statism watch

BP and the Obama administration are both allowing this spill to grow progressively worse. We may want to ask ourselves why that is. Because whether it be for manipulation of energy prices, blackmail to pass carbon tax legislation, or for some other purpose, BP has passed up multiple offers of help from foreign states and other interested parties, and now we are given to understand they’re sitting on their hands besides. Washington’s Blog provides some further details of what you’ll hear from the witness in the attached video: 1. BP is given advanced warning when an official is going to show up to any place where there is oil. All assets are deployed. As soon as the official leaves, 75-80% of the assets are removed. BP calls it a “pony and balloons” show. 2. “We are expendable to these people. We do not matter.” 3. They’re not cleaning it up, they’re covering it up. 4. BP is making it impossible for clean-up workers to wear respirators. 5. She saw hundreds of thousands of fish dying, so disoriented by the oil that they crashed into her boat. 5. There is a media blackout. 6. If the country does not stand up and say “no more”, this will go global. All of the world’s oceans are connected. If not stopped, it will destroy one-third of the world’s water.

Related: Peak oil postponed again? | Deepwater Horizon worker claims oil rig leaking weeks before explosion | States Need To Launch Criminal Investigation Into BP, Federal Government’s Role In Oil Spill | The White House’s Climate Strategy: Pass Bill Now, Slip Carbon Taxes in Later | BP Aware Of Cracks In Oil Well Two Months Before Explosion | Obama Using Oil Spill To Push Green Economy Agenda | Confidential document reveals Obama’s hardline US climate talk strategy | Obama sets sights on Arctic oil and gas exploration | Obama Likely to Rebrand Climate Bill as Jobs Bill | Oil Companies Support Global Warming Alarmists, Not Skeptics | Obama targets US public with call for climate action | Obama to stake reputation on fast-tracked climate bill | Oil, oil everywhere? Well, just maybe | World has enough oil reserves, says BP boss

Naked Capitalism
June 26, 2010

Gulf resident and fisherman’s wife Kindra Arnesen took advantage of the offer extended to her to visit cleanup sites and staff meetings:

At any rate, I was invited the following week to go behind “enemy lines.” They gave me, of all people, security clearance to go into the base of operations meetings in Venice, Louisiana eight days in. Open door invitation to sit like a fly on the wall. Can you believe it? It’s really going on. They also gave me security clearance to go up to the Homer Incident Command Post which is over the entire region of Louisiana. I’ve been in Coast Guard planes all the way out to the site itself. Helicopters. Boat rides. I have been everywhere that anybody could ever want to go to get an inside look at what’s really going on.

Arensen appears to have been invited in because she got media coverage earlier in June when CNN covered her efforts to organize wives of Gulf fisherman over concerns about the safety of working on oil cleanup:

Arnesen believes it was vapors from the oil and the dispersants from the BP Gulf oil disaster that made her husband and the other shrimpers sick. She says they were downwind of it, and the smell was “so strong they could almost taste it.”

For several weeks, she hesitated to talk publicly about it. Like many fishermen who can no longer fish in the Gulf, her husband has signed a contract to work with BP to clean up the oil, and she doesn’t want to bite the hand that puts food on her family’s table.

But now Arnesen, a 32-year-old “uneducated housewife” — her words — is breaking her silence and is encouraging others in her community do the same. After attending a lecture by Rikki Ott, a toxicologist who’s worked with families affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, Arnesen decided to organize other wives to ask questions about the safety of working near the oil.

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Related: EU trade pact may imperil local control over water | Bulk water exports prohibited under new U.S.-Canada border regulations | Water demand puts Canadian rivers at risk | Canada, U.S. will renegotiate Great Lakes water treaty | Water not recognized as human right in World Water Forum statement | Canada’s bid for UN Security Council seat tied to water issue | Changes to law could affect navigation of Canadian waters, critics say | Detroit granted water extraction exemption due to ‘historical precedent’ | Bilderberg-connected Desmarais dynasty thinktank supports exporting Canada’s water | Water pact will deplete Great Lakes, expert fears | Beware thirsty Americans, Kennedy tells Canada | Closed-door talks focusing on our water supply | Canada’s water needs protection from thirsty America: trade lawyer

CBC News
June 17, 2010

Canada’s approach to managing its water resources is outdated, a government think-tank on the environment said in a report Thursday.

In a report titled Changing Currents, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy concludes Canada is ill-prepared to effectively manage its water resources to ensure sustainable economic growth.

“New stresses and demands are likely to pose a significant challenge to the sustainability of Canada’s water resources if action is not taken now,” round table CEO David McLaughlin said.

The report says sharing jurisdiction over monitoring and managing water between several levels of governments causes potential confusion among businesses that need water for their production.

Canada has only 0.5 per cent of the world’s population but controls 20 per cent of the globe’s fresh water. Those ratios are unlikely to change, but the demands of a growing economy on water resources are likely to heighten significantly in the coming decades, the report says.

“Governance at a national level is not currently positioned to respond to expected increasing pressure on our water resources,” it says.

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Here’s the other side of the water debate, which ought to be heard, given that the arguments against water export seem unclear. While obviously water is a common resource and the rights of those living downstream (if any) must be respected. Even from an enlightened laissez-faire markets perpective you can’t just set up shop at a headwaters and claim you own the river, poisoning it or extracting more than a share any more than you could deprive your neighbours of oxygen (were that possible) because you felt like bottling it. That would be a direct assault on their property rights, since it would deprive them of a commodity they’re using. Is that really what the nascent water export industry has in mind? That seems unlikely, and ought to be a criminal matter if it isn’t already. Likewise, mass diversion in unpopulated areas should be a matter of property rights as well – you’d better own the affected area, and that requirement would rapidly moderate extraction. Finally, ‘Water Day’ and some of these other Canada Council initiatives seem to ignore the fact of the water cycle raised by the author below. It evaporates, it goes up, and barring regional climate shifts it comes back to where you got it from. Any water buffs want to contest this?

Related: Bulk water exports prohibited under new U.S.-Canada border regulations | Water demand puts Canadian rivers at risk | Canada, U.S. will renegotiate Great Lakes water treaty | Water not recognized as human right in World Water Forum statement | Canada’s bid for UN Security Council seat tied to water issue | Changes to law could affect navigation of Canadian waters, critics say | Detroit granted water extraction exemption due to ‘historical precedent’ | Bilderberg-connected Desmarais dynasty thinktank supports exporting Canada’s water | Water pact will deplete Great Lakes, expert fears | Beware thirsty Americans, Kennedy tells Canada | Closed-door talks focusing on our water supply | Canada’s water needs protection from thirsty America: trade lawyer

Gwyn Morgan, The Globe and Mail
June 13, 2010

A clear-headed comparison of the environmental impacts of carefully chosen water-export projects with that of leading resource industries would show water transfers to be one of the cleanest possible ways of creating new investment, jobs and deficit-reducing government revenues

A recent special report on water in The Economist offered a provocative comment: “The trouble with water is that it’s all politics, no economics.” How else to explain why a pro-free-trade government in one of the world’s most water-endowed countries would seek to ban bulk water exports? That’s what Canada’s proposed Transboundary Waters Protection Act, introduced by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon last month, would do. Driving the Conservative government’s proposed ban are opinion polls showing two-thirds of Canadians oppose water exports.

Politics do indeed make strange bedfellows. Mr. Cannon’s statement of the government’s “resolve to make sure there are no exports of bulk” resonated among left-wing, anti-free-trade groups, such as the Council of Canadians. But do the council’s arguments hold water?

The council’s website lists “five reasons to oppose bulk water exports,” drawn from a 2007 council publication. Let’s take a look at each of them.

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The, erm, faeces storm over JP Morgan’s control over sewage treatment in one Carolinian county should be enough of a preview into the way these deals go down to alarm any Canadian, free market loving or otherwise. The legitimacy of ownership of the commons really needs a lot more attention than it gets when it comes to water.

Related: Greece’s near bankruptcy won’t scuttle Canada-EU trade talks: minister | Big stakes in Canada-Europe trade talks, but little attention | EU ‘Free Trade’ and CETA: Advancing the Transatlantic Agenda | CETA worse than ACTA – EU Trade Negotiators Demand Canada Completely Overhaul Its Intellectual Property La ws | Beyond ACTA: Proposed EU – Canada Trade Agreement Intellectual Property Chapter Leaks | EU approves free-trade talks with Canada | Canada expects EU free-trade talks soon: Stockwell Day | Harper, Sarkozy vow to work toward Canada-EU deal | CD Howe Institute backs Canada-EU deal, deep integration | Towards a new world order: Canada-EU trade proposal rivals scope of NAFTA

Bruce Campion-Smith, Toronto Star
May 29, 2010

OTTAWA – Foreign companies would gain unprecedented access to municipal water services and perhaps even a claim to the water itself under the free trade deal now being negotiated between Canada and the European Union, a new report says.

While the federal government has touted the economic upsides of the trade pact, a legal analysis claims it will likely have big implications for municipalities by forcing them to open their contracts to European firms.

That’s the view of Canadian trade lawyer Steve Shrybman, who penned an opinion of the free trade talks for the Centre for Civic Governance, a Vancouver-based advocacy group.

The European Union has made a pointed request that drinking water services be included in the trade agreement, opening the door for big multinational firms to “stake” a claim in municipal water systems, he said.

“The objective of these large water conglomerates is to expand their Canadian markets by winning contracts to establish and/or operate water supply and waste water treatment facilities and services,” he writes in his opinion.

“The most serious threat to public ownership and control of water arises from the risk of private entities being able to establish a proprietary claim to the water itself,” the report says.

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Related: Water demand puts Canadian rivers at risk | Canada, U.S. will renegotiate Great Lakes water treaty | Water not recognized as human right in World Water Forum statement | Canada’s bid for UN Security Council seat tied to water issue | Changes to law could affect navigation of Canadian waters, critics say | Detroit granted water extraction exemption due to ‘historical precedent’ | Bilderberg-connected Desmarais dynasty thinktank supports exporting Canada’s water | Water pact will deplete Great Lakes, expert fears | Beware thirsty Americans, Kennedy tells Canada | Closed-door talks focusing on our water supply | Canada’s water needs protection from thirsty America: trade lawyer

Juliet O’Neill, Canwest News
May 13, 2010

OTTAWA — Stronger protection against bulk water exports from rivers and streams that cross the U.S.-Canada border was announced Thursday by the federal government.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon cited the depletion of water in the once mighty Rio Grande River that crosses the U.S.-Mexico border at a news conference announcing the bill he tabled in the House of Commons.

“That water basin is on the point of being completely dried up and that is what we want to be able to avoid here,” he said at a news conference.

The bill would “plug the last remaining gap” in a ban against bulk water removal that is in place for the Great Lakes and other water that straddles the Canada-U.S. border and is covered by provincial law. The bill provides new powers of inspection and enforcement and fines of up to $6 million for corporate violations. The exception is to help forest fire fighting or other disasters in the United States.

“This important legislation makes it clear that we are not in the business of exporting our water,” Cannon said. “Canadian water is not a commodity. It is not for sale.”

The proposed new amendments to the Boundary and Transboundary Waters Protection Act “closes any gap that might be there by completing what provinces already do.”

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Despite promises made during his presidential campaign, the Obama plan includes lifting moratoriums on drilling on the Atlantic seaboard and in the Gulf of Mexico as well. The locations extend into the UN LOST treaty’s ‘exclusive economic zone‘ and the timing of this announcement is designed to head off competing Chinese and Russian claims on the same resources. It’s also intended as a sop to Republicans in order to push cap-and-trade carbon legislation through the Senate. (It appears the EPA’s notion to implement carbon controls administratively has fallen by the wayside.)

Flashback: Clinton’s Arctic comments cheer Inuit | Review panel green-lights Mackenzie pipeline | Canada an ‘energy superpower’ in Arctic, Foreign Minister says | Arctic borders will be defended: MacKay | Arctic expert questions Canada’s northern strategy | Northwest Passage surveillance study halted | Military’s ‘Polar Breeze’ cloaked in secrecy | Ignatieff on Obama visit: Crisis an opportunity for continental, global integration | Harper plays down threat to Arctic sovereignty | New policy emphasizes U.S. interests in Northwest Passage | UN Given Power to Mediate in Arctic Disputes | Nunavut taken aback by military plan for drone patrols | Remote-controlled aircraft would patrol Arctic: military

Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service
March 31, 2010

The much-anticipated but controversial transformation of the Arctic Ocean into a new global treasure house of oil and gas is a step closer with the U.S. government moving Wednesday to open that country’s offshore areas — including the Beaufort Sea, subject of a boundary dispute with Canada — to more intensive petroleum development.

U.S. President Barack Obama has announced plans to end a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in almost all U.S. coastal waters, kick-starting what’s expected to be a major push to exploit extensive undersea deposits north of Alaska — part of a total circumpolar resource that geologists say holds as much as one-quarter of the planet’s untapped hydrocarbon reserves.

“This is not a decision that I’ve made lightly,” Obama said during a speech at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he unveiled the plan.

“But the bottom line is this: Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs and keep our businesses competitive, we’re going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.”

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As though there isn’t enough incremental toxic exposure in the urban environment already – bisphenol-A, GMO foods, melamine, fluoride, other contaminants – municipal water users now need to worry about the practically pleistocene scourge of lead poisoning? Wikipedia reports this causes “symptoms predominantly in the central nervous system, such as insomnia, delirium, cognitive deficits, tremor, hallucinations, and convulsions.”

Flashback: Ottawa to test taps for cancer contaminants | Chemicals feminizing males, study suggests | Major report to reveal male gender under threat from pollutants | End water fluoridation, U of T dental professor says | Cities, States Questioning Wisdom of Adding Fluoride Chemicals to Public Water Supplies | Scientists Note Hormones in Water, Feminization of Fish Downstream of Montreal | Pesticides, pollutants threaten Canadian tap water, researchers suggest

CBC News
March 16, 2010

Toronto Public Health says it is investigating research done by an American scientist into the partial replacement of residential water pipes.

Toronto is in the midst of a five-year, $250-million lead pipe replacement program — but the city only replaces the pipes on city-owned land. It’s up to homeowners to pay to replace the pipes that lead from the property line into their homes and in many cases residents don’t replace the old lead pipes.

The city estimates that in about half the cases, people don’t pay the several thousand dollars it costs to have their pipes replaced.

But research conducted by Mark Edwards at Virginia Tech University shows lead levels could spike if only part of the pipe is replaced.

“[Replacing] half the lead pipe — in some cases — makes the problem worse. There is strong evidence emerging that this is a serious and long-term problem,” he said in an interview with CBC News last week.

Edwards says when the new copper pipes are joined to the existing lead pipes the lead occasionally flakes off into the water causing extraordinarily high lead concentrations.

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In case the Boston revelation that the Chinese are cutting fluoride with something – likely melamine – isn’t enough, in case all of the studies that the article’s author points you towards, or the mainstream Canadian news items StatismWatch has dredged up from the archives, or even the issue of medication without consent – in case that pile of evidence that fluoride has deleterious effects isn’t enough to convince you this should be looked at, you can always turn to the fact that birth defects are cropping up in Indian villages and kangaroos and cattle are getting sick after exposure to it.

Flashback: End water fluoridation, U of T dental professor says | Cities, States Questioning Wisdom of Adding Fluoride Chemicals to Public Water Supplies | Tests find melamine in candies, milk, infant formula from China | Scientists Note Hormones in Water, Feminization of Fish Downstream of Montreal | Govt. Report: Fluoride in Water Supply Harms Thyroid Function | Pesticides, pollutants threaten Canadian tap water, researchers suggest | Dentist association attempts to defuse water flouridation controversy | Cut children’s fluoride exposure, report to Health Canada urges | Chief dentist recants support for fluoride

Kurt Nimmo, Infowars.com
March 13, 2010

The “investigative” team at WCVB TV in Boston ran a story yesterday about an unknown substance in fluoride imported from China. “Team 5 Investigates found the Amesbury Water Department pulled fluoride from its system amid concerns about its supply from China,” the news station reported. “Department of Public Works Director Rob Desmarais said after he mixes the white powder with water, 40 percent of it will not dissolve.” Desmarais said the residue clogs his machines and makes it difficult to get a consistent level of fluoride in the town’s water.

In the video report below, WCVB mentions melamine in food products and the heavy metal cadmium in toys imported from China while completely ignoring the larger and more important issue — fluoride is an extremely dangerous toxin that kills.

“Fluoride is added to the water most of us drink because the government believes it’s a safe and inexpensive way to prevent tooth decay.”

Fluoride does not prevent tooth decay. According to numerous studies, water fluoridation actually increases tooth decay. The AMA and others fallaciously claim that fluoride added to over 62% of U.S. water supplies reduces tooth decay. However, no less than six studies from dental journals show it does not and, in fact, may increase the likelihood of dental cavities.

Exposure to fluoride often results in dental fluorosis. Large numbers of U.S. young people — estimated up to 80 percent in some cities — now have dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive fluoride exposure. Dental fluorosis consists of damage to tooth-forming cells, leading to a defect in tooth enamel. It is also an indicator of fluoride damage to bones.

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Well, you really have to hand it to The Guardian for its devotion to publishing some reports from both sides of this issue, as much as it might (we suspect) piss off its natural constituency. Perhaps this will save us the spectacle of another ‘underwater’ Maldives cabinet meeting, given the scientists involved now admit they’ve no idea whether to expect sea levels will rise or fall in the foreseeable future after analyzing the last 22,000 years of data.

Flashback: Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 | Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws | Canadian scientist says UN’s global warming panel ‘crossing the line’ | Manufactured ‘Science’: Another IPCC Scientist Reveals How UN Scientists talked about ‘trying to make IPCC report so dramatic that US would just have to sign Kyoto Protocol’ | Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified | UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters | The IPCC glacier meltdown: More global warming fraud exposed | Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run by UN IPCC climate chief | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 2 | Climategate: Al Gore lies | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 1 | If Climategate Is No Big Deal, Why Are Questions About It Met With An Armed Response? | Climategate: Investigations into climate fraud fixed | ‘Independent’ United Nations panel to examine Climategate evidence | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Climategate: Global Warming scientists placed under investigation | Latest Climategate revelation: Climate change data dumped | Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation | Obama’s ‘Science Czar’ John Holdren Friend of Climate Deception Lab | “Climategate”: Peer-Review System Was Hijacked By Warming Alarmists | Top Climatology Lab Hacked, E-Mails Reveal Biased Science | E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming | Polar bear expert barred from conference by global warming advocates | Top Japanese Scientists: Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity | IPCC caught with false figures, doubt cast on accuracy of global temperature record

David Adams, The Guardian
February 21, 2010

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study “strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results“. The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.

Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.

Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper’s estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.

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If forced to choose between removing carp or pushing TARP, we’d have to pick the former. The costs of war and bank bailouts certainly far outweigh the kinds of domestic projects that, while systemically unethical in their use of force against the citizens to raise funds, would at least be a lesser evil in that the levels of expropriation would be reduced by orders of magnitude and the domestic population would actually benefit from clean water, housing, social assistance and the like.

Flashback: Canada, U.S. will renegotiate Great Lakes water treaty | Water not recognized as human right in World Water Forum statement | Ottawa to test taps for cancer contaminants | Pesticides, pollutants threaten Canadian tap water, researchers suggest | Water pact will deplete Great Lakes, expert fears | Lakes across Canada face being turned into mine dump sites

The Associated Press
February 21, 2010

The Obama administration has developed a five-year blueprint for rescuing the Great Lakes, a sprawling ecosystem plagued by toxic contamination, shrinking wildlife habitat and invasive species.

The plan envisions spending more than $2.2 billion US for long-awaited repairs after a century of damage to the lakes, which hold 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the document, which Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was releasing.

“We’re committed to creating a new standard of care that will leave the Great Lakes better for the next generation,” Jackson said in a statement.

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