Forex Exchange

At least someone is beginning to realize that there's something profoundly fishy about a company, based in Houston, Texas for all practical purposes, being registered in Switzerland for tax and administrative purpose, and having its rigs registered in the Marshal Islands. But Obama still thinks that BP is the only permissiable culprit, which must take all the rage, all the blame, all the hate, all the while it is expected to do all the work necessary to actually rescue the situation. BP are trying all the possible options in logical order of preference: why not stop sreaming dementedly in their ear and threatening them while they get on with this? Meanwhile, Transocean is doing nothing except trying to melt into the shadows.... Could it be, that Mr Obama knows that Transocean is probably mostly to blame, but that it's so much easier for him to grab the assets of a British company than a Swiss one? Especially when the shareholders, hidden behind all the Swiss secrecy, are mos...

The failure of BP's "Top Kill" procedure to stem the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, does have one positive aspect, because of what the next option on the list entails (they are working through the options in the order of "time taken to get ready for them" so that the leak will eventually be stopped by the quickest means that work, no matter how often Mr Obama leads the nation in a ten-minute hate of BP in the meantime.) That next option is to cut the existing well head and blowout preventer clean off the well, lift it clear (it weighs about 140 tons) and clamp a replacement over the clean-cut pipe. This will, hopefully briefly, result in a much increased flow, so doing it after trying the top kill is probably sensible as at least some of the heavy mud may still be in the well to slow the flow. This is essentially what was eventually done (in shallower water) with the well under the Piper Alpha platform. So it shouldn't be scorned: this is a standard procedure...

The Piper Alpha oil and gas platform disaster in the North Sea, which killed 167 men, was largely the product of two things: 1/Badly-planned maintenance, so that two components of the safety chain were being worked on at the same time. (You don't necessarily make things safer by doing lots of maintenance: the Royal Navy Icebreaker, HMS Endurance, was nearly sunk by a sea valve being improperly refitted after unnecessary "maintenance". You make things safer by careful and intelligent planning of maintenance, so that necessary things get done in a safe sequence, by people with the right expertise and the correct tools.) 2/ Mid-life modification of a simple, albeit large, oil production platform, into a mixed oil and gas production platform also acting as collector for other fields. This is what turned a small fire into a sequence of explosions leading to the total destruction of the platform (and a fast rescue boat launched by a standby ship). This is where lessons were l...

This morning, a Mr Stephen Griffiths referred to himself as the "Crossbow Cannibal" when politely asked for his name by the clerk of Bradford Magistrate's Court. There need be no complicated analysis of his motives for vile murder, then: it was all a calculated attempt to gain the world's attention. The media, if they have any sense, will restrain themselves and never, ever , call him by the name he has invented for himself. Neither should they refer to him as the "Pathetic Twat" because his kind of oxygen thief is capable of deriving glory even from that. The only proper and safe way to refer to this man is as "Mr Stephen Griffiths" and with a careful and polite emphasis on the "mister". Anything else will feed the fantasy he inhabited when he allegedly killed three, and possibly many more, defenceless young women. And when he is in prison, only the parole board needs to remember his name at all. And the fact that "Outraging Public ...

Last week, Sam Hallam was acquitted by the Court of Appeal, after serving eight years in prison for a murder he couldn' t have committed. Counsel for the Crown seems only to have read the full case files about halfway through the hearing, because that was the point where the Crown suddenly withdrew its opposition to the appeal without any public explanation. Interestingly, Mr Hallam uses his first major interview , with the Mail on Sunday, to express, not merely his indignation at the way he was treated by an inquiry team led by then-Chief-Inspector Michael Broster, but also his concern that the conduct of the now-Superintendent Broster in the Gareth Williams case may have fatally compromised what is now and always should have been, a murder inquiry. See several articles in this blog about the Williams case, below. Mr Hallam rightly observes that the Gareth Williams case was "really important" and mistakes were unacceptable, let alone near duplicates of the kind of mistak...

For anyone who believes that Antony Charles Lynton Blair is a good man and a "pretty straight kind of guy", here is a link to a blog about organized harassment in his former constituency, his constituency party officials appearing to be amongst those doing the organizing. Strangely, for a man who made anti-racism so much a part of his mission, there's a strong racist element to some of the harassment practiced by his former goons.

Before the Liberal Democrats started to flirt with Lord Mandelson and Alistair Campbell to keep the Labour Party in power, they had promised, like the Conservatives, to order a full and properly-constituted investigation and formal inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly. All we really know about this is that the public has not been told the truth and that many senior Labour figures, including Alistair Campbell, have more to hide, and more to fear, on this issue than any other. The so-called "Coalition of all the losers" will guarantee that the truth about David Kelly remains hidden, and the Liberal leadership will find that gagging any voice of conscience on their backbenches is the price of their part-share of power. Dr Kelly gave good service to the United Kingdom and to the world. He deserves a lot better than this! And if we're not being told the truth about the death of Dr David Kelly, we are still not being told anything about the screamingly suspicious death ...

Long before any of the facts about the Deepwater Horizon accident became known, President Obama led the American people in pinning all blame and liability upon British Petroleum Plc, who had leased the rig to drill on a site they had a licence for. (The process of getting a licence involves paying money to Federal and State governments). The rig was owned and operated by the Swiss company, Transocean, and the actual work directly involved in the accident was being done by the sub-contractor, Haliburton, a name that ought to be recognized by anyone who has an interest in political scandal and corruption in the United States, or Iraq. Under American law, BP carry all the liability, because they own the licence on the well. Placing the moral blame on them as well, is typical Chicago politics. But if anyone is actually looking for the intrinsic cause of this and other oil-industry accidents in the United States, it is precisely this: The liability for the environmental and economic dama...

The Daily Mail reports , that there are no less than fifty criminal investigations ongoing across the United Kingdom, into abuse of postal votes and other fiddles relating to this Thursday's election. And yet, all the comment forums are full of blather about different voting systems, and whether anything but "proportional representation" can be considered democratic. Medawar wonders whether all of these voices are knowingly trying to draw our attention away from a much more basic issue: is someone, nationally (or even on a European scale?) organizing all the separate little voting fiddles? Because someone adding an extra seven fictitious electors to a single household, doesn't affect the price of fish in the slightest. Even swinging one whole constituency, doesn't avail anyone of anything very much. But an organized programme to sway fifty key constituencies, is quite another matter. No doubt, it will be impossible to link this to the national organization of an...

The Westminster Coroner has given a narrative verdict in the unexplained death of Gareth Williams. This link is to the Daily Mail article; Medawar has had trouble finding a link to the original narrative itself, which would be far more useful, but this link , to the Guardian's report, contains more of the narrative and less speculation. Dr Wilcox did say, very clearly, that Gareth Williams was not gay, not a cross dresser, not actively interested in bondage, and that all the "leaks" (via News Corporation media in almost every case) to the effect that he was, may well have been an attempt to manipulate perceptions of the evidence. This vindicates Medawar's position on this from the earliest days of the investigation. Even if, by some strange quirk, this were not a murder, the crime of perverting the course of justice has still been committed, on a very large scale. But, as Dr Wilcox has determined, the overwhelming probability is that this was an unlawful killing, and...

This link is to the MoD's Global Strategic Trends page, which allows you to download the current issue of that report (and fill in a feedback form if you wish.) It's about one hundred and sixty pages, although not exactly small print, so it's not a casual read. But it does give some insight into why some groups might want to target and harass other groups in society. The report predicts both resource wars and ethnic conflicts, although it's pretty clear to Medawar that the main driver of ethnic conflict is when a powerful elite tries either to harness an ethnic group in order to control a natural resource, or to destabilize and perhaps deport or even exterminate an ethnic community in order to remove them from control of resources. This could well be the sort of thing that's behind the organized stalking of native American leaders, journalists and artists that Terri Hansen has reported. It definitely is what's behind the relentless ethnic persecution of non...

This appears to be an anonymous proxy service, based in Las Vegas, which allows people to access blogs, websites, etc. without leaving their own IP. Sort of online stalker's toolkit, doubtless in Las Vegas to better serve the Mob. Anonymous, and indeed unrecorded, that is, until they store a complete page on their desktop "to read later" and then click on the article title when they do. This promptly tells Medawar that: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/sean/Desktop/americas-forgotten-anti-gangstalking.html They are called Sean and they are an idiot. Look! It's a blog , people are supposed to be able to read it! Skulking in using webtools designed to hide your IP, just makes you look like a stalker or a terrorist. As long as you don't leave threats or self-serving lies in the comments section, Medawar doesn't mind people reading the articles. If Medawar was keeping a secret, would he be publishing it on his blog?