Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq By Paul Bignell

From 9/11 Blogger and The Independent

Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq By Paul Bignell

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change...

Read more.

Companies That Made And Maintained Blow Out Preventer Have Had Hands-On Access To It

From Cryptogon.

A federal board allowed to monitor testing of a key piece of Gulf oil spill evidence — the blowout preventer — demanded Thursday that the analysis stop, saying representatives of the companies that made and maintained the 300-ton device have been getting preferential and sometimes hands-on access to it...


“Given the well-publicized history of improper relationships between the former Minerals Management Service and members of the oil industry, one would have expected that extraordinary care would be taken to conduct the BOP testing above reproach,” safety board chairperson Rafael Moure-Eraso said in the letter. “One would have expected an independent, second set of eyes like the CSB to be welcomed. Regrettably this has not been the case.”
The MMS was renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement after two scathing reports by a federal inspector general. The reports highlighted drug use and sex among agency employees and oil and gas industry executives, and said drilling regulators accepted gifts and trips from oil and gas companies and even negotiated to go work for the industry while overseeing it.

A Damaged Gulf Stream?

From Max Keiser.

Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura: "The Gulf Oil Spill" (FULL LENGTH)

Though a somewhat sensational TV program, I think this episode is definitely worth watching for the issues it raises.

Halliburton Knew Cement for BP Unstable, Report Finds (Update2)

From Bloomberg.

Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Halliburton Co. knew cement it mixed for BP Plc’s doomed Macondo well was unstable as much as two months before the April blowout that triggered the worst U.S. oil spill, a report to a presidential commission found. Halliburton dropped the most in almost two years in New York trading...

Senior NOAA Scientist Admits He Lied That Gulf Spill Oil Is Gone, Puts Administration's Spill-Disclosure "Credibility" In Question

From Zerohedge.

The fears of all those who had long believed that the administration, either in collboration with BP or otherwise, had been flagrantly lying about the true situation in the GOM, have been confirmed by The Guardian (via BNO). "A senior U.S. government scientist on Thursday admitted that three-quarters of the oil that was released into the Gulf of Mexico after BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill was still there, contradicting his earlier claim that the worst of the spill had passed, the Guardian reported...

Unknown To Moron Establishment Media, Fooled Public, Gulf Oil Well Problems Continue...

I would like to think that now that Obama went swimming in the Gulf everything is ok. However, I am not quite sure after reading this.

Well B? Intriguing Video Suggests Another Well Is Leaking In Gulf...

This was a good find from Kushmonster.

Do People Really Drown In Hot Tubs?

They are going with the drowning in a hot tub story on Bloomberg.

Tara Harrington, medical associate at Maine's Office of Chief Medical Examiner knows exactly what happened, absolutely, and right away.

“It was an accident,” Harrington said today in a telephone interview. She said “heart disease” was listed for the category of “other significant conditions” on the death certificate.


So "heart disease" according to Bloomberg was just an "other significant conditions." So no heart attack now?

That's hard to believe. What did he just fall asleep in his hot tub and drown while simultaneously accusing BP of murder and the government of cover-up of the destruction of the Gulf Of Mexico? I doubt it.

BP Critic Matt Simmons Dies Of Hot Tub Heart Attack?

From Kennebec Journal

According to police reports, Simmons suffered a heart attack while in a hot tub at his home on North Haven. An autopsy is planned for today in Augusta, according to the Knox County Sheriff's Office...

From Zerohedge.

CNBC notes the apparent cause of death of the recently popular BP skeptic, and founder of oil company Simmons & Co., was a heart attack. A conflicting report according to WLBZ cites the source of death as drowning...


Here is Matt Simmons from just a few weeks ago:

The Crime of the Century: What BP and the US Government Don't Want You to Know, Part I

From Huffington Post and Kushmonster

The unprecedented disaster caused by the BP oil spill at the Deepwater Horizon Mississippi Canyon 252 site continues to expand even as National Incident Commander Thad Allen and BP assert that the situation is improving, the blown-out source capped and holding steady, the situation well in hand and cleanup operations are being scaled back. The New York Times declared on the front page this past week that the oil was disolving more rapidly than anticipated. Time magazine reported that environmental anti-advocate Rush Limbaugh had a point when he said the spill was a "leak". Thad Allen pointed out in a press conference that boats are still skimming on the surface, a futile gesture when the dispersant Corexit is being used to break down oil on the surface. As the oil is broken down, it mixes with the dispersant and flows under or over any booming operations...

Scientists Find Evidence That Oil And Dispersant Mix Is Making Its Way Into The Foodchain

From The Huffington Post


Scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico, the first clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they can easily enter the foodchain.

Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them "in almost all" of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. -- more than 300 miles of coastline -- said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory...

Matt Simmons: "Unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico"

From Zerohedge.

Oil Well Fixed? Yeah right.

Give me a break. It's a PR move like everything else. They want the stock market to go up or who knows what, so they claim they finally plugged it. I am not inclined to believe it. And now they say there is a seep. Just a little seep.

From Bloomberg.

July 19 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. government officials demanded to see BP Plc’s plans for opening its sealed Gulf of Mexico well after tests found a suspected leak seeping from the seabed...

Matt Simmons Calls Out BP lies about Capping Gulf Oil Volcano

From Kushmonster

NEW BRITISH SLAVE TRADE IN DIXIE

From Kushmonster

In the many videos managing to emanate from the de facto media/news blackout imposed by state and federal authorities in the Southern Gulf States at the behest of the foreign multinational corporation British Controleum, what is apparent among many other disturbing anomalies, is the press ganging of local residents into the distasteful and disgusting task of "cleaning up" the infernal, toxic, and caliginous goo accumulating on the Gulf coastline...

Former Contractor: BP Not Interested In Cleaning Up Oil Spill

From Prison Planet

Former high-level BP contractor and Army Special Operations soldier Adam Dillon told a New Orleans television station that British Petroleum is not interested in cleaning up the oil spill because the company is run by “cutthroat individuals” who only care about money...

128 BP Oil Cleanup Workers Sickened in Louisiana – Told NOT to go to Public Hospitals

Toxicologists: Corexit “Ruptures Red Blood Cells, Causes Internal Bleeding”, “Allows Crude Oil To Penetrate “Into The Cells” and “Every Organ System”

From Washington's Blog.

As I have previously noted, Corexit is toxic, is less effective than other dispersants, and is actually worsening the damage caused by the oil spill.

Now, two toxicologists are saying that Corexit is much more harmful to human health and marine life than we've been told.

Specifically Gulf toxicologist Dr. Susan Shaw - Founder and Director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute - dove into the oil spill to examine the chemicals present.

Dr. Shaw told CNN:

If I can tell you what happens — because I was in the oil — to people…

Shrimpers throwing their nets into water… [then] water from the nets splashed on his skin. …

[He experienced a] headache that lasted 3 weeks… heart palpitations… muscle spasms… bleeding from the rectum…

And that’s what that Corexit does, it ruptures red blood cells, causes internal bleeding, and liver and kidney damage. …

This stuff is so toxic combined… not the oil or dispersants alone. …

Very, very toxic and goes right through skin.

***

The reason this is so toxic is because of these solvents [from dispersant] that penetrate the skin of anything that’s going through the dispersed oil takes the oil into the cells — takes the oil into the organs… and this stuff is toxic to every organ system in the body. …





Similarly, marine biologist and toxicologist Dr. Chris Pincetich - who has an extensive background in testing the affects of chemicals on fish - says that Corexit disrupts cell membranes.

He also explains that EPA toxicity testing for Corexit is woefully inadequate, since EPA testing for mortality usually only requires a 96-hour time frame. His doctoral research found that fish that were alive at 96 hours after exposure to pesticide were dead at two weeks, so the chemicals were considered non-lethal for the purposes of the test.



Drs. Shaw and Pincetich are wildlife conservationists. But even industry scientists working for Exxon and the manufacturer of Corexit itself admit that the stuff is toxic.

Independent Video Of Gulf Devastation

From Cryptogon.