Israel's latest cowboy adventure

Maybe you know by now about Israel attacking a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid-carrying ship, the Mavi Marmara, in international waters last week and killing nine and injuring dozens of the 700 or so passengers, hailing from a wide array of countries? Well, they did. They invaded it (the only one out of six that they hadn't been able to mechanically disable, a condition they achieved most likely through the use of prop foulers, long ropes/cables designed to wrap around a ship's propeller and seize it) by helicopter, with what seems to be a secretive number of "commandos" rappelling onto the deck at 4am on Monday, May 31st. They were immediately met by a number of people prepared for self-defense, who seemed to use whatever they could find to defend themselves, including pipes, pieces of metal, anything that could be thrown, fists, feet and knives. They tossed at least one overboard, and a few of the Israelis jumped overboard. Watch the Israeli Defense Force-edited video of the people defending their ship against a pirate attack:

There is nothing wrong with how the Israelis were met. They were violently invading a humanitarian aid ship bound for one of the most (deliberately) devastated places in the world right now - Gaza. The Israelis say that these ships were violating their military blockade of Gaza. Technically, that is not true, as they had not approached Gaza, and were in international waters. However, their stated aim was to reach the port in Gaza, yes. They planned to violate their illegal blockade that even the United States does not support. The Israelis say their blockade (including things like coffee, chocolate and cement, as well as nearly all exports) is to punish Hamas and destabilize their rule over Gaza, but these things never work. Look at Iraq. George Bush the First and Bill Clinton's decade-long sanctions against the country, along with their ceaseless bombing campaign, did nothing to touch Saddam Hussein, but did quite a bit to kill 500,000 Iraqi children. All they are succeeding in doing is immiserating the people of Gaza, further radicalizing them, making them hate Israel even more than they already do, making them feel isolated, desperate and hopeless, and making the world view Israel as the heartless wonder that it is. Hamas stands as as strong as it ever has, despite the three-year blockade. Egypt was a part of it as well, but has recently renounced it, as a result of Israel's killings about the ship and typically indignant attitude, and indefinitely reopened its non-industrial border crossing with Gaza.

So back on the ship, Israeli commandos manhandled and beat a ton of people for being on the ship:

"Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat," said Greek activist Dimitris Gielalis, who had been aboard the Sfendoni. He was among six Greeks returned home Tuesday.

"They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used," he said.

He said the boat's captain was beaten for refusing to leave the wheel, and had sustained non-life-threatening injuries, while a cameraman filming the raid was hit with a rifle butt in the eye, he said.

"Of course we weren't prepared for a situation of war.," he added.

The returning Greeks said those still in custody were refusing to sign papers demanded by Israeli authorities.

"During their interrogation, many of them were badly beaten in front of us," said Aris Papadokostopoulos, who was aboard the Free Mediterranean traveling behind the Turkish ship and carrying mainly Greek and Swedish activists.

A fitting retribution for bring wheelchairs and medicine to deeply impoverished people. This is typical for Israel. They love overpowering people and intimidating the helpless. Read on:

Activists returning to Europe said that the commandos had beaten passengers and used electric shocks during the clashes.

Six Greeks and several others, including a Turkish woman and her 1-year-old baby, were released Tuesday.

Turkish activist Nilufer Cetin, who had hidden with her baby in her cabin's bathroom aboard the Mavi Marmara, told reporters she believed there were 11 dead.

”The ship turned into a lake of blood," Cetin told reporters in Istanbul, having returned after Israeli officials warned that jail would be too harsh for her child.

"We were aware of the possible danger in joining the trip," she said. "But there are thousands of babies in Gaza. If we had reached Gaza we would have played with them and taken them food."

She said Israeli vessels harassed the flotilla for two hours starting around 10 p.m. Sunday, and returned at around 4 a.m. Monday, fired warning shots and told the ships to turn back.

When the Mavi Marmara continued on its course the harassment turned into an attack.

"They used smoke bombs followed by gas canisters. They started to descend onto the ship with helicopters," she said, calling the clashes that then erupted "extremely bad and brutal."

"I was one of the first victims to be released because I had a child," she told reporters, "but they confiscated everything, our telephones, laptops are all gone."

Her husband - the ship's engineer - was still being held by Israeli authorities.

Some 400 Turkish activists were on the six-ship flotilla, along with more than 30 Greeks and people of some 20 other nations including Germany, the U.S. and Russia.

Also typical is that Israel cut all communications aboard the ship, and then kept all seven hundred incommunicado while they were detained:

An Al-Jazeera journalist delivering a report before Israel cut communications said Israel fired at the vessel before boarding it. In one web posting, a Turkish television reporter on the boat cried out, "These savages are killing people here, please help" — a broadcast that ended with a voice shouting in Hebrew, "Everybody shut up!"

Al-Jazeera said that eight staff members were detained while covering the story, and asked for the Israeli government to release them immediately...

Of the hundreds of activists who were detained aboard the ships after they were escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod, 15 were sent to Beer Sheva Prison, according to a spokesman for the Israeli prison authority. Another 25 were slated for deportation and 50 others who refused to identify themselves were being held separately.

Then Israel went on to propagate a bunch of bullshit about how they, the Israeli military, were set up, victims of an ambush. This is amazing. They allege that somehow, through deliberately placing themselves on the deck of a ship, in international waters, armed with guns and authorized to kill, they were the victims in this situation:

Israel's prime minister claimed Sunday that the Turkish activists who battled Israeli naval commandos in a deadly clash last week prepared for the fight ahead of time, before boarding the ship in a different city from the rest of the passengers.

Benjamin Netanyahu's charges highlight Israel's frantic efforts to portray the activists as terrorists and counter a wave of harsh international condemnation that has left the Jewish state isolated and at odds with some of its closest allies...

Netanyahu told his Cabinet that "dozens of thugs" from "an extremist, terrorism-supporting" organization had readied themselves for the arrival of the naval commandos.

"This group boarded separately in a different city, organized separately, equipped itself separately and went on deck under different procedures," he said. "The clear intent of this hostile group was to initiate a violent clash with (Israeli) soldiers..."

On Sunday, the Turkish daily Hurriyet showed new pictures taken by unidentified people of wounded Israeli commandos, including some with bloodied faces. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the images seemed to corroborate Israel's version of the events.

"It shows that our boarding party in fact did face deadly violence from the hardcore Islamist activists on the boat ... and that our boarding party was forced to respond," he said. "Had they not, they would have been killed."

Boarding party. Did you get that? BOARDING PARTY? Good one, Mark Regev. When you get tired of lying and killing for a living, you should try writing for Saturday Night Live. They could use someone like you.

The head of the IHH, the Islamic Charity organization that sponsored the Freedom Flotilla, as the six aid ships were called, disagrees with Netanyahu and Regev's assertions:

In Turkey, IHH head Bulent Yildirim said all passengers boarded the ship in the Turkish port of Antalya, and rejected suggestions that those who clashed with the soldiers were trained militants.

"Take a look at who was killed. They had pot bellies. They were old. They were young. Who would believe that they received special training?" he said.

Israel says the IHH is a terrorist organization. Again, even the United States says that they aren't.

Overall, I would say that Israel is taking this well, showing a good amount of contrition for its military escapades:

In a sign of Israeli frustration, some hard-liners produced a music video that parodies the events on the raided ship and has received more than a million hits on YouTube. A group of Israeli men and women portray the activists as Arab and Turkish militants with keffiyehs and mimic their accents. At the end, the mock activists wave clubs and knives in the air.

They sing a song with crude lyrics called "We Conned the World" — set to the tune of "We Are The World."

"We'll make the world abandon reason, we'll make them all believe that the Hamas is Mama Theresa," they sing.

The Israeli government press office relayed a link to the video to foreign correspondents on Friday, then recalled the message and apologized.

Nothing like kicking people who are down. That's Israel's specialty though, and what endears them so closely to many throughout the world.

Further displaying their will to do anything it takes to make themselves the victims in every situation, the Israeli government was forced to admit that it edited the invasion tape to include anti-Semitic rhetoric that wasn't really there:

Israel acknowledged Sunday that it edited recordings of what it said were anti-Semitic and anti-American radio calls by pro-Palestinian activists who tried to run the Gaza blockade and that it could not identify the origin of the broadcasts.

The Israeli military released a 26-second recording Friday night in which a warning call to a ship in the flotilla was met with the reply of "Shut up -- go back to Auschwitz." After another voice reports that the convoy has the permission of Palestinian officials to dock in Gaza, a third voice responds, "We are helping Arabs going against the U.S. Don't forget 9/11, guys."

But after the organizers of the aid convoy accused Israeli officials of manipulating the tapes, the Israel Defense Forces reported it had mistakenly identified one of the six ships in the activists' "Freedom Flotilla" as the source of the broadcasts. And it released a nearly six-minute recording of radio traffic that included those calls and several others, along with bursts of static and calls in other languages on the same channel.

Nice. Nothing like a good lie to drum up support for war. It's a classic technique - Vietnam, Iraq, etc.

I would like to conclude with the fact that Israel has not alleged even once that these ships were carrying weapons, nor anything that Hamas could use as such. Accordingly, despite Israel's best attempts to search the cargo looking for them, all they found were medical supplies and construction materials. Again, this was clearly an entirely just response. What a bunch of fucking monsters.

P.S. The Pixies canceled their first-ever show in Israel because of this. AWESOME. Hooray for people still giving a fuck.

Crocodiles - smarter than you think

Salt water crocodiles of the Indian/Pacific Oceans routinely ride currents for hundreds of miles, know when to ride them, and can not only figure out when they're going the wrong way, but know how to get out of the current and wait until it switches to the direction they want:

One satellite-tagged crocodile, 12.6-foot-long male (3.8 meters) - left the Kennedy River and travelled 366 miles (590 km) over 25 days, timing its journey to coincide with a seasonal current system that develops in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Another croc - a 15.8-foot-long male (4.8 meters) - traveled more than 255 miles (411 km) in only 20 days through the Torres Straits, which are notorious for strong water currents. When the reptile arrived at the straits, the currents were moving opposite to his direction of travel - he then waited in a sheltered bay for four days and only passed through the straits when the currents switched to favor his journey.

Amazing.

They also don't drill holes in the ocean floor, which makes them even smarter.

Organic dairy is still rape

Just without hormones. Isn't that nice? Read about how the CEO of Pacific Natural Foods, Chuck Eggert, treats the "organic cows" that he thinks he owns:

Eggert tapped son Charlie to run the complex operations: managing the milking cows and 100-plus calves; seeing to artificial insemination; and feeding herds an organic mix of alfalfa, barley, flax, composted corn silage and minerals. He found himself birthing calves at 2 a.m. -- and collecting and disposing of millions of gallons of waste each year.

If forceful impregnation, in this case coldly referred to as "artificial insemination" isn't rape, then I don't know what is.

Organic dairy cows are still victims of capitalism, but a variety with a friendlier face. They are supposed to be able to move more than non-organic dairy cows, have "natural" food and all sorts of wonderful benefits that they would normally have if people hadn't made them rape/production slaves, which are all things that make people feel better about themselves for paying people to rape cows, confine them, take their milk and sell them off to slaughter when they pass their peak rates of production.

Capitalists, of course, are chiefly concerned with money. Money always wins over welfare and wellbeing. I think "green" capitalists or "concerned" capitalists or however they try to redefine themselves do those cost/benefit analysis things where they figure out how to make the most money while having to spend the least, which, in this case, often results in keeping a large number of cows and treating them not quite as shittily as their relatives in factory farms.

Here are what some local critics have to say of Eggert's two dairy farms:

Kimbirauskas, with Friends of Family Farmers, says there's a simpler way to reduce manure impacts: Cut herds and get them in pastures. That reduces odor and the volume of waste to be handled.

"There are other organic dairies that aren't putting millions of dollars into waste technology," she says. "They're just putting their cows on grass."

Until now, national organic standards have only required dairies to provide "access to pasture." Some of the Eggerts' neighbors say they've rarely seen cows grazing in the past.

Here is how various Oregon state agencies have felt about Eggert's "green" practices:

His twin dairy farms near the Willamette River southwest of Wilsonville were intended as an extension of that ethos: organic, cutting-edge operations that would be models of environmentally sustainable and economically successful agriculture.

It has not gone well. Eggert's Mayfield and Rock Ridge dairies have repeatedly mismanaged the manure that 700 milking cows produce, racking up 20 manure-related violations and $35,000 in state fines. A $20,000 fine this month was the largest ever by the state's Confined Animal Feeding Operation program.

Nice, Chuck, nice. Good going there, really. You are showing people how much different "green" capitalism is from the normal kind, whatever you want to call it.

Finally, here's Chuck propagating that myth that cow's milk is somehow necessary for life:

"If you just say no dairy should be more than five cows, all you're doing is providing an elitist food system," says Eggert, 61. "Some people might go to the store and pay $10 a gallon for a gallon of organic milk. Most people can't afford that."

"Elitist food system." Or a more compassionate one.

Brave bullfighter catches a horn in the balls

Man, this is amazing. Swung around and whatnot.

It makes me happy to know that they operated on him without anesthesia.

Florida is now fully benefitting from BP's free oil initiative

Fucking communists, just taking and taking:

Driftwood and seashells glazed with rust-colored tar lined the surf along the Gulf Coast's once-pristine white sand beaches Saturday, the crude from a busted oil well deep underwater showing up in greater quantities and farther east.

A cap placed over the gusher was collecting only a fraction of the oil, which had stained beaches with a waxy mess of tar balls and created an unusual orange foam in the surf.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., wooden boardwalks leading to beachfront hotels were spotted with oil from beachgoers' feet, and some condominiums were providing solvents for guests smeared with the brown goo. At Pensacola Beach, the retreating high tide left an orange stain in its wake.

Erin Tamber moved to the beach area after surviving Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where she had lived for 30 years.

"I feel like I've gone from owning a piece of paradise to owning a toxic waste dump," she said as she inspected the beach Saturday morning.

I wish I could have the slightest feeling that this is going to be a turning point, where people really push back in a sustained way against destructive capitalism and the government that loves it, but I don't. People don't care. Now that Lost and American Idol and whatever else are going to repeats, I guess people have to find some other distraction. Baseball? I don't know. I'm fairly confident that people's attention, in significant amounts, will not turn to BP and the federal government. I would love for it to, but it's not realistic. Katrina didn't do it; why should this? I guess it's a bit more spread out, but it hasn't killed anyone aside from Deepwater Horizon workers. People just don't care. Too fucking busy with hating immigrants or Muslims or whatever the political distraction issue of the day is.

Anyway, Florida's western beaches are getting fucked and people can't go in the water anymore:

Swimmers at Pensacola Beach rushed out of the water after wading into the mess, while other beachgoers inspected the clumps with fascination, some taking pictures.

Health officials said that people should stay away from the mess but that swallowing a little oil-tainted water or getting slimed by a tar ball is no reason for alarm.

On Saturday morning at a public beach in Gulf Shores, a long line of brown globs marked the high water line from overnight at the public beach.

Finally, somehow, real thought worked its way into a news story, if ever so slightly:

"This is disgusting," said Macon Srygley, of McCalla, Ala. "I hate it for BP, but this has to be a lesson for anyone drilling in the ocean. We've got all this technology, but are we not smart enough to realize we can end ourselves with it?"

Right on. We aren't, and we will.

BP's tally of dead birds thus far

As of a couple of days ago, this is the official count of how many birds BP has killed in the last month and a half:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported 522 dead birds — at least 38 of them oiled — along the Gulf coast states, and more than 80 oiled birds have been rescued. It's not clear exactly how many of the deaths can be attributed to the spill.

I'm going to go ahead and say all of them, plus many more that will never be found.

Of course, that figure is buried in the bottom of a BP oil hole article, cause no one cares about that stuff nearly as much.

Again, I will say that nothing anyone got from that fucking hole in the bottom of the ocean was ever worth the life of one bird, fish, dolphin, turtle or anything else they have killed and have yet to kill through their bottomless greed and utter lack of regard for whatever "safety" can be assured aboard something as destructive and ruinous as a petroleum extraction platform.

I wish people would stop worshipping perceived "rights" of capital in this country and just go ahead and fucking burn down everything BP and its rapacious managers own.

BP is in the process of expanding its oil pollution to Florida

Any day now, Florida will be able to bask in the glory of BP's free oil program. And I thought we were dealing with capitalists here.

The giant Gulf of Mexico oil slick was Wednesday closing in on the pristine Florida coast, as deep sea robotic submarines hit a new snag in BP's latest bid to contain the spill.

Forecasters said it was virtually certain Florida's panhandle, a major draw for tourists from around the world, would be hit by the spill this week.

The latest official projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show the slick to be about seven miles (11 kilometers) off the state's shores, a Florida official told AFP.

"Within the next 72 hours it should affect our coast," said the official with Florida's Environmental Protection Agency, asking not to be named.

Florida would be the fourth state hit by the oil since an April 20 explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon rig, 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers. The BP-operated rig sank two days later.

What a bunch of lucky people those Floridians are. FREE OIL. And here I am, paying for it like a sucker.

BP's oil spreads to Alabama and Mississippi

Of course, it will only get worse. There is lots and lots more where that came from, seeing as the hole will probably be spewing oil and gas for at least two more months. Nice.

And if it took that long for oil to reach those places, think of how much is behind it and for how long it will keep washing up, long, long after the hole is plugged or runs out.

Rust-colored oil washed ashore on barrier islands off Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday, while more patches of crude offshore appeared to be moving toward those states' coasts, authorities reported.

Researchers scrambled to clean up tar balls and puddles of oil from the beaches of Alabama's Dauphin Island, while a strip of oil about two miles long and three feet wide stretched along Petit Bois Island, about five miles away off Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour's office reported.

It marked the first time oil has hit Mississippi's shores since the largest oil spill in U.S. history erupted in late April. And while tar balls associated with the Gulf spill had hit Dauphin Island, about 35 miles south of Mobile, in early May, residents said that Tuesday was the first time they had seen oil hitting the beach.

Only part of the island's beaches have been lined with protective booms, with much of those barriers lined up near a protected wildlife area on the west end of the island.

These places are fucked. And BP doesn't care any more than it is legally compelled to.

Tony Hayward is sorry

Thanks big guy. Everything is cool now. Promise.

BP facing civil fines of $86 million a day

Yes, shit fucking yes, PLEASE let this happen:

A clause buried deep in the U.S. Clean Water Act may expose BP and others to civil fines that aren't limited to any finite cap -- unlike a $75 million limit on compensation for economic damages. The Act allows the government to seek civil penalties in court for every drop of oil that spills into U.S. navigable waters, including the area of BP's leaking well.

As a result, the U.S. government could seek to fine BP or others up to $4,300 for every barrel leaked into the U.S. Gulf, according to legal experts and official documents.

It is truly the least these fucking people deserve. They are a bunch of liars, a horde of greedy plunderers who would gladly ruin the entire planet (save for their gated communities) if not kept in check by the ribbons of regulation currently now upon them.

That's oil for you. That's capitalism for you. You need to have assholes like this in every sector of industry, finance and government to give you cheap everything. But no one wants to face that. They want to blame BP and guiltlessly drive to Walmart. And we have them. We have assholes in spades. What a bunch of pieces of shit we are. We all just go on with our lives, letting these people fuck us and everything around us.

Right on, Bob Herbert

Bob is my new favorite person at the New York Times. He seems way more "left" than the most of the rest of their people, and is very frank. All of which means he is a real, thinking person who says what he means and what he believes. He doesn't seem like a bullshitter.

He wrote this mostly great op-ed piece on Memorial Day:

If a bank is too big to fail, it’s way too big to exist. If an oil well is too far beneath the sea to be plugged when something goes wrong, it’s too deep to be drilled in the first place.

YES, fucking YES. Why can't people get that? What the hell business do you have drilling a mile under the sea (assuming that people have a "right" to extract petroleum in the first place, which they don't) when you have absolutely no plan in place in the event of a ruptured pipe, aside from drilling a new well? So many people buy into that industry/business/capital worshipping bullshit where people can do whatever they want in the interest of "progress" and profit.

Some of the rest of it is straight-up liberal and oddly patriotic, but I guess you have to do that shit to get a job there and keep it. They aren't going to publish things that I typically write here, for sure. They've got an agenda, and it is not the same as mine. But the editorial board does seem to allow people to deviate from it, to an extent.

Read on:

When are we going to stop behaving so stupidly? We nearly wrecked the economy and we’re all but buried in debt. But we can’t break up the biggest banks, and we can’t raise taxes. Now we’re fouling the magnificent Gulf of Mexico and ruining entire communities along the southern Louisiana Coast.

And, by the way, we’re still fighting a futile war in Afghanistan that we’ve been fighting with nonstop futility for nearly a decade. (I’m sure the troops saddled with this thankless task were thrilled to see fans and teams demonstrating their undying support for their efforts by wearing fancy baseball caps on Memorial Day.)

For a nation that can’t stop bragging about how great and powerful it is, we’ve become shockingly helpless in the face of the many challenges confronting us. Our can-do spirit was put on hold many moons ago, and here we are now unable to defeat the Taliban, or rein in the likes of BP and the biggest banks, or stop the oil gushing furiously from the bowels of earth like a warning from Hades about the hubris and ignorance that is threatening to destroy us.

BP and the Obama administration have been equally clueless about halting the millions of gallons of oil that have flowed into the gulf since the Deepwater Horizon explosion more than a month ago.

It's nice to see someone hitting at Obama who isn't some conservative piece of shit who will take any chance they can get to take a dump on him, just because he's not conservative, and is black.

Bob Herbert, I will be on a team with him any day. Hell yes, Bob.

BP making cleanup workers sick, legally prohibiting them from speaking to anyone

Manslaughter, again. What a truly awful bunch of people (that's what a company is, a bunch of people). Death to all of them.

"Graham MacEwen, a spokesman for BP, says the company isn't providing masks because their air monitoring shows there's no health threats to workers."

No fucking masks. NOT ALLOWED. While working on top of crude oil and carcinogenic dispersants.

BP allowing Louisiana marshes to die

Murder? Perhaps. At least manslaughter. But they don't care. I wish someone in the government had the willpower to go ahead with dissolving this company and imprisoning, or at least indicting, everyone at BP (and Halliburton) responsible for this.

BP simply does not care. They have virtually unlimited money, but are refusing to spend. They're trying to make a big deal out of the fact that they've spent a billion dollars. They've got a lot more left, and every "analyst" seems to think the company will survive just fine, which is fucking sick.

Gored "bullfighter" still in a really bad place

Nice. Fuck you, Julio Aparicio. Hope you have a long, terrible road of suffering ahead. Please, please do not die. You do not deserve such luck.

A Madrid hospital says Spanish bullfighter Julio Aparicio has returned to intensive care and is fighting an infection after a horrific goring in the throat by a bull.

Aparicio had left the unit and was recovering well on Monday following surgery to reconstruct his throat, mouth and palate, but outbreak of an infection forced a return to the unit where doctors placed him on mechanically assisted breathing, October 12 Hospital said.

In a statement released Saturday the hospital says Aparicio is now breathing normally and it describes his condition as "grave" but stable.

The matador slipped in a bullring, fell to the ground and a 1,168 pound bull drove his right horn through Aparicio's throat and out his mouth.

I guess they got the bull's weight after a couple of brave men killed it for no reason.

Contaminated Cocaine Can Cause Flesh to Rot

So do more and get off the planet, scumbags. Fashionable pieces of shit. Hip slaves.

Cocaine abusers -- already at risk for an abnormal heartbeat, blood pressure problems, hallucinations, convulsions and stroke -- can add another potential health complication to the list: rotting flesh.

"If you are a user of cocaine, you should be aware that some of the cocaine is not clean and can have other agents that can cause you to have a low white-cell count or skin tissue death," said Dr. Ghinwa Dumyati, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester and an epidemiologist for the Monroe County Health Department in New York.

In a report in the June 1 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, Dumyati and doctors from the University of Rochester Medical Center discuss two cases involving women with a history of cocaine use who came to the hospital for help when they noticed purplish plaques on their cheeks, earlobes, legs, thighs and buttocks.

Their profiles were typical of toxicity with levamisole, the doctors reported. The medication is a veterinary anti-worming agent, approved for use in cattle, sheep and pigs. It was once used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and kidney problems in humans, Dumyati said. It's no longer approved for use in people in the United States, she said, because of adverse side effects.

But it's often used to cut cocaine, before distribution to the user, she said. "Almost 80 percent of the cocaine coming into this country has levamisole mixed in," Dumyati said...

But that's not all that's bad about levamisole. "It has other side effects," she said. "It has effects on bone marrow function. There can be a drop in the white blood cell count."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in late 2009 on a cluster of cases of problems with white blood cell counts linked to cocaine use. Called agranulocytosis, the condition occurs when bone marrow fails to make enough white blood cells.

Idiots. Do more, really. If I had some, I would sell it to you. All of it. Fuck, I would just GIVE it to you.

Make sure you wear long sleeves and pants to all yr shitty parties. It's hard to look good when you've got purple rotting patches on you.

BP does not allow cleanup crews on the water to wear masks or complain publicly

I guess they are trying to avoid giving people the idea that crude oil is unhealthy.

A fisherman who was hospitalized after becoming ill while cleaning up oil in the Gulf of Mexico has filed a temporary restraining order in federal court against oil company BP.

John Wunstell Jr., is asking BP to give the workers masks and not harass workers who publicly voice their health concerns.

Wunstell, a shrimper, said he was paid by BP to use his boat, Ramie's Wish, to clean up oil that has been gushing into the Gulf since an oil rig sank about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, gushing an estimated 19,000 barrels (798, 000 gallons) of crude a day.

In an affidavit, Wunstell wrote he started experiencing severe headaches and nasal irritation on May 24. Over the next few days, he also developed nosebleeds, an upset stomach, and aches.

On Friday, Wunstell was airlifted to West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana, where he remained hospitalized Sunday...

In his affidavit, Wunstell described his experience at the hospital.

"At West Jefferson, there were tents set up outside the hospital, where I was stripped of my clothing, washed with water and several showers, before I was allowed into the hospital," Wunstell said. "When I asked for my clothing, I was told that BP had confiscated all of my clothing and it would not be returned."

The restraining order requests that BP refrain from "altering, testing or destroying clothing or any other evidence or potential evidence" when workers become ill.

Man, turns out it's all a lie. I hate when I've been had:

Graham MacEwen, a spokesman for BP, said he could not comment on the restraining order, or on allegations that BP confiscated clothing.

He denied accusations from Clint Guidry, president of the Louisiana Shrimpers Association, that BP has been threatening workers who speak out about health concerns.

Fishermen contacted by CNN have declined to speak publicly.

Some, who are making as much as $3,000 a day cleaning up the oil, have said they fear losing their jobs with BP.

"The BP oil spill wiped out their professions and their jobs this year and possibly years down the road," Klick said. "The only work they can get right now is with BP."

The BP spokesman said there have been no threats against workers for speaking out.

That's good to hear, that they aren't threatening them. I guess they also aren't threatening them for failing to wear masks, as they are admittedly not providing their workers with them:

Corexit, a dispersant, is being sprayed into the Gulf to break down the oil. The safety data information sheet from the manufacturer states that people should "avoid breathing in vapor" from Corexit, and that masks should be work when Corexit is present in certain concentrations in the air.

BP has not supplied workers with masks when they work near the oil and dispersants.

"We're been carrying out very extensive air quality since early on in this exercise, to make sure that we have working safe conditions, and thus far not found situations where there are air quality concerns that would require face masks," MacEwen said.

He added that workers who want to wear masks are "free to do so" as long as they receive instructions from their supervisors on how to use them.

According to Guidry from the shrimpers' association, BP told workers they were not allowed to wear masks.

"Some of our men asked, and they were told they'd be fired if they wore masks," he said.

Fired for wearing masks, awesome.

Also, Tony Hayward makes up the most fantastic fucking lies. Why hasn't someone offed this fuck yet?

Tony Hayward, the chief executive officer of BP, offered another explanation for the fishermen's illness: spoiled food.

"Food poisoning is clearly a big issue," Hayward said Sunday. "It's something we've got to be very mindful of. It's one of the big issues of keeping the Army operating. You know, the Army marches on their stomachs."

An expert on foodborne illness cast doubt on Hayward's theory.

"Headaches, shortness of breath, nosebleeds -- there's nothing there that suggests foodborne illness," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. "I don't know what these people have, but it sounds more like a respiratory illness."

Holy shit. The shit he says isn't even realistic. I guess it doesn't have to be. As long as he pulls in money, no one cares. It's not like he's up for reelection.

Impending increase in oil flow from BP's hole in the ocean floor

BP's newest sure-to-fail attempt to stop the oil from blowing out of that broken pipe a mile under the Gulf of Mexico will bring a 20% increase in the amount of oil flowing from it:

Even as the White House sought to demonstrate that it was taking a more direct hand in trying to solve the problem, senior officials acknowledged that the new technique BP will use to try to cap the leak — severing the riser pipe and placing a containment dome over the cut riser — could temporarily result in as much as 20 percent more oil flowing into the water during the three days to a week before the new device could be in place.

Nice. If we've got, on the low end, one million gallons of oil pouring out per day, we will now have one million and two hundred thousand. If we have four million, on the higher end, we will now have four million and eight hundred thousand. Until August, when they manage to finish drilling their new well.

Showing that BP's gusher in the ocean floor was just short of deliberate

Did they intend for the rig to explode and the hole to spew oil? Of course not. That means they lose money. But they did consistently ignore safety-related warnings that would necessitate them shutting down their operation, however shortly, in order to address the obvious problems indicating an impending explosion. They knew this was a potential, increasingly likely scenario, and they did nothing but keep drilling and pulling out oil:

The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of “well control.” And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.

On June 22, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.

“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.”

The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission from BP colleagues because it violated the company’s safety policies and design standards. The internal reports do not explain why the company allowed for an exception. BP documents released last week to The Times revealed that company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options...

In April of this year, BP engineers concluded that the casing was “unlikely to be a successful cement job,” according to a document, referring to how the casing would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well.

The document also says that the plan for casing the well is “unable to fulfill M.M.S. regulations,” referring to the Minerals Management Service...

On Tuesday Congress released a memorandum with preliminary findings from BP’s internal investigation, which indicated that there were warning signs immediately before the explosion on April 20, including equipment readings suggesting that gas was bubbling into the well, a potential sign of an impending blowout.

A parade of witnesses at hearings last week told about bad decisions and cut corners in the days and hours before the explosion of the rig, but BP’s internal documents provide a clearer picture of when company and federal officials saw problems emerging.

In addition to focusing on the casing, investigators are also focusing on the blowout preventer, a fail-safe device that was supposed to slice through a drill pipe in a last-ditch effort to close off the well when the disaster struck. The blowout preventer did not work, which is one of the reasons oil has continued to spill into the gulf, though the reason it failed remains unclear...

The documents show that in March, after problems on the rig that included drilling mud falling into the formation, sudden gas releases known as “kicks” and a pipe falling into the well, BP officials informed federal regulators that they were struggling with a loss of “well control.”

On at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventer was leaking fluid, which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to operate properly.

“The most important thing at a time like this is to stop everything and get the operation under control,” said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, Austin, offering his assessment about the documents...

Bob Sherrill, an expert on blowout preventers and the owner of Blackwater Subsea, an engineering consulting firm, said the conditions on the rig in February and March and the language used by the operator referring to a loss of well control “sounds like they were facing a blowout scenario.”

This is an open-and-shut case of capitalist negligence. We're gonna need a lot of ropes for this one. I would pay dearly to watch these motherfuckers hung in their suits. Maybe we can dip them in oil, set them on fire, and then hang them with steel cables, as ropes would burn off very quickly. Wait, no, that's good, stick with the ropes. We will dip them in oil, set them on fire, hang them with ropes, let them hang for a second until the rope burns off, just to add agony, then watch them writhe on the ground until they die.

BP's"top kill" procedure to plug the hole did not work

At all. In the least. Still blowing thick, deep black oil. Not surprising, given the track of failures behind them:

The abandonment of the top kill technique, the most ambitious effort yet to plug the well, was the latest in a series of failures. First, BP failed in efforts to repair a blowout preventer with submarine robots. Then its initial efforts to cap the well with a containment dome failed when it became clogged with a frothy mix of frigid water and gas. Efforts to use a hose to gather escaping oil have managed to catch only a fraction of the spill.

And you know what? They aren't going to stop it until they drill a new well, which will take until August:

BP has started work on two relief wells, but officials have said that they will not be completed until August...

That's at least another 180 million gallons of oil that will blow out, making it top out at easily over 300 million gallons. But remember, as Tony Hayward said, the Gulf of Mexico is real big, so it doesn't matter much.

In the meantime, don't expect too much, as they are basically throwing things at it and seeing what sticks:

A technician who has been working on the project to stem the oil leak said Saturday that neither the top kill nor the “junk shot” came close to succeeding because the pressure of oil and gas escaping from the well was simply too powerful to overcome. He added that engineers never had a complete enough understanding of the inner workings of drill pipe casing or blowout preventer mechanisms to make the efforts work.

“Simply too much of what we pumped in was escaping,” said the technician, who spoke on condition of remaining unnamed because he is not authorized to speak publicly for the company.

Once again - "engineers never had a complete enough understanding of the inner workings of drill pipe casing or blowout preventer mechanisms to make the efforts work." Wow. They don't understand the equipment they are using. Good idea, especially when working with such a volatile and destructive material as petroleum.

Also, the New York Times is still lying about how much oil is coming out of there:

He said it would capture most but not all of the oil leaking from the well, which is believed to be gushing 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

We know it is much more than that. Much, much more.

Oil industry threatens the president and you

They are relentless as well as remorseless. Such is the march of capital.

"An extended moratorium on safely producing our oil and natural gas resources from the Gulf of Mexico would create a moratorium on economic growth and job creation," said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, the main U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry...

The ban, Gerard said, will hurt growth "by undercutting our nation's access to affordable, reliable, domestic sources of oil and natural gas..."

Gerard said he understands the frustration many feel toward the industry, but he said lawmakers should reconsider any decisions that would limit access to domestic sources of oil.

"This issue is much larger than the oil industry since access to affordable energy impacts every sector of our economy, every state in our nation and every American family," he said...

The ban could also mean layoffs in the energy industry, particularly in the Gulf Coast region, according to API. The group said 150,000 jobs are at risk if deep water production is significantly reduced over a period of five years.

"Deepwater is where the new action is in the Gulf," said API spokesman Bill Bush. "If that's shut down, there could be serious jobs impacts."

First, the US imports around 70% of its oil. So it only produces about 30% domestically. And of that, 30% it is only 30% that comes from offshore drilling. So the US only gets 10% of its oil from domestic offshore drilling. Not very much. At all. Fuck it.

Capitalists throw around the word "jobs" like Zionists with "anti-Semite." As soon as you make a point with them, they threaten and smear you so that you fuck off real quick.

Really though, if jobs are truly lost from stopping offshore oil production, too bad. Has to happen sooner or later - that oil ain't gonna be there forever. And that's what oil companies are ultimately in the business of - running themselves out of business, although they don't tell anyone that. Or themselves, really. But anyway, sometimes you just have to find something else to do, especially when you are a cog in the most profoundly destructive industry/line of work/business the world has ever known. Slave traders had to do it, much of the German military had to do it after World War II, even people selling Yugos had to do it. It sucks for the politically-celebrated "little guy," but such is life. Hopefully, one day, slaughterhouse workers will have to do the same.

BP's hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico is still gushing

Watch their oilvision to witness it. Around three million gallons a day, despite BP and the government's ass-covering lies. Today must be day 40, I believe. 120,000 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Eclipsed the Exxon Valdez spill, previously the worst in US history, in four days.

It's not so bad though:

BP CEO Tony Hayward told Britain's The Guardian newspaper that the spill was small in proportion to the Gulf.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," Hayward said.

WHY HASN'T SOMEONE TRIED TO PLUG THE HOLE WITH THIS PIECE OF SHIT YET?

Chris Oynes

This man has responsible for heading the arm of an agency that permitted BP's profound neglect to turn into a catastrophe, the fallout of which will take a very long time to understand.

He announced his retirement recently, taking off a month earlier than he had planned.

What a coincidence that the section of the Minerals Management Service he oversaw (the one responsible for regulating offshore drilling) is coming under increasingly heavy scrutiny in the wake of the unaccidental man-made disaster.

Paying off federal oil rig inspectors in the Gulf of Mexico

There is no way BP was not involved in this.

The oil "spill" was no "accident."

This shit is nearly unbelievable, until you realize that we are greedy pieces of shit who ultimately don't care about much:

Federal inspectors overseeing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico accepted meals and tickets to sporting events from companies they monitored, the Interior Department's inspector general concluded in a report released Wednesday.

In one case, an inspector in the Minerals Management Service office in Lake Charles, Louisiana, conducted inspections of four offshore platforms while negotiating a job with the company, the report states. Others let oil and gas company workers fill out their inspection forms in pencil, with the inspectors writing over those entries in ink before turning them in.

Some in the same office accepted tickets to the 2005 Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, a college football bowl game in Atlanta, Georgia. One inspector told an office clerk, "Everyone has gotten some sort of gift before at some point" from companies they regulated, according to the report.

LET OIL AND GAS COMPANY WORKERS FILL OUT THEIR INSPECTION FORMS IN PENCIL. Gee, wonder how the fucking oil rig blew up.

Some more gems:

The Lake Charles investigation was launched shortly after another scandal emerged from within the MMS. A September 2008 inspector general's report found regulators in the agency's Colorado office received improper gifts from energy industry representatives and engaged in illegal drug use and inappropriate sexual relations with them...

She pointed out that Randall Luthi, its [Mineral Management Service] previous director, left at the end of the Bush administration to become president of the National Ocean Industries Association, the trade association that represents offshore drillers.

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

BP corporate policy views workers as one of the three little pigs

Really. And then they assessed which pig's housing was the least financially risky. Then people died as a result of it.

The people running this company should be ashamed; I doubt they are. Either way, they should be set on fire.

BP refusing to clean up Louisiana marshes

This is pretty much the most important place on land that's fucked right now. This is the source of so much life and is so delicate. And BP is doing NOTHING.

Got milk?

Cause this is where it comes from.

The logical and necessary result of viewing life as a commodity.

We can't die off fast enough.

Filthy fucking BP trying to get its lawsuits dismissed with a judge they bought

The oil industry bought this judge a long time ago. Our legal system allows for BP to have the more than 100 lawsuits already filed against them adjudicated by one judge, one of their picking. Guess who they picked. Would not be at all surprised if they were allowed to have their way.

Helping BP

If you've got any thoughts on how they could do things a little differently (and who doesn't), here's how you can offer contributions, courtesy of the BP website:

Do you have ideas to help us?:
+1 281 366 5511

It only takes a minute, and there's a real person on the other end. Sure, what you say probably won't reach the top, but you can help build an atmosphere of incredibly low morale within the company among low-level employees and managers, which would eventually reach the top.

Fucking corporate lies

You have 20,000 people working the cleanup? GET MORE. NOW. FUCK YOUR PROFITS, FUCK YOUR INVESTORS, FUCK YOUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS. FIX IT MOTHERFUCKER. I hope the piece of shit gets an ulcer that eats through his ribcage.

"I probably should apologize to folks that we haven't been giving more data on that," Suttles said when asked why it took so long for BP to announce it had suspended the top kill. "It was nothing more than we are so focused on the operation itself."

YOU SHOULD ALSO PROBABLY FUCKING KILL YOURSELF AND ALL PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR RUNNING THE COMPANY.

Where are suicide bombers when you need them? People wasting their time trying to blow up a truck in Times Square. Get a real fucking target.

BP's hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico is now blowing muddy oil

Congratulations. You're doing a fine job.

Don't forget to check BP's disastervision for the latest on their struggle to address a problem for which there are really no short-range solutions, as no one bothered to think that far ahead (there was too much money to be made too quickly to wait on the technology to address a "what if" situation). And that is 100% their fucking fault.

Watch James Carville get really mad at BP

This is fun. Sure, he's way too sympathetic to Obama (Carville is a professional Democrat), but it's nice to see someone get really pissed at BP on television. I think at least 70% of it is genuine. Which is high, especially for a political strategist/politician maker. Mary Matalin seems to be even more legitimately disturbed, maybe 85%. You never know though; I tend to view electoral politics in much the same light as professional wrestling.

Thanks to BP for helping us to get there faster

So much life on earth (still, despite our best efforts) to wipe out before we win the war.

Here is a big shout out to BP, Halliburton, Transocean, the federal government, the president and the Coast Guard for doing a whole lot of nothing while the Gulf of Mexico is silenced. I would like to give a less immediate, but perhaps more broad mountain of gratitude to the oil industry the world over, automobile manufacturers, industrialists, capitalists and state capitalists of all stripes, the airline industry, purveyors of all things plastic, and once again, the federal government, for ensuring that all this continues unabated and that all the appropriate pieces of shit get the subsidies and infrastructure they need to keep fucking the planet. Great teamwork!

Ruined.

Once again, I would like to reiterate that I hate us.

Try not to be poor, black, stuck in Harlem and sick

Cause Harlem Hospital might not take such good care of you:

Nearly 4,000 tests for heart disease performed over the last three years at Harlem Hospital Center — more than half of all such tests performed — were never read by doctors charged with making a diagnosis, hospital officials acknowledged Tuesday.

The echocardiogram tests, a type of ultrasound used to evaluate heart muscle and valve functions, were ordered by doctors at the hospital. The tests were stored on a computer and basically forgotten, officials said.

Nice. Pretty sure that wouldn't happen at Beth Israel.

It's typical of New York's ghettoes though. It's an old, long story where the poor, and particularly the black and Puerto Rican (Central Harlem, the area Harlem Hospital serves is definitely poor and black/Puerto Rican) have perpetually had the worst access to health care and the health care to which they do have access is subpar at best. It's really hard to feel that there isn't a racial neglect/institutional racism component to this.

Oilvision

Watch it spew. Watch as we kill the earth a little bit more.

"I was born on planet earth
at a drastic time full of plastic mirth
and everyday I've seen increasing signs
and you would too if you'd opened your eyes
you had a chance you did not try
so now it's time to watch it die"

Helping to solve disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964

If this is true, it rules. A lot. And makes me really happy, picturing some racist piece of shit who thinks he's real tough being reduced to a sobbing pile of fear in minutes.

The notion that Scarpa strong-armed a Klan member into giving up information about one of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era has been talked about in mob circles for years.

It supposedly happened during the search for civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, who were beaten and shot by a gang of Klansmen and buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Miss. The case was famously dramatized in the movie “Mississippi Burning.”

Investigators struggled for answers in the early days of the case, stymied by stonewalling Klan members.

In 1994, the New York Daily News, citing unidentified federal law enforcement officials, reported that a frustrated J. Edgar Hoover turned to Scarpa to extract information. The Daily News said the New York mobster terrorized an appliance salesman and Klansman already under suspicion in the case and got him to reveal the location of the bodies.

Schiro testified Monday that she and Scarpa traveled to Mississippi in 1964 after he was recruited by the FBI. She said they walked into the hotel where the FBI had gathered during the investigation, and the gangster winked at a group of agents. She said an agent later showed up in their room and handed Scarpa a gun.

She said Scarpa helped find the volunteers’ bodies by “putting a gun in the guy’s mouth and threatening him.” She said an unidentified agent later returned to the room, gave Scarpa a wad of cash, and took back the weapon.

By any means necessary.

The oil hemorrhage is never going to end

It's been well over a month now, and don't you know that hole in the ocean floor is still blowing over a million gallons a day into the Gulf of Mexico with no end in sight. Actually, you know what, never mind that. It does not matter how much oil is coming out of the hole:

BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

Whatever the case, for the last week, BP has been sucking out 126,000 gallons a day, at most, which I'm sure will find its way into cars very soon. Amazing that they are still making money off of this thing. Fucking company needs to be shut down, deploying any and all means available.

To stop oil from coming to the surface (addressing the aesthetics of the matter), they're using dispersants underwater, which are known to be toxic. Aside from their intensely poisonous nature, BP is making a new problem - vast underwater oil clouds, "including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots." Great news.

While the oxygen depletion so far is not enough to kill off sea life, the possibility looms that oxygen levels could fall so low as to create large dead zones, especially at the seafloor. “That’s the big worry,” said Ray Highsmith, head of the Mississippi center that sponsored the mission, known as the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology.

This is already the worst single-event environmental disaster this country has ever seen. It will go down as one of the worst in the world. And no one seems to be able to do anything about it.

I finally figured out why the U.S. is occupying Iraq

It's to rid the world of those gay little boy terrorists.