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Mercredi 1 septembre 2010 3 01 /09 /2010 13:13

Privatisation de l’occupation : Les mercenaires et les ONG + dossier mercenaires

Counterpunch - Le Grand Soir

Original : http://www.counterpunch.org/engler0...

Par Yves ENGLER

Les fanatiques du libre marché soutiennent que le secteur privé peut presque tout faire mieux que les gouvernements. Les plus fanatiques ne tolèrent pas le "presque" et affirment que même la police et l’armée devraient être privatisées.

Le développement des compagnies privées de sécurité (PSC) est généralement considéré comme le résultat du succès des arguments des fanatiques du marché.

Ce qui est moins commenté c’est la croissance parallèle des organisations non-gouvernementales (ONG) qui oeuvrent pour le développement de la santé, de l’éducation et des services sociaux, spécialement dans le tiers-monde, services qui étaient auparavant offerts pas les institutions publiques.

De manière intéressante, au moins une personnalité interne a fait le lien entre les deux. James Fennel, conseiller de Armorgroup et ancien employé d’ONG, explique que ces organisations ont des trajectoires historiques similaires : "Le rôle croissant des entreprises commerciales de sécurité peut être considéré comme allant de pair avec le développement de la politique de la contribution technique des ONG dans les 20 dernières années pour apporter une aide officielle aux pays du sud et les assister dans leur développement."

En plus de racines idéologiques similaires, les PSC et les ONG ont souvent des liens plus directs. Récemment CARE, Save the Children, CARITAS et World Vision ont tous loué les services de firmes privées de sécurité (PSC) pour protéger leurs activités à l’étranger.

Inquiètes pour leur image, les ONG occidentales préfèrent dissimuler leurs liens avec les PSC mais un certain nombre d’études techniques les mettent en lumière. Une étude a montré que "toutes les organisations humanitaires importantes ( c’est à dire les agences humanitaires de l’ONU et les ONG les plus importantes) avaient employé des gardes armés au moins une fois et environ 22% des plus importantes organisations humanitaires ont reconnu avec utilisé les services d’entreprises de sécurité durant l’année précédente [2007]."

USAID (United States Agency of International Development) a demandé aux ONG qui étaient en mission en Irak de louer les services de gardes de sécurité privés. Corez Levine, conseiller en droits de l’homme, explique : "Mon organisation, un petite ONG qui travaille à restaurer la société civile n’a pas fait exception. Environ 40% de notre budget de 60 millions de dollars a été employé à protéger les 15 internationaux qui composent notre équipe. Notre entreprise de sécurité était sud-africaine."

CARE Etats-Unis a aussi employé d’anciens militaires sud-africains pour protéger ses opérations en Irak. Peter Singer, auteur du livre "Les guerriers privés : le développement de l’industrie militaire privée" décrit la militarisation du travail des ONG en Irak. "La mesure dans laquelle les choses ont changé est illustrée par une ONG humanitaire qui a loué les services d’une PMF (firme militaire privée) pour protéger ses installations et son personnel en signant un contrat qui comportait l’emploi de tireurs d’élite."

L’occupation de l’Irak et de l’Afghanistan ont augmenté les liens entre les ONG et les PSC de manière significative. En 2006 Singer a écrit : "Les représentants de l’industrie estiment qu’environ 25% des entreprises "haut de gamme" qui fournissent des services armés et plus de 50% des firmes qui fournissent du soutien logistique ont travaillé pour des clients qui étaient dans l’humanitaire." ArmorGroup, MPRI, KROLL, Olive, Southern Cross, Triple Canopy et Blackwater ont tous apparemment travaillé pour des organisations humanitaires.

ArmorGroup est une des entreprises favorites des ONG. En 2002 ses client comprenaient UNICEF, CARE, CARITAS, et la Croix Rouge. ArmorGroup fait de la publicité auprès des ONG. Ils ont embauché un ancien responsable de CARE-Angleterre, James Fennel, et se présentent comme le leader de la corporation en ce qui concerne les standards éthiques. C’est peut-être vrai, mais la firme a pourtant été éclaboussé par quelques scandales. En août dernier, un de ses employés a tiré et tué deux collègues et blessé un interprète irakien.

Avant d’être embauché par ArmorGroup, Danny Fitzsimons a eu quelques accrochages avec la loi en Grande Bretagne et a été licencié par une autre PSC pour instabilité de caractère. Corporate Mercenaries fait état d’un autre scandale : "Defense System Colombia (DSC), un organe subsidiaire de DSL (maintenant ArmorGroup), a été soupçonné de fournir des informations secrètes détaillées à la célèbre XVIième Brigade de l’armée colombienne pour identifier des groupes opposés à [la compagnie pétrolière] BP présents dans la région de Casanare. Ces fuites semblent avoir eu une incidence sur des exécutions et des disparitions."

Southern Cross est une autre PSC qui travaille pour des agences humanitaires et qui se dépeint comme une entreprise aux aspirations morales. Mais elle a aussi un passé trouble. Southern Cross a été fondée dans la Sierra Leone en 1999 par Cobus Classsens un officier d’Executive Outcomes qui fut créé par les anciennes Forces Spéciales de l’Afrique du Sud de l’apartheid.

Avant d’être démantelé Executive Outcomes incarnait tout ce qu’il y a de pire dans les entreprises de sécurité privées. Aujourd’hui, c’est Xième Service, auparavant Blackwater, qui détient ce sinistre record tout en ayant des liens propres (ce n’est pas un jeu de mot ! NdT) avec des ONG. Un rapport de 2006 de Humanitarian Policy Group affirme que Blackwater est employé par des groupes humanitaires et en février dernier, Bashir Bilour, le ministre de la province de la frontière nord-ouest du Pakistan (NWFP) a reconnu que "Blackwater se trouve au Pakistan et opère dans la NWFP ainsi que dans d’autres secteurs". Selon Bilour "Blackwater avait été engagé pour garder le personnel du consulat et les employés d’ONG étrangères."

Un groupe qui prétend avoir des objectifs "humanitaires" ou de "développement" ne devrait évidemment jamais embaucher Blackwater mais comment définir une limite à ne pas franchir ?

Embaucher même la plus morale des PSC pose déjà tout une série de problèmes éthiques.

En louant les services des PSC, les organisations humanitaires concourent-elles au boom que connaissent les compagnies privées de sécurité ? Les PSC aiment le plus souvent faire état de leurs liens avec les ONG car elles croient que cela aide à "légitimer leur activité commerciale".

Koenraad Van Brabant pose une question plus importante. En embauchant des PSC les ONG "contribuent-elles à augmenter la sécurité publique dans son ensemble" ou "cautionnent-elles une privatisation de la sécurité qui permet à ceux qui en ont les moyens de vivre en sécurité pendant que les autres vivent dans la peur" ? Le personnel des ONG a sûrement les moyens de se payer des services de sécurité mais ce n’est pas un luxe que la plupart des gens peuvent se permettre.

Dépendantes des contrats des gouvernement occidentaux, les ONG suivent souvent les militaires dans les zones de guerre. Ce qui fait qu’elles sont souvent perçues comme les agents hostiles d’un pouvoir occupant. Et en conséquence elles ont besoin de services de sécurité.

Est-il si surprenant que les ONG qui fournissent les services que les institutions publiques offraient auparavant se tournent vers les firmes privées de sécurité qui font exactement la même chose ?

Yves Engler est le co-auteur de "Canada et Haïti : la guerre contre la majorité pauvre". Son livre le plus récent est "Canada et Israël : construire l’apartheid". Pour plus d’information visitez son site Web : yvesengler.com

Traduction : D. Muselet pour le Grand Soir

Photo: http://crooksandliars.com

http://www.legrandsoir.info

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-privatisation-de-l-occupation-les-mercenaires-et-les-ong-56320433.html

Privatisation de la défense : jusqu’où aller trop loin ? par Philippe Leymarie

Blackwater in Iraq : Killing for Profit

Sous OBAMA: moins de soldats en Iraq, mais plus de mercenaires !

L'Iraq, laboratoire de techniques de répression high-tech

UN: Private Military Recruiting Booming + videos

Entretien avec Gilles MUNIER (Amitiés Franco-Irakiennes)

IRAQ's Laboratory of Repression by Robert PARRY

Haïti : les mercenaires flairent un marché juteux par Jeremy Scahill

The Scandal of Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill

Legitimizing the Permanent Occupation of Iraq

ACLU, Lawmakers Press Pentagon On Killings of Iraqis

What's In A Name? Blackwater Changes Name To Escape Brutal Reputation

Publié dans : USA
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Dimanche 29 août 2010 7 29 /08 /2010 08:35

Five years since Hurricane Katrina

WSWS By Naomi Spencer

Part 1: A manmade disaster

28 August 2010

The following is the first in a series of articles on the fifth anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast of the United States. The world looked on in horror as New Orleans, Louisiana, was struck by storm surges that breached nearly every levee in the low-lying city’s dilapidated system. Tens of thousands of mostly poor, black residents who had been unable to evacuate were trapped by floodwaters without food, drinking water, or rescue.

More than 80 percent of New Orleans, a city of 500,000 people, was submerged. The storm destroyed communities across more than 95,000 square miles of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. At least 1,836 residents of the region were killed by the hurricane and its immediate aftermath, and many more were never to be found.

Photo: people.com

As staggering as these figures are, they cannot in themselves reveal the full scale of the catastrophe and its aftermath. Across the region, over one million people were displaced, many never to return, including hundreds of thousands who lost all of their possessions.

For weeks after Katrina’s landfall, a social disaster continued to unfold. Stranded victims continued to die of drowning, dehydration, and exhaustion. Tens of thousands of survivors were forced into wretched conditions—hot, overcrowded makeshift emergency centers—deprived of the most fundamental provisions. Without food, water, medical care, diapers, or toilets, more victims succumbed to the catastrophe.

Negligent and unprepared government authorities met the disaster with a military lockdown, curfews, and rampant police violence. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) turned relief trucks away, cut emergency lines, and survivors were prevented from leaving the city. Victims were vilified and blamed for the social anarchy. Police and armed mercenaries were given the nod to gun down unarmed “looters” or residents desperately seeking higher ground in the affluent neighborhoods. As the situation grew more desperate, the Bush administration ordered in the military.

Photo: wikimedia.commons

Katrina marked a milestone in political life in the United States. Before the eyes of billions around the world, the true face of American capitalism stood exposed. In the midst of “the richest country in the world,” a major American city, already deeply distressed, with its critical infrastructure in ruins, was being allowed to die. The experience of Katrina was burned into social consciousness. Debacles which reveal the rot of US politics and the nature of class society—the BP oil disaster, the collapse of Detroit—are invariably referred to as “Katrinas.”

ci.eagan.mn.us

Every aspect of the catastrophe expressed the class chasm long reinforced in the policies of the ruling class: masses of New Orleans residents, many without transportation to evacuate, living out their lives in poverty and want, their suffering and pleas unacknowledged, were treated as expendable. Behind lies of politicians that the disaster was unpredictable and unavoidable stood the decades’ worth of warnings by scientists and engineers, and long-term neglect of levees and other infrastructure for the working class areas.

The complete absence of a coordinated plan for rescue and recovery was the product of a ruling class determined to impose the costs on the generosity of the American people. The official response focused above all on the protection of profit and property; the list goes on. Not least, an indifferent ruling class oversaw the abandonment of a major center of jazz, blues, and American cultural life in the working class areas of the city.

The lives of ordinary Americans were subordinated in every aspect to the pursuit of profit by a handful of wealthy elite. Indeed, even the disaster itself was seized on as an occasion to carry out privatizations, gentrification, and other policies that have further widened the social inequality in the region. Among the first to benefit from federal aid were billion-dollar casino operations, luxury hotel chains, yacht clubs, and the oil industry.

Photo: http://communitiesrising.files.wordpress.com

For the region’s working class and small businesses, however, billions of dollars in promised aid never arrived. Even after one of the worst disasters in US history, the cost of rebuilding of infrastructure to prevent it from happening again was considered prohibitive.

Under Bush and now Obama, meanwhile, billions of dollars have been burned up in the illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan each month. For fiscal year 2010 alone, the Obama administration has authorized Pentagon and military spending of more than $1 trillion. The federal government’s bailout of Wall Street and the banks may cost $23.7 trillion.

Five years on, the region remains wracked by a widening social divide. New Orleans, which after the hurricane saw its residents decimated and dispersed across the country to emergency shelters, is still 20 percent smaller than its pre-Katrina population.

The mostly black working poor bore the brunt of this displacement; many whose homes were destroyed were never given promised funds to rebuild their lives. Some remain in Houston, Washington, DC, and other cities to which Gulf Coast residents were evacuated or found their way. Suburban parishes are now home to the majority of the metro area’s poor. Home and flood insurance rates soared by hundreds of dollars, and at the same time rent rates have spiked.

Many want to return to former neighborhoods but cannot for lack of work. Families are split apart, with one spouse returning in hopes of reclaiming their former lives. Other families continue living in ramshackle trailers purchased from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) on blighted properties. Some homeowners in New Orleans parishes most devastated by flooding, unable to secure funding for repairs, simply live in their ruined homes. At least 12,000 residents within the city are homeless.

Photo: people.com

For those residents remaining, grants and low interest loans are scant and buried in bureaucratic red tape. Basic public agencies and works projects are similarly met with the claim that there is “no money.” The government of New Orleans, itself under the shadow of a $68 million budget deficit and facing the loss of federal stimulus funds, has only $1.2 billion to spend on hundreds of urgently needed repairs.

Residents in the eastern portion of the city, including the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish, still have no hospital and very little in the way of other essential services. At the same time, health care needs have grown, including among children, who continue to suffer psychological trauma from Katrina.

Photo: about.com

In the coming days, the World Socialist Web Site will publish further articles examining these and other aspects of social conditions in New Orleans in greater detail.

Photo: http://www.hurricanekatrina.com

“Hurricane Katrina: Social Consequences & Political Lessons,” a pamphlet from Mehring Books that brings together articles and statements posted on the WSWS in the immediate aftermath of the Katrina disaster, is also available for purchase online.

http://www.wsws.org

The photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally recently visited two of the families she photographed for a 2006 New York Times Magazine photo essay, “Children of the Storm,” about the effect of Hurricane Katrina on children along the Gulf Coast. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/08/29/us/storm-children.html?hp

Katrina Four Years Later - Pain Index - 2009

Hurricane Katrina - Hurricane Song

The Katrina Myth: An Unnatural Disaster (video, 10')

Katrina survivors struggle years after hurricane (video)

New Orleans to Demolish Thousands of ‘Poor’ Homes

Hurricane Katrina from inside the Beau Rivage (video)

Augmentation dramatique des catastrophes naturelles dans le monde

Les phénomènes extrêmes ont touché 58 millions de personnes en 2009

Le nombre de catastrophes naturelles a augmenté de 60% en dix ans

How A Hero in New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina Was Arrested, Labeled A Terrorist And Imprisoned

Photos: aquafornia.com

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-Five years since Hurricane Katrina - Part 1: A manmade disaster-NaN.html

Publié dans : USA
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Jeudi 5 août 2010 4 05 /08 /2010 22:39

Yes we Can: Collapse in Living Standards in America: More Poverty By Any Measure

Internationalnews

Global Research, July 14, 2010

15 million unemployed, homelessness has increased by 50 percent in some cities

homeless

by Christine Vestal

More than 15 million Americans are unemployed, homelessness has increased by 50 percent in some cities, and 38 million people are receiving food stamps, more than at any time in the program’s almost 50-year history.

Evidence of rising economic hardship is ample. There’s one commonly used standard for measuring it: the U.S. Census Bureau’s poverty rate. It guides much of federal and state spending aimed at helping those unable to make a decent living.

According to Richard Bavier, a former analyst for the federal Office of Management and Budget, already available data about employment rates, wages, and food stamp enrollment suggest that an additional 5.7 million people were officially poor in 2009. That would bring the total number of people with incomes below the federal poverty threshold to more than 45 million. The poverty rate, Bavier expects, will hit 15 percent – up from 13.2 percent in 2008, when the Great Recession first started to take its toll.

The current formula for setting the federal poverty line – unchanged since 1963 – takes the cost of food for an individual or family and multiplies the number by three, under the assumption that people spend one-third of their incomes putting meals on the table. While the formula may have been a good way to estimate a subsistence cost of living in the early 1960s, experts say food now represents only one-eighth of a typical household budget, with expenses such as housing and childcare putting increasing pressure on struggling families.

In addition, the official measure fails to account for regional differences in the cost of housing, it doesn’t include medical expenses or transportation, and at $22,000 for a family of four, the poverty line is considered by many to be simply too low. Nearly two decades ago, Congress asked the National Academies of Science (NAS) to revisit the official poverty measure and come up with recommendations for a new measure that would satisfy critics on both ends of the spectrum.

This past March, the Obama administration said it would use the NAS 1995 guidelines to update the federal government’s poverty calculation and promised to unveil the first new “supplemental poverty measure” in September of 2011. Under the NAS recommendations, Commerce Department expenditure data for food, clothing, shelter and other household expenses would be used to set a poverty threshold for a reference family of four – two adults and two children. Then a family or individual’s resources would be compared to that line by including income and in-kind benefits, with taxes and other non-discretionary expenses, such as medical expenses and child care, excluded.

Because many expect the new calculation will result in a higher poverty count, the March announcement met with fiery criticism from some conservatives who charged the federal government could ill afford to increase its safety-net spending. The administration’s supplemental poverty measure remains controversial, and some leaders on both ends of the political spectrum are urging Congress and the administration not to adopt the new formula for purposes of allocating federal funding or determining individual eligibility anytime soon.

Title: Collapse in Living Standards in America: More Poverty By Any Measure

15 million unemployed, homelessness has increased by 50 percent in some cities

Source: Global Research July 14, 2010,

Author: Christine Vestal, cvestal@stateline.org

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/

Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips, Sonoma State University

États-Unis: Six millions de personnes n’ont que les coupons alimentaires pour seul revenu

Growing Poverty and Despair in America By Stephen Lendman

Americans must prepare for deepening unemployment, inflation and possible breadlines (11' 55)

Actual U.S. Unemployment: 15.8%

États-Unis : La vie dangereuse et misérable des enfants ouvriers agricoles

How Wall Street Destroyed Health Care By Paul CRAIG ROBERTS

Publié dans : USA
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Lundi 2 août 2010 1 02 /08 /2010 02:10

Obama’s Health Care Reform : A lie exposed

Internationalnews

WSWS 20 July 2010

obama_health_care

By Jerry White

Four months after the passage of Obama’s health care legislation—hailed by most of the media and the entire liberal establishment as the most progressive social reform since the 1960s—the reactionary implications of the measure are emerging ever more clearly.

The centerpiece of the plan, the White House claimed, was the extension of coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and the containment of costs that were making medical care unaffordable for average citizens. Cost-cutting and the implementation of “efficiencies” would not affect the quality of care, the president claimed. Moreover, those already insured would be able to keep their doctors and medical plans.

As the World Socialist Web Site explained, these claims were false. The purpose of the legislation was to slash health care costs for US corporations and the government by reducing coverage and rationing care for millions of Americans.

The ruling class saw Obama’s “reform” as an opportunity for corporations to dump their employer-paid insurance plans, or, at the very least, restrict workers’ ability to choose treatments, doctors and hospitals.

The result, the WSWS warned, would be the establishment of a class-based system where workers would be given inferior care while the rich continued to enjoy the best medical treatment money could buy.

Recent news reports have confirmed this warning.

A July 18 New York Times piece, entitled “Insurers Push Plans That Limit Choice of Doctor,” reports: “As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.”

Insurance giants Aetna, Cigna, the UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint have already offered plans with “limited networks” to smaller employers in New York, San Diego and Chicago, the article notes, adding that insurers and their consultants expect that “businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.”

“The tradeoff,” the Times writes, “is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.”

In New York, for example, Aetna’s “narrow network” plan provides access to only half the doctors and two-thirds of the hospitals offered by its traditional coverage, while in San Diego, 80,000 school employees, covered by UnitedHealth, have been put in a multi-tiered health plan where their out-of-pocket expenses depend on the quality and price of the physicians they choose.

By such means, the employers stand to save 15 percent.

“Affordability is the most pressing agenda item,” Dr. Sam Ho, the chief medical officer for UnitedHealth’s medical plans, told the newspaper. That Obama’s health care “reform” was from the start about cutting costs, rather than improving coverage, is a fact of which the Times and the rest of the liberal establishment were well aware and which they assiduously concealed from the public. As the article points out, insurance executives at Cigna were sounding out CEOs about super-cheap plans even as the bill was being prepared.

“What this does is eliminate the Gucci doctors,” Peter Skoda, the controller of Haro Bicycle Corporation in Vista, California, told the newspaper. “Facing a possible 35 percent increase in its rates,” the Times notes approvingly, “Haro switched to an Aetna plan that prevents employees from seeing doctors at two medical groups affiliated with the Scripps Health system in San Diego. If employees go to one of the excluded doctors, they are responsible for paying the whole bill.”

The Times notes that the last time corporations and insurers tried to restrict access to specialists and hospitals—with the establishment of Health Management Organizations or HMOs in the 1990s—it provoked an enormous public backlash. That is why Obama, with the help of the New York Times and other media, sought to conceal the real content of his health care “reform” from the population.

Under the terms of the plan, corporations are not obliged to provide insurance at all, let alone maintain present levels of coverage. On the contrary, companies that maintain insurance plans the government deems too costly will face a punitive tax. Moreover, employers are liable to pay only a small fine—well below the cost of continuing to pay premiums—if they drop workers from their insurance coverage.

In Massachusetts—where the state government enacted a health care overhaul in 2006—hundreds of employers are opting to dump coverage and force workers to sign up for the state subsidized health care program. According to a recent Boston Globe article, under conditions of rising costs and the continued economic downturn, companies say it has become far cheaper to pay the state penalty for not covering their workers—roughly $295 annually per employee—than to pay thousands in premiums.

Similar financial incentives will kick in nationally, once the Obama plan goes into full effect.

Under the legislation, workers who are stripped of their employer-paid benefits—along with those presently uninsured—will be forced to buy coverage on so-called insurance exchanges run by the states. If they fail to do so, they will be fined.

The insurance giants, which stand to make a windfall from the influx of approximately 24 million new customers, are betting that their cut-rate plans will be popular among workers who cannot afford quality coverage, the Times reported. “We think it’s going to grow to be quite a hit over the next few years,” Ken Goulet, an executive vice president at WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest private health insurers, told the newspaper.

The New York Times led the campaign for the passage of Obama’s health plan. On March 24, in a Times article entitled “In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality,” David Leonhardt wrote that the legislation was “the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.” It was, he continued, part of a “deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.”

This was a bald-faced lie, and the Times’ well-paid writers and editors knew it. In fact, Obama’s plan to gut health care was part of the unfinished business of the corporate-government offensive against the working class launched in the 1980s. This was also signaled by the Democratic president’s attack on health benefits for auto workers during last year’s forced bankruptcy and restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler.

The record of the WSWS on Obama’s health care “reform” sets us apart from all those pseudo-left organizations and middle-class liberal publications like the Nation, which promoted the anti-working class legislation.

Photo: duffyleadership.com

http://www.wsws.org

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-obama-s-health-care-reform-a-lie-exposed-54894154.html

President Barack Obama's Health Care Reform Proposal (.pdf)

President Barack Obama's Campaign Positions on Health Care (.pdf)

En français, sur le même sujet: La réforme du système de santé d’Obama: un “vote historique” pour une régression sociale programmée

Publié dans : USA
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Mercredi 30 juin 2010 3 30 /06 /2010 09:35

Marée noire catastrophique de BP: l'opinion d'Alex Jones/BP Oil spill disaster: Alex Jones''s false flag theory (video VOSTF)

Tribune

26/06/10

Related:

Marée noire de PB : Goldman Sachs, UBS et Wachovia ont massivement vendu leurs actions BP au premier trimestre 2010

Goldman Sachs sold $250 million of BP stock before Oil Spill

Obama’s Oval Office speech: A cowardly cover-up of BP’s crimes + video

Obama administration blocked efforts to stop BP oil drilling before explosion

Marée noire: BP et Obama (dont la campagne a été en partie financée par BP) s’enlisent dans la crise

Marée noire du Golfe: la négligence criminelle de BP est prouvée

Analyse complète en trois parties (VOSTF): http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xds5g1_alex-jones-maree-noire-de-bp-false_news#from=embed

Photo: http://www.ubbo-enninga.com

You're playing too much golf during oil spill, Barack Obama is told

Obama Tells Politico the Oil Spill is Like 9-11… Then Goes Golfing for 4 Hours

Avis de non-responsabilité : Les opinions exprimées dans cet article n'engagent que l'auteur et ne reflètent pas nécessairement celles d'IN.

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-maree-noire-catastrophique-de-bp-l-opinion-d-alex-jones-bp-oil-spill-disaster-the-false-flag-theory-d-alex-jones-video-vostf-53242275.html

Publié dans : USA
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Dimanche 27 juin 2010 7 27 /06 /2010 14:33

Disaster capitalists: Halliburton to make money off oil spill

Internationalnews

The Raw Story

June 18th 2010

Does a company that both builds oil rigs and cleans up oil spills have any motivation to prevent oil rig disasters?

That's the question some people in business and politics are asking themselves after Halliburton's purchase of an oil clean-up company 10 days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and launched the worst oil spill in US history.

Some observers see a conspiracy in the actions of the company once headed by Dick Cheney. Halliburton, which built the cement casing for the Deepwater Horizon's drill, announced its purchase of Houston-based oilfield services company Boots and Coots for $240 million on April 9, just 11 days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

According to a report at the Christian Science Monitor Friday, Boots and Coots is now under contract with BP to help with the oil spill. The company "focuses on oil spill prevention and blowout response," CSM reports. Halliburton's purchase is not yet a done deal -- it's still awaiting regulatory approval, though few observers think the purchase won't pass muster.

"[Mergers and acquisitions] in the industrial and oil services sectors is totally normal," writes David Anderson at The Inspired Economist, "but the timing in this case, is not. Boots & Coots sure seems like the perfect company to own if it would soon become necessary to get more involved with some oil disaster.

"Does this strike readers as a coincidence? If so, it’s a pretty lucky one for Halliburton."

But could Halliburton have known that an oil disaster was on the horizon, and planned in advance to profit from it? News reports indicate they could have.

The New York Times reported in May that BP was concerned about the rig's well casing -- which Halliburton worked on -- as early as June of 2009. The Times also reported that a Halliburton employee warned BP three weeks before the explosion that BP's use of cement for the well casing was "against [Halliburton's] best practices."

But even if the company's purchase of Boots and Coots was just a "lucky coincidence," there is still plenty about it to alarm observers. According to CSM, analysts are worried that a company like Halliburton will grow "complacent" in preventing disasters, because there is money to be made from cleaning up the mess -- and then rebuilding the oil rig.

“Working on both sides of the fence” is common in the oil industry, University of Louisiana professor Robert Gramling told CSM, but “it makes for a very complex decision-making environment that can become problematic."

At the very least, Halliburton's purchase should give the company a revenue boost. While Halliburton has been reporting plummeting revenue in recent quarters, Boots and Coots has been a business success story, with its revenue jumping from $11 million in 2000 to $209 million in 2008, before dropping slightly in 2009.

http://rawstory.com/

Photo: http://anglopressy.files.wordpress.com

Url of this article: http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-disaster-capitalists-halliburton-to-make-money-off-oil-spill-53202386.html

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Mercredi 23 juin 2010 3 23 /06 /2010 20:43

Obama Secretly Deploys US Special Forces to 75 Countries Across World

special forces

American troops now operating in 75 countries. President Obama has secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US special forces carrying out search-and-destroy missions against al-Qaeda around the world. The dramatic expansion in the use of special forces, which in their global span go far beyond the covert missions authorized by George W. Bush, reflects how aggressively Obama is pursuing al-Qaeda behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy.

When Obama took office US special forces were operating in fewer than 60 countries. In the past 18 months he has ordered a big expansion in Yemen and the Horn of Africa — known areas of strong al-Qaeda activity — and elsewhere in the Middle East, central Asia and Africa.

Obama has also approved pre-emptive special force strikes to disrupt terror plots, and has given the units powers and authority beyond that of former President Bush. The aggressive secret war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups has coincided with a surge in the number of US drone attacks in the lawless border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Obama has asked for a 5.7 per cent increase in the Special Operations budget for the 2011 fiscal year — a total of $6.3 billion — on top of an additional $3.5 billion he requested this year. Of about 13,000 US special forces deployed overseas, about 9,000 are evenly divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their use, and the increase in drone attacks, is a strategy that has been strongly advocated by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, but criticized by the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hundreds of civilians have died as a result of there special operations.

The order also allowed for US special forces to enter Iran to gather intelligence for a possible future military strike if tensions over its alleged nuclear weapons program escalate dramatically.

Title: Obama Secretly Deploys US Special Forces to 75 Countries Across World

Source: The Times (London) June 5, 2010

Authors: Tim Reid and Michael Evans, (Washington)

Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips, Sonoma State University

Obama’s Oval Office speech: A cowardly cover-up of BP’s crimes + video

Breaking News: BP Gulf oil spill map: Oil spill rate increases to 2.7 million gallons a day (The Examiner) June 16

Why the BP Deepwater Horizon failed and why it is so hard to stop the oil leak

Internationalnews

WSWS

NB: On the high-end estimate, the BP spill is producing every four days the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez.

By Barry Grey
16 June 2010

President Obama’s Oval Office speech Tuesday night on the Gulf oil disaster was a cowardly exercise in evasion and cover-up that could have been written by the publicity department of BP.

The 18-minute speech, coming on the 57^th day of the worst environmental catastrophe in US history, provided no concrete assessment of the causes of the oil spill or the dimensions of the crisis—in terms of damage either to the ecosystem or the economy.

The speech represented a complete capitulation to BP and corporate power. Anyone who expected that Obama would use the occasion to provide the American people with an honest accounting of the disaster and the culpability of BP had to be sorely disappointed.

Given only hours before a scheduled White House meeting with top BP executives, the speech made absolutely clear that the Obama administration takes its marching orders from the corporate-financial oligarchy. In his response to the Gulf disaster, Obama has adopted the same approach as he did to the criminal actions of Wall Street that threw the US and the world into the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. No one is to be held accountable and nothing is to be done that challenges the basic interests of the financial aristocracy.

In his speech, Obama made no clear condemnation of BP’s actions, either before or after the April 20 blowout of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that took the lives of 11 workers and sent millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

He made no mention of the latest shocking revelations of BP’s systematic violations of safety procedures in the run-up to the explosion that sank the rig—violations that were part of the company’s policy of cutting corners in order to save time and money and boost profits.

He did not even note the new estimates released that day by government scientists placing the oil flow rate at 35,000 to 60,000 gallons a day—the latest evidence of BP’s consistent policy of lying about the crisis.

Nor was there any mention of a criminal investigation into BP—something that was floated two weeks ago by the administration and has since been dropped.

Obama devoted exactly four short sentences and less than a minute to the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, omitting anything that could be damaging to BP. For example, he failed to note that the company’s blowout preventer, supposedly the failsafe barrier against an oil gusher, failed to operate.

“Because there has never been a leak this size at this depth,” he continued, “stopping it has tested the limits of human technology.”

This is a miserable and dishonest attempt to place the disaster outside of any direct responsibility on the part of BP. The issue is not the supposed limits of human technology, but the fact that BP had no plan in place to deal with a blowout.

Obama proceeded to tout his desultory and incompetent response to the spill, stating, “As a result of these efforts, we’ve directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology. And in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well. This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that’s expected to stop the leak completely.”

Where did the figure of 90 percent containment come from? From BP!

Obama presented the claims of the company, including full stoppage of the leak by late summer, as though they were to be trusted. This is after BP has given incorrect and false information from day one of the disaster—information which Obama and his subordinates have uncritically accepted and passed on to the public.

Obama was silent on BP’s record of deceit—beginning with its claim after April 20 that there was no oil leak, followed by its fraudulent estimates of 1,000 barrels a day and then 5,000 barrels. Nor did he mention the company’s defiance of the Environmental Protection Agency’s call for it to stop pumping the toxic oil dispersant Corexit into the Gulf. Or its policy of blocking the media from gaining access to polluted beaches and marshlands.

As his speech made clear, the administration will continue to disseminate BP’s lies.

“But make no mistake,” Obama said, “We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got and for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.”

These are generalities that one could drive a truck through. This is a disaster whose total costs in economic and environmental destruction rise to the hundreds of billions and even trillions of dollars. But Obama was careful to give no figures for the cost of the oil blowout to date, the projected losses to the tourism and fishing industries, the hundreds of thousands of jobs wiped out—rendering his pledge to “make BP pay” and “do whatever’s necessary” empty and without any credibility.

“Because of our efforts,” Obama boasted, “millions of gallons of oil have already been removed from the water through burning, skimming and other collection methods. Over five-and-a-half million feet of boom has been laid across the water to block and absorb the approaching oil.”

This hyping of what is universally seen as an incompetent, disorganized and wholly inadequate response by the government and BP is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. The very morning of Obama’s speech, the New York Times published a lengthy front-page article under the headline: “Efforts to Repel Gulf Spill Are Described as Chaotic.”

Obama went on to assure the victims of the Gulf spill, “As the cleanup continues, we will offer whatever additional resources and assistance our coastal states may need… But we have to recognize that despite our best efforts, oil has already caused damage to our coastline and its wildlife. And sadly, no matter how effective our response is, there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done. That’s why the second thing we’re focused on is the recovery and restoration of the Gulf Coast.”

Again, the vaguest of generalities, which are belied by the refusal of the government to allocate to date anything near the needed resources or take any action that challenges BP’s property and profits. To seriously approach the “recovery and restoration” of the Gulf Coast would require the seizure of BP’s assets and the nationalization of the oil industry under the democratic control of the working population.

“Tomorrow,” Obama declared, “I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of the company’s recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent third party.”

Again—no numbers! “Whatever resources are required” is a generality that can be twisted to suit the needs of whoever is calling the shots, and despite Obama’s talk of an “independent third party” to administer a compensation fund, those setting policy will be BP, the oil industry as a whole, and Wall Street.

Likewise the phrase “all legitimate claims.” Who is to determine which claims are legitimate? This is a formula for denying adequate compensation to tens of thousands of workers whose jobs are being wiped out by the Gulf disaster.

“The third part of our response plan,” Obama continued, “is the steps we’re taking to ensure that a disaster like this does not happen again. A few months ago, I approved a proposal to consider new, limited offshore drilling under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe—that the proper technology would be in place and the necessary precautions taken.

“That obviously was not the case in the Deepwater Horizon rig, and I want to know why… And so I’ve established a National Commission to understand the causes of this disaster and offer recommendations on what additional safety and environmental standards we need to put in place.”

Obama’s promise to “ensure that a disaster like this does not happen again” lacks any credibility. As does his pose of bewilderment as to the causes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

By now a mountain of facts have emerged proving that the cause of the explosion was the company’s disregard for safety, driven by its drive for profit. And it is well established that the government, including under Obama, facilitated this by allowing the company to regulate itself.

Given the servile defense of corporate profiteering by the administration, both political parties and all branches and levels of the government, there is no doubt that the conditions for further disasters in the future will continue to prevail.

Indeed, the real mandate of the National Commission (which is co-chaired by a board member of Conoco-Phillips), as indicated previously by Obama himself is to quickly come up with a proposal for token safety improvements so as to resume deep-water drilling in the Gulf and elsewhere.

Obama repeated his mantra of “coming together” as a nation—“workers and entrepreneurs, scientists and citizens, the public and private sectors.” In other words, mounting no popular opposition to the corporate criminals and holding none of them accountable for their crimes.

In a final insult to the intelligence of the American people, he dragged in God at the end of his remarks, declaring that “we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day.”

Obama’s performance was the speech of an individual and a government that are under the thumb of BP and the corporate-financial elite as a whole. It reeked of servility and cowardice before big business and contempt for the public.

It made clear that nothing will be done to compensate the vast majority of workers and small businessmen whose jobs and livelihoods are being wiped out by the Gulf spill.

The speech was part of a three-day public relations campaign, including a two-day tour of the Gulf and Wednesday’s White House meeting with BP’s chairman and CEO, designed to cover up the preparations for a filthy deal with BP. That deal will likely include a temporary delay by BP in paying out billions in shareholder dividends and the setting up of an escrow fund that will limit the company’s liabilities to a small fraction of the real cost of the disaster for which it is responsible.

http://www.wsws.org

More: Obama cuts deal to shield BP assets

Washington and BP -- 'Like a Junkie Controlling His Dealer': http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,696597,00.html

Illustration: 4.bp.blogspot.com

Url of this article: http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-obama-s-oval-office-speech-a-cowardly-cover-up-of-bp-s-crimes-video-52360676.html

Communauté : Actualités Internationales - Publié dans : USA
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Jeudi 3 juin 2010 4 03 /06 /2010 07:32

Joe Biden: Israel right to stop Gaza flotilla from breaking blockade

Internationalnews

Informationclearinghouse

VP Biden tells Charlie Rose that the Israel Navy might not have needed to drop commandos onto the Gaza-bound ship, but insists that Israel is entitled to defend its security.

By Natasha Mozgovaya

June 03, 2010 "Haaretz" -- U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday defended Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip and its decision to intercept the pro-Palestinian flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to the coastal territory, though he did not go so far as to defend the Israel Navy raid that killed nine people two days earlier.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Biden pointed out that Israel had given pro-Palestinian activists the option of unloading their cargo at the Ashdod port, and offered to bring it to the Gaza Strip on their behalf.

"They've said, 'Here you go. You're in the Mediterranean. This ship -- if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we'll get the stuff into Gaza,'", he said. "So what's the big deal here? What's the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it's legitimate for Israel to say, 'I don't know what's on that ship. These guys are dropping… 3,000 rockets on my people.

"Look, you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not -- but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know -- they're at war with Hamas -- has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in."

During the interview, Biden also blamed Hamas for the crisis that has wracked the coastal territory and for the ongoing state of conflict with Israel.

"As we put pressure, and the world put pressure on Israel to let material go into Gaza to help those people who are suffering, the ordinary Palestinians there, what happened? Hamas would confiscate it, put it in a warehouse [and] sell it.

"So the problem is this would end tomorrow if Hamas agreed to form a government with the Palestinian Authority on the conditions the international community has set up," Biden told Rose.

U.S. Congress reacts to Gaza flotilla raid

In contrast to the barrage of condemnations all over the globe, many in the U.S. Congress expressed support for Israel.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed her regret for the loss of life and said the event "underscores the urgent need for negotiations designed to achieve an enduring and comprehensive regional peace."

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Israel "rightfully invoked its right to self defense."

"Hamas could end the blockade at any time by recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing violence, and releasing Gilad Shalit," Hoyer continued.

Other members spoke about why there is a need for the blockade of Gaza in the first place.

The blockade exists "to deny Hamas the weaponry and raw materials it needs to continue its rocket attacks in Israel, killing innocent people," Republican whip Eric Cantor said.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

Photo: laprovence

Url of this article: http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-joe-biden-israel-right-to-stop-gaza-flotilla-from-breaking-blockade-51633882.html

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Vendredi 28 mai 2010 5 28 /05 /2010 02:22

Ex-EPA Officials: Why Isn't BP Under Criminal Investigation?

Internationalnews

Truthout

28 May 2010

by: Jason Leopold

(Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

Why hasn't the government launched a criminal investigation into BP?

That's the question several former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials have been asking in the aftermath of the catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last month that killed 11 employees and ruptured a newly drilled well 5,000 feet below the surface and has spewed tens of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf if Mexico, which now stands as the largest spill in US history.

Like previous BP-related disasters in Alaska and Texas, evidence has emerged that appears to show BP knowingly cut corners on maintenance and safety on Deepwater Horizon's operations, which, according to blogger bmaz, who writes about legal issues at Emptywheel, could amount to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act. Additionally, because people were killed, BP and company officials could also face prosecution for negligent and reckless homicide.

Scott West, the former special agent-in-charge at the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division, who spent more than a year probing allegations that BP committed crimes in connection with a massive oil spill on Alaska's North Slope in 2006, said the company's prior felony and misdemeanor convictions should have immediately "raised red flags" and resulted in a federal criminal investigation.

"If the company behind this disaster was Texaco or Chevron I would have likely waited a couple of days before I started to talking to people," West said. "And the reason for that is those corporations do not enjoy the current criminal history that BP does."

West, who Truthout profiled in an investigative report last week about the Bush administration's apparent scuttling of West's criminal probe into BP in 2007, was harshly critical of the way the disaster has been handled by the government. He said in an interview that BP and the oil conglomerate's executives are "known as liars" and the fact that the government has treated "and continues" to treat the company with kid gloves is "outrageous."

"BP is a convicted serial environmental criminal," West said. "So, where are the criminal investigators? The well head is a crime scene and yet the potential criminals are in charge of that crime scene. Have we learned nothing from this company's past behavior?"

Bob Wojnicz, a former EPA special agent who conducted criminal investigations into the Olympic Pipeline explosion in Bellingham, Washington, in 1999 and worked with West probing the oil spill in Alaska that resulted from a severely corroded pipeline, agreed.

In the case of the Olympic pipeline explosion, which killed three children, Wojnicz said the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), one of the agencies involved in the investigation, treated it "like an accident." But EPA "got involved right away and we looked at the incident and found apparent crimes and were able to make recommendations for charges. You can't really get to that point unless you have preliminary criminal investigation into what happened."

"So how Is BP somehow above being treated like any other criminal suspect?" asked Wojnicz, who is also an attorney. "Recall that they are not just criminal suspects - they are convicted criminals still on federal probation. This whole affair needs to be aired out thoroughly. There is more than enough information available to justify initiating a criminal investigation. The fact that this has not yet happened is evidence of either gross incompetence by government officials or complicity by those officials in covering-up the true nature of BP's conduct. Either of those possibilities is completely unacceptable and should be dealt with immediately and harshly."

West said the EPA, along with, perhaps, the FBI, would be one of the agencies to lead a criminal probe because of possible criminal violations of the Clean Water Act.

"At the end of the day if it turned out to be a God-awful accident then you go home," West said. "But everything is lost by waiting."

Attorneys Dispatched

On Wednesday, however, BP's Chief Executive Tony Hayward said he had not been informed that BP is the subject of a criminal investigation.

Tracy Russo, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told Truthout that she could not comment on specific questions about whether or not a criminal probe has been launched.

But in a letter sent Tuesday to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California), the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch appears to confirm that the incident is still being treated by the government as a civil matter.

Boxer and six other senators who are members of the Environment and Public Works panel wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder May 17 requesting that he launch a "inquiry" to determine whether BP lied to the federal government about whether it could adequately respond to oil spills in the Gulf.

The senators' letter cited a February 2009 document BP sent to federal regulators that said, "in the event of an unanticipated blowout resulting in an oil spill, it is unlikely to have an impact based on the industry wide standards for using proven equipment and technology for such responses, implementation of BP's Regional Oil Spill Response Plan which address available equipment and personnel, techniques for containment and recovery and removal of the oil spill."

But on May 10, BP released a statement that said the "techniques being attempted or evaluated to contain the flow of oil on the seabed involve significant uncertainties because they have not been tested in these conditions before."

The company has also been accused of publicly lying about the volume of oil that began gushing out of the deep sea well, which government geologists now estimate could be five times higher than BP's own assessment.

Questions about the veracity of statements made by the likes of Hayward and others about the oil gusher has convinced Larry Schweiger, the president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, that BP has engaged in a massive cover-up.

"It is now clear that BP had hoped to cover up the damage of their oil spill by withholding video evidence of the size of the gushers and preventing independent analysis. In Washington, it's been said that 'it's not the crime, it's the cover-up' - but in this case, it's both the crime and the cover-up that are an outrage."

Although Welch told Boxer that the Justice Department's "long-standing policy" is to "neither confirm nor deny the existence of a [criminal] investigation" he said the agency has "sent formal demands to [BP], Transocean [the owner of the Deepwater Horizon] and other companies to ensure the preservation of potentially relevant information."

"These letters invoke legal requirements in anticipation of litigation," Welch wrote. "Department officials have spoken with BP and Transocean counsel to ensure they are complying with these demands."

The Justice Department would not release the letters agency officials sent to BP and other companies that calls for the preservation of the documents.

In his letter to Boxer, Welch added that three weeks ago Holder "dispatched a team of attorneys from the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) and the Civil Division within the Department to monitor the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and assess the legal position of the United States in the aftermath of this environmental disaster."

"The team, headed by Ignacia Moreno, Assistant Attorney General for ENRD, and Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, met with the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana and the rest of the response team in New Orleans, as well as with state officials," Welch wrote. "Subsequently, Ms. Moreno and Mr. West convened a meeting of all of the United States Attorneys in the Gulf region to assure a coordinated effort.

"The Department team is examining the full range of affirmative legal options that may be available to the United States. The team is providing daily legal advice and coordination for federal attorneys from across the Government, a vital function. Department attorneys also are defending the interests of the United States in suits brought by others."

While Welch's letter may allude to the possibility of a criminal investigation down the road, West said the correspondence makes clear that the disaster is still being treated as "an accident."

"The magnitude of this disaster rivals any we have seen and yet it is being treated as an accident by the government," said Scott West, who spent nearly two-decades at the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division. "I bet there are 1,000 criminal investigators in the federal government looking at this and are asking 'what the heck is going on?' but they can't speak out of school. So I am going to give them voice."

By comparison, a pipeline rupture that occurred last November at BP's Prudhoe Bay operations, which resulted in a 46,000 gallon oil spill, immediately lead the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division to issue a statement saying the agency was working with the FBI to investigate the cause of the incident and to determine if any laws were broken.

"The (EPA) Criminal Investigation Division is continuing to work in concert with our federal and state partners, and British Petroleum, to assess the situation associated with the Nov. 29 rupture," said Tyler Amon, the acting special agent-in-charge of the Northwest office of the EPA's criminal division. "This matter is under investigation."

Furthermore, BP's probation officer, Mary Frances Barnes, told Truthout that the EPA and FBI's investigation will determine if BP Exploration Alaska violated the terms of its probation.

But in the Gulf, the longer the government waits to conduct a criminal probe, West and Wojnicz said, the harder it will be to obtain accurate information about the events that lead up to the explosion.

"As time passes, people's memories fade," West said. "It's just a natural thing. The subjects of the investigation (BP and senior managers) have had over a month to sanitize records and get stories straight."

West said there should have also been a subpoena immediately issued for emails and other documents that may shed light on the events leading up to the spill and the discussions that took place afterwards.

"The thing that has brought most criminals down is their email," West said. "The first thing you do is grab the servers so they can't be doctored. But this company does not appear to be under a court order to produce or preserve so what's to stop them from tampering with potential evidence?"

In fact, Congress has already been informed that seven hours of data leading up to the explosion aboard Deepwater Horizon is now missing.

"While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the April 20 blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that the last seven hours of its data are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion," the Associated Press reported May 13.

"The gap poses a mystery for investigators: What decisions were made -- and what warnings might have been ignored? Earlier tests, which suggested that explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well, were preserved."

Jurisdiction

West said if he were the special agent-in-charge of the EPA's Dallas office, which has jurisdiction over the area of the Gulf where the Deepwater Horizon sank, he would have "dispatched criminal investigators immediately just as I did in March 2006, as the special agent-in-charge in Seattle when BP's negligence resulted in the dumping of crude onto the North Slope of Alaska."

Ivan Vikin is the EPA's special agent-in-charge assigned to the Dallas office that would have jurisdiction over the Gulf disaster. He did not return calls for comment. An EPA senior criminal investigator who works in another office, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said officials in the criminal division "are under direct orders not to talk about this case."

"We were told to direct all questions [about the Gulf disaster] to headquarters," the EPA senior criminal investigator said. "But I can tell you that a criminal investigation has not been approved and for the life of me I can't understand why."

An EPA spokesperson did not return numerous calls for comment on whether Vikin has initiated a criminal investigation. Asked whether a criminal investigation could be proceeding, but conducted under the cover of secrecy, West said, based on his experience, if that were the case it would be "damn near impossible" to contain leaks.

"Sure, it's possible but highly unlikely," West said. "We're not hearing about guys with a gun and a badge knocking on doors and asking questions or subpoenas being issued for documents. If that were taking place we would know about it, especially on something this big. You're just not hearing about it and that's the first clue that a criminal investigation isn't happening."

Wojnicz agreed. He said if there was a criminal investigation the media would "be all over it."

"You can try, but you can't keep something like this secret," he said. "And you would think that this administration may do themselves a favor if they announced an investigation because of the public relations nightmare they are dealing with over their handling of it."

West said it's also possible that people in government have been saying "'if we start a criminal investigation then BP will clam up and we will lose their cooperation and right now we just need to stop the flow of oil and conduct a criminal investigation later."

"I've heard that argument over and over during my tenure and I challenged it and said it was bullshit. The EPA tried to pull that with me when I sent an agent up to the North Slope after the pipeline rupture saying my criminal investigators were 'getting in the way.' It's a ridiculous statement. Criminal investigators work with emergency responders all the time and do not get in the way. It takes experience to know how to challenge this kind of push back when you're faced with it. If that were the case with the Gulf, the criminal investigator could say 'if you keep it up I may have to make an obstruction of justice referral to the US attorney.' But who has the balls to do that?"

A Powerful Company

Jeanne Pascal was the debarment counsel at the EPA's Seattle office who spent more than a decade working on issues related to environmental crimes BP had been convicted of.

Debarment is a process that happens when a company is convicted of a crime and prohibited from receiving government contracts for a certain time period. Pascal first started working on debarment with BP when the company was convicted of a felony in connection with illegally dumping hazardous waste in the late 1990s in Alaska.

In an interview, Pascal said there "doesn't appear to be a criminal investigation and there should be."

"This is a company that views itself as above the law," Pascal said. "Now why is that? The only thing I can come up with to explain the failure to launch a criminal investigation is that BP has so much political influence. Congress needs to step up if the president won't do the right thing. The FBI ought to be investigating this matter criminally along with EPA and [Department of Interior]. This is the fifth major incident committed by this company in 10 years."

She said the power the company wields might be due, in large part, to the fact that BP supplies the military with 80 percent of its fuel needs. Because of that, she had to proceed with caution. BP pled guilty to a felony in connection with a March 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery, which claimed the lives of 15 employees and injured 170 others; BP pled guilty to a criminal misdemeanor for two oil spills in Alaska in March and August 2006 due to a severely corroded pipelines on which BP failed to perform maintenance; and, BP entered a deferred prosecution agreement related to price fixing scheme involving propane trading.

"If I had debarred BP while they were supplying 80 percent of the fuel to US forces it would have been almost certain that the Defense Department would have been forced to get an exception," Pascal said. "There's a provision in the debarment regulations that says in a time of war or extreme need exceptions can be granted to debarment so that federal agencies with critical needs can continue doing business with debarred contractors. I was in a quandary. If I moved forward with debarment we would have had a major federal contractor doing business with the federal government with no governmental oversight or audit provisions. I felt oversight terms and conditions were critical with BP, so I pursued settlement of the matter in the hopes of getting oversight and audit terms."

Pascal said she has observed similarities in BP's response to what happened aboard the Deepwater Horizon and the revelations that the company had been illegally dumping toxic waste at Endicott Island in that BP's initial response was then, and has been, to blame its contractors when, in fact, BP's "company man" on drilling rigs has control over drilling operations.

"When there is a failure they blame the contractor," Pascal said. "BP is the most retaliatory company I ever dealt with. They punish employees for bringing Health Safety and Environmental (HSE) concerns to the management or to regulators. BP management then fails to take responsibility. They manage the way they operate with profit foremost in their minds."

A major criticism shared by West, Wojnicz and Pascal is that Obama has moved forward with an independent commission to study what caused the disaster and make sure it doesn't happen again without the commencement of a criminal investigation and the subpoena and testimonial powers that gives the government the ability to compel documents and witness testimony. A civil approach relies too heavily on the veracity of what the company will be willing to disclose; and in this situation thoroughness is critical.

Wojnicz said a presidential commission "is a feel-good measure that the White House is putting out there to show they are making some kind of inquiry."

"They'll call witnesses and ask for documents and give certain people all the time they need to figure out what they are going to say," Wojnicz said. "There really is no place for this right now."

West said he intends to keep the pressure on and speak out about the urgent need for a criminal probe.

"Criminal enforcement of the nation's environmental laws is a powerful and effective tool to achieve compliance with those laws," West said. "EPA Criminal Investigation Division is the best entity available for this work, yet the managers within [the agency] are timid at best and obstructionist at worst. If they are not going to bring criminal enforcement to bear in this, the most egregious assault on our environment, then when will they? So if we, as a nation, want the criminal enforcement program to work as Congress intended, then we need to send the current crop of managers home and bring in new ones who will."

http://www.truthout.org/

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-ex-epa-officials-why-isn-t-bp-under-criminal-investigation-51260891.html