Sludge Dump

I'm tired of listening to myself again -- so today I just offer up a series of things I found this morning.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge has approved a $7.25 million fine against an Egyptian shipping company that dumped oil sludge at sea, the largest penalty for dumping ever assessed in the Pacific Northwest.
...
Ocean watchdog groups say illegal dumping may be so widespread that it exceeds the volume of even big oil spills like the Exxon Valdez wreck. Some Coast Guard inspectors suspect a quarter or more of all ships may dump oil overboard.
By WILLIAM McCALL Associated Press Writer

The Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-688) marked an end to almost a century of sewage sludge and industrial waste dumping into the ocean. Book Rags

For much of history, the ocean was used generally as a dumping ground for many types of waste such as Garbage, Acid Rain, and Toxins. One area off the coast of New Jersey was used beginning in the 19th centruy as a dumping ground for sewage. This area is now known as the 12-mile dumping ground, and has a large amount of toxic metals. Divers are still advised to avoid the area due to the high level of refuse materials and toxins. Wikipedia

Sludge dumping proceeds despite review
Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published 3/23/2002

The federal government is using faulty science to allow itself to dump tons of crude-oillike sludge into the Potomac River and should be stopped immediately, according to a scientific review. However, 48 hours after the report was released Tuesday, the Army Corps of Engineers discharged massive amounts of the smelly sludge through a national park and into the designated National Heritage River near Georgetown Thursday and yesterday, witnesses said.



I find this all pretty fascinating. I also read a government study this morning that said the floor of the ocean rivals the amazon rain forest for number of living species.
Then I found a message board for captains!

Greased Up

Last night I was talking to one of my very favorite poets -- people. I told him, very briefly, about this project -- told him I was imagining a book of poems called "oil." He started laughing immediately -- and we began to imagine cover art with voluptuous breasts covered in... yes, OIL.

It's dark and rainy and everyone I know is in a crappy mood. A good day for a story about oil-wrestling!

Okay -- so here's a first hand account of a oil-wrestling match in Seattle -- I'm not linking anything today for fear of actually being enlisted to write for Playboy -- which, I have to say, after three years as an adjunct professor, would be hard to pass up.

The girls entered the ring and had baby oil poured onto them and spread over their bodies by the two ring girls, then the match began. They were tentative at first, trying to get used to the unsure footing and being gentle with each other. But as the rounds progressed, with the raucous crowd cheering them on, they went at each other with the fire and energy of a catfight, trying to put moves on each other and take each other down. The action also got a lot wilder as the night went on, with contestants getting each other on all fours, straddling each other, and trying to grab hold of each others' shiny, oily arms, legs, boobs and butts. The ring girls added to the fun by the giving the contestants spankings whenever they came close to the edge of the ring. One ring girl was eventually pulled onto the mat by both wrestlers for a sexy wrestling threesome.

...

"I just wanted the chance to be greased up, mostly naked, and be pressed up against my homegirl! It sounds like an erotic experience every woman should have the chance to try." The petite, blue-eyed brunette also described herself, for the benefit of the fellas on CV, as "5'3", with blue cat eyes and lickable lips, small boobs but a ghetto booty, and happily single but available to the right man, if he can rock my world in bed."


I started looking for the health effects of baby oil. I couldn't find any -- but we know, of course, that baby oil is a petroleum product. It will seal off all breath in your skin -- at very least.

I may be the last person to know this, but I didn't know that baby oil erodes Latex. As in eats away at condoms in as little as 90 seconds -- again, no links today, sorry. That pretty well freaks me out -- this product that so many of us used to slather all over ourselves for sunning our showers -- as if embalming...

Baby oil is also recommended as a better smelling substitution for googone, removing tape and adhesives.

Years ago, I stopped drinking Coke because I learned that it's used on old cars for rust removal. Sometimes it's just not that hard to infer what shouldn't be in close contact...

In Turkey they wrestle with olive oil! For crying out loud the US is so confused.


link

Okay, well, I learned something today. And am even in a little better mood.

My Father's Back Yard

Last week, when I went to Greenpoint I was wandering around -- funny, when I was little my grandmother would barely let me go past the front door. It's gentrifying, but a lot of people are still speaking Polish -- a lot of people still don't speak English. There were a few stores that were selling upscale skin care products -- the likes of which would have sent my grandmother into some sort of fit I can only imagine -- but the bakery is still there, and the restaurant where we had her wake...

I think it's so strange, sometimes, how you find what you are looking for in the oddest ways.

As I turned a corner I found this leaking drum.



How weird is that, given this project, that I would find a leaking drum? It wasn't oil -- it smelled more like solvent. it was all rusted out and there was another one a half a block behind though that one seemed empty, if more corroded.

As I said, I don't think it was oil or anything -- but it worried me in thinking about this place. This place that I loved, that my father ran around in with his friends. Even after it all the disregard for health and hazard is apparent in one hour, in one afternoon.

Strikes Strikes Strikes

Today they are striking in London.

LONDON (AP) -- Oil giant BP PLC on Sunday was closing a pipeline system responsible for delivering almost a third of Britain's North Sea oil production.

Also "in a row over pensions" which is not explained in the AP/Times article, the article by AFP (Agency France Press) or in the article in the Wall Street Journal.


AFP

The closing is expected to cost the company about $100 million a day -- and rationing has begun.

Where's Thomas freedman when you need him? Though I bet his new book will cover some of this territory... One problem with the set up of news in this country is that it is really bad at piecing together stories -- giving some sort of overall information, except in circumstances where one reporter rises to the position of leader. Anyway, Friedman, if you are listening, maybe not the best time for a sabbatical!

It would be nice to have some analysis...
I imagine the rise in oil prices is putting pressure on everything -- oil companies are making more money now -- while people are paying more and beginning to feel the crunch.

Ben Stein said the big oil companies are us -- but I'm not sure how many people would really feel that way.

Interesting note -- when you search Google by oil and strike, the majority of the hits are American military strikes in Iraq.

Striking

It turns out, they are striking in Nigeria, too -- at the Exxon-Mobil plant.

It's shell that's being blown up. The BBC article this morning quotes the militants' statement saying,

"Our candid advice to the oil majors is that they should not waste their time repairing any lines, as we will continue to sabotage them."

I am dissatisfied by the reporting. It says the the strikers are protesting wages and conditions. What are the wages? What are the conditions??

In Scotland they are protesting, from what I could gather, the drop in pensions that have resulted from the stock market. I wonder why the reporting is so bad -- I wonder if the unions are blacklisted -- if to get their side of the story is too volatile or if they won't talk to the press.

In 2003 the Times ran an article about a strike in Nigeria. Then,

"The oil workers are demanding more than a year's worth of back pay, including unpaid overtime, expenses and travel allowances. They are also demanding greater autonomy and better financing for the department, which they say is crippled by inefficient government bureaucracy."

Better autonomy and financing for a government department! These were the demands...

The following was:

Written: by Marx in English, May 12th, 1869;

First published: as a leaflet, Address to the National Labour Union of the United States in 1869;
From: the minutes of the General Council meeting, May 11, 1869, as taken by George Eccarius.

Fellow Workmen:

In the initiatory program of our Association we stated:

"It was not the wisdom of the ruling classes, but the heroic resistance to their criminal folly by the working classes of England, that saved the west of Europe from plunging headlong into an infamous crusade for the perpetuation and propagation of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic."

Your turn has now come to stop a war the clearest result of which would be, for an indefinite period, to hurl back the ascendant movement of the working class on both sides of the Atlantic.

1869.
We are doing that now, aren't we -- the propagation of slavery...

In Nigeria, the working class must seem bourgois.
What are the conditions? In the villages their drinking water has an oil sheen. What are their work days like? What is their air like? What is their food like? Where do their babies play?

It seems to me that we should know these things. Nigeria is the fourth largest oil source for the US, according to the Energy Information Administration.

When I drive my gas guzzling Cross Country in order that I might protect my children, what are the conditions on which I depend?

In Protest

I'm thinking about two stories today.
The first is from the BBC, with the headline:

Strike to Close Oil Pipeline.

The second from Forbes:

Nigerian Militants Report Another Pipeline Bombing.

They are both pretty straight forward stories. The strike in Scotland could cost BP and estimated 50M pounds a day. Because of the attacks in Nigeria Shell says they may not be able to fill some of their orders.

I guess I'm thinking about different parts of the world. Who has power and who becomes desperate. Employment. Exploitation.

Scotland:
"A Unite spokeswoman said: "Unite believes that it is legitimate to comment that Ineos are responsible for the current pension plan being valued about £40m below what the value would have been had the full value of the fund been transferred in 2005.""

Nigeria:
"The group says it is fighting to force the federal government to direct more oil industry revenues to the region, which remains deeply poor despite four decades of oil production in the area."

There's something in the juxtaposition of plight --
like language, protest can teach us about climate -- about circumstances and lives.

I'm thinking that it must be so desperate in Nigeria -- that people attack and pollute and destroy their own land and bodies in order to try to enact change. One of the things that they are fighting for is to be employed -- of course, once one is employed they can strike...
I'm thinking about the colors of the protesters, and access to power.

My Father

Yesterday I had to call my father in order to remember the house number and directions to the house he grew up in.

Before I told him why I called, he told me he was coming from the doctor. He might have cancer. He might not.

There is a pocket on his bladder. One test showed one thing, the other another. The doctor said why don't we wait three months then test again -- the chart said that was my father's idea. Ugh. Time for a new doctor.

The doctor said it was probably from smoking 30 years ago. I said -- or the oil. He said, no, the doctor said in most people we think it's smoking. Most people didn't grow up on top of the largest oil spill in the country. Most people don't die from quitting smoking 30 year ago.

He said -- but this isn't why you called.
I said, actually, I think it is.