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Peak oil has happened or will happen some time around this year, and its consequences could threaten the continued survival of democratic governments, says a secret Germany military report that was leaked online. According to Der Spiegel, the report from a think-tank inside the German military warns that shrinking global oil supplies will threaten the

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The second largest shareholder in News Corp. — the parent company of Fox News — has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes linked to the imam planning to build a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, says a report from Yahoo!News. According to the report from Yahoo!’s John Cook,

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About three-quarters of the oil spilled from the ruptured BP well in the Gulf of Mexico has disappeared, a top US official said Wednesday. “The scientists are telling us about 25 percent was not captured or evaporated or taken care of by mother nature,” said Carol Browner, a top energy adviser to President Barack Obama, on the ABC network’s “Good Morning America” programme. “This is an initial assessment by our scientists in the government and outside the government. We think it’s important to make this available to the public. That’s what we’ll be doing today.” Browner said the report to be released later Wednesday was “encouraging” but that more cleanup will be needed. “Mother nature will continue to break it down,” she said. “But some of it may come onshore, as weathered tar balls. And those will be cleaned up. They can be cleaned up. And we will make sure they are cleaned up.” Story continues below… An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of 87 days after an explosion on a BP-leased offshore rig on April 20. The leak was capped on July 15, and on Wednesday BP said it succeeded in controlling the pressure in the ruptured well through a procedure called a “static kill.” The New York Times said the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, indicated that fears that a huge underwater glob of oil would surface at some point to tar Gulf beaches looked increasingly unlikely. “There?s absolutely no evidence that there?s any significant concentration of oil that?s out there that we haven?t accounted for,”Jane Lubchenco, head of the agency, was quoted as saying.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Army on Thursday said leadership and discipline have deteriorated at bases in the United States, with officers missing warning signs of soldiers on the verge of suicide. As the military focused on fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over nearly a decade, senior leaders have failed to track reckless behavior and monitor alcohol and drug abuse among soldiers back home, said an army report on suicide prevention. “Because of everything we’re doing, we have not paid the attention we need to high-risk behavior,” said General Peter Chiarelli, the US Army’s vice chief of staff, who oversaw the report. Senior officers had “rightly prioritized the number-one thing that they were going to do is to prepare their soldiers to go into harm’s way,” he said. But the army needed to improve “garrison leadership” at US bases and take steps to stop rising suicide rates, he said. Story continues below… The general said “it’s time for the army to take a hard look at itself, to sit down and say, okay, what are those things that came lower on our priority list that we need to reinstitute, reinforce and start doing to get at this problem?” The report, titled Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention, is the result of a 15-month effort to better understand the alarming increase in suicides. The army reported 32 suicides in June, an all-time high, and so far this year 80 active duty soldiers and 65 soldiers in the reserves have committed suicide. The report showed illegal drug use was increasing among troops and that the army did not have a clear idea of the scale of the problem. Crime also was “on the rise and discipline is seemingly going unchecked,” the report said. About 1,054 soldiers who have committed two or more felony offenses are still serving in the army, it said. The general said data showed soldiers who enlisted at an older age, about 28-29 years old, were three times more likely to take their lives, possibly because they had more personal or financial problems. And suicides were more frequent among soldiers in their first year in the army, with the risk gradually declining the more time soldiers served in the force. “We see more suicides in that first year than in any other years,” he said. There was no evidence that showed soldiers who had been repeatedly deployed in combat faced a greater risk of suicide, but Chiarelli said he still suspected that could be the case. To combat suicides and a rise in depression and anxiety, the army hoped to increase the time soldiers had at home between deployments, he said. The army hopes to soon give soldiers two years at home for every year deployed. “We still have an Army that’s out of balance,” he said, referring to the strain of repeated combat tours. Preventing suicides remained a difficult task, and some cases defied explanation, he said. Chiarelli said there were about two or three suicides a month in which soldiers displayed no tell-tale signs of desperation beforehand. “These are the ones that are so perplexing and difficult for us to understand,” he said. Top military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, have appealed to officers to ensure soldiers who need psychological help do not face ridicule or risk to their careers. Chiarelli said the growing number of soldiers who are seeking help was a possible sign that the stigma in the military associated with psychological problems was starting to fade.

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From the point of view of civil libertarians, the Obama administration has been an exercise in frustration, with every hopeful sign followed by failures to live up to its own promises. The ACLU has just issued a report (pdf) , titled “Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration,” which focuses on this pattern of inconsistency. “The administration has displayed a decidedly mixed record,” explains ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romaro, “resulting, on a range of issues, in the very real danger that the Obama administration will institutionalize some of the most troublesome policies of the previous administration — in essence, creating a troubling ‘new normal.’” As summarized in a press release announcing the report, “President Obama has made great strides in some areas, such as his auspicious first steps to categorically prohibit torture, outlaw the CIA’s use of secret overseas detention sites and release the Bush administration’s torture memos, but he has failed to eliminate some of the worst policies put in place by President Bush, such as military commissions and indefinite detention. He has also expanded the Bush administration’s ‘targeted killing’ program.” The report is divided into seven sections covering transparency, torture and accountability, detention, targeted killing, military commissions, speech and surveillance, and watch lists. The most striking areas of the report, however, are those which focus not on torture or secret prisons but on less-publicized recent actions by the Obama administration. Story continues below… The transparency section, for example, emphasizes that the program of “targeted killing” of suspected terrorists has been “shrouded in secrecy,” and that despite a FOIA request by the ACLU, “the CIA has refused even to confirm or deny whether it has records about the program.” It also points out that rather than living up to Obama’s promise as a candidate that he would make sure whistleblowers got protection, “the administration has been prosecuting them.” “It has charged Bradley Manning,” the report notes, “a 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst, for allegedly leaking a video showing the killing of two Reuters news staff and several other civilians by U.S. helicopter gunships in Iraq. (Reuters had spent nearly three years trying to obtain the video through FOIA; now that the video is in the public domain, it is clear that there was no basis for withholding it.)” “We urge the administration to recommit itself to the ideals that the President himself invoked in his first days in office,” the report urges. “Our democracy cannot survive if crucial public policy decisions are made behind closed doors, implemented in secret, and never subjected to meaningful public oversight and debate. It cannot survive if the public does not know what policies have been adopted in its name.” Another striking revelation appears in the section on surveillance: “Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has invested border agents with the authority to engage in suspicionless searches of Americans’ laptops and cell phones at the border; Americans who return home from abroad may now find themselves confronted with a border agent who, rather than welcoming them home, insists on copying their electronic records — including emails, address books, photos, and videos — before allowing them to enter the country. (Through FOIA, the ACLU has learned that in the last 20 months alone, border agents have used this power thousands of times.)” And the report blasts the use of watch lists of suspected terrorists as “a disaster that too often implicates the rights of innocent persons while allowing true threats to proceed unabated.” “Rather than reform the watch lists the Obama administration has expanded their use and resisted the introduction of minimal due process safeguards to prevent abuse and protect civil liberties,” the report charges. “The result is an unconstitutional scheme under which an individual’s right to travel and, in some cases, a citizen’s ability to return to the United States, is under the complete control of entirely unaccountable bureaucrats relying on secret evidence and using secret standards.” “There can be no doubt that the Obama administration inherited a legal and moral morass, and that in important respects it has endeavored to restore the nation’s historic commitment to the rule of law,” the report concludes. “But if the Obama administration does not effect a fundamental break with the Bush administration’s policies on detention, accountability, and other issues, but instead creates a lasting legal architecture in support of those policies, then it will have ratified, rather than rejected, the dangerous notion that America is in a permanent state of emergency and that core liberties must be surrendered forever.”

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EPA says 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled in Mich. river, governor criticizes cleanup. Federal officials now estimate that more than 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled into a major river in southern Michigan, and the governor is sharply criticizing clean-up efforts as “wholly inadequate.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the update Wednesday night, shortly after Gov. Jennifer Granholm lambasted attempts to contain the oil flowing down the Kalamazoo River. She warned of a “tragedy of historic proportions” if the oil reaches Lake Michigan, which is still at least 80 miles downstream from where oil has been seen. Granholm called on the federal government for more help, saying resources being marshaled by the EPA and Enbridge Inc., which owns the pipeline that leaked the oil, were “wholly inadequate.” Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge said earlier Wednesday that it had redoubled its efforts to clean up the mess. Chief executive Patrick D. Daniel said the company had made “significant progress,” though he had no update on a possible cause, cost or timeframe for the cleanup. The company didn’t return messages for comment after Granholm’s statements. Story continues below… The overall work force on the spill Wednesday was likely more than 400 people. EPA officials said they’re ramping up efforts with air and water testing. Local officials said they weren’t concerned about municipal water supplies. Tom Sands, deputy state director for emergency management and homeland security, said during a conference call with Granholm that he had seen oil past a dam at Morrow Lake. The lake is a key point in the river near a Superfund site upstream of Kalamazoo, the largest city in the region. But his report could not be immediately confirmed. The company’s latest update statement Wednesday said oil was about seven miles short of the opening to Morrow Lake. A press conference scheduled for late Wednesday, which was to include company and EPA officials, was canceled for what a company spokesman called scheduling conflicts. State and company officials previously said they didn’t believe the oil would spread past that dam. “It’s going to hit a Superfund site unless somebody like the EPA and the company get very serious about providing significant additional resources,” Granholm said. The spill has killed fish and coated wildlife as it made its way westward about 35 miles downstream past Battle Creek, a city of 52,000 residents about 110 miles west of Detroit. Both company and EPA officials have said oil is no longer leaking. Enbridge has been working to clean up the spill since the leak was reported early Monday. Before the EPA announced its new estimate, Enbridge reiterated its belief that about 819,000 gallons of oil spilled into Talmadge Creek, which flows into the Kalamazoo River. State officials said they were told during a company briefing Tuesday that about 877,000 gallons spilled, but company officials disputed the number. An 800,000 gallon spill would be enough to fill 1-gallon jugs lined side by side for nearly 70 miles. It also could fill a wall-in football field including the end zones with a 14-foot-high pool of oil. Granholm has declared a state of disaster for some areas along the river, and President Barack Obama called Granholm to offer federal support. An oily reflective sheen could be seen in patches along the Kalamazoo, and the affected area still had a strong odor, although not as strong as on Tuesday. Anil Kulkarni, a mechanical engineering professor at Penn State University, said a quick response was vital to the river’s ecology. Snails, frogs, muskrats and even birds eat, live and nest on or near the riverbank. “The river banks are nearby. It has more potential to inflict damage because of the proximity to land. Anything that comes in contact with oil is going to be affected badly. It prevents the natural life of species, whether it’s collecting food or anything else.” Enbridge affiliates have previously been cited for skirting environmental regulations in the Great Lakes region. Houston-based Enbridge Energy Co. spilled almost 19,000 gallons of crude oil onto Wisconsin’s Nemadji River in 2003. Another 189,000 gallons of oil spilled at the company’s terminal two miles from Lake Superior, though most was contained. In 2007, two spills released about 200,000 gallons of crude in northern Wisconsin as Enbridge was expanding a 320-mile pipeline. The company also was accused of violating Wisconsin permits designed to protect water quality during work in and around wetlands, rivers and streams, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said. The violations came during construction of a 321-mile, $2 billion oil pipeline across that state. Enbridge agreed to pay $1.1 million in 2009. The Michigan leak came from a 30-inch pipeline, which was built in 1969 and carries about 8 million gallons of oil daily from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario. The river already faced major pollution issues. An 80-mile segment of the river that begins at Morrow Lake and five miles of a tributary, Portage Creek, have unsafe levels of PCBs and were placed on the federal Superfund list of high-priority hazardous waste sites in 1990. The Kalamazoo site also includes four landfills and several defunct paper mills. ___ Associated Press Writers David Runk and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report. Source: AP News Powered by Mochila

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EPA says 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled in Mich. river, governor criticizes cleanup. Federal officials now estimate that more than 1 million gallons of oil may have spilled into a major river in southern Michigan, and the governor is sharply criticizing clean-up efforts as “wholly inadequate.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the update Wednesday night, shortly after Gov. Jennifer Granholm lambasted attempts to contain the oil flowing down the Kalamazoo River. She warned of a “tragedy of historic proportions” if the oil reaches Lake Michigan, which is still at least 80 miles downstream from where oil has been seen. Granholm called on the federal government for more help, saying resources being marshaled by the EPA and Enbridge Inc., which owns the pipeline that leaked the oil, were “wholly inadequate.” Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge said earlier Wednesday that it had redoubled its efforts to clean up the mess. Chief executive Patrick D. Daniel said the company had made “significant progress,” though he had no update on a possible cause, cost or timeframe for the cleanup. The company didn’t return messages for comment after Granholm’s statements. Story continues below… The overall work force on the spill Wednesday was likely more than 400 people. EPA officials said they’re ramping up efforts with air and water testing. Local officials said they weren’t concerned about municipal water supplies. Tom Sands, deputy state director for emergency management and homeland security, said during a conference call with Granholm that he had seen oil past a dam at Morrow Lake. The lake is a key point in the river near a Superfund site upstream of Kalamazoo, the largest city in the region. But his report could not be immediately confirmed. The company’s latest update statement Wednesday said oil was about seven miles short of the opening to Morrow Lake. A press conference scheduled for late Wednesday, which was to include company and EPA officials, was canceled for what a company spokesman called scheduling conflicts. State and company officials previously said they didn’t believe the oil would spread past that dam. “It’s going to hit a Superfund site unless somebody like the EPA and the company get very serious about providing significant additional resources,” Granholm said. The spill has killed fish and coated wildlife as it made its way westward about 35 miles downstream past Battle Creek, a city of 52,000 residents about 110 miles west of Detroit. Both company and EPA officials have said oil is no longer leaking. Enbridge has been working to clean up the spill since the leak was reported early Monday. Before the EPA announced its new estimate, Enbridge reiterated its belief that about 819,000 gallons of oil spilled into Talmadge Creek, which flows into the Kalamazoo River. State officials said they were told during a company briefing Tuesday that about 877,000 gallons spilled, but company officials disputed the number. An 800,000 gallon spill would be enough to fill 1-gallon jugs lined side by side for nearly 70 miles. It also could fill a wall-in football field including the end zones with a 14-foot-high pool of oil. Granholm has declared a state of disaster for some areas along the river, and President Barack Obama called Granholm to offer federal support. An oily reflective sheen could be seen in patches along the Kalamazoo, and the affected area still had a strong odor, although not as strong as on Tuesday. Anil Kulkarni, a mechanical engineering professor at Penn State University, said a quick response was vital to the river’s ecology. Snails, frogs, muskrats and even birds eat, live and nest on or near the riverbank. “The river banks are nearby. It has more potential to inflict damage because of the proximity to land. Anything that comes in contact with oil is going to be affected badly. It prevents the natural life of species, whether it’s collecting food or anything else.” Enbridge affiliates have previously been cited for skirting environmental regulations in the Great Lakes region. Houston-based Enbridge Energy Co. spilled almost 19,000 gallons of crude oil onto Wisconsin’s Nemadji River in 2003. Another 189,000 gallons of oil spilled at the company’s terminal two miles from Lake Superior, though most was contained. In 2007, two spills released about 200,000 gallons of crude in northern Wisconsin as Enbridge was expanding a 320-mile pipeline. The company also was accused of violating Wisconsin permits designed to protect water quality during work in and around wetlands, rivers and streams, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said. The violations came during construction of a 321-mile, $2 billion oil pipeline across that state. Enbridge agreed to pay $1.1 million in 2009. The Michigan leak came from a 30-inch pipeline, which was built in 1969 and carries about 8 million gallons of oil daily from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario. The river already faced major pollution issues. An 80-mile segment of the river that begins at Morrow Lake and five miles of a tributary, Portage Creek, have unsafe levels of PCBs and were placed on the federal Superfund list of high-priority hazardous waste sites in 1990. The Kalamazoo site also includes four landfills and several defunct paper mills. ___ Associated Press Writers David Runk and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report. Source: AP News Powered by Mochila

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