Ex-BP CEO Chooses Sea Protection Forum to Talk About Spill

BP should have done more to prevent the Gulf of Mexico oil spill two years ago but the company's complacency was not unique in the industry, former CEO Tony Hayward said this week in his most public comments yet about the disaster.
Hayward chose to talk about the disaster, the worst offshore spill in U.S. history in which 11 men died, at a marine-protection conference in Istanbul.
He warned that Istanbul, a UNESCO World Heritage site with a population of some 15 million people, could see a similar disaster unless it stems the flow of oil tankers through its Bosporus Strait. Some 150 million tonnes of crude and petroleum products transit the narrow, winding waterway each year.
Nearly 5 million barrels of crude spewed into the Gulf of Mexico between April and September 2010 after BP's Macondo well blew out, causing explosions on board the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which was licensed to BP by Transocean.
The oil super-major launched a $15 billion emergency response, the biggest ever in corporate history, Hayward said. It hired nearly 50,000 people and deployed 10,000 vessels, "more than took part in the Normandy landing," he said, likening it to the sacrifice made by more than 200,000 allied soldiers in World War Two.
In another clumsy water reference, Hayward described the disaster as a "black swan": a low-probability high-impact risk that could have been avoided if all systems had been working and monitored properly.
"What happened that day was a tragic and avoidable industrial accident," he admitted but added: "If the blowout preventer had not failed, the events of April 2010 would have remained a personal tragedy and an industrial accident, but would not have caused an environmental and social disaster."
Blaming the rig's blowout preventer -- a valve used to seal and control oil wells -- would appear to pass some of the buck. London-based BP sued Cameron International Corp, which made the blowout preventer, in April 2011 for negligence. BP and its partners Transocean and Halliburton, the oilfield services contractor, have quarreled in public and in the courtroom over who was responsible for the spill. Halliburton is suing BP, claiming it withheld vital information about subsurface conditions.
A White House commission in January 2011 said BP, Transocean and Halliburton made a series of cost-cutting decisions that ultimately contributed to the blaze and oil spill. On Tuesday, the same U.S. administration granted BP permission to construct three rigs in the Gulf of Mexico at a projected cost of £2.5 billion.

"Unfortunately human behaviour works like this ... you learn from your mistakes," Hayward said. "We were wrong but our complacency was not unique. The industry had lulled itself into a false sense of security, thanks to 20 years of drilling in deep water without a serious accident."

These were Hayward's first public comments about the spill since leaving BP in October 2010, his publicist said. By the time he left BP, Hayward had already handed over day-to-day management of the crisis amid criticism for his handling of the crisis, including a comment that he would like his life back.

He was also berated in the press after he was photographed yacht racing while the oil still gushed. "South Park" witheringly lampooned him.

Hayward invoked the media scrutiny during his speech. "We had no equipment to contain and stop the oil on the seabed," he said. "No such equipment existed. We found ourselves having to design and build it -- improvising, as it were, on prime-time television."

An avid sailor and diver, Hayward, 55, gave his speech at a conference to discuss ways to protect the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, both ravaged by industrial pollution.

Nearly 150 million tonnes of crude and petroleum products transit through Istanbul's Bosporus Strait each year. The narrow, winding straits invite disaster.

Hayward seems to have bounced back. Late last year, with partners he formed the London-listed Genel Energy after they paid £1.3 billion for Genel Enerji, a Turkish company focused on exploration and production in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq. He is now CEO.

His new colleague -- Genel Energy president Mehmet Sepil - has also courted controversy. Sepil was slapped with the biggest fine ever (£1 million) by the Financial Standards Authority, the British regulator, for insider trading during Genel Enerji's failed merger with Heritage Oil in 2009. The Kurdish Energy Minister Ahsti Hawrami, kingmaker of operators in Kurdistan and a friend of Sepil and Hayward, is also accused by the FSA for insider trading the same company.

Hayward received a bonus pay out from Genel Energy of £11 on the second anniversary of the disaster. And greater riches could be on the horizon as Genel considers offshore exploration in the eastern Mediterranean. Will Hayward bring lessons learned from the Gulf of Mexico with him?

Greek Carnival Revives the Spirit of an Ancient City

Most of Istanbul's Greeks may be gone, but a revival of the raucous, pre-Lent festival of Baklahorani helps keep their spirit alive.
Two parades, led by troupes of costumed revelers banging drums and blaring clarinets, wound through the streets of Istanbul on Sunday and Monday to celebrate Carnival before seven weeks of abstinence and reflection for the Orthodox faithful. Hundreds of Turks, Greeks and tourists donned masques and wigs to join the street parties.
This year was the biggest celebration yet of Baklahorani, which roughly translates as "eating beans" in reference to the Lenten fast, since its revival in 2010. It was a days-long Istanbul street festival for centuries until 1941, when Greeks, facing pressure from Turkish authorities, abandoned the festival.
"In the 70 years since Baklahorani, demonstrations of faith were done in private. Today it is a matter of pride to celebrate in public," says organiser Haris Rigas, whose family left Istanbul for Greece decades ago. Rigas returned to Turkey five years ago to study political science at Istanbul's Bogazici University.
About 800 people attended the first of the two parades that took place on Sunday and weaved through Istanbul's main high street, Istiklal Caddesi in the district of Beyoglu. The same street witnessed a night of violence that targeted the city's Greeks and other ethnic minorities in September 1955. Hundreds of people were injured, and more than 5,000 businesses were destroyed. That accelerated the decline of the Greek community in Istanbul, once the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today, fewer than 3,000 Greeks, most of them pensioners, remain in their ancient homeland.

"I am here to celebrate Istanbul Greek culture," said Burcu Karabiyik, 38, a sculptor wearing a red, sequined eye mask. "It's important to stake a claim for Istanbul's traditions and show solidarity when our society is so polarised."

Most of Turkey's Greeks were expelled after World War One in a population exchange that also brought Muslims here from Greece. In later years, tensions over Cyprus, social discrimination and restrictions on property and other rights forced out more than 150,000 others. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property has been appropriated, schools are left without pupils, and priests hold services in empty churches.
Istanbul, Europe's largest city, is home to a mainly Muslim population of 14 million people, yet it retains the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the spiritual centre for the world's 300 million Orthodox. About 60,000 Armenian Christians and 20,000 Jews also live here.

Turkey's centre-right, Islamist-rooted government has made a few steps at improving the plight of Greeks since its election in 2002. They have granted Turkish citizenship to foreign bishops so they can join the Patriarchate's Holy Synod, which runs the Church and provides candidates for future patriarchs. Other gestures have included permission for a Greek Orthodox mass at Sumela Monastery near the Black Sea town of Trabzon for the first time since the 1920s.

Progress on returning seized properties has been slow. Greeks, along with Israelis, are reportedly barred from buying homes in Beyoglu, which was populated by ethnic minorities during the Ottoman era. The Patriarchate's seminary has been closed since 1971, making it impossible for the Church to train its clergy.
Despite the constraints they face, Baklahorani demonstrates that, at least on the street level, Greeks are more comfortable about expressing their identity. A second, smaller parade was held on Clean Monday in Kurtulus, the former Greek neighbourhood known as Tatavla that has traditionally been home to Baklahorani.

Istanbulites have in recent years begun celebrating the city's native culture. The Sabanci Museum held a major exhibit last year featuring 5,000-year-old artefacts from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, the first collaboration between Turkish and Greek museums. Nostalgia for Istanbul's recent, cosmopolitan past has seen publication of cookbooks with Istanbul Greek recipes, rembetiko bands performing weekly in Beyoglu bars and Greek-style tavernas serving meze to boisterous crowds.

"By no means does Baklahorani represent a true revival of Greek community or culture," Rigas says. "But it is still an expression of optimism for the Greek Orthodox of Turkey."

Turkish Earthquake Reveals Nationalist Fault Lines

A killer earthquake in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast a fortnight ago sparked a genuine show of popular support and charity, but the ugly rhetoric of nationalism was not far behind. And the vitriol comes from the mainstream, not just the political fringes.

The 7.2-magnitude quake in Van province on 23 Oct killed about 600 people and injured thousands more. It hit during a period of renewed violence between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an outlawed guerrilla group that has waged an armed campaign for Kurdish autonomy since 1984. Just four days before the quake, the PKK killed 24 soldiers in an ambush in neighbouring Hakkari province, sparking convulsions of national grief.

With feelings still raw after the attack, some public figures expressed outright racist sentiment towards victims of the earthquake in the hours after it rocked Van. Breakfast show host Muge Anli spat on national television: "When we feel like it, we throw stones at police and kill soldiers as if we were bird hunting in the mountains. Then, when something happens, we say, 'Police, soldiers, come.' We need a balance...People need to know their place." And Duygu Canbas, a news anchor, departed from the teleprompter to express racist-tinged sympathy over the tragedy. "Even if it is in Van, all of Turkey is sad about this news," she said during a live broadcast.

Anli and Canbas were speaking for those Turks who equate Kurds with the PKK. For these people, Kurds had it coming to them. Though both women were widely criticised and soon offered apologies, the comments are still a crack in the veneer of national unity, the mandate of successive governments since the birth of modern Turkey. Last Saturday marked the 88th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic. Official celebrations were cancelled out of respect for the loss of life in the earthquake, causing outrage on social networking sites. Not everyone obliged with the show of respect: About 1,000 motorcyclists held an impromptu ceremonial ride-out in central Istanbul, their bikes festooned with Turkish flags. (In this topsy-turvy country, even bikers are fervent nationalists, while elsewhere they are outlaws, at least on the weekends.)

Turks' inability to distinguish between Kurds - who make up some 20% of the population - and the PKK mirrors the trouble Americans have distinguishing Muslims from terrorists, the British had when separating Catholics from the IRA and the Spanish in seeing ETA everywhere there are Basques. It is a mistake the Turks have made before when ridding themselves of established ethnic populations before and after 1923. Even today many still refuse to accept that there is an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq, even though it is codified in the Iraqi constitution. For decades, Kurds were not even recognised as a distinct ethnic group and were instead referred to as 'Mountain Turks'. The Kurdish language was banned outright until 1991.

Nationalist dogma papers over many cracks, including the institutional corruption that leads to almost no prosecution for the criminal disregard of construction standards that leads to avoidable deaths in a country crisscrossed by fault lines. The sending of tax money specifically set aside for earthquake-proofing is spent on other government projects. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan calls on families to have three children in a country with one of the youngest populations in Europe and highest rates of childhood poverty to stave off a pension crisis that will inevitably arise.

In Turkey, nationalism lets political parties of all stripes hide behind personalities instead of policies and obedience to a national cause rather than public-service-led government. It stifles debate, scuppers reconciliation with the past and engenders cultural homogeneity. It can, quite literally, bring down the walls on an otherwise great nation.

Out of tragedy, community is often born. Turkey realised that in 1999 when successive earthquakes here and in Greece prompted mutual outpourings of aid and led to reconciliation between the arch enemies. The earthquake in Van offers Turkey another chance at such "earthquake diplomacy," this time inviting it to make peace with its own citizens.

Intelligence

It was announced today that the British domestic intelligence agency MI5 is to appoint a scientific adviser (a new Q, if you like) who will provide ideas on how to use science and technology to help agents in the field combat terrorism.

The MI5's website requires applicants have "world-class" scientific expertise and communication skills. One would presume that in line with UK law there's an equivalent advert in the job centre.

What he will do precisely, MI5 is keeping secret of course, but they can assure the public that MI5 are no longer using divining rods, phrenology and calculator watches to detect terrorist activities.

Spectre vs Rector Part 2

The jury has finally returned from to deliberating the second verdict of Phil Spector after a 10-2 guilty verdict last year. California law requires a unanimous verdict for murder. And this time they were certain - guilty in the first degree, carrying a sentenced of 18 years to life.

It was good to see he dressed appropriately this time. His return to the Ronnie Wood wig - leaving the yellow Judy Dench bob and Annita Dobson fright-wig behind - imbued the occasion with a fittingly sombre tone. One presumes the red kerchief in his jacket pocket was a tribute to the splatter of Larna Clarkson's blood on his vestibule floor.

There were surprisingly few puns that could be generated from all this. The best the BBC came up with was "A spect-acular fall." Weak. Not even

In other pop news, Nadja Benaissa, a singer from the German Popstars prefabbed girl group No Angels has been arrested moments before a solo gig on suspicion of infecting three people with HIV.
Girls Aloud.... jog on.

1. The Soft Machine
As Long As He Lies Perfectly Still 2:32
Volume 2, 1969, Probe/ABC

A tribute to former bandmate Kevin Ayers.

2. Love Song With Flute (Mono) 4:11
Caravan
Caravan, 1969, Verve

In glorious mono. Another offshoot of The Wilde Flowers is Caravan, which included bass player Richard Sinclair.

3. 5 And 20 Schoolgirls 4:19
Daevid Allen
Majick Brother
Actuel, 1969

This is the third branch of the Wilde Flowers. Australian guitarist and singer Daevid Allen first met Robert Wyatt from the Soft Machine when he was lodging in Wyatt’s parents’ house near Canterbury. After a bried tenure in the Soft Machine, Allen went on to form Gong in Paris when he was refused re-entry into the UK after a tour in Europe.


4. The Song Of McGuillicudie The Pusillanimous 5:07
Egg
Egg, 1970, Deram

Egg included in its early incarnation the guitarist Steve Hillage, who played with Gong and Kahn.

5. Girl On A Swing 2:49
Kevin Ayers
Joy Of A Toy, 1970, Harvest/EMI

From his 1970 debut record Joy of a Tory.

6. Elastic Rock 4:06
Nucleus
Elastic Rock

Band members later became part of the Soft Machine

Roy Babbington and John Marshall from Nucleus went on to play in late-period Soft Machine. The band also featured at one stage Andy Summers who, as we know, formed The Police.

7. O Caroline 5:04
Matching Mole
Matching Mole, CBS

Robert Wyatt has an amazing skill to extract love songs from the obliquest of situations. This is O Caroline. After Robert Wyatt left Soft Machine, or was fired, due to musical differences, he started a new project Matching Mole, which is a pun from the French translation of Soft Machine, Machine Mole. Matching Mole included former Caravan member Dave Sinclair.

8. This Is What Happen 5:02
The Keith Tippet Group
Dedicated To You, But You Weren't Listening

9. Stranded 5:56
Khan
Space Shanty, Decca, 1972
Legend of a Mind, 2002, Decca

I first heard this on the fantastic Decca Deram Nova compilation I picked up in a record shop in Brighton for a few pounds.

10. Bittern Storm Over Ulm 2:19
Henry Cow
Unrest

Unrelated to Canterbury rock geographically but whose members collaborated with Canterbury groups and artists.

11. Underdub 4:03
Hatfield and the North
The Rotter’s Club, 1975, Virgin

12. Terran 3:49
Art Bears
Hopes And Fears

Art Bears were formed from the ashes of Henry Cow, with singer Dagmar Krause and avant-garde guitarist Fred Frith.

13. Norrgarden Nyvla 2:58
Fred Frith
Gravity

Acik Week 1 - Folk Revival

Jackson C Frank
“Blues Run The Game”
JACKSON C FRANK , Columbia/Castle,1965

Jackson C Frank first came to England from America in 1965. This song was produced by Paul Simon.

Vashti Bunyan
“Some things Just Stick In Your Mind”
SINGLE, Decca, 1965

Written by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. It took Vashti another 35 years to achieve commercial success after decades in seclusion when her best known seminal folk record JUST ANOTHER DIAMOND DAY, was rediscovered. Although this song not exactly a folk tune, it’s still a great and one of my favouritesby her.

John Renbourn
“The Earl Of Salisbury”
SIR JOHN A LOT OF MERRIE ENGLAND, Warner Bothers, 1968

A beautiful, medieval song,

Bert Jansch
“Pretty Polly”
JACK ORION, Transatlantic, 1966

Most traditional folk songs are about two things – sex and death. There are many great versions of this tune but this is my favourite.

Shirley Collins and Davey Graham
“Reynardine”
FOLK ROOTS, NEW ROUTES, Decca,1964

A Victorian ballad about a werewolf who kidnaps young maidens then, presumably, has his wicked way with them and kills them. It’s sung by Shirley Collins who, along with Anne Briggs and Martin Carthy, is pivotal to the early English folk revival in the 1950s and 60s. And together with Alan Lomax she recorded an amazing collection of Southern American folk music.

Pentangle
“Light Flight”
BASKET OF LIGHT, Transatlantic 1969

The BBC used this next song as the theme to the first drama it broadcast in colour.

Fairport Convention
“Fotheringay”
WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAYS, Island, 1969

Here’s another song about death, this time that of Mary Queen of Scots who was beheaded by her sister, Queen Elizabeth the first.

Nick Drake
“River man”
FIVE LEAVES LEFT, Island, 1969

This song was produced by Joe Boyd, who also worked with VASHTI BUNYAN and the INCREDIBLE STRING BAND.

Round Table
“Scarborough Fair”
SPINNING WHEEL, Jay Boy,1969

Studio session bands are put together for no particular reason other than to make weird records that disappear without a trace. This song features band leader, the late David Munrow from the EARLY MUSIC CONSORT playing the lead crumhorn.


The Incredible String Band
“The Hedgehog Song”
THE 5000 SPIRITS OR THE LAYERS OF THE ONION, Elektra, 1967

This next song was chosen by the Arch Bishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams as one of his favourite records of all time.

Jan Dukes De Grey
“Texas”
SORCERERS, Nova, 1969

Acid folk from JAN DUKES DE GREY from their first record in 1969.

Mellow Candle
“Heaven Heath”
SWADDLING SONGS, Deram, 1972

Moving further into experimental folk from very young Irish group,

Richard Thompson
“Vincent Black Lightening 1952”
RUMOUR AND SIGH, Capitol, 2001

A peerless performer and songwriter who I had the pleasure of seeing a few years ago combines my two favourite things in this song – guitars and motorcycles, and being a folk tune, love and death.
Guaranteed to make me weep every time I hear it.

Steeleye Span
“All Around My Hat”
ALL AROUND MY HAT, Crysalis, 1975

Produced by Mike Batt of The Wombles and Katie Melua fame, here’s is a good fun mix of glam rock and traditional folk, which reached No. 5 on the UK charts in 1975.