From New Orleans all the way to Florida’s prime beach locales of Pensacola, Fort Lauderdale and the precious Keys, folks are mad, made angry by a seemingly unconquerable oil spill, damage to the environment that parallels the one inflicted on a pristine Prince William Sound so many years ago.

The outrage has been roiling for weeks on end, ever since the drilling rig exploded and men were lost at sea.

And now in the midst of all the mishaps and efforts at recovery comes the success of BP in finally capping the wellhead.  Success at least for now since many are hedging and assuring the public that nothing is guaranteed.  There could be underground leaks, there may be potential failures ahead in the relief wells currently under construction.  Deepwater emergency operations such as these have been rare since for the better part of its existence the Oil Industry has developed its emergency scenarios and risk mitigation capabilities on dry land.  Underwater massive blowouts and crisis management is an almost new field to the small fraction of energy exploitation that is processed in this hazardous environment.

The villagers are fuming.  The compensation to boatmen actively involved in the recovery and cleanup efforts with BP may seem fair enough.  As reported by Reuters and several other newswire agencies many small businesses are not actively part of the flotilla.BP has announced that it will compensate fishermen for their claims but that their total compensation will be adjusted for any income they receive from being hired as part of the recovery fleet the company is currently operating along the Gulf Coast.

The conspiracy theorists and their allies that have for decades implied OPEC controls the Energy markets would have handed the reigning champs the crown on a silver plate.  The American Public would have had a large hand in helping bring about this nightmarish vision into existence.

And this is not far from anyone’s foggy memory but aside from the seven “old ladies” there were their sisters, or aunts, which are and were large vertically-integrated government-owned energy groups such as Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia), Pemex (Mexico), and Petrobas (Brazil).

In fact in 2007, the Financial Times produces its own list of the new Seven Sisters, albeit almost exclusively state-owned oil and gas power players, including Russia’s Gazprom and China’s CNPC.

So should BP be made fully-responsible for the damage?

It’s anything but a “Catch 22” as some smiling guests may say at a gala for the privilege of your ears.  Nowadays a “Catch 22” is emblematic of a snow job on the hill for Mr. Homer Simpson aka Mr. Plow.  A “Catch 22” is a statement that you are being tagged as a fool and taken for a ride.

It’s really more of a “Catch 44” because it does not exist in common parlance and if you sum up the number 44 it adds to 8 which ought to signal to all members present that we are eating from the dish that’s being served up.

I for one would rather have Ten Angry Fishermen rather than see them become One.

Good luck to us all.


Cordially yours,

Mike Gomez,
Editor-in-Chief



Ten Angry Fishermen copyrighted 2010 Citadel Consulting Group LLC.  All rights reserved.

Hot Cough-E N' Shock-Lit Shock-Lots from Meta Cafes 
By Francis Benetti for the West Coast Midnight Run

Dateline:  November 3, 2008
Los Angeles, CA


We’re not exactly sure when it happened, how come or why but we just noticed that MetaCafe started posting adult, no-holds-barred video clips with sex scenes from American-made, as well as foreign, films and porn shops.

Please allow us to emphasize.  MetaCafe did not create this trend.

The trend is not startling in itself.  Any person that has done sufficient web browsing would have noticed the level of saturation of nudity and porn content.  This trend has been with us almost from day one when the entire world wide web was booted into operation.

What is startling is that the level of nudity is in the form of easily accessible videos, albeit labeled 18+ Category.  However at MetaCafe there is not a single effective roadblock in sight for minors who can easily pick any of a dozen highly explicit sex scenes and enjoy them any time and anywhere away from the watchful eyes of their guardians.

As an adult single, I personally do not take offense from adult websites and porn on the web – under certain constraints and limits.  However I am in my 50s and although my exposure to mature content on the web has been since my late 20s, I was well beyond the age of consent and well beyond having had a Con-Sensual relationship with the opposite sex.

In 1977, Oak Industries, Norman Lear's Chartwell Enterprises and Jerry Perenchio blazed new frontiers when they launched ON-TV(1), a premium cable movie channel which helped breach the path from the local liquor store, the adult bookstore and the lesser known adult movie theaters scenes into the living rooms of America.  Soon thereafter, circa 1982, Playboy followed suit and initiated highly specialized adult fare on their own premium channels.

At the time this was happening, the internet infrastructure was still being developed.  No sooner had the world wide web been kicked onto the circuit in 1991 (2) that softcore and eventually hardcore pornography followed.

The years tumbled and soon specialized adult entertainment events emerged creating connotations for locales such as Palm Springs, New Orleans and many well known spots on the Florida Coast with the Girls Gone Wild phenomenon.  Thinly disguised adult fare such as beach parties and spring breaks became the modus operandi for legitimizing soft and hardcore adult entertainment.

Since then we have had many so-called dating sites that offered “real” adults posting photos of themselves in the buff, videos of singles and couples in the nude or engaging in all kinds of sexual activities.  Never mind that many of these sites offered thinly disguised venues for porn companies, sites which for the most part boasted fake profiles created by the company running the site simply as means of renting porn content.  Never mind that Netflix offers the consumer the option of downloading films in the complete and total privacy of your home, while indulging the smooth convenience of "lap top" sugar-coated cookies (my French pal at the other side of the Irish river informs me that "flics" is the street term for cops).

Never mind that space on the internet such as MSN Myspace is flooded with internet porn, many of which were only a few years ago simply photo stills.  The trend has moved to video clips.

Highly popular sites such as Flickr, advertised for lovers of photos and photography and billed as the “best online photo sharing and management application in the world” quickly became awash with adult space including photos and videos from individuals and communities into the “alternative” lifestyles, from gay and lesbian sex, to kink, fetish and the “swinging” lifestyle:  Couples exchanging their mates and sharing with other couples and/or singles.

Yet despite all of these “sexual evolutions” over the past few years, most of these developments had been spreading over the internet with an ever weakening system of controls.  Many of the dating sites mentioned made use of regulated access and interested internet surfers were required to have a credit card for "age verification" or you had to purchase your subscription.  Many of the freely available adult communities at MSN and the now defunct Yahoo Groups observe a number of protocols and the website content itself is under “lock and key”.  On some sites, you need a password and have to be either invited or have to petition to join.

As identity theft and a host of other problems emerged with internet security, invasion of privacy and spyware bots, some companies may have perceived a loss of their traffic.  For those acting as observers of internet technologies there has been a move to more lax "controls" and "checkpoints" as their effectiveness has come under fire and criticism.

With Flickr, it has become ever easier to access these groups and content.  In becoming a member of the Flickr adult scene, the web surfer does not need any kind of verification, the individual (or minor in this hypothetical case) can simply create a (profile) file and list their age being over 21 then search the groups using adult keywords and request an invite.  That is all there is.  If you can wait a few hours you are admitted.  With Flickr you need to register as a member.

But now MetaCafe has managed to open the nightclub scene to anyone and everyone.  The adult sex clips referenced here can be accessed by anyone, without going through the motions of becoming a member of this site.  All an internet browser need do is simply type the MetaCafe address in their browser and then select the 18+ Category, once at the welcome page.  There is a token “family filter” which is a button that the web surfer clicks consenting that they are older than 18.  But that is it.  The web surfer is not required to register as a member.

Click and Presto!!!!  They are offered a smorgasbord of explicit sex videos regardless of whether you are 90 or a seven year old.

As mentioned earlier, MetaCafe is not responsible for this trend.  They have only pushed the bar a tiny increment lower.  But that is all takes.  A few subtle moves every now and then.

And how long will it take before another company or organization takes the baton and pushes the bar even lower?

It may not be long before the standard for acceptable nudity and sexual content display is well below the lowest common denominator and… well… deep into the dirt.

All we can do for now is ask ourselves, “What’s next America?”

As publishers no one would understand our yearning to be the leader in freedom and in setting the curve for open mindedness and tolerance but have we for once stepped over an almost non-existing threshold?  It is so easy rolling back the clock with Daylight Savings.  Can we ever roll back the clock in this department?  Will we soon be raising our children for having sex before they reach puberty?  Will adults in a decade from now be engaging in sex with pubescent children?  Will adults continue to encroach on youth in our obsession with youthful appearances and the next sexual “high”?

With adult entertainment speading onto every corner of the planet with the help of the internet, the answer does not lie with our leaders but with each and every member of communities and towns, large and small, across the nation and those of our friends and allies.

 
Reference Notes: (1).     Wikipedia.org
                          (2).     INRIA/W3C

Copyrighted 2008 Citadel Consulting Group LLC.  All rights reserved.

The West Coast Midnight Run                  presents its D'Ark Night Film Festival an independent entertainment production

Enough bitching anyways, hopefully you will enjoy the D'Ark Night Film Festival and do take a minute of your time, type a commentary and drop it for me personally because I will be reviewing for myself the take of the day.


"Mikey Likes It" Gomez
Chief Editor of the West Coast Midnight Run


PS: For a variety of editorial reasons the West Coast Midnight Run at this time declined on launching a documentary film, For Whom the Belles Toll, on its own magazine website and instead gave permission to a colleague for editing the documentary into a fan-made non-profit short film that is being showcased at a variety of portals including Youtube, whom we thank diligently for their forum and hospitality.


Copyrighted July 3, 2008 by Citadel Consulting Group LLC.  All rights reserved.