After watching the Democratic Congressman from Louisiana, Charlie Melancon, break down in tears while talking about the destruction of wetlands by BP's oil spill, and about the people of South Louisiana, I am reminded of my mother's voice when she called me from Houston during Katrina. I have never heard her voice sound like that before. The city of New Orleans, where she had been a young bride, where she had attended Tulane University and where her husband, my father, worked with a local doctor who ran for Governor years ago...was being destroyed. My mother said to me, holding back tears, "Those towns, Plaquemines Parish, it's all gone". Once again, it is all gone...due to pure greed.
My father is a native of Louisiana, and his parents gave me a book of poetry which had belonged to my great-grandmother. Inside the back cover she wrote the following: "New Orleans is the only exotic city in America". I have lived in many parts of the U.S. and I agree with her. But I would add that not just New Orleans, but the entire Gulf Coast, the small fishing villages and the estuaries and wetlands and intercoastal waterways, the beaches and towns which make their living from their proximity to the Gulf, embody a way of life which is not only "exotic"...it is one of the few places in America where there is still some texture, where the culture is deeply rooted in the way of life. One which now may be extinguished forever. Yet how many Americans really know this part of the US? It may now be too late. Nothing will ever be the same again.
It is not by accident that the Blues musicians sprang forth from the rural small towns in the South, often poor as can be, that the Rolling Stones and so many others found inspiration in these Gulf States, the true deep South, where poverty and a sometimes disturbing reality mixed with a true love of both having a good time, and knowing how to "make due" when times are tough. And although I first witnessed the damage deep poverty could do when my father took on trip after trip to Louisiana, I also saw a joy of life, a pride in a way of life, and some of the most irreverent and yet respectful people I have ever met.
Oil is mixed in with everything on the Gulf Coasts of Louisiana and Texas. Men come from far and near to make money working as roughnecks on the wells. Wives cope with men gone for weeks at a time on the rigs. My former husband worked creating products to help save lives in the case of a disaster on a rig. He also was an engineer who worked with the insurance companies allowing (or not) rigs to be insured. This is serious geopolitics. We need to look into the history of deep drilling, follow the money trails, and the political ones. Because this is more than just a horrific "accident" which will kill all marine life and choke the wetlands for decades, it will lead to calls for alternative green energies. But for the moment, the powers that be are in the hands of the same good ole boys from BP, to Houston, to Saudi Arabia, to Venezuela and Norway and France.
Don't fool yourselves. These people pay off judges and lives will be threatened. Go watch The Pelican Brief again. As one woman in my family used to say about Texas and Louisiana and oil cases, "Sometimes you have to pay the judges". There is simply too much money at stake. And just as a metals trader who blew the whistle a few weeks ago on JPMorgan for manipulating the silver market, was almost run down with his wife in London by a car after contacting the authorities, so too do those with power in the oil industry manipulate prices and threaten people for profits. The price of oil has gone up at least $2 a barrel since this accident, which means that the damages BP will pay can be paid with the extra $10 million or more per day in extra profits they are making. Tort Reform (we can thank George W. for that!) limits the damages BP will pay. And if this case ends up in a court in Houston I can tell you right now having dealt with courts and the good ole boys in Houston...BP will get away literally with murder. The public needs to follow EVERY step of this case from the backgrounds of the lawyers and judges to who profits financially from this.
Because the system is rigged. It was rigged under Bush. It was rigged back when Kennedy was killed in Dallas. These boys play nasty. And my great grandmother was right...it is one of the only exotic parts of America, and the wealth and the poverty which exist side by side along the Gulf Coast, is due to the presence of oil. But don't be fooled. Oil is not going away just yet. Not until the new "green" good ole boys, have their monopolies well established. Follow the money trail. It will lead you to hedge funds in London and venture capital in California.
The real lesson we should learn from this disaster is that the true pollution we need to clean up are corrupt companies and an unequal distribution of wealth. Oil kills, but so does greed. And the green boys are no less greedy than those making money off of Cap & Trade and tree farms and alternative energies. Why don't they show us how serious they are about being green by donating many,many millions to cleaning up the Gulf. They should be down there right now helping these people if they really believe in our future being Green! Build some Tesla car factories and alternative fuel facilities in South Louisiana. Spread the wealth around! And keep the Gulf Coast way of life along a little longer. Because America is losing part of its cultural heritage right before our eyes!
Follow Vivian Norris de Montaigu on Twitter: www.twitter.com/vivigive
http://www.propublica.org/ion/blog/item/In-Gulf-Spill-BP-Using-Dispersants-Banned-in-UK
"The two types of dispersants BP is spraying in the Gulf of Mexico are banned for use [1] on oil spills in the U.K. As EPA-approved products [2], BP has been using them in greater quantities than dispersants have ever been used [3] in the history of U.S. oil spills.
BP is using two products from a line of dispersants called Corexit [4], which EPA data [2] appear to show is more toxic and less effective [5] on South Louisiana crude than other available dispersants, according to Greenwire."
I wish i could find the head of BP saying that the fisherman are only "sick" because of "food poisoning." He should have to go out and plug it himself.
Some for more accountability journalism instread of so much on the scene action.
http://www.propublica.org/article/bp-gulf-oil-spill-dispersants-0430
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100453
http://dir.salon.com/topics/murray_waas/”
" In most of the Houston region, where there are numerous petrochemical refineries, ambient air concentrations of benzene exceed the Environmental Protection Agency's risk guidelines, which deem as "acceptable" a risk that leads to 1 case of cancer in every 1 million people. Unlike some other states, Texas does not have its own benzene emission standard".
http://southernstudies.org/2008/09/houston-mayor-challenges-oil-refinery.html
The ground water pollution linked to the oil industry is also a major problem.
Remember this PSA? Should start showing it again!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R-FZsysQNw
Bad News-- Obama and BP still in charge of the world's most horrific environmental disaster!
bad news . . . republicans continue to block efforts to raise the oil spill liability cap!
Well,
"MIAMI -- Facing more than 100 lawsuits after its Gulf of Mexico oil spill killed 11 workers and threatened four coastal states, oil giant BP is asking the courts to place every pre-trial issue in the hands of a single federal judge in Houston.
That judge, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, has traveled the world giving lectures on ethics for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, a professional association and research group that works with BP and other oil companies.
... "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/27/oil-spill-lawsuits-bp-wan_n_591664.html
4232 Luzon Way, Sarasota, FL 34241 - tell me at least why even Nature Conservancy has confessed it's a pro-quo situation that BP gives the environmentl organizations plenty of money so that they stay out of their way. PLEASE RESPOND ! tHANK YOU
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=The_Nature_Conservancy
People truly need to investigate before they just start handing out their hard earned money to these fake environmental front groups of the oil industry. A large majority of these "environmental" organizations have made a pact with the devil in taking money from Big Oil. Big Oil has has targeted most environmental groups, if not all, by trying to "greenwash" their reputations as eco-terrorists.
Estimated by BP to hold 50 million barrels, the seam of oil has emptied as much as 740,000 barrels (one barrel is 42 gallons), or about 1.5 percent of the total. Because of the immense pressures of the earth's innards, geologists say, the deposit will completely unload into the Gulf unless the Deepwater Horizon well is capped."
If Macondo holds 50M barrels, and say a barrel stands 4', if you laid them end to end, they stretch 200M feet, divided by 5280 feet/mile is 37,878 miles, which is 1.5+ times around the 25,000 miles circumference of the Earth.
Hmmm
Where one side of my family is from. Like Rep. Charles Melancon, connected to those bayous around Napoleonville. Yes, it is a crying shame. Two horrible strikes and a third developing with the erosion of the barrier islands. And probably the end of the unique American culture of the area's Cajuns.
Not that anyone really wanted to look closely, but there were signs. Like how we working people have been demoted from personnel to "human resources." Bodies, like the dead coal miners and oil rig workers, to be used for the extraction of what's left of the world's resources by callous, irresponsible multinational corporations. Now we face an eco-caust.
Can't we find a better purpose for existence than a system built on environmental degredation and the manipulative finance of trickle-up? We have to choose. Rapacious economics or as the locals say, let the good times roll.
It's either laissez faire or laissez le bon temps rouler, mon cher.
FASCISM.
It is sad that the majority of the population of this country is so ignorant of what might be lost in industory, food production, petroleum production, internation trade etc.and so indifferent to the humans and their productive ways of life that are being sacrificed.
Katrina, Rita, Ivan, TransHaliBrit, who cares it just those trashy dumb Southern hicks.
Shame on us, and on our governments for their indifference.
"Don't fool yourselves. These people pay off judges and lives will be threatened. Go watch The Pelican Brief again. As one woman in my family used to say about Texas and Louisiana and oil cases, "Sometimes you have to pay the judges". There is simply too much money at stake."
Meanwhile, BP is only making stuff worse:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/29spill.html?hp
"BP engineers struggled Friday to plug a gushing oil well a mile under the sea, but as of late in the day they had made little headway in stemming the flow."
ttp://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/12/exclusive_interview_murray_waas_on_how
http://www.theatlantic.com/murray-waas/
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/anderson_cooper_360/
Aren't these legislators supposed to be representing their constituents? If legislators needed the industry viewpoint on a piece of legislation, couldn't they send an email or make a phone call?
Calling these professional influence peddlers "lobbyists"...isn't that a little mild?
These legislators now control $ trillions. Do you think that a few $thousand in the right time and place is a good investment for a corporation?
If we get tired of the dog and pony show the US Gov't has become, and the parade of excuses, we need to do what it takes to have publicly financed elections.
Then we will have government, not entertainment.