Must We Nuke the Gulf OIl Spill?

BP Is Destroying Evidence and Censoring Journalists

BP is using federal agencies to shield itself from public accountability and is actually disappearing oiled wildlife.

June 12, 2010  |  

Marine Photo Bank / Flickr Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Marine Photo Bank / Flickr Creative Commons

Orange Beach, Alabama -- While President Obama insists that the federal government is firmly in control of the response to BP's spill in the Gulf, people in coastal communities where I visited last week in Louisiana and Alabama know an inconvenient truth: BP -- not our president -- controls the response. In fact, people on the ground say things are out of control in the gulf.
Even worse, as my latest week of adventures illustrate, BP is using federal agencies to shield itself from public accountability.
For example, while flying on a small plane from New Orleans to Orange Beach, the pilot suddenly exclaimed, "Look at that!" The thin red line marking the federal flight restrictions of 3,000 feet over the oiled Gulf region had just jumped to include the coastal barrier islands off Alabama.

"There's only one reason for that," the pilot said. "BP doesn't want the media taking pictures of oil on the beaches. You should see the oil that's about six miles off the coast," he said grimly. We looked down at the wavy orange boom surrounding the islands below us. The pilot shook his head. "There's no way those booms are going to stop what's offshore from hitting those beaches."
BP knows this as well -- boom can only deflect oil under the calmest of sea conditions, not barricade it -- so they have stepped up their already aggressive effort to control what the public sees.
At the same time I was en route to Orange Beach, Clint Guidry with the Louisiana Shrimp Association and Dean Blanchard, who owns the largest shrimp processor in Louisiana, were in Grand Isle taking Anderson Cooper out in a small boat to see the oiled beaches. The U.S. Coast Guard held up the boat for 20 minutes - an intimidation tactic intended to stop the cameras from recording BP's damage. Luckily for Cooper and the viewing public, Dean Blanchard is not easily intimidated.

A few days later, the jig was up with the booms. Oil was making landfall in four states and even BP can't be everywhere at once. CBS 60 Minutes Australia found entire sections of boom hung up in marsh grasses two feet above the water off Venice. On the same day on the other side of Barataria Bay, Louisiana Bayoukeeper documented pools of oil and oiled pelicans inside the boom - on the supposedly protected landward side - of Queen Bess Island off Grand Isle.
With oil undisputedly hitting the beaches and the number of dead wildlife mounting, BP is switching tactics. In Orange Beach, people told me BP wouldn't let them collect carcasses. Instead, the company was raking up carcasses of oiled seabirds. "The heads separate from the bodies," one upset resident told me. "There's no way those birds are going to be autopsied. BP is destroying evidence!"
The body count of affected wildlife is crucial to prove the harm caused by the spill, and also serves as an invaluable tool to evaluate damages to public property - the dolphins, sea turtles, whales, sea birds, fish, and more, that are owned by the American public. Disappeared body counts means disappeared damages - and disappeared liability for BP. BP should not be collecting carcasses. The job should be given to NOAA, a federal agency, and volunteers, as was done during the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
NOAA should also be conducting carcass drift studies. Only one percent of the dead sea birds made landfall in the Gulf of Alaska, for example. That means for every one bird that was found, another 99 were carried out to sea by currents. Further, NOAA should be conducting aerial surveys to look for carcasses in the offshore rips where the currents converge. That's where the carcasses will pile up--a fact we learned during the Exxon Valdez spill. Maybe that's another reason for BP's "no camera" policy and the flight restrictions.

On Saturday June 12, people across America will stand up and speak out with one voice to protest BP's treatment of the Gulf, neglect for the response workers, and their response to government authority. President Obama needs to hear and see the people waving cameras and respirators. Until the media is allowed unrestricted access to the Gulf and impacted beaches, BP - not the President of United States - will remain in charge of the Gulf response.
For more information on community rallies, please visit HERE.

Riki Ott, PhD, is a community activist, a former fisherm'am, and has a degree in marine toxicology with a specialty in oil pollution. She is also the author of Sound Truth and Corporate Myth$: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.

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Saudi Arabia Gives Israel Clear Skies to Attack Iranian Nuclear Sites

Saturday, June 12, 2010



By Hugh Tomlinson

June 12, 2010 "The Times" -- Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”

Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one.

The four main targets for any raid on Iran would be the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, the gas storage development at Isfahan and the heavy-water reactor at Arak. Secondary targets include the lightwater reactor at Bushehr, which could produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.

The targets lie as far as 1,400 miles (2,250km) from Israel; the outer limits of their bombers’ range, even with aerial refuelling. An open corridor across northern Saudi Arabia would significantly shorten the distance. An airstrike would involve multiple waves of bombers, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest.

Passing over Iraq would require at least tacit agreement to the raid from Washington. So far, the Obama Administration has refused to give its approval as it pursues a diplomatic solution to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Military analysts say Israel has held back only because of this failure to secure consensus from America and Arab states. Military analysts doubt that an airstrike alone would be sufficient to knock out the key nuclear facilities, which are heavily fortified and deep underground or within mountains. However, if the latest sanctions prove ineffective the pressure from the Israelis on Washington to approve military action will intensify. Iran vowed to continue enriching uranium after the UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions yet in an effort to halt the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme, which Tehran claims is intended for civil energy purposes only. President Ahmadinejad has described the UN resolution as “a used handkerchief, which should be thrown in the dustbin”.

Israeli officials refused to comment yesterday on details for a raid on Iran, which the Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has refused to rule out. Questioned on the option of a Saudi flight path for Israeli bombers, Aharaon Zeevi Farkash, who headed military intelligence until 2006 and has been involved in war games simulating a strike on Iran, said: “I know that Saudi Arabia is even more afraid than Israel of an Iranian nuclear capacity.”

In 2007 Israel was reported to have used Turkish air space to attack a suspected nuclear reactor being built by Iran’s main regional ally, Syria. Although Turkey publicly protested against the “violation” of its air space, it is thought to have turned a blind eye in what many saw as a dry run for a strike on Iran’s far more substantial — and better-defended — nuclear sites.

Israeli intelligence experts say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are at least as worried as themselves and the West about an Iranian nuclear arsenal.Israel has sent missile-class warships and at least one submarine capable of launching a nuclear warhead through the Suez Canal for deployment in the Red Sea within the past year, as both a warning to Iran and in anticipation of a possible strike. Israeli newspapers reported last year that high-ranking officials, including the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have met their Saudi Arabian counterparts to discuss the Iranian issue. It was also reported that Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, met Saudi intelligence officials last year to gain assurances that Riyadh would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets violating Saudi airspace during the bombing run. Both governments have denied the reports.

There Is a Method to Israel's Madness

Friday, June 11, 2010

Asia Times / By Pepe Escobar

128 COMMENTS

A new Middle East is being born - and there seems to be only one place for Israel: isolation. With that comes an inevitable, somewhat crazed approach to diplomacy.

June 10, 2010  |  

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Why would Israel, in a deliberate and methodical operation planned over a week in advance - according to statements by senior Israeli military commanders made in Hebrew-language media days before the attack - target an unarmed ship on a humanitarian mission flying the flag of Comoros? (Unlike Turkey, Comoros is a party of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over war crimes committed on vessels of member states.)

Why would Israeli commandos shoot nine unarmed activists dead with nine millimeter bullets at close range, between the eyes, in the top of the head, in the back of the head, in the chest, in the back, and in the legs - including an American citizen? (The final death toll may be 15, as six activists are still missing; Israeli army radio reported 16 dead early last Monday when the attack took place on the Mavi Marmara, a part of the Free Gaza flotilla.)

How could Israel think it would get away with it by censoring video and photos - and then getting away with it all over again by refusing an international, independent commission to investigate the incident and subsequent cover-up?

Why, geopolitically, would Israel declare war on the de facto international community - from Muslim nations to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member-countries to global public opinion?

Is this merely a case of a "dysfunctional government", as Bradley Burston wrote in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz? And strategically speaking, is there any method behind the madness? Or is the method actually the madness?

Be afraid, be very afraid

There may be a very simple answer to all these questions: fear.

Let's survey Israel's possible motivations. A key Israeli motive to attack the humanitarian flotilla was to send a "signal" to Turkey about the Brazil and Turkey-mediated Iran nuclear fuel-swap deal - as its success pre-empted Israel's pleas for a military strike on Tehran's nuclear facilities. Israel wants conflict between Washington and Tehran - and that means using the Israel lobby in Washington to sabotage US President Barack Obama's half-hearted attempts at finding any sort of agreement with Tehran over its uranium-enrichment program.

Israel wants a weak Turkey - out of the loop both in the Middle East and the European Union (EU). Turkey is an emerging, key regional power now with good, stable relations with its neighbors. Turkey is key for the US: 70% of all supplies for US troops in Iraq go through the Incirlik base in Turkey. Turkey has troops fighting the US war in Afghanistan. Not to mention that Turkey - in Obama's own terms - represents the key bridge between the West and the Muslim world.

The White House gave a wimpy response, "The United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy." This was also Washington's signal to Turkey that the Brazil-Turkey mediation on the Iran nuclear fuel swap deal was not exactly welcome.

Iran agreed last month with the leaders of Brazil and Turkey to send most of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey to be held in escrow pending delivery of fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor.

As much as Israel wants Turkey immersed in deep trouble with both Syria and Greece, and fighting a nasty internal Kurdish problem, Ankara is not exactly trembling because of Israel's "message". In terms of conventional military strength, Turkey is ahead of Israel itself; and moreover it is a very important US NATO ally.

Another key Israeli motive was to undermine and in fact abort any possibility of meaningful peaceful negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians - and to cut Turkey from the loop. Turkey is very much involved in the Palestinian tragedy. It is trying hard to breach the gap between Fatah and Hamas. A key Israeli aim appears to be to sabotage any Turkish-led peace initiative to solve the Palestinian problem that includes the essential provision of a fully denuclearized Middle East - anathema to (undeclared) nuclear power Israel.

To round it all up, there is the crucial element of fear itself. As the once-fabled Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have struggled in battles with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza in 2008, they have had to come to grips with the fact that their tanks are now vulnerable to Russian-made rocket-propelled grenades; their ships are now vulnerable to Hezbollah's made in China missiles; and their planes will soon be vulnerable to Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles.

The new axis in town
Iraqi Kurdistan is now virtually independent - according to Washington's designs. Israel is robustly active everywhere in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the same time, the US actively supports the Iraq-based Kurdish Workers' Party separatists in eastern Anatolia as well as Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) separatists in Iran and Kurdish separatists in Syria. The Turkish military spent no time analyzing these crucial developments. Their conclusion: NATO is not exactly a panacea. We must focus on the Middle East.

And this has led to the ultimate Israeli nightmare. The new key axis in the Middle East is Turkey, Iran and Syria. It used to be only Iran and Syria. Its historical legitimacy simply cannot be questioned, as it unites Shi'ite Iran, secular Syria and post-Ottoman Sunni Turkey.

There are many fascinating side-effects of this cross-fertilization - such as more than a million Iraqis, many of them very well educated, finding a new life in Syria. But the most remarkable effect of this axis is that it has smashed the same old divide-and-rule logic Western colonialism has been imposing on the Middle East for more than a century. Turkey's destiny may not be firmly attached to a fearful Europe that really does not want to embrace it after all; Turkey is to become once again a leader of the Muslim world.

Life for the new axis won't be easy. United States covert operations have tried to destabilize Syrian President Bashar al-Assad - to no avail. The same for US Central Intelligence Agency black ops in Sistan-Balochistan province in southeast Iran, as a means to destabilize the regime in Tehran. And the same for shady covert ops meant to bring a new military dictatorship in Turkey. But while US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton perfects her vociferousness, Assad, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad got together this February in Syria and advanced their partnership.

Crucially, Russia immediately stepped in to fill the US-provoked void. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been to Ankara and Damascus and has positioned himself in favor of full reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and a fully functional Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel.

Even US Central Command commander General David “I'm always positioning myself to 2012” Petraeus has been forced to publicly admit that US strategic ally Israel - because of the non-stop colonization of Palestine and the blockade it is enforcing in Gaza - has become an immense burden for US strategic designs.
Russia on the other hand supports the new Turkey, Syria and Iran politico-economic axis. Visa-free travel between Ankara and Moscow is now on. Russia's Rosatom and Atomstroyexport are finishing Iran's Bushehr nuclear power station this August; are discussing the building of other plants; and have clinched a Turkish nuclear power station deal worth US$20 billion (Syria is also interested). Stroitransgaz and Gazprom will bring Syrian gas to Lebanon - as Israel prevents Lebanon from exploiting its considerable offshore reserves. Russia is on a roll. Tehran will soon receive its already paid-for S-300 missiles. And Syria will soon get a new naval base.

In Pipelineistan, Russia and Turkey are now brothers in arms. Russia will build a crucial Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline to bring Russian oil from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Moreover, Turkey is about to join the Russian South Stream gas pipeline - and that means a direct blow to the troubled US/EU-supported Nabucco.

Russia - just like Turkey - also wants a fully denuclearized Middle East, which implies a non-nuclear Israel. This will be discussed at the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.

Thus, essentially, Israel fears the new Turkey, Syria and Iran as much as it fears Russian support for it. A new Middle East is being born - and there seems to be only one place for Israel: isolation.

Israel's "mad dog" strategy - conceived by former military leader Moshe Dayan - is not exactly an exercise in fitting in. Even centrist Middle East analyst Anthony Cordesman, an establishment icon at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote an essay under the title "Israel as a Strategic Liability?"

Big Brother Washington may be - forever - blind to it; but if you are a state and your strategy is to configure yourself as South Africa at the twilight of apartheid - by the way, at the time Israel was trying to sell nuclear weapons to South Africa - method is the last thing to be found in your madness.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.