Dana Milbanks of WaPo calls for the REVOCATION OF BP's CORPORATE CHARTER!

Check out the full article here at the Washington Post

God spoke to Moses through a burning bush on Mount Horeb. He apparently speaks to Republicans through a spewing oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) delivered the startling revelation last week that the BP oil spill was caused not by a faulty blowout preventer but by the Almighty Himself. He explained the spill to an Oklahoma City radio station like this: "Acts of God are acts of God." With this curious theology, Cole has joined the ministry of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a fellow Republican, who last month said of the oil spill: "From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented."

So if God is responsible for the spill, and BP is the spill's "responsible party," what these men are really saying is that BP is . . . God?

This interpretation is at the very cutting edge of ecclesiastical thought. In the past, our Heavenly Father has involved himself in floods, droughts and the occasional earthquake, but this may be his first foray into industrial disasters.

The Valdez spill was an act of Exxon. Bhopal was an act of Union Carbide. But the BP spill is an act of God. Oiliness is next to godliness.

Forgive this blasphemy, but is it perhaps time to question the Doctrine of Boardroom Infallibility? In Washington, belief in corporate divinity has become a bipartisan religion, and it's polytheistic: Lawmakers, despite the occasional bit of populist rhetoric, routinely provide generous offerings to the automotive, aerospace, financial, pharmaceutical and insurance industries, along with petroleum.

An article by The Post's Dan Eggen explains why: More than 1,400 former members of Congress, staffers and federal employees registered as lobbyists in the financial services sector alone since the start of 2009, according to a study by Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics. Many of these lobbyists, of course, moonlight as fundraising captains for lawmakers.

Check out the full article here at the Washington Post

Join the Citizen's movement:

BRANDS: Your life-long friends

You know these faces. You probably know these faces better than you know people in your own neighborhood. Better than you know members of your extended family. They were there with you when you were born. They were there with you as a child. They visited you every day on TV.
Who are they?
What do they want from you?
They just want to be your friend. They make things for you. Are they the ones who made these cookies? Your oatmeal? Your big mac? Your breakfast cereal?
"Be our friends! Let me hang out in your home!" they cry, with their silent pleading eyes.
And you do. You always have. You always will. They will be with you throughout your adult life. They're always so happy to see you. They always will be.
They will visit you every night on TV, even as you become old and fragile. You will age and decay. They will not. They will be with you, these friends, as you reach the end of your life and die. They will be there, silent, watching. They will not mourn your passing.

They're all so happy to see you! They always will be.

Post-Oil Hakiu contest!

Normally I wouldn't post about something like this. But I figured, there's not a whole hell of a lot we can do right now (I'm looking over at the live video of the leak in the right-hand column of my blog). But why just cling to all the doom and gloom? Get your creativity on!

DissectingWords.com recently posted an entry about how author John Scalzi is holding a contest. A haiku writing contest!
Whoever writes the best haiku about a post-oil age, will win a copy of his new book, "METAtropolis."

Now, I LOVE haiku. I once took it upon myself to write 100 haiku. I have since lost that notebook. Oh well.

The reason I love haiku? It's always a challenge to pack as much meaning into as few words as possible. The perfectly crafted haiku can tell an entire story.

Here are my entries for this contest so far:

They left the city.
Green grows up from between cracks.
Deer graze in Times Square.

The sky at night shines.
Forgotten lights re-emerge.
Now we remember.

The orange haze lifts.
We see now what they once saw.
Our ancestors’s stars.

Fields. Bright green. Sun’s sheen.
The party has just begun.
Our hands see the land.

REVOKE BP'S CORPORATE CHARTER

revoke bp's charter

by the Punk Patriot



After my last video on evolution and capitalism, many of you asked me:

Do you support capitalism?

Capitalism is a force of nature. You may as well ask if one supports a type of gravity. One must keep in mind, however, that markets should serve society, not the other way around.

The type of market that Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Rothbard, and Ayn Rand talk about, is a market that is given complete dominion over society. Society does not exist to serve markets, markets exist to serve society, and because they have the relationship backwards, their theories are destructive.

I support the mixed-market capitalism that Ralph Nader advocates for, and I support Adam Smith's 'small-businesses-only', version of capitalism, but not lassiez-faire capitalism, and not corporate oligarchical capitalism.

Corporations are a business model that Adam Smith despised. They remove accountability from the market, and allow businesses to take risks that they never would, and to act in ways that- free from concequnce, and are thus outside of the context of the morality in society.

But corporations have an achilles heel. Corporations exist because of Corporate Charter. These charters are issued by state governemnts. These charters are like contracts, saying that the business in question exists to serve the public good.

It’s clearly the case that many corporations do not exist to serve the pubic good. Citizens and Government alike should be far less shy about revoking corporate charters when a business becomes destructive to society. For instance, BP and Halliburton are both responsible for cutting corners, and doing things wrong to save money, resulting in one of the worst environmental disasters in 25 years, and potentially one of the worst environmental disasters known to modern man. They have destroyed local economies throughout the gulf coast for generations. They should have their corporate charter revoked, and BP should cease to exist as a corporation in the United States.

We the people have the power to do this. We always have. We should not be afraid to use this power. My task for YOU, my audience, is to find what state’s laws BP America is incorporated under. Then we shall organize to take action. (Stay Tuned)

The free market does not know good from evil, it only knows profits. Just the same, fire does not know useful from destructive, it only knows to burn.

A totally free market will bend towards monopoly, and at that point it ceases to function properly. If left completely to it’s own devices a free market will turn into totalitarianism. Like a fire, it needs to be tended from time to time, to keep it from smothering itself as it eats itsself alive and destroys it’s own structures in a fit of continuous consumption.

There must be restrictions placed on the market, because it does not know service from disservice, or creation from destruction. The market must be regulated to keep it from destroying society-- in the same way that we keep fire in a fireplace to keep it from consuming the entire house.

And when a particular fire gets out of control, it must be snuffed out.

t r u t h o u t: BP May face Negligent homocide charges

From Truthout:

Like previous BP-related disasters in Alaska and Texas, evidence has emerged that appears to show BP knowingly cut corners on maintenance and safety on Deepwater Horizon's operations, which, according to blogger bmaz, who writes about legal issues at Emptywheel, could amount to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act. Additionally, because people were killed, BP and company officials could also face prosecution for negligent and reckless homicide.

Wouldn't that be nice? I'd like to see their corporate charter revoked.

Read the entire article here.

Socialism: Protecting America From Fires since 1898

Click the image to purchase this shirt

Socialism has serious branding issues here in the USA.

It's totally reviled and hated, despite it being as American as Apple Pie.

The first Government-Run Fire department was started in 1898. It was a socialist model that replaced the private fire company model, in which fire companies would compete with one another to be the ones to respond to a fire in order to get payment from fire insurance companies.

These private fire companies were extremely corrupt, and would actively prevent other fire companies from responding to a fire to make sure that they would be first, through activities like sending a person ahead of their pump wagon with a barrel. This "Barrel Sitter" would place his barrel over the fire hydrant, and sit on the barrel to prevent other fire companies from gaining access to it, and thus becoming the first to respond.

While these schmucks fought over profits, fire destroyed homes and took the lives of those trapped by the flames and smoke.

To make matters worse, private fire companies refused to put out fires that affected homes that were too poor to afford fire insurance plaques, despite there being a definite risk to the public safety that had no regard for the income of residents, rich or poor.

The socialist model changed all that, and is the model seen almost everywhere in the United States today.

That's right! Whether they know it or not, your local fire department is filled with Socialists!

Click the image to purchase this shirt

BP: Bringing People Together

I picked this up from my friend Davis Fleetwood over at NO CURE FOR THAT

It comes from Andy Cobb and the Partisans

It's one of BP's old greenwashing adverts, where they talk about going "Beyond Petroleum"-- with a new twist.



Brown: It's the New Green.

Rightwing News Hacks call for Obama's Assasination

Published in Veterans Today Gordon Duff reports on an incident in which the Right-wing propaganda... er "online news magazine" Newsmax called overtly for a military coup and assassination of the President.

First there's this graphic:



Come on, really?

Next there's the actual article itself:

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible. Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:

And at this point, the original article goes on to make it's case on why the military ought to revolt against their own country and assassinate the president, which you can read all about in Gordon Duff's full article.

Dolphins are washing up dead

I think we're finally starting to understand just how grim the situation in the Gulf is. The damage has already been done, and even if "Top Kill" hadn't failed, we still have to deal with an environmental disaster on the scale of Chernobyl.

The NOAA has recorded that 22 Dolphins have been recorded washed up dead.

From CNN (emphasis added):

Dolphins have washed up dead. Endangered sea turtles have been found with oil stuck on their corneas. Lifeless brown pelicans, classified as endangered until recently, have been carried away in plastic bags. Beaches in Grand Isle, Louisiana, are spattered with gobs of sticky crude. And when the moon rises over the coast there, the oil-soaked ocean sparkles like cellophane under a spotlight.

{snip}

If scientists' worst fears are realized, the oil plume in the Gulf could choke off and kill coastal marshes in the productive Mississippi Delta and barrier islands, turning these verdant tufts of life -- which look like hairy putting greens floating out on the water -- into open ocean. That would snap the region's marine food chain, exposing and starving all kinds of organisms.

{snip}

Equally frightening, the oil also could spawn a massive oxygen-free "dead zone" deep in the Gulf's waters, which would suffocate all marine life on the ocean floor. Samantha Joye, an oceanographer at the University of Georgia, said that if that happens, the dead zone could change marine chemistry in the Gulf of Mexico forever.

Despite being told repeatedly NOT to use their chemical dispersant, chemicals that have been banned in England (BP's home country) due to their toxicity, BP has continued to use it anyways, causing the oil to break up and fall beneath the surface, where it cannot be retrieved. It hides the problem from public scrutiny, but doesn't actually fix anything. In fact it makes things worse. And we have no clue how bad things are going to get. Again from that same CNN article:

Researchers know almost nothing about what the oil and chemical dispersants used to try to break up the oil will have on life below the Gulf's greasy surface, Joye said on her boat in Gulfport, Mississippi, just before heading out toward the epicenter of the spill.

"I don't think we know what's going on yet, and it's a month into this thing," she said.

Bacteria eat oil and in the process also chew oxygen out of the ocean. There's so much oil in the water, the bacteria may deplete oxygen reserves until deep-water fish like grouper and snapper and "benthic" communities of sea tubes and oysters suffocate, she said.

{snip}

BP has released more than 28,000 gallons of chemicals on the ocean, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in hopes these "dispersants" will break up the oil and minimize its impact on the environment. Such a huge amount of dispersant has never been released deep into the ocean before, according to the EPA, and some independent researchers and the EPA have questioned whether those chemicals may be making matters worse.

I highly reccomend that you read the entire article, which is found here.

BP Declares 'TOP KILL' a failure

The new solution sounds a lot like something they should have done 5 weeks ago. From NOLA:

That next attempt should be a procedure known as Lower Marine Riser Package or LMRP. This procedure involves cutting off the failed, leaking riser at the top of Lower Marine Riser Package on the blowout preventer to get a clean-cut surface on the pipe. A cap will be installed with a sealing grommet connected to a new riser from the Discoverer Enterprise drillship, with the hopes of capturing most of the oil and gas flowing from the well.

But WAIT! It gets better!

"We expect to capture most of the oil," said BP CEO Doug Suttles. "I emphasize most because the cap will not result in a complete seal."

BP's Criminal Record

Environmental Criminals need to be treated the same as rapists and murderers.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

BP hired faux cleanup crew for show during Obama's visit

About 2 minutes into this otherwise standard newscast about Obama's visit to the Gulf Coast is a startling accusation-- that BP hired a phony cleanup crew for show during Obama's visit.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

If you don't think that a company would do something like this, you should know that they have been doing it for decades.

Read the book "Toxic Sludge is Good For You!: lies, damn lies, and the public relations industry"



+++++++++++++++

UPDATE

+++++++++++++++
So there are now several sources confirming that BP did indeed just bus in actors to pretend to be a cleanup crew during Obama's visit.

Article from NOLA

BP, the oil company taking flak for its inconsistent response to the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, bused in 400 extra cleanup workers to Grand Isle during President Obama's visit today, Jefferson Parish Council Chairman John Young said.

"It appears to have been a PR stunt by BP, not to say we don't appreciate the extra participation," Young said. "We certainly need them, but we don't need them for just one day that happens to coincide with a visit from the president."

{snip}

Young said he saw the workers dressed in red shirts, blue jeans and black shrimp boots mulling across the beaches and in the mess hall during the president's appearance. They were uniformed in a way "which you don't normally see workers dressed like that," Young said.

After Obama's departure, Young said, the work crews all but vanished.

"This is a total shame that a mockery has been made of this visit by the executives of BP," Councilman Chris Roberts said.

"What we want to make clear (is) if they're going to send them, then send them everyday, not just on the day of the president's visit," Councilman Tom Capella said.

And Councilman Young throws out one of the worst insults a Louisianan can:

Young stopped short of saying Jefferson Parish officials were frustrated with BP's response to a disaster that has affected more than 100 miles of coastline. But he noted that parish officials commandeered idle BP-hired vessels last week to begin skimming oil that had traveled into Barataria Bay.

He said there appears to be a disconnect between the oil company and the Coast Guard, which is in charge of the response effort.

"I would compare BP today to FEMA after Katrina," Young said, recalling the halting response of the federal emergency agency in the days following the 2005 hurricane.

And from this transcript of a BP press conference from GottaLaff of Political Carnival:

CNN: We’ve never had 400 there, they spent time recruiting people for today, then Obama leaves, the workers leave too. Ironic that they’d pull off this type of shenanigans… It’s a slap in face, insulting to Gulf Coast residents and to the president. If they left every day at 2-3 o’clock that would be one thing, but this was no coincidence.

You have no idea how badly BP fucked up

Part 1

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Part 2

Watch CBS News Videos Online

When you Beleive in Yourself, a Bear and an Eagle High-Five

INSPIRED

HELL YES.

This image was inspired by the Maine Green Independant Party's homepage, on which it looks like an Eagle is about to give a high five, and a quote from friend of the show, Latasha Ewell, of DissectingWords.com

Scientist Infects himself with a computer virus

Rory Cellan-Jones reports on BBC News:

A British scientist says he is the first man in the world to become infected with a computer virus. Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading contaminated a computer chip which was then inserted into his hand.

The device, which enables him to pass through security doors and activate his mobile phone, is a sophisticated version of ID chips used to tag pets.

In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems. If other implanted chips had then connected to the system they too would have been corrupted, he said.

[VIDEO] Evolution and Capitalism

Evolution and Capitalism

by The Punk Patriot



Our society today has largely been shaped by the selfish individualism of Ayn Rand, in ways we won’t fully understand for centuries.

So much so, that nobody growing up in this age knows any different from it. People raised in the post-Reagan world see these drastic changes in human behavior as just being the status-quo.

Individuals are having to change in order to better cope with this new environment that Ayn Rand’s philosophy has created.

Empathy, something born from the communal lifestyle of our ancestry in social mammals, is becoming maladaptive.
To become a member of the most successful elite, one needs to behave in ways that are anti-social, misanthropic, disingenuous, and cold-hearted.

Now average lay people might call such behavior immoral, or they might call such a person a “selfish asshole”, but this type of behavior is actually beneficial to the individual, given the confines and structures of our autistic economics.

The very things we think of as making us human: love, empathy, concern for others, are now in the world we live in, maladaptive behaviors.

The Neo-human, the human evolving to best suit this crazy new breed of hyper-capitalism, has no genetic needs to socialize, to love, to be loved, to care or be cared for. What this Neo-human needs to survive, can be purchased with money.

Emotional currency is useless and worthless to him. With no desire to be loved, and no empathy for others, this autonomous being feels no emptiness, and does not feel lonely. He can kill with out a second thought.

Contemporary psychology will call this person a sociopath, but contemporary psychology is still mired in the mammalian standards of what is normal. Soon, as hyper-capitialism reaches a crescendo, and our social norms are slowly redefined by this dramatic shift, it will turn out that WE were crazy for thinking our systems morality had value.

Holy Number 7!

Math Geeking out

So I came across this really cool anomoly in simple arithmatic.

Pick any number that is a non-multiple of 7.

Now divide it by 7.

I don't know what the answer is to your specific number, but I can tell you one thing for certain. It's a number that repeats these six digits forever: "142857"

Crazy, right?

Go ahead give it a try:

1/7= _____
2/7= _____
3/7= _____
4/7= _____
5/7= _____
6/7= _____
8/7= _____
6,000/7= _____

WILD!

Also, I finally have a new video coming out next Wednesday, so keep an eye out for it.

Music- Crystal Castles: Crimewave

I can't put my finger on why I like this song so much. By all counts, I should hate it- it's disco-y, it's house-techno sounding...

But something about it appeals to me, the same way that Kraftwerk appeals to me.

Amature Footage of the Oil Spill- Worse than BP admits

This video is from Alabama resident John Wathen, as a volunteer pilot flew him over the area where the oil rig sank.

Officials have stopped guessing at the amount of oil leaking although some speculate it may be closer to 1 million gallons per day. Don't let BP spin this into something trivial.

>http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=524_1273510578

Repost, but still relevant

So for all those who are flipping out about Obama's administration still granting waivers to the oil industry, allowing them to break the law when it comes to offshore drilling- despite the recent spill in the Gulf.

Or whatever other disappointment you find yourself fretting about. Just keep this in mind:



Personally, when a politician says that they support some terrible thing, I take their word for it.