Exxon's Climate Change Cover-Up Is 'Unparalleled Evil,' Says Activist

Exxon Mobil's decision to hide research that confirmed fossil fuels' role in global warming for decades amounts to "unparalleled evil," environmentalist Bill McKibben said.

Bill McKibben

In an op-ed published Wednesday in The Guardian, the activist once called "the nation's leading environmentalist" said the oil giant set back by decades any effective action to curb climate change when it publicly disputed the very facts its research confirmed.

"To understand the treachery -- the sheer, profound, and I think unparalleled evil -- of Exxon, one must remember the timing," he wrote. "Global warming became a public topic in 1988, thanks to Nasa scientist James Hansen -- it’s taken a quarter-century and counting for the world to take effective action."

Over the past three weeks, the results of two independent investigations were published by the Pulitzer-Prize winning website Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times.

The evidence was damning.

By 1978, Exxon's senior scientists told management that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels warmed the planet, according to the investigations. By 1982, the company's own analysis of climate models found temperatures could rise up to 5 degrees from the "connection between Exxon's major business and the role of fossil fuel combustion in contributing to the increase in atmospheric CO2." By 1991, a senior researcher at the company's Canadian subsidiary said such temperature rises "will clearly affect sea ice, icebergs, permafrost and sea levels."

"If at any point in that journey Exxon -- largest oil company on Earth, most profitable enterprise in human history -- had said: 'Our own research shows that these scientists are right and that we are in a dangerous place,' the faux debate would effectively have ended," McKibben wrote. "That’s all it would have taken; stripped of the cover provided by doubt, humanity would have gotten to work."

Yet, publicly, Exxon funded institutes to cook up reports denying the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community and, as it happens, its own researchers.

"[T]his company had the singular capacity to change the course of world history for the better and instead it changed that course for the infinitely worse," McKibben wrote. "In its greed Exxon helped -- more than any other institution -- to kill our planet."

Exxon did not return a call requesting comment. More

 

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Canadian Supreme Court Rules Against Chevron and in Favor of Ecuadorians

The law has finally caught up with Chevron.

Today's unanimous decision from the Supreme Court of Canada opens the door for Ecuadorian indigenous and farmer communities to enforce their $9.5 billion USD verdict against Chevron and is a major victory for human rights and corporate accountability.

Chevron's deliberate dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic waste water and 17 million gallons of crude into the Ecuadorian Amazon created a massive health crisis and remains one of the worst oil-related environmental crimes in history. After being found guilty of its drill and dump tactics in Ecuador, Chevron has been on the run, spending billions on retaliatory legal attacks seeking to delay justice rather than fulfilling its legal obligations to carry out a full-scale environmental clean-up and provide potable water and health care to the communities it poisoned.

Chevron's $15 billion USD in Canadian assets are more than enough to satisfy the verdict, and the Canadian court's decision to allow the Ecuadorian rainforest communities to pursue action to collect their verdict is a significant step towards justice long denied. The verdict should be a major wake-up call to Chevron shareholders and senior management that despite spending billions to make this issue go away, the company faces major risk to its assets and brand in Canada and beyond. Rather than spend hundreds of millions more on legal fees in Canada to delay justice further, it's time for Chevron to finally do the right thing. More

 

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Exxon Mobil's response to climate change is consummate arrogance

Monday saw the release of the latest climate report from the planet’s scientists.Predictions of famine, flood, and so on – mostly what we already knew, in even more striking language.

But Monday also saw the release of another document somewhat less expected, and probably at least as important in the ongoing battle over the future of the atmosphere and hence all of us who live in its narrow envelope.

Exxon Mobil said: 'we are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become ‘stranded''

Here’s the backstory. For 18 months now some of us have been campaigning for colleges, churches, cities and the like to sell their shares in fossil fuel companies, on the grounds that their business plans call for burning far more carbon than scientists believe the planet can safely handle. It’s become the fastest growing divestment movement in history — but some have tried to reach out to the industry and reach a middle ground instead, hoping to reform them instead of simply trying to break their power.

Profound thanks are due, then, to those shareholder activists who urged “constructive engagement” with the oil, gas and coal barons.

Because those organisations, groups like As You Sow, CERES, and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, managed in very short order to get Exxon Mobil, the leader of the fossil fuel industry, to show its cards. In fact, in a truly historic moment, Exxon Mobil turned over the whole deck — and to its credit it showed it has nothing up its sleeve, no tricky rhetoric or sleight of hand. Just endless amounts of oil and gas.

On Monday the company issued two reports, in formal response to a shareholder resolution that demanded they disclose their carbon risk and talk about how they planned to deal with the fact that they and other oil giants have many times more carbon in their collective reserves than scientists say we can safely burn.

The company said that government restrictions that would force it to keep its reserves in the ground were “highly unlikely,” and that they would not only dig them all up and burn them, but would continue to search for more gas and oil — a search that currently consumes about $100 million of its investors’ money every single day. “Based on this analysis, we are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become ‘stranded,’” they said.

This is an honest reply. It is as honest as the report that emerged the same day from the world’s climate scientists, which demonstrated that if Exxon Mobil and its ilk keep their promise to dig up their reserves and burn them, then the planet will no longer function effectively.

Some of us, cynically, thought all along that this would be Exxon’s posture. The company, after all, poured millions into denying climate science when that was still possible. That’s why we’ve been calling for divestment.

We’ve never thought that there was a small flaw in their business plan that could be altered by negotiation; we’ve always thought their business plan was to keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere. And indeed Exxon’s statements are easy to translate: “We plan on overheating the planet, we think we have the political muscle to keep doing it, and we dare you to stop it.” And they’re right — unless we build a big and powerful movement, they’ll continue to dominate our political life and keep change from ever taking place.

So now, with that information clearly on the table, it’s time for college boards and foundation heads, church denominations and city mayors to act and act firmly. By divesting — by announcing that they are breaking ties with these companies — they will begin the process of politically bankrupting them. Of taking away the social license that allows them to act with such consummate arrogance, on the very day that the planet’s scientists laid bare the impact of climate change on everything from crop yields to civil wars.

It’s never fun to see one’s cynicism confirmed. But Monday was a day for reality, on the scientific front but also the political, economic, and corporate.

The only open question left is what we’re going to do about it. More

 

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US outrage at Iran's pick of 'hostage-taker' envoy

US outrage at Iran's pick of 'hostage-taker' envoy completly Ignores 1953 Iranian coup d'état

The BBC reported yesterday the the Obama administration says Iran's nomination of a former hostage-taker as its ambassador to the United Nations is "extremely troubling". This is however laughable given that the United States and the UK jointly instigated a coup in 1953 toppling the democratically elected Mosadeq government.

The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup, was the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and his cabinet on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United Kingdom (under the name 'Operation Boot') and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project).[3][4][5][6]

Mossadegh had sought to reduce the semi-absolute role of the Shah granted by the Constitution of 1906, thus making Iran a full democracy, and to nationalize the Iranian oil industry, consisting of vast oil reserves and the Abadan Refinery, both owned by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a British corporation (now BP).[7][8][9] A military government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran (Persian for an Iranian king),[9] to effectively rule the country as an absolute monarch according to the constitution. He relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979.[7][8][9][10] In August 2013 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) admitted that it was involved in both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.[11][12] The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government." [13] Wikipedia

United States Department of State spokeswoman Marie Harf said at Wednesday's daily briefing: "I will say that we think this nomination would be extremely troubling. Mr Cruz, a Texas Republican, said on the Senate floor on Tuesday: "It is unconscionable that in the name of international diplomatic protocol, the United States would be forced to host a foreign national who showed a brutal disregard of the status of diplomats when they were stationed in his country." More - BBC Wikipedia

I would have to state, without a moments hesitation, that the Iranians were more than a little upset by the 1953 coup. Editor

© 2014

Oil Company’s Restraining Order Bars Anti-Fracking Protestor From Grocery Store, Friends’ Houses

In October of 2013, Cabot Oil & Gas secured a court order that effectively banned an anti-fracking activist from entering any land owned or leased by the company. But because of the broad scope of the court order, that activist is now claiming she legally can’t go to the grocery store, the hospital, restaurants, and even her friends’ homes.

Vera Scroggins

“It’s tough to try to figure out, where can I stand? Where can I walk?” Vera Scroggins told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “It’s not a pleasant thing to endure.”

Cabot, one of the biggest names in Pennsylvania’s natural gas rush, had sought a preliminary injunction against Scroggins in October after alleging that she had repeatedly trespassed onto several of the company’s leased and owned properties, giving unauthorized tours of their operations. After hearing testimony from employees and security personnel, Susquehanna County Judge Kenneth Seamans granted Cabot’s request to have Scroggins legally barred from not only the land Cabot owns, but from all the land it holds mineral leases on.

The problem with that, according to Scroggins’ attorneys, is that nearly 40 percent of Susquehanna County land is owned or leased by Cabot. This includes the grocery store, the local recycling center, the hospital that is nearest to her home, and several of her friends’ houses.

“In short, the right to extract gas is, according to the company, also the right to banish,” Scroggins’ attorneys said in a motion asking Susquehanna County Judge Kenneth Seamans to undo his October order. A ruling on that motion could come this week, the Associated Press reports.

In arguing for the ban, Cabot allegedly said that its leases for the mineral rights below properties like the grocery store and hospital granted the company an “exclusive property interest” in that land. But Scroggins — who elected not to have attorney representation at the time of the October order — is now arguing alongside her attorneys that Cabot’s leases contain no language that grant the company such a broad right.

Additionally, her attorneys are saying that Cabot’s request and Judge Seamans’ decision violated Scroggins’ Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and movement.

“The injunction sends a chilling message to those who oppose fracking and wish to make their voices heard or to document practices that they fear will harm them and their neighbors,” the motion said. “That message is loud and clear: criticize a gas company, and you’ll pay for it.”

According to the motion, Cabot isn’t even continuing to seek the broad restraining order. In an amended complaint against Scroggins filed in January, Cabot said it would prefer a more specific but permanent injunction barring Scroggins from entering onto properties owned and leased by Cabot, but only where it is actually conducting operations. The company also wants to ban Scroggins from coming anywhere within 150 feet of that land.

This is hardly the first time an activist fighting against fossil fuel development has find herself in legal hot water.

In Australia, Jonathan Moylan is facing jail time after a fake press release he distributed led to temporary stock market confusion. In the U.S., activist and journalist Mike Stark is being sued for defamation after writing a strongly opinionated article about coal baron Robert Murray. And in November, Canadian environmental writer, illustrator and activist Franke James was blacklisted by the Canadian government for making art that was critical of the Canadian government’s policies with respect to tar sands and climate change.

 

© 2014

Israel: Gas, Oil and Trouble in the Levant

Israel is set to become a major exporter of gas and some oil, if all goes to plan. The giant Leviathan natural gas field, in the eastern Mediterranean, discovered in December 2010, is widely described as “off the coast of Israel.”

At the time the gas field was: “ … the most prominent field ever found in the sub-explored area of the Levantine Basin, which covers about 83,000 square kilometres of the eastern Mediterranean region.” (i)

Coupled with Tamar field, in the same location, discovered in 2009, the prospects are for an energy bonanza for Israel, for Houston, Texas based Noble Energy and partners Delek Drilling, Avner Oil Exploration and Ratio Oil Exploration.

Also involved is Perth, Australia-based Woodside Petroleum, which has signed a memorandum of understanding for a thirty percent stake in the project, in negotiations which have been described as “up and down.” There is currently speculation that Woodside might pull out of the deal: “ …since the original plans to refrigerate the gas for export were pursued when relations between Israel and Turkey were strained. That has changed, more recently, which has opened the door for gas to be piped to Turkey.”

The spoils of the Leviathan field has already expanded from an estimated 16.7 trillion cubic feet (tcf ) of gas to nineteen trillion – and counting:

”We’ve discovered nearly 40 tcf of gas, and we have roughly 19 tcf of that gas that’s available for export to both regional and extra-regional markets. We see exports reaching 2 billion cubic feet a day in capacity in the next decade. And we continue to explore.”, stated Noble Vice Chairman Keith Elliot (ii) There are also estimated to be possibly six hundred million barrels of oil, according to Michael Economides of energytribune.com (“Eastern Mediterranean Energy – the next Great Game.”)

However, even these estimates may prove modest. In their: “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the Levant Basin Province, Eastern Mediterranean”, the US Department of the Interior’s US Geological Survey, wrote in 2010: “We estimated a mean of 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas in this province using a geology based assessment methodology.”

Nevertheless, Woodside Petroleum, might also be hesitant to become involved in further disputes, since they are already embroiled, with the Australian government, in a protracted one in East Timor relating to the bonanaza of energy and minerals beneath the Timor Sea, which has even led to East Timor accusing Australia “of bugging East Timorese officials during the negotiations over the agreement.”(iii)

Woodside’s conflict in East Timor however, may well pale against what might well erupt over the Leviathan and Tamar fields. The area is not for nothing called the Levantine Basin. Whilst Israel claims them as her very own treasure trove, only a fraction of the sea’s wealth lies in Israel’s bailiwick as maps (iv, v) clearly show. Much is still unexplored, but currently Palestine’s Gaza and the West Bank between them show the greatest discoveries, with anything found in Lebanon and Syria’s territorial waters sure to involve claims from both countries.

In a pre-emptive move, on Christmas Day, Syria announced a deal with Russia to explore 2,190 kilometres (850 Sq. miles) for oil and gas off its Mediterranean coast, to be: “… financed by Russia, and should oil and gas be discovered in commercial quantities, Moscow will recover the exploration costs.”

Syrian Oil Minister, Ali Abbas said during the signing ceremony that the contract covers “25 years, over several phases.”

Syria, increasingly crippled by international sanctions, has seen oil production plummet by ninety percent since the largely Western fermented unrest began in March 2011. Gas production has nearly halved, from thirty million cubic metres a day, to 16.7 cubic metres daily.

The agreement is reported to have resulted from “months of long negotiations” between the two countries. Russia, as one of the Syrian government’s main backers, looks set to also become a major player in the Levant Basin’s energy wealth. (vi)

Lebanon disputes Israel’s map of the Israeli-Lebanese maritime border, filing their own map and claims with the UN in 2010. Israel claims Lebanon is in the process of granting oil and gas exploration licenses in what Israel claims as its “exclusive economic zone.”

That the US in the guise of Vice President Joe Biden, as honest broker, acting peace negotiator in the maritime border dispute would be laughable, were it not potential for Israel to attack their neighbour again. In a visit to Israel in March 2010, Biden announced: “There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security- none at all”, also announcing on arrival in Israel:”It’s good to be home.” More

 

Posted with Blogsy

Bitumen facility blamed for Peace Country, Alberta, health woes

A family is blaming emissions from a nearby heavy oil production site for chasing them from their Peace Country home of seven years in northwestern Alberta.

Thera Breau

Thera Breau says the decision to move came down to the health of her young kids who started experiencing unexplained health problems.

They had urinary incontinence with a strong smell of ammonia," said Breau, who also noticed speech problems and skin rashes developed by her toddler.

Breau made the decision to move on the morning of Mar. 18 when she took her five-year-old son to catch the bus in front of her house.

"His eye was twitching so bad that he had a temper tantrum." Breau said.

"The air stank so I called the ERCB (Energy Resources Conservation Board), and decided I didn't want to live here anymore until I could be told that it was safe."

The Breaus left their rural bungalow, moving to a small rented home in the nearby community of McLennan. "His eye was twitching so bad that he had a temper tantrum." Breau said.

"The air stank so I called the ERCB (Energy Resources Conservation Board), and decided I didn't want to live here anymore until I could be told that it was safe."

The Breaus left their rural bungalow, moving to a small rented home in the nearby community of McLennan.

Not the first to leave

Breau's family is not the first to pack up and leave the area. At least six other families have done the same.

Mike Labrecque, 60, moved from his home southeast of Peace River last year as his health was deteriorating.

He dropped 40 pounds and was experiencing allergic-type reactions such as hives and difficulty beathing. He now lives in a cabin along a lake without power or water and has seen a noticable improvement in his health.

When he does venture back to his property, he needs an industrial-strength gas mask in order to breathe comfortably.

"It's very depressing, I know I will never be able to live here again," said Labrecque through a gas mask while standing in what was the kitchen of the house under construction on his abandoned property.

"My body has suffered way too much damage... my body is totally allergic to the air here."

As for the possible cause of the fleeing residents' difficulties, all point to a relatively new process of extracting bitumen from underground in the region called Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand, or CHOPS, where heavy oil is pumped from the ground and stored in heated tanks which produce emissions that form an aerosol-type plume. More

 

The Beaver Lake Cree Judgment: The Most Important Tar Sands Case You’ve Never Heard Of

Sure they’re bad for the environment, for human health, and for wildlife, but we rarely stop to wonder if the Alberta tar sands are in fact unconstitutional.

But the constitutional standing of the tar sands – one of the world’s largest and most carbon-intensive energy projects – is just what’s at stake in a treaty rights claim the Beaver Lake Cree Nation (BLCN) is bringing against the Governments of Alberta and Canada in a case that promises to be one of the most significant legal and constitutional challenges to the megaproject seen in Canada to date.

Signaling the high-stakes of the whole dispute, it has taken five years of beleaguered fighting just to have the case go to trial. Canada and Alberta – the defendants – fought tooth and nail during those five years to have the claim dismissed outright, saying the case put forward by the BCLN was “frivolous, improper and an abuse of process.”

The BCLN is challenging these governments on the grounds of the cumulative impacts of the tar sands and has indicated some 19,000 ‘individual authorizations’ and 300 individual industrial projects in their claim. The governments of Alberta and Canada tried to have the case dismissed under Rule 3.68, a measure meant to protect defendants from cases that are…well…“frivolous, improper, and an abuse of process.”

But this case isn’t one of those.

Canada claimed the claim was “unmanageable” and “overwhelming,” suggesting the 19,000 authorizations were likely to have fallen within the relevant regulatory framework at the time of their approval and needn't be bothered with. But, as one judge stated, a claim cannot be dismissed based merely on its scope. The courts agreed, telling Canada that no further “delaying tactics” should be permitted in this litigation lest the entire claim be “stonewalled at an early stage through excessive particularization.”

What is more, the court said Canada’s complaint “flies in the face of the Supreme Court of Canada” and its previous decisions, indicating Canada’s counsel was unsuccessful in its attempts to squeeze out of a tight legal position. Canada even sought to have its portion of the claim whittled down to “limit its exposure” in the case, a position the court said Canada’s “counsel candidly admitted to advancing…for strategic reasons.”

On April 30^th, 2013, the courts told Canada and Alberta they’d had enough of the bickering. “The parties will be well-served by returning to their case management judge for the implication plan to advance this litigation through trial,” they wrote.

In other words: get your act together, you’re going to court.

The Rights

The Alberta Court of Appeal’s decision to uphold the claim against the crown, grants the BLCN the opportunity to argue the cumulative negative impacts of tar sands expansion may constitute a legal breach of the band’s historic Treaty 6 with the Canadian government, signed back in 1876.

And the significance of this judgment cannot be overstated. The BLCN’s claim now stands as the first opportunity for legal consideration of the cumulative impacts of the tar sands on First Nation’s traditional territory and the implications of those impacts on the ability to uphold Treaty Rights.

And First Nation’s Rights – enshrined as Aboriginal Rights in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 – are arguably some of the most important emerging rights on the Canadian legal landscape and certainly the most powerful environmental rights in the country.

This, in part, has to do with the fact that what section 35 rights actually legally entail, is still being developed through case law. Dozens of important cases - like the precedent-setting R v. Gladstone andMikisew v. Canada- have been decided by courts over the last 30 years, since the patriation of the Constitution, finding Canada in serious violation of the Constitution when it comes to treaty rights.

Despite the emerging nature of these rights, one thing is clear – First Nations have the inalienable right to hunt, trap and fish in their preferred manner, throughout their traditional territories and the province.

And there’s the rub. If you’ve got a megaproject that is destroying what you might otherwise be hunting, trapping or fishing, you've got a serious constitutional gaffe on your hands. The Constitution is the highest law in the land, and cannot simply be ignored.

The Cumulative Impacts

This puts Canada and Alberta in a tough spot. Over the last decade, as they’ve been welcoming a veritable cascade of new projects in the tar sands area, scientists and conservation groups have been raising the alarm as the consequent research began to show devastating effects on caribou populationsand fish species especially hard done by the escalating development.

The BCLN’s traditional territories blanket an area about the size of Switzerland. Thirty per cent of tar sands production, or about 560,000 barrels of oil, are produced on BLCN every day. The oil industry has plans to grow this number to 1.6 million barrels a day.

The once-pristine forest and hunting grounds are now covered with 35,000 oil and gas sites, 21,700 kilometres of seismic lines, 4,028 kilometres of pipeline and 948 kilometres of road.

Perhaps it has taken Canada and Alberta by surprise that the cumulative impacts might be considered at a constitutional level. After all, neither the province nor the federal government have been particularly proactive in studying the cumulative effects of development in the area.

True, scientists have been fretting about loss of caribou herds and habitat for decades, even citing theSpecies At Risk Act as a potential legal cause to slow the pace and scale of tar sands development. But Canada ignored those pleas for caution as long at it could – until another legal action forced them to release the recent Federal Caribou Recovery Act last fall.

And it was only a few months ago that Environment Canada scientists announced tar sands pollution was present in bodies of water up to 100 kilometres from the centre of development. The accumulating toxins, they discovered, disrupt fish embryos at the developmental stage. The federal government worked overtime to downplay the significance of the research last fall, even preventing lead researchers from discussing their findings with the media.

Overall, the federal government has been just as culpable as provincial leaders in keeping these growing environmental effects under-reported, or under wraps. The BLCN’s upcoming litigation may be the change in tide that brings the cumulative impact discussion to centre-stage.

The Cause for Hope

5 years ago Crystal Lameman’s uncle Chief Al Lameman filed the original claim on behalf of the Nation.

“In 2008 I don't think my uncle knew the attention this litigation would gain,” Crystal said. “His intent and purpose was to protect what little we have left but it has created this movement, this mobilization of a people and it's a great feeling seeing people mobilize beyond the confines of race, color, and creed. This recent win means our judicial system is clearly standing strong in the law of Canada and it gives me hope.”

And Crystal has much cause for hope, according to Jack Woodward, renowned Native Law expert and lawyer on the case.

“The Beaver Lake case will define the point where industrial development must be curtailed to preserve treaty rights,” he said.

“At issue is the cumulative impact of industry, not each individual project. The court will be asked to say if the level of industrial activity in the hunting grounds has now crossed the line to make it impossible to reasonably exercise the harvesting rights. If the Beaver Lake are successful there will be constitutional controls on development to allow the land to recover and to prevent any further encroachments that might disturb wildlife populations.”

A precedent-setting ruling of that sort would have significance for any other First Nation making similar claims regarding the overall impacts of industrial development. This could have serious ramifications for other First Nation groups living near the tar sands or newly-industrialized zones like British Columbia’s northeast. More

 

The Beaver Lake Cree nation's once-pristine forest and hunting grounds are now covered with 35,000 oil and gas sites, 21,700 kilometres of seismic lines, 4,028 kilometres of pipeline and 948 kilometres of road.

 

Oil spill firm to pay $400 million to fix Gulf coast

The Deepwater Horizon spill has just provided a $400-million windfall for Louisiana's environment. Transocean, which worked with BP on the stricken Macondo well, pleaded guilty last week to a violation of the US Clean Water Act, and admitted that it was negligent in the 2010 spill.

The resultingmultimillion-dollar fine will be used to pay for a host of environmental projectsaround the Gulf of Mexico.

It is the second largest fine for environmental damage in history, after the $4.5-billion fine BP had to pay out for the same spill. Transocean has two years to pay up in full.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will get $150 million, and another $150 million will go to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), a non-profit based in Washington DC. The NAS will use its portion to research oil-spill prevention and better ways to respond to spills. The NFWF's Timothy DiCintio says it will distribute its award between the affected Gulf Coast states, for ongoing remediation efforts such as marsh and wetland clean-up.

The remainder of the money will go directly to Louisiana's $50-billion Coastal Master Plan, which aims to restore the state's degraded coastline. The money will fund a host of projects, including restoring barrier island reefs and creating diversions on the Mississippi to repair eroded coasts.

"The way Louisiana looks at it, their coastal problems are so pervasive that the degradation from the spill was a final indignity," says DiCintio. The modifications should not only allow the state to rebuild after the lingering effects of the spill and hurricane Katrina, but also help the coast cope with future disasters. More

 

Even Dumb Ideas Have Consequences - Andrew Bacevich

It came and went in a flash and now it’s long forgotten, buried in the rubble heap of history. But maybe, given recent events, a little excavation is in order. After all, as the author ofConstantine’s Sword, James Carroll, wrote in 2004, looking back on the 9/11 moment, “A few days after the assault... [s]peaking spontaneously, without the aid of advisers or speechwriters, [George W. Bush] put a word on the new American purpose that both shaped it and gave it meaning. ‘This crusade,’ he said, ‘this war on terrorism.’"

It was the presidential equivalent of a Freudian slip, the sort that reveals one’s deepest preconceptions. After all, there was only one set of “crusades” and Medieval Christendom launched them against Islamic "infidels" of the Middle East. There has been no such presidential slip since.

When, in January 2002, for example, George W. Bush gave his State of the Union address, his speechwriter David Frum, who liked to speak of the “stinking bowl” of the Arab world, ditched the very thought that there might be a crusade against Islam in America. Instead, he and an associate came up with a phrase that hinted at a more ecumenical set of enemies. In imitation of Germany, Japan, and Italy, the “Axis powers” of World War II, he puffed up three rickety regional regimes -- Iraq, Iran, and North Korea -- into a looming “axis of evil.” (“Seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.”) It may have been farfetched to compare Iraq’s megalomanic autocrat Saddam Hussein, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il to Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, but it proved adequate for the needs of that moment.

How, after all, could the United States be “at war with Islam,” when the distinctly non-Muslim North Korea was on board the SS Axis of Evil? Still, when you look back on the fate of that “axis,” something strange should jump out at you. After all, the Bush administration knocked off Saddam over a non-existent Iraqi nuclear and WMD program which, in the pre-invasion months, its officials insisted might put mushroom clouds over American cities and leave Iraqi drones spraying chemical and biological poisons over East Coast cities. Since then, in conjunction with Israel, both the Bush and Obama administrations have gone after Iran’s nuclear program, including rounds of cyber warfare, a massive build-up of forces in the Persian Gulf region, threats of war, sanctions, Israeli assassinations of nuclear scientists, and so on, and yet Iran, too, has no nuclear weapon and no one claims it does, nor do mostexperts think it's even close.

As it turned out, only the one non-Islamic country in that axis of evil actually built and testeda perfectly real nuclear weapon in those years. And the response seems curiously instructive: though it announced its first successful test in 2006 and the actual building of a bomb in 2009, no war threats ensued, no invasion occurred, no cyber-attacks were launched, no giant military build up in the region occurred. In the end, next to nothing happened. In fact, when you think about it, since 2001, just about every war-like act by Washington, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines, or elsewhere, has been directed at a Muslim country or at Muslims in a county. More

 

Israel orders new building in East Jerusalem

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has ordered the building of 2,000 new housing units for Israelis, mainly in illegally occupied East Jerusalem, an area Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.

Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday that the new construction would include settlements that he believed would be part of Israel in a future peace accord. Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land are considered illegal under international law.

Israel also decided on Tuesday to freeze the transfer of tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority, as a punitive measure after Palestine was granted full membership of UNESCO, the United Nations' culture and heritage agency, media reports said.

Saeb Erakat, the former Palestinian chief negotiator, said construction of more housing units was "politically motivated".

"The land they are going to build settlements on is supposed to be the land of the Palestinian state," he told Al Jazeera.

"The money they will withhold is Palestinian money. So this is a policy of intimidation and blackmail and we'll not budge ... we'll continue pursuing our rights."

Erakat added: "The mere fact that Israel defies the international community, by having more settlements instead of cessation of settlement activities and withholding Palestinian money, which is theft in my opinion, just reflects the nature of the Israeli government attempts to continue undermining the two-state solution. What harm does it bring to Israel when Palestinians join UNESCO?"

The decision to build more housing units was taken at a meeting of senior ministers, chaired by Netanyahu, Israel's public radio said.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the accelerated construction was an answer to the moves being made by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation at the UN in pursuit of statehood recognition.

"You can't demand from the Israeli public to continue to show restraint when the Palestinian leadership continues to slam the door in their face," said the official.

He said 1,650 of the new tenders are for units in East Jerusalem, while the rest are for Efrat and Maale Adumim, two illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians object to Israeli housing in East Jerusalem and demand an end to all construction in the settlements before direct talks can resume. Israel rejects that as a precondition. More

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