Untitled Document

How Much Does Obama Hate and Make War on the United States?

Logic dictates Obama, Rothschilds and Rockefellers are letting the Gulf well spill oil until Congress passes Cap and Trade .

There are too many benefits for those who hate America, make war on her, the Omega Agency, Obama, Banksters, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers to assume they are not responsible for the explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. If the Omega Agency bad guys get Cap and Trade Wall Street Exchange Traded Credits, which this oil spill could easily guarantee, it will mean Banksters get another Wall Street tool to steal money, like their derivatives - Cap and Trade emission credits.

Another benefit of this oil drilling platform explosion and oil spill for the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, who own BP, Exxon, and basically all of big oil, is it stops drilling off the United States coastal waters and this guarantees our dependence on foreign oil. This, of course, is what the Omega Agency wants. Our dependence on foreign oil guarantee wars and our military presence in foreign countries. The closer the United States comes to self sufficiency in oil, the less of a reason the Banksters have to sell oil wars around the world. Oil wars shred the US Constitution and put us daily one step closer to Martial Law. Also not drilling for oil off our coastal water works to keep the price of oil and gas high. Detectives rely heavily on pointing the finger at who is guilty when they determine the entity that has the motive and the means. Obama, Banksters, the Omega Agency, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers have the motive and means of causing this Gulf drilling platform explosion and oil spill.

What proof do we have the Gulf oil spill was deliberate? Switzerland-based Transocean Ltd., started to remove a mud barrier before a final cement plug was installed, a move industry experts say weakens control of the well in an emergency. In other words the drilling contractor took the bandages off the wound before the wound healed causing blood to flow. The blood ignited into a huge fireball when it found air.

Bickford's client went on to say that the crew opened a valve on the well head, allowing a huge kick of gas to push the seawater out the top of the marine riser and all the way to the top of the rig tower, 240 feet in the air. The resulting explosion probably instantly killed his colleagues who were in the path of the gas, "James" said.

Bickford said his client saw mud being pumped out of the riser and onto boats that normally collect the mud in tanks. Another lawyer, Stuart Smith, said he represents fishermen who witnessed the explosion and saw the mud being extracted beforehand.

Other lawsuits by rig workers paint a similar picture. Bill Johnson, a Transocean deck pusher with 35 years of experience on oil rigs, was injured in the explosion and has sued his employer, BP, Halliburton and others in Galveston County, Texas. Johnson's attorney, Kurt Arnold of Houston, said Johnson had a meeting with a BP supervisor about 10 hours before the explosion and was told "things were plugged in the well and good to go. He thinks in retrospect the company man was not following procedure."

Another one of Arnold's clients, roustabout Nick Watson, said mud came back up the hole so suddenly before the explosion that he was trying to wipe it away from his eyes on the deck when the power went out and the first explosion came, Arnold said.

When one factors in the fact Obama is not eligible to be president, his father was not a US citizen, and the fact Obama does not keep his word, Obama Set to Delay Iraq Troop Withdrawal , and the fact the Gulf Oil Spill is being used to enact Cap and Trade legislation, logic dictate Obama hates the United States and is making war on the United States.

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Safety fluid was removed before oil rig exploded in Gulf

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/safety_fluid_was_removed_befor.html

By The Times-Picayune
May 06, 2010, 10:35PM

This story is by David Hammer and Dan Shea
John McCusker / The Times-Picayune
A flotilla of boats is on hand Thursday to try and cap the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. The boat hauling the cofferdam is bottom right.

The investigation into what went wrong when the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and started spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is sure to find several engineering failures, from cement seals that didn't hold back a powerful gas bubble to a 450-ton, 40-foot-tall blowout preventer, a stack of metal valves and pistons that each failed to close off the well.

There was, however, a simpler protection against the disaster: mud. An attorney representing a witness says oil giant BP and the owner of the drilling platform, Switzerland-based Transocean Ltd., started to remove a mud barrier before a final cement plug was installed, a move industry experts say weakens control of the well in an emergency.

When the explosion occurred, BP was attempting to seal off an exploratory well. The company had succeeded in tapping into a reservoir of oil, and it was capping the well so it could leave and set up more permanent operations to extract its riches.

In order to properly cap a well, drillers rely on three lines of defense to protect themselves from an explosive blowout: a column of heavy mud in the well itself and in the drilling riser that runs up to the rig; at least two cement plugs that fit in the well with a column of mud between them; and a blowout preventer that is supposed to seal the well if the mud and plugs all fail.

In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, Scott Bickford, a lawyer for a rig worker who survived the explosions, said the mud was being extracted from the riser before the top cement cap was in place, and a statement by cementing contractor Halliburton confirmed the top cap was not installed.

Mud could have averted catastrophe
If all of the mud had still been present, it would have helped push back against the gas burping up toward the rig, though it might not have held it back indefinitely.

Click to see a full size PDF file about what happened on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
When the gas got to the sea floor, the third defense - the blowout preventer -- also failed, and it has continued to fail for weeks as unmanned submarines have tried to get it to engage.

BP declined to answer questions about exactly how far along they were in the process of closing the well head 5,000 feet below the Deepwater Horizon rig when the explosion occurred.

But Halliburton said in a statement that it had completed pouring cement that lines the well 20 hours before the blowout. After that cement lining is done, the federal Minerals Management Service requires at least two prefabricated cement plugs to be placed at the bottom of the well and farther up, with mud packed in between. Halliburton's official statement shows there was still one more cement plug to be inserted.

"Well operations had not yet reached the point requiring the placement of the final cement plug which would enable the planned temporary abandonment of the well, consistent with normal oilfield practice," the Halliburton statement said.

Lawsuit disputes Halliburton statement
But Bickford's client, who was working immediately next to the drill floor at the time of the explosion, claims the rig operators had already started pumping mud out of the riser. Bickford said his client, whose identity he wants to protect for now, will allege human error in the decision to start removing the mud barrier before the well was totally capped.

Bickford said his client is the survivor of the rig explosions who called into the April 29 "Mark Levin Show," a nationally syndicated talk show out of WABC in New York, and gave perhaps the most detailed witness description available so far of what was taking place at the time. He used the assumed name "James" on the show.

BP photo
The bottom of the damaged and leaking marine riser sits atop the failed blowout preventer on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. The main tube of the riser guides the drill pipe into the well, while the other pipes carry hydraulic fluid to operate the blowout preventer.
"We had set the bottom cement plug," the caller said. "At that point the BOP stack, the blowout preventer, was tested. I don't know the results of that test. However, it must have passed because at that point they elected to displace the marine riser from the vessel to the sea floor. They displaced all the mud out to the riser preparing to unlatch from the well two days later. So they displaced it with sea water."

Explosion doomed oil rig
Crew members were caught off-guard by a gas-bubble kick that spewed watered-down mud and an invisible plume of heavy gas onto the rig, igniting a fiery explosion that killed 11 crew members and doomed the rig.

BP spokesmen have declined to confirm or deny these descriptions of events, saying the details will come out as a result of the ongoing investigation.

Another one of Arnold's clients, roustabout Nick Watson, said mud came back up the hole so suddenly before the explosion that he was trying to wipe it away from his eyes on the deck when the power went out and the first explosion came, Arnold said.

'Mud weight is the first round of defense'
If the final cement plug wasn't in place yet, removing the mud would be at odds with "good oil-field practice" outlined in 2003 by the federal Minerals Management Service. The MMS report, prepared by WEST Engineering Services, warns against single-point failures -- counting on one mode of protection -- by saying that "mud weight is the first round of defense against a kick, followed up by" the blowout preventer. Removing the mud left the blowout preventer as the only failsafe.

"To displace mud above the position of the upper plug with water before setting the upper plug means that you are relying on one barrier for the duration; this is not good," said a deepwater drilling expert who did not want to be identified because he does business with BP. The expert is not involved in the Deepwater Horizon project.

While the mud could have given workers more time to react to the blowout, the accident itself and the oil spill originated in the failure of the cement and the failure of the blowout protector.

Blowouts often related to cement problems
Blowouts are not unprecedented, and often they are caused by cementing failures. An MMS study found that half of 39 blowouts on offshore rigs from 1992 to 2006 were related to cement problems.

Cement has two roles in oil exploration: It seals the pipe lining the well from the bedrock around it, and it is used to seal wells on the inside before abandoning them. It's not known which of the two cementing jobs was the culprit in the BP accident.

Even with the problems with cement seals and the weakening of the mud barrier, the blowout preventer, or BOP, a contraption built by Cameron International, still could have blocked the oil gusher. Unfortunately, those devices, too, have had documented troubles. Transocean Chief Executive Officer Steve Newman reported "a handful of BOP problems" during a call with stock analysts last year, although he said "they were anomalies."

According to internal BP documents obtained by The Times-Picayune, the preventer on the Deepwater Horizon's well head had a series of six valves and "pipe rams" that are activated by hydraulic pistons and constrict around the drill pipe to close off the well. BP said those valves failed to close the well before the rig was abandoned. In addition, there's a last-ditch mechanism, called a shear ram, that is supposed to use high pressure to slice clear through the drill pipe and shut off the whole opening.

But shear rams have a weakness. They are not engineered to cut through tool joints, the knuckles where sections of the drill pipe are connected every 30 feet. That means that about 10 percent of a pipe is made up of tool joints that a shear ram isn't strong enough to penetrate, said Per Holand, a drilling expert from Norway who has advised the MMS.

"If they do not know the exact location of the tool joint, they would normally close a pipe ram and lower the drillpipe until it stops against the pipe ram to ensure that the shear blind ram does not hit a tool joint," Holand said. "This may of course be difficult if you have a crisis on the rig."

The removal of the mud could have limited the amount of time the crew had to work through the process Holand described.

The shear ram is activated by a button on a control panel on the drill ship. An MMS safety alert in 2000 urged drill operators on the Outer Continental Shelf to have a backup method for activating the blowout preventer.

Blowout preventer backup not required
But the United States does not require the acoustic backup system that must be used in Norway, Canada and Brazil. Holand said such an acoustic system could have helped avert such a massive spill from the Deepwater Horizon well if the section of pipe inside the blowout preventer was normal-sized. But if there were tool joints inside the preventer, an acoustic trigger system "may not have worked" anyway, Holand said.

Robots on the seafloor have been unable to activate the shear ram using a manual switch.

Even if a tool joint wasn't in its way, the shear ram may not have been strong enough to cut through the pipe under the intense conditions at the bottom of the sea, where fluid inside the well bore may be as hot as 400 degrees and the water on the seabed outside can be just above freezing. The shear rams are rarely, if ever, put to the test in real-life emergencies.

Because the shear rams are the prevention method of last resort and would destroy any drill pipe if used -- costing oil companies a tremendous sum of money -- they are tested on location just to see if they move, without any pipe getting cut. The standards for manufacturing them with enough force to actually cut a drill in two at the bottom of the sea are all based on formulas.

In a September 2004 study for the MMS, researchers from WEST Engineering found that BOP manufacturers were not using the best models for calculating the necessary force and were not adjusting the force according to different types of pipes.

With all of these potential Achilles' heels, it's amazing that oil companies and regulators haven't prepared for the possibility that all of the redundant protections could fail at once, said Mark Davis, director of the Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy at Tulane University Law School.

"It doesn't matter how many levels of sophistication there are in the blowout prevention device; if you have nothing to fall back on that's when a spill becomes catastrophic," he said. "We in New Orleans know, this is almost like building levees, you can build them with the expectation that they will hold in every event, but we know there's risk of something unknown and unprepared for. The risk of harm is so great, that's why we need a backup system on the two-to-three-day horizon, not 60-to-90 days."

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David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3322. Dan Shea can be reached at dshea@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3391.

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-springs-a-gusher-of-conspiracy-theories/19463861

Noting the timing, but offering no evidence -- though that hasn't stopped others from picking up on the Monkey Wrench Gang meme. On Monday, Dana Perino, former press secretary for President George W. Bush, appeared on "Fox and Friends" and asked, "Was this deliberate?"

Meanwhile, former FEMA head Michael Brown, who earned infamy for his role in the Bush administration's relief effort after Hurricane Katrina, has accused President Barack Obama of using the spill to galvanize the country against offshore drilling. "This is exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'I'm gonna shut it down because it's too dangerous,' " Brown said. "This president has never supported Big Oil, he's never supported offshore drilling and now he has an excuse to shut it back down."

To raise just one problem with this theory -- again floated without evidence -- there's the inconvenient fact that Obama is responsible for recently reversing the ban on offshore drilling along most of the U.S. coast. (If anything, the oil that's continuing to spill out is pressuring Obama to revisit his position.)

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http://beforeitsnews.com/story/42/592/BP_oil_spill_conspiracy_theories_Read_about_Sorcha_Faal.html

Though I'd heard her tell many official lies when she was G.W. Bush's spokesperson, I confess I was a little taken aback when Dana Perino (click here) joined the conspiratorial chorus ("I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory....but was this deliberate?") -though this is a woman who's also said, for all the world to hear, that America experienced no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration.

Michael Brown, late of FEMA, ascribes the Obama administration's allegedly slow response to the catastrophe to naked political calculation. "We're seeing the Rahm Emanuel rule #1 taking effect, and that is to let no crisis go unused. So this is an opportunity for a President who wants to bankrupt the coal industry, and basically get rid of the oil and gas industry, to shut down offshore drilling." (Click here for more). Obviously, Brown is a man with a chip on his shoulder; I can't really blame him for going off half-cocked.

Climate Bill Would Allow States To Veto Offshore Oil Drilling Up To 75 Miles From Coast

WASHINGTON — A long-awaited energy and climate bill to be made public on Wednesday would allow states directly affected by offshore drilling to veto drilling plans of nearby states if they can show significant negative impacts from an accident.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., also would allow coastal states to opt out of drilling being allowed up to 75 miles from their shores – a concession to lawmakers concerned about offshore drilling in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill.

Kerry and Lieberman have closely guarded the bill's details before Wednesday's announcement. The Associated Press obtained a copy of a summary being circulated Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

In a break from current policy, states that allow offshore drilling will receive a share of federal revenue, the summary shows. That provision is likely to spark debate from interior senators, mostly in the West, who object to revenue sharing for offshore drilling.

Kerry and Lieberman have said they will press ahead with the climate bill despite losing the support of their only Republican partner, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Graham, who had been negotiating with Kerry and Lieberman for months, said last week he believes it is impossible to pass the legislation now because of partisan disagreements over offshore drilling and whether to take up immigration reform.

Kerry disagreed, saying in a statement late Tuesday that the Gulf oil spill underscores how desperately the nation needs to break its dependence on fossil fuels.

"For climate, it's the bottom of the ninth inning and the bases are loaded if we can just push these runs across the plate," he said.

The bill, to be called the American Power Act, is a chance for Congress to show it can still address major issues, while also creating American jobs, strengthening national security and protecting the environment, Kerry said.

Story continues below

He cited an "unprecedented" coalition of bill supporters, ranging from environmentalists to business leaders and military officials. Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents U.S. shareholder-owned electric companies, is expected to join Kerry and Lieberman for Wednesday's announcement, suggesting the industry group's support.

"People from across the ideological spectrum are standing by us, ready to line up in support of this plan. Any time you see me and T. Boone Pickens urging the Senate to pass something, you know it's a genuine effort to bridge the old divides," Kerry said.

Pickens, a well-known Texas oilman, paid millions in support of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that attacked Kerry's Vietnam War record in the 2004 presidential campaign. Pickens now supports huge increases in wind power and natural gas that would benefit from the climate bill.

The legislation aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and more than 80 percent by 2050.

For the first time it would set a price on carbon emissions for large polluters such as coal-fired power plants. Rates initially would range from $12 per ton of carbon emissions to $25 per ton, depending on market prices. Restrictions would not take effect until 2013 for power plants and transportation fuels, and 2016 for manufacturers.

Allowances would be granted to local electricity companies, which would be required to use them to help rate payers. In addition, a separate consumer relief provision would provide rebates to eligible families.

Kerry and Lieberman said the bill would exempt farms and most small and medium-sized businesses, concentrating efforts on the largest polluters.

The bill would offer incentives of up to $2 billion per year for companies that develop so-called clean coal technologies, including methods to capture and store carbon emissions.

The legislation has several provisions aimed at boosting nuclear power. It increases funding for nuclear loan guarantees to $54 billion, the same amount President Barack Obama has proposed, and calls on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed the licensing process for new plants.

The bill also would provide a 10 percent tax credit for certain nuclear power construction expenses, allow tax-exempt bonds for public-private partnerships for advanced nuclear power facilities, and provide grants in place of tax credits for some nuclear expenses.

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Execs grilled on oil spill 'cascade of failures'

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Execs-grilled-on-oil-spill-apf-3057016402.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=

Congress calls drilling execs to account for 'cascade of failures' behind Gulf oil spill

Members of the Louisiana National Guard prepare to hook a sandbag to the belly of a Blackhawk helicopter in Port Fourchon, La., Tuesday, May 11, 2010. Helicopters are dropping sandbags at the mouths of marshes along Port Fourchon and nearby Grand Isle to keep oil from being carried inland with tides. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press Writer, On Tuesday May 11, 2010, 10:48 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress called BP and its drilling partners to account Tuesday for a "cascade of failures" behind the spreading Gulf oil spill, zeroing in on a crucial chain of events at the deep-sea wellhead just before an explosion consumed the rig and set off the catastrophic rupture.

In back-to-back Senate inquiries, lawmakers chastised executives of the three companies at the heart of the massive spill over attempts to shift the blame to each other. And they were asked to explain why better preparations had not been made to head off the accident.

"Let me be really clear," Lamar McKay, chairman of BP America, told the hearing. "Liability, blame, fault -- put it over here." He said: "Our obligation is to deal with the spill, clean it up and make sure the impacts of that spill are compensated, and we're going to do that."

By "over here," McKay meant the witness table at which BP, Transocean and Halliburton executives sat shoulder to shoulder. And despite his acknowledgment of responsibility, each company defended its own operations and raised questions about its partners in the project gone awry.

Lawmakers compared the calamity to some of history's most notorious mishaps from sea to space in the first congressional inquiry into the April 20 explosion and so-far unstoppable spill. In the crowded hearing room, eight young activists sat in quiet protest, with black T-shirts saying, "Energy Shouldn't Cost Lives." Several wore black painted spots near their eyes to symbolize tear drops made from oil.

Said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, "If this is like other catastrophic failures of technological systems in modern history, whether it was the sinking of the Titanic, Three Mile Island, or the loss of the Challenger, we will likely discover that there was a cascade of failures and technical and human and regulatory errors."

The corporate finger pointing prompted an admonishment from Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of oil-rich Alaska that "we are all in this together" in trying to shut off the oil and find a safer way to exploit vital energy.

"This accident has reminded us of a cold reality, that the production of energy will never be without risk or environmental consequence," she said. Still, she said, "there will be no excuse" if operators are found to have violated the law.

Failure to cap the leak was intensifying impatience, from the contaminated Gulf waters to the White House.

"The president is frustrated with everything, the president is frustrated with everybody, in the sense that we still have an oil leak," spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "That includes us, that includes everybody that's involved with this."

After an icelike buildup thwarted a plan over the weekend to siphon off most of the leak using a huge, 100-ton containment box, a second, smaller box was lowered into the water late Tuesday near the blown-out well. The box was being slowly submerged to the seabed but it won't be placed over the spewing well right away. BP spokesman Bill Salvin said engineers want to make sure everything is configured correctly and avoid an ice buildup.

Salvin said undersea robots will position the box over the gusher by Thursday.

Ramifications from the environmental crisis spilled over into landmark climate change and energy legislation that is coming out Wednesday. The bill from Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman proposes letting coastal states veto drilling projects off the shores of neighboring states if they can show the potential for harm.

The impact is being felt in the realm of regulation, too. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar proposed splitting his department's Minerals Management Service in two to make safety enforcement independent of the service's other main function -- collecting billions in royalties from the drilling industry.

Senators sought assurances that BP PLC will pay what could amount to billions of dollars in economic and environmental damages. McKay repeatedly said his company would pay for cleanup costs and all "legitimate" claims for damages, and not try to limit itself to an existing federal limit of $75 million on such damages.

BP was the exploratory well's owner and overall operator, Transocean the rig's owner and Halliburton a subcontractor that was encasing the well pipe in cement before plugging it in anticipation of future production.

The explosion is thought to have begun with a surge of methane gas from deep within the well, and while the cause is still under early investigation, the testimony Tuesday provided some insight into what might have been involved.

Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama grew frustrated grilling the executives on why engineers replaced a heavy "mud" compound in the well with much lighter sea water -- thereby reducing downward pressure on the oil -- when they were temporarily capping the site for future exploitation. He quoted an oil rig worker saying, "That's when the well came at us, basically."

"I'm not familiar with the individual procedure on that well," BP's McKay said.

Steven Newman, Transocean's president and CEO, and Halliburton executive Tim Probert repeatedly told Sessions they did not know how often sea water instead of the compound was used to seal Gulf wells.

"Well, you do this business, do you not?" the senator demanded. "You're under oath. I'm just asking you a simple question."

New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg remarked in the day's other hearing: "The conclusion that I draw is that nobody assumes the responsibility."

McKay said that a key piece of safety equipment, the aptly named blowout preventer, had failed to work and made it clear it was owned by Transocean. "That was the fail safe in case of an accident," said McKay.

But Transocean's Newman said offshore production projects "begin and end with the operator, in this case BP" and that his company's drilling job was completed three days before the explosion and there's "no reason to believe" the blowout protector mechanics failed.

And Newman wanted senators to know Halliburton was in the process of pouring cement into the pipe to plug it but the final well cap had not yet been put in place.

Halliburton's Probert said his company followed BP's drilling plan, federal regulations and industry practices.

Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Frederic J. Frommer in Washington, and Harry R. Weber from the site of the oil leak on the Gulf of Mexico, contributed to this report.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7659965/Gulf-oil-slick-is-a-disaster-for-world-climate-deal.html

Could the greatest casualty of the giant oil slick surging through the Gulf of Mexico turn out to be not Louisiana's magnificent wildlife, or the biggest US fishery outside Alaska, but the last remaining chance of an international agreement to combat climate change? It seems counter-intuitive. Surely an economic and ecological disaster, caused by exploiting the fossil fuels that emit all that carbon dioxide, should make the world keener to tackle global warming by moving to cleaner sources of energy? But that would be in a rational universe – one where agreement did not depend on two increasingly dysfunctional institutions: the UN climate treaty negotiations and the US Congress.
In the real world, there is no possibility of a new treaty unless Congress first passes legislation to reduce emissions from the United States. And, until the oil started gushing from the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, the best chance of getting this through was for Capitol Hill, and the whole of the United States, to stop worrying about slicks and learn to love offshore oil drilling.

The story starts 41 years ago, with a blowout at an oil platform some six miles offshore from Santa Barbara, California. Over 11 days, 200,000 gallons of crude oil bubbled to the surface, killing birds and dolphins, and polluting some 35 miles of coastline. It was by no means the worst oil spill, but it was possibly the most important one, because it helped kickstart the US environmental movement, which then rapidly spread worldwide.
Richard Nixon, just days into his first presidential term, said that the spill had touched his conscience (which must have taken some doing), though the president of Union Oil, which operated the platform, objected: "I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds."
The result was that oil drilling became unacceptable off the West Coast. Twenty years later the prohibition extended nationwide, after the much more serious spill from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. The taboo started to dissolve as oil prices rose, and vanished when they peaked before the financial collapse. "Drill, baby, drill" became Sarah Palin's war cry, while Republican commentators opined that offshore oil was "extraordinarily safe and environmentally friendly" because none had been spilled during Hurricane Katrina.
Barack Obama also took up the new article of faith, promising in his election campaign to restart the drilling. And just a month ago he opened up vast areas off the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico to oil companies (the Santa Barbara effect still lingers in the West).
This was a trade-off to try to get Republican and conservative Democrat senators to back a new climate bill. So far it hasn't worked: indeed the bill is already in trouble because one of its sponsors, the Republican Lindsay Graham, withdrew after the Senate leadership scheduled immigration legislation ahead of it. But now it faces a new danger: that previously supportive Democrats from coastal states rebel. One, Robert Menendez from New Jersey, says: "I have let the administration know that if they do not protect New Jersey from the effects of coastal drilling in the climate-change bill, then my vote is in question."
By chance – even as the black tide approached Louisiana this week – the Obama administration approved another controversial energy development off a sensitive shore – a giant windfarm in Nantucket Sound, off Massachusetts. Environmentalists have fought the plans, the first US offshore wind project, for a decade, but the disaster in the Gulf may boost its chances. It's an ill wind, as they say, but the climate treaty may well be blown away, none the less.
Highway hedgehogs now run for their lives
Fewer hedgehogs are being killed on the roads – which has long been thought to be really bad news. That’s not, let me hasten to say, because of a deep-seated national aversion to Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, but because naturalists estimate the creature’s population by the number of squashed corpses. These are down more than 20 per cent, ergo the animal is in trouble.
But now a much cheerier explanation is emerging; some experts think that evolution is at work. While most hedgehogs curl up in the face of danger, others – with a gene that makes them run instead – have escaped to breed. In the century of motoring since Beatrix Potter fictionalised her pet hedgehog, the theory goes, the species has benefited through, as it were, the non-survival of the flattest.

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Iraq violence set to delay US troop withdrawal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/12/iraq-us-troop-withdrawal-delay

Withdrawal of first large phase of combat troops likely to be delayed for at least a month due to Iraq's instability

The White House is likely to delay the withdrawal of the first large phase of combat troops from Iraq for at least a month after escalating bloodshed and political instability in the country.

General Ray Odierno, the US commander, had been due to give the order within 60 days of the general election held in Iraq on 7 March, when the cross-sectarian candidate Ayad Allawi edged out the incumbent leader, Nouri al-Maliki.

American officials had been prepared for delays in negotiations to form a government, but now appear to have balked after Maliki's coalition aligned itself with the theocratic Shia bloc to the exclusion of Allawi, who attracted the bulk of the minority Sunni vote. There is also concern over interference from Iraq's neighbours, Iran, Turkey and Syria.

Late tonight seven people were killed and 22 wounded when a car bomb planted outside a cafe exploded in Baghdad's Sadr City, a Shia area, police and a source at the Iraqi interior ministry said.

The latest bomb highlights how sectarian tensions are rising, as al-Qaida fighters in Iraq and affiliated Sunni extremists have mounted bombing campaigns and assassinations around the country.

The violence is seen as an attempt to intimidate all sides of the political spectrum and press home the message to the departing US forces that militancy remains a formidable foe.

Odierno has kept a low profile since announcing the deaths of al-Qaida's two leaders in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri, who were killed in a combined Iraqi-US raid on 18 April. The operation was hailed then as a near fatal blow against al-Qaida, but violence has intensified ever since.

All US combat forces are due to leave Iraq by 31 August, a date the Obama administration is keen to observe as the president sends greater reinforcements to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan – a campaign he has set apart from the Iraq war, by describing it as "just".

Iraqi leaders remain adamant that combat troops should leave by the deadline. But they face the problem of not having enough troops to secure the country if the rejuvenated insurgency succeeds in sparking another lethal round of sectarian conflict.

"The presence of foreign forces sent shock waves through Iraqis," said Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister. "And at the beginning it was a terrifying message that they didn't dare challenge. But then they got emboldened through terrorism and acts of resistance. And as the Americans are leaving, we are seeing more of it."

Zebari said Iraq's neighbours were taking full advantage of the political stalemate.

He also hinted that they may be directly backing the violence.

"They too have been emboldened, because we haven't been able to establish a viable unified government that others can respect," he said.

"In one way or another, Iran, Turkey and Syria are interfering in the formation of this government.

"There is a lingering fear [among some neighbouring states] that Iraq should not reach a level of stability. The competition over the future of Iraq is being played out mostly between Turkey and Iran. They both believe they have a vested interest here."

The withdrawal order is eagerly awaited by the 92,000 US troops still in Iraq – they mostly remain confined to their bases. This month Odierno was supposed to have ordered the pullout of 12,500, a figure that was meant to escalate every week between now and 31 August, when only 50,000 US troops are set to remain – all of them non-combat forces.

US patrols are now seldom seen on the streets of Baghdad, where the terms of a security agreement between Baghdad and Washington are being followed strictly: this relegates them to secondary partners and means US troops cannot leave their bases without Iraqi permission.

US commanders have grown accustomed to being masters of the land no longer, but they have recently grown increasingly concerned about what they will leave behind.

Zebari said: "The mother of all mistakes that they made was changing their mission from liberation to occupation and then legalising that through a security council resolution."

Earlier this week, Allawi warned that the departing US troops had an obligation enshrined in the security agreement and at the United Nations security council to safeguard Iraq's democratic process. He warned of catastrophic consequences if the occupation ended with Iraq still politically unstable.