This whole drone thing is getting way to scary. You can kiss any freedom you thought you had in the first place goodbye if this program goes through...
Nearly half the public, 44 percent, supports allowing police forces
inside the U.S. to use drones to assist police work, but a significant
minority — 36 percent — say they “strongly oppose” or “somewhat oppose”
police use of drones, according to a survey last month.
An inspiring story of an Ecuadorean peasant-turned lawyer-who took on Big Oil.
In 1972, crude oil began to flow from Texaco’s wells in the area around Lago Agrio (“sour lake”), in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Born that same year, Pablo Fajardo is now the lead attorney in an epic lawsuit (among the largest environmental suits in history) against Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001. Reporting on an emotional battle in a makeshift jungle courtroom, the author investigates how many hundreds of square miles of surrounding rain forest became a toxic-waste dump.
1. How British (Really) is BP? Certainly to anyone knowledgeable about its past operations in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and the Americas, BP is as British as warm beer.
Nor is there anything new about complaints that BP is secretive in its operations and given to doubletalk in responding to valid criticisms in host countries. This is certainly not the whole story, but these very negatives are deeply embedded in its corporate DNA.
The tale of how Britain gained full access to Azeri oil is a sordid one. There are several reports of how BP executives working for Lord Browne spent millions of pounds on champagne-fuelled sex parties to help secure lucrative international oil contracts. The company also worked with MI6 to help bring about changes in foreign governments, according to an astonishing account of life inside the oil giant. Les Abrahams, who led BP’s successful bid for a multi-million-pound deal with one of the former Soviet republics, today claims that Browne - who was forced to resign as chief executive recently after the collapse of legal proceedings against The Mail on Sunday - presided over an “anything goes” regime of sexual license, spying and financial sweeteners.Read More
http://www.iranian.com/main/blog/jalilbahar/bps-caspian-disaster
3. BP Under Criminal Investigation for Alaskan Oil Spill ----2006
The oil giant BP is under criminal investigation in the US for a big oil spill in Alaska in March that has raised fresh questions about the company's safety record.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/jun/08/oilandpetrol.news 4. Lockerbie bomber 'set free for oil'---2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6814939.ece 5. Out-of-Sight, Out-of-Mind "...a fundamental question lingers like the petrochemical smell over the gulf: Is Corexit doing more harm than good? Dispersants, all agree, do not lessen the amount of oil in the environment. Rather, they break it into tiny drops that have different, but not necessarily less toxic properties.
"[Dispersants] make the oil more soluble in water, so it won't just sit on the surface," Jackie Savitz, senior scientist with Oceana told CNN. "Whether that's good or bad depends on whether you're a fish or a seabird."
But whether or not the dispersants work as promised, they are effective in other ways, critics charge. By breaking the peanut-butter thick sludge into tiny droplets, Nalco's Corexit has made the oil less visible, thereby disguising the full environmental impact of the spill, and helping BP limit its legal and financial liability."
Read more here:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15609
6. BP oil spill: company accused of 'buying academic silence' in new legal row
BP has been accused of “buying” the silence of some of the world’s leading scientists and academics to help build its legal defence against litigation after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Give the image makers at BP credit for knowing how to stick to a story. If you had (a) been spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of up to 25,000 bbls. per day since April 20, and (b) been spraying dispersants on it to keep much of it from floating to the surface, you'd find it hard to say "who me?" if scientists began finding huge plumes of oil drifting in underwater currents.
But that's been BP's position. Not only has the oil giant not been willing to take the blame for the toxic clouds below the waves, it's denied they even exist. Today, however, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that they had found the smoking gun that most everyone else believed was there in the first place.
A government panel on Thursday essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well, with the new calculation suggesting that an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days.
Edward Burtynsky has traveled internationally to chronicle the production, distribution, and use of the most critical fuel of our time. In addition to revealing the rarely-seen mechanics of its manufacture, Burtynsky captures the effects of oil on our lives, depicting landscapes altered by its extraction from the earth, and by the cities and suburban sprawl generated around its use. He also addresses the coming "end of oil," as we confront its rising cost and dwindling availability.
“Edward Burtynsky: Oil is the definitive photographic documentation of this hotly debated subject.” - Paul Roth, Senior Curator of Photography, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
Employees of Halliburton Inc., a United States energy services group, after an intensive investigation have been charged with acts of bribing Nigerian officials.
The investigation stems from the construction of a giant liquefied natural gas plant on the Nigerian coast near Port Harcourt that began in 1996 and received a boost last year when former Halliburton Inc. executive, Albert J. Stanley pleaded guilty to orchestrating $180 million in bribes to senior Nigerian officials.
