Stephen Lendman

At the BP oil leak Senate hearings, oil company executives
pointed fingers at each other. The gulf oil spill totals more
than 4 million gallons and counting. Flickr photo.

On April 22, AP reported the news - an initial April 20 explosion, then a larger one igniting Deepwater Horizon's oil drilling platform that burned for more than a day before sinking and releasing thousands of barrels of oil daily into surrounding waters, enough potentially to cause the greatest ever environmental disaster if not sealed in time to prevent.

Transocean Ltd. owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon platform under contract to BP Exploration and Production Inc., a division of BP - 4th on Fortune Global 500 with $239 billion in 2009 operating revenue and $14 billion in profits. It ranked fourth behind Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil and Wal-Mart. Of the world's 10 largest companies, six are oil giants. Transocean, an offshore drilling contractor, owns operates about 140 drilling rigs. More on its culpability below.

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Jeff Schmidt / Stephen Lendman

Canadian Professor Denis Rancourt

Challenging Canadian Civil Liberties Association Members for Opposing Academic and Expression Freedoms at the University of Ottawa - by Jeff Schmidt

Denis Rancourt is a distinguished, tenured Professor of Physics, a recognized expert in his field, and an Environmental Science Researcher at the University of Ottawa, Canada.

Yet because of his activist position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he was unfairly fired and barred from campus on threat of arrest - a violation of his tenure, academic freedom, and beliefs about human rights and equal justice.

Author Jeff Schmidt wrote the following article and letter, calling on Canadian Civil Liberties Association board members to repudiate their organization's attack on a man to be honored, not vilified or abused.

Stephen Lendman

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Les Visible
Smoking Mirrors

What a smorgasbord of possibilities is laid out upon the buffet table of the moment. They say you can read the future in the actions of the past; if you can trust historians. One might say that every person possessed of even elementary consciousness knows that some acts lead to trouble and some acts are benign. Then again, people have died for trusting the appearance of someone in distress when it was only a con. That said, I’ve always trusted in divine inspiration, probably because every other method failed.

Maybe truth is on a need to know basis which counterpoints the proliferation of the group-assumed- ‘I don’t want to know’ -movement that seems to gather force with every passing day. One of the things that my security clearance allows for is to see around the corner based on the personality and intentions of the one rounding it.

I watched Ahmadinejad’s speech at the U.N. He was measured and respectful. He was less direct than I would have been but he is the leader of a nation and I am not. Well, let’s review a few things and you are welcome to accept what I have to say or disprove it. You’ll still come to the same conclusion, like it or not.

The U.S. experienced a major attack on 9/11/2001. The perpetrators were identified as Arabs who were members of Al Qaeda. Across the span of time to this moment it has been conclusively proven in the minds of those who do want to know that it was actually carried out by Israel and obliging members of various security forces. It has also been proven in the words of high level intelligence operatives that there is no Al Qaeda.

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Matt Taibbi

"The Obama administration said Sunday it would seek a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. flatly asserted that the defendant in the Times Square bombing attempt was trained by the Taliban in Pakistan." ~ via Attorney General Backs Miranda Limit for Terror Suspects – NYTimes.com.

Memo to those Tea Party activists out there who’ve been howling about those liberal wusses in the Obama Justice Department who read Faisal Shahzad his Miranda rights: congratulations. You’ve just opened the door for a major new expansion of government power.

Having followed the Tea Party around on and off for a few months now it’s been hard not to notice some of the contradictory messages emanating from the movement. You’ll hear the same people who want to abolish the EPA complaining about the slow federal response to the Gulf oil spill, or the same people who are stocking up on guns to ward off the inevitable government assault on their property cheering for beefed-up drug enforcement laws and the no-knock search warrant.

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