Re: the BP oil catastrophe: very interesting parallel, and other topics - BP Catastrophe PART II

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Compliments of Brasscheck ( note that Brasscheck is VERY antisemitic, and VERY anti- Israel. Once in a while, they have something good.)

 .... And some interesting history about such disasters in the past ( From  Wealth Daily):

• In 2001, Petrobas's P-36 rig exploded and sunk into the ocean killing 10 workers and leaking 399,000 gallons of oil into the water. Cleanup costs reached $515 million.
  
• In 1989, Unocal's Seacrest drillship capsized and sunk in a typhoon, killing 91 crewmembers.
  
• In 2005, ONGC's Mumbai High North Platform was hit by a passing ship, igniting a huge fire on the rig. 22 lives were lost and a 10-mile oil spill resulted, costing $195 million to contain and clean.
  
• In 2003, Hurricane Katrina sunk or set adrift at least 20 offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, one of which collided with a heavily traveled bridge in Mobile, Alabama.
  
• And in 1988 — during routine maintenance of its oil pumps — Occidental's Piper Alpha platform exploded, killing 167 men on board.

.... And some update on the consequences of this disaster so far ( Wealth Daily):

And beyond the financial toll, a brief rundown of the other after-effects of this spill is mind-boggling...

Fisheries: The government has declared an official "fishery disaster" in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

25% of the Gulf is currently closed to commercial fishing, and that figure will surely rise as more oil continues to leak out of the sunken rig.

Already, hundreds of thousands of fisherman, shrimpers, oystermen, and boat operators are losing huge amounts of their living with less and less water to fish.

In fact, one oyster farmer estimates that if the oil reaches his beds before he can harvest, he'll lose as much as $4,500 a day...

In 2008, the Gulf supplied one-eighth of all fish and shellfish caught in the U.S. Louisiana is the nation's leading supplier of domestic shellfish.

So with a quarter of the Gulf closed off to fisherman right now, those fisheries have been absolutely crippled.

Consider this, too: Shrimp fisheries in the Gulf bring in an estimated $442 million per year from wholesale distribution...

That means that if at least 25% of it stays closed, the industry could see a loss of over $110 million this year.

Wildlife: In just the 40 days following the spill, the dead bodies of 491 birds, 227 turtles, and 27 dolphins and other marine mammals have already been collected from the shoreline oil along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

But this could be a drop in the bucket compared to what's coming...

Some speculate that the death toll on these creatures will reach high in the tens of thousands before it's all said and done.

It could literally be decades before things are back to normal in the Gulf.

The oil has already made its way ashore into Louisiana wildlife reserves like the Breton National Wildlife Refuge in the offshore Breton and Chandeleur Islands and the Pass-a-Loutre refuge further to the south.

"It's the very worst-case scenario for things like birds and mammals," said James H. Cowan Jr., a professor at Louisiana State University.

Tourism: BP is paying millions for a marketing campaign for the states of Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama to get the word out that, for at least the time being, their beaches are free of oil.

But those states (along with Louisiana) have nonetheless reported scores of cancellations at hotels since the spill.

A Florida tourism official recently stated that they're losing millions of dollars from their lifeblood $60 billion vacation industry.

In fact in the Florida panhandle, Memorial Day hotel occupancy rates are usually 90 percent or higher. This year, reservations were off by 50% — and some hotels were hit with occupancy as low as 15-19%...

And those figures are BEFORE the oil has even begun to reach Florida shores.

Imagine how much damage they'll be looking at by August, now the earliest estimate of when BP experts will have the leaking well-capped.

"While I always hope for the best, this is looking like really out-of-control bad," said Florida Senator Bill Nelson.

.....Here is more information on the toxicity of Corexit:
http://averyheavystone.blogspot.com/

....And here is a great website to keep updated:
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/gulf-oil-spill-updated-news/1177

However, see this too, and BUYER BEWARE!

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/oil-spill-conflict-interest-matt-simmons-shorting-least-8000-bp-shares


.... Some pictures, after all:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/scenes_from_the_gulf_of_mexico.html 


Finally, see also this EXTENSIVE AND INCRIMINATING ARTICLE ABOUT THE BP DISASTER on this blog:
http://israeltruthtimes.blogspot.com/2010/06/right-up-my-alley-if-even-dr-len.html

And this shocking update:
http://israeltruthtimes.blogspot.com/2010/06/bp-oil-catastrophe-part-iii-this-has-to.html

And this incriminating article by E. Winston, about Obama and BP:

REID – PELOSI – OBAMA WANT $20BILLION IN ESCROW FROM BRITISH-PETROLEUM

               by Emanuel A. Winston, Middle East Analyst & Commentator

        IF Harry Reid, House Majority Leader; Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House (3^rd in line for President); and President Barack Hussein Obama want $20 Billion in Escrow from BP, that’s a great idea.  But, that isn’t the problem.   If these three pirates get anywhere near this escrow fund, it might instantly become their own Democratic slush fund.   They will need new offices, a new Commission to oversee the distribution of money to claimants who would only get pennies on a dollar once these corrupt people took their share.

        Why do you think these three conniving pirates only allowed the spending of several Billion for Bailouts and left $400 Billion unspent?  They were probably awaiting the time prior to elections when such monies would be useful to buy the next election.  I am certain Rahm Emanuel could explain the plan to insure sufficient funds were available prior to the midterm elections and even more for the 2012 re-election campaign of Obama.

        Why do you think the Obama-Care plan called for several years of higher taxes, with none or very little paid out for Health-care until 2014/15?  That accumulated pile of American tax-payers’ dollars would be in the hands of Obama-Pelosi-Reid for all that time – unless they were voted out of office.

        I cannot help but wonder why the Republicans didn’t mention this act of piracy.  Perhaps now is a good time along with the proclamation that the Obama-care scheme would be declared null and void.

        A SOLUTION:  Let there be an escrow for all those crushed by the BP (British Petroleum) gushing oil spill.  Government scientists (on Tuesday, June 16^th, the 58^th day since the explosion of BP deep sea oil well), increased their estimate of oil flowing into the Gulf by 50% to between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. That translates into 1.5 million gallons to 2.5 million gallons per day. Supposedly, these people, businesses and industries are insured against “political theft” by these corrupter.

        Don’t believe that this money will remain untouched by the Obama regime, no matter what they promise by way of Third Party independent controllers.    In the latest report we hear that BP has agreed to a $20 Billion escrow.  Guess how many lawyers will demand their share while the politicians will drool as they plunge into money pile expropriated from the American tax-payers.

 And this other one, by Thomas Sowell

Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?

By THOMAS SOWELL Posted 06/21/2010 06:13 PM ET

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.
Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.
"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.
Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.
In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.
The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.
Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.
And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.
But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men."
If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.
But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."
Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.
With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.
If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government.

And, without constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a "crisis" — which, as the president's chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to "go to waste" as an opportunity to expand the government's power.

That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country's wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard's restrictions on the printing of money.
At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law "for the relief of the German people."
That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.
The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed "czars" controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.
Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power — vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom — are the "useful idiots" of our time. But useful to whom?

Contributed by Joel, thanks.