Leaked US embassy cables published by WikiLeaks have revealed that the government has “weakened” the compulsory pilotage regime for large vessels, including oil tankers, chemical tankers and liquefied gas carriers, sailing through the sensitive maritime environment of the Torres Strait. Owners and masters of vessels that fail to use a pilot to navigate the narrow and hazardous channel will not face any penalty if they do not subsequently call at an Australian port.

On learning the Torres Strait pilotage regime was quietly amended 17 months ago, the chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Don Henry, said it was “absolutely essential” that all shipping [through the strait] has pilotage. The cables reveal that the US and Singaporean governments reacted strongly against the Howard government’s October 2006 announcement of a compulsory pilotage regime in the Torres Strait designed to reduce the risk of oil and chemical spills in the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef.  Singapore’s Foreign Minister, George Yeo, wrote directly to his Australian counterpart, Alexander Downer, “to complain about the decision and its negative impact on larger strategic interests”.

The leaked cables show the US shared Singapore’s concerns and served as Singapore’s “closest ally on the Torres Strait issue”. American diplomats lobbied other countries with large registered merchant fleets such as Panama and Cyprus to protest to Australia as well. The Howard government was unmoved. In early 2008 the new Labor government under Kevin Rudd would not change its position either. However, in July 2008, the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s international law branch, assistant secretary Adam McCarthy, told the US embassy in Canberra that “Australia recognises that it has not handled the Torres Strait pilotage issue particularly well” and indicated Canberra was prepared “to explore ways to address US concerns”.

After detailed talks between US and Australian officials in Washington in August 2008, the department sought American agreement to a compromise formula that would allow Australia to save face while meeting US demands. This would involve leaving the “compulsory” framework in place while in practice reverting to a voluntary scheme for many vessels by not enforcing penalties against ships that passed through the Torres Strait without a pilot, but which did not call at an Australian port. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority formalised the change on April 17, 2009.

So there you have it, a piss-ant under secretary selling out Australia’s interests for what ? A night out with ladies of the night or was it laddies …

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show BP officials openly discussing how to influence the work of scientists supported by the fund, which was created by the oil company in May last year.

Russell Putt, a BP environmental expert, wrote in an email to colleagues on 24 June 2010: “Can we ‘direct’ GRI [Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative] funding to a specific study (as we now see the governor’s offices trying to do)? What influence do we have over the vessels/equipment driving the studies vs the questions?”.

The email was obtained by Greenpeace and shared with the Guardian.

The documents are expected to reinforce fears voiced by scientists that BP has too much leverage over studies into the impact of last year’s oil disaster.

Those concerns go far beyond academic interest into the impact of the spill. BP faces billions in fines and penalties, and possible criminal charges arising from the disaster. Its total liability will depend in part on a final account produced by scientists on how much oil entered the gulf from its blown-out well, and the damage done to marine life and coastal areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The oil company disputes the government estimate that 4.1m barrels of oil entered the gulf.

There is no evidence in the emails that BP officials were successful in directing research. The fund has since established procedures to protect its independence.
Other documents obtained by Greenpeace suggest that the politics of oil spill science was not confined to BP. The White House clashed with officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last summer when drafting the administration’s account of what has happened to the spilled oil.

On 4 August, Jane Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator, demanded that the White House issue a correction after it claimed that the “vast majority” of BP oil was gone from the Gulf.
A few days earlier, Lisa Jackson, the head of the EPA, and her deputy, Bob Perciasepe, had also objected to the White House estimates of the amount of oil dispersed in the gulf. “These calculations are extremely rough estimates yet when they are put into the press, which we want to happen, they will take on a life of their own,” Perciasepe wrote.
Commenting on BP’s email discussions about directing research, a spokeswoman for the oil company said: “BP appointed an independent research board to construct the long-term research programme.”

But Kert Davies, Greenpeace US research director, said the oil company had crossed a line. “It’s outrageous to see these BP executives discussing how they might manipulate the science programme,” Davies said. “Their motivation last summer is abundantly clear. They wanted control of the science.”

The $500m fund, which is to be awarded over the next decade, is by far the biggest potential source of support to scientists hoping to establish what happened to the oil.

A number of scientists had earlier expressed concerns that BP would attempt to point scientists to convenient areas of study – or try to suppress research that did not suit its business.
The first round of funds were awarded last May to a consortium of gulf coast researchers. “The rest we are all waiting with bated breath,” said Ajit Subramaniam, a marine scientist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. “A lot of the funds might be for understanding future spills. It is also unclear what kind of strings will be attached with that money.”

Another email, written by Karen Ragoonanan-Jalim, a BP environmental officer based in Trinidad, contains minutes of a meeting in Houma, Louisiana, in which officials discussed what kind of studies might best serve the oil company’s interests.

Under agenda item two, she writes: “Discussions around GRI and whether or not BP can influence this long-term research programme ($500m) to undertake the studies we believe will be useful in terms of understanding the fate and effects of the oil on the environment, eg can we steer the research in support of restoration ecology?”

Ragoonanan-Jalim acknowledges that BP may not have that degree of control. “It may be possible for us to suggest the direction of the studies but without guarantee that they will be done.”

The email goes on: “How do we determine what biological/ecological studies we (BP) will need to do in order to satisfy specific requirements (legislative/litigation, informing the response and remediation/restoration strategies).”

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 April 2011 11.46 BST

Despite soaring unemployment and the 19 million Americans currently living in “deep poverty”, federal funds for the Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) program have entirely dried up for the first time since 1996, leaving states with an average of 15 percent less federal funding for the coming year to help an ever-increasing number of needy families.

TANF, the federal program that replaced welfare under the Clinton Administration, provides a lifeline for families and workers who have exhausted all of their unemployment benefits. According to a new report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, “more homeless families will go without shelter, fewer low-wage workers will receive help with child care expenses, and fewer families involved with the child welfare system will receive preventive services” now that Congress has passed legislation that will end funding for the TANF Contingency Fund in 2011.

Congress also failed to reauthorize an emergency fund for a subsidized job program on September 30 that would have allowed states to provide emergency help to needy families and place low-income people in subsidized jobs.

In fiscal year 2011, every state except Wyoming will experience up to a 20 percent reduction in recession relief funds. The CBPP reports that many states have already drastically reduced their subsidized job programs after being cut off from federal funding, costing tens of thousands of people their jobs. Some states are also considering substantial cuts to programs for low-income families with children, including child care subsidies for working parents and programs that address substance abuse, caring for a disabled child, and other challenges.

“This is not what Congress intended when it reformed the welfare system in 1996,” said Liz Schott, Senior Fellow at CBPP. “Helping welfare recipients find work in this economy requires more help from the federal government, not less.”

In the USA, tens of thousands of tons of potentially lethal radioactive waste have been piling up across the nation for more than a generation, but the federal government has yet to decide how to get rid of it permanently.  After axing a multibillion-dollar plan to bury the waste beneath Yucca Mountain, Nev., President Barack Obama has asked an expert panel to recommend alternatives; however, the panel’s report isn’t due until January 2012 and the group’s recommendations aren’t binding on the White House or Congress.

In short, the country’s political leaders are no closer to a safe, permanent disposal plan for nuclear waste than they were a generation ago, when nuclear power became widespread and the Cold War was in full swing.

America’s accumulated 70,000 tons of extremely radioactive, “high level” waste — uranium and plutonium — has sat in “temporary” storage in 35 states since at least the 1950s.  “The country at large is beset by a whole host of problems, so it’s not surprising that they aren’t paying attention to this,” said nuclear expert Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. “Everybody realizes that the collapse of the Yucca Mountain program means many years of on-site storage with no end in sight. Even the people who want nuclear power don’t want waste in their backyards.”

The waste will continue to pile up as the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants win license renewals from federal regulators. It’s expected to reach 153,000 tons by 2055, according to a November report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative agency. Commercial nuclear waste, which is solid, is stored in deep pools of water at many power plants. Some of it also is stored in huge steel-and-concrete containers called dry casks, which cost about $1 million apiece, according to Rod McCullum, a waste expert at the power industry’s Nuclear Energy Institute. Jim Riccio, a nuclear energy analyst at the environmental group Greenpeace, said the Obama administration should tell the industry to move more of the fuel rods from pools, where they’re more vulnerable to terrorist attack, to dry casks.  “Dry casks are not perfect, but they are a heck of a lot better,” he said.

In addition to the commercial waste, about 91 million gallons of high-level liquid waste is stored at South Carolina’s Savannah River Site, Washington state’s Hanford Site and the Idaho National Laboratory. That waste comes from making fuel for nuclear weapons during the Cold War era.  The defense waste is slowly being converted into glass rods through a process called vitrification to allow for more efficient storage and transport. David McIntyre, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said current on-site storage methods are safe and will contain the radiation for the foreseeable future.

So federal lawmakers feel they can put off making tough political decisions about what to do with the nuclear waste, said John Gervers, a nuclear-waste consultant in New Mexico. “It’s going to continue to pile up,” he said. “Ultimately, there has to be someplace (where) all that waste has to go. In my opinion, a permanent repository is the way to go.”  The White House says even if the expert panel recommends a permanent “geologic” resting place for the waste, such a repository won’t be built at Yucca Mountain, located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas in the home state of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

A 1982 law set a 1998 deadline for building a permanent disposal site, but it didn’t happen. It wasn’t until 2002 that Congress, acting on President George W. Bush’s recommendation, fixed up Yucca Mountain as the permanent site. Since then, taxpayers have spent more than $10 billion for exploratory work at the site, including building a deep tunnel.

Soon after becoming president, Obama announced he would cancel the Yucca Mountain project — a decision that South Carolina, Washington and some other local governments are fighting in federal court. Those state and local governments have teamed up with the nuclear industry to argue before the NRC that the administration can’t terminate work on the project, only Congress can.

The nuclear energy industry is pushing for an interim storage facility where spent fuel rods could be stored while a geologic repository is built. The government also should allow the industry to recycle the used fuel rods to extract all possible use from them, said McCullum at the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Though legal in France, such “reprocessing” has been banned in the U.S. since 1977. President Jimmy Carter outlawed the practice that year, citing the potential for countries to use the plutonium byproduct to make atomic weapons.

MORE ONLINE: www.gao.gov/new.items/d1048.pdf, to access the Government Accountability Office’s “Nuclear Waste Management” report, issued in November 2009.

The latest U.S. Treasury Z1 Flow of Funds report was released on March 11, 2010, bringing the data current through the end of 2009.

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As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds:

* Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further — it furloughed its schoolchildren.
* Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.
* Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.
* Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.

There are some lovely photos accompanying the article, including one showing what a darkened street in Colorado looks like as a result of not being able to afford street lights. Read the article to revel in the details of this widespread misery. Meanwhile, the tiniest sliver of the wealthiest — the ones who caused these problems in the first place — continues to thrive. Let’s recall what former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson said last year in The Atlantic about what happens in under-developed and developing countries when an elite-caused financial crises ensues:

‘Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or — here’s a classic Kremlin bailout technique — the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk — at least until the riots grow too large’.

The real question is whether the American public is too apathetic and trained into submission for that to ever happen.

UPDATE: It’s probably also worth noting this Wall St. Journal article from last month — with a subheadline warning: “Back to Stone Age” — which describes how “paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue.”

Utah is seriously considering eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional. And it was announced this week that “Camden [New Jersey] is preparing to permanently shut its library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to borrow a library book free.”

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights – or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State – that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?

Anyway, I just wanted to leave everyone with some light and cheerful thoughts as we head into the weekend.

Copyright ©2010 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Funnily enough, when the USSR collapsed, so too did the supply of oil to Cuba, by two thirds. In the ensuing period the average Cuban lost 22 pounds (lbs) in weight.

Add to that the embargo on Cuba by the USA – enforced by banning ships who had been to Cuba from enterting any harbour of port in the USA – and you could see why they went on a forced diet.

In fact it was several Australians who went to Cuba and taught them Permaculture practices (from Bill Mollison from Tassie) that helped create a largely self-sufficient food producing country it now is.

Now it appears that the shoe is on the other foot; with Americans suggested as the most obese nation, the global financial crisis worm – instigated by the Americans – has come back to visit them, with the significant increase in requests for food stamps.

The number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 40 plus million in May this year, as the jobless rate hovers near a 27-year high.

Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 % from a year earlier and increased 0.9% from April this year (3 months ago), the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website that pparticipation has set records for 18 straight months.

Over an eighth of the American population will get food stamps each month in the year that began Oct. 1 2009 and according to White House estimates, the figure is projected to rise to 43.3 million in 2011.

In Australia we have seen federal governments implement owrk practices at the behest of corporations; its common practice to employ people from many other conuntries to ‘supply labour where there is a shortage’, the problem is that most of these industries have skilled and semi-skilled unemployed Australians on the dole because of off-shore labour.

There needs to be a more balanced approach between Unions and Corporations, otherwise the inflexability of egos will end up with conflict. As in the USA and Greece, there will be increasing protests and bloodshed.

To the question of should we start worrying the answer is Yes. What happened to the industrial giant that once was the USA and their collapsing housing market values is what will eventually happen here; where the Americans were once major exporters of resources and even oil, they are now major importers just as we are becoming. If the economy in China goes off the boil and the value of currencies we accept in payment from other countries in economic depression like spirals, once we run out or we reach that cross over point like the USA where we spend more on food and other ‘esentials’ then we earn, we too will feel the pain. At what point in time and which political party will have no choice but to tighten the purse strings ?

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a fiscal state of emergency, requiring most state employees to take three days of unpaid leave a month until a new budget is enacted. Arnie said the state is on the verge of a “fiscal meltdown”. Measures so far have included deferring payments to schools and other local governments, but the crisis was deepening with no state budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year expected soon. This has resulted in sharply reduce funding for services designed to help the state’s poor.

A budget crisis last year pushed California (which would have the world’s eighth largest economy if it were a country) to the brink of bankruptcy, sending the state’s credit-rating plunging and forcing it to start paying bills with IOUs.

The following story is but another jigsaw piece in the collapse of the American Empire. When I was in Cuba several years ago, I saw what the once great USA – and its largely undeserving people – will have to endure. Given the excesses of the average American, many will struggle to survive; by 2020 it will all but over for the upper middle, middle and lower socio-economic population.

Michigan Oil Spill Prompts Evacuations, Finger-Pointing

By MATTHEW DOLAN
JULY 29, 2010

An oil spill this week from an underground pipeline connecting the U.S. to Canada has prompted local health officials to call for the evacuation of as many as 50 homes and recommend residents living close to the river to stop using well water for drinking and cooking.

The spill contaminated more than 20 miles of the Kalamazoo River in south-central Michigan and led to finger-pointing between those leading the clean up and state and local officials who have described the response as inadequate and slow-footed.

The pipe’s Canadian owner, Enbridge Inc. of Calgary, maintains that its response has been ramping up and that the oil hasn’t leached into a nearby lake, which response officials have called a place they hope to protect from the spill’s reaches.

Company and federal officials said that even though the river’s western reach ends at Lake Michigan, they don’t believe that the oil spill will reach the great lake.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that more than one million gallons have escaped. That would make it one of the largest ever in the history of the Midwest. But company officials are sticking with their earlier estimation of 819,000 gallons.

Unlike the BP PLC oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, this gushing pipe near Battle Creek, Mich., was capped relatively quickly after its owners were able to shut down the line almost immediately after its discovery. The pipe rupture has already forced the evacuation of several dozen residents who live near the Kalamazoo River, forced the river’s closure to the public and raised questions about whether the pipeline’s owner reported the spill in a timely way.

The line owned by Enbridge Energy Partners LP is a 30-inch pipe that moves light synthetic, heavy and medium crude oil northeast about 1,900 miles. The affected section of the line stretches from Griffith, Ind., through Michigan and just over the border to Sarnia, Ontario.

The Calhoun County Public Health Department on Thursday recommended the immediate evacuation of residents living closest to the site of the spill in Marshall because of elevated levels of Benzene in the air. Between 30 and 50 homes were affected in the recommendation but it wasn’t clear whether the figure included the number of residents who have already fled the area.

People who breathe in high levels of benzene in the short term may develop dizziness, irregular heartbeat, headaches, tremors and unconsciousness with long term affects harming the blood and immune systems.

The department said evacuated residents would be reimbursed by Enbridge, but couldn’t say how long they would be out of their homes.

In a precautionary move, the health department also warned those with private wells living within 200 feet from the edge of the river bank between Tallmadge Creek—site of oil spill—west along the Kalamazoo River to the Kalamazoo County line to stop using the water for drinking and cooking despite the fact that no test has yet reveal groundwater contamination.

After the leak was discovered on Monday morning on a creek near the company’s pump station in Marshall, Mich., the pipeline was shut down when its isolation valves were closed off, according to officials at Enbridge Inc.

Federal officials said Wednesday that the timeline involved in the spill remains under investigation by several agencies.

Officials said it would be weeks before an official cause of the pipe break is determined. Feedback from the initial portions of the investigation is expected in the next few days to provide telling clues about the origins of the leak, company officials said.

Regulators Sent Warning Letter to Enbridge

U.S. government regulators sent a warning letter to Enbridge seven months ago about possible problems with the pipeline that ruptured earlier this week.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration wrote to Enbridge Energy Partners Chairman Terry McGill in January that his company’s corrosion monitoring in its oil pipeline connecting the U.S. to Canada did not comply with federal regulations.

Company officials said Thursday that Enbridge Inc., the parent company, had been compiling with regulators’ request since the letter and at the time the spill was reported on July 26. Its remediation for corrosion of the oil transport line from Indiana to Ontario has been ongoing, according to company executives.

Stephen Wuori, executive vice president for Enbridge’s liquid pipelines, said during a conference call with reporters that the point of the line that ruptured on Tallmadge Creek in Marshall, Mich., was not seen as problematic before the spill. A spokeswoman for agency at the Transportation Department declined to comment about the issue.

Since 2002, Enbridge has received more than a dozen warnings or citations for violating safety and other standards and fined tens of thousands of dollars as a result, according to a review of correspondence maintained by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.