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dhp123166

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  2. dhp123166
    British Petroleum has lost 90 billion dollars or roughly ½ of its’ net worth in the last two months since the beginning of the disaster in the Gulf. Planned implimentation of a plug for the leak in the Gulf of Mexico is two months away. Rudimentary mathematics would project the company being out of money by that time. BP’s assets include ; oil wells,
    refineries, equipment etc.. Not to mention investments in several nations governments. Too big to fail indeed.
     
    What we are not privy to is the moving around of assets, hiding them if you will from the scrutiny of prying eyes who in this case is the US government and to a lesser degree the peoples of the Gulf Coast. Twenty billion dollars has been set up as a slush fund to begin paying off people whose livelihoods have been interrupted. I think that this initial cash outlay is going to be spent very quickly. I have read stories of grossly inflated claims from would be recipients of this aid and why not? Getting paid is the American way. But who compensates the families of the dead turtles, and pelicans? How does one place value on a shattered ecosystem? Like we say in America, that’s the cost of doing business. the Gulf of Mexico will be considered "an acceptable loss" as long as the money (and oil)keeps flowing.
     
    These payments are going to buy people off basically or dull the rancor which emanates from their mouths, at least for a little while. See, the most hated and infamous dictator said, "Everyone has a price, it’s just that you would be surprised at how low it is.†The money will buy good publicity and that is about all that BP can do because they don’t seem to be very good at plugging oil leaks. As everyone profits from the calamity one would be hardpressed to not realize where this is going to end up. Institutionalized greed and weak moral fiber have quietly usurped any spiritual guidance we might have had in the USA. We are not a christian nation under god. We have five percent of the world’s population and consume 25 percent of the resources. We are a nation of destroyers and our religion is nihilism.
  3. dhp123166
    This just in;
     
     
     
    (CNN) -- While cleanup crews and technical teams continue efforts to stop crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana lawmakers are proposing a different approach: prayer.
     
    State senators designated Sunday as a day for citizens to ask for God's help dealing with the oil disaster.
     
    "Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail," state Sen. Robert Adley said in a statement released after last week's unanimous vote for the day of prayer. "It is clearly time for a miracle for us."
     
    The resolution names Sunday as a statewide day of prayer in Louisiana and calls on people of all religions throughout the Gulf Coast "to pray for an end to this environmental emergency, sparing us all from the destruction of both culture and livelihood."
     
     
     
     
    Maybe we can sacrifice a few chickens and goats while we are at it? Oh wait, do pelicans and sea turtles count or was that accidental so the gods will not look favorably upon us?
     
    These people are our leaders?
  4. dhp123166
    Watching the tragicomedy of errors transpire leaves me with no words, so the words of others must suffice.
     
     
     
    "In this land, right now, some are insane, but they're in charge"
     
    The Gang of Four- "To Hell With Poverty"-1982
     
     
     
    Al Pacino as the devil in “The Devils’ Advocate†starring Keanu Reeves-1997
     
    “Eddie Barzoon, Eddie Barzoon, I nursed him through 2 divorces, cocaine rehab, and a pregnant receptionist.
     
    god’s creature right? And I warned him Kevin, I warned him every step of the way watching him bounce around like a game, like a windup toy, like 250 lbs. of self serving greed on wheels.
     
    The next 1000 years is right around the corner and Eddie Barzoon is the poster child for the next millennium.
     
    It’s no mystery where they come from, you sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its’ desire, you build egos the size of cathedrals, fiber optically connect the world to every eager impulse, grease even the dullest dreams with dollar green gold plated fantasies ‘til every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god and where can you go from there?
     
    And as we’re scrambling from one deal to the next who’s got his eyes on the planet?
     
    As the air thickens, the water sours, even the bees honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity and it just keeps coming-faster and faster, there’s no chance to prepare, it’s buy futures, sell futures, when there is no future!
     
    We got a billion Eddie Barzoons jogging into the future, every one of ‘em gettin’ ready to fistf*** god’s ex-planet, lick their fingers clean as they reach out with their pristine cybernetic keyboards to total up their f***in’ billable hours and then it hits home;
     
    You gotta pay your own way Eddie, it’s a little late in the game to buy out now;
     
    Your belly’s too full, your **** is soft, and you’re screaming for someone to help,
     
    But guess what , there’s no one there,
     
    You’re all alone.
     
    You’re god’s special little creature…"
  5. dhp123166
    Yes, catatastrophe is the right word. I don't even think the psychic shock of what an oil spill on the level of this has even sunk in yet. An Exxon Valdez level spill; every five days.
    Ask the residents of coastal Alaska what that was and continues to be like.
     
    That's how much oil has/is been/ being released. I think the Gulf of Mexico is history. I mean there was already a "dead (hypoxic) zone" at the mouth of the Mississippi from agricultural runoff. This will pretty much seal the deal.
     
    The damage will spread outward in waves. First as the oil washes ashore, we will have a visual with all the usual pathos of oil-soaked birds and oil drowned fish. Then the science will confirm what we see; that the Gulf of Mexico life support systems are gone. The human toll (other than the initial killed 11 victims) comes next, tourism and livelihoods eradicated and the byproducts of this; despair rises manifested by increased drug and alcohol use, domestic violence, murder and suicide go up. This is going to last for a very long time, if there is the luxury of time remaining at this point in history.
     
    People don't seem to want to acknowledge what has happened on any level other than the mundane or at least feign outrage, but maybe that's because the usual human mind has a cutoff point for abject horror when it is too much for one soul to take. There are many prices to pay in the slaying of ones illusions in this world and the loss of this reflex is one of them.
     
    The blame game is pointless. The further one follows that thread, one finds the truth. We are all complicit. The irony that I am blogging this on an auto enthusiasts website is not lost on me. I am addicted to petroleum, and I can't quit. Everyday brings a fresh relapse and I will not stop. It's easier to ween a junkie off of heroin than it is to get me off of petroleum. It's everywhere and part of everything. I was born into it. It's got a stranglehold on my psyche.
     
    I don't think we're ever going to stop until all the resources are used up and everything is destroyed. But that's the cyclical nature of things, everything ends, and this is the beginning.
  7. dhp123166
    Well for me this event has faded into the background noise of the rest of the items which come through the TV screen. It's not in my immediate sphere so to walk around in a sense of despairing outrage is not only hypocritical it's not conducive to a healthy mental state.
     
    The interesting part now is the tangled web of consequences. This is gonna be good. First you got BP whose shares have fallen 17 % since this started. BP in Britain is the biggest pension holder and also one of the barometers of that countries economic health. Guess which country is also one of our chief supporters in the "War On Terror" in Afghanistan and elsewhere? That could be a huge trump card should they choose to play it.
     
    Then we have the red staters along the Gulf Coast who even though their states coasts are awash in petroleum are lobbying the federal government to cease and desist with the moratorium on offshore drilling as it will cost jobs. I guess these are the same people who want big government out of their lives (except when they need rescuing). I even saw Louisiana's state representative explaining on the tube that "1/2 the folks down here make their living fishing and the other 1/2 make their living in the oil business". Wow talk about a conflict of interests!
     
    You got Kevin Costner on Capitol Hill lobbying for the usage of his oil/ water separation machines and basically being told they will probably be too expensive to use. That's great, always a friggin' bottom line to watch out for, even when the price for non implementation
    could be far too costly to our only home (assuming his machines work of course). Like I guess now a monetary value has been placed on the only hospitable planet that we know of in the cosmos. Gotta love them bean counters. Oh well I guess we get the representation we deserve.
     
    It's not all bad news though, even though hurricane season is being hyped as being one possibly for the record books, oil could actually help to not make that so.
     
    When oil is released in a body of water it spreads in a layer a few molecules thick and diminishes the production of capillary waves which as a consequence prevents the wind from "gripping" the sea. Waves build exponentially and it has been studied and documented that oil in the water of the oceans inhibits production of large scale waves during storms.
     
    As far as chaos goes this is gonna be a helluva show...
  8. dhp123166
    Another attempt at stopping the "gusher" fails again, and please media outlets, it is a "gusher" not a "spill". Enough with the Orwellian doublespeak already.
     
    This whole incident for me has gone past horror into the realm of absurd comedy; watching the stuffed shirts with their sleeves rolled up walking around in front of the cameras acting like they know what to do and have the situation under complete control. Meanwhile they're
    talking August as a realistic closing date to this catastrophe when a relief well or two is drilled.
     
    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats’ feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar
     
    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
     
    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
    Remember us—if at all—not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.
     
    "The Hollow Men"- T.S. Eliot
     
    We enjoyed a wonderful day at the beach yesterday with a clean sky, clean beach and clean water. Yes there were the omnipresent offshore oil rigs dotting the horizon but as I mused to no one in particular, they are for sure double and triple checking their emergency procedures.
     
    I have friends in the oil business out here, and out here they still remember the Santa Barbara spill of 1969 so they take their procedures very seriously and are forced to by the local regulatory agencies. The reputation that the Gulf Coast oil industry has is that it's populated for the most part by a bunch of "git-r done" renegades and has a history of lax regulation enforcement.
     
    We still have primary destruction going on as the gusher continues. Secondary destruction of the Gulf food chain and wetlands has also arrived. When it's really going to hit home is when tertiary destruction starts. When all those poor nations which ring the Gulf of Mexico
    that rely on the ocean for their food source can no longer sustain themselves because the whole food chain is gone. That's when the real fireworks are going to start because people driven by hunger will do and are capable of anything in the course of satiating their hunger.
     
    Don't fool yourself, one of the only reasons we have no violent uprisings in America is because we have good food and plenty of it. And Spencer and Heidi are on the tube now, I'll get back to you later...
  9. dhp123166
    It's real easy to see how this disaster happened and not just from a bubble of methane or bad concrete. One wrong turn led to another and it started a long time ago. From oil discovery and utilization to saleable commodity to industry deregulation to unbridled human greed, lust for power and unchecked arrogance.
     
    "When the corporation becomes enthroned an era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed."
     
    Abraham Lincoln
     
    Remakably prescient. No one seems to react to anything because we are witnessing the most complete (if misguided) authoritarianism of the modern age. We are owned completely; every thought, every impulse, every desire has been programmed from an early age. Freedom is a destructive illusion. All this was alluded to in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World Revisited" written in 1958 when he said that the totalitarianism of the future would rely on a system of rewards to keep people in line as opposed to violence and force. Just the threat of the latter is enough to control most, including me. The only way to escape is to "lose one's mind" (whatever that means)" because again Huxley states that individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity. One can also see the impulse of a people to act against their own best self interests in the masterwork of Wilhelm Reich "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Political paradigms don't seem to disappear they just get recontextualized.
     
    So we sit and wait for people who aren't really in control to do something to save this planet from our monumental blunder. Or we pray to some deity who never seems to be there to save us from ourselves.
     
    But it wasn't god who drilled that hole which exploded, it wasn't the devil who could not control the escaping gas bubble , it was just us and we're alone on this one.
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