Rumor Schlumberger Exits Deep Horizon

http://adropofrain.net/2010/05/rumor-schlumberger-exits-deep-horizon-hours-before-blowout/
Hours Before Blowout

Posted: May 14th, 2010 by: h-1

This may or may not be the story ROCKMAN referred to (read down a bit for the quotes I included towards the end of the posting) in the current oildrum Deep Horizon blowout thread.
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AlanfromBigEasy on May 14, 2010 – 3:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Story circulating in New Orleans

With appropriate caveats:

BP contracted Schlumberger (SLB) to run the Cement Bond Log (CBL) test that was the final test on the plug that was skipped. The people testifying have been very coy about mentioning this, and you’ll see why.

SLB is an extremely highly regarded (and incredibly expensive) service company. They place a high standard on safety and train their workers to shut down unsafe operations.

SLB gets out to the Deepwater Horizon to run the CBL, and they find the well still
kicking heavily, which it should not be that late in the operation. SLB orders the
“company man” (BP’s man on the scene that runs the operation) to dump kill fluid down the well and shut-in the well. The company man refuses. SLB in the very next sentence asks for a helo to take all SLB personel back to shore. The company man says there are no more helo’s scheduled for the rest of the week (translation: you’re here to do a job, now do it). SLB gets on the horn to shore, calls SLB’s corporate HQ, and gets a helo flown out there at SLB’s expense and takes all SLB personel to shore.

6 hours later, the platform explodes.

Pick your jaw up off the floor now. No CBL was run after the pressure tests because the
contractor high-tailed it out of there. If this story is true, the company man (who
survived) should go to jail for 11 counts of negligent homicide.

Alan
….
AlanfromBigEasy on May 14, 2010 – 8:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | [Parent subthread ] Comments top

This story did come from within the industry. I agreed to keep the source(s) confidential.

Alan


This is almost exactly what ROCKMAN was hinting out, and he further noted these guys won’t say this in public now for fear of legal reprisals, but they certainly will say it under oath.

If true, things are going to be very very bad for BP, since that makes this event not only avoidable, but deliberately done almost, at least the decision to not stop, if this report is true, was deliberate.

Keep in mind that BP was celebrating the completion with high ups at the day the blowout happened, which would give credence to the idea of the BP supervisor not wanting to stop the well just when the top brass were on the rig. Human all too human indeed…

ROCKMAN has been hinting that the causes here were human error all along, but he since his sources I assume are company insiders, he can’t say more. But this might be the explanation…

ROCKMAN on May 14, 2010 – 8:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | [Parent subthread ] Comments top

The “ordered the company” is the one part that doesn’t fit at all. No matter the disagreement a subcontractor will never order a coman to do anything. He might refuse an order or he might tell the coman to go screw himself. I seen and done both. But never gave one an order. Perhaps it was a misinterpretation. Perhaps the SLB gave the coman an ultimatum. That I’ve seen first hand a number of times.

But soon we’ll be able to judge the validity of this story. Now that the MSM has the smell of blood we should be seeing SLB in the spot light very soon. They’ll have to respond in some form. Any form of confirmation will be solid gold proof IMHO. An absolute and clear denial would offer the same. SLB would never cover-up such an event. NEVER for a variety of reasons. A “no comment” will be subject to interpretation but could make me assume some level of truth to the story

As I responded to another TODer I consider the story 100% true or an absolute lie. No room for anything in between IMHO.

[[Update]]Part of this story has now been confirmed, that is, Schlumberger was on the Rig but was sent back 11 hours before it blew.

However, this is still early in the information phase, and as nola notes:

BP spokesmen did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the decision to send Schlumberger home without conducting a cement bond log or on the cementing schematic Probert gave the Senate committee. And Halliburton didn’t respond to questions about the accuracy of Probert’s diagram.

Since the original story was probably either partly untrue, totally true, or partly true, we’ll have to wait a bit more to get the actual details.

One thing however worth noting, ROCKMAN when discussing a rumor he’d heard but would not himself reveal, stated that it was unlikely you’d hear the truth until the actual parties were under oath, in court, for what should hopefully be somewhat obvious reasons.

So keep a watch on this one, but really, the 60 minutes expose on BP safety, or rather lack of safety, practices, is in a sense all you really need. This Schlumberger story, while interesting, is just a side-note, though I admit to wondering about it, it has a ring of truth to my ears, and I think the guy who leaked it was told it by an insider, with much better information than this new story of May 19. We shall see.

Overall it’s not looking very good for BP legally though. Hopefully the top kill will work this Sunday, this blowout is too severe to engage in any type of schadenfreude, this is a significant part of the planet’s ecosystem under attack by our insatiable desire for more consumption, more people, more driving, at any price… sad really to watch as a world sucks itself dry in a desperate attempt to achieve… what exactly?

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76 Responses to “Rumor Schlumberger Exits Deep Horizon Hours Before Blowout”
« Older Comments

1.
eddytheeagle says:
June 6, 2010 at 02:39

Yes, it’s a terrible shame seeing the nationalistic side of this disaster. We need to focus on stoping the spill and cleaning up the mess (I think BP is doing all it can on both counts).
When that is achieved we can look for the cause.
Both mud engineers killed in the blowout? while displacing with sea water??
The BOP total failure?
Many questions to be answered.
h-1 thanks for keeping on the right heading.
2.
john S says:
June 6, 2010 at 02:59

Let’s pray for the departed 11 crew and there families,i believe justice will prevail !!!! if it’s a case of negligence,the person or persons involved should be treated like a common criminal,we need to know who these people are they may end up on your installation / rig
think about that SCARY!!!!
3.
john S says:
June 6, 2010 at 03:08

Let’s not forget people “quote what one area manager said to me it’s called business”
shareholders/ managers on bonus schemes / cutting corners saving money for top management,yet the workers on the rig suffer no parts,unsafe equipment,conditions and yet we are expected to keep everything running,and not complain a right gong show!!!!
you know what iam talking about….
4.
Brace yourself says:
June 6, 2010 at 05:51

I have worked in the UK sector for many years, Piper Alpha demonstrated many areas rerquiring improvements, I would brace yourselves in the U.S. sector for much of the same, yes we can never say something will bnever again happen here, but I firmly believe the severity will be reduced
I have a freind who works in the U.S. training personnel for the Gulf, he said that the first days on the job and the first offshore guy he encoutered actually said ” don’t bring your North Sea S*#T here ” There lies the root of the problem.
Too gung Ho, U.S. government can’t come out of this smelling of Roses either, regulatory agencies will crawl over the industry going forward, no more cosy relations with Oil Companies.
BP will be ultimately held responsible as operators always are, Transocean and the US Government must also stand up to their responsibilities.
Don’t for one minute think the problem is with BP alone, don’t you think all the other Oil companies have been very quiet through all this, ” There but for the grace of God go I ”
Thoughts go out to the victims and Families.
5.
Reddy says:
June 6, 2010 at 19:35

Thanks to every one here for your good discussions.
Keeping the reasons for the blowout aside, my concern from that minute was to fix the leaking well. I am a offshore pipeline engineer with 13yrs experience. I have sent 6 concepts to BP hotline to consider and implement. I do not know who approved the LMRP design to do it? As I understand the LMRP concept has more risks and possibility of worsening the leak.
As I involved personally with ROV’s working in the similar water depths, fixing leak might have been handled in much better way and much sooner than what it is taking.
There is no lack of technology its rather a innovative engineering concept that solves the leak problem. FYI here are the concepts I proposed:
1) Cut 21″ casing and 6″ pipes together and fit 24″ adjustable clamp with a valve and pup piece, close the valve once it is fitted well
2) Right on leak fit a adjustable clamp with a thick liner
3) Downhole insertion tube
4) Use of subsea separation unit
5) Similar to 40′ hight and single outlet containment dome used; did BP think about using rectangular or circular dome (orifice) placed in plan dimension (say 12 ft length x 4 ft width/diameter x 4 ft height; ~34.2 bbls capacity) with multiple outlets to assist with either chemical injection or oil withdrawal. Also thoughts of having 2 or more chambers with perforations or cavities between chambers
6) Apply pipeline hot tapping technique to divert/stop flow.
Many Thanks.
6.
Chris B says:
June 6, 2010 at 20:40

My thanks to billthedrill. Your apology and support was much appreciated, people do strange things when they are angry….
I started my offshore work in North Sea in the summer of the Piper Alpha disaster, the Cullen Inquiry led the way to changes throughout the Oil Industry as I know it and the Lessons Learned have helped to form my guiding principals through the rest of my working life.
I sincerely hope that when the leak is contained andt the US Governement hold their inquiry that the full findings will be submitted ” without prejudice” There will be grief for companies who have to retrain and rethink their methods, but none of that grief will measure up to that of the families who lost their loved ones, and the people who survived but who will live with it for ever.
7.
h-1 says:
June 7, 2010 at 13:36

New information coming out all the time. Just posted this one, The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen!, that’s a signed statement by one of the rescue ship’s sailors, confirmed by another sailor, about Harrell’s phone call to parties unknown as of now right after the rig burst into flames.

Harrell was screaming, “Are you f#cking happy? Are you f#cking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen.”

Food for thought, no?
8.
Diogenese II says:
June 7, 2010 at 22:30

I worked in the oil and drilling industry in Alberta back in the 70′s and 80′s so I only have an idea of what is really going on and I have a good idea when I see or hear or read BS.

But I don’t understand some of the jargon and acronyms used in the posts on this page.

I find what is being reported on the media here in Canada is plain stupid and mind numbing to those who have some knowledge of such things.

I don’t get or subscribe to CNN, so I don’t know what they are reporting.

I seen the CBS 60 minutes program a couple of weeks ago, and that was very telling and the best that I heard so far. But it looks like it has been taken down off their website as I could not find it the other day when I went to look. Probably were told to take it down by BP lawyers and 60 minutes was canceled this last Sunday.

They started showing the clock ticking and then went to show a movie.

I wondered why?

But it is so easy to see that BP is giving out lies and BS to the media.

I have been looking for some intelligent information on this problem.

I was glad to come across this forum.

I would like to know how much pressure is in this hole?

What size was the casing?

By knowing this it is easy to calculate the amount of oil flowing out.
Or at least get a very good educated guess.

How deep is the well?

Where is the rig laying in relation to the well?

I imagine there is drill pipe inside the crumpled casing.

So how can they run anything into the hole, even if they cut it.

All this topkill and junk shot stuff is just nonsense as far as I can tell.

What kind of formation is between the ocean floor and the oil?

I seen one video that seems to show the oil flowing up through the ocean floor.

That simply means that the oil is coming up out around the casing probably from the bottom unless the casing is bust somewhere.

How much pressure is used in pumping mud and cement down these holes?

Surely someone knows the answers to these questions on this forum.

I am quite sure BP had this well tested by this time and knows exactly how much pressure there is in the well and how much it is producing or and could potentially produce and how much oil is in the formation.

And I am sure there are many well experienced experts on this forum who have a very good idea of how much pressure there is in the well and all the answers to the rest of the questions.

Please educate us.

Then as far as what BP has been doing since the explosion has also been amatuerish.

Right from pumping sea water on the fire with gun boats does not seem to be the most intelligent thing to do and load the platform with water and sink it.

And all the flow stopping methods they have used till now have been ridiculous ideas. Even I had my doubts if they would work as I mentioned above.

Why wasn’t there more intelligent ideas used? Where are the brains?

It looked like amateurs were handing the mess.

Next:

How about some discussion on other clean up options.

I just seen this video using bacteria:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI&feature=youtube_gdata

Based on the information given, it appears to make sense and work, since it has been proven before, why are they not using it?

Surely you experts know a lot about this and other options to deal with the oil.

I would like to see detailed discussion, comments and input on clean up methods.

Then there is this video:

http://pesn.com/2010/05/27/9501657_Gulf_oil_gusher_conspiracy_cover-up/

I know that there is quite a bit of plain nonsense on it but the video seems to show oil flowing out of the ocean floor.

Please comment on the points that you experienced guys know may have some validity and ignore the obvious conspiracy nonsense and other stupidity.

I thank you in advance and look forward to your comments and answers.

Diogenese II

Diogenese was a Greek philosopher back in the old days who was alleged to go around from house to house in his community peeking in the houses with a lantern looking for a sane man.

It would be a good idea to find a lot more sanity and honesty being told about this mess.
9.
h-2 says:
June 7, 2010 at 23:54

Diogenes, I’ve moved my response to this BP gulf oil spill summary because this is not really topically related the original Schlumberger/BP topic. But the questions themselves are good.
10.
mad dog says:
June 8, 2010 at 09:55

heard at bp headquarters about 1 week after accident
11.
h-1 says:
June 8, 2010 at 10:31

mad dog, heard what? Are you referring to the schlumberger story or to the story just linked to about the eye witness account of Harrell saying he told the person the rig was going to blow?
12.
Trout 579 says:
June 8, 2010 at 21:16

Wow, there are a lot ideas floating around out there. It is all speculation right now. I use to work for Schlumberger in Canada and USA for 8yrs as a well cementer. I have successfully completed thousands of casing cement jobs. There are many different senarios that can happen before and after cementing the production string or liner to create a potential blowout. I have also worked for BP Canada. They are one of the better companies to work for in Canada. They in my opinion and experience have and do put safety 1st on all the many number of jobs that I had completed for them over my 8yrs of service. Trust me, they are going to have their BEST COman on this well, conducting the day-day operations. I keep hearing that this well was the 1st to be drilled at such a depth of water. So do you really think BP is going to cut corners? Anyone ever work on a wildcat drill? I have, well here in Canada and the steps and safety precautions that an oil company has to go through and take are enormous, everything is under the microscope. But the pay offs are many fold the costs. So maybe chaulk this one up to mechanical failure, underestimating the pore pressure of the pay zone whatever it may be. I highly doubt human error on this one. Lets get our focus on the NOW! While we still have a chance.
13.
h-1 says:
June 8, 2010 at 21:26

I have read that BP USA is the problem, apparently the other BP units are better run. If you read all the comments you’ll find a wide range of what I trust is actual personal direct experience, which shows an equally wide range of views of how these companies are run.

If you’re asking me, yes, of course I think BP is going to cut corners, and so do quite a few other people. The well was late, they had BP brass on the rig, and they wanted to move it to the next location. Very few people I’m following at this point think this was mechanical failure alone, including some GOM drilling types who seem to know what they are talking about. Tony Hayward listed not 1, but 7 distinct failures that occurred on this blowout. I’m sorry, but if you have that many problems, coupled with ongoing large numbers of safety violations, I’d say, yes, in fact, this was almost certainly the result of unsafe practices. 7 failures points to an overall pattern of unsafe operations, not just one glitch or mechanical failure.

And let’s not forget the political / economic relationships between the Bush era MMS and the drilling industry, that allowed many major regulations to not be enforced or enacted. You know, the ones that Norway and Brazil deepwater insist on…

One thing is for sure, you’re going to see radically higher safety standards. Keep in mind, despite your words, BP assured the MMS here that there was basically no chance of such a deep water blowout. Apparently they were mistaken in their assumption. Also don’t ignore the evidence that is now starting to rise, I quoted one recent bit a few comments down, I think that one is quite interesting. So yes, in fact, I do think that macho attitudes and sloppy cost cutting could easily exist in a company like BP, they have afterall been directly convicted of precisely that problem, and Tony Hayward was in fact brought in to try to reign in that safety attitude in 2007. So yes, I do think that BP is not what you think it is, at least it isn’t in these parts of the world. But several people have pointed out that BP USA is maybe suffering from some type of US type attitude that maybe other BP units don’t suffer from, which would sync your experience with other views here.

By the way, if you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the dad of one of the dead guys on the Deepwater Horizon:

The highest-ranking crew member to perish aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig warned his family that BP Plc was pressuring him to sacrifice safety for the sake of time and money, his father said.

Jason Anderson, one of 11 rig workers presumed dead after an April 20 explosion and fire sank the Deepwater Horizon and triggered the worst oil spill in U.S. history, told relatives in February and March that BP was urging him to accelerate work on the Macondo well off the Louisiana coast, said his father, Billy Anderson.

On previous wells drilled with the same rig, Jason Anderson, a 35-year-old employee of vessel owner Transocean Ltd., had been able to convince BP representatives to eschew shortcuts that he believed would compromise safety, his father said. But in the eight weeks preceding the disaster, BP stepped up the pressure and overruled safety objections, Billy Anderson, 66, said.
BP Pressured Rig Worker to Hurry Before Disaster, Father Says

Clearly, you can’t discuss with the guy who is dead, but I guess you could talk to his dad, but I imagine he’s probably not in the mood to talk too much at this point.

I’m not sure where you heard this was the first to be drilled at 5k feet, that’s not right, in fact I think the deepwater horizon had just finished a much deeper well prior to this one. At least in deeper water. Latest drill ships can go to 10k feet of water and 40k feet down, so no, that is just wrong report you read somewhere.

I do believe though I’m not certain that this is however the first deepwater well to blowout at 5k feet ocean depths, that might be what you’re thinking about.
14.
Diogenese II says:
June 9, 2010 at 09:47

h-2
Thanks for your reply to my questions.

Yes, you are correct that I did not look else where.

This forum was the first I came across and did not know where else to look at the time.

Since then I have viewed Oil drum and a couple other sites and learned a lot.

Maybe this is not really important, but just out of curiousity I would like to know where the rig is in relation to the well?

That information I did not come across.

I heard one comment that the rig is on top of the well, but I don’t think it is, otherwise there would be no way to access the well to work on it. If not thank God that it is not. Unless everything we see and hear is not true.

And what kind of rock is generally beneath the ocean floor sediment and the oil in the gulf or more accurately the area?

And I could not find any discussion on alternative clean up techniques where I was,

Of which the bacteria method seems to be best.

Is there anyone on this post or others who worked on the incident where the bacteria was proven as referred to described in the video link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI&feature=youtube_gdata

On a side note:
I would also like to say that your ( referring to h-2 and h-1 as well ) sensible candidness (intellectual and perceptual honesty/ integrity) and clarity of thought/ professionalism and objective writing is a breath of fresh air and much appreciated amidst so much that is not.

So many people need to learn to not say anything unless it is intelligent, factual, scrutinized/ evaluated and they can prove it or back it up with verifiable facts.

In other words they need to develop an honest and critical thought and speaking process.

Mental fabrications, propaganda, myths, misinformation, beliefs, opinions, hearsay and gossip are not part of that function.

Are you guys the moderators of this list?

I would like to add a few words that someone sent me a few years ago:

“We can have capitalism or a planet to live on but not both.”
15.
h-1 says:
June 9, 2010 at 11:42

I moved the response to Diogenes II to its own posting, Thoughts and Summaries of the BP Spill, it’s too far off topic for this thread.

If you have comments or questions not particularly related to the original question here, BP / Schlumberger, please use one of the response threads I just created for Diogenes questions. This comment thread I want to reserve only for people who have views or inputs that might clarify the situation around this topic.

But thanks for the kind words, it’s not easy trying to maintain those standards you mention. I am certain I will fail now and then, but it’s a good target anyway.
16.
h-1 says:
June 10, 2010 at 10:00

I’d missed this May 31 anonymous (probably insider) report on what happened, read it and decide for yourselves if you feel this adds anything meaningful to the question.
17.
Bob says:
June 11, 2010 at 05:40

This was halliburtons fault I tell you, they did the same thing in the Timor Sea off Australia only 12 months earlier.
BP’s decision to not hire SLB to do the whole cementing process, which they are experts at.
And use the cheaper Halliburton, is what caused this one as well.
This is the same reason Chevron had the blowout in the Timor Sea, SLB is the only know expert never to have a problem in deep water well cementing, yet they cost a hell of a lot of money.
Cut costs don’t hire the best guys for the job, and you get this chaos.
18.
rattman691 says:
June 16, 2010 at 23:44

In my opinion, most people writing comments here do not have a clue about oil wells, much less drilling and completing one. The log that was run or not run, which ever is true, has nothing to do with the well blowing out. The biggest fault lies with our goverment (MMS) giving BP the approval to replace the backup set of Shear Rams with just another set of pipe rams. I doubt both sets of rams would have failed at the same time. The BOP stack normally as a backup set of rams and annular, just in case one fails.
19.
h-1 says:
June 17, 2010 at 12:27

ratttman, you have to do a better than this comment. Demonstrate that most of the drilling guys who took the time to post don’t know what they are talking about, and demonstrate it by proving that you do. I was going to delete your comment, but I’ll give you a chance to show that you’re not just typing some words and hitting enter.

My current best understanding is that the primary actual cause of this blowout was the failure to continuously and actively monitor the mud returns.

Trying to blame the MMS for this, while correct in a certain sense that Bush/Cheney did in fact follow the insane ideology that industry should/could regulate itself, so what better place to put industry people than the MMS, and also correct that the Obama group didn’t act quickly enough to unravel the corruption in the MMS, enabled/generated by the Bush / Cheney ideologues, anyway, trying to then blame the ‘government’ for what almost all serious oil industry guys I am reading agree was very very bad drilling practice on this well by BP, well, you know, that sounds like a typical right wing refusal to assign and take responsibility for actions, I’m sorry to say..

There’s a reason the MMS is being redone to avoid such conflicts of interests, now. That is, the entire structure of industry self regulation promoted by the right wing in the USA is being undone before it destroys the rest of this country. Not undone enough, not undone fast enough, but definitely being corrected to some degree.

So give it another try, but this time try to demonstrate that A: you actually know what you’re talking about, ideally because you do drilling for a living and haven’t followed various blogs who are trying to reassign blame as a form of damage control for your primary information, and B: show explicitly based on the understanding you should have from A: where the posters, and which posters, are wrong or have no clue about what they are talking about.
20.
john says:
June 18, 2010 at 05:49

A: all procedures have to be pre-approved by MMS before work can proceed. so that means the Government is partly to blame. B. The people that died are responsible for well control at all times so that means transocean is to blame . the BOP that failed is also owned and operated by transocean employees only again transocean is to blame. The sad fact is and that is why rattman tells you that most people on here posting do not have a clue what happened , but those of us who drill wells for a living do know and understand what happened. the rest of you can just keep guessing and fabricating crap
21.
john says:
June 18, 2010 at 06:03

By the way I pushed tools on rigs for 15 yrs. and was drilling superintendent for 5 drillings rigs in the water for 5 yrs. and now run my own business drilling wells for the last 5 yrs. and no company man ever made me do something i did not want to do. and if any of your drilling guy’s care to debate this blowout and cause anytime just let me know. that is any one but the socialist Diogenese II
22.
john says:
June 18, 2010 at 06:10

“My current best understanding is that the primary actual cause of this blowout was the failure to continuously and actively monitor the mud returns”

This statement isTRUEin a sense and is the only statement that is in your whole discussion board. the rest is just gibberish, although not the actual cause it is the warning sign that trouble is coming. the cause even i would need more info on the steps that took place proceeding the mud flowing.
23.
h-1 says:
June 18, 2010 at 10:26

Technically on point A you are correct, but you are absolutely ignoring the massive corruption generated by the Bush/Cheney whitehouse that basically neutered the MMS. Since, as you may or may not be aware, the USA has been undergoing a massive economic crisis since about 2008, the result of deregulation of the financial sector, it’s possible, if you extend yourself out of your core competence levels into areas you may be less comfortable in, anyway, it’s just possible that the MMS reform didn’t get a high enough priority in the new administration’s to-do list. But given that the MMS had from what I understand basically evolved into an industry run self-regulatory body, almost totally corrupt in nature, saying the MMS didn’t do x or y is basically the same as saying that the industry, when given the chance to self-regulate, failed to do so. In other words, the industry needs to examine itself, and realize that it is, like all other industries, totally unable to engage in serious self regulation. This doesn’t mean individual companies don’t do great self regulation, they can and do, but the overall industry cannot do this, because anyone at any time can do exactly what BP did should they decide to cut a few corners because the well is late and over budget.

Speaking for myself, the main guys I’m listening to all also are drilling for a living, now, the guys over at theOilDrum.com and gCaptain and a few other places. So you’ll have to step in line and talk it over with them. You’re the only one, by the way, who states this in the way you do, just so you know.

Now whether the other posters here have a clue or not, I’ll leave that up to posterity and the hearings to say.

But all clearly thought out views are always welcome.
24.
h-1 says:
June 18, 2010 at 10:36

Re diogenes II, merely because someone uses the word ‘capitalism’, that is, the current economic system we live under, doesn’t mean they are a socialist. I have no idea what his politics are. Can we also exclude neo-conservatives from any discussion, to keep it balanced? Given that many prominent old school conservatives, such as Barry Goldwater before he died, think the Bush type neo-cons are technical political fascists, that would seem reasonable, no? So we can just have the centrists in the discussion. Although what passes for Centrism here in the USA would be considered right wing in most of the rest of the world.

Personally I tend to give someone credit for correctly identifying our economic system in a discussion, you know, it’s like saying, that’s a well bore when you’re examining a well bore. I also give them credit for seeing possible shortcomings in it, ie, a process known as thinking for oneself.

Re the company man, you’ll have to argue that with other drilling guys, who have been told this, and who in fact say the exact opposite. So clearly there is a wide range of experience possible in the oil services industry, like anywhere else in life. In fact, one of the most explicit statements I came across was specifically that one problem with the initial rumor report was that they had never seen anyone tell the company man to do anything, ie, their word was final. This is certainly the feeling I’m getting from the ongoing investigation, where apparently even Haffle (I think that’s his name) yelled at some higher up in BP from the rescue ship via satellite phone, saying, are you fucking happy? I told you it was unsafe… and Halliburton also warned against unsafe conditions from what I gather.

Now, clearly here, what you have to identify, since we are in fact discussing the specific actions of a specific company, is if you have worked for BP yourself, in the GOM, BP USA that is. You’ll note in this single discussion thread there are several people who say they have done this. If you have not done this, then it’s unclear to me where your experience re working for BP has come from. But also, as we all know, companies can and do change their internal cultures, and the pressures on any one job, costs, budgets, overruns, might change any situation, unless the company has ultra strict rules internally, like supposedly Exxon does now… after the Exxon Valdez of course.
25.
h-1 says:
June 18, 2010 at 10:44

Re the specific information on the well: The information is out now, deepwaterhorizonresponse.com has all the paper work in pdf form. That information is being analyzed daily over at theOilDrum.com in the daily discussion threads. Check out today’s Deepwater Oil Spill – the BP CEO and Congress – and Open Thread: comments for a sample. Also take the time to read the summary of the initial findings re cause of the blowout, but if you don’t have the time, it was sloppy drilling practices. Today’s thread also features a real live retired lawyer (retiredL) who specialized in oil field law, which adds a delightful flavor of actual reality in terms of what is actually going in inside of BP right now.

There’s about 10 active drilling guys there, just so you don’t embarrass yourself, the main ones are ROCKMAN, aliilaali, Heading Out (I believe he’s active, though he may be teaching now, not sure), toolpush, shelburn, R2-3D, plus a bunch of retired drilling guys, whose nicknames usually indicate that, so you can bat around some experiences if you like, I think you might learn something to be honest. (MichaelWSmith is a BP pr shill, he’s on all the main blogs now trying to do damage control.) There’s a huge range of styles out there from what I can see, but there is a general agreement that BP really really screwed up here, and there’s also a general view that the blame lies with BP primarily, and a screwed up regulatory system secondarily. But see my notes on just why that system got screwed up. Remember, you cannot have both deregulation, dismantling and corruption of regulatory bodies, and strong regulation, it’s one or the other, but if you vote for parties that promise to remove it, restrict, denature, it, then don’t be surprised when the sh#t hits the fan years later, and for God’s sake have the decency to take some of the personal responsibility for the results of your votes, if that’s not too much to ask… or is taking personal responsibility just something that applies to other people, never oneself, especially when it comes to the results of supporting a certain type of ideology?

By the way, most of the useless comments in this discussion thread were removed, I left only the ones I thought raised interesting questions in some way or other, and I left all the ones that seemed to indicate that the person posting it had direct personal experience. You might find it useful to ask yourself if your personal direct experience covers all possible types of personal direct experience in the drilling sector, ie, you’ve worked for every single company, dealt with every company man, worked on every job, with every services company, every year, over time. If the answer to this question is no, which I assume it must be, then I’d have to ask you where your dead certainty that everyone else is wrong comes from?
26.
h-1 says:
June 18, 2010 at 14:20

i want to give just one example of why what one person knows reflects only their own company/direct local experience, not a general rule, and I assume such an example should be all that anyone who is reasonably intelligent needs to demonstrate this point.

ozamerican on June 18, 2010 – 10:51am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

My question is bigger, about process:

What role does the CEO have in risk management?

I will say that I work for a former Halliburton subsidiary, and there’s NOTHING we do that doesn’t go up the chain of command and get signed off on at the highest level.

I can’t BELIEVE that BP didn’t have a similar risk management system in place, and that ultimately, Mr Hayward didn’t sign off, too, or one at least of his very close delegates.

RISK management is EVERYthing to companies like this. Anyone who’s been there will know how front and central this is.
===
PassingThrough on June 18, 2010 – 11:09am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

A CEO will head up the process that sets the Risk Management rules for the company. Procedures will be developed and written up, perhaps a proprietary software system, a Permit System, a Safe System of Work, will be bought in. You often find a unique safety culture has been developed in a major corporation, Zero Tolerance, No Excuses, Golden Rules, that sort of thing. The CEO often signs it off.

But on a day-to-day basis, the signing off of the actual permit-to-work will go to a fairly low level manager. Very few processes or procedures will get anywhere near the attention of the CEO in a large corporation (imo).
====
[-] ozamerican on June 18, 2010 – 11:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

I disagree. In the (former hallburton subsidiary) company I work for, I often had to get (even small) contracts signed off on by the person reporting to the equivalent of the person directly reporting to Tony Hayward. No “fairly low level manager.” I don’t know where you work, but I know what it’s like where I work and my email address is still begins with “HALHOUSTON”.
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[-] ozamerican on June 18, 2010 – 11:44am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

Sorry, not my email address, but my intranet login begins with HALHOUSTON.

No big deal but I know how the sign-offs work.
====
PassingThrough on June 18, 2010 – 1:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

ozamerican, sorry, I should have said my comments are based on my experience here in the UK. It may be different where you work. I work in literally hundreds of different places (I carry out safety inspections and audit maintenance work).

Note that what the first poster ‘knew’ only reflected what existed in his company, while what another poster ‘knew’ only reflected what was the case in the UK. Now, both guys have learned that there are differences in this and an absence of absolutes. Now can we move along and try to resume a civil intelligent conversation minus the pointless chest thumping and ‘everyone but me is wrong’ type babble?

BP Press Suppression = Cover-Up

Gaza Flotilla Massacre Comment: A Doggerel Too Ignorant to Languish

I'll preserve this unreservedly stupid bit of scrap from Kay for the day we see some IDF free information come out of this tragedy. Jonathan's idiocy may amuse in another context, but I fail to see the humour. These people killed, "thugs" we would be convinced, all have families, friends, and lives as productive and valuable as any are no more. Dead mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons, needlessly killed. None were there for glory or money. Most to bring aid to ameliorate in some small, mostly token way, the indefensible siege of Gaza.

Over the next week, as more of the still incarcerated surviving participants are released and their stories told, and proven true, I'll bring this back to Mr. Kay for his doubtless feckless comment. - ape

The Canadian on the Gaza flotilla was a genuine peacenik

By Jonathan Kay May 31, 2010 – 4:24 pm
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/31/the-canadian-on-the-gaza-flotilla-was-a-genuine-peacenik/
Earlier today, I blogged about the violent “activists” who provoked the deadly treatment they got at the hands of Israel’s military off the coast of Gaza. Since then, we’ve learned that one of the activists participating in the six-boat flotilla is Kevin Neish, a 53-year-old pro-Palestinian activist from Victoria, B.C.

For what it’s worth, Neish — unlike the violent thugs who sparked the confrontation with the Israelis — seems to have been a genuine pacifist. Here’s a snippet of an interview he gave, from Crete, with Rabble.ca about the (then) upcoming flotilla:

[My role on the boat is that] I’m supposed to delay the [Israeli] commandos enough — non-violently, of course — that [a] film crew can get their footage … I’ve been tasked with basically standing in a passageway that leads to the upper deck, and being in the way, non-violently.

I hope he wasn’t hurt in the encounter. If his words here are sincere, then he seems to have been duped by the violent elements in the Free Gaza convoy as much as everyone else.

No Press Allowed: BP Owns the Air, Sea, and Ground it Soils

BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill
Photographers say BP and government officials are preventing them from documenting the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
source

Jean-Michel Cousteau (center) was turned away from a wildlife sanctuary by the U.S. Coast Guard after they discovered that an AP photographer was on board.

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.

Last week, a CBS TV crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach. On Monday, Mother Jones published this firsthand account of one reporter’s repeated attempts to gain access to clean-up operations on oil-soaked beaches, and the telling response of local law enforcement. The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.

“We are not at liberty to fly media, journalists, photographers, or scientists,” the company said in a letter it sent on Tuesday to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). “We strongly feel that the reason for this massive [temporary flight restriction] is that BP wants to control their exposure to the press.”

The ability to document a disaster, particularly through images, is key to focusing the nation’s attention on it, and the resulting clean-up efforts. Within days of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, pictures of dead otters, fish, and birds, as well as oil-covered shorelines, ignited nationwide outrage and led to a backlash against Exxon. Consumers returned some 10,000 of Exxon’s 7 million credit cards. Forty days after the spill, protestors organized a national boycott of Exxon. So far, no national boycott of BP is in the works, despite growing frustration over the company’s inability to cap the leaking well. Obviously, pictures are emerging from this spill, but much of the images are coming from BP and government sources.
Tim Boyle/Getty Images

Click to View a Timeline of the Gulf Oil Spill
A Timeline of the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

The U.S. Coast Guard insists that they and BP have gone to great lengths to accommodate journalists and “roughly 400 members of the media have been given tours of the spill on either BP-contracted aircraft or Coast Guard helicopters,” says U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer David Mosley, who is based at the BP command center in Houma, La. (BP referred all questions to the command center). “I understand there may be some frustration [among the press], but there is a constant ongoing effort to fulfill media requests.” Mosley defended flight restrictions as a necessary safety precaution. Since the flight restrictions were expanded on May 11, private aircraft must get permission from BP’s command center to fly over a huge portion of the Gulf of Mexico encompassing not just the growing slick in the Gulf, but the entire Louisiana coastline, where oil is washing ashore. If a request is denied, aircraft must stay 3,000 feet above the restricted area, where visibility is minimal.

Photographers who have traveled to the Gulf commonly say they believe that BP has exerted more control over coverage of the spill with the cooperation of the federal government and local law enforcement. “It’s a running joke among the journalists covering the story that the words ‘Coast Guard’ affixed to any vehicle, vessel, or plane should be prefixed with ‘BP,’ ” says Charlie Varley, a Louisiana-based photographer. “It would be funny if it were not so serious.”

The problem, as many members of the press see it, is that even when access is granted, it’s done so under the strict oversight of BP and Coast Guard personnel. Reporters and photographers are escorted by BP officials on BP-contracted boats and aircraft. So the company is able to determine what reporters see and when they see it. AP photographer Gerald Herbert has been covering the disaster since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20. He says that access has been hit or miss, and that there have been instances when it’s obvious members of the press are being targeted. “There are times when the Coast Guard has been great, and others where it seems like they’re interfering with our ability to have access,” says Herbert. One of those instances occurred early last week, when Herbert accompanied local officials from Plaquemines Parish in a police boat on a trip to Breton Island, a national wildlife refuge off the barrier islands of Louisiana. With them was Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of Jacques, who wanted to study the impact of the oil below the surface of the water. Upon approaching the island, a Coast Guard boat stopped them. “The first question was, ‘Is there any press with you?’ ” says Herbert. They answered yes, and the Coast Guard said they couldn’t be there. “I had to bite my tongue. That should have no bearing.”

Local fishermen and charter boat captains are also being pressured by BP not to work with the press. Left without a source of income, most have decided to work with BP to help spread booms and ferry officials around. Their passengers used to include members of the press, but not anymore. “You could tell BP was starting to close their grip, telling the fishermen not to talk to us,” says Jared Moossy, a Dallas-based photographer who was covering the spill along the Gulf Coast earlier this month. “They would say that BP had told them not to talk to us or cooperate with us or that they’d get fired.”

Some Gulf Coast watermen find BP’s desire to limit press access obvious. “If there was a major fire in a warehouse, would you let reporters go inside and start taking pictures?” asks Peace Marvel, a charter-boat captain in Venice, La. Job one, he says, is to clean up the spill, and running members of the press around only gets in the way and makes things worse. “Nobody wants this marsh saved as much as we do.” Since the spill, Marvel has turned his 15 years of experience into helping coordinate the logistics of ferrying BP officials around the Gulf Coast to deal with the spreading disaster. His current contract with BP lasts for 30 more days, and he says he’s making more money working for BP than he did as a charter-boat captain. “I’m hustling for business,” he says.

So are the reporters and photographers trying to cover the worst environmental disaster in the history of the U.S. waters. They’ll have to do it without the help of people like Peace Marvel, and against the will of BP.

Righthaven Files More Lawsuits

Righthaven Files More Lawsuits Amid Questions About Group's Agenda
by Wendy Davis, Sunday, May 16, 2010

source

Copyright enforcement group Righthaven has filed two more lawsuits against Web site operators for allegedly copying and linking to articles that originally appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

In the latest lawsuits, against the nonprofit Ecological Internet and the operator of the sports betting site madjacksports.com, as with the prior 11 filed since March, Righthaven says it obtained the copyrights to the newspapers' articles. In all cases, Righthaven apparently went to court without first asking that the articles be removed. While sending takedown notices isn't legally required, it's extremely unusual for content owners to sue over newspaper articles when no one has previously complained to the operators.

Glen Barry, who runs Ecological Internet, says he has kept a database of articles about environmental issues for 15 years without previously facing litigation. "We have already amicably resolved similar situations with other outlets, including The New York Times," he says. He adds that he preserved copies of the articles on his site for research purposes. "We are building a scholarly archive to solve ecological crises," he says.

Barry adds that he checked the site's logs after speaking with Online Media Daily and discovered that the site had just four articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal in its archives. None had ever been clicked on, he said.

In the meantime, at least one Righthaven defendant is questioning whether it was targeted for political reasons. The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, sued last month, was previously named by the Las Vegas Review-Journal as one of the five "worst taxpayer nightmares of the year."

"This nonprofit band of lefties never tires of coming up with ways to spend other people's money in the pursuit of 'social, economic and environmental justice,'" the paper railed in a December editorial.

PLAN now sees a connection between the paper's stance and the lawsuit. "They've got a right to say what they want to say," says communications director Launce Rake. "But at this point, I believe they just want to shut us down."

But it's not yet clear whether Righthaven intends to bring actions against conservative organizations. Righthaven CEO Steven Gibson says that his concern is limited to fighting the "rampant" copyright infringement occurring online. He specifically denies any link between the newspaper's editorial stance and the lawsuits brought to date. "We're non-discriminatory in terms of addressing copyright infringement," he says.

Other defendants include the progressive group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a real estate blogger, sites related to sports gambling, a group that opposes wind energy, an environmental site and the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws. In 2002, the Las Vegas Review-Journal ran an editorial urging the decriminalization of marijuana.

Still, some observers have noted that Righthaven so far has not filed suits against any right-wing organizations or Republican groups that the paper currently appears to support. The Las Vegas Journal Review (which covers the media and has no connection to the Review-Journal) and Media Matters for America have both pointed out that Righthaven appears to allow U.S. Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian to reproduce the paper's stories on his campaign site.

Media Matters also said that some legal experts believe that allowing one political group to post copyrighted material but preventing others potentially violates campaign finance law.

Whether the lawsuits are aimed at forcing liberal groups to shut down or not, that could well be the effect, says Santa Clara University professor Eric Goldman. Simply defending a lawsuit could easily cost at least $100,00, he estimates. In addition, statutory damages in copyright infringement lawsuits -- available regardless of any actual economic harm -- range from $750 to $150,000 per infringement.

Oil in the Loop

BP withholds oil spill facts — and government lets it
By Marisa Taylor and Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — BP, the company in charge of the rig that exploded last month in the Gulf of Mexico, hasn't publicly divulged the results of tests on the extent of workers' exposure to evaporating oil or from the burning of crude over the gulf, even though researchers say that data is crucial in determining whether the conditions are safe.

Moreover, the company isn't monitoring the extent of the spill and only reluctantly released videos of the spill site that could give scientists a clue to the amount of the oil in gulf.

BP's role as the primary source of information has raised questions about whether the government should intervene to gather such data and to publicize it and whether an adequate cleanup can be accomplished without the details of crude oil spreading across the gulf.

Under pressure from senators, BP released four videos Tuesday, but it hasn't agreed to better monitoring.

The company also hasn't publicly released air sampling for oil spill workers although Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency in charge of monitoring compliance with worker safety regulations, is relying on the information and has urged it to do so.

"It is not ours to publish," said Dean Wingo, OSHA's assistant regional administrator who oversees Louisiana. "We are working with (BP) and encouraging them to post the data so that it is publicly available."

Much of the worker exposure data is being collected by contractors hired by BP.

Toby Odone, a BP spokesman, said the company is sharing the data with "legitimate interested parties," which include government agencies and the private companies assisting in the cleanup. When asked whether the information can be released publicly, he responded, "Why would one do it? Any parties with a legitimate interest can have access to it."

Joseph T. Hughes Jr., the director of the worker education training program for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said he didn't think "anyone has seen much of that data at all."

"The hard part about it is that in a normal response, when the government is doing this, there might be more transparency on the data," Hughes said. "In this case, when you have BP making the decisions and collecting the data it's harder to have that transparency."

Unlike the response to other past national disasters such as Hurricane Katrina where the government was in charge, BP has been designated as the "responsible party" under federal law and is overseeing much of the response to the spill. The government is acting more as an adviser.

So far, the government has been slow to press BP to release its data and permit others to evaluate the extent of the crisis.

"I think that one of the lessons learned here is whether the federal government should have more of a role in the response and not leave that decision-making in the hands of the responsible parties," said Hughes, whose institute was one of the first to raise questions about air quality at the World Trade Center site in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

A recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine found that many Sept. 11 rescue workers still suffer from impaired lung function.

The Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, one of BP's consultants, is collecting air quality samples over the coast and the water.

"It's fair to say that a majority of the air monitoring along the shoreline is being done by our organization," said Glenn Millner, a partner with the CTEH and a principal toxicologist.

Gina Solomon, a medical doctor and a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said her environmental organization has been pressing the government to release the data, after hearing reports of fishermen concerned about exposure.

"The fact that OSHA is saying that it's safe is important because they have access to data that we don't have," she said. "It's sort of awkward to have to take that on face value given the fact that there are fishermen who feel they are getting sick."

The Environmental Protection Agency is releasing shoreline data on its website, but not information about the air quality workers encounter on the water.

OSHA has access to that data and is monitoring it to determine what type of equipment the workers should be issued and other questions related to worker safety. So far, the air quality does not require workers to receive respirators, Wingo said.

Millner said that data as a matter of practice is shared only with the oil clean up worker and the company overseeing the cleanup.

BP also has exercised considerable control over how much is known about the amount of oil gushing into the gulf.

Early on, the government estimated that 210,000 gallons was being released daily. That estimate was based on satellite observations of the water's surface.

The first look at the oil coming out of the pipe on the sea floor was a video clip that BP released last week in response to demands from reporters and others. It caused a stir because some experts who analyzed it estimated that the amount of oil pouring into the gulf was many times the government's official estimate.

Sens. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., on Monday asked BP on Monday to provide all available video footage.

BP provided clips from several days of the spill on Tuesday.

The clips, however, would still result only in rough estimates because the oil flows at different rates at different times and it's mixed with gas, said BP spokesman Mark Proegler.

The company had no other equipment on the sea floor to monitor the amount of the flow, and no plans to install any.

"We've said from the beginning . . . it's difficult if not impossible to measure from the source of the flow," Proegler said on Tuesday. BP's focus is stopping the flow and keeping the oil away from shore, he said.

Jeff Short, an oil pollution expert and former National Marine Fisheries Service official who now works for the environmental group Oceana, said the estimate based on surface observations was very imprecise, and that looking at the flow rate from the pipe would be better.

"The public has the right to see what harm the environment is exposed to, and knowing the flow rate is fundamental to that," he said.

Judy McDowell, the chair of the biology department and a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who's studied many oil spills, said that in addition to knowing the amount of oil flowing in, scientists also need to figure out how it's dispersing and breaking down in order to know what effect it would have on living organisms in the water.

Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of NOAA, said in testimony to a Senate committee Tuesday said it was important, but difficult to get a better estimate of the amount of oil. She said that the Coast Guard planned to set up a team to get a better estimate.

Some university researchers have been frustrated by the lack of data and the refusal of federal agencies to press BP to collect detailed measurements from the broken well pipe or fully assess what might be happening underwater.

"We have been screaming from day one for data,'' said Peter Ortner, a fisheries biologist at the University of Miami.

Ortner also said that NOAA had been slow to consider sub-surface effects and didn't deploy the sophisticated gear that might help surveying for submerged oil.

Lubchenco said Monday that the agency had been discussing ideas about more sensing gear on the ocean floor but said "the priority at this point is to stop the flow.''

Meanwhile, an analysis of satellite imagery by the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, reported Tuesday that the spill has grown to more than 7,500 square miles, or about the size of New Jersey.

(Curtis Morgan of The Miami Herald contributed to this article.)

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

Obama talks tough on oil spill, but avoids taking hands-on role

Oil spill: BP had wrong diagram to close blowout preventer

Fear over Gulf oil spill: What happens if they can't stop it?

Congress wants to know why MMS aborted tougher drilling rules

More McClatchy oil spill coverage

Check out McClatchy's expanded politics coverage at Planet Washington

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/18/94415/bps-secrecy-keep-facts-on-gulf.html#ixzz0oQjGfOyj

The Pentagon’s Private & Secret Spy Ring

International Media Mis-Adventures:
The Pentagon’s Private & Secret Spy Ring
by rory o' connor

source

Author and adventurer Robert Young Pelton is perhaps best known for his best-selling guides to The World’s Most Dangerous Places. A veteran of battles in Afghanistan, sieges in Chechnya and attacks in Liberia, and a survivor of an assassination attempt in Uganda and a kidnapping in Colombia, Pelton has also spent time hunting for Osama with the CIA and hanging out with both Blackwater contractors and the insurgents they were fighting in Iraq.

Two months ago, Pelton says, things started to get really scary in one of the world’s truly most dangerous places – the environs of Washington, D.C.

That’s when the New York Times broke a story headlined “Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants,” and ran a picture of Pelton above a caption identifying him as “a contractor.”

The article explained how “under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program,” a Defense Department official named Michael D. Furlong “set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants…” Furlong is a civilian Pentagon official with years of experience in what the military used to call “psyops” or “psychological operations” — now referred to as “information operations.” Unnamed “government officials” (no doubt with DC-area offices in Langley, Virginia) told Times reporter Mark Mazzetti they believed Furlong “might have channeled money away from a program intended to provide American commanders with information about Afghanistan’s social and tribal landscape, and toward secret efforts to hunt militants on both sides of the country’s porous border with Pakistan.” Furlong’s operation, as the Times reported, involves “a mysterious American company run by retired Special Operations officers and an iconic C.I.A. figure who had a role in some of the agency’s most famous episodes, including the Iran-Contra affair.” His “operators” gathered intelligence on militants and the location of their camps, which was then passed on to military and intelligence officials “for possible lethal action” in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Did any of this intrigue involve Robert Young Pelton? Or has he – along with his business partner, the former CNN executive Eason Jordan – become collateral damage in a murky “rogue” intelligence affair?

Pelton and Jordan had been hired by the US military to run a public Web site aimed at helping government officials gain a better understanding of the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. The pair thought up the idea for the government information program sometime in 2008 and approached Gen. David D. McKiernan, who was about to become the top American commander in Afghanistan. Their previous “Iraq Slogger” Web site had employed Iraqis to report and write news stories. Now they proposed setting up a similar Web site in Afghanistan and Pakistan — “Iraq Slogger on steroids,” Pelton calls it — to be financed largely by the American military. Dubbed AfPax Insider, their proposed reporting and research network was meant to be an “open-source” news gathering operation, involving only unclassified materials gathered by employees. The project would involve not only a subscription-based Web site, but a secure information database only the military could access in addition.

McKiernan endorsed the proposal and told them “to get to work,” but funding was late in coming and less than expected. In the summer of 2009 they were told their services were no longer needed. Instead, the planned budget of $22 million that was supposed to go to their Web site was apparently redirected by Furlong toward “off the books” intelligence gathering used to kill militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead of using Pelton and Jordan, Furlong employed two other companies. The first was International Media Ventures — several of whose senior executives are former members of the military’s covert Special Operations forces — describes itself as a public relations firm and “an industry leader in creating potent messaging content and interactive communications.” IMV President Robert Pack says it provides “information and media atmospherics, research and analysis for good governance and development in Afghanistan, civil society demographics and dynamics, key audience and influence group analysis, and media channel utilization.”

“Were they using us as cover?” Pelton wonders. “I don’t know, but I do know we got cut out after the snowball got rolling. Were we exploited? What was exploited was our concept of providing ‘atmospherics.’”

The second firm was American International Security Corporation, run by former Green Beret Mike Taylor, who employed Duane Clarridge, a former top C.I.A. official linked to the Iran-Contra scandal. AISC was also employed by The New York Times in late 2008 until mid-June 2009 to assist in the case of David Rohde, a reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan and held for seven months in Pakistan’s tribal areas before finally escaping. Who led the mission for the Times? None other than Duane Clarridge, who then began establishing a network of informants around the globe.

The Times, which withheld information about Rohde’s kidnapping for months, is now also withholding information about the contractor network, including some of the names of agents working in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But in a front page story this week, Mazzetti did reveal that Furlong’s “rogue operation” is still operating, and that its “detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan and the movements of enemy fighters in southern Afghanistan are also submitted almost daily to top commanders and have become an important source of intelligence.”

Pelton believes he has become cannon fodder in a turf war between the CIA and the Pentagon, with the Times acting as the CIA’s mouthpiece and media outlet. “The narrative has become Blackwater-like,” he complains. “The unstated assumption is that we are the same sort of ‘contractors’ as Blackwater.” Instead, Pelton says, it was “a constant battle with Furlong,” who was “constantly trying to push us in that direction.” He avers that he and Jordan are “not spies and not contractors, but open-source information providers” who got caught in the middle of what might be “a CIA Frankenstein.”

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell has said that the entire program “remains under investigation by multiple offices within the Defense Department.” Meanwhile, Pentagon officials decided recently not to renew the contract, which expires at the end of this month.

“We gave them everything we promised,” Pelton told me. “But the worst part of all this is that the military still desperately needs exactly what we could provide them. Instead, our information was being used to kill people!”

Iceland Volcano Rumbles and Spews Still

Iceland Volcano Rumbles and Spews Still

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303950104575185250359696836.html

Spill? What Spill?

Oil spill? What oil spill?

BP's nonchalance over Gulf leak tars entire offshore drilling industry

By Lorne Gunter, Edmonton Journal May 16, 2010

Source

When you watch news reports of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, remember one thing: The hurricanes that regularly plague the Gulf often have enough force to churn up the seabed.

A Category 4 or 5 hurricane at the surface spins and whirls with such magnitude that the ocean floor 2,000 or even 3,000 feet below is sometimes turned over.

What has this to do with the Deepwater Horizons disaster? Plenty.

At the moment, being unable to cap the erupting wellhead a mile below, oil company crews, with the approval of government administrators, are injecting the spreading mess on the surface with dispersant -- chemicals designed to break up the enormous, creeping black blot that threatens the Gulf's freshwater deltas and saltwater marshes.

But dispersants are little more than a cosmetic coverup. They may even do more harm than good by masking the extent of the environmental catastrophe and breaking the oil up into smaller parcels that will be harder to clean up.

What's more, the dispersant may increase the formation of tar balls, globs of heavy, gooey black oil that often sink to the sea floor only to be carried to shore on currents and tides --- a few here, a few hundred there.

That's where the hurricanes come in.

If British Petroleum (BP) and its partners, coupled with the U.S. Department of the Interior, inject enough dispersant and create enough tar balls, these tacky ecological time bombs will keep being torn up from the ocean bed and brought to shore for decades and decades.

Just when Americans are certain the legacy of this tragedy has passed, another hurricane will come along and pick up scores of these viscous reminders of the Deepwater disaster and deposit them on some shore birds' nesting grounds or fragile oyster bed or sea life spawning zone.

I certainly do not favour a ban on offshore drilling. There are, at present, too few alternatives to oil and natural gas to power developed and developing economies alike.

It is naive in the extreme to believe we can simply proclaim our desire to find alternative energy sources and it will happen like magic.

Over time, alternatives will come, but what replaces hydrocarbons cannot be directed by government. Nor can they be predicted now.

Perhaps wind, solar or nuclear -- or some combination of the three -- will provide our future energy needs. But it is also possible that some as-yet-unknown source will emerge.

Still, while we wait for the replacement or replacements -- while we are still dependent on crude oil and natural gas -- and while we need to expand offshore exploration, the companies doing the drilling and exploring have to be better prepared for accidents than BP has shown itself to be in this case.

BP's attitude has appalled even a diehard free-marketer such as me.

First, it seemed to say "Oil spill? What oil spill?" Then when the slick could no longer be ignored, its attitude became one of nonchalance: "Don't worry. It's only a small leak."

To this day, neither the company nor the U.S. Department of the Interior seems prepared to admit the true extent of the disaster. Both are insisting that no more than 5,000 barrels a day are gushing from the broken well (after having insisted, disingenuously, for two weeks that it was only 1,000).

Meanwhile, independent engineers viewing the speed of the flow estimate the true rate at 20,000 to 70,000 barrels daily.

(The upper estimate would create an Exxon Valdez every four days.)

Indeed, BP's attitude seems still to be one of unconcern. They still seem to be saying it's no big deal. Even if it is a big deal, it's not our fault. Besides, what are you going to do, sue us? Government regulations limit the extent of our financial liability.

A story in Friday's Miami Herald claims BP employees had described the well as "troublesome" in the weeks leading up to the explosion in late April.

Unscheduled gas penetrations had occurred and three times during the course of the rig's final day there had been "sudden loud noises as bursts of pressure had been released." Pressure tests had shown a "disturbing imbalance." Nonetheless, BP pushed ahead.

Such a cowboy attitude does the cause of offshore drilling more harm than good.

According to a study by the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, offshore drilling remains less damaging than shipping oil by tanker.

"Since 1991, oil tankers have still spilled three times as much oil as offshore platforms and more than twice as much as pipelines."

Even during hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, very little oil spilled into the Gulf.

But there is no excuse for companies being shielded by governments from the full impact of the mistakes they make.

If they want to drill in sensitive areas, oil companies have to be more accountable, especially for the damage they do to others' property and livelihoods: fishermen, homeowners, boaters and entrepreneurs.

lgunter@shaw.ca
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

Read more: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/spill+What+spill/3034244/story.html#ixzz0o7LfYq7G

Barrick Tries to Block Book on Mining Practices

Barrick Gold moves to block mining book
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 12, 2010
CBC News
source


The threat of legal action from mining giant Barrick Gold has forced Vancouver-based Talonbooks to postpone publication of a book about the Canadian mining industry.

Publisher Karl Siegler calls it a clear case of "libel chill" by one of Canada's largest mining companies.

The book, Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice for the World's Mining Industries, was to be published in spring 2010, but in February, the publisher and everyone else involved with the book got a threatening letter from Barrick lawyers.

Siegler described Imperial Canada as an examination of the political, legal and banking environment that has led 70 per cent of the world's mining companies to register in Canada.
Defamation suit launched in Quebec

The letter gave Talonbooks seven days to hand over the manuscript of the book, which was in the process of being translated from French to English.

"We ignored it initially," Siegler said in an interview Wednesday with CBC Radio's Q cultural affairs show.

"As far as we were concerned, they had no right to demand or see copies of manuscripts that were in development prior to their public release. Anyone working on a book has a right to privacy and should not be subject to this kind of supervision."

But after receiving a legal letter, the translators immediately stopped work on the book. Siegler consulted a lawyer, who told him if he proceeded with the book, he could face years in court fighting an opponent with very deep pockets.

"Everyone involved stood to lose millions of dollars," Siegler said. "In the publisher's case, we stood to lose not just the company but all of the titles we have in print, roughly 500 titles dating back to the 1960s, many of which are Canadian classics."

Imperial Canada Inc. was inspired by a French-language book published in Quebec called Noir Canada: Pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique by the same lead author Alain Deneault .

Barrick Gold and another mining company, Banro, sued the authors and publishers of Noir Canada for $11 million claiming defamation for the book's description of Canadian mining practices in Africa. That case is still before the courts and Canada Noir remains available in print in French only.

Siegler said he considered publishing a straight-up translation of Canada Noir but decided he wanted to examine a wider issue — the infrastructure that supports Canada's mining industry.

"I'm not interested in the sensationalist aspects [of] what Canadian companies do around world. I'm interested the subtext," he said.

He approached Degneault to write the book, suggesting he recruit a team of collaborators.
Libel accusation 'appalling': publisher

John Dixon, a spokesman for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said the case underscores the need for a change in Canadian libel laws, so that corporations cannot use the laws to protect themselves from public scrutiny.

"If we step back and consider whether or not it is really important for Canadians to understand the mining industry and the consequences of the conduct of those industries around the world, we can't give corporations the same kind of protection [as we do private citizens]," Dixon said.

"We can't let them have the uninhibited ability to sue if we're going to get to the bottom of stuff like that. "

But Vince Borg, vice-president of corporate communications at Barrick Gold, said the company is just defending its reputation.

"Discourse is a very good thing in democracy, but it has to be based on the facts," Borg told Q.

"If I was about to publish a book about your criminal misdeeds, and you saw it on my website, would you not take action to protect your reputation?"

Siegler called this defence "appalling."

"Here's a man telling you that he's seen on a website a book that he presumes is about to accuse him and the corporation he works for of criminal acts," Siegler said. "There's nothing on our website to indicate that anybody is going to accuse anyone of criminal acts."

Talonbooks is still considering publishing Imperial Canada, possibly among its fall releases, but it first has to convince the translators and everyone else involved with the book to continue working on it, Siegler said.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/05/12/barrick-gold-mining-book.html#ixzz0nsX0Xhmx

Venezuelan Natural Gas Platform Sinks in Caribbean

Venezuelan natural gas platform sinks in Caribbean
source

A gas platform has sunk in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela, but the energy minister says it poses no risk to the environment.

President Hugo Chavez announced the incident via his account on the social networking site Twitter.

He said all 95 workers were evacuated from the Aban Pearl platform before it sank in the early hours of Thursday.

The rig was at the centre of Venezuela's efforts to develop its huge offshore gas deposits.

Venezuela's energy and oil minister, Rafael Ramirez, said there had been a problem with the flotation system of the semi-submergible platform, causing it to keel over and sink.

But he said a tube connecting the rig to the gas field had been disconnected and safety valves activated, so there no risk of any gas leak.

The Aban Pearl platform was drilling in the Mariscal Sucre offshore natural gas project, off the coast of Venezuela's Sucre state.

It belongs to an Indian company, Aban Offshore Ltd, but was being operated by Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA, which is developing the field.

Massive reserves

Last week Mr Ramirez stood atop the rig on live television as its gas flare was lit to inaugurate the project.

Venezuela has massive offshore gas reserves, but it has struggled to attract foreign investment, and industry experts say progress has been slow.

President Chavez used Twitter to send out the news of the sinking at just after 0300 local time (0730 GMT).

"I'm afraid to inform you that gas platform Aban Pearl sank a few moments ago. The good news is that 95 workers are safe," he tweeted.

"They were evacuated and at the moment two Navy patrols are moving to the area."

The captain and two other crew stayed on board until it was clear the rig was going down, officials said.

The incident comes less than a month after an explosion that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Work is still under way to stop a massive oil leak that is threatening the Gulf coast of the United States.

Eyeing the Black Mountain Climb

I share their despair, but I'm not quite
ready to climb the Dark Mountain
by George Monbiot

source

To sit back and wait for the collapse of industrial civilisation is to conspire in the destruction of everything greens value


Those who defend economic growth often argue that only rich countries can afford to protect the environment. The bigger the economy, the more money will be available for stopping pollution, investing in new forms of energy, preserving wilderness. Only the wealthy can live sustainably.

Anyone who has watched the emerging horror in the Gulf of Mexico in the past few days has cause to doubt this. The world's richest country decided not to impose the rules that might have prevented the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, arguing that these would impede the pursuit of greater wealth. Economic growth, and the demand for oil that it propelled, drove companies to drill in difficult and risky places.

But we needn't rely on this event to dismiss the cornucopians' thesis as self-serving nonsense. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calculates deforestation rates between 2000 and 2005 in the countries with the largest areas of forest cover. The nation with the lowest rate was the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The nation with the highest, caused by a combination of logging and fire, was the United States. Loss of forest cover there (6% of its own forests in five years) was almost twice as fast as in Indonesia and 10 times as fast as in the DRC. Why? Because those poorer countries have less money to invest in opening up remote places and felling trees.

The wealthy nations are plundering not only their own resources. The environmental disasters caused by the oil industry in Ecuador and Nigeria are not driven by Ecuadorian or Nigerian demand, but by the thirst for oil in richer nations. Deforestation in Indonesia is driven by the rich world's demand for palm oil and timber, in Brazil by our hunger for timber and animal feed.

The Guardian's carbon calculator reveals that the UK has greatly underestimated the climate impacts of our consumption. The reason is that official figures don't count outsourced emissions: the greenhouse gases produced by other countries manufacturing goods for our markets. Another recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the UK imports a net 253m tonnes of carbon dioxide, embodied in the goods it buys. When this is taken into account, we find that far from cutting emissions since 1990, as the last government claimed, we have increased them. Wealth wrecks the environment.

So the Dark Mountain Project, whose ideas are spreading rapidly through the environment movement, is worth examining. It contends that "capitalism has absorbed the greens". Instead of seeking to protect the natural world from the impact of humans, the project claims that environmentalists now work on "sustaining human civilisation at the comfort level which the world's rich people – us – feel is their right".

Today's greens, it charges, seek to sustain the culture that knackers the planet, demanding only that we replace old, polluting technologies with new ones – wind farms, solar arrays, wave machines – that wreck even more of the world's wild places. They have lost their feelings for nature, reducing the problem to an engineering challenge. They've forgotten that they are supposed to be defending the biosphere: instead they are trying to save industrial civilisation.

That task, Paul Kingsnorth – a co-founder of Dark Mountain – believes, is futile: "The civilisation we are a part of is hitting the buffers at full speed, and it is too late to stop it." Nor can we bargain with it, as "the economic system we rely upon cannot be tamed without collapsing, for it relies upon … growth in order to function". Instead of trying to reduce the impacts of our civilisation, we should "start thinking about how we are going to live through its fall, and what we can learn from its collapse … Our task is to negotiate the coming descent as best we can, whilst creating new myths which put humanity in its proper place".

Though a fair bit of this takes aim at my writing and the ideas I champion, I recognise the truth in it. Something has been lost along the way. Among the charts and tables and technofixes, in the desperate search for green solutions that can work politically and economically, we have tended to forget the love of nature that drew us into all this.

But I cannot make the leap that Dark Mountain demands. The first problem with its vision is that industrial civilisation is much more resilient than it proposes. In the opening essay of the movement's first book, to be published this week, John Michael Greer proposes that conventional oil supplies peaked in 2005, that gas will peak by 2030, and that coal will do so by 2040.

While I'm prepared to believe that oil supplies might decline in the next few years, his coal prediction is hogwash. Energy companies in the UK, as the latest ENDS report shows, are now beginning to deploy a technology that will greatly increase available reserves. Government figures suggest that underground coal gasification – injecting oxygen into coal seams and extracting the hydrogen and methane they release – can boost the UK's land-based coal reserves 70-fold; and it opens up even more under the seabed. There are vast untapped reserves of other fossil fuels – bitumen, oil shale, methane clathrates – that energy companies will turn to if the price is right.

Like all cultures, industrial civilisation will collapse at some point. Resource depletion and climate change are likely causes. But I don't believe it will happen soon: not in this century, perhaps not even in the next. If it continues to rely on economic growth, if it doesn't reduce its reliance on primary resources, our civilisation will tank the biosphere before it goes down. To sit back and wait for what the Dark Mountain people believe will be civilisation's imminent collapse, without trying to change the way it operates, is to conspire in the destruction of everything greens are supposed to value.

Nor do I accept their undiscriminating attack on industrial technologies. There is a world of difference between the impact of windfarms and the impact of mining tar sands or drilling for oil: the turbines might spoil the view but, as the latest disaster shows, the effects of oil seep into the planet's every pore. And unless environmentalists also seek to sustain the achievements of industrial civilisation – health, education, sanitation, nutrition – the field will be left to those who rightly wish to preserve them, but don't give a stuff about the impacts.

We can accept these benefits while rejecting perpetual growth. We can embrace engineering while rejecting many of the uses to which it is put. We can defend healthcare while attacking useless consumption. This approach is boring, unromantic, uncertain of success, but a lot less ugly than the alternatives.

For all that, the debate this project has begun is worth having, which is why I'll be going to the Dark Mountain festival this month. There are no easy answers to the fix we're in. But there are no easy non-answers either.

Prosecuting a Tortured Child

Prosecuting a Tortured Child: Obama’s Guantánamo Legacy
by Andy Worthington,
May 3, 2010

Since coming to power 15 months ago, promising to close Guantánamo within a year, and suspending the much-criticized military commission trial system for terror suspects, President Obama’s zeal for repudiating the Bush administration’s “war on terror” detention policies has ground to a halt.

The rot set in almost immediately, when the new administration invoked the “state secrets doctrine” last February, to combat a lawsuit brought by several men subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture, and was sealed last May, when Obama delivered a major national security speech in which he announced that the military commissions were back on the table, and also announced his intention to continue holding some prisoners at Guantánamo without charge or trial.

In November, Attorney General Eric Holder set the seal on the administration’s two-tier justice system for terror suspects at Guantánamo by announcing that five men would face federal court trials for their alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks, but that five others would face trial by military commission, in a revamped version of the “terror courts,” approved by Congress over the summer.

This year, Obama disappointed critics in the United States, and those scrutinizing his activities around the world, by failing to close Guantánamo within a year as promised, and by failing to set a new deadline for the prison’s closure, but last week his administration pressed ahead with what may well be viewed as the single most disappointing failure to repudiate the cruel, chaotic and unjust policies of the Bush administration’s “war on terror”: the trial, by military commission, of Omar Khadr.

A Canadian citizen, Khadr was just 15 years old when he was seized by U.S. forces after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, in which he allegedly threw a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier, Sgt. Christopher Speer, and was taken first to the U.S. prison at Bagram airbase, and then to Guantánamo, where he remains to this day. I have been covering his case since June 2007, when his first pre-trial hearing took place in the commissions’ first reincarnation, after the Supreme Court ruled in June 2006 that the original version, the brainchild of Dick Cheney and his legal counsel David Addington, was illegal.

For nearly three years, therefore, I have watched as a disturbingly shambolic and misconceived excuse for a judicial system has attempted, without success, to prosecute Omar Khadr, and the many failures of this endeavor have not been resolved through Congress’ tweaking the system last summer.

The shame and disgrace of prosecuting a child

Firstly, and most important, Khadr was a child when seized. This meant nothing to the Bush administration, and it is clear that it also means nothing to the Obama administration either. Back in May 2003, when the story first broke that juvenile prisoners were being held at Guantánamo (and research indicates that at least 22 juveniles were held in total), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld impatiently told a press conference, “This constant refrain of ‘the juveniles,’ as though there’s a hundred children in there — these are not children,” and General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that they “may be juveniles, but they’re not on the Little League team anywhere. They’re on a major league team, and it’s a terrorist team, and they’re in Guantánamo for a very good reason — for our safety, for your safety.”

This rhetoric played well with those who hold that everyone is accountable for their actions, whatever their age, but in a more enlightened world, of which the United States is technically a part, juveniles — defined as those under the age of 18 when the crime they are accused of committing took place — “require special protection” according to the Optional Protocol to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which the United States is a signatory. The Optional Protocol specifically recognizes “the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities,” and requires its signatories to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate case of a child who was “particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities” than Omar Khadr, who spent much of his childhood in Afghanistan, taken there by his father, an alleged fundraiser for Osama bin Laden, and yet, as I demonstrated in the first of my weekly columns for The Future of Freedom Foundation, back in October 2008, Khadr has never received “physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration,” because a detailed plan submitted by four doctors to the Defense Department in January 2003, entitled, “Recommended Course of Action for Reception and Detention of Individuals Under 18 Years of Age,” was completely ignored.

The problem of invented war crimes charges

Beyond this most glaringly obvious problem with Omar Khadr’s trial (and his nearly eight years in detention), another fundamental problem with Obama’s decision to proceed with prosecuting a former juvenile prisoner in the first U.S. war crimes trial since Nuremberg concerns the basis of the charges against Khadr. On an intuitive level, critics of Khadr’s trial have, from the beginning, recognized that there is something horribly skewed about redefining the internationally accepted laws of war so that one side in an armed conflict — the United States — can kill whoever it wants with impunity, whereas its opponents are viewed as terrorists, or, when brought to trial, as those who have committed “murder in violation of the law of war.”

Lt. Col. David Frakt, who knows more about the laws of war than Congress or officials in either the Bush or Obama administrations, has long pointed out that the military commissions are fundamentally flawed because they contain ”law of war offenses” invented by Congress, including “providing material support to terrorism” and “murder in violation of the law of war.” As he explained last week, as Khadr’s trial got underway, the latter was introduced by the DoD in 2003, when it was defining the crimes eligible for trial by military commission, as “murder by an unprivileged belligerent.” He added:

This status-based definition conflated two different concepts — unprivileged belligerents and war criminals. Under Article 4 of the Geneva Prisoner of War Convention it is clear that while a member of an organized resistance movement or militia may be an unprivileged belligerent (because of not wearing a uniform or failing to carry arms openly, for example) he may still comply with the laws and customs of war, so not all hostile acts committed by unprivileged belligerents are war crimes. Attacks by unprivileged belligerents which comply with the law of war (in that they attack lawful military targets with lawful weapons) may only be tried in domestic courts. In Iraq, for example, insurgents who try to kill Americans by implanting roadside bombs are properly arrested and tried before the Central Criminal Court of Iraq as common criminals. Attacks by unprivileged belligerents which violate the law of war, such as attacks on civilians or soldiers attempting to surrender, or using prohibited weapons like poison gas, can be tried in a war crimes tribunal.

When Congress revived the commissions in 2006 (after Congress ruled them illegal), “murder by an unprivileged belligerent” became “murder in violation of the law of war.” However, as Lt. Col. Frakt explained, the distinction appeared to be cosmetic, and, crucially, judges in the only two full trials that ever took place (those of Salim Hamdan and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul), as well as the judge in the case of Mohamed Jawad (released in August 2009), rejected the supposed crime, “each ruling that the mere status of unprivileged belligerency was insufficient to prove a violation of the law of war.”

Despite Lt. Col. Frakt’s alerting Congress to these problems last summer, lawmakers left the definition of “murder in violation of the law of war” unchanged in the new version of the commissions, but, astonishingly, DoD officials added an “official comment,” explaining that “an accused may be convicted in a military commission … if the commission finds that the accused engaged in conduct traditionally triable by military commission (e.g., spying; murder committed while the accused did not meet the requirements of privileged belligerency) even if such conduct does not violate the international law of war." In other words, as Lt. Col. Frakt explained, “a detainee may be convicted of murder in violation of the law of war even if they did not actually violate the law of war.”

The first flawed week of Omar Khadr’s pre-trial hearings

This new twist in the absurdly ill-conceived commissions did not permeate the first week of pre-trial proceedings in Omar Khadr’s case, although it will undoubtedly surface should the trial actually go ahead in July, and his defense team has not yet flagged up Khadr’s age on capture as a campaigning issue. Even so, there was more than enough incompetence and manipulation at work to indicate that President Obama’s decision to revive the commissions will, in all probability, lead not only to protracted legal challenges, but also to international indignation at the failure of both the administration and Congress to deliver justice to the prisoners at Guantánamo.

As dozens of journalists geared up for the pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo last Tuesday, having experienced the logistical nightmare that makes trials at the naval base such a poor idea on the basis of expense and practicability alone, they received their first notification of the chaos that, without fail, marks the proceedings as little more than a dark farce. The first day’s hearing was delayed so that everyone could review the commission manual, which was not signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates until the evening of April 27, and now had to be downloaded and printed out in a part of the world where technology is often stranded in, at best, the late 20th century.

Although Khadr turned up for the delayed start of the first day’s hearings, which commenced on Wednesday afternoon, he essentially boycotted the rest of the week’s proceedings, when, whether deliberately or not, he highlighted the kind of excessive security measures that pass for normal at Guantánamo. On day two, after complaining of eye pain, apparently brought on by conjunctivitis, he refused to don blackout goggles for his trip from his cell to the courtroom in a windowless vehicle, telling his escort, Marine Capt. Laura Bruzzese, “You're trying to humiliate me.” Although he was persuaded to attend later that day, he again refused to attend on day three, complaining that a waistband search for contraband “comes too close to his genitalia in the way it's being done,” as Barry Coburn, one of his military defense lawyers, explained. On Saturday, he refused again, telling Capt. Bruzzese, “I’m not going, nothing is starting at 0730.”

In the courtroom, meanwhile, discussions focused on the reliability of the evidence gathered by the government during Khadr’s interrogations. Khadr’s defense team has long maintained that Khadr, who was badly wounded at the time of his capture, having been shot twice in the back, was subjected to brutal treatment in the U.S. prison at Bagram, and later at Guantánamo, which rule out any self-incriminating statements he may have made as the “fruits of torture.” As I explained in a major review of Khadr’s case in November 2007:

According to his own account, reported by Amnesty International, he “asked for pain medication for his wounds but was refused,” said that “during interrogations a bag was placed over his head and U.S. personnel brought military dogs into the room to frighten him,” and added that he was “not allowed to use the bathroom and was forced to urinate on himself.” Like many other prisoners, he was also hung from his wrists, and explained that “his hands were tied above a door frame and he was forced to stand in this position for hours.” An article in Rolling Stone, in August 2006, added further details, noting that he was “brought into interrogation rooms on stretchers, in great pain,” and was “ordered to clean floors on his hands and knees while his wounds were still wet.”

Most of the above seems to have taken place in Bagram, where brutality was so commonplace at the time of Khadr’s stay there that at least two prisoners died of wounds inflicted by their guards just months after his departure. However, the abuse continued in Guantánamo, where, it should be noted, he arrived around the time that a regime of humiliation, isolation, and abuse, including extreme temperature manipulation, forced nudity, and sexual humiliation, had just been introduced, by reverse-engineering torture techniques used in a military program designed to train U.S. personnel to resist interrogation if captured, in an attempt to increase the meager flow of “actionable intelligence” from the prison. As I explained in 2007:

He told his lawyers that he was “short-shackled by his hands and feet to a bolt in the floor and left for five to six hours,” and that “occasionally a U.S. officer would enter the room to laugh at him.” He also said that he was “kept in extremely cold rooms,” “lifted up by the neck while shackled, and then dropped to the floor,” and “beaten by guards.” In one particularly notorious incident, the guards left him short-shackled until he urinated on himself, and then “poured a pine-scented cleaning fluid over him and used him as a ‘human mop’ to clean up the mess.” As if further humiliation was required, he added that he was “not provided with clean clothes for several days after this degradation.”

In contrast to Khadr’s claims, the government has proposed that he was treated humanely, and that he offered up self-incriminating information voluntarily. Robert Fuller, an FBI agent who interviewed Khadr at Bagram in October 2002, testified on Wednesday that his interrogations of Khadr were “conversational” and “non-confrontational,” adding, “We never put our hands on Mr. Khadr,” and stating that Khadr spoke “openly, confidently and comfortably about al-Qaeda” and admitted to throwing the grenade that killed Sgt. Speer. Fuller’s testimony continued on Thursday, and on Friday, a young female Navy Reservist (identified only as “Agent Number 11”) also spoke about non-coercive interrogations, this time at Guantánamo.

As Michelle Shephard explained in the Toronto Star, the former interrogator told the court that, “over the course of 12 interviews, which began in the prison hospital when Khadr arrived [at Guantánamo] on Oct. 28, 2002, he agreed to talk while they shared M&Ms and fig newtons.” Claiming that she was chosen to interrogate Khadr in the hope that he would relate to her as a “mother figure,” she also stated that their rapport was so good that Khadr told her, “I’d rather be in the booth with you than bored in my cell.”

Whether this is true or not, “Agent Number 11” inadvertently revealed the general futility of cooperating with the interrogators in Guantánamo, when she explained that “He knew if he was cooperative it would expedite his repatriation back to Canada” — a claim that was clearly groundless. She also said that he confessed to throwing the grenade that killed Sgt. Speer “like it was done in the movies,” adding that he said “he checked his watch just before throwing the grenade to note the time.” Military defense lawyer Lt. Col. Jon Jackson challenged this as “odd,” according to Shephard, “especially since … Khadr was bleeding from his head and blinded in one eye by shrapnel by that time” — or, in another possible scenario, was unconscious and face-down beneath a pile of rubble.

Did Omar Khadr throw the grenade?

The question of whether or not Khadr even threw the grenade that killed Sgt. Speer is crucial to his case, of course, and on day three of the hearings (on Saturday), these claims and counter-claims were addressed. Back in March 2008, it was revealed that there were two versions of a report describing the firefight, both written by the commander of the Special Forces unit responsible for capturing Khadr, who is identified only as “Lt. Col. W.”

In the first version, “Lt.-Col. W” stated that the person who had thrown the grenade had been killed, This, of course, would rule out Khadr as the suspect, but in the revised version, “Lt. Col. W” changed a single line to note that the person who threw the grenade was “engaged,” thereby implicating Khadr, who was the only non-U.S. survivor of the firefight. On Saturday, “Lt. Col. W.” testified by video link from the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, claiming that he had changed his report for “history’s sake,” but only because he had initially believed that Khadr had died. He said that he changed it, several years after the event, after being visited by military investigators.

This sounds plausible, but, as Michelle Shephard noted, his revised report “appears to conflict with a March 2004 statement written by a commando identified only as OC-1, which states that after the grenade was thrown he shot two fighters — one fatally,” demonstrating that two men were alive at the time the grenade was thrown (Khadr and another insurgent), and that, as a result, either of them could have thrown the grenade.

How this will all pan out is unknown at present, as the defense team has not yet had the opportunity to present its evidence, including the alarming claim, mentioned above and made last October when Khadr’s defense team released previously classified photos, that Khadr could not have thrown the grenade because, at the time, he was buried face-down under a pile of rubble.

Will a plea deal save Omar Khadr (and Obama) from the perils of a trial?

Pre-trial hearings are continuing this week at Guantánamo, and, to be honest, anything could happen. According to some of the first reports last week, prosecutors offered Khadr a plea bargain before the hearings even began — proposing that he would serve five years in a U.S. prison in exchange for pleading guilty to the war crimes charges against him — but the defense team turned down the offer. However, on Saturday the Washington Post claimed that the Obama administration was actively seeking a plea agreement. A senior official, speaking of the proposed trial in July, which would be the first trial under Obama to go ahead, told the Post, “This is not what you would choose to open with. Khadr has become a cause, and this is not a case that will demonstrate the strength and validity of military commissions.”

This seems rather disingenuous, as the administration clearly knew what it was doing when Khadr’s name was put forward last November, but maybe Obama has finally found his conscience, and is getting cold feet. After all, as Lt. Col. David Frakt declared authoritatively last week:

The Administration's decision to press forward with the first war crimes trial of a child soldier in modern history is unfathomable. That the Administration would then try to ensure a conviction by attempting to rewrite the law to create a new war crime is reprehensible.

If an administration that promised “hope and change” is not definitely to become one tarred as an advocate of the “unfathomable and reprehensible,” Obama needs to move fast. Changing the plea bargain to one that frees Khadr after a much shorter period of time than five years would be a good start; and scrapping the commissions immediately afterwards would be a sensible way to follow up.



Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press) and serves as policy advisor to the Future of Freedom Foundation. Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk.

Fish Farms Good Enough to Eat

Farmed salmon you can eat with peace of mind
April 21, 2010

Photo: Farmed salmon you can eat with peace of mind

SeaChoice partners with Overwaitea Food Group in 2009 (Credit: Lana Gunnlaugson)

By Bill Wareham, Senior Marine Conservation Specialist

source


You may have heard your fill about farmed salmon, but I want to tell you an exciting story about one of Canada's leading retailers, which is asking you to fill up on a new farmed salmon product.

After listening to years of debate in British Columbia, this company recognized the problems with open net pen farmed salmon and began looking for an alternative. SeaChoice and many other sustainable seafood programs in North America recommend against buying farmed salmon from open net pens due to negative effects this practice has on the health of our oceans, particularly the proliferation of sea lice and their devastating effect on juvenile wild salmon.

Believing that aquaculture is going to be part of our food security solution, the challenge for the company and SeaChoice was to find producers that farmed fish in a sustainable manner. This is where things get interesting.

In searching for alternative seafood options to meet their commitment to marketing sustainable seafood, the Overwaitea Food Group secured a supply of sustainably farmed salmon branded as "Sweet Spring" from a company in Washington State. These folks produce Coho salmon in an innovative land based closed containment system that uses a freshwater recirculation system, significantly reducing the environmental damage associated with traditional salmon farming. SeaChoice assessed this product and ranked it as a sustainable "Best Choice".

Beginning this Earth Day, Overwaitea Food Group will begin selling this sustainable Coho salmon in their Save-On Foods, PriceSmart, Overwaitea Foods, Urban Fare and Cooper's Foods stores throughout BC and Alberta. I think this is great news, demonstrating that there are creative alternatives for consumers looking for sustainable seafood.

If you're a fish eater, I recommend that you seek out and purchase this sustainably produced Coho salmon and help create a demand that enables closed system salmon producers to grow and profit from a great idea.

Filling Canada's Prisons: Harper Seeks to Follow Mandatory Minimum Sentencing for Marijuana

Bill C-15 could fill Canadian prisons with drug offenders
By Carlito Pablo

Will Bill C-15 kill the twin scourge of illegal drugs and gang violence?

source


Libby Davis
NDP MP,Vancouver East

“There’s a lot of information, both in the United States and in Canada, that shows that mandatory minimum sentencing regimes for drug offences are ineffective. This is all about window-dressing for the Conservatives’ crime agenda. They want to impress people with their tough-on-crime approach. One thing that will happen is that it could very much overcrowd our prisons. We find the bill to be misdirected and based on a very faulty premise. It’s based on the U.S.’s war on drugs, which has been a complete failure.”


Ed Fast
Conservative MP, Abbotsford

“What Bill C-15 does is it’s connecting the sale of drugs to aggravating factors. If there’s a sale or production or growing of drugs that occurs and violence is present, we will put those guys behind bars. But we also want to make sure that low-level dealers that are dealing in drugs simply because they’re addicted can actually get the help that they deserve. We believe it’s a balanced approach. We’re not going after the marijuana users. We’re going after the guys who really present an ongoing danger to our community.”


Ujjal Dosanjh
Liberal MP, Vancouver South

“Bill[s] C-14 and [C-]15? We have said that we’ll support both of them. We agree with tougher penalties for serious and violent and chronic offenders. But that alone isn’t going to do the job. That’s why we believe this government is failing significantly in their drive to deal with the issue of crime. They’re failing Canadians because they’re not emphasizing crime-preventing, they’re not providing resources for youth programs, they’re not providing actual police officers on the ground, [and] they’re not providing prosecutors.”


Adrianne Carr
Deputy leader, Green Party of Canada

“The Green party doesn’t support mandatory sentencing because it has proven to not work. It’s coming from this tough-on-crime perspective. What we’ve seen is that our court system wastes extraordinarily high resources in prosecuting the petty criminals involved in drug cases, particularly marijuana. We should be legalizing marijuana, which has been suggested by the Senate of Canada and the Fraser Institute, and these are hardly radical institutions. What we have to do is delink the profit motive from drugs.”

On March 2, the Pew Center on the States, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, released a report on the staggering growth of the American correctional system.

Entitled One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections, the report noted that “sentencing and release laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s put so many more people behind bars that last year the incarcerated population reached 2.3 million and, for the first time, one in 100 adults was in prison or jail.”

It also cited the tremendous increase in the number of people on probation or parole, such that “combined with those in prison and jail, a stunning 1 in every 31 adults, or 3.2 percent, is under some form of correctional control.”

Why is this relevant to Canada?

“We only need to go south of the border and see a nation that enacted mandatory minimums related to drug offences from the mid-1980s on,” criminologist Susan Boyd told the Georgia Straight. “It didn’t reduce violence and drug use. So here we are saying, ‘We’re going to do this.’ ”

Boyd—an associate professor at UVic and research fellow at the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C.—was referring to the reintroduction in Parliament by the Conservative government of a bill that proposes mandatory minimum jail sentences for drug offenders.

If passed into law, Bill C-15 would, among its other provisions, throw people caught with one marijuana plant into the slammer for a minimum of six months. If growing a single plant is done on a property that belongs to another person or in an area where it may present a hazard to children, minimum jail time is nine months.

Worse, the bill seeks to increase the maximum penalty for this particular offence to 14 years.

Vancouver’s so-called Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, who is fighting extradition on charges of selling marijuana seeds to American growers, is a potential U.S. prison statistic.

Emery was handing out leaflets condemning drug prohibition, along with his wife, Jodie, on the south side of the city when the Straight asked him about Bill C-15. “Anything that puts more people in jail for drugs is going to fill prisons,” he said. “It’s a very expensive and failed policy that will only bring us more misery.”

The Pew Center on the States report pointed out that many states in the U.S. “appear to have reached a ‘tipping point’ where additional incarceration will have little if any effect on crime”.

In Washington state, which shares a border with B.C., the report stated, “from 1980 to 2001, the benefit-to-cost ratio for drug offenders plummeted from $9.22 to $0.37.

“That is, for every one dollar invested in new prison beds for drug offenders, state taxpayers get only 37 cents in averted crime,” it noted. “An updated analysis from 2006 found that incarceration of offenders convicted of violent offenses remained a positive net benefit, while property and drug offenders offered negative returns.”

Conservative Abbotsford MP Ed Fast deflected criticism that mandatory jail times haven’t worked in the U.S.

“First of all, on the issue of deterrence there’s contradicting evidence,” Fast told the Straight. “I don’t base my support for the legislation on the deterrent effect. I base it on the prophylactic effect of the legislation. Prophylactic means taking repeat, violent offenders out of our communities for longer periods of time.”

Bill C-15 is a reincarnation of Bill C-26, which the Conservatives introduced in November 2007.

In February 2008, a few months after Bill C-26 was tabled in Parliament, Boyd started sending Prime Minister Stephen Harper a weekly letter in an attempt to educate the Conservative leader about harm reduction and drug regulation.

Boyd did this for a year, and she sent her 52nd and final letter in early February this year. Bill C-15 was introduced on February 27, a day after the Conservatives filed Bill C-14, which toughens penalties for gang-associated violent activities.

As an educator, Boyd has this to say about mentoring Harper: “The prime minister gets a failing grade on drug policy.”
The economics of prisons in Canada

> Total correctional-services expenditures in 2005-06: almost $3 billion

> Share spent on custodial services or prisons: 71 percent

> Associated policing and court costs in 2005-06: more than $10 billion

> Number of correctional facilities in Canada in 2005-06: 192

> Annual cost of incarcerating a federal female prisoner in
2004-05: $150,000 to $250,000

> Annual cost of incarcerating a federal male prisoner in 2004-05: $87,665

> Daily cost of incarcerating a provincial prisoner in 2004-05: $141.78

> Daily cost of alternatives such as probation, bail supervision,
and community supervision: $5 to $25

Source: prisonjustice.ca

Sweeping New Powers

Sweeping New Powers Would Threaten Privacy: Watchdog

BC Government wants to amend law to allow much more collection and sharing of personal data.

By Andrew MacLeod,
25 Mar 2010, TheTyee.ca

source


Public bodies would collect, share your personal information without consent.


The British Columbia government wants sweeping new powers to collect and share citizens' private information and store it outside of Canada. Officials argue the powers would help them better serve the public, but a privacy advocate says British Columbians should be worried about the government's plans.

Representatives of the B.C. government presented their 88-page submission to a March 24 meeting of a special committee struck to review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Such a review happens every six years. The transcript is here.

The government proposes public bodies be able to collect and share people's personal information without their consent. Non-public bodies such as the police, social service providers and non-governmental organizations would be able to do the same.

It would also change the act to allow information to be stored outside of Canada, overturning a provision put in place to protect British Columbians from the long arm of the United States' Patriot Act.

"It's the scope of the thing," said Vincent Gogolek, the policy director for the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association watchdog group. "They really are looking to change the basis of the act to remove people's control over their own information."

'Shared across the universe'
Millennium Water - Home of the Olympic and Paralympic village.

The government's submission says it wants the act amended "to allow for indirect collection by, and disclosure to and between all relevant public bodies, without consent, for purposes of integrated program or activity."

Even non-public bodies including "government and police agencies in other jurisdictions" could indirectly collect and disclose personal information without consent, under the proposal.

This would be done where it's "of benefit to the citizen and necessary to the delivery of the service or program," or for public health and safety.

"They want it shared across the universe," said Gogolek. "NGOs, the RCMP, all over the place. . . They don't want any supervison of that. . . and that's a problem."

The information at stake includes some of the most personal things about people, he said. Information about medical history, mental health, addictions, housing and criminal records would be included, he said. "This is stuff you don't want bouncing around all over the place."

People have a right to keep control of their information and how it is used, Gogolek said, adding it's not good enough for the government to just say, "trust us."

"This will be used monitoring and checking up on people," he said. The government argues that it has become more horizontal and the law needs to change to match its new structure, he said. "I've got a bit of a problem with that and I suspect the committee might have a bit of a problem with that."

The government is making the pitch as it embarks on a $180-million integrated case management system that will be used by both the children and families and housing and social development ministries.

The government has entered a six-year deal with Deloitte Inc. to develop the system, despite warnings the system will create new privacy risks.

Patriot Act worries

Perhaps even more contentious is the provincial government's desire to store more information outside the country.

Here's how the submission to the committee puts the request: "Amend the provisions in the FOIPP Act prohibiting the storage of information outside of Canada to take into account IT developments and advancements that make jurisdictional boundaries artificial."

The change would include, "social networking and other internet tools and mechanisms that can promote stronger citizen engagement and [would] take advantage of commercial and economic opportunities for storage and management of information including 'cloud computing.'"

The provision requiring information stay in Canada dates back to soon after the B.C. Liberals took office in 2001. They were contracting out the management of health records, just as the United States government responded to the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center by bringing in the Patriot Act, parts of which allowed for the collection of large amounts of information.

The province's chief information officer, Dave Nikolejsin, presented the government's submission to the committee. He described why they want the restrictions on foreign data storage changed: "How we are able to do some of our alternative service delivery projects is dictated, because a lot of the organizations that bid on opportunities like that and attempt to do business with us are not Canadian businesses. We have to go through machinations that other jurisdictions don't in order to make sure that the data stays in Canada."

"Alternative service delivery" is the wording the government uses to describe contracting out public services. He named Alberta and Ontario as provinces B.C. competes with that don't have similar restrictions on data storage.

"This was hugely controversial and the government was forced to bring it in because of the Patriot Act," said Gogolek. "The Patriot Act is still there." The president of the United States may have changed, but the law has not, he said.

Expanding definitions

Gogolek also takes issue with a couple of changes suggested by the attorney general and the solicitor general.

One would extend the definition of "law enforcement," allowing public bodies to refuse access to a greater number of records. Originally the idea was to prevent information that would compromise a particular investigation from being released. As Gogolek puts it, you legitimately don't want the U.N. Gang able to request records about how the police are investigating the U.N. Gang.

"They want to expand it from investigations to crime prevention," said Gogolek. That would make lots of records that are now releasable secret, he said. "It's got to be realistic. You can't just raise hypotheticals."

The government also asked the committee to rewrite the law so it can refuse access to security video from jail cells. That would be in direct contradiction to a two-year-old ruling by former information and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis, said Gogolek.

"They seem grumpy about that," he said. Knowing that video from jail cells may find its way into public is incentive for the people who work in jails to follow the law, he said. That incentive would be removed if people knew the footage could never be released, he said. "I don't think it's a good way to go."

The acting information and privacy commissioner, Paul Fraser, is scheduled to present to the committee next week.

Gogolek said his group, which presented to the committee last month, will also be looking for a way to respond to the government's submission. [Tyee]

Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee's Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria. You can reach him here.