Obama opens up delicate Alaska ecosystem for drilling

Bryan Dyne

The Obama administration has approved Shell Oil’s plan to begin drilling for oil in the Beaufort Sea, off the Arctic Ocean coast of Alaska. This will be the first offshore drilling operation authorized in the region since the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe in April 2010. It only the latest example of the Obama administration’s prostration before major oil interests.

Approval for drilling came from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE). The agency adopted the plan given to it by Shell Oil without even a cursory examination. Instead, it adopted an uncritical attitude towards the company, entrusting it not to violate safety regulations and risking a similar disaster to that which occurred last year.

The BOEMRE is also ignoring the ecological impact of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. When the oil tanker struck the Bligh Reef, it spilled somewhere between 42,000 and 120,000 cubic meters of crude into the Prince William Sound. This resulted in the deaths of as many as 250,000 seabirds and hundreds of sea otters, harbor seals and bald eagles, as well as four humans poisoned during the cleanup. The immediate economic impact was the loss of 26,000 jobs and $2.4 billion.

In addition, the clean up efforts were not sufficient to completely eliminate oil. An NOAA report issued in 2007 revealed that, despite cleanup efforts, 26,000 gallons of oil still remain in the soil of the contaminated shoreline, impeding the repopulation of wildlife in the area. The amount of oil left in the ocean is unknown. Moreover, residents of the area who used to rely on fishing for subsistence are still wary of consuming local catches for fear of leftover oil.

The more recent explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon, which killed eleven workers, has left a much deeper scar. From April to June of 2010, the oil rig leaked 780,000 cubic meters of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, contaminating almost 800 kilometers of coastline in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Hundreds of thousands of fish, birds and other animals were affected, with thousands turning up dead. One estimate, given by Earth Economics, values the damage done at approximately $1 trillion to the Mississippi River delta alone.


Growing Israeli Tyranny

Stephen Lendman

For years, America and Israel followed similar paths toward full-blown tyranny, threatening all their citizens. Believing either is democratic and egalitarian is ludicrous and nonsensical, especially now under right-wing neoliberal governments, cracking down hard against challenges to their authority.

In Israel, moreover, Arabs have no rights. In fact, they're treated more like fifth-column threats than citizens with equal rights as Jews. They never had them or do now.

Three articles, among others, discussed Israeli governance under Netanyahu and Israel's most extremist ever Knesset, accessed through the following links, here, here and here.

Since becoming prime minister on March 31, 2009 for the second time (earlier serving from June 1996 - July 1999), Netanyahu's hardline coalition government enacted measures repressive enough to make some right-of-center politicians blush. At the same time, left-of-center ones worry where Israel is heading, a direction they very much oppose.

Already, Netanyahu's gone a long way toward wrecking Israeli society, similar to what Obama's done to America, handing it more than ever to wealth and power interests, especially bankers, war profiteers and militarists.

Moreover, Congress and Israel's Knesset enacted numerous hardline measures. This article discusses a new one MKs will now consider called, "Basic Act: Israel - the State of the Jewish Nation," not one for all its people.


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