From: CNN
26 February 2016
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| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The site of the massive natural gas leak near Los Angeles |
ACP's Vision provides the focus point for people who act from awareness on issues of accountability and community.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
California methane leak 'largest in US history'
Friday, February 26, 2016
True Change in Society Happens Only After Individual Hearts Are Changed
By Father Teo
During the 1960’s
I was a professor in a private high school in Bolivia. Our students
were sons and daughters of those with power in government and wealth.
It was these future leaders of Bolivia that we wanted to be aware of
the Social Justice teachings of the Catholic Church. Not only
ourselves, but also those who taught in the other private high
schools did an excellent job.
During my time there
I lived through 7 revolutions, 7 different attempts to change and
better the country, but with no success. I was sometime during the
last month of my stay that one of my former students invited me to
his home for dinner. Before, during and after dinner the two of us
had a wonderful conversation. He confidentially told me that he was
the commandante of the guerrilla movement living in the semi jungles
of Bolivia and they were about ready to begin the revolution that
Bolivia needed to restore social justice and Christian love for one
another, two virtues that were missing.
As I listened, I
begin to notice that something wasn’t correct. He had relayed to me
exactly all the teachings on social justice. It was all being done
for the glory of God and the betterment of our fellow brothers and
sisters, especially the poor and indigenous. After taking control of
the government and the country, they would immediately establish that
longed for Christian society of brotherly love.
I asked Roberto a
question. “Tell me. How are you going to change overnight the
country into such a loving just country? To win the revolution you
are putting guns in the hands of people, commanding them to kill if
necessary in order to take control. We can’t put those feelings
into people one day, and then the next day replace that with
brotherly love.” He replied, “Oh, yes we can because we are doing
it right.”
That was the moment
that I realized that I had spent my many years forming and teaching
the youth how to change society, and never once did anything to help
them change their hearts first. I had wasted my time. Unless the
heart is changed with love first, there is no way to change society.
The revolution failed. Most of the guerrillas were killed.
This happened in the
early days of Liberation Theology, the theology of social justice
that was being taught throughout South and Central America. It was an
attempt to rid the hemisphere of all the terrible social evils that
had existed for centuries. And it was now able to be done with a
clear conscious. It was a part of the Church’s theology. It proved
the justification of warfare as a last resort, which really became
the first resort. This is what we taught our students.
It was only at that
dinner engagement with Roberto that I saw for the first time that war
does not solve problems because even though it changes leaders of
government it does not change anyone’s heart. Unless the heart is
changed with love, the same evil will again appear. All will be the
same.
Fortunately, it was the following year that the Liberation
Theologians realized the same thing, and their teaching was changed.
It became based the realization that only those people who had
experienced our Heavenly Father’s love were able to share that
love, a love that changes and heals hearts of hurts and hatred. That
love does not and cannot use force nor warfare as a means to
accomplish its end.
Recently, I attended
a lecture given by Dr. C.T. Vivian, a minister who knew Dr. Martin
Luther King. In the lecture he stated how hard Dr. King insisted that
all their demonstrations had to be done from a spiritual non-violent
attitude. Adding the spiritual element was adding love for the one
who was the cause of their suffering and lack of justice. I realized
that Dr. King in choosing in a sense Liberation Theology had
correctly based it on one’s experience of the Father’s Love. As a
result, his “revolution” was successful. There was and has
remained change!
February 26, 2016
Don't Forget Hillary and her Love Relationship with the Corporations who run America
Hillary is addicted to power.
Hillary Clinton on Gaddafi: We came, we saw, he died
Listen to the words of a man no dead and understand what is happening to us today.
Monday, February 22, 2016
After 10 years, neighbors of a Wilmington oil drilling operation still complain of health, environmental issues
From: LA Times
A decade ago, Los Angeles city
planners gave an energy company permission to drill up to 540 wells and
produce up to 5,000 barrels of oil a day on a Wilmington site next door
to a youth baseball field and blocks of homes.
The next few years were, in the words of one neighbor, "a living hell." People living nearby complained of foul odors, gas flaring, oily dust, round-the-clock noise, diesel truck traffic and foundation-damaging vibrations. They said the fumes made them nauseous, gave them headaches and itchy eyes.
In response, the regional air quality board issued orders to stop the flaring violations. The planning department imposed some new conditions — and reiterated its support of the drilling. MORE
The next few years were, in the words of one neighbor, "a living hell." People living nearby complained of foul odors, gas flaring, oily dust, round-the-clock noise, diesel truck traffic and foundation-damaging vibrations. They said the fumes made them nauseous, gave them headaches and itchy eyes.
In response, the regional air quality board issued orders to stop the flaring violations. The planning department imposed some new conditions — and reiterated its support of the drilling. MORE
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Sunday, Feb 21, 2016 12:30 PM PST America’s shameful state of decay: Sanders is campaigning on rebuilding the country’s infrastructure — will it work?
From: Salon
Bernie Sanders (Credit: Reuters/Jim Young)
“Every generation needs a new revolution.”
Thomas Jefferson
Infrastructure.
Not a very exciting word, and certainly not one to whip up the hysteria
of the electorate in an election year. We have other words for that:
immigration, terrorism, religious extremism or Russian aggression. The
usual suspects.
Yet, perhaps the
word “infrastructure” will become more exciting if we unpack it, learn
what it is – and understand that it is not any external cause that most
threatens America, but instead decades of negligence to the very
“infrastructure” of this nation. There is that word again:
infrastructure. But, what does it mean?
A
short list will suffice: water treatment, roads, bridges, public
housing, passenger and freight rail, marine ports and inland waterways,
national parks, broadband, the electric grid, schools, hospitals,
government buildings, dams – in other words, to use a medical metaphor,
the conditions for the healthy life of a nation. MORE
Pundit Living With Clinton Staffer Smears Sanders
From: Justice Integrity Project
by Andrew Kreig
As the Democratic presidential race next moves to the heavily black electorate in South Carolina, two misleading smears of candidate Bernie Sanders by prominent African-American supporters of Hillary Clinton taint the critics' fairness and that of the institutions they represent.
Washington Post editorial board member Jonathan
Capehart
and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights hero shown in an
official photo at right, separately suggested in misleading remarks that
Sanders had puffed up his 1960s civil rights activism.
The controversies arose as Sanders and Clinton scramble for African-American support in the South Carolina primary Feb. 27 following Clinton's victory in the Nevada caucuses Feb. 20. The big prize is the 11-state Super Tuesday contests March 1, most in Southern states where, like South Carolina, the Democratic electorate is majority or near-majority African-American.
Lewis
dissed Sanders Feb. 11 at a news conference called by Congressional
Black Caucus Political Action Committee at the Capitol Hill headquarters
of the Democratic National Committee,
"I never met him," Lewis said of Sanders, referencing the early 1960s when Lewis led the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in courageous civil rights struggles that included the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma, Alabama. "But I met Hillary Clinton. I met President Clinton." Two days later, Lewis had to walk back his remarks by noting that Sanders had been active in the early 1960s, whereas the Clintons had been in high school then and Lewis did not meet them until the 1970s.
Also on Feb. 11, Capehart published a Washington Post column Stop sending around this photo of ‘Bernie Sanders,' citing Randy Ross, the widow of former Chicago student Bruce Rappaport, as saying her late husband was the man shown standing in a photo (below) that the Sanders' campaign had been using to illustrate the presidential candidate's commitment to civil rights.
Both Sanders and Clinton have refrained from comment, thereby stating above the battle. But, as indicated below, the controversy provides a window into the high stakes of the race and the deceptive tactics of candidate surrogates and media organizations to provide a competitive edge to their favorite candidate. More dramatically, we see also how a much-honored civil rights figure stepped forward to set the record straight.
The University of Chicago has long identified Sanders as the man standing in the 1962 photo below left taken by then-student Danny Lyon, who went on to become the official photographer for SNCC and a much-honored photographer and film maker.
Capehart is a contributor on MSNBC, whose host Chris Matthews presented the controversy as if it were a major campaign scandal that implied devious tactics by the Sanders camp just as he was trying to win African-American support following his strong showings in the white-dominated states of New Hampshire and Iowa. Part the problem is that Capehart reportedly been living for years with a Clinton staffer and has not disclosed that relationship to audiences for his pro-Clinton commentaries.
If
Sanders had falsely puffed up his civil rights record it would have
been one of the worst possible introductions to the heavily black
Democratic primary audiences in the South.
But the photographer Lyon stepped forward to confirm that Sanders was the man standing in the photo. Lyon denounced Capehart for his shoddy reporting.
The photo, along with a similar one shown on the next page of this column, is courtesy of the Danny Lyon/Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library).
The Lyon statement, confirmed by his release last week of his "contact sheets" of images when he was developing his images for the university's student newspaper, brings disturbing scrutiny on the journalistic methods of Capehart, as well as his newspaper and cable colleagues at the Washington Post and MSNBC.
After Capehart's attacks on Sanders the website Men's Trait reported in Pro-Clinton Columnist In Bed With Clinton Staffer — Literally that the pundit has been been living for years with a Clinton staffer.
True, such conflicts of interest between journalists and political advocates are common in Washington and other media centers, and are rarely revealed.
But a factually inaccurate smear by a prominent pundit during a presidential race can easily elevate routine questionable behavior to news, as here.
by Andrew Kreig
Posted: 21 Feb 2016 05:25 AM PST
As the Democratic presidential race next moves to the heavily black electorate in South Carolina, two misleading smears of candidate Bernie Sanders by prominent African-American supporters of Hillary Clinton taint the critics' fairness and that of the institutions they represent.
Washington Post editorial board member Jonathan
Capehart
and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights hero shown in an
official photo at right, separately suggested in misleading remarks that
Sanders had puffed up his 1960s civil rights activism.The controversies arose as Sanders and Clinton scramble for African-American support in the South Carolina primary Feb. 27 following Clinton's victory in the Nevada caucuses Feb. 20. The big prize is the 11-state Super Tuesday contests March 1, most in Southern states where, like South Carolina, the Democratic electorate is majority or near-majority African-American.
Lewis
dissed Sanders Feb. 11 at a news conference called by Congressional
Black Caucus Political Action Committee at the Capitol Hill headquarters
of the Democratic National Committee,"I never met him," Lewis said of Sanders, referencing the early 1960s when Lewis led the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in courageous civil rights struggles that included the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma, Alabama. "But I met Hillary Clinton. I met President Clinton." Two days later, Lewis had to walk back his remarks by noting that Sanders had been active in the early 1960s, whereas the Clintons had been in high school then and Lewis did not meet them until the 1970s.
Also on Feb. 11, Capehart published a Washington Post column Stop sending around this photo of ‘Bernie Sanders,' citing Randy Ross, the widow of former Chicago student Bruce Rappaport, as saying her late husband was the man shown standing in a photo (below) that the Sanders' campaign had been using to illustrate the presidential candidate's commitment to civil rights.
Both Sanders and Clinton have refrained from comment, thereby stating above the battle. But, as indicated below, the controversy provides a window into the high stakes of the race and the deceptive tactics of candidate surrogates and media organizations to provide a competitive edge to their favorite candidate. More dramatically, we see also how a much-honored civil rights figure stepped forward to set the record straight.
1960s Civil Rights Student Activist
As a student at the University of Chicago, Sanders led a chapter of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) in sit ins that protested the university's tacit support of segregated student housing in its Hyde Park locale surrounded by black neighborhoods. Sanders also participated in the famed 1963 March on Washington led by famed civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.The University of Chicago has long identified Sanders as the man standing in the 1962 photo below left taken by then-student Danny Lyon, who went on to become the official photographer for SNCC and a much-honored photographer and film maker.
Capehart is a contributor on MSNBC, whose host Chris Matthews presented the controversy as if it were a major campaign scandal that implied devious tactics by the Sanders camp just as he was trying to win African-American support following his strong showings in the white-dominated states of New Hampshire and Iowa. Part the problem is that Capehart reportedly been living for years with a Clinton staffer and has not disclosed that relationship to audiences for his pro-Clinton commentaries.
If
Sanders had falsely puffed up his civil rights record it would have
been one of the worst possible introductions to the heavily black
Democratic primary audiences in the South.But the photographer Lyon stepped forward to confirm that Sanders was the man standing in the photo. Lyon denounced Capehart for his shoddy reporting.
The photo, along with a similar one shown on the next page of this column, is courtesy of the Danny Lyon/Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library).
The Lyon statement, confirmed by his release last week of his "contact sheets" of images when he was developing his images for the university's student newspaper, brings disturbing scrutiny on the journalistic methods of Capehart, as well as his newspaper and cable colleagues at the Washington Post and MSNBC.
After Capehart's attacks on Sanders the website Men's Trait reported in Pro-Clinton Columnist In Bed With Clinton Staffer — Literally that the pundit has been been living for years with a Clinton staffer.
True, such conflicts of interest between journalists and political advocates are common in Washington and other media centers, and are rarely revealed.
But a factually inaccurate smear by a prominent pundit during a presidential race can easily elevate routine questionable behavior to news, as here.
What Will Be the Health Impact of 100+ Days of Exposure to California's Methane Leak?
From: Inside Climate News
With little research into the
chemicals involved, scientists can't pinpoint the cause of nosebleeds in
households near Aliso Canyon.
A resident living near SoCal Gas's leaking gas storage site
holds a protest sign at a meeting of air quality regulators on January
20, 2016. Although the leak has been plugged for now, scientists say the
long-term health risks associated with exposure to methane are unknown.
Credit: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
One
big unknown clouds the aftermath of the Los Angeles County methane
disaster: the health effects for thousands of people living nearby who
were exposed to the gas while it leaked for three and a half months.
People from 600 households near the leak at the Aliso
Canyon gas storage unit reported headaches, nosebleeds, nausea and other
symptoms to county officials as thousands were evacuated from their
homes. It isn't known which, if any, toxic chemicals in the natural gas
may have caused the symptoms, or whether there will be long-term health
ramifications, according to environmental scientists.
"We're dealing with a gap in the science," said Michael Jerrett,
professor and chairman of the Department of Environmental Health
Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We just don't
have a very good scientific understanding of what that means for
long-term health effects." MORE
Friday, February 19, 2016
Oil driller cut 25,000 jobs, paid CEO $18 million
From: CNN
2015 was a tough year for oil driller Schlumberger. Unless you were the CEO.
CEO Paal Kibsgaard received total compensation worth $18.3 million in
2015, the company reported, down only slightly from $18.5 million the
year before.
The rest of Schlumberger didn't fare so well. The company cut 25,000 jobs during the year, or 20% of its workforce. Revenue was down 27%, and profit plunged 41%.
Exxon's Never-Ending Big Dig: Flooding the Earth With Fossil Fuels
From: Truth Out
Thursday, 18 February 2016 10:32
By Bill McKibben, TomDispatch | News Analysis
 |
| (Photo: Oil Pump via Shutterstock) |
Here's the story so far. We have the chief legal representatives of the eighth and 16th largest economies on Earth (California and New York) probing the biggest fossil fuel company on Earth (ExxonMobil), while both Democratic presidential candidates are demanding that the federal Department of Justice join the investigation of what may prove to be one of the biggest corporate scandals in American history. And that's just the beginning. As bad as Exxon has been in the past, what it's doing now - entirely legally - is helping push the planet over the edge and into the biggest crisis in the entire span of the human story.
Back in the fall, you might have heard something about how Exxon had covered up what it knew early on about climate change. Maybe you even thought to yourself: that doesn't surprise me. But it should have. Even as someone who has spent his life engaged in the bottomless pit of greed that is global warming, the news and its meaning came as a shock: we could have avoided, it turns out, the last quarter century of pointless climate debate.
As a start, investigations by the Pulitzer-Prize winning Inside Climate News, the Los Angeles Times, and Columbia Journalism School revealed in extraordinary detail that Exxon's top officials had known everything there was to know about climate change back in the 1980s. Even earlier, actually. Here's what senior company scientist James Black told Exxon's management committee in 1977: "In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels." To determine if this was so, the company outfitted an oil tanker with carbon dioxide sensors to measure concentrations of the gas over the ocean, and then funded elaborate computer models to help predict what temperatures would do in the future.
The results of all that work were unequivocal. By 1982, in an internal "corporate primer," Exxon's leaders were told that, despite lingering unknowns, dealing with climate change "would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion." Unless that happened, the primer said, citing independent experts, "there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered... Once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible." But that document, "given wide circulation" within Exxon, was also stamped "Not to be distributed externally."
So here's what happened. Exxon used its knowledge of climate change to plan its own future. The company, for instance, leased large tracts of the Arctic for oil exploration, territory where, as a company scientist pointed out in 1990, "potential global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs." Not only that but, "from the North Sea to the Canadian Arctic," Exxon and its affiliates set about "raising the decks of offshore platforms, protecting pipelines from increasing coastal erosion, and designing helipads, pipelines, and roads in a warming and buckling Arctic." In other words, the company started climate-proofing its facilities to head off a future its own scientists knew was inevitable. MORE
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Lawsuit Filed Over Oklahoma’s ‘Fracking’ Earthquakes as Its Third Largest Quake Is Felt in 7 Other States
From: EcoWatch
| February 17, 2016 11:15 am
The Sierra Club and the public interest law firm Public Justice have filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against three energy companies engaged in hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, in Oklahoma.
The suit against New Dominion, Chesapeake Operating and Devon Energy Production Company alleges that wastewater from fracking and oil production have contributed to the state’s alarming spike in earthquake activity.
The lawsuit demands the companies, as a first step, to “reduce,
immediately and substantially, the amounts of production waste they are
injecting into the ground.” MORE
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
3 Reasons ExxonMobil's Stock Could Fall Further
From: The Motley Fool
Any more weakness
from oil prices, a decline in industry-wide downstream margins, and a
shrinking cash cushion could all significantly impact share prices at
ExxonMobil.
Image source: ExxonMobil corporate website.
Shares of ExxonMobil are down 22% from their highs in 2014. While there are reasons to think ExxonMobil is one of the best in the business and a great investment in a down market, there are still reasons ExxonMobil's stock could fall even more than it already has. Here are three reasons shares could fall further and what it investors should do about it.
Continued low oil price environment
This one is a real no-brainer, but it's definitely worth keeping in mind at all times. As an integrated oil and gas company, ExxonMobil and its peers have assets throughout the entire value chain of oil and gas. In a commodity market, this means when one part of the business does well, it's typically at the expense of the other. MORE
Monday, February 15, 2016
Saturday, February 13, 2016
President Kennedy and His Brother Robert Kennedy Were Murdered By The Military-Security Complex
From: Paul Craig Roberts
Of course, the presstitute media will say that Paul Shrade, who was himself shot when Kennedy was assassinated, is a “conspiracy theorist.” Remember: a conspiracy theorist is anyone who on the basis of hard evidence challenges a government that blames its crime on an innocent third party.
by Paul Craig Roberts
Presstitute Media, such as the UK Telegraph, spend a lot of energy
debunking exposes of government conspiracies. For example, the
thousands of highrise architects, structural engineers, physicists,
nano-chemists, demoltion experts, first responders, military and
civilian pilots, and former government officials who have provided vast
evidence that the official story of 9/11 is a made-up fairy tale at odds
with all evidence and the laws of physics are dismissed by presstitutes
as “conspiracy theorists.”
Similarly, those, such as James W. Douglass, who have proven beyond
all doubt that President John F. Kennedy was not assassinated by Oswald
but by his own paranoid anti-communist military-security complex, are
dismissed as conspiracy theorists.
The 9/11 Commission Report and the Warren Commission Report were
cover-ups. VP Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives he sponsored needed a
“new Pearl Harbor” in order to begin their military assaults on the
Middle Eastern countries that had independent foreign policies instead
of being US/Israeli vassals. 9/11 was their orchestrated “new Pearl
Harbor,” and this fact had to be covered up when 9/11 families persisted
in their demands for an investigation and could not be bought off for
large sums of money.
Similarly, the Warren Commission had no choice but to cover up that a
popular American president, John F. Kennedy, had been murdered by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the Secret Service, because he was
believed by paranoid anti-communists to be “soft on communism” and
thereby a threat to the security of the United States. The cold war was
on, and the Warren Commission could not hold those responsible
accountable without destroying the public’s confidence in the American
military and security services.
Nevertheless everyone aware of the forged case against Oswald knew
what had happened. One of these people was Attorney General Robert
Kennedy, JFK’s brother.
Bobby Kennedy understood the situation. He knew that as a member of a
cover-up administration he could do nothing about it. However, he knew
that if he won the presidency, he could hold accountable those security
elements responsible. His brother had told him that after his
reelection he was going to “break the CIA into a thousand pieces.” When
the Vietnam war desroyed President Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Kennedy emerged
as the next president of the US.
Bobby Kennedy was assassinated the evening that he won the California
Democratic primary. Sirhan Sirhan was blamed. He was standing in front
of Kennedy. He had an eight shot low caliber pistol, which he fired.
He did hit Paul Shrade, who was standing next to Kennedy. But he did
not hit Kennedy. Kennedy, according to the medical evidence and eye
witnesses was killed from shots to his back and to the back of his head.
This was confirmed to me years ago by a distinguished journalist and
documentary film maker who was standing just behind Robert Kennedy when
he was shot. He told me that he felt the bullet that hit Kennedy go by
his ear and saw its impact. He wrote a full report for the FBI and
despite his credentials was never contacted by the investigation.
Now, last Wednesday, 48 years later, Paul Shrade has presented
ironclad evidence at the parole hearing of the now 71 year old Sirhan
Sirhan that Robert Kennedy was shot by someone else from the rear, not
from the front where Sirhan Sirhan was standing.
You can read Paul Shrade’s statement here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44184.htm
Of course, the presstitute media will say that Paul Shrade, who was himself shot when Kennedy was assassinated, is a “conspiracy theorist.” Remember: a conspiracy theorist is anyone who on the basis of hard evidence challenges a government that blames its crime on an innocent third party.
At the time of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the CIA was conducing
mind control experiments. Experts think that Sirhan Sirhan was one of
those under the CIA’s control. This would explaine why Sirhan Sirhan
has no memory of the event.
President John F. Kennedy had experienced in the Joint Chiefs of
Staff under Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer a high level of insubordination.
Lemnitzer showed in White House meetings contempt for the president.
When Lemnitzer brought Kennedy the Northwoods Project to shoot down
American citizens in the streets of America and to blow American
airliners out of the sky in order to place the blame on Castro so that
the US could invade and achieve “regime change,” a popular term of the
George W. Bush regime, in Cuba, President Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as
chairman and sent him to Europe as head of NATO.
Kennedy did not know about Operation Gladio, an assassination program
in Europe run by NATO and the CIA. Communists were blamed for Operation
Gladio’s bombings of civilians in train stations in order to erode
communist political influence, especially in Italy. Thus, Kennedy’s way
of getting rid of Lemnitzer put Lemnitzer in charge of this program and
gave Lemnitzer a way to get rid of John Kennedy.
Anyone who thinks that democratic governments would not kill their
own citizens is uninformed beyond belief. If, dear reader, you are one
of these gullible people, please go to the Internet and become familiar,
for example, with Operation Northwoods and Operation Gladio.
Friday, February 12, 2016
Extreme Inequality = Economic Collapse
From: EcoWatch
John Fullerton’s white paper, Regenerative Capitalism, lists eight principles critical to systemic economic health. The Capital Institute’s research group, Research Alliance for Regenerative Economics (RARE),
uses recent scientific advances—specifically, the physics of
flow [1]—to create a logical and measurable explanation of how these
principles work to make or break vitality in the human networks of which
economies are built. Here we explain why too much inequality is more
than a moral problem. In fact, it drives economic systems towards
collapse by sucking the life-blood out of real economies worldwide.
According to a recent study by Oxfam International, in 2010 the top 388 richest people owned as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population—a whopping 3.6 billion people. By 2014, this number was down to 85 people. Oxfam claims
that, if this trend continues, by the end of 2016 the top 1 percent
will own more wealth than everyone else in the world combined. At the
same time, according to Oxfam,
the extremely wealthy are also extremely efficient in dodging taxes,
now hiding an estimated $7.6 trillion in offshore tax-havens.
Why
should we care about such gross economic inequality? After all, isn’t it
natural? The science of flow says: yes, some degree of inequality is
natural, but extreme inequality violates two core principles of systemic
health: circulation and balance. MORE
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Another PEMEX platform fire results in injuries, fatalities
From: OffShore
02/08/2016
Offshore staff
CIUDAD DEL CARMEN, Mexico – A fire located in the compression area aboard the Abkatun Alfa platform killed three workers and injured more, PEMEX
announced Feb. 7 via Twitter. The national oil company said it gained
control of the fire, and that an evacuation was not necessary.
One of the employees that died in the fire was a worker from Cotemar,
a company that provides offshore services to PEMEX. The company said in
a statement that 19 of its employees suffered minor injuries. Another
six were taken to different private hospitals in Ciudad del Carmen and
Villahermosa, and were receiving care from Cotemar’s doctors. At the
time of this writing, another Cotemar employee remains missing.
“It is worth mentioning that this accident has no relation to the
work that our staff was doing, since the activities were completely
outside the place where the accident was presented,” said Cotemar in a
statement dated Feb. 7. MORE
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
On the News With Thom Hartmann: Court Rules That Corporations Should Pay to Clean Up Their Disasters, and More
From: Truth Out
Tuesday, 09 February 2016 00:00
By Thom Hartmann, The Thom Hartmann Program | Video Report
In today's On the News segment: The DC Circuit Court of
Appeals agreed that corporations, not taxpayers, should pay to clean up
their own disasters; Maine will get to vote on marijuana legalization
this November; Canada will protect 85 percent of British Columbia's rain
forest from development and destruction; and more.
TRANSCRIPT:
Thom Hartmann here - on the best of the rest of Science and Green news ...
You need to know this. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals says
that it's time to end the era of "privatize the gains, and socialize the
losses." Last week, the public interest law firm Earthjustice
broke the news that one of our nation's highest courts says it's time
for the EPA to make polluters pay to clean up their own messes. Working
on behalf of conservation groups, Earthjustice attorneys filed suit to
demand that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalize so-called
"financial assurance" rules that require companies stay financially
viable enough to pay for the potential cleanup of any toxic substances
that they produce. In other words, these rules prevent companies from
causing a toxic spill then declaring bankruptcy to avoid the cost of
clean up. And these rules have actually been in place since 1983, when
they were issued as part of the EPA's "Superfund" law. But that agency
pretty much ignored them until a 2009 court ruling ordered the EPA to
start enforcing these regulations. Since that 2009 case, the agency had
once again started to ignore these important rules, which left taxpayers
picking up the tab for toxic spills. So, Earthjustice and other groups
filed suit to force the agency to follow the rules that are already on
the books. And the DC Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that corporations -
not taxpayers - should pay to clean up their own disasters. Their
ruling stated, "It is a common practice for operators [of sites that
produce hazardous substances] to avoid paying environmental liabilities
by declaring bankruptcy or otherwise sheltering assets." And they agreed
that holding corporations accountable will also give them a financial
incentive to make their businesses as safe as possible to begin with.
Amanda Goodin, one of the attorneys for Earthjustice, said, "Today's
court ruling is clear - we will no longer see polluters cheating the
system, evading their financial obligations, and skipping town on their
toxic messes, leaving taxpayers stuck with hefty cleanup bills." Next
time a big company considers skimping on safety in the name of profit,
they will have to be willing to back up that decision with corporate
dollars. MORE
Oil Industry Caused 2005 Swarm of California Earthquakes: Newly Published Study
From: DeSmogBlog
By Sharon Kelly • Monday, February 8, 2016 - 03:58
Oil and gas wastewater disposal has been tied to a series of earthquakes
in California for the first time, in a peer-reviewed study published
last Thursday.
A string of quakes ending on Sept. 22, 2005 struck in Kern County near the southern end of California's Central Valley – and the new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, concluded that the odds that those quakes might have occurred by chance were just 3 percent.
Instead, the researchers honed in on a very specific set of culprits: three wastewater injection wells in the Tejon Oil Field. Between 2001 and 2010, the rate of wastewater injection at that oil field quintupled, and up to 95 percent of that wastewater was sent to just that trio of closely-spaced wells, the scientists noted. MORE
A string of quakes ending on Sept. 22, 2005 struck in Kern County near the southern end of California's Central Valley – and the new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, concluded that the odds that those quakes might have occurred by chance were just 3 percent.
Instead, the researchers honed in on a very specific set of culprits: three wastewater injection wells in the Tejon Oil Field. Between 2001 and 2010, the rate of wastewater injection at that oil field quintupled, and up to 95 percent of that wastewater was sent to just that trio of closely-spaced wells, the scientists noted. MORE
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Arkansas homeowner wins verdict for damages caused by vibrations from nearby oil drilling operations
From: Haygood, Orr & Pearson
Posted October
25, 2014
by John Chapman
by John Chapman
The federal Eighth Circuit Court of
Appeals has affirmed a jury verdict in favor of a landowner who
alleged her home was damages by vibrations from drilling operations.
The judgment in favor of the plaintiff was affirmed in Hiser v.
XTO Energy. Inc., No. 13–3443 (8th Cir. Oct. 3, 2014).
Ruby Hiser filed a lawsuit against XTO Energy Inc. in Arkansas.
Ms. Hiser had lived in her home for six years before XTO began
drilling operations nearby. XTO began drilling a gas well on property
adjacent to Ms. Hiser’s home in February 2009. According to Ms.
Hiser, it was around this time that she started feeling vibrations.
Ms. Hiser testified at trial that she feels the vibrations and hears
her house “crackle” when XTO’s drill is in use. She testified
that people who stayed the night in her home also felt the
vibrations. Several witnesses also testified at trial they had felt
the vibrations when visiting Ms. Hiser’s property.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
The only place left to invest if ‘Oilmageddon ‘ hits this market
From: Market Watch
By BarbaraKollmeyer
Critical information ahead of the U.S. market’s open
Getty Images
Investors
are about to embark on a great adventure — a week without Chinese
interference. Millions are hitting the road for the Lunar New Year
holidays, and local markets are shut. To keep cash flowing for the
holidays, the People’s Bank of China has been pouring money into the
financial system all week.
One thing that China break should
provide is plenty of time for Wall Street to go into hyper-navel-gazing
mode over the U.S. economy — and it’s been doing a lot of that,
recently. One giant update in the forms of jobs data comes later today,
to polish off the week. (Just in, see below)
Meanwhile, the
ripples we’ve been seeing across several asset classes — gold bugs are
smelling life and the dollar has tumbled, while the S&P 500 is set
to lose over 1% — has brought out some bears. Credit Suisse pushed out a
note this morning entitled “Dangerous markets.” MORE
Warren Buffett's $1 billion bet on oil
From: CNN
Oil prices have plunged this year, but Warren Buffett isn't scared. He's bet nearly a $1 billion on the sector since the start of the year.
That's how much Phillips 66 stock Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) has bought since Jan. 3, according to company filings, the most recent of which was made Wednesday.
Berkshire already owned 61.5 million shares of the oil refining
giant, and has recently spent $964 million to buy an additional 12
million shares of the company. Buffett's firm now owns 14% of Phillips
66 shares, making it Bershire's sixth largest holding.
As an oil refining company, Phillips 66 (PSX) is in the one aspect of the oil industry that can benefit from falling oil prices.MORE
Obama proposes $10/bbl crude oil tax to fund transportation plan
From: Oil & Gas Journal
WASHINGTON, DC, Feb. 4
02/04/2016
The Obama administration proposed a $10/bbl tax on crude
oil to help pay for its plan to create a 21st Century Clean
Transportation System. Officials from national oil and gas associations
immediately said it was a serious mistake.
“The president’s plan would increase American investments in clean
transportation infrastructure by roughly 50% while reforming the
investments we already make to help reduce carbon pollution, cut oil
consumption, and create new jobs,” the White House said in a Feb. 4 fact sheet.
“The new fee on oil will also encourage American innovation and
leadership in clean technologies to help reshape our transportation
landscape for the decades ahead,” it added. MORE
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