Hat Tip: Letters from the Sanitarium

Eventually, toxic crap from the petroleum will diffuse into all the oceans. It will evaporate with water to form rain that will poison people and other life forms all over the planet. The air we breathe will remain poisoned as well.

Greenpeace has a Flickr photo set that shows what is really being done to the environment.

So much of the coverage on the cable "news" channels is about the politicians and the pundits, while the consequences of this horrific crime get short shrift.

 

Attacking women and queers is an old tactic of the Roman Catholic Church when they want to divert attention from the rampant child molestation in their clergy. They just won't let go of it. (From Edge 6/16/10)

The bishop of Essen, Germany--an epicenter of the clerical sexual abuse scandal now rocking Europe--has targeted gays with a declaration that homosexuals are headed to Hell.

Blog The Eponymous Flower posted a German news item on June 15 about the words of Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck. The original June 10 article appeared at German Catholic news site Kreuz.net ("Cross.net") reported the Overbeck had appeared on a televised talk program in April, where he declared, "Homosexuality is a sin. We know this very clearly and unambiguously, and that’s that. It contradicts nature." Added the bishop, "Human nature is fulfilled in the conjoining of man and woman."

The Eponymous Flower elaborated on the bishop’s anti-gay message. "Whoever dies as an unrepentant homosexual, goes to Hell," the posting’s framing comments read. "The Bishop of Essen can not abolish the 10 Commandments: homosexual perversion is a mortal sin."

Instead of sentencing queers to a nonexistent hell, why not turn in some of the child raping priests you are protecting so they can go to very real prisons? Being used as scapegoats by a clergy that sees sex as sinful unless it is among married heterosexuals or involves adults molesting children is getting really old.

Can't they come up with something knew to distract the gullible? How about threats involving people who shave their beards or eat shellfish? Is it any wonder so much of the Roman Catholic flock is finally leaving that bigoted, greedy, and child molesting church?

Last Monday, there was a rally for homeless queer youth organized by the Ali Forney Center and other queer organizations, that was partly in response to a hate crime in Queens. Here's the promo Queers United ran:

A rally to protect and advocate on behalf of homeless LGBT youth will occur tonight in Manhattan. This rally is in response to the recent hate crime against the Ali Forney LGBT homeless youth shelter. There are too many issues LGBT youth who are homeless go through to be ignored and while the the NYC Commission on LGBTQ Runaway and Homeless Youth came out with a report of suggestions, action needs to follow for implementation of change.

Monday June 14th, 6:30PM, Union Square
(Special guest-speakers Sandra Bernhard and Lt. Dan Choi)

Our execrable Mayor Bloomberg created the commission while at the same time planning to cut $6 million of city funding for homeless youth. He loves to pretend to be pro lgbt while stabbing us in the back when it counts. Some of us are not fooled by his bullshit.

The hate crime that triggered this particular rally was described by Kicked Out Anthology:

I am shocked and angered by the vandalism that occurred at the Ali Forney Center’s NYC shelter in Queens. Yesterday morning youth living at the shelter woke up to find the words “”We don’t want gay people here” scrawled on the walls, and “gay shelter” on the door of a place that is intended to provide them safety and security. Take a moment and think about what that must have felt like “we don’t want gay people here” the majority of homeless LGBTQ youth have left home because of their parents and guardian’s reaction to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, how bitingly cruel to wake to find those same words on the door of a place offering them sanctuary.

Sandra Bernhard was good, but Lt. Dan Choi was amazing. He is the most passionate and moving queer speaker since Harvey Milk. Like Milk, he sees queer issues in a broader social justice context. If Choi ever starts working on coalition building like Milk did, Choi could be the kind of queer leader our movement desperately needs.

However, the most important speakers were the queer youth themselves. Putting human faces on a social ill, homelessness, that our society prefers to ignore is terribly important.

The speaker from Fierce made some excellent points about how youth homelessness disproportionately effects the queer community. She said that over 40% of homeless youth in NYC acknowledge being LGBT. Many more are understandably reluctant to say who and what they are to strangers trying to gather statistics.

Some queer youth run away from homophobic parents, but most of the queer youth who are homeless are kicked out by their parents. There are far fewer beds here in NYC than there are queer youth who need them. However, things are better here than in most of the country. Most places have zero beds for LGBT youth.

Some of the things speakers at the rally called for include:

- A queer nondiscrimination policy for all federally funded youth shelters.

- An end to Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to cut funding for homeless youth.

- Making youth issues a priority for the LGBT community.

- The creation of a queer youth center at the pier in the West Village.

Some elected officials showed for the event, including City Controller John Liu. Conspicuous by her absence was openly lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. I guess she has been too busy with her hateful crusade to "honor" Mother Teresa, the homophobic bigot who denied visits from same sex lovers in AIDS hospices, avoided providing pain medication to all patients, used highly questionable medical practices, and lavished praise on Savings and Loan crook Charles Keating even after he got caught. Considering how much Quinn panders to our viciously homophobic and horribly corrupt Mayor Bloomberg, serious questions about Quinn's loyalty to the queer community need to be raised.

 

Image: ssoosay

The corporate media have so much power to frame the nation's political debate that most people often aren't even aware of what has been done. An excellent example of this is how the corporate media have gone along with British Petroleum's sleazy marketing ploy to call itself "BP." This marketing scam was created for two purposes.

1) British Petroleum didn't want the portion of the US populace that doesn't follow the news to know that a foreign corporation had bought major US oil companies.

2) Using "BP" allowed them to run these fraudulent "Beyond Petroleum" commercials where British Petroleum had the nerve to actually present itself as an alternative fuels company, a presentation even more offensive given the fact that British Petroleum joined with other Big Oil corporations to lobby against alternative fuels and public transportation while pushing for wars for oil here and in Britain.

Yet, the corporate media have completely gone along with the "BP" fiction. This wasn't just based on the general far right bias of corporations owned by rich Republicans. British Petroleum is a major advertiser on corporate media outlets. That ad money buys a lot of bullshit, and the bullshit isn't just being shoveled at us during the commercials.

Notice to the British Petroleum PR Person Posting Anonymously:
Trying to cynically exploit what happened in Bhopal in order to promote the interests of a truly monstrous corporation like British Petroleum is absolutely reprehensible. It's obvious that you couldn't care less about people in India or the US.

 

From the A.N.S.W.E.R. website:

On Saturday, July 10, thousands will protest against anti-immigrant racism at the National Governors Association annual meeting in Boston.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s racist law, SB 1070, has ignited a firestorm of protests around the country at the very time when immigrants and their supporters are standing up for reform. In addition to SB 1070, which legalizes racial profiling and is aimed at all people of color in Arizona, the state has passed a bill, HB 2281, which bans ethnic studies from public classrooms. Other states are reportedly considering similar moves.

In Massachusetts, a series of anti-immigrant amendments were passed into the State Senate's version of the budget, restricting access to basic social services like healthcare, education and housing. Also included is the creation of an anonymous tip line for the public to report on undocumented people and mandating the state to investigate all reports made.

These attacks come at a time when all people are suffering from the wave of budget cuts and mass unemployment that makes racism and anti-immigrant xenophobia so dangerous.

It’s time for Brewer and the rest of the state governors to be met with the outrage felt by millions of immigrants and their supporters.

Immigration must be on the agenda of the annual meeting of the National Governor’s Association—and our voices must be heard!

The protest has broad support among anti racist activists. Supporting organizations include:

ANSWER Coalition
Vamos Unidos USA
Boston Mayday Committee
Mass Global Action
Unidad Latina en Acción
Hermandad Mexicana Nacional
Muslim American Society Freedom
La Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas-UCC
Rev. Graylan Hagler, National President of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice
Barrio Unido para Amnistía Incondicional
Ugnayan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Linking the Children of the Motherland)
Damayan Migrant Workers Association
Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
March Forward!
Alliance for Global Justice

If you are in the Boston area at the time, you are encouraged to go.

It's encouraging to see people oppose the racist scapegoating by corrupt bigots like Klan Brewer. The efforts by corporate media to deflect legitimate anger resulting from suffering caused by corrupt behavior by wealthy and corporate interests are reprehensible. Illegal immigration has little or no impact on our lives. Obscene tax breaks for the rich, the Iraq War, predatory lending, outsourcing, wasteful military spending, financial speculation, derivatives trading, and corporate controlled trade agreements like NAFTA are causing far more pain for middle class and poor Americans. Yet, those issues are deflected or spun by corrupt media and corrupt politicians like Klan Brewer who are completely bought and paid for by the interests that are devastating the overwhelming majority of people in this country.

I've decided to start my first weekly feature here in the land of the Godless Liberal Homo: Action Against Oil Spills Tuesdays. This will be running at least for the next few weeks in order to turn anger into action against more catastrophes like the British Petroleum oil volcano in the Gulf. If we continue offshore drilling, more incidents like this are inevitable.

The first action will be to work to reduce the dependency on automobiles which creates the market for much of the filthy muck in the Gulf. The American Public Transportation Association has an Action Alert for people to contact the folks who are supposed to be representing us in DC asking them to push for more money for public transportation during the next appropriations process. Here is the sample text: (You should replace all or most of it with your own words.)

Public transportation benefits all Americans. Please support further investment in public transportation because public transportation:

-CREATES JOBS AND STIMULATES THE ECONOMY
For every $1 invested in public transit, $6 is generated in economic returns. And every $1 billion invested in public transportation supports 30,000 jobs in urban and rural areas.

-REDUCES OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL
Public transportation allows us to save 900,000 automobile fill-ups each day. That's 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline annually that we're not buying overseas.

-PROTECTS OUR ENVIRONMENT
Public transportation saves 37 million metric tons of CO2 annually. That's the equivalent of the electricity used by nearly 5 million homes.

-ENHANCES OUR QUALITY OF LIFE
Each year, public transit saves auto drivers and truckers more than $10.2 billion in congestion costs, which in turn, reduces stress. What's more, public transportation connects us to work, school and health services.

Only a small percentage of the population in this country uses public transit, and that much CO2 is being kept out of the atmosphere. Think how much more CO2 would be kept out if we massively expanded public transit.

Please Take Action to Prevent More Oil Spills!

 

They were legitimately angry at that corporation dumping waste into Lake Michigan.



 

Photo: Muffett

GOP gubernatorial bidder Meg Whitman bid over $70 million of her own money to win the Republican nomination on GOPBay. The losing bidder, Steve Piozner, only bid $25 million of his enormous fortune.

According to one source, the highest bid on EBay, where Ms. Whitman used to be CEO, was for $21 million, making GOPBay a more high end auction site than Ms. Whitman's former employer.

Other items that may be up for auction in the future:

- The Grand Canyon

- The Papacy

- The Moon

Making the rich pay their fair share in taxes is not part of Ms. Whitman's platform.

 

Photo: dmax3270

I already knew that my Phonycrat Sen. Chuck "Loves Torture" Schumer was racist, but I didn't know that he was this sickening of a bigot. (From Think Progress - Hat Tip: Unbrainwashed)

SCHUMER: The Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution. More do than before, but a majority still do not. Their fundamental view is, the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them our land — this is Palestinian thinking [...] They don’t believe in the Torah, in David [...] You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay. The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose — obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel — but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re going to get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense.

The military siege of Gaza is a racist crime against humanity. It's perpetrators are subject to criminal prosecution in any country in the world. Unbrainwashed also discusses Schumer's theocratic bigotry against people who don't believe the Jewish religion.

But Schumer is worse than that. He believes that Palestinians deserve it because "they don't believe in the Torah." Hey, I don't believe in the Torah, does that make it okay for someone to economically strangle me until I do? All this proves is that Israel is not a democracy, but an apartheid theocracy, albeit a racist one, where those people not of the state religion are not entitled to the same rights as those of the correct religion.

I don't believe in the Torah, David, or any other religious claptrap. I'm sick of people like Chuck Schumer, Pat Robertson, and Osama bin Laden acting like it is OK to murder people merely for not sharing in a superstitious religious faith.

Also, Schumer attacks the Palestinians for acknowledging a fact that nobody can honestly dispute, "the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them our land." Attacking this reflects Schumer's racist attitude that brown skinned peoples' sole purpose of existence is to be punished for crimes committed by white people.

Chuck Schumer is a truly heinous bigot. There is no way I could ever vote for him for any public office again after this.

 

One of the excuses made by defenders of British Petroleum is that fighting back against that terrorist corporation will hurt efforts to compensate victims. That isn't true. British Petroleum has no intention of fairly compensating victims. From Facing South:

BP hires company to handle oil spill claims whose goal is "reducing payouts" for clients

Publicly, BP has said it intends to be generous in compensating those affected by the Gulf oil spill: CEO Tony Hayward has pledged to pay all "legitimate" claims resulting from the disaster, even offering to waive the $75 million cap on liability for economic damages.

But to handle claims from the spill, BP has hired a risk-management company who advertises that a main benefit of its services is "reducing our clients' loss dollar pay-outs" -- a goal Gulf advocates say is in direct contradiction to Washington and BP's promises to fully compensate coastal residents.

ESIS Inc. -- part of the Swiss-based global insurance giant the ACE Group -- is a risk-management firm whose mission is to "impact our clients' business and reduce their total cost."

One of ESIS's many services for corporate clients is handling claims made against companies, which Darryl Willis, VP for Resources at BP America said in recent Congressional testimony [pdf] is the role they're playing for BP in the wake of the spill:

Even before this event, BP had a relationship with a company called ESIS - they are trained to respond quickly and professionally to significant events. Organized in 1953, ESIS is part of the ACE Group, headed by ACE Limited. The ESIS Claims team assisting BP was developed in 1995 and has extensive experience. ESIS has handled over 200 incidents, both small and large. The company is well known as a leader in its field. Speaking personally, I have been impressed by the professionalism and dedication of our ESIS colleagues in providing the backbone of our claims process.

How does ESIS deliver on its promise to clients to "reduce their total cost?" Part of the savings come from ESIS's ability to bring expertise and systems for handling claims that BP doesn't have already.

But another way ESIS can "reduce cost" is by cutting the number and dollar value of claims that are paid. As ESIS advertises in a fact sheet on another part of the business, [pdf] a key goal of their operations is "reducing our clients' loss-dollar payouts."

As the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights argued in a letter this week [pdf] to Admiral Thad Allen who is leading the federal spill response, ESIS's goals of reducing claims costs may not only contradict BP's pledge to honor claims, but also raises larger questions about Washington's role in overseeing the claims process:

As the National Incident Commander, you have the responsibility to ensure that the people of the Gulf Region harmed by the BP oil disaster are fully compensated by BP for all of their losses, This responsibility entails investigating and preventing any efforts by BP and ESIS that provide or attempt to provide insufficient compensation to any claimant.

Gulf Coast residents are already reporting frustrations with ESIS's handling of the claims process and finding ways to limit payouts. Here's a story from a Louisiana fishing guide:

Brian Sherman of Buras filed his claim after losing business as a fishing guide who helped people keep up their boats and condominiums and ran boats out of the Venice Marina before the oil spill. Last year Sherman made about $3916 per month. BP provided him with a check for only $2500, however, because ESIS, the firm hired by BP to handle claims, classified him as a deckhand, a lower paying position.

All of British Petroleum's talk about fairly compensating victims is a pack of lies. British Petroleum must be destroyed, its executives imprisoned, and its assets seized immediately.

 

British Petroleum is keeping cleanup workers from talking to the press. I wonder what they are covering up.