Murder at Standing Rock

Of course the cavalry is torturing indians to death.  That's what they've always done and always will do to people standing in the way of corporate profits.

PZ Myers:

It’s definitely winter up here in the upper Midwest. The temperature is right around freezing, there’s at least 15cm of snow on the ground, and the roads and sidewalks are slick with hard-packed ice. And they’re using water cannons on protesters at Standing Rock.

This is not just cruel — it’s dangerous. I’m sure residents of the Dakotas are just as conscious of the risks of getting wet outside in frigid weather as we are here in the slightly more urban state of Minnesota. You just don’t do that. You can kill people in this weather.

And of course they’re using rubber bullets and tear gas, and roughing up protesters and throwing them in dog kennels.

She told me that they were arrested at a prayer ceremony lead by camp elders, and that she had been slammed to the ground by uniformed officers with shields and helmets that kept her from distinguishing whether they were law enforcement or national guard.

“It was three against one, that’s their strategy,” she said, “there’s tear gas in the air everywhere. They didn’t fire it directly at me, but it’s everywhere.”

I was told that when they were arrested, they weren’t read their rights until after they spent a day in jail.

Her description of the arrest matched my student’s description. She told me they were bussed to a facility where they were kept in dog cages with urine stains on the floor, pictures of dogs hung on the walls. Women were separated from men with chain link fencing and a tarp.

They said their phones and money were confiscated, the money seized and turned into procurement cards and calling cards, allegedly without consent. The balance was not returned upon release, she said.

The state of the jail uniforms made the women feel vulnerable, she said, and the tarp separating the women from the view of the camp’s men exacerbated that feeling. She went on to tell me they were strip-searched.

“It was just turn your head and cough, just spread your cheeks and cough, but they didn’t tell us what they were going to, so when the woman approached me with rubber gloves on, I braced for a body cavity search. It’s worse not knowing, you know?”

America! This is what we’re like before the orange fascist takes power. What’s it going to be like next year?

You can still donate to the Standing Rock Sioux, and they’re going to need it. It takes courage and dedication to confront this kind of oppression.

 Update from Democracy for America:

 Last night, the brave leaders and protesters fighting for Native American rights against the Dakota Access Pipeline came under a brutal and violent attack by local police. We need your help right now to get President Obama to step in and stop these horrible attacks.

Police attacked the protest camp near Standing Rock with tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, and even water cannons. Using water cannons in below-freezing temperatures puts people at risk of hypothermia. Hundreds of protesters were hospitalized, with several in serious condition.

President Obama has less than 60 days left in office -- that means time is running out to get him to stop these police attacks, and stop the pipeline. People across the country are calling the White House today -- will you join them and call President Obama right now?

YES, I will call President Obama at (202) 456-1111 -- and tell him to step in to stop the attacks on protesters and stop the pipeline. (Click here to report the results of your call)

No, I can't call (or I got a busy signal) -- but I will contribute directly to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's Dakota Access Pipeline Donation Fund.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a $3 billion pipeline designed to carry fracked oil from North Dakota to Illinois -- meaning it would cross underneath the Missouri River, the longest river on the continent. A leak in the pipeline would have the potential to destroy the drinking water supply for millions of people who live downstream.

Time and time again, the U.S. government has disrespected and disregarded the treaties it made with native communities. We cannot let them get away with it again. And not only would the Dakota Access Pipeline violate sacred lands, it would open up the entire region to a rapid expansion of fracking activities, with potentially catastrophic results for the indigenous people who live there.

Bold, inspiring protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux and other indigenous communities have managed to successfully stall the pipeline for months. The Obama administration and the Army Corps of Engineers put it on pause for more review. But local police have decided they won't wait, and have unleashed a brutal assault on the protesters, native land and our environment.

Enough is enough. We need to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux and the #NoDAPL protesters until the threat of this pipeline has been completely eliminated. Will you call President Obama?

I Am Too Cynical to Celebrate, But You Should Not Be

I don't know how old D.R.Tucker is, but my guess is at least a generation younger than me.  He hasn't watched the fossil fuel industry win every single battle for the last 40 years.  He doesn't know that all Exxon-Mobil has to do when some little country - and compared to Exxon-Mobil, even the U.S. and China are little countries - demands it stop drilling/fracking/mining is say "Make me."

Because I don't think we can.  But I do sincerely hope D.R. Tucker is right.

The next time somebody tells you change cannot happen, that hope is a hoax, that good men and women cannot win the biggest fights of the day, remind them of December 12, 2015.

Representatives of 195 countries reached a landmark climate accord on Saturday that would, for the first time, commit nearly every country to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to help stave off the most drastic effects of climate change.

Delegates who have been negotiating intensely in this Paris suburb for two weeks gathered for the final plenary session where, suddenly, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France asked for opposition to the deal and, hearing none, gaveled the session closed.

With that the delegates achieved what had been unreachable for two decades: a consensus on the need to move away from carbon-based fuels and a plan for the 195 nations to do so.

Thought the final deal did not achieve all that environmentalists, scientists and some countries had hoped for, it set the table for further efforts to slow down the slide toward an unlivable planet.

In the end, it was an extraordinary effort at international diplomacy. Supporters of a deal have argued that no less than the future of the planet was at stake, and in the days leading up to the final session worked relentlessly to push skeptical nations to join their ranks.

I am fighting back tears as I write this. Do you know what this moment means? It means the most rapacious and destructive industry on the face of this warming Earth is on the downfall. It means that we will finally race towards the day where fossil fuels are kept in the ground where they belong, and children born today can have clean air, clean water and a stable future.

Do you know what this moment means? It means men and women of goodwill can succeed in the face of impossible odds.

Do you know what this moment means? It means that the deniers, the disinformers and the demagogues have been humiliated and humbled once and for all.

This is history’s golden moment. This is a moment where hope won in a blowout against cynicism. This is a day to be proud, damn proud, of being alive, of being compassionate, of being human.

Caring won. Hope won. Science won. The better angels of our nature won.

No Water for Anybody But Fossil Fuel Frackers

Kentucky's precipitation is up eight inches over the average for this point in the year, which means there will be plenty of nice, clean drinking water for the motherfrackers to poison and pour back into the water system for the rest of us to choke to death on.

Because nothing - not even a 10,000-year drought - is enough to stop water-destroying fracking.

Wonkette on Jerry Brown's counter-productive attempt to save California from dying of thirst:

The water shortage can’t be real anyway, since there seems to be plenty of water for agriculture, which uses 80 percent of California’s water but only accounts for 2 percent of the state’s GDP.

But even the thieving bastards of Big Ag are pikers compared to California's frackers.

KeninNY at Down with Tyranny:

What About Fracking, Governor Brown?

Fracking, like almond-growing, is also notoriously thirsty. Just one example:

“At the height of California oil production in 1985, oil companies in Kern County pumped 1.1 billion barrels of water underground to extract 256 million barrels of oil—a ratio of roughly four and a half barrels of water for every barrel of oil,” according to Miller. “In 2008, Kern producers injected nearly 1.3 billion barrels of water to extract 162 million barrels of oil—a ratio of nearly eight barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced.”

Again, by that measure, the ratio is eight to one — eight barrels of water produces one barrel of oil. Whom does fracking benefit? The owners of Big Oil:

Clean Water Action has the scoop on which companies have the biggest stakes in the Monterey [California] Shale [oil fields]:

Occidental Corporation (Oxy) is the largest holder of land/mineral rights in California, holding rights to drill over 1.6 million acres of land in the Monterey Shale. In a presentation to shareholders in 2010, Oxy officials stated that “in 10 years, California shale could become Oxy’s largest business unit.”

Venoco Inc. has one of the largest stakes in the Monterey Shale with rights to drill in over 300,000 acres. There are more than 10 billion barrels of oil available for extraction at its current sites. In its 2011 report to shareholders, the company stated that it continues to expand its onshore Monterey acreage lease holdings across three basins: Santa Maria, Salinas Valley, and San Joaquin (which includes the Sevier discovery). ...

And so on. Why does fracking, like big agriculture, get a pass? Maybe this is the reason:

The oil and gas industry gives millions of dollars to California’s elected officials to ensure their interests are served in Sacramento. Governor Brown is one of these recipients, having accepted at least $2,014,570.22 [$2 million] from fossil fuel interests since his race for Attorney General in 2006.

As the public awakens to the dangers of fracking in California, the fossil fuel industry is spending as much money as it takes to protect their dirty interests. Billions of barrels of untapped oil are sitting in the Monterey Shale and Big Oil is pushing to make sure it all stays on the table.

State campaign finance laws prohibit any company or individual from contributing more than $27,200 per candidate, per election — but many of these companies have found loopholes that let them flood the system with their petro-dollars, making sure our elected leaders, and Governor Brown in particular, protect their interests.

The fossil fuel corporations and associated industries at the top of the dirty money pile include: Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, Southern California Edison, Valero Energy, Tesoro Corp, Plains Exploration and Production, Venoco, Conoco Phillips, and Aera Energy (owned jointly by Shell and ExxonMobil). 

So the opening question comes back at the bottom: So what about fracking, Governor Brown? And what about agriculture as well? It's not just us asking, we in the nation waiting our turn. It's your own residents, on whom you're putting the squeeze so ... it has to be said this way ... wealth can be served. The tighter the squeeze, the more urgently the question will be asked. The Social Contract, the glue that holds a society cooperatively together, can be bent, but only so far. At some point it breaks.

Saudi Arabia Should Be Glass By Now

The evidence is overwhelming, and now it's court testimony: the autocratic assholes ruling Saudi Arabia planned, paid for, directed and took secret delight in the 9/11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans in the Twin Towers.

And we're kissing their asses.

Think Progress:

A former Al Qaeda operative who helped plot the 9/11 terrorist attacks has claimed that he has firsthand knowledge that members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family financially supported the terrorist network in the late 1990s. Zacarias Moussaoui, who is serving a life sentence at a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, also said that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

“I was supposed to go to Washington and go with him…find a location where it may be suitable to launch a Stinger attack and then, after, be able to escape,” the French-born Moussaoui said of a plan he made with a Saudi Arabian Embassy official while in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Moussaoui said he was arrested before he could carry out the plan.

The former terrorist’s testimony has been submitted as part of a case brought by the families of 9/11 victims against Saudi Arabia for its alleged involvement in the terrorist attack that killed more than 3,000 people. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on that day were Saudi.

Enjoy cheap gas while you can.  It's going to soar immediately up to $10 a gallon as soon as the Saudis finish wrecking the economies of every oil-producing nation that competes with them.

They redefine "vicious motherfuckers."  And they are a clear and present danger to the survival of human civilization.

An Obvious Choice

Protecting fossil fuels doesn't save a single job, other than the those held by the politicians who do the industry's bidding. It doesn't educate a single child, fill a single pothole or treat a single cancer patient. It does, however, ensure that human civilization will not outlive those already alive today.

Brad Friedman nails it:

The real concern from deniers then (at least those like [House Speaker John] Boehner and the fossil fuel companies, who know there’s no real question about the science — as opposed to their minions that they’ve played for stooges), is only about the economic interests of the fossil fuel industry. It’s not about “the economy,” as you’ll also begin hearing more and more — as Boehner, by way of example, tried to pretend that any proposal to do anything about it “involves hurting our economy and killing American jobs” — because there are plenty of long and short-term economic gains to be had from moving to a world of clean, renewable energy.

The pretend “debate,” in truth, is really only about the handful of folks who profit off of the oil, coal and gas extraction industries, and the personal pain they would like to avoid in cutting into a single cent of the most profitable industry the world has ever known.

It’s not about a “hoax” or “bad science.” It’s not about “lining Al Gore’s pocket.” It’s about a few very very rich men who don’t want to lose any of their future riches.

That’s it. There’s no more to it. It’s action to save humanity versus a loss of profits for a handful of very wealthy people. There’s no real debate about science or the economy or anything else. It’s about the folks who run Big Carbon hoping to remain as absolutely profitable as long as humanly possible, no matter the ultimate cost to our nation, the world, and actual humanity.

Avoiding Climate Catastrophe Dirt Cheap If We Do It Right Now

But it'll cost the Koch Brothers and Exxon-Mobil a whole extra dime a day, so forget it.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress:

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just issued its third of four planned reports. This one is on “mitigation” — “human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases.”

The first two reports laid out humanity’s choice as depicted in the figure above, which appeared in both reports. The first report warned that continued inaction would lead to 9°F warming (or higher) for most of the U.S. and Northern Hemisphere landmass, resulting in faster sea level rise, more extreme weather, and collapse of the permafrost sink, which would further accelerate warming. The second report warned that this in turn would lead to a “breakdown of food systems,” more violent conflicts, and ultimately threaten to make some currently habited and arable land virtually unlivable for parts of the year.

Now you might think it would be a no-brainer that humanity would be willing to pay a very high cost to avoid such catastrophes and achieve the low emission “2°C” (3.6°F) pathway in the left figure above (RCP2.6 — which is a total greenhouse gas level in 2100 equivalent to roughly 450 parts per million of CO2). But the third report finds that the “cost” of doing so is to reduce the median annual growth of consumption over this century by a mere 0.06%.

You read that right, the annual growth loss to preserve a livable climate is 0.06% — and that’s “relative to annualized consumption growth in the baseline that is between 1.6% and 3% per year.” So we’re talking annual growth of, say 2.24% rather than 2.30% to save billions and billions of people from needless suffering for decades if not centuries. As always, every word of the report was signed off on by every major government in the world.

Never in the history of humanity has there been a better reason for everyone aged 25 and under to rise up and kill everyone aged 31 and older.  Not that I would ever endorse such a thing, or ever did, even when I was young and knew better than to trust anyone over 30.

Only Senate Bill 14 Can Stop the Poisoning of the Bluegrass by NGL Pipelines

There is a lot of destructive and underhanded manuevering going on in the Kentucky General Assembly over various bills to try to stop the Bluegrass Pipeline.

It's critical that we don't let pressure from oil and gas lobbyists kill the best bill - SB 14 - by promoting weak bills that don't protect landowners from eminent domain or Central Kentuckians from toxic waste poisoning our land and our health.

Senate Bill 14, by Senator Jimmy Higdon, simply and powerfully denies the power of eminent domain to companies - like the Bluegrass Pipeline companies - who are not utilities.

The proposed Bluegrass Pipeline - contrary to lies the company's reps have repeatedly told to landowners throughout the region - does not and never will carry natural gas or oil for home heating. The proposed pipeline would carry "natural gas liquids" which are the toxic byproducts of fracking.

These are the same toxic byproducts that are blamed for permanently poisoning drinking water in fracking fields across the country.

And the companies proposing the Bluegrass Pipeline are the same companies paying millions of dollars in fines for the leaks, explosions and pollution from its NGL, gas and oil pipelines across the country.

But these are also companies who are part of Big Fossil Fuel: the richest and most powerful corporate group on the planet. And Big Fossil Fuel's lobbyists are pushing hard against Senate Bill 14 because they know it will be the death knell for the Bluegrass Pipeline.

Big Fossil Fuel is trying to get legislators to substitute House Bill 60 and Senate Bill 21, which would require companies to pay a pittance in severance tax on the toxic waste running through the pipeline. This is bullshit that will not produce revenue but will ensure that Kentucky's Bluegrass Region becomes the next Love Canal.

There are dozens of landowners at strategic points along the pipeline route who are categorically refusing to sell access to their land for the pipeline. Their refusal is blocking the pipeline.

The company is using terroristic tactics on landowners, threatening that if they don't sign over their land immediately, the company will use eminent domain to take the land anyway without payment.

So the company is lying twice in their response to a lawsuit stopping them from using eminent domain:

They are falsely claiming that they don't have to use eminent domain because landowners are selling access voluntarily, and they are falsely claiming that they haven't tried to use eminent domain yet.

In fact, they are using the threat of eminent domain to terrorize landowners who don't want the pipeline but can't afford to lose their land to eminent domain.

Call your legislators and tell them to reject House Bill 60 and Senate Bill 21, and support Senate Bill 14. Tell your Senators to sign on to Senate Bill 14 as co-sponsors.

Leave a message for your legislator by calling 1-800-372-7181. Click here to send an email to your legislator. Click here to find out who your legislators are.

Find out more about the Bluegrass Pipeline at stopbluegrasspipeline.us.

"We are actually poised to control our own energy future."

If by that you mean the Keystone Pipeline and widespread fracking, Mr. President, it's an energy future that will kill us, and sooner rather than later.



Full transcript here.

Yeah, I'd say the odds of him approving what Charles Pierce calls the Death Funnel of Canadian tar sands oil just jumped to near-certain.

And the timing of this love note to fossil fuels - while the bodies of thousands of victims of carbon-driving climate change are rotting in the Phillipine sun - is despicable.

Fines for Crimes Like This Should Put Exxon Out of Business Permanently

Because nothing else will make them stop. I doubt even imprisoning their top executives would change anything; they'd just promote a new set and carry on.

And with every pocket-change fine for destroying an entire community for generations to come, companies like the Bluegrass Pipeline's Williams Co. get more confident that they can fuck over landowners with impunity, because the state and federal government will do nothing to stop them.


Kiley Kroh at Think Progress:

Federal pipeline safety regulators announced on Thursday that they are proposing a $2.6 million fine against ExxonMobil after a ruptured pipeline spilled thousands of barrels of oil in Mayflower, Arkansas this past March.

Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said in a letter to Exxon that the company had violated pipeline safety regulations and failed to notify the agency that the pipe, built before 1970, was susceptible to rupture.

“The really disconcerting thing about the violations listed is how they fly in the face of what the industry keeps saying about their efforts to make pipelines safe through their integrity management plans,” said Carl Weimer, Executive Director of the watchdog group Pipeline Safety Trust, via email. “This type of ERW pipe has been known for years to have serious problems and this Notice of Violation makes it clear that Exxon did not recognize the risk or prioritize their testing program correctly to protect people or the environment.”

The fine is a drop in the bucket for Exxon, which earned $7.8 billion in the third quarter of 2013 alone, and whose profits through September top $24 billion.

The spill has taken a tremendous toll on the people of Mayflower and cleanup is far from complete. The ruptured pipeline gushed 210,000 gallons of heavy Canadian crude into a residential street and forced the evacuation of 22 homes. In July, Exxon told homeowners it was ending temporary housing payments before residents felt it was safe to move back.

“It’s horrible,” resident Amber Bartlett told Inside Climate News. “They want us to go back now. We’re not comfortable with that, because no one really knows if long-term health effects are linked to exposure to this.”

SNIP

As long as the bulk of the responsibility for testing and maintaining the rapidly expanding network of oil and gas pipelines across the U.S. remains with the companies themselves, observers fear there may be more Mayflowers in store. “It has become clear from a series of significant failures over the past few years that trusting the industry with this level of responsibility has not worked, and it is time for the regulators to step in with stronger oversight,” said Weimer.

SNIP

Weimer said fining a company like Exxon, which routinely accrues tens of billions in profits, just $2.6 million “is like fining a motorist that drives in a manner that recklessly endangers the public $2.50. No one thinks that level of fine for reckless driving would change anyone’s behavior, so why would anyone think $2.6 million would change Exxon’s behavior?”

What the Bluegrass Pipeline Has In Store For Kentucky

Fossil fuel is dead.  But before we finally dispose of its rotting corpse, it's going to spread death and destruction further than any of us dare imagine.

Charles Pierce:

Steve Jensen's land is dead now. His farm in North Dakota is a dead zone because an oil pipeline run by a company called Tesoro ruptured somehow and blessed Jensen's land with 26,000 barrels of crude that has bubbled to the surface, and now, from the air, Jensen's farm looks like the Talladega Speedway. Because it is a pipeline, and pipelines burst, this one burst. And because it is an oil company, and oil companies lie, especially about their pipelines, which burst, Tesoro immediately broke the glass on the bullshit-alibi alarm that hangs on the wall of its company cafeteria.

That company won't pay a fucking dime in compensation. Neither will Williams Co. when - not it - their toxic fracking waste pipeline through the heart of the Bluegrass bursts and destroys Central Kentucky's economy.

Because it is run by greedy fools, North Dakota is a state that has sold its soul to the oil companies, which lie, especially about their pipelines, which burst, and it also appears that North Dakota, and the greedy fools who run it, may have set a land-speed rcord for ass-covering.

SNIP

Frankly, I have no reason to believe "officials" when they say the leak has been stopped. I don't have any reason to believe that this gunk hasn't gotten into the groundwater until somebody from outside North Dakota, which pretty plainly is terrified of pissing off the extraction industries that now run the state, tells me that's the case. ("A thick band of clay"? OK, trust but verify.) Frankly, given what we know about pipelines, and the people who build them, and the people who operate them, and how they are the property of an entire industry that poisons the land and then lies about, the fact that we even deliberating building our old pal, the Keystone XL pipeline, is completely mad.

Fossil Fuels Are Dead and Solar Killed Them

Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Gas are propping up rotting corpses to keep the poisonous profits and budget-busting government subsidies flowing. It's over and they know it.

Their longstanding claim that reducing fossil fuel use means the end of civilization, forcing us to huddle in caves lit by candles, stands exposed as a Big Lie: even here in coal-worshipping Kentucky, there's enough renewable energy available that your local power company will sell it to you instead of coal-generated energy if you request it.

Mark Hertsgaard at The Nation:

”We’re actually winning the fight against climate change, but most people don’t know it yet.”
 
That may seem a strange statement to make in a week when a landmark scientific report declares that humanity must quit fossil fuels within thirty years or risk catastrophic climate change. But Danny Kennedy, a former top Greenpeace activist who helps run the global solar company Sungevity, says that solar and wind power are growing so fast worldwide that they will displace fossil fuels much sooner than usually thought. He has lots of supporting data, much of which comes from the crazy tree-huggers at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Deutsche Bank and the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

SNIP
 
No political naïf, Kennedy knows that the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel titans must still be resisted. But he believes climate activists need to shift emphasis. “We’ve convinced the public that climate change is a problem and that the powers that be don’t have an answer,” Kennedy says. “The final step is to show we do have an answer. It’s divest, but also reinvest. Let’s talk about how we drive wind and solar forward in the US so they’re in not just half a million households but 40 million, which is entirely possible.”

Read the whole thing.

Send This Murdering Corporate Person to Prison

People who destroy evidence of a crime go to prison.  In fact, people who destroy evidence of a crime during the commission of which other people DIE, get convicted of felony homicide.  According to the Supreme Court, corporations have all the rights of people.  Why isn't Halliburton going to prison? 

TPM:

Halliburton Energy Services has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence in connection with the 2010 Gulf oil spill, the Department of Justice said Thursday.
Federal officials said in a news release that a criminal information charging Hallburton with one count of destruction of evidence was filed in federal court in Louisiana.

Halliburton has agreed to pay the maximum fine, be on probation for three years and continue to cooperate with the government’s criminal investigation, said the news release, which did not spell out the fine amount.

The Houston-based company has also made a $55 million voluntary contribution to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. It was not a condition of the court agreement, the news release says.

Halliburton was BP’s cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The blowout triggered an explosion that killed 11 workers and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Tell ya what: I'll settle for Halliburton surrendering all its assets to the U.S. government, going completely out of business, and preventing all its executives from ever doing business with the U.S. government. No, make that ever doing business with any public or private entity in or of the United States.

Compared to prison, that's extremely lenient.

Our Ally, Saudi Arabia

We could enormously simplify and improve our foreign and domestic policy if we followed one simple rule: Whatever Saudi Arabia does or wants, do the opposite.

This, for example, is exactly the kind of "god's law" the xian dominionists will enforce in the U.S. when they get into power. 

A Saudi court sentenced two Asian housemaids to 10 years in jail and ordered their lashed 1,000 times each after they were found guilty of indulging in sorcery at their employers’ houses in the Gulf Kingdom, a newspaper reported on Monday.

Their Saudi employers reported the two maids to the Gulf country’s feared religious police, saying they had discovered that their families had been harmed because of sorcery practiced by the maids against them.

Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice who searched the two houses in Riyadh found talismans and other magic items in the bedrooms of the two maids, Sabq Arabic language daily said.

“The court found them guilty and sentenced them to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes each,” the paper said without identifying the maids or specifying the harm they caused.

Saudi Arabia, which strictly enforces Islamic law, has beheaded many persons convicted of practicing magic over the past years.

More than two million domestic servants work in Saudi Arabia, mostly from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Africa.

 One thousand lashes is a death penalty about five times over.

But it's not just freakazoid misogyny.

From The Nation:

The true victors of the coup are Mideast zealots who shun the ballot box as a rigged Western secular game, along with their sponsors in the bizarre theocracy of Saudi Arabia, the first country to welcome the downfall of Egypt’s only serious attempt at representative governance. For all of the fanatical blather concerning Islam that has emanated from the oil floated theocracy of Saudi Arabia, the spawning ground for Osama bin Laden and fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers, it is the peaceful electoral campaigns of the populist-based Muslim Brotherhood that the Saudi royalty finds most threatening.

Now it is the turn of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which denied aid to Morsi’s government, to reassert their influence over Egypt by rallying around the country’s military. As The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, “Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. are signaling they are prepared to start showering Egypt’s new government with significant funding as it transitions away from Mr. Morsi and his Islamist movement.”

So much for the promise of the Arab Spring; it will now be marketed as a franchise of the Saudi government. In the end, the argument was not secular versus religious, but rather whether power would reside in the ballot box or the barrel of the gun. The United States, and too many of Egypt’s self-proclaimed secular democrats, ended up on the wrong side of that choice.

Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists and Osama bin Laden.

Saudi Arabia, leader of the anti-U.S. oil boycotts of the 1970s that permanently broke the U.S. economy.

Saudi Arabia, fomenter of anti-U.S. resentment and rage around the world.

Government Regulations Saved Lives in One Crash; Lack of Them Killed Dozens in the Other.

On Tuesday night, Chris Hayes asked why we don't apply the same pressure on government to make fertilizer plants and freight trains carrying explosive petroleum products more safe.

Silly Chris. Rich people fly on planes. Rich people don't work in fertilizer plants or live in the path of runaway freight trains.

Igor Volsky at Think Progress:

As the nation breathes a sigh of relief for the many passengers of Asiana Airlines passengers on Flight 214 who escaped uninjured after their Boeing 777 crashed in San Francisco, aircraft safety experts are attributing the relatively small number of fatalities to government regulations adopted in the aftermath of past accidents.

In the past decade, the Federal Aviation Administration — the office responsible for overseeing all aspects of civil aviation — has instituted a series of aircraft safety standards that undoubtedly saved lives on Saturday, Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, told ThinkProgress on Tuesday morning, pointing to new mandates for everything from seating to enhanced training of flight attendants. American regulations lead the world and are typically adopted by airlines in Europe and Japan, with only minor adjustments.

For instance, in 1988 airplanes began installing so-called 16 G passenger seats that stay in place “when subjected to stresses up to 16 times the force of gravity” after regulators discovered “that passengers might survive a crash were they not crushed to death when the seats tore loose from the floor.” Despite initial opposition from the airline industry, final regulations were implemented in June of 2009 and Goelz believes that the stronger chairs prevented passengers from being thrown throughout the cabin as the rear of the Flight 2014 slammed down on the ground, allowing individuals to evacuate in time.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that if the old 9 G standard would have been part of that airplane those seats would have behaved as well as they did,” Todd Curtis, an air safety analyst added.

A series of evolutionary changes to fire code requirements also protected passengers on the flight. FAA implemented reduced flammability and nontoxic gas emissions of interior components after an Air Canada accident in 1983 caused a fire in which the overwhelming majority of passengers died from toxic gas and smoke. It also instituted an enhanced burn-through rate standard to guarantee that the skin of the airplane and insulation resist fire for up to four minutes, allowing passengers more time to escape. Regulations require that airlines and flight attendants be able to evacuate a full passenger load with only half of the exits operating in under 90 seconds.

But Goelz now fears that sequestration and the GOP’s zeal for applying greater cost benefit analysis to all safety regulations could prevent regulators from instituting such safety standards in the future. The regulations outlined above would “have a tough time meeting the kind of cost benefit analysis that these guys want,” Goelz said, noting House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster’s (R-PA) push for more burdensome economic analysis. Curtis disagreed with this characterization, arguing that the industry itself had incentives to unilaterally implement additional safety requirements.

Lawmakers gave the FAA relief from the first round of sequestration, “but the idea that they’re going to have another round of it is pretty ominous,” Goelz added, “safety investigators are going to ber laid off or pushed back.”

As for the Canadian catastrophe, Zoe Carpenter writes:

A debate about the relative merits of transporting crude oil by pipeline or by rail reignited over the weekend, after a runaway freight train carrying seventy-two cars of oil exploded and leveled Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

The disaster exposed a significant lack of regulation governing the shipment of crude oil via rail, and raised questions about the continued use of old tanker cars known to be unsafe.

Mr. No-Food-for-Poors Massie OKs Billions for Big Oil

From VoteNote:

Offshore Drilling Bill – Passage - Vote Passed (235-186, 13 Not Voting)

Before leaving for the July 4th recess, the House passed a bill that would direct the Interior secretary to implement a five-year oil and gas leasing program off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, including areas off of California, South Carolina and Virginia. The vote largely broke along party lines, with 16 Democrats voting in favor of the bill and 6 Republicans voting no. Five of the six GOP no votes came from the New Jersey delegation. The bill would make at least half of the unleased costal areas with the most potential for energy production available for exploration and would create a nationwide revenue sharing system for all coastal states. Before passing the bill, the chamber narrowly defeated (209-210) a Democratic amendment by Alan Grayson of Florida that would prevent the bill from affecting states’ authority to restrict leasing and natural-resource development beneath states’ navigable waters. Reps. Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore. And Lois Capps, D-Calif. also offered amendments to protect sensitive coastline in Alaska and California. Both were defeated. The House adopted (217-202) a Paul Broun, R-Ga., amendment that would place a 60-day limit on judicial review of claims arising from projects in the leasing program. It would place restrictions on appeals and institute a "loser pays" requirement on individuals or entities filing suit, except in specified circumstances.

Rep. Thomas Massie voted YES

First, Big Oil and Big Gas get access to billions of dollars' worth of fossil fuels for pennies in lease charge. Second, states and municipalities are barred from protecting their own residents by restricting offshore drilling in their own waters.

Now that's what I call Big Government jack-booted thuggery.

What Will the Climate Speech Mean After Obama Approves Keystone?

Because that's what "significantly increase pollution" means: "Regardless of the facts about the effect of tar sands extraction on global warming, this narrow definition means I can justify approving a pipeline that will mean game over for human civilization."

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

First, Obama is absolutely correct to simply sidestep Congress here. In the long run, arguably the biggest impact of Congressional dysfunction could be that presidents regardless of party begin to ignore it and we move closer to unilateral rule. Of course, filibuster reform would help with this. Anyway, Obama still has significant power within the Executive Branch to shape policy and it is here he will leave his climate legacy.

Second, increasing carbon emissions standards on power plants is absolutely the best way to go about this, or at least it’s a very good first step. If it is a war on coal, then it is a war on coal. I know the UMWA and coal companies hate him for it, and what we really need is a clear program of green jobs in coal country to replace the jobs lost to environmental regulations, but sometimes you just have to make these hard decisions. 

Of course, the vast majority of coal jobs have already disappeared due to automation and industry disinvestment in Appalachia for new coal seams in Wyoming.

Third, Obama needs to take two steps he doesn’t want to take to show he is serious. First, he needs to not allow the Keystone XL Pipeline. If he lets that be built, it demonstrates that he is unwilling to do what it will actually take to slow climate change. Second, he needs to fight against coal exports to China. The Powder River Basin in Wyoming is now basically an enormous coal mine, mostly to serve an export market. West Coast cities are fighting against having their ports used for coal exports. Obama needs to step in here. I am skeptical on both counts.

Fourth, the plan really needs a more vigorous green jobs program and clean energy subsidies to replace dirty energy subsidies, but without funding from Congress, it’s hard to do too much here.

Fifth, none of this will probably make a molehill’s worth of difference in the ultimate battle against climate change. But a start is a start and you have to do something. Overall, it’s a positive speech, for whatever that’s worth.

As a sidenote, it’s also worth reading this essay by environmental justice scholar Robert Bullard on the need for historically black colleges to take climate change seriously. It’s an environmental justice issue.

Unfortunately, even those affected don’t always see it that way because unlike a toxic waste dump in your backyard, you don’t notice it every day.

….Or as Pierce says, Obama’s bailing the ocean out with a thimble. 

Mitch McConnell Takes $1.3 Million in Bribes to Let Corporations Poison Our Drinking Water

I've been saying it for more than 20 years, ever since I read Water, the Nature, Uses and Future of Our Most Precious and Abused Resource, by Fred Powledge: the wars of the next century are going to be over not oil, but water.

The news has finally caught up with Powledge.

Down with Tyranny:

If you were listening to NPR (last week), you may have heard their report about water rights in the U.S. "Oil was probably the fluid of last century where there was a lot of turmoil, and I think water is the fluid of this century," explained Michael Walsh, a major general with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

    So often, we take water for granted. We turn on the faucet and there it is. We assume it's our right in America to have water. And yet, water is a resource. It's not always where we need it, or there when we need it.

    Rivers don't follow political boundaries-- they flow through states and over international borders. And there are endless demands for water: for agriculture, drinking, plumbing, manufacturing, to name just a few. And then there's the ecosystem that depends on water getting downstream.

    So what are our legal rights when it comes to water? And who decides?

The NPR report talks about the role of Congress and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, municipalities, ranchers, fishermen and American Indian tribes. But they never got around to what trumps all of them: Corporate America, where the bottom line is... the bottom line. Greed and avarice trumps all, especially when you're talking about "the fluid of last century." Tom Kenworthy made the case over the weekend that fracking is already straining U.S. water supplies.

    As the level of hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells in the United States has intensified in recent years, much of the mounting public concern has centered on fears that underground water supplies could be contaminated with the toxic chemicals used in the well-stimulation technique that cracks rock formations and releases trapped oil and gas. But in some parts of the country, worries are also growing about fracking’s effect on water supply, as the water-intensive process stirs competition for the resources already stretched thin by drought or other factors.

SNIP 

   ...As the Ceres report concludes:

        Shale energy development highlights the fact that our water resources were already vulnerable before additional demands were introduced. Regulators, water managers and ultimately all significant economic players who rely on abundant supplies of water must double-down their efforts to better manage this limited and most precious resource.

Worse news: because of the role of money in our politcal system-- i.e., systemic bribery-- those charged with protecting our clean drinking watre supplies (something that basic) have given a green light to Big Oil and Gas to ignore previous clean water regulations and frack away to their hearts' content. I thought this might be a good time to mention the dozen most corrupt Members of Congress in terms of Big Oil shillery. These are the Oil and Gas whores still in Congress who have made sure our watre would be poisoned-- with the amounts they have taken from Big Oil in blatant, legalistic bribes:

    • John McCain (R-AZ)- $3,043,404
    • John Cornyn (R-TX)- $1,990,350
    • Joe Barton (R-TX)- $1,734,255
    • Steve Pearce (R-NM)- $1,479,701
    • Jim Inhofe (R-OK)- $1,457,696
    • Miss McConnell (R-KY)- $1,348,311
    • Don Young (R-AK)- $1,193,613
    • David Vitter (R-LA)- $1,144,385
    • Mary Landrieu (D-LA)- $1,086,084
    • Mike Conaway (R-TX)- $942,118
    • Pete Sessions (R-TX)- $868,346
    • Lord Charles Boustany (R-LA)- $803,655  

You can live without fossil fuels. You can live with cars, without electricity, without even an IPad. You can even live without indoor plumbing.

You can't live without drinkable water.

And that's exactly where Mitch McConnell's good corporate buddies want you - unable to live without drinkable water, the last gallons of which they will own. 

The Easy Revenue Missing from Obama's Budget

When even Exxon-Mobil handmaiden the IMF says fossil fuel subsidies have to go, you know it's almost too late for ending them to make a difference.


DS Wright at Firedoglake:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has a new report out claiming that fossil fuel is “mispriced” and that eliminating subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and adding carbon taxes could cut greenhouse gases by 13 percent.

“Energy subsidies are pervasive and impose substantial fiscal and economic costs in most regions.

On a pre- tax basis, subsidies for petroleum products, electricity, natural gas, and coal reached $480 billion in 2011(0.7 percent of global GDP or 2 percent of total government revenues). The cost of subsidies is especially acute in oil exporters, which account for about two thirds of the total. On a post-tax basis which also factors in the negative externalities from energy consumption — subsidies are much higher at $1.9 trillion (2½ percent of global GDP or 8 percent of total government revenues). The advanced economies account for about 40 percent of the global post-tax total, while oil exporters account for about one third. Removing these subsidies could lead to a 13 percent decline in CO2 emissions and generate positive spillover effects by reducing global energy demand.”

There's not a fossil-fuel corporation on the planet that's not raking in billions a year, if not billions a week. They don't need us to hand them another $480 billion we can't spare.

Three Catastrophes; One Solution

And for once, the solution is cheaper and easier than the alternative.

David Atkins reviews this and concludes:

The great tragedy here is that we have three gigantic problems right now, each of them with the same simple solution. We have a climate problem, first and foremost. We have a global economic and unemployment problem, second. And we have a global terrorism (or imperialism, depending on your point of view) problem focused largely on oil producing states, third.

All of these problems have the same solution: a global effort to create jobs in renewable energy, conservation and climate adaptation technologies while transitioning away from fossil fuels.

The importance of this effort to the climate problem is obvious. The human race is quite literally going to go extinct if we don't solve this problem by mitigating the climate crisis and bringing emissions under control. The longer it takes us to solve this problem, the more in danger we are of civilization collapse unless we figure out significant adaptation solutions. And it may well be that, dangerous as it certainly is, we may be forced to attempt geo-engineering as well.

If you've given up trying to make the climate deniers see reason, “This Cheat Sheet Will Make You Win Every Climate Argument”.

100 Years of Oil Company Welfare

More than a billion dollars a year just handed to companies that are already the richest motherfuckers on the planet, making billions of dollars in profits not every year, not every month, but every week. The federal tax subsidy is chump change to them.

But a pittance that hardly registers on ExxonMobil's balance sheet would make a world of difference to millions of struggling American citizens. Cancelling it would be the most painless way possible to fix the fucking sequester and start making the budget reflect reality.

Everybody who thinks a single fucking dime of this is getting cut in the sequester, stand on your head.

Rebecca Leber at Think Progress:

Automatic across-the-board budget cuts (took) hold on Friday, affecting job growth, state education programs, environmental agencies, and women’s health programs. The sequester actually shares an important anniversary — with Big Oil tax breaks. It is not as well-known a date, but one type of deduction, the percentage depletion allowance, celebrated its 100-year anniversary (Friday).

Depletion allowances let oil companies treat the oil in the ground as capital equipment, and thus allows them to write off a certain percentage for each barrel that comes out. (See more here.)

The year 1913 marked the first time a Big Oil subsidy was written into the tax code. The Revenue Act of 1913 allowed oil companies to write off 5 percent of the costs from oil and gas wells beginning March 1 of that year. (For reference, see pages 172-174 of the Act.) A century later, oil companies can now deduct three times this rate, at 15 percent, although the very largest companies no longer qualify. The percentage depletion subsidy also increases when prices are high, at the same time that oil companies enjoy greater profit. It can even eliminate all federal taxes for independent producers.

A Center for American Progress report estimated that closing this tax break would save $11.2 billion over 10 years.

President Obama has called on Congress to eliminate the percentage depletion allowance, along with a series of other tax breaks totaling $4 billion annually. Even Ronald Reagan once asked for the same in a 1985 speech on tax reform:

“Under our new tax proposal the oil and gas industry will be asked to pick up a larger share of the national tax burden. The old oil depletion allowance will be dropped from the tax code except for wells producing less than 10 barrels a day. By eliminating this special preference, we’ll go a long way toward ensuring that those that earn their wealth in the oil industry will be subject to the same taxes as the rest of us.”

However, congressional Republicans taking the lion’s share of oil and gas industry contributions have refused to close century-old loopholes in order to raise revenue. A number of specialized Big Oil tax breaks allow the top oil companies to cut their tax bill dramatically, sometimes half (or less) of the top corporate rate. It is not as if Big Oil is struggling: Last year, the five largest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil — earned $118 billion profit at a time when consumers paid record-high gas prices. This haul follows after a year the companies earned a record $137 billion profit.