Federal scientists: Limit offshore drilling plans

By GottaLaff

Once again, attempts are being made to eradicate the ugly, toxic BushCo stain:

The federal government's top ocean scientists are urging the Interior Department to drastically reduce plans to open the coast to offshore oil and gas drilling, citing threats to marine life and potentially devastating effects of oil spills in Arctic waters.

The recommendations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are informal and not binding. But if adopted, they would restrict development in some of the nation's most resource-rich untapped offshore areas and mark a significant departure from the pro-drilling policies of the George W. Bush administration. They also give added -- and official -- weight to environmentalists' concerns.

It's like being held captive and suddenly having the gag and shackles removed. Breathing again sure feels swell, doesn't it?

In a letter sent to Interior officials last month, NOAA recommended excluding large tracts of the Alaska coast, the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico from Interior's draft offshore drilling plan for 2010 to 2015.

NOAA recommends establishing buffer zones around the Southern California Ecological Preserve off Santa Barbara. In addition, it suggests that its broader recommendations, such as taking greater account of drilling's effects on marine life, could affect potential lease sales off California.

The agency calls for a ban on drilling in the Arctic until oil companies greatly improve their ability to prevent and clean up oil spills. And it asks Interior to delay new drilling plans until an Obama administration ocean policy task force completes its work late this year.

The comments, dated Sept. 9 and obtained by the Washington Bureau, were included in a letter to Interior officials from NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. They include an often sharp critique of the offshore leasing plan, developed under Bush, that would open swaths of the California coast and other areas to new drilling.

NOAA says the leasing plan's assessment of the risks of drilling, such as oil spills, is "understated and generally not supported or referenced."

Isn't it amazing how wrong BushCo was about so many issues, yet how little resistance they got while in office? Cronyism sure comes in handy.

NOAA urges the Minerals Management Service -- the Interior division that handles offshore drilling -- to consider ocean ecosystems, coastal communities and other environmental factors when finalizing a leasing plan.

The agency stresses the challenges of cleaning up an oil spill in remote, icy waters, which NOAA says would be substantially more difficult than cleaning up a spill elsewhere.

The recommendations highlight the competing pressures on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as he weighs whether to amend the Bush-era leasing plan.

Let's see: Profits for Big Oil v. the health of the planet.

AUDIO-- Bombshell: Bin Laden worked for US until 9/11

By GottaLaff

Former FBI translator and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, Sibel Edmonds.

When I saw that headline, I had to wonder if this is another one of those exaggerated stories that Commenters pounce on me for. But it's Sibel Edmonds, who usually sounds reasonable and very credible. I report, you decide:

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).

Sibel Edmonds on the Mike Malloy Show, hour 1

Sibel Edmonds on the Mike Malloy Show, hour 2

In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”

These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from ‘actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia’) as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

The goals of the American ’statesmen’ directing these activities included control of Central Asia’s vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.

The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities. [...]

According to Sibel:

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

[...]

Sibel has famously been dubbed the most gagged woman in America, having the State Secrets Privilege imposed on her twice. Her 3.5 hour testimony to the 9/11 Commission has been entirely suppressed, reduced to a single footnote which refers readers to her classified testimony.

In the interview, she says that the information that was classified in her case specifically identifies that the US was using Bin Laden and the Taliban in Central Asia, including Xinjiang. In the interview, Sibel reiterates that when invoking the gag orders, the US government claims that it is protecting ” ’sensitive diplomatic relations,’ protecting Turkey, protecting Israel, protecting Pakistan, protecting Saudi Arabia…” This is no doubt partially true, but it is also true that they are protecting themselves too, and it is a crime in the US to use classification and secrecy to cover up crimes.

As Sibel says in the interview:

I have information about things that our government has lied to us about… those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.

Summary

The bombshell here is obviously that certain people in the US were using Bin Laden up to September 11, 2001.

It is important to understand why: the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years, promoting the Islamization of Central Asia in an attempt to personally profit off military sales as well as oil and gas concessions.

The silence by the US government on these matters is deafening. So, too, is the blowback.

Sadly, this makes sense to me in the most chilling way imaginable.

Your turn.

VIDEO- Inhofe: Oil And Gas Usage Doesn’t Create Any Pollution

By GottaLaff



::Cough!:: Oh wow, excuse me, I live in the L.A. area and the pollution here is just ::wheeze!:: awful! There are so many cars out here ::hack!:: and I've always been told that they are a major source of my ::wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeze!:: pulmonary issues, but Inhofe says otherwise:

This afternoon, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) took to the Senate floor and basically made a pitch for the oil and gas industry. He said that to ensure “energy security,” the United States should increasingly “extract our own resources.” According to Inhofe, this solution would not only achieve energy independence, but it would also be pollution-free [...]

Inhofe is an anti-science senator who thinks that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Gee, I'm not a smoker, so that's sure not the cause of my ::hack! wheeze!:: lung irritation.

Hmmm. I guess I need to do more research. It's embarrassing how wrong I've been all these ::cough! hack! wheeze!:: years.

By the way, what's up with all this crazy weather? It couldn't be due to all that pollution, could it? Nah...

Eradicating another ugly Bush stain: Court halts Utah oil/gas leases

By GottaLaff

BushCo just had their noses rubbed into one of their own greasy, smelly, putrid stains. Score another one for the good guys:

Court halts Utah oil and gas leases

Environmental groups win a temporary restraining order, potentially leaving the fate of the 110,000 acres to the Obama administration.

A federal judge late Saturday halted the Bush administration’s efforts to open 110,000 acres of federal land in Utah to oil and gas exploration, ruling that the danger of damaging the pristine land required further study before leases were awarded. [...]

A coalition of seven groups sued for a temporary restraining order, and the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina means the checks written by energy companies for the land cannot be cashed.

[This] will potentially place the fate of the land into the hands of the incoming Obama administration. Obama aides have objected to the sale.