of reliable scientists, a hellish nightmare for the entire Gulf coast area, Dr. Seth Forman and others comparing Corexit to Agent Orange, the deadly defoliant used in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Millions of gallons were sprayed with devastating effects, its deadly dioxin one of the most toxic known substances, a potent carcinogenic human immune system suppressant. It accumulates in adipose tissue and the liver, alters living cell structures, causes congenital disorders and birth defects, and contributes to diseases like cancer and type two diabetes. In the 1960s and 70s, it affected millions exposed, Southeast Asians and Americans alike. Expect a repeat today, what BP, the administration and media suppress.

Hugh Kaufman sees tens of thousands of Gulf coast residents at risk and anyone eating the seafood. They’ll “end up with cancer, genetic mutations, or some other mysterious unexplained illnesses (years later).”

After the Exxon Valdez disaster, most workers and others exposed to dispersants and oil died young, their average age about 50, another shocking story never reported, a window into the far greater calamity ahead, the Gulf catastrophe infinitely greater, the equivalent of three – four Exxon Valdez incidents a week, using Exxon’s 11 million gallon figure. The state of Alaska’s conservative estimate was over 30 million gallons, also unreported.

Today, independent scientists report hazardous levels of oil and dispersants in the Gulf, ashore, and in the air, including carcinogenic benzene and oil vapors (Volatile Organic Compounds — VOCs), as early as 1948, the American Petroleum Institute saying, “The only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.”

Now it’s off the charts contaminating a wide area, one element in a deadly toxic brew, the administration and BP claiming the threat is over, the environment safe, normality fast returning — the official lie, the Obama administration fronting for BP, complicit in its crimes, contributing to a greater disaster instead of preventing it by enforcing responsible policies in the first place, ones absent, assuring other calamities from future oil drilling operations, especially offshore in deep water, where technology and safety concerns haven’t kept up with the rush to plunge deep holes in the earth, damn the hazards and millions of lives at risk.

Final Thoughts

The lives and livelihoods of Gulf residents are at risk, the entire area economically damaged, BP establishing a paltry $20 billion compensation fund for victims, containing a slim $3 billion deposit, the idea being to help BP, not them, claims czar Kenneth Feinberg appointed to assure it, a man notorious for serving wealth and power interests.

Earlier, he managed a similar account for 9/11 victims, then later was appointed pay czar for bailed out Wall Street banks and other companies. Like BP ombudsman, Stanley Sporkin, he’s a notorious “fixer,” fronting for power, not people, earlier negotiating a lawsuit settlement for Agent Orange producers, benefitting them, not affected veterans, getting $1,200 not to litigate.

He later performed similar services for AH Robins, maker of the Dalkon Shield, injuring 235,000 women with potentially lethal pelvic infections, a settlement giving most of them $725 or less.

He’s now point man in charge of doing to Gulf residents what he did earlier, saving corporate criminals billions, getting victims to waive their right to sue in return for amounts too meager to matter. In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, he said:

When I go to the Gulf, I hear a lot about the underground economy. ‘Mr. Feinberg, I got paid $5,000 a month all cash. Do I have a claim?’ Well, you have to prove your claim. There’s nothing illegal about all cash business, but do you have your tax return…. Do you have documentary evidence….Will your ship captain vouch for the $5,000…. I need something. I can’t be paying claims that can’t be proven. And I can tell you that this is going to be a big issue.

Indeed it will, reports confirming Feinberg on BP’s payroll, his mandate being to deny, deny, deny, or pay minimum amounts, mostly in lump sums, victims waiving their right to litigate, even those losing livelihoods and years of lost income.

Washington is corporate-occupied territory, politicians bribed with millions of dollars, favors, and lucrative revolving door jobs out of office. As long as a government/industry cabal runs America, wealth and power interests alone will matter, letting companies like BP destroy the environment, our welfare and lives, expendable for greater profits, assured under Democrats and Republicans, two wings of the money party.

On May 4, National Geographic asked if the “Gulf Oil Spill (was) a ‘Dead Zone in the Making,’ ” saying if it can’t be contained, it could happen. An early August update explained that beneath the surface lies:

a turbid cloud of stirred-up sediment and dead sea creatures. Flaccid jellyfish floated on the flat currents of tiny corpses. On the sea bottom the waters were gray and terribly empty. No coral, no fish, no algae, nothing but the noxious oily streaks of red tides and lethal plankton blooms. Everything in this 7,000 square-mile zone (the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined) has died from lack of oxygen. It (was) if every person in a city were suddenly sucked dry of air and suffocated….

Other researchers agree, saying the Gulf’s dead zone doubled in the last year, and may be larger than estimated. Caused by hypoxia (low oxygen levels), it stretches across the Mississippi River Delta along Louisiana’s coastline into Texas. According to the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, it’s the world’s second largest and growing, covering about 7,700 square miles, an area nearly the size of New Jersey. Marine biologists attribute it to oil and dispersants, as well as nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizer runoffs, soil erosion, animal wastes, sewage, and seasonal weather, notably hurricanes and floods.

They occur globally, but the Gulf approaches the largest ever recorded in 1985 at just over 8,000 square miles, some scientists believing that number’s been eclipsed but not verified, most reputable ones agreeing that a vast area has been poisoned, creating alarming hazards for wildlife and millions of people. It’ll be years before the full impact is known, but it’s guaranteed to be catastrophic.

Kathleen Wells, JD  Huffington Post

Environmental lawyer, advocate for working Americans, and host of Ring of Fire, Mike Papantonio and his firm have handled thousands of cases throughout the nation, including asbestos, breast implants, pharmaceutical litigation, factory farming, securities fraud, the Florida tobacco litigation, etc., and has received numerous multi-million dollar verdicts.

Recently, he has been making frequent appearances on The Ed Show and Hardball to discuss the ramifications and implications of British Petroleum’s oil spill, in an effort to hold BP accountable for the damage that they have caused to the environment and persons, as well as to expose the lies that BP continues to feed the news media.

Kathleen Wells: You filed a class action lawsuit against BP. Talk to me about that suit, and differentiate it from the trust fund.

Mike Papantonio: I think the most important thing is: We filed a RICO case.  The RICO case is much different from anything on the table.  The RICO case says that the conduct of BP, Halliburton, and Transocean is really not just negligence, but it’s something that — it’s the same kind of suit you would use to go after the mob or a drug cartel or organized crime.

It’s a civil RICO case.  It isn’t unique to Florida, but Florida has the most progressive – certainly the most far-reaching – civil RICO case in the country.  That’s the case that I’m focusing on primarily.

Kathleen Wells: Now you are talking about the federal lawsuit that you filed recently in Pensacola. And you are alleging that the Bush administration relaxed federal regulatory oversight, etc.

Mike Papantonio: Yes.  Because that’s far different than anything that the trust fund is going to be looking at.  It’s not a typical OPA kind of case or typical class action.  The other thing it does, because of the unique aspects of RICO, is that it allows you to ask for damages that are different from the typical kinds of damages.

For example, here, if you have a property owner in Florida and they own a home/a set of condos, there is nothing that allows, in the OPA claim, diminution of value. You can’t say these people have lost their value (It has been reduced 30 percent) because of this event.

Under this [RICO] statute, under the way that we brought the case, we then can ask for that.   We can say that we have people in certain counties here that are heavily tourist areas.  They are heavily reliant on the beach crowd, and because of that, the value of the property has gone down. The numbers are already fairly substantial.

That’s the damages that would flow from the RICO case. Now, any other damages as well can flow, but that’s the thing I’m focusing on.

Kathleen Wells: OK, so differentiate this from the trust fund.  Why would a person come to you as opposed to filing a claim to recover via the trust fund?

Mike Papantonio: They wouldn’t. I really think most people, the typical person that has a claim – that charters a boat or a fishing business – it doesn’t make sense that they should first go out and hire an attorney if the damages are fairly easy to compute.    If you’ve got somebody that’s been in the fishing business for ten years and they can say: “Well, here’s my history. I don’t have all the documents, but I can tell you, historically, I’ve been able to generate $250K in the eight or seven months, and now I can’t do that.”  Why should you pay an attorney for that?

It’s different when you are talking about something as sophisticated as a taxing authority or a municipality or a hotel.  You don’t just prance in and say: “Mr. Feinberg*, give me $8 million.”  So those are the cases – the more complex cases – that I’m going to be handling.

If someone goes in and says, “I can’t quite articulate the amount of money that I’ve lost,” Feinberg isn’t saying you can’t have a lawyer; he is saying we are going to try and build it so that you don’t need one. It makes perfect sense.

Kathleen Wells: What is the likelihood of this $20-billion trust fund being sufficient to cover everyone’s damages?

Mike Papantanio: It’s not even close.  Look, our experts tell us that the best analysis for BP — we are talking between $60-80 billion, which sounds like a lot of money, but in the big picture, this is a $115-billion company.  They are way undervalued marketwise. They have staying power because they have assets that are the perennial kind of sources of money. They are always going to be there.

And so, even though that sounds like a big number, it really isn’t. And I don’t think anybody went into this with their eyes closed, thinking $20 billion was going to be enough – it’s not.  Feinberg surely understood; he is very sophisticated.  This is going to affect people in a diverse way, from a prioritize standpoint. You know they’ve lost their boat, they can’t make the payment on their boat, they are losing their home, they can’t feed their family – that’s what this $20-billion trust fund is for. And I think he [Feinberg] will prioritize it.

Kathleen Wells: And then there will be subsequent damages, because with the dispersants we are seeing personal injury damages — health concerns.

Mike Papantonio: Riki Ott has incredible history of data.  I was with him yesterday. The stories he tells are just phenomenal. It’s serious.  So, yeah, that’s a whole different claim.

Kathleen Wells: Are you in Louisiana right now?

Mike Papantonio: I’m in Pensacola right now, and it’s certainly not as affected as Louisiana, but from a tourist’s standpoint, this area is dead — the harm has already been done. We have tar balls already coming up on the beach.  We have total slick that is three or four miles off shore.  Everything is there [so] that a family in Topeka is not going to say: “Hey, kids, let’s load up the station wagon and go to Pensacola.”

Kathleen Wells: President Obama, in his speech, characterized BP’s conduct as reckless. Do you think that characterization is accurate?

Mike Papantonio: I think it was kind. It’s criminal! Listen, we are so upside down in the way we view this picture.  This is a company that already has a history of being a felon – they killed 15 people over in Texas City; they pled the felonies.  Shortly after that, they had to plead to a $350-million fine for price-fixing.

They are in business with a company that had to plead to a $500-million fine for bribery, a company that the GAO looked at, which is Halliburton, a company that the GAO determined overcharged taxpayers by $5 billion — a company, that allowed supervisory employees to rape and sodomize a 20-year-old employee and lock her up in a container for 24 hours so she couldn’t tell her story.

These are the people we are dealing with.

So, when I use the word criminal, a reporter that is not used to dealing with corporations like this, their first reaction is: That’s an odd characterization.  But I deal with them all the time and I deal with corporations that aren’t criminal.

This is a criminal corporation.  They are sociopaths in the way they view the world.  They are predatory, and the President was very kind to them when he merely called them reckless. They are well beyond reckless.

Kathleen Wells: But will they face criminal responsibility/liability?

Mike Papantonio: If they don’t, it will be a travesty. We throw people in jail for carrying around five ounces of marijuana, and they can go to jail in excess of a year.  And here, we’ve killed 11 people, and for the people responsible not to go to prison will be a travesty of justice.

Simply because they are dressed up in an Armani suit and expensive shoes and a silk tie doesn’t mean they are not criminals.  It simply means we see them differently: They are not in an L.A. hood; they look different; they look like business people.

I’ve been in courtrooms with many corporations like this, and I’ve been in courtrooms with corporations that don’t function like this: They are not sociopaths; they are not predatory; they are simply negligent.

This is not simply a negligent corporation; this is a predatory, sociopathic, criminal, corporation.

Kathleen Wells: And so their conduct is intentional, you are saying?  When you say it’s criminal, is it criminal negligence, you would say?

Mike Papantonio: Here’s the issue:  Sometimes conduct is so reckless that we say we are going to treat them outside the analysis of negligence.  A drunk driver has a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit.  They drive through a school zone, and they kill a child.  That is not intentional.  They didn’t intend to kill the child. But their conduct is so wanton that they fall within the criminal realm.

At the very least, we have that.  But the question is: Do we have something beyond that? Do we have an intentional design, where the design was: We are going to de-regulate, we are going to take control over the regulatory body that’s suppose to be the brakes, that’s suppose to stop us when we get out of hand?  Do we have such control over that agency where it is a meaningless agency? And do we have a design to gain that control?

Kathleen Wells: When you characterize a company as reckless/criminal, who are the players that would be carted off to prison? Would it be the CEO?

Mike Papantonio: You would take them off to prison for reckless, wanton conduct that approaches manslaughter.   In most countries you would do that.  In the United States, we have been incapable of saying that.  To give a parallel analysis, we know, for example, that Madoff stole billions of dollars.  But we also know that there was conduct on Wall Street where we didn’t know Mr. Madoff.  Madoff didn’t pull all the strings, but we know four or five people who did, and we treat them, not like criminals, but we treat them under the civil recovery – SEC civil.  They should be prosecuted; they should be perp-walked.

That’s the same thing here.  You see, negligence is forgivable. Somebody makes a bad mistake.  OK, well, you know, people are human.  We are not infallible.

But, when there is a design from day one.  You see the design. You’ve taken the drink, you’ve jumped in the car, you’ve hit the gas pedal, and now you are driving 70 mph through a school zone.  You know something is going to happen.

That’s what this company did.

Kathleen Wells: And who represents this company? Is it the CEO?  Is it the COO?  Who is going to go to prison?

Mike Papantonio: That’s the fallacy in the system, you see? This question is agonizing because you are sitting there saying: “There is no easy answer. We have built a Chinese wall around the CEO like Tony Hayward.  Tony Hayward, we can’t go put in handcuffs and dress him up in one of those little orange suits and hall him away, because Tony is going to say: ‘Well, I didn’t really make the decision.  This guy made the decision, collectively, with this team, collectively, with this company policy.”

And it’s a complete, utter sham.

To give you the best example I can, and this is one that is very easy to understand: Years ago, I handled the Factor VIII case. That’s where this particular company had manufactured a drug that would stop hemophiliacs from bleeding. They had created a drug from whole blood.  They knew that the drug that they had created from whole blood was contaminated with the HIV virus.

After hundreds of people died — children primarily, because it’s a disease that is uniquely related to male children — after they contaminated hundreds, wiped out entire families — because that child would then spread the disease to the sister, and the sister would spread the disease to the other brother, father, and mother — after they were forced to take the product off of the market in the United States, they then took it and they shipped it to France, South America, and Asia and killed thousands of people.

In France, somebody went to prison. And that somebody paid the kind of price that we should be holding corporate types to: They went to prison.

In America, nobody was even arrested, much less sent to prison.

Kathleen Wells: Then, it becomes moot or irrelevant to paint/characterize a company as criminal, reckless, or sociopathic.  It’s a moot point.

Mike Papantonio: I think you hit it on the head.  It does, because even though the Supreme Court, six months ago in the United Citizens case, said that we have to treat a corporation like a person, we don’t treat them like a person.

And until somebody shows courage, and I don’t anticipate that that is going to be Holder. Holder comes from that silk stocking, corporate atmosphere.  He was the guy that these corporations called on to defend them. Covington & Burling — that’s where he comes from.

Is that the guy that is going to pull the trigger on this?  Probably not.  But it’s going to take that kind of courage. It’s going to take an Attorney General saying: “Damnit, we just can’t allow this anymore. We have to set an example.”

Kathleen Wells: But he did announce that he is bringing a criminal investigation.

Mike Papantonio: So what!  I’m pleased. I’m happy that he is. Hooray!  Let’s see what it is. At the end of the day, let’s see what it really is.

How many indictments have you seen in the Goldman Sachs issue?  How many indictments have you seen in AIG or any of these real, real, ugly cases that flowed from Wall Street?

Kathleen Wells: So you are basically saying this investigation has no teeth?

Mike Papantonio: It will have no teeth. It will look like it’s something, but when it is all over it’s not going to be anything.  Nobody is going to go to jail.

Kathleen Wells: So corporations in this country are in a lofty position.

Mike Papantonio: They are above the law!  There is no question.  And until we start treating … If we are serious – if this dysfunctional, corporate-run Supreme Court that we have – if they are serious and they say we must treat a corporation like a person when it comes to giving campaign donations, they should have the right to do what a person does, well fine.  It’s a two-way street: They also have the responsibility to be held accountable when they kill people, when they destroy an ecosystem, when they lie to us about their relationships with regulatory agencies, when they bribe regulators. We should be able to throw them in jail because they are a person.

Kathleen Wells: There has been no case law in United States where a CEO or an executive of a corporation has faced criminal penalties?

Mike Papantonio: That’s not accurate — there has been. But they are very few and far between. If you quantify it, what is the conduct en masse that we see in the United States? Can we go get somebody – yeah, we can. We saw it with Tyco. That was clear.  We saw it with Enron, right? That was very clear: This person did this.

But most of the time they have so much insulation that we give them such a free pass that it is very, very difficult to do.  It’s because we built it into the system to where the system perpetuates its willingness to protect a white-collar criminal and throw the blue-collar criminal in prison.

Kathleen Wells: And so you are saying it’s not likely that it’s going to happen with any of the executives with BP?

Mike Papantonio: No.  Frankly, people with middle management should already be in prison. The people that were involved in the drug and sex orgy scandal that broke out right before this happened — they should already be in jail.  What we are talking about is bribery – purely, simply bribery.

And so, when a corporation like Halliburton or BP then interacts with a regulatory agency and makes them do things that they know they are not supposed to do, and they give them something in exchange, that’s bribery.

Could we do something about it?  Yes.  Will we?  No.  Does this Attorney General have the courage to do it?  No.

This is not unique to this situation.  Who in the hell is Salazar?  Where did he come from? The Republicans wanted Salazar. That was their guy. Where did Tim Geithner and Summers and Bill Rubin – where do these people come from?

They come from organizations that people like Eric Holder are beholden to. I mean, c’mon.  I was very pleased that he was the first African-American Attorney General, but so what?

And for Eric Holder to grab himself and rise above what he has been beat into, which is the Covington & Burling culture, where he represents these people. These corporations are people they have represented all their lives.

Look, I hope he does. Nothing would please me more.  But I’m not going to stand by and wait for it.

Kathleen Wells: You’re not going to hold your breath. I’m disappointed to hear this, because it speaks to the culture…

Mike Papantonio: Exactly.  Most reporters don’t get that. They don’t understand that this is very complex. It’s a cultural policy issue.  Let’s be honest with it – it’s a policy.  We don’t throw our Harvard MBAs in prison.

Kathleen Wells: Recently, it was reported that the federal judge ruled to overturn the administration’s six-month moratorium on drilling.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah, Feldman.  Of course, how ridiculous! That’s a whole different story.  That’s the story of the judiciary.  Now, Feldman probably isn’t the best example of that. But while we have been paying attention to the shiny thing (the shiny thing is Congress and the Senate) — how many Senators are we going to have? How many Congressmen?  Are we going to be able to get our 60 votes? Are we going to be able to overcome the filibuster?

While we have been paying attention to that, Karl Rove, people like Tom Delay, people like Newt Gingrich, people like Boehner and Eric Cantor – these people have been worried: can we pack the judiciary?  How many federal judges can we put in there that come from the silk stocking background of Williams & Connolly or the Byrd Law Firm?  How many people can we pack in there? And that’s what they have been doing ever since Karl Rove said:  “That’s the way we are going to take back America. We are going to take it back through the judiciary, both at the trial level and the appellate level.”

And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what happened to us. Seventy percent of the judiciary now is Republican appointees, and when you break it down, it is even uglier than that. They are not simply Republican appointees, they are ideologues.

That didn’t just happen. It happened while I was doing radio shows with Bobby Kennedy on “Ring of Fire” on Air America, talking about how horrible it would be to lose a congressional race, and they were packing the courts in our backyard.

Kathleen Wells: And let’s take it on the legislative level. I just did an interview with Senator Bill Nelson of your state (Florida), and I was talking about the fact that Republicans, specifically Bill Frist, mentioned that they would work to defund any legislation subsequent to it’s being passed**.

Mike Papantonio: Of course.  Listen to this – jump to your story.  Do you really think that Joe Barton said, ”I know what I’m going to do today. I’m going to apologize to Tony Hayward. I’m going to apologize to BP?”

Tom Price, who created the Republican talking points on this, he just didn’t create the talking points that we are going to apologize. You don’t have Newt Gingrich and Boehner out there apologizing overtly, but they are still apologizing.

The legislative process that you are going to see come at this is going to be driven by the same thing it’s always driven by, and that’s money.  These are just the first few paper cuts. Barton’s statement was simply: “Let me see how the real crazy teabaggers are going to respond. Let’s talk to our base.”  He is talking to his base.

Who is the base?  The base are the teabaggers, the nutcases that live all up and down this coast. This is teabagger central, understand?  So let me begin by talking to those people. Let me begin talking to those people, before we move to the legislative aspect of giving BP a free ride (which it will happen). Barton will be in charge of Energy, if the Republicans take the Congress back. He is the guy. So let’s start floating the ideas — that’s the first step.

The second step is — you have your Murkowski’s, you have the Palins, you have all of these shills, these hacks — with a straight face, they say: “Well, we have to legislate a way for BP to stay alive.”  That’s what we will see if the Democrats lose next time.

Nothing is coincidental.

Kathleen Wells: So this is a strategy.  Rand Paul characterized it as un-American to criticize BP.   Michael Steele and also Michele Bachmann said that the trust fund was a slush fund and a redistribution of wealth.

Mike Papantonio: Here it is.  Michele Bachmann — she wasn’t just talking to you and me. She was talking to the fringe edge. Where is the fringe edge? Where are they?  They’re in Texas; they’re in Louisiana; they’re in Mississippi; they’re in Alabama; they’re in North Florida. That’s where the fringe edge lives.

That is the genesis, if you will, of the teabagger movement.  So they aren’t just out there willy-nilly saying this stuff. This is the first step.  And then, if the Democrats lose in the next election, then it’s going to be plausible — the issue will be a discussion issue. It will enter the mainstream discussion. We will feel comfortable talking about letting BP have a break.  And then we will see legislation to change some of what we’ve been able to do to get BP to do what they are supposed to do.

Kathleen Wells: So it’s like gutting it – the legislation.

Mike Papantonio: Exactly.  But this is just paper cuts right now. If the Democrats lose, you will have the Barton characters in control of changing the whole nature of the way we handle BP.

Kathleen Wells: I just don’t want to be partisan about it.

Mike Papantonio: I can’t help but be partisan about it. There is nothing redeeming I can tell you on the other side, so you would be talking to the wrong person for that.

Kathleen Wells: But what I’m saying is that with the health care bill we saw some of those Blue Dog Democrats not … so we have people in both parties, right?  Maybe we are talking degrees.

Mike Papantonio: That’s exactly right – it is degrees.  Of course, we have the Blanche Lincolns. You are always going to have that. You are always going to have those people out there. You are always going to have the Liebermans.  But when you look at the total picture, which is all I can look at, I say: Where is the biggest threat?  It’s this issue of the beginning paper cuts, the talking points, telling the teabaggers that it’s un-American, telling the teabaggers that it’s socialism. All that does is pander to their craziness to begin with, and then that becomes part of the broader public discussion. And then the legislature has an easier time to change the law.

Kathleen Wells: Also, Governor Haley Barbour and Governor Jindal said that a moratorium on drilling is bad for the region and bad for the country as a whole.

Mike Papantonio: It’s crazy talk. Here’s the tough thing that politicians can’t say. When the buffalo hunters killed all of the buffalo, then they were out of work, right? They killed them. There was nothing else they could do. We are at that crossroads right now, because what’s happening is we have an entire industry that we have to evaluate from the standpoint of the greater good. Like it or not, we have to do that.

And the greater good is this analysis: If we put 30,000 people out of work because of a moratorium or because we’ve changed the way that we are handling this industry here on the coast, then we’ve saved one million jobs that have been lost because of this oil spill. One million people have lost their jobs because of this oil spill.

So am I supposed to listen to Bobby Jindal or Haley Barbour and be moved by the fact that we have to?

Plants — car manufacturing plants, steel manufacturing plants, airplane manufacturing plants — close down all the time, and they put tens of thousands of people out of work all the time.  It’s the reality. It’s where we are as a society. We are a dynamic, changing society.  We are not static.

And it’s the same analysis of a buffalo hunter that says: “I’ve killed all the buffalo.  Well, let me go kill something else now.”

*In August, the claims system will be taken over by Kenneth Feinberg, an independent administrator appointed by President Obama. BP will pay Feinberg’s salary, but he reports neither to BP nor to the government. Feinberg will have wide discretion in setting the rules to determine who is eligible for payments through the fund.

As of July 28, BP has yet to deposit any money in the oil spill compensation fund and Feinberg has stated that he could not begin making payments to businesses and individuals until BP makes a deposit.

by Sasha Chavkin ProPublica,

BP appears to be delaying decisions about the validity of many claims for damages from the Gulf oil spill, leaving claimants frustrated by bureaucratic obstacles and confusing requests for more documentation.

The company’s claims process is guided by the Oil Pollution Act, a 1990 federal law that holds oil companies responsible for repaying direct “removal costs and damages [1]” caused by a spill. But many claims are for damages that are not explicitly covered by the law — such as ruined start-up companies and lost income from commission payments — and many of those are in limbo.

BP appears to be delaying claims that are not covered by the Oil Pollution Act until the process is taken over in mid-August by Kenneth Feinberg, the independent administrator appointed by President Barack Obama to oversee the compensation process. Feinberg has said that his standards for judging claims will be more generous than the limits set by the Oil Pollution Act.

Daren Beaudo, a spokesman for BP, said, “It may be simpler for Mr. Feinberg to take on those non-Oil Pollution Act related claims.”

While BP is reviewing claims whose eligibility under the Oil Pollution Act is uncertain, it has not indicated which types of damages have been approved for payments and which of these claims are being delayed as well.

The issue came to our attention following responses to ProPublica’s BP claims tracking project [2] by readers, who said that their claims for certain types of damages were in a holding pattern.

The frustration caused by the delays is compounded because BP is not explaining the situation to claimants. Instead, claimants describe a pattern of unreturned phone calls, frequent switches of the adjuster handling their claim, and requests for more documentation. Three ProPublica readers said they received form letters from BP [3] saying that they had not provided enough documentation, only to be told later by adjusters that in fact the company was not yet approving the type of claims they had submitted.

It is unclear how many claims are being delayed because of doubts regarding their eligibility under the Oil Pollution Act, or how many claimants in this situation have been told they provided insufficient documentation. According to the latest data from BP, the company has held up a total of 59,900 claims for having insufficient documentation, accounting for 43 percent of all claims [4] and significantly outnumbering the 38,400 claims that have been approved. (If you have had a similar experience, you can tell ProPublica about it here [5].)

BP spokesman Ray Viator wrote in an e-mail that “our policy is to send letters citing ‘insufficient documentation’ only to those claimants where that applies,” and said that the sample letter provided to him from a ProPublica reader’s claim had been sent in error by BP. Viator also said that the company had instructed adjusters to inform claimants if their claims were being reviewed for eligibility under the Oil Pollution Act.

One area in which BP appears to be delaying decisions because of uncertainty about the Oil Pollution Act is claims for lost income from commission payments.

Duane Sandy, a salesman of hurricane-proof storage units based in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., said he is paid on commission and has not sold a single unit in Florida since the spill. He said he submitted a claim in May for $3,500, based on the income he expected to lose relative to his commission payments in 2009, with a letter from his boss as documentation. He has not received any checks, and he received a form letter from BP dated July 19 [3] stating that he had “provided insufficient documentation to support the claim.”

But Sandy said that when he called BP’s adjuster, he heard a different story — that BP would not pay his claim because it was not approving payments for income loss based on commissions. “Once they heard I got paid by commission, they didn’t care what I did,” Sandy said.

Viator, the BP spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that the company is “currently evaluating claims based on lost income from commissions to determine whether they are compensable under the Oil Pollution Act.”

Amy Weiss, a spokeswoman for Feinberg, said people who are paid by commission will be eligible once Feinberg takes over. Sandy may have to wait until the claims system switches control to have a chance to get compensated.

Claimants have also reported extended delays in decisions on such damage claims as lost income from a commercial photographer in a beachfront tourist town, lost down payments on canceled Gulf Coast vacations and lost sponsors for a television show about fishing in the Gulf.

If you’ve filed a claim with BP and been told that you didn’t provide enough documentation — or if there’s any other part of your experience that we should know about — you can tell ProPublica what happened with this simple form [5]. If you have questions about the BP claims process, check out ProPublica’s Unofficial Guide to BP Claims [6].

Amanda Michel contributed reporting to this piece, and is coordinating our BP claims project [2].

Update: Several hours after this report was published, BP sent out a press release acknowledging that decisions on “several thousand claims” will be deferred until independent administrator Kenneth Feinberg takes over the compensation system. Here is our story [7] about BP’s statement.

But I don’t think they’re going to win,” he says. “I think they’re on a fool’s mission.”

Why do they keep saying it’s Feinberg’s call when ACE’s professional Claims Deniers on the job???   He’ll kiss the insurance companies asses just like our government and BP tell him too

By Tovia Smith NPR

The economic impact of the Gulf oil spill is reaching far beyond the fishing and tourism industries that were first hit. Everyone from plumbers to beauticians says they’re feeling the pain. But some people are much more likely than others to get money from BP’s compensation fund.

While scientists watch to see if oil might make its way through the entire marine food chain, the economic food chain has already been spoiled for everyone from fishermen to oil rig workers.

With no one fishing and many restaurants hurting for business, it’s also having an impact on Scott Burke’s bottom line. His company, Loop Linen and Uniform Service, launders and rents tablecloths and napkins just outside of New Orleans.

The Trickle-Down Effect

Washing machines that usually run until 9 p.m. are turned off, and linens rented out to restaurants are piled high on shelves.

“As the restaurants slow down, we slow down,” Burke says. “It’s just a trickle-down effect.”

And the trickle doesn’t stop with Burke.

“The people who supply me — I’m not using as many chemicals to wash,” he says. “I’m not buying linen ’cause there’s just not a demand. So, everyone’s feeling the pinch.”

Many are also trying to make a claim. Even a local plumber hired a lawyer.

Shucking oysters tends to muck up the drain pipes in restaurant kitchens. But no shucking means no clogging. And now he’s sitting around wondering if he’s eligible for compensation.

“We have no customers — we’re very slow, like [a] 40 percent drop down,” says Kim Truong, who owns Paradise Nail Salon. Truong says she’s worried about her business. Many female customers say they no longer have the money to get their nails done because their husbands are out of work.

Truong says she tried to file a claim with BP and presented old tax returns, as well as receipts from this year. But she says BP officials told her they don’t yet know if they’ll be able to offer her any compensation.

Feinberg’s Judgment Call

Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of BP’s $20 billion compensation fund, determines who gets paid. The guy who owns a beachfront motel on the Gulf is a sure bet. Real estate brokers who aren’t renting as much are likely to receive something. But Feinberg says a golf course located 50 miles away is unlikely to receive anything, even if its business is way down.

“That’s a judgment call,” Feinberg says. “At some point you have to make a call: These claims are eligible; these claims are not eligible. I could be wrong. You people could draw the line somewhere else.”

Preston Mayeaux, 59, knows where he would draw the line.

Losing ‘Golden Years’

He walked into a BP claims center this week seeking compensation because, he says, the property value has plummeted at the small cabin he owns on Bayou John Charles. He says he can no longer enjoy summer weekends on the oily water.

“I lost my golden years that I wanted to be able to go to my fishing camp, and how do you put a price on that?” Mayeaux says. “I don’t know how you put a price on that.”

Apparently, neither did the BP claims official who Mayeaux says gave him a lot more pushback than sympathy. If BP’s recklessness caused the spill, then he says people like him should be compensated.

BP has repeatedly insisted that it will pay “every legitimate claim.”

“That’s the magic word. What will be considered legitimate?” says John Alario Jr., a Louisiana state senator. “I think some people will end up having to go to court to prove what is legitimate. It’s yet to be seen how fair they’re going to be. We can only go by trust at this point.”

Feinberg doesn’t disagree. His offers will all be driven by what he thinks someone would be able to get if they chose instead to sue BP.

Feinberg says those further down the food chain who are not happy with his offer can try their luck in court.

“But I don’t think they’re going to win,” he says. “I think they’re on a fool’s mission.”

GULFPORT, United States – Contrary to recent media reports of a quick recovery in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists and biologists are “deeply concerned” about impacts that will likely span “several decades.”

“My prediction is that we will be dealing with the impacts of this spill for several decades to come and it will outlive me,” Dr. Ed Cake, a Biological Oceanographer, as well as a Marine and Oyster Biologist, told IPS, “I won’t be here to see the recovery.”

Dr. Cake’s grim assessment stems partially from a comparison he made to the Exxon Valdez oil disaster and the second largest oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (BP’s being the largest), that of the Ixtoc-1 blowout well in the Bay of Campeche in 1979.

“The impacts of the Exxon Valdez are still being felt 21 years later,” Dr. Cake said, “The impacts of the Ixtoc-1 are still being felt and known, 31 years later. I know folks who study oysters in bays in the Yucatan Peninsula, and oysters there have still not returned, 31 years later. So as an oyster biologist I’m concerned about that. Those things are still affected 31 years later, and that was a smaller spill by comparison.”

Dr. Cake is also concerned about deepwater habitats that are being affected. Given that BP has used at least 1.9 million gallons of chemically toxic dispersants, the vast majority of the oil has remained beneath the surface, and much of that has sunk to the sea floor.

As an example, he told of “a new coral colony ecosystem” within 10 miles of BP’s blowout Macondo Well, which was found by a pipeline company whilst it was producing an environmental impact assessment statement of the route of the pipeline.

“They found some amazing coral communities that no one knew about, and now they will be covered in oil,” Dr. Cake said, “Those will not recover.”

Dr. Stephen Cofer-Shabica, an oceanographer in South Carolina, focuses on the biology of barrier islands. He monitored the affects of the Ixtoc-1 oil disaster on Padre Island National Seashore in south Texas.

“You can go back now, 31 years later, and there’s still oil in the sand there [Padre Island],” he told IPS. But his main concern is now about what the state of Louisiana is doing in response to BP’s oil disaster.

Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal has authorized the dredging and building of sand berms near Louisiana’s barrier islands in a so-called effort to keep oil away from the shore. One area where the dredging project is still underway is the Chandeleur Islands.

“The Chandeleur project is totally futile and a waste of resources, and I can’t believe they are still doing it,” Dr. Cofer-Shabica said, “That’s what I find totally unfathomable. There’s oil floating around underwater, that has been dispersed and these barrier islands, as constructs will not have any effect on that oil at all.”

According to Dr. Cofer-Shabica, the so-called fix is actually a hugely destructive problem. “From an oceanographic perspective, this was biologically destructive, especially when you start digging up the bottom in shallow water, and building these barrier islands.”

He added, “Louisiana is in a precarious position anyway because of the subsiding that is happening in the delta, and on top of that you have worldwide sea-level rise, so it has two physical factors that are working against its marshes. So building barrier islands to presumably keep oil out, amidst rising sea levels, makes no sense.”

In addition to this, he said that the biological impacts of building islands “are larger than the physical impacts,” and said this of dredging sediment from those areas: “You’re in shallow water, that is biologically rich with clams, worms, and bacteria, that will all be dug up and destroyed.”

Dr. Cake is also worried about oil contaminating the oysters. He has seen much oil in Louisiana’s marshes. “One of the experts with us worked for NOAA on the Exxon Valdez spill, and he told me if the oil is on the marsh grass, it’s in the oysters.”

BP and the Coast Guard are currently under scrutiny for having used so much oil dispersant, an industrial solvent that breaks up the oil so that it will sink below the surface.

For example, a 1979 report, “Effects of Corexit 9527 on the Hatchability of Mallard Eggs” in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, showed that even though dispersants are applied to minimize oil impacts to visible and charismatic species, Corexit actually enhances the lethal effects of crude oil to birds that are exposed.

Corexit 9527 penetrates eggshells and shell membranes as readily as crude oil. When applied to an eggshell near the embryo, the embryo would fuse to the shell membrane and die within 24 hours.

“Corexit breaks the oil up into mirco-globules,” Dr. Cake said, “That’s the harmful part for oysters. Oysters are filter feeders, and they feed on a range of three to 12 millionths of a meter as particles. You can grind up graphite from a pencil in fine enough particles and they’ll run it through their system. It’s the same with the micro-globules of oil. They’ll be taken in, but in going through the system, and in absorbing some of that oil, it’ll cause lesions. So it’s actually what the Corexit does to the oil, that’ll affect the oysters in the end.”

According to Dr. Cake, his study teams have people watching and monitoring affected areas.

“In the past month in Bretton and Chandeleur Sounds, oil was there during the day, it was sprayed with Corexit at night, and the next day it was gone. Where did it go? It went to the bottom, and that’s adjacent to where these oyster farms are. So at that point, there’s a lot less water for that Corexit to disperse into, and there may be an impact from that on the oysters.”

Dr. Cake said that while scientists have found very large plumes of dispersed oil at depth, “I’m not sure that oil will ever get here as dispersed clouds. It’s getting here as sunken clouds, because that’s what they [BP] wanted it to do. Sink it, get it out of sight out of mind. But what about all that that’s already here? I think it came in and they sprayed it, and it’s now sunk because of the spraying.”

Chasidy Hobbs, with Emerald Coastkeeper in Pensacola, Florida, is on the City of Pensacola Environmental Advisory Board and Escambia County Citizens Environmental Committee. Hobbs also directs the environmental litigation research firm, Geography and Environment.

“We’re poisoning the entire Gulf of Mexico food web,” Hobbs, who is also an instructor and advisor in the Environmental Studies Department at University of West Florida, told IPS, “It’s crazy, and it’s criminal. I’m deeply concerned with the long-term ecological and human impact.”

Dr. Cake is among a large and growing group of scientists who are discussing a grim future for much of the Gulf of Mexico as a result of BP’s disaster.

“The oil itself on the bottom is being eaten by bacteria. This has always been the case in naturally occurring seeps across the Gulf. But now we’ve introduced much more oil, and as the bacteria grow they are consuming the oxygen that is in that area. And that oxygen loss will result in dead/hypoxic zones, like the one off the West side of the Mississippi over towards Galveston where there’s one that is 3,000 square mile area of dead bottom. Now we’re looking at that along the eastern part because of the presence of so much more bacteria.”  Original Story here

Oceanographic satellite data now shows that as of July 28, the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico has stalled as a consequence of the BP oil spill disaster. This according to Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, an Italian theoretical physicist, and major complex and chaotic systems analyst at the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy.

Intro by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News

This could be the most significant man-caused Earth Changes news thus far in my lifetime.  This morning, Lesie Pastor informed the New Energy Congress of a report by Your Own World USA that as of July 28,

Oceanographic satellite data now shows that the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico has stalled as a consequence of the BP oil spill [volcano] disaster. This according to Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, an Italian theoretical physicist, and major complex and chaotic systems analyst at the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy.

He further notes that the effects of this stall have also begun to spread to the Gulf Stream. This is because the Loop Current is a crucial element of the Gulf Stream itself and why it is commonly referred to as the “main engine” of the Stream.

The concern now, is whether or not natural processes can re-establish the stalled Loop Current. If not, we could begin to see global crop failures as early as 2011.

Images of The Day After Tomorrow flashed in my head.  The disruption of major ocean currents is no small thing.  The climate ramifications are massive, worldwide.

The Gulf Loop is the current that loops up, to the right of the middle of the Gulf of Mexico then drops down to the left of Florida where it then passes below Florida into the Atlantic, where it contributes to the Gulf Stream, which passes up the east coast of the United States and Canada.

The Gulf Stream is what keeps the east coast of the U.S. as well as Britain and Europe more temperate, compared to what they would be without this warm current passing by.

After reading through the article, seeing its scientific backing, and discussion of the ramifications, I went to Google to see if this is getting mainstream press attention.  A Google News search for “Loop Current” Stalled came up null.  Nada, nothing.

“How could that be?” I wondered.  This is huge, and it’s something that mainstream science and the mainstream press could easily verify and report.

I then placed a call to Paul Noel, who seems to always be up on things like this.  I caught him in the middle of a family vacation event at a museum, so I was only able to speak with him for a couple of minutes, but he said that he had noticed that the current had stalled.  “I check the loop current periodically”, he said.  He also said that a new phenomenon had cropped up on the beaches.  Something about a “bathtub ring” of oil residue.  I didn’t catch how this was new, and he had to go.

So apparently, this is a breaking development that will most likely take a while to sink in, just as the initial BP rig fire and sinking and oil volcano took a while for people to realize its significance and impact.  The people still living near the Gulf may yet be in denial as to the impact of the toxic fumes coming off the slick, poisoning their rain and crops and groundwater.  Now the other shoe drops.  The Loop Current stalls, and now the globe will feel the impact.

The mechanism by which the oil slick could lead to something like this could have to do with the changed viscosity of the water penetrated with oil to great depths due to the Corexit dispersant; and it could have to do with the darkened water attracting more solar heat, increasing its temperature.

Here is the rest of the story from Your Own World USA

YOWUSA.COM, 01-August-10
Marshall Masters

An Open System in Trouble

The Loop Current is a clockwise flow that extends northward into the Gulf of Mexico and joins the Yucatan Current and the Florida Current to the Gulf Stream.

Although at first glance the Loop Current appears confined within the Gulf, scientists define it as an “element of an extremely complex, open system”: as all other “elements” of the so-called “Earth System”, are not separable from the others.

These various “elements” of the Earth System (i.e., atmosphere, landmasses and so forth) are so strongly correlated to one another that at some point, they become indivisible.

Why is this important to all life on the planet? The Gulf Stream is a strong interlinked component of the Earth’s global network of ocean conveyor currents, which drive the planet’s weather systems.

For this reason, Zangari’s concern is that should the Loop Current fail to restart, dire global consequences may ensue as a result of extreme weather changes and many other critical phenomena. The repercussions of which could trigger widespread droughts, floods, crop failures and subsequent global food shortages.

While pundits are certain to trivialize the ramifications of this event, “the real worry” says Zangari, “is that that there is no historical precedent for the sudden replacement of a natural system, with a dysfunctional man-made system. That is, except for the atomic bomb blasts and contamination as a result of nuclear waste and nuclear plant accidents, such as the April 1986, Chernobyl disaster

In what is now widely regarded by many as “Oil’s Chernobyl,” Americans, and particularly Gulf Coast residents are disheartened by a steady stream of bureaucratically bungled responses, which are now proving to be just as a deadly as the initial event itself.

Perhaps even more so, as this toxic brew of incompetence, greed, corruption, oil, Corexit dispersant and other chemicals has unleashed a man-made disaster in the Gulf, with frightful possibilities for the future.

The Corexit Curse

The use of Corexit as a dispersant was first brought to the public’s attention during the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

A powerful solvent used as a dispersant for oil slicks, public knowledge about the dispersant and its long-term effects is hampered by the proprietary protections of its manufacturer, Nalco Holding Company, which is associated with British Petroleum (BP) and Exxon.

What is known, is that this petroleum-based formula is regarded as being at least four times more toxic to life, than the oil is disperses by many environmentalists.

Officially, just over one million gallons of Corexit has been spayed in the Gulf of Mexico, but reliable sources tell Yowua.com that the actual amount could easily be twice that much.

Either way, current satellite data of the Gulf feeds tell Zangari that the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico has clearly stalled due to environmental impacts from a man-made introduction of oil, which were then compounded by other agents (Corexit and so on).

Worse yet, these real-time satellite data feeds offers clear evidence to Zangari that a new artificial system has been generated in of the Gulf in a remarkably short period of time. It is this new and unnatural system which has changed the viscosity, temperature and salinity of the Gulf’s seawater, thereby causing the Loop Current to stall. A system that has existed for millions of years.

Consequently, there is no possible way for scientists to predict its future evolution, though corporate spinmeisters and media pundits will no doubt be sure to offer a bevy of right-sounding predictions. Their goal as it has been throughout this ordeal, will be to deflect attention by trivializing the severity of the event with simplistic and misleading explanations.

However, researchers like Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, offer insights that transcend the politics of oil.

As a theoretical physicist, he currently holds a position as an associate member of the Research Division of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics at Frascati National Laboratories (LNF) of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy. A prestigious research facility focused on high-energy physics.

However, what makes Dr. Gianluigi Zangari’s findings so vital to the common man, is that for over a decade, he has conducted his continuous global analysis climate research, using publicly available data. Unlike the jealously guarded formulas for Corexit, anyone can vet his research without having to run through a gauntlet of corporate lawyers.

Tracking Zangari’s Data

Zangari’s assessment is based on daily monitoring of real-time data oceanographic satellite public data feeds called “Real-Time Mesoscale Altimetry” from the Jason, Topex/Poseidon, Geosat, Follow-On, ERS-2 and Envisat satellites.

These satellite feeds are are captured and made publicly available by NASA, NOAA and by the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

These CCAR data maps offer researchers like Zangari a continuous stream of markers for sea and ocean dynamics: surface height, velocity, temperature. A fourth marker that Zangari has found to be especially helpful, are chlorophyll infrared emission maps. This is because they show him real-time changes in the shape of the Gulf Stream.

In addition to changes in ocean velocity, Zangari is reporting an equally troubling analysis with sea surface temperatures. The data published by Rutgers University is from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data maps. Dr. Zangari re-elaborates and checks these data maps using his own calculus system called SHT (patented in 1999.)

Acknowledgments: Frascati National Laboratories, NOAA and Rutgers University (http://marine.rutgers.edu). Analysis by Dr. Gianluigi Zangari (Frascati Labs), July 29, 2010.

Taken altogether, these four oceanographic markers began taking a turn for the worse, shortly after the Deepwater Horizon well explosion on April 20, 2010. This rapid turn of events raised Zangari’s concerns about the Gulf’s Loop Current, and then on July 28, 2010 the worst case imaginable happened. “The Loop Current simply stalled,” Zangari noted sadly “and we have no idea if it can reorganize itself, because now we’re dealing with troubling unknowns.”

Velocity and Temperature Worries

At present, Admiral Thad Allen is trying to assure Americans that the worst of the disaster has passed and that the oil slicks have disappeared due to natural processes. However the markers from oceanographic satellite feeds Dr. Zangari is studying tell him an entirely different story.

The millions of gallons of Corexit sprayed in the Gulf have given BP and the US government a convenient way to mitigate public concerns by removing the threat from sight. The logic being that since the oil is disappearing, so is the crisis. However, taking oil from the surface and spreading through the water column is not a PR matter. Instead, it has become a convenient way to cover up one massive mistake, with a tragically larger one.

To help understand why, let’s assume that what is really happening in the Gulf is not much different from what happens when you shake a bottle of oil and vinegar salad dressing. Leave the bottle on the shelf for a while and the oil and vinegar will naturally separate, each with it’s own unique viscosity.

However, when the bottle is shaken the two are mixed. This creates a new, and overall thicker viscosity, hence the dressing pours more slowly. In very simple terms, this is what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, which begs another question. Was the Gulf of Mexico intentionally written off early on, so as to protect the Gulf Stream and America’s NATO partners?

Will This Stall Spread Into the Atlantic?

The importance of the Gulf Stream was brought to the forefront in the blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) where the Gulf Stream stalled, causing temperatures in New York City to plummet from sweltering to freezing in a matter of hours.

Based on real science, the film showed movie audience how the the Gulf Stream transports warm water from the equatorial regions of the Earth, along American’s Eastern seaboard and then across the Atlantic to Northern Europe.

Now, current temperature measurements for the Gulf Stream on the Atlantic Front (from 76 to 47 meridian) now appears to be about 10 degrees Celsius cooler than it was this time last year. Consequently, a direct causality nexus has now been established, between the stall of the Gulf Loop Current and this new temperature drop in the Gulf Stream on the Atlantic Front.

For this reason, the focus of Zangari’s research is presently centered on finding signs of a return to the former natural equilibrium of the Gulf. Again, he stresses making predictions (pessimistic or optimistic alike) because “these phenomena are unpredictable because they are ruled by strong non-linearities.”

Nonetheless, we must must ponder the question: What does this new nexus portend for our future? To that, Zangari says “we can affirm that this system (the Gulf Stream) is changing in an unpredictable way, which may produce serious consequences on planetary scale.”

Yowusa.com will report new developments in Dr. Zangari’s research as they become available.