From Oil to BPA via Finland and the Great Barrier Reef

World's biggest bribery:

In the list of the world's great companies, Unaoil is nowhere to be seen. But for the best part of the past two decades, the family business from Monaco has systematically corrupted the global oil industry, distributing many millions of dollars worth of bribes on behalf of corporate behemoths including Samsung, Rolls-Royce, Halliburton and Australia's own Leighton Holdings.

When in doubt, move to Finland.

Arizona, what is going on with this election? Election fraud?

Whee. Carbon dioxide isn't going to kill us, methane will.

Sad rape girls forever.

Hearst's vendetta against Orson Welles is revealed.

The bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

BPA is in a lot of our canned foods.

Is Saudi Arabia mad at us? Do we care?

Well... we've never really discussed why 15 of the 17 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, have we?  And bin Laden was Saudi as well.... But Saudi Arabia has oil, so we must be friends...

Is America's relationship with Saudi Arabia broken beyond repair?

Barack Obama arrives in Riyadh seeking rapprochement with an aggrieved Arab ally whose interests are increasingly at odds with its key western backer. 

The president's flying visit – no more than an evening in the Saudi king's palace – is his first since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, which drove an initial wedge between both capitals. 

Ever since, relations have tangibly soured, with US outreach to Iran and ambivalence on Syria particularly irking Saudi leaders, who believe their arch-foe, Tehran, has been empowered at their expense. 

So bothered has Riyadh become by what it sees as naive appeasement of Iran that it now seems ready to project itself regionally without US cover. 

"The US has underwritten the regional security order for the past 70 years and it sees now as a good time to disengage," one senior figure told the Guardian recently. "We will have to do it all ourselves." 

Saudi anger is rooted in the US response to the Arab awakenings that rumbled through North Africa and the Middle East in the three years since Mubarak, a staunch regional ally, stood down.

Another top heavy bloated monarchy perched on top of an increasingly angry neglected population wondering when the Arab Spring uprising will start in their country and whether the US will ride in on its white horse?

Things not about the State of the Union

School shootings since Sandy Hook.

What did Congress just do to the IRS?

More crude spilled  in 2013 Than Previous Four Decades Combined... or oil spill?  What oil spill?

Exploding neighborhood novas

Petition to keep China from processing our chickens.  (via Steve Bates)

Free art books from the Getty Museum.  In fact, free education!

Here is a cat playing a theremin.

Dry and getting drier...

And warm.  I used the air conditioner in the car a few days ago because it was over 85 degrees F.  The governor declared a drought emergency.  (Although apparently the oil companies can still use tons of water to frack.)  And it looks like we're settling in for the long term.

The Water Wars are here.

The earth is getting fracked to death and other excitements...

Killing whales in search of oil.

Voices in a train station singing an old Icelandic hymn.

"Saving" our schools.

Getting up off the floor.

Hobbit number 2!




How watching Breaking Bad helped a woman dump an abusive boyfriend.  

Josh Marshall discusses Ted Cruz.

The difference between Republicans and Democrats described by one day in October.

Radioactive wastewater from fracking found in Pennsylvanian stream.

Jumble sale....

Nobody knows who's running the place?  The NSA at its best.

This should make you feel happier....

Jeffrey Wiese, the nation's top oil and gas pipeline safety official, recently strode to a dais beneath crystal chandeliers at a New Orleans hotel to let his audience in on an open secret: the regulatory process he oversees is "kind of dying." 

Wiese told several hundred oil and gas pipeline compliance officers that his agency, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration (PHMSA), has "very few tools to work with" in enforcing safety rules even after Congress in 2011 allowed it to impose higher fines on companies that cause major accidents. 

"Do I think I can hurt a major international corporation with a $2 million civil penalty? No," he said. Because generating a new pipeline rule can take as long as three years,

Wiese said PHMSA is creating a YouTube channel to persuade the industry to voluntarily improve its safety operations. "We'll be trying to socialize these concepts long before we get to regulations."

Saving the farmland soil.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story.

Health care in America explained.

Additives, maps and books

Additives in our food.

Undercover Agents Infiltrated Tar Sands Resistance Camp to Break up Planned Protest  TransCanada and Department of Homeland Security keep close eye on activists, FOIA documents reveal and what fracking is doing to Texas.

Being tolerant in gaming is hard.

The Onion is real news, right?

How to prevent rape.

Maps that can change your perception of the world.

Crimes against humanity.

And, sorry Australia, for shooting one of your baseball athletes.  We have these gun laws you see....

Finally... recommended books published after 2000.

What the frack?

Fracking leads to earthquakes.  I check the USGS earthquake map every day and yes, Oklahoma and other central US states are getting unusual earthquakes now.  Will Big Oil stop fracking?  Ha.

And .... they're off!

Louisiana Parents Fear Elementary School Cafeteria Scanner Will Implant the Antichrist’s ‘Mark of the Beast’ on Kids’ Hands

Congress: They don't work for you.

Bedbugs in hospitals.

We can blame Chile for deforming the earth.

This PROVES we should let the oil companies build pipelines all over the place and drill and ... oops...

Roundup ... is really really toxic.

Have telemarketing people been calling you more on the phone?

What single gif or picture would you show someone?

Georgie Bush's Great Mulligan.

Teaching Game Theory.

How about toxic magic fairies then?

Believing in clean oilsands like believing in ‘magic fairies,’ top scientist says

OTTAWA — Claims that Alberta’s oilsands are environmentally harmless are “lies” and won’t convince anyone in Washington, one of this country’s most famous ecologists said Friday. 

Political leaders in Alberta and Ottawa “seem to think that Americans believe in magic fairies — just shut your eyes and say the oilsands are clean four times and it happens,” said David Schindler of the University of Alberta. 

He said this reflects the current federal ideology — not anti-science, but “anti-some kinds of science. Anything with ‘environmental’ in it seems to be anathema.” 

Schindler, a freshwater scientist, was speaking at Carleton University. He has been a leading researcher on pollutants ranging from phosphates to acid rain to toxic waste, and in 2001 won the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal, a national award given to the country’s top scientist. 

Showing his audience an aerial photo of a scarred landscape in oilsands country, he said environmental assessments commissioned by oil companies show there is no impact and those same companies claim the damage is later remediated. 

“Why are people allowed to lie to the public like this? I just don’t understand this. We have to challenge them,” he said. “Obviously the people who used to challenge them, the civil servants, are no longer allowed to. 

“If you got towns around the world to nominate the village idiot from every town and flew them over the oilsands, and asked them: ‘Yes or no, is this a significant impact?’ I think I know what the answer would be. 

“It gives you an indication of how stupid this must seem to people in Washington. They must think we’ve all just fallen off a turnip truck ... We’ve had premiers and prime ministers and ministers of the environment spouting this stuff.” 

He said tailings ponds in the region total 170 square kilometres, forming “a toxic Great Lake.”

Tell us again how this won't happen with the Keystone pipeline

Arkansas residents evacuate as Exxon-Mobil tar sands pipeline ruptures

An Exxon-Mobil oil pipeline ruptured Friday afternoon in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, forcing the evacuation of 20 homes and shutting down sections of interstate highway. According to Little Rock’s KATV, a hazardous materials team from the Office of Emergency Management has contained the spill and is currently attempting a cleanup. 

The burst pipe is part of the Pegasus pipeline network, which connects tar sands along the Gulf coast to refineries in Houston. Thousands of gallons of crude oil erupted from the breach around 3:00 p.m. on Friday, spilling through a housing subdivision and into the town’s storm drainage system, fouling drainage ditches and shutting down Highway 365 and Interstate 40. 

Residents were evacuated to avoid health hazards from crude oil fumes and to keep stray sparks from igniting the standing oil. Emergency workers contained the spill by hastily constructing earthen dams.

Monday mopings...

Um... shouldn't we be worried a bit about this? Vial of easily weaponized virus goes missing in Texas

Overfishing our oceans.

Monsanto's death patents.

Five reasons why not to eat anything from China.

But Chevron is so trustworthy!

Conservapedia Disproves E=mc²

We could have told you this: Researchers link ‘unfounded’ wars to increased risk of PTSD. War for war's sake will destroy armies. Wars for no just cause destroys soldiers.

 Might as well make yourselves useful: Cleaning up the oceans with drones.

Fools, Fanatics, Faith, and Fungus

NRA Ridicules Congresswoman Whose Husband Was Shot and Killed in Mass Shooting

Dick Cheney, Ahmed Chalabi Contemplated Value Of Iraqi Oil To U.S., David Frum Writes

Depleted uranium, a gift of war that keeps on giving....

MUST WATCH: A Politician Loses It And Restores My Faith In Humanity

White-nose bat fungus. So now we kill off the bats and wonder why we are being inundated with insects.

Prison Profiteers Are Neo-Slaveholders and Solitary Is Their Weapon of Choice

Monday Monday....

Good morning, Monday!

The NRA: dead children are a cost of doing business.

Finally, a good use for dryer lint!

Underwater crop circles.

A good section of Obamacare kicks in.

When you chase all the immigrant workers away, you have to work with prisoners... prisons that are run by corporations who are demanding of states to guarantee a steady stream of prisoners.  What is wrong with this picture?

National Geographic photo competition 2012.

Black holes:  engines of the universe.

Armed volunteers to guard schools.... what on earth could go wrong?

A giant squid in the deepest parts of the ocean.

Oil and gas companies want to stop residents from speaking about local drilling at rule hearing.

Asteroid Apophis is trying to kill us.

From cows to cats

Cows are more dangerous than sharks.



Ryan hasn't run the numbers on his budget.  Isn't that what you do first when you figure out a budget?  Because it involves money?

Romney's medicare cuts are the same/different than Ryan's.

American Women are Under Assault from Christian Republicans

Jan Brewer denies deferred action recipients drivers’ licenses; will other governors follow suit?

Northern Gateway: Enbridge Accused Of Misleading Public With Video That Shows Smooth Sailing In Douglas Channel

GPS in your DNA: Genetics can reveal your geographic ancestral origin

Watching Goldman Sachs take over the world...

Guess what law goes into effect the same exact year oil is supposed to hit $5 a gallon? OMFG, you guessed it! A law allowing Goldman Sachs to buy 25% of all oil on the market.

Kochsuckers.

They think we'll eat seafood from the Gulf?

Stop telling us it's all clean now.

MATTHEW HINTON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Oil was spotted in West Bay just west of the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River, seen at top left, by the Gulf of Mexico Friday October 22, 2010.

Blog sprinkles

A reminder why the Gulf of Mexico will not be the same for decades and decades. And BP's happy story about oil eating bacteria? Gulf bacteria digests gas, not oil.

Monkeyfister notes that a Florida man's blood was tested and was off the charts with the chemicals that BP uses: Florida man gets tested: Six of nine VOCs in blood — Hexane “off the charts”

The tree of crazy and why we need a chainsaw.

Californians better watch who's doing what to our water supply.

And speaking of water.... it can be turned into a blade and defuse bombs!

A watery blade is saving the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan. Known as the Stingray, the device uses conventional military explosives to craft a blade of water sharp enough to slice through a metal bomb and scramble its innards.

Developed by the Sandia National Laboratories, thousands of units of this technology have already been shipped to Afghanistan to help diffuse the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that are so deadly to U.S. soldiers.

High fructose corn syrup producers want to change its name but not its potency.... basically hiding the ingredient in the product. Be careful what you eat.

The Art of Drew Struzan

Digby quoting Michael O'Hare about those super rich whining about the ending of the Bush tax cuts:

"A truly amazing pasticcio of mendacity, ignorance, and small-minded cupidity"

Why riding a motorcycle can be effing dangerous.

The glory of an egret in flight.

Phila of Bouphonia is back with another Friday Hope blog!

This is what we've been telling you all along

But did you listen? NoooOOOOooOOOOooo.

While officials claim most of the oil from America's worst-ever spill has disappeared, fishermen hired by BP are still finding tar balls—and being instructed to hide their discoveries.

Two weeks ago, as federal officials prepared to declare that some three-quarters of the estimated 5 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf over three months had disappeared, Mark Williams, a fishing boat captain hired by BP to help with the spill cleanup, encountered tar balls as large as three inches wide floating off the Florida coast

Reporting his findings to his supervisor, a private consulting company hired by BP, the reply, according to his logbook came back: "Told—no reporting of oil or tar balls anymore. Don't put on report. We're here for boom removal only," referring to the miles of yellow and orange containment barriers placed throughout the Gulf.

[snip]

The miraculous disappearance of the oil and the pending transfer of $20 billion to Ken Feinberg, who is independently overseeing the claims fund, have resulted in the oil giant cutting back its response operations. With a recent halving of the Vessels of Opportunity program, which hired fallow charter and commercial fishing boats, captains and deckhands are now less reticent to describe their experiences.

Link via Bryan of Why Now?