Layla Anwar-"Falluja Worse Than Hiroshima "

"Falluja Worse Than Hiroshima "

Layla Anwar

July 2, 2010 The information is too important not to jot down...this is a rushed post. I just finished watching a re-run of Ahmad Mansour's Al-Jazeera Arabic - interview with Prof.Chris Busby. Prof Busby is a Scientist and Director of Green Audit, and scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risks. To find out more on Prof Chris Busby and his work -- Google -- Chris Busby Uranium. Prof Busby has published many articles on radiation, uranium and contamination in countries such as Lebanon, Kosovo, Gaza and of course Iraq. His latest findings - which were the subject of the program aired on Al-Jazeera are what I will focus on here. As some of you know, Falluja is a forbidden city. It was subjected to intense bombardments in 2004, with DU bombs and White phosphorus, and since it has become a no go zone - meaning that both the Iraqi puppet authorities and the U.S invading/occupying forces do not allow anyone to conduct any real study in Falluja. Falluja is basically under siege. Obviously both the Americans and the Iraqis know something and are hiding it from the public. And this is where Prof. C.Busby comes in the picture. He was/is adamant to get to the bottom of what took place in Falluja in 2004. Being a top scientist in his field, he set out to conduct a survey/research in Falluja whose preliminary results will be published in 2 weeks - hopefully. Prof Busby found many obstacles while undertaking this project. Neither he nor any member of his team were allowed access to Falluja to conduct interviews. He said when the main door closes, one has to find other doors to open. And this is what he did. He managed to gather a team of Iraqis from Falluja to conduct the surveys for him. The research project was based on 721 families from Falluja with 4'500 participants - living in both high level and lower level radiation zones. Results were compared to a control group - a sample of the same number of families living in a non radioactive zone in another Arab country. For the purpose of the study he chose three other countries for comparison - Kuwait, Egypt and Jordan. Before getting into the preliminary results I must note the following : - the Iraqi authorities threatened all the participants of this survey with arrest and detention should they cooperate with the "terrorists" who were interviewing them. In other words, they were threatened under the anti-terrorism act. - The U.S forces prohibited Dr.Busby for gathering any data, arguing that Falluja is an insurgency zone. - The doctors from Falluja turned down the request to be aired live on the Ahmad Mansour program because they had received several death threats and feared for their lives. In other words, the study was conducted under very difficult and life threatening conditions. But it was conducting nonetheless. As the program has not been uploaded on youtube, I can't give a word for word transcription. I took short hand notes and memorized the rest. But I will do my best to present all the facts I heard today. So what is it that the US and its Iraqi puppets do not want the public to learn ? And why are they are not allowing any measurements of the levels of radiation in Falluja, and why did they even forbid the IAEA to enter Falluja ? What exactly happened in Falluja ? What were the kinds of bombs used ? Was it just DU or more ? 1) One thing that is very peculiar to Falluja is that the rates of cancer have risen dramatically in a very short space of time i.e since 2004. Examples given by Dr.Busby : - rate of Child Leukemia is 40 X (times) higher since 2004 than during previous years. And compared to Jordan for instance it is 38 X times higher. - rate of breast cancer is 10 X higher since 2004 - rate of lymphatic cancer is also 10 x higher since 2004. 2) Another peculiarity to Falluja is the dramatic rise in infant mortality rates. Compared to 2 other Arab countries like Kuwait and Egypt who are not contaminated by radiation these are the figures : - infant mortality rates for Falluja is 80 infants out of 1'000 births in comparison to Kuwait with 9 infants out of 1'000, and to Egypt with 19 infants out of 1'000. (so Iraqi infant mortality rate is 4 times higher than Egypt and 9 times higher than Kuwait) 3) the third peculiarity to Falluja is the number of genetic deformities that has suddenly exploded since 2004. This is a subject I've already covered in the past. But this is not the whole story, today I learned something else. The radiation of whatever agent that was used by the "liberating forces", not only causes massive genetic deformities but also and this is very important : - it causes structural changes at the cellular level. - which in turns means due to the genetic make up of male infants (lack of X chromosome), male infants are more likely to die at birth, and female infants are more likely to survive birth with strong deformities. And here another example is given by Dr.Busby : prior to 2003 the birth rates in Falluja were as follows : 1050 male infants to 1000 female infants. In 2005, there has been only 350 male infants born - meaning that male infants do not survive. - as for the female infants and this is where the tragedy lies...radiation causes change at the DNA level, which means that these same female if they do survive, and if they do reproduce will give birth to genetically disfigured females and dead male infants. - the above findings are backed by other studies conducted on the children and grandchildren of Hiroshima survivors (in 2007) and which show that even the third generation exhibits genetic malformations including disease(cancer, heart, etc...)by a rate of 50 X times. In Chernobyl on the other hand, studies on animals in the same area have shown that the effects of radiation have genetically modified 22 generations. In sum radiation is transmitted from gene to gene and has a cumulative effect with time. (won't go into how - with cells accumulation/ memory and the working of the immune system - here. You can read more details about that once Prof Busby's paper is published) - Some of the infant deformities are so grotesque that both Al-Jazeera and the BBC who produced a documentary on the same subject - refused to air pictures to their viewers. Examples of deformities which Ahmad Mansour has pictures of are : * children born without eyes * children with two and three heads * children born with no orifices * children born with brain and eye/retina malignant tumors * children born with vital organs lacking * children born with missing limbs or extra ones * children born with no genitals * children born with severe cardiac malformation and more... - on that same point, doctors in Falluja were asked for the purpose of the study to note the rates of birth defects in the space of one month and compare to a previous month and this is the result : in the space of one month alone births with defects rose from 1 x day (previous month) to 3 x day (current month designated for the study which was February 2010) - Uranium is fed into the blood stream through ingestion and inhalation. The massive levels of Uranium the people of Falluja were subjected to also accounts for the vertiginous rise in lung, lymph nodes and breast cancers in adults. Already with these preliminary findings, Prof. Busby and his team concluded that in comparison to Hiroshima and Nagazaki - Falluja was worse. And I quote from Dr.Busby : " The situation in Falluja is scary and horrendous, it is more dangerous and worse than Hiroshima..." On a side but very related note : I mentioned these are preliminary results - why so ? Because Prof. Busby has been harassed and has had his research funds slashed, doors closed in his face, threatened, (alongside other scientists who tried conducting similar studies in the 90's in Iraq), abandoned by the scientific community, mobbed --because of the nature of his work on Iraq. The political implications are enormous and dangerous for the US and its cronies. It means that the scientific evidence for War Crimes is right here at our fingertips... Hence Prof. Busby's life has been made very difficult. The research paper that he took great pains in conducting and producing was sent to the Lancet for reviewing at the Scientific committee level, the Lancet turned it down saying it did not have the time to review it. Labs who cooperated in the past to test samples - turned him down when they found out that the samples were from Iraq. Only 2 labs are willing to test the samples for the EXACT MATERIAL/AGENT USED IN FALLUJA - and they are willing to do so only at a very exorbitant price - again due to the sensitive nature of the study. Also due to lack of funds, Prof Busby has about 20 samples from Falluja for testing -- that he is carefully safeguarding -- is awaiting the necessary funds to do so. When asked by Ahmad Mansour what makes him persevere seeing all the formidable obstacles that he has been facing - his reply was : " All my life, I sought the Truth, I am a hunter of the Truth in a jungle of lies. I also have children. Children are not only our future, they are the carriers of future generations. For 50 years we have been contaminating the planet (with radiation) and we pass this legacy onto our children and grandchildren. We owe it to the people of Falluja to find out the Truth " When asked how he manages with no funds and doors closing in his face - his reply was : " I rely on the goodwill of people who send little amounts here and there, and am also a firm believer if the main door closes, open other ones. When there's a will, there's a way." Hats off to you Prof. Busby. I urge all the people reading this post, all people of conscience, I urge all the Iraqis (get a move on for God's sake!) and all Arabs to contact Prof. Busby and to donate so the samples from Falluja can be tested and the Truth can be uncovered. And I shall end this post with a final quote from this great dedicated man " The Truth has wings that can't be clipped " I have to end here. It's early morning, I have not slept yet. I wanted to get this out to the world...the question I shall take with me to bed -- if I can ever close my eyes -- is the same question I have been asking since 2003 - Why ? What have the Iraqi people, what have the Iraqi children done to you to deserve all that ? The implications are harrowing.... P.S: Paola Pisi, Editor of Uruknet found the youtube video, it has just been uploaded. I don't know how she does these things because I've been searching for it for hours. Thank you Paola. Here's another dedicated person to theTruth. If anyone can translate it fully into English I'd appreciate that. Am really too exhausted to review it now and compare it to my notes, above. Again I repeat my plea - IRAQIS GET OFF YOUR ASSES. "Foreigners" care more about your country and the Truth than you do. Shameful lot !

The Not-So-Secret Agents

Weekend Edition
July 2 -5, 2010

CounterPunch Diary

The Not-So-Secret Agents

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

There’s been ripe chortling about the spy network run in the U.S.A. by the Russian SVR – successor to the KGB in the area of foreign intelligence. The eleven accused were supposedly a bunch of bumblers so deficient in remitting secrets to Moscow across nearly a decade that the FBI can’t even muster the evidence to charge them with espionage. The ten who have been arrested are accused of conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general, which is what lobbyists here do if they are working for, say, Georgia or China. Their filings are available for public review at the Commerce Department. If the Russians are convicted, they could be sentenced up to five years in prison.

All of the defendants who appeared in the New York court except one, the fetching Anna Chapman, are also charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years of prison.

Assuming their lawyers don’t get them off, a doubtful proposition, we can assume the Russians will round up 11 Americans, accuse them of spying and then do a trade. Then both sides will start again, the Russians training fresh sets of agents to spout American baseball records, burn hamburgers over the backyard grill, jog and do other all-American things like have negative equity on their houses and owe the IRS money, and the Americans forcing their agents to read Dostoevsky.

The network wasn’t so dumb in conception. Anna Chapman, her photo now being ogled across the net, listed herself as the chief executive officer of PropertyFinder Ltd., a Manhattan real estate firm. This would have been a good springboard into intimate contacts and possibly productive blackmail, with Wall Street tycoons, and the vast espionage target known as the U.N. hq in midtown.

The couple in Boston were nicely located to consort with the hundreds of U.S. government consultants, active advisors and retired officials, roosting at Harvard and MIT. Secrets to steal? There are plenty in the greater Boston/Cambridge area. In the mid-1990s, the director of the Central Intelligence was John Deutch, formerly a prof at MIT, who came under heavy investigation after his retirement for having kept top-secret intelligence files on his home computers. Deutch, born in Brussels with a Russian Jewish father, was pardoned by Bill Clinton in his last day in office.

It’s not a demerit for a spy to live in suburbia in a home secluded behind hydrangeas. “Agents of influence” live the high life and consort with the mighty. Intelligence work needs low profile people too, who chase up confidential data from the pharmaceutical companies and other industrial and high-tech outfits with which New Jersey is filled. But are there any secrets left to steal in this post-Cold War era of the Internet? Of course. There are always codes, reports of secret advanced military projects, biotech and computer hard and software and manifold commercial secrets to be acquired, or at least invigilated. In the dawn of the Republic, Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. secretary of the treasury, treated it as his first order of business to persuade President George Washington to launch a major, successful spy program to steal British industrial patents.

But the assignments given the ring by their handlers in Moscow indicates that Russian espionage has been taken over by think-tank types and policy wonks ladling out softcore assignments like assessing “outlooks” and “moods”. According the FBI’s affidavit, “Heathfield”, in the Boston area, was told to report on "United States policy with regard to the use of the Internet by terrorists, United States policies in Central America, problems with United States military policy and 'Western estimation of (Russian) foreign policy.''' Really! Mr Vladimir’s instruction to Verloc in Conrad’s Secret Agent to blow up the Greenwich Observatory sounds eminently sound by comparison. Richard Sorge, Vilyam Fisher, not to mention Kim Philby, must be rolling in their graves at the misuse of resources.

This indulgence duly infected the ring members who seem, at least to judge from the FBI indictment, to have been timid and without much inventive energy, merely happy to be living in reasonable comfort in America, rather than struggling in Russia’s difficult current environment. It was a situation that did not require a denouement. The FBI had a budget-enhancing job requiring thousands of person-hours monitoring the suspected spies. The spies had their pleasant lives. The SVR had its budget-enhancing spy ring. Why upset the apple cart by rushing in to arrest everyone except Christopher Metsos who jumped bail in Cyprus?

The Russians say darkly that it was an effort by neoconservative forces to mar the pleasant encounter between presidents Medvedev and Obama. Maybe. But as a right-wing conspiracy to bring back the Cold War it was pretty pathetic. The Obama administration made haste to discount any serious diplomatic backwash from the arrests. Maybe the Russians were about to roll up the ring and the FBI wanted to grab a few headlines and justify their next budget request. Maybe it was part of some internecine feud between U.S. intelligence agencies. If there is – as seems likely – a back story, it will be years, if ever, before it comes out.

The FBI is probably thrilled to come up with some spies who aren’t Israelis or Americans working for the Israelis who are routinely spared the inconvenience of any trial by the intervention of Israeli-backed U.S. politicians and speedily released.

A retired intelligence officer in Washington, D.C., did raise some intriguing questions on a Washington Post discussion site, particularly about steganography – embedding secret messages in Internet communications – a technique the Russians allegedly used.

“The document from the FBI has some curious anomalies: (1) after the steganography images were processed, why did they remain posted? (2) why were the agents not trained in radiograms and steganography prior to coming to the U.S.? (3) Why did the agents keep the paper record of the 27-character password for the steganography software, when it should have been memorized or burned immediately? (4) why would the U.N. diplomat meet directly with the agent in Brooklyn, instead of using a cut-out? (5) why were the meetings in the South American country, including the handover of cash conducted in broad daylight in a public park? Illegals are expensive long-term investments, but this batch didn't seem to have been managed well, at least that is the impression from reading the FBI documents.”

The answer is surely that the Russians need to tighten up their act. Remember that when Graham Greene joined MI6, it seemed so appallingly inefficient that he concluded that this was a false front operation, masking the real MI6 from novices such as himself.

Obama’s Green Light to BP

In our latest newsletter Jeffrey St Clair excavates the corruption across three presidencies that led to that appalling disaster in the Gulf. It was bad under Clinton; worse under Bush. But it was Obama and his Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who set the stage for catastrophe.

In the first year of the Obama administration, Salazar’s Interior Department put 53 million acres of offshore oil reserves up for lease, far eclipsing the records set by the Bush administration. As St. Clair describes, Salazar was adamant in retaining Chris Oynes as associate director of offshore drilling at the Minerals Management Service. As St. Clair explains, an outraged inspector general of the Interior Department discovered that on Oynes’s watch “the repeat offenders in the oil industry were allowed to police themselves, writing their own environmental analyses, safety inspections and compliance reports, often in pencil for MMS regulators to trace over in ink.”

By the time Obama declared on March 31 that “we’ve still got to make some tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development in ways that protect communities and protect coastlines,” his administration had given the green light to BP’s Deepwater Horizon well, giving this notoriously criminal company—a big contributor to the Obama 2008 campaign—a pat on the back for its safety record.

This is a must-read piece. Also in this crackerjack edition: What’s the best way to create jobs? Eugene Coyle makes the case for the 4-day work week. Have the CIA and MI6 destroyed classical music in the western world? Britain’s best known composer, Howard Blake, says Yes.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill.

 Graphic comparing the Exxon Valdez and BP Deepwater Horizon oil spills.

Alaska's present, after 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, might be Gulf Coast's future

Published: Sunday, June 27, 2010, 7:59 AM     Updated: Monday, June 28, 2010, 6:16 PM

Cindy Chang, The Times-Picayune

On a chilly, drizzly recent June afternoon in Cordova, Alaska, the town's fishers gathered for an important announcement.

Scott Threlkeld, The Times-PicayuneA sheen of crude oil floats to the surface in a freshly dug hole on the rocky beach at Eleanor Island in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Crude oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill remains below surface rocks on the island.The super tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on in Prince William Sound, spilling more than 11 million gallons of crude oil.

An official from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game emerged with a flier and tacked it to a bulletin board. The news was good: sockeye salmon were plentiful enough to be harvested for a 12-hour period.

Soon, boats were chugging toward the Copper River delta against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains. By the next morning, Cordova Harbor was nearly empty. At an evening softball game, a gaggle of small boys chased every foul ball but few parents were present: many were out on the water.
Life in this town of 2,200 centers around fishing, as it has for generations. During salmon season, Cordova operates in its own unique rhythm, set by the comings and goings of the crews who spend days or weeks at a time on their boats, and by the perpetual daylight of the Alaskan summer. Main Street, with its family-owned bookstore, family-owned drugstore and century-old hotel, is like a far-northern version of Mayberry.

Associated Press archiveIn April 1989, Bill Scheer, of Valdez, Alaska, is covered in crude oil while working on a beach fowled by the spill of the tanker Exxon Valdez.

But mention the word Exxon to anyone here, and the idyll evaporates. Men break down in tears describing what they lost when 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled into Prince William Sound in 1989 from a grounded tanker named Exxon Valdez. Twenty-one years later, the herring that once signaled the start of the summer season are largely gone, rendering $300,000 permits worthless. Losses are tallied in divorces, suicides, repossessed boats, depleted college funds, friends who moved away. Cynicism, normally a stranger to small towns, has lodged permanently in people's craws, receiving a fresh injection two years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court whittled a $2.5 billion punitive-damages judgment against Exxon down to $500 million.
Now, whenever they turn on the television, Cordovans see an eerie replay of what they experienced two decades ago. Boats trailing oil-absorbent boom, birds covered beak to tail with black crud, meetings in high school gymnasiums where the oil company promises to make fishers whole: It is all too close to home.
BP spill surpasses Valdez in weeks
Exxon Valdez long ranked as the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, but BP Deepwater Horizon surpassed it in a matter of weeks, if not days. The deep-sea oil rig, which killed 11 workers when it exploded on April 20, has spewed the equivalent of at least three and perhaps 15 Exxon Valdezes into the Gulf of Mexico, with the possibility of total containment still more than a month away.

Scott Threlkeld, The Times-PicayuneA fishing boat heads to port in Cordova, Alaska. Fishers in Cordova, a fishing village accessible only by boat or aircraft, were devastated by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound.

The ecological disaster thousands of miles to the south has brought renewed interest in remote Cordova, reachable only by boat or plane. Despite the pain of dredging up the past, most Cordovans are willing to share their stories with visitors. They volunteer advice to their Gulf Coast counterparts, with "Don't trust BP" the most common admonition.
"Don't believe anything the oil company says. They have huge PR departments whose job it is to minimize the collateral damage," said Mike Lytle, a Cordova fisherman. "I hope you have better luck than we did with the oil companies."
In some ways, Alaska and Louisiana could not be more different. In Alaska, the lucrative catches are salmon and halibut, not shrimp and oysters. Fillets are grilled with salt and pepper or a dash of teriyaki, not Cajun spice blend. Summer temperatures rarely rise above 60 degrees, and the frigid winters are accompanied by round-the-clock darkness.

fisheries and Big Oil -- or as vulnerable to being sullied when a drilling operation goes horribly wrong. In both states, families have fished the same waters for generations and even the young people cannot imagine any other way of life. Twenty-one years later, Exxon Valdez survivors are like maritime Cassandras, foreseeing the long and bitter journey in store for the Gulf Coast residents they have never met but whose plight they have been following from afar.
"A lot of lives are going to be affected. It'll never be the same. It'll take years and years to work through it," said Bruce Robertson, who has fished local waters for close to 30 years. "Nice families will be broken apart. Businesses will be lost. It's not going to be pretty."

Oil remains just below surface, 21 years after spill
Eleanor Island is one of many uninhabited slips of land scattered across Prince William Sound. Its rocky beaches are home to purple starfish and colonies of tiny mussels. Closer to the treeline, the rocks get smaller. Remove a few shovelfuls of the gravel-like surface and you will strike oil -- not naturally occurring oil but Exxon Valdez oil, buried for 21 years. The water welling up in the hole has a rainbow sheen. Dark brown globs float on the surface, and the smell summons up a gas station.




After the Exxon Valdez slammed into Bligh Reef on March 24, 1989, piloted by an unlicensed assistant while the allegedly inebriated captain was below deck, the slick initially did not spread far from the tanker. But efforts to contain it were minimal. On the third day, a powerful storm blew into the Sound, and the oil spread southwest, eventually covering more than 11,000 square miles. Cordova was spared a direct hit, but the town would never be the same.

Associated Press archive21 years earlier, crews used high-pressured hoses to blast Exxon Valdez oil from the rocks on the beach on Naked Island in Prince William Sound.

After a few disastrous seasons, Prince William Sound salmon have rebounded, with a boost from hatcheries that cultivate eggs and release juvenile fish into the wild. Sea otters remain in the "recovering" column; those animals that dig for clams in places with lingering subsurface oil have not bounced back as quickly. One killer whale pod is doing well after losing about 40 percent of its members, but the other local pod appears headed for extinction.
The biggest loss is the herring, once exported to Japan for its pale yellow roe. The whales, sea lions and seabirds appear to have enough herring to eat, but numbers remain far too low to sustain a commercial fishery that once injected millions of dollars into the local economy. People in other Prince William Sound communities who made their living from the sea were affected in much the same way Cordovans were.
"It was a source of a big chunk of our income," said Rochelle van den Broek, executive director of Cordova District Fishermen United. "Things are definitely a lot slower. Now, not everyone can afford to live here, and we lose half the town during the winter. There aren't as many kids at school. There's the whole trickle-down effect."
The oily deposits on Eleanor Island are not proof positive that Louisiana oyster fishers or Pensacola sunbathers will still be contending with tarballs 20 years from now. Oil decomposes faster in warm waters than in the icy Alaskan seas, and marshes can cleanse themselves more readily than rocky beaches. The BP spill is much farther offshore than the Exxon Valdez was. But the amount of oil that continues to gush from a mile under the ocean has already exceeded the Alaska spill by an order of magnitude. Another wild card is dispersants, used only briefly to combat Exxon Valdez but a long-term worry for the Gulf of Mexico because of their toxicity.
"What's more hopeful is that the oil will not remain as long. But it will still be very damaging," said Nancy Bird, executive director of the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova.
'The world turned upside down'
In early 1989, Linden O'Toole and her husband, Kevin, were in the market for a salmon seining permit. The fishery was extremely profitable, and the Cordova couple was outbid by one buyer before paying $300,000 for the right to capture salmon by encircling them with nets.

Scott Threlkeld, The Times-PicayuneSalmon fresh off the boat drop into bins at Copper River Seafoods in Cordova. After 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, fishers in Codrova suffered lean times and often financial ruin because of the reduction of open fishing grounds and the collapse of fish prices.

That was a few months before the spill. Nonetheless, 1990 was a banner year for Prince William Sound salmon seiners. But the oil devastated spawning grounds, and the effect was seen a few years later, when the hatchlings from 1989 should have ended up in seiners' nets. The yield went from 68 million pounds in 1991 to 17 million in 1992 and just 9.5 million the following year, a decline of 86 percent. The value of a permit fell even more precipitously, according to state data, hitting a low of $13,500 in 2003.
The O'Tooles eventually unloaded their permit for $47,000 but were still on the hook for the original $300,000 debt. They scraped by with earnings from Linden O'Toole's real estate business. Kevin O'Toole returned to being a deckhand. Only last year did he buy back into the seining industry and become his own boss again, albeit with an aging clunker of a boat.

Scott ThrelkeldJohn Platt: 'I'm still reeling. I've got three boys who want to go to college next year and I can't help them,'

"The future was so bright at that point. The minute that changed was when the oil hit that water," Linden O'Toole said. "There's no question, that's when the world turned upside down for us."
Many local fishers worked on the cleanup, and some profited more than others, spawning the term "spillionaire." Valdez, the doomed tanker's home port, where oil instead of fishing dominates, attracted so many job seekers that hotels overflowed and tent cities sprang up. But in the long run, the money Cordovans made that summer did not cover the losses they suffered in subsequent years. Some, feeling flush, invested in new boats or permits, only to see the fisheries come crashing down.
Some left fishing and started new lives, either in town or elsewhere. Local businesses, dependent on fishing money, failed in droves.

"My heart breaks for you guys. I don't think anyone down there knows what they're in for," said Sylvia Lange, a former fisherwoman who now owns the Reluctant Fisherman Inn. "The only thing you can do is change your life and make it positive for yourself. If you always wanted to go to art school, do it."
John Platt bought a herring seining permit in 1990 for $300,000. He fished for herring in 1991 and 1992, but there has only been one commercial herring season since then, and none since 1998. The market value of a herring permit is now about $10,000.
The money Platt got from Exxon, which he described as "a fraction of the actual losses," all went to pay off his now-worthless herring permit.
"I'm still reeling. I've got three boys who want to go to college next year and I can't help them," said Platt, who still fishes for salmon. "We haven't had health insurance in I don't know how long."

Scott Threlkeld, The Times-PicayuneDouglas Pettit: 'You can't imagine the change. It just sucked the life right out of this town.'

Platt's half-brother, Douglas Pettit, invested nearly $400,000 in a salmon seining boat and permit the year after the spill. The fishery has rebounded in recent years, but by then, Pettit was mired in debt and being pursued by creditors. He gave up the boat and recently sold the permit for a huge loss.
Despite income from a heating and plumbing business, Pettit fears losing his house and his remaining boat. He burst into tears and hid his face in his hands when he considered the possibility. Another brother, Daniel Pettit, died in 2005 after the failing fisheries drove him to alcoholism, Pettit said.
>"You can't imagine the change. It just sucked the life right out of this town," Pettit said. "To take away our livelihood and our way of life, that really hurts."
Steven Picou, a University of South Alabama sociologist, has documented the high rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues in Cordova after Exxon Valdez. "Technological disasters" like oil spills are much harder on victims than natural disasters because of the bitterness toward the individuals or companies that caused them, and because the effects tend to be spread out over a longer period of time, Picou has written. Drawn-out litigation adds to the psychological strain.
Picou has also studied Hurricane Katrina survivors. The catastrophic oil spill comes just as the Gulf Coast had started returning to normal, five years after the storm.
"They're vulnerable, and this makes it worse in terms of people who can't cope with this. When is it going to end?" Picou said. "We knew when Katrina ended, we knew when we got water pumped out of city, we knew we could go back and rebuild and raise our homes and protect ourselves from it never happening again. Here we are with this thing. There's very little people can do. They feel helpless, they feel a lot of anger. It's like the whole meaning of life is sucked out of these communities."
Emotions still raw in fishing village
In the old days, a Native Alaskan who felt an authority figure had been unresponsive and needed to be browbeaten into doing the right thing might have commissioned a "shame pole."

Scott Threlkeld, The Times-PicayuneA 'shame pole,' by artist Mike Webber, is displayed at the Ilanka Cultural Center in Cordova. It features the upside-down head of Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, now retired, with dollar signs for eyes and oil spewing from his mouth with the words, 'We will make you whole.' Webber, an Alutiiq, said shame or ridicule poles are meant to shame the offender into doing the right thing.

Such a totem pole is on display at Cordova's Ilanka Cultural Center, which is devoted to Native Alaskan artifacts. Artist and local fisherman Mike Webber portrays Exxon's former CEO, Lee Raymond, hanging upside down with black oil spilling from his mouth and the quote "We will make you whole." On the 7-foot cedar pole, oil-soaked wildlife and dead herring float near a tombstone commemorating the 6,000 plaintiffs who died before the conclusion of the 20-year litigation against Exxon.

Substitute BP's Tony Hayward for Raymond and pelicans for the sea otter, and many Louisianans would see an exact match with their own situation.

Anger at Exxon, first for causing the disaster and then for playing hardball with compensation claims, is still raw in Cordova. The U.S. Supreme Court caused a new groundswell of bitterness when it drastically reduced a punitive damages award by a lower court. The $20 billion escrow account set up by President Barack Obama and funded by BP could help avoid a repeat of a similar legal battle, but Cordovans warn those affected by the spill not to count on BP or the government.

"Everyone was thinking they'd get a big payoff from Exxon. They get a check 18 years later and it's a fraction of what they thought it would be. There's been divorces, all sorts of things. The town was kind of messed up, but it's kind of come back together again," said Don Bailey, a fisherman for 37 years.

A way of life
For all its struggles, Cordova remains a fishing town. The young people are sometimes advised to find a job with a steady paycheck, but many are determined to follow in their parents' footsteps.
John Platt's three sons all want to fish. Platt has agreed, on one condition: They must finish college so they will have a backup if the ecosystem goes haywire or, God forbid, there is another spill. His oldest, Christopher, plans to fish in the summers while teaching high school in the off-season.

Like Platt, James Burton's father spent the last two decades paying off a worthless herring permit and tried to persuade his son to become something other than a fisherman. The younger Burton worked for several years as a state trooper but disliked sitting at a desk writing reports. The open ocean called.
Though the herring are gone and the Sound just had its first shrimp opener since the spill, the bounty of salmon -- king, chum, coho, pink, sockeye -- still provides a living for Cordova's fishers. The 2008 salmon seining season was epic, with a $52 million yield, though 2009 was not as good.
"I grew up that way," said Burton, 30. "I couldn't stay away."

Image of the Day: Cassini Frames Saturn's Moons Titan & Dione

Check out this latest image from Cassini, NASA’s orbiting Saturn outpost. It shows the small Saturnian moon Dione in crisp detail, in front of the hazy atmosphere of Titan.
NASA says: Cassini takes pictures like this all the time, so it’s easy to forget how amazing it is: We have a foil-wrapped 22-foot-tall spacecraft whizzing around the rings and moons of the sixth planet, snapping stunning vistas of a place no human will likely ever visit. And each photo is more amazing than the last.
This image was taken April 10, 2010, in visible color -- no fancy Photoshop work, except a bit of heightened contrast. This is what things really looked like from Cassini’s position, 1.1 million miles from Dione, 1.7 million miles from Titan and at least 744 million miles from Earth. Pretty amazing stuff.
Via NASA

Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed Fails

Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed Fails 229-198

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By RonPaul.com on July 1, 2010

Ron Paul’s attempt to audit the Federal Reserve, which was previously co-sponsored by 320 members of the House (HR 1207), failed by a vote of 229-198. All Republicans voted in favor of the measure with 23 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans. 122 co-sponsors of HR 1207, all Democrats, jumped ship and voted against the measure.
The GOP had offered the Fed audit as the minority’s last chance to alter the financial regulation bill. The bill does have an watered-down audit provision in the conference report, but it is limited to loans made by the Fed during the height of the economic crisis. Ron Paul’s bill would have allowed a total examination of the Fed’s books.

Audit the Fed: Vote on House Floor Today!

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By RonPaul.com on June 30, 2010

As the House debates the financial regulatory reform bill, the Republicans will offer the thorough Paul-Grayson Audit language as part of their motion to recommit.
In support of this motion, Representative Paul has written an “Audit the Fed” post for the “America Speaking Out” website. Check it out here and show your support by voting for the idea and leaving a comment.
You can find out more about the motion to recommit here.

GOPers To Push Fed Audit
House GOPers will make a push to audit the Federal Reserve in a last-ditch effort to stop financial regulatory reform legislation, leaning on a popular proposal from Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) to make their case.
The GOP will offer the Fed audit as a motion to recommit, the minority’s last chance to alter a bill before final passage. A motion to recommit is subject only to an up-or-down vote, not to debate or amendments.
The regulatory reform measure does have an audit provision in the conference report, but it is limited to loans made by the Fed during the height of the economic crisis. Paul’s bill would allow a total examination of the Fed’s books.
Paul’s legislation has 320 co-sponsors, including Dems as diverse as Reps. Jason Altmire (D-PA), a centrist, and Steve Cohen (D-TN), a liberal.
But it’s unlikely to pass as a motion to recommit, which would send the conference committee back to the drawing board for a third time. House and Senate Dems reached agreement Tuesday night on a revamped package after Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), 2 key GOPers who voted for the Senate version, said they could not vote for the first conference report. Negotiators ended up dropping a proposed $18B bank tax to help pay for the bill.

Call Congress and urge your representative to support Audit the Fed (especially if they’re a cosponsor) by voting for the motion to recommit on H.R. 4173. If final passage of the Dodd-Frank bill comes up for a vote, demand they oppose this latest government move to interfere in the economy.

Ron Paul on Federal Reserve Audit and Financial Regulation

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By RonPaul.com on June 30, 2010

Ron Paul says the monetary system is the cause of the crisis, and giving more power to the Fed doesn’t make sense since they are the cause of the crisis. The original language of HR 1207, calling for a full audit of the Fed, was neutered but there is still a chance to revive the original intent. Without a full audit, we will never understand why bubbles form and why more regulations fail. The Fed audit that Paul is calling for does not challenge the supposed independence of the Federal Reserve.

P. Krugman-The Icelandic Post-crisis Miracle

New York Times Blog

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June 30, 2010, 6:09 pm

The Icelandic Post-crisis Miracle

Iceland is, of course, one of the great economic disaster stories of all time. An economy that produced a decent standard of living for its people was in effect hijacked by a combination of free-market ideology and crony capitalism; one of the papers (pdf) at the conference I just attended in Luxembourg shows that the benefits of the financial bubble went overwhelmingly to a small minority at the top of the income distribution:

Olafsson and Kristjansson

And in the process of building short-lived financial empires, a handful of operators built up enormous debts that their fellow citizens are now expected to repay.
But there’s an odd coda to the story. Unlike other disaster economies around the European periphery – economies that are trying to rehabilitate themselves through austerity and deflation — Iceland built up so much debt and found itself in such dire straits that orthodoxy was out of the question. Instead, Iceland devalued its currency massively and imposed capital controls. [ΑΥΤΗ ΕΙΝΑΙ Η ΛΥΣΙΣ ΔΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ, ΜΟΝΟΝ ΑΥΤΗ!!!]
And a strange thing has happened: although Iceland is generally considered to have experienced the worst financial crisis in history, its punishment has actually been substantially less than that of other nations. Here’s GDP:

Eurostat

And here’s employment:

Eurostat

The moral of the story seems to be that if you’re going to have a crisis, it’s better to have a really, really bad one. Otherwise, you’ll end up taking the advice of people who assure you that even more suffering will cure what ails you.

P. Buchanan- The Prisoner of Gen. Petraeus

June 29th, 2010

The Prisoner of Gen. Petraeus

By Patrick J. Buchanan
President Obama is being hailed for toughness in his firing of Gen. McChrystal and brilliance in his replacing him as Afghan field commander with Gen. David Petraeus, who managed the George W. Bush “surge” in Iraq that saved this nation from an ignominious defeat.
Herewith, a dissent.
By firing a fighting general, beloved of his troops, Obama just took upon himself full responsibility for the McChrystal Plan. The general is off the hook.
As of now, the plan is not succeeding. And given the inability of Kabul to deliver the “government in a box” to Marja, after Marines supposedly de-Talibanized the town, the McChrystal Plan is failing. The Battle of Kandahar has not yet begun, though the June D-Day has come and gone.
Should we be in this same bloody stalemate in December, Obama will be blamed for having fired his field commander who devised his battle plan, and was carrying it out, over some stupid insults from staff officers to some counterculture magazine.
More critically, Obama just made himself hostage to a savvy general who is said to dream of one day holding Obama’s office.
Consider the box Obama just put himself in.
In 2009, he sacked Gen. David McKiernan and replaced him with his own man, Gen. McChrystal. Now, he has sacked McChrystal and replaced him with Petraeus.
The former community organizer and acolyte of Saul Alinsky cannot now possibly fire the most popular and successful general in the U.S. Army, who accepted a demotion to take command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, without a firestorm that would consume his presidency.
If Obama has not noticed, the neocons, who want a “long war” in the Islamic world and a new war with Iran, are celebrating the Petraeus appointment with far greater unanimity than Obama’s own staff.
Why is the War Party celebrating? Petraeus is one of them.
And the untouchable general’s demands have begun to come in.
Clearly, Obama has been told he must back away from his declared deadline of July 31, 2011, for beginning withdrawals of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. And Obama is already moving to do so.
Vice President Joe Biden’s statement in Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise” that, “in July of 2011, you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out, bet on it,” has already been challenged by Defense’s Robert Gates.
No such decision has yet been made, said Gates.
Look to Obama, soon, to walk back that July 2011 date and declare that any withdrawal of U.S. troops will be “conditions-based” — another way of saying that if we are not winning the war in July 2011, we are not coming home.
Here is the likely scenario.
At the December review of the Afghan war, Petraeus will argue that, while progress is being made, we cannot meet our goals by July 2011. Years more of combat will be required to win the war.
Petraeus will ask the president for more time, perhaps years more, and perhaps ask for more troops, 20,000 or 30,000, to complete the mission and ensure Afghanistan is not again a sanctuary for al-Qaida.
Thus, in December 2010, Obama becomes LBJ in December 1967, when Gen. William Westmoreland, with 500,000 troops in Vietnam, came to the White House to ask for 200,000 more. LBJ said no.
And as the Republican right hammered him for not bombing Hanoi and blockading Haiphong, Sens. Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy entered the primaries against him from the left.
Richard Nixon, saying five years of unsuccessful prosecution of a war called out for new leadership, was marching to the nomination of a party he had helped reunite after the Barry Goldwater disaster.
The outlook bleak, his party splintering, LBJ declared on March 31, 1968, that he would not run again.
If Obama repudiates his July 2011 date for first withdrawals of U.S. troops, if he agrees to any new Petraeus troop request, his party will split and he will face a primary challenge from the antiwar left.
But if he stands with Biden and says the July 2011 date holds, and the troops start home in July, Petraeus would likely put out word that his hands are being tied and he will not fight a no-win war.
Should Petraeus resign his command under such circumstances, he would become a Douglas MacArthur-like hero to the GOP, and could wind up as No. 2 on the ticket. And that could send Barack Obama home to Chicago.
Obama should have left McChrystal to succeed or fail with the McChrystal Plan. Had he succeeded, Obama also would have succeeded. Had he failed, Obama would have been free to relieve him and tell the nation: “We gave it our best shot, with our best general, with all the resources he requested. Regrettably, we did not succeed. Now we are coming home.”
That option was closed when he fired McChrystal and made himself the political prisoner of Gen. David Petraeus.
Brilliant.

The International Monetary Fund

June 29, 2010

Trust Them? Why?

Is Advice From the IMF Better Than Advice From a Drunk on the Street?

By DEAN BAKER

That is the question that people around the world should be asking as the International Monetary Fund dishes out its prescription for austerity. The IMF program calls for cutbacks in government support for health care, pensions and a wide range of other public services. It also calls for weakening labor market regulations that provide workers with job security.

These recommendations are being given in a context where the world economy is suffering from a massive shortfall of demand. In other words, tens of millions of people are unemployed right now because there is not enough spending to keep them employed. The IMF’s program is almost certain to reduce spending further leading to even larger shortfalls in demand and more unemployment.

But, the IMF says that we should trust them. The question we should all be asking is “why?”

Where was the IMF when the housing bubble in the United States and elsewhere was inflating to ever more dangerous levels? Was it frantically yelling at governments to rein in the bubbles before they burst with disastrous consequences? After all, what could possibly have been more important than warning of the dangers of these bubbles?

It was easy to both recognize the housing bubbles and that their collapse would have devastating consequences for the economy. Economies don’t adjust easily to a loss of wealth that in some cases exceeded 50 percent of GDP.

Real economists know this, but apparently the folks at the IMF did not, or if they did, they didn’t think it was worth saying anything. One will look in vain through IMF publications during the buildup of the housing bubble for serious warnings of the potential dangers. While the IMF can scream about the need for austerity today, it couldn’t be bothered to say much about the bubbles that got us here.

The IMF’s track record gives us reason not only to question the institution’s competence but also its motivations. This question comes up most clearly in the case of Argentina. At the end of 2001 Argentina defaulted on its debt, enraging the IMF. Prior to the default, Argentina had been an IMF poster child eagerly embracing the IMF's program. The IMF's growth forecasts clearly reflected its change of attitude towards Argentina. Prior to the default the IMF was consistently overly optimistic about Argentina's growth prospects, projecting much higher growth than Argentina actually experienced. After the default, the IMF was hugely over-pessimistic, projecting much lower growth rates than it subsequently experienced. It is difficult to explain this pattern of errors except by a political motivation.

It is possible to see a similar pattern in the IMF’s latest set of policy recommendations to deal with the economic crisis. The impact of most of its proposals will be to reduce the benefits received by ordinary workers. The proposed changes in labor market regulations will likely also weaken workers’ bargaining power, leading to cuts in wages. Furthermore, the reduction in demand caused by the turn to austerity will leave millions more out of work, both depriving these workers of income and further weakening the bargaining power of those who still have jobs.

There are alternatives. Central banks like the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Board could just buy and hold large amounts of government debt. These central banks can both ensure that there are no questions of solvency by providing a ready market for government debt and that there is no build-up of interest burdens. The interest paid on the debt held by the banks is refunded to governments.

Large-scale central bank purchases of government debt will not create inflation in a context of massive unemployment and excess capacity. This is not a point we have to debate. Japan’s central bank has bought an amount of government debt roughly equal to its GDP, yet it remains far more concerned about deflation than inflation. While we could hope to do better on the stimulus front than Japan, inflation is simply not a problem it faces now or even on the distant horizon.

It is especially painful to see these calls from austerity coming from the IMF. This organization is distinguished not only by its dismal track record in pushing economic policies that don’t work; it also is known for the exorbitant benefits that it gives its economists. Under the IMF’s pension program, many staffers can retire in their early 50s with six-figure pensions. Imagine the folks who completely missed the housing bubble or who got it totally wrong on Argentina lounging around the tropics at age 51 on their $100,000 a year IMF pension. At least a street drunk giving economic advice would be honest.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy and False Profits: Recoverying From the Bubble Economy.
This column was originally published by The Guardian.

Guns of August in the Middle East?

July 1, 2010

Dispatches From the Edge

Guns of August in the Middle East?

By CONN HALLINAN

Crazy talk about the Middle East seems to be escalating, backed up by some pretty ominous military deployments. First, the department of scary statements:

First up, Shabtai Shavit, former chief of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, speaking June 21 at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv on why Israel should launch a pre-emptive strike at Iran: “I am of the opinion that, since there is an ongoing war, since the threat is permanent, since the intention of the enemy in this case is to annihilate you, the right doctrine is one of presumption and not retaliation.”

Second up, Uzi Arad, Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security advisor, speaking before the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem June 22 on his belief that the “international community” would support an Israeli strike at Iran” “I don’t see anyone who questions the legality of this or the legitimacy.”

Third up, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi speaking to reporters at the G-8 meeting in Toronto June 26: “Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively.”

Fourth up, Central Intelligence Director Leon Panetta predicting on ABC’s “This Week” program June 27 that Iran could have two nuclear weapons by 2012: “We think they [Iran] have enough low-enriched uranium for two weapons…and while there is continuing debate [within Iran] right now about whether or not they ought to proceed with a bomb…they clearly are developing their nuclear capacity.” He went on to say that the U.S. is sharing intelligence with Israelis and that Tel Aviv is “willing to give us the room to be able to try to change Iran diplomatically and culturally and politically.”

A few points:

1) Iran and Israel are not at war, a fact Shavit seems confused about.

2) Since the recent rounds of sanctions aimed at Iran would have lost in the United Nations General Assembly, it unclear who Arad thinks is the “international community.”

3) Berlusconi is a bit of a loose cannon, but he is tight with the Israelis.

4) An Iran that is different “diplomatically and culturally and politically” sounds an awful lot like “regime change.” Is that the “room” Panetta is talking about?

And it isn’t all talk.

Following up the London Times report that Saudi Arabia had given Israel permission to fly through Saudi airspace to attack Iran, the Jerusalem Post, the Islam Times and the Iranian news agency Fars report that the Israeli air force has stockpiled equipment in the Saudi desert near Jordan.

According to the Post supplies were unloaded June 18 and 19 outside the Saudi city of Tabuk, and all civilian flights into the area were canceled during the two day period. The Post said that an “anonymous American defense official” claimed that Mossad chief Meir Dagan was the contact man with Saudi Arabia and had briefed Netanyahu on the plans.

The Gulf Daily News reported June 26 that Israel has moved warplanes to Georgia and Azerbaijan, which would greatly shorten the distance Israeli planes would have to fly to attack targets in northern Iran.

The U.S currently has two aircraft carriers—the Truman and the Eisenhower—plus more than a dozen support vessels in the Gulf of Hormuz, the strategic choke point leading into the Gulf of Iran.

The Saudis have vigorously denied the reports they are aiding the Israelis, and Shafeeq Ghabra, president of the American University of Kuwait, says “It would be impossible for the Saudis to allow an Israeli attack on Iran.”

But Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Ramat Gan, Israel, argues that Saudi Arabia and Israel both fear a nuclear-armed Iran. “This bring us together on a strategic level in that we have common interests. Since the Arab world and Saudi Arabia understand that President Obama is a weak person, maybe they decided to facilitate this happening.” He also said the story might not be true because “I don’t think the Saudis want to burden themselves with this kind of cooperation with Israel.”

According to military historian Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “The real fear is that someone will get carried away by his own rhetoric and fear mongering” and start a war. He also thinks, however, that Israel should not take a preemptive strike “off the table.”

Trita Parsi of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington argues that the escalation of rhetoric is dangerous. “When you have that kind of political environment, you are leaving yourself no space to find another solution,” she told the Christian Science Monitor. “You may very well end up in a situation where you are propelled to act, even though you understand it is an unwise action, but [do so] for political reasons.”

The rhetoric is getting steamy, the weapons are moving into position, and it is beginning to feel like “The Guns of August” in the Middle East.

Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net

What do we know about the Deepwater Horizon disaster?

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10370479.stm

What do we know about the Deepwater Horizon disaster?

 

Firefighters battled in vain to save the rig

The Deepwater Horizon rig disaster caused the deaths of 11 crew and a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since the 20 April catastrophe there has been much discussion in US Congressional hearings and the media about the sequence of events that led up to it.
Here is a summary of what we know so far about the BP oil spill, and the primary questions that are still being investigated.

BACKGROUND

The Deepwater Horizon rig was drilling an oil well in the Macondo prospect that was intended to be plugged with cement and then completed later to become a production well.
The top of the well was about 5,000ft (1,524m) beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
The Deepwater Horizon was owned and mostly staffed by employees of exploration firm Transocean, under contract to BP.

THE NATURE OF THE WELL

GLOSSARY

Continue reading the main story

• BOP: Blowout preventer - stack of valves designed to stop blowouts
• Blind ram shear: Last line of defence in BOP - cuts pipe
• Centraliser: Device to keep pipe or casing in centre of well
• Cement bond log: Tests to make sure cement is sound
• Annulus: Gap between pipe and rock, or between pipe and another pipe

Underwater oil wells are not just holes with a drilling pipe stuck into them. As the drilling is done, a fluid, usually mud is forced out of the drill bit and debris is thus pushed upwards.
This fluid also counteracts the pressure to stop oil and gas forcing their way upwards.
Once each passage of drilling is completed, metal casing is cemented into place in the hole.
In this case the well had already been cemented ready for abandonment. At the point the disaster occurred, the well was essentially finished.

HOW CEMENT AND CASING IS PLACED IN DRILLING BOREHOLE
Drill, lowered from rig, bores through seabed creating a borehole for sections of casing pipe to be lowered into Casing pipe is lowered into borehole allowing cement to be pumped down the pipe to fix it in place Once the cement is set and secure another stage of drilling begins

CASING AND CEMENT

The first of the two catastrophic problems was in the well itself.
In his evidence to a Congressional committee on 19 May, Transocean chief executive Steve Newman noted that the well was "essentially complete" with drilling having finished three days before the disaster on 17 April.
He said: "The one thing we do know is that on the evening of 20 April, there was a sudden catastrophic failure of the casing, the cement or both. Without a failure of one of those elements, the explosion could not have occurred."
The cementing job was done by Halliburton to specifications ultimately determined by BP.

CENTRALISERS

Much has been made in Congressional hearings of the number of centralisers used. These devices make sure that the pipe or casing is centralised during cementing, to ensure a good job is done.
Congressmen say Halliburton recommended that 21 should be used, but BP decided only six should be used.
In an e-mail, a BP engineer said : "But, who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine and we'll get a good cement job."

CEMENT BOND LOG

Because of the importance of getting a good cement job in the well, one that is bonded both to the casing and to the geological formation in which the well is dug, a series of measurements called a "cement bond log" is usually run.
A sonic scanning device is lowered through the well on a wireline. It checks whether there are imperfections in bonding or other problems in the cement. If there are, more cement can be squeezed into affected sections.
Documents presented to Congress show a team from Schlumberger were called to the rig to be ready to do such work, but that they departed on the morning of the disaster having been told their services were not required.
Other documents suggest the cost saving in not having a "cement bond log" to be about $118,000.

CEMENT ISSUES

Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, noted "the failure to circulate potentially gas-bearing drilling muds out of the well". This should have been done before cementing.
Another issue was the type of casing that would be used on the final, bottom section of the well. BP opted for a single line of casing from the seabed down to the bottom of the well, Congressman say. The more expensive option would have been to use a "liner", a bit of casing hung from the bottom of the casing section above. Inside this would have been a further piece of tubing called a "tieback".
This arrangement would have created more barriers to the upward flow of oil and gas, but it would also have been more expensive.
Other cementing issues being investigated by Transocean include the type of nitrogen-foamed cement used, the volume and the time it was allowed to "cure".

WHAT IS A BOP?

Whatever the exact cause of what happened, it is clear there was some sort of gas-kick and blowout resulting in an uncontrolled upward surge of oil and gas flow to the surface.
The blowout preventer (BOP) is supposed to stop this happening. The BOP, the size of a five-storey building, consists of a series of high-pressure valves, designed to prevent such a surge or kick from damaging the drilling operation.
In this particular BOP, built by US firm Cameron to specifications by Transocean, there are five ram-type preventers and two annular preventers, according to Transocean's chief executive.
These devices did not stop the blowout. Nor has it been possible to activate them using remote-operated vehicles.

WHY DID THE BOP FAIL?

Blowout preventer

Investigations into the US oil spill are focused on the blowout preventer system of valves on the seabed.

The system's control panel is its electronic "brains", keeping valves open to allow flow from well to rig.

In an emergency, hydraulic valves or shear rams should close shut on the pipe, sealing it and preventing flow.

BACK 1 of 3 NEXT

Two possible scenarios have been discussed. One - suggested by Transocean - is that the kick was so catastrophic it pushed fragments of cement debris through the BOP so fast that it was damaged and could not activate.
The sheer force of what happened is indicated by the fact that cement debris travelled all the way up the 5,000ft of riser and on to the deck of the drilling rig.
The other possibility is that the BOP was faulty in the first place.
There were initial allegations that the batteries in a control pod for the BOP may have been flat. Transocean denies this.
A rig worker has also told the BBC's Panorama programme that a leak had been spotted in one of the BOP's control pods.
The last line of defence in a BOP is usually the blind shear ram. This device, activated hydraulically, uses piston-driven blades to cut the pipe, thus stopping the flow.

Tyrone Benton: 'We saw a leak'

This did not work. One possible explanation is that the section of pipe it was trying to shear was a section of "tool joint". These joints between the pipes are typically so strong that a blind shear ram cannot deal with them.
Another possibility is that something in the hydraulic mechanism of the blind shear ram had failed.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

With the failure to prevent the blowout, the rig was in danger. Everything happened very quickly, according to Transocean boss Steve Newman's hearing evidence.
"It is also clear that the drill crew had very little, if any, time to react. The initial indications of trouble and the subsequent explosions were almost instantaneous."
The surge of gas that reached the surface ignited. Transocean identified two nearby vessels, the rig's own engines and some equipment as the possible source of the accidental ignition.
In the blast and fire, 11 rig workers died, with more injured. Just over 36 hours later the rig sank.