PBS Need to Know

The topic of global warming frequently grabs headlines. Now the issue is center stage at Britain’s National Theatre, where playwright Mike Bartlett’s new play “Earthquakes in London” has received buzz for its apocalyptic view of a world in chaos due to global warming. The script features a scientist who suppressed his prescient understanding of the impact of carbon emissions, only to lose faith in the future of mankind.

Guest host Leslie Hart speaks with Rupert Goold, the Olivier-award-winning British director at the helm of the three-hour epic. Goold is also artistic director of the Headlong Theatre Company and an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In this podcast, Goold discusses the aim and impact of “Earthquakes in London.” He also calls upon scientists to more clearly communicate their warnings regarding global warming.

Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica

Natural gas production in Wyoming was called into question by residents concerned that it was contaminating their drinking water.

The federal government is warning residents in a small Wyoming town with extensive natural gas development not to drink their water, and to use fans and ventilation when showering or washing clothes in order to avoid the risk of an explosion.

The announcement accompanied results from a second round of testing and analysis in the town of Pavillion by Superfund investigators for the Environmental Protection Agency. Researchers found benzene, metals, naphthalene, phenols and methane in wells and in groundwater. They also confirmed the presence of other compounds that they had tentatively identified last summer and that may be linked to drilling activities.

“Last week it became clear to us that the information that we had gathered” “was going to potentially result in a hazard — result in a recommendation to some of you that you not continue to drink your water,” Martin Hestmark, deputy assistant regional administrator for ecosystems protection and remediation with the EPA in Denver, told a crowd of about 100 gathered at a community center in Pavillion Tuesday night. “We understand the gravity of that.”

Representatives of the EPA and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which made the health recommendation, said they had not determined the cause of the contamination and said it was too early to tell whether gas drilling was to blame. In addition to contaminants related to oil and gas, the agency detected pesticides in some wells, and significant levels of nitrates in one sample — signs that agricultural pollution could be partly to blame. The EPA’s final report on Pavillion’s water is expected early next year.

ProPublica first drew attention to Pavillion’s water [1] in late 2008, and reported extensively [2] on the EPA’s ongoing investigation there last August.

EnCana, the oil and gas company that owns most of the wells near Pavillion, has agreed to contribute to the cost of supplying residents with drinking water, even though the company has not accepted responsibility for the contamination.

EnCana spokesman Doug Hock told ProPublica in an e-mail that the petroleum hydrocarbon compounds the EPA found “covers an extremely wide spectrum of chemicals, many of which aren’t associated with oil and gas.”

“ATSDR’s suggestion to landowners was based upon high levels of inorganics — sodium and sulfate that are naturally occurring in the area,” he said.

EPA scientists began investigating Pavillion’s water in 2008 after residents complained about foul smells, illness and discolored water, and after state agencies declined to investigate. Last August the EPA found contaminants in a quarter of samples taken during the first stage of its investigation, and the agency announced it would continue with another round of samples — the set being disclosed now.

In the meeting Tuesday, the agency shared results from tests of 23 wells, 19 of which supply drinking water to residents. It found low levels of hydrocarbon compounds — various substances that make up oil — in 89 percent of the drinking water wells it tested. Methane gas was detected in seven of the wells and was determined to have come from the gas reservoir being tapped for energy. Eleven of the wells contained low levels of the compound 2-butoxyethanol phosphate — a compound associated with drilling processes but that is also used as a fire retardant and a plasticizer.

The scientists also found extremely high levels of benzene, a carcinogen, and other compounds in groundwater samples taken near old drilling disposal pits. Some of the samples were taken less than 200 yards from drinking water sources and scientists expressed concerns that the contaminated water was connected to drinking water wells by an underground aquifer.

“The groundwater associated with some inactive oil and gas production pits” “is in fact highly contaminated,” Ayn Schmit, a scientist with the EPA’s ecosystems protection program, told residents. But she also cautioned that the EPA has not determined the cause of the contamination and is continuing its investigation.

Related:

The price of gas: A Need to Know investigation

This week on Need to Know: Corporations and labor unions are spending record amounts on political campaigns, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that lifted restrictions on independent expenditures. Monica Youn of the Brennan Center for Justice explains how this new record-breaking spending might affect the November elections. Then, Need to Know travels to Mississippi to see whether an experimental jobs program there that subsidizes the salaries of new hires can actually give hope to the unemployed.

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Bob Ivry of Bloomberg News joins Need to Know to discuss a well-kept secret in Washington: the true cost of the federal bank bailout. We also go back to Louisiana, one week after the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, to examine the erosion of coastal wetlands there. Author Charlaine Harris talks about Vampires. And as Washington once again debates the role of the state, Jon Meacham looks to history to understand how government and the private sector can best work together.

Watch the individual segments: New rules for campaign spending

Corporations and unions are spending record amounts on political campaigns, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling. Monica Youn of the Brennan Center explains how this might affect upcoming elections. One step forward for jobs

Need to Know travels to Mississippi to see whether an experimental jobs program there can deliver hope to the unemployed. The true cost of the bank bailout

Thought the financial crisis only cost taxpayers $700 billion? Think again. New reports have shown that, at one point last year, the government had lent, spent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion to Wall Street. Disappearing delta

Need to Know revisits a report about the erosion of the wetlands along the Louisiana coastline — New Orleans’ natural buffer against hurricanes. Vampires, shootouts and sex scenes

The third season of the HBO series “True Blood” is nearing its end. So Need to Know is re-featuring our interview with author Charlaine Harris, whose books inspired the series. Harris talks about her writing habits, her fascination with the supernatural and her personal set of vampire teeth. In perspective: On government

Washington is once again debating the efficacy of regulation and the role of the state. But as history tells us, America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial, and the government is attentive and engaged.

I was 11 years old on the day Reagan was sworn in as our 40th president, and I — a politically fascinated youngster — was taken to the inauguration by a long-suffering grandmother. Nearly three decades later, I can still remember Reagan saying these words: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

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Ronald Reagan was not wholly wrong. That line was, however, more memorable than accurate.  Article adjectives — check your “Strunk and White” — were the key. Government was not the solution, in fact, and government was a problem. Edited that way, the line would have been factually correct. We wouldn’t remember it, though.

Not that it’s being memorable settled anything. As Washington again debates the efficacy of regulation and the role of the state, we’re reminded that this is an argument that is, in St. Augustine’s phrase, ever ancient, ever new. For example, for Lyndon Johnson, the years of the Great Society offered, he once remarked, more hope than the world had seen since the birth of Christ. The backlash came quickly.

Listen to Jimmy Carter: “But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America. It is a crisis of confidence.”

Bill Clinton, governing in the world Reagan built, appeared to end the debate for all time: “The era of big government is over.”

But this American story is never over. And now President Obama has to decide where he stands. For him, ideological categories are of little use; once the Bush administration essentially nationalized the banks in the fall of 2008, it made it difficult to see exactly what public and private sector really mean anymore.

Cynically but accurately put, Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them — take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.

It would be wonderful if the public sector were always great, or always terrible; or if the private sector were always great, or always terrible. Alas, reality is more complicated than comforting caricatures. Governments fail, and corporations fail. Look no farther than the Gulf of Mexico or Wall Street for evidence of the culpability and responsibility of both entities for an unfolding and spreading disaster.

History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged. Who among us, really, would, looking back, wish to edit out either sphere at the entire expense of the other?

One of the long-standing traditions of Labor Day is that television news programs do some kind of tribute to the working man and woman. But since this is Labor Day 2010, there are a lot fewer working men and women to honor. More than 14 million Americans are out of work, and for them, Labor Day is just another Monday.

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As unemployment hovers around 10 percent, the Obama administration, and politicians everywhere, are attempting to find an answer. One solution that some states are trying involves using part of a special $5 billion fund from last year’s federal stimulus package. The goal is to put the neediest Americans back to work.

Correspondent Mona Iskander traveled to Mississippi to meet some of the people who are hoping this temporary jobs program will lead to permanent employment.

Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer and the unofficial beginning of the high political campaign season. And while we’re all bound to spend a fair amount of time talking about the issues and candidates this election cycle, we want to begin with what is often called the mother’s milk of politics: money.

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According to a report from the Associated Press, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is planning to spend $75 million on this year’s campaigns, mainly on Republican candidates. The AFL-CIO, for its part, will spend more than $50 million supporting candidates who share labor’s agenda — mostly democrats. But the Chamber of Commerce has also spent close to $190 million lobbying Congress since the Obama administration began, according to that AP report, which calls the chamber “a virtual third party.”

There are new rules on campaign spending as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case earlier this year. It held that some restrictions on campaign spending by corporations and labor unions violated their First Amendment rights to free speech. Jon Meacham spoke with Monica Youn of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law about how the new rules are already affecting campaigns. She has litigated campaign finance and election law issues in state and federal courts across the country.

We all know about TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which spent $700 billion in taxpayers’ money to bail out banks after the financial crisis. That money was scrutinized by Congress and the media.

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But it turns out that that $700 billion is just a small part of a much larger pool of money that has gone into propping up our nation’s financial system. And most of that taxpayer money hasn’t had much public scrutiny at all.

According to a team at Bloomberg News, at one point last year the U.S. had lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion to rescue the economy. The Bloomberg reporters have been following that money. Alison Stewart spoke with one, Bob Ivry, to talk about the true cost to the taxpayer of the Wall Street bailout.

Last week, we went to New Orleans for a look at how faulty levees contributed to the fatal flooding during Hurricane Katrina. And while the importance of the levee system can’t be overstated, New Orleans has also had a natural buffer against hurricanes: the wetlands of Louisiana that stretch for hundreds of miles along the coast.

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But even before the BP spill, those wetlands were in serious trouble. In the time it takes you to watch this broadcast, roughly an acre of those wetlands will sink into the Gulf of Mexico.

This year, President Obama became the first president to include funding for Gulf coast restoration in his budget. But the money allocated may be too little. To give you a sense of the scale of the problem, here is an excerpt from a segment called “The Disappearing Delta,” reported by our former colleagues at “NOW with Bill Moyers.”

“The Disappearing Delta” was produced even before the wetlands damage caused by Katrina. It was reported by National Public Radio’s Daniel Zwerdling.

As the third season of the critically acclaimed television show “True Blood” is about to wrap on HBO, we revisit our June interview with author Charlaine Harris, whose books inspired the series. The story imagines a small Louisiana town where humans and vampires coexist, and follows the fraught relationships that result.

Need to Know’s Alison Stewart sat down with Harris to discuss her writing habits and fascination with vampires. Harris also talked about her own personal experimentation with vampire teeth, and described what it was like to write her first sex scene.

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Hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — is a process used by energy companies to get natural gas out of the ground. Fracking involves forcing water, sand and chemicals underground to fracture rocks and release the natural gas trapped within them.

But what happens to those chemicals once they’ve been injected into the ground? That depends upon whom you ask. In a joint effort with ProPublica, the non-profit investigative journalist organization, we sent correspondent John Larson to Wyoming, where some residents believe fracking is contaminating their water and risking their health.

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Need to Know

Episode 117

Airdate: August 27, 2010

ALISON STEWART: I’m Alison Stewart.

JON MEACHAM: And I’m Jon Meacham. Here’s what you need to know.

ALISON STEWART: Landowners powerless to stop energy companies from gas drilling on their land…it’s a controversial technique called fracking, and some residents say it’s making them sick.

JOHN FENTON: They’re relying completely, completely on the industry to follow the rules. How, how can you do that?

ALISON STEWART: A Need to Know investigation

JON MEACHAM: After the recall of millions of eggs, we ask, how safe is our food supply?

GARDINER HARRIS: I think most people and even industry now acknowledge that the voluntary efforts that have been going on for really hundreds of years in this country don’t work anymore.

ALISON STEWART: And five years after Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, we get a guided tour and some strong opinions…about what’s been fixed and what hasn’t.

HARRY SHEARER: These walls which have not been fixed will fail again. That’s the fear.

ALISON STEWART: Actor, activist and New Orleans resident Harry Shearer on “The Big Uneasy.”

JON MEACHAM: All that and Andy Borowitz next on Need to Know

ALISON STEWART: Hello everyone and thanks for joining us.

JON MEACHAM: This week we bring you three stories on very different subjects, but with a common underlying theme…the role of government in keeping us safe. We’ll delve into the safety of our food supply, and whether New Orleans can consider itself safe from the kind of flooding that happened five years ago after Katrina.

ALISON STEWART: But we begin with the safety of a process known as fracking. That’s short for hydraulic fracturing, and it’s used by energy companies to get natural gas out of the ground.

Fracking involves forcing water, sand, and chemicals underground to fracture rocks and release the natural gas trapped within them. But what happens to those chemicals once they’ve been injected into the ground? That depends upon whom you ask. In a joint effort with ProPublica, the non-profit investigative journalist organization, we sent correspondent John Larson to Wyoming, where some residents believe fracking is contaminating their water and risking their health.

JOHN FENTON: We’ve got two different wells and then equipment for separating the liquids out of the gas.

JOHN LARSON: And this is how far from your home?

JOHN FENTON: Oh, less than a quarter of a mile I’m guessing.

VOICEOVER: John Fenton has lived here, the sweeping plains of central Wyoming, all his life. He started out as a carpenter, but in the 90s, natural gas drilling took off here.

JOHN LARSON: Now you actually worked on this project right here?

JOHN FENTON: Correct. You see these green pipes coming up out of the ground?

VOICEOVER: So Fenton decided to give it a try and worked his way up from laborer to welder.

JOHN FENTON: You can see where they’re welded together. And that was my job, to weld everything together and make it fit.

VOICEOVER: While many of his neighbors farmed this land, he constructed drilling rigs here, doing contract work for gas companies including Encana, which has some 200 wells in this area. And he says he made more money than he ever could have farming.

JOHN FENTON: I could make in six months welding what I make in about six years.

VOICEOVER: The work kept him close to his home, here, in a town called Pavillion. In fact, sometimes the land he helped drill was his own.

That’s because of something that will likely seem remarkable to most Americans. Fenton, like most Wyoming residents, only has the rights to the surface of his land. Oil and gas companies can buy the rights for everything below ground from the state, and pay residents an access fee to drill.

JOHN LARSON: If they want to go in there and get it, in this case natural gas…

JOHN FENTON: Mm-hmm.

JOHN LARSON: …you can’t stop ‘em.

JOHN FENTON: No.

JOHN LARSON: They can come on your property –

JOHN FENTON: Yeah.

JOHN LARSON: – drill a hole, there’s nothing you can really do about it.

JOHN FENTON: Nothin’.

VOICEOVER: Over time, Encana and several other gas companies drilled 24 gas wells on this property where Fenton and his wife Catherine raised their four boys, and where their parents and grandchildren also live.

FENTON: We got two more grandkids.

VOICEOVER: But there were problems.

JOHN FENTON: You see these big bolted flanges.

VOICEOVER: Fenton says he started seeing things on the job that troubled him: workers spilling chemicals and improperly sealing wells.

JOHN FENTON: I’ve seen any type of garbage from sandwich bags to old grease guns that down work any more, dirty gloves. I’ve even seen people relieve themselves in there, you know.

VOICEOVER: And then suddenly in 2001 a fine, white mist started spewing from what’s called a drill pad right by the Fenton’s house. The Fentons complained, but they say the state’s Department of Environmental Quality told them it could do nothing to stop it. The DEQ confirms that it does not regulate the process of fracking in that area.

JOHN FENTON: They wouldn’t answer any questions. They wouldn’t do anything.

JOHN LARSON: Even though you knew that chemicals were coming out and spewing -

JOHN FENTON: Yeah.

JOHN LARSON: - all over the place.

JOHN FENTON: Yeah.

VOICEOVER: The drilling process on the Fenton’s land includes a practice originated by the energy-services giant Halliburton, known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

To frack a well, drillers blast millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals deep into the ground. That creates fractures in the rock and releases the gas.

It’s used to reach once inaccessible gas reserves in a vast area that includes 31 states and the Gulf of Mexico. Encana is a major player drilling wells that rely on fracturing. So are BP and Exxon Mobil.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: It’s become the essential process in producing new reserves of– of natural gas in the United States.

VOICEOVER: Abrahm Lustgarten is a reporter for the non profit investigative journalism organization ProPublica. He has been covering this story – and raising concerns about fracturing — since 2008.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: Questions have arisen about what happens to the substances that are injected underground. Where does it go? Can it infiltrate water resources? There’s been– a great deal of concern about where– these chemical– what these chemicals are and– and where they end up.

Remarkably, no one outside the industry even knows what these chemicals are. And gas companies do not have to tell.

Not only that, but when President Bush signed an energy bill in 2005, it contained something critics call “the Halliburton loophole,” which specifically exempted fracking from regulations imposed by the safe drinking water act.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: It’s just a couple sentences. And it’s buried very deep in– what was one of the longest– pieces of legislation passed in the– in the Bush Years, the Energy Policy Act.

VOICEOVER: Lawmakers who voted for the bill – and the loophole – were influenced by a 2004 Environmental Protection Agency study that found that fracking “poses little or no threat” to drinking water. But five of seven members of the study’s review panel had ties to oil and gas companies. And in a 2004 letter to congress, EPA whistleblower Weston Wilson said it was “scientifically unsound and contrary to the purposes of law.”

JOHN FENTON: They’re relying completely, completely on the industry to follow the rules. How, how can you do that? I – I don’t understand how you can, especially somethin’ that important and somethin’ that can be that destructive, and you just turn it over to the people who are makin’ millions and millions of dollars off of it, to follow the rules.

VOICEOVER: Abrahm Lustgarten visited Pavillion in 2009, where he met the Fentons.

Catherine Fenton told him that her mother had lost both her sense of smell and taste, and now Catherine was suffering similar symptoms.

CATHERINE FENTON: For about two years now I’ve noticed my smell and taste going. I expect to be like my mother. She’s been to neurologist after neurologist and nobody can help her.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: People complain of respiratory ailments. They– have chemical sensitivities– shortness of breath. Swelling, skin rashes, lesions, severe headaches, nausea, often severe vomiting. It’s very difficult in any of these cases to know for sure whether the– the health impacts that we’re seeing are related to drilling. Are related to– to fracturing chemicals specifically. But it is unnerving to hear the same stories from different people– thousands of miles apart and they’re so nearly precisely identical.

JOHN FENTON: It would be different if it was one person. You know, you could explain that away. But when you’re seeing this happenin’ all around to your neighbors and you’re seein’ it happen to people in other parts of the country who your only common connection is you live in the middle of gas production…

VOICEOVER: Troubled by his experience, John Fenton quit the oil and gas industry. And now, with the help of his family, he ekes out a living raising hay.

They’re concerned about whether their water is safe for farming. And even more concerned about whether it’s safe to drink. Fenton now drives 80 miles round-trip every two weeks to get water from relatives. Fenton’s neighbor Louis Meeks, a decorated Vietnam veteran who raises alfalfa, has wells on his property that were also fracked… and his water is also undrinkable.

LOUIS MEEKS: I love this place, I really do love this place but look what they did to it. We was happy and they come and ruined it.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: Louis Meek spent years trying to– get some attention– for his issues. In almost every– every turn he hit a dead end.

LOUIS MEEKS: They don’t care! You know? They don’t! The state don’t care!

JOHN LARSON: I already notice there’s sort of a white film. Is that what you’re talking about?

VOICEOVER: He’s kept up his fight though. He says he’s sure that if regulators saw – and smelled – his water, they would understand why he was so persistent.

LOUIS MEEKS: Yeah you can see the sheen. And you can smell it right there.

JOHN LARSON: Can you? Oh yeah, smells like oil. It smells just like oil.

LOUIS MEEKS: Smells like production water.

VOICEOVER: Meeks says the last time he tried to drill a well for drinkable water he went to more than 500 feet and the water still smelled. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: During that drilling process, they had– a blowout. The drill struck what appeared to be– a pocket of gas. And blew back out– the way they were drilling it with immense force. It became a gushing waterfall of– of methane and– and water– in the middle of winter. That– that blew the drilling rig off its foundation. And– and created this towering– wall of ice.

LOUIS MEEKS: We called Encana and see what they would do, and they says, we’re not doin’ nothin’. That was private property and you were drillin’ a private well.

VOICEOVER: Meeks and his wife Donna had to leave their property for three days until a judge finally ordered Encana to seal the well. The episode brought Meeks and his plight national attention when it was chronicled in an HBO documentary called “Gasland.”

FILM CLIP: What would happen if I took some chemicals and dumped it in the Big Boss of Encana’s well? They’d have me in the pen so fast my head would spin.

VOICEOVER: Not everyone is happy with the attention meeks has brought to the fracking in pavillion.

VINCE DOLBOW: Everyone’s out there lookin’ for an Erin Brockovich situation, and this is viewed nationally, and it gets everyone stirred up nationally lookin’ for this villain.

VOICEOVER: Vince Dolbow, a hay farmer, is part of a sizable group here that says drilling has unfairly become an easy target.

VINCE DOLBOW: The mineral industry’s the number one income generator to the state of Wyoming as far as tax revenue and things that way.

JOHN LARSON: How do you explain a number of your neighbors starting to say, hey, our water is suddenly goin’ bad and we think it might have something to do with the oil and gas industry?

VINCE DOLBOW: What I would say is that there may or may not be somethin’ in their wells. There has been nothin’ to tie anything to the oil and gas industry yet. And what I would say is that I think some of those motives may be economic motives that are with the individuals making those claims.

JOHN LARSON: So people may be wantin’ to go after big oil, big gas to get a big paycheck somehow without necessarily – really having bad water, bad wells.

VINCE DOLBOW: Possibly. I’m, I’m not saying that their wells are good. That’s not my deal. I don’t know.

VOICEOVER: They’re making another one right there.

VOICEOVER: Another one on your property?

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: Louis Meeks. This is a man who had made his– living on the Wyoming ranch lands, who had– served the country and the military in– in Vietnam. He spent all of his savings and– and resources– fighting the oil and gas industry and seeking answers and seeking some sort of restitution or some sort of solution. What he couldn’t do because of the stigma attached to his property was– was sell it– and move somewhere else. So, he became a prisoner in his own property.

JOHN LARSON: I mean, this has been goin’ on for how long? Two, two thousand –

LOUIS MEEKS: Since April of ’04, yeah.

JOHN LARSON: Oh, you gotta be tired.

LOUIS MEEKS: Oh, I’m gettin’ real tired of it. But I ain’t gonna give up. I gotta keep fightin’. I want that little girl of mine, that little granddaughter of mine to have somethin’, be able to go fishin’, be able to go huntin’. It’s pathetic what these gas companies are doin’. They’re runnin’ the states. And ain’t gonna be nothin’ left, no huntin’, no fishin’, no good water. And one of these days, you mark my word, water’s gonna be worth more than oil and gas.

AYN SCHMIT: You can’t hear people talking about fears that they have with their health and their children’s health and, and not be moved by that.

Ayn Schmit oversees water quality issues for the EPA’s region 8. When she and her colleagues heard about the problems in Pavillion two years ago, they decided they needed to act. It was the first time the EPA had done a scientific investigation into fracking since its 2004 report.

AYN SCHMIT: We sampled 39 wells. S – two of them, I think, two or three were c – were p – community wells for the town of Pavillion, and the rest were primarily domestic wells, some stock watering wells.

VOICEOVER: The EPA found what it calls “contaminants of concern” in eleven of the 39 sampled wells. They included the wells of Louis Meeks and John Fenton.

JOHN FENTON: We’ve got the second-highest methane reading out of all the tests taken in the water, suspended methane. And we’ve also got some very exotic chemicals that so far it’s hard to even know what these chemicals are.

JOHN LARSON: But does this necessarily prove that it’s coming from the gas operations?

JOHN FENTON: No, it doesn’t, because it’s hard to prove where anything comes from if you don’t know what they’re using.

VOICEOVER: Remember, gas companies are not compelled to tell the public or the EPA which chemicals they use in fracking. Some scientists say the list likely includes the carcinogen benzene.

But for now, the EPA can’t even be sure which chemicals it is looking for…

JOHN LARSON: Now, just to the common American, I think that sounds outrageous. How would, how do you explain why that would be?

AYN SCHMIT: I can’t really explain that. I mean, I can say that as a scientist, dev – designing an investigation, it’s certainly helpful to know what one is looking for when one is designing that process.

VOICEOVER: Industry representatives say the composition of fracking fluid must be kept confidential because it’s a trade secret.

LEE FULLER: We are dealing with chemical additives that are manufactured and, and they have a certain intellectual property right to them.

VOICEOVER: Lee Fuller represents the natural gas industry as policy director for a coalition of trade groups called energy in depth.

LEE FULLER: I think there’s been a very aggressive effort to try to suppress the development of fossil fuels in the United States. Natural gas offers us a huge potential for clean-burning American fuel, but it is fossil fuel. And fracturing, is a linchpin to producing that natural gas.

VOICEOVER: Fuller says too much has been made of chemicals that make up a tiny part of fracturing fluid.

LEE FULLER: Recognize that that mixture that you’re dealing with is something like 99 ½ percent water and sand. The additives that are involved in it are a very small part of the total mixture composition.

ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN: Well, this is the standard industry explanation for– for what goes into hydraulic fracturing fluid. But if you take their 99.5 percent and you simply do some math, and you look at the– the two million or four million or six million gallons of fluid that might be pumped into a hydraulic fracturing operation You might have 10,000 or 20,000 gallons of toxic chemicals that make up that five percent. That is still an extraordinary amount of– of toxic chemicals. And remember we don’t know exactly which toxic chemical we’re talking about. If it is benzene, just a drop can contaminate thousands of gallons of fresh drinking water.

VOICEOVER: A law passed just this month in Wyoming forces companies to provide a complete list of fracking chemicals to a state agency called the Wyoming state oil and conservation commission. But that’s the same agency that promotes gas drilling in the state. A spokesperson told need to know it isn’t making the entire list available to the public or the federal government.

Even without a full list however, the EPA did find an unusual chemical in Pavillion well water. It’s called 2bep – and it’s related to a compound that some industry disclosures confirm is used in fracking.

JOHN LARSON: How dangerous is that compound?

AYN SCHMIT: Again I’m not a toxicologist. Some of the compounds that we’re looking for have very little toxicological information. So, as you can imagine, the health risk evaluation process is, is complex and challenging.

VOICEOVER: The EPA is now drilling test wells in Pavillion to learn more about what’s in the groundwater. They expect to announce preliminary results next week.

Encana refused an on camera interview with Need to Know but did issue a statement saying it “…remains fully committed to working with the EPA in its water quality investigation and testing in the Pavillion area.”

SOT: The burden should be on the gas companies to show us this is safe.

VOICEOVER: In the meantime, there has been a wave of public outcry about fracking this past summer, there were protests in cities from Dallas to Albany to Pittsburgh.

SOT: We need to strike a balance here.

VOICEOVER: In response, the EPA has begun holding regional meetings to lay out its plans and elicit public comments. The nearest one to Pavillion was held in July….six hours away, in Denver. Halliburton was there.

MICHAEL EBERHARED, HALLIBURTON: I’m Mike Eberhared. Thank you, I work for Halliburton here in the Rockies. Like all other state regulators the director of the Colorado oil and gas conservation committee has recently stated the committee’s not aware of any time that Hydraulic Fracturing has resulted in harmed ground water.

VOICEOVER: So was John Fenton.

JOHN FENTON: My wife and I run a small family farm and ranch operation in central Wyoming. Currently there are 4 generations of our family living on the ranch. We can no longer drink our water because due to safety concerns with constituents in the water. So I hereby propose that if this hydraulic fracturing is as safe and benign as it’s made out to be that the categorical environmental exclusions against environmental rules be done away with. That a full and complete unedited list of constituents needs to be made, not just to the state government like they’re proposing in Wyoming, but to the public at large would be a very good start. I’ve worked in industry in the past, and I don’t have a problem with the production of oil or natural gas or any of our other natural resources. And the monetary gains are nice, the jobs are nice. But we do have to look after the health and the basic human needs of everyone on this planet.

JON MEACHAM: This week online…New York state resident, fracking opponent and actor Mark Ruffalo discusses the campaign that led New York State to declare a moratorium on the controversial practice.

MARK RUFFALO: It’s a battle that’s happening in rural areas. I live there. The reason I know about this is because I live there – that’s where I’m raising my family. This isn’t an actor with his pet issue. This is me and my kids and my family. And we get our water from our well. And my neighbors – I sit right smack dab in the middle of this thing and my neighbors, my friends, have leased their lands. And I can’t blame them. What can I say – especially the farmers – I mean I love those guys. I really do care about those people and I think they’re getting shafted by these gas companies, obviously. And I care because it’s my life.

JON MEACHAM: The full interview, and much more, on the Need to Know site.

ALISON STEWART: Now here’s what you need to know about who is….or isn’t…..protecting our nation’s food supply. As 550 million eggs were recalled over the past two weeks for possible salmonella contamination, we learned that the owner of the farm that produced many of those eggs, Austin “Jack” DeCoster has a history of health, worker safety, and environmental violations, spanning over two decades. You may ask yourself where was the FDA? Where was the USDA in all this? Well, actually, you don’t have to ask yourself, because I’m going to ask Gardiner Harris, the public health reporter for The New York Times. Thanks for being with us.

GARDINER HARRIS: Happy to be here, Alison.

ALISON STEWART: Let’s talk about the DeCoster family for just a moment. They have had a series of fines over many years, classified as habitual violators at one point. Can you explain to us why they would be able to still be in the business of providing food for the country if they’ve broken so many rules?

GARDINER HARRIS: Right. Well, all those rules were broken from state– agencies and also the worker safety rules and all those other things have nothing to do with FDA or USDA oversight. I mean, what– what’s really going on here– Allison, is there’s an alphabet soup of various agencies who oversee our food supply. Most prominently, of course, USDA and FDA. But in fact, there are 13 different federal agencies who oversee the food supply in the federal government. And then, of course, there are scores of state agencies that also have roles in some form of food regulation. So, it’s– it’s not at all uncommon that you’ll have these sort of organizations like the DeCoster Group, that will fall between the many, many cracks between all of these various agencies.

ALISON STEWART: Well, let’s talk about the FDA and the USDA, because it’s very interesting. I don’t think a lot of people understand that they both have different food groups under their purview. That one can be in charge of the eggs and one’s in charge of the hens. Can you explain that?

GARDINER HARRIS: Right. I can explain it, although it’s– it’s hard to kind of figure out the– the idea behind it, of course. You know, FDA oversees, for instance, cheese pizzas. USDA oversees meat pizzas. FDA oversees open-faced sandwiches. USDA oversees closed sandwiches. And so, this, of course, leads to problems. And– you can particularly see this with eggs, because, of course, USDA oversees chickens and FDA oversees shell eggs that we eat. So, the problem is, is that for decades, shell eggs have really kind of fallen through the cracks between these two agencies, because nobody was quite sure who was supposed to make sure that shell eggs were– were safe. Now, finally, at the end of the Clinton Administration, after a huge amount of– decades of bureaucratic infighting, President Clinton actually had to resolve this fight. And he resolved it in favor of the FDA. And said in 1999, the FDA was gonna put out a rule saying that it was gonna– regulate eggs and this is how it was gonna do it. But the rule didn’t get out. And the Bush Administration came in and suddenly they went back to that same argument that had been going on for a long time. And it took the Obama Administration to finally separate these parties again and make the same decision that President Clinton had, which is that FDA is gonna oversee eggs. So, FDA came out with a new egg rule. But that egg rule only went into effect in July. And, of course, many of these illnesses started in May and even earlier. FDA thinks that had its egg rule gone into effect earlier, this recall might not have happened. Although, that’s not clear, either. And in fact, Congress is set to tack– tackle this issue in the next few weeks.

ALISON STEWART: Let me break down that answer a little bit. The FDA, you talked about the recall. I don’t think a lot of people understand that the recall was voluntary. The FDA wasn’t able and didn’t really have in its purview to say, “Hey, recall those eggs.” Why is that?

GARDINER HARRIS: What I think most people and even industry now acknowledge is that the voluntary efforts that have been going on for really hundreds of years in this country don’t work anymore. And that’s partly because of the industrialization of the food supply and the nationalization of distribution. You know, this DeCoster Group had eggs distributed over 22 different states. I mean, that’s an extraordinary-sized operation that really wasn’t around decades ago. So, when there’s a problem in an operation like that, you can stick in thousands of people. And also, we now have this DNA typing that you can sort of tell when someone get– who gets sick in Tennessee actually is getting sick from the same problem as someone who is getting sick in– in Texas. And a decade ago, we just didn’t know that. People would get sick. You had no idea why. You had no idea that these illnesses across state lines were linked. Now we know. And people are really getting tired of– of these things happening. So, they’re finally willing, I think, and Congress is poised to pass, hopefully– legislation that would give FDA re– authority to sort of demand recalls. Authority to insist that these production facilities be done safely. And a variety of other authorities.

ALISON STEWART: There are opponents to that legislation, however. Small farms are saying, you know, “It’s really not fair to put my small farm and have it have the same sort of regulation as these giant, big ag farms.” Is there something to that argument about this legislation?

GARDINER HARRIS: Well, I think that goes to sort of a cultural issue in agriculture, of course. These are fiercely en– independent people. You know, a lot of the small farms are– have moved into this sort of organic space. And they really don’t like the idea of an inspector from the federal government being able to tromp around their grounds. And that’s one of the reasons why this legislation has been held up. You know, the House passed the legislation more than a year ago. And the Senate has been considering it ever since, you know? Part of the delay, of course, is– was the huge battle over such things as health reform and financial reform. But part of it was that– you know, the Senate is much more– listens much more closely to agricultural in– interests, because ag interests have much more power in the Sen– Senate. Because, you know, these relatively low population states like the– the Dakotas have two Senators just like California. So, these small farmers have really made their voice heard in the Senate. And so, the Senate legislation provides a lot of opt outs for small farms, as long as they’re, you know, only distributing to local farmers, cooperatives. As long as their– their production is relatively low. They– they will not– have to comply with some of the rules in– in the legislation. But, of course, consumer groups have pushed back a little bit and said, “Why do we put up with unsafe foods– of any sort? From any size facility?” So, the fight is still continuing behind the scenes in the Senate. Nonetheless, most people think that the Senate, when it comes back into session after Labor Day, will move to pass this legislation. And this egg recall is maybe perfectly timed to sort of provide the last incentive to get it over the last hurdle.

ALISON STEWART: This story is to be continued in the fall. Gardiner Harris from the New York Times, thanks so much.

GARDINER HARRIS: Sure. Thank you, Alison.

ALISON STEWART: This weekend we all have an opportunity to be honest with ourselves when it comes to some issues that touch on raw nerves. Let’s try it: Right now—what do you think about the building of the Islamic cultural and religious center near the site of the World Trade Center attacks? If your gut tells you, “Ok…it is a free speech issue, not to mention freedom of religion,” well then logically you support Glenn Beck’s right to hold what he… what he calls his “restoring honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the site and the date of the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. Intellectually it’s the same argument. Gut check again, does it feel right?

Now let’s try it this way: deep down inside, you oppose the Islamic center and prayer room because you think it is insensitive to 9/11 victims families or you believe it could promote something dangerous to America – and that’s the most important thing right now– if you are consistent, you must also oppose the gathering of thousands of people, some tea party members, who if history repeats itself may carry signs like these at the site where an iconic speech of the Civil Rights Movement was given. You will want to be sensitive to the feelings of all those who shared Doctor King’s dream to end the violence that included children being blown up in churches, men lynched and others attacked and denied rights by their fellow citizens because of their race.

Mr. Beck said on his radio show this week that his rally quote “has nothing to do with the mosque thing, nothing to do with it.” Well there’s a link. Both situations bring up painful memories and no matter who or what you support, in these two cases, you can’t really argue that.

Something else Dr. King said in his speech could provide more guidance today than perhaps it did even 47 years ago. He said quote “when the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir”. We are heirs and keepers of these important documents that helped make this country great. Let’s respect it, even if it hurts a bit to do it.

JON MEACHAM: Sunday will mark the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Nearly two thousand people died. The economic toll is close to a hundred billion dollars. Among the many Katrina retrospectives, a unique voice stands out. Harry Shearer – the comic actor and writer best known for his work on “The Simpsons” and the landmark motion picture “This is Spinal Tap” – has just finished a provocative documentary film about Katrina. The film will be shown this coming Monday, in movie theaters nationwide, for one night only. In the film, Shearer argues that many of us learned the wrong lessons about what happened to New Orleans five years ago. We visited with Shearer in New Orleans to get a look at his film, and to understand why he remains skeptical that the government has done all that’s needed to prevent another flood.

HARRY SHEARER: This is the Lower French Quarter, which is a residential neighborhood, this close to the part of the French Quarter where everybody comes and parties. But don’t come visit us in the Lower Quarter! It’s quiet here. I came one year for Jazz Fest and fell in love with the place. I left, but I kept coming back and just the love affair that kept getting deeper. This city, if it speaks to you at all, it whispers in your ear so seductively that you can’t resist.

VOICEOVER: Most of us first saw Harry Shearer like this when he played the bassist Derrek Smalls in the 1984 comedy “This is Spinal Tap.”

For over twenty years, Shearer has also been the voice of many of the characters on “The Simpsons.” He plays, among others, Ned Flanders, Kent Brockman, Principal Skinner, and the show’s villain, the evil-to-his-core Montgomery Burns.

MONTGOMERY BURNS: I hope nobody finds out about this.. it’s pure journalistic dynamite!

VOICEOVER: But Shearer’s most recent project is quite a detour – a documentary about exactly what occurred in his beloved city five years ago…

HARRY SHEARER: But here in New Orleans, we all know what happened in August of 2005. Katrina.

NEWS ANCHOR 1: The biggest natural disaster…

NEWS ANCHOR 2: Katrina was a natural disaster.

CHRIS DODD: …a major American city went through a natural disaster..

AL SHARPTON:.. unlike in Katrina, where you had a natural disaster hit the city..

NEWT GINGRICH:… Katrina, which destroyed so much of New Orleans..

GERALDO RIVERA: …this natural disaster befell New Orleans…

VOICEOVER: Shearer says they’ve all got it wrong.

HARRY SHEARER: This was clearly a man-made event. This was caused by four decades plus of misfeasance and malfeasance on the part of the federal government.

VOICEOVER: His documentary is called “The Big Uneasy” and in it, Shearer takes up this provocative idea. To make the case, he’s put together a jam-packed chorus: there are scientists and engineers, community leaders and government whistle-blowers. They are all brought together to help explain the real reason New Orleans flooded so badly during Hurricane Katrina.

In just one of the film’s many case studies, Shearer examines what happened with the canals that sit in the middle of New Orleans.

During Katrina, a huge amount of storm water from Lake Pontchartrain surged down into these canals.

REPORTER: The hurricane’s beginning to push water into Lake Pontchartrain — you can think of it as a big soup bowl — eventually it’ll fill up and begin to spill out.

VOICEOVER: The floodwalls in two of them didn’t hold, causing some of the worst flooding right into the heart of the city.

The Army Corps of Engineers – the agency that built those floodwalls – said the storm water had gotten so high in the canals that it overtopped them – sort of literally spilled over the tops of the walls and that’s why they broke.

But Shearer introduces us to hurricane researcher Iivor van Heerden – he was part of an investigative team from Lousisiana State University.. And van Heerden argues that the corps’ version of events doesn’t add up.

IVOR VAN HEERDEN: The Corp of Engineers were claiming that the surge was so high it came over these walls and eroded the bottom and that’s why they failed and therefore it wasn’t their fault, but what we soon discovered, was that the surge only came to about here.

There’s no evidence of overtopping, yet we had catastrophic failure. It must’ve been a structural issue. It must’ve been an engineering design issue.

VOICEOVER: van Heerden and his colleagues looked closely at those broken flood walls and the levees on which they’d been built… they ran seismic studies, they did core samples. And they found that the walls had been built on unstable ground – in one instance, on sand.

IVOR VAN HEERDEN: The London Avenue breach at Mirabou — the floodwalls are totally disappeared. There was a hole about 30 feet deep, and sand everywhere. There was sand 6 feet high. White, white, white, beach sand. Now we know sand is about the worst material that you can utilize to build a levee, because it doesn’t have strength, and also, because it’s permeable – imagine a bunch of marbles sitting on each other, there’s lots of gaps, the water can move through very easily.

VOICEOVER: We also meet engineer Robert Bea, who headed up another investigative team. This one from University of California, Berkeley.

ROBERT BEA: The breaches had occurred due to water working its way underneath the sheet piling. The sheet piling wasn’t driven. That water worked underneath the levees, that water worked to weaken the soils, and the walls collapsed into the weak areas.

When the Berkeley team issued its final report, it acknowledges that the Army Corps had tried for many years to obtain authorization to install floodgates that might’ve stopped the canals from filling up… but their report went on to say that “ …a large number of engineering errors and poor judgments contributed to these … catastrophic design failures.”

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You quote, in the film, several officials, both former and current, from the Army Corps of Engineers and the impression you get from them is that this was such a massive storm and that there’s nothing you can do. You can’t, I think as one of them says, you can’t out-engineer Mother Nature.

HARRY SHEARER: That’s the Corps’ job. That’s what they do. They fool around with water. They fool around with water, you know. They take it from where it isn’t and put it where it is. Or they take it where it is and put it where it isn’t. That’s out-engineering Mother Nature.

VOICEOVER: The Army Corps of Engineers is one of the biggest federal agencies you’ve barely heard of – for over two hundred years, they’ve built and managed massive water projects around the country… They build dams… and levees and shipping canals.

The Corps’ methods have sometimes come under fire, no more so than in New Orleans.

For example, take what happened back in the mid 1960s… Hurricane Betsy flooded New Orleans. President Lyndon Johnson and Congress were so alarmed by images like these that they instructed the Army Corps to beef up the city’s ring of defenses.

The Corps did. But it designed a defense against what’s known as the “standard project hurricane” – a model storm that’s supposed to be the strongest type of storm that’s reasonably likely to hit a given area.

But when making that assessment of likely storms, they threw out some of the strongest ones that had hit the area – like 1969’s Hurricane Camille, which was a whopper category 5 storm – those were viewed as anomalies.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Did people know?

HARRY SHEARER: I don’t think so because the Corps was constantly emitting these reassuring statements of how, you know, protected we were. Mortgage-holders were telling homeowners “You don’t need to get flood insurance, you’re living inside a federally-protected levee.” So, you know…

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So banks were comfortable writing mortgages.

HARRY SHEARER: Yeah, yeah, yeah

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And so insurance companies were comfortable–

HARRY SHEARER: Everybody was reassured. It wasn’t just, you know, dumb old homeowners. It was everybody. We have an Environmental Impact Statement from 1974 where the Corps said explicitly that anything beyond the Standard Project Hurricane was so unlikely and, and was dependent on conditions anomalous to this area, that the likelihood of it occurring was “nil.”

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Anomalous to New Orleans?

HARRY SHEARER: Yeah.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Which is practically knocking on the door of the Gulf Coast.

HARRY SHEARER: Yeah, yeah. “Nil”

NEWSCASTER: The sign says “Do Not Enter,” Hurricane Katrina didn’t get the message.

VOICEOVER: And then Katrina came along.

BRIGADIER GENERAL MICHAEL WALSH: The design of those walls were based upon a Standard Hurricane coming through. The—uh, Hurricane Katrina was much larger than what the walls were designed for.

IVOR VAN HEERDEN: In many locations, levees were built at 10 feet high, when they should’ve been at 14 feet. They had new model data available to them from 1979 onwards that they ignored.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I think it’s fair to say in your film that there’s a current of anger and outrage at what happened after Katrina.

HARRY SHEARER: Mm-hmm. How can you not be angry? How can you not be angry? We, we spent — we, the federal taxpayers spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on a program that was said by Congress to be designed to protect this city against something like Hurricane Betsy. This was a hurricane no worse than Hurricane Betsy, but Betsy flooded 20 percent of the city and this thing flooded 80 percent of the city. You know, I know how bad I feel ’cause my car wouldn’t start today, and I’m feeling angry at the manufacturer. Well, we feel that way about the federal government that sold us a bill of goods.

VOICEOVER: Shearer’s film also explains how some of the Army Corps’ biggest projects in the New Orleans area – projects that had nothing to do with flood protection – would later have disastrous consequences

WILLIAM FREUDENBERG: The dumbest thing of all, in retrospect was to build one of the biggest pork-barrel projects most Americans had never heard of before which is the Mississippi River- Gulf Outlet –M-R-G-O- or “Mr. Go.” That was the one cut that led to a 1,000 deaths.

HARRY SHEARER: MR. GO was a straight line from the Gulf to the heart of New Orleans. You look at a map of the river from the Gulf and its this and—

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The Mississippi’s like a big snake.

HARRY SHEARER: Yeah, it just keeps going around and around and has a lot of curves and it’s torturous and it’s “Ooh, I gotta steer.” And the idea was, oh well, it would be so much easier for boats to come up here — ships, excuse me — come up here if they’ve got a straight line.

TAB BENOIT: Not only does it allowing a straight line for shipping , but it also is a straight line for the tide to bring salt water way into town, and start killing trees and everything like that.

BOB GRAMMLING: The biggest problem is they were digging through marsh and it’s not firm, so you could dig 35’ feet down, but the sides slumped in, and then you’d re-dig it, and the sides would slump in more, there are places where this ship cana – l if you wanna call it that — is a quarter mile wide, just from the slumping sides.

WILLIAM FREUNDLING: Each time the Corps would go in and dredge it a little bit wider that would let in more salt water, which kills more plants, and it’s this cycle – it’s a self-feeding disaster.

HARRY SHEARER: MR. GO never turns out to be the economic boon that was predicted. By the time it opens, ships are too big for it. The Corps is spending millions of dollars a year just to keep the sides of it dredged. So it’s an economic failure and an ecological disaster. But, aside from that, it’s a wonderful idea.

VOICEOVER: Shearer talks with some of the very first researchers who recognized that a hurricane’s storm surge could travel up the MR. GO like a freight train and drive flood water straight into the city.

SHERWOOD GAGLIANO: The Corps vehemently denied that this effect would occur – they conducted some mathematical statistical model studies that said that this would not happen.

VOICEOVER: But it did happen.

IVOR VAN HEERDEN: Watch how that wall of water just shoots and floods this part…

BOB GRAMMLING: The water came up here at the intersection of the Industrial Canal and MR. GO, and it came down here and into the industrial canal, and then into the Lower 9th Ward.

IVOR VAN HEERDEN: At 7:45 in the morning, just as the surge was peaking in this canal, two massive breaches occurred in the walls behind me, sending an 18’ foot high wall of water into the Lower 9th Ward.

WILLIAM FREUNDLING: It was instantaneous – the water came in there, it piled up, it got so high it came over the top, it carved this gap behind the wall in the Lower 9th Ward, eventually shoving it aside like a battalion of bulldozers.

IVOR VAN HEERDEN: …totally destroying the first five rows of homes, and even some homes nine blocks back were floated off their foundations. It’s here that we have the greatest number of people killed due to drowning during Katrina.

VOICEOVER: A group of residents from these neighborhoods filed suit against the Army Corps of Engineers in 2006 arguing that because of the way it built and maintained the MR. GO. Their homes were destroyed and their neighbors drowned.

In November of last year, they won their case. In a blistering ruling, a federal judge wrote: “the failure of the corps to recognize the destruction that the MR. GO had caused and the potential hazard that it created is clearly negligent on the part of the corps,” “furthermore, the corps not only knew, but admitted by 1988, that the MR. GO threatened human life … And yet it did not act in time to prevent the catastrophic disaster that ensued with the onslaught of hurricane katrina.”

There’s an epilogue to this story. In the five years since Katrina… the Army Corps of Engineers has rebuilt and strengthened floodwalls and levees all around the city. It’s installed these massive new floodgates and barriers at several critical points.

HARRY SHEARER: This is the 17th Street canal. This is one of the three outfall canals that flooded.

VOICEOVER: The Corps also repaired the canal walls that broke open during Katrina. You can see the new gray wall here. But the part next to it, on the left that’s still the old faulty wall that failed so badly during the storm.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So if I understand this correctly, the engineers found that these walls were planted not deep enough and in soil that wasn’t so great, to hold these walls.

HARRY SHEARER: Mm-hmm.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But when they fixed it, they fixed this gray wall and built that much stronger.

HARRY SHEARER: They fixed the part that broke. They didn’t fix the whole thing.

VOICEOVER: The Corps argues it didn’t have to replace the entire stretch of the old wall because instead it built these brand new floodgates and pumps, which will stop storm water from ever pouring back into the canals.

But an Army Corps whistleblower alleged that those new pumps are faulty. And they just might fail during a big storm. The justice department investigated her claims and it agreed, saying: “the government and the public cannot reasonably trust that the flood control system in place in New Orleans possesses reliability and integrity.”

ARMY CORP ANIMATION: The surge barrier is the largest design built …

VOICEOVER: Meanwhile, the Corps is about to complete its biggest civilian work project ever — a massive gate and flood wall that will to seal off the mouth of the MR. GO. It’s nearly 30 feet high and close to two miles across.

The Corps hopes its work across New Orleans provides not only enough safety, but enough confidence for local residents to rebuild their homes. That hope is shared by a young community organizer who appears at the end of Shearer’s film.

DR. VERA TRIPLETT: One of the things that I have had faith in personally, is the Corps,’ sort of– they don’t wanna be embarrassed again. We spend more time focused on rebuilding our communities and we hope that the people who’re being paid millions of dollars to make sure those levees don’t fail again – we have faith that they’re going to protect us.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Do you share her faith that the Corps has learned its lesson and it’s done the right thing now?

HARRY SHEARER: No. I put that in to reflect what a lot of people here feel. But listen, I– my job in life, whether I’m being a satirist or doing this, is to be a skeptic. I think when officials have proven to be wrong, time and time again, it’s the better part of sanity to be skeptical and say, you know, prove it, just prove it.

ALISON STEWART: Next week on Need to Know: With unemployment high and job prospects low… Mississippi has started an experimental jobs program using federal dollars…

JON MEACHAM: Of course any news show worth its salt can report on today’s news. But we can do one better here at Need to Know.

ALISON STEWART: For a look into the week to come, we’re joined by Andy Borowitz with Next Week’s News. Andy?

ANDY BOROWITZ: Thank you, Alison and Jon. This week I look two whole days into the future, to this Sunday’s Emmy awards. My prediction: this year’s Emmy for best drama will go to… “Mad Men.” You heard it here first, folks. Well, actually, you didn’t. It was also on the cover of “Duh” magazine. The popularity of “Mad Men” has already inspired several trends, as viewers have started drinking, smoking, and neglecting their children. But it’s also inspired a trend that’s not so positive: people trying to dress like “Mad Men” characters. We’ve seen this kind of thing before. Remember when Lance Armstrong first came on the scene? This was the unfortunate result. And what about all the sad Rolling Stones fans who try to look like Mick Jagger? Pathetic. But this trend of dressing up like “Mad Men” characters is even worse – and here’s why. The thing we like about “Mad Men” is that it’s a period show. If we all start dressing like “Mad Men,” it won’t be period anymore. The same thing happened in the 70s, when everyone started dressing like “Happy Days,” which was set in the 50s.

This led to confusion about what decade we were actually living in, so that by the ‘80s, we elected a movie star from the ‘40s. So let’s not let history repeat itself. If you feel compelled to dress like a TV character, how about these? Crockett and Tubbs…The Hoff…Or Alf. Okay, not Alf – he was naked. Now, I know what you’re saying – you want to dress like Don Draper because of his timeless elegance and cool. Well, if it’s timeless elegance and cool you’re after, there’s another TV character you could dress like. Classic. Alison, Jon?

ALISON STEWART: Thanks Andy. That’s it for Need to Know on the air

JON MEACHAM: You’ll find new stories, podcasts, blogs and original Web reporting at the Need to Know website.

ALISON STEWART: Thanks for joining us.

Need to Know

Episode 116

Airdate: August 20, 2010

ALISON STEWART: I’m Alison Stewart.

JON MEACHAM: And I’m Jon Meacham. Here’s what you need to know.

ALISON STEWART: As American troops pull back from combat positions in Iraq, just what sort of Iraq is the U.S. leaving?

JON MEACHAM: Rethinking a common medical practice – when to give blood transfusions…and when not to.

MARIK: There have been a whole host of studies which have actually supported our findings that the older the blood the greater the number of complications and the less effective the blood is in delivering oxygen.

ALISON STEWART: Military checkpoints in New York. War with Venezuela. China as the world’s only superpower. Meet the man who cooked up those story lines …best selling author of “Super Sad True Love Story,” Gary Shteyngart.

GARY SHTEYNGART: Absolutely. Each year I think I lose about six percent of my humanity. That’s what the scientists tell me.

JON MEACHAM: You’re the polar ice cap.

GARY SHTEYNGART: I’m the polar ice cap. Thank you, exactly. I am the polar ice cap of the humanities. And I’m slowly, slowly shrinking.

JON MEACHAM: All that, and Andy Borowitz.

ALISON STEWART: Next on Need to Know.

JON MEACHAM: Thanks for joining us. We begin by focusing on the consequences of war, and the obligations of peace.

ALISON STEWART: On Thursday morning, local time in Iraq, the Fourth Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, crossed into Kuwait…the last U.S. combat brigade to be pulled out of Iraq. The war that began seven years ago with the previous administration’s shock and awe ends now with the current administration’s mission to “advise and assist”. That is how President Obama describes the new role for the 50,000 American troops who will remain there until 2011. You may hear those words, advise and assist, but you’re not likely to hear the word “victory” when officials talk about Iraq these days. Here to help us evaluate what’s been achieved, and what still hangs in the balance in Iraq is Middle East scholar and history professor at the University of Michigan, Juan Cole. He writes the widely-read blog, Informed Comment and is  author of “Engaging the Muslim World.” Welcome Professor Cole. Thanks for coming to New York…

JUAN COLE: Thanks…

ALISON STEWART: …to join us. So this drawdown has been happening slowly for the past 18 months. But the big dramatic pictures we all saw, the big dramatic action was these troops coming across– the brigade coming across and the gate closing two weeks before the scheduled deadline. Tell me your thoughts on the timing and why it was such a fairly closely held secret.

JUAN COLE: Well, I mean, withdrawing from a war zone is– is always dangerous. And there– there was– danger of troops being attacked. I think you’ll– you’ll notice that they came out at night– and that was a security measure. There are still Shiite militias, the Maathi Army (PH) operating in those areas near Kuwait. And then this was an enormous logistical challenge. Logistics means moving things around in military terms. So– you know, a million and a half pieces of equipment had to be taken back out of the country. They were living there. There’s microwaves and– air conditioners and so forth and– and, of course, tanks and– armored vehicles. So getting all of that equipment out in addition to thousands and thousands of men– and women was– was a real logistical challenge. And– it– it’s remarkable that the U.S. military pulled this off on schedule.

ALISON STEWART: 50,000 troops will remain in the country. Let’s talk about what is the role of the military starting right now?

JUAN COLE: Well, for some time now the U.S. military has not been engaged in active war fighting. There are still battles. We lost four guys last week. It was very tragic– that they’re still fighting and losing their lives. But it’s on a far reduced scale to what we saw in the past. And– they’re not doing active– they– they hadn’t been doing active patrols– in the– in the– cities. So now– the– the tasks that remain are to continue to train– the Iraqi military. The U.S. is providing– logistical support to the military. It’s moving around water and ammunition because the Iraqis lack an air force. And it’s giving close air support, if there is a battle and they need something bombed, you know, the U.S. will do that for them. So there– there still is, you know, a role for the U.S. military in the next 18 months.

ALISON STEWART: Obviously the Iraqi military is going to have to step in. Yet we saw earlier this week an attack on a recruitment center that killed 59, wounded 100. Who at this point wants to attack recruits to the Iraqi military?

JUAN COLE: Well, there are still small guerilla groups that are very, very unhappy about the new situation in Iraq. These are mostly Sunni Arabs. And they feel that, you know, Iraq was their country. The U.S. has put Shiites and Kurds in charge of them. There’s been a foreign military intervention. And so they’re still pushing back against this new order. They’re still trying to destabilize it. They’re engaging in terrorism. And it– it’s not effective politically.

ALISON STEWART: Contractors will still be in Iraq. What do you expect their role will be, U.S. contractors?

JUAN COLE: Well, the U.S. contractors are brought in by the U.S– it will be by the State Department and what’s left of the military mission– in a support role. That’s a U.S. decision– and it’s still controversial among– Iraqis, especially the private security groups. And, of course, they banned– the old– Blackwater– or Z Group– from Iraq. But– I think also the civilian contractors’ roles will change. The mission will shift to being more support, development, economic progress, and so forth.

ALISON STEWART: Given what we’ve seen this week, with a little bit of hindsight, was the Bush administration’s 2007 surge successful?

JUAN COLE: Well, I don’t wanna take anything away from the efforts of the U.S. military, which were– important in tamping down violence. But– in my view, the thing that caused the violence to subside in the main was that the Shiites won the civil war. And they ethnically cleansed the capital, Baghdad, of hundreds of thousands of– Sunni Arabs– something that I think in American reporting on Iraq is– is often missed, is that Baghdad– Baghdad is now– a largely Shiite city. That was not the case. It was about 50/50 when the U.S. invaded. A lot of refugees have– have been produced in this process. So that’s not good for stability.

ALISON STEWART: And, also, would obviously cause resentments.

JUAN COLE: Yes.

ALISON STEWART: And how would those resentments play out potentially in the future?

JUAN COLE: Well, at the moment, I perceive the Sunni Arabs to be largely demoralized, except for those guys who are bombing things from time to time. But– most Sunni Arabs seem to have had the fight knocked out of them. So I don’t anticipate a revival of the civil war soon. But certainly over the long term, if you have, you know– a significant number of people, 20 percent of the population– really deeply unhappy with the political– conditions– then the danger of a recrudescence of violence is there.

ALISON STEWART: Let me follow up on that idea of ethnic cleansing of the Sunni Arabs. What was the U.S.’s role, if any, in that? Did we know about it? Did we look away?

JUAN COLE: At the time, you know, the Sunni Arab guerilla groups were doing a lot of damage. And so I think we did kind of look away– at the time in 2006 and ‘07. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world that could have happened from our point of view, I– I’m afraid. And– and– but– but the other thing to say is that the U.S. was powerless to do anything about it. This was happening at a micro level. So I think, you know, the– it’s easy to overestimate the power of an occupying force. But 160,000 troops in a country of 30 million really can’t dictate the course of affairs very easily.

ALISON STEWART: Let’s move on to the political situation in Iraq. Last week, negotiations to broker some sort of power sharing deal fell through because the election five months earlier, there was no clear winner between the former prime minister and the current prime minister. So what’s next?

JUAN COLE: Well, it’s a very bad situation obviously. Nouri al-Maliki– who’s been– prime minister since 2006, remains the caretaker prime minister. But, of course, his legitimacy, his scope of action, is constrained. And they haven’t managed to put together– a coalition of parties who did well in the elections and which could together form a majority in parliament.

ALISON STEWART: With Shiites in power, how does this bring Iran into the equation?

JUAN COLE: Well– Iran is extremely influential with the Iraqi Shiites. It– it doesn’t dictate things to them. They’re not obedient to Iran. But they have an alliance with and they have warm relations. So one of the problems with forming a government at the moment is that Iran wants the Shiites to coalesce in a big Shiite coalition and run the government. The United States is backing– former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, whose list is more secular and was largely supported by the Sunni Arabs– and which is– tends to be anti-Iranian. So the U.S. would very much like to maneuver– Allawi into at least control of the security apparatus to make sure that Iran doesn’t control– Iraq. And one of the reasons that the Iraqis can’t form a government is that, in a way, the United States and Iran are– are playing politics at the same time as local factions are.

ALISON STEWART: Anthony Shadid of the New York Times has done some interesting reporting. And he’s been writing that the elites in Iraq are extremely disconnected from the people in the street and the people in the street are extremely disenchanted with the way the political process has gone forward. What could this disconnect mean for forming a new government, a new government that actually has is power and can get things done like get the electricity back on and like make life livable for the average Iraqi?

JUAN COLE: Well, you know, Iraq now is– is– in a condition where– things have been engineered in the constitution and in the political process so that there’s a weak government. And this is a reaction against there having been way too strong a government back in the era of Saddam Hussein who, you know, committed genocide and– ruled the country with an iron fist. So everybody’s a little bit afraid of another, you know, strong man emerging. And so they– they mobilized against this. But they’ve over-corrected. So they’ve ended up in a situation where they can’t manage to form a government at all and one that’s formed tends to be weak– and ineffectual and not good at providing services. I think eventually the Iraqis are gonna have to work their way toward– a more functional– federal government. But the danger is that if they don’t do that soon– people will become disenchanted with the whole democratic process, having elections and so forth, that it’s not producing any results.

ALISON STEWART: The world’s biggest embassy is in Iraq and it’s the United States embassy. And the State Department is planning to open up four more offices around the country. With such a big United States diplomatic presence, why hasn’t the United States been able to move this process along in any way? And what does that say that we have not been able to help move this process along?

JUAN COLE: Well, the United States– has, you know, now– has no combat troops in Iraq. So its– its position is much weaker than it used to be. We can’t dictate the situation in Iraq. That big State Department– compound– is not a sign of power. It’s a sign of an aspiration for– the United States to continue to have influence and to have an impact on Iraq of a civilian sort– as the war winds down.

ALISON STEWART: Given Iraq’s history, is a coup a concern?

JUAN COLE: I think a coup is a concern. As the Iraqi military becomes stronger– as it’s maybe the only institution in the country that’s actually functioning– well– you could see a general– or– or– or lieutenant colonel– get ambitious. There’s another possibility which is someone like the current– caretaker prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki– has gotten a lot of the officer corps to report to him personally. And he’s established tribal militias in the south who report to him. What if it gets to the point where people say to Maliki, “Go,” you know, “Step down so we can form a government with somebody else,” and he says, “Make me”?

ALISON STEWART: Let’s talk about the personal toll. Obviously over 4,000 American troops have died. Thousands of Iraqis have died and been wounded. What is life like for Iraqis as the United States pulls out combat troops? Are they safe? Do they have infrastructure they need? What about the refugees?

JUAN COLE: There have been riots in recent weeks over the lack of electricity. A lot of the middle class left because of the extreme violence in the war. And so getting good medical care is difficult. Infrastructure– has been damaged by years and years of sanctions and war. It has been sometimes targeted where it was rebuilt by– the insurgents. So– life is hard. There are an estimated four million refugees– 2.7 million inside the country, the rest outside. Security is not good. People are afraid. There’s enormous dissatisfaction with the condition of life. The– the government still has not been able to pump very much more petroleum than was being pumped– in the days of Saddam and the sanctions regime. And so the government’s income is limited. And so things are not good. And international investment is not coming in because of the bad security situation.

ALISON STEWART: Outside of forming a new functioning permanent government, what is the outstanding issue in Iraq, in your mind, as U.S. combat brigades pull out?

JUAN COLE: One is that the Kurdish ethnic group in the north has conflicts over territory– and prerogatives with the Arab majority. And this has gone to fighting. At some points they fired at each other. That’s a whole ‘nother civil war that could occur. And it could– draw in Iran and Turkey. Could be a big mess. So that needs to be resolved.

ALISON STEWART: Final thoughts. The current administration has said that all troops will be out by the end of 2011, although Defense Secretary Gates has opened the door for that to be till 2012. What needs to happen in Iraq between now and then for that to actually happen, for all the troops to come out?

JUAN COLE: Well, the Obama administration has been pretty steadfast about keeping to a schedule of taking troops out. Having the troops out by the end of 2011 was set by the Status of Forces Agreement– legislated by the Iraqi parliament and agreed to by the Bush administration. So it’s not really in American hands. I think there will be a U.S. presence in Iraq of a military sort– on a small scale for many years to come. I think– Iraq is emerging as an independent country. It– it’s got a very fragile security situation. Its politics are very fractious. But it is going to be standing on its own two feet.

ALISON STEWART: Professor Juan Cole, thanks for joining us on Need to Know.

JUAN COLE: Thanks for having me.

ALISON STEWART: One of the nice things about working with Jon Meacham is that he knows history….really, really knows history. This comes in handy when we want to reach past the heat and noise of a controversy in the news, and get some perspective. This week, there was loud and sometimes overwrought discourse about the proposed cultural center and mosque near the site of the world trade center attacks. Strong opinions were everywhere… politicians, pundits, religious leaders. As for the families of the 9/11 victims, they’re divided about it. So we turn to Mr. Meacham, who reminds us that the struggle over religious freedom has quite a long history in Manhattan, one that’s older than the nation itself.

JON MEACHAM: History can seem abstract, but it always begins in quite concrete, and often small, places. The story of religious liberty in America is such a chapter and it begins right here in lower Manhattan. Walking around here offers us a way to understand the complexities and compromises Americans have always made in negotiating the tensions between faith and politics, church and state, majority and minority.

In fact, those tensions started long ago when New York was a Dutch colony known as New Amsterdam…In the mid 1600s, Peter Stuyvesant walked these streets – or hobbled (he had a peg leg, as you can see) – as the head of the new Amsterdam colony. It was a pretty diverse community even then – Lutherans, Catholics, Quakers and of course Calvinists, of whom Mr. Stuyvesant was one. In fact, he frowned on non-Calvinist Christians and wasn’t above jailing or even flogging them.

But it was only when Jews first arrived in 1654, that Stuyvesant actually tried to kick an entire religious community out of town. “Hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ,” he called them; anti-Semitism alive and well in the new world 356 years ago.

Stuyvesant was overruled by his superiors in Holland, however, and Jews were given official permission to settle in the area – on the basis of — quote — “reason and equity.” This small community became known as Congregation Shearith Israel.

Yet despite their official recognition, Stuyvesant still wouldn’t let them practice their faith outside their own homes. By 1685, New Amsterdam had passed from Dutch to British hands, but congregation Shearith Israel still couldn’t establish its own place of worship. The governing common council said “publique worship is tolerated…but to those that professe faith in Christ.”

It wasn’t until 1730 when these first Jewish New Yorkers finally secured permission to build what became the very first Jewish synagogue in America here where this parking garage now stands. It was from here – several decades later when revolution was in the air – that a tiny band of Jews, led by Gershom Seixas, the leader of Congregation Shearith Israel, made a bet on the colonial cause.

Seixas would later update a traditional Hebrew prayer to bless the Continental Congress and “…his excellency George Washington, captain general and commander in chief of the federal army of these states.”

Sexias wagered rightly, that Washington, like most of the founders, believed religion a matter best left, as much as possible, to the individual. Liberty of conscience was a keystone of American liberty.

Washington was inaugurated president on April 30, 1789 right here at Federal Hall. Afterward he walked to nearby St. Paul’s Chapel for services. At the time, New York newspapers took care to list the 14 clergymen in the city–and Gershom seixas was among them.

In a letter Washington wrote from New York to the Hebrew congregation at Newport, Rhode Island the following year, he said that the government of the United States should give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” and, quoting the prophet Micah, added that every man should be left free to sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall make him afraid.

We were fearless in the beginning right here, on the tip of this island–fearless about freedom, and confident enough in the great experiment in liberty that differences were not merely to be tolerated but expected and defended. As it was in that beginning, so it should be now.

ALISON STEWART: We turn now to some information you need to know about for the sake of your health. It’s about blood…specifically, blood transfusions. For decades, blood has been called the gift of life. And while its image was tarnished in the 1980s when HIV and hepatitis contaminated the blood supply, better screening tests have made donated blood the safest it’s ever been. Each year, close to 5 million Americans receive a blood transfusion. For many, that transfusion will be a lifesaver. But for others, a transfusion may do more harm than good, according to some doctors and researchers. For those patients, there may be a better alternative. We asked Need to Know medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay to report on the potential problems, and ingenious solutions, to the time honored practice of blood transfusions.

VOICEOVER: Donate blood—save a life. It’s been part of our national consciousness since World War II.

ANNOUNCER: The Army and Navy have called upon the Red Cross for an increased quota of 4 million pints of blood in 1943…

VOICEOVER: And Americans heeded the call for blood… between 1941 and 1945 the Red Cross collected 13 million pints headed for wounded soldiers on the field. Transfused blood was miraculous, saving countless numbers of soldiers’ lives.

ANNOUNCER: Today scientific use of blood has emerged as one of the major medical advances of WWII…

VOICEOVER: These days more than 14 million units of whole blood or red blood cells are transfused each year in the United States. The benefits of blood—so it goes—are so obvious as to be beyond question. But are they?

Now a growing number of experts are questioning the value of blood and blood products and are concluding that for many patients the risks of transfusions can outweigh the benefits.

It’s a controversial point of view that is changing medical practice, and potentially saving lives. And you might be surprised to learn that one of the driving forces behind it – has been the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

BETTY MYERS: I want to know when I go in there that they will not use the blood under any circumstances whether I live or die.

VOICEOVER: Jehovah’s Witnesses like Betty Myers see blood as a precious fluid – so precious that being transfused with someone else’s blood means losing the chance for eternal life.

BETTY MYERS: There are several passages in the book of Genesis, the book of Leviticus and the book of Acts that prohibits the taking of blood, because blood is in your body as a life to you.

VOICEOVER: In 1994, a committee of Jehovah’s Witnesses from the world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York made a simple request to hospitals in the area: give us the best medical and surgical care you can…..just do it without the use of blood transfusions. Many facilities turned them down, but Englewood Hospital, in nearby New Jersey, agreed.

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: To be honest with you, we just accepted this as a challenge. We, we thought that someone had to take care of this population. And we were ready to learn.

DR. EMILY SENAY: So you didn’t think they were out of line or suicidal or on the road for trouble pushing this?

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: We, we may have, going back that far, but w e certainly learned very, very quickly that that’s not the case.

VOICEOVER: As chief of anesthesiology and critical care at Englewood, Dr. Aryeh Shander was already questioning conventional wisdom about blood transfusions.

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: Transfusion of blood components seemed to be erratic and I started looking at my own practice to see that the decisions were not really based on anything and that when I did apply some rationale to the decision, the amount of transfusions that I was using clearly was much, much smaller than what was being used around me.

VOICEOVER: Within a year of treating Jehovah’s Witness patients without transfusions, Shander and Englewood noticed something unexpected.

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: Our physicians started seeing Witness patients coming, getting their surgery, getting the medical care without a single drop of blood. Going home, either at the same time as other patients or even going home earlier. No complications. And that’s when we started to recognize that there is something here we needed to investigate more.

VOICEOVER: Dr. Shander wasn’t the only physician questioning the value of blood. At about the same time critical care specialist Dr. Paul Marik was also coming to some surprising conclusions about blood transfusions. In 1993 he published this study suggesting that transfusions weren’t doing the very job they were supposed to do – and that is to deliver oxygen to cells in the body. One reason he speculated was that some donated blood might be sitting too long on the shelf

DR. PAUL MARIK: hat we found was that the older the blood, the less effective it was in…in unloading oxygen in the tissues.

VOICEOVER: By law,donated blood must be used within 42 days…but just like anything else that sits on a shelf, blood degrades… and as it ages, red blood cells become mishappen, making it harder for them to maneuver through tiny capillaries.

DR. PAUL MARIK: Since then there have been a whole host of studies which have actually supported our findings that the older the blood the more the…the greater the number of complications and the less effective the blood is in delivering oxygen.

VOICEOVER: One example: a 2008 Cleveland Clinic study that looked at the records of 6,000 heart surgery patients. It showed that those who received blood more than two weeks old had a significantly higher risk of complications like infection, respiratory problems, kidney failure, and even death.

There is disagreement in the medical community about whether older blood causes problems. But it’s not just the age of blood that might be harming patients. Dozens of studies suggest transfusions are linked to other serious risks including cancer recurrence, organ failure and the significant long term impact blood may be having on the recipient’s immune system.

DR. PAUL MARIK: We know now that transfusion of blood lowers the host’s immune response and ability to fight infection so it predisposes sick people to get infections.

VOICEOVER: Doctor Marik is a harsh critic of the status quo when it comes to blood use in American hospitals. He says doctors use blood transfusions the way they do….because….well…that’s how they’ve always done it. Dr. Shander agrees.

DR. EMILY SENAY: Are there large numbers of Americans who are getting blood probably inappropriately? Or blood products?

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: Yes. I think that the short answer is yes, the question of appropriateness is something which is very ill-defined.

DR. EMILY SENAY: Are they at risk?

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: The recipients?

DR. EMILY SENAY: Yes.

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: Absolutely. If you can’t demonstrate benefit, all you’re offering the patient is risk.

VOICEOVER: Need to Know went to the American Red Cross – which supplies 40 percent of the nation’s blood – to find out what its attitude is towards the new thinking on transfusions.

Dr. Richard Benjamin, chief medical officer of the Red Cross, supports the conservative use of blood, but is wary of much of the research about the potential hazards of donated blood, including older blood.

DR. RICHARD BENJAMIN: There are a number of studies published, they are retrospective analyses, they are generally inconclusive. We really do need randomized control trials to answer this question.

VOICEOVER: Large clinical trials including one sponsored by the national institutes of health are underway now to determine what effect if any the age of blood has on patient outcomes.

The results of that research could have a major effect on how the Red Cross conducts business.

DR. RICHARD BENJAMIN: If indeed it turns out that six week old blood is not as good as three week old blood, we would have to change our whole collection system to supply the appropriate blood for hospital needs.

DR. EMILY SENAY: How would that affect you?

DR. RICHARD BENJAMIN: Well we’ll go out and do it. I mean we will do what is best for patients and is best for hospitals.

VOICEOVER: Dr. Harvey Klein is the head of the department of transfusion medicine at the National Institutes of Health’s clinical center. He supports many of the ways transfusion practices are changing.

But he points out that this shouldn’t lead anyone to believe that blood transfusions are always bad…..in some situations there is simply no substitute…

DR HARVEY KLEIN: If you’re dying on the battlefield, there’s no replacement for human blood. If you’ve been shot in an alley, there’s no replacement for human blood. And in fact if you begin to bleed like crazy in the operating room, only blood will save you.

VOICEOVER: And indeed, Englewood Hospital does transfuse blood when needed.

But since 1995, the hospital has applied its blood conserving standard of care to all patients, cutting transfusions by 40 percent. How do they do it? They use an aggressive approach involving what they call patient blood management and bloodless surgery.

Here’s how it works. First, candidates for surgery are carefully evaluated and treated for problems like anemia. The point is to keep them from needing transfusions in the first place.

And what happens once you get in the operating room? This patient is having a heart valve replaced.

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: We actually take some of your blood out and keep it by your bedside so there’s no storage, at room temperature, so it’s active and it’s whole blood and load your vessels with liquid so that if you’re going to bleed it’s going to be very, very dilute. And then at the end of surgery, we return this blood.

VOICEOVER: Even the blood lost when surgeons open the patient’s chest is collected, cleansed of contaminants and returned. These so-called bloodless surgical techniques — meticulously preserve the patient’s own blood so she won’t need someone else’s.

Dr. Shander says compared to patients who get transfusions, patients without them do better….

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: If you look at the cardiac population for example, compared to other institutions, our risk adjusted mortality is the lowest in the state of New Jersey with probably the lowest transfusion rates in the world.

DR. EMILY SENAY: What are the circumstances where you really absolutely have to transfuse someone? There’s just no question about it?

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: You know for me it’s a very difficult question to ask because there are patients that we have here who have hemoglobin levels of less than 2 grams per deciliter which is considered to be incompatible with survival who have gone home. So…

DR. EMILY SENAY: Without a transfusion.

DR. ARYEH SHANDER: Without a transfusion. We generally, if somebody will accept blood, we would transfuse them when they get to those…those levels. We won’t let them get down to those levels. But we’ve seen people survive with aggressive therapy without receiving blood.

VOICEOVER: The notion that less may be more when it comes to blood is catching on…but slowly. About 100 hospitals across the country offer blood management programs, up from about 25 in the mid 1990s. One is Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine. Dr. Irwin Gross established their program in 2007 and within three years he cut transfusions by 60 percent – saving the hospital almost 1.5 million dollars a year.

DR. IRWIN GROSS: Much of this is not high-tech. And there really are very few aspects of patient blood management that are not accessible to even the smallest of community hospitals. Most of this is just good clinical care of the patient.

ANNOUNCER: This bag saved the driver. This bag saved the passenger.

VOICEOVER: There is no doubt that when necessary – donated blood can save lives. The question the medical community is trying to answer now – is when is it necessary?

ALISON STEWART: Joining us in studio now to answer just a few more questions is Need to Know’s medical correspondent, Dr. Emily Senay. So Emily, I’m a patient, I’m going to the hospital – what kind of questions should I be asking about transfusions?

DR. EMILY SENAY: Well you know, you should ask questions. Everybody should ask questions. If it’s the case of surgery, the first question you wanna ask is “Is this a procedure that requires a blood transfusion?” And depending on the answer you get, you wanna ask your doctor, “Is there anything I can do to reduce my own risk for needing a transfusion?” And these are the blood management techniques talked about in the piece, and these are very simple things. How do I get myself in the best shape possible? How do I reduce anemia and problems like that, so when I get to the O.R. I don’t need a transfusion? Then you should ask, well how do you compare to other doctors who are doing this procedure? Do you use more blood or less blood? Does this institution use more blood or less blood than neighbors or large academic medical centers. Whatever your wishes are in terms of blood transfusions, whether they’re religiously based or not, you wanna make sure that the doctors you’re talking to know what they are.

ALISON STEWART: Let’s talk about the other side of the coin…donations. Does this mean that people should keel back donations?

DR. EMILY SENAY: No, absolutely not. No expert we spoke with would suggest that at all. This is a discussion about how to use a scarce resource. The scarce resource is blood. We need donors. We need donors now, we’re going to need donors into the future. This is really a discussion about how we use what they’re giving us through donations in the best way possible so it’s good for the patients, and we make sure we’re doing it correctly.

ALISON STEWART: And especially if we talk about the age of the blood as being a factor in its effectiveness, I know the NIH did some studies, we saw that in the piece. What other investigations are ongoing?

DR. EMILY SENAY: It’s so interesting, Alison. This is the only developed country that until recently did not have a national adverse event blood transfusion monitoring program, so just this past February the Centers for Disease Control has launched just such a program to give us a snapshot of what we’re seeing nationally. You know, we do know about certain things, like mortality related to certain types of blood transfusions or blood products, but we don’t know much else. So this will allow hospitals to upload their data to the CDC and allow them to analyze them compared to other programs – the first time we’re going to know something about what’s going on in this country – it’s called the National Hemovigilance Program, it’s just launched recently, in February.

ALISON STEWART: This also begs the question about science… what about artificial blood?

DR. EMILY SENAY: Sure, this is the science fiction part, the thing that’s sort of always on the horizon. When are we going to get that chemical that will replace the need for blood transfusions, blood donations. You know, that’s a horizon that’s always moving into the future, unfortunately. Some things came up recently – they were used in clinical trials that were not successful. They’re looking at other things – actually taking some of the molecules inside red blood cells, isolating those – I think one of the coolest science fiction things out there is this blood farming where they’re looking at stem cells and trying to actually grow red blood cells in a “factory” and then using that, but nothing is on the horizon or close to the marketplace anytime soon, so for now, donating blood – it’s going to be the thing that we need to do to help people who are in the hospital, trauma victims, and absolutely in the military.

ALISON STEWART: But blood farms – that’s great sci-fi.

DR. EMILY SENAY: Blood farming, very sci-fi.

ALISON STEWART: Dr. Emily Senay, thanks a lot.

DR. EMILY SENAY: Thanks, Alison.

ALISON STEWART: Commercial shrimping resumed along parts of the Gulf Coast this week, and an area near the Florida Panhandle reopened for fishing on August 10th. The question of course is, will consumers feel okay about eating Gulf seafood?

JANE LUBCHENCO, NOAA: We know that the seafood that is in the market now from the Gulf is in fact safe to eat.

ALISON STEWART: But all those pictures of oil-covered wildlife might still make you wary of a shrimp kebab or grouper sandwich. We did our own research and uncovered 5 Things You Need To Know About Gulf Seafood.

ALISON STEWART: Thing Number One: Which seafood is most likely to be safe?

Some species of seafood are better at clearing oil out of their bodies than others. Fish do it the fastest. In fact, the federal government reopened some Gulf waters for fishing last week.

ALISON STEWART: Thing Number Two: Shellfish take longer to cleanse themselves.

Shrimp, crabs and especially oysters have a harder time processing oil droplets that enter their systems. Shrimpers are back out in coastal state waters this week, but further into the Gulf, federal waters are still closed to them.

ALISON STEWART: Thing Number Three: How is seafood from these reopened areas being tested? You may have heard about the federal government’s sensory test to evaluate Gulf seafood. Specially trained sniffers, yes I said sniffers, actually smell samples of fish and shrimp from the Gulf for evidence of oil or dispersants, as seen here.

It may sound odd, but Calvin Walker of the National Seafood Inspection Lab told us the sniffers can detect petroleum and dispersants down to about one part per million. Meanwhile, the samples are also undergoing chemical analysis for oil.

And here’s something else to consider – most seafood served in the U.S. doesn’t undergo anywhere near this rigorous level of safety testing. The U.S. imports about 80 percent of its seafood and only a small fraction of that undergoes even physical inspection.

ALISON STEWART: Thing Number Four: Laws of supply and demand don’t necessarily apply to seafood pricing. In a normal year, only about two percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S. comes from the Gulf. Steve Hedlund, the editor of a seafood trade publication, told us that your average supermarket probably doesn’t even carry any seafood from the Gulf to begin with. Despite that, because there’s been a perception that shrimp are in short supply, Hedlund says panicky buying has driven prices up by about 10 to 30 percent across the country.

ALISON STEWART: Thing Number Five: What’s the bottom line? Does all this safety testing mean we’re safe? The general consensus seems to be that having a plate of Gulf seafood is safe, but Gina Solomon of the National Resources Defense Council cautioned this week that some people might want to be more careful. Pregnant women, children and people who eat fish as a large part of their diet might be more susceptible to long-term health effects.

She also worries there will be contaminants that may not show up in near-term testing. Oil contains heavy metals like mercury, arsenic and lead that will take some time to accumulate into dangerous levels. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, tells us that while it is not currently testing for heavy metals, it is aware of the concern and that analysis will likely be added to its long-term monitoring efforts.

JON MEACHAM: This week online…We visit Houston to see how a program meant to target and deport illegal immigrants with criminal records might actually be threatening public safety.

MALE VOICE: Everybody that comes through the door, in some way or the other, is interviewed or screened for immigration status.

JON MEACHAM: Contributor Robert Fri debunks some of the hype surrounding natural gas and its potential to solve our energy problems…And if there is a story you think we should be telling… tell us. Visit the new and improved “Pitch Room” on the Need to Know site.

JON MEACHAM: How much of what ails America can be blamed on Facebook? According to best-selling author Gary Shteyngart, quite a lot. Shteyngart’s new satirical novel “Super Sad True Love Story” imagines a world in which the American economy has collapsed, the government is run by the so-called Bipartisan Party, and the media is dominated by Fox Liberty Ultra and the New York Lifestyle Times. It’s also a world in which people no longer read. Books are considered novelty items, and smelly ones at that. People communicate primarily in online slang through smart phones and social networking sites. Genuine human contact has become obsolete.

Shteyngart, who updates his own Facebook page often, was born in 1972 in what was then Leningrad. His family immigrated to the United States when he was a boy. He was named one of the New Yorker’s 20 best writers under 40. And the New York Times, the real one, called his book a, quote, “Super sad, super funny, super affecting performance.” In fact, the book has debuted to great reviews and is a New York Times bestseller. Gary Shteyngart, welcome.

GARY SHTEYNGART: Thank you. Great to be here.

JON MEACHAM: Now, your novel is supposed to be futuristic. It’s supposed to be about people not talking to each other, only communicating through devices, and speaking in a slang that develops out of the technology as opposed to human contact. So is this fiction or are you simply reporting?

GARY SHTEYNGART: Well, any novel that’s set in an illiterate America that’s about to collapse is pretty much set next Tuesday. So that’s about the timeframe I’ve given myself. This is the problem with writing a novel these days. If you’re gonna write about anything technological, it evaporates the next day. We don’t have a present anymore, just a future. Tolstoy, 1862, he was writing about, you know, horse carriages in 1812. They may have evolved a little bit, but he didn’t have to worry about some killer app coming along and destroying his world.

JON MEACHAM: Right. What’s the constant human factor, though? I mean, Tolstoy is presumably writing– was writing about the same sorts of things you’re writing about in terms of humanity. Or do you think something has fundamentally shifted as the Internet has taken over?

GARY SHTEYNGART: It’s a big question. We’re still at the very beginning of the process. You know, people still need to interact. There’s still some interaction. But so much of it is done digitally. There was– I read about a seminar at NYU where—the incoming freshman class had to figure out how to talk to one another without Facebook. And they had them up on a stage. And they said, “Come on, just ask Jimmy where he’s from.” And then he said, “Where you from, Jimmy?” “I’m from Syosset.” “Oh, me, too,” you know? And– and they were shocked that they could communicate without Facebook– or without Twitter or without any other kind of thing. So it– it’s a whole new world. And as a writer, I feel responsible– I’m– I don’t write historical fiction. I’m writing what’s happening right now. And the only way to write about right now is to write about in the future.

JON MEACHAM: Have you always wanted to be a novelist?

GARY SHTEYNGART: Always wanted to be a novelist. I was– four or five years old, my– growing up in Leningrad. And my grandma had me– write a little novel about Lenin, who I adored. There was a big statue of Lenin. Lenin meets a magical goose and they invade Finland and try to create a Socialist revolution there. And then Lenin–

JON MEACHAM: That–

GARY SHTEYNGART: –eats the goose.

JON MEACHAM: –that actually happened, too.

GARY SHTEYNGART: That actually happened. It’s happening as we speak.

JON MEACHAM: There’s a pattern.

GARY SHTEYNGART: There’s a pattern there, yeah. So I’ve always wanted to be a writer.

JON MEACHAM: The– you told The New York Times in 2002, “Look, it’s a heroic act to leave your country. In a way, it’s even more brave when you do it not because you’re a refugee but because you simply demand a better life. But it’s a self-selecting impulse. People who dare to cross borders have a certain personality. And I don’t think I’m one of them.” Are you talking about the difference between your generation in that of your parents’ and grandparents’?

GARY SHTEYNGART: Yes, exactly. I mean, I– I think– I don’t think I would have the gumption to say, “I’m leaving the United–” I– I spend a lot of time in Italy and other countries. I don’t think I have the– the strength to say I’m gonna abandon my culture, abandon my language, abandon all the things that– that– that make my life what it is and just move somewhere just to make a better life for my kids. That requires a kind of selflessness that I wish I would have but I– I frankly don’t. I– I always write– I’ve written about immigrants for quite a while– in my first two books. In this last book, what’s interesting to me is– he’s– Lenny, the hero of the book, is– is native born American. He has Russian parents. But I see him as an immigrant from another– another planet almost, which is the pre-digital planet. He is 15 years older than– than his lover in the book who is completely digitized. And he is basically an immigrant from a whole different way of thinking, an introspective way of thinking that doesn’t exist anymore.

JON MEACHAM: So while we become more self-absorbed, we put all the information we possibly can about ourselves out there. Has that been at the price of introspection?

GARY SHTEYNGART: Absolutely. Each year I think I lose about six percent of my humanity. That’s what the scientists tell me. It’s– it’s a process I can’t reverse.

JON MEACHAM: You’re the polar ice cap.

GARY SHTEYNGART: I’m the polar ice cap. Thank you, exactly. I am the polar ice cap of the humanities. And I’m slowly, slowly shrinking. It– it is a very annoying situation. And I go to upstate New York because– American telegraph and telephone cannot deliver– a phone call up there. I use an iPhone. So that’s my respite from it. And I get so much done there not just in terms of writing but in terms of actually reading and– and– and having my mind enter the consciousness of another human being, which is what reading really is, which is why I’m so scared of it being under threat.

JON MEACHAM: But why, at a moment when we’re evermore connected, at least virtually, do you think that– is that– that is at a price of human connection? Why can’t we have both?

GARY SHTEYNGART: It would be nice to have both. And I– I love technology. I mean– this thing which– tells me where to go, you know, I tell my computer iPhone, I say, you know, I– I want a taco right now. And it says, “Oh, you’re going completely the wrong way.” That’s nice. It’s nice to be led around like that by a small– plastic device. But what I miss is actual connection with human beings. You know, the– the people on Facebook, they’re connected to their friends, but are they really connected? There’s nothing like sitting, you know, having a beer with someone, having a coffee with some– even tactile connection, even, you know, somebody petting me is– is an amazing thing.

JON MEACHAM: But why is it that the more time we spend creating a virtual world do we draw back? Is it– is it a function of time, lower-case “t”?

GARY SHTEYNGART: I think humanity– I think these leaps in technology– as happens in the book, they happen so quickly. And I think it’s– it takes time for us as human beings to process everything that’s happening around us. For now we are so distracted by these very bright lights and these flashing things. You know, I– I spend– a lot of my time in upstate New York. And there’s some towns where they’re second homeowners. And a lot of them are retired and they’re in their 50s and 60s. They’ve already had a career. You would think they would be talking about grandchildren and introspective things, figuring out where they– what their life has been. No, all around me they’re sitting at dining tables talking about the latest app as if it’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to them. “Oh, my god, I just downloaded this new Android. It’s amazing.” You know? It– it– it shocks me how easy we fall for the seduction of this siren song and how easy it is for us to say, you know, these people, this world that we’ve had around us, it’s just not important enough. Let’s leave it behind and move to the digital realm.

JON MEACHAM: What is the, to your mind, next step? Does it continually get worse? Is there a backlash?

GARY SHTEYNGART: You know, there’s a great slow food movement in Italy and other countries. I love it. I love it. You know, we– we’re so busy. We’re running around. We’re eating this garbage, you know?

JON MEACHAM: Yeah.

GARY SHTEYNGART: And finally somebody said enough is enough. We’re– we’re gonna slow it down. The same thing with– with– with literature and– and other things. We have to go back to– we have to spend some time digitally and then move away from it and spend time looking at long-form text like novels. You know, in my book “Super Sad True Love Story,” there’s– it barely exists. There– there’s barely any reading. At one point, Lenny, the protagonist, tries to read—“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” to Eunice, his much younger lover. And she can’t understand what’s coming out of his mouth because she’s never heard it. And she becomes very frightened by it because books are actually– people say, “Oh, this is cutting-edge technology. It’s so avant-garde.” It’s actually quite boring. I find the stuff in books, the raw material, the blood and guts of humanity, I find that to be a lot more avant-garde, a lot more– chilling, thrilling, and also cool.

JON MEACHAM: When you talk about a book, do you mean long-form narrative– in one sequential form? Or do you mean the physical item?

GARY SHTEYNGART: I mean both. I mean, it’s nice to have that four pounds in your hands, you know? I– I don’t have that much problem with the Kindle or the e-book or the iPad. You know, if people read, people read. But it’s very distracting to try to look at something on a screen as opposed to a book. A book also tells you who you are. You know, you’re on the subway. You’re a young man. You’re trying to flirt with a young woman, and you– you take out your James Joyce Ulysses and you say– book– I’m not saying that was my past.

JON MEACHAM: I– I hear the Shteyngart’s very effective on that.

GARY SHTEYNGART: Oh, the Shteyngart is a great accessory book.

JON MEACHAM: Is that right?…You read Mark Twain in Russian.

GARY SHTEYNGART: Yeah, yeah. I grew up– reading Mark Twain with an introduction I think by one of Stalin’s henchmen had– the intro to it: “This racist book betrays America’s racist society.” I love Mark Twain. I think– you know, for me, the books I write, if they don’t entertain a certain group of people then I failed already. If it’s just gonna be a novel of ideas, I don’t care. Shoot me. I– I’m not interested in that. It has to be– it has to have a lot of humor. It has to be, you know, picaresque. And– and it has to really draw you into the lives of these characters. Lenny and Eunice are the first– you know, the last book I had, 325 pound—“Absurdistan” was the novel. 325-pound guy, bad circumcision, not gonna draw in a huge amount of readers. But Lenny and Eunice, for the first time I feel a real closeness to these two characters. The way I read “1984,” I want Julian Winston to survive this horrible society. I want my Lenny and my Eunice to survive the horrible society I’m describing as well.

JON MEACHAM: Now, how many times are you gonna update your Facebook page from today till midnight?

GARY SHTEYNGART: Well, it depends. You know, I do readings. Today I’m doing a reading. And sometimes people bring these adorable wiener dogs. I love dachshunds. They’re my favorite animal. So I’m gonna have to take some pictures of those if they come and then post them immediately on Facebook. It’s very exciting stuff. I mean, these are small furry dogs.

JON MEACHAM: But you don’t– but you– you have no hypocritical twinges about– satirizing a world of which you’re very much a part?

GARY SHTEYNGART: I hate myself very much for doing this.

JON MEACHAM: Well, I think you– I think you’ve managed to– to survive and monetize that.

GARY SHTEYNGART: I– I’ve monetized it. I built a platform and I monetized it. I don’t even know what I’m saying, but it sounds great, right?

JON MEACHAM: Gary Shteyngart, thank you.

GARY SHTEYNGART: Thank you very much.

ALISON STEWART: Coming up on the next edition of Need to Know…

MALE VOICE: We all know what happened to New Orleans on August 29, 2005.

ALISON STEWART: On the 5 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, an unusual voice – actor, comedian and long time New Orleans resident Harry Shearer – previews his new documentary about the myths and realities of what caused the disaster.

HARRY SHEARER: This was caused by four decades plus of misfeasances and malfeasances on the part of the federal government.

ALISON STEWART: “The Big Uneasy,” on the next Need to Know.

ALISON STEWART: Before we leave you tonight, we’d be remiss if we didn’t share some wisdom from our prognosticator-in-residence, Andy Borowitz.

JON MEACHAM: This week, Andy joins us with some insight into the costs and benefits of a higher education. Andrew?

ANDY BOROWITZ: Thank you so much, Jon, Alison. Well, next week, I’m driving my daughter up to college. Now, a lot of people are asking, in this economy, is a college education really worth it? Well to answer that question, I’m launching a special Next Week’s News investigation: “In This Economy, Is a College Education Really Worth It?” Helping me out are my two educational pals from PBS, Elmo from Sesame Street and Ken Burns.

Ken Burns goes to college and studies “documentary filmmaking.” Elmo doesn’t go to college. Elmo lives with his parents and becomes a “barista.” After four years of college, Ken Burns discovers that documentary filmmaking is an “unmarketable skill.” After four years at Starbucks, Elmo becomes a “manager.” Ken Burns applies to Elmo for a job as a barista. “Sorry, Ken Burns,” says Elmo. “You’re ‘overqualified.’” Elmo doesn’t have to live with his parents anymore. He gets his own apartment and a “Nintendo Wii.” Ken Burns has to sleep on his parents’ couch. He owes thousands of dollars in college loans and drinks a lot of “malt liquor.” But it’s a happy ending for Elmo. He gets two weeks off for summer vacation on the “Jersey Shore.” So, when I drive my daughter to college next week, I clearly have a lot to think about. Like, how am I going to pay for it all? Well, don’t worry; I’ve already got a plan. Alison, Jon, may I take your order?

ALISON STEWART: Tall, non-fat mocha, extra hot.

ANDY BOROWITZ: How modern.

ALISON STEWART: Thanks Andy. That’s it for this edition of Need to Know on television, but as you know, we’re always posting new stories online.

JON MEACHAM: At the Need to Know website at pbs.org, you’ll find podcasts, blogs, and videos you won’t find anywhere else. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.

One of our biggest stories from last week — which we covered in two articles and a podcast with Michael Mann, the “Climategate” scientist who was the target of a (now dismissed) fraud probe by the Virginia attorney general’s office — came directly from a Pitch Room suggestion! So keep the ideas and the feedback coming! Here are some of the pitches we’ve been receiving lately — what would you like to hear more about?

350.org

A story about the global grassroots movement 350.org. Next worldwide event is scheduled for 10-10-10. Started by Bill McKibben author, activist, environmentalist two years ago. 350 is the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere that is considered safe by many scientists. We are currently at 392.

- Joyce Gralak

Native Americans in the U.S.

My suggestion for the “Pitch Room” is to cover the state of our Native Americans or Indigenous People’s across our American Nation. From shore to shore to cover the struggles be they: humanitarian, economic, political, and especially moral. The suicide rate amongst Native American male youth is climbing. If we believed the climate is stacked against African-Americans is horrible, than for Native Americans its double or triple those numbers across the board.

Reservations or tribal lands are like third-world nations within our borders. Be it housing stock, lack of heating during the harsh winters (e.g. the Lakota), or unemployment rates soaring beyond depression era rates of over 50%.

Tiokasin Ghosthorse, would be an excellent point man to discuss this at great lengths. He hosts a radio show called “First Voices Indigenous Radio” for Indigenous people for nearly across the globe, although mostly for the Americas.

It seems in discussion of race in America from Whites, Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians. That Native Americans are always left out of the discussion.

- Ivan Pozo-Illas

LGBT dictionary

We all know that people dress a certain way to identify ourselves to others. But we speak differently, too. I work at a community college, and we have set up a Safe Spaces program to aid our at-risk LGBT students. To that end, we are creating the first searchable, comprehensive list of LGBT terms — in 3 different languages. I have a great group of LGBT college-aged students contributing to it, and getting authorship status. The point is that we recognize that to engage in a culture, or to understand why a student is being hurt by certain words, you need to have access to those words.

So that’s practice. But the reality is that we want to present a dictionary to those who are new to the gay community. We want to help them learn the lingo, and we want to make that lingo mainstream to help end the ‘ick factor’ and discrimination.

All of this opens up the very interesting question: How are language and culture related? What pictures are made when speakers use or are exposed to certain words? The Department of Defense issued a survey to troops regarding their perceptions of gays serving openly in the military. But instead of ‘gay’, they used ‘homosexual’, which has known connotations. The point is that they were priming negative perceptions, and manufacturing negative replies.

- Elise (via email)

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (We had quite a few requests for stories on this topic, and about the XMRV virus associated with the condition)

I would like to see a program on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. A significant number of people who have CFS have all three of these disorders. Having multiple conditions is not surprising when people are chronically ill. Most people who have an immune or an “autoimmune” illness have multiple illnesses. But what is unique about these illnesses is that the sick person has been blamed to such a degree that the average person out there may very well believe that the illnesses are not physiological. Indeed, I’ve read that over half of all doctors still don’t believe in CFS and the WHO and CDC both recognize it as a real physical illness.

There are plenty of studies that now show that these illnesses are real. Indeed, just recently a French research team has proved Dr. Martin Pall’s NO/ONOO theory (pronounced No Oh No) as to the physiological changes that go on with folk who have CFS, FMS, MCS, and PTSD among people who are diagnosed to have MCS. As far as I know, this is the first time that folk with MCS have been shown to be physiologically different from “normals.”

At any rate, people with these illnesses have been shunned and left to cope with lives that have essentially crashed and burned, ignored by many in the medical community, ignored by family, ignored by friends. If having support is essential to good health, then our larger community has certainly done all it can to keep us ill. Thank goodness for online support groups and the cyber world in general.

- Claironess

Need to Know presents VII Magazine, a new journalistic partnership with VII Photo, which will give our readers unprecedented intimate access to the work of the world’s leading photojournalists. Every day, our partners at VII will showcase a new photo, and each week, a new video or audio slideshow.

This week: At an office in Canandaigua, N.Y., operators answer about 300 calls a day from veterans who are considering suicide.

Opened in 2007 by the Veterans Administration, the veterans crisis hotline  the first of its kind in the country. The office received 10,000 calls in 2007, but the number had increased to 70,000 in 2008, and in 2009, it was 120,000. By June of this year, the line had already received just under 100,000 calls.

In this photo essay, VII photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson, provides a mesmerizing glimpse into the daily lives of these call responders.

From “The Breaking of the Cakes” (an epiphany ceremony). January, 1937
Courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity

[The] use of a Christian date for a Vodou ceremony is typical of the whole Haitian religious complex here. For example, the official church lithographs of the saints form the principal wall decoration for every Vodou altar, and some fifty percent of the people know the Christian as well as the Vodou name for the saint. But a good half of the population, even here in Pont Beudet close to Port-au-Prince, the center of Haitian culture, and in daily contact with the literate staff of the Haitian Asylum for the Insane and with schools and a church nearby, know these pictures only as deities in the Vodou pantheon. St. Antoine is Papa Legba, god of the crossroads, he who opens the gate to let the other loa enter and to whom the first song of every bamboche or ceremony are usually addressed. He is master of all ⎯ the master of all the animals, chief of all the loa. St. Patrick is Papa Damballa, master of the snakes and of the rainbow. Mater Dolorosa is Maîtresse Erzulie, the rich and jealous goddess of love, for whom many men reserve their Tuesday’s and Thursday’s bed in return for the benefits believed to be received. And so it goes with most of the loa.

So far as I know, no friend of mine here has ever walked the four miles to mass in Croix des Bouquets, but I understand that all the initiates of the canzo ceremony are supposed to make a pilgrimage to all the principal shrines and chapels of the region. In other words, Catholicism is merely the official religion of Haiti, and its symbolism has merely been adapted to conform to the ideology of the various African cults that managed to survive in Haiti.

I should like to add at this point that what I have seen of Vodou in Haiti makes me a little impatient with such accounts as Seabrook’s and Craig’s. Strange and rather horrible things do happen here at times, but these things, when taken out of their context — of a simple country people amusing themselves and reverencing the powers that they believe they see walking the earth every day — form a garish and distorted picture so far from the truth that it would have been better had these men never written about Vodou at all. Beyond these general remarks, however, it is best for me to leave writing about Vodou to those who have seen more (because they have made Vodou their special interest) than I have.

George Narvil, organist and choirmaster from the church at Croix des Bouquets, a distinguished old fellow with a long white beard, comes walking from the hounfort (a little thatched house about ten yards away from the mambo’s rest-house) a little bell. He sounded the bell three times and then came and sat down with us and joined in the gossip and laughter under the tonnel. This was about one forty-five. Behind the house Theoline was squatting on a low stool while several disciples combed her hair and powdered her.

At two, Narvil sounded the bell three times again. This was to advertise to the whole world that the ceremony was about to begin. More and more people began to arrive, all in their best clothes, many with their town shoes and all shiny from scrubbing Madame Degras, a famous mambo from Port-au-Prince, appeared out of the house with her mother, who was even more distinguished in her time. The daughter was all of sixty-five. Lemon yellow and with long white hair and great intelligent eyes. The old mother was a soft, broken mound under a long white cotton dress who leaned on a thick brown coconut cane. We made friends, and Madame Degras combed my hair. I bought milk for her mother. At 2:15 the bell was rung three times again, and after a little we all wandered vaguely to the hounfort, where the recording machine had already been set up.

Related: Haiti’s Lost Music

Click play to listen to sample tracks from the Lomax archives.

By Jacky Lumarque

Is Haiti a country condemned to poverty and chaos?  Does the combination of bad governance and natural disaster constitute a fatal impediment to the rebuilding of this poor nation? Why has a country once called the “Pearl of the Antilles” turned into a place most observers compare to hell?

Some attribute the amplitude of the January 12 earthquake to Haiti’s “culture of poverty.” For decades, Haiti has been on the receiving end of an endless stream of foreign aid, which has made zero impact on growth and development. Competent Haitians are condemned to poverty in Haiti, while they seemingly get rich overnight when they emigrate to the United States or Canada. To many, lack of natural resources and the burden of colonialism, racism, international exclusion and even the independence debt to France are insufficient to explain Haiti’s permanent state of poverty. They argue that unless this country adopts a counterculture it will never get on the path of prosperity.

I, however, would argue that Haitian culture represents a force for the country and must play a fundamental role in the rebuilding process. Sure, many of the most beautiful manifestations of this culture have been destroyed by the earthquake: Nader Museum and Art Gallery in Desprez lost thousands of unique paintings; important private collections of books, paintings, photographs, voodoo artifacts have perished under the rubble, and the murals at the Ste Trinity Church have been destroyed. But the soul remains.

One can regret that the leadership of the country has long ignored its cultural patrimony, and has, in many cases, worked to destroy it. From 1860 when the Haitian government signed its first convention with the Vatican (Le Concordat) to 1957 when the country was subjected to ”anti-superstitious campaigns” orchestrated by the government and the Catholic Church, the country  saw the destruction of many temples and sacred objects, and the imprisonment of many peasants and the urban poor. As it often occurs in history, the oppressed took refuge in the arts: painting, sculpture, music, dance, handicraft and literature.

Isn’t it a surprising fact that without government support and subsidies, without institutional structures for research, training and promotion, Haitian art and literature continue to blossom?

In 2009, 12 international prizes have been awarded to Haitian writers, all educated and living in Haiti (except for Dany Laferrière who chose to live in Canada). How can Haitians show such a force of expression, innovation and creation in music, dance, painting, sculpture while everything in the country seems intent on discouraging these impulses ?

Haiti doesn’t need a counterculture, but, rather, leaders who recognize the vitality of Haitian culture and encourage its production by mobilizing public resources and support.

Jacky Lumarque is the president of Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince.

Related: Haiti’s Lost Music

The narrow K-G Pass is one of the roads in Afghanistan that the U.S. military has planned to pave with an eye toward greater security. Photo: Fred W. Baker III/DOD

In 2007 and 2008, a strange meme swept through the few reporters covering Afghanistan: roads were the key to winning in Afghanistan. Paving Afghanistan’s roads, so the thinking went, would bring security to the provinces and spur development.

The idea was ludicrous on its face. While the reporters performing their ritualistic one- and two-week embeds extolled the power of asphalt, Taliban militants were using the newly paved roads to lay siege to villages, capture entire districts, brutally attack road construction crews and execute complex ambushes against Coalition forces.

By July 2008, the General Accounting Office (GAO) had released a report (pdf), complaining that U.S. agencies responsible for road building “know little about the impact of road projects, since they have not conducted assessments to determine the degree to which the projects have achieved economic development and humanitarian assistance goals.” Moreover, the GAO noted, even the positive reports of progress suffered from spotty or incomplete data, including reports from the Defense Department, which the GAO said had no “clear guidance” and failed to “assess the results” of its road projects.

But roads were not dangerous everywhere. The paved roads in the north and center of Afghanistan, where security is less of a problem, have been good for business. In places like Mazar-i Sharif, they have contributed to a thriving local economy, and increase economic linkages between Kabul and the rest of the country. That doesn’t mean the roads are perfect, however.

Last week, a friend of mine, who for security reasons must remain nameless, was held at gunpoint on a stretch of road in Panjshir province. This was surprising for two reasons: one, it happened on a very well-traveled route, but more importantly it happened in Panjshir, which is renown more for its security and status as a vacation destination than for illegal checkpoints and road banditry. My friend was equally flummoxed at what was happening, and only managed to escape by pressing a roll of money into the marauder’s hands.

If that were an isolated incident, it would be easy to write off as a one-off occurrence — random muggings are an unfortunate reality of life, and even walking around a safe neighborhood in a big city one can encounter similar banditry without fears of all of society collapsing. But the newly paved roads of Afghanistan have been the center of the country’s growing insecurity.

Using the Wikileaks data, Mike Dewar, a post-doc at Columbia, and Drew Conway, a Ph.D. student at NYU, have shown that over the past several years attacks in Afghanistan have been concentrated along the highways — the largest paved roads in the country. There are probably many reasons for this: paved roads are easier to drive on, the roads connect population centers, and so on. The result, whatever the cause, is that, in a strange way, roads have contributed to insecurity in Afghanistan.

Visualisation of Activity in Afghanistan using the Wikileaks data from Mike Dewar on Vimeo.

The U.S. military seems aware of this to a certain extent. As Spencer Ackerman, a reporter for Wired’s Danger Room blog, noted earlier this month, Major General John Campbell, who commands the 101st Airborne Division, plans to make the roads safe as a part of his campaign to “secure” the eastern part of Afghanistan. His plan is to control the roads and connect the various district centers in this area, adopting an “ink spot” approach favored in some counterinsurgency literature.

It sounds lovely, but that’s been the plan for years. In late 2007, the Army units responsible for that same patch of Afghanistan had announced an ambitious plan to secure and then pave the road connecting two important cities: Khost and Gardez. It is an important route: the KG-Pass, as it’s commonly known, was the site of Operation Magistral, one of the last major Soviet military offensives of the Soviet-Afghan War. In 1988, they sent nearly 20,000 troops to secure this exact same stretch of road, killing nearly 2,000 insurgents over the course of a two-month battle. While the Soviets declared victory, the insurgents they faced were commanded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who used American stinger missiles to impose steep losses on the Soviets, and he remains the leader of a major insurgent group today.

Things haven’t changed much. During his previous embed in Afghanistan in 2008, Ackerman reported the next unit responsible for this same stretch of road had ambitious plans to do the exact same thing. Now we’re in 2010, and after three years precious little has been done to secure or pave that stretch of road. The military continues to insist that efforts to pave the roads are the key to securing Afghanistan, against all evidence to the contrary.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Afghanistan, conditions deteriorate along the paved roads. In the northwest of the country, which is not an epicenter of the insurgency, bandits have seized control of the roads and routinely rob travelers. In Badghis province, despite millions of dollars in development, the roads remain unfinished and the Taliban have successfully used opposition to them as propaganda.

Why does the international  ommunity focus so intently on road construction? It’s difficult to say. There is a belief, justified in many ways, that well-paved roads are a necessary step toward fostering economic development. Roads do little for commerce, however, if they’re controlled by criminals and insurgents, and paving them seems to make road-based crime worse. There is also a belief, almost religious in its adherence to faith over fact, that paving roads somehow reduces the emplacement of IEDs — even though the many thousands of miles of paved roads have accompanied a dramatic increase in the use of IEDs by insurgents.

Like far too many aid projects in Afghanistan, the relentless focus on road construction probably has as much to do with western preferences as it does with specific benefits to Afghan communities. Paved roads make traveling in the lumbering, top-heavy, IED-resistant MRAP vehicles much easier than dirt tracks. It’s easy to point to miles of roads paved as a metric for spending development dollars, even when it’s difficult or impossible to explain how those roads have benefited the communities they affect. Indeed, the bizarre obsession on road construction is a symptom of the aid project in Afghansitan-writ large, preferring large showcase projects to smaller ones with greater immediate benefit to communities, focusing on hard metrics instead of specific outcomes, and doing what is familiar instead of what is effective. In that sense, the push to pave Afghanistan won’t change meaningfully, probably ever – road construction will probably remain a centerpiece of the development community, even after the U.S. eventually draws down its troops. Maybe, by then, building these roads will actually make sense.

Joshua Foust is a military analyst specializing in Afghanistan, Pakistan and post-Soviet Central Asia. He blogs at www.registan.net.

Flickr/LupineHorror

This week on our Karr on Culture podcast: Will steep cuts to arts funding leave British culture reeling — or help usher in a new age of creativity?

Britain’s creative class has had it pretty good over the past few decades: government arts subsidies have built (and rebuilt) theaters, concert halls, and galleries. Subsidies to theatre and film organizations may have helped an estimated 80,000 Brits land jobs in Hollywood, where many play leading roles and bring home major awards. But now, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government is threatening to slash arts subsidies by 40 percent. Martin Smith, former head of the Young Vic Theatre, worries that cuts of that order of magnitude would devastate artistic innovation. The Government hopes that donations from individuals and the corporate sector will make up some of the difference. But this summer, museums in London have been the targets of regular protests against one of Britain’s largest patrons of the arts, BP. Activist Kevin Smith of the anti-oil group Platform says cultural organizations should wean themselves from petroleum industry support. Not everyone things the situation’s bleak, though: London-based artist Alana Jelinek, who’s also done scholarly research into the effects of arts funding, says that art history demonstrates that tough financial times can lead to a boom in creativity. “I’m actually looking forward to the art we’ll see,” she says.

A treasure trove of Haitian music, recorded in the 1930s, is brought back to the country as it tries to rebuild after the earthquake.

The earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12 was unlike any other natural disaster in recent history. It killed an estimated 250,000 people and left more than a million homeless, but it also destroyed much of the country’s cultural legacy. Hundreds of historic buildings, monuments, art collections, recording studios and libraries were buried in the rubble.

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Producers: Anthony Lappé and Laura van Straaten

Anna Lomax Wood is trying to help Haiti hold onto its past as it looks to the future. Her father, the famous ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (1915-2002), traveled to Haiti in 1935-6. Working for the Library of Congress, the then 21-year-old recorded more than 50 hours of Haitian music. The scratchy recordings captured the rich tapestry of Haitian music, from West African and Congolese drumming to French lullabies to New Orleans jazz imported by U.S. Marines. But these rare recordings sat for decades in the Library of Congress archives.

Now his daughter is trying to use these recordings — which were painstakingly remastered and released in 2009 in a box set from Lomax Wood’s Association for Cultural Equity — as a healing tool for Haitians.

This spring, Lomax Wood began what her father called “repatriating” the music to its rightful owners in a program funded by the Miami-based Green Family Foundation. She traveled to Leogane, a town near the epicenter of the earthquake where her father recorded some of his most memorable moments on tape and film. She played the music and the archival film for survivors, young and old. For many of the older generation, this was the music of time long past.

The late ’30s and early ’40s in Haiti was a time of a change and hope. An often brutal U.S. occupation had just ended, and the country had a democratically elected president. While Hollywood was turning out zombie movies, novelists like Zora Neale Hurston were writing about Haiti’s cultural renaissance. Lomax turned to Hurston to help him get Haitians to accept him into their homes, their celebrations and their most sacred religious ceremonies. Much of Lomax’s recording captures the complex rhythms of Haiti’s African-based voodoo religion. The result was a trove of music history that many Haitians now consider to be priceless.

Jacky Lumarque, head of Quisqueya University in Haiti, is working to rebuild the institution’s buildings, which were almost entirely destroyed in the earthquake. But he believes there is much more to the rebuilding process than bricks and mortar.

“One of the lessons we learned after the earthquake is that reconstruction is necessary, but it’s not in buildings. It’s not in facilities. The most important aspect of reconstruction is in humans. And to do that, to do that, culture most be the most fundamental aspect of the reconstruction program. Haiti already has that. It’s part of our own fundamental wealth. We don’t need technical assistance for that. It’s inside us,” he said. “Lomax shows us that has been possible – we can do it at some point and we can do it again.”

Related:

To explore the Alan Lomax archive, including sounds from Haiti and the American south, visit the Association of Cultural Equity website.

Essay: For Haiti to move forward, we must return to our culture

This week on Need to Know: The price of gas. In collaboration with ProPublica, correspondent John Larson travels to Wyoming, where some say the controversial method of extracting natural gas known hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is polluting their water. Then we visit Harry Shearer, the comic writer and actor, in New Orleans, the subject of his documentary “The Big Uneasy.” On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Shearer punctures some of the myths that have been told about the disaster.

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Then: What do the Ground Zero mosque controversy and Glenn Beck’s “restoring honor” rally have in common? Glenn Back says nothing. But as Alison Stewart points out, there is, in fact, a connection. Plus: New York Times public health reporter Gardiner Harris discusses who is — and who isn’t — protecting our nation’s food supply. And resident satirist Andy Borowitz predicts the winners of this weekend’s Emmy Awards.

Watch the individual segments: The Price of gas

In collaboration with ProPublica, Need to Know correspondent John Larson investigates the practice of fracking, which some Wyoming residents say is polluting their water. Food safety and the egg recall

Need to Know talks to reporter Gardiner Harris about food safety and regulations that are highlighted by this latest case of tainted eggs. Glenn Beck and the Ground Zero mosque

Glenn Beck has said his rally at the Lincoln Memorial this weekend has “nothing to do” with the Ground Zero mosque controversy. But as Alison Stewart points out, the two may in fact have something in common. Unnatural disaster

Need to Know follows Harry Shearer, the writer and comic actor, through New Orleans, as he punctures the myths and misconceptions about Hurricane Katrina. Next week’s news: Emmy edition

Andy Borowitz worries that people will start dressing up like characters from “Mad Men,” and offers some classic TV shows to emulate instead.