Month: June 2010

I'm not the only one asking – and not the funniest either.

On the Daily Show last night, I learned of BP's astonishing record of malefeasance and safety corner-cutting. From ABC News:

OSHA statistics show BP ran up 760 "egregious, willful" safety violations, while Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had eight, Citgo had two and Exxon had one comparable citation.

BP is responsible for 97 percent of safety violations. No wonder Andrew Revkin says the announcement of a criminal investigation "felt way overdue":

Last Friday, two former special investigators from the criminal investigation division of the Environmental Protection Agency, quoted by the Web site Truthout, said that criminal, not civil, inquiries should have been the priority from day one. Here’s a vivid excerpt:

Scott West, the former special agent-in-charge at the E.P.A.’s Criminal Investigation Division, who spent more than a year probing allegations that BP committed crimes in connection with a massive oil spill on Alaska’s North Slope in 2006, said the company’s prior felony and misdemeanor convictions should have immediately “raised red flags” and resulted in a federal criminal investigation. “If the company behind this disaster was Texaco or Chevron I would have likely waited a couple of days before I started to talking to people,” West said. “And the reason for that is those corporations do not enjoy the current criminal history that BP does.”… “BP is a convicted serial environmental criminal,” West said.

Speaking of the North Slope, Palin, in response to who knows what, tweets:

C'mon., Extreme Greenies-who-lock-up-our-lands…see now why we push"drill,baby,drill"of known reserves&promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?

More on the 2006 onshore spill here.  (Photo by Johan Lammers.)

"Spoiler alert: Sarah Palin loves Israel and hates the media," Alex Pareene, on her Facebook response to the flotilla.

David Runciman has a fascinating post-mortem on the British election. He notes that there were, in some respects, three separate votes – in England, where the Tories had an 11 point margin; in Scotland, where Labour actually gained a little; and London, where Labour's vote held up rather well. What explains this strange pattern? Anti-incumbency. In England, Labour ruled and the Tories fared well; in Scotland, the Scottish Nationalists have been in power in Edinburgh's Assembly and Labour did well; in London, my old mate Boris Johnson is the Tory mayor, and he created a little backlash as well.

If this is any harbinger for the US, all incumbents may be at risk, and not just the Democrats (as the primaries have so far shown). But for Britain, there are darker implications. In Runciman's deft phrase:

At present Labour can only govern England from Scotland, and the Tories can only govern Scotland from England.

So what happens when the English Tories impose stiff spending cuts on Scotland? Or Northern Ireland? That's the problem with devolving real power to Scotland, as Labour did. The country starts to develop an entirely different politics and entirely different political conversation, and the UK starts to feel as incoherent as the EU:

In this respect, British devolution is a bit like that other great constitutional project launched for the new millennium, the euro. It worked fine to start with, when it was awash with cheap credit and good intentions. But when the money runs out, the cracks start to show.

(Photo: The English flag, by Paul Gilham/Getty.)

In her column today, she doesn't offer any substantive proposals for the president to stop the oil-gush. His language has been full of rage; he has launched a criminal investigation; he is obviously exasperated; and this is a narrative he simply cannot control. Almost from the start it was clear that only relief wells could stop this, and they take time to drill in that kind of depth.

Maureen has long wanted Obama to be what he isn't. We have a temperamental WASP in the White House. And the whole point of a WASP president – like GHWBush – is that they are best judged over the long term of results rather than the short term of emotion. I can quite see how emotionally, Obama is losing this p.r. war. But since he literally cannot win against a narrative determined by physics, it seems to me that columnists should be pointing out the reality of reality rather than the "reality" of "narrative."

An Israeli celebration of the attack on the Mavi Marmara outside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu is not acting in a vacuum. It is the Israeli public that supports him and his policies.

"I don't want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers…I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for,"  – Steve Jobs.

As someone who spent my first five years blogging while also having to explain to every person I knew what a "blog" was, it is pretty staggering to see how swift the revolution has been. We have gone from being contemptible poseurs to being a lethal threat. But nothing has persuaded me more of the value of blogging than watching old media companies try to adapt. If MSM editors are so smart and so essential, why didn't they see this coming? And why have they been, with some exceptions, so inept in integrating it? And it's these losers who hold the key to journalism's future? The same people who helped bury it?

Guess which one is in IT:

Larison's view of the blockade:

The blockade is a policy aimed at the steady immiseration and deeper impoverishment of Gazans. This not only deflects attention from Hamas’ abuses and misrule, but it also ensures that there will not be enough prosperity in the future to foster any sort of viable political opposition against Hamas. That tells me that Israel is actually quite willing to tolerate a Hamas-run enclave on its doorstep so long as it can keep the people living there poor and dependent.

Here's what Israel killed nine civilians for:

Toys, some wheelchairs and a lot of used clothes.