"Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste"

I'm morbidly fascinated with the ongoing Gulf of Mexico catastrophe. What's even more fascinating is this supposed ineptitude, or lack of a competent response by the US government.

I'm left with only one real conclusion - if this disaster were not instigated on purpose, our Government has certainly let it get to it's current (and increasingly worsening) state on purpose.

Why?

How else do you account for such insanity as this?

Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.

To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn't capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana's marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.

The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company's expense. "If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands," says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.

In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.

Now why in holy hell would our Government do this? This is why I say the ONLY conclusion we can come to is that whoever is calling the shots here WANTS the environmental devastation this oil gusher is causing.

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules.

This is the supposed rationale...but it makes no logical sense whatsoever. Are there really union shippers who would happily watch as the entire gulf region is literally destroyed in both an environmental and economical sense...just to preserve the rules set up to protect their racket?

Let's delve more into this crazy rationale:

The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy."

Not crazy....psychotic. Pathological. The supposed rationale here is that US Government is more interested in adhering to the environmental laws than averting an actual environmental catastrophe!

The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labor unions, the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.

A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berms to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berms. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. "Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands," he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focused on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.

Postponed for training...while the oil keeps spewing from the damaged well every single second?

I believe this is all a dog and pony show - stalling tactics used by the Government to allow as much damage as possible while putting up the appearances of "doing something."

Now why would our government allow this disaster to happen? What's to gain here?

Rahm Emmanuel stated quite openly that they would "Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste."

Well, we are now in the midst of one fantastic fucking crisis.

I have this sinking feeling we're gonna find out real soon exactly why they deliberately and purposefully let this turn into the disaster that it now is.

A Conspiracy Reality...Not Just a "Theory"

Came across a blog, Hold the Toast, that also lead me to another great website, The Metabolism Society that focuses on the science of diet that contradicts the conventional wisdom of mainstream dietary advice...especially that doled out by the non-profit organizations that are supposedly in existence to help people live healthy lives.

So how is it that the American Diabetic Association recommends the carbohydrate-based food pyramid diet to diabetics? Hold the Toast has the details:

Those of us in the low carb community have long shaken our heads, wondering why, oh why, the American Diabetes Association still insists that the best diet for people with severely impaired carbohydrate metabolisms is a low fat diet loaded with starch -- aka "lots of sugar holding hands." The research and clinical experience of doctors like Dr. Richard Bernstein and Dr. Mary Vernon seems to affect them not at all. Nor do years of positive clinical research, or the stories of millions of diabetics who have controlled their blood sugar through low carbohydrate diets.

They also seem oblivious to the fact that before hypoglycemic medication was invented, low carbohydrate diets were commonly recommended for diabetics: Dr. John Rollo, Surgeon General in the Royal Artillery of the British Army being credited as the first modern doctor to recommend such a diet for treatment of the disease. This text, Diabetes Mellitus and Its Treatment, by R.T. Williamson MD, was published in 1898, and includes this statement:Ever since Rollo published his book on diabetes in 1797, and pointed out the value of restriction of the carbohydrates in the food, it has been acknowledged that of all forms and methods of treatment this dietetic one is the most important.

Yet the ADA continues to recommend a diet of the very foods that destabilize blood sugar, instructing diabetics to "cover" those "healthy" carbs with higher and higher doses of medication -- this, despite it being generally recognized that tight blood sugar control is the most important preventive of diabetic complications.

Why?

Take a look at this: a list of the ADA's top corporate sponsors. See the "Banting level" sponsors, the biggest bankrollers of the ADA? All but one of them are pharmaceutical companies. The remaining one -- BD -- is a medical supplies corporation whose business includes "diabetes care" and "pharmaceutical systems. All of them make money off of diabetes. All of them. They are all making money, very big money, off of diabetes medications. I question whether those sponsors have any corporate interest in diabetes interventions that would dramatically lessen the quantity of drugs diabetics have to take.

Why folks...that sounds sort of like a ummmm......let's see...big corporations donate $$$$ to Government subsidized non-profit organization that recommends people eat the kind of food that causes diabetes so that they can continue to have customer base dependent on their lucrative medications and equipment rather than simply changing their diet and CURING their diabetes...

....why, that actually sounds like an ummmmmmmmmm.....ahhh....conspiracy?

Another Expose on Corporate Fascism USA

It is the standard left wing/mainstream liberal media meme that much of our problems are the results of the failures of the "Free Market Capitalism."

The standard right wing/FoxNew/talk radio media meme is that our problems are the result of "Government Interventions in the Free Market" and that Government needs to leave "big business" alone.

Of course, both are wrong. Both contain some truth to them, but they both are based on dialectical straw men that keep us divided and squabbling over marginal half-truths while the real system of Corporate Fascism continues it's machinations unhindered and unaffected, no matter who runs the show in D.C. The right, or the left...both are part and parcel to the perpetuation status quo.

LewRockwell columnist, Jim Quinn, writes a review of a recently aired HBO special entitled Gasland, in which Quinn makes the connection between the actions of the big Natural Gas companies and their practice of "fracking" which is implicated in contaminating drinking water wells in communities across the country.

Quinn lays out the modus operandi of our corporate-fascist government State, and shows quite clearly how it all works the same, whether it's big gas companies contaminating water wells with their fracking process, or it's BP unleashing the biggest environmental catastrophe in the known history of mankind...

From Too Small to Matter:

As I watched the film, it was clear that there are many parallels to the BP disaster in the Gulf. Corporate fascism rules America. Corporations spend billions to generate legislation which benefits their bottom lines. Their lobbyists write the legislation and bribe the corrupt Washington politicians. The American people suffer. The documentary GASLAND leads me to the following conclusions:

1. Mega corporations are not inherently evil, immoral, or greedy. The men who run the Mega corporations are evil, immoral and greedy. EPS, profits, and bonuses are what drive corporate executives.

2. Mega corporations use their political connections, highly paid lobbyists, and vast financial resources to steer legislation in order to reap greater profits.

3. The people that Josh Fox profiles in his film are poor, uneducated, hard working, and helpless. They are no match for a big corporation. They don’t have the financial resources to fight a corporation with thousands of lawyers and billions of dollars.

4. Corporations see the "small people" as just another cost of doing business. The deaths of some uneducated country folk are inconsequential to the Harvard MBAs running corporate America.

5. The gas drilling companies have a checklist on how to rape and pillage the land.

* They low-ball the country bumpkins who occupy the land for the drilling rights.
* They promise that the fracking process is safe.
* When they contaminate the wells and people complain, they deny it was their fault.
* If the complaints persist, they agree to pay for the well water being cleaned.
* If this doesn’t work, they pay the occupants a lump sum of money and make them sign a legal document saying they can’t speak about the issue with anyone.
* When people begin to die, they put their high-powered legal teams into action fighting every charge until the victim gives up.

6. The Federal and State regulators of the gas industry have been instructed by their politician bosses that the benefit of the doubt should always be given to the corporations. They generate the tax revenue. They generate the jobs. They make the political contributions. The people drinking the contaminated water can’t have any impact on a politician’s re-election.

This is the framework for how our economy and system really work.