Selling the public on teratogenic wars: ‘deceptions2’ a lesson in war propaganda

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

Under 30 minutes, deceptions 2 is Chris Pratt’s follow-up to his popular full-length documentary from 2010 (reviewed here). D2 focuses on the use of public relations firms to manipulate the public into supporting foreign wars of aggression.

But these aren’t ordinary wars, where industry sends armies into the bush to slaughter natives to seize their lands. Instead, now the US and its allies are poisoning the lands they invade, using depleted uranium and caustic chemicals, and generating an epidemic of birth defects.

John Wathen: Eyewitness to BP’s destruction of Gulf warns New Zealand

38-minute video presented by Greenpeace NZ
With Support by Waterkeeper Alliance

John Wathen is an award winning photo journalist who recently toured Aotearoa recounting his experience both on the ground and in the air documenting the catastrophic 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Jew or Genital?

A Story in Three Pieces

By Volaar

 I should have suspected that the future would not be anything like it had been promised to us in 1977.  During a compulsory sex education course one of our football coaches had the indubitable privilege of referring to our nether regions as, “gentiles.” 

Gulf of Mexico Sea Floor Unstable, Fractured, Spilling Hydrocarbons

Getty Images

By Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda

Oil and gas are still seeping unabated, says expert. Toxic leakage poses significant public health risks.

The Gulf of Mexico disaster has not gone away.  In fact, it has grown exponentially since the main stream media stopped talking about it. According to the Gulf Rescue Alliance, an organization composed of scientists, medical professionals and seafood industry professionals, among others, the problem cannot be simplified to the damage already caused by the oil spill. It is worse, much worse.

The Real Agenda received exclusive information regarding the current state of the ongoing emergency in the Gulf of Mexico.

Environmental Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: The Escalation of BP’s Liability

Louisiana seafood distributor Dean Blanchard, with recently found oil taken from a nearby marsh. © Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera

By Dahr Jamail
Global Research

As oil, sickness and contamination persist, Gulf residents and lawyers file thousands of lawsuits against the oil giant.

“If you got caught humping another woman – [if] you’re both naked and caught in the act – you’d want BP to explain to your wife how it didn’t happen.”

This colorful analogy was proposed by Dean Blanchard, a seafood distributor on Grand Isle, Louisiana, to explain oil giant BP’s continuing machinations to evade liability in the aftermath of the April 2010 disaster.

The Old Integrity

By Robert C. Koehler

The old order and the old integrity slowly collapse, but the statues remain, and the words. How odd they sound:

“The founder of the University of Chicago, John D. Rockefeller, on December 13, 1910, made provision for the erection of this chapel and thus defined its purpose: As the spirit of religion should penetrate and control the university, so that building which represents religion ought to be the central and dominant feature of the university group. Thus it will be proclaimed that the university is dominated by the spirit of religion. All its departments are inspired by religious feeling, and all its work is directed to the highest ends.”

Well, hmm. This was the 19th century’s religion, of course. Its patriarchal God presided over empire and scientific progress and the Industrial Age, but even still — no matter how many passionate arguments I’ve had with this God over the course of my lifetime — I was struck, on this beautiful fall afternoon in Chicago, as I stood in the vestibule of Rockefeller Chapel with my out-of-town guests, by this God’s absence in contemporary public life. The regulating force is gone and we’re spinning, it seems, out of control.

New film: WWF beds with Monsanto to steal public lands, promote GM crops

By Rady Ananda

“We need to start focusing on food production.  It takes 15 years to bring a genetically engineered product to market. The clock is ticking.  We need to get moving.” ~ Dr Jason Clay, Senior Vice President, World Wildlife Fund, 2010.

A 2011 film by Wilfried Huismann, The Silence of the Pandas, targets the World Wildlife Fund, the largest, most trusted, and best-funded environmental “protection” organization in the world.  Its reputation does not live up to its actions, however, which green wash industries that are destroying the environment as well as indigenous cultures.

Down the Drain Goes Public’s Right to Know about Fracking

BC gov’t ignores own pledge to consult citizens, grants Talisman’s request for big water use

By Ben Parfitt
The Tyee

Williston Reservoir in northeast B.C. is the province’s biggest body of fresh water. Photo: BC Hydro.

What landed in the Tyee’s inbox was entirely in keeping with the government’s handling of a contentious proposal by a natural gas company to divert large quantities of water out of Williston Reservoir. When word leaked that the government had approved the diversion scheme, a rather strange statement was issued that began by noting that the provincial Cabinet minister in charge was unavailable.

The statement was not a formal news release. Nor was it posted on any government website. Rather, it was emailed without advance notice to a few select media — The Tyee and CBC Radio’s Prince George station included.

Nuclear Detonation Timeline 1945-1998 (Video)

By Isea Hashimoto
(2003, 15 mins)

This film is a bird’s eye view of the history of nuclear explosions from 1945-1998 by scaling down a month into one second. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work to interface with the people who have yet to learn of the extremely grave, but present problem facing the world thru nuclear technology.

Oil Pipeline Breaks on Blackfeet Reservation; Significant Volume of Oil Floods Cut Bank River, Montana (Video)

By Destini Vaile and Reed Perry
Activist Post

Plenty of people have heard of the recent oil spill on the Yellowstone River in Montana. Few are aware, however, that three weeks ago another leak formed a creek of crude running down to Cut Bank River just miles from Glacier National Park.

Cowardly local papers, perhaps for fear of hurting tourism or stepping in front of juggernaut corporations, have completely ignored reports from environmental officials and concerned citizens.  They have often repeated the drilling company’s press releases verbatim.

Panetta’s Gaffe

By Robert C. Koehler

Leon Panetta, on his first visit to Iraq as secretary of defense last weekend, reached for a Bush moment ten years too late.

“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked,” he said to the assembled troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad, according to the Washington Post. “And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaida. And we’ve been fighting as a result of that.”

Yeah, oops, gaffe, Mr. Secretary, right? That Iraq-al-Qaida connection thingy isn’t in the spin anymore, and Panetta’s assistant had to mop up afterwards, making sure no one misinterpreted the boss’s remarks as reopening an old “debate” by reiterating a long-abandoned lie.

Methane Levels 17 Times Higher in Water Wells Near Hydrofracking Sites, Study Finds

By ScienceDaily

A study by Duke University researchers has found high levels of leaked methane in well water collected near shale-gas drilling and hydrofracking sites. The scientists collected and analyzed water samples from 68 private groundwater wells across five counties in northeastern Pennsylvania and New York.

“At least some of the homeowners who claim that their wells were contaminated by shale-gas extraction appear to be right,” says Robert B. Jackson, Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change and director of Duke’s Center on Global Change.

Radioactive Water Pumped into Mississippi River

Video by WJTV

Radioactive water released into river at Grand Gulf
By Keven
Natchez Democract

PORT GIBSON, Mississippi — An unknown amount of radioactive water was released accidentally into the Mississippi River late last week at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is investigating the incident, but suggests the release poses no public health hazard.

Gulf Coast Fisherwoman ‘Breaches the Peace’ at BP Shareholder Meeting

By Renee Feltz
Democracy Now

Security officers at BP’s shareholder meeting [on April 14] in London blocked the entrance of a delegation of four fishermen and women from the Louisiana and Texas Gulf Coast area heavily damaged by last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Among them was Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation fisherwoman from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was there to present BP executives with the Ethecon Black Planet award for companies who represent a danger to the planet.

Wilson is a past recipient of the the group’s Blue Planet Award and author of Diary of an Eco-Outlaw An Unreasonable Woman Breaks the Law for Mother Earth. She confronted BP’s former CEO Tony Hayward when he testified before Congress last June. She told Democracy Now! what happened when she tried to enter the BP meeting.

BP anniversary: Toxicity, suffering and death

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster has caused the biggest chemical poisoning crisis in US history, experts say

Medical and toxicology experts have told Al Jazeera that the oil spill has triggered environmental and human health disasters that will likely span decades. Erika Blumenfeld, Al Jazeera

By Dahr Jamail
Al Jazeera

April 20, 2011 marks the one-year anniversary of BP’s catastrophic oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. On this day in 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, causing oil to gush from 5,000 feet below the surface into the ninth largest body of water on the planet.

At least 4.9 million barrels of BP’s oil would eventually be released into the Gulf of Mexico before the well was capped 87 days later.

It is, to date, the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. BP has used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic dispersants to sink the oil, in an effort the oil giant claimed was aimed at keeping the oil from reaching shore.

Alan Ginsberg’s Plutonium Ode

(At American Poems)

I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
ous hand, named for Death’s planet through the
sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of
Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
King worshipped once
with black sheep throats cut, priests’s face averted from
underground mysteries in single temple at Eleusis,

Ecocide: Obama approves Shell Oil deepwell drilling in Gulf of Mexico

If you doubt the War on Nature, from fracking to deepwater drilling to genetically engineered food and tons of pesticides, then test the nearest stream or air quality outside your home. Corporations, protected by governments, are killing the planet and they will not stop until WE stop them.

O beautiful for chemtrail skies,
Monsanto waves of grain;
For mining mountain travesties
Above the blighted plain…

Corporate America!
America!
They piss toxicity
They kill the birds and dolphins, too
From sea to oiled sea.

Shell wins approval to drill new Gulf of Mexico deepwater wells

Royal Dutch Shell has won approval to drill the first new deepwater oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico almost a year after a spill by rival BP halted the industry’s expansion.

By Richard Blackden
Telegraph UK

US authorities have given the green light to the Anglo-Dutch company’s plan to drill three wells to a depth of about 2,950 feet in a field 130 miles off the coast of Louisana.

End:Civ film urges drastic, immediate change

By EndCiv.com

END:CIV by Franklin Lopez (2010, 75 mins) examines our culture’s addiction to systematic violence and environmental exploitation, and probes the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations. Based in part on Endgame, the best-selling two-volume tome by Derrick Jensen, END:CIV asks: “If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?”

The causes underlying the collapse of civilizations are usually traced to overuse of resources. As we write this, the world is reeling from economic chaos, peak oil, climate change, environmental degradation, and political turmoil. Every day, the headlines re-hash stories of scandal and betrayal of the public trust. We don’t have to make outraged demands for the end of the current global system — it seems to be coming apart already.

Dark Mountain Project to issue second book

By Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth
Dark Mountain Project

We are the initiators of the Dark Mountain Project. Last year, with your help, we raised $6,140 to cover the publishing costs of Dark Mountain: Issue 1, our first book-length collection of essays, stories, poetry, conversations and art for living through times of global disruption.

A year later, we are in the final stages of putting together Issue 2. Once again, it will be a hardback book of around 250 pages, with contributions from writers ranging from familiar names to those appearing in print for the first time.

Dead Baby Dolphins Washing up along Gulf Coast at 10 Times Normal Rate

Researcher Rhiannon Blake prepares to measure a male baby dolphin discovered Monday in Gulfport, Miss. (James Edward Bates)

By Karen Nelson
Biloxi Sun Herald

Baby dolphins, some barely 3 feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines at 10 times the normal rate of stillborn and infant deaths, researchers are finding.

The Sun Herald has learned that [18] young dolphins, either aborted before they reached maturity or dead soon after birth, have been collected along the shorelines.

The Institute of Marine Mammal Studies performed necropsies, animal autopsies, on two of the babies Monday. Moby Solangi, director of the institute, called the high number of deaths an anomaly and said it is significant, especially in light of the BP oil spill throughout the spring and summer last year.