Terror threats at chemical plants underestimated

From:  AP 

By HOPE YEN

 

 

 

This April 18, 2013 file photo shows an aerial view of the remains of a fertilizer plant and an apartment complex to the left, destroyed by an explosion in West, Texas. The government has failed to inspect virtually all of the chemical facilities that it considers to be at high risk for a terror attack, numbering in the thousands, and has underestimated the threat to densely populated cities, congressional investigators say. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is underestimating the threat of a chemical attack on America's densely populated cities and has failed to inspect virtually all of the chemical facilities that it considers particularly vulnerable to terrorists, congressional investigators say.

The yearlong investigation by Republican staff on the Senate Homeland Security Committee paints a portrait of inspection delays, government errors in risk assessment and industry loopholes in a $595 million terror prevention program passed by Congress in 2006.

Coming a year after a massive explosion at a West, Texas, fertilizer plant, the report points to threats from the release of toxic and flammable chemicals.  MORE

The Man Behind the Exploding Trains

From:  Sightline Daily

by Eric de Place & Rich Feldman

 Pulling back the curtain on Warren Buffett's role. 

This post is 21 in the series: The Northwest's Pipeline on Rails

“Look for the UTLX logo on tank cars when you watch trains roll by. As a Berkshire shareholder, you own the cars with that insignia. When you spot a UTLX car, puff out your chest a bit…” – Berkshire Hathaway’s 2012 Annual Report

In our previous installment, we explored how unsafe DOT-111s, the Ford Pinto of rail cars, make up the vast majority of oil-filled tank cars now riding the rails in North America. With DOT-111s, there is no margin for error. A serious derailment will almost always lead to oil spills or explosions. But if they are so clearly dangerous, why are these tank cars still on the rails?
The reason, in short, is because the railroad and rail car industries have opposed new safety regulations. (The oil and ethanol industries have abetted their cause.) Citing supposedly onerous costs for retrofitting unsafe tank cars, as well as the related infrastructure to load and unload the products they carry, these companies have successfully argued against rules that would require them to make the upgrades that could prevent the explosions.
Behind many of the industry groups opposing hauling Bakken crude in only safe tank cars is a single figure: Warren Buffett.

Warren Buffett by Fortune Live Media used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Most people don’t realize it, but the tank cars that carry crude oil are not owned by the railroads that run them and are only rarely owned by the shippers who use them. In fact, roughly 80 percent of all the tank cars registered in North America are owned by companies that lease the tank cars to shippers. (Several of the major lessors also manufacture or repair tank cars.) These lessors—the actual owners of the tank cars—are the ones ultimately responsible for the fact that that the vast majority of oil trains today are largely composed of older models so riddled with obvious flaws that federal safety investigators have for years urged the entire fleet be retrofitted.  MORE

Unmasked

From:  Monbiot

by George Monbiot

The justifications for extreme inequality have collapsed. But only the Green Party is prepared to take the obvious step

When inequality reaches extreme and destructive levels, most governments seek not to confront it but to accommodate it. Wherever wealth is absurdly concentrated, new laws arise to protect it.

In Britain, for example, successive governments have privatised any public asset which excites corporate greed. They have cut taxes on capital and high incomes. They have legalised new forms of tax avoidance(1). 

They have delivered exotic gifts like subsidised shotgun licences and the doubling of state support for grouse moors(2). And they have dug a legal moat around the charmed circle, criminalising, for example, the squatting of empty buildings(3) and most forms of peaceful protest(4). However grotesque inequality becomes, however closely the accumulation of inordinate wealth resembles legalised theft, political norms shift to defend it.  MORE

Tomgram: Chip Ward, Leave It to Beaver(s)

From:  TomDispatch 

by Chip Ward

If you want to be unnerved, just pay a visit to the U.S. Drought Monitor and check out its map of the American West with almost all of California stained the deep, distressing shades of red that indicate either “extreme” or “exceptional” drought.  In other words, it could hardly be worse.  California is now in its third year of drought, with no end in sight; state agricultural losses are estimated at $2.2 billion for 2014 alone; most of its reservoirs are less than half full; the Colorado River basin, which supplies water to "about 40 million people and 4 million acres of farmland in seven states," including California, is compromised; and California's first six months of 2014 have been the “hottest ever... nearly five degrees warmer than the twentieth century average.” The drought’s arms extend north through Oregon ("severe") into Washington, where it’s already been the fire season from hell -- and it’s just beginning.  They also reach east through Nevada as far as Utah and straight across the Southwest in various shades of yellow, orange, and deep red.

TomDispatch’s western contingent, environmentalists Chip Ward and William deBuys, have had the stresses of climate change, rising heat, drought, wildfires, desertification, and someday the possible abandonment of parts of the Southwest on their minds (and so on the minds of TD readers) for years now.  These days, the chickens are coming home to roost -- but not, it seems, the beavers.  Ward, a Utah environmentalist and the former assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library System, has long focused not just on how our American world is being ravaged, but on how to protect and restore it.  In today’s post, he offers a reminder that sometimes such restoration can come in small packages and that even the most modest of natural geo-engineering can disturb vested interests. Tom

The Original Geo-Engineers
Or How to Save the Iconic West from the Cow
By Chip Ward
The great novelist Wallace Stegner sorted the conflicting impulses in his beloved American West into two camps. There were the “boomers” who saw the frontier as an opportunity to get rich quick and move on: the conquistadors, the gold miners, the buffalo hunters, the land scalpers, and the dam-building good ol’ boys. They are still with us, trying to drill and frack their way to Easy Street across our public lands. Then there were those Stegner called the “nesters” or “stickers” who came to stay and struggled to understand the land and its needs. Their quest was to become native.

That division between boomers and nesters is, of course, too simple.  All of us have the urge to consume and move on, as well as the urge to nest, so our choices are rarely clear or final. Today, that old struggle in the American West is intensifying as heat-parched, beetle-gnawed forests ignite in annual epic firestorms, reservoirs dry up, and Rocky Mountain snow is ever more stained with blowing desert dust. 

The modern version of nesters are the conservationists who try to partner with the ecosystems where they live. Wounded landscapes, for example, can often be restored by unleashing nature’s own self-healing powers. The new nesters understand that you cannot steer and control an ecosystem but you might be able to dance with one.  Sage Sorensen dances with beavers.

Dances with Beavers

MORE

The risk of opposing Israel in the US

From:  Al Jazeera 

by  Ruth Fowler

We all know the stigma, but we cannot remain silent

Growing up in the United Kingdom in an agnostic family that had Jewish and Christian members, I was free to have an opinion about the continual clashes between Israel and Palestine. It reminded me of Britain’s relationship with Northern Ireland. While I never endorsed violence or supporting the Irish Republican Army, I sympathized with the occupied rather than the occupier and recognized the occupied’s right to resist occupation.

Back then, even when my opinion differed from my friends’ and colleagues’, I felt secure that I would not lose work or friends or opportunities or sleep because I recognized that the state of Israel used unnecessary and criminal violence against the Palestinian people in order to further its Zionist ideals.

Today, as a white woman living in the United States, I do not feel free to express an opinion about the conflict without facing opposition or abuse. Only two days ago a woman who asked me to refer pregnant women to her acupuncturist business page, posted a Golda Meir quote online: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” I had to do a double take. Who, exactly, was I supposed to refer to this woman? Was I meant to be racially selecting clientele for her, or did she honestly think a woman of color — any color — would find the insinuation that race dictates how much one loves one child an acceptable statement to make as a small-business owner specializing in birth and pregnancy?  MORE

Warren Buffett as Market Manipulator -- Impossible?

From:  Huff Post

by Raymond J. Learsy

 

Warren Buffett the very icon and dean of the America's trust in the stock market and our economic process whose example has been a beacon of achievement and trust in the system. Is it possible that even Warren Buffett has clay feet, stooping to the very actions whose cynicism and manipulative enterprise has made many so wary of a structure that rewards the few at the cost of the many?

I don't know, but an extraordinary set of circumstances have come to pass in the past few days of stark stock trading, coincidences that cannot but leave one wondering whether willful manipulation was at play. 

Buffett is sitting on a gain today from his investment in The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) when he came in with $3 billion to assist Dow to acquire Rohm & Haas for $18.8 billion in 2009. He effectively became the single largest shareholder in the larger Dow Chemical Company after acquiring 3,000,000 shares of Series A Cumulative Convertible Perpetual Preferred Stock in Dow Chemical Company. Under certain conditions, each preferred share is convertible into 24.201 shares of Dow common stock, but the preferred share comes with dividends at a rate of 8.5 percent per year. Beginning in April 2014, if Dow's common stock price exceeds $53.72 then Dow can elect to convert the Dow preferred shares into common stock if its shares traded above $53.72 for any 20 trading days in a consecutive 30-day window.  MORE

ExxonMobil restarts Pegasus pipeline closed after Mayflower oil spill; operating in Texas

From:  The Republic 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Posted: July 30, 2014 - 1:55 pm
Last Updated: July 30, 2014 - 1:59 pm 

 

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — ExxonMobil has restarted a section of its Pegasus pipeline in Texas more than a year after a crude oil spill in central Arkansas forced the company to shut down the entire line, a spokesman said.

The southern portions of the pipeline were restarted on July 9, ExxonMobil spokesman Aaron Styrk told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (http://bit.ly/1s2gfuM ) in an email. The Texas section includes a 205-mile segment between Corsicana and Beaumont and a 6-mile segment between Beaumont and Nederland.

The Pegasus pipeline ruptured in March 2013 in Mayflower's Northwoods subdivision, sending an estimated 210,000 gallons of heavy crude into the neighborhood, drainage ditches and Lake Conway. Authorities have said the oil did not reach the main portion of the lake.  MORE

Ebola outbreak may already be uncontrollable; Monsanto invests in Ebola treatment drug company as pandemic spreads

From:  Natural News

by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) A global outbreak of deadly Ebola is underway and has crossed national borders. One infected victim of the horrifying disease flew on international flights, vomiting on board and exposing hundreds of people to the deadly virus which can be transmitted through airborne particles. Ebola has an 8-10 day incubation period, meaning thousands of people could be carrying it right now and spreading it across the cities of the world without even knowing it.

Passengers in Hong Kong and the UK have already shown symptoms of the disease and are being tested, reports USA Today. (2) The Peace Corps has evacuated its volunteers from the region after two were exposed to Ebola. (3)

"Expert claims panic over death of U.S. man in Nigeria is 'justified'" reports the Daily Mail. (1) "He warned the spread of Ebola could become a global pandemic."

Ebola is the closest thing to real-life zombie infections

With apologies to those victims who have suffered the horrible fate of Ebola, I'm offering a medically accurate description here as a warning to everybody else. Believe me when I say you do NOT want to contract Ebola. Warning: Graphic language below.

Ebola is a gruesome disease that causes cells in the body to self-destruct, resulting in massive internal and external bleeding. In its late stages, Ebola can cause the victim to experience convulsions, vomiting and bleeding from the eyes and ears while convulsing, flinging blood all over the room and anyone standing nearby, thereby infecting those people as well. This gruesome ending is the reason Ebola spreads so effectively. The virus "weaponizes" the blood, then causes the victim to fling it around on everyone else almost like you might see depicted in some horror zombie flick.

"Haemorrhaging symptoms begin 4 - 5 days after onset, which includes hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, pharyngitis, bleeding gums, oral/lip ulceration, hematemesis, melena, hematuria, epistaxis, and vaginal bleeding," reports the Pathogen Safety Data Sheet from the Public Health Agency of Canada. (8) That same publication also explains, "There are no known antiviral treatments available for human infections."

Read that again: There are NO KNOWN TREATMENTS for human infections.

Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor tragically died yesterday from an Ebola infection. Although well trained in infectious disease, even he underestimated the ability of this insidious killer to leap from person to person. Around half of those infected with Ebola die, making it one of the most fatal diseases known to modern medical science. And yet medical staff around the world still aren't exercising sufficient precautions when interfacing with infected patients.

Monsanto and Dept. of Defense help fund pharma company that could earn billions from Ebola treatment

There are some experimental drugs under development by pharma companies that show some promise, but nothing is commercialized yet. (9)

One fascinating development worth investigating further is that TEKMIRA Pharmaceuticals, a company working on an anti-Ebola drug, just received a $1.5 million cash infusion from none other than Monsanto. Click here to read the press release, which states "Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation is a biopharmaceutical company focused on advancing novel RNAi therapeutics and providing its leading lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery technology to pharmaceutical partners."

The money from Monsanto is reportedly related to the company's developed of RNAi technology used in agriculture. The deal is valued at up to $86.2 million, according to the WSJ. (11)

Another press release about Tekmira reveals a $140 million contract with the U.S. military for Ebola treatment drugs:

TKM-Ebola, an anti-Ebola virus RNAi therapeutic, is being developed under a $140 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense's Medical Countermeasure Systems BioDefense Therapeutics (MCS-BDTX) Joint Product Management Office.

Additional Tekmira partnership are listed at this Tekmira web page.

Not to invoke any charges of collusion or conspiracy here, but a whole lot of people are going to have raised eyebrows over the fact that Monsanto just happened to be giving a cash infusion to a key pharma company working on an Ebola cure right in the middle of a highly-publicized Ebola outbreak which could create huge market demand for the drugs. The fact that the U.S. Department of Defense is also involved with all this is going to have alternative news websites digging hard for additional links.

Sadly, the history of medicine reveals that drug companies, the CDC and the WHO have repeatedly played up the severity of disease outbreaks in order to promote sales of treatment drugs. I'm not saying this outbreak isn't very real and very alarming, of course. It is real. But we always have to be suspicious when windfalls profits just happen to line up for certain corporations following global outbreaks of infectious disease. Vaccine manufacturers, remember, made billions off the false swine flu scare, and tens of millions of dollars in stockpiled swine flu vaccines later had to be destroyed by the governments that panicked and purchased them.

Has air travel doomed humanity to a pandemic outbreak?

Air travel creates the "perfect storm" for Ebola to devastate humanity. It all starts with these irrefutable facts about air travel:

1) All passengers are confined to the same enclosed space.

2) All passengers are breathing THE SAME AIR.

3) Ebola can become airborne via very small particles in the air, and just a single Ebola virus riding on a dust particle is sufficient to infect a human being (see below).

4) Following the flight, infected passengers then intermingle with thousands of other people at the airport, each doing to a different unique destination somewhere else across the country or around the world.

5) The speed of air travel vastly out-paces the speed of governments being able to deploy infectious disease prevention teams.

A global pandemic wipeout from Ebola, in other words, could originate from a single person on a single international flight. And it could circle the globe in less than 48 hours.

Just one organism is sufficient to infect a new host

Just how much Ebola virus does it take to infect someone? Alarmingly, as the Public Health Agency of Canada explains, "1 - 10 aerosolized organisms are sufficient to cause infection in humans." (8)

Read that again: it takes just ONE aerosolized organism (a microscopic virus riding on a dust particle) to cause a full-blown infection in humans. This is why one man vomiting on an international flight can infect dozens or hundreds of other people all at once.

Some experts fear that has already happened. As the Daily Mail reports: (1)

Nigerian health officials are in the process of trying to trace 30,000 people, believed to be at risk of contracting the highly-infectious virus, following the death of Patrick Sawyer in Lagos. It comes as Nigerian actor Jim Lyke sparked outrage, posting a picture of himself wearing an Ebola mask while sitting in a first class airport lounge as he fled Liberia.

Dave Hodges of The Commonsense Show reports: (7)

A desperate search is on to find the hundreds of passengers who flew on the same jets as Sawyer. A total of 59 passengers and crew are estimated to have come into contact with Sawyer and effort is being made to track each individual down. There is an inherent problem with this "track down". Presumably, some of the passengers connected to other flights, which known to be the case. Let's just say for the sake of argument that only 20 people, a low estimate given the nature of the airports that Sawyer was traveling in, were connecting to other flights, the spread of the virus would quickly expand beyond any possibility of containment because in less than a half a day, nearly a half a million people would be potentially exposed. Within a matter of a couple of hours, Sawyer's infected fellow travelers would each have made contact with 200 other passengers and crew. Hours later, these flights would land and these people would go home to the friends, families and coworkers across several continents.

CBS News adds: (4)

"Witnesses say Sawyer, a 40-year-old Liberian Finance Ministry employee en route to a conference in Nigeria, was vomiting and had diarrhea aboard at least one of his flights with some 50 other passengers aboard. Ebola can be contracted from traces of feces or vomit, experts say."

American family members quarantined in Texas

A U.S. doctor named Dr. Kent Brantly has reportedly contracted Ebola. "Brantly and the couple's 3- and 5-year-old children left Liberia for a scheduled visit to the United States on July 20. Days later, Kent Brantly quarantined himself in the isolation ward of a hospital where he had been treating Ebola patients after testing positive for the disease," reports CBS News. (3)

That same story goes on to say, "Amber Brantly and the children are in Abilene, Texas, under a 21-day fever watch," which is essentially a quarantine. This means the necessary quarantine of American citizens on U.S. soil has already begun.

Nobody is yet talking about what all this might mean if a large U.S. city shows an outbreak of infections. Will the federal government use the military to quarantine an entire city? Ultimately, it must! And make no mistake: this possibility is already written up and on the books for national emergencies. One declaration of martial law is all that's required to seal off an entire U.S. city at gunpoint.

Another CBS News article reports: (4)

"If it gets into a big city, that's everybody's worse nightmare," said Dr. Tim Geisbert, a professor of microbiology and immunology at University of Texas Medical Branch, in an interview with CBS News. "It gets harder to control then. How do you quarantine a big city?"

The answer, by the way, is by deploying America's armed forces against its own citizens in a domestic national emergency scenario. Everybody in the federal government already knows that. It's only the mainstream media that pretends such plans don't already exist.

Ebola detection kits deployed to all 50 U.S. states

Although the federal government's official reaction to all this is low-key, in truth the U.S. government is rapidly preparing for the possibility of an Ebola outbreak reaching the continental USA.

As reported above, the U.S. Department of Defense already has a $140 million contract awarded to Tekmira for its Ebola treatment drugs.

Additionally, as SHTFplan.com reports: (5)

The Department of Defense informed Congress that it has deployed biological diagnostic systems to National Guard support teams in all 50 states, according to a report published by the Committee on Armed Services. Some 340 Joint Biological Agent Identification and Diagnostic System (JBAIDS) units have thus far been given to emergency response personnel. The systems are "rapid, reliable, and [provide] simultaneous identification of specific biological agents and pathogens."

On one hand, we might all applaud the government's preparedness actions in all this. It's smart to have diagnostic systems deployed nationwide, of course. But it begs the question: When was the government planning on telling the public about all this? Probably never. There's no sense in causing a panic when half the people won't survive an outbreak anyway, they figure.

The perfect bioweapon against humanity?

I also need to make you urgently aware that Ebola is a "perfect" bioweapon. Because of its ability to survive storage and still function many days, weeks or years later, it could be very easily harvested from infected victims and then preserved using nothing more than a common food dehydrator.

As the Public Health Agency of Canada explains: (8)

The virus can survive in liquid or dried material for a number of days (23). Infectivity is found to be stable at room temperature or at 4 (C) for several days, and indefinitely stable at -70 C.

To translate this into laymen's terms, this means the Ebola virus can be:

• Stored in a liquid vial and easily smuggled across international borders.

• Dehydrated and stored in a dried state, then easily smuggled.

• Frozen at very low temperatures where it remains viable indefinitely.

Once dried, contained or frozen, Ebola pathogens can be smuggled into target countries with ridiculous ease. In the United States, for example, people can literally walk right through our Southern open borders with zero security whatsoever.

Open borders is an open invitation for bioweapons terrorism

Once inside the target country, a bioweapons terrorist could then easily infect people in public transit hubs such as subway stations, airports, bus stations and so on. Unfortunately, spraying a few Ebola particles into people's faces is ridiculously easy, especially if the terrorist carrying out the activities decides he is on a suicide mission and doesn't care about self-exposure.

An outbreak of Ebola in a major U.S. city would quite literally threaten the public health of the entire nation. That's why an "open borders" policy in the middle of a global Ebola outbreak is unconscionable from the point of view of public health. CDC officials must be tearing their hair out over this issue.

Think about it: America is a country where public health officials freak out and go crazy when two children acquire whooping cough in a public school in Maryland. But when tens of thousands of people are streaming into the country, unbounded, with near-zero medical scrutiny in the middle of an international Ebola outbreak, federal officials do almost nothing at all. If there is an Ebola outbreak in the U.S., this is most likely how it will arrive.

Sources for this article include:
(1) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2710...

(2) http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/201...

(3) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/peace-corps-volu...

(4) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-plane-trav...

(5) http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/congre...

(7) http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/07/30...

(8) http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/lab-bio/res/psds-...

(9) http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/technology/art...

(10) http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tekmira-receiv...

(11) http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB100014...

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Climate Denial Machine Fueled By Big Oil and Koch Brothers Impacts Congressional Races

From:  EcoWatch 

As reported last week by EcoWatch, a research firm’s data shows that the U.S. is the leader in denying climate change. Last night, MSNBC’s The Ed Show discussed how conservative climate change deniers fuel a misinformation campaign and refuse to address the terrible environmental disasters impacting the country.

Ed Schultz was joined by Jane Kleeb, executive director of Bold Nebraska, and Brad Woodhouse, president of American Bridge. Kleeb eloquently lays out how “crazy republicans” only want to side with the tea party, and refuse to side with scientist on climate change. Her solution, “Democrats should start telling stories of Americans who are creating clean energy.”

Check out this must see interview that also provides the latest on the Keystone XL pipeline.

VIDEO

Minnesota crossed by 50 oil trains a week, almost all in Twin Cities

From:  Star Tribune 

 Article by: DAVID SHAFFER , Star Tribune

Newly released details show trains pass close to state’s populated areas

Fifty oil trains, each loaded with more than 1 million gallons of North Dakota crude oil, pass through Minnesota each week, and almost all of them go through the Twin Cities, according to the first detailed reports on the state’s crude-by-rail traffic obtained by the Star Tribune.

The reports, submitted to state officials by railroads and stamped “confidential,’’ say that oil trains can be more than 100 tank cars long as they pass through 39 of the state’s 87 counties. The greatest concentration is on the BNSF Railway main line between Moorhead and the Twin Cities. Canadian Pacific, another railroad serving North Dakota’s Bakken region, sends far fewer oil trains through the state, the data show.

Almost all of the oil trains pass through populated areas. Ramsey County and Clay County, which borders Fargo, N.D., have the most traffic — 45 per week on average. In the seven-county metro area, every county except Scott and Carver sees at least 40 oil trains per week.  MORE

Crude oil and intermodal will drive rail traffic for BNSF over the long term

From:  Progressive Railroading

— by Jeff Stagl, managing editor

 

The Williston Area Development Foundation manages a "Rockin' the Bakken" campaign and website to promote the expansion of crude-oil drilling in the Bakken Formation, a 200,000-square-mile shale that encompasses portions of North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan. 

More commonly known as the Bakken Shale, the region already has been rockin' big time for BNSF Railway Co. In the past five years, the Class I's annual crude-oil volume in the shale has skyrocketed 7,000 percent from 1.3 million barrels in 2008 to a projected 89 million barrels in 2012. 

BNSF's daily volume was expected to climb from 400,000 barrels at 2012's end to 500,000 barrels by the end of this year, while the number of unit trains operating per day was projected to increase from five in 2012 to eight in 2013.MORE

Oil train derails in Interbay in Seattle, no spills

From:  Seattle Times 

by Lynda Mapes

A BNSF investigator photographs the scene where a locomotive and four cars carrying crude oil went off the track beneath the Magnolia Bridge in Seattle’s Interbay neighborhood early this morning. (Photo by Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)

A train carrying nearly 100 cars of crude oil went off the track beneath the Magnolia Bridge in Seattle’s Interbay neighborhood early this morning.

Nothing leaked when five of the train’s 102 cars went off the track about 2 a.m., said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas. The derailment posed no public threat, he said.

The train, going slower than 5 mph, was pulling out of the BNSF rail yard when the wheels of the second of two locomotives in front went off the track. A car loaded with sand also went off the track, Melonas said.

The next three cars, filled with crude oil, also derailed. The first car was leaning at a 45-degree angle, the second at a 20-degree angle and the wheels of the third car where just off the track, Melonas said. The tank cars carry an estimated 28,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil each.

No one was injured.MORE

BNSF Nears Shift To One-Member Crews, Possibly Even on Dangerous Oil Trains

From:  DeSmogBlog 

by Cole Stanger 

For decades, the U.S. railroad industry has successfully shed labor costs by shifting to smaller and smaller operating crews. Now, it’s on the verge of what was once an unthinkable victory: single-member crews, even on dangerous oil trains.

A tentative agreement reached by BNSF Railway and the Transportation Division of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation (SMART) union would allow a single engineer to operate most of the company’s routes. It would mark a dramatic change to a labor contract that covers about 3,000 workers, or 60 percent of the BNSF system.  

It’s not just bad news for workers. The contract has major safety implications—especially amid North America’s dangerous, and sometimes deadly, crude-by-rail boom. Last year’s Bakken shale oil train derailment and explosion in Lac Mégantic, Quebec, which killed 47 people, brought increased scrutiny to oil trains.   MORE

Oil trains crowd out grain shipments to NW ports

From:  Seattle Times 

By Ángel González

Seattle Times business reporter

 As oil trains hauling North Dakota crude delay rail transport of grain to Pacific Northwest ports, the prospect of growing fossil-fuel traffic has some fearing that such shipping disruptions will become a long-term problem impeding exports and the regional economy. 

A surge in oil trains hauling North Dakota’s energy bonanza is interfering with grain shipments to Pacific Northwest ports, prompting fears of a chronic crisis in which railcars carrying fossil fuels crowd out other products and disrupt exports. 

Washington wheat farmers have been luckier than their Upper Midwest cousins because most can ship their wheat by barge down the Columbia River. 

But those farther from the river, who typically rely on railroads, are increasingly paying truckers to move their wheat to a barge port. Farmers and others worry that costs and delays will get worse as more trains carrying oil — and perhaps coal — clog the region’s rail lines.  MORE

BNSF train carrying North Dakota oil derails in Seattle

From:  Reuters 

Thu, Jul 24 12:10 PM EDT

By Edward McAllister

(Reuters) - A Burlington Northern Santa Fe train carrying crude oil derailed as it left a railyard in north Seattle on Thursday, but there were no reports of a spill or injuries, BNSF said in a statement.

Four railcars came off the tracks at around 2 a.m. PDT (0900 GMT), three of which were carrying crude oil, said BNSF, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. The train originated in North Dakota and was bound for Tesoro Corp's 120,000 barrel-per-day Anacortes oil refinery, 80 miles (129 km) north of the city, Tesoro confirmed.

The derailment comes at a pivotal moment for the booming crude-by-rail industry, which has come under intense scrutiny after a series of accidents over the past 18 months. MORE

Warren Buffett Really Likes Oil Trains — Despite the Explosions

From:  ViceNews 

By Eric de Place

July 29, 2014

Watch the VICE News documentary "Bomb Trains" here.

The people in the Musi-Café had no idea what hit them. At about 1am on July 6, 2013, a train parked on a slope a couple miles away slipped its brakes. Seventy-two tank cars loaded with crude oil accelerated into the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, and began to tumble off the tracks, detonating and burning with a force so powerful that it leveled several city blocks. Forty-seven people were killed — most of whom were inside the Musi-Café.

In the months that followed, Lac-Mégantic became a rallying cry, a bloody shirt waved by activists across North America who were growing increasingly concerned about a relatively new phenomenon: ultra-long trains loaded with a peculiar variety of crude oil.

Months later, after several other oil train accidents, Warren Buffett went on CNBC claiming that oil train explosions were “very, very, very, very rare.”

If Buffett sounded defensive, it may have been because he is the single most important person in the world of oil-by-rail, an industry that he dominates and that has proven to be highly profitable for oil companies and railroads — and singularly dangerous to the public.  MORE

The Seven Pillars of the Matrix

by Robert Bonomo

“No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.”

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Contemporary baptized, corporatized and sanitized man rarely has the occasion to question his identity, and when he does a typical response might be, “I am product manager for a large retail chain, married to Betty, father of Johnny, a Democrat, Steelers fan and a Lutheran.”

His answers imply not only his beliefs but the many responsibilities, rules and restrictions he is subjected to.  Few if any of these were ever negotiated-  they were imposed on him yet he still considers himself free.

But is free the right adjective for him, or would modern domesticated simian be more apt?  He has been told what to do, believe, think and feel since he can remember.  A very clever rancher has bred billions of these creatures around the globe and created the most profitable livestock imaginable.  They work for him, fight for him, die for him, believe his wildest tales, laugh at his jokes and rarely get out of line.  When domesticated man does break one of the rules there are armies, jailers, psychiatrists and bureaucrats prepared to kill, incarcerate, drug or hound the transgressor into submission.

One of the most fascinating aspects of domesticated man’s predicament is that he never looks at the cattle, sheep and pigs who wind up on his plate and make the very simple deduction that he is just a talking version of them, corralled and shepherded through his entire life.  How is this accomplished?  Only animals that live in hierarchical groups can be dominated by man. The trick is to fool the animal into believing that the leader of the pack or herd is the person who is domesticating them.  Once this is accomplished the animal is under full control of its homo sapien master. The domesticated man is no different, originally organized in groups with a clear hierarchy and maximum size of 150-  it was easy to replace the leader of these smaller groups with one overarching figure such as God, King, President, CEO etc.  

The methodology for creating this exceptionally loyal and obedient modern breed, homo domesticus, can be described as having seven pillars from which an immense matrix captures the talking simians and their conscious minds and hooks them into a complex mesh from which few ever escape.  The system is so advanced that those who do untangle themselves and cut their way out of the net are immediately branded as mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers who can’t accept the ‘complexity of modern life’, i.e. conspiracy nuts.

DELUSION DWELLERS, Laurie Lipton, 2010

Plato described this brilliantly in his Allegory of the Cave, where people only see man made shadows of objects, institutions, Gods and ideas:

 “--Behold! human beings living in an underground cave...here they have been from their childhood...necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance...the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets... and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall...”

It began with the word, which forever changed the ability of men to manipulate each other.  Before language, every sensation was directly felt through the senses without the filter of words.  But somewhere around 50,000 years ago language began to replace reality and the first pieces of code were put in place for the creation of the Matrix.  As soon as the words began to flow the world was split, and from that fracturing was born man’s angst and slavery.  The words separated us from who we really were, creating the first screen onto which the images from Plato’s cave were cast.  Gurdjieff said it well, “Identifying is the chief obstacle to self-remembering. A man who identifies with anything is unable to remember himself.”

It’s no accident that in Hesiod’s ages of man the Golden Age knew no agriculture, which appeared in the Silver age, and by the time we reach the Bronze age the dominant theme is toil and strife.  The two key elements to the enslavement of man were clearly language and agriculture.  In the hunter gatherer society, taking out the boss was no more complicated than landing a well placed fastball to the head.  Only since the advent of farming was the possibility of creating full time enforcers and propagandists made possible, and hence enslavement inevitable.

The search for enlightenment rarely if ever bears fruits in those temples of words, our schools and universities.  Almost all traditions point to isolation and silence as the only paths to awakening;  they are the true antidotes to modern slavery.  As Aristotle wrote, “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”

So from the institution from which we are mercilessly bombarded with words and enslaved to time, we begin our descent through the seven layers of the Matrix.

Education

There are things we are born able to do like eating, laughing and crying and others we pick up without much of an effort such as walking, speaking and fighting, but without strict institutional education there is no way that we can ever become a functioning member of the Matrix. We must be indoctrinated, sent to Matrix boot camp, which of course is school.  How else could you take a hunter and turn him into a corporate slave, submissive to clocks, countless bosses, monotony and uniformity?

Children naturally know who they are, they have no existential angst, but schools immediately begin driving home the point of schedules, rules, lists and grades which inevitably lead the students to the concept of who they aren't.  We drill the little ones until they learn to count money, tell time, measure progress, stand in line, keep silent and endure submission.  They learn they aren't free and they are separated from everyone else and the world itself by a myriad of divides, names and languages.

It can’t be stressed enough how much education is simply inculcating people with the clock and the idea of a forced identity.  What child when she first goes to school isn't taken back to hear herself referred to by her full name?

It’s not as if language itself isn't sufficiently abstract- nothing must be left without a category.  Suzy can’t just be Suzy-  she is a citizen of a country and a state, a member of a religion and a product of a civilization, many of which have flags, mascots, armies, uniforms, currencies and languages.  Once all the mascots, tag lines and corporate creeds are learned, then history can begin to be taught.  The great epic myths invented and conveniently woven into the archetypes which have come down through the ages cement this matrix into the child’s mind.

Even the language that she speaks without effort must be deconstructed for her.  An apple will never again be just an apple-  it will become a noun, a subject, or an object.  Nothing will be left untouched, all must be ripped apart and explained back to the child in Matrixese.

We are taught almost nothing useful during the twelve or so years that we are institutionalized and conditioned for slavery- not how to cook, farm, hunt, build, gather, laugh or play.  We are only taught how to live by a clock and conform to institutionalized behaviors that make for solid careers as slaveocrats. 

Government

In the countries that claim to be democratic the concept of a government created to serve the people is often espoused.  Government, and the laws they create and enforce are institutionalized social control for the benefit of those who have seized power.  This has always been the case and always will be.  In the pre-democratic era it was much clearer to recognize who had power, but the genius of massive democratic states are the layers upon layers of corporatocracy and special interests which so brilliantly conceal the identify of those who really manage the massive apparatus of control.

The functions of the state are so well esconded in dogmatic versions of history taught in schools that almost no one questions why we need anything beyond the bare essentials of government to maintain order in the post-industrial age.  The history classes never point the finger at the governments themselves as the propagators and instigators of war, genocide, starvation and corruption.  In Hollywood's version of history, the one most people absorb, 'good' governments are always portrayed as fighting 'bad' ones.  We have yet to see a film where all the people on both sides simply disengage from their governments and ignore the calls to violence.
The state apparatus is based on law, which is a contract between the people and an organism created to administer common necessities- an exchange of sovereignty between the people and the state.  This sounds reasonable, but when one looks at the mass slaughters of the 20^th century, almost without exception, the perpetrators are the states themselves.

The loss of human freedom is the only birthright offered to the citizens of the modern nation.   There is never a choice.  It is spun as a freedom and a privilege when it is in fact indentured servitude to the state apparatus and the corporatocracy that controls it.

Patriotism 

Patriotism is pure abstraction, a completely artificial mechanism of social control.  People are taught to value their compatriots above and beyond those of their own ethnic background, race or religion.  The organic bonds are to be shed in favor of the great corporate state.  From infancy children are indoctrinated like Pavlov’s dogs to worship the paraphernalia of the state and see it as a mystical demigod.

What is a country?  Using the United States as example, what actually is this entity?  Is it the USPS, the FDA, or the CIA?  Does loving one's country mean one should love the IRS and the NSA?  Should we feel differently about someone if they are from Vancouver instead of Seattle?  Loving a state is the same as loving a corporation, except with the corporations there is still no stigma attached to not showing overt sentimental devotion to their brands and fortunately, at least for the moment, we are not obligated at birth to pay them for a lifetime of services, most of which we neither need nor want.

Flags, the Hollywood version of history and presidential worship are drilled into us to maintain the illusion of the 'other' and force the 'foreigner/terrorist/extremist' to wear the stigma of our projections.  The archaic tribal energy that united small bands and helped them to fend off wild beasts and hungry hoards has been converted into a magic wand for the masters of the matrix.  Flags are waved, and we respond like hungry Labradors jumping at a juicy prime rib swinging before our noses.  Sentimental statist propaganda is simply the mouthguard used to soften the jolt of our collective electroshock therapy. 

Religion

As powerful as the patriotic sects are, there has always been a need for something higher.  Religion comes from the Latin 're-ligare' and it means to reconnect.  But reconnect to what?  The question before all religions is, what have we been disconnected from?  The indoctrination and alienation of becoming a card carrying slave has a cost;  the level of abstraction and the disconnect from any semblance of humanity converts people into nihilistic robots.  No amount of patriotic fervor can replace having a soul.  The flags and history lessons can only give a momentary reprieve to the emptiness of the Matrix and that's why the priests are needed.

The original spiritual connection man had with the universe began to dissolve into duality with the onset of language, and by the time cities and standing armies arrived he was in need of a reconnection, and thus we get our faith based religions.  Faith in the religious experiences of sages, or as William James put it, faith in someone else's ability to connect.  Of course the liturgies of our mainstream religions offer some solace and connection, but in general they simply provide the glue for the Matrix.  A brief perusal of the news will clearly show that their 'God' seems most comfortable amidst the killing fields. 

If we focus on the Abrahamic religions, we have a god much like the state, one who needs to be loved.  He is also jealous of the other supposedly non-existent gods and is as sociopathic as the governments who adore him.  He wipes out his enemies with floods and angels of death just as the governments who pander to him annihilate us with cultural revolutions, atom bombs, television and napalm.  Their anthem is, "Love your country, it’s flag, its history, and the God who created it all"-  an ethos force fed to each new generation. 

Circus

The sad thing about circus is that it's generally not even entertaining.  The slaves are told it's time for some fun and they move in hordes to fill stadiums, clubs, cinemas or simply to stare into their electrical devices believing that they are are being entertained by vulgar propaganda.  

As long as homo domesticus goes into the appropriate corral, jumps when she is told to and agrees wholeheartedly that she is having fun, than she is a good slave worthy of her two days off a week and fifteen days vacation at the designated farm where she is milked of any excess gold she might have accumulated during the year.  Once she is too old to work and put to pasture, holes are strategically placed in her vicinity so she and her husband can spend their last few dollars trying to get a small white ball into them.

On a daily basis, after the caffeinated maximum effort has been squeezed out of her, she is placed in front of a screen, given the Matrix approved beverage (alcohol), and re-indoctrinated for several hours before starting the whole cycle over again. God forbid anyone ever took a hallucinogen and had an original thought.  We are, thankfully, protected from any substances that might actually wake us up and are encouraged stick to the booze.   The matrix loves coffee in the morning, alcohol in the evening and never an authentic thought in between.

On a more primal level we are entranced with the contours of the perfect body and dream of ‘perfect love’, where our days will be filled with soft caresses, sweet words and Hollywood drama.   This is maybe the most sublime of the Matrix’s snares, as Venus’s charms can be so convincing one willingly abandons all for her devious promise.  Romantic love is dangled like bait, selling us down the path of sentimentally coated lies and mindless consumerism. 

Money

Money is their most brilliant accomplishment.  Billions of people spend most of their waking lives either acquiring it or spending it without ever understanding what it actually is.  In this hologram of a world, the only thing one can do without money is breath.  For almost every other human activity they want currency, from eating and drinking to clothing oneself and finding a partner. Religion came from innate spirituality and patriotism from the tribe, but money they invented themselves-  the most fantastic and effective of all their tools of domestication.

They have convinced the slaves that money actually has some intrinsic value, since at some point in the past it actually did.  Once they were finally able to disconnect money completely from anything other than their computers, they finally took complete control, locked the last gate and electrified all the fences.  They ingeniously print it up out of the nothing and loan it with interest in order for 18-year-olds to spend four years drinking and memorizing propaganda as they begin a financial indebtedness that will most likely never end.  

By the time the typical American is thirty the debt is mounted so high that they abandon any hope of ever being free of it and embrace their mortgages, credit cards, student loans and car loans as gifts from a sugar daddy.  What they rarely asks themselves is why they must work to make money while banks can simply create it with a few key strokes.  If they printed out notes on their HP's and loaned them with interest to their neighbors, they would wind up in a penitentiary, but not our friends on Wall Street-  they do just that and wind up pulling the strings in the White House.  The  genius of the money scam is how obvious it is.  When people are told that banks create money out of nothing and are paid interest for it the good folks are left incredulous.  “It can't be that simple!"  And therein lies the rub- no one wants to believe that they have been so easily enslaved.

Culture

“Culture is the effort to hold back the mystery, and replace it with a mythology.”

– Terence McKenna

As Terence loved to say, “Culture is not your friend.”  It exists as a buffer to authentic experience.  As they created larger and larger communities, they replaced the direct spiritual experience of the shaman with priestly religion.  Drum beats and sweat were exchanged for digitized, corporatized noise.  Local tales got replaced by Hollywood blockbusters, critical thinking with academic dogma.

If money is the shackles of the matrix, culture is its operating system.  Filtered, centralized, incredibly manipulative, it glues all their myths together into one massive narrative of social control from which only the bravest of souls ever try to escape.  It's relatively simple to see the manipulation when one looks at patriotism, religion or money.  But when taken as a whole, our culture seems as natural and timeless as the air we breathe, so intertwined with our self conception it is often hard to see where we individually finish and our culture begins.

Escaping the Grip of Control

Some might ask why this all-pervasive network of control isn't talked about or discussed by our ‘great minds’.  Pre-Socratic scholar Peter Kingsley explains it well:

“Everything becomes clear once we accept the fact that scholarship as a whole is not concerned with finding, or even looking for, the truth. That’s just a decorative appearance.  It’s simply concerned with protecting us from truths that might endanger our security; and it does so by perpetuating our collective illusions on a much deeper level than individual scholars are aware of.”

Whoever discovered water, it certainly wasn't a fish.  To leave the ‘water’, or Plato's cave takes courage and the knowledge that there is something beyond the web of control.  The path out of the Matrix is not for everyone because it requires dangerous unlearning, unbelieving, disconnecting and unplugging.  No stone can be left unturned within the soul of the seeker, but the reward is beyond anything words and culture could possibly offer.

Plato described the process of leaving the Matrix over 2,300 hundred years ago in the Allegory of the Cave:
"First he will see the shadows best,..then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven...Last he will see himself in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate himself as he is."

 

Robert's site is Cactus Land