We found among our REFERRERS a terrific blog and in turn we recommend it to you – our readers:

http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/

 http://www.offshorevaluation.org/

The Offshore Valuation is the first full economic valuation of Britain’s offshore renewable resource.

from: Citizens For Affordable Energy

The following quite amazed us and we had to do a little research:

With the help of Google we found: “THE CHARLATAN MAGAZINE IS THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE COMPLEMENT OF THE CHARLATAN, CARLETON UNIVERSITY’S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER.”

Joseph-Beth Booksellers is an independent bookseller with stores in five major US cities: Lexington, Kentucky; Cincinnati, Ohio; Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Charlotte, North Carolina and as well The Village At Spotsylvania Towne Centre, Spotsylvania, Virginia. Then looking up the area phone code 704 – this points at Charlotte, North Carolina. Ain’t this amazing? Why then Carleton University – or are there more then one Carleton University that compete for the charlatan?

======================

Citizens for Affordable Energy

919 Milam, Suite 2070
Houston, TX
77002
US

If you watch President Obama, and have learned something from the “Way to Copenhagen” you cannot miss that Obama has had achievements with China on the currency issue and on the increase of the internal market – so that issue we thought formerly  to be the main gripe in Toronto – is now off the table. Think G-2?

Today’s papers – all of them – show Obama and Medvedev chew hamburgers in a middle class lunch-joint in Arlington – no less then “Ray’s Hell Burger!” That reminded me of something that happened to me at the beginning of the Gorbachev days in Moscow.

I had there friends from the National Academy that I knew for years. They were always nice to me when I came to Moscow and now I wanted to invite them also to a nice Moscow restaurant as I used to do in earlier times – you know – then it was one of the big hotels where it was intended just for foreigners. But no, this time they suggested to go to McDonalds – the novelty at the time in Moscow. I swear – this is a true story.

OK -now to the issue of the day – please forget the Ham part of this food – it is neither Kosher nor Halal in ant case – but think heavily about the international meaning of “Burgers” – in German, French – you name it.

So, if the US manages to get to some pre-Toronto understanding with Russia also, perhaps on how to make burgers then clearly – the patient to be dissected in the Toronto operating room will be the EU. Let us say once more – if the EU does not decide to unite – the individual member States alone – anyone of them – will just not make the grade to be considered a third partner in a G-3 constellation.

 http://robertreich.org/post/604861772/bp…

BP Stands for Bad Petroleum

Saturday the White House warned BP that it expects the oil giant to pay all damages associated with the disastrous oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico, even if the costs exceed the $75 million liability cap under federal law. BP responded Sunday saying its public statements are “absolutely consistent” with the Administration’s request.

———————-

Actually, who still remembers that BP wanted us to believe that the letter stand for “BEYOND PETROLEUM?”

In effect BP moved into solar energy and together with the Shell Oil Company became one of the first two oil companies that tried to be seen as ENERGY COMPANIES by going beyond oil. We gave them lots of credit – then watched how Shell was helping destroy Nigeria. BP on the other hand was indeed rather blameless at that time. Both, BP and Shell got into the “ENERGY” business because of push by British NGOs. It was the enlightened part of the UK that did the trick, while the enlightened part of the US had no chance whatsoever because of the hold the US oil industry has on Washington – Democrats or Republicans alike.   It was EXXONMOBIL that actively fought the manmade global warming / climate change “theory” and funded all those self styled scientists – in the US and in the UK – that made sure that the media will conclude that only death is proof of death – what I mean is that only when disaster has occurred this is the proof that we are on the path to a disaster.

OK, disaster is striking the Southern coast of the US and beyond while BP has $10.5 Billion to distribute as dividend to share-holders. This alone is good reason for the US Administration to take over BP as it is unacceptable to see these funds leave the company’s coffers with potential reparation bills amounting to more then twice that amount. The $69 million mentioned by President Obama as first payment requested from BP in order to compensate for the oil-spill is pittance to the real cost of redress in this case. Robert Reich has quite a few important points on these issues.

Let us conclude this introduction by saying that BP will yet turn the clock back to the idea of “Beyond Petroleum” by having proven with their lack of preparedness for this accident that this is the true path to a sane world of the 21st century.

———————-

Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His “Marketplace” commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

: Is this realistic?

A: Not only realistic but it may become necessary – both operationally and politically. If the disaster continues to worsen, it’s untenable for a for-profit corporation to be in charge.

Q: But why should we expect government to do any better job than BP?

A: BP would still be at the job – and its expertise, equipment, and other assets would continue to be utilized. But the federal government would be in overall control of the operation – weighing public risks and benefits, deciding what resources are necessary, getting accurate information and disseminating it to the public.

Q: Why should we trust the government?

A: This isn’t an ideological contest about how little you trust a giant oil company versus the federal government. It’s a matter of accountability. BP’s primary responsibility is to its shareholders. And it will cut corners – as it has before – if that’s the best way to maximize the value of their shares. But only the government, through the President, is directly accountable to the American public, and responsible for protecting it.

Q: Under what legal authority could the President take control of BP’s North American operations?

A: Obama has implicit authority through laws and regulations dealing with offshore drilling, especially the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. By analogy, if a nuclear reactor were melting down, the President would use his regulatory authority over nuclear energy to take temporary control over the plant and the relevant parts of the corporation that ran it. President Truman seized the nation’s steel mills in 1952, arguing that the emergency of the Korean War necessitated it. (The Supreme Court ultimately blocked him but according to Justice Jackson, whose opinion was essentially the majority’s, that was because Truman had no statutory basis for the seizure, not even an implicit one. That isn’t the case here.)

Q: But BP is a British corporation. How can the U.S. government take control?

A: The nationality of a corporation’s shareholders has nothing to do with it. If it is operating within the jurisdiction of the United States and poses a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of Americans, a president would take control of its operations and assets in the United States.

Q: Do you really think Obama would do this? Wouldn’t he prefer to stay away from this mess and keep the responsibility squarely on BP?

A: He may not have much of a choice. If the disaster worsens and Obama doesn’t take control he risks inheriting the mantle of Katrina.

Q: What will force his hand?

A: The White House is already inching toward control. BP’s new admission that it can’t stop the leak until August has shocked a public already deeply distrustful of it. As new evidence emerges of the scale of the disaster, the pressure on the Administration to take full and open control will only grow. Last Saturday Energy Secretary Chu asked BP to cease its so-called “top kill” effort to stop up the gush because he and his team of scientists had concluded it was too risky. Now the White House has to decide whether BP’s continued use of highly toxic dispersants poses more of a threat to the public and the environment than a help. When do these decisions tip over into control? Any time now.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created under President Richard Nixon. Since then it was all downhill. BP has now started to reeducate President Obama.

Our Deepwater wake-up call: Let’s rethink the trade-off between economic development and environmental protection.

- – - – - -

In June 1969, the stretch of the Cuyahoga River that runs through Cleveland was so polluted that it caught fire. Time magazine described the Cuyahoga this way: “Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows.”

The spectacle of a river in flames helped galvanize the environmental movement, and the following year, with Richard Nixon as president, the Environmental Protection Agency was established. In 1972, Congress passed the landmark Clean Water Act. Today, the Cuyahoga is clean enough to support more than 40 species of fish.

We still don’t know the full extent of the environmental disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico — the impact on avian and aquatic life, on fisheries, on tourism, on the delicate ecology of coastal marshes and barrier islands. We do know, though, that it is the worst oil spill in our nation’s history, far surpassing the Exxon Valdez incident. And maybe the shocking images from the gulf of dead fish, oiled pelicans and shores lapped by viscous “brown mousse” will refocus attention on the need to preserve the environment, not just exploit it.

“Drill, baby, drill” isn’t just the bizarrely inappropriate chant that we remember from the Republican National Convention two years ago. It’s a pretty good indication of where the national ethos has drifted. Environmental regulation is seen as a bureaucratic imposition — not as an insurance policy against potential catastrophe, and certainly not as a moral imperative.

Yes, many Americans feel good about going through the motions of environmentalism. We’ve made a religion of recycling, which is an important change. We turn off the lights when we leave the room — and we’re even beginning to use fluorescent bulbs. Some of us, though not enough, understand the long-term threat posed by climate change; a subset of those who see the danger are even willing to make lifestyle changes to try to avert a worst-case outcome.

But where the rubber hits the road — in public policy — we’ve reverted to our pre-enlightenment ways. When there’s a perceived conflict between environmental stewardship and economic growth, the bottom line wins.

Barack Obama is, in many admirable ways, our most progressive president in decades. But as an environmentalist, let’s face it, he’s no Richard Nixon. Before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded — allowing, by some estimates, as many as a million gallons of crude oil to gush into the Gulf of Mexico each day for more than a month — Obama had announced plans to permit new offshore drilling. “I don’t agree with the notion that we shouldn’t do anything,” Obama said at the time. “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.”

Obama has wisely backed away from that decision. The technology involved in deep-sea oil drilling turned out to be far more advanced than the technology needed to halt a spill if something goes wrong — essentially, like engineering a car to double its top speed without thinking to upgrade the brakes. This oversight apparently wasn’t noticed by anyone who had the power to correct it.

Calls for Obama to somehow “take over” the emergency response ring hollow. Take it over with what? Hands-on intervention has never been government’s role in this kind of situation. BP and the other oil companies had the undersea robots and the deep-water experience. Other private companies owned and operated the skimmers that remove the oil from the surface. There is no huge government reserve of the booms that are needed to protect Louisiana’s beaches and marshlands; those are made by private firms and are being deployed by unemployed fishermen.

Obama has rethought his enthusiasm for offshore drilling. Now he, and the rest of us, should rethink the larger issue — the trade-off between economic development and environmental protection. In the long run, our natural resources are all we’ve got. Defending them must be a higher priority than our recent presidents, including Obama, have made it.

Energy policy is one of Obama’s priorities. He talks about “clean coal,” which I believe to be an oxymoron, and favors technologies — such as carbon capture and sequestration — that are new and untested. The environmental risks must be a central and paramount concern, not a mere afterthought. Let’s preclude the next Deepwater Horizon right now.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

===================================

But the Washington Post, afraid of looking too progressive in a Sarah Palin dominated US political backwaters town, has balanced above excellent article with a second one that caters to the political sharks. Please read the two articles not just as a sandwich were our future is the filling. Read it rather as an effort to blunt the call for non-fossil future. In effect, this second article is nothing less then the Hofmeister defense of BP which we posted as our original article after we listened to this former CEO of Schell Oil Company on his launch at the US Foreign Policy Association on his start of a book-release campaign in defense of Big Oil.

- – - – -

Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama’s tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we’ve had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So we go deep, ultra deep — to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people? All spills seriously damage wildlife. That’s a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from the barren to the populated, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism and recreation?

Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they’ve escaped any mention at all.

The other culprits are pretty obvious. It starts with BP, which seems not only to have had an amazing string of perfect-storm engineering lapses but no contingencies to deal with a catastrophic system failure.

The CNN ireport – LIVING IN A TOXIC TOWN. CNN and Dr. Sanjay Gupta invite you to put on video what you know.
 http://www.ireport.com/ir-topic-stories….

Living in a toxic town

Many residents of Mossville, Louisiana, suspect their proximity to more than a dozen chemical plants may be responsible for what they say are high rates of cancer and other diseases in the area.

Is there a place near you where pollution is making people sick? CNN is investigating the environment’s effects on health as part of Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s Toxic Towns USA special. We want you to join us in the newsgathering process.

“Put yourself on video and document conditions in your area, or take photos of what’s around you. Tell us what industrial or chemical pollution may be contributing to health problems for you and those you love, and be sure not to put yourself in a dangerous situation,” CNN writes.

“Tell us about toxic towns near you and Dr. Gupta may report on your community.”

This is a good piece on the engineering challenges presented in capping a spewing oil well 5,000 feet underwater.

‘Dome’ is a temporary method of containing gulf oil spill.

By Fred Tasker | The Miami Herald, Friday, May 7, 2010.

The 78-ton steel containment dome that crews lowered over the Deepwater Horizon site on Thursday night represents the best immediate chance to slow the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from the blown-out well.

But even if it works — a big “if” that may not play out for days — it’s still a temporary measure subject to weather and other conditions.

“A dome might slow the leak, but it can’t stop it,” said Dr. Philip Johnson, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Alabama.

The only permanent solution is to drill relief wells to shut off the flow, Johnson and other experts say. And BP says that will take three months. Because of that, a half-dozen other methods — from burning the oil to dispersing it with chemicals, continue at full speed.

Workers lowered the four-story dome onto the seabed surface late Thursday night, but said it will be Sunday or Monday before they will know if it’s working.

Oil has been leaking in three places since the April 20 explosion. One small leak was capped Wednesday. The containment box will be lowered over a much bigger leak in a pipe that’s responsible for about 85 percent of the oil that’s coming out.

“This kind of system worked very effectively after Hurricane Katrina,” said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas. “But it was in much shallower waters, mostly less than 200 feet deep.”

At 5,000 feet it will be much harder.

“It’s pitch black down there. There are no divers. And there are all kinds of currents,” McCormack said.

If the box being lowered Thursday can contain the bigger leak, a second box being built may be used to stop the smaller leak at the blowout preventer.

Even with two domes in place, the method depends on piping the oil up to a ship, which will siphon it into smaller ships to be carried away. But, Johnson notes, “if a hurricane comes, you’re in trouble.” Hurricane season starts in June.

Relief wells are the best solution, the experts say.

“It’s the standard method when you’ve lost control of high-pressure wells,” said Greg Pollock, head of the oil spill division of the Texas General Land Office.

BP began drilling the first of two planned relief wells near the broken well on Sunday. Tony Hayward, BP’s group chief executive, estimates it will take three months to complete.

One other alternative BP engineers are considering is to try to plug the leaking well from the top instead of drilling a relief well to cap it from the bottom. That would take two to three weeks.

Three months to drill a relief well is “an optimistic estimate,” says Dr. Don Van Nieuwenhuise, geology professor at University of Houston who helped drill two relief wells for an earlier Gulf oil well blowout. The oil in the area beneath the BP well is trapped in shale under great pressure.

Drilling into it could create new leaks if not done carefully, he said.

Ever since the oil rig exploded, dozens of BP and Coast Guard ships have been cruising through the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf spraying dispersants into it. Dispersants are mixtures of solvents, surfactants and other compounds that break up the surface tension of the slick, making the oil more soluble in water.

Wave action pulls the oil apart into even smaller droplets, which remain suspended beneath the water or fall to the ocean floor. It helps protect onshore birds and animals, but wildlife experts fear its effects on fish and other animals living beneath the sea, according to the National Academics of Science.

In another novel attempt to reduce oil damage, BP workers on Wednesday injected about 3,000 gallons of dispersant directly into the leaking well on the seabed.

So far, Coast Guard and BP vessels have used 190,285 gallons of dispersant and have another 55,611 gallons available, according to the Deepwater Horizon Response Operation.

The use of dispersants has won only grudging approval from environmentalists and even petroleum engineers.

“Dispersants are chemicals. Chemicals aren’t good in the environment. It’s a trade-off,” McCormack said.

Meanwhile, BP, the U.S. Coast Guard and an army of volunteers are using several other strategies to stop damage from the gushing oil.

• Controlled burning: On Thursday, favorable weather conditions finally allowed cleanup crews to conduct a controlled burn of oil on the surface. An earlier successful burn took place April 28, destroying thousands of gallons of oil, but rough weather had frustrated several attempts since.

In a controlled burn, boats maneuver through the oil slick towing buoyant, fire-resistant booms to gather the oil into a thick, flammable pool. When a “boomful” of oil is gathered, it is towed away and ignited. When an oil slick burns, residue hardens and drops to the ocean floor. • Oil-skimming boats: BP and the Coast Guard have at least 35 ships in the Gulf skimming the oil from the surface and pumping it into barges.

“Rough seas can limit its effectiveness, but you have to use every method available,” Pollock said.

• Floating booms: These are miles-long, 20-inch-tall devices of vinyl fabric with a foam float stitched inside for buoyancy that can be stretched along the water. They can help contain oil slicks at sea, redirect them into planned areas for recovery or disposal and hold them back from environmentally sensitive areas.

The Deepwater Horizon Response Operation reports that 535,870 feet of booms had been deployed, with another 664,9891 feet available. They are being used offshore in the Gulf to redirect the oil slick, and near shore to protect shorelines at six locations including Pensacola. For days, rough seas have disrupted many of the booms, hurting their effectiveness.

Despite all the efforts, there are no guarantees.

Said Pollock: “I just hope things can happen quick.”

U.S. Oil Spill Hurting Energy Moves In Congress

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Oil Spill Pressures White House On Drilling, Climate

Date: 30-Apr-10
Country: US
Author: Patricia Zengerle
The spreading oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico could force the White House to rethink plans to increase offshore oil drilling, an essential component of a climate change bill it is working to push through Congress.
 http://planetark.org/wen/57792

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Oil Slick Expected To Hit Coast Reserve Thursday

Date: 30-Apr-10
Country: US
Author: Chris Baltimore
A massive oil slick from a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to reach a Louisiana wildlife reserve on Thursday as it threatens an environmental disaster across four southern U.S. states.
 http://planetark.org/wen/57788

 http://www.newsweek.com/id/236278

How Much Oil Is Really Off the Atlantic Coast?

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Obama’s decision to open the Atlantic Ocean to drilling may not yield the results everyone imagines.

President Obama’s March 30 decision to open up vast tracts of the Atlantic Ocean to oil and natural-gas exploration triggered the predictable range of responses: drilling advocates, including Republican lawmakers, offered tepid approval, while environmentalists complained. But lost amid the political debates—did Obama secure conservative Democrats’ support for energy legislation? Could Republicans still run on “Drill, Baby, Drill?”—was a question with more practical impact: What’s down there?

We really have no idea. The entire East Coast has been off limits from all drilling-related activity since 1981. That’s the last time any data was collected on the area, using seismic equipment that’s outdated compared to today’s advanced methods. More accurate data is likely to lead to more accurate drilling and fewer “dry wells” that don’t produce oil. But it could also revise downward how much we think is out there. The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) estimates there could be as much as 10 billion barrels of oil and natural gas in the mid- and south Atlantic. But that’s only at a 5 percent level of confidence. Ask them what they’re 95 percent confident of, and the estimate drops to fewer than 2 billion barrels, or about 100 days of oil at our current rate. So, not much. “We really don’t know a lot about what’s down there,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar admits. “It may be nothing, it may be a lot.”

What’s sure is that it’ll be decades before we ever find out. The general consensus is that the Atlantic Ocean is not nearly as geologically complex as the Gulf of Mexico, where a mile-thick layer of salt has trapped billions of barrels of oil and gas. Companies have only begun tapping into those resources in the last few years, thanks to advances in deepwater drilling technology. Those advances may come in handy over the next couple decades as companies plumb the depths of the Atlantic, but only if there’s oil down there. The oil lobby and its congressional allies reluctantly applauded Obama’s move while railing against his decision to keep off limits the entire Pacific Coast, where there’s thought to be considerably more oil and gas, 22 billion barrels by the rosiest of estimates. But energy companies may never have access to Pacific coastal waters. The 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara launched the modern American environmental movement, and in the eyes of many, the area remains “too special” (Salazar’s words) to touch.

The first true test of the new Obama oil plan will take place 50 miles off the coast of Virginia, in a 2.9 million-acre triangle of water that the state is anxious to see drilled. Starting with former governor (now Democratic National Committee chairman) Tim Kaine’s administration in 2006, Virginia has aggressively worked to open up its coast to exploration and now stands first in line to hold a lease sale, where oil companies submit sealed bids on tracts based on what they think is down there. Virginia initially pushed for that to happen in 2011, but it’s been pushed to 2012 since the Interior Department first has to conduct an environmental impact study. That will likely take a year or more and result in a 1,000-page document for Salazar to sign. Lawsuits from environmental groups could follow if they deem the report insufficient, which would hold things up even further. Whenever the report does go through, the lease sale will follow shortly thereafter.

What’s unclear is whether oil companies will have time to commission seismic testing before the lease sale is done. An Interior official, speaking on background, says that it’s “not likely” they will. Salazar echoes this: “[Companies] may have to go with whatever information is out there right now.” This could seriously reduce the amount of money the lease sale generates, as companies aren’t likely to shell out big bucks based on 30-year-old data. Typically, lease sales generate hundreds of millions in revenue, which in the Gulf of Mexico gets split between the federal government and the coastal states Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama. For example, a combined 4.5 million acres of water split into three separate lease sales between August 2008 and March 2009 netted $1.3 billion, 37.5 percent of which ($480 million) went to state coffers.

Virginia wants half of whatever oil companies pay to lease the waters off its coast. Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte has made that a key demand of the energy legislation he introduced a week before Obama made his announcement. As of now, though, there is no revenue-sharing agreement in place for East Coast states, and Salazar has made it clear that they shouldn’t expect one, a point he says he emphasized in a recent meeting with Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. There’s speculation that any revenue-sharing deal would be tucked into a national energy bill to curry support for addressing climate change from Southern coastal states. Goodlatte says that any attempt to bury a revenue-sharing deal in a cap-and-trade bill “would be a major dealbreaker” for Virginia’s support of developing its offshore resources. This sets up an intriguing game of chicken between the Obama administration and pro-drilling advocates in Virginia, including the state’s two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Jim Webb, who both oppose the cap-and-trade language included in the energy bill passed by the House last year. Depending on which one blinks, we might not see oil come out of the Virginia coast after all.

 http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/ob…

President Obama to Allow Oil Drilling Off Virginia Coast.

WASHINGTON (March 31, 2010) – In a reversal of a long-standing ban on most offshore drilling, President Barack Obama is allowing oil drilling 50 miles off Virginia’s shorelines. At the same time, he is rejecting some new drilling sites that had been planned in Alaska.

Obama’s plan offers few concessions to environmentalists, who have been strident in their opposition to more oil platforms off the nation’s shores. Hinted at for months, the plan modifies a ban that for more than 20 years has limited drilling along coastal areas other than the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama was set to announce the new drilling policy Wednesday at Andrews air base in Maryland. White House officials pitched the changes as ways to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil and create jobs – both politically popular ideas – but the president’s decisions also could help secure support for a climate change bill languishing in Congress.

The president, joined by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, also was set to announce that proposed leases in Alaska’s Bristol Bay would be canceled. The Interior Department also planned to reverse last year’s decision to open up parts of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Instead, scientists would study the sites to see if they’re suitable to future leases.

Obama is allowing an expansion in Alaska’s Cook Inlet to go forward. The plan also would leave in place the moratorium on drilling off the West Coast.

In addition, the Interior Department has prepared a plan to add drilling platforms in the eastern Gulf of Mexico if Congress allows that moratorium to expire. Lawmakers in 2008 allowed a similar moratorium to expire; at the time President George W. Bush lifted the ban, which opened the door to Obama’s change in policy.

Under Obama’s plan, drilling could take place 125 miles from Florida’s Gulf coastline if lawmakers allow the moratorium to expire. Drilling already takes place in western and central areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

The president’s team has been busy on energy policy and Obama talked about it in his State of the Union address. During that speech, he said he wanted the United States to build a new generation of nuclear power plans and invest in biofuel and coal technologies.

“It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” he warned.

Obama also urged Congress to complete work on a climate change and energy bill, which has remained elusive. The president met with lawmakers earlier this month at the White House about a bill cutting emissions of pollution-causing greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020. The legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore and provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities.

White House officials hope Wednesday’s announcement will attract support from Republicans, who adopted a chant of “Drill, baby, drill” during 2008′s presidential campaign.

The president’s Wednesday remarks would be paired with other energy proposals that were more likely to find praise from environmental groups. The White House planned to announce it had ordered 5,000 hybrid vehicles for the government fleet. And on Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department are to sign a final rule that requires increased fuel efficiency standards for new cars.

—————————————–

_	Obama just announced a new plan for offshore drilling–can you take a stand to oppose this concession to the oil industry? www.350.org/dont-drill

Dear friends,

We read some disappointing news this morning–and you probably did too.

President Obama and Interior Secretary Salazar announced a significant expansion of offshore drilling. According to the New York Times, this move is in part a concession to oil companies.

From the New York Times:
“The new plan now grants one of the biggest items on the oil industry’s wish list – access to vast areas of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling.” ¹

This isn’t what coastal residents want–more drilling threatens health, wildlife, and decades of community struggles to keep our coastal areas safe. Not only that–more drilling means more Carbon pumping into the atmosphere, when what we really need to do is rapidly move away from fossil fuels.

This is a step backward, there’s no question about it, and it doesn’t even need to happen.

Will you take immediate action to urge President Obama and your elected officials to scale back their offshore drilling ambitions?

http:/www.350.org/dont-drill

My home state, California, has seen incredible damage from oil spills–the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 helped to spark the very first Earth Day–and I’m not willing to sit quietly and see even more areas opened for drilling.

Expanded offshore drilling was one of Obama’s campaign promises, so in some ways this news isn’t surprising. What about other campaign promises like 100% auctioning of pollution permits, or five million new green jobs? ² These are the real steps forward toward 350 ppm–not more drilling.

We can and must do better. We still have time to choose a path to clean energy that doesn’t rely on even more fossil fuels, and even more handouts to oil companies. This year, we’ll be getting to work locally, modelling the clean energy future in our own communities. But today, we need to speak up.

Please contact President Obama today, urging wiser action on offshore drilling: http://www.350.org/dont-drill

Many thanks,

May Boeve
U.S. coordinator, 350.org

PS: Minutes after today’s news broke, we created this Facebook page: “1,000,000,000 Strong Against Offshore Drilling.” Will you join me & show the kind of groundswell of anger this news inspires–by inviting many of your friends to join too? Thanks for getting the word out, here’s the link.

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1. “Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time”: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/science/earth/31energy.html?hp

2. Obama’s Energy Factsheet from the Campaign:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf

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Offshore oil drilling:

We see from today’s shocking news story “Obama to Open Offshore Areas to
Oil Drilling for First Time”
(nytimes.com/2010/03/31/science/earth/31energy.html?th&emc=th) that Drill
Baby Drill is alive and well.  For the American people to be sucked in to
tolerate more deliberate global warming as well as ongoing war for oil –
just because Obama cares more about health care than Bush did — does not
bode well for anyone.  There are no jobs or health care on a dead planet.
Killing the biosphere is exactly what fossil fuels and other industrial
activity are doing (along with small-scale deforestation, overfishing,
tilling the soil while losing topsoil, etc.).  O-bomb-a would have us
believe there is no alternative.

It so happens that a back-burner, all-but-defunct project of ours,
“Committee Against Oil Exploration (CAOE) – Campaign Against Offshore Oil”
comes up high in any Google search on “offshore oil drilling.”  Over the
years we’ve periodically gotten inquiries, and our standard response has
been “The information on that page (culturechange.org/caoe.html) is good,
but we have not been funded to pursue the issue since 2002.”  We’ve
responded to requests for interviews, but that’s all.

As the Google search result says, “CAOE seeks to protect sensitive
ecosystems from oil pollution and promote maximum conservation to curb
dependence on all fossil fuels.”  How more timely could this be, with
Obama’s announcement?

The CAOE (pronounced kay-oh, or K.O. as in knock out) webpage is down now,
as I write this.  I curse our shoestring budget that results in poor web
performance.  But we are resuming efforts to deal with the burning issue of
offshore oil drilling.  One way we’ll do this is to participate on the
“White House Wall” of Facebook.  Culture Change’s facebook activity will
also be increased.

Bolivia is about to host the World People’s Conference on Climate Change
and the Rights of Mother Earth, April 19-22.  An interesting dilemma:  Just
as some Zapatistas felt burning plastic was okay because it was capitalist
plastic, let’s hope that indigenous fossil fuel exploitation is not seen as
excusable because it’s not Yankee.  Mother Earth doesn’t care if the
burners are leftists or rightists.

Watch for reportage on all of the above from Culture Change.

Jan Lundberg
Culture Change
P.O. Box 4347, Arcata, CA 95518 USA
Tel/fax: 1-215-243-3144
http://culturechange.org

also at - http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-s…

——————————————————

 http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/what-th…

What The Snowpocalypse Tells Us About Global Warming.
by Bradford Plumer, February 10, 2010, The New Republic online

Washington D.C.’s getting slammed by record snowfall right now, which means that in addition to unplowed roads and Mad Max-style scenes at Safeway, we also have to suffer through a flurry of Al Gore jokes and Republicans snorting about how this proves global warming is all fake. I guess the prim, boring response is that a single weather event, even an extreme one, doesn’t tell us very much about long-term climate trends. But blah, blah, everyone’s heard that line before.

A more thoughtful reply comes from meteorologist Jeff Masters, who explains how massive snowstorms in the Northeast are, in fact, quite consistent with a steadily warming world:

There are two requirements for a record snow storm:

1) A near-record amount of moisture in the air (or a very slow moving storm).

2) Temperatures cold enough for snow.

It’s not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming.

According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the globe warmed 0.74°C (1.3°F) over the past 100 years. There will still be colder than average winters in a world that is experiencing warming, with plenty of opportunities for snow.

The more difficult ingredient for producing a record snowstorm is the requirement of near-record levels of moisture.

Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events–the ones most likely to cause flash flooding–will also increase. This occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air.

According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. This extra moisture in the air will tend to produce heavier snowstorms, assuming it is cold enough to snow. Groisman et al. (2004) found a 14% increase in heavy (top 5%) and 20% increase in very heavy (top 1%) precipitation events in the U.S. over the past 100 years, though mainly in spring and summer. However, the authors did find a significant increase in winter heavy precipitation events have occurred in the Northeast U.S.

This was echoed by Changnon et al. (2006), who found, “The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901-2000, with downward 100-yr trends in the lower Midwest, South, and West Coast. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901-2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity.”

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting the U.S. Global Change Research Program actually predicted stronger winter storms for the Northeast, in its 2009 report on potential climate-change impacts for the United States:

Storm tracks have shifted northward over the last 50 years as evidenced by a decrease in the frequency of storms in mid-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, while high-latitude activity has increased. There is also evidence of an increase in the intensity of storms in both the mid- and high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, with greater confidence in the increases occurring in high latitudes (Kunkel et al., 2008). The northward shift is projected to continue, and strong cold season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, with greater wind speeds and more extreme wave heights.”

Now, that doesn’t mean we can definitely say that global warming caused this snow monstrosity—again, it’s too hard to attribute any single weather event to long-term climate shifts. (For instance, El Niño may be playing a bigger role right now in feeding these storms.) At most, we can say that a warming climate will create the conditions that make fierce winter storms in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic more likely. Or at least it will for awhile: If the planet keeps heating up, then at some point freezing conditions in the Northeast will become very rare, at which point snowstorms will, too But we’re not at that point—the Earth hasn’t warmed that much yet.

On the other hand, climate models do predict that snowstorms in the southernmost parts of the United States should become much rarer in the coming decades: There’s plenty of moisture down south, but freezing temperatures are likely to decrease and the jet stream is expected to shift northward. So if those regions start seeing a sustained uptick in snowfall, then something’s gone awry in climate predictions. But the blizzard in the Northeast, while miserable and incredibly disruptive, doesn’t appear whack with long-term forecasts. (That’s not exactly cheerful news for those of us who have to live here.)

—————
Dr. Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog

Last Updated: 1:02 PM GMT on February 11, 2010.
Heavy snowfall in a warming world.

Posted by: JeffMasters on February 08, 2010

A major new winter storm is headed east over the U.S. today, and threatens to dump a foot or more of snow on Philadelphia, New York City, and surrounding regions Tuesday and Wednesday. Philadelphia is still digging out from its second top-ten snowstorm of recorded history to hit the city this winter, and the streets are going to begin looking like canyons if this week’s snowstorm adds a significant amount of snow to the incredible 28.5″ that fell during “Snowmageddon” last Friday and Saturday. Philadelphia has had two snowstorms exceeding 23″ this winter. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the return period for a 22+ inch snow storm is once every 100 years–and we’ve had two 100-year snow storms in Philadelphia this winter. It is true that if the winter pattern of jet stream location, sea surface temperatures, etc, are suitable for a 100-year storm to form, that will increase the chances for a second such storm to occur that same year, and thus the odds have having two 100-year storms the same year are not 1 in 10,000. Still, the two huge snowstorms this winter in the Mid-Atlantic are definitely a very rare event one should see only once every few hundred years, and is something that has not occurred since modern records began in 1870. The situation is similar for Baltimore and Washington D.C. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the expected return period in the Washington D.C./Baltimore region for snowstorms with more than 16 inches of snow is about once every 25 years. This one-two punch of two major Nor’easters in one winter with 16+ inches of snow is unprecedented in the historical record for the region, which goes back to the late 1800s.

Top 9 snowstorms on record for Philadelphia:

1. 30.7″, Jan 7-8, 1996
2. 28.5″, Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
3. 23.2″, Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
4. 21.3″, Feb 11-12, 1983
5. 21.0″, Dec 25-26, 1909
6. 19.4″, Apr 3-4, 1915
7. 18.9″, Feb 12-14, 1899
8. 16.7″, Jan 22-24, 1935
9. 15.1″, Feb 28-Mar 1, 1941

The top 10 snowstorms on record for Baltimore:

1. 28.2″, Feb 15-18, 2003
2. 26.5″, Jan 27-29, 1922
3. 24.8″, Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
4. 22.8″, Feb 11-12, 1983
5. 22.5″, Jan 7-8, 1996
6. 22.0″, Mar 29-30, 1942
7. 21.4″, Feb 11-14, 1899
8. 21.0″, Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
9. 20.0″, Feb 18-19, 1979
10. 16.0″, Mar 15-18, 1892

The top 10 snowstorms on record for Washington, D.C.:

1. 28.0″, Jan 27-28, 1922
2. 20.5″, Feb 11-13, 1899
3. 18.7″, Feb 18-19, 1979
4. 17.8″ Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
5. 17.1″, Jan 6-8, 1996
6. 16.7″, Feb 15-18, 2003
7. 16.6″, Feb 11-12, 1983
8. 16.4″, Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
9. 14.4″, Feb 15-16, 1958
10. 14.4″, Feb 7, 1936

The capital region is not accustomed to this much snow. The average annual snowfall for Washington is 15 inches. But the 2009-10 winter has been far from average. A major storm just before Christmas dumped up to 20 inches in some areas, and the city has seen smaller snow accumulations already twice this week.

The record snowfall for D.C. was 28 inches in 1922.This weekend alone will surpass that amount.

The snow was expected to become particularly heavy after nightfall and continue through Saturday. The Washington DC district’s director of transportation, Gabe Klein, said the snow could pile up at a rate of four inches an hour during parts of the storm, with winds gusting up to 25 miles an hour.

For district officials, the latest blizzard seemed a bit old hat. “We’re pretty much going to handle it in the same way we handled the last storm,” said William Howland Jr., director of D.C.’s Department of Public Works. In the spirit of the season, city press advisories referred to the storm as the “super snow bowl.”  Others dubbed it – “Snowmageddon.” We call it a potential tie-breaker in the Congressional Global Warming Wars. They will call it Washington Freezing and find in it an excuse for doing nothing on the Global Issue.

The storm also got the attention of the White House, whose current occupant, Barack Obama, famously dissed his adopted city’s response to a minor snowfall shortly after taking office last year. This time around, his tune had changed. As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, “Even a transplanted Hawaiian to Chicago has sufficient respect for a forecast of nearly two feet of snow.”

———-

Even as city officials were urging residents to stay off the streets, Washingtonians were making plans for mass revelry in the form of giant snowball fights. (A group snow battle during the December storm was marred when a police officer pulled out a gun after snowballs hit his Hummer.)

On Friday, a Facebook group promoted the “official DuPont Circle Snowball Fight” for Saturday afternoon and boasted that its membership had soared from 30 people on Thursday to more than 2,000 a day later.

Local bars and restaurants were offering Snow Day specials, with at least one establishment, Urbana, promoting a “baby, it’s cold outside beach party” theme.

Washington, Maryland and Virginia all declared snow emergencies Friday morning, and hundreds of flights were canceled at the region’s three major airports.  The lobbyists will be stuck in town this weekend. With snow soon to be sticking to the runways, a Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority spokesman said she expected the final flights to leave the area by 6 p.m., with the airports likely to be shuttered all day Saturday.

——————–

By Nafeesa Syeed
AP
WASHINGTON (Feb. 6) — A blizzard battered the Mid-Atlantic region Saturday, with emergency crews struggling to keep pace with the heavy, wet snow that has piled up on roadways, toppled trees and left thousands without electricity.

The National Weather Service called the storm “extremely dangerous.”

Officials urged people to huddle at home and out of the way of emergency crews. Forecasters said the storm could be the biggest for the nation’s capital in modern history.

A record 2½ feet or more was predicted for Washington. As of early Saturday, 10 inches of snow was reported at the White House, while parts of Maryland and West Virginia were buried under more than 20 inches. Forecasters expected snowfall rates to increase, up to 2 inches per hour through Saturday morning.

Blizzard warnings were issued for the District of Columbia, Baltimore, parts of New Jersey and Delaware, and some areas west of the Chesapeake Bay.

“Things are fairly manageable, but trees are starting to come down,” said D.C. fire department spokesman Pete Piringer, whose agency responded to some of the falling trees. No injuries were reported.

President Barack Obama called the storm “Snowmageddon.”

Airlines canceled flights, churches called off weekend services and people wondered if they would be stuck at home for several days in a region ill-equipped to deal with so much snow.

“D.C. traditionally panics when it comes to snow. This time, it may be more justifiable than most times,” said Becky Shipp, who was power-walking in Arlington, Va., Friday. “I am trying to get a walk in before I am stuck with just the exercise machine in my condo.”

The region’s second snowstorm in less than two months brought heavy, wet snow and strong winds that forecasters warned could gust near 60 mph in some areas along the coast.

Hundreds of thousands of customers across the region had lost electricity and more outages were expected to be reported because of all the downed power lines. A hospital fire in D.C. sent about three dozen patients scurrying from their rooms to safety in a basement. The blaze started when a snow plow truck caught fire near the building.

Authorities blamed the storm for hundreds of accidents, including a deadly tractor-trailer wreck that killed a father and son who had stopped to help someone in Virginia. Some area hospitals asked people with four-wheel-drive vehicles to volunteer to pick up doctors and nurses to take them to work.

The country band Rascal Flatts postponed a concert Saturday in Ohio, but the Atlanta Thrashers-Washington Capitals NHL game went on as planned.

In Dover, Del., Shanita Foster lugged three gallons of water out of a Dollar General store.
“That’s all we need right now. We’ve got everything else,” said Foster, adding that she was ready with candles in case the power went out.

Shoppers jammed aisles and emptied stores of milk, bread, shovels, driveway salt and other supplies. Many scrambling for food and supplies were too late.
“Our shelves are bare,” said Food Lion front-end manager Darlene Baboo in Dover. “This is just unreal.”

Metro, the transit system the Washington area is heavily dependent upon, closed all but the underground rail service and suspended bus service.

Maryland’s public transportation also shut down Saturday, including Baltimore’s Metro. Maryland Transit Administration spokeswoman Jawauna Greene said the underground portion of the Metro could reopen later Saturday but it depended on the weather conditions.
“We have trees on the overhead wires, trees on train tracks. We can’t get anything out,” she said.

Amtrak also canceled several of its Northeast Corridor trains Saturday, and New Jersey’s transit authority expected to suspend bus service. As much as a foot of snow was reported in parts of that state.

Across the region, transportation officials deployed thousands of trucks and crews and had hundreds of thousands of tons of salt at the ready. Several states exhausted or expected to exhaust their snow removal budgets.

Maryland budgeted about $60 million, and had already spent about $50 million, Gov. Martin O’Malley said. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who has been in office less than a month, declared his second snow emergency, authorizing state agencies to assist local governments. As of early Saturday, some parts of Virginia had already seen more than 18 inches of snow.

The snow comes less than two months after a Dec. 19 storm dumped more than 16 inches on Washington. Snowfalls of this magnitude – let alone two in one season – are rare in the area. According to the National Weather Service, Washington has gotten more than a foot of snow only 13 times since 1870.

The heaviest on record was 28 inches in January 1922. The biggest snowfall for the Washington-Baltimore area is believed to have been in 1772, before official records were kept, when as much as 3 feet fell, which George Washington and Thomas Jefferson penned in their diaries.

In Washington, tourists made the best of it Friday, spending their days in museums or venturing out to see the monuments before the snow got too heavy.

A group of 13 high school students from Cincinnati was stranded in D.C. when a student government conference they planned to attend was canceled – after they had already arrived. So they went sightseeing.

At the Smithsonian’s natural history museum, Caitlin Lavon, 18, and Hannah Koch, 17, took pictures of each other with the jaws of a great white shark in the Ocean Hall.
“Our parents are all freaking out, sending texts to be careful,” Koch said. “Being from Ohio, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much snow at once.”

Associated Press writers Brett Zongker and Sarah Karush in Washington, Kathleen Miller in Falls Church, Va., David Dishneau in Chantilly, Va., Ben Nuckols in Hanover, Md., Randall Chase in Dover, Del., and Steve Szkotak in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

———————

Here in New York, I just came home from jogging on the street – there were more joggers out on a Saturday morning then I ever saw. The streets  are clear – the only white is that of salt some eager store owners or building – Supers sprinkled believing there will be snow. Indeed in between parked cars, in some streets, there is a little bit of white – so there was a dusting sometime earlier today. Will New York be spared this time? Was it all destined for Washington or we are still on line to get it later?

Feds move to seize 4 mosques, tower linked to Iran.
By ADAM GOLDMAN (AP) – November 12, 2009

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors Thursday took steps to seize four U.S. mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.
In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors filed a civil complaint in federal court seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets of the Alavi Foundation and an alleged front company.
The assets include Islamic centers in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston, more than 100 acres in Virginia, and a 36-story office tower in New York.
Seizing the properties would be a sharp blow against Iran, which has been accused by the U.S. government of bankrolling terrorism and seeking a nuclear bomb.
A telephone call and e-mail to Iran’s U.N. Mission seeking comment were not immediately answered.
It is extremely rare for U.S. law enforcement authorities to seize a house of worship, a step fraught with questions about the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.
The action against the Shiite Muslim mosques is sure to inflame relations between the U.S. government and American Muslims, many of whom are fearful of a backlash after last week’s Fort Hood shooting rampage, blamed on a Muslim American soldier.
The mosques and the office tower will remain open while the forfeiture case works its way through court in what could be a long process. What will happen to them if the government ultimately prevails is unclear. But the government typically sells properties it has seized through forfeiture, and the proceeds are sometimes distributed to crime victims.
There were no raids Thursday as part of the forfeiture action. The government is simply required to post notices of the civil complaint on the property.
Prosecutors said the Alavi Foundation, through a front company known as Assa Corp., illegally funneled millions in rental income back to Iran’s state-owned Bank Melli. Bank Melli has been accused by a U.S. Treasury official of providing support for Iran’s nuclear program, and it is illegal in the United States to do business with the bank.
Government officials have long suspected the foundation was an arm of the Iranian government; a 97-page complaint details involvement of several top officials in foundation business, including the country’s deputy prime minister and ambassadors to the United Nations.
“For two decades, the Alavi Foundation’s affairs have been directed by various Iranian officials, including Iranian ambassadors to the United Nations, in violation of a series of American laws,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.
The skyscraper, known as the Piaget building, was erected in the 1970s under the shah of Iran, who was overthrown in 1979. The tenants include law and investment firms and other businesses.
The sleek, modern building, last valued at $570 million to $650 million in 2007, has served as important source of income for the foundation over the past 36 years. The most recent tax records show the foundation earned $4.5 million from rents in 2007.
Rents collected from the building help fund the centers and other ventures, such as sending imprisoned Muslims in the U.S. educational literature. The foundation has also invested in dozens of mosques around the country and supported Iranian academics at prominent universities.

If federal prosecutors seize the skyscraper, the Alavi Foundation would have almost no way to continue supporting the Islamic centers, which house schools and mosques. That could leave a major void in Shiite communities, and hard feelings toward the FBI.

Legal scholars who specialize in religious liberty issues said they know of only a few cases in U.S. history in which law enforcement authorities have seized a house of worship. Marc Stern, a religious-liberty expert with the American Jewish Congress, called such cases “extremely rare.”

The Alavi Foundation is the successor organization to the Pahlavi Foundation, a nonprofit group used by the shah to advance Iran’s charitable interests in America. But authorities said its agenda changed after the fall of the shah.

In 2007, the United States accused Bank Melli of providing services to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and put the bank on its list of companies whose assets must be frozen.
The United States has imposed sanctions against various other Iranian banks and other businesses.
 http://www.alavifoundation.org

———-

Update of November 13, 2009:

The skyscraper known  as the Piaget building is at 650 Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street and was built in the 1970s when Iran was under the shah’s control. Eventually the Alavi Foundation which funds Islamic centers took over the building. Among the tenants are the Citigroup and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Notorious inside-trader Ivan Boesky had an office there.

Yusill Scribner, a spokesperson for US attorney’s office for Southern District of New York said that there are no allegations of any wrongdoing on the part of any tenants or occupants – we assume that this is true for all five properties involved. None of the building have been seized yet and if it happens it will not involve any evictions.

Troubling Portrait of Suspect Emerges.
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE ,  AP

WASHINGTON (Nov. 5) - His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.
There are many unknowns about Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive. But details of his life and mindset, emerging from official sources and personal acquaintances, are troubling.
For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood, Texas, in July, the 39-year-old Army major worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing his career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.
While an intern at Walter Reed, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.
Grieger said privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan’s interactions with patients. He recalled Hasan as a “mostly very quiet” person who never spoke ill of the military or his country.
“He swore an oath of loyalty to the military,” Grieger said. “I didn’t hear anything contrary to those oaths.”
But, more recently, federal agents grew suspicious.
At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.
They had not determined for certain whether Hasan is the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.
One of the officials said late Thursday that federal search warrants were being drawn up to authorize the seizure of Hasan’s computer.
Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, who said he worked with Hasan, told Fox News that Hasan had hoped President Barack Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Lee said Hasan got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars, and had tried hard to prevent his pending deployment.
Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan was a lifelong Muslim.
“I got the impression that he was a committed soldier,” Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan’s desire for a wife.
On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan said.
“I don’t know why he listed Palestinian,” Khan said, “He was not born in Palestine.”
Nothing stood out about Hasan as radical or extremist, Khan said.
“We hardly ever got to discussing politics,” Khan said. “Mostly we were discussing religious matters, nothing too controversial, nothing like an extremist.”
Hasan earned his rank of major in April 2008, according to a July 2008 Army Times article.
He served eight years as an enlisted soldier. He also served in the ROTC as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg. He received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry there in 1997.
Associated Press writers Lara Jakes, Pam Hess, Lolita C. Baldor and Brett Zongker in Washington and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

—————-
Press Release from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee:
ADC Appalled by Attack on Fort Hood, Community Urged to Take Safety Precautions.

Washington, DC | November 5, 2009 | www.adc.org | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is appalled by the attack that took place earlier today against soldiers and others at Fort Hood, Texas. Preliminary news reports have indicated that a rogue Army Major Malik Hasan and two others shot and killed at least 12 people and injured numerous others.

ADC President Mary Rose Oakar said, “This attack is absolutely deplorable. ADC has been consistent and on record in condemning any attacks aimed at innocents, no matter who the victims or the perpetrators may be.  Such violence is morally reprehensible and has nothing to do with any religion, race, ethnicity, or national origin.  ADC urges the FBI and law enforcement agencies to make every effort to see that justice is served.” Oakar continued, “ADC also calls upon law enforcement agencies to provide immediate protection for all Mosques, community centers, schools, and any locations that may be identified or misidentified with being Arab, Muslim, South Asian or Sikh as a clear backlash has already started.  The actions of a few should not invite a backlash on innocent members of any community and we urge law enforcement and others to keep that in mind.

Additionally, due to these tragic developments, ADC is releasing the following advisory statement to members of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities. ADC feels it prudent to issue this advisory statement due to the potential of a backlash against these communities and given the historically documented acts of hate-motivated violence including vandalism against these communities.

ADC would like to emphasize that it is issuing this advisory based on experiences in the community in recent years, and purely as a precautionary measure. ADC presents these suggestions for the consideration of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities, to be evaluated by each family and individual according to their own best judgment and in the context of their own situation and relationship with their local community. ADC urges everyone to exercise common sense and rely on their own best judgment, but offers the following as suggestions should the need arise:

1) IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS PLACED IN PHYSICAL DANGER BECAUSE OF YOUR ETHNICITY, RELIGION, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN:

Call the police (dial 911 in most communities)

Contact the local FBI office, It is the FBI’s job to investigate hate-motivated crimes and specific threats of violence. A list of FBI field offices is included on our website, please see: http://adc.org/fbi_field_office.htm

If the threat is imminent, go to a safe location such as a police station or church.

If you feel threatened in your home or community, move to a friend’s house, or a hotel for as long as necessary.

Contact ADC to file a complaint by emailing the ADC Legal Department at<  legal at adc.org > or by calling (202) 244-2990.

2) IF YOUR PLACE OF WORK, PLACE OF WORSHIP, OR SCHOOL IS IDENTIFIED OR CAN BE MISIDENTIFIED WITH ARABS AND/OR MUSLIMS:

Make sure the location has an open line of communication with law enforcement.

Make sure you know all the exits to your building.

Make sure the location has a current emergency plan that is defined and can be implemented should the need arise.

3) IF YOUR CHILD CAN BE IDENTIFIED AS ARAB OR MUSLIM, OR MAY BE CONFUSED FOR BEING OF MIDDLE-EASTERN ORIGIN:

Make sure you discuss the events with your children and that they feel comfortable speaking with an adult if they face harassment by others.

Make sure your children know what steps to take to avoid confrontation with other students.

Work with your children’s school to implement an anti-discriminatory policy.

Click on the following link for a list of the FBI Field Offices across the country: http://adc.org/fbi_field_office.htm

ADC would like to emphasize that it is issuing this advisory based on experiences in the community in recent years, and purely as a precautionary measure. ADC presents these suggestions for the consideration of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities, to be evaluated by each family and individual according to their own best judgment and in the context of their own situation and relationship with their local community.
NOTE TO EDITORS: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is non sectarian and non partisan, is the largest Arab-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1980, by former Senator James Abourezk to protect the civil rights of people of Arab descent in the United States and to promote the cultural heritage of the Arabs. ADC has 38 chapters nationwide, including chapters in every major city in the country, and members in all 50 states.

The ADC Research Institute (ADC-RI), which was founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors a wide range of programs on behalf of Arab Americans and of importance to all Americans. ADC-RI programs include research studies, seminars, conferences and publications that document and analyze the discrimination faced by Arab Americans in the workplace, schools, media, and governmental agencies and institutions. ADC-RI also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the Arabs.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN, ClimateWire
Published: May 22, 2009

Thirty-five members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee gained a new title last night: global warming ambassadors.

In voting to adopt comprehensive legislation to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the 34 Democrats and one Republican now embark on the difficult task of convincing their fellow House colleagues to support sweeping new environmental legislation in tight economic times.

“We really need to be emissaries to the caucus, talking to them about how we were able to find some good common ground, and how it’s a good bill,” said Rep. Diane DeGette, a Democrat from Denver who said she would focus in the coming months on her fellow Western and urban lawmakers.

Rep. Mike Doyle, a Democrat who represents Pittsburgh, has already gotten started, albeit in a very subtle way. He brought up the climate bill over breakfast yesterday with a wavering lawmaker from the South.

“It was more of a conversational thing,” said Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.). “He was explaining how he’d become a convert. I’ll just leave it at that. He did not try to twist my arm or influence my vote in any way.”

As DeGette, Doyle and many other Democrats are already seeing, their job will not be easy. It is going to take more than just one breakfast conversation to explain the intricacies of a 946-page climate bill that was long ago branded by Republicans as an “energy tax.”

“As this bill is now out there in the public domain, I think people will understand the extraordinary cost that this will impose to business and working families,” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said yesterday. “And at the end of the day, that will be what will kill this bill.”

Taylor, an 11-term congressman from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, is not ready to buy into the climate bill.

“I think of the whole cap-and-trade idea as a Ponzi scheme,” Taylor said. “I don’t like the idea that one factory is cleaner than it has to be so that another a factory is dirtier than it should be, because historically that factory that’s dirtier than it should be ends up in the South. … If the vote was today, I’d vote ‘no.’”

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) has his own problems with global warming legislation, especially when it comes to speculation in the carbon market. Several members of the Energy and Commerce Committee won some concessions on this very issue, but DeFazio said he probably will not be swayed.

“I don’t care what restrictions we put on it, we do not want to enable Wall Street hedge funds, derivative traders and others to create another bubble and take control of our carbon markets,” DeFazio said. “Cap? Fine. Regulate? Great. Trade? No.”

Then there is House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who again yesterday said he has between 40 and 45 Democrats who will oppose the climate bill if serious concessions are not made on several intertwining issues. Peterson’s list starts with U.S. EPA’s draft plan to consider greenhouse gas emissions from “indirect” land-use changes spurred by biofuels production. He also wants a larger share of agricultural offsets factored into the bill, as well as more free allowance allocations to rural electric utilities.

“If they don’t want to change it, then they’ll have to find the votes some other place,” Peterson said. “In my district, a ‘no’ vote would be a good vote.”

Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), a member of the Agriculture Committee and the Blue Dogs, a group of moderate and conservative Democrats, said defections among committee members and Blue Dogs would make for “rough sledding” on the floor for the climate bill given the widespread GOP opposition.

“I don’t think [Peterson] is bluffing,” Pomeroy said. “He has got the support he says he has.”

A plan in progress:

Democratic committee leaders say they will map out their plans for getting the bill ready for the floor once Congress returns from the weeklong Memorial Day recess. Eight other committees will have jurisdiction over pieces of the bill, but only a few have signaled serious interest in holding their own markup: Ways and Means, Agriculture, Science, and Natural Resources.

Speaking to reporters last night after the final passage vote, Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said he would do what it takes to get the measure across the finish line.

Evangelicals and Rural Americans Are Breaking Big for Obama: A mass defection from the Republican Party may be underway in counties that were once GOP strongholds. Call it the reverse Bradley Effect.

By Robert S. Eshelman, Tomdispatch.com. Posted October 30, 2008.

There’s clearly a new political landscape forming in the U.S. That’s what the polls are telling us. It’s not just that the first major-party black candidate for President is leading by significant margins in the national polls; it’s not just that North Dakota, a state George W. Bush won in 2004 by 64%, is believed to be “in play”; it’s not just that Virginia which, like North Dakota, was last carried by a Democrat in the sweep year of 1964, is, according to the most recent Washington Post poll and others, in the Obama camp by at least 8 points, or that he’s leading in a remarkable number of states Bush took in 2004, or even that Democratic Senate and House candidates are making a run of it in previously ridiculous places.

(a) Consider, instead, three recent polls in the context of the Bush years. Obama and McCain are now in a “statistical dead heat” among born-again evangelicals, those Rovian foot soldiers of two successful Bush elections, according to a recent survey; and the same seems to be true in Sarah Palin’s “real America,” those rural and small town areas she’s praised to the skies.

(b) According to a poll commissioned by the Center for Rural Strategies, in those areas which Bush won in 2004 by 53%-41%, Obama now holds a statistically insignificant one point lead.

(c) To complete this little trifecta, Gallup has just released a poll showing that Jews are now likely to vote for Obama by a more than 3 to 1 majority (74% to 22%).

If present projections come close to holding, this could prove to be a rare reconfiguring or turning-point election — as Wall Street expert Steve Fraser first suggested might be possible at TomDispatch way back in February 2007. If so, the Republican Party, only recently besotted by dreams of a generational Pax Republicana, might find itself driven back into the deep South and deep West for who knows how long, “an extremist rump, reduced to a few stronghold states and obsessed with causes that seem not to matter to the general public.”

Among the remaining unknowns in this election, of course, are the intertwined issues of class and race. In this regard, few places have been more closely examined than parts of Pennsylvania, a battleground state in which polls show John McCain significantly behind, but which he must capture if he hopes to win this election, and a place where working-class, as well as possibly racist, “Hillary voters” were supposed to be especially strong. Ever since the primaries, reporters have been tromping the state in search of them. Today, TomDispatch has an interesting twist on such articles. We’ve sent a home-town boy back to Pennsylvania to offer a more personal view of the race there — and the news isn’t good for the future of the Republican Party. — Introduction by TomDispatch editor, Tom Engelhardt.
 http://www.alternet.org/election08/10526…

Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer (nee Nancy Wadley) is an economist who in 2008 became a spokesperson and adviser for the McCain Campaign and later the McCain – Palin presidential ticket.

She is a former executive Vice President of Citizens for a Sound Economy, former President of the Independent Women’s Forum, and former President of Americans for Prosperity (originally CSE).^[1]

After graduating from George Mason University with a master’s in economics in the late 1980s, Pfotenhauer became chief economist at the Republican National Committee. She then worked for George H. W. Bush‘s transition team and Sen. William L. Armstrong (R-CO) and was then appointed to be chief economist of the President’s Council on Competitiveness.

During the Clinton years, she rejoined Koch Industries as “executive vice president for policy” of the Koch front group Citizens for a Sound Economy. With her then-husband Daniel Mitchell, a Heritage Foundation economist, she co-hosted the call-in show Mitchells in the Morning on National Empowerment Television, run by Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich. From 1996 to 2001, she was the top lobbyist for Koch Industries.

While working for Koch, she divorced Mitchell and married Gordon Smith‘s (R-OR)’s chief of staff Kurt Pfotenhauer, now a top mortgage-industry lobbyist. In 2001, she was named president of another Koch front group, the anti-feminist Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). In 2003, she also became president of Americans for Prosperity, until joining the McCain campaign in 2007.

In 2008, she created controversy by referring to the areas of Virginia not included in Northern Virginia as “real Virginia”, prompting comedian Jon Stewart to rhetorically ask “What the pfuck?”^[2]

1. ^ PBS
2. ^ [1]