07/05/10 – Dahr Jamail – The Scott Horton Show

Hey everybody, welcome back to the show, this is Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is Dar Jamel, the great unembedded reporter.
He's the author of Beyond the Green Zone and the Will to Resist and his website is DarJamelIraq.com and he's been writing about the Gulf Oil Spill, Dar Jamel's Dispatch is the name of the site, DarJamelIraq.com.
Welcome to the show, how are you doing Dar?
Hey Scott, good to be with you again.
Well I'm glad to have you here.
So yeah, I haven't done any coverage of this oil spill thing on the radio show because I'm just kind of trying to put it out of my mind because I hate to think about what's going to happen to that Texas Gulf Coast that I care quite a bit about.
I'd rather just not think about it at all, but I guess I need to.
Really good stuff that you've got here, I was just reading Fending for Themselves before the show this morning and I guess the first piece of news there is, wow, there's actually Indians left in Louisiana, huh?
Who knew that?
Yeah, just a few, not too many, that's for sure, but the vast majority of the self-described Indians in Louisiana are down south of New Orleans and it's in the Marsh area which is the most vulnerable part of the state.
And you know, one thing I guess before we start talking about this whole thing for proper context when we talk about this oil disaster is like, maybe some of the listeners know this, but I didn't know very much about this at all until I got here this trip to New Orleans and started researching, but basically the entire south coast of Louisiana is vanishing.
It's a very fragile wetlands, wildlife, loads and loads of wildlife there, critical bird habitat, etc.
But for multiple reasons this area is literally vanishing before our eyes.
One, climate change, rising water, two, the oil industry went down there and drilled the hell out of it for oil and natural gas and chopped so many canals to lay their piping that that has caused massive erosion.
It's literally causing the area to just be kind of succumbing to the Gulf of Mexico.
And then of course now, we have storms that roll through and that erodes it further.
The primary reason being the controlling of the Mississippi River and the Delta, which used to produce sediment and build the area up faster than it would actually be eroded into the Gulf.
And so all of those things are at work now, short of the Mississippi, and so we have a situation where that entire marsh area, long before this oil disaster started, has already been literally vanishing.
Well, and here's the thing about that too.
I'm no scientist, but I know one named Tom and, you know, yeah, he knows, trust me.
And what he says is, this is the origin of the food chain on earth right here.
These wetlands are where the very smallest little creatures that become the bigger creatures that become dinner for the one step above that.
This is what we eat, is the things that eat the things that eat the things that grow up in those wetlands.
Without those wetlands, we don't really know what's going to happen.
Right, right.
Which is, I think, really the biggest issue, in addition to the fact that just right here within New Orleans, that's the land that really absorbs the tidal surges from the hurricanes that come through.
So when you take away the wetlands, we're going to be looking at Katrina's on a much larger scale, where hurricanes will roll straight into the bigger cities in the state without anything absorbing their punch before they get there.
So that's what's going on.
But now we add in this massive oil disaster where already we have huge amounts of crude oil washing into these areas.
And when they hit the marsh, they kill it immediately.
Because when the oil hits the marsh grass, it kills it.
The marsh grass is what holds that land together, the roots of it.
Then all of a sudden you have just bare land sitting there and it's going to erode it lightning fast speed.
In addition to the oil killing all of this fragile ecosystem that you mentioned.
And with the Native Americans down there, that is their way of life.
They are expert fisher people, oyster fishermen.
And when that land and that ecology is destroyed, they literally have no way to feed themselves in addition to the commercial fishing industry in this state, which is absolutely massive and a huge part of the state economy.
As well as the basis of the culture of that entire part of southern Louisiana is just going to be completely wiped out.
And these people already can't fish.
And so what BP is doing is they're hiring them to run, use their fishing boats to go out and place boom around the affected oil areas and the areas that they supposedly are going to try to keep from getting hit with oil.
And as you can see from the pictures in this article, the boom operation is a total joke.
You probably knew this guy and a lot of people probably know this, but to go see it, it's really shocking that BP, this hugely rich company, worth hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, can spend all this money on their shareholders, on the latest technologies for drilling and extracting oil.
And yet when you look at what they use then in the event of a catastrophe to try to correct the problem, and they're using basically, you know, primitive technology of booming, which everyone in the oil industry understands doesn't work.
And in addition to the way that they're using the booms, they're not even using it the way that it's meant to be used, where they're supposed to set it up in these and divert the oil into channels.
And then in order to collect it, they're not supposed to just set it up around places to try to keep it away.
But that's not even how booming is designed and specifically supposed to work.
So it's amazing to go out to these areas and see booms.
You'll see these huge marsh areas that are just covered in oil and or spotted with oil.
And then they're surrounded by boom, half of which is floating underwater, is already washed up on land.
It's really an absolute disaster.
And what they're doing to try to mitigate it is, frankly, a joke.
Well, you know, I was blissfully ignorant about that boom.
I always wondered, even when it's, you know, looks like it's doing what it's supposed to be doing on TV or whatever, it's only a few inches above the water.
We're talking about the ocean here, giant waves and things.
I mean, the Gulf of Mexico in the North Atlantic, but it also isn't a calm lake either.
And how the hell is that supposed to keep oil out?
And then, boy, from the pictures I saw on your website there, I mean, it doesn't even look like it's it.
I mean, hell, that stuff didn't even float.
It's got to be held up with sticks.
I don't know.
I don't want to know anymore, man.
You're breaking my heart with this stuff.
It's just and you say in there, Dar, is this really right?
An Exxon Valdez every two and a half days.
That's the oil coming out of the hole in the ocean here.
And it's been going on for months.
That's right.
If the higher end independent scientists predictions of the measurement of the amount of oil coming out of this gushing hole in the bottom of the Gulf, where the blowout preventer used this basically used to be, I mean, it's still technically there, but I was supposed to actually stop this thing.
You know, I mean, let's let's just back up real quick for for history.
You know, when this thing first happened and that well blew up and the well opened up and started spewing oil, BP claimed there was no leak.
Then they claimed there was a thousand barrels a day.
Then they claimed there was five thousand barrels a day.
And then more recently, the U.S. government experts say, well, no, it's between 30 and 60,000, 35,000 and 60,000 barrels a day.
But from the very beginning, independent scientists said, well, no, it could be around the round, give or take one hundred thousand barrels per day.
And that is also the amount that BP estimated in their initial disaster report that it could be as high as 100,000 a day.
All right.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back.
Everybody is Darja Mail Darja Mail Iraq dot com.
You can interact with other LRN listeners on our message board at Forum dot LRN dot FM.
That's Forum dot LRN dot FM.
I'm about to have a nervous breakdown.
My head really hurts.
And I know I'll find a way out of here.
I'm going to go.
All right, welcome back to the show.
This is Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking to Darja Mail.
He's the author of Beyond the Green Zone and the Will to Resist.
Here he's unembedded himself down in Louisiana.
Two pieces in question here, fending for themselves and living on a dying delta.
Now, Darja, tell us about the people, these Indians that you met there and and, you know, what it's like to be them these days.
Well, it's it's amazing down in that area, Scott.
It's about probably an hour and a half drive south of New Orleans, down on the marsh area, right down towards the coast.
And it's an area where you go down and the further south you go, you know, you start out surrounded by lush green land and then it becomes broken up with bayous and lakes and ponds.
And then it gets to a point where basically you're on a road and you're pretty much on a road going through pretty much the only land in the area.
Everything around you is water or little patches of of green land.
And that's about it.
And that's the area.
And so to drive down to this one tribal area, the Pontchartrain Indians, and you go over a tiny little bridge over yet another bayou and then you're on this tiny little strip of land where there's houses on stilts.
There's there's fishing nets everywhere and out of work shrimp boats.
Most of them, you know, right now, this should be the height of shrimping season.
They would be out working like mad, harvesting the marsh for shrimp, fish, crab.
And there they are tied up alongside the bayou.
And people are basically, if they're not going out laying boom for BP, they're sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out what the heck they're going to do next because people just don't know.
And with the Indians down there, it's really similar.
The same story is with fishermen who are non-Indian folk, where people, if they're not right now out laying boom for BP, which is very totally temporary job, they have no idea how long that will last, certainly for a while longer while this crisis continues.
But there's really no way they're going to know.
And just to get back to finish the thought we were talking about right before break is, you know, 100,000 barrels a day gushing out of this thing in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Well, the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 in Alaska was 259,000 barrels.
So if those higher-end estimates are accurate, and they are looking more accurate with time and slowly but surely the government estimates are climbing up to that higher-end estimate, that's two and a half Exxon Valdezes every single day gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
We can't see most of it because BP is using dispersants in two ways.
Hang on one second.
Let me stop you there because I just want to be clear, and I could have taken my note wrong, but I thought that you wrote on your blog that it was a Valdez every two and a half days rather than two and a half Valdezes a day.
No, it's an Exxon Valdez every two and a half days.
Sorry if I just misspoke.
Right, right.
That's what I thought.
That's what I thought originally.
I just want to make sure.
Yeah, that's correct.
But they're hiding it because most of this oil is not coming up to the surface, although we've seen a massive amount hit the surface of the Gulf and then wash ashore because they're hitting it with dispersants right down there at the source where it's coming out of the ground in the bottom of the Gulf, and then once the bit of it that does reach the surface, they're hitting it, they're flying over it in Hercules planes and basically dropping dispersant on it from the air to try to break it up.
I saw one of these scientists types on TV saying it's shooting out under such pressure that it's basically coming out as a mist.
That's part of it, too, because it's coming out at such pressure.
I mean, thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds per square inch pressure.
I mean, this is a huge reservoir is what a lot of people are predicting, too.
But the thing is, Scott, I really want to try to underscore the depth of this crisis, and I share your empathy and sympathy with the Gulf of Texas.
I live in Texas, too.
I spent a lot of my childhood playing down on the beaches of Galveston, and it really hurts my heart to see this, because we're looking at a very real possibility of this entire ecosystem and this entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico, on the U.S. side as well as Mexico, just being utterly wiped out for possibly generations if they don't stop this thing very, very soon.
Experts are talking about, look, it doesn't look like they're going to be able to stop this thing, even with these so-called relief wells that they're supposedly going to be hitting the source and being able to try to plug it up next month.
And I really hope that they're successful, because if they don't stop this thing, as one person I've been talking with, an insider deep within the industry, is telling me, if they don't stop this thing, then we need to know how big this reservoir is, and we can assume it's big.
Otherwise, they wouldn't have been taking the risk and the expense of drilling in 5,000 feet of water.
So we need to talk about, is it 10 billion barrels?
Is this 100 billion barrels?
How big is this reservoir?
Because that's how much oil is going to be in the Gulf of Mexico.
And they haven't even been straight about that?
Have they even pretended to be straight about how big of a well they think they've tapped here?
Well, we know the answer to that.
BP hasn't been straight about anything.
I mean, have they claimed to answer the question?
It's a secret.
They don't even pretend to answer that.
They don't even lie about it.
They don't even pretend.
They don't even offer that up in any way.
Well, I've got to tell you, man, I really hate worst-case scenario stuff, because it never, ever really is as bad as it seems a lot of times.
And yet, it seems really bad.
I don't know how many gallons, parts per million, or whatever.
Who knows?
We're way outside of my area of expertise here, man.
And the ocean's a hell of a big thing.
And Earth's natural processes are pretty powerful.
But then again, all that oil was just sitting there until somebody broke a hole in the top of it and opened it up.
Right.
Well, there really is.
I mean, I understand the being leery of the worst-case scenario thing.
But even if they stopped this thing today, which of course they're not, but even if they stopped it today, we're looking at enough oil in the Gulf that they're already finding oil in crab embryos.
So it's already entered low down on the food chain.
They're already finding oil there.
They're already, of course, finding loads and loads of fish, of crab, of turtles, of dolphin, of all kinds of birds that are already being killed by it.
It's already low down in the food chain.
Crabs are already eating it.
It's already in their eggs for future generations of crabs.
Here's what you don't understand, Dar.
We're an empire now.
And that means we create our own reality.
And we can just do things however we want and have things however we want.
There are no consequences.
Yeah, unfortunately, we just need to alert the oil in the crabs and the shrimp and the plankton about our little empire project.
But unfortunately, they don't know and they can't read.
It really is that kind of hubris that says, you know, yeah, we'll just go and invade the Middle East.
We'll turn everything upside down.
And then we'll put it all back together again.
It'll be fine.
And yeah, we'll just drill a hole in five miles of water or whatever it is, you know, as deep as the atmosphere is tall in order to get some oil.
And, you know, no big deal.
We don't need to have the ability to turn it off if we need to.
It'll all work out.
We can do what we want.
Well, it's really shocking, you know.
And, you know, one thing let's be real clear about with BP, given that, you know, yesterday was the 4th of July and today is a holiday for most folks because of that, this joke of celebrating independence from the Brits when, you know, this is a company that's over doing what they want.
They have the U.S. government in their back pocket.
They basically didn't have regulations in force, which is why this whole disaster happened in the first place.
This is a company that's, you know, criminally complicit in basically making this happen.
And they're using a dispersant that is banned over in Britain because it's so toxic and so dangerous.
They're not even allowed to use it back home.
But they're using it at free will over here.
The EPA ordered them to stop.
They thumbed their nose at the EPA.
They've been using it nonstop.
And this is a company that, you know, they basically don't care.
And the amount of money, you know, $20 billion as a slush fund to help compensate Americans who are suffering from their criminal negligence, that sounds like a lot of money.
But we're talking about a company that, you know, they're worth hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.
$20 billion is a drop in the bucket when it's going to come to really cleaning this up and compensating people.
Aw man, that clock doesn't keep time worth of crap.
I'll tell you what, I'm taking that thing off the wall.
That's the bumper music already playing.
We're done.
Thanks very much for your time, for all your efforts.
We'll be keeping an eye on DarjaMailRack.com for sure.
Thanks guys.
Alright y'all, this is Anti-War Radio.
That was Darja Mail.
We'll be right back.