A Visit To India Is Hard To Leave Behind: What separates New Delhi from the Everglades

(Counterpunch, March 20, 2012) At two in the morning, the sleek, modern airport at New Delhi hummed with activity. Most travelers pointed westbound to European capitals and from there, mid morning connections to the Americas.

What piqued my curiosity at that ungodly hour: airport security worked at half pace while the crowds piled behind. For the most part, India’s bureaucratic indifference was far from sight during a three-week visit.

Here at the moment of departure, anxious lines pushed and security responded with its own laws of gravity, and I felt the curious pull of the familiar, something that reminded me of home. You know what they say about Schenectady: it’s not hell but you can see it from there?

The places that hold us, whether in Uttar Pradesh or New York, have their tell tales. For example, in Florida –my home–, the sign of the eternal, damning wheel is the predisposition of bureaucrats to work hand-in-glove with politicians and lobbyists to destroy the Everglades.

Victims of the Free Market: Predatory Speculation

Civil War in Libya. Oil speculators crowding into the market. For nearly a week running, network TV news has led with the story of rising gas prices and the “threat to the economy”. Really? The Federal Reserve core inflation excludes food and energy, on the basis that price spikes moderate and in any event (barring revolutionaries gaining foothold in Saudi Arabia) speculators come and go, exchanging futures for paintings by Michaelangelo. The price of gas goes from $3.14 to $3.55, and suddenly we are atwitter about tapping the national oil reserve?

In the week before TV news began to focus on gas prices, the Administration announced the jobless rate fell to 8.9 percent. The emerging story line is that rising fuel prices are threatening the economic “recovery”. That’s not why the seams are coming apart.

BP’s Temple of Doom: Slowly the Poison the Whole Bloodstream Fills…

(Counterpunch) The electronic ether  is crackling with rumors of suspected collateral damage from the BP Gulf Oil catastrophe. A Youtube video purports to show rain falling in Louisiana, streaking the earth with a Deepwater Horizon sheen of oil. In Tennessee, near the Big River, TV news reports bird deaths and damage to all kinds of plants, bearing scars of an unidentified toxin. Widespread crop damages.

A leitmotif emerges, that corporate America is deliberately scuttling the ship, punching holes in its ribs below the waterline. 9/11 conspiracies have a new sibling: the Gulf Coast catastrophe. Still, I am interested in answers: could poisons in Corexit, the chemical dispersant being used by BP, be carried aloft with aromatic compounds released from the oil. Does methane convert to ozone as bloggers claim, concentrated in droplets that fall from the air like mercury in the Florida Everglades?

Environmental Catastrophe Fatigue: Tuning Out

(Counterpunch) Since the Gulf oil spill catastrophe, more than two months ago, I have dropped in regularly to the excellent online coverage by the Times-Picayunein New Orleans. Recently the web edition of the the newspaper has segregated the Gulf oil spill catastrophe into a special section, relieving readers and subscribers from a ceaseless tide of bad news. To be fair, the Times Picayune has an entire click-thru feature filled with news and information of the unfolding Gulf catastrophe, but I’m not imagining the necessity of sublimation. Americans are an “up” people. We are not weighted down by history. We are inventors, entrepreneurs and builders. The paper is responding to a phenomenon well-known to close observers: environmental catastrophe fatigue.

The Forty Year War on the Environment: Along Came Jeb

(Counterpunch) In The New York Times, Jeb Bush offers a rare glimpse of what we have been missing since the former governor of Florida– and putative lynchpin of the Karl Rove/ Grover Norquist wing of the GOP– left office. Jeb! derides President Obama blaming his brother’s administration for the nation’s ills. “It’s kind of like a kid coming to school saying, ‘The dog ate my homework… “It’s childish. This is what children do until they mature. They don’t accept responsibility.”

Taking Over BP

(Counterpunch) As a routine strategy, “managing expectations” is the best way to deal with disaster. It is easy to understand why BP’s first instinct was to keep the video feed of the oil spill 5,000 feet underground from flowing to the public. BP is continuing to harass and to limit access of reporters from viewing and reporting damaged wildlife. Those oiled birds and sea turtles are toxic to corporate power. The images also contribute substantially to the pressures rising on the Obama administration, as the Gulf of Mexico turns into a horror over a long, hot summer.

Stage Managing a Catastrophe in the Gulf: From “Top Hat” to “Top Kill”

(Counterpunch) From the very first, the Gulf Oil Spill has been about “managing expectations”. Coast Guard Admiral Mary Landry used exactly that term in an early televised press conference about “Top Hat”, the first failed intervention to stop tens of millions of gallons of oil from leaking into the Gulf. “Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry cautioned about high expections for the containment system. ‘So, please, I have to manage your expectations and just understand that our job is not done until this well is sealed, until this well is cemented, our job is not done ’til then.’” (Crews prepare to take contraption to Gulf oil leak, AP, May 5, 2010)

The Tragedy of Managed Expectations in the Gulf: When There’s No Good News, Make Some Up

(Counterpunch) Where is the Gulf oil? This morning googling the question produces 16,676 related articles. It is the spatter of zeitgeist, of Youtube clips, talk shows, nightly news, CSPAN and press conferences from sea to sea shining with petroleum. The hidden clouds of oil spilled by BP into the Gulf of Mexico may or may not be light, may or may not be dispersed into droplets or globs, may or may not coat beaches, wetlands and mangroves along the Gulf coast for decades to come: toxic as the day is long. According to AP, “At first we had a lot of concern about surface animals like turtles, whales and dolphins,” said Paul Montagna, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi who studies Gulf reefs. “Now we’re concerned about everything.” (Deep sea oil plumes, chemical dispersants pose risks for the Gulf’s coral reefs, food chain”, May 17 2010)

Risk and Consequences: Wrecking the Gulf

Deepwater Horizon represents the first instant, large-scale defeat in the era of climate change hopelessness. Capitulations to come will bring far deeper misery and chaos; a real-time slaughter of the lambs. I’m not sure what to do with this despondent news, but I am not inclined to rousing speeches about national character and sacrifice. Not with so many thieves running loose.

Killing the Gulf of Mexico: Unacceptable Risks

Did we have to kill the Gulf of Mexico to stop, “Drill, baby, drill”? Before the spill from Deepwater Horizon is contained, Florida will see exactly the environmental catastrophe that kept offshore oil away from Florida’s coasts until the November 2008 elections. “Drill, baby, drill!”. The question arises: why must the American public “see” an environmental disaster before believing it represented an unacceptable risk all along?