Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

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Oh, It Was The John P. Wheeler III Who Was Involved In The Barksdale-Minot Incident Who Was Found In A Landfill!



So Wayne Madsen  hips me to this tip on John Wheeler III, whose name I didn't recognize:


John Wheeler III, special assistant to Air Force Secretary during the 2007 B-52 nuke incident at Minot, found dead in Delaware landfill. Homicide concluded. Last seen on Amtrak from DC on Dec. 28. Dealing with neocons can be hazardous to one's health. Not the first suspicious Air Force death as reported by WMR.
A bit more digging, so you have somewhere to start, brings me to Sodahead's rather levelheaded opinion :



What the "news" is not telling you is -

Wheeler was the assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force in the George W. Bush Administration. It was the Secretary of the Air Force who discovered that Richard Cheney had set up an alternative chain of command to the nuclear weapons wing of the AF. In the process, six minutemen missiles [sic] armed with nuclear warheads were secretly transported from Minot AFB to Barksdale AFB [see note -- ed]. The later is the chief staging base for the Middle East war. The alarm system for the weapons was deactivated for the transport, something that not even the base commander could authorize. The orders had to have come from above. Many point to Cheney. Before the warheads could be flown via B-52 to the Iraq/Iran theater, the Secretary of the Air Force ordered the stand-down of all B-52 flights. When he discovered the alternative chain of command to Cheney, he fired all military personnel who were involved. Cheney was said to have been livid. The Secretary ordered an investigation of what the AF press release called an oversight, and 70 enlisted men and 5 officers were removed from the Minot nuclear system. 

At the same time, people involved began to die mysteriously. Wheeler is only the latest casualty.

N.B.:The missiles were Advance Cruise Missiles, or ACM's, NOT minutemen.  For an interesting 'explanation' see the Army Times writeup .  Interesting of course that its the Army times....  Rest of the Sodahead piece, including background info, here .


For a detailed history of the Barksdale-Minot incident, go here (of course) for my repost of Chuck Simpson's excellent exegesis.












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BP Pulls Out; Deepwater Drilling Quietly Resumes


a paraphrase of this Reuters article


BP plc is phasing out "Operation Deep Clean, " responsible for clean up operations on the Gulf Coast.  Eight months after the Deepwater Horizon exploded, melted for three days in a blue flame of natural gas hundreds of feet high, and sank, the US Coast Guard says with a straight face that only 30 miles of beach remain to be cleaned, from an original estimate of 928.   Still at it since the worst part of the disaster, 7.83% of the workforce and  26.32% of the clean up fleet will no doubt soon be retired.

Whether or not they were successful fell not within the scope of the Reuters article that I am paraphrasing for you, and so falls not within the scope of this.

Small Battle, Won Against Shell, To Make You Feel Better...

Although not about Deepwater drilling, Reuters' copywriters see fit to add this bit of information about Shell: A coalition of groups (unnamed) appealed to the US EPA, charging that the permits violate the Clean Air Act: the allow tons of contaminants from Shell's drill ships to pollute the Arctic environment.  Without these permits Shell cannot drill exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.  The Appeals Board told the EPA to analyze the impact of nitrogen dioxide in particular on Native Alaskan Communities.  Reuters does not explore whether once this impact is assessed, business will or will not go on as usual.

...When You Read That War For Deepwater May Be Lost

Meanwhile, here's change you can't believe: the Obama administration has decided to 'grandfather in' 13 companies, allowing them to resume deepwater drilling "because they were in the middle of previously approved projects" when the Deepwater Horizon blew.

Active Platforms as of 2006. Source: Wikipedia
The moratorium to deepwater drilling ended in October, after which Reuters leads me to understand that the Obama administration has been under intense pressure from Gulf State leaders, Big Oil, and Republicans.  No word as to pressure from other parties, such as represent the environment or the people of the Gulf.  

Reuters lists these as the lucky thirteen:
 ATP Oil & Gas; BHP Billiton Petroleum; Chevron USA; Cobalt International Energy; ENI U.S. Operating Co. Inc.; Hess Corp.; Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corp.; Marathon Oil Co.; Murphy Exploration & Production-USA; Noble Energy Inc.; Shell Offshore; Statoil USA; and Walter Oil & Gas Corp.

These companies may resume deepwater drilling without fear of any added regulatory or  environmental scrutiny.



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