Of Course They Did.

Letter: BP, Halliburton knew of flaws in cement in Gulf oil spill well. Friggin' ridiculous excerpts in italics:

Oil giant BP and contractor Halliburton knew of potential flaws in the cement slurry used to reinforce the oil well below the Deepwater Horizon rig before it exploded in April, according to a letter Thursday from the lead investigator for a federal probe of the Gulf oil disaster.

The letter from Fred Bartlit Jr. to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling said that tests in February on a cement slurry similar to what was used on the Macondo well showed instability -- and that both companies had the data.
..
"Halliburton and BP both had results in March showing that a very similar foam slurry design to the one actually pumped at the Macondo well would be unstable, but neither acted upon that data," the letter said."

"Halliburton (and perhaps BP) should have considered redesigning the foam slurry before pumping it at the Macondo well," the letter continued.

The news caused Halliburton stock to drop in value by almost 8 percent by the end of trading Thursday, to $3
1.68 a share. U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, called for the oil spill commission to get full subpoena power, and for BP CEO Bob Dudley to agree to testify before Congress.

"The fact that BP and Halliburton knew this cement job could fail only solidifies their liability and responsibility for this disaster," Markey said in a written statement. "This is like building a car when you know the brakes could fail, but you sell the cars anyway."

Hey look! The perfect example of the failure of Government de-regulation regarding corporate safety practices, and all it took was a catastrophic environmental disaster that is far from over, far from "capped." Rather, the consequences of this disaster are just beginning to bloom. And there are no doubts this fruit will be poisonous..

Ever Have Your Mind Blown By An Internet Comic?

You're about to..  An artist friend of mine has a new web comic called "Blaed Race" (Pronounced 'Blade.').  It's super-cool, and if you've got some free time, you should really check it out.  Then when Scotty Richard becomes famous, you can say you've been reading his stuff since (almost) the beginning!  Enjoy!

Sadly, I Called This..

Reappearance of Huge Plumes of Oil is Making It Hard to Pretend that the Problem Has Disappeared

All those catastrophic environmental and health worst-case-scenarios didn't disappear. They just hid for awhile..

Here's A Doom Nugget Buried Under Charlie Sheen's Unconscious, Drunken Body..

Not literally, people; come on.. Failure Shuts Down Squadron of Nuclear Missiles. Excerpts/Italics:

President Obama was briefed this morning on an engineering power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday.

The base is a main locus of the United States’ strategic nuclear forces. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They’re on full-time alert and are housed in a variety of bunkers across the base.
..
..engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of five missiles, began to “ping” out of sequence, resulting in a surge of “noise” through the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence, so if they begin to send signals out when they’re not supposed to, receivers on the missiles themselves will notice this and send out error codes.

Since LCCs ping out of sequence on occasion, missileers tried quick fixes. But as more and more missiles began to display error settings, they decided to take off-line all five LCCs that the malfunctioning center was connected to. That left 50 missiles in the dark. The missileers then restarted one of the LCCs, which began to normally interrogate the missile transceiver. Three other LCCs were successfully restarted. The suspect LCC remains off-line.
And:
The defense official said that there had not been a power failure, though the official acknowledged that that explanation had made its way through public affairs channels.

“We’ve never had something as big as this happen,” a military officer who was briefed on the incident said. Occasionally, one or two might blink out, the officer said, and several warheads are routinely out of service for maintenance. At an extreme, “[w]e can deal with maybe 5, 6, or 7 at a time, but we’ve never lost complete command and control and functionality of 50 ICBMs.”

The Military says this happened previously in 1998 to two bases in North Dakota and Montana, and the same piece of hardware is blamed, too(see article linked), but I find the timing and magnitude of this incident particularly disturbing. I can't imagine the same programming/system problem that happened twelve years ago happened again because they couldn't isolate the bugs. 1998 was the Stone Age in cybertime, so no progress finding a fix? Really? Rating: Highly Suspect to Unadulterated Bullshit.

So.. What caused it? How did the Military lose command and control of one ninth our ballistic missiles? Escalating tensions between North and South Korea, China and Japan, Israel and Iran, Russia and Georgia, stealth cyber warriors everywhere and nowhere at once, and something locks up our nukes? And what if something were to actually take control of those nukes and turn them inward?

Have you noticed no one's talking about Stuxnet anymore? It must have just dissolved and gone away overnight..

Highest alert issued for Indonesia's Merapi volcano

From BBC. Excerpts:

Indonesia has raised the alert for its most volatile volcano, Mount Merapi, to its highest level and warned villagers in threatened areas to move to safer ground.
And:
Officials said about 500 volcanic earthquakes had been recorded on the mountain over the weekend.

"The magma has been pushed upwards due to the escalating seismic energy and it's about a kilometre below the crater," AFP news agency quoted government volcanologist Surono as saying.

The region is active. If the sun pops off a big enough CME in the next few days, we might see some real seismic activity, with both quakes and volcanoes striking this same area. The conditions seem perfect for some big destruction..

Geopolitically, This Is A (Really) Big Deal..

Vatican body asks UN to 'end Israeli occupation' Key excerpts in italics:

Israel cannot use the Biblical concept of a promised land or a chosen people to justify new "settlements" in Jerusalem or territorial claims, a Vatican synod on the Middle East said on Saturday.
And:
US-brokered peace talks have stalled since Israel rejected appeals to extend a temporary moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank that expired last month.

Since the freeze expired, Israel has announced plans to build another 238 homes in two east Jerusalem neighborhoods, drawing the condemnation of Palestinians and world leaders.

In a separate part of the document, a section on cooperation with Jews, the synod fathers also took issue with Jews who use the Bible to justify settlements in the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.


"Recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the Word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable," the document said.

Many Jewish settlers and right-wing Israelis claim a biblical birthright to the West Bank, which they call Judea and Samaria and regard as a part of historical, ancient Israel given to the Jews by God.

Asked about the passage at a news conference, Greek-Melchite Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros, said:


"We Christians cannot speak about the promised land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a chosen people. All men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.

"The concept of the promised land cannot be used as a base for the justification of the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of Palestinians," he added. "The justification of Israel's occupation of the land of Palestine cannot be based on sacred scriptures."

This is big. The Vatican is criticizing THE Fundamental Justification of Israel's Military Strategy and doing it to the United Nations. Whatever your thoughts are on either organization doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that this bit of information means jack-shit your little corner of the world.

To the entities involved, this is a big slap in the face and won't be forgotten anytime soon. My prediction is that Israel will take a much more defensive posture, thereby escalating tensions, not only in the region(including Iran), but with Russia, China, and the U.S. What alliances actually occur is something I won't speculate on, at least, not at the moment..

It Looks Like People Are Getting Wise To High Fructose Corn Syrup's Lies..

Corn Syrup Lobby Courts Mommybloggers, Gets Spanked. Excerpts/Italics:

Some scientists and food experts, including the well-regarded sustainable food advocate Marion Nestle, have argued that high fructose corn syrup is really no worse, nutritionally speaking, than traditional refined table sugar, which is certainly no health food. But mounting evidence suggests that subtle chemical differences between the two sweeteners might cause HFCS to affect the body differently than regular sugar, in potentially harmful ways.

A 2007 Rutgers University study linked HFCS in soda to diabetes. There was the revelation in 2008 that some brands of HFCS contained traces of mercury. Then a Princeton study, published just this March, connected high fructose corn syrup consumption to obesity in rats.

As a result of all the bad publicity associated with these scientific findings, more than 50% of Americans now believe high fructose corn syrup may pose a health hazard. Sales of high fructose corn syrup have plummeted as manufacturers scramble to replace HFCS with familiar, old-fashioned table sugar.

So last month, the Corn Refiners Association, a trade organization that lobbies the U.S. government on behalf of corn processors, launched a campaign to change the name of high fructose corn syrup to corn sugar.
Along with the usual press releases and web site, there's this..

Specifically, the CRA approached bloggers who write compensated product reviews for MomCentral, a targeted social media marketing organization whose clients include such corporate giants as Unilever, Bayer, and Procter and Gamble.
...
For the Corn Refiners Association, MomCentral arranged a webinar for blogger members, where attendees were apparently treated to a CRA sponsored presentation of evidence that high fructose corn syrup, a.k.a. "corn sugar," and traditional table sugar are nutritionally equivalent and affect the body in exactly the same way. The bloggers were then paid, with Walmart gift certificates, to write about what they had learned from the CRA.
And:
The blogger backlash against the CRA / MomCentral corn sugar marketing campaign was swift and severe. Prominent members of the parent blog community, including Mom-101's Liz Gumbinner, Work It Mom's Mir Kamin, and Christine Koh of Boston Mamas, came out strongly against the marketing campaign, calling the CRA messaging misleading and taking the bloggers who repeated CRA's assertions uncritically to task for failing to do their own research on high fructose corn syrup to present more balanced reviews.

These tactics aren't working. The public is becoming aware of the dangers of HFCS, not only through information, but also by becoming aware as to how they personally feel, in response to ingesting High Fructose Corn Syrup. The industry has lost ground, but don't expect them to give up: They'll just change tactics, again.