Monday, June 7, 2010

Why is Ivor van Heerden now a BP News Media Spokesman?
~He's at it again, this morning on NPR.
Scientific Ambiguity, as a PR Tool, has already worked so well for Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and Big Oil --but you have to have a renowned and (now formerly) respected "Scientist" who is willing to spin the broken record.
In a brilliant tactical PR move by BP Unified Command, this weekend, he was "placed" with a boat load of Press on Grand Terre Island to counter the blisteringly horrid photographs of pelicans gobbed in thick oil on Grand Terre Island --just days before. Sooo, now Ivor van Heerden is the Press Go-To Guy?
Why can't he just Do Science instead of doing Press Statements?
Well, since the Press is censored from speaking to sick Clean-up Workers, or anyone else under contract with BP, I find it Bizarre Irony that this man --himself under contract with BP-- would sue to get his job back from LSU after alleging they fired him for Speaking To The Press!
Considering the incredible Funding Influence BP (and the Oil Industry writ large) exerts on LSU, perhaps we are beginning to see the carrot they are dangling before this Waskly Wabbit. ~~~WTF Up, Doc?
~Despite what Van Heerden says, these Pelicans on Queen Bess are in trouble. Can someone get a crew there to rescue them?
~Ladder Reporter on the scene Georgianne Neinaber. Click to enlarge
"Unless they start picking up the saturated boom, remove the sunken boom, and work this rookery, I don't know how the chicks can survive. Locals want us to see this: Pelicans abandoned because media has left once they got initial gruesome photographs."-GN (Click pics to enlarge)
Editilla Hotellas~"Cause Now they are embed with Ivor van Heerden?
~But Ivor van Heerden says all of this impact has been "overstated"!
When Editilla considers the damage done by Ivor van Heerden in his doing Press Tours for BP and saying on NPR that the "oil impact on Louisiana has been overstated, that it is only tens of miles" I just want to put my heart on a grill, cook it and hand- feed it to him with an ice pick.

Science wars over oil spill impact on Gulf Coast~Carol Forsloff
~"The damage from the oil coming ashore is overstated",
"The oil has impacted only tens of miles" ~NPR, June 5th, 2010.
This is according to former Professor Ivor Van Heerden, after he took a group of reporters out on a tour of the area around parts of the Gulf, but what do other scientists say?

As quiet desperation settles over the area Haley Barbour waxes nonsensical on Fox News ~slabbed

Poll: BP Oil Spill Response Rated Worse than Katrina
~"It's not a core competency of BP so we're trying to get them some help."
~BP Spokesman Thad 'The Impaler' Allen

7 comments:

Sop811 said...

In a broad sense LSU has won.

Ivor downplayed the impact of the spill on the coastline. Not good.

What a shame Editilla.

sop

Horatio Algeranon said...

Damage control by BP appears to be multi-pronged.


Dudley Do-Right (BP managing director, Robert Dudley), -- Oilcano Operations replacement for BP CEO Tony "I want my golf cart back" Hayward -- comments about BP's latest effort at "Damage Control": "The Cone of Silence"

Editilla said...

Yeah, sop, this thing with Ivor van Heerden has just about broken my heart.
I'm not a joiner. We threw a LOT of heart and soul into defending him.
Now he's doing press tours to cover the ass of the very people trying to kill us.
That is just too weird for me to get my head around right now, and my heart won't go near it.
Alas, we'll see what levees.org will do with this.
We're waiting.

Demeur said...

What these spin doctors fail to realize is that we in the blogisphere have boots on the ground. The truth will get out.

Thanks for all your good work here.

Horatio Algeranon said...

Everything that is done by BP has to be seen through the lens of "liability reduction".

Vérité Parlant said...

Great catch!

New Orleans Ladder said...

Well, Thanks Y'allz.
Ms Parlant, I follow you for the catches.
Ho, that is what bothers me the most about Van Heerden's public statements, to wit: he is engaging in Jury Tainting for BP plain and simple. He is grossly underestimating the impact of this oil crime, which will definitely matter in court when everyone needs to eat BP.
That really bothers me. It isn't as much that he has to work. Hell everyone in South Louisiana it seems must now work for BP after our President allowed them to take charge of our assfucking.
So he's gotta work as a coastal scientist, but Why is Van Heerden doing Press Tours for BP and the Oil Industry, while everyone else from sick clean-up workers to beach tourists are CENSORED from even taking cell phone pics of the coasts????
Why? How can Ivor van Heerden speak to the Press and yet none of the rest of the citizenry actually impacted by this crime that Van Heerden says is "OVERSTATED"???
I still can't get my mind around that. Ivor van Heerden... I just can't do the Judas thing. It hurts too much.
But my sense of abject betrayal by someone I threw it all for is Nothing compared to the pain our coast will feel as a result of his bull shit.
That is what really bothers me.
The babies who will be born into this hell with defects, the grain belt stained by the blood of this black swan, the people with their 100 year stares.
The Pelican, blinded by the gobs of oil that Van Heerden has said is only on "tens of miles" of coastline.
The Devil is actually an honest dealer, yet this is another game all together.