Alfred Woody's Kewl Blog [ 椼森 ]: 05/01/2010

Monday, May 31, 2010

Gaza Flotilla Attacked: Israeli troops storm aid ships, up to 20 killed

Click this link ...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZenysNLAfc8

BP, Obama face clamor to halt oil spill "crime"

VENICE Louisiana (Reuters) - Lawmakers and local residents clamored on Sunday for BP and the Obama administration to do more to save the Gulf Coast from an out-of-control oil spill that has become the biggest environmental catastrophe in the country's history.

One congressman called the nearly six-week oil gush in the Gulf of Mexico an "environmental crime," while a Louisiana senator demanded BP invest $1 billion immediately to protect the region's treasured marshlands.

The failure on Saturday of a "top kill" technique attempted by London-based BP to try to seal its leaking Gulf well has unleashed a surge of anger and frustration that poses a major domestic challenge for President Barack Obama.

Obama, who has called the leaking BP well a "man-made disaster," is trying to fend off criticism that his administration acted too slowly in its response to the spill, now known to be the worst in U.S. history.

He is in a bind because it appears only BP can stop the leak, although he has made clear the government is in charge. But critics say he has not directed enough resources to the unfolding disaster and he has been present enough.

The White House said on Sunday that the government will triple clean-up resources in areas affected by the spill, while the administration's top energy and environment officials head back to the Gulf this week following Obama's second visit on Friday.

"This is probably the biggest environmental disaster we have ever faced in this country," top White House energy adviser Carol Browner told NBC's "Meet the Press."

BP, its reputation and market value already battered by the catastrophic spill, and the entire U.S. oil industry face more probing questions about why safety backups did not accompany their pursuit of oil in ever deeper offshore waters.

"I think without question if the word criminal should be used in terms of an environmental crime against our country, that what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico is going to qualify," U.S. Representative Ed Markey told CBS' "Face the Nation."

Department of Justice officials are part of an ongoing federal investigation into the April 20 rig explosion that triggered the spill, and the Obama administration has not ruled out the possibility of a criminal prosecution.

In Louisiana, which has borne the brunt of the oil spill impact so far, local authorities demanded that BP and the federal government rush a plan to create a sand barrier to the oil by dredging and building up outlying sandbanks and islets.

"I'm devastated ... We are dying a slow death, every time that oil takes out a piece of the marsh, a piece of Louisiana is gone forever," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, where the oil has clogged wetlands.

"Even the government seems powerless and all the experts. If these people can't stop it, then who in the name of God can?" Father Gerry, a priest at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Port Sulphur, Louisiana, said, his voice heavy with emotion.

'OIL COMING UP UNTIL AUGUST'

After giving up on Saturday an attempt to pump heavy fluids and blocking materials into the leaking well to "kill" it, BP is pursuing another option from its undersea toolbox.

But BP warns that the new procedure, which will try to fit a containment cap over the leaking well, could take between four and seven days. Even then success is not guaranteed because it has never been attempted before at the depth -- a mile down -- where the oil is leaking.

BP Managing Director Robert Dudley told NBC's "Meet the Press" the company would know by the end of the week whether the new containment effort worked.

The next BP step would involve undersea robots using diamond-rimmed saws to cut off a pipe over the well to put in place a containment device that would try to siphon off most of the leaking oil and gas up to a tanker ship on the surface.

Dudley said he did not think BP CEO Tony Hayward, who has faced heavy criticism, should be forced to resign.

A surer solution to the leak, a relief well already being drilled, is not expected to be finished until early August.

This means crude oil continues to spew out daily, feeding a huge, fragmented slick that has already polluted marshlands teeming with wildlife and rich fisheries in Louisiana.

"There could be oil coming up until August." Browner told CBS's "Face The Nation," "We are prepared for the worst."

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu called on BP to immediately invest $1 billion to protect marshes, wetlands and estuaries across the region. "While we may not be able to plug the leaking well right away, there is nothing that should stop us from getting help to the Gulf Coast immediately," she said.

OBAMA'S 'KATRINA'?

Gulf residents fear the spilled oil could be whipped further inshore by what promises to be the most active Atlantic storm season since 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina.

That deadly storm proved a political disaster for President George W. Bush, who was accused of complacency in handling it, and Obama is fighting to prevent the Gulf spill from becoming his own "Katrina" ahead of the November congressional elections.

Louisianans still recovering from Katrina's devastation were frustrated by the oil spill response. "It's been a screw-up from day one. Nothing was at the ready and no one was in a position to respond," said Claude Marquette, a retired physician, 68, speaking as he sat with his wife in his boat.

BP's Hayward had predicted that despite risks, the "top kill" had a 60 to 70 percent chance of success. He said he did not know why it failed to stop the gusher.

The misstep is likely to drive his credibility lower, along with his company's market value, which has dropped by 25 percent since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers, and triggering the spill.

The government estimated last week that 12,000 to 19,000 barrels (504,000 to 798,000 gallons/1.9 million to 3 million liters) a day are leaking from the well. At that rate, the government now knows that the Gulf disaster has surpassed the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaskan waters.

(Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe, Rachelle Younglai and Alan Elsner in Washington, Pascal Fletcher in Miami, Eileen O'Grady in Houston and Patricia Zengerle in Chicago; Writing by Pascal Fletcher and Mary Milliken; Editing by Eric Beech)

Marc Faber: Bloomberg Interview May 25, 2010

Energy expert: Nuking oil leak ‘only thing we can do’

BP 'totally in charge of the news' about oil leak, energy expert says

As the latest effort to plug the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico meets with failure, the idea of nuking the immediate area to seal the oil underground is gaining steam among some energy experts and researchers.

One prominent energy expert known for predicting the oil price spike of 2008 says sending a small nuclear bomb down the leaking well is "probably the only thing we can do" to stop the leak.

Matt Simmons, founder of energy investment bank Simmons & Company, also says that there is evidence of a second oil leak about five to seven miles from the initial leak that BP has focused on fixing. That second leak, he says, is so large that the initial one is "minor" in comparison.

Simmons spoke to Bloomberg News on Friday, before BP announced that its latest effort to plug the leak, known as the "top kill" method, had failed.

"A week ago Sunday the first research vessel ... was commissioned by NOAA to scour the area," he said. They found "a gigantic plume" growing about five to seven miles from the site of the original leak, Simmons said.

Simmons said the US government should immediately take the effort to plug the leak out of the hands of BP and put the military in charge.

"Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapons system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil," he said.

His idea echoes that of a Russian newspaper that earlier this month suggested the US detonate a small nuclear bomb to seal the oil beneath the sea. Komsomoloskaya Pravda argued in an editorial that Russia had successfully used nuclear weapons to seal oil spills on five occasions in the past.

Live Science reports:

Weapons labs in the former Soviet Union developed special nukes for use to help pinch off the gas wells. They believed that the force from a nuclear explosion could squeeze shut any hole within 82 to 164 feet (25 to 50 meters), depending on the explosion's power. That required drilling holes to place the nuclear device close to the target wells.
A first test in the fall of 1966 proved successful in sealing up an underground gas well in southern Uzbekistan, and so the Russians used nukes four more times for capping runaway wells.

Simmons also told Bloomberg that the idea to use radical measures like a nuclear bomb to seal the leak is probably not being contemplated by decision-makers "because BP is still totally in charge of the news and they have everyone focused on the top kill."

Asked by a Bloomberg reporter about the risks involved in setting off a nuclear bomb off the coast of Louisiana, Simmons argued that a nuclear explosion deep inside a well bore would have little effect on surrounding areas.

"If you're 18,000 feet under the sea bed, it basically wont do anything [on the surface]," he said.

Joe Wiesenthal at Business Insider says the idea of using nukes will be getting a lot of attention now that the "top kill" procedure has failed.

Next, the so-called "nuclear option" is about to get a lot of attention. In this case, of course, nuclear option is not a euphemism. It's the real idea that the best way to kill this thing is to stick a small nuke in there and bury the well under rubble. ... By the middle of the coming week, it will be all over cable news, as pundits press The White House hard on whether it's being considered and why not.

The following video was broadcast on Bloomberg News, Friday May 28, 2010.

"Perfectly Safe: It Just Kills Plants ... " Agent Orange and the Third Generation

Each year for the last five years the U.S. has welcomed a delegation of Vietnamese affected by spraying chemicals in Vietnam three decades ago. The Fifth Agent Orange Justice Tour ended recently. It focused national attention on grass roots and legislative efforts to achieve comprehensive assistance to victims in Vietnam, to the children and grandchildren of U.S. veterans, and to Vietnamese-Americans.

It is not news that American troops fighting for the U.S. military in Vietnam were told by their commanders that the defoliants and herbicides sprayed by the U.S. Air Force were "perfectly safe...[they] just kill plants."
The statistics, while heartbreaking, are, likewise, not news for anyone who pays attention to recent history. From 1961 to 1970 more than 20,000 missions that composed Operations "Trail Dust" and "Ranch Hand" dispersed about 13 million gallons of chemicals over five million acres of Vietnam's forests and agricultural lands; southern Laos and Cambodia were sprayed too.

To the military mind, defoliating was a practical solution that disallowed cover to the enemy. To the corporate mind – Dow, Monsanto, Hercules, Uniroyal, Diamond Shamrock, Syntex Agribusiness, and more than two dozen others – manufacturing chemicals provided good ROI: one gallon of liquid cost $7 back then. Moreover, corporations sped up the 2,4,5T manufacturing process so they could produce more, faster. They ignored the partially catalyzed molecule, dioxin, that was a byproduct of the faster process; it remained in Agent Orange (AO).

Vietnam's dense southern uplands' forests were sprayed with a range of chemicals signified by color-coded barrels: Agents Blue, Orange, White, Pink, Purple and so on. Areas that the C-123 "Provider" airplanes didn't reach – equal to the size of Rhode Island -- were bulldozed with Rome Plows.

Paul Cox was a US Marine fighting along the DMZ for months. Today, he is a civil engineer, a Veteran for Peace member, and a board member of Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign (VAORRC). In a recent presentation in San Francisco, he described the area he fought in at the time as "almost totally denuded from high explosives and multiple spraying sorties; aside from some invasive grass, hardly anything lived, no animals, no bugs, no nothin'. We could operate in the area for days in a row and see no living trees."

Since 1994, the Canadian company Hatfield Consultants has conducted contamination and mitigation work in Vietnam in close collaboration with Vietnamese Government agencies. More than nine projects in twenty provinces have determined levels of Agent Orange/dioxin in soils, food items, human blood, and breast milk. Hatfield also studies the effects of loss of timber that leads to reduced sustainability of ecosystems, decreases in the biodiversity of plants and animals, poorer soil quality, increased water contamination, heavier flooding and erosion, increased leaching of nutrients and reductions in their availability, invasions of less desirable plant species (primarily woody and herbaceous grasses), and possible alterations of Vietnam's macro- and micro-climates.

In short, there is no let up to the devastation wreaked by war's practicality and profit three decades ago.

Consistent determination

Despite VAVA delegates representing three million people when they travel to the U.S., to date U.S. courts have not acknowledged the chemicals' effects on Vietnam or the Vietnamese.

Yet, under U.S. law, veterans who served in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975 (including those who visited Vietnam even briefly), and who have a disease that the Veterans Administration (VA) recognizes as being associated with Agent Orange, are presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange and are eligible for service-connected compensation based on their service.
The VA’s list of "Diseases associated with exposure to certain herbicide agents" are Acute and Subacute Peripheral Neuropathy,AL Amyloidosis, Chloracne (or Similar Acneform Disease), Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (now expanded to B Cell Leukemias), Diabetes Mellitus (Type 2), Hodgkin’s Disease, Ischemic Heart Disease, Multiple Myeloma, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Parkinson’s Disease, Porphyria Cutanea Tarda, Prostate Cancer, Respiratory Cancers (of the lung, larynx, trachea, and bronchus), and Soft Tissue Sarcoma.

Veterans' children born with Spina bifida "may be eligible for compensation, vocational training and rehabilitation and health care benefits." For the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concluded in its 1996 update to its report on Veterans and Agent Orange – Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam that there is "limited/suggestive evidence of an association between exposure to herbicides used in Vietnam and spina bifida in children of Vietnam veterans."

A time line, briefly

September 10, 2004: an amended class action complaint was submitted to the U.S. District Court, Eastern District; Constantine P. Kokkoris, represented the victims.

March 10, 2005: in Brooklyn, Judge Weinstein dismissed victims' claims.

September 30, 2005: a Brief was submitted to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York against 36 U.S. chemical companies. The summary by Jonathan Moore states:

The lawsuit...seeks to hold accountable the chemical companies who manufactured and supplied Agent Orange to the government. Contrary to government specifications, the product supplied to the government contained an excessive and avoidable amount of poison...[D]ioxin...was present in the herbicides supplied to the government only because these chemical companies deliberately and consciously chose to ignore then existing industry standards and produce a herbicide that contained excessive and avoidable amounts of dioxin. The presence of the poison dioxin had no military necessity...chemical companies...knew that the more herbicide they produced the more money they would make and the faster they produced it the more they could sell to the government....[T]hey ignored industry standards....

That lawsuit was unsuccessful.

Another try

This year VAVA, Veterans for Peace, and the Vietnamese will begin to apply pressure on Congress to pay the bills for damage done in that country. These groups are drafting legislation that they expect will become a bill that, eventually, addresses this legacy. It consist of four parts:

1) clean up the environment and do no further harm.

2) address the problems of millions ill ...that now extends to three generations.

3) create regional medical centers specifically for victims' children and grandchildren born with the physical deformities and mental illness associated with dioxin.

4) conduct a public health study on the Vietnamese American population in the U.S. to learn if, and if so, how they have been affected by AO sprayed in their homeland. (The assumption is that this population could have a similar exposure to deployed American military personnel).

Personal stories: new every time

If the news about dioxin – and the political and economic wrangling that accompanies it – is depressingly familiar, what is always fresh are the hopeful voices and enthusiastic faces of the VAVA delegates. All suffer grievous disease or deformities yet their spirits and generosity are astonishingly strong.

This year, 33-year old Pham The Minh accompanied the small group. He is the son of a Vietnamese fighter contaminated by Agent Orange in Quang Tri Province where the spraying was most intensive. Minh and and his sister were born after the war with birth defects that signal dioxin contamination.
His is no story of victimization. The man's voice is vibrantly honest and alive as he says, "I grew up with pain in my spirit and in my body...I graduated from university and I am happy to teach English to victims of Agent Orange."

In Minh's city of Hai Phong alone there are more than 17,000 victims with birth defects, most of whom live difficult lives and require constant support from hard-pressed families.

Last year, the delegation was headed by Dang Hong Nhut who suffers from cancer and has experienced multiple miscarriages. Twenty-one year old Tran Thi Hoan accompanied Nhut. Tran was born with one hand and no legs due to her mother's exposure. Despite Tran and her mother both being diagnosed with life threatening and disabling conditions that create severe and life-long hardship, the young woman attends college and is determined to work for a just solution for other Vietnamese families.

The 2007 delegates shared compelling stories too.

Vo Thanh Hai was 19 years old in 1978 when he was employed replanting trees around Nam Dong that had been defoliated by the U.S. Army's spraying operations.

In 1986, Mr. Hai’s wife miscarried. In 1987, their son, Vo Thanh Tuan Anh was born. In 2001, he began episodes of fatigue and dizziness that was diagnosed as osteosarcoma for which he was treated with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

Their doctor also advised Mr. Hai to have a lump on his own neck examined. Tests disclosed Hodgkins Disease.

Both father and son have difficulty performing routine activities. Mrs. Hoa provides their daily care...which means the family has little regular income.

Nguyen Van Quy served in the Vietnam People's Army from 1972 through 1975. He ate manioc, wild herbs and plants and drank water from streams in areas that had been spayed with Agent Orange. He experienced periodic headaches and exhaustion and itchy skin and rashes.

In 2003, Mr. Quy was diagnosed with stomach cancer, liver damage and with fluid in his lung. His son, Nguyen Quang Trung, was born with spinal, limb and developmental disabilities, enlarged and deformed feet, and a congenital spine defect; he cannot stand, walk, or use his hands.

Mr. Quy's daughter, Nguyen Thi Thuy Nga, was born deaf and dumb and developmentally disabled. Neither child can attend school or work and neither is self-sufficient.

In her presentation in San Francisco, shortly before leaving the U.S. to return home, another 2007 delegate, Mrs. Hong, said how happy she was to have had a chance to visit this country and talk to people she found "very welcoming."
Mrs. Hong had served in the Eastern Combat Zone of South Vietnam as a clerk tailor and medical care worker. In 1964, she was sprayed with Agent Orange while washing rice in a stream. She tried to dive into the water to wash away the chemicals that stuck to her body. Moreover, she consumed contaminated food, wild grasses, and water every day after that.

In 1975 she was diagnosed with cirrhosis and required long term hospital treatment. In 1999 she was found to have an enlarged spleen and hemopoesis disorder. Several tests later uncovered cancer of the left breast as well as shortness of breath, high blood pressure, cerebral edema, breast cancer with bone metastasis, stomach aches, cirrhosis, gall-stones and bladder-stones, varicose limbs, limb-skin ulcer, weak legs and limited range of movement.

Both Mr.Quy and Mrs Hong died shortly after they returned to Vietnam.

Tragedy of such magnitude easily can overwhelm those unprepared to hear it. Yet listening deeply to these personal stories presented in the even-handed, non-blaming manner of the VAVA delegates creates an opening that may allow We, the People to apply pressure on Congress to co-create legislation to alleviate our nation's moral stigma from our actions in Vietnam.

Perhaps the courage of the women in Lan Teh Nidah's poem, Night Harvest can give hope to Americans of peace and reconciliation. These courageous Vietnamese women harvested rice at night to avoid detection by American forces.

...

The golds of rice and cluster bombs blend together.
even delayed fuse bombs bring no fear:
Our spirits have known many years of war.
Come, sisters, let us gather the harvest.

...

We are the harvesters of my village,

...

We are not frightened by bombs and bullets in the air --

Only by dew, wetting our lime-scented hair.

One day, perhaps, we in the United States will acknowledge our responsibilities in Vietnam. For we, too, have known many years of war. Those of us who struggle for peace are harvesters too. Let us accept our history, sew the seeds of peace, and highlight the futile lose/lose proposition that is war.

Susan Galleymore is author of Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror, host of Stanford University's Raising Sand Radio, and a former "military mom" and GI Rights Counselor. Contact her at media@mothersspeakaboutwarandterror.org.

BP says end point for stopping Gulf oil leak is relief well due in August

WASHINGTON (AP) — A BP executive says a relief well is the "end point" of efforts to stop the Gulf oil spill — which suggests there's little chance of plugging the leak until the new well is completed in August.

BP managing director Bob Dudley tells ABC's "This Week" that the current attempt to cap the leaking well would at best minimize the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Dudley says the relief well expected to be ready at the end of August "is certainly the end point on this game."

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A BP executive says BP will learn from its failed attempts to stop the Gulf oil spill and apply those lessons to its next try.

BP managing director Robert Dudley says unmanned submarines working a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico will try to saw through a leaking pipe and then cap it with a funnel-like device built to capture the oil.

This next attempt will be similar to a containment dome that failed to work.

Dudley says BP will try to pump warm sea water down the pipe to keep the oil and gas warmer and prevent ice from forming. That was blamed for the earlier failure.

Dudley spoke on "Fox News Sunday" with later appearances on CNN's "State of the Union," ABC's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS' "Face the Nation."

Treasury Secretary David Laws urged to resign after paying £40,000 of taxpayers' money to secret gay lover

Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws was fighting to avoid becoming the coalition Government's first casualty tonight after it was revealed that he funnelled £40,000 of taxpayers' money to his secret gay lover.

The Liberal Democrat, who is in charge of slashing public spending, is facing growing pressure to quit after he claimed up to £950 a month in expenses for five years which was paid in rent to his partner.

Mr Laws was last night confronted with evidence that he could have breached Parliamentary rules on expenses, which ban MPs from renting from spouses or lovers.

He issued an apology and announced he would 'immediately' pay back tens of thousands of pounds claimed for rent and other housing costs.

David Laws with George Osborne earlier this week: He is under pressure to resign after it was revealed that he funnelled £40,000 of taxpayers money to his secret gay lover

The revelations are a setback for the coalition since Mr Laws's casual use of public money will undermine the Government's case for painful cuts to public spending.

Downing Street released a terse statement last night which said: 'The Prime Minister has been made aware of this situation and agrees with David Laws's decision to self-refer to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner.'

Mr Laws is a multi-millionaire former investment banker who earned a double first in economics at Cambridge. He retired from the City at the age of 28.

James Lundie: David Laws' partner

Facing the expenses revelations in the Daily Telegraph, he chose to reveal that his partner is James Lundie, a lobbyist who used to work for former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy.

Sir Alistair Graham, former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, suggested Mr Laws should step aside from his job while the matter was investigated.

'I'm genuinely shocked that somebody who is now Chief Secretary to the Treasury is faced with disclosure of this nature where he clearly hasn't told the full truth to the people dealing with expenses in the House of Commons,' he said.

Labour backbencher John Mann said today Mr Laws had to resign from the Government, insisting his position was 'untenable'.

'Nick Clegg was meant to have carried out an audit of his MPs in the last parliament,' he said.

'These things should have been out in the open in the last parliament.

His position is untenable, if it is as reported. Certainly his position in the Government is untenable.'

The Bassetlaw MP dismissed the idea that Mr Laws' desire to protect his private life was an excuse. 'Who cares what his sexuality is these days?' he said.

Mr Laws escaped censure by the numerous Parliamentary inquiries into expenses because he had never admitted his homosexuality, meaning officials had no way of knowing his landlord was also his lover.

He has now referred himself to Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon, who will investigate whether he broke rules which, since 2006, ban MPs from 'leasing accommodation from a partner'.

But between 2004 and 2007, Mr Laws claimed between £700 and £950 a month to sub-let a room in a flat in Kennington, South London, owned by Mr Lundie, who was also registered as living at the property.

He sold the flat for a profit of £193,000 in 2007 and bought another house nearby for £510,000.

The MP then began renting the 'second bedroom' in this property, funding it with expenses claims of £920 a month. Mr Laws's main home is in his Yeovil constituency.

In September 2009, Mr Laws switched his designated second home and began renting another flat at taxpayers' expense.

In a statement last night he claimed his desire not to reveal his sexuality had led to the unorthodox claims.

Mr Laws' position will not be made any easier by the righteous tone he has previously struck on the issue of expenses

He said: 'I've been involved in a relationship with James Lundie since around 2001 - about two years after first moving in with him. Our relationship has been unknown to both family and friends throughout that time.

'James and I are intensely private people. We made the decision to keep our relationship private and believed that was our right. Clearly that cannot now remain the case.

'My motivation throughout has not been to maximise profit but to simply protect our privacy and my wish not to reveal my sexuality.'

Mr Laws's excuse for claiming so much public money was that he and Mr Lundie were not 'spouses'.

He insisted: 'At no point did I consider myself to be in breach of the rules, which in 2009 defined partner as "one of a couple... who, although not married to each other or civil partners, are living together and treat each other as spouses".

Although we were living together we did not treat each other as spouses - for example, we do not share bank accounts and indeed have separate social lives.

'However, I now accept that this was open to interpretation and will immediately pay back the costs of the rent and other housing costs.'

He added: 'I regret this situation deeply, accept that I should not have claimed my expenses in this way and apologise fully.'

He is likely to have to pay back more than £25,000.

Mr Laws' position will not be made any easier by the righteous tone he has previously struck on the issue of expenses.

In a press release on his website from June 18 last year, the Lib Dem declared that because he rented accommodation in London he had made 'no gain from buying a property with help from the taxpayer'.

INVESTMENT BANKER WHO RETIRED... AT THE AGE OF 28

Laws outside his Yeovil home

Born in Surrey in 1965, he was educated at the Roman Catholic fee-paying school St George's College in Weybridge.

After graduating from Cambridge with a double first in economics David Laws swooped into the city and a successful career as an investment banker.

He worked in fixed income first for JP Morgan and then Barclays de Zoete Wedd.

He left in 1994 to become economic adviser to the Liberal Democrats and just three year later was the party's director of policy and research.

It was his second attempt at Parliament in 2001 that saw him succeed Paddy Ashdown as MP for Yeovil, winning with a majority of 3928.

Laws was re-elected in Yeovil constituency with an increased majority of 8562 at the General Election in 2005 - the highest share of the vote of any MP in Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.

Following his re-election Laws was appointed as Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in 2005, putting pressure on the then Government to overhaul the tax credit system and reform the CSA.

A Cabinet re-shuffle in 2007, after Gordon Brown took up the job as Prime Minister, saw Sir Menzies Campbell make Laws the Shadow Secretary for Children, Schools and Families.

Laws was part of the team that negotiated the coalition deal between the Lib Dems and the Tories and the hard work paid off.

He was one of only five Lib Dems to get a Cabinet position and is now Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

It now appears, however, that his partner did make substantial capital gains on properties that the taxpayer helped fund.

Mr Cameron has previously made a point of taking a hard line on expenses abuses among his own ranks, while Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has boasted that his party emerged unscathed from the scandal.

The episode will also be the first test of how Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg co-operate over man management.

Under the coalition protocol that has been hammered out, Mr Clegg must be 'fully consulted' before any Lib Dem minister is removed from a government post.

Sir Alistair Graham, former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said that it was 'staggering' that the information had only just come to light now.

'I'm a genuinely shocked that somebody who is now Chief Secretary to the Treasury is faced with disclosure of this nature where he clearly hasn't told the full truth to the people dealing with expenses in the House of Commons,' he told the BBC.

'Given all the expenses farrago that has gone on over the past two or three years the fact that it has come to light now when he is a key part of a coalition government is staggering really.

'How did this not come in the inquiry? Or why, knowing that these matters were spotlight, he didn't come forth himself.

'Even if he was trying to protect his relationship, which would appear has ended, that he didn't want to come out and say, 'There may be some question marks over expenses I have claimed and I would like to clarify the situation before we go into a general election'.'

Speaking to The Times after news of the row broke, Mr Laws said: 'When I grew up, being gay was not accepted by most people, including many of my friends.

'So I have kept this secret from everyone I know for every day of my life. That has not been easy, and in some ways it is a relief not to have to go on misleading those close to me about who I am.'

On Thursday, the newspaper asked him what his family situation was and he replied: 'single'. Asked whether he had a partner he said: 'No'.

Last night he said that he wished he had been more open. 'I realise that I have made a serious mistake, because of my failure to be honest about my sexuality. Today has been the most difficult day of my life and I apologise to James, and to all my family, friends and constituents who I have not been honest with about who I am over all the years of my life.'

He went on: 'I hope that others will now learn that it is time for people to be honest about their sexuality. Keeping secrets is much tougher than telling other people who you really are.'

Admitting that his actions would seem 'very strange for many people today' Mr Laws said that this partner, James Lundie, was the only person he had ever had a relationship with.

'Only one person was aware of who I really am - James. I hope that people will understand that fear of loss of privacy rather than desire for financial gain has been behind the problems I now have.'

Labour MP Alan Whitehead, a member of the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee in the last parliament, said Mr Laws' position would be 'very difficult' if he was found to have committed 'serious breaches' of the rules.

'Clearly if the commissioner decides that serious breaches of the rules have taken place, serious misjudgments have been made about his position, then I think his position will be very difficult,' Mr Whitehead told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

'Certainly on the facts and the way the previous rules operated it is quite clear that David Laws seems to have broken those rules.

'The question I think behind it is the judgment call that he made, and indeed a lot of MPs made judgment calls about the previous rules - some of them disastrously bad.

'That I guess will be the centrepiece of what the commissioner for standards looks at. To decide whether the judgment call that was made by David Laws was indeed one that at least to some extent mitigated what he has done as far as his expenses are concerned.'

Mr Whitehead pointed out that the police were able to step in and start an investigation if the matter was considered serious enough.

Foreign minister Jeremy Browne, a friend and Lib Dem colleague of Mr Laws, told Today: 'I've known David for about 15 years and I can tell you categorically that this is a human story, it's not a financial story.

'He is a deeply private man and he has a personal wish not to have his life put up in lights.

'I think it should be possible to be in politics and serve your country and still maintain a private life at the same time.'

He stressed that Mr Laws had given up a lucrative City career to go into politics, and could have claimed far more in expenses if he had stated openly that he was part of a couple.

The term 'partner' in Commons expenses rules was 'ill defined' and 'not black and white', according to Mr Browne, and the Standards Commissioner would examine that situation.

However, put that Mr Laws and Mr Lundie appeared to have been together since 2001, the MP replied: 'I never said it was a casual relationship.'

Mr Browne described Mr Laws as 'brilliant' and accused the media of damaging the national interest by 'prying' into his private life.

'We are in a state of national crisis at the moment,' he said. 'We have somebody, one of the most talented, brilliant politicians of his generation in the Treasury trying to get our national finances back on their feet.

'If we have a national death wish where we want to pull people down and destroy them personally when they have devoted their life to public service, we are in a state of collective self harm.'

He added: 'This is a massive distraction, motivated possibly by politics, to tear David down.'

Mr Laws had set an 'example of frugality' by claiming less in expenses than he was entitled to over the years, the Taunton MP insisted.

Time for law abiding American citizens to stop paying taxes, start a new government? 4 of 13

David Degraw has written an outstanding comprehensive explanation of what’s really happening in the US economy. He’s given me permission to reprint it here. I also recommend his site "For Our Economy" for citizen grass-roots activism for economic justice.

Regarding the title of Americans starting a new government, I remind readers of the Declaration of Independence; our core American principles of government. The below links document that US political “leadership” is not even close to following our constitutional limitations and therefore are “leading” unlawfully. Americans with an oath to defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, should choose to either honor their oath or admit allegiance to the current fascist imposter of the greatness this nation is on paper and in our ideals.

Another excellent summary is economist James Galbraith’s recent expert testimony to the US Senate Judiciary Committee of what will become “emperor has no clothes” obvious: the US economy is a rigged casino. Here is my best pitch to explain and document the fraud. Here is my best explanation of the obvious solutions. Here are my comprehensive resources to understand the US oligarchy in all its unlawful infamy in unlawful wars, war lies, torture and indefinite detention (including against Americans), and our controlled economic demolition.

I’ll present David’s documentation and analysis in 13 segments; each with his introduction. Use the “previous” and “next” buttons under the title to navigate to the different segments. Please share broadly with the understanding that all our economic problems really exist on paper only. They are propagandized and managed frauds; solved almost instantly by an economic structure designed for the public good rather than designed for an oligarchy. I stake my professional reputation on the factual reality of these statements and prove their objective existence in the data in the above links.

I appreciate David Degraw’s leadership to research and communicate the facts, and help us all embrace the terrible truth of US fascism that We the People must expose and end in order to unleash humanity and build a brighter future for all of us.

Look and verify for yourself. Res ipsa loquitur.

Is It Time for Law Abiding American Citizens to Stop Paying Their Taxes and Start a New Government?

By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report

The evidence is now overwhelming. The United States government has facilitated the theft of trillions of dollars of national wealth and 99% of the US population no longer has political representation.

I: The Ongoing Theft of Trillions
II: Off-the-Books, Off-the-Record
III: Osama bin Bank of America
IV: New Mafia World Order
V: The Goldman Sachs Obama Illusion
VI: American Heroes Speak Out on the Financial Reform Ruse
VII: Economic Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMDs)
VIII: Hank “Pentagon Sachs” Paulson
IX: $5.4 Trillion a Year Bullion Market Ponzi Scheme
X: Ponzi Nation: Welcome to America, Sucker
XI: Economic Shock and Awe
XII: Time for a Second American Revolution - The 99% Movement
XIII: How You Can Get Involved

Now that I have your attention, I want to make it clear to you that I am being rational and serious when I ask this question: Is it time for law abiding American citizens to stop paying their taxes and start a new government?

Before you roll your eyes and dismiss me as some “extremist,” let me explain the situation to those who are unfamiliar with my past reports. In my report on the Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States, I lay out the case proving that our economy and tax system has become an organized criminal operation. I defy anyone who spends time researching and analyzing the facts and overwhelming evidence to support this claim to prove otherwise. I invite anyone who thinks I’m wrong to a debate on national television. I’m talking to you, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and President Obama!

I torturously spend 60 plus hours a week researching this and the torrent of devastating news and evidence is mounting by the minute. The staggering level of theft continues unabated. As I am watching this unfold, I am horrified thinking about the severe consequences that have only just begun to reap their toll. Our nation is being raped and pillaged. Our future is going up in flames and our government isn’t even making the slightest effort to put out the fire. In fact, they are purposely pouring gasoline all over it.

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that… the machine will be prevented from working at all.” – Mario Savio

So let me take a deep breath and back up for a minute… and explain the urgent gravity of our current crisis.

IV: New Mafia World Order

But wait, I hear skeptics say, “How is it possible that they could steal trillions and not get caught or be held accountable?” Which is a very logical question. Well, when you have trillions of dollars you can easily grease the wheels, fund political campaigns at every level, and buy off all the regulators. The SEC knew about Bernie Madoff for years, but didn’t do anything about it, and he was a small-timer. The SEC and The Federal Reserve also obviously knew about Lehman’s accounting games long before they went bankrupt and actively worked to hide the information from the public.

For another current example of how the wheels are greased, let’s look at this, just in off the AP wire… “Government rewarded bank auditors with big bonuses.”

“As banks gambled on the risky mortgages that helped create the worst financial crisis in generations, the U.S. government handed out millions of dollars in bonuses to regulators at agencies that missed or ignored warning signs that the system was on the verge of a meltdown.

The bonuses, detailed in payroll data released to The Associated Press, are the latest evidence of the government’s false sense of security during the go-go days of the financial boom. Just as bank executives got bonuses despite taking on dangerous amounts of risk, regulators got taxpayer-funded bonuses for doing “superior” work monitoring the banks.

The bonuses, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, were part of a reward program little known outside the government. Some government regulators got tens of thousands of dollars in perks, boosting their salaries by almost 25 percent.”

Do you see this? Major bonuses for looking the other way! What the New Mafia World Order calls “superior work.”

To get a further understanding of how this banking cartel operates and handles people who are in a position to stop their plunder, consider the case of American hero Bradley Birkenfeld. Democracy Now covered his case with this report:

"Why Is the Whistleblower Who Exposed the Massive UBS Tax Evasion Scheme the Only One Heading to Prison?

A former banker for the Swiss giant UBS who blew the whistle on the biggest tax-evasion scheme in US history is preparing to head to prison tomorrow to begin serving a forty-month federal sentence. Bradley Birkenfeld first came forward to US authorities in 2007 and began providing inside information on how UBS was helping thousands of Americans hide assets in secret Swiss accounts."

As Jesselyn Radack wrote on Common Dreams, “Birkenfeld is the only person in the scandal (which resulted in the Treasury’s recouping $780 million) to be sentenced to prison. Not a single one of the 52,000 American tax cheats who had UBS accounts faces jail time.” In other words, as this case demonstrates, if you’re rich enough, it’s legal to steal tax money, but illegal to point out that the money was stolen. How is that for sending out a message to let the world know who is in charge? Welcome to the New Mafia World Order.

And to think, this theft is peanuts compared to the trillions stolen through market manipulation and the bailout, but as National Whistleblowers Center summed it up: “Mr. Birkenfeld’s voluntary disclosures also led to: The shutdown of the entire $20 billion UBS program that existed to solicit and encourage wealthy Americans to hide their money in secret, offshore accounts.”

Well, the billionaire pirates who looted our economy can’t have something like this happen, so send that confused servant who thinks laws apply to them to jail!

BP's behaviour in the Gulf is appalling. But our thirst for oil is the real issue

Science will solve this crisis, but the real cause is America's demands and our refusal to pay oil's true price

Article history

Barack Obama examines tar balls from the spill on a Louisiana beach last week. Photograph: EPA

As this piece is written, act one of the Gulf of Mexico tragedy continues, agonisingly, to unfold. We, the people of the region, keep hoping to leave behind the terrifying explosions and ghastly loss of human life, the dread invoked by black jets billowing endlessly from below and the floating oil spreading over an ever-growing area.

We want to move on to act two, which will feature many dirty shovels, corpses of birds and people crying over the loss of a landscape they love. Act three has yet to be written; it will employ an enormous cast of lawyers and last for decades, but in that time there will be some healing, we hope. That's what we need to happen as soon as possible, but we can't seem to get the damned thing plugged up.

I am told that Britons like to measure areas by comparison to the size of Wales. The oil spill stretching across the Gulf is now far bigger than Wales; it's about the size of Scotland and growing by more than 1,500 square kilometres (580 square miles) a day. It was my observation, in satellite images of this inexorable spread, that led me to conclude in early May that the rate of release being cited by BP and repeated by our coastguard – 1,000 barrels a day – was preposterous.

After initial pressure, the rate was upped to 5,000 barrels per day – still too low by my estimation by at least a factor of five. BP, however, refused to make any effort to estimate the flow, claiming this could jeopardise its response efforts, which could not possibly be any greater, it avowed.

At this point, three weeks into the calamity, BP had yet to release any video images of the oil gushing from the stricken well. Pressure from journalists eventually pried loose a single, 30-second clip, along with a statement from BP professing surprise that anyone was even interested and the certainty that no one looking at the images could possibly tell what the flow rate was. Not so, it turned out.

Several scientists were able to estimate flow rates at between 40,000 and 100,000 barrels a day. Suddenly a great many people were highly interested in video and other information. Threat of congressional subpoena – a very powerful writ in our system – forced BP to produce more video and eventually the live feed from the bottom we can now see at bp.com. The gusher video went viral.

Now here's the remarkable thing. Through all this, Doug Suttles, head of BP America, appeared day after day on TV insisting that 5,000 barrels a day was the real number. In fact, he said, this number was at the heart of all its engineering calculations for stopping the leak with the dome, the top hat, the top kill, the junk shot and, in last resort, the LMRP cap – whatever that is.

BP, in the words of Suttles, felt deep and sincere concern for the people of Louisiana, and everywhere else where the oil might drift. When a CNN team videoed Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and other dignitaries afloat in an oil-drenched marsh, Suttles was quickly on the air to profess BP's determination to clean up that "30 acres" of polluted wetland. When several fishermen working on a response team were hospitalised by fumes, he was quick to note the potential danger of "volatile organic compounds" – and just as quick to claim that BP had looked for, but failed to find, any of these nasty VOCs.

My personal experience of the oil spill has been quite different. Last Wednesday my colleagues and I encountered several square kilometres of oil about a centimetre thick; it was 12 miles off the Mississippi delta and more than 50 miles from the leaking well. It comprises several thousand cubic metres poised to come ashore from this patch alone. There are many more like it. Working to sample it – without a skimmer in sight by the way – we would have been overcome by fumes had we not donned respirators. Next day, on boats and planes, we easily documented not 30 acres of oiled marshland, but more than 1,000 in only a portion of the vast, vulnerable delta.

What baffles me is not that BP should seek to minimise the magnitude of the spill. After all, some of our laws would make it liable to penalties of $1,000 per barrel released. Any company would seek to avoid such exposure. What's puzzling is why the company's spokespeople cleave to statements that are so readily refuted.

Casting BP executives as cardboard cut-out villains does not get us very far though. Whatever the courts may find about BP's culpability the real cause is our demand for oil and our refusal to pay its true price. Right now, everyone in America wants to do something to fight the spill. However, if you suggest that perhaps we should double the price of fuel and use the revenue to rebuild our transportation network, the general response is suspicious silence.

Facile comparisons do not do justice to this still unfolding drama. If the climate scientists are even partly right, this could be a dress rehearsal for greater crises: humans instigating vast change we then struggle to control.

Amid such struggles, minimising the spill rate for PR purposes does not stop the leak; engineering stops the leak. Expunging oil from your publicity photos does not clean the beach or tell you how badly damaged was the ecosystem; science does that. In the struggle between spin and science, we must demand that science wins.

• Ian R MacDonald is Professor of Oceanography, Florida State University