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By E.J. Dionne $14.00
Ha-Joon Chang $17.79
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 dsearls (CC BY 2.0)
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In one of the largest prison breaks in Mexico in recent years, 132 inmates escaped from a facility in the northern state of Coahuila on Monday, setting off a massive manhunt by police and soldiers near the U.S. border.
Posted on Sep 18, 2012
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 ssoosay (CC BY 2.0)
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By Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch —
Drugs are all anesthesia from pain. The ruthless Mexican cartels crave money, which they make from the Yankee craving for numbness. They sell unfeeling, and we buy it, at tens of billions of dollars and thousands of Mexican lives per year.
Posted on Jul 13, 2012
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 U.S. Navy / MC2 Justin E. Stumberg
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U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who will ultimately put a price tag on the worst oil spill in American history if the many lawsuits against BP go to trial, has given the oil giant and its many, many plaintiffs another week to reach a settlement.
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 AP / Patrick Semansky
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Looking back over the disastrous BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico last year, an internal review by the U.S. Coast Guard has concluded that the seagoing service was poorly prepared for such an event and that the cleanup itself was riddled with planning failures.
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 U.S. Coast Guard
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Even Wall Street executives have to be smacking their heads over this one. The company that ran the Deepwater Horizon oil rig (before it exploded, killing 11 and filling the Gulf of Mexico with oil) has decided to give its executives bonuses for achieving “the best year in safety performance in our company’s history.” There are no words ...
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The GOP begins to roll back Wall Street reform, college graduates are snubbing law school, and Washington’s pro-nuke consensus. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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 The Pug Father (CC-BY)
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Scientists at the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies are investigating unusually high numbers of stillborn and aborted dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico region. Seventeen infant dolphins have washed up on shore so far this year, compared to an average of one or two a month, says one scientist. (more)
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By Richard Reeves — This year was a game-changer, and what we need is a game-changer list. On that kind of list, I would drop one-off sensations, beginning with the oil spill, the Haitian earthquake and the mine rescue. No. 1 would be WikiLeaks.
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 U.S. Coast Guard / Petty Officer 2nd Class John Miller
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Attorney General Eric Holder says the government is going after nine companies involved with the Deepwater Horizon spill “for government removal costs, economic losses and environmental damages without limitation.” ... (more)
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 youtube.com
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An hours-long gun battle in the Mexican border town of Matamoros left at least eight people dead, including the leader of a major drug gang and a newspaper reporter. Pictured above, a government spokesman speaking about the violence.
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 U.S. Coast Guard
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Three of four tests showed that the cement mixture used by Halliburton in the construction of BP’s ill-fated oil well in the Gulf was unstable, but the mixture was used anyway, a presidential commission investigating the disaster has found. The only successful test, which BP did not know about, has since come under suspicion.
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Those nerds at MIT have come up with something really amazing (not the first time). It’s a swarm of autonomous robots that talk to each other as they make their way around a spill, gobbling up the oil. Why didn’t we think of that?
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 White House
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The president paid his respects to the people of New Orleans on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by recognizing their perseverance and determination “to rebuild in the face of ruin.” Full remarks follow the jump.
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 U.S. Coast Guard / Ensign Michael P. McGrew
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The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is raining on Uncle Sam and BP’s well-capping parade. Researchers at the institute say a 22-mile-long, 1.2-mile-wide oil plume deep under the Gulf’s surface is degrading much slower than the government’s more optimistic claims.
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 Flickr / Bryan Brenner (CC-BY)
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Americans get half of their shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico, but that was before it was contaminated by 190 million gallons of oil and 2 million gallons of chemical dispersant. Shrimp season officially started Monday, but it will be some time before we know whether the ravaged Gulf waters—and American appetites—are up to it.
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 SpillCam / globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam
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Someone should tell BP that the whole kill-speak approach does not bode well when you’re actually killing wildlife and industry in the Gulf. But nonetheless, BP says the mud and cement pumped into the blown-out oil well, termed a “static kill,” are holding and that it is preparing to seal the deal with a “bottom kill” later this month.
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 AP
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An oil spill following a pipeline explosion in China’s Yellow Sea could be much bigger than the government is admitting. The Chinese government says 1,500 tons of oil was spilled, but an American expert who visited the scene says it may actually be 50 times that figure, putting it on the order of the Exxon Valdez disaster.
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Martin Sutovec, Slovakia —
Posted on Jul 28, 2010
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 U.S. Coast Guard / Petty Officer 3rd Class Ann Marie Gorden
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The cost to the Gulf states’ tourism industry alone could be $22.7 billion, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association. The outlook for the region’s fishing and drilling industries is also pretty bleak.
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Today on the list: The places that make the Gulf spill look like a national park, Elizabeth Warren (yay) vs. Timothy Geithner (boo), Syria bans the veil, and the strange things men pay prostitutes to do (as if you don’t already know).
Posted on Jul 19, 2010
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Fake News by Andy Borowitz —
Based on the record ratings for its special featuring LeBron James’ announcement of his new team, ESPN announced that instead of airing NBA games, it would schedule two-hour specials showing the rich guy cashing his ginormous paychecks.
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 NASA
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By Amy Goodman — “Deep Spill 2” sounds like a sequel to a Hollywood thriller. Unfortunately, it is more of a reality show. “Deep Spill 2” is the name of an ambitious series of proposed scientific experiments that should be happening right now.
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Fake news by Andy Borowitz —
“Assuming that aliens have been monitoring Earth for the past month in preparation for an invasion, they’ve probably figured out it’s no longer worth the trip,” Dr. Hawking said.
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By Ruth Marcus — And sometimes, life imitates farce. Thus the spectacle of BP’s Chief Executive Officer Tony “I’d like my life back” Hayward spending the weekend at a yacht race.
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Riber Hansson, Sweden —
Posted on Jun 22, 2010
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Dario Castillejos, Dario La Crisis —
Posted on Jun 22, 2010
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 AP / Prakash Hatvalne
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By T.L. Caswell — The “massacre” sentences were far too light, but at least India put executives on trial. Let’s hope the U.S. has the will to fully investigate and, if warranted, try BP executives.
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By Eugene Robinson — Joe Barton is not alone. The Texas congressman’s lavish sympathy for BP—which he sees not as perpetrator of a preventable disaster but as victim of a White House “shakedown”—is actually what passes for mainstream opinion among conservative Republicans today.
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Fake news by Andy Borowitz —
At a press conference at corporate headquarters in London, BP CEO Tony Hayward said that environmentalists would embrace the new technology “because lies are a totally renewable resource.”
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Fake News by Andy Borowitz —
Sensing a public relations opportunity, golf legend Tiger Woods spoke out today on the BP oil spill.
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 AP / Evan Vucci
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President Barack Obama finally might be digging in his executive heels over the Gulf oil blowout. The White House has announced the president will address the nation Tuesday night about the spill and is expected to outline a plan that would force BP to create a multibillion-dollar escrow account to compensate those affected.
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 White House / Chuck Kennedy
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It’s a doubly bad day for news regarding the oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico: Scientists have doubled their estimate of the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf every day, and BP announced it will not have the leak sealed before August.
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By David Sirota — While British Petroleum and federal regulators are certainly at fault for their reckless behavior, every American who uses oil—which is to say every American—is incriminated in this ecological holocaust.
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 Flickr / IBRRC (CC-BY)
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Maybe oil companies like BP are careless with safety standards because, after devastating the tourist and fishing industries (not to mention the environment) of the Gulf, they’re on the hook for about one day’s oil profits in economic damages. In protest of that liability cap and one of the senators who wants to keep it ... (continued)
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RJ Matson, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch —
Posted on Jun 9, 2010
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 U.S. Navy / MC2 Justin Stumberg
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By Abrahm Lustgarten and Ryan Knutson, ProPublica —
A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.
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 White House / Chuck Kennedy
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By T.L. Caswell — Are these visits “theater”? To be sure. But presidential theater of the right kind is not without value. It can be of huge worth especially in times of desperation, and especially in this cynical day.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The simple truth is that the most important issue facing the nation is not the oil spill, however horrific its effects will be, but the economy.
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By Eugene Robinson — How is it possible that BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward hasn’t been fired? At this point, how can anyone believe a word the man says? If he told me my mother loves me, I’d want a second source.
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By Ruth Marcus — The presidency is not a play in two acts. The disaster in the Gulf is not six characters in search of a leader. So why the coverage of President Obama and the oil spill as theater criticism?
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 Flickr / mikebaird (CC-BY)
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With atrocious timing, the Minerals Management Service has approved a new oil well to be drilled off the coast of Louisiana. As decisions go, this one seems dumber than a bag of nails. Why not just build an offshore bucket? There’s plenty of oil in the water these days. You can thank Team Obama, which let a ban on shallow drilling expire, for this bizarre development.
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 Rick Rowley / Big Noise Films
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By Amy Goodman — The anger is palpable across the Mississippi Delta. As the Deepwater Horizon oil geyser, almost a mile underwater, continues unabated, the brunt of this, the largest environmental catastrophe in United States history, is rolling onto the coast, impacting the ecology, the economy and entire ways of life.
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By William Pfaff — The conduct of Barack Obama in the BP affair, and all that preceded it, has become to this writer all but incomprehensible. I cannot imagine a more compelling portrayal of impotence.
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