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Chef Marcus Guiliano has been an advocate for over 10 years on healthy, sustainable, local & real food. He found his mission in cooking when he reversed over a handful of medical conditions including 28 years of asthma. For more information visit http://www.chefonamission.com.
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The Georgia Institute of Technology and Universidad Autonoma de Aguascalientes (UAA), Mexico published an article in the journal Environmental Pollution finding that dumping the dispersant Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico increased the toxicity of the mixture up to 52-fold over the oil alone.
Contamination from BP disaster in US Gulf is ongoing, affecting sea life, killing off coral - but of course the media doesn't say anything about it so few think about it anymore.
Gulf's dolphins pay heavy price for Deepwater oil spill http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/31/dolphins-sick-deepwater-oil-spill
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The report, commissioned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], found that many of the 32 dolphins studied were underweight, anaemic and suffering from lung and liver disease, while nearly half had low levels of a hormone that helps the mammals deal with stress as well as regulating their metabolism and immune systems.
Australia’s 60 Minutes national television program has become the first major media to expose the truth that BP’s oil and Corexit, that the petrochemical-military-industrial complex (PMIC) carpet-bombed Americans along the Gulf of Mexico coast, has caused illness and deaths, a “health catastrophe.”
“When petroleum giant BP spilled millions of litres of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico three years ago, it was the worst ever offshore oil disaster. Now, this environmental disaster is a health catastrophe,” 60 Minutes says in its Special Report, Crude Solution – Part 1 http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/crude-solution-part-1/x9vqssi?cpkey=705dfb21-4df9-411f-b787-d94c3941e00e%257c%257c%257c%257c (12:15) [A MUST WATCH]
“It was the world’s worst ever oil disaster,” 60 Minutes stated. “To try and break up that slick, vast quantities of chemical dispersant was sprayed on the spill. It seemed to work: The oil disappeared.”
But, people started getting sick, and then, people started dying,” the reporter said after 60 Minutes conducted what it calls its special investigation. “Now, this environmental disaster has become a health catastrophe.”
To date, not one American major media television has reported this health catastrophe to the public, as detailed in Vampire of Macondo where this Gulf Operation that began in April 2010 is referred to as chemical genocide.
Aussies Blow Lid Off BP Gulf Oil-Corexit Deaths, ‘Health Catastrophe’ Cover-Up
August 18, 2013 9:06
The main issue is that the COMBINATION of oil and Corexit is 52 times more carcinogenic that Corexit alone.
If you divide Corexit into two words you have Cor. which is the abbreviation for Coronor, and Exit . . . well we all know what THAT means . . . the exit as in DEATH.
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Published on Dec 13, 2012
'Vampire of Macondo: Life, crimes and curses in south Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico that powerful forces do not want you to know' - by Deborah Dupré
The first book to reveal genocide of Americans by the petrochemical-military- industrial complex; how BP's Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe sickened and killed thousands of Gulf of Mexico Coast people and government covered it up. Hear heart-rending cries of the victims. Read thoroughly documented evidence of crimes by Big Oil, military, seafood and tourism industries, health care providers, and corrupt government leaders.
Vampire of Macondo exposes far more than media, BP, the government or courts are telling about the historic Gulf oil catastrophe that began Earth Day, 2010 and continues destroying human life and the environment. This event is by United Nations definition, a crime against humanity, as detailed in Vampire of Macondo.
What People Are Saying about VAMPIRE OF MACONDO:
"Deborah Dupré's personal encounters with graceful southern Louisiana life and petrochemical-military-industrial thugs will transform your perspective on our fossil fuel addiction. Empowering!" JIM HIGHTOWER, Political Commentator
"Excellent chronicle of one of the saddest and most tragic environmental abuses in USA history. -- HUGH KAUFMAN, senior engineer and a former chief investigator for EPA Ombudsman's office
"Brings the epic tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon disaster down to the human level. -- MICHAEL RIVERO, "What Really Happened?" Talk Show Host
"Weaves the Gulf Oil operation technicalities with residents' struggle for a voice about the censored human health, marine life, and seafood catastrophe worsening daily." - ROSALIND PETERSON, Agriculture Defense Coalition, Californiaskywatch.com
About Deborah Dupré:
As a native of New Orleans, Deborah Dupré reports censored human rights news stories. With MS and Education Specialist Graduate Degree from American and Australian universities, Dupré has been a human and Earth rights advocate for over 30 years in the U.S., Vanuatu and Australia. Her unique humanitarian-based research and development work, including in some of the world's least developed and most remote areas, led to her writing human rights news articles to "touch the hearts and minds of more of society," as she says.
An oil leak was discovered on the afternoon of 22 April [2010] when a large oil slick began to spread at the former rig site.[40] While originally BP authorities gave their best estimate of a flow rate of 1,000 to 5,000 barrels per day (160 to 790 m3/d), according to the Flow Rate Technical Group, (FRTG) 62,000 barrels per day (9,900 m3/d) was a more realistic figure.[41][42][43] The total estimated volume of leaked oil approximated 4.9 million barrels (210,000,000 US gal; 780,000 m3) with plus or minus 10% uncertainty.[3] This makes it the largest accidental oil spill in history.[7][44] BP challenges this figure, saying that the government overestimated the volume; however, emails released in 2013 show that BP's internal estimates matched those of FRTG.[45][46] BP also argues that government figures do not reflect over 810,000 barrels (34 million US gal; 129,000 m3) of oil that was collected or burned before it could enter the Gulf waters.[45]
According to the satellite images, the spill directly impacted 68,000 square miles (180,000 km2) of ocean which is comparable to the size of Oklahoma.[4][47] By early June 2010, oil had washed up on 125 miles (201 km) of Louisiana's coast and along Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama barrier island coastlines.[48][49] Oil sludge appeared in the Intracoastal Waterway and on Pensacola Beach and the Gulf Islands National Seashore.[50] In late June, oil reached Gulf Park Estates, its first appearance in Mississippi.[51] In July, tar balls reached Grand Isle and the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.[52][53] In September a new wave of oil suddenly coated 16 miles (26 km) of Louisiana coastline and marshes west of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish.[54] In October, weathered oil reached Texas.[55] As of July 2011, about 491 miles (790 km) of coastline in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida were contaminated by oil and a total of 1,074 miles (1,728 km) had been oiled since the spill began.[56] As of December 2012, 339 miles (546 km) of coastline remain subject to evaluation and/or cleanup operations.[57]
Concerns were raised about the appearance of underwater, horizontally-extended plumes of dissolved oil. Researchers concluded that deep plumes of dissolved oil and gas would likely remain confined to the northern Gulf of Mexico and that the peak impact on dissolved oxygen would be delayed and long lasting.[58]
Two weeks after the wellhead was capped on 15 July 2010, the surface oil appeared to have dissipated, while an unknown amount of subsurface oil remained.[59]
Estimates of the residual ranged from a 2010 NOAA report that claimed about half of the oil remained below the surface to independent estimates of up to 75%.[60][61][62] That means that over 100 million US gallons (2.4 Mbbl) remained in the Gulf.[57]
As of January 2011, tar balls, oil sheen trails, fouled wetlands marsh grass and coastal sands were still evident. Subsurface oil remained offshore and in fine silts.[63]
In April 2012, oil was still found along as much as 200 miles (320 km) of Louisiana coastline and tar balls continued to wash up on the barrier islands.[64]
In 2013, some scientists at the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference said that as much as one-third of the oil may have mixed with deep ocean sediments, where it risks damage to ecosystems and commercial fisheries.[65]
In 2013, more than 2.7 million pounds of "oiled material" were removed from the Louisiana coast.[66] In the same year, tar balls were being reported almost every day on Alabama and Florida beaches.[67]
The April 2010 British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the worst environmental accidents in U.S. history, but what is perhaps equally damaging are the legal machinations which have since occurred behind the scenes.
Enter Ron Johnson, the owner of Ericam Environmental, LLC. Three years ago, he filed suit against BP for negligence and antitrust after the oil company giant refused to at least attempt to use his technology, the SAK-J5 and the S.O.C.K., equipment, oil containment and recovery technology that had previously been tested at a 100 percent success rate, writes Brandon Turbeville for the Activist Post.
Widespread collusion between BP and federal courts?
Here's some background from Turbeville, who quoted from Johnson's lawsuit:
While BP's negligence in the Deepwater Horizon spill scarcely needs a court case in which to be proven, Johnson's case focused largely on the aspect of antitrust in which he claims that BP "willfully and intentionally mislead and concealed facts to the American government, the President of the United States and the American public about the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, clean up and recovery."
In addition, Johnson's suit claims that BP "willfully and intentionally misquoted the actual amount of oil arising from defendant's [BP] damaged oil rig." Furthermore, "[D]ue to the continuing negligence in the operation of the remediation of this oil that is spreading across the Gulf of Mexico waters and costal shorelines, causing total destruction of the wetlands, fish and wildlife with, complete hardship for the people of the states adjacent to the Gulf waters, along with future undetermined damage to the fish industry as well."
Rather than use his technology, BP chose instead to utilize Corexit, a compound that worked merely to hide the oil from view but did little to actually clean up the spill.
But the situation has only gotten worse since Johnson filed his suit. Now, he claims, there is collusion between BP and the federal courts "such as the Clerk's Offices' refusal to enter default against BP even after Federal court rules clearly deemed that this judgment was to be entered; attempts by the court to accommodate BP at every conceivable opportunity; tampering with confidential document; and the denial of suits that were never signed by judges," among other claims, Turbeville writes.
Gulf Seafood Deformities Alarm Scientists [Complete Article]
Note: You will find the following message when you try to view the video . . . "The uploader has not made this video available in your country." Oh! I'm so surprised. After searching the internet and some 95 websites that stated they have the video, I found that it has been completely scrubbed from the internet. So much for the truth . . . what ARE they afraid of?
March 18, 2013
New Orleans, LA - “The fishermen have never seen anything like this,” Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. “And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I’ve never seen anything like this either.” Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and CoastalSciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.
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Cowan’s findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants. Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP’s 2010 oil disaster.
Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp – and interviewees’ fingers point towards BP’s oil pollution disaster as being the cause.
Eyeless shrimp
Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp. “At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp. According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.”
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“Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico],” she added, “They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.”
On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded, and began the release of at least 4.9 million barrels of oil. BP then used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersants to sink the oil. Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing. “I’ve seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out,” Ladner told Al Jazeera. “The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday.”
While on a shrimp boat in Mobile Bay with Sidney Schwartz, the fourth-generation fisherman said that he had seen shrimp with defects on their gills, and “their shells missing around their gills and head”. “We’ve fished here all our lives and have never seen anything like this,” he added. Ladner has also seen crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one of their claws.
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Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs “with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they’ve been dead for a week”. Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills.
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“We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills.” Rooks, who grew up fishing with her parents, said she had never seen such things in these waters, and her seafood catch last year was “ten per cent what it normally is”. “I’ve never seen this,” he said, a statement Al Jazeera heard from every scientist, fisherman, and seafood processor we spoke with about the seafood deformities. Given that the Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US, this phenomenon does not bode well for the region, or the country.
BP’s chemicals?
“The dispersants used in BP’s draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber,” Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor told Al Jazeera. “It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known”.
The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP’s disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.
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Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic – able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus – and carcinogenic.
Cowan believes chemicals named polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), released from BP’s submerged oil, are likely to blame for what he is finding, due to the fact that the fish with lesions he is finding are from “a wide spatial distribution that is spatially coordinated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon, both surface oil and subsurface oil. A lot of the oil that impacted Louisiana was also in subsurface plumes, and we think there is a lot of it remaining on the seafloor”.
Dr Wilma Subra, a chemist and Macarthur Fellow, has conducted tests on seafood and sediment samples along the Gulf for chemicals present in BP’s crude oil and toxic dispersants. “Tests have shown significant levels of oil pollution in oysters and crabs along the Louisiana coastline,” Subra told Al Jazeera. “We have also found high levels of hydrocarbons in the soil and vegetation.”
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According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, PAHs “are a group of semi-volatile organic compounds that are present in crude oil that has spent time in the ocean and eventually reaches shore, and can be formed when oil is burned”. “The fish are being exposed to PAHs, and I was able to find several references that list the same symptoms in fish after the Exxon Valdez spill, as well as other lab experiments,” explained Cowan. “There was also a paper published by some LSU scientists that PAH exposure has effects on the genome.”
The University of South Florida released the results of a survey whose findings corresponded with Cowan’s: a two to five per cent infection rate in the same oil impact areas, and not just with red snapper, but with more than 20 species of fish with lesions. In many locations, 20 per cent of the fish had lesions, and later sampling expeditions found areas where, alarmingly, 50 per cent of the fish had them.
“I asked a NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] sampler what percentage of fish they find with sores prior to 2010, and it’s one tenth of one percent,” Cowan said. “Which is what we found prior to 2010 as well. But nothing like we’ve seen with these secondary infections and at this high of rate since the spill.”
“What we think is that it’s attributable to chronic exposure to PAHs released in the process of weathering of oil on the seafloor,” Cowan said. “There’s no other thing we can use to explain this phenomenon. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Official response
Questions raised by Al Jazeera’s investigation remain largely unanswered. Al Jazeera contacted the office of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who provided a statement that said the state continues to test its waters for oil and dispersants, and that it is testing for PAHs. “Gulf seafood has consistently tested lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the levels of oil and dispersant contamination that would pose a risk to human health,” the statement reads. “Louisiana seafood continues to go through extensive testing to ensure that seafood is safe for human consumption. More than 3,000 composite samples of seafood, sediment and water have been tested in Louisiana since the start of the spill.”
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At the federal government level, the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency – both federal agencies which have powers in the this area – insisted Al Jazeera talk with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
NOAA won’t comment to the media because its involvement in collecting information for an ongoing lawsuit against BP. BP refused Al Jazeera’s request to comment on this issue for a television interview, but provided a statement that read: “Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident.” BP claims that fish lesions are common, and that prior to the Deepwater Horizon accident there was documented evidence of lesions in the Gulf of Mexico caused by parasites and other agents.
The oil giant added:
“As part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, which is led by state and federal trustees, we are investigating the extent of injury to natural resources due to the accident. “BP is funding multiple lines of scientific investigation to evaluate potential damage to fish, and THESE INCLUDE: extensive seafood testing programs by the Gulf states; fish population monitoring conducted by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Auburn University and others; habitat and water quality monitoring by NOAA; and toxicity tests on regional species. The state and federal Trustees will complete an injury assessment and the need for environmental restoration will be determined.” Note: Would you trust ANYTHING that BP funds will show ANY negative results.
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Before and after
But evidence of ongoing contamination continues to mount. Crustacean biologist Darryl Felder, in the Department of Biology with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is in a unique position. Felder has been monitoring the vicinity of BP’s blowout Macondo well both before and after the oil disaster began, because, as he told Al Jazeera, “the National Science Foundation was interested in these areas that are vulnerable due to all the drilling”.
“So we have before and after samples to compare to,” he added. “We have found seafood with lesions, missing appendages, and other abnormalities.” Felder also has samples of inshore crabs with lesions. “Right here in Grand Isle we see lesions that are eroding down through their shell. We just got these samples last Thursday and are studying them now, because we have no idea what else to link this to as far as a natural event.”
According to Felder, there is an even higher incidence of shell disease with crabs in deeper waters. “My fear is that these prior incidents of lesions might be traceable to microbes, and my questions are, did we alter microbial populations in the vicinity of the well by introducing this massive amount of petroleum and in so doing cause microbes to attack things other than oil?” One hypothesis he has is that the waxy coatings around crab shells are being impaired by anthropogenic chemicals or microbes resulting from such chemicals.
“You create a site where a lesion can occur, and microbes attack. We see them with big black lesions, around where their appendages fall off, and all that is left is a big black ring.” Felder added that his team is continuing to document the incidents: “And from what we can tell, there is a far higher incidence we’re finding after the spill.” “We are also seeing much lower diversity of crustaceans,” he said. “We don’t have the same number of species as we did before [the spill].”
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Felder has tested his samples for oil, but not found many cases where hydrocarbon traces tested positive. Instead, he believes what he is seeing in the deepwater around BP’s well is caused from the “huge amount” of drilling mud used during the effort to stop the gushing well. “I was collecting deepwater shrimp with lesions on the side of their carapace. Under the lesions, the gills were black. The organ that propels the water through the gills, it too was jet-black. That impairs respiratory ability, and has a negative effect on them. It wasn’t hydrocarbons, but is largely manganese precipitates, which is really odd. There was a tremendous amount of drilling mud pumped out with Macondo, so this could be a link.”
Some drilling mud and oil well cement slurries used on oil extraction rigs contains up to 90 per cent by weight of manganomanganic (manganese) oxide particles. Felder is also finding “odd staining” of animals that burrow into the mud that cause stain rings, and said: “It is consistently mineral deposits, possibly from microbial populations in [overly] high concentrations.”
A direct link
Dr Andrew Whitehead, an associate professor of biology at Louisiana State University, co-authored the reportGenomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes that was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October 2011.
Whitehead’s work is of critical importance, as it shows a direct link between BP’s oil and the negative impacts on the Gulf’s food web evidenced by studies on killifish before, during and after the oil disaster. “What we found is a very clear, genome-wide signal, a very clear signal of exposure to the toxic components of oil that coincided with the timing and the locations of the oil,” Whitehead told Al Jazeera during an interview in his lab. According to Whitehead, the killifish is an important indicator species because they are the most abundant fish in the marshes, and are known to be the most important forage animal in their communities.
“That means that most of the large fish that we like to eat and that these are important fisheries for, actually feed on the killifish,” he explained. “So if there were to be a big impact on those animals, then there would probably be a cascading effect throughout the food web. I can’t think of a worse animal to knock out of the food chain than the killifish.”
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But we may well be witnessing the beginnings of this worst-case scenario. Whitehead is predicting that there could be reproductive impacts on the fish, and since the killifish is a “keystone” species in the food web of the marsh, “Impacts on those species are more than likely going to propagate out and effect other species. What this shows is a very direct link from exposure to DWH oil and a clear biological effect. And a clear biological effect that could translate to population level long-term consequences.”
Back on shore, troubled by what he had been seeing, Keath Ladner met with officials from the US Food and Drug Administration and asked them to promise that the government would protect him from litigation if someone was made sick from eating his seafood. “They wouldn’t do it,” he said. “I’m worried about the entire seafood industry of the Gulf being on the way out,” he added grimly.
‘Tar balls in their crab traps’
Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer, as well as a marine and oyster biologist, has “great concern” about the hundreds of dolphin deaths he has seen in the region since BP’s disaster began, which he feels are likely directly related to the BP oil disaster. “Adult dolphins’ systems are picking up whatever is in the system out there, and we know the oil is out there and working its way up the food chain through the food web – and dolphins are at the top of that food chain.”
Cake explained: “The chemicals then move into their lipids, fat, and then when they are pregnant, their young rely on this fat, and so it’s no wonder dolphins are having developmental issues and still births.” Cake, who lives in Mississippi, added: “It has been more than 33 years since the 1979 Ixtoc-1 oil disaster in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche, and the oysters, clams, and mangrove forests have still not recovered in their oiled habitats in seaside estuaries of the Yucatan Peninsula. It has been 23 years since the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska, and the herring fishery that failed in the wake of that disaster has still not returned.”
Cake believes we are still in the short-term impact stage of BP’s oil disaster. “I will not be alive to see the Gulf of Mexico recover,” said Cake, who is 72 years old. “Without funding and serious commitment, these things will not come back to pre-April 2010 levels for decades.” The physical signs of the disaster continue. “We’re continuing to pull up oil in our nets,” Rooks said. “Think about losing everything that makes you happy, because that is exactly what happens when someone spills oil and sprays dispersants on it. People who live here know better than to swim in or eat what comes out of our waters.”
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Khuns and her husband told Al Jazeera that fishermen continue to regularly find tar balls in their crab traps, and hundreds of pounds of tar balls continue to be found on beaches across the region on a daily basis. Meanwhile Cowan continues his work, and remains concerned about what he is finding. “We’ve also seen a decrease in biodiversity in fisheries in certain areas. We believe we are now seeing another outbreak of incidence increasing, and this makes sense, since waters are starting to warm again, so bacterial infections are really starting to take off again. We think this is a problem that will persist for as long as the oil is stored on the seafloor.”
Felder wants to continue his studies, but now is up against insufficient funding. Regarding his funding, Cowan told Al Jazeera: “We are up against social and economic challenges that hamper our ability to get our information out, so the politics have been as daunting as the problem [we are studying] itself. But my funding is not coming from a source that requires me to be quiet.”
The BP oil spill started on April 20, 2010. We’ve previously warned that the BP oil spill could severely damage the Gulf ecosystem.
Since then, there are numerous signs that the worst-case scenario may be playing out:
We’ve repeatedly documented that BP’s gulf Mocando well is still leaking.
Stuart Smith – a successful trial lawyer who won a billion dollar verdict against Exxon Mobil – noted recently:
New sampling data from the nonprofit Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) provide confirmation that not only is BP’s oil still very much present in the water in Bayou La Batre, but that it still exists in a highly toxic state nearly two years after the spill.
Here are photos of brown oily foam washing ashore in Bayou La Batre (just west of Mobile Bay) on February 27, 2012:
Photo credit to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN)
Water samples were taken by Dennis and Lori Bosarge, LEAN members from Coden, Alabama. The lab-certified test results are in (see full lab report at bottom), and they are startling in that they suggest that oil is still leaking from the Macondo reservoir – most likely from cracks and fissures in the seafloor around the plugged wellhead. Scientists believe the cracks were caused by BP’s heavy-handed “kill” efforts.
***
Despite numerous opportunities to do so, the U.S. Coast Guard has never publicly denied that the Macondo field is still leaking. And these latest sampling results out of Bayou La Batre provide damning new evidence that the BP oil spill never really ended.
The New York Times notes today:
Congress’s response to the spill has been truly pathetic. It has not passed a single bill to prevent another catastrophe, according to a report issued Tuesday by former members of a presidential commission that investigated the spill. Congress has failed even to codify the Interior Department’s sound regulatory reforms, which could be undone by a future administration.
***
The administration has developed new standards for each stage of the drilling process — from rig design to spill response — insisting that operators fully prepare for worst-case scenarios. But the commissioners’ report notes that the new equipment systems have not yet been tested in deep-water conditions.
Indeed, Mother Jones points out that the White House pressured scientists to underestimate the size of the spill. And see this Forbes write up, and our previous reporting on the topic.
This is exactly like Fukushima and the financial mess, because government’s approach to crises is consistent, no matter what area we are talking about: let the giant companies which fund political campaigns do whatever they want … and then help them cover up the extent of the crisis once it inevitably hits.
As Thomas Botch says in the comments at Facebook, "To many high profile people (successful and educated with little reason to die from risky behavior) all "croak" in "too short a time period" to be "statistically normal." Don't you agree?"
February 17, 2011 - LSU scientist Gregory Stone, 54 - Unknown Illness
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The LSU community mourns the passing of Greg Stone, James P. Morgan Distinguished Professor in Coastal Studies, director of the WAVCIS program and internationally renowned coastal researcher. Stone passed away on Thursday, Feb. 17. A memorial service will be held at Rabenhorst Funeral Home on Monday, Feb. 21, at 12 p.m. Continue Reading the Story about Greg Stone's Death
April 2, 2011 – Tucker Mendoza, gulf truth activist, still recovering, along with his niece. Shot four times through his front door, niece hit twice. Anyone with information regarding this shooting incident should call St. John the Baptist Parish Detectives at 985-359-8769 or Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111.
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Tucker Mendoza
Tucker Mendoza, a gulf truth activist, was shot early this morning 4 times through the door of his home in Laplace. He was hit 3 times in the chest and once across the forehead. With him was a niece, he reports she was struck in the neck and bottom. Continue Reading the Story About Tucker Mendoza's Death
January 19, 2011 - former President and CEO of the International Oil Spill Control Corporation - imprisonment and subsequent murder while jailed
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A Gulf human rights reporter, U.S. government Gulf operation critic, framed political prisoner, was murdered Thursday. Dr. Tomas B. Manton passed away Wednesday, January 19th after assaulted at Liberty Correctional Facility in Bristol, Florida where held as a Falsely Imprisoned Person (FIP). Continue Reading the Article on Thomas Manton...
December 31, 2010 - a former Pentagon official and presidential aide and a defense consultant and expert on chemical and biological weapons - was beaten to death in an assault, body was discovered in a Wilmington landfill
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John P. Wheeler II, the military expert who served three Republican presidents and helped get the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built was found dead in a Delaware landfill. Authorities are trying to piece together when he was last seen alive. The body of John P. Wheeler II, 66, was uncovered Friday when a garbage truck emptied its contents at the Cherry Island landfill in Wilmington. Continue Reading the Article on John Wheeler...
November 23, 2010 - an incident commander for BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill response team, died Tuesday night near Destin, Florida in a small plane crash'
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An official of BP Plc's Gulf oil spill program and two family members died in a plane crash on Tuesday night in Florida, the company said in a statement. James Patrick Black, 58, died when the private plane on which he was a passenger crashed while trying to land in heavy fog at a Destin, Florida, airport, according to BP and the U.S. Coast Guard. Continue Reading the Article on James Patrick Black...
November 15, 2010 - age 33, worked in the USF Center for Biological Defense and Global Health Infectious Disease Research - Found dead in an apparent suicide by cyanide at a Temple Terrace hotel. She leaves behind a husband and a young child.
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A University of South Florida molecular biologist died Monday night in an apparent suicide by cyanide at a Temple Terrace hotel, police said. Chitra Chauhan, 33, of Tampa was pronounced dead at University Community Hospital about 10:30 p.m., Temple Terrace police reported. Continue Reading the Article on Chitra Chaunhan...
November, 2010 - MIA Status, of Lakeland, FL - Swan expert who “ran into legal trouble over an expired prescription license has closed his practice” — Was investigating unexplained bird deaths near Sarasota abruptly and immediately closed his practice, and apparently his investigation into the deaths of swans in Sarasota, suspected to have been impacted by the BP Oil Disaster. No one has heard or spoken with him since. Watch this news report covering his investigation before his disappearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sqbx2TnbYlc
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October 6, 2010 - age 66, was hit by a truck as he passed through Panama City, Florida. Mr. Grooters had been knocked down and killed close to the end of a 3,200-mile trans-America charity ride to raise awareness about the Gulf Coast oil disaster. He began his cross-country bike ride in Oceanside, California, on September 10th. Grooters's family and friends will cycle the final stretch of the journey from the Pacific to the Atlantic in his honour, raising cash to support Gulf Coast families. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319529/Cyclist-Roger-Grooters-66-killed-truck-Gulf-Mexico-oil-spill-charity-ride.html#ixzz1G4s6su96
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A cyclist aged 66 has been knocked down and killed close to the end of a 3,200-mile trans-America charity ride. Roger Grooters was hit by a truck as he passed through Panama City, Florida, last Wednesday. Mr Grooters' wife, Vicki, was following the 66-year-old in a support vehicle when the accident happened. Continue Reading the Article on Roger Grooters...
August 9, 2010 - Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, 86, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, was among nine people on board when the 1957 DeHavilland DHC-3 Otter, crashed into a brush- and rock-covered mountainside Monday afternoon about 17 miles north of the southwest Alaska fishing town of Dillingham, federal officials said. Stevens was the recipient of a whistleblower's communication relative to the BP Oil Disaster blow-out preventer, and a conspiracy of secrecy to hide the facts from the public. (http://beforeitsnews.com/story/132/410/Sen._Ted_Stevens_Killed_In_Plane_Crash_He_Got_A_
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"You and your fellow Committee members may wish to require BP to explain what action was ultimately instituted to cease the practice of falsifying BOP tests at BP Prudhoe drilling rigs. It was a cost saving but dangerous practice, again endangering the BP workforce, until I exposed it to Senator Ted Stevens, the EPA, and the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission." The cause of the crash is still an OPEN investigation by the NTSB (http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/GenPDF.asp?id=ANC10MA068&rpt=p)
BP paid a $1 million to buy Ted Stevens papers, to try and shut him up...
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August 13, 2010 - age 67 - Simmons’ body was found Sunday night in his hot tub, investigators said. An autopsy by the state medical examiner’s office concluded Monday that he died from accidental drowning with heart disease as a contributing factor - “It was painful as can be” to be only insider willing to speak out against the "officials" during the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico
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Matthew Roy Simmons was founder and chairman emeritus of Simmons & Company International, and was a prominent advocate of peak oil. Simmons was motivated by the 1973 energy crisis to create an investment banking firm catering to oil companies. In his previous capacity, he served as energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush. He was, up until his death, a member of the National Petroleum Council and the Council on Foreign Relations. Continue Reading the Article on Matthew Simmons...
April 6, 2010 - age 46 - cell biologist and college professor, a near-native Floridian who chose to return to South Florida after studying at elite universities - was fatally shot during what police say was a home invasion robbery.
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A Nova Southeastern University professor who spent his promising career trying to cure cancer was murdered during an apparent home invasion in his usually quiet Plantation suburb in the middle of the night. Dr. Joseph Morrissey, 46, was tied up and shot before his house was set on fire by an armed man, according to reports. His wife, Linda, was also tied up but escaped the home with the couple's 5-year-old son. Police say the "robber" is at large, though there is no description at this point other than he is a man. Continue Reading the Article on Joseph Morrissey...
January 26, 2011 - age 31 - Mississippi Department of Marine Resources officer, from Ocean Springs arrested on child porn charge
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Another Mississippi law enforcement officer has been arrested for allegedly keeping child porn on his state issued laptop. Anthony Nicholas Tremonte, 31, was arrested Wednesday and charged with one count of Possession of Child Pornography. Continue Reading the Article on Anthony Tremonte...
Depopulating An Entire Region of the Country
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/depopulating-entire-region-of-country.html
The Gulf Oil Spill Is a Depopulation Event of Epic Proportions
In order to demonstrate the fact that the BP event was indeed a planned event and is part of a bigger scheme to depopulate the Gulf of its 40 million residents, it is necessary to present a review of the money trail in the Gulf which shows forethought, planning and motive as a precursor to more important reasons on why the Gulf had to be destroyed.
When I first investigated the Gulf in a seven part series, I believed I was looking at an event that was motivated by pure greed. Although the major players (e.g. BP, Transocean, Halliburton, Goldman Sachs) did make huge sums of money from this planned catastrophe, I have since discovered the event was not just perpetrated for purposes of greed alone.
The net effect of the Gulf event is that it is a depopulation event, and the government is in league with perpetrators of this event to achieve this end.
