Myths and Realities about 490 Tamil Refugees on MV Sun Sea

Myths and Realities about 490 Tamil Refugees on MV Sun Sea

Download and distribute this widely as a printable factsheet in PDF:
http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=2167

==> Myth 1: They are illegals who are jumping the queue.

There is no 'queue' for refugee claimants. Refugees are forced from their
homes in emergency situations due to human rights abuses committed during
wars, military occupations, or persecution against a minority group. We
cannot expect refugees to wait for Canada to select them from overseas. We
must understand that they undertake long and dangerous journeys to protect
their lives and the lives of their families. According to the 1951 UN
Convention on Refugees, to which Canada is a party, there are no penalties
on refugees who arrive without pre-authorization and irregularly.


==> Myth 2: They are terrorists.

There is no evidence to substantiate this. Rohan Gunaratna, the
government's primary source, has already been discredited by lawyers as
well as an Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator for being uncredible.
Last October, when the 76 Tamil asylum-seekers came on Ocean Lady they
were similarly labeled as terrorists and security threats. However by Jan
2010, they were all released from detention when Canadian Border Services
Agency admitted they had no evidence of a terrorist connection.

Furthermore, officials are just relying on stereotypes of Tamils as all
being associated with the Tamil Tigers to create unnecessary racist
hysteria and mistrust of asylum-seekers. National security laws in the
post-911 climate have directly targeted and marginalized immigrants,
refugees, and racialized people. These laws and policies are less about
protecting society than creating a culture of fear. Many of these policies
- such as Security Certificates - have been struck down in the Courts
after years of human rights and anti racist campaigning. The rhetoric of
the War on Terror serves as a convenient distraction from the reality that
people's daily lives are increasingly unsafe and insecure due to global
neoliberal economics and war-mongering that leads to mass displacement,
poverty, and human rights atrocities.


==> Myth 3: The situation is getting better in Sri Lanka.

According to a 2010 Amnesty International report, in the past 12 months
the Sri Lankan government has continued to jail critics and clamped down
on dissent. Some 80,000 Tamils remain in refugee camps, while 400,000
displaced Tamils survive in communities where homes and infrastructure
were destroyed. The government continues to extend a state of emergency,
restricting many basic human rights, and thousands of arbitrary detentions
are justified under the guise of detainees being suspected Tamil Tigers.
This past month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed a panel to
investigate war crimes and genocidal acts committed by the Sri Lankan
government against Tamils.


==> Myth 4: They are a burden on tax payers.

The biggest resource expenditure has been the government's choice to spend
thousands of dollars in an unnecessary security operation, including
resources spent on incarcerating women and children. Only a tiny fraction
has been spent on the health and well-being of the migrants, whose lives
are worth more than dollars. Furthermore, scapegoating migrants for being
a financial burden lets the government off the hook. All residents
continue to receive inadequate access to necessary social services because
of misplaced government priorities - choosing to bail out banks and sink
billions into the police and military - not because of the lack of
resources to provide a social safety net for all in need.


==> Myth 5: Canada has a generous refugee system; we cannot keep accepting
people.

Despite border panics, only a small minority of asylum seekers make claims
in the Western world. There are about 20 million refugees worldwide and
most migrate into neighboring countries of Africa, Middle East, and South
Asia. Canada accepts fewer than 20,000 refugees per year, which is less
than 0.1% of the world's displaced population.

Furthermore, Canada's system is not generous. Deportations from Canada
have skyrocketed 50% over the last decade, with 13,000 deportations in the
past year. With the Conservatives, the number of approved asylum claims
has dropped by 56%. Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney's recent refugee
reforms create two tiers of refugees, establishing a hierarchy based on
nationality. There are countless structural flaws in the system, designed
to make it near impossible to claim asylum. Immigration and Refugee Board
members are political appointees; certain avenues such as the Pre Removal
Risk Assessment have acceptance rates of 3-5% while others such as the
Humanitarian and Compassionate claim do not have to be processed prior to
deportation. In addition, the refugee system has been termed a "lottery
system" because acceptance rates can vary from 0-80% depending on the
judge. The Safe Third Country Agreement between the US and Canada creates
a "Fortress Canada" by disallowing up to 40% of asylum seekers.


==> Myth 6: It is not our problem.

The Canadian government has recently been forced to apologize for racist
and exclusionary historical measures including the Chinese Exclusion Act
and Komagatamaru incident. These apologies and the rhetoric of
multiculturalism is hollow when current policies and practices perpetuate
racism and exclusion. The recent backlash that repeats the tired-old
refrain about 'illegals' and 'criminals' has meant that right-wing
neo-nazis such as Paul Fromm and the Aryan Guard have resurfaced publicly
and are being given a platform to spew their hate about sending the boat
back. Is this really the side that we are on?

Immigration and refugee issues are not simply about Canadian benevolence
or charity. We need to rethink what function and whose interests the state
border actually serves. The current trends of global migration reveal the
ways in which patters of Western domination and corporate globalization
have enriched some countries by creating economic and political insecurity
that forces people indigenous to their lands to migrate. The Canadian
government continues to maintain economic and diplomatic ties with the
government of Sri Lanka, instead of supporting those who have survived the
brutality of that government, which makes us complicit in their
displacement. Also, we must always remember that Canada is a settler
country, built on the theft of Indigenous lands and the forced
assimilation of Indigenous communities. On what basis is a colonial
government denying colonized people their right to livelihood? Finally, we
must challenge the idea that some are more worthy than others to a life of
dignity; instead we should reaffirm the universal value that people have
the freedom to move in order to seek safety and to flourish.

LET THE TAMIL REFUGEES STAY!
NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL, THE SYSTEM IS ILLEGAL!

~ Visit us at www.nooneisllegal.org or email noii-van@resist.ca ~

Remembering the Wars: Sri Lanka 2009

http://voicesinexile.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/opinion-the-war-in-sri-lanka-and-the-left-in-toronto/


Opinion: The War in Sri Lanka and the Left in Toronto
May 18, 2009
by voicesinexile

By Noaman Ali and Fathima Cader

Protest-CP24

photo by freelancer RJ

The recent burst of mass mobilizations by sections of the Canadian-Tamil community in Toronto has brought to the fore several contradictions concerning the conflict in Sri Lanka and its presence in and connection to Canada. Mainstream media’s responses to the protests have been overwhelmingly racialist, exposing many of the limits of Canadian multiculturalism. In order for Canadian multiculturalism to accept any given group of people as a cultural community, it must define that group by differentiating it from a supposedly mainstream Canadian identity. This focalising Canadian identity—in effect a non-identity—is white and middle-class. Thus, when the Toronto Star publishes an editorial entitled “Protesters vs. the public” [1] it effectively notes that the protesters are not part of the public by pitting (Tamil) protesters against the (Canadian) public. Rather than focusing on the war, media outlets have focused on the inconvenience posed to commuters, thereby shifting attention away from deaths in Sri Lanka to traffic regulations in Canada. Consequently, responses to the protests have largely demonstrated pernicious xenophobia. For instance, in the Toronto Sun, Peter Worthington argues that not using excessive force (e.g., water cannons) against Tamil protesters who block streets is tantamount to “reverse racism” against white Canadians. [2]

But if the coverage of the protests has made certain contradictions about the performance of cultural politics in public spaces in Canada apparent, other contradictions about the negotiation of those politics within cultural communities have also been rendered largely invisible. The impetus comes, once again, from a multiculturalism that defines ethnic, immigrant identities against a supposedly mainstream, local one. The act of defining a cultural community necessarily ignores the cultural, economic, and political differences that exist within that community. When these differences are ignored, political representation to mainstream political actors (i.e. those in the government, political parties, and state apparatuses) is mediated by non-elected, self-appointed community “leaders” who may not, and often do not, capture all cultural and political differences. In fact, the very articulation of those differences is precluded: a-cultural white English-speaking Canadians may lean left or right as individuals, or as voting blocs based on class and region, but the articulation of such political differences is absent in the representations of the politics of minority communities. The responses of politicians, activists, journalists, police and vocal sections of the public to the rallies protesting the war provide key examples of this.

The responses of politicians and police officials who addressed themselves to “the Tamil community” falsely suggest that all the protesters were Tamil and that all of Toronto’s Tamils supported the protests. The paternalism of Mayor David Miller’s deciding to tell “the Tamil community” what it “needs to hear from us” [3] (whoever “us” is) feeds into the blatant racism expressed by other elements of the public. Thus, for instance, in The Globe & Mail Christie Blatchford uses the demonstrations to question not just protest tactics, but also the immigration policies that, according to her, have led to the presence of a worryingly large number of Tamils in Toronto. [4]

Parallel to Miller’s homogenization, though coming from the opposite direction, veteran dissident leftist Judy Rebick notes on her blog that, “in a brilliant action, the Tamil community [...] climbed the on ramp on to the Gardiner Expressway [...] and sat down blockading traffic for several hours.” [5] While the action, as an object lesson in activist tactics, was brilliant, one can say with certainty that “the Tamil community” neither climbed onto nor sat down on the Gardiner. Rather, a more correct terminology would be what Rebick subsequently calls “a group of Tamil activists.” The tenor of her blog post, however, confirms that she views the Tamil community in homogenous terms. She goes so far as to end her post with the note that “we are all Tamils,” a statement that is problematic on two grounds. First, working in solidarity with others requires acknowledging the lived differences that separate us so that we might use those differences for the purposes of justice, rather than discounting them out of an unhelpfully over-forced empathy. Second, that kind of statement presupposes that there is only one kind of Tamil identity, which everyone else can access. Yet if Tamilness is an identity constructed solely on the basis of one’s presence at or support for the protests, not even all Tamils can be called such.

If Toronto’s Tamil population is being flattened into one homogenized entity by politicians and many leftist activists, that process is certainly not being opposed by some sections of Toronto’s Tamil community. The Canadian Tamil Congress, one of Toronto’s more prominent Tamil political groups, notes that it is “the unified voice of Canada’s 300,000 Tamils.” [6] Its FAQ page shows that it ascribes to all Sri Lankan Tamils the desire for a separate homeland (Tamil Eelam). [7] The history and current reality of a diversity of non-communal and Tamil organizations and individuals within and without Sri Lanka, with varying goals and political objectives—and varying definitions of self-determination for Tamil people—is elided by this construction of Tamil identity. It is impossible for the CTC to be the unified voice of Tamils when Tamils don’t have a unified voice. In other words, to return to Rebick’s rallying cry, we are not all Tamil, if only because there is no one Tamil identity we can be.

At many of the protests, the LTTE-designed national flag of Tamil Eelam (which shares the Tiger emblem) has been a prominent fixture, LTTE soldiers have been venerated as freedom fighters, the prospect of Eelam has been seen as a necessary solution to the war, and LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran has been venerated as a national leader. While this set of views may be influential and even hegemonic within Toronto’s Tamil diaspora, it is not universal. Just as the actions of many of the Tamil demonstrators are not and cannot be the actions of “the Tamil community,” so too are the opinions expressed at these demonstrations not those of “the Tamil community.” In fact, those are not even necessarily the views of all of the protesters present at the rallies, but dissenting, non-LTTE views are not being heard.

To signal toward complexity and difference within Tamil communities is not to deny the Sinhala ethnic chauvinism of the government of Sri Lanka; its use of undemocratic and authoritarian practices to crush dissent; or its use of mass murder, ethnic cleansing and internal colonization against Sri Lankan Tamils. Nor is it to deny that militant Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka has largely been a response to the systematized and legislated discrimination of the Sri Lankan state. The LTTE is, in fact, a legitimate national resistance movement and was—until recently— the de facto governing entity in several parts of Sri Lanka. However, in its progress towards and current operation of that position, it too has often represented an ideology of ethno-religious chauvinism; has used undemocratic and authoritarian practices to crush resistant views and movements–including against dissident Tamils; and has used mass murder, ethnic cleansing and internal colonization against Muslims. The point here is not that the LTTE is just as bad as the government of Sri Lanka—which many Sri Lankans, Tamils and otherwise, think it is—but that a critical left view cannot support the LTTE, except tactically in opposition to the oppression of the Sri Lankan state. Nor can it support the LTTE’s ideology or practice. Thus, the assumption should not be made that support for Tamils in opposition to Sri Lankan state oppression is consonant with support for the LTTE.

It is important that critical leftists in Canada take concrete steps, working with members of the Tamil population and the Sri Lankan population more broadly, to bring to an end the oppression being perpetrated by the Sri Lankan state, but without steamrolling the complexities of the conflict and those affected by it. We must stand for an end to Sri Lankan state aggression, but also for an end to the LTTE’s aggression toward dissident and minority groups. Toward these ends, some concrete steps we should seek to take include:

1. Demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

Critical leftists must stand up for the thousands being massacred in Sri Lanka. To this end, we should engage with supporters of the LTTE and others in demanding an immediate, permanent, and confirmable bilateral ceasefire. Protests calling on the Canadian government to take an active role in bringing about such a ceasefire are important and should be supported, though not uncritically.

2. Oppose the complacency and racism of the Canadian state, media and vocal sections of the general public; and oppose police violence.

The Canadian government continues to turn a blind eye to the conflict, tacitly supporting the Sri Lankan state’s actions. Politicians at all levels have spoken to “the Tamil community” in condescending ways. The media has focused more on the plight of commuters inconvenienced by the rallies than on the thousands of dying civilians. Many Canadian citizens have expressed their xenophobia calling upon Tamils to “go back home”.

Meanwhile, at the rallies, protestors have on several occasions been literally caged into tight areas and police officers have often used excessive force on them. Protestors have been arrested merely for speaking out,8 and, at times, have been brutalized with no provocation.9,10

Police violence and the complacence and racism of Canadian foreign politics, the media and vocal sections of the general public must be opposed loudly and forcefully.

3. Push for a political solution.

This conflict has no military solution. Critical leftists must not stop at the call for a ceasefire, but also push for a comprehensive political settlement that involves more than just the Sinhala-dominant Sri Lankan state and the LTTE. There are many more legitimate representatives of Tamil (including Tamil-speaking Muslim) aspirations and political views than the LTTE, whom the LTTE has repressed. Support must be given to them. However, there can also be no political settlement without the involvement of the LTTE.

The Canadian government does not label organizations as terrorist on the basis of objective criteria, but politically opportunistic ones. Moreover, designating certain groups as terrorist does little to clarify conflict situations, but more often obscures issues. Canada’s banning the Tigers as terrorists suggests that the problem of Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism is not one of discrimination and disenfranchisement, but of immeasurable violence and terrorism, and that therefore the solution to this conflict must inevitably and solely come through the military elimination of said terrorist group. Critical leftists, however, must remain firm that any long-term and viable solution to the Sri Lankan conflict cannot be military; it must involve a political settlement.

4. Work toward cross-ethnic solidarity.

Following from the support for repressed and marginalized voices, critical leftists must promote cross-ethnic solidarities in Sri Lanka and in the Sri Lankan diaspora. The fictions of ethnic homogeneity constructed by Sinhala nationalism and by Tamil nationalism must be punctured and repudiated. This does not mean an opposition to the principle of self-determination. Yet however the majority of Tamils in Sri Lanka choose to define self-determination, a lasting peace has to be based on the recognition of the vast complexity, intermingling, and transcendence of ethnic boundaries that constantly occurs in Sri Lanka – both in Sinhalese-dominated and in Tamil-dominated areas. Non-communal political formations must be supported.

To that end, critical leftists in Canada should work towards facilitating the kinds of cross-ethnic solidarity movements and conversations that have been mostly foreclosed by the terroristic strategies employed in Sri Lanka by the armed forces and by the LTTE. While acknowledging and addressing the limitations of Canadian multicultural policies here, we need to capitalise on our distance from the conflict, and the relative peace afforded by that distance (however racialised and restricted it is), to facilitate dialogue.

5. Oppose the Sri Lankan state; criticize the LTTE.

Successive Sinhala ethnic chauvinist governments have precipitated the crisis in Sri Lanka. They continue to do so with impunity. Critical leftists must be absolute in their opposition to the ethnic chauvinism and practical depredations of the parties controlling the Sri Lankan state. The Sri Lankan state has been one of the most significant obstacles toward the achievement of a lasting peace.

At the same time, the LTTE has used civilians as human shields and has engaged in forced conscription. It must be therefore also be criticized and its particular human rights violations not excused or glossed over.

6. Oppose the role of international imperialism in the conflict.

The ideology of twenty-first century imperialism is manifest worldwide. In particular, in South Asia, the discourses of “wars on terror” in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are smokescreens for governments and imperial actors like NATO and the United States to obscure real, legitimate and popular grievances by focusing instead on military campaigns. This is precisely the strategy currently being used by the state in Sri Lanka against its local Tamil grievances. Furthermore, the Sri Lankan state receives military aid from, among others, Pakistan and Israel—lackeys of American empire. China, too, in increasing its international political reach, has steadily provided arms and funding to Sri Lanka for several years. India has also played a major role through its intervention or absence of intervention, in line with its hegemonic designs in South Asia.

The international dimensions of the conflict are too complex to be examined in detail here. However, we should engage in further study of the international dimension of the conflict as well, for in resisting the violence of the Sri Lankan state, as critical leftists, we are also taking a stance against certain operations of international imperialism. We must recognize, however, that ultimately the problem is one of Sinhala ethnic chauvinism and the lack of meaningful political representation of national minorities in Sri Lanka.

In conclusion, it is important to note that these six items should be regarded as points of departure for critical leftists. By no means is this a conclusive programme on how activists in Canada, whatever their ethnicity or personal connection to the war, should approach the conflict. That sort of conversation is much more difficult, and must be had in conjunction with all the members of Canada’s Sri Lankan diaspora, including its Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim communities.
—-
Noaman Ali is a teaching assistant at York University and a member of CUPE 3903. Fathima Cader is a Colombo-born Tamil Muslim who spent five weeks in April and May 2009 in Sri Lanka. She is a law student at the University of British Columbia.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

* Toronto Mayor Miller Issues Statement About Tamil Protest
* Prabhakaran’s pride
* SOUTH ASIAN PEOPLE’S FORUM: Special Session on Sri Lanka
* Canada Stops Ship Carrying 490 People

Janine Bandcroft Goes Under the Volcano

Janine Bandcroft Goes to Under the Volcano
Aug. 8, 2010

http://previous.ncra.ca/exchange/dspProgramDetail.cfm?programID=101877

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/08/20108975319492772.html

How a Tree Can Start a War

Robert Fisk: UN: Israel was on its own side before border clash

Thursday, 5 August 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-un-israel-was-on-its-own-side-before-border-clash-2043556.html

So was the tree inside Israel? The UN implies that the shrubbery that ultimately cost the lives of five men on Tuesday was on the Israeli side of the "Blue Line".

"Unifil established... that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side," said a Unifil military spokesman.

The tree was certainly north of Israel's own "technical fence". But the Lebanese have their doubts about some parts of the "Blue Line" – which is why Israel's attempt to cut down what appears to be a spruce tree started a gun battle on Tuesday on Lebanon's southern border which killed three Lebanese soldiers, a 55-year-old Lebanese journalist and an Israeli lieutenant-colonel. Along with the fact that Israel had apparently not co-ordinated its gardening expedition with the Lebanese via the UN.

Canada's Fading Democratic Committment

A less proud country

Apathetic Canadians have allowed their government to trample freedoms -- but opposition is mounting

By Lawrence Scanlan,

[Ottawa] Citizen Special July 28, 2010
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/less+proud+country/3330366/story.html#ixzz0uzHn95oZ

There's been a sea change, a darkening of the political climate in this country. The first instinct is to discount such javascript:void(0)troubling thoughts. So perhaps the view of someone born elsewhere, but long on our shores, is more to be trusted. Ursula Franklin, the celebrated physicist, pacifist, author and Companion of the Order of Canada, recently spoke to CBC Radio's The Current. She had survived a Nazi death camp and come to Canada hoping for better. Now 88, Franklin is "profoundly worried about the absence and erosion of democracy in Canada." Democracy, I heard her say on the radio, is a slow and messy process. When Franklin sees cabinet ministers holding press conferences to discuss legislation not yet debated in the House of Commons, she sees that process being skirted. And when she hears the prime minister saying he does not "trust" the Opposition, she sees contempt for democracy itself. "Who wants to live in a country," Franklin asked, "where those who don't think like you are deemed untrustworthy?"

A German reporter here to cover the G20 summit likened Toronto's walls to the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie. I was just in Berlin and the checkpoint these days comprises a few sandbags and two "soldiers" in Second World War American uniforms posing for tourists' cameras. Walls fall in one place, rise up in another. But surely not here?

UN Report on Mavi Marmara Massacre Due

Israel Braces Itself for
a UN Fact Finding Mission
by Gilad Atzmon

source

Israel faces another disastrous report as an 'Independent and impartial' fact-finding team appointed by the UN Human Rights Council will look into Israel's 'violations of international law' during her commando raid on the Gaza-bound Turkish ship.

Seemingly the UN Human Rights Council wasn’t overwhelmingly impressed by Israel's own ‘truth finding’ missions. I guess that this is understandable. The Israelis should accept the UN concerns. It is very uncommon to let the murderer or the rapist investigate himself.

The UN team is expected to travel to Israel, Turkey and Gaza in August to interview witnesses and gather information before reporting back to the Council in September.

I guess that in order to complete its job satisfyingly, the UN mission should consider taking advice from some Old Testament experts who can elaborate on the cultural and spiritual heritage that led to the current state of Israeli barbarism. As I've mentioned many times before, Zionism , is an attempt to revive the ancient Israelite nation. Hence it shouldn’t take us by surprise to discover that this has created a contemporary Israeli who follows the most sinister possible interpretation of the Judaic text.

Moreover, The UN mission would also benefit by recruiting some leading psychologists who can turn on a floodlight on the issues to do with Israeli collective lethal aggression. We all know the dry facts to do with the Israeli murder in the high seas. Yet, we are still perplexed that a so-called ‘democratic government’ made a decision to unleash its deadliest naval unit against civilians delivering humanitarian aid in international waters. If the UN wants to prevent future Israeli crimes, we better grasp, once and for all, what kind of needs the massacre was there to satisfy. We better understand once and for all why it is that Israeli politicians believe that providing their followers with fresh blood is translated into electoral power?

It is not yet clear whether Israel, which has a long history of rejecting UN probes, would cooperate and allow the team to visit. However, we have to bear in mind that Israel's political manoeuvring capacity in the international arena has shrunk considerably since her genocidal attacks on Lebanon 2006 and Gaza 2008-9.

The Israeli reaction wasn’t late in coming. Officials in Jerusalem told the Israeli Ynet that the Human Right Council's decision to look into the May 31st raid on the Gaza-bound Turkish ship is “pointless”, “obsessed” and “weird”*.

It is unfortunately typical for Israelis to believe that the Goyim are ‘obsessed’ and ‘weird’. I guess that the only possible interpretation of such a statement is that Israelis believe that killing peace activists better become an international norm. Indeed, it has already become a norm in Israel.

Knesset Member Otniel Schneller (Kadima), went even further arguing that “instead of focusing on the flotilla raid, the international community should investigate the continued captivity of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in Gaza, which he says constitutes a violation of international law.

I myself wonder what law it violates exactly. Gilad Shalit was a soldier in uniform serving as a post guard in a concentration-camp in an occupied territory. Abducting Shalit was a fully legitimate act of resistance. Furthermore, the Hamas struggle to keep Shalit alive should be realised as an act of compassion and kindness. However, I wonder whether KM Schneller would also insist that an hypothetical case in which Jewish camp inmates abducted a Nazi officer from a bunker at the outskirts of Auschwitz would also constitute a “violation of international law"? I guess we all know the answer.

As it happens, the Jewish State is now in a siege. This siege is mental, spiritual, intellectual, physical and political. Israel can only blame itself.



* For obvious reasons, the word ‘weird’ appeared only in the Hebrew edition.

Dire Straits - Original Brothers in Arms vid

Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms : vidéo sur auFeminin.com

http://www.aufeminin.com/video/see_265812/dire-straits-brothers-in-arms.html

Gershwin Done Right

Take away the banks' licence to print money

Take away the banks' licence to print money
By Paul Hellyer, Citizen Special July 5, 2010

source

I am one Torontonian who was bitterly disappointed by Canada's attempt to lead the world through the G20 group of leaders. Apart from putting our city through a kind of hell for three days, the "victory," if there was one, was not for the people of the world. It was a confirmation of the supremacy of Wall Street and of the fact that Mammon rules the world.

What was missing at the G20 was any meaningful discussion of why the banking industry was able to get the world into such a mess and how to keep it from reoccurring. Especially when, as U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs recently told a London audience, "Wall Street has had the most profitable year in its history. It made profits of $55 billion," thanks to bailouts and low interest rates. "Bankers are brazenly smirking as they pocket large amounts of our money," he said. And the most the G20 could agree on was to give them a green light to keep on doing it.

The world monetary and banking system that left tens of millions unemployed in Canada, the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, and eroded the retirement wealth of a whole generation, is a disaster and must be fixed for the benefit of all. You would think G20 leaders would get the message after 25 recessions and depressions since 1890. Apparently not; we are doomed to struggle with more of the same.

The real source of the problem is a privately owned money-manufacturing monopoly that creates virtually all the new money as debt, of which there is so much that the real economy is about to drown in it. But there is a quick and simple fix with a Canadian precedent to support it.

Most people believe the bankers' myth that the money they lend to you today is money that someone else deposited yesterday. The odds of that being true are infinitesimal. They have to create the "money" they lend to you.

This is the way it works. Suppose you decide to borrow $35,000 to buy a new car. You visit your banker, who will ask for collateral; then you will be asked to sign a note for the principal amount with an agreed rate of interest. Once the note is signed, your banker will tap the bank's computer and, presto, a $35,000 credit will appear in your account. The important point is that only seconds earlier that "money" did not exist. It was created out of thin air -- so to speak.

The problem with bank-created money (BCM) is that it is all created as debt on which interest has to be paid. But no one creates any money with which to pay the interest, so collectively we have to borrow more and go deeper and deeper in debt. The system is like a balloon being pumped full of debt. The balloon keeps getting larger until the debt load is too big, and then it's like a balloon with a pin stuck in it. A recession or depression wipes out a lot of debt so the whole process can start over again.

In 1938, there were no job openings in Canada -- none. Then war broke out in 1939. Soon everyone was working. Some people joined the armed forces, others built factories or made munitions. So, you might ask, where did they get the money necessary to do all this? The Bank of Canada just printed it.

The system worked this way. The Bank of Canada (BoC) printed money to buy government of Canada bonds. The government paid the BoC interest on the bonds, but the bank paid it back as dividends. So the net cost to taxpayers was close to zero.

The cash that the government got from the sale of its bonds was spent into circulation and wound up in the private banks, where it became what the economists called high-powered money. That became the monetary base (cash reserves) for private banks to expand their lending capacity and make loans for building factories, etc.

In effect, the money-creation function was shared between the government of Canada, through the Bank of Canada, and the private banks. This was the system that got us out of the Great Depression, helped finance the Second World War, helped finance post-war infrastructure and assisted in laying the foundation for our

social security network. It was the system that gave us the best 25 years of the 20th century!

It continued, in effect, until 1974 when the BoC, in concert with other central banks, adopted the ideas of Milton Friedman and his colleagues at the University of Chicago. This led to the current so-called capital adequacy system that is basically uncontrollable because all of the yardsticks are subjective. It has got to go.

The first requirement is to re-instate the cash reserve system as an objective regulator of the rate of money creation without the wild fluctuations in interest rates that have had such horrific consequences in the real world.

Next, bank leverage has to be reduced from 20-to-one to a level that the banks themselves would consider prudent if they were making a loan to industry. A ratio of three-to-one appears to be most appropriate. That leaves them with more than enough money-creation power to meet their legitimate objectives while denying the reckless latitude to finance leveraged buyouts, hedge funds, the purchase of stocks on margin, and the casino-like activities that have become addictive.

Third, and profoundly significant, the proportion of government-created money (GCM) should increase to 34 per cent of the total, while the banks are reduced to 66 per cent from about 95 per cent. If the GCM is created as debt-free money, it will be possible to reverse debt-to-GDP ratios in every country. Of course, the 33-per-cent cash reserve should be phased in over a period of years to give the banks time to adjust to the new reality. Still, benefits of the transition would be immediate.

Canadian banks had considerably more than $2 trillion in assets at the end of last year. Requiring them to increase the cash in their vaults by three per cent would allow the federal government to print enough money to eliminate its budgetary deficit for last year. One or two additional percentage points would provide cash to allow the federal government to assist the hard-pressed provinces and still have enough cash to provide additional stimulus to help create jobs for people affected by the banking crisis.

Whenever government-created money is suggested, the knee-jerk reaction of orthodox economists is that it would be inflationary. That is not correct. It is the quantity of money put into circulation that influences prices, not who prints it. GCM would be entirely neutral if BCM was reduced accordingly.

The infusion of substantial sums of debt-free money would end the tsunami of debt that has put the world financial system in peril and paralysed governments from taking the essential steps to solve the problems of the real world, as opposed to the demands of the money-changers.

Was it too much to ask of the leaders of the G20 that they put the interests of their electors and of future generations ahead of the interests of an elite few?

Former defence minister Paul Hellyer is the author of a new book titled Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Survival Plan for the Human Species.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Take+away+banks+licence+print+money/3236169/story.html#ixzz0sqPZ7BM7

G20: Phony Weapons Cache Displayed by Toronto Police

Toronto's top police officer misled the public by displaying fake weapons used in a medieval-themed role-playing game to help justify their actions during G20 protests, their owner said Wednesday.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/30/g20-weapons.html

Brian Barrett said everything in the backpack police confiscated from him "was safe enough for toddlers."

Barrett's "spell-balls," foam-covered batons and scale-mail vest were among items police Chief Bill Blair showed reporters on Tuesday.

"He turns around and states that they are specifically dangerous terrorist items that were solely intended to hurt police," Barrett said. "That's unacceptable to me."

Barrett, 25, of Whitby, Ont., was en route to a west-end park for a role-playing fantasy game called Amtgard when police stopped him at Union Station on Saturday.

Players ranging in age from early teens to late 40s regularly participate in the fantasy combat involving foam swords often referred to as live action role-playing or LARPing.

Police questioned Barrett for almost three hours, confiscated his gear, and released him.

He said he expected it would be returned as early as Monday.

But when he turned on his TV Tuesday, he saw the gear displayed along with hatchets, bats and tire irons that police had confiscated over the weekend.

His homemade shield, foam-covered baton, scale-mail vest, and roll of hockey tape sat next to bear spray, a modified BB-gun, and gas masks.

Barrett was enraged to see his property associated with violence and vandalism.
Could be used to set fire

Police did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but had previously insisted the items were potentially dangerous.

For example, they said, the "spell balls" could be used to set fire to a building.

Blair had already been forced to admit that a chainsaw and crossbow on display at the news conference had nothing to do with G20 protests.

The police chief was also forced to admit that a regulation granting police unprecedented search and arrest powers did not apply to the area outside the summit fence.

However, Blair said he deliberately chose to leave the public in the dark.

More than 900 people were detained for incidents related to G20 protests.

Civil libertarians and opposition politicians both federally and provincially are calling for an independent review of how police behaved amid accusations of widespread abuses.

They claim police illegally detained, searched and arrested people.

Barrett said he's baffled that Blair would try to mislead the public with his homemade props, especially while under such scrutiny

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/30/g20-weapons.html#ixzz0sO8IzwcR

Cutting Through the Confusion About Israel/Palestine

Richard Forer – Cutting Through the Confusion About Israel/Palestine
June 25, 2010
By Richard Forer*


In the spring of 2009, I was a member of a group that put up a billboard criticizing Israel's lethal use of force during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. A year later, the group received a letter from a college student – referred to as "J" below – asking it to remove the billboard. The student said that he had researched the Gaza invasion and had concluded that both sides were equally responsible for its consequences. He felt that the billboard unfairly placed the blame for all of the destruction solely at the feet of Israel. I replied to the student with the following letter, some of which contains passages from my forthcoming book.

Hi J,

Thank you for your letter. First, I assume you are Jewish. Is that correct? Before I get into the specifics of your letter I want to talk about a few things you might find interesting. I do so because everyone involved in the Israel-Palestine issue has the potential to change the world from an arena of Us against Them into one of peace and respect. But that requires undeviating self-honesty, which leads to compassion, clarity and understanding. Most people do not take up the challenge of looking deeply within for fear of what they might find. They revert to the safety of their presumed identity and the beliefs and images that make up and reinforce their identity. Attachment to a limited or exclusive identity always carries with it the consciousness of Us against Them. The consciousness of Us against Them requires that there be unending conflict.

Perhaps you have it within yourself to look beyond what you currently see as all sides of the issue. I hope so because the lives of those who suffer on either side of the conflict depend upon people like you. Peace is only possible when we care for people on both sides equally. We do not have to like the other but we have to recognize that he is just as entitled to self-determination as us, that he has the same human needs for respect and dignity as do we. We also have to begin to understand and ask why the other acts as he does. Does his motivation arise in a vacuum or does it arise in relationship to our own behaviour. Have we played roles in inciting his behavior? Until we take responsibility for the parts we play in the drama of human suffering and as it relates to the Israel-Palestine conflict, peace has no chance; and the people we claim to care about will continue to suffer and die, now and into the bloody future, in Israel, in Palestine and throughout the world. They will die and suffer because our true goal is not their wellbeing; our true goal is to maintain our presumed identity; it is to confirm the beliefs and images that we incorrectly associate with our personal and collective identity.

As long as we believe in a world of Us against Them we will see a world of Us against Them. Our emotions, our attitudes toward others, the way we interpret events, what we notice and what we don't notice will mirror our world view, thereby confirming and reinforcing it. In short, individually and collectively, we create the world we live in. Thus, the great struggle all of us must take on, if we truly want peace and respect between peoples, is to transform our consciousness from Us against Them to one of tolerance and understanding.

To be honest your letter can only fully be answered with a comprehensive look at the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The book I have completed would be a good reply but that is beyond the scope of our discussion for now. Obviously you are very passionate and concerned about this situation. With that in mind I have included at the end of this letter a list of some well-researched books on the subject. Most of these writers have come to similar conclusions. Most of them are Jewish. Cypel and Hirst are famous journalists from France and England respectively. Cypel lived in Israel for 10 years and his father was a Zionist leader. Ben-Ami, a historian and former minister of foreign affairs and internal security, was Barak's chief negotiator at Camp David. [Ilan] Pappe, [Avi] Shlaim, [Tom] Segev and [Benny] Morris are all famous Israeli historians and among the group known as "new" or "revisionist" historians because of their access to the primary archives and their refutation of common Zionist myths. [Tanya] Reinhart and [Baruch] Kimmerling were two of the most renowned and courageous sociologist/historians in Israeli academia. [Mary Elizabeth] King is an expert on collective non-violent action who has worked with Martin Luther King (no relation) and Jimmy Carter. [Clayton] Swisher was a VIP security guard at the Camp David talks in 2000. He interviewed many of the participants. [Anna] Baltzer, an American, is one of the most compassionate people I have ever had the honour to meet. She is brilliant, fair and honest. She cares about Israelis as well as Palestinians.

And even though he is particularly controversial, Norman Finkelstein, despite his blunt critique of Israel's defenders, is included because of his genius and meticulous research. You can watch him on YouTube. I researched a great deal of the claims he makes by reviewing his sources. In every case he checks out perfectly. I saw no distortion, obfuscation or deceit. Additionally, one cannot ignore the sources he cites. Truthfully, if one wants to criticize Israel, deceit is unnecessary. The words and confessions of Israeli leaders are more than enough.

Again, before I respond to the points you make about Gaza, let me tell you a little about me. I was born a few months before Israel declared its statehood. Both of my parents were first generation Americans. My mother lost 17 relatives in the Holocaust. My father and his family never discussed anything about that horror. My younger brother is president of one of the largest Jewish congregations on the east coast. My identical twin brother is an ultra-Orthodox Jew who lived for a few years in Israel. Both of his daughters are married with children and live in Jerusalem. Some of their friends are militant Jews from Hebron and other messianic communities, who believe that the sixth commandment, which they translate as "Thou shalt not commit murder," cannot be violated by killing any Arab, since Arabs are inherently predisposed to want to murder Jews; and Arabs are not human anyway. One of my brother's sons recently served in the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]. I have a friend who lives in Ma'ale Adumim, in occupied territory outside of Jerusalem. She was a member of Kach (Meir Kahane's group) for 15 years. She now holds Palestinian-Israeli dialogue groups and prefers a one-state solution.

I was extremely "pro-Israel" my entire lifetime. I was utterly supportive of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. I joined AIPAC and donated to the Jewish Federation. Midway through the war in Lebanon, after arguments with close friends who were critical of Israel, I decided to actually engage myself in a real study of the Israel-Arab conflict. My purpose was to alleviate my suffering and to find more historical arguments to refute the claims my friends were making. Up to that point in time I had only read Joan Peters's highly influential book From Time Immemorial, a book that I learned has been universally debunked and called a "hoax", "phony", "worthless", "recycled Zionist propaganda", "previously modified and discredited Zionist propaganda", etc. by scholars from Israel, Europe, the US and the Jewish World Congress. I had used Peters's research to justify my claim that there never were a Palestinian people; that Israel had always treated the so-called Palestinians kindly and had always bent over backwards for peace.

During my research that began in the midst of the Second Lebanon War I chose to study Jewish scholars only, knowing that if I studied the subject from the perspective of any Arab or Muslim scholar I would suspect bias. My study became a full-time and daily practice to this very day. As mentioned above, many of the scholars I studied had access to the most primary of sources, among them the Israeli state, IDF, Ben-Gurion, Haganah, Palmach and Central Zionist archives. I read the arguments of many Israeli officials, including a number of heads of Shin Bet (Israel's internal security agency) and I read numerous respected international publications (none Arab), including the Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz and Yediot Ahronoth. I also studied the websites of the Israeli ministries of defence, internal security, foreign affairs and health as well as respected human rights organizations such as B'Tselem, HaMoked (Centre for the Defence of the individual), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, OCHA (the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), UNICEF, the International Red Cross, National Lawyers Guild, Goldstone report, etc., all of which (including the two Israeli NGOs) at one time I would have suspected of being anti-Semitic. I read from both sides of the divide, including Alan Dershowitz, Aaron David Miller, Dennis Ross, Shlomo Ben-Ami, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and more. If I wasn't sure who a source was I checked it out. I discarded anyone whose claims I could not verify through further research and I discarded anyone who appeared anti-Semitic and/or seemed to be promoting their own prejudices without, at the very least, solid proof from reputable sources. I also randomly checked the sources of virtually all of the articles, books and publications I examined to make sure the author was not taking quotes out of context, was not distorting the real message his source was conveying or was not simply lying. All of the actual historians checked out well; and the human rights organizations, independent of each other are of a very similar mind. I doubt there has ever been a more solidly documented conflict in world history than the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Other than Peters the one author who was clearly distorting history for his own purposes is Alan Dershowitz. Anybody can debunk The Case for Israel. At one time Dershowitz was someone I admired but his spiteful and slanderous participation in the Israel-Palestine issue has only inflamed Zionists and given them apparent justification for their unjustified verbal attacks against not only Palestinians but honest and courageous scholars as well as Jimmy Carter, who is committed to a fair peace between both sides and without whose help in brilliantly brokering the Camp David Accords Israel would not exist in its present form. Remember, Dershowitz is not a historian; he is an attorney and his book is written with the mind of an attorney. He ignores and distorts evidence that could convict his client; and he obfuscates where obfuscation clouds any issue that could also convict his client. Unlike historians who start out with a hypothesis and do research to confirm, modify or deny the hypothesis, and who allow the facts to determine their conclusions, Dershowitz decides on the conclusions and then researches (or not) accordingly. To cite only two examples out of many, on page 184 [of The Case for Israel] he quotes Raji Sourani:

Even Raji Sourani, the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza and a strident critic of Israel, says that he remains "constantly amazed by the high standards of the legal system [sic]." [Dershowitz cites Greg Myre, "Trial of Palestinian leader focuses attention on Israeli courts," New York Times, 5 May 2003].

Here is the actual quote from the New York Times:

Despite his many frustrations with the Israeli courts, Mr Sourani says he remains "constantly amazed by the high standards of the legal system". "On many issues," he said, "when the courts are dealing with purely Israeli questions, like gay rights, I admire their rulings. But when it comes to the Palestinians, these same people seem to be totally schizophrenic." [emphases added]

On page 42 Dershowitz says the following without citing source material:

The developing clash between the Jews of Palestine, led by David Ben-Gurion, and the Muslims, led by the uncompromising Jew-hater, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was not over whether the Jews or Muslims would control all of Palestine… Instead, it was – realistically viewed – whether the remainder of Palestine was to be given exclusively to the Muslims of Palestine or whether it would be fairly divided between the Jews and the Muslims of Palestine, each of whom effectively controlled certain areas.

What is particularly egregious about this quote, which is nothing more than Dershowitz's own made-up version of history, is that his primary source, Benny Morris, shows that Ben-Gurion's intention was the opposite of what Dershowitz attempts to deceive his reader into believing. Dershowitz quotes Morris's Righteous Victims 59 times in the first 83 pages of his book. He quotes Morris a total of 87 times within the 244 pages of the book. Here is what Morris (who is a Zionist and believes that Palestinians are "psychopaths" and "serial killers") says in Righteous Victims, p.138:

[Weizmann and Ben-Gurion] saw partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine… [Ben-Gurion] wrote to his son, Amos: ‘[A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning… Our possession is important not only for itself … through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state … will serve as a very potent lever in our efforts to redeem the whole country.

The above passage by Ben-Gurion expresses a common intention that he and the majority of Zionists shared for more than a decade before 1948. Confirmation of this can be found in many books on the subject.

Even though I am going to disagree with you I appreciate the fact that you are doing your own research. One bit of advice that I think is important for everyone is: Do not believe a thing anyone tells you about this issue. Find out for yourself through the most objective research possible, as I did and be sure to do it out of a sense of integrity. Do not demean yourself by selectively researching the subject in order to prove to yourself that what you believe is accurate. Otherwise you will never discover your role in the suffering of others, nor will you discover how to alleviate that suffering. And you will never resolve your own anxiety and suffering. As a Jew you will always be left with the dilemma of victimization: Why does the world not understand my people and why is the world anti-Semitic juxtaposed against compelling evidence that is impossible for all but the willfully deaf and blind to ignore.

J, all that I am going to say here can be found in the many sources I list above or in sources available in my forthcoming book. I cannot divulge these readily available sources at this time because I want to protect the integrity of my book. I also want you to know that I have provided more than 20 Jewish supporters of Israel with evidence similar to what I provide in this letter. I have asked them to examine my evidence and to read one book to either confirm or deny the beliefs they take for granted. Not one has been willing to read a book. Not one was willing to challenge his beliefs. All claim concern for their Jewish brethren, yet none have compassion for the Palestinians. I try to impress upon them that as long as people continue to distort the history of the Israel-Palestine problem and character-assassinate the Palestinian people – as has been going on for over 60 years – peace will not be possible. Their response is to ignore me or accuse me of being anti-Israeli. Denying reality, perpetuating an illegal and brutal occupation, character-assassinating the people you need to make peace with is a road to more suffering, not just for the weak but also for the strong. Acknowledging the truth and working to restore integrity is indeed a road to peace. Who really cares about Israel and who really cares more about holding onto false and unexamined beliefs?

You start your letter with the statement that "we must look at both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side". I agree but you have not really looked at the Palestinian side. Take, for example, the letter you quote from Tom Adam of Sderot. Yes, he has had to deal with fear of rocket attacks but why? Without condoning these rocket attacks we have to ask: Why have Palestinian groups launched these rockets? Has Israel incited them? Is the launching of these primitive rockets the only way they know to let the world know that their parents, grandparents and children are being oppressed from birth to death? What about Palestinian children, whose lives are at the mercy of the Israeli military? Many of these kids have seen their fathers beaten by Israeli soldiers, their mothers humiliated and called "whores", have seen violence committed by Israeli soldiers or settlers on a regular basis, yearn for a glass of uncontaminated drinking water, are malnourished, maimed, deaf, blind, paraplegic, amputees, have endured Israeli sonic booms that cause all kinds of trauma, including bedwetting, nausea, miscarriages, nosebleeds, anxiety, muscle spasms, temporary loss of hearing, heart and breathing problems. These Palestinian children are the lucky ones because they are not dead, the victims of rockets, bullets, white phosphorus and Israel's common refusal to allow medical supplies into Gaza. Also, you should know that Israel fortified public buildings and constructed shelters to protect its Jewish population in the line of rocket attacks. You should also know that Israel did nothing to protect its Palestinian-Israeli citizens in their villages in the line of these same attacks.

You say the Billion Coalition "depicts Israel as the perpetrator and sole cause of the atrocities committed during Operation Cast Lead". I do not agree that the coalition depicts Israel as the "sole cause of the atrocities", the vast majority of which were in fact perpetrated by Israel. Rather they see Israel as the primary cause. Israel, as military and civil and illegal occupier, whose force is thousands of time more powerful than the Palestinians, is the party that has the power to make peace. What is particularly counter-productive is Israel's refusal to abide by international conventions and laws, which are designed to bring about a degree of civility between peoples.

Speaking of peace, I will mention only one example of Israel's continual sabotage or ignoring of peace proposals since 1948. That is the 2002 Roadmap for Peace that the Palestinians accepted in full. Israel "accepted" but with 14 prerequisites. Among them:

[C]essation of incitement against Israel, but the Roadmap cannot state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians." "The waiver of any right of return of refugees to Israel; No discussion of Israeli settlement in Judea, Samaria and Gaza or the status of the Palestinian Authority and its institutions in Jerusalem; No reference to the key provisions of UN Resolution 242.

Any objective research leads to the inescapable conclusion that Israel has never wanted peace; what Israel has always wanted is more territory. Israel's greed has necessitated the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in order to grab their territory.

You may not be aware, for example, that Israel conspired with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1987 to create Hamas. Israel also armed Hamas. It wanted an alternative to the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization]. The first Intifada began in 1987. It was primarily nonviolent on the part of Palestinians (not Israelis). Israel arrested or deported most of the nonviolent leaders while allowing Sheikh [Ahmad] Yassin, Hamas's spiritual leader, to distribute anti-Jewish hate literature calling for the violent overthrow of the Zionist government. It is far easier for Israel to portray the Palestinians as psychotic killers in order to divert the world's attention from its strategy of land theft and ethnic cleansing and thereby deceive the world into believing the Israeli army is merely defending itself than it is to justify land theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians when their resistance is nonviolent.

You need to do a lot more research if you want to discover, as close as possible, the truth. Your research looks like it comes from either public Israeli government sources, which are notoriously unreliable, or Israeli apologists who have a record of justifying virtually anything Israel does. You also need to more carefully review the Goldstone report. Israel committed terrible atrocities against civilians. Just because Hamas is also guilty of terror (to a significantly less extent than Israel) does not exonerate Israel of anything.

Israel has a National Information Directorate whose purpose is to coordinate the various sectors of the government apparatus into disseminating self-serving messages (propaganda) to the public. I do not trust the Israeli government to publicly admit to their crimes. To do so would hurt their image to Jewish supporters around the world who still believe in Israel's "purity of arms" and it would implicate its leaders in war crimes for which they could eventually be prosecuted. Israel has always lied about its actions. Its history of lies is astonishing. I prefer to rely on sources that have nothing to gain and everything to lose with their admissions of honesty. Benny Morris:

For decades Ben-Gurion, and successive administrations after his, lied to the Israeli public about the post-1948 peace overtures and about Arab interest in a deal. The Arab leaders (with the possible exception of [King] Abdullah [of Jordan]) were presented, one and all, as a recalcitrant collection of warmongers, hell-bent on Israel's destruction. The recent opening of the Israeli archives offers a far more complex picture.

Akiva Eldar:

Without lies, it would be impossible to talk about peace with the Palestinians for 36 years while at the same time seizing more and more Palestinian land. Without lies, it would be impossible to claim that there is no partner for the road map, while at the same time injecting more and more money into outposts that the road map calls for dismantling. Without lies, it would be impossible to promise "painful concessions" in exchange for peace, while at the same time terming people who concluded such an agreement "traitors".

Former Israeli Chief of Military Intelligence General Yehoshafat Harkabi:

We must define our position and lay down basic principles for a settlement. Our demands should be moderate and balanced, and appear to be reasonable. But in fact they must involve such conditions as to ensure that the enemy rejects them. Then we should manoeuvre and allow him to define his own position, and reject a settlement on the basis of a compromise position. We should then publish his demands as embodying unreasonable extremism.

Moshe Dayan:

[The state of Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no – it must – invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge… And above all – let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.

You say that the "fundamental truth is that this is a two-way conflict". The Palestinians could end the conflict by lying down and allowing Jewish settlers, with the support of their government, to overrun them, allow them to take the remainder of their agricultural lands, their villages and their homes, and drive them out of the country into generations of poverty and homelessness. Is that a real peace? The fundamental truth is that Zionism, and the lies perpetrated by its founders, leaders and supporters from the days of Theodore Herzl on, has initiated and perpetuated this conflict. If someone attacks you, tries to steal everything you own, abuses and humiliates your children and then tells the world that you are a liar who never owned the land in the first place would you accept that?" I do not know any person or country in the world who would passively accept the theft of their land. In 1948 Jews owned about 6 per cent of the land of Palestine. They now control 78 per cent of the land outright, which both the PLO and Hamas have de facto accepted as irreversible. Additionally, Israel has illegally seized or controls about half of the West Bank. And Israel maintains land, sea and air control over the Gaza Strip. In short, the Palestinians subsist on about 10 per cent of their indigenous homeland.

Mostly Ashkenazi Jews fought the British and the Arabs for a Jewish national home. Their connection to the land called Palestine was far less than the connection Palestinians had and still have to that same land. Yet I know of no Jewish supporter of Israel who does not applaud the acts of the Haganah, Irgun and even Stern Gang for their roles in establishing Israel. I know of no Jewish supporter of Israel who resents the uprising of Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto against their Nazi oppressors. In order to dissociate Palestinian resistance from Jewish resistance Israel supporters have to make up myths to portray the Palestinians as not a real people, as inherently anti-Semitic, as murderous and hateful, as not the real owners of the land, as a psychotic society, etc., etc. These myths are designed to deceive all of us. They deprive Jews and others of their natural intelligence and compassion. Palestinian resistance, while mostly nonviolent, is similar to the resistance of any occupied people throughout history.

Israel did kill almost 400 children in Operation Cast Lead. I am not saying that Israel's leaders said "let's go kill Palestinian children" but there is no question that Israel's leaders knew perfectly well that hundreds of Palestinian children and other civilians would die. Gaza is, after all, the third most densely populated place on earth, with 50 per cent of its inhabitants less than 16 years of age. Gaza has been a closed military area since 1967. Its citizens have nowhere to go to flee Israeli bombs and rockets. I suggest you look up Israel's Dahiya Doctrine (or strategy), which is designed to punish a civilian society for the actions of its leaders (a war crime). As General Gadi Eisenkot said after Lebanon:

We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases. This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.

Israel's most eminent military strategist, Zeev Schiff, said: "the Israeli army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously… the army … has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets … [but] purposely attacked civilian targets." Former Chief of Staff Mordecai Gur, a moderate, admitted that Israel always targeted civilians (see [David] Hirst). Rafael Eitan, chief of staff during Israel's destruction of Lebanese society in the early 1980s, was an extreme hawk who served for years as Ariel Sharon's second-in-command. He was responsible for the murders of hundreds of Egyptian PoWs at the end of the Suez War. He proposed that for every incident of stone throwing Israel should build 10 settlements. He said "the only good Arab is a dead Arab". He was founder of the extreme right ultra-nationalist Tzomet party (Movement for Zionist Renewal). Later in life he admitted ordering his troops to brutalize prisoners and impose collective punishment upon Palestinians (both war crimes). He said: "I don't believe in peace, because if they had done to us what we did to them we'd never agree to make peace." Think of the implications of that statement. Yitzhak Rabin admitted that "ruling over another people has corrupted us".

Operation Cast Lead was not "a reaction due to the Islamic Resistance Movement". It was collective punishment designed to intimidate a people into rejecting Hamas; and it was a re-establishment of the deterrent force Israel relinquished to a certain extent in Lebanon. Ephraim Halevy, former head of Mossad and former National Security Director, said: "If Israel's goal were to remove the threat of rockets from the residents of southern Israel, opening the border crossings would have ensured such quiet for a generation."

Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, acknowledged that Hamas is willing to accept a long-term ceasefire on the 1967 borders.

Amira Hass reported in Ha'aretz: "The Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Saturday his government was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders."

Jimmy Carter:

But one of the things that they [Hamas] committed to me that was very significant, and they announced it publicly, by the way, to al-Jazeera and others, was that they would accept any agreement that's negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians if it's submitted to a referendum in the West Bank and Gaza, and the Palestinians approve it. That means they would accept Israel's right to exist if that's in the agreement and so forth.

Roger Cohen of the New York Times:

Henry Siegman, the president of the US/Middle East Project, whose chairman is [Brent] Scowcroft … told me that he met recently with Khaled Meshal, the political director of Hamas in Damascus. Meshal told him, and put in writing, that although Hamas would not recognize Israel, it would remain in a Palestinian national unity government that reached a referendum-endorsed peace settlement with Israel.

Regarding Hamas's use of hospitals, the Goldstone report states: "The Mission did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities and that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes."

In 2006 Israel made a similar claim that Hezbollah embedded their forces within civilian areas in order to attract Israeli firepower. That claim was debunked by Human Rights Watch, which clarified that most of Hezbollah's rockets were "stored in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys".

You are correct that "Eighty per cent of the weapons used were precision guided, and 99 per cent of all strikes hit their targets." Yes, these precision guided rockets destroyed or killed civilians, whole neighbourhoods, minarets where there was no room for any fighter to hide and launch rockets, and UN buildings. B'Tselem reported: "Whole families were killed; parents saw their children shot before their very eyes; relatives watched their loved ones bleed to death; and entire neighbourhoods were obliterated."

A United Nations General Assembly report quoted the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross): "The Israeli military ‘failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded.' Israel made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting."

The Goldstone report is particularly damning. Again, please read through it. Goldstone rejected the HRC's [UN Human Rights Council] request to investigate possible war crimes by Israel until they altered the wording to include Hamas as a possible perpetrator. The Israeli government acknowledged his "record of impartiality". His findings are in line with the numerous human rights groups I mentioned earlier in the letter. IDF soldiers have testified to deliberately killing civilians, just as they have testified to similar brutalities in Hebron. The evidence is overwhelming. If Goldstone had not been head of the Mission there is a high likelihood that the report would have been even more critical of Israel.

Goldstone, as any reasonable person knows, is not an anti-Semite. Eliyahu Yishai was deputy prime minister during Operation Cast Lead. At the beginning of the invasion he urged the IDF to "bomb thousands of houses, to destroy Gaza". Nine months later, as minister of the interior, Yishai slandered Goldstone as an "abominable anti-Semite" for heading a mission that concluded that the IDF did exactly what Yishai wanted them to do. Yishai is not a reasonable person.

Israel's internal investigations were designed to cover up their atrocities. Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi is not going to implicate himself or other Israeli officials in possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amnesty International responded to the IDF "internal investigation":

The information made public only refers to a handful of cases and lacks crucial details. It mostly repeats claims made by the army and the authorities many times since the early days of Operation "Cast Lead… It does not even attempt to explain the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths nor the massive destruction caused to civilian buildings in Gaza… [T]he army's claims appear to be more an attempt to shirk its responsibilities than a genuine process to establish the truth. Such an approach lacks credibility.

Regarding rocket and mortar fire, from 2000 through 2008 Palestinian groups launched 8,088 unsophisticated rockets and mortars against Israel. From 2001 through 2008 eighteen Israelis were killed as a result of these attacks. Contrast those figures with the 7,700 sophisticated rockets that Israel launched against Gaza in nine months, between September 2005 and June 2006. From 2005-2007, 1,290 Gazans, including 222 children, were killed as a result of these kinds of attacks. Who is the perpetrator and who is the victim?

Your statement that "Israel warned the Palestinian people that election of Hamas to the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) would only cause more conflict" is a reflection of an authoritarian mentality that places one party in control over the lives of another. It is the same mentality that is at the root of this conflict. Hamas was elected in a fair election that the US pushed for. Who is Israel to decide for the Palestinians who their leaders should be? Hamas is not monolithic, is not particularly corrupt as is Fatah, and is not a collaborator with the Israeli government. That is why they were elected and that is why Israel wants them removed. Hamas makes the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people more difficult. What you call Israel's warning was actually a threat. Hamas has repeatedly stated its willingness to establish a long-term truce. Ephraim Halevy and American strategists said that Israel and the US have the ability to strengthen Hamas's moderate wing and engage them in a peace process. But, as Moshe Dayan states above, Israel is not interested in a peace process.

If you honestly are looking for the truth your study of Operation Cast Lead is simply not thorough or objective enough. With regard to the ceasefire, if you read the analysis of the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Centre (IICC) you will learn that "The lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist organizations, in some instance in defiance of Hamas (especially by Fatah and Al-Qaeda supporters). Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire."

Israel never really adhered to the ceasefire. They only allowed the average number of trucks entering Gaza to increase from 70 per day to 90, not the 500 per day that crossed before Israel instituted its blockade. On 4 November 2008 IDF troops entered Gaza and killed six or seven Hamas soldiers because they were allegedly digging a tunnel for the purpose of kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Hamas said its members had been digging the tunnel for defensive purposes. On 5 November Israel sealed all crossing points into Gaza. Yossi Alpher, former Mossad official and former adviser to then Prime Minister Ehud Barak:

[The blockade is] collective punishment, humanitarian suffering. It has not caused Palestinians in Gaza to behave the way we want them to, so why do it… I think people really believed that, if you starved Gazans, they will get Hamas to stop the attacks. It's repeating a failed policy, mindlessly.

On 14 December a high-level Hamas delegation met with Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman who, as mediator, had helped negotiate the June to December ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Hamas offered to end all rocket attacks in return for Israel ending its raids into Gaza and re-opening the border crossings. Suleiman conveyed Hamas's proposal to Israeli authorities. On 19 December, Robert Pastor, a senior adviser at the Carter Centre, met with Khaled Mashaal, who made the same offer. The next day Pastor passed Mashaal's offer on to a "senior official" in the IDF, who told Pastor he would get back to him. He never did. As for the Egyptian offer, it is unclear whether Israel ignored the offer or rejected it outright. At an Israeli cabinet meeting on 21 December, Yuval Diskin, said: "Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce." Diskin said that if Israel ended the blockade, Hamas would restore the ceasefire.

If you've gotten this far, I can tell you the billboard you object to was taken down by Lamar Advertising on 28 April 2009. It was designed to provoke reaction from a mostly apathetic public in the wake of a brutal invasion. Calls from AIPAC supporters influenced Lamar's decision. Rather than seeing themselves and Israel as victims, these AIPAC people would be far more effective if they took the time to actually look at the evidence. None whom I have met have any intelligent knowledge of the actual history. For them, the childhood myths they were raised with supersede years of honest and objective research. Their attitude is identical to fundamentalist Christians who believe non-Christians will go to hell for their failure to accept Jesus Christ into their lives. They claim to care about Israelis but their continued support of a brutal occupation only demeans an entire people and perpetuates conflict for both sides of the issue. It also paints Judaism, once known for its commitment to ethics and justice, as a religion and culture of hypocrisy and bigotry.

Please do not fall into the trap that so many who remain unconscious of their participation in the suffering of others have fallen into. Please do not allow bigotry to influence you as it has influenced them. I urge you to avoid losing your humanity. Commit yourself to the truth. It is the only path that will free you of your own suffering and free others less fortunate than you of the suffering imposed on them by others.

Sincerely, Rich Forer
Book list
Anna Baltzer, Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories

Anna Baltzer, DVD: Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories and Photos
available at www.AnnaintheMiddleEast.com. Excerpts on YouTube.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy

Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

Sylvain Cypel, Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse

David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East

Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History

Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians

Mary Elizabeth King, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance

Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999

Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Tanya Reinhart, The Road Map To Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003

Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948

Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust

Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis

Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall

Clayton Swisher, The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process

* Richard Forer is a former member of AIPAC. His identical twin brother is a prominent member of an Ultra-Orthodox sect of Judaism. His younger brother is an attorney and President of one of the largest Reform synagogues on the East coast. Forer is a practitioner of the Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method, a unique system of healing developed by an Israeli. His book, Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict will be available in the Fall. He can be reached at rich_forer@yahoo.com.

Haneen Zoabi: Arab-Israeli Parliamentarian Fights Death Threats

Arab-Israeli Parliamentarian Fights Death Threats
Sun 20 June 2010
by Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service
http://www.truth-out.org/arab-israeli-parliamentarian-fights-death-threats60587
Ramallah, West Bank - "I stopped counting after I had received 50 death threats. I told my secretary not to tell me about them any more," Arab-Israeli Knesset (parliament) member, Haneen Zoabi told IPS.

"As a result of the death threats I’ve been given personal body guards both within the Knesset and outside," adds Zoabi.

Zoabi, a member of the Arab-Israeli political party Balad, was on board the ‘Mavi Marmara’, part of the Free Gaza (FG) flotilla, when it was attacked by Israeli commandos in international waters as it tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza several weeks ago.

Following her arrest, interrogation and subsequent release Zoabi returned to a very hostile Knesset where she was subjected to a torrent of verbal abuse, including that of a racist and sexist nature. Some of the comments were so degrading and insulting that they were wiped from the Knesset record.

Another Knesset Member (MK) was prevented from assaulting Zoabi following the physical intervention of other MKs.

For video from Knesset confrontation, see Democracy Now's interview with MK Zoabi here.

Zoabi has been labelled a "terrorist" and a "traitor" and the Knesset House majority has called for her parliamentary privileges to be withdrawn. The Israeli interior ministry has also called for her citizenship to be revoked.

"I intend to take the matter to court, if necessary, to fight to keep my parliamentary privileges and citizenship,’’ Zoabi told IPS.

Zoabi says that she and her fellow Arab-Israeli MKs have become the subjects of a witch hunt by a majority in the Knesset, but she has no regrets about joining the FG flotilla and would not hesitate to repeat her action.

"It’s hard working in such a hostile environment where every move I make and every word I utter is subject to intense scrutiny,’’ she says.

Zoabi recalls the horrifying ordeal the activists endured after the Israeli naval seals had boarded the ‘Mavi Marmara’ when nine activists were shot dead and dozens wounded.

Survivors have accused the commandos of deliberately shooting some of the activists in cold blood. Turkish autopsies revealed that several of the dead had multiple gunshot wounds to the head.

Zoabi did not witness any of the shootings or beatings of the activists but she questions the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

"The Israeli soldiers had taken command of the ‘Mavi Marmara’ within 20 minutes of boarding. Yet it was an hour-and-a-half before they told all the passengers that the situation was under control and ordered us all to go downstairs. I wonder what happened in that hour," says Zoabi.

"I was treated fairly carefully because they knew I was a member of the Knesset. They also kept me away from other passengers who were beaten and abused as they didn’t want me to be able to bear testimony to this,’’ Zoabi said. "They also deliberately withheld medical treatment from the seriously injured passengers during the first few hours.’’

"I went and held up a notice written in Hebrew to the window where the commandos were standing, calling for medical help. I also called out to them in English and told them there were critically injured passengers who needed urgent medical attention, but they ignored me. Two seriously injured passengers, who were bleeding, died after 40 mins,'' Zoabi told IPS.

"Minutes after the attack began, the wounded and the dead were being brought inside from the deck,’’ Lubna Marsawa, another activist, told Electronic Intifada (EI), the not-for-profit, independent online publication which covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Palestinian perspective.

‘’We were then held for several hours with four bodies and dozens of wounded, some in critical condition. Blood was pouring from the bodies of the victims. We wanted to help them, but we had no medical equipment. There was nothing we could do," Marsawa told EI.

Zoabi also accuses the Israeli authorities of trumping up charges against the passengers. "When they interrogated me in Ashdod port they accused me of attacking the soldiers, of threatening their lives and being in possession of knives. I just laughed in their faces, it was so ludicrous."

Zoabi was released quickly due to her parliamentary immunity and the Israeli police have not tried to charge her with attempted assault against the navy commandos.

She doubts whether the self-appointed Israeli investigation into the flotilla fiasco will be either credible or legitimate.

"They will not question any of the commandos involved or allow the survivors to testify. Furthermore, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has already reached a conclusion before the investigation even gets under way.

"He said the inquiry would prove that the commandos acted in self-defence and that Israel’s raid was in accordance with international law. What kind of legitimate inquiry is that?"

The feisty Knesset member now believes that the relationship between Israel’s Palestinian-Arab minority and the Israeli-Jewish majority has reached a point of crisis and that the two communities are on a collision course.

"The situation started deteriorating following the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada or uprising in 2000 when 13 Israeli-Arabs were shot dead by Israeli security forces during a protest against land expropriation," says Zoabi.

As Israel’s increasingly right-wing Knesset tries to pass more draconian legislation, much of it with racist overtones, against dissenters and what it labels "traitors", Israeli-Arabs are being placed in an untenable situation.

"They are forcing the Palestinian minority to choose between loyalty to Zionist values or being labelled "terrorists and traitors".

‘’This either or situation is not only undemocratic but will also backfire on Israel. Israeli-Arabs can’t be expected to follow the Zionist narrative or disassociate from their Palestinian roots," says Zoabi.

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.
javascript:void(0)
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?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 14th, 2010 at 18:20 and is filed under Currents of the Peak. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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.
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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).
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[-] 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.
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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?