Every year, beginning a day or so after Christmas, and ending New Year's morning, I lead a retreat at Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, MA, called the "New Years Spiritual Renewal Retreat." It's wonderful to be able to get away and do a retreat like this in a yoga resort and educational center like Kripalu, but how can we initiate spiritual renewal wherever we are, and sustain it throughout the year? What are the "spiritual" approaches to change that go deeper -- and are far more successful -- than the mere making of resolutions? In a five-day retreat I cover a number of approaches, and would take a book to share them, but most important is the practice of meditation. I call meditation the "laboratory of life," that indispensable period we take out of our day, not to "self improve," but rather to uncover our underlying divinity. During times of transition, such as the approach of the New Year, many people especially focus on their identity, how to become a new and improved version themselves, and in this retreat I try to show how meditation can deliver a deeper transformation than what we normally think of as self-improvement.

Most of us live in a piece of territory called "me" -- a personality who seems to live inside the boundaries of its skin, separate from all that surrounds it. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says that when the sense of an "other" arises, fear (of suffering) arises. This separate personality thus involves itself in a constant strategy of minimizing any potential discomfort or pain, and maximizing its pleasure. It hopes for a happier future filled with good things and experiences.

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We are now in the 10th year of the first decade of the 'war on terror.' So the inevitable anniversary assessments are beginning to appear. Iraq reappraisals specifically are back in vogue. They favor the drawing of balance sheets. Most will be skewed in an alchemic attempt to put the face of success on an unmitigated disaster. Even a more tempered approach at calculating cost/benefits, though, leaves something missing -- something of paramount importance. It is the effects on Iraqis themselves. Not Iraqis in the abstract, not as figures in a statistical tabulation of sects. Rather, as flesh and blood and feeling persons. Frankly, most of the discourse about Iraq from day one has had a disengaged quality to it. That is the norm for dominant powers on the world stage, and for the seminar strategist. That was not always the norm by which Americans referenced war and violence abroad in the 20th century when we truly believed in our proclaimed ideals.

To illuminate the point, here are some too readily slighted facts. 100,000 - 150,000 Iraqis are dead as the consequence of our invasion and occupation. That is the conservative estimate. Untold thousands are maimed and orphaned. 2 million are uprooted refugees in neighboring lands. Another 2 million are displaced persons internally. The availability of potable water and electricity is somewhat less than it was in February 2003. The comparable numbers for the United States would be 1.1 - 1.6 million dead; an equal number infirmed; 22 million refugees eking out a precarious existence in Mexico and Canada; 22 million displaced persons within the country. We did not do all the killing and maiming; we did most of the destruction of infrastructure. To all these tragedies we are accessories before and during the fact.

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Yesterday, the President's oil spill commission issued one chapter of its report to be released in total on January 11.  The released chapter, Chapter 4, goes through the commission's recounting of the events leading up to the blowout and its own conclusions about causes.  No new information was revealed in the released chapter, though the commission continues to spread blame, primarily to BP, Transocean, and Halliburton.  It also blamed failures  of the industry and government which are clear to those paying attention.  In pointing out these failures the commission said,

"Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur. The missteps were rooted in systemic failures by industry management (extending beyond BP to contractors that serve many in the industry), and also by failures of government to provide effective regulatory oversight of offshore drilling."

Clearly the commission's full report will go against the Obama administration's decision this last Monday to allow 16 deepwater projects to resume without safety system redesign or environmental review.  Although there are some new safety training and third party certification rules now being required of deepwater operators, there are no required changes in rigs or well control systems, there is no change in liability limits, and the statutory thirty day permit review limit remains in place.

I also continue to disagree with the commission's (and BP's, for that matter) conclusion that Halliburton is one of the primary party's at fault.  Were there communication errors on Halliburton's part? Yes.  Could Halliburton have done a better job alerting BP about its cement lab tests? Certainly.   Could Halliburton be more forthcoming to the various investigative bodies about its tests and own actions?  Absolutely.  However, as I've said before, bad cement does not equal blowout.  Bad cement jobs, especially in deep, hot, high potential wells happen every day, and not due to any particular party's fault.  Bad cement jobs that require remedial work during completion are a simple fact of life. 

The failure here was clearly human, clearly on BP's shoulders as well as its contractor Transocean.  BP's casing design was over-reliant on a good cement job and vigilant well control.  On-site management failures and BP's convoluted management structure were the real causes of the well getting away from them.  Transocean's failed blowout preventer failed to shut-in the well after they lost control. Even with no cement in the well, it must be kept under control with careful well monitoring and redundant procedures.  Assuming the cement job was good, shortcutting the plugging and abandonment procedure, hurrying, and having multiple simultaneous operations blinded the rig crew to what was really going on in the well.  Even with anomalous pressure readings and volume gains in the pits, both BP and Transocean management were distracted by visiting VIPs, a rushed schedule, and a crew change in the middle of the operation.  Overconfidence and complacency born from 7 years of safe operations were also certainly direct causes of this massive failure.

The spill commission's conclusions, though not completely off base, are tainted by politics, lack of industry experience on the panel, and what I believe to be its effort to spread blame, not pinpoint it.  I would imagine that no new information will be forthcoming when its entire report is released next week, so I'm looking forward to the Joint Investigation, managed by the Coast Guard and the BOEMRE, report to be issued in March.  I expect it will be much more objective and thorough, and should provide vital information gained from the forensics testing on the BOP that are yet to be released to the public.

In the meantime, oil continues to wash up on the beaches of Alabama and the wetlands of Louisiana.  Thousands of businesses and workers continue to suffer all around the Gulf coast.  The oil and gas industry continues to ignore its own complicity in this disaster and lobby for status quo.  The MSM continues to ignore the massive economic and ecological damage in the Gulf since they are now focused on the size of Speaker Boehner's new gavel, Lindsay Lohan's most recent probation violation, and whose going to be on the next Dancing with the Stars.



Bob Cavnar, a 30-year veteran of the oil and gas industry, is the author of Disaster on the Horizon: High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout, recently released by Chelsea Green Publishing Company.

I might have been six years old when I first learned how integral the bumble bee was to the human food chain. The Huffington Post article yesterday about the American bee population plummeting and the disastrous effect this is likely to have on those of us who eat scared the food I had digested up to that moment out of me. Then I remembered someone who eats far more than me and is certainly far more informed on such matters as the calamitous loss of bees and other pollinating insects, not to mention snakes and tigers and penguins and other wildlife that is dying off, according to the new study across three continents by the World Wildlife Fund to which HuffPost referred.

That person is of course Rush Limbaugh, also known as El Rushbo, a pseudonym he reminds us of to his own amusement quite often. El Rushbo goes on about what fools and fakers and worse environmentalists are -- and what hogwash environmental science is. The man once claimed that the BP oil spill was the result of a conspiracy of environmentalists, for God's sake. His fans, who are also tickled to be called ditto-heads, seem to be entertained by this -- just enough, I imagine, for Limbaugh to refer to himself as an entertainer when he suspects his role as a commentator has gotten him into some unsustainable mischief. Should Limbaugh be too embarrassed to do that for himself regarding the environment -- and I predict that moment is coming -- look for El Rushbo to hide behind the stations that carry him. "You take him too seriously, the man's an entertainer," will be some representative suit's mantra. What the hell, that's the way the New York Times and Michael Steele -- how entertaining is that combo? -- have referred to him.

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