Jen Marlowe on her play, There is a Field, the life and death of Palestinian Aseel Asleh in context
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org www.donkeysaddle.org For information on how to do a dramatic reading or performance of the play, There is a Field.
Jen Marlowe is an award winning filmmaker, human rights activist, author and playwright. We talk about her new play, ‘There is a Field’ as she organizes simultaneous readings throughout the month of October. It is to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Israeli Palestinian, Aseel Asleh.
Aseel Asleh was 17-years-old. He was shot to death by Israeli security forces in 2000. Jen Marlowe tells his story, talks about his writing, the words and stories of his family and friends, and explains the historical meaning of his life.
The Israeli security forces charged Aseel Asleh as he stood watching a peaceful demonstration. He ran and they chased him into an olive grove. As his friends and horrified parents watched the Israeli security agents hit him with a rifle butt knocking him to the ground. He fell out of sight and then they all heard the shot… “You can come and get him now” an Israeli said to Asleh’s parents. The evidence points to an execution style shooting of a young man who dreamed of peace, not war, and friendships, not hatreds.
Jen Marlowe explains how she has developed her play to tell the story of one individual who lost his life as a way to help people understand the broader crisis facing Palestinians inside Israel. Jen Marlowe has was a friend to Aseel Asleh and remains close to his family.
Underwriting for this program was brought to you by JeremyRHammond.com, political analysis from outside the standard framework. He is founder and editor of ForeignPolicyJournal.com and a recipient of the Project Censored 2010 Award. “New at JeremyRHammond.com, the piece, ‘Turning Back From the Point of No Return: Implications of the Threat to Bomb Iran.’ He wrote it to counter the public narrative arguing that an air strike on Iran might be necessary in order to prevent a nuclear holocaust.” An Atlantic Magazine article by Goldberg indicates that an Iran attack might be necessary to ‘prevent’a nuclear holocaust.
Talk Nation Radio for August 19, 2010
Dahr Jamail, Gulf Seafood Not Safe, Idrees Kamal, Pakistan Aid Effort
(Scroll down to transcript, and to see other Talk Nation Radio coverage on chemical dispersant. Dr. Samantha Joye, for example, explained that the use of chemical dispersant presents another environmental problem, as they can be more toxic than the oil itself to some species.)
In late July both the FDA and NOAA announced that they were giving the go ahead for seafood to be harvested from certain areas in the Gulf of Mexico. They said testing showed the seafood was safe, yet this was very premature according to Journalist Dahr Jamail.
We interviewed him to talk about his dramatic revelations in a Truthout.org story August 16, 2010. See: ‘Uncovering the Lies that are Sinking the Oil‘ his story, August 16,2010, “Uncovering The Lies That Are Sinking The Oil”. Dahr Jamail has also been providing reports to Inter Press Service about his investigations into the short and long term impacts of the BP oil disaster.
Plus, helping Pakistanis help themselves: In flood ravaged Pakistan, Idrees Kamal is part of a coalition of Pakistani rights and anti poverty groups working frantically to save lives. You can find CRSD at http://www.crsdpk.org. We were able to reach Idrees Kamal in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. His group, CRSD, Citizen Rights and Sustainable Development, is doing what it can locally to help thousands of flood victims.
TRANSCRIPT in process
Talk Nation Radio for August 19, 2010
Produced by, Dori Smith, in Storrs, CT, Syndicated with Pacifica Network
Background Dahr Jamail’s August 16, 2010 story in Truthout.org focuses on the lies being told by BP and U.S. Government officials as they try to downplay and in a way cover up the long term damage from BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. See: ‘Uncovering the Lies that are Sinking the Oil‘. His August 2, 2010 story in Inter Press Service describes his investigations into the short and long term impacts of the BP oil disaster.
In late July both the FDA and NOAA announced that approved seafood harvests from Gulf waters was safe. In an email to Talk Nation Radio, FDA spokesperson Meghan Scott answered our questions by saying: “We can not give a blanket statement that all seafood from all Gulf waters is safe”.
Background on Pakistan
In areas where flood waters have receded, Pakistani community leaders like our guest, Idrees Kamal, are doing what they can to help the people of Pakistan. Idrees Kamal studied social development at Peshawar University and has been working with the group, CRSD, (Citizen Rights and Sustainable Development) at hastily put together relief facilities. CRSD is non–profit, non-partisan, and non-sectarian. They work on poverty and labour rights, political rights, health, education, woman’s development, child labor issues, and environmental pollution as well as human development. CRSD founders/Directors have been working with community for last almost 30 years and they have an experience in management in the sectors like poverty alleviation, workers education, labour rights, political rights, health, education, women development, child Labor, environmental pollution , human development and capacity building of the NGOs, CSOs, and CBOs .The BOD have a vast working experience and knowledge to its credit in mass mobilization.
The relief efforts of CRSD are being conducted with help from the Khattak Jirga and the Women Action Forum (Rukhsinda Naz,) who are providing tea. (See also, Ali Shah of Union council Akbarpora for Flood affectees of Mohib Banda). They are providing help at schools and other types of buildings that are usable in: Tarkha, Kurvi, Natal, Banda Seikh Ismial, Banda Malahan, Kurvi, Momin Garai,Amankot. The government has given them some supplies.
Contact Idrees Kamal at crsdpk@gmail.com. He has also been using his Facebook page to call attention to their relatively small but effective sustainable development group turned relief office. They are providing what they can of hot meals plus supplementary food from the UN in addition to sanitation kits and medical care to help people maintain themselves and try to stave off dehydration, hunger related diseases and more serious ones such as Cholera.
Background on journalist Dahr Jamail’s investigation into short and long term health and environmental impacts of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Transcript:“They are basically helping set the table so that people are going to be eating extremely contaminated seafood,” excerpt of interview with Dahr Jamail, August 19, 2010.
Dori Smith: Dahr Jamail’s August 16,2010 story in Truthout.org, “Uncovering The Lies That Are Sinking The Oil,” is a shocking tale of fishermen turned whistle blower over the government’s failure to protect them. On August 2nd he wrote a detailed report for Inter Press Service news about the long term impact of massive quantities of the chemical dispersant Corexit used by BP. He now criticizes the government for reporting that Gulf seafood is safe without specific testing for Corexit.
First, we were able to reach Idrees Kamal in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (see map). His group, CRSD, Citizen Rights and Sustainable Development, is doing what it can locally to help thousands of flood victims. Groups like his have been given special permission to help. They have opened relief camps at schools in District Nowshera where waters have receded, but much of Pakistan remains flooded.
Photo by Kevin Frayer, See AP story by ASHRAF KHAN
Idrees Kamal: We are working here with the help of philanthropists and some other organizations like (Education First) Women Action Forum, SPO and we are working with Khattack Jirga and the Women Action Forum, (Rukhsinda Naz who are providing tea.) So they are providing us with some uncooked food and then we cook in a school Tarkha at our main camp and then we provide that, distribute that cooked food to eight centers. Three in Tarkha, as well as (a middle girl’s school) Natal, where 300 people are living, flood affected are living, and Kurvi, where another 300 people are living and then (unclear) the government middle school, we are also providing there. We are also providing some hygiene kits from the government and have also provided some medical facilities, (serving) until now some 10,000 people.
Dori Smith: In Pakistan Idrees Kamal echoing the sentiments of U.N Secretary General Ban Ki Moon in calling for more help. Ban Ki Moon is calling Pakistan’s great flood the worst humanitarian disaster he has ever seen.
Idrees Kamal: In my life I have never seen this type of catastrophic, devastating flood in our country, for it is huge. So I also appeal to the Americans, to the other people who are living in America, please help our nation. I endorse the statement of the U.N. Secretary General and I also want to please help our people so death can be minimized. We are living in very catastrophic, dangerous, unsafe, and in a food crisis, situation. In two to three months the situation will be worsened.
Dori Smith: Idrees Kamal in North-West Pakistan. CRSDPK.ORG is the web site. They are non profit, non partisan and non-sectarian, working in coalition now on an emergency basis to help flood victims. You can write to them at: crsdpk@gmail.com (Phone, 92 91 2247100)
Journalist Dahr Jamail has been covering the Gulf oil spill and touring the region doing an investigation into short and long term health affects. He writes for Inter-Press Service and many other news outlets. Dahr Jamail welcome.
Dahr Jamail: Thanks Dori.
DS: Just tell us what you are seeing as you tour the Gulf of Mexico.
DJ: Well it’s really amazing to be down here in the Gulf and seeing everything first hand and seeing the destruction and the devastation and then to have that contrasted with what we see in the media, what we see coming from the Obama administration. I’ll spare wasting time on that, we all know that they are trying to spin this that it’s over and the oil is gone or mostly recovered and things are getting back to normal down here and its the opposite. Just yesterday for example we went out from Port Boshane which is down near Grand Isles in Southeast Louisiana and we went out to several islands out there to inspect what kind of shape they are in, what kind of shape the marshes are in, and we were in sheen literally all day.
We traveled probably about eighty miles by boat round trip through the day and we were in sheen non stop and we went to a couple of the islands and got out and walked around on them and it was nothing but destruction. Tar balls everywhere, tar mats, some of them probably four feet across all over the shore, crabs crawling on them and such.
We went in and found inland pools that were just completely sodden with literally brown liquid oil floating on top of these pools inside the marsh grasses. The bottom, the mud is just black with oil, and we went in and dug around a bit then and when you stir this stuff up it smells so intense you have to just leave because you get dizzy it just smells just awful. And this is the situation out there and again all of the coastlines of many of these islands are just completely burned up with oil. The oil hits the marsh, it turns it black and brown and it kills it, and it starts eroding promptly. And that’s everywhere you see, long rows of white PVC pipe that they use to try to hold in place the absorbent booms with the booms over time slips out of those pipes and then washes up on the marsh and its actually up above the water its not doing anything other than bringing the oil that’s already in the absorbent boom into the marsh further. That’s what we saw everywhere we went.
Driving back into port we passed over another large sheen of oil but this one had clearly been hit with dispersant and with the kind of telling white foam across the top and we have photos of all of it and (here) and we will be posting them before too long.
DS: Now you have seen aircraft dispensing the dispersant in the waters in the Gulf of Mexico?
DJ: I haven’t seen it personally, I mean this is known. There are coast guard photos of it, this is what they have been doing from the very beginning out at the source but even more recently this is what they have been doing inland. And not so much aircraft but actually we’ve been talking to a lot of fishermen in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana, all saying the same thing. Many of them eye witnesses to basically out of state contractors coming in, going out at night in boats, using a particular type of boat called a Carolina skiff which is basically just a work boat, and going out with tanks, 375 gallon white tanks filled with dispersant, and going out at night and spraying oiled areas that are found by the fishermen who generally populate the Vessels of Opportunity program, (VOO) who are supposedly out there finding the oil and cleaning it up.
Well basically what it looks like is happening is BP is basically using the fishermen in the VOO program to find the oil and then they call in the coordinates and then they are instructed to leave, and physically not allowed to clean it up, this is another part of this program. Then once they get away, either shortly thereafter that or that night these out of state contractors come in, in the Carolina skiffs, and spray the area.
They can spray up to 150 feet from the boat with dispersant, and then the fishermen in the VOO program will come out the next day and go to the same place and they will find the oil sunk, and then what’s left is this kind of pasty white foamy residue on the surface. We’ll be posting photos of this as well but it is very very clear, what’s happened, and then often times when its in shallow water when the oil goes down to the bottom as the day progresses and gets hotter that oil then bubbles back up to the surface.
DS: Why do you think it is that the government fell for this idea of saturating the Gulf of Mexico with this dispersant?
DJ: Well I don’t think its really a question of the government falling for it. I think it’s a fact of the government being complicit in it. This could not happen without the government helping to make it happen and that’s been clear from the very start. BP has taking the lead on this. They have gone from claiming no oil was coming out of the damaged well to a thousand barrels a day, to five thousand, and then ratcheted on up and now we know its somewhere closer to 100,000 a day that were coming out.
All through that process they would make an announcement and it would simply be parroted by the U.S. Government, usually in the form of the sock puppet of Thad Allen. That’s just one example.
We’ve talked about the dispersant and the Corexit, the toxicity of it: The EPA has done its own studies in the past and we wrote about this about a month ago where even according to some EPA’s own studies on Corexit, when they did a test of it with shrimp 50% of the shrimp exposed to a very dilute amount of it died immediately and then most of the rest of the shrimp died shortly thereafter.
So the EPA understands this and then since that time we’ve had several EPA whistle blowers the best known of which being Hugh Kaufman talking about how horribly toxic this stuff is. It’s an industrial solvent that’s just terrible. I mean the list of how it will impact you is about a page long. (Listen to Kaufman and Dahr Jamail on Democracy Now on this topic here)
So that information is there and yet we have the EPA as an organization, and the rest of the entire government, involved in this situation including NOAA, (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,) OSHA, (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) NIOSH, (National Institute for Occupational Safety) and Health, we could go down a long list. Basically they are just helping BP carry out their plan.
The Coast Guard has repeatedly denied involvement in spraying dispersant, even at one point I saw a Coast Guard fellow saying that no dispersant whatsoever had been sprayed in Florida, despite, I have several eye witnesses who have seen the C-130s come in off the coast of Destin Florida or Valusia Florida and spray it all through the month of July, well past the deadline of July 15th, when they claimed no more was being sprayed. So we have government complicity in this thing all the way through.
I think one of the crown jewels of that complicity would be Obama coming down to the coast and taking his daughter out into the water for a photo op to try to show people that everything’s just fine. And if you go down the coast a few dozen miles, or however far it is from Panama City to Destin, you are going to find giant fish kills on the bottom. (See Earth Justice on dead fish, Florida and elsewhere, litigation, food safety)
You are going to find fish kill so intense as of a week ago that they are closing public boat ramps. You are going to find tar balls still washing up to the beach. I just got more pictures right now from a contact over there, dead wildlife, massive amounts of dead fish floating around under sea on the bottom of the area over there. And yet we have Obama who basically acts, putting himself in a position where he is acting like a really good PR flak for BP.
DS: You are listening to Talk Nation Radio, an interview with Journalist Dahr Jamail. I’m Dori Smith. In Late July the FDA and NOAA declared Gulf seafood safe. While most major networks were interviewing happy fishermen glad to be back to work, Dahr Jamail was touring much further into the region to speak with those who said they saw the use of dispersant far beyond what the government had admitted. The government agencies had been giving fisheries the go ahead prior to having a specific test for the dispersant:
NOAA chemist Gina Ylitalo: “Yes, the seafood in the Gulf is safe. It’s a safe as we can make this.” During the same interview Ylitalo admitted they were still working on a test for the dispersant: “We are developing a chemical test to analyze for the dispersant in the seafood samples”. (See U.S. Government info that it is ‘safe’ here) and (MSNBC report here.
FDA spokesperson Meghan Scott answered our questions via email, saying, “We cannot give a blanket statement that all seafood from all Gulf waters is safe”.
We asked Dahr Jamail to comment on the statement of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke after traveling to Louisiana that quote; “We need to let the American people know that the seafood being harvested from the Gulf is safe to eat“.
DJ: Well I guess I would like the opportunity to take this individual, and his family, maybe he has kids, to this inland lagoon we found yesterday and they can swim in the oil, and they can swim in the sheen, and the vile odors that are in the off gassing that’s happening in there. We saw crabs crawling all through it, they can eat some of those crabs, they can fry them up. You know I guess that would be my response.
It’s infuriating to me to see these people. I mean that individual, he and so many other people in the Obama administration like him, are literally criminally complicit. They are basically helping set the table so that people are going to be eating extremely contaminated seafood.
When we are talking about Corexit, it’s carcinogenic, it’s mutagenic, if you are a pregnant woman and you are exposed to it your fetus will die, period. That’s how toxic this stuff is. (Earth Justice report, Patti Goldman, Congress couldn’t stop Corexit use.)
It’s a neurotoxin. It causes respiratory system depression, just a myriad of things that this does, and they are not even testing for it, and their test for oil is a smell test. They pick up a fish or a crab or a shrimp and if they can’t smell something then they call it good. It’s part of their campaign to show everybody that everything is OK. We can get back to business as usual, BP can keep drilling out in the Gulf, trying to get people to come back down to the Gulf Coast because the economies are in a shambles because of this. A big part of that is trying to share that the seafood is OK to eat, and that’s just this one aspect of this giant PR campaign that BP and the government have been running to try to show people, Oh look everything is great, we can just get back to business as usual, now go back to sleep.
I think that that’s part of what this whole seafood situation is, and I think it’s probably one of the most insidious parts because it’s literally going to be endangering the lives, directly, of untold numbers of people across the United States. (NPR story facilitates PR campaign here).
DS: Dahr Jamail, Can you confirm the use of the Corexit dispersant in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana?
DJ: The dispersant is being used in all four of those states without a doubt. I talked to VOO program fishermen who have been eyewitnesses to dispersant being used either by airplane or by boat or both, in all four states, and I have also spoken with people who have been exposed to them and are suffering with health effects from that in all four states as well. So there is no question that they have been used, sometimes extremely heavily, in all four states.
DS: Why do you think it is that this is going on? Why is the Corexit which you say is a neurotoxin, dangerous to pregnant women, a carcinogen, why is it being used really?
DJ: It is being used to hide the oil, the amount of oil for several reasons. One is that BP will be fined for every barrel, the final estimate that the government decides is the amount that was gushed into the Gulf. Then the amount recovered, they are going to be charged per barrel in liability for that amount and so its all about protecting BP’s bottom line, that the less oil that they estimate, the less oil that they ‘find,’ the less of a fine BP is going to have to pay. It’s just that simple.
Also, kind of dovetailing into that is the less visible oil there is, then the less work there is for the VOO program and the fact that BP can get that shut down also minimizing their liability. So we have seen the response workers numbers go from around a maximum of about 45,000 to now it’s well below 30,000 and being chopped down by the day.
So I am speaking directly with VOO people who are going out in their boats, who know where the oil is, and are literally being called off and not allowed to go collect it. So that if they can go a few days in an area like what happened in Mississippi recently and say well there is just not a whole lot being found–which is total nonsense because these guys are finding it and then as I said before they are not being allowed to clean it up–instead they are going out and sending private contractors out to sink it with dispersant: That basically means at the end of the day that BP is going to start shutting down these programs in different states as Mississippi has done, and pay out less money for the response effort. At the end of the day that’s going to help them with their bottom line. So that’s what this whole thing is about.
DS: You also write in your Truthout.org piece that not much money has been paid out?
DJ: No, you know of this so called $20 billion dollar compensation fund, which is a joke of an amount, because when someone loses their entire livelihood or dies early because they have been exposed to dispersant, or, we have had four suicides so far directly related to this disaster and counting, what is that worth? I mean how do you put a price tag on that? You know if someone’s entire livelihood, they lived down on the coast, they are a third generation shrimper, their kids are in all of their community is there, and now you have basically wiped that out for an indefinite amount of time. How much is that worth? Is that a million dollars? Is that two million dollars?
To put an overall price tag on this thing I think is also degrading and insulting to people down here. One thing they have tried to do, the Obama administration put Ken Feinberg in charge of this fund. He is being paid by BP. He will not disclose the amount he is being paid by BP, and he is basically acting as this kind of apologist and intermediary between the Obama administration and BP. At the end of the day he is completely complicit in both and particularly with BP. So as a result of that people who are filing claims, so far, most of these people have not seen one dime. I have yet to talk to one person who said, yes they caused us damage, yes they showed up and helped me determine it was this amount; I agreed that was fair amount for me to be compensated, and then they have paid me or started to pay me. I have not met one person in all four states so far down here that can say that.
Mississippi also is part of that PR effort, also Bill Walker was responsible for this as well. They have opened it up, you can go shrimp, there are no bans right now in Mississippi that I am aware of. But the people that go fish, guess what? They are not catching anything. Because like I said before, when the shrimp hit Corexit, the dispersant, they die. Fifty percent of them die upon contact and then most of the rest die shortly thereafter.
We went out in the boat yesterday from South East Louisiana and opened up some of the areas down there for shrimping. We literally, right when we pulled out of the dock, we passed two shrimpers coming in and our captain asked one of them, hey how did you do?
He said, I didn’t catch anything, not a thing. He said well how much do you usually catch? And the guy said, a thousand pounds. Shortly after that we passed another guy coming in and he had caught 18 shrimp, ‘one-eight’, and these are people that usually go out and catch hundreds if not sometimes a thousand pounds on a big day. And they are not catching anything, and we were out in bays that were open and not one shrimper out there because people know, look, I’m not going to go shrimp because I’m probably not going to catch anything and if I do there is basically no market for it. Most folks wouldn’t eat anything that comes out of there. It’s so toxic and its so bad down here that literally people out of Mississippi are going out and shrimping and they are not catching anything despite the feds opening the water.
I think that’s one of the scariest parts of this whole situation. Not only do we just have complete deregulation for the corporations to do what they want, but we have a government that’s basically acting as apologists for them and helping them pretend like this thing isn’t so bad, and we can open up this area for fishing and people can eat the food that comes out of it, and it couldn’t be much more toxic than it is right now.
It’s a wasteland in a lot of the areas down here and we’ve got the pictures to prove it, and the facts. And yet, we have a government that’s trying to basically race seafood back out onto the market. That is a really scary situation. It just underscores the fact that you cannot trust this government for anything with this situation down here in the Gulf, not one thing. They have proven themselves as complicit and untrustworthy as BP has from the very beginning.
DS: Well the Joint Task Force has said some 1.8 million gallons of total dispersant applied, they are saying approximately 577,000 gallons still available, although nobody really seems to have set a clear limit. Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has said that with the new documents about the dispersant, the validity of those numbers are now in question.
DJ: I am really glad that he is doing that because the validity of all of the numbers put out by BP and the government related to this disaster should be questioned, absolutely. I mean we have got the criminals cleaning up the crime scene. BP with the help of the federal government.
Right now, what’s going on at the well? You know we have to take their word that there is a cap and that its holding and that appears to be the case. But we have no idea about seeps, and there has been a scientist reporting on seeps coming out of the area of the well head that could lead to a further degradation and another rupture in the future that would be far worse than what we just dealt with. (Scientist working for NOAA warns about oxygen loss from all of the seeps, methane gases, and plumes, in addition to the gigantic oil spill, see Dr. Samantha Joye, a marine biologist, here.)
Certainly, I think the amount of dispersant that has been used, and that they continue to use? I think it’s very safe to assume that this roughly 2 million gallon figure that’s been put out by the government and BP, I wouldn’t trust that figure for a second. There is no way we could prove it. There is no way we can verify that that’s all that has been used. We know that they are continuing to spray it. We know that they have lied, the Coast Guard, I’ve got a guy on tape lying on camera saying the dispersant have never been used in Florida, and the C-130s have never been used to dispense them in Florida and I’ve got eyewitnesses in several areas that directly contradict that.
I’ve got a guy in that piece that I talk about who was hit by dispersant from a C-130 just earlier this month off the coast of Florida. And that’s just one example. I mean we could go on for hours on the amount of lying that’s going on by BP and the government. We feel that this story that was released yesterday is very important in trying to bring some more attention to how insidious this is and what kind of program they are using to try to really cover up, temporarily at least, the scale of this disaster and to minimize BP’s liability.
DS: What about one of your sources, James “Catfish” Miller. Tell us about the risks that he is taking and also what on earth he and others like him are going to do now?
DJ: Well these are open ended questions and there are not a lot of answers to those right now. I mean that is the big question that I think we need to keep bringing attention to is what are these people going to do? Right now another layer to it is just with the Vessels of Opportunity program, that was basically just set up to try to keep employed the fishermen whose lives were completely destroyed by this oil disaster. So it basically took on about 30,000 commercial fishermen and now they are cutting that program down by the day. So while that program has existed we have had this false economy along the Gulf where these people have been able to keep working and keep bringing money in and paying their bills, and those in the VOO program are making good money on the days when they are out there working. But that program is being cut away as we speak. I am going to be real surprised if there is much of it left at all in place in another two or three months from now. So when that’s gone and that false economy is gone, what do these people have? They have nothing.
The scientists and the biologists I’m talking with are very clear about the fact that we are going to be looking at years of recovery if not twenty to thirty years. So when shrimping season opens up next year, or crabbing season, or various fishing seasons, and there is basically not much there to catch, then what do these people do? When there is not a VOO program? What do these people do then?
DS: But here you have a resident saying to you, “last week we were sitting on our boat and you could smell the chemicals. It smelled like death. It was like mosquito spray but ten times stronger”. Then he says the following day he felt sick. There are so many witnesses, it’s almost like why take the risk of telling these big lies which is what your report in Truthout.org is about?
DJ: I think there are people speaking up. There are fishermen like James Miller and others who are basically putting it all on the line because they feel that its so important that people understand what’s really happening and how dangerous the situation is and the lies that are being perpetrated and kept going by the government and BP.
They are willing to just put it all out there because it’s the moral thing to do and they are angry. They feel like they’ve been completely had, and left hung out to dry by the government that is supposed to be watching their backs in a situation like this. So that’s basically why they are doing it. I think it’s really an honorable thing for these guys to be doing and they are definitely putting all on the line by doing so. (See Dahr’s update here.)
DS: Dahr Jamail, finally just comment on some of the headlines about Iraq this week, pretty grim. It’s like 2004 all over again. You know a devastating car bombing, dozens of casualties, and in the news Nouri al Maliki (acting PM) and former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi: no government still, months after the election.
DJ: what is happening in Iraq now, I mean it’s clockwork. You and I were predicting this stuff years ago Dori. And you know we have a government, it’s a puppet government that can’t stand on its own two feet, it was never set up to do so by the Americans, and now just in the last 48 hours we have seen General Petraeus saying, well you know we are on schedule to leave and we are going to have people out by 2011, the deadline just like we set up, but if you guys ask us to stay we’ll stay. (See Dahr’s August 20, 2010 story with Abdu Rahman in Inter Press Service News here.)
This comes in the wake of what was it last week the head general in Iraq says we won’t be able to stand on our own until at least 2020, we are going to need the Americans to stay until then. So they were just laying out the propaganda, getting everybody ready, getting everybody primed up to digest the facts when they come out and say, oh well it looks like we are not going to be leaving after all we were ready to but the poor little Iraqis want us to stay. That’s a very kind of tongue in cheek way to put it but I think it really clarifies how they have intended to run this thing all along. They have never had real intentions to pull out completely and I think that’s what we are seeing right now.
One thing that has been a success for the empire project is that the western oil companies have over these last years managed to get a pretty strong toe hold into Iraq’s oil market. So we’ve got several big oil corporations with the ability to start getting involved in Iraq’s oil production and selling and profiting on that. That along with the permanent bases there, you know I’ve had people, when I have given talks about Iraq in the past say well couldn’t you say from a Bush-Obama-empire-U.S.-empire-project perspective, say that that agenda did succeed?
I think as far as the permanent bases being there and the oil contracts for the western companies trying to get into Iraq’s oil, I think you could argue that, that yes they have succeeded.
DS: Dahr Jamail thank you so much for joining us today.
For Talk Nation Radio I’m Dori Smith, this program is produced in Storrs, CT and syndicated with Pacifica Network. Talknationradio.org for an archive of our work, talknationradio@gmail.com to write to us. Our music is by Fritz Heede. (See our blog here).
DS/8-20-10
Other Talk Nation Radio interviews about Corexit, chemical dispersant used widely in the Gulf of Mexico by British Petroleum:
Thursday, July 22, 2010, Leaks, Pressure, and Storm Risks in the Gulf of Mexico, interview with Dr. Samantha Joye and q/a with National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen. She has also said the use of chemical dispersant presents another environmental problem, as they can be more toxic than the oil itself to some species.
BP Tries to Disperse Concern amid Calls for Prosecutions and Reform, Jun 10, 2010, Then, former EPA investigator Scott West joins us to go over BP’s history of criminal negligence and catastrophe. He says the spill wouldn’t have happened if the Bush administration and Justice Department had backed his effort to prosecute BP officials. Dr. Ira Leifer is on the Government’s Flow Rate Tech Group. He confirms what he told the press, (McClatchy) that when you use BP’s own assessment of a worst case scenario, you get more like 100,000 barrels per day as a flow rate. See transcript.
Talk Nation Radio for June 2, 2010, BP Spill litigation, Earth Justice Attorney Patti Goldman, Plus ADHD and other Affects from Pesticides.
See more here, and update on how massive use of dispersant chemicals in the Gulf of Mexico is making Nalco, the manufacturer’s, stock go up here.
Underwriting for this program was brought to you by www.JeremyRHammond.com political analysis from outside the standard framework. Jeremy R. Hammond has been a guest on the show. He is founder and editor of ForeignPolicyJournal.com and a recipient of the Project Censored 2010 Award. In this month’s issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Jeremy discusses the impact of the war on Iraq with Mike Otterman, author of the new book “Erasing Iraq, The Human Costs of Carnage”. Also, see Deconstructing the Official Narrative on the U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq, Friday, August 20th, 2010.
Talk Nation Radio for August 12, 2010 John Atlas, Can Community Organizing make a come back in America?
New book, Seeds of Change about ACORN story
Part One of a Two Part Special on ACORN
Produced by Dori Smith
TRT: 29:00
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here and at Archive.org and Radio4all.net
John Atlas joins us for a two part series on his new book, Seeds of Change, the Story of ACORN, America’s most Controversial Anti Poverty Organizing Group. We’ll hear about the history of ACORN as members work to try to restart the organization.
The results of August 10, 2010 midterm primary elections in four states were informative in that there was record low turn out in three of the states. We decided to air this special on ACORN as a way of reflecting on the state of America’s electoral system, the media, and community organizing.
MidTerm Races: California hit a 90 year low for voter turn out. In 2008 we saw a 90-year high for voter turn out in California. But are these low voter turn out rates in states like Connecticut indicative of what the actual Midterm Elections 2010 will be like? Can community organizing make a come back in time to make a difference?
The State of Colorado was an exception with some 40% of voters turning out to vote in races that did have lots of interest due to community organizing for candidates with a populist message. (We’ll consider the Colorado race and the fact that they used mail in ballots in upcoming programs on the elections.)
John Atlas also outlines the story of fraud committed against ACORN in various states including Florida, as he tracks down the truth behind the sensational headlines about allegations of vote fraud by ACORN. In the end when ACORN was cleared the media never covered that part of the story.
We tend to think of ACORN as a group that organized poor voters, in many cases African Americans, who were disproportionately limited in their ability to vote. But if you were a victim of mortgage fraud, and if you are now facing soaring rental costs, ACORN’s model was designed to benefit you. Fair housing has been a big part of what ACORN did over the many years before it was brought down according to our guest, by high powered political figures like Karl Rove, some fake video and a willing media.
All of this makes John Atlas a suitable person to tell the ACORN story. He is the founder and current president of the National Housing Institute, which publishes the magazine, Shelterforce and here. A long time public interest lawyer, writer, and organizer, John Atlas takes us through the history of an organization created by people inspired by the civil rights movement.
ACORN’s roots date back to the 1960s, when the organization was working to help poor Americans organize themselves and build a political voice in their own communities.
The goals of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, have been to strengthen US democracy through voter registration drives in poor neighborhoods. They were all about getting the poor to organize themselves for a living wage, representation at banks and mortgage lending institutions, and for a wide range of projects to improve communities including better police protection.
Stories by or about John Atlas here here and here.
Underwriting Underwriting for this program was brought to you by JeremyRHammond.com, political analysis from outside the standard framework. Jeremy R. Hammond has been a guest on the show. He is founder and editor of ForeignPolicyJournal.com and a recipient of the Project Censored 2010 Award. In this month’s issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Jeremy discusses the impact of the war on Iraq with Mike Otterman, author of the new book “Erasing Iraq, The Human Costs of Carnage”.
Talk Nation Radio for August 5, 2010 Israel May Attack Iran, Journalist Gareth Porter, Coleen Rowley of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
TRT: 29:00
Produced by Dori Smith in Storrs, Connecticut
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here and at Archive.org and Radio4all.net
The Neocons are still angling for war with Iran, according to Gareth Porter, and Israel could be on the verge of making sure they get it. We’ll hear the rest of our conversation with journalist, author, and historian, Gareth Porter. And then former FBI Special Agent, Coleen Rowley of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity joins us about their warning to President Obama that Israel may bomb Iran.
The last time Coleen Rowley was issuing a warning it came in the form of a memo she wrote while still with the FBI. In 2002 she warned former Director Muller of her concerns about the way intelligence was reviewed prior to 9/11. (See, May 21, 2002, “An edited version of the agent’s 13-page letter,” –and Coleen Rowley: “I base my concerns on my relatively small, peripheral but unique role in the Moussaoui investigation in the Minneapolis Division prior to, during and after September 11th”), and writes that that Bush’s policies in the so-called war on terror in response to 9/11 were unsound.
On August 3, 2010, Consortium News published their open letter to President Obama warning him that Israel may bomb Iran. The group argues that the climate is right for such an attack because Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has garnered support within Congress and sees himself as in the catbird seat with America.
Former FBI special agent Coleen Rowley joins us to talk about the warning to Obama. In it they mentioned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot be trusted, that he and other Israeli leaders are after regime change, and are not strictly concerned about a future Iranian nuclear weapon.
They proposed to President Obama that he do what Bush/Cheney did in 2007, send admiral Mullen to Tel Aviv to meet with the Israeli military. He should tell them not to even consider attacking Iran, they said.
As we heard last week journalist, author and historian Gareth Porter is warning of Israeli influence in the U.S. and new threats of an Israeli and US attack on Iran. Gareth Porter is author of several books including Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”.
Did the Israeli Mossad, their intelligence agency, forge documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program? See Gareth Porter on the documents here and listen to our broadcast to hear more.
WASHINGTON, Sep 14, 2009 (IPS) – The International Atomic Energy Agency says its present objective regarding Iran is to try to determine whether the intelligence documents purportedly showing a covert Iranian nuclear weapons programme from 2001 to 2003 are authentic or not. The problem, according to its reports, is that Iran refuses to help clarify the issue.
Writing for Inter Press Service, Gareth Porter described problems at the IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency, and the strange and possibly damaging role of former deputy director for safeguards there Ollie Heinonen. (Story here).
According to Porter, Heinonen has been the driving force in turning the IAEA into a mechanism to support U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran.
An investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter worked in Saigon during the early 1970s. He writes for Inter Press Service News and other outlets. Recent stories about Iran here, here and here.
Here are some regional headlines:
An explosion went off near the entourage of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. No one was harmed. A conservative Iranian group told media it was a grenade, the Iranian government said it was more like a firecracker. Guardian version and the Daily Mail version.
Ahmandinejad has claimed that Zionists were threatening to kill him according to the Guardian, which also reports that the Iranian intelligence minister was quoted as saying there were Israeli backed conspiracy plots in the region. The quote originated with the Iranian Students News Agency.
Less than a week after an historic visit to Lebanon by the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Syria, there has been violence at Lebanon’s border with Israel. There were attempts by Israel to cut down a tree, which appear to have provoked a firefight. One Israeli soldier and two Lebanese soldiers as well as a Lebanese journalist were killed.
Finally, Israeli air force jets bombed northern Gaza hitting tunnels near the border with Egypt. 22 people have been injured, two seriously. The attacks come a day after militants in Gaza fired mortars into Israel with no reported casualties. We also discuss the media in this week’s show, this blog has interesting information about this topic: Here, here and here.
A blast in the Peshawar area of Sadder Pakistan has killed a high profile member of Pakistan’s military. Sifwat Ghayur of the FC, the Frontier Constabulary and four guards traveling in his vehicle were killed. 15 others were wounded in the suicide blast targeting the busy commercial area of Deens Chowk. Geo video ABC News here.
Finally, the U.N. is struggling to aid more than 3.2 million Pakistanis as flood waters threaten the southern part of the country. 1,500 people were killed as hundreds of villages in Pakistan’s main province of Punjab were underwater.
Al Jazeera reporting 4 million affected by floods here.
Underwriting for this program was brought to you by JeremyRHammond.com, political analysis from outside the standard framework. Jeremy R. Hammond is founder and editor of ForeignPolicyJournal.com and a recipient of the Project Censored 2010 Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his work covering Israel’s assault on Gaza and the U.S. role. He has been a guest on Talk Nation Radio to discuss the 2009 presidential election in Iran and its aftermath. (More from Hammond on Iran here.) RECENT stories at JeremyRHammond.com, include an analysis of the legality of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that left 9 Turkish peace activists dead.
Talk Nation Radio for July 29, 2010
Gareth Porter Triages MidEast News, to include plan for an Iran Attack?
Investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter joins us as we discuss his recent stories in Inter Press Service News, and US intelligence strategies that could include an attack on Iran. Special interests in the US and Israel have been working to change public opinion to facilitate an attack on Iran despite intelligence that indicates that this is neither necessary nor wise.
–According to Gareth Porter, the controversial scientist claiming to have been kidnapped by the CIA, Shahram Amiri, was actually a ‘walk in’ to the CIA, a likely double agent, and he actually told the CIA that Iran has no nuclear bomb programme.
Yet, militant forces within the U.S. Military and Intelligence apparatus and Israel want the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate rewritten to show Iran as more of a threat.
ABC-File-Photo
Gareth Porter explains that Shahram Amiri, who returned to Iran via Pakistan, was here to be turned into the new ‘Curveball,’ an Ahmed Chalabi-like source who would have offered information about an Iranian WMD program. He didn’t fit the bill.
Gareth Porter writes in his Inter Press story (July 19, 2010) that: ‘Contrary to a news media narrative that Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri has provided intelligence on covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, CIA sources familiar with the Amiri case say he told his CIA handlers that there is no such Iranian nuclear weapons programme, according to a former CIA officer’. IPS Story here.
‘Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism official, told IPS that his sources are CIA officials with direct knowledge of the entire Amiri operation’. Gareth Porter’s July 19, 2010 story on Amiri here.
TRT: 29:00
Produced by Dori Smith in Storrs, Connecticut and Syndicated Nationally with Pacifica Network
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here and at Archive.org and Radio4all.net (More of our interview with Gareth Porter next week.)
Investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter’s articles appear regularly in Inter Press Service and other news outlets. He specializes in U.S. national security policy and is author of the book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”.
Gareth Porter discusses several of his most recent stories in Inter Press News Service on US intelligence and military policy in the Middle East. He also lets Talk Nation Radio listeners know of his decision to write a new book about U.S. military strategies that rely on preconceived notions about Iran. The assumptions have been carefully cultivated by special interests, especially but not only AIPAC.
Gareth Porter also scrutinizes an April story by Joby Warrick and Greg Miller who claimed that Shahram Amiri had provided sensitive information about a long-hidden Iranian uranium-enrichment plant. Their source was actually the political arm of the MEK, Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), classified by the US State Department as a terrorist organization. MEK has a stated aim of toppling the Iranian government. Interestingly, the US reconsidered their classification as a terrorist organization recently. Recently their status as a terrorist group was reconsidered.
GARETH PORTER, ON CURVEBALL and AMIRI:
July 27, 2010 to Talk Nation Radio during interview with Dori Smith:
‘They did indeed apparently hope for the kind of revelations that ‘Curveball’, this former Iraqi official who claimed to have personal knowledge of Saddam’s mobile bio-weapons labs which of course turned out not to exist; They hoped for somebody like that who could provide, if not personally, then lead them to somebody who could provide that kind of personal testimony about Iranian covert nuclear weapons work. Instead of course what they got was somebody who said gee I don’t really have personal knowledge but the folks that I talk to who are nuclear scientists say no, there is nothing like that going on’.
‘So obviously a bitter disappointment all around for the CIA and even more so and more importantly a bitter disappointment for those political forces who were putting pressure on the CIA to do exactly this, to come up with a ‘Curveball’, and then I’m talking here about you know not only the Israelis the European three, the UK, Germany and France who have lined up solidly with the Israeli position saying that yes we’re sure that Iran is hell bent to get nuclear weapons, and have bent their own intelligence reporting and analysis to conform to that conclusion to that sort of preconceived idea about the Iranian program, and I’m talking as well about officials and political figures in the United States who have been pushing for a revision of the National Intelligence Estimate ever since it came out in 2007, as well as the quality news media’.
‘The Washington Post and the New York Times, particularly the New York Times being the worst offenders here, continuing to write stories that, month after month year after year, hammer away at the theme that its obvious that this 2007 NIE was wrong, that it was politicized, that it must have been that the CIA was trying to use the Intelligence Estimate to force the Bush administration not to carry out a military option against Iran and so forth’.
‘All of these forces I think, have been working, not so much in a conspiratorial manner, not that there are secret meetings you know that sort of plot the next steps week by week month by month, but rather working from the same set of biases about the Iranian program which spring from the entire history of the western world, and particularly the American mistakes in its view of Iran and its nuclear program going back all the way to the beginning of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
There is a whole history there that really needs to be subject to a revision, which is by the way something that I’m hoping to do in a book that I’m starting to work on’.
We also asked Gareth Porter about the general importance of the office of Director of National Intelligence, an office held by Dennis C. Blair until recently. On Thursday July 29th, shortly after our interview with Gareth Porter, Retired Air Force lieutenant General and Defense Department intelligence chief James Clapper was confirmed as Blair’s replacement. Clapper famously asserted in 2003 that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had moved weapons to Syria. Iraq did not have WMD according to later reports.
We hear a clip of Clapper being questioned by Senator Levin during confirmation hearings as he discusses confusion about order of command issues, the fact that the DCI, Director of Central Intelligence, reports information to the National Intelligence Director.
Underwriting for this program was brought to you by JeremyRHammond.com, political analysis from outside the standard framework. Jeremy R. Hammond is founder and editor of ForeignPolicyJournal.com and a recipient of the Project Censored 2010 Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his work covering Israel’s assault on Gaza and the U.S. role. He has been a guest on Talk Nation Radio to discuss the 2009 presidential election in Iran and its aftermath. (More from Hammond on Iran here.) RECENT stories at JeremyRHammond.com, include an analysis of the legality of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that left 9 Turkish peace activists dead.
Talk Nation Radio for July 21, 2010
Leaks, Pressure, and Storm Risks in the Gulf of Mexico, interview with Dr. Samantha Joye and q/a with National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen
UPDATE: There was an evacuation of all ships from region of blown BP oil rig in Gulf of Mexico as a possible cat 3 hurricane approached. The storm has been downgraded as it now moves into the Gulf.
AND: Second Federal Analysis Gives Further Clues about Location and Movement of Subsurface Oil
News updates for 7/22/10 on BP spill:
Drilling safety hearings here, see, David Hammer, The Times-Picayune, David Hammer, Oil Regulator to hold meetings in New Orleans, re Drilling Safety here and Tropical Depression 3 forms off Bahamas here
With a storm approaching, we hear from Admiral Thad Allen, and scientist Samantha Joye describes the dangers she is familiar with as we discuss the Deep Water Horizon spill and complications involving Methane and other gases.
Produced in Connecticut by Dori Smith and syndicated nationally with Pacifica Network TRT: 29:00
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org
With bad weather, a tropical depression storm approaching the Gulf of Mexico, the government and BP Joint Task Force called a press conference and Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander, took our questions. We asked him first what percentage of oil versus methane and other gas may be leaking from the well head, the cap or other leaks identified after the most recent test capping of the blown well. We also asked Thad Allen to describe all of the leaks identified since the capping test, and to talk about any new ones they have discovered. Scientists have been closely watching to determine if the cap is displacing pressure and causing leaks underground. If they can’t observe the cap because of bad weather for up to four days, Allen said. They could decide to reopen the cap to avoid missing signs the well is buckling”
Unified Command for Deep Water BP Oil Spill, Transcript Press Brief with National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen July 21, 2010. Full Press Conference:
Dori Smith: (initial portion of question not avail)…”to what the percentage of oil versus methane is in any of the leaks that have been identified, either on the cap area of the well or in any plumes nearby within the radius that you’ve been looking at, concerned, of course, about the pressure?”
Thad Allen: “We believe, especially around the current blowout preventer the capping stack that it is a mixture of the hydrocarbon column itself, which would be some mixture of oil, some natural gas, and some water. The existence of hydrates on the blowout preventer and the capping stack is indeed that there is gas there because the gas combined with the cold water and pressure is what produces hydrates. So there is some amount of methane gas in that.
The exact percentages, we have taken samples and they’re being analyzed ashore. Some samples done on scene based on the samples that were taken in around the wellhead indicated there was about 16 percent methane, but that needs to be validated by a shore test”.
Dori Smith: “And can you finally, on follow up, tell us is – has BP or has anyone identified new plumes or new leaks beyond what were already being studied in the vicinity?”
Thad Allen: “What we have asked BP to do is actually number these events so we can follow them. And I can take you through the general grouping of them. On the 17th of July, that was the event that we noted that was three kilometers southwest of the wellhead that we now have attributed to be in place before this started, probably attributable to another well.
Then we had a series of anomalies that were detected on the 18th of July. And these are just differences in density and return on both the seismic and the acoustic sensors. They were investigated with ROVs. They thought there might be some plumes. There were some gas bubbles brewing and they were followed up with ROVs. There were no other indications observed, and we closed out on those.
Following that, on the 19th is when we started to observe the bubbles around the current wellhead in the blowout preventer. Those have already been reported. And these are emanated from the wellhead itself through gaskets and seals that happen to be leaking.
And finally, we found another leak just yesterday in the BOP in the annular preventer. That’s the upper part of the BOP or the lower marine riser package. And that’s attributed to a leak in a gasket as well.
I think what you’re generally starting to see is from the blowout preventer—it’s been down there a long time under a lot of stress. And just like any other piece of equipment, we’re starting to see some small leaks around it. But that’s been it so far”. ) From Joint Task force transcript..7/21/2010
Our interview with Dr. Samantha Joye was recorded July 9, 2010
It is roughly three months since the start of the worst oil disaster in US history and according to our guest, Dr. Samantha Joye, of the University of Georgia Marine Science Department, it is more accurate to call this a “hydrocarbon spill”. Dr. Joye explains why the high concentrations of methane gas leaking from the well head and from seeps near it have presented the core of the problem all along.
Dr. Samantha Joye and a team conducting research with funding from NOAH, have been providing regular updates on Gulf of Mexico water values. We asked Dr. Joye to discuss the rather unique problems at the drill site of the Deep Water Horizon rig explosion. She explained that the seabed where BP drilled is sand and gravel, not salt which would be the preferred platform material for an ocean drill site of this kind.
Dr. Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia became prominent in the headlines after establishing new problems in the Gulf of Mexico due to large plumes of oil and methane that posed a risk to oxygen levels in the water column. BP downplayed the results, but Joye has persisted in her research, and she points out that the type of scientific testing she has been doing takes time and multiple tests. She documents her research at Gulf Oil Blog and a documentary produced by the University of Georgia is airing this week through the Georgia Public Broadcasting network.
We established during previous shows that the rig would have produced a very large amount of oil had it been operational. The amount that BP saw as a ‘worst case scenario’ blow out leak amount would be 100,000 barrels per day. This is far more than average given that all 33 proposed wells to be drilled in the Gulf of Mexico would produce 80,000 to 100,000 barrels per day combined over a six-month period.
BP actually drilled into a vast Methane gas field at the Deep Water Horizon site, which could pose further risk. Pressure from the capped well could put too much pressure on weak points, a known fissure identified along the pipeline, and other locations at or near the BP rig. Dr. Joye explains in scientific terms what the dangers are, and shares the work of her team at the University of Georgia which has been studying life in the Gulf of Mexico and oxygen levels in the water column near the spill. They have been going to the region with test equipment to identify problems caused by plumes of oil and gas located at various sites near the Deep Water Horizon rig disaster.
She has also said the use of chemical dispersant presents another environmental problem, as they can be more toxic than the oil itself to some species.
British Petroluem capped the well experimentally prior to completion of the relief wells which are apparently nearly complete and may be ready this week end depending on rain storms bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico. BP plans a static kill, flooding the well head with mud and cement for this weekend, however, incident commander Thad Allen explained that weather conditions could prompt an evacuation of all ships from the region, which would mean loss of the visual from the leaking well head.
Dr. Samantha Joye, film uploaded to YouTube by the University of Georgia. The film was shown on Georgia Public Broadcasting Network on 7/21/10. Dr. Joye’s work takes her to the ocean’s depths in the Gulf of Mexico, and initially, she explained, they predicted what would occur and then began scientific testing in the Gulf to establish the facts. She is shown in the film using testing equipment to locate oil and gas plumes in the Gulf of Mexico near the Deep Water Horizon rig.
Mark Perry on the leaked Pentagon Red Team Report on Hamas and Hezbollah, we asked him to examine Israel’s reasons for refusing Turkey’s offer to negotiate a way out of the crisis posed by the Gaza flotilla killings.
Mark Perry is a military and political analyst and author of eight books, including Partners In Command, George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, and Talking with Terrorists.
Journalist Mark Perry joins us to talk about a sensational five page Pentagon report from a so-called, “Red Team.” The report written by senior intelligence officers at the US Central Command, CENTCOM. It suggests that marginalizing Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have worked against US interests in the Middle East. The report drafted May 7th describes a US Military view that runs contrary to Israeli policies of isolating Hamas in Gaza, and the officers suggested integration of Hamas and Hezbollah into their respective political mainstreams.
The Red Team report could mean that Israeli Government and Military officials will have a more difficult time arguing that humanitarian aid workers on board the Mavi Marmara were terrorists. Nine were shot and killed and fifty shot and wounded by Israeli commandos on May 31st.
An Israeli military investigation found mistakes made, but said the US of live rounds were justified. Israeli leaders first called the incident self defense, later claiming that the passengers were terrorists after a video showed them targeting and firing from above prior to landing on the Turkish aid vessel. The ship was one of eight vessels trying to bring aid into Gaza to break a blockade that left hundreds of thousands without a way to rebuild homes and government buildings after Israeli air strikes of 2009.
Israel’s portrayal of the aid workers on the Mavi Marmara as terrorists appears to be based on the links some passengers had to the Hamas government in Gaza. If the Military does not classify them as terrorists, that could remove Israel’s argument for militant policy including the blockade and occupation of Palestine.
Ret. U.S. Col. Ann Wright, who was a passenger on one of the other ships, told an audience in Hartford June 30th that a passenger on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara appears to have been shot before the Israeli commandos landed on the aid ship.
Portions of our interview with Mark Perry were also used in Sprouts, a Pacifica weekly, you can download it at audioport.org. You can also find audio of the talk given by Ret. Col. Ann Wright about the Mavi Marmara killings and the Gaza Freedom Movement at WHUS Radio, FM 91.7, online at WHUS.org.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon said the Turkish flotilla activists, “Had ties to agents of international terror, international Islam, Hamas, al Qaeda, and others”. Mark Perry’s source said: “Putting Hizballah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda in the same sentence, as if they are all the same, is just stupid”. – “I don’t know any intelligence officer at CENTCOM who buys that.”
We will be providing more of this interview with Mark Perry asap.
Music by: Roger Waters, We Shall Overcome, inspired by the Gaza Freedom Movement, we found it at GazaFreedomMarch.org.
This week’s stories:
This week on Sprouts we hear portions of a talk given by Ret. Col. Ann Wright at Real Art Ways, in Hartford, Connecticut. June 30, 2010. WHUS Radio sponsored the event.
Ret. Col. Wright recounted her experiences while on board one of eight vessels that made up the Gaza Freedom Flotilla boarded by Israeli commandos May 31, 2010. Nine people were killed, fifty shot, according to Wright. She talked about Israeli weapons fire that came before the commandos landed on the Mavi Marmara, stun grenades, and went over other evidence that is likely to be discussed under conditions of independent investigations.
Journalist Mark Perry talks about his story in Foreign Policy Magazine on ‘The Red Team Report’, on the Middle East. The report was critical of U.S. and Israeli policy that marginalizes Hamas and Hezbollah, and suggests they be mainstreamed. According to Mark Perry, a senior officer he spoke with was not impressed by comments like that of Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon who charged that the Turkish flotilla activists, “had ties to agents of international terror, international Islam, Hamas, al Qaeda, and others”.
Mark Perry’s Pentagon source said: “Putting Hizballah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda in the same sentence, as if they are all the same, is just stupid”. – “I don’t know any intelligence officer at CENTCOM who buys that.”
Sprouts is a weekly program that features local radio production and stories from many radio stations and local media groups around the world. It is produced in collaboration with community radio stations and independent producers across the country. The program is coordinated and distributed by Pacifica Radio and offered free of charge to all radio stations.
For information, or if you would like to feature your work on Sprouts, contact Ursula Ruedenberg at ursula@pacifica.org.
Talk Nation Radio
Josh Ruebner on the Decline in Israel’s International Standing
Suddenly Israel seems unable to control the debate. Josh Ruebner calls the recent behavior of Israeli leaders, “erratic”. Is there a policy shift on the horizon?
TRT: 29:29
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org
Josh Ruebner, the National Advocacy Director for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation joins us to look at US and Israel policy toward Palestine, a slight opening now in Washington DC after Israel decides to stand down from some of its restrictions of goods and building supplies into Gaza.
US Military Aid to Israel: “It’s not just a distant conflict it’s one that we’re intimately involved with because we provide Israel with every conceivable weapon available that it uses to engage in it’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories and the kinds of horrific human rights abuses that were witnessed for example with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. If you go to one of our web sites which is Aid to Israel.org you’ll see that our support for Israel in the form of Military aid comes at a price that we really cannot afford–30 billion dollars in weapons between 2009 and 2018 and if you go onto our web site you can look at your own town, congressional district or state and see how much that geographical unit is providing in tax dollars to Israel and what that money could fund instead in terms of unmet domestic needs that we need to take care of here at home such as affordable housing, green jobs retraining, health care, etc, so we could think of a lot better ways to put our tax dollars to than Israeli occupation and apartheid.”
Josh Ruebner’s group represents a national coalition of more than 250 organizations working together to change U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine in recognition of the need for equality, an improvement in human rights and respect for international law.
It’s been an interesting week in Washington thus far as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in meetings with President Obama, the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglo has demanded an apology from Israel for the Gaza Freedom Flotilla killings. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said flat out, “no”. Then, a surprising story by Mark Perry about behind the scenes discussions at CENTCOM about a possible opening to reevaluate the wisdom of isolating Hamas and Hezbollah. Perry’s source at CENTCOM scoffing at Israel’s portrayal of the Palestinian Security Forces as linked to al Qaeda.
Mark Perry reported June 30th that CENTCOM, the US Central Command, has been discussing the previously taboo subject of engaging diplomatically with militant groups like Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. A “Red Team Report” according to Perry, was issued May 7th, just weeks before Israeli commando forces boarded the Mavi Marmara and other ships in the Flotilla trying to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The event in international waters has turned diplomacy on its head between Israel and Turkey. Stay tuned for our upcoming interview with Mark Perry.
CLIPS: Mark Regev, Israel’s spokesperson, from BBC. Hartford WHUS EVENT: Former US Military Col. Ann Wright spoke to an audience in Hartford, Connecticut about the Gaza Freedom Flotilla she was on that was attacked by Israeli Commandos. You can listen to the entire program online at WHUS.org. Wright explained that there were many reporters on board the various flotilla ships, and on the Mavi Marmara, an Al Jazeera reporter reported seeing someone slump over on the top deck as if shot from the Israeli helicopter above prior to the landing on deck of Israeli commandos. She said fifty people were wounded by gunfire, another nine were killed, eight Turkish citizens and one American.
Talk Nation radio for July 1, 2010
Marine Biologist, Dr. Craig McClain, A Tipping Point in Gulf of Mexico
We continue to look at the science and what hundreds of thousands, probably millions of barrels of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico is doing to the ecosystem.
Dr. Craig R. McClain at McClain Laboratories, is Assistant Director of Science at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, in Durham North Carolina. He has been researching the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and other locations for 11 years, studying the fascinating and often newly discovered life he finds there.
He blogs at Deep Sea News with fellow marine biologists Dr. Kevin Zelnio and Miriam Goldstein (PFD Goldstein soon to be Ph.D. Goldstein). McClain was raised in the Gulf Coast region and now works with his various scientific teams to study it. On their blog, McClain, Zelnio and Goldstein are working to help people understand the science of the BP disaster.
We’ll also hear from BP’s spokesperson Mark Proegler who took our questions on the amounts of oil we’re looking at, and the dangers we face from the Gulf Coast of Mexico region, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and all along the Eastern seaboard if the oil gets into the Loop Current. Proegler said it was not in the loop current, yet The Examiner says it has already entered the it, as did this, this, and concern expressed on this news site.
RESPONSE: We are contacting scientists to collect responses to what BP told us. Stay tuned for upcoming interviews with: Dr. Ed Overton, LSU, taped 7/2/10, air date as soon as edit permits, Dr. Samantha Joye, University of Georgia, scheduled for next week. Contact us at talknationradio@gmal.com.
After saying BP had allocated a large amount of funding for scientific research, BP’s spokesperson would not commit to the way it will be allocated, and whether or not scientists invited into the recovery effort will have to be associated with the government/private sector effort, or Joint Task Force. He said the company has not said they will refuse claims from states further up the East Coast in the event that the oil is carried there in the Loop Current.
Photo by Times-Picayune, A. Boyd The arrival of hurricane Alex shut down relief operations near the Deepwater Horizon rig and throughout the region, as oil is now hitting precious marshes and fisheries in Louisiana hard, and making its way into Lake Pontchartrain Basin at the Chandeleur Islands and the Mississippi River Delta.
Oil has already had devastating impacts in the western portions of the Louisiana coastline and has contaminated Florida’s white sand beaches. amid the chaos about what is really happening to the wildlife in the region, and what it means to us, we asked Dr. McClain what concerns him most about BP’s oil spill, and he explained that it is the as yet unknown short and long term consequences of the disaster.
Oceanographers are increasingly concerned about high concentrations of methane in plumes of oil rising from the area near the blown drilling rig in the Gulf, the mixture of oil rising from a plume of oil a short distance from the rig is 40 percent methane and 60 percent oil, according to Oceanographer John Kessler of Texas A&M, Dr. Samantha Joye holds weekly press conferences and uses her blog, gulfoilblog.org to share data as it is recorded.
We have calls in to several other scientists and will provide their reactions to what BP has told us in upcoming broadcasts. Also, well known journalist Dahr Jamail is now reporting from the Gulf of Mexico, dahr.org for his stories, the latest from Louisiana is titled, living on a dying delta. (Click here for Dahr.org)
hccreekkeeper | June 26, 2010 This was the most emotionally disturbing video I have ever done!
A flight over the BP Slick Source where I saw at least 100 Dolphins in the oil, some dying. I also photographed a Sperm Whale covered in oil all around it’s blow hole.
Please spread this around the world. Send me any links to places it gets posted so I can follow. I want to piss off the world. Who will answer for these gentle creatures?
Blogs with scientific information about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: Gulf Oil Blog, Dr. Samantha Joye, University of Georgia,
Talk Nation Radio, for the week of June 16, 2010
Robert Jensen, Media in Age of Calamity, BP Spill update
We look at media coverage of the BP oil spill, of the drilling regulation “debate” and U.S. policy in the Middle east.
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
TRT: 29:12
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org
US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to break records for cost in dollars and lives and time served by US and other forces. In the meantime, the American people seem to be more at risk than ever of losing all hope of home ownership, or even financial security.
We look at media coverage of these leading cataclysmic stories, How can we improve the media and be more actively engaged in helping?
Journalist Robert Jensen is at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He has a Ph.D. in media ethics and law from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. He worked as a journalist for a decade prior to joining academia, and presently teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics.
Next week, we’ll hear more on the BP spill from scientist Craig McClain, Assistant Director of Science for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. He focuses on the ecological and evolutionary drivers of marine invertebrate biodiversity:
Craig McClain: “Because of a variety of things, ocean warming, ocean acidification, the sort of things that have been gong on for a while now, the depletion of the reef and the fish throughout the Gulf of Mexico, the degradation of the marshes and wetlands along the Gulf Coast especially around Louisiana; those things were already occurring before the oil spill. And now we’ve asked all of those other systems to take another impact which is the oil spill and so the question is, now have we pushed all of these systems past their tipping points? Have we created irreversible damage?”
Talk Nation Radio for June 17, 2010 Talk Nation Radio for June 17, 2010
Amjad Shawa, Palestine, Cecelia Goin, Jerusalem, and Francis A. Boyle, on Gaza, Was a deal struck to lighten the blockade of Gaza in exchange for cooperation with investigation of flotilla killings?
Israel announced it will add more items to the list of goods allowed into Gaza. We contacted Palestinian aid coordinator Amjad Shawa of PNGO, as the story was developing, ICRC, spokesperson Cecelia Goin for comment on their strongest call yet for Israel to lift its blockade, (see below) and Law Professor Francis A. Boyle for analysis of the blockade negotiations and Israel’s investigation of the Gaza flotilla deaths.
‘Four of our 14 specialized ventilators for newborn babies are out of order. It is currently impossible to get spare parts into Gaza so that we can have the ventilators fixed. This is a real problem if we have many newborns in the intensive care unit at the same time’. Majdia Jouda, head of the neo-natal department at Shifa Hospital
INTRO: The entire process of easing the blockade went on over roughly two weeks. Israel first announced it would allow more food items like catchup and mayonnaise into Gaza, insulting Palestinians who said they wanted the blockade lifted, not eased for condiments. UN spokesperson Chris Gunness echoed their call. Then, in surprise global coordination, their voices were joined by top government officials in Turkey, the US, the EU, and at the Arab League: Ireland‘s most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal Sean Brady, said both the economic and military blockade of Gaza should be lifted. And former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on June 16th that he was confident that Israel had agreed to a partial lifting of the blockade, that there would now be a list of non allowed goods, rather than the short list of 80 types of items to be allowed into Gaza by Israel.
ANALYSIS: Also, International Law expert Francis A. Boyle responds to Israel’s appointment of new members to their panel looking into deaths on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. He says the new members do not afford independence, and says he expects a whitewash. He expects neither Turkish or Palestinian officials to accept Israel’s investigation.Professor Francis A. Boyle has written definitive texts on international legal rights under conditions of war and occupation. He is skeptical about Israel’s ability to investigate itself about the Gaza flotilla killings.
Last week Israel announced it would be adding two non Israelis to the investigating panel, Brigadier Gen. Ken Watkin, former attorney to Canada’s military, and Lord David Trimble, former Ulster Unionist party head in Northern Ireland. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. Fellow Nobel peace prize winner Mairead Corrigan Mcguire, a 1976 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, questioned Trimble’s ability to be impartial.
(NYT, The Lede) Two weeks ago Lord Trimble attended an event set up by the Israeli government to combat what they called, a quote: “unprecedented delegitimization campaign against Israel, driven by the enemies of the Jewish state and perversely assumed by numerous international authorities.”
The new Friends of Israel Initiative includes former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, and Bush’s staunch supporter in Spain, former Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar. Also, Netanayahu ally, and former Israeli ambassador Dore Gold addressed the event.
Spokespersons for Israel at their embassy in Washington declined to comment on air about any changes to the blockade of Gaza. They did not return our press call. Finally, during our second call to them we were able to confirm only that there was a cabinet meeting scheduled for June 17th to discuss Tony Blair’s recommendations. Their spokesperson said he preferred to be unnamed.
It was a rare crack in Israel’s usual tight control over news and information. But what was really going on, and would the easing of the blockade be meaningful? As the story was unfolding we asked Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois school of Law to comment. Professor Boyle has been advising members of the flotilla on international legal rights and has represented the Palestinians in the past.
See latest, Al Jazeera report on this matter here. “The new Israeli decision would allow the entry of some 120 types of goods and products that Israel embargoed after claiming that such goods could be used for military purposes.—Furthermore, Israel is expected to grant the UNRWA a green line to implement some projects and reconstruct schools and public building that were bombarded by the Israeli army during the war”.
BBC News on Details of Gaza blockade revealed in court case Aid group brings lawsuit over Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Why some things not other, why no “fruit juice”? — Gisha’s director, Sari Bashi, says she is no security expert, “but preventing children from receiving toys, preventing manufacturers from getting raw materials – I don’t see how that’s responsive to Israeli security needs.” The Israelis maintain that: “The limitation on the transfer of goods is a central pillar in the means at the disposal of the State of Israel in the armed conflict between it and Hamas.”
See BBC clip Growing international concern over conditions in Gaza. Israel violating International law with blockade of Gaza, “unsustainable” and “unlawful”.
ICRC gravely concerned about humanitarian situation in Gaza, June 13, 2010
ICRC gravely concerned about humanitarian situation in Gaza
Geneva (ICRC) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is alarmed about the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.
The continuing escalation of violence, with military operations taking place in highly populated areas, has serious consequences for the civilian population.
Over the past two weeks, Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip have led to the deaths of dozens of people and the wounding of many more, among them a large number of civilians. In one single incident on 12 July, nine family members – including children – were killed in their home by an air strike in Gaza City. In some cases, people living near operations have been unable to leave their homes for several days.
The ICRC has urged and continues to urge Israel to respect the rules of international humanitarian law. In particular, in the conduct of hostilities, Israel must take all precautions to spare civilian life and property. It must also ensure that the wounded have access to medical facilities.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is continuing to deteriorate. The strike on Gaza’s only power plant on 28 June reduced the power supply in the Strip by half, with direct and indirect effects on the population. Hospitals and a large part of the water and wastewater systems now depend on generators that consume considerable amounts of fuel, which is also in short supply owing to recurrent closures of the Strip. Furthermore, the strict controls imposed on the passage of basic items into the Strip have exacerbated the difficulties faced by residents, who were already living in precarious conditions. Under international humanitarian law, Israel is responsible for meeting the basic needs of the population, which include food, medical supplies and means of shelter.
As a further consequence of the ongoing situation in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians have been stranded on the Egyptian side of the Rafah terminal, two of whom have reportedly died. The material and psychological conditions in which these people live are deteriorating day by day and no solution to their plight has been found by the parties concerned. The ICRC has already offered its services to facilitate their passage into the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, together with the Egyptian Red Crescent, it is providing the affected people with assistance.
The ICRC is seriously concerned about the consequences of the repeated launching of rockets from the Gaza Strip against the civilian population in Israel. These attacks, which have wounded several people, are indiscriminate and thus prohibited by international humanitarian law.
Finally, the ICRC urges those detaining IDF corporal Gilad Shalit to treat him humanely and allow him to contact his family. It has informed all the parties that it stands ready to provide its services.
Talk Nation Radio, for the week of June 16, 2010 A Discussion with Journalist Robert Jensen, Media in an Age of Cataclysm http://talknationradio.com/?p=1384
We look at media coverage of the leading cataclysmic stories, the BP spill, war in the Middle East and recent events in international waters where aid workers were targeted by Israeli commandos, plus the state of government in America. How can we improve the media and be more actively engaged in helping?
Journalist Robert Jensen is at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He has a Ph.D. in media ethics and law from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. He worked as a journalist for a decade prior to joining academia, and presently teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics.
Cataclysm One: There is a discussion raging about how to save the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s oil. The oceans provide us with air, and stabilize the atmosphere. What will thousands of barrels of oil per day going into the gulf do to the production of oxygen in the world’s most effective lung system?
Scientists at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Minerals Management Service that granted BP deep water drilling rights, are frantically searching for ways to repair the problem. The head of America’s joint task force on the containment operation, Admiral Thad Allen, is becoming more flustered as he tries to answer questions from a few of the more astute reporters. They have begun to press the Admiral and BP for answers about the scale of the disaster. Reading between the lines, when field reporters tell major TV news anchors that the oceanographers they interviewed are “terrified” we know there is something dark and terrible shaking the core of America’s belief system that we are too big to fail.
How did we reach this level of cataclysm, and what role has the media played?
Airing on WHUS Radio, Wed. June 16th at 5:00 PM EST www.whus.org before upload to other fine radio stations in the Pacifica community and any LPFM, Net-radio, podcasting stations that wish to air us weekly.
Talk Nation Radio for June 10, 2010
BP Tries to Disperse Concern amid Calls for Prosecutions and Reform, Dr. Ira Leifer, Flow Rate Tech Group, Scott West, Retired EPA Special Agent
Transcript below:
Breaking News Update: The White House has announced that they have received a new flow rate assessment about the BP spill. The company is now promising an ability to contain as much as 60,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil per day from their leaking pipe in the Gulf of Mexico. Here is a paragraph from the statement that arrived via the White House list serve to Talk Nation Radio: “The Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) cap that is currently in place can capture up to 18,000 barrels of oil per day. At the direction of the federal government, BP is deploying today a second containment option, called the Q4000, which could expand total leak containment capacity to 20,000-28,000 barrels per day. Overall, the leak containment strategy that BP was required to develop projects containment capacity expanding to 40,000-53,000 barrels per day by the end of June and 60,000-80,000 barrels per day by mid-July”.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu said: “This estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on the oil that is escaping from BP’s well.”
They are now claiming that they have planned for contingencies to deal with a worst case scenario, which is exactly what our guest last week, Dr. Ira Leifer of the Government’s Flow Rate Technical Group, indicated was the best approach. We transcribed our interviews for last week’s show and you can read them below.
Dori Smith, talknationradio@gmail.com
Dr. Ira Leifer speaking about BP’s shear and cap effort to stop the flow of oil coming from their blown pipe in the Gulf of New Mexico: ‘What I would argue from looking at the videos is however much oil is coming out its large enough relative to 15,000 that it did not make an appreciable dent in it. That means it’s certainly more than double that and the amount is something that we should be able to figure out within a day with the results of the new data’. (more below)
Produced by Dori Smith
TRT: 29:00
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here and at Radio4all.net and Archive.org Dr. Ira Leifer, an associate researcher at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Flow Rate Technical Group, Scott West, former Special Agent in Charge, EPA
BP gives out low numbers on flow from broken pipe. We hear better analysis. If the DOJ and Bush administration had backed EPA official’s call for criminal prosecution, safety might have improved. Plus Nalco, manufacturer of chemical dispersant. See: BP Tries to Disperse Concern amid Calls for Prosecutions and Reform.
Transcript: Talk Nation Radio, June 9, 2010
Producer/host: Dori Smith
‘I’m quite confidence that in the long term, that basically the truth will out’.
Dr. Ira Leifer joins us to talk about his assessment as part of the government’s flow rate technical group analyzing the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP/Transocean spill.
‘And BP, which is able to afford a great number of attorneys can just simply overwhelm the federal government with its legal representation’.
Then, former EPA investigator Scott West joins us to go over BP’s history of criminal negligence and catastrophe. We look at the problem of getting good information from BP or the government, as a pattern has been forming. BP tries to disperse public concern by offering low numbers and the Obama administration reinforces them.
In May, NPR’s Richard Harris asked Dr. Steven Wereley, at Purdue University, to study the videotape of the oil flowing out of the pipe and use his technique for calculating low rate from speed of particle movement. ‘We’re talking more than a factor of 10 difference between what I calculate and the number that’s being thrown around’.
BP had said 5,000 barrels of oil were flowing from the pipe per day. Wereley told NPR that the flow rate was more like 70,000 barrels a day. Other researchers also got the much higher numbers.
At a press conference June 9th, the National Incident Commander on the spill, Admiral Thad Allen, said between 19 and 25,000 gallons were coming out of the pipe per day at this point:
Admiral Thad Allen: ‘We have a bunch of technical experts got together and they came up with two ranges; of 12,000 to 19,000 and 12,000 to 25,000. Until we get better data that becomes the rebuttable uh assumption on flow and everything else’.
That after the pipe was sheared to accommodate a containment cap. The company had trapped 15,000 barrels during the previous twenty-four hour period and hoped to double that in the coming weeks. But again, NPR wanted more clear information. Where the numbers came from, BP or the government? ‘My knowledge was it was the task group but I will check back and if I misunderstood it I will make a clarification on it. They are going to be looking at that again they have high-resolution video that was taken after the riser pipe was cut, that’s been brought back on hard disk and that’s exactly what the group is analyzing right now’.
When we spoke with one of those technical experts working for the government’s team, Dr. Ira Leifer, he confirmed his assessment based on BP’s own data, that the flow could be more like their worst-case scenario of 100,000 barrels per day. We asked him to confirm the reports in McClatchy and then Reuters, citing the 100,000 figure:
Dr. Ira Leifer: Let me just say what I had intended to say which is that in the absence of good quality data which was our situation until very recently, the flow clearly had increased significantly. The question is how much. And there are two ways two ways to do go about that. One is you get data and you analyze it, that’s called science. The other way was to just take BP’s own estimate of a worst case scenario of freely flowing pipes and just put that out there: This is what BP thinks would happen when a pipe freely flows from that reservoir, now by pipe I mean the pipe that is the problem with this well, into the ocean. And BP’s number was 100,000 barrels per day. It does not mean that I think 100,000 barrels per day is flowing out, it could be less it could be more. The whole point of science and being a scientist and agencies working on this and the people is to actually come up with a number. And again, previously BP was very reticent about providing data, not letting us do our work. Now they have become much more helpful and forward looking at providing the data. I assumed they kind of realized that they don’t like their own number very much and they would actually finally like for us to be able to come up with a good number.
Dori Smith: Well Dr. Leifer we heard this morning from Admiral Thad Allen that BP captured 15,000 barrels overnight in 24 hours. That still leaves 85,000 according to your estimation.
Dr. Ira Leifer: I would just point out again its BP’s worst case scenario. The question is, is the flow from that well worst case? Is it even worse than that? Or is it not as bad. So what I would argue from looking at the videos is however much oil is coming out its large enough relative to 15,000 that it did not make an appreciable dent in it. That means it’s certainly more than double that and the amount is something that we should be able to figure out within a day with the results of the new data.
So the amount of oil that still remains to be captured could be conceivably within another mere expansion to 30,000 total but it also could be larger. And this is where we need to know by analyzing data and I think what has come out of including BP’s own worst case scenario is that they are much more cooperative and forward looking now and helpful so that we can actually do out job so that the efforts that go on are done safely.
Dori Smith: And of course NOAA is testing deeper samples of water to try to discover oil there, but why is it so difficult to assess this and does it have to do with the Corexit, the Nalco product that was used to disperse the oil. And if so would that affect the tests that are now being sent to laboratories like ALPHA here in New England.
Dr. Ira Leifer: the challenge is, it’s hard enough to figure out where the oil is going to go at the sea surface where you actually can look at it from an airplane or boat and track it. In the three dimensions of the ocean it is far more difficult challenge to find where hit has gone. Because the other thing is that the ocean is vast. If the oil is dispersed throughout the water column, that’s the idea behind dispersants, then the concentrates go down to very small amounts. That should not have anything to say with whether or not those very small amounts are problematic to the ecosystem. Very small amounts of petroleum hydrocarbon in the water column are known to cause all sorts of problems with fish and so on. But because the amounts are so small, they are hard to find. It’s not easy to find when something gets so diluted. And there was a lot of word done on this particular aspect after the Exxon Valdez because scientists were in fact able to take a look at the effects on fish and other life forms in the ocean from the petroleum hydrocarbon dose, even years later from he sediment into the water column.
Dori Smith: Well we were concerned when one of NOAA’s tests turned out to establish that there was a similarity between oil they found at more than 3,000 ft down and the oil spewing from the spill but then on later follow tests they couldn’t establish that. Then we read that there may be a conflict of interest with the labs or that even BP is doing some of these tests themselves.
Dr. Ira Leifer: In that regard I’m quite confident that in the long term, that basically the truth will out. It is not possible for anyone to have a complete control of all of these oil samples from the ocean and I think the laboratories know that if they did not do a very high quality analysis that other entities with own boats collecting water samples would very rapidly be releasing information that would be in contradiction to their laboratory. The one thing that these laboratories value above everything else is their reputation and I would imagine that in order to protect their reputation they would, realizing that other people would also be collecting and analyzing water samples, would be very honest in that regard. I certainly can’t promise that but I imagine that they would want to do that because this is such a large spill, there are so many people who are going to be trying to understand what happened, and so on, that you can’t hide things for very long when so many people are looking.
Dori Smith: Dr. Ira Leifer is a well-known scholar at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California. We turn now to Scott West, an EPA agent in the criminal division, he took calls from workers complaining that BP’s pipeline in Prudhoe Bay Alaska, was vulnerable.
Scott West: What I did with the EPA, I was a criminal investigator with the criminal investigation division and in Seattle I was special agent in charge up until I retired in October of 2008. The State of Alaska fell under my area of responsibility. And in 2005 I received information from some employees working on the North Slope up at Prudhoe Bay that a particular transit line was full of sludge and they had grave concerns about erosion causing the pipeline to rupture. They had brought these concerns to their officials, supervisors and other officials at BP and they were ignored and even chastised. So they came to me and there wasn’t much we could do until March of 2006 when that pipeline did indeed rupture and cause the second largest oil spill in Alaska.
We started a criminal investigation immediately and carried it forward for the next year and a half. It was a robust investigation enjoying a great deal of support by the EPA and the Department of Justice. Then unexpectedly in August of 2007 I was informed that the Justice Department had decided to grant BP’s wishes to settle this case along with the cases involving an explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, and a propane trading violation in Chicago.
They wanted to wrap these all up together and so the Justice Department shut down my investigation, worked out the misdemeanor plea with the company for the Alaska case and that was that. And so when the rig exploded in the Gulf, and once I found out it was BP’s rig, I felt that nothing had changed within the criminal corporate culture that we had found and indeed that this was no accident, it was the result of criminal decisions.
Dori Smith: And of course, the U.S. Justice Department, once again investigating British Petroleum, we’re reading about a lot of money…
Scott West: …They’re not investigating British Petroleum.
Dori Smith: OK, correct me.
Scott West: Yeah, the Attorney General Last Tuesday came out publicly and under I believe pressure that’s been coming on from the public about why isn’t there a criminal investigation? And he made the statement that indeed there is an investigation and he cited the statutes that one would expect: The Clean Water Act, the Rivers and Harbors of the Refuse Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Now short of calling the Attorney General a liar I’m going to say he practiced the art of deception. There is an investigation underway by the Department of the Interior, Office of Inspector General, having to do with some improprieties at Mines and Minerals Service. By all logic the EPA Criminal Investigation Division has indeed gone into the computer system and officially opened a file for an investigation into BP. But in terms of their being an actual investigation under way, there is none.
Dori Smith: Let’s talk about first the Prudhoe Bay spill and then Texas because I know by the time the Texas spill [refinery explosion] happened you were already aware of safety violations. Walk us through the series of events.
Scott West: Well that’s correct and because the corporation was charged the only things you can do to a corporation is take money away from it and put it under scrutiny. Corporations though do not make the decisions that led to these events. Individuals within them do.
What had been my aim using the criminal tool had been to carry the investigation to the point where we could determine if we could charge individuals for those decisions. And that’s what we wanted to do was to hold individuals accountable and hopefully that that would change the corporate culture. A $20 million dollar fine, which is ultimately what BP had to pay, it was $12 million in fines and then $8 million in restitution, but essentially it was a $20 million dollar deal, is a rounding error when you look at the amount of money that they pulled off the slopes and certainly worldwide. It wasn’t enough to get their attention and they were at that time had already been convicted of felony hazardous waste violations up on the North Slope. Then with the Texas City, also the Clean Air Act, they became serial environmental criminals.
Dori Smith: What were some of the aspects of the Prudhoe Bay Alaska spill that BP did wrong, that contributed to the disaster happening in the first place.
Scott West: It was the cost cutting, and ignoring the concerns raised by its own engineers that was the problem.
Dori Smith: And how could this leak have gone on for a number of days undetected by this company?
Scott West: (chuckles) Well they operate a quite elaborate system of leak detection equipment and they are quite known for having false reports all the time so the alarm goes off and its summarily ignored. That’s what happened here. The alarms were going off, and because they had gone off so often they weren’t paying much attention. It wasn’t until one of the workers was driving down one of the roads along the pipeline and he actually smelled crude, and so he got out and looked around and that’s how the leak was discovered.
Dori Smith: Can you explain where the criminal negligence was in that case.
Scott West: The criminal negligence was in the fact that the company was not following industry standard practices in terms of maintaining that pipeline. They had internal knowledge from their own employees and experts that they had a serious problem. They chose to ignore that problem saying that they didn’t have the money to address it and it was low on their priority list. They had other concerns. This sort of thing: That’s how you get from an unfortunate series of events turns into criminality when people who have the responsibility to keep up with these things fail to do so.
Dori Smith: And then let’s go to Texas where BP again their plant blue up, I believe it was 15 workers killed and 170 injured. That of course also linked to safety violations at their facility Again, they got placed on probation, pretty much walked away and went on to Deep Ocean drilling.
Scott West: That’s correct. I wasn’t involved in the investigation into Texas City but I was talking to my counterparts who were and we found an awful lot of similarities between BP operating in Alaska and then BP operating at that refinery in Texas, City. It was a whole host of cutting corners, saving money, trying to stretch every penny which is very difficult to understand when you look at the size of the profits that this company was making worldwide and continues to make worldwide as to why they would risk these catastrophic events for nickels and dime. But yet they do, and they did, and now we are seeing that the same sort of behavior most likely led to what happened out in the Gulf.
Dori Smith: The Deep Water Horizon explosion in April, there was someone killed on board that rig and he had been very concerned, his name is Jason Anderson. He was a rig manager and prior to dying had spoken t about his concerns, was shut down by the industry, they were in a hurry, why don’t you take it from there.
Scott West: Well I certainly wasn’t on the rig and I did not speak to Mr. Anderson at any time prior to his death, but what you just told me is certainly consistent with what I had learned about BP when I was investigating them criminally up in Alaska and what my counterparts found in Texas City is that time is money, they are always in a hurry, and workers concerns are often ignored and more so than ignored many workers fear retaliation for speaking out.
They certainly watched a number of their friends get fired or blacklisted from the industry for raising concerns. Then it was also something that we saw that BP would often blame the dead guy. I don’t mean to be crude here but that was what some employees shared with us and that’s how he put it is that when something went terribly wrong and there were deaths it was often the company’s way to say that those individuals that were killed had done something at fault.
Dori Smith: What about BP’s response to accusations of criminal negligence? I assume given the way they lobby in Congress that they came up with a very bold plan to counter such charges.
Scott Well they did but the fact remains that they pled guilty in Alaska to negligence, which led to the rupture of that pipe and the discharge of oil onto the tundra. They pled guilty to felony Clean Air Act in Texas City which led to the explosion and then the deaths of those workers. They pled guilty in Alaska earlier to illegally handling hazardous waste. There’s only so much they can claim when indeed they come into a courtroom and please guilty to these crimes.
The other thing to look at here, and I don’t totally blame BP: They are from my experience the worst of the oil companies operating in the United States, but I blame the Department of Justice for being so lenient with BP in the past that they’ve allowed them to believe that they can continue to operate this way without sanctions.
Dori Smith: Scott West, you are making these charges as a retired Special Agent in Charge at the EPA Environmental Protection Agency. You work in the Department of Intelligence and Investigations, what is that?
Scott West: That’s for Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, it’s a non-government entity but we enforce international law on the high seas, Marine Conservation Law, where other nations fail to do so. So bringing in a criminal investigative element was a move on the part of Captain Paul Watson to strengthen what we do in terms of dealing with crimes on the seas.
Dori Smith: Financial concerns were really on the minds of many of the politicians who for years argued in favor of drilling in the ANWR, drilling in the ocean, and also on the North Slope. People up there needing jobs, needing money, were divided over whether or not this was a good idea. But talk about the environmental risks first of all from these big oil pipeline systems and then from deep water drilling and what that means to us as citizens of this planet.
Scott West: We’ve certainly seen the risk from deep water drilling, there’s no question about that. Then, also these major pipelines that carry the oil and of course with the Exxon Valdez, the ships that carry the soil: They are inherently dangerous, inherently pose significant environmental risks. However, there is a great deal of technology out there that if employed properly can reduce those risks considerably. This is what’s causing me the most concern with this particular company is that by my experience investigating them, and then certainly what we are seeing in the Gulf, is that they are not taking advantage of that technology.
Dori Smith: We heard from Attorney Patti Goldman last week, of Earth Justice, that their complaint now in litigation is that BP did not provide the government, MMS, (Minerals Management Service) with an adequate plan to deal with a blow out scenario like the one that happened.
Scott West: Yeah well what your suggesting is that the regulators failed in doing their job and insuring that the operators followed the law. And I think that that’s probably an accurate assessment. I was never involved in the regulatory side of these rigs, and certainly not the Deep Water Horizon spill. We’ll have to see what comes out of that but I would not be at all surprised if we find that there was inadequate oversight, that people either chose to look the other way or simply were not qualified to even understand what was being presented to them in these documents.
Dori Smith: Just summarize the EPA, how it works and what does or does not work about it.
Scott West: That’s the big question. I worked for the EPA for just under 19 years, the entire time as a criminal investigator. It’s a large bureaucracy, it certainly has issues related to that, but I do have to admit I did find it to be quite effective, at least from my perspective in what I was doing, I was proud to work there, and I felt it was a good use of my time and talent towards protecting the environment. I did run into some concerns with the Alaska case when my own management failed to back me up and fell into lock step with the Department of Justice. I did have some concerns back shortly after 9/11 when within the criminal program it seemed to forget all about protecting the environment and wanted to jump on the bandwagon of homeland security. But a lot of those issues I understand have been resolved, or at least are being addressed significantly, so in terms of how the greater part of the agency functions, that was kind of on the other side of the door from where I was as a criminal investigator.
Dori Smith: As it turns out BP was fined [by OSHA] for their Texas operation, 87.45 million, it was the largest find in agency history, for failure to repair potential safety hazards. They also issued notifications, 270 of them, plus another 449 willful violations; there you are talking about worker safety.
Scott West: Correct.
Dori Smith: So what’s the difference essentially in terms of the enforcement capacity of either EPA or OSHA today?
Scott West: A different type of regulations, but we can look at how the EPA, the civil side of the House of Representatives have been able to address the conditions and the actual results of the oil spill in Alaska. They certainly have been trying to bring about fines and BP, which is able to afford a great number of attorneys can just simply overwhelm the federal government with its legal representation and essentially just tie it up in court for years. The EPA is still trying to get some kind of civil resolution to the oil spill of 2006 up on the slope and the BP attorneys just seem to keep overwhelming them and bullying them in meeting after meeting and its not going anywhere. So that’s of concern to me.
Dori Smith: How can an agency that’s had two instances of being put on probation..
Scott West: Three!
Dori Smith: Oh OK three. Well how can they move on to do this deep ocean drilling at this incredible depth, I think its 5,000 feet, and the Bush administration and the MMS, Minerals Management Service, they gave them permission.
Scott West: Well we’d have to ask those officials, those are the ones that grant permission for the drilling and they need to be quizzed as to with this abysmal criminal record, environmental criminal record, and worker safety record, why was not more care taken to make sure that things were being done right before they granted those permits? That’s where you will have to go for that answer.
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Jen Marlowe on her play, There is a Field, the life and death of Palestinian Aseel Asleh in context
Underwriting for this program was brought to you by JeremyRHammond.com, political analysis from outside the standard framework. He is founder and editor of ForeignPolicyJournal.com and a recipient of the Project Censored 2010 Award. “New at JeremyRHammond.com, the piece, ‘Turning Back From the Point of No Return: Implications of the Threat to Bomb Iran.’ He wrote it to counter the public narrative arguing that an air strike on Iran might be necessary in order to prevent a nuclear holocaust.” An Atlantic Magazine article by Goldberg indicates that an Iran attack might be necessary to ‘prevent’a nuclear holocaust. 
We interviewed him to talk about his dramatic revelations in a Truthout.org story August 16, 2010. See: ‘
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