“Gulf oil spill: White House accused of spinning report : Scientists say it is ‘just not true’ that the vast majority of oil from the BP spill has gone : Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 August 2010”
Use all the dispersants you want (or are just about legally entitled to), but an ecological catastrophe like this will not go away and die quietly, even though a large number of marine animals will be forced to :-
1. Something happens to provoke some persons as yet unidentified in Gaza.
2. Some persons as yet unidentified may or may not have fired a Grad missile from the Gaza Strip towards the Israeli town of Sderot.
3. The Israeli Defense Force act “in retaliation” and bomb three locations in Gaza, killing at least one person and wounding eight.
4. Some persons as yet unidentified may or may not have fired a Qassam rocket from the Gaza Strip towards Ashkelon.
You may be forgiven for thinking this is all about simple tactical weaponry exchange, embedded cultural or religious hatred, or revenge attacks.
But you’d be wrong.
This escalation in violence is merely part of what looks very strongly like an ongoing strategy to keep Gaza from economic development, by preventing them from exploiting their largest natural resource – offshore sub-marine Natural Gas.
I am going to give you my first attempt at some history on this matter. I make any and every apology if I have got something wrong. Please correct me by comments below the post.
I have not even started to attempt to address the hypocrisy of the United Kingdom and the United States of America effectively giving weapons to Israel via a system of direct and indirect aid. All that is brilliantly covered by Robert Fisk, so I don’t need to :-
Gaza is being locked down under a “resource curse” – the Gazans are being forcefully detained in an open air concentration camp with scant resources, when all the time, just off-shore are enough hydrocarbons to make them all very wealthy. Many Gazans are succumbing to starvation of the body and mind, and many are unwell and have to endure appalling deprivation.
I should expect that the “final solution”, whatever that will be, will be announced by Israel in the next few years, unless the international community wakes up to the obvious risks that Gaza faces, and does something decisive about it.
With extra economic sanctions imposed against Iran, and a rise in diplomatically expressed disapproval, recent political engagement from the international community is beginning to take on a decidedly sabre-rattling flavour.
The United States of America, and its allies and press-ganged collaborators, may not wage an actual military assault on Iran, but they may be staging another kind of rout – with the aim of securing Fossil Fuel energy supplies for the industrialised West.
Iran’s “public face” people have still not learned that the Western media are prone to pursuing irritating, provocative lines of enquiry, in order to elicit a scandalous response, in order to back up the “axis of evil” view of the world.
The responses given in the interview at the top of this post show how Iran walks into the trap so easily. Iran cannot correct world opinion, regardless of the logic they use, when world opinion on Iran is so blatantly manipulated by those who manage the Western media.
But there’s more going on here than just media corruption and the demonisation of Iran.
Why not bring in a special new executive at BP’s London Headquarters, maybe ex-CEO of BP, Lord John Browne of Madingley, who was rather green, really, or that other Anthony, the ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, and make them responsible for expanding an entirely new share offering in Solar Power.
Investors would be encouraged to explicitly finance new solar projects around the world by buying “solar shares” in the company, who make a priority of environmental matters, as we all know.
The British Government could offer extensive tax breaks, declining to tax revenues from solar electricity in the same way that BPs’ Oil and Gas sales are tapped for a percentage slice to help the public purse.
And there you could have it, bish bash bosh.
And while you’re at it, rename the company “Beautiful Photonenergy”.
The world could forget about the Gulf of Mexico plumes and seepages and we could all, together, forge a clean, smooth new Low Carbon, Low Dirt world.
Image Credit : Google Maps. Point A shows the location of the Natural Gas discovery announced 5th July 2010. Point B shows the point at which the yacht “The Kingdom of Bahrain” was seized by Iranian Authorities in late November 2009
Iran has been playing a game of gentle brinkmanship with the major military powers over its nuclear ambitions for the last few years. Its civilian nuclear ambitions, that is.
The United Nations Security Council imposed a new bag of sanctions against Iran in June, and since then various Iranian aircraft have been refused refuelling by that paragon of commercial virtue BP, amongst other things :-
