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Thursday, May 27, 2010

According to Democratic Senator Mark Begich from Alaska, the U.S. Department of the Interior has decided to halt all new Arctic exploratory oil drilling applications until 2011. The response is believed to be caused in part by the two current oil spill disasters (that of the Deepwater Horizon Incident and more recently the Alaska oil pipeline malfunction). However, Begich is not happy about the actions taken by the White House.

“I am frustrated that this decision by the Obama administration to halt offshore development for a year will cause more delays and higher costs for domestic oil and gas production to meet the nation’s energy needs,” Begich claims.

Last September, the state of Alaska made a public notice about Shell’s desire to drill off the coast of the Beaufort Sea, placing experimental drilling rigs at two drill site location: “Torpedo” and “Sivulliq”.

“Shell is committed to undertaking a safe and environmentally responsible exploration program in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea in 2010,” said Shell Oil Company President Marvin E. Odum to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Mineral Management Service (MMS).

Odum follows with, “I am confident that we are ready to conduct the 2010 Arctic exploratory program safely and, I want to be clear, the accountability for this program rests with Shell.”

Chuck Clausen, director of the Alaska project at the Natural Resources Defense Council is not so optimistic: “Hazards present in the Arctic can include frigid temperatures, presence of sea ice, gale-force winds, intense storms and heavy fog … The potential for loss in the Arctic is great.”

Odum believes that the climate in the arctic will make any spill easier to clean up because, “Arctic conditions create differences in responding to oil in cold and ice conditions. Differences in evaporation rates, viscosity and weathering provide greater opportunities to recover oil. In Arctic conditions, ice can aid oil spill response by slowing oil weathering, dampening waves, preventing oil from spreading over large distances, and allowing more time to respond.”

However, Clausen believes that there are no current systems to remove oil from icy ocean waters.

This is not the first time that President Obama’s administration has taken the environmentally cautious path in Alaska. The President put Bristol Bay off limits to oil and gas exploration until 2017. Bristol Bay currently is one of the top salmon fishing grounds in the state.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to give a speech at Thursday’s White House address, regarding the suspension of Arctic oil drilling projects.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Voters in swing states across the United States began receiving a one-hour DVD of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West over the weekend. The video was produced and distributed by Clarion Fund, a non-profit organization connected with Zionist and pro-Israeli organizations. The DVDs were delivered with leading newspapers mostly in swing states such as Ohio, Florida, and Michigan.

The film focuses on drawing parallels between “Islamo-fascists” and Nazis, and opens with a series of videos of terrorist acts. It features interviews with counter-terrorism analysts, footage from Arabic TV, and interviews with former terrorists.

The film’s website states that the filmmakers “are against the Radical Islamists [sic] who want to impose their violent, oppressive world view, with little value for life and the manifold pleasures within”, but that they feel they share the same values and fears as most Muslims. The goal of the film, they say, is to raise public awareness, link isolated terrorist events to global origins, correct media misinformation, recognize efforts for Muslim tolerance, and promote efforts to fight “the Radical Islamic threat”.

Obsession has drawn both criticism and praise in the U.S. “Obsession is without exaggeration one of the most important films of our time,” wrote CNN‘s Glenn Beck. The film received awards at numerous film festivals like the Liberty Film Festival.

But outraged Muslims have objected to the film and its distribution. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has received a large amount of calls over the matter, Muslims feel it is “an attempt to not only marginalize and demonize the American Muslim community, but also to sway the election by targeting swing states”.

The film has been criticized for misquoting sources, poor fact checking, and including biased witnesses and testimony. Several of the analysts featured in the film have been criticized as being racist and anti-Islamic. Daniel Pipes, one of the talking heads in the film, was reported as saying that Muslims in America present “true dangers to American Jews”. Nonie Darwish, also featured in the film, has been widely criticized for his belief that “Islam is the devil” and thinks “Islam is cruel, anti-women, anti-religious freedom and anti-personal freedom in general.”

Clarion Fund, which also sells a DVD titled The Third Jihad, states copies are being distributed to 28 million homes but there is no intent to sway voters. The organization’s focus, however, is only on radical Islamic threats to national security, and the group also runs a website RadicalIslam.org which recently endorsed John McCain.

An investigation by Inter Press Service in 2007 revealed that Obsession’s production was… closely tied to right-wing Zionists both in America and Israel. Rabbi Ephram Shore, brother of Clarion Fund’s founder Raphael Shore, is the head of an Israeli group which was involved in the film. Various weblinks on the group’s website focus on anti-Semitism and Israel.

The funds for the production of the movie were reported as having been borrowed, but there is no word on where the funds for the distribution came from. A spokesman for CAIR, Ibrahim Hooper, commented that he “can’t imagine that you can produce, package, distribute and advertise this product for less than 50 million dollars”.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Wikinews interviewed author Amy Scobee about her book Scientology – Abuse at the Top, and asked her about her experiences working as an executive within the organization. Scobee joined the organization at age 14, and worked at Scientology’s international management headquarters for several years before leaving in 2005. She served as a Scientology executive in multiple high-ranking positions, working out of the international headquarters of Scientology known as “Gold Base”, located in Gilman Hot Springs near Hemet, California.