George Zimmerman Goes Rogue

Posted: April 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Crime, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , | 18 Comments

UPDATE: Angela Corey has announced that she will hold a press conference in Jacksonville within the next 72 hours. She said she will give the press a 3 hour heads-up before she makes her announcement.

George Zimmerman’s attorneys Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig, announced at a press conference this afternoon that they have withdrawn from the representing Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin homicide.

The attorneys decided to resign after they “lost contact” with Zimmerman–he has refused to return their calls since Sunday. They also learned over the weekend that Zimmerman had ignored their advice about a website they set up for him and had set up a Paypal account different than the one they had agreed on, which Zimmerman’s father would control.

The last straw was when Sonner and Uhrig learned that George Zimmerman had contacted special prosecutor Angela Corey’s office and asked to speak to her directly. She refused to speak to him without counsel. Zimmerman then called back and told Corey’s office that he had no attorneys, just “advisers.”

Zimmerman also contacted Sean Hannity, who took the call personally. Hannity confirmed that he did talk to Zimmerman off the record and that he would discuss it on his Fox News program tonight. Sonner and Uhrig have no idea what their former client said to Hannity.

Most troubling of all, Zimmerman has “left the state, but not the country.” So where is he? It’s not clear if even Zimmerman’s father knows where is now. Keep in mind that these two attorneys have never known where Zimmerman was hiding, and have never actually met him. They have only talked to him by telephone.

According to MSNBC, the attorneys said

“We have a pretty good idea where he (Zimmerman) is,” Uhrig said, but added that Zimmerman is not answering the phone. The attorneys said they thought Zimmerman was still in the United States, but not likely in Florida….

The attorneys also expressed concern about Zimmerman’s “emotional and physical safety” and said he may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. They also have reservations about a web site Zimmerman set up to solicit money for help in his defense.

“Him setting up his own website is fine,” Sonner said. “I wish he would have told me.” Sonner, the first attorney Zimmerman contacted, said he had been working on the case for free.

From Think Progress:

At various times during the press conference, both attorneys said they did not know where Zimmerman is currently.

Uhrig told the press that, if people are trying to find Zimmerman, they should “stop looking in Florida” and “look much farther way.” This directly contradicts what Craig Sonner said on March 23 when he assured a reporter from WFTV that “he’s absolutely in the state, he’s local.”

Benjamin Crump, one of the attorneys for Travon Martin’s parents, gave a statement to Time Magazine:

Benjamin Crump, attorney for Trayvon Martin’s family expressed surprise over the announcement and issued a statement to TIME.

Trayvon’s family was always concerned that Zimmerman doesn’t try to skirt his legal responsibilities and become a flight risk. We always wanted this before a judge and a jury. We hope that [authorities] will take this under consideration that this a flight risk. If they go to press charges, is he really going to face them?

Regarding the website, therealgeorgezimmerman.com, Crump says:

It’s America, and he has a right to do what he wants to do. The family was a little taken aback that George said he had this life-changing occurrence [and needs money]. Well Trayvon Martin had a life-ending occurrence; his family had to do all this stuff [to get someone] who killed their child to face a judge and a jury. The fact that he has this website and he’s out to do this website, when you see the balance, Trayvon is dead. If it were the reverse, Trayvon would have been arrested by day one.

Let’s hope that the special prosecutor’s office has caller ID or that the FBI has some way of finding out where Zimmerman has gone.

News Flash: Women still expected not to age or put on weight

Posted: April 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: , , | 28 Comments

We haven’t heard recently from Demi Moore whose meltdown was plastered every where. After having a lot of plastic surgery for a Charlie’s Angels movie and serving as the poster child for Cougar relationships, she evidently couldn’t deal with the expectations and her aging.  Demi’s not the only one whose body and relationships have been the obsession of an older woman hating media and culture.  The current object of weight jokes and speculation is pregnant Jessica Simpson.  Here’s supposedly feminist Joy Behar heaping the guilt on to Simpson.

The 31-year-old recently posed nude on the cover of Elle magazine, paying tribute to Demi Moore’s iconic cover, and she tweeted about it by making a joke of it.

“Last chance to see me ‘fat’ aka PREGNANT on the cover of Elle,” the mother-to-be tweeted. “I loved this shoot, [and it’s] only on stands for a few more days!”

Just last week while co-hosting The View, Joy Behar slammed Simpson’s weight gain during her first pregnancy. Talking to her fellow morning show hosts, the 69-year-old said: “Remember the time that Jessica Simpson was criticized because she didn’t know the difference between chicken and tuna? That kind of thing is more fun to criticize than the fact that the girl is fat.”

She also added: “Most women who are pregnant are not supposed to gain more than 25lbs. She looks like she gained a lot more than that.”

Sue me, but I think pregnancy weight gain is between a woman and her doctor.  I also don’t think it’s very sisterly of Behar to pile on, of course you can use effective methods like latex waist cinchers for weight loss and help yourself a little with that.

Ashely Judd has written an excellent piece on how the media gangs up on women who dare to age, not exercise maniacally and eat like anorexics, or who look okay because if they dare to look okay it must be due some kind of plastic surgery.  Judd also hits on the classic woman on woman jujitsu and the messed up meme that a woman who “lets herself go” is also losing her husband, boyfriend, whatever.

This expert from recent post on https://www.newyorkplasticsurgeryallure.com is worth sharing: The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.

Very few women live their lives with healthy attitudes towards their aging bodies.  One of the few brave women has been Jamie Lee Curtis.

Jamie Lee Curtis discusses aging gracefully with co-hosts Gayle King and Erica Hill, live today, April 6, 2012, on CBS THIS MORNING on the CBS Television Network (7:00 AM – 9:00 AM).

Below is an excerpt from the interview.

KING: When there are so many women who don’t want — who are so afraid — to go there with the age. Why are you so comfortable with it?

CURTIS: I am pretty happy with who I am, and what I am doing, and it’s much more about the content of my character than the contour of my face.

We used to talk a lot about this in the good old days of “Our Bodies, Our Selves”.  However, most of us were not in the same shape as we are now.  We now have an entire category of mental illness called body dismorphic disorder which includes a range of behaviors like anorexia, bulimia and obsessive, perpetual plastic surgery.  The Hollywood frenzy feeders appear to feed these tendencies loudly and continually.  Judd’s article outlines exactly what she’s experienced.  Notice the sources aren’t all Perez Hilton or Joan Rivers.

However, the recent speculation and accusations in March feel different, and my colleagues and friends encouraged me to know what was being said. Consequently, I choose to address it because the conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle. The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.

A brief analysis demonstrates that the following “conclusions” were all made on the exact same day, March 20, about the exact same woman (me), looking the exact same way, based on the exact same television appearance. The following examples are real, and come from a variety of (so-called!) legitimate news outlets (such as HuffPo, MSNBC, etc.), tabloid press, and social media:

One of my best friends suffers from body dismorphia.  I watched horrified as this friend of mine–a gorgeous woman in her mid-30s came back from a few years in California with all kinds of plastic surgery scars and changes.  She was trying to recreate a Glamour spread she had done while a teenager.  She also had done a stint on All My Children.  I guess this and other experiences contributed to an obsession with plastic surgery. She’s gotten help and is doing well now.  But, I was really worried about her for many years. I also worry whenever my very skinny youngest daughter thinks she’s getting fat.  Despite the knowledge we now have and diagnosis of this obsession as a mental illness, we still have the press–and other women–perpetuating the mean.

What makes me most sad about this is the number of women in the media–like Joy Behar–that contribute to the sense that no woman has the right to age.  It’s also a shame that the same expectations hoisted on us from the pin up girl days to now are still pervasive and doing damage.   We need to be brave like Judd and Curtis and speak out against unrealistic  views of women’s bodies and our  aging processes. The emphasis should be on what is healthy which varies from woman-to-woman.  We also should be aware of any false expectations of ourselves and others that are leading to this continuing, unhealthy trend and change our attitudes towards ourselves and other women.

Tuesday Reads

Posted: April 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment, War on Women, Women's Healthcare | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 49 Comments

Good Morning!

It is just me, or is racism coming to the surface with a vengeance after the Trayvon Martin shooting? Maybe it’s just that the media is covering it more. But when it comes to the right wingers, it seem to me that they’ve be somehow inspired by, rather than shocked by, George Zimmerman’s horrific act. I’ll give you some examples, but I don’t want to link to the winger sites. I’ll give you enough info so you can google them.

You’ve probably heard about the National Review’s firing of writer John Derbyshire after he wrote a blatantly racist piece in response to the Martin/Zimmerman case. Amy Davidson at the New Yorker:

Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, announced over the weekend that he was ending the magazine’s association with John Derbyshire because of a post he published in Taki’s Magazine….Lowry said that the column, “The Talk: Non-Black Version,” was “nasty and indefensible.” Given its conceit—Derbyshire explaining to his children that black people are generally dumber than they are and dangerous and should, on the whole, be avoided—it might also be described as racist. (Josh Barro, at Forbes.com, called it “kind of unbelievably racist.”) In firing “Derb,” Lowry directed readers to his “delightful first novel” but said, in effect, that “Derb” had become bad for the NR brand:

We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation.

Except as Davidson points out, barely disguised racism is hardly foreign to the National Review. Why should we believe Lowry is so shocked by it? More likely he acted because the column was getting so much negative attention.

And yesterday another right wing racist–some guy named Mark Judge–came out of the closet in a post at Tucker Carlson’s site The Daily Caller (google it to read the whole miserable thing) writes that he’s thrown off the chains of his “white guilt.” Why? Because his bike was stolen and he’s sure the thief must have been black–even though he has no idea who actually stole the bike.

First Judge establishes his “poor me-ness” by explaining that he really loved that bike, and his doctor recommended exercise to deal with the aftereffects of chemotherapy for non-Hodgkins lymphoma. AND he was at church on Good Friday when the must-have-been-black-guy stole his bike. AND he never went on disability during his chemo treatments. Break out the violins and handkerchiefs!

Next he claims

“a liberal friend gave me a lecture about profiling and told me to just forget about the bike. ‘That person needs our prayers and help,’ she said. ‘They haven’t had the advantages we have.’”

“They?” So this “liberal” also assumed the thief was black?

That’s when I lost it. I had been carefully educated by liberal parents that we are all, black and white, the same. My favorite movie growing up was “In the Heat of the Night.” Yet that often meant not treating everyone the same. It meant treating blacks with a mixture of patronizing condescension and obsequious genuflecting to their Absolute Moral Authority gained from centuries of suffering. It meant not treating everyone the same.

It meant leaving valuable things like a bike in a vulnerable position in a black part of town because you didn’t want to admit that the crime is worse in poor black neighborhoods.

And get this–Judge’s favorite movie used to be In the Heat of the Night. So he couldn’t possibly be a racist, right? Really, go read the post. The pretzel logic is beyond belief.

The news has been filled with reports of African Americans getting shot by white people. I don’t know if there’s been an uptick in race-related shootings or if they are just getting more coverage at the moment. This terrible case in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example. The two shooters have now confessed.

The explanation for a shooting rampage that terrorized Tulsa’s black neighborhood and left three people dead may lie in a killing that took place more than two years ago.

Carl England, whose son is accused in the weekend shooting spree, was fatally shot in 2010 by a man who had threatened his daughter and tried to kick in the door of her home.

The man was black, and police say England’s son may have been seeking vengeance when he and his roommate shot five black people last week.

Police documents filed Monday in court say the two suspects have both confessed. According to an affidavit, 19-year-old Jake England admitted shooting three people and 32-year-old Alvin Watts confessed to shooting two.

So what was Watts’ motive then? It’s very sad that England’s father was killed, and the case does sound troubling

Back in 2010, Carl England had responded to his daughter’s call for help and with her boyfriend tracked down the man who tried to break in. A fight broke out, and the man took out a gun and fired at England.

The man who pulled the trigger, Pernell Jefferson, was not charged with homicide because an investigation determined he acted in self-defense.

Nevertheless, deciding that other innocent black people have to die because of what Jefferson did is still racist.

And then there’s right wingers and their hatred of poor people. That’s not news, but when a preacher unashamedly advertises it on Easter Sunday… Good grief! Kevin Drum: Helping the Poor is Now Apparently Anti-Bible.

I see that fellow Orange Countian Rick Warren — he of Saddleback megachurch and Purpose Driven Life fame — is in the news again. He was on ABC’s This Week yesterday, and Jake Tapper asked him what he thought about President Obama’s suggestion that God tells us to care for those less fortunate than ourselves:

Well certainly the Bible says we are to care about the poor….But there’s a fundamental question on the meaning of “fairness.” Does fairness mean everybody makes the same amount of money? Or does fairness mean everybody gets the opportunity to make the same amount of money? I do not believe in wealth redistribution, I believe in wealth creation.

The only way to get people out of poverty is J-O-B-S. Create jobs. To create wealth, not to subsidize wealth. When you subsidize people, you create the dependency. You — you rob them of dignity.

These people have completely removed Jesus from “christianity.”

Via The Minority Report at The Washington Free Beacon, It looks like the Obama Campaign needs to work a lot hard on diversity in hiring.

On Monday, Buzzfeed posted some photos of Obama campaign staff, and if there are any black faces in them, I can’t see them. Take a look at that Minority Report piece if you can. Here’s part of it:

In August 2011, Obama signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to develop plans for improving workforce diversity.

The apparent lack of racial diversity at the Obama campaign headquarters comes at a time when the national black unemployment rate is nearly double the rate for whites.

According to the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 14 percent of blacks are currently unemployed, compared with 7.3 percent of whites….

In Illinois, the black unemployment rate—as high as 28 percent, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security—far exceeds the national average.

What a hypocrite!

And check out this one on “Obama’s war on women” too.

Jeeze, where can we turn? Obviously, the Repubs are even worse. In case you missed it, Scott Walker recently surreptitiously signed anti-abortion and anti-birth control bills at the same time he repealed Wisconsin’s equal pay for women act.

I’ll end there, but in case you missed my evening post last night, please be sure to read Joseph Cannon’s important post on electronic spying by Progressive Insurance. Your car insurance company may be following suit soon.

What stories do you recommend this morning?

Monday Evening News Update

Posted: April 9, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, children, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 50 Comments

Good Evening!

I have some great Sky Dancing news! Minkoff Minx will be back posting again soon! She plans to do the Wednesday Morning Reads and will gradually work her way back to her previous schedule. I’m so happy you’re on the mend, Minx!

In addition, we have a new front pager, Ecocatwoman (AKA Connie from Orlando). If you haven’t read her first two posts yet, please check them out: Language Matters and Goodby Flipper?

It’s another slow news day in politics, but I’ve gathered a potpourri of links for you anyway.

First, I want to call your attention to an important post by Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire: Why is Progressive Insurance LYING about their spy devices?

You know about Progressive Insurance. That’s the company whose TV ads feature a lovely lady wearing a white uniform and blindingly red lipstick. The folks at Progressive are pushing a device called Snapshot which plugs into your car’s steering column and sends the company information about your driving habits. If you practice good habits, you get a substantial discount.

The question is: How much info are you sending to them? Are they tracking your location via GPS? Are they keeping track of how fast you go?

Progressive insists that they don’t collect location and speed info. In the video embedded above, you’ll see a Progressive commercial in which the lady with the stoplight lips assures you that the company doesn’t want to know where you go or how fast you get there. All they want to know is the amount of driving you do, how hard you hit the brakes, and what time of day you travel.

Please go read the whole thing. We truly have no privacy left. Along similar lines, apparently we can look forward to being spied on through our televisions next, according to The Daily Mail: Is your TV watching you? Samsung’s latest sets with built-in cameras spark concerns

Samsung’s latest breed of plasmas and HDTVs may allow hackers, or even the company itself, to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.

The new models, which are closer than ever to personal computers, offer high-tech features that have previously been unavailable, including a built-in HD camera, microphone set and face and speech recognition software.

This software allows Samsung to recognise who is viewing the TV and personalises each person’s experience accordingly. The TV also listens and responds to specific voice commands.

This is Twilight Zone stuff!

Gary Merson, who runs website HD guru, said that because there is no way of disconnecting the camera and microphone, users cannot be 100 per cent sure that Samsung is not collecting data and passing it on to third parties.

Merson said: ‘What concerns us is the integration of both an active camera and microphone. A Samsung representative tells us you can deactivate the voice feature; however this is done via software, not a hard switch like the one you use to turn a room light on or off.

‘And unlike other TVs, which have cameras and microphones as add-on accessories connected by a single, easily removable USB cable, you can’t just unplug these sensors.

I’m never buying another TV as long as I live! I barely watch the thing anyway.

This morning Angela Corey, the special prosecutor (who began investigating the Trayvon Martin shooting after the states attorney in charge of Sanford, FL, Norman Wolfinger, had to recuse himself) announced that she will not be using a Grand Jury to determine whether to indict George Zimmerman or let him go free. The decision, and the consequences will be strictly on Corey. She didn’t indicate how much longer her investigation will take, so the only thing we know for sure right now is that Zimmerman won’t be charged with a capital offense. In Florida, that would require a Grand Jury.

According to The Miami Herald:

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Trayvon’s parents, issued a statement after Corey’s decision Monday.
“We are not surprised by this announcement and, in fact, are hopeful that a decision will be reached very soon to arrest George Zimmerman and give Trayvon Martin’s family the simple justice they have been seeking all along,” Crump said.
Trayvon, 17, was shot and killed by Zimmerman on Feb. 26 while walking through a Sanford neighborhood where he was visiting. Sanford police opted not to arrest Zimmerman, who claimed self-defense. After public outcry, Gov. Rick Scott assigned Corey, the state attorney for Duval, Nassau and Clay counties, to take over the case on March 22.

Assuming Corey decides to charge Zimmerman, it may not be as easy for him to get off with a “stand your ground” defense as some commentators have claimed, according to a legal analysis published by Reuters.

Interviews with nearly a dozen veteran defense lawyers who have experience litigating Stand Your Ground cases suggest winning immunity could be quite difficult.

“Judges do not readily grant these (immunity) motions because they know they can pass it on to the jury,” said Carey Haughwout, the public defender for Palm Beach County….

The first hurdle will be a special evidentiary hearing in front of a judge, where Zimmerman will have the opportunity to argue that he deserves immunity. But to convince the judge, Zimmerman will have to present a “preponderance of evidence” that he acted in self defense, which under the law means he has to show he had “reasonable belief” that such force was necessary. That is a high bar, and difficult to prove, criminal defense attorneys said.

In cases where the facts are in dispute — and even if they don’t seem to be — the judge is likely to deny the Stand Your Ground immunity motion, said Ralph Behr, a Florida criminal defense attorney who has filed eight motions for immunity, all of which have been denied. More typically, a judge will choose to have the case go to trial, where the defendant must take his or her chance with a jury, just like other criminal defendants, he said.

I think that is all Trayvon’s family and their supporters want–a chance to see Zimmerman arrested and tried before a jury. Of course they also have the option of a civil suit, and that could mean that the homeowners’ association that allowed Zimmerman to run their neighborhood watch without doing a background check or requiring that he get training could be on the hook for millions of dollars.

I certainly hope that Angela Corey will factor into her decision the troubling racist history of the city of Sanford as well as the history of the Sanford Police Department’s failure to carefully investigate crimes against young black men.

Here’s a little Sanford history from WXEL public television:

The year before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by becoming the first African American to play major league baseball, he fled the racist threats of townspeople in Sanford, Florida, where Trayvon Martin was shot 66 years later.

It was 1946 and Robinson arrived in this picturesque town in central Florida for spring training with a Brooklyn Dodgers farm team. He didn’t stay long.

Robinson was forced to leave Sanford twice, according to Chris Lamb, a professor at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, who wrote a graphic account of Robinson’s brush with 100 angry locals in a 2004 book.

According to the article, there was still plenty of “racial tension” in Sanford even before the shooting of Trayvon Martin, and the failure of local police to arrest Zimmerman has brought the simmering resentment to the surface.

Last month, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held two town hall meetings in Sanford where hundreds of black residents turned out to voice their concern over police conduct….

NAACP officials compiled details at those meetings of at least six incidents involving alleged police misconduct that they plan to turn over to the Justice Department for possible investigation, an NAACP spokesman said.

HuffPo has a very good article on the racist bumbling Sanford Police Department. Check out this one example from a lengthy piece:

On the night of June 15, 2010, Ikeem Ruffin, 17, was shot and killed by a masked man during a robbery in an apartment complex in north Sanford. Ruffin had just left work and died wearing his McDonald’s uniform.

Police found 18-year-old Tarance Terrell Moore standing by the victim and calling for an ambulance, but the teen was already dead. The gun used in the killing was never recovered.

The next day, police charged Moore with robbery and murder in Ruffin’s death. He was denied bail and locked in Seminole County Jail awaiting trial.

More than a year later, Seminole County prosecutors dropped the murder charge, which carried a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, in exchange for a guilty plea to a charge of robbery with a firearm. Moore was sentenced to nine years in prison….

“He was there, but he wasn’t my son’s killer,” Ruffin said of Moore. “They just wanted to pin it on him and forget about the killer.”

So the kid shoots someone and then stands there calling for an ambulance? How much sense does that make. But police never investigated further after arresting Moore.

I just have a couple more items for you. Did you hear about Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley calling President Obama “stupid” on Twitter?

David Axelrod responded: “Heads up, Sen. Grassley. I think a 6-year-old hijacked your account and is sending out foolish Tweets just to embarrass you!” But I like Charlie Pierce’s response better:

This is…funny because, you see, if there’s one thing that Chuck Grassley is noted for, it is that he is the most spectacular box of rocks, the most bulging bag of hammers, in the history of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. If brains were atom bombs, he couldn’t blow his nose. If his IQ was one point lower, they’d have to water him. As the great Dan Jenkins once put it in another context, if the man had a brain, he’d be out in the yard playing with it.

Don’t take it from me. Ask anyone. “Stupid” is not a word for this fella to be tossing around idly, even if he did spell it out fully.

Finally, a very scary situation for some British youngsters that turned out to have a happy ending: Toddler on Easter egg hunt stumbles on live GRENADE… which has to be blown up by bomb squad.

Police called in the bomb squad yesterday after a three-year-old boy was spotted standing on a live hand grenade during an Easter egg hunt.

The grenade, believed to be a relic from the Second World War, was found in a field next to a busy road.

Yikes!

The egg-shaped hand grenade was spotted by father-of-three Stuart Moffatt, 34, at the event organised by a pre-school group.

Mr Moffatt, an engineering consultant, was there with his wife Victoria, 35, and their children Nelly, five, Isla, two, and 11-month-old Freddie.

He said: ‘We were beginning to count up the eggs at the end of the hunt and I saw a boy of three standing on an object.

‘It was brown and about 4 inches high. It looked like an Easter egg, but it was a hand grenade.

‘I was shocked. The boy who was standing on it thought it was a rock.’

Thank goodness all the kids are okay!

Sooooo….what stories have you been following today?

Goodbye Flipper?

Posted: April 9, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Environment, Environmental Protection, Gulf Oil Spill, just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Rick O'Perry, right, and another dolphin trainer with Flipper

Flipper, an Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin, was one of the biggest television stars from 1964 – 1967. There were actually 4 dolphins who played Flipper on the screen.  Most of the series was filmed behind the scenes at the Miami Seaquarium on Virginia Key in Biscayne Bay.  The success of the Flipper franchise made dolphins a lovable species around the world.  The true story of Flipper, the dolphin and the making of the television series, is told by Ric O’Barry, Flipper’s trainer, in his book Behind The Dolphin Smile.  For those of you who were born after the 1960s, you may have seen dolphins in captivity at marine parks or even had the opportunity to swim with dolphins at one of these attractions. (NOTE:  I do not support dolphins in captivity)

Due in large part to people’s exposure to Flipper or dolphins in captive environments, there has been increased interest in and concern for dolphins around the world.  Since the beginning of this year dolphins worldwide have been stranding themselves and dying in record numbers.  The reasons for these deaths are slow in coming.  Bear in mind that the numbers listed below are like the tip of an iceberg.  Only those dolphins found onshore are listed.  Those who died at sea, whose bodies were never discovered and/or recovered are not included in the mortality/stranding counts.

THE GULF STATES – GULF OF MEXICO – February, 2010 – now

When the first report of the explosion and oil leak of the Deepwater-Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico was announced,  I knew that we were about to witness one of the greatest environmental disasters in the history of the U.S.  It had the potential to outpace the Exxon-Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska – and it did.  In case you never saw the official mortality record from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, their last report from April, 2011 lists the statistics on birds, sea turtles and marine mammals impacted.

Of course, those numbers don’t tell the whole story.  They don’t include unrecovered animals, nor the impact on breeding or toxins passed on to the offspring of the survivors, nor the poisoned food sources available to the survivors.  Please don’t get me wrong.  The people living in the area are exposed to the same toxins, but they, at least, may be treated for the illnesses that result from their exposure.  And, the people aren’t living in the water, surrounded by the oil and corexit, a toxic substance used to disperse the oil.  People also can choose what they will eat, which isn’t the case for the birds, fish, turtles and marine mammals living and swimming in this toxic soup.

Since February of 2010, 693 dolphin deaths have been documented in the Gulf of Mexico.  A good compilation of the news coverage can be found at Reef Relief.

An ongoing die-off of dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in 693 carcasses washing ashore. Scientists believe many more dolphins likely died but were never recovered. An investigation is underway to determine whether the BP oil spill is to blame. (Press-Register/Ben Raines)

Many of the dolphins in Barataria Bay, LA are sick, according to researchers.  The AL.com blog has a full story on what researchers have found through taking both blood and tissue samples.

Thirty-two dolphins caught in August in Louisiana’s heavily oiled Barataria Bay were found to suffer from a range of symptoms including anemia, low body weight, hormone deficiencies, liver disease, and lung problems.

Those symptoms are typical of mammals exposed to oil in laboratory experiments, scientists said.

According to the Gulflive.com blog, of the 30 dolphins who washed ashore since January, 2012, 24 have been calves.

“We are dealing with a very unusual mortality,” said Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport. “It is mostly calves. Generally when you see a stranding it is a variety of animals — adults, males, females, young.”

The second anniversary is approaching and the legacy of this catastrophe mostly lives on with those people, animals and plants along the Gulf Coast who survived.  This story from the one year anniversary has some amazing and heartbreaking photos: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/gulf_oil_spill_one_year_later.html   This recent story paints a more current picture of the state of the Gulf Coast.

Laurel didn’t find dead turtles on a recent stroll on her Gulfport shores, which she now calls “death beach.” But walking along she smelled something bad. After poking around in the sand, she found the nauseating source: a dead baby dolphin’s tail, decomposing and buried not more than a few inches in the sand. An out-of-work shrimper came a long and picked it up, and when he realized what it was he started to sob: “This really ruins my day…” Laurel remembers. Tourists looked at it incredulously, Laurel says, their kids screaming, ‘Mommy, it’s a dolphin’s tail!’

The attention of the rest of the country has turned to other news stories, having been  lulled into a false sense that everything has returned to normal by all of those commercials, funded by BP and the states’ tourist boards.  The bodies of the dead and dying animals tell a different story.  But dolphins, in particular, aren’t just dying along the Gulf Coast.

CAPE COD – January – February, 2012

177 dolphins have stranded themselves in Cape Cod.  Once again the cause or causes of the high number of dolphins ending up on the beaches of Cape Cod are simply guesses.  In mid-February, 11 stranded dolphins were found onshore in Wellfleet.

The remote inlet down Wellfleet’s Herring River is a place where the tides recede fast and far, and that’s left the animals mired in a grayish-brown mud one local calls “Wellfleet mayonnaise.”

News coverage of the incident details the stranding and actions taken to save the dolphins.   Sixty dolphins stranded in Cape Cod.  The full story tells that only 19 could be rescued.

A single dead dolphin calf was found in Queens, NY.

Kim Durham, the foundation’s rescue program director, tells the Daily News there were “no signs of trauma.” Researchers say an increasing number of common dolphins have been spotted in the Northeast in the winter, which may be attributable to climate change and a steady improvement in environmental cleanliness in the waters off the Rockaway peninsula.

Although no official cause for the strandings has been announced, there are some who think Naval operations in the area could be to blame.

Again, just as in the months of January and February Naval activity is taking place in the Atlantic. Even government Funded IFAW Katie Moore who has denied Naval involvement despite evidence of Naval activity can no longer deny the possibility of sound being the source of these tragic deaths along the Atlantic Coastline, “

And these deaths may not be the only ones which may be attributable to sonar type activities taking place in the oceans. 

PERU – February – April 2012

To locate possible oil and/or gas deposits, seismic surveys are conducted with the use of air guns by releasing high pressure air.  This passage from the Canadian Centre for Energy Information report was particularly interesting.

Offshore seismic surveys require government approval and must comply with strict environmental regulations, including a pre-survey environmental assessment. Programs are designed to avoid fish spawning seasons and sensitive fishery areas.  During the first half-hour of a survey, the energy level of the discharges is gradually increased so that fish and aquatic mammals have an opportunity to move out of the area.

That paragraph is telling.  The fish and other marine life are given a full half hour to “leave the area.”  Are these people serious?  Any of the marine life in area will understand the increasing sound waves are a signal to vamoose?  Maybe they should try transmitting in Morse Code, it would make as much sense.  Dolphins, like all cetaceans, use echo location to find food, navigate in their habitat and communicate with each other.  Needless to say, these high pressure sound waves can do massive damage to marine life, especially dolphins and whales.  If you are interested in more detailed information on dolphins and the use and effect of sound, check out this lesson plan:  http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/education/documents/porpoise-marsouin/harbourporpoise_lesson4_e.pdf

Of all these recent stranding episodes, the largest die-off is occurring off the coast of Peru.  Over 3000 dead dolphins have washed ashore since the incident began.  Once again, authorities and researchers are cautious about announcing the cause of the massive numbers of dead dolphins.  Some have attributed the deaths to the search for offshore oil deposits in the ocean floor.    More information, along with photos and video on this massive die- off can be found at The Watchers and at SF Gate, CNTV  and on the blog StrandedNoMore.

For the time being, drilling for oil is a necessary evil.  There are many downsides to onshore drilling, but drilling offshore has far greater along with potentially catastrophic problems.  This Hub Pages blog entry by Cheryl has a comprehensive discussion of offshore drilling.

It seems evident to me that we, humans, are the culprits in the deaths of these magnificent, highly intelligent animals.  Whether through releasing toxins into the environment or sending shockwaves through the ocean, we are killing them.  Why?  OIL – our endless quest to drill for more and more and more oil.  And our tax dollars continue to subsidize this industry, while these oil companies make vast amounts of profit.  Then we get to pay again, at artificially inflated prices, when we pump the resultant gasoline into our vehicles.  We are complicit, intentionally or not.  But Bill McKibben, of 350.org can say it better than I.

Whether or not the bill passes, those subsidies are worth focusing on.  After all, we’re talking at least $10 billion in freebies and, depending on what you count, possibly as much as $40 billion annually in freebie cash for an energy industry already making historic profits.

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