It's not over! Coast Guard investigating oil sheen at BP Deepwater Horizon disaster site

Mark Schleifstein
The Times-Picayune
Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:28 CDT

 The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating an oily sheen spotted in the Gulf of Mexico last month near the site of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill 40 miles south of the Mississippi River, a spokesman said Wednesday. Samples of the sheen taken near the site of the failed BP Macondo oil well have been sent to the service's Marine Safety Lab in Groton, Conn., to determine whether the oil is from the BP spill, said Lt. Commander Michael Wolfe.

The Coast Guard's National Response Center was first notified of the sheen on Sept. 16 in a report that said it was spotted on satellite imagery, and had not been visually confirmed.

"Attempting to confirm presence of sheen via visual observation and further satellite data collection," said that first report. "BP intends to mobilize a helicopter overflight of the area as soon as possible."

The sheen was later reported on a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration web site tracking environmental incidents nationwide.

"Although the source of these sheens may be the wrecked BP Macondo well, this relationship has not been established at this time," officials wrote on the site, which is operated by the National Ocean Service's Office of Response and Restoration. "Activities include daily over-flights sponsored by BP, with USCG or NOAA observers on board intermittently."

The report also said BP was sending a vessel equipped with a remotely-operated underwater vehicle to the area to investigate the potential source of oil.

A BP spokesman referred questions about its response to the sheen to the Coast Guard.

This is the latest in a series of reports of new oil on the surface of the Gulf at or near the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which resulted in a 3-month release of oil.

Coast Guard officials said they also are monitoring a 3-mile by 1-mile "barely discernible silvery sheen" emanating from an Apache Corp. platform about 15 miles south of Grand Isle.

A report filed with the Coast Guard National Response Center by Apache officials on Tuesday said 7 gallons of oil were released into the Gulf because of equipment failure. A separate report filed with the center by an anonymous caller referred to the release as a "massive oil sheen."

Wolfe said according to the company, the equipment has been secured and the oil in the water is not recoverable. He added that the Coast Guard has referred the case to the EPA, and there is no chance of the oil reaching land.

Comment: Lets suppose for a moment that this is not related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. If that's the case, either we have a new spill from a different platform or the ocean floor itself is 'opening up' in different places as part of global geological changes. Both scenarios are worrisome.

On the other hand, if this is indeed Deepwater Horizon then it confirms what we always suspected: We were lied, the leak was never fixed and it has been leaking all this time. All they did was sink the oil with toxic corexit to hide the evidence.

Spain could indicate the direction America is taking

(sott)  Suddenly, Spain and Greece are being racked by strikes and huge demonstrations. The public in these countries is, in effect, saying that it has reached its limit: With unemployment at Great Depression levels and with erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has already gone too far. Paul Krugman - New York Times

What began as an economic storm has blown into a full-scale political crisis. Amid popular discontent and separatist protests, Spain has stumbled towards a crossroads: without decisive action by the government, the post-Franco democratic settlement is at risk. Financial Times

It is said that every historical phase carries within it the embryo of the next phase to be born in the future. If this is so, then someday we may come to consider the mountain of debt that threatens to crush our present system as an explanatory, broken condom.

One of the paradoxes here is that the enormous robustness of the United States, its size, population, its natural resources, military power and perhaps most of all, its ability to create money out of thin air to pay its debts, probably means that it would not see the total systemic crisis arriving until it was too late to really do anything about it.

If Americans wonder where the world economic crisis is taking them, a look at what Spain is going through right now might give them some serviceable hints.

Spain is one of the world's oldest nation-states, with a population of 40M and a large economy somewhere in the world's top ten. Thus, unlike Greece, it is large enough and complex enough to serve Americans as a guinea pig.

Spain is infinitely more fragile and vulnerable than the USA, but for that very reason it is able to provide a valuable early warning for Americans... in much the same way that coal miners used to take little canary birds down into the mine to detect odorless, poisonous gases. Long before the burly miners noticed anything, the tiny bird would keel over in a faint from gas inhalation. When the canary passed out, the miners would run for the exit. Spain has just keeled over...

The distress signals coming from the American system are much more subtle than those emanating from Spain.

Here, for example is some socially ominous data:

Lower-paying jobs, with median hourly wages from $7.69 to $13.83, accounted for just 21% of the job losses during the recession. But they've made up about 58% of the job growth from the end of the recession in late 2009 through early 2012. Los Angeles Times

Whether people are actually "entitled" to "to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it" is open for discussion. But, the fact is that if enough of them don't have any plausible way of getting health care, food or housing, finally they are going to turn against any system that denies them these things. And if the number of the disgruntled is sufficient then, to maintain some sort of order and domestic tranquility, the system will have to give them health care, food and housing, whether they want to do so or not.

Probably the reason the American right wing has become so grotesquely strange and wacky of late is that the extremely lucid money financing all the zany craziness is aware that somewhere down the road, if the trends of growing middle class impoverishment continue, some sort of serious redistribution, strongly reminiscent of socialism, is going rear its head.

To me it is clear that the people who are willing to pay $50K to hear Romney talk over rubber chicken are trying to deny the declining middle class and the growing mass of working poor any kind of clarity of thought, if possible. If the Spanish crisis is any harbinger of things to come, it will be the people's stomachs however that will finally do the talking.

Prominent Republicans endorse legal pot in Washington state and Colorado

(Reuters) - Ballot measures to legalize marijuana in Washington state and Colorado gained support this week from a pair of prominent Republicans - U.S. Senate candidate Michael Baumgartner and former Representative Tom Tancredo - who could help sway conservative voters.

No state has ever legalized marijuana for recreational use. The federal government considers it an illegal drug, but 17 states and the District of Columbia allow it as medicine.

Baumgartner, the Republican challenger to Washington state's Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, said in a phone interview the state initiative, which would allow the sale of marijuana to people 21 and older at state-sanctioned stores, is a "thoughtful way forward."

"It checks a lot of boxes we want to see, in terms of children not being exposed, in terms of not increasing marijuana usage and not allowing it in public spaces," Baumgartner said.

Tancredo, who served five terms in the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009, this week endorsed the legalization campaign in Colorado. He argued government should not interfere with people's choice to use pot.

In Oregon, a third state where voters this November will decide whether to allow recreational use of pot, the campaign has struggled to find big name Republican supporters.

Legalization opponent Kevin Sabet, a former adviser to the Obama administration's drug policy director, disputed the argument of many libertarians that government should not interfere in pot use by people.

"The libertarian argument is fundamentally flawed because drug use does not affect just the individual, it affects healthcare costs, criminal justice costs that we see with a legal drug like alcohol and costs to our highway safety," Sabet said.

(Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Sabet's comment just doesn't make good sense though...  "The libertarian argument is fundamentally flawed because drug use does not affect just the individual, it affects healthcare costs, criminal justice costs that we see with a legal drug like alcohol and costs to our highway safety,"...

Alcohol speeds up the driver while dulling the driver's senses, and is the quickest way to a marital argument, as well as the root cause of far too many violent crimes worldwide.  Alcohol poisoning is also the result of a night of binge drinking; the hangover in most cases, but some do end up as an emergency situation, and the majority of bad choices most people make in their lives are while under the influence of alcohol... Need I go on....?

Marijuana, on the other hand, slows down the driver, creates a peaceful form of thought, making arguments appear comical, and the worst 'hangover' from pot is sleeping in, sometimes very late.  It is not physically addictive, and if our world leaders made their decisions during a marijuana toast, instead of a big party alcohol toast, we would have far less wars...

......Peace 

Sky-high gas prices in California reveal energy infrastructure ripe for sudden collapse

(NaturalNews) If you're in California, you're paying sky-high prices for gasoline this week. At some stations, prices are over $5 a gallon. But you might not be aware of why you're paying this price. The answer may be more than a little disturbing: California's energy infrastructure is so fragile that a power outage at a single gasoline refinery caused state-wide prices to skyrocket.

Yep, an Exxon Mobil refinery in Torrance was knocked offline several days ago by a local power outage. This, in turn, caused a sudden spike in gasoline prices state-wide. This whole fiasco may have been set off by something like a single electrical transformer failing somewhere along the electrical supply chain.

Our energy infrastructure is more fragile than you think

What this really reveals is just how close to collapse California's energy infrastructure really is. And it's worse than you think, by the way: California can't import gasoline from neighboring states because its fuel refining requirements are so stringent due to air quality control concerns.

As Nancy Rivera Brooks, the LA Times editor, explained in a recent interview:

Because we have such a clean-burning recipe for gasoline here, very few refineries make it outside California, and there aren't pipelines that bring it into California from those refineries that can make it. When something goes wrong, you're stuck with what you've got in your tank.

I bet most Californians had no idea the gasoline supply across their entire state depends on a couple of high-voltage wires feeding a single refinery in Torrance. That's how amazingly fragile California's energy infrastructure really is. There are no pipelines from other states! When California's refineries go out, they're out!

And given how California is steeped in the culture of driving for hours each day, a loss of gasoline supply is the equivalent of an economic collapse. Without gasoline, in other words, California's economy grinds to a halt almost immediately. For starters, nobody can get to work!

A reminder to prepare for worse things yet to come...

Despite the fragile nature of systems upon which they depend, most Californians don't practice anything resembling preparedness. They have no stored gasoline, no stored water, no stored food and virtually no other supplies, either. They live their lives completely dependent on the system, and so they freak out when the system fails. They've been told the system won't fail, but of course it does... sometimes catastrophically.

I know lots of people who live in Los Angeles. When I talk with them, I often ask what their plans are for a "grid down" scenario. The answers I get include things like, "I will try to escape by boat." Or, "I hope it won't be that bad." Some even tell me, "I try not to think about that." I love my friends, but many of them are living in denial.

And they're not alone. Most Los Angeles residents have never really considered the reality of the city in which they live. If you think gasoline prices are bad right now from one little power outage at a refinery, just wait until the water pumps fail.

A water crisis would be far worse than a gasoline crisis

Los Angeles is an artificial city built in a desert. There is virtually no natural water supply there. Most of the water used by the city today is delivered using masses of electricity and a complex network of tunnels and pumps to lift an entire river of water 2,000 feet up and over the Tehachapi Mountains. That delivery system is called the California Aqueduct. Click here to see pictures of it.

Where does the electricity come from to power these pumps? Think about it. The Edmonston Pumping Plant has 14 pumps that push water over the mountains. Each one of those pumps uses 80,000 horsepower. These pumps use so much power that a power generating station had to be constructed nearby, just to power the pumps. A picture of that power station appears here. From the photo, it appears to burn coal, although I'm not 100% sure of the energy source.

If it's coal, this means that in Los Angeles, using water is the equivalent of burning coal. When you water your lawn, you burn coal. When you wash your car, you burn coal. When you even drink water, you're burning coal. Because of this, the very act of living in Los Angeles is one of the most environmentally-unfriendly activities imaginable. So much for the "environmentalists" who live in L.A. and claim to be living in harmony with the planet. Living in L.A. is, by definition, completely out of harmony with the planet. Los Angeles should not be inhabited by masses of humans. At best, it can naturally support small bands of roaming tribes.

As Navy lieutenant Henry Augustus Wise wrote after visiting California in 1847:

Under no contingency does the natural face of Upper California appear susceptible of supporting a very large population: the country is hilly and mountainous; great dryness prevails during the summers, and occasionally excessive droughts parch up the soil for periods of 12 or 18 months. Only in the plains and valleys where streams are to be found, and even those will have to be watered by artificial irrigation, does there seem the hope of being sufficient tillable land to repay the husbandman and afford subsistence to inhabitants.

What exists in Los Angeles today, in other words, is 100% artificial. Another term for that is non-sustainable. When the water pumps fail, Los Angeles immediately falls into a state of collapse.

Los Angeles is a ticking time bomb for those who are not prepared

This recent gas price blip is but a gentle reminder of the reality of living in or near Los Angeles. This is a city which cannot be evacuated. Too many people and too few roads. As a result, if the water pumps fail, most residents will simply die within days.

To live in Los Angeles is to bet your life on the machines, day after day, and usually with zero preparedness buffer. To live in Los Angeles without a backup supply of food, water, supplies and medicine is truly a suicidal gamble.

Because if fuel prices can hit $5 / gallon virtually overnight, from a tiny little blip in a refinery, what happens in a full-blown economic collapse or grid-down scenario?

Solutions!

The solution to all this? Buffer yourself and your family from infrastructure failures. Have a supply of water, storable food, emergency medicine, emergency fuel and the means for self defense.

If you live in Los Angeles, you are living in a highly vulnerable area. Take steps now to ensure your long-term safety even if refineries fail or something worse unfolds.

Being prepared is being safe!

Seven dead as meningitis outbreak grows

October 7, 2012 – HEALTH – The death toll from an outbreak of fungal meningitis linked to contaminated steroid injections has risen to seven, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Saturday. The total number of cases has also grown to 64 people in nine states, the CDC said. That is 17 more cases and two more states than the day before. Patients contracted the deadly meningitis after being injected in their spine with a preservative-free steroid called methylprednisolone acetate that was contaminated by a fungus. The steroid is used to treat pain and inflammation. Health officials say 76 medical facilities in 23 states received the contaminated products, which were manufactured by New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts. NECC voluntarily recalled three lots of the injectible steroid last week. As a precaution, the Food and Drug Administration is asking doctors, clinics, and consumers to stop using any products made by NECC. The FDA is investigating the scope and cause of the outbreak. The CDC raised the death toll Saturday after two people died in Michigan. Other deaths have been reported in Maryland, Tennessee, and Virginia. Tennessee is reporting the most number of overall cases — 29 — which includes three deaths, according to the CDC. Confirmed cases have also been found in Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina and Ohio. The other states that received the contaminated products from NECC are California, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia. Nearly 10% of drugs administered in the United States come from compound pharmacies, according to a 2003 Government Accountability Office report. Drugs manufactured by compound pharmacies do not have to go through FDA-mandated pre-market approval. Instead, oversight and licensing of these pharmacies comes from state health pharmacy boards. -CNN

Swedish official admits toxic 'chemtrails' are real, not a wild conspiracy theory

(NaturalNews) Those long, white streams of persistent, cloudy haze commonly blasted into blue skies by unmarked airplanes are not your typical contrails, says Swedish Green Party leader Pernilla Hagberg. As reported by the Swedish paper Katrineholms Kuriren, Hagberg, the first major political leader to come forward on the issue, has openly admitted that these unusual cloud trails, which fail to dissipate like normal contrails do, are actually a toxic mix of chemicals, viruses, and metals that she has collectively referred to as "chemtrails."

According to Hagberg, the sprayings are a joint endeavor by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), as well as the Swedish government in her own country, to modify atmospheric conditions via deliberate aerosol spraying efforts. And included in this "dangerous" mix of aerosols are various chemical components, viruses and viral fragments, and metals such as aluminum and barium, which have already been shown to be accumulating in water supplies and soils around the world. (http://chemtrails.cc/)

Normal contrails, which are composed of mere water vapor that quickly dissipates after emission from jet engines, are far different from chemtrails, which gradually blanket the entire sky in a sea of white. The following video, put together by the FreeTruth Show, a YouTube-based radio broadcast, contains some imagery of what these chemtrails typically look like in the sky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AykLfHtM_3M&feature=youtu.be

"It is great to see a politician bringing public attention to this issue and helping add to the credibility of this cause in the mainstream," writes JG Vibes for The Intel Hub about Hagberg's unprecedented public admission. "Unfortunately, this is a political problem that requires many non-political solutions."

Spraying the skies to save the planet?

Interestingly, the United Nations (UN) and various Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed groups have recently been forced to admit that such sprayings are taking place, and that the emitted particles are not normal contrails. But their excuse for why chemtrail sprayings are being done is that they will somehow save the planet from the devastating effects of so-called "global warming," that ever-present, pseudoscientific environmental theory that is often used as justification for all sorts of outlandish policy proposals. (http://www.globalresearch.ca)

In the case of chemtrails, everything from blocking the sun in order to lower the earth's average temperatures, to deliberately shifting weather patterns for the purpose of offsetting the allegedly melting polar ice caps, have been used as excuses for trying to legitimize the seeding of our skies with a cornucopia of poisons. And if re-elected to another term, Hagberg says she will continue to fight such chemtrailing efforts in her own country, which she says have been co-opted by the Swedish government.

Be sure to check out the documentary What in the World are They Spraying? (http://www.whatintheworldaretheyspraying.info/), as well as its sequel, Why in the World are They Spraying? (http://www.whyintheworldaretheyspraying.com/), to learn more about the global chemtrail phenomenon. Both full-length films can also be found for free viewing on YouTube.

The October Wiser Now interview on Earthchanges

Excerpt: Wiser Now: Is there a hierarchy or sequence of geological events that will signal the start of an ELE?   Alvin Conway: “The planet’s magnetic field strength declines, there is magnetic polarity deviation or migration, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions increase, there are changes in ocean temperature and salinity, and the climate basically unravels. This is underscored by an expansion of magma and rise in convection in the planet’s mantle. The earth’s crust experienced the most violence in the Pacific Ring of Fire from catastrophic rupturing when there was a magmatic expansion of the planet. As I wrote in The 7th Protocol, the first time the planet had a magmatic expansion, the fountains of the great deep were broken up and geysers of hot water destroyed the world by a flood. The rupture was very pronounced in the Pacific basin, which is why the underlying geology is so fractured, and why the region is now so seismically and volcanically active. Another massive fissure occurred along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which almost cracked the crust of the planet in two. The first magmatic expansion released the fountains of water from the deep. The next expansion will unleash the magma from faults, cracks, and plumes already present in the crust. Volcanoes are erupting en masse, and will continue to do so to dissipate the build-up of thermal pressure in an attempt to prevent a catastrophe. If the planet’s heat cycle cannot be console by planetary geologic processes, the spectrum tilts toward an Extinction Level Event (ELE). Consequently, volcanoes also are our first telltale sign that something has gone awry with the planet. We’re witnessing evidence of another magmatic expansion across the planet with near simultaneous ground inflation occurring from magma intrusion at Yellowstone, Long Valley, Uturuncu in Bolivia, El Hierro in the Canary Islands, Santorini in Greece, Marsili in the Tyrrhenian Sea, Katla in Iceland, and the ground around Mt. Fuji in Japan. These are the early warning signs, along with increased seismicity along tectonic plate boundaries (especially in subduction zones), that something is amiss. No part of the planet will be left unscathed from these changes.” theextictionprotocal