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News May 24 2010
Read by Emily Brass
Produced by Emily Brass and Nicholas Fiscina
Stories written by Chris Hanna, Sarah Deshaies, and Jose Espinoza
New Media and Politics - The BP Valdez x 5,6,10?
The title says it all. No one has a clue right now except that this is far worse than the Valdez but the extent is essentially unknown as are the far-reaching consequences.
The first story I saw today about the gusher in the Gulf was BP essentially claiming domonion over the waters they have polluted, telling the EPA that they don't want to use a less toxic dispersant and the EPA could go jump in a lake... of oil! Many do not know that the EPA was actually created by Richard M. Nixon and back before it got Bush-whacked, it had teeth.
McClatchy have been all over this story in ways the regular suspects in the MSM have not. Perhaps they seek to carve themselves out a niche as a reality based news site - that'd be nice. I highly recommend you go to their site and watch the video roundup of news from the Gulf. A couple of other stories from McClatchy are the serious concerns about the oil making it's way to Florida beaches and then on up the coast to North Carolina.
As for impacts being felt right now, Nola.com has a dispiriting article on the impossibility of removing the oil from the spill out from Louisiana's marshes. The picture painted is a grim one: Oil that has rolled into shoreline wetlands now coats the stalks and leaves of plants such as roseau cane -- the fabric that holds together an ecosystem that is essential to the region's fishing industry and a much-needed buffer against Gulf hurricanes. Soon, oil will smother those plants and choke off their supply of air and nutrients.
From NPR, a story about what might happen if a hurricane were to strike while all this is taking place - hurricane season begins June 1, remember, so we'll all probably get a first hand look. They have no clue as to what they have wrought. A lot of people are asking, why BP is still in charge of the response to the spill? That includes democratic strategist James Carville, and while I disagree with his assessment he's probably right about how people are going to respond to this crisis - blame the administration and Obama for not doing enough quickly enough.
To wrap for the evening, two reminders of why BP should be held to account criminally: This story about survivors of the explosion being kept in seclusion and coerced into signing legal waivers. And the fact that an acoustic switch costing .004 % of BP's 2009 profits would have prevented this from happening in the first place.
Note: Full slide show can be found at greenpeace.org
New Media and Politics - War News
Today, I thought I'd get a bit personal. I didn't post links to the usual litany of stories on Friday as a week of staring at the computer was just too much. I'm the host of New Media and Politics, a progressive radio talk show and play jazz in between the stories. Most of the stories I talk about were found somewhere in the blogosphere or on twitter. Needless to say, I depend on the help of many good people to point me in the direction of those stories the MSM finds inconvenient to pay much attention to.
I blog American, International and environmental stories here and Canadian news at the sister site NMPCanada. I also post all this stuff here at the radio station. So Friday, after a busy week I'd had enough and went for a 60k bike ride, cooked supper and collapsed in front of what can only be described as bad TV. So I didn't post my newswrap - which I should clarify is generally a list of the stories I talked or will talk about on my radio show.
So, it's a busy Saturday as always but I'll try and hit on stories that seem to be the day's most important. Beginning with those related to the wars of occupation in the Middle East. (Whoops! Slipped into early Sunday morning.)
As always, war news is unwanted and unsexy but the US has kids and good people doing grunt work in two wars of occupation, Canada in one, so it is important to never forget.
Today in Afghanistan, the third major attack on NATO forces in six days occurred. Insurgents fired rockets, mortars and automatic weapons and launched a ground assault against NATO's largest base in southern Afghanistan. The AP is reporting twelve Afghans were killed outside of Kabul when US soldiers spotted two suspected insurgents of trying to plant IED's - no word if any among the dead were civilians. Marjah, the object of a major spring offensive faces a deteriorating security situation. Afghan civilians fleeing for their lives.
Someone on twitter today, noting the lack of prosecutions for torture and BP's seeming impunity from charges both for the negligent death of the 11 who died and the ongoing ecocide in the Gulf, said it sometimes feels like GWB's third term. I'd like to echo that and point to a story about a ruling today by a DC Circuit court today that ruled detainees being held by the US at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan don’t have the right to challenge their detention, even though that right is guaranteed to prisoners in the US Constitution.
In Iraq, anger over the deaths of six detainees who died while being transported. Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi said in a statement that the deaths constituted "murder." A busy Friday in Iraq as 56 were killed and 158 wounded.
Since the war began back in 2003 so many of Iraq's legacies have been destroyed and lost forever. Since the last American "surge" Bahgdad has been made a city of rubble and walls. Push aside any romantic notion you may have in your mind about what has often been called the cradle of civilization. Read this story from 2008 about the city of walls 5 after the war began and this poignant story about the loss of the home of the renowned Arab novelist, poet, painter and translator Jabra Ibrahim Jabra which was destroyed in an April 4 car bomb attack that also killed 17 people in Baghdad.
News May 21st 2010
News produced by Drew Pascoe and pronounced by Erica Fisher
Stories by Jose Espinoza, Corentine Rivoire, Jonathan Moore, Alina Gotcherian
News May 19th 2010
Read and produced by Lachlan Fletcher.
Stories written by Emily Brass, Matthew Phelps and Gareth Sloan.
New Media and Politics - The Canuck Report
A spate of recent attacks in Afghanistan making it look like it could be a long summer for NATO allies which doesn't auger well for Canadians either of course. Taking place all over Afghanistan and talk is that this is the beginning of the Taliban summer offensive. At some point in the recent past wasn't it NATO who were said to be planning a summer offensive?
There are tons of posts here on what I've been calling the BP Valdez, in the hopes it would go viral and people would notice our little blog (can't blame a guy for trying). You'd think that what's taking place in the Gulf of Mexico would make people sit up and take notice. Maybe pause before they did anything as stupid, or reckless. You'd be wrong. In fact so far as getting people to think differently about the inherent costs and risks of retrieving and burning fossil fuels it seems little has changed. Canada's tar sands on track to suppliy 30% or more of US oil needs in 2030.
New Media and Politics - Cataloguing Lunacy
Beginning with unsexy war blogging: Analysis suggests it will be near impossible for Obama to achieve a drawdown in Iraq by the August deadline. A brazen attack in Afghanistan on Bagram Air Base suggests that things not on track there either.
A fascinating BBC interview about the ways in which NATO is "divided" over Russia.
The five UN Security Council members have recently agreed to sign on for crippling sanctions to Iran but it may cause the collapse of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the middle-east. And here's analysis from the Asia Times on the deal for sanctions struck by the US, and their reaction to Tehran's nuclear swap with Brazil and Turkey.
From the crazy in US politics, C&L has a wrap on Tuesday night's primaries and vote in Pennnsylvania which suggests that the teabaggers really don't have as much influence as the media might have led you to believe. I'll hold to my predictions for the coming Novemeber US mid-terms and that is the GOP will not gain many seats in the House. They have a problem: the nuts are running the assylum and they are the hard-core participants in the primaries. So, even in a year where people are inclined to vote against incumbents if your choice is between an incumbent and a crazy person well...
Sticking with crazy people, can you imagine anything easier than a gig where you get to fact check Michelle Bachmann? For insane rantings, how about Newt Gingrich yelling "Obama is worse than Hitler?" Glenn Beck says to store food, pray for him, the apocalypse is coming. He is pocketing a fortune while talking like he is stark raving mad! Of course Rush Limbaugh makes bizarre pronouncements about liberals annd Obama every day of the week.
Wall Street reform bill set to go through in a victory for dems and the administration. It remains to be seen if that means a victory for the rest of us.
And to end on a crazy note, North Korea threatening to wage war if they're punished for sinking of a South Korean ship, which they swear they didn't do.
Cursed Arrows Tonight On Hooked On Sonics!
Kitchener, Ont's Cursed Arrows dropped by CJLO to record an in-studio session for Hooked on Sonics while on tour supporting their latest record "Telepathic High Five" out on Noyes Records. Tune in to hear the session, and other new tunes we got planned for tonight.
Cursed Arrows plays Casa del Popolo this Saturday!
http://www.myspace.com/arrowsband
http://www.cjlo.com/onair/hooked-sonics
BP Valdez News Roundup
Increasingly the US government is being blamed for failing to conduct proper scientific studies of the disaster and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. BP is urging those who are working in response to the spill to forego health concerns even while some are complaining of ...bad headaches, hacking coughs, stuffy sinuses, sore throats, and other symptoms. The outcry promises to get louder as the oil begins to roll into shore and the Louisiana wetlands.
To see a video of the oil hitting the Louisiana marshlands go to this link.
Sticking with BP malfeasance and coverups, McClatchy is reporting today, Steve Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, who earlier this month made simple calculations from a video BP released on May 12 and came up with a flow of 70,000 barrels a day. Let's hope the investigation into the accident is as thorough as needs be.
The EPA informed BP officials late Wednesday that the company has 24 hours to choose a less-toxic form of chemical dispersants to break up its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This suggests the EPA are concerned that the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants pose a threat to the Gulf's marine life.
As far as changing the subject and getting people to reconsider the burning of fossil fuels as an energy source or at least begin moving in another direction, the ongoing disaster in the Gulf appears to be having little effect. Canada's tar sands are on track to be the largest supplier of US oil and could be supplying more than a third of all US oil imports by 2030. People do not seem to realize that climate change being influenced by human activities is settled science.
And none of this is having any real effect on slowing down off-shore drilling projects either, in spite of claims to the contrary.
Late Night with New Media and Politics
The Saga of the BP Valdez Continues...
More news pours in about the gusher in the Gulf and BP continues to do everything it can to hide what's happening. Word is that the oil spill will soon be threatening the east coast of the US. There's also word today from CBS in what they call, ...the most disturbing site yet: the first heavy sludge now oozing into the marshes of Louisiana as the slick continues to grow in size out in the gulf. Almost as maddening is this from the same report that: Kelly Cobiella of the CBS News team was threatened with arrest by Coast Guard officials in the Gulf of Mexico who said they were acting under the authority of British Petroleum.
Over here you can listen to the sociopathic Tony Hayward who, after hiding the real amounts of oil and gas pouring into the Gulf, pretend that the environmental impact is "...likely to have been very, very modest."
He's trying to pretend that a spill that is likely, at bare minimum, already the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez x 4, plus more chemical dispersants that have been used at any one tome anywhere - and that's just so far - will amount to little more than nothing?
Before this all started BP assured everyone it could handle a spill of 12.6 million gallons per day. Of course BP can always rely on their whores and shills to do whatever it takes to protect their interests and that includes pushing back on making them pay the full costs related to this disaster.
Increasingly the US gov't is being blamed for failing to conduct proper scientific studies of the event and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. BP is urging those who are working in response to the spill to forego health concerns even while some are complaining of feeling sick.
I'll be back early tomorrow with a wrap on what Canada is doing about off-shore drilling (hint: same as always) and the regular links to Canadian and internation news stories from sources as re;liable as I can dig up.
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