Smart Pig: BP's OTHER Spill this Week

By Greg Palast on Buzzflash.com:

With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there's no space in the press for British Petroleum's latest spill, just this week: over 100,000 gallons, at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand used to be a lot. Still is.

On Tuesday, Pump Station 9, at Delta Junction on the 800-mile pipeline, busted. Thousands of barrels began spewing an explosive cocktail of hydrocarbons after "procedures weren't properly implemented" by BP operators, say state inspectors "Procedures weren't properly implemented" is, it seems, BP's company motto.

Click here for the whole article at Buzzflash

If you don't hate BP yet, try not to after reading this article. What Palast has been doing for the past decade or so is invaluable; I wish I worked as hard as him to get the word out about shady corporate happenings. Who knows how long he'll be around, if everything he's been exposing has been true.

This article talks about just a few despicable things BP has done in the past which makes the current disaster easier to understand, and also more enraging. He points out that BP is highly responsible for the destruction caused by the '89 Exxon Valdez spill, which transitions smoothly into their anti-whistleblower tactics against one Dan Lawn, who warned BP for over a decade about corrosion of a certain pipeline in Alaska which was finally addressed in 2006.

The overall lesson here, to me, is that we can't expect the private sector to ever regulate itself seriously or safely. There has to be a referee, and the referee has to be neutral. What we've gotten for longer than I've been alive is the largest corporate entities slithering their way into government regulatory positions and doing the opposite of what they're supposed to do. What's worse, the corporate owned media spins this issue so much that the average viewer of cable news will probably tell you that the private sector deals with enough regulation as it is. It's simply not true. I've lost count of the factory recalls of American products in my lifetime, and that isn't even half of the problem. But every time you hear about e. coli in the burgers, or peanut butter, or flipping green beans, that's a consequence of lax regulation. When people die needlessly because of poorly constructed automobiles, there's your free market working itself out. Fuck BP.

The City of Baytown: "We want rich people"

From my sort-of home town paper, the Baytown Sun:

In the city’s efforts to attract high-end retail and restaurant development, one essential ingredient is having a customer base to support that development. In an early step toward building such a customer base, the Baytown Economic Development Foundation has been conducting a survey to assess the potential market for houses valued at $200,000 or higher.

[...]

In a letter DonCarlos sent to large employers asking them to invite employees to take the survey, he said consultants had recommended “for the City of Baytown to establish a framework that encourages developers to build higher-end housing that would attract affluent buyers and therefore create more demand for commercial and retail activity.”

[...]

“We feel a lot of the white-collar workers, and a fair number of the blue-collar workers—professional and nonprofessional—in some of our major industries have chosen to live elsewhere. We’ve got a pretty concentrated effort under way to try to attract the people who work here in our industries to also live here and raise their families here.”

for the whole thing click here or on the title of this entry

What this amounts to is a desire for white-washing in Baytown. When you have city officials like mayor Stephen Don-Carlos complaining that houses valued under $160k are not "profitable" for them, you're talking about a city that doesn't want anymore non-white people living there. But there are other issues here.

That last quote I put here, about white collar and blue collar workers from "our major industries," is addressing the fact that the Exxon corporation is the only reason why Baytown exists, yet the people at the top of the company making obscene amounts of money don't live in Baytown. This also begs the question, "Why should the city where the most profitable company in recent history is based have any money problems?"

Another question on my mind is "Does Baytown really need MORE suburban sprawl??"

Is there any chain restaurant Baytown doesn't have at least one of now? Maybe we could have the first Karl's Junior restaurant in the region, how exciting! Is there any room left on Garth road to build another fake, over-priced suburban "Italian" restaurant? We got Johnny Carinos, now Olive Garden, is Carabas on the Don-Carlos radar for white people bait? Ah, but that's not enough. The city wants "high end" retailers to set up shop in Baytown. Ooo, let's turn Texas Avenue into the Galleria of East Houston, complete with a Jeffery's outlet and an Apple store! Floor those old historical buildings and local owned businesses and build a place where Rex Tillerson himself may shop, maybe we can make some room where the old hospital used to be!

I think we all know why people move to Baytown. It's Exxon, stupid. Any economic questions about Baytown can be referred to their accounting department. Exxon is Baytown, Baytown is Exxon.

That's the way things are, but that's not how it has to be. There's been a thriving little-music-scene-that-could living there for a while now. They even had their own legitimate venue to play at on weekends. But new owners of the property got tired of the place's slight money problems, being run by a church that lost support from the Southern Baptist Convention because they dared to let a gay-friendly Christian denomination rent the place out during the week. The venue fell behind on the rent, and despite their potential to put on profitable shows, with over one hundred people showing up to one show in particular in August 2006, the following month the owners of the building kicked out Mr. Haney and his brainchild, The Harbour. That's the kind of ethic the city council is supporting--your only value is your profit margin. Pay now or get out.

What's good for the bosses is good for our city. Screw the poor, screw the individuals who have grown up here and are trying to define Baytown beyond Exxon. Lets pave the way for a yuppie paradise. Gee, why are so many young Baytownians moving to Austin? Screw 'em. The oil an gas industry will never die.....

My band and mouth stabbings

I haven't linked this blog to my band in a long time but I wanted to post the latest news entry from our website:

Second post of 2010 and what happened Saturday night
Damn, I'm a slacker. Only took five months to post a news entry, and to play a show, for that matter. On Saturday night we played at Cecil's Water Park in Crosby which is actually a pretty cool place. There had been some talk of trouble brewing at this show, but there was also some talk that nothing violent was going to go down. We went on around midnight and played several songs until eventually a fight broke out which led to several other fights over the span of about 30 or 40 minutes. Eventually some police showed up and I think took some people away, but I don't know about that for sure. I don't know what the initial fight was about, but the whole night I could sense some tension in the pit. There were probably some people there who either aren't familiar with "mosh pits" or are accustomed to being excessively violent at shows, but there was some kind of clash and eventually it erupted into a brawl. Apparently, someone also got stabbed in the mouth with a knife. Which is not nearly as funny in reality as it sounds abstractly. The people running the show couldn't decide if they wanted us to keep playing or shut it down, eventually there was a drunken consensus that we keep playing. I packed up my gear and left. I half-heartedly apologize for us not finishing our set. We're supposed to be playing in Baytown in a few weeks but I think it's a semi-private event so I'm hesitant to divulge too much info (of which I have little anyway). If you have any questions, comments, concerns, statements, filibusters, rebuttals, proposals, inquiries, conjectures, objections, interjections, testimony, arguments, bullet points, flashcards, musings, ad-libs, asides, asterisks, spread sheets, dinosaurs, or any Powerpoint slide shows, please contact thedraftedband@yahoo.com. That is all.

www.thedrafted.com

Mixed feelings on Draw Muhammad Day

Today is May 20th, 2010, the first annual Draw Muhammad Day, as decreed by numerous YouTubers and bloggers. It's a response to the response to the response to the response of a joke that was a response to a response, yadayada yada. South Park joked about drawing Muhammad on their show before, and they self-censored. Now they've drawn Muhammad for real and they got death threats and will probably not be allowed to ever re-run the show.

Take it from Wiki: "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day is a protest against Islamists who threaten violence against individuals that attempt to depict Muhammad. It originally began as a protest against censorship of South Park episode "201" by Comedy Central in response to death threats from radical Islamists."

here's the whole thing

I'm not sure what an "Islamist" is but I think they mean "Muslim." Apparently, Pakistan has blocked Facebook altogether because of a group on the site that is dedicated to supporting Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.

Of course, illustrators have been threatened and murdered by radical hard-liner Muslims in recent history. The death threats continue today, but I still can't quite get behind this particular cause, if that's what it actually is.

From what I understand about the general religion of Islam, those who practice it are not allowed to depict Muhammad. So a moderate Muslim shouldn't care one way or the other whether a non-Muslim depicts their prophet, although it would be hard to blame them at least for being offended by it. Obviously most Muslims do not support the actions of the murderous radicals, but what are they supposed to think about this particular "holiday?" We all know that there are some crazy Muslims out there (and Christians and Jews and Scientologists and and and...) so I'm kind of confused by this particular effort, which serves to alienate all Muslims, but with the supposed intent of only riling up the few who would kill or threaten to kill someone for depicting Muhammad.

Is it all non-Muslims' job to force moderate Muslims to make the choice of openly denouncing other Muslims or being silently complicit with radical actions? No. Do non-Muslims have the right to do so in the US? Absolutely. For me, this a particular right that I choose to wave. As someone who respects people who actually understand their religion, as moderate Muslims and Jews (not Christians) seem to, I have no plans of drawing Muhammad this year.

Seems like misdirected energy to me.

Civil Rights and Misleading Headlines

After reading this article, I felt compelled to talk about the US public school system's problem with overbearing social discipline, and the peculiar wording accompanying this Associated Press article on Yahoo.com. The article is about a school in Mississippi that canceled their senior prom because the ACLU demanded that they change a certain policy regarding gay couples. The school has a ban on same-sex prom dates, and an 18-year-old lesbian student was planning on wearing a tuxedo.

It should be duly noted that public school's are not bound by strict constitutional guidelines. Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier was part of a Supreme Court precedent which gives public school administrators some leeway in enforcing certain school rules, such as reasonable censorship of school newspapers, or in this case dress codes. On the other hand, Tinker v Des Moines clearly protects students' free expression, so long as school dress codes are designed to promote educational goals. The latter decision is much older than the former, however, and we have a more conservative Court now than when Tinker was decided.

Some may argue that a public school has a right to deny any student access to a non-curricular school function like that of a prom. The ACLU's argument here must be that the school is interpreting its policy (which is probably vaguely worded as "no distracting attire allowed at prom") in such away that explicitly discriminates against homosexuals. What sucks about this AP article is that they give no insight into what the ACLU is saying about this--more on that in a second. Being government institutions, public schools have ZERO right to discriminate on social grounds like this. If this were a private school, the ACLU would have no case and probably would not have bothered the administration.

The subtitle to this article on the Yahoo.com front page was "Citing 'distractions,' a school district under pressure from the ACLU calls off prom altogether." This subtitle would lead any rational person to infer that the ACLU demanded that the school cancel prom. This is not the case. The ACLU demands that the school change its discriminatory policy, the school chose on its own behalf to cancel its prom. The way this article is presented on Yahoo, and with the articles' stark omission of any detailed comment from the ACLU, those who may not openly advocate discrimination but nevertheless "disagree" with homosexuality can simply fall back on the classic Bill O'Reilly narrative that the ACLU is a bunch of busy bodies who are at war with Christians and Christianity (despite the fact that the ACLU has represented Christians and fought for their free exercise).

This article doesn't cite the school's official policy at question here; is it actually a ban on homosexuals or just against causing a distraction at the prom, or both? The article says:

"The ACLU filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford to force the school district to sponsor the prom and allow McMillen to bring whom she chooses and wear what she wants."

"AP" now stands for Absolute Phailure.

Naomi Klein: How Socialism Protected Chileans from Earthquake Fall-out

From Alternet:

Just two days after Chile was struck by a devastating earthquake, Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens informed his readers that Milton Friedman's "spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile" because, "thanks largely to him, the country has endured a tragedy that elsewhere would have been an apocalypse...

[...]

According to Stephens, the radical free-market policies prescribed to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet by Milton Friedman and his infamous "Chicago Boys" are the reason Chile is a prosperous nation with "some of the world's strictest building codes."

[...]

The Chile of the 1960s had the best health and education systems on the continent, as well as a vibrant industrial sector and rapidly expanding middle class. Chileans believed in their state, which is why they elected Allende to take the project even further.

After the coup and the death of Allende, Pinochet and his Chicago Boys did their best to dismantle Chile's public sphere, auctioning off state enterprises and slashing financial and trade regulations. Enormous wealth was created in this period but at a terrible cost: by the early eighties, Pinochet's Friedman-prescribed policies had caused rapid de-industrialization, a ten-fold increase in unemployment and an explosion of distinctly unstable shantytowns. They also led to a crisis of corruption and debt so severe that, in 1982, Pinochet was forced to fire his key Chicago Boy advisors and nationalize several of the large deregulated financial institutions. (Sound familiar?)

Click here for the whole article

Click here for Paul Krugman's piece on the subject

Click here for the Wall Street Journal article about Friedman

Not surprising that free marketeers would try to spin the disaster in Chile in favor of the gangster-style fundamentalist capitalism that got us into this economic mess. Also not surprising that they spun it in a complete 180 to the facts.

Chile's history in the late 20th century is very much a part of our own; it's a shame so few Americans understand what happened there and why the dictator we helped prop up there was so harmful to the working people of that country.

Always a new asshole for white people to idolize

I heard about the Austin IRS building attack by Joseph Stack the other day and today I found out about a man who has become known among the webertubes as "Epic Beard Man."

Joseph Stack flew his own plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. He posted an online manifesto which rails against taxation in much the fashion that the Tea Parties have been doing for over a year now. Epic Beard Man can be seen on YouTube, arguing with another man on a public bus and later beating him up (EBM is in his 60s, is probably homeless or retired, and clearly has some mental health issues).

Both of these men have had Facebook pages made in their honor, revering their honorable acts of violence for various causes. Just like Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin, a new generation of white supremacist heroes enter the hearts of right wing American zealots.

Joseph Stack

Epic Beard Man

Epic Beard Man interview (pity this man, don't hold him up as a fucking hero)

These men are not to be idolized, nor demonized for that matter. Whether intentionally or not, they each in their own ways acted on deeply rooted white supremacist values. Anyone rejoicing in what these men did is equally pitiful.

SSB Re-Run: Obama calls for National Health care (2007)

On January 25th 2007 I wrote this about Obama's proposed stance on health care.

-----------------------------------

'Obama calls for national health care' -- [so what?]
[^ link]

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

"The time has come for universal health care in America," Obama said at a conference of Families USA, a health care advocacy group.

"I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country," the Illinois senator said.

...

Okay, Barack Obama says we should have universal health care. That's what this article is about. But then it also says that John Edwards and Hillary Clinton want national health care too, so why does it matter that Obama was talking about it? What makes him any better of a Democrat than the other two? He's gotten a lot of praise from just about everyone; Time Magazine had him on the cover a few months back as our future president. Don't get me wrong, I want a black president just as much as the next guy, but I just don't see how much of a difference he would really make.

I'm not usually very pessimistic, but there is no chance in hell that the US is going to convert to national health care any time soon. As Obama pointed out himself, national health care always gets set back by "Washington politics." ..I think .. No matter what the Dems say about it, they're never actually going to go through with it.

------------------------------------------------

I'm like a modern day Nostradamus ain't I not?

Hey, don't blame me, I voted for Nader.

A Public Rebuttal to John Cornyn

As part of a letter writing campaign organized by Amnesty International I sent an email to my Senators from Texas: John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison. I've lost the original message sent to him, but the basics can be inferred from Cornyn's response (Hutchison is probably too busy running for Governor to read many constituant emails). Here are the key points of his response coupled with my own rebuttals:

CORNYN: Many of the enemy combatants being held in Guantanamo Bay—largely members or affiliates of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban—continue to pose a direct threat to the security of the United States. [...] In fact, dozens of terrorists previously released from Guantanamo Bay have already returned to the battlefield to fight against American and coalition forces.

ME: What does it take to be a member or affiliate of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban? These are not legitimate, official organizations; they are basically gangs made up of a few thousand people total. That being said, do you really believe that most of the inmates at Guantanamo are actually terrorists? The reason why groups like Amnesty International are upset about this prison is that it has been consistently shown that a large majority of the prisoners there have been put there for little to no reason, and have not helped Al-Qaeda or the Taliban at all. If "dozens" (more like one dozen, to be exact) of released inmates have gone on to join the insurgency, or Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, does this mean that ALL of the prisoners MUST stay in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, indefinitely? I suspect that this violates the Geneva Conventions.

CORNYN: For these reasons, I am gravely concerned by the current Administration’s efforts to transfer dozens of these terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to a state-run prison in Illinois.Unfortunately, this latest plan follows the emerging pattern from the current Administration, wherein critical decisions appear to be made more for the sake of political posturing rather than in the interests of our national security. This is unacceptable, and I strongly oppose any effort to close the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

ME: For those who are accused of aiding Al-Qaeda to commit the 9/11 attacks, which was committed on U.S. soil, it is constitutionally mandatory that they be tried in the United States. This has nothing to do with political posturing; do you really think that transporting prisoners to the US is politically beneficial? It's the law, Senator! It is the Executive Branch's job to execute the law, and that is why some of the Guantanamo Prisoners must be brought here eventually. To call this political posturing a complete lie: it would be much easier and politically safer for Obama to take YOUR position on this. But guess what, Senator? Obama hasn't talked seriously about Guantanamo since he got into office; he is not bringing those prisoners here any time soon. Turns out you guys aren't so different after all.

CORNYN: Furthermore, all detainees at U.S. facilities are treated humanely and in accordance with our laws. I have visited Guantanamo Bay to observe the detention facility’s operations and the living conditions of detainees. Although neither Al-Qaeda nor Taliban detainees qualify under applicable legal authority for prisoner of war (POW) status, they have been treated humanely and are allowed many POW privileges—including the opportunity to worship, access to correspondence materials, and meals that adhere to Muslim dietary laws. I recognize the complex issues that arise as we work to balance individuals' rights and freedoms with the need to prosecute the Global War on Terror and protect the American people.

ME: To simply state that "all detainees are treated humanely" is to ignore piles and piles of proven instances where this has not been the case. Also, to say that you've visited the prison and that you saw nothing wrong going on does absolutely nothing to support your stance on this. Do you think that the guards are going to leave the prisoners outside in the sun for hours, deface the Koran, and waterboard people while a senator is visiting?

We can't just toss away all of our problems on some island and expect them to go away. If detainees cannot be proven guilty, they have to be let go. If they're accused of a crime on our soil, they have to be tried here. They CANNOT be tortured! Waterboarding is inhumane; if you want to ignore that so you can say that no laws are being broken in any of our facilities, why don't you let someone do that to you and see how humane it is? That is why Amnesty International is urging you to do something about this facility. I urge you to re-examine what our laws and that of the Geneva Convention actually say, and not worry about what it takes to get re-elected in Texas.

King was killed because he supported a labor union