Palast takes us on a fast paced, kick ass narrative that globe trots from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, to the coast of Alaska, to New Orleans, to Liberia, to Azerbaijan, to Fukushima, Japan. It’s the real-deal investigative reporting of corporate irresponsibility. As Greg Palast said himself in an interview,” This book is a story of the 1%. It’s why we occupy.”

It’s interesting to go back and read someone like John D. MacDonald‘s Travis McGee series these days. Here I am, 45 years later, quoting his words from 1965 decrying the state of the environment. The biggest disconnect is when I read him complaining about the world population being overburdened at 4B when we recently passed 7B.

There may be ongoing claims that will drain out a bit more money. But it won’t be much more than 20% of the total funds negotiated that will be used. I don’t know whether this can be attributed to program eligibility or a lack of publicity or bad design. But that number seems quite low compared to the devastation that BP wreaked upon the Gulf Coast.

Antonia Juhasz’ Black Tide drills into our past, our present, and all too possibly, our future. Black Tide gives us the chance to learn from Antonia’s years of expert work on the oil industry and the industry’s effects upon us all and the planet we all depend on. This book goes far beyond history and policy – the book draws on the months Antonia spent with Gulf Coast residents living with the consequences of the oil catastrophe BP and partners brought upon them and the Gulf one year and thirteen days ago. The result is a powerful, compelling work of non-fiction that reads like a novel. But unlike a novel, Black Tide brings us into the lives of real people, and Antonia brings them to us in their own words.

“Mommy, does BP stand for Bad People?”

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded, causing an oil gusher which spewed over 205 million gallons of oil and 225,000 tons of methane into the Gulf of Mexico. In the ensuing months, a lot of time and money has been invested in selling the idea that the Gulf has been healed, and on the road to recovering its former glory. We don’t have to buy that particular product. We can instead take the lessons of folks like the Center for Biological Diversity, which used available public data to chronicle the toll on marine wildlife in the Gulf.

A year after the BP disaster erupted in the Gulf, Cherri Foytlin walked from her home in New Orleans to the White House, to let President Obama hear firsthand the suffering that continues to affect the residents of the Gulf Coast. Sadly, she couldn’t get an invitation to get past the gate. (Rubbing salt in her wounds — she got to watch Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles stroll past her on the sidewalk on their way inside.)

Meanwhile, BP and certain parts of the government continue to try to spin the news, limiting media access to heroic rescuers, limiting scientific access to spill sites, and otherwise trying to hide the record and avoid accountability.

Access. It’s the name of the game.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of America’s most horrific industrial accidents, happened 100 years ago today, on March 11, 1911. Though New York City’s fire department arrived on the scene within two minutes of the call, the fire at this “modern” high rise at the corner of Washington Pl. and Greene St. still claimed the lives of 146 people, most of them young women and teenage girls. Some were burned, some died of smoke inhalation, some were crushed pushing for the exits, some fell from a faulty fire escape, and some jumped nine stories in an attempt to escape the flames.

It was a catastrophic, once-in-a-lifetime failure of what were considered more than ample emergency response systems. No one could have possibly anticipated. . . .

What do shooting sprees and massive oil rig blowouts have in common?

After having spent five months in the Gulf, I decided to read Bob Cavnar’s book of the story behind the Deepwater well blowout starting with chapter 7 on the “BP-government merger.” This was one of the most troubling twists in events that I had witnessed in the Gulf. I figured if he could shed some light on this, then maybe he would have frank insights on how we got into this mess – beyond the human error – and how we might avoid another.