OK. Unf**k The Gulf Already

Chalchiuhtlicue's Wrath

About 500 years ago, Cortez landed in Mexico. He told the people who were already living there that they had to become subjects of the King of Spain. But, they told him, they were already subjects of Montezuma, the Emperor who was in Tenochtitlan. Cortez told them that Montezuma had to become a subject of the King of Spain, too, and he took Montezuma prisoner. As if that weren’t enough, he told the People that they had to give up their Old Gods and accept his God. Cortez’s God, he told them, was far more powerful than their Gods, and if they didn’t accept his God and abandon their own Gods and abandon their practice of having idols and human sacrifices and ceremonies and dances to their Gods, they would be killed. Also, Cortez told them, they had to deliver to Cortez all of their gold and silver. So it was that the Spanish foothold came to what is now Mexico in 1517.

Cortez was deadly serious about obtaining compliance with these demands. To make sure they were carried out he brought to this hemisphere some frightening, never before seen things. He brought the first firearms. And explosives. And the first steel swords. And the first, huge battle horses. And horrible, gigantic war dogs. In the first skirmishes with the people who lived here, he showed that he and his God had entirely different rules in war. The number of deaths would be enormous. No captives would be taken. The dead would be left on the battlefield.

Those who lived here used in combat obsidian swords, which were designed to injure but not to kill. The goal of their war was to capture enemy combatants. Later, these might be sacrificed or eaten. But the idea wasn’t to kill them all on the battlefield. These obsidian swords were no match for Spanish steel. Steel swords shattered them. And foot soldiers were no match for cavalry. Or guns. Or explosives. A few, foul smelling Spanish soldiers were a match for large numbers of warriors.

To this mismatch Cortez added terror. Killing many unarmed non-combatants, including women and children was a tactic to assure compliance with Cortez’s wishes. Apparently, this horror was acceptable to Cortez’s God. To no one’s surprise, it was quite effective in securing compliance with Cortez’s demands.

Chief among what was not acceptable to Cortez’s God were the Original Gods. There were many Gods. Cortez insisted that these Gods all had to be abandoned. No exceptions. These Gods’ requirements, Cortez believed, were simply unacceptable. There could be no idols. There could be no offerings or sacrifices to these Gods. There could be no more singing and dancing. People who insisted on ceremonies for these Gods of any kind, offerings, sacrifices, prayers, songs, festivals, those people had to be converted. And if they resisted conversion, they’d be killed. Period. If their Gods were so powerful, Cortez taunted them, why aren’t they protecting you now? Why are they letting us destroy their temples and their images? Why are they letting us hold Montezuma captive and kill you? Why are they letting us live in this Temple and cover their altar with a picture of the Madonna?

Cortez evidently didn’t understand the Gods. There were obvious reasons why people followed them and made offerings to them. This was not superstition, regardless of how Cortez may have characterized it. The Gods were cared for because they were supporting the people’s lives. They had done so for centuries. It was a gigantic presumption on Cortez’s part to insist that the Gods were no good, or that they were powerless. Who was he to command them to do anything? Wasn't his arrival evidence of their displeasure?

Chalchiuhtlicue, Goddess of water, she with the “skirt of gems,” companion to the mighty rain God Tlaloc, watched and saw that the people gradually abandoned her. Not all of them left her at once. There was no formal renunciation of her. Over time, over a long time, virtually everyone who had offered to her songs, dances, prayers, sacrifices, offerings, virtually everyone who had remembered her, died or forgot her. There was no more dancing and no more incense. How long had it been since there had been sacred copal smoke? And drumming? And a fiesta? And worse, they didn’t tell their children about her. If they were frightened or terrorized into abandoning her, it did not matter to her. That was no excuse. Wasn't she an Old God? Had she not served them for millennia? After all, she recalled, there were reasons why for so many millennia the people had praised her, made offerings to her, and remembered her. There were reasons why they built temples to her. It was because she was their God and she cared for them. How dare they think they did not need her?

Chalchiuhtlicue was the Goddess of the waters, of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. She and Tlaloc together brought the rains. They watered the crops. If they didn’t bring rain, the People would starve. The mais would not germinate. They also protected the life of the seas and the lakes around Teotihuacan. They were responsible for fish. And frogs. Shellfish and crabs. Yes, sometimes they brought fierce storms, hurricanes, mud slides, terrible winds, but even these they moderated. They cared for the People. They made the wheel of life turn. They made the cycle of the weather. They brought sacred water. And in response to the offerings and prayers, Chalchiuhtlicue did what she could to be of help them. When she saw that she was almost completely forgotten, she became angry. And vengeful. And she decided she would no longer moderate the Sea and protect the people. Because they had forgotten her. And abandoned her. They had lived by her Grace, but they betrayed her. She seized her obsidian knife, and she stabbed herself in her stomach.

Perhaps you can understand that just as a dog’s year is 7 human years, a God’s year is about 500 human years. Chalchiutlicue waited for us to come back her. She waited a full God year. She waited long enough. And now she knows we are not coming back. As we have abandoned her, so she has now abandoned us.

Chalchiuhtlicue has now fully withdrawn her help. She has given up on us. And she has sacrificed herself.

You can see this in the Gulf. You can see her blood and guts emptying into the Gulf. You can see that she has cut herself deeply with her obsidian knife and is bleeding to death.

Who were we to leave her? Who were we to believe that she was powerless? Who were we to believe the calumnies Cortez brought? Didn’t we understand the Gods? Didn’t we realize that there were good reasons why we made offerings and ceremonies to them for so very long?

Haiku

You swim from the oil
But there's nowhere to go.
Dolphin sobs and cries.

Dear Pachamama: This Too Can Heal

The Despacho


Beyond the anger, frustration, sadness, depression and fear of the BP oil disaster there must be something else. The Gulf of Mexico is fast becoming a deadly petroleum gumbo garnished with oil coated pelicans, life in the sea is massing and trying to unsuccessfully to escape the pollution, and there may really be nothing on a practical level that can be done to staunch the hemorrhage of Pachamama's vital fluids. We watch in horror. And grief. Is our mother dying? I awoke in the middle of the night to write this haiku:

I watch you dying.
Pelican can't fly away.
Oceans fill my eyes.

Yesterday I had the thought that we are watching the death of the coral and multitudes of the finned and swimming creatures because they are offering themselves up, sacrificing themselves to give us a message we have willfully refused for decades to hear. I want us to hear and heed that message. And they are apparently ready to die to have us hear and understand it.

But there is more. If it is true that what we give our attention to grows, and I believe it is, it is time to shift some of our conscious attention from our pervasive thoughts of grief and anxiety to another thought. This thought: this too can heal. Even this unprecedented horrendous mess Pachamama can heal. Even this unmitigated disaster she can heal. How she can do this is not important. What is so very important is the thought, the belief that this too can heal. That thought needs to take hold. Without the thought that this too can be healed, there is only focused attention on the death of the Gulf, the death of all of its creatures, the eventual death of the oceans, and the death of the planet. And that focused attention will kill all of us.

The Dhammapada tells us this very same thing, that we are what we think:

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

Filled with anger, fear, sadness, grief, overcome with frustration, we are what we think. With only those intense thoughts there is no room for anything else. There is only death.

To mark the Solstice and to offer both our thanks and our deepest apologies to Mother Earth, Pachamama, Santa Madre Tierra, many friends gathered on Saturday. We made a despacho, an offering, the one pictured above.

A despacho is a prayer bundle in the Q'ero tradition from the high Andes of Peru. It is made up of many symbolic elements: sugar for sweetness, lima beans for nutrition, raisins to honor the ancestors, alphabet noodles to honor learning, red wine to honor the feminine, white white to honor the masculine, and on and on and on. There are so many ingredients. There is a clam shell to symbolize the mamakocha, the oceans and waters of our planet. There are cotton strands to symbolize the clouds. And stars. And the sun. And Pachamama. The despacho in many ways is a complete, mythic universe of offering. To it, each participant in the ceremony adds personal and community prayers. In this case, the prayers were especially for the healing of Pachamama from the Gulf disaster.

Many of the prayers were like this one by Masaru Emoto:

Now let's give energy of love and gratitude to the waters and all the living creatures in Mexico Gulf by praying like this:

To the water, whales, dolphins, pelicans, fishes, shellfishes, planktons, corals, algae and all creatures in our Gulf of Mexico:

I apologize.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.

source.

Or like this one I wrote:

Dear Pachamama, Mother Earth, Santa Madre Tierra, Gaia, Sweet Mother, I am so sorry for what we have done and are doing to you and your creatures, our brothers and sisters, the creatures who live in and near the sea. We don't know how to stop the oil, and we don't know how to save all of these beings. Please understand our remorse, our regret, our shame and accept out deepest apologies for destroying this part of this wondrous, blue pearl planet. Please forgive us.

source.

After all of the many prayers are placed in the bundle, and the bundle is tied up, the despacho is burned in a ceremonial fire. This, the tradition says, releases the prayers to the heavens, but we all know that the prayers reach their destination as soon as they are thought. Whenever they are thought.

I know that I will not be able to keep my focus on the possible healing of the Gulf and our planet. I know that I will again become infuriated. At BP. At the government. At Obama. At the BP CEO. And Louisiana's politicians. At Missisisppi's governor. That's just human. My hope is that I will be able to turn away from strong negative feelings to hold gently in the palm of my hand the possibility of healing for the Gulf and our beautiful, blue planet. And for all of us.

Pachamama, I Beg You Please Forgive Us

This is deeply troubling. And beyond sickening. AP reports:

GULF SHORES, Ala. - Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange — and troubling — phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say.

The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators.

"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

Dear Pachamama, Mother Earth, Santa Madre Tierra, Gaia, Sweet Mother, I am so sorry for what we have done and are doing to you and your creatures, our brothers and sisters, the creatures who live in and near the sea. We don't know how to stop the oil, and we don't know how to save all of these beings. Please understand our remorse, our regret, our shame and accept out deepest apologies for destroying this part of this wondrous, blue pearl planet. Please forgive us.

BP Spills Coffee

Day 47

Once again, my hair's on fire.

These are the salient facts. The BP oil leak continues unabated. Oil has transformed the Gulf Coast into the largest man made ecological disaster in history. It may be impossible to stop the leak. Even if it's possible to stop the leak, it may take months and luck to do so. Neither the Government nor BP apparently has the resources to stop the leak quickly. Flying over the leak and visiting the Gulf Coast and making repeated speeches about the leak and trying not to look completely helpless or to cry on camera is apparently all that Government can do for us. There has not been an all out, dramatic, gigantic mobilization of human and other resources to capture oil or to contain it. Oil has arrived and more is expected on beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. There's no end in sight.

My hair's on fire. I'm not really able to be with the situation. The Gulf has turned into an oil gumbo with dead animal croutons, and my emotions are a boiling, raging, oil stew. There is no real relief, no real change in sight. There is no comfort. Even thinking about impermanence, which can be an ally at times like this, doesn't help. Because there's my ever present dread that while the current situation cannot continue forever, it just might become much, much worse. What would that look like? It would be the death of an ecosystem.

At the moment there seem to be only two real possibilities. These are not disjunctive. Choice one: pick up my shovels and drive to the coast. Do whatever I can to be of help there. Choice two: ceremony and prayer. Beg Santa Madre Tierra, Pachamama, Mother Earth for forgiveness and healing.

When Is The BP Perp Walk?

It's no secret. I, who have devoted much of my professional life to defending people accused of horrendous crimes; I, who generally feel that nobody should ever go to prison; I who have spent decades fighting against state killing; I confess. I want to see BP executives indicted, perp walked in New Orleans in handcuffs before a howling media, convicted by juries and locked up. Locked up for a very long time. Like Bernie Madoff.

I don't care particularly what federal and/or state crimes the BP and drilling folks have committed. I want them to be given a full and fair trial in a federal court, and I want them imprisoned. For a very long time. I want them to be an example that this kind of environmental destruction will not be tolerated in a civilize society. There, I've said it.

And the good news for me, and for you if you feel this way is that apparently the current administration has finally decided to move in the direction of criminal prosecutions. It only took 53 days of spillage and a world record, man made environmental catastrophe. Goodness, even WFAN Sports Talk Radio in NYC today was complaining about BP and the spill and federal oversight. So finally, today, at long last, the administration is at last starting to pursue the criminals who have attempted to murder an entire ocean and all of the life in it and surrounding it.

You have some choices in how to think about this crime. You can think of it as a crime of greed. You can think of it as a crime of recklessness. You can think of it as a crime of stupidity. You can think of it as a mix of all of these. But regardless of the motivations, regardless of how one characterizes it, it's a crime.

The New York Times reports:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Tuesday that federal authorities have opened criminal and civil investigations into the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill,” Mr. Holder said after a meeting with state attorneys general in New Orleans. “If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response." snip...

Earlier Tuesday, President Obama vowed to pursue criminal inquiries into the cause of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as the crisis he called “the greatest environmental disaster of its kind in our history” threatened to engulf his second year in office.

“We have an obligation to determine what went wrong,” Mr. Obama said, appearing in the Rose Garden after meeting with the two men he has appointed to lead an inquiry into the cause of the spill, former Senator Bob Graham of Florida and William K. Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

“If laws were broken, leading to death and destruction,” Mr. Obama said, “my solemn pledge is, we will bring those responsible to justice.”

If laws were broken. If we find evidence of criminal behavior. What a joke. If only these attempts to sound tones of restraint and impartiality and fairness could be the last vestige of federal dithering and misinformation and indecisiveness. For 53 days we've all watched as the Gulf of Mexico is ruined, we've watched while BP has demonstrated beyond cavil that it has no clue whatsoever how to stop the leak, we've watched them lie and fabricate and evade and lull and protect their sorry behinds.

I personally have no intention of reading all of Title 18 of the United States Code, and all of the other possibly relevant federal statutes, to figure out specifically what laws have been broken by Transocean and BP and their regulators. Sadly, unlike other cases, it's that clear to me: if global corporations can befoul an entire ocean and it doesn't violate several federal laws, the US Code isn't worth a cup of warm spit.

I've been hoping for almost two months that a criminal investigation would be launched. I look forward to the arrests. I look forward to the perp walks. I look forward to the courthouse steps statements of innocence. Bring it on. I can hardly wait for a jury to speak and for a New Orleans judge to impose sentence

BP: Wounding My Mother, Wounding Pachamama

It begins as helplessness. Nothing more, nothing less. I watch as oil spews from BP's well into the Gulf of Mexico, killing sea life, destroying the ocean, ruining the breeding grounds near the shore. The Gulf of Mexico is becoming a vast petroleum gumbo garnished with oil soaked sea birds and drowned turtles. I watch this. I wish that all of the wise men and women of the world could find a solution, could stop the flow. But as the time elapses, and the 48 hour periods to know whether the flow can be stemmed mount up, it should be obvious to me. There may be no solution. At least not for the foreseeable future. And by then, by then what even BP is calling a "catastrophe" will be that much more enormous. That much more irremediable. The leak will have killed much of the Gulf of Mexico, and unchecked, it will continue to kill.

Keith Olbermann thinks that Obama should show more anger about this. That, he thinks, will show people that Obama is with them. Or something. Personally, I have more than enough unproductive anger about BP. I don't need it to be mirrored. Or extended. No. What I want is internal. I want to understand what BP is doing and has done to my interior landscape. I want to come to terms with that. And to comprehend it in this way, I use what I know: I look at the mythic, and I look at myself. It's Shamanism 101.

Please join me on this voyage.

Have I ever seen anything like this before? Have I ever seen my Mother Earth, Pachamama, Santa Madre Tierra so wounded and killed by one of her children? I've been thinking about the BP leak as a wound that will lead to matricide, the death of our Mother.

I've found two myths that seem to apply. There are doubtless others. I offer these two as a beginning point.

In Babylonian mythology, Tiamat is a primordial goddess of the salt water ocean, mating with the god Abzû to produce younger gods. ... Later when Ea's son Marduk creates problems for her yet sleeping god youngsters by playing with sand storms and tornadoes, she conspires to retaliate by creating eleven frightening monsters and erecting her son Kingu as their general, but this plot fails when Marduk slays them all including Tiamat herself. From Tiamat's body the world is formed, land and sea.

Wiki

Marduk kills his mother. Marduk, who plays with things that should not be played with, sandstorms and tornadoes and deep sea drilling, kills the primordial goddess of the salt water ocean. And the world is far different because of her death; it then has both land and sea. Marduk's killing his mother is a cosmos shifting, future changing event:

Tiamat possessed the Tablets of Destiny and in the primordial battle she gave them to Kingu, the god she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host. The deities gathered in terror, but [Marduk], first extracting a promise that he would be revered as "king of the gods", overcame her, armed with the arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear.

And the lord stood upon Tiamat's hinder parts,
And with his merciless club he smashed her skull.
He cut through the channels of her blood,
And he made the North wind bear it away into secret places.

Slicing Tiamat in half, he made from her ribs the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the source of the Tigris and the Euphrates. With the approval of the elder deities, he took from Kingu the Tablets of Destiny, installing himself as the head of the Babylonian pantheon.

Is that what we have done? Has the BP leak changed the Gulf of Mexico, the oceans, and the entire world in ways that cannot yet be comprehended? Is that what we are watching and are helpless to change? Put another way, are we Marduk?

Another myth. If you think of the Earth, Mother Earth, Pachamama, Santa Madre Tierra as a living, moving, thinking, conscious being, our planet, our Mother, what is this horrible gaping wound that has been done to her? What is this deep puncture to her insides, to her womb, to her intestines that is now leaking her precious blood and bodily fluids into the Gulf of Mexico? What kind of grave injury have we given to our Mother that is now spurting her life force, her blood into the ocean, creating huge plumes of oil and death as it flows?

How do I confront the bleeding out of our Mother? Bleeding I am unable to staunch.

And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.

I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field...

Ezekiel 16:6 - 7

It's an ancient prayer. Some call it the Bleeding Prayer. "When I came upon you polluted in your own blood, I said, 'Live. Live, like the plants in the field.'" It seems to fit the present disaster: uncontrollable bleeding of our Mother that is beyond our ability to check. Our engineering and governmental resources just aren't up to the task. If there's a solution, it's obviously in another realm, of Spirit.

For the past month, I have written extensively about BP and this disaster. What I notice about my writing is that it's angry and I have been making a sharp, bright line between BP and the rest of us, including myself. On reflection I now think that one of the reasons we are so ineffective in handling this disaster is our shadow and the degree to which we have tried to suppress and disown our inner BP. My inner BP: my tyrannical, know-it-all, powerful, greedy, reckless, patriarchal, secretive, dishonest inner BP. As I write this sentence, I think, "Wait. BP is the fourth largest corporation in the world. It's not even a person. You're not like that, at all. You love the Earth." A thought that to me is first rate evidence of my own shadow and of the existence of an inner BP that has neither been acknowledged nor honored.

So what, as Lenin said, is to be done? I invite you to join me a small ceremony. I will make a small altar to my inner BP. I will put on it things that remind me of BP or that I identify as BP or that have something to do with my inner BP and drilling and oil and accidents and destruction and recklessness. I will acknowledge these many things, and I will consider how it is that they have helped me live and exist in the world, in my life, the benefits they have given me in the past. And then, when I understand and can feel how that is, I will honor each of these aspects of BP that I find in me. I will thank them for being of assistance to me, for helping me survive, for helping me grow and succeed. And then I will commit them to the fire and release them.

I invite you to join me in this.

BP Now Admits It's A "Catastrophe"

Well, that sure didn't take long. We've had more than a month of watching oil gush from a broken pipe a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico. We've watched BP, which has Ken Salazar's foot on it's hydra-headed neck, take every possible step to save oil it could sell while it dithered about blocking the leak and invented sci-fi machines to capture oil. And we've watched in horror while enormous amounts of oil flow into the sea and onto beaches and through marshes, and we're seeing pelicans covered in oil and drowned turtles and fishing bans and devastation in the tourist industry. And now, after all of that, as if we don't already know that we're watching something that foreshadows the impending death of the Gulf of Mexico, BP has revised its characterization of the spill from having a "modest" environmental impact to being an "environmental catastrophe."

What a sickening development.

CNN has the story and video.

And the result is that while the Gulf of Mexico is being ruined everyone is now officially "frustrated." The President. You. Me. We're frustrated because all of the smart people in the world in convocation apparently cannot put this Humpty Dumpty together again. Or haven't. So at long last, according to TPM, DFA is now calling for a boycott of BP. What else, I ask, can we do to express ourselves?

There are really two issues. The first is the leak. But the second, and over time it might be the more important, is collecting, containing and then cleaning up the mess. That process is sadly long overdue and it does not depend on stemming the flow. It depends on the government mobilizing the resources necessary to contain and clean up the oil. And if you think that blocking the leak is/was a challenge, the clean up is a far larger one.

Can we please get going on that? Every day that we wait on this is a day of more suffering and death in the Gulf.

BP And Obama And The World's Largest Man Made Environmental Disaster

We've all had a month to stew about this. The Gulf of Mexico is slowly turning into a petroleum gumbo laced with oil coated pelicans and dead dolphins. We've been watching a slow motion train wreck. Except it's not just two colliding steam engines. No. No such luck. It's the Gulf of Mexico, teaming with life, and its currents are moving the spilled oil around. Eventually it will be everywhere. And while we're watching that unfold, and seeing clumps of tar and oil all over the beaches, we are beginning to suspect that, hard as it is to believe, maybe nobody, that's right nobody, knows how to plug the leak. And stop the spill. So we're going to have to watch a colossal ecological disaster we are utterly helpless to stop. Or mitigate. The signs are already everywhere, preparing us for a spectacle of wildlife and oceanic death, slowly breaking to us the very bad news we really don't want to hear.

Just look at this from AP:

Oil spill frustration is rampant.

The White House is being pounded for not acting more aggressively in the month-old oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The administration is hitting back, mostly at BP. Louisiana is threatening to take matters into its own hands. The truth is, the government has little direct experience at either the national or state level at stopping deepwater oil leaks — and few realistic options.

With the oil flowing and spreading at a furious rate, President Barack Obama has accused BP of a "breakdown of responsibility." He named a special independent commission to review what happened.

But the administration seems to want to have it both ways — insisting it's in charge while also insisting that BP do the heavy lifting. The White House is arguing that government officials aren't just watching from the sidelines, but also acknowledging there's just so much the government can do directly.

"They are 5,000 feet down. BP or the private sector alone have the means to deal with that problem down there. It's not government equipment that is going to be used to do that," Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen told a White House briefing on Monday.

This is a recipe for a most horrible outcome. Our frustration today is absolutely nothing compared to what is coming. What is coming is the largest man made environmental disaster in history. This is going to make Chernobyl look like Three Mile Island. This is going to make Exxon Valdez and Santa Barbara look like a joke.

The administration has stated that it is going to have "a special independent commission" "review what happened." But I don't need no stinking commission to know what happened. We've been over it and over it and over it. That's all back story anyway. If the Gulf of Mexico dies, as surely it will from enough oil, "what happened" is going to be the least of anyone's concerns. It's going to be a footnote in a narration of the extensive misery and suffering that the spill has caused.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Interior supposedly has his foot on the throat of BP. And the government continues to rely on oil company "expertise" to deal with the spill. But the Interior Department was still apparently granting permits for underwater drilling even after he declared a moratorium on that. And we're already being told that the feds can supervise and direct BP, but that they aren't capable to doing anything on their own. Look at this. The Coast Guard's guy who's in charge of this federal emergency response is saying that it's BP or the private sector that has "the means to deal with that problem", not the government. If you kick them out of the way, who will take over? Nobody, he claims. I asked before and I ask again, whether this is the first time that a claimed foot on the throat has been confused with fellatio.

No, the administration isn't going to elbow sweet BP aside. Ever. Absolutely not. No matter what. We're already being told that BP, the fourth largest corporation in the world, has all the "means to deal with that problem," and that the rest of us can just sit here and watch the largest man made ecological disaster in history slowly, but inexorably unfold. And the expertise, we're being told, is all in the hands of the oil companies. They're doing, so we're told, all they can do.

There are some very, very smart people in the United States. I'd like to tell you that they can be quickly called together to solve this problem. That it's that big a disaster that unconventional approaches are required. But I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think the administration will take over the efforts to close the spill. I don't think anything will change in the way this disaster is being handled until much later. Until we've been made physically and emotionally sick by the condition of the Gulf of Mexico. Then maybe things will change. If it's not too late.

Sea Turttle Swimming Through BP Spill

Some things require no words.

Is This Obama's Katrina? Nice Work, Kenny.

Exactly how far does BP have to go, how many times does it have to blunder and fail and make excuses while it tries to preserve its investment in the leaking well, before the US pushes BP out of the way and stops the leak that is now destroying the Gulf of Mexico? Apparently, pretty damn far. Long story short, the US isn't going to take over the problem at this point. You know we're in big, big trouble when the intervention of the US Army Corps of Engineers looks like an improvement in disaster management.

This from Reuters makes the US government's intentions less than perfectly clear:

The U.S. government will move aside BP (BP.L) from the operation to try to halt the Gulf of Mexico oil spill if it decides the company is not performing as required in its response to the well leak, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Sunday.

"I am angry and I am frustrated that BP has been unable to stop this oil from leaking and to stop the pollution from spreading," Salazar told reporters after visiting BP's U.S. headquarters in Houston.

"We are 33 days into this effort and deadline after deadline has been missed," Salazar added, referring to the failure of containment efforts attempted so far by London-based BP to control the gushing undersea well one mile (1.6 km) down on the ocean floor.

President Barack Obama's administration is facing growing public and political pressure to take full charge of the oil spill containment operation as criticism against BP grows.

Yeah, Ken, we're all angry and frustrated. But, guess what? We're not the Secretary of the Interior or of anything else. We're not in the cabinet. We're sitting here watching the Gulf of Mexico turn into a petrol gumbo laced with oil coated pelicans.

And what exactly do you mean when you say, "if" the company isn't performing as required? Performing as required means that the leak is stopped. Closed up. That there's no more oil. Running a straw into the leak so that BP can sell it and make money on it isn't exactly "performing as required."

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said, but he did not specify at what point this would occur or what might be the trigger for it.

"This is an existential crisis for one of the world's largest companies," he said, in a reference to the billions of dollars of cleanup and damages costs that BP faces.

Give me a f*cking break. That last paragraph has to be some kind of sick joke. "An existential crisis for one of the world's largest companies?" Dude, it's an existential crisis for the Gulf of Mexico, its inhabitants, and its wild life if not the oceans generally and the planet. You think I or anybody else gives a rat's ass whether BP fails?

If you know how to stop the leak, it's really time to stop it. This sitting and watching as BP diddles and tries to harmonize stopping the leak with preserving its investment in the well is going to kill the Gulf, if it hasn't done so already. 33 days is more than enough time to stop the leak.

The federal response, described in your brilliant statements today, is what I call feckless. And that's the nicest term I can find to describe it. This is a disgrace. The only thing we're lacking at the moment is the icing. That would be Obama telling Ken Salazar what a great job he's doing. I wish I didn't think that was next up.

Deepwater Horizon: The Mess After One Month

This video is a compilation of the 27 images in the oil spill trajectory ensemble forecast from four different numerical models animation produced by OCG/CMS/USF, plus a google earth satellite view from May 17 of the Gulf with the oil visible moving into the loop current.



The Deepwater Horizon oil spill trajectory ensemble forecast from four different numerical models - modeling includes a West Florida Shelf version of ROMS nested in the Navy's operational HYCOM. We are also diagnosing model output from the Navy's HYCOM, from NCSU's SABGOM ROMS, and also from the NOAA RTOFS.

http://ocg6.marine.usf.edu/~liu/oil_spill_ensemble_forecast.html

h/t to Edger and docuDharma

Taking Care Of Old Mom Earth

The oddest thoughts.

If I lived in suburbia and my dog ran out and pooped on my neighbor's lawn, my neighbor would be angry. My neighbor might tell me to clean it up. S/he'd be much angrier if I spilled a truck full of chemical fertilizer or garbage on the lawn, something that would be hard to clean up and looked and smelled bad.

I live in the country. I go for a walk in the fields with my dog. On my own land I come upon an enormous horse poop. Later, I see my neighbor and ask if she's been riding on my land. I shake my head, no, at her. She says she'll clean it up. I think, well, what if she had left instead a few leaking barrels of hazardous material or poison. What if she left behind baited leg traps so my dog and pets could be injured. I'd be much angrier.

If BP were pouring its oil on my roof, or in my yard, or in my street, I'd tell them to cut it out and to clean it up. I'd probably also get angry at BP. I would plot ways of having my sweet revenge on them for making a mess of my house, or land, or street. I'd think about all of the demonstrations, lawsuits, administrative actions, and so on I could instigate against them.

But BP's not pouring it directly on me, or my family, or my house, or my land. No. They're spilling it, lots and lots of it in the Gulf of Mexico. I notice that I'm less angry about this than if they were filling my basement with crude oil. I notice that nobody's really picketing BP gas stations or their corporate headquarters. I notice that people are not screaming at them to cut it out and clear it up. I notice that people are not asking that they be nationalized or seized or confiscated. I notice that their gas stations are still open for business. Same for their refineries. I notice that their bank accounts still work, their stock is still traded. I notice business as usual. I notice that I can turn away from them and do other things. Like go to work. And sleep.

Why is that? Is it because the Gulf of Mexico isn't my physical backyard? Or my fields? Or my street? Is it because it seems farther away from me? Is it because we're just beginning to see the devastation that this will bring to the Gulf Coast? Is it because we don't believe that it is destroying the Gulf and our planet? Is it because the oil isn't going directly into my basement and disrupting my life at this second and befouling my every breath and making me sick?

I like to think that we humans are stewards for mother earth. That we take care of her. It's like the old song, "The earth is my mother/I must take care of her." I like to think that we belong to the earth, that she does not belong to us. I like to think that our precious, small, blue planet will support and nurture us and give us all we need. And all she needs in exchange is that we take good care of her. But I don't think we're taking good car of her right now. I think we're destroying her. It's not just the oil in the Gulf, not by a long shot, but the oil in the Gulf is the latest, quickest, more egregious example of the failure of our husbandry.

If somebody insulted my mother, or harmed her, I would be outraged. I would protect her. I would do whatever was in my power to keep her from harm. Goodness. Some people will actually fight if somebody even says something bad about their mother. Well, this is worse than saying something bad. This is actually harming, defiling, injuring the planet and the creatures that live on it. Here we are, our mother is actually being harmed. And somehow, somehow we sit idly by.

We think about the situation. While we think, the oil is still flowing. Out of control. We hope that some new contraption will stop the leak. The last one didn't but maybe this one will. Or the well that arrives in July. We hope the damage won't be too great. We hope BP will stop the damage, the spill. We hope the government will get involved. We sit on our hands. We stare at the ceiling. We hope this isn't the beginning of our planet's death rattle.

And, of course, we make arguments about policies we will need in the future. And we talk about how it's our fault that there is a gigantic oil leak in the sea because we're addicted to oil. We blame ourselves in some regard for this rapidly expanding injury to our planet. But we still stare at the ceiling. And we hope this isn't the beginning of our planet's death rattle. And that something will save our pearly blue planet from harm.

The truth, I'm afraid, is that we're in a trance. We've been drugged by darts. We're immobilized. We sit and stare. We think. We talk. We type. But until the end we won't do anything to respond to this, to embody our fury, to protect ourselves and our planet and our oceans. We'll wait and hope that the damage stops. And we'll talk about our planet's remarkable capacity to stabilize itself and heal itself and repair itself.

I wonder. Are we trying to kill our planet? Is this a slow form of attempted planetary suicide?

Why are we letting our mother down like this? Where is our gratitude for all she does for us?