News, photography and analysis by an award-winning independent journalist and select colleagues

The Obama administration announced last week that it is safe to eat fish and shrimp caught in the 78 percent of federal waters in the Gulf that are now reopened to fishing. But many are still concerned about the levels of toxins in the water and the impact on marine life. Independent journalist Dahr Jamail has been reporting from the Gulf Coast for over a month now. Last week he spoke to some commercial fishermen in Mississippi who are refusing to trawl because of the oil and dispersants that are still in the water.

Dahr shares stories of his trip to the Gulf Coast with Amy Goodman and Sharif Abdel Kouddous. Dahr’s segment starts around 42:15 of this video.

Dahr Jamail reports from the Gulf spill zone on how media is treated, how locals fare day-to-day, and how the future looks.

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BAGHDAD - The March elections have only deepened political divisions, and brought more violence.

Violent incidents come now amid tensions fueled by post-election arrests of victorious MPs, and disputes over vote fraud.

Incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has successfully appealed to the Supreme Court to disqualify more than 50 candidates on the opposition list, accusing them of being former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party.

Leaders from Maliki’s group declined to talk to IPS, saying they were busy with meetings to form alliances for the next government.

Members of former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi’s list of the Iraqiya Party, that won 91 parliamentary seats to 89 for Maliki’s State of Law party, were more forthcoming.

“We have a national project to reform the political process, including the starting point for reform of the Iraqi situation, and we will work to promote the reality of Iraq for the better,” Khalil Ismail al-Qubaisi from the Allawi list told IPS at his office in Baghdad.

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From the intro:

Doctors in the Iraqi city of Falluja are handling up to 15 times as many birth defects as they were one year ago.

The chronic deformities include multiple tumours, heart problems, nervous system anomalies and eye deficiencies.

Residents of the city blame the surge in chronic deformities on controversial weapons used by US forces against Sunni fighters in 2004.

White phosphorus and depleted uranium shells were allegedly among the munitions used.

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We’re joined by journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone, Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. He’s been on tour with his latest book, The Will to Resist, Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his February 8th article in TruthOut.org, “Army Imprisons Soldier for Singing Against Stop-Loss Policy,” is also about a soldier who has resisted further military service. Iraq War Veteran Marc Hall was stop-lossed after a 15 month tour. His original protest song about the stop loss policy landed him in prison in Liberty County Georgia, and the Army will send him back to Iraq for court martial proceedings.

At a White House concert February 10th President Barack Obama praised the singers and song writers who would risk being sent to jail during the civil rights era as they spoke out for what they believed.
Obama said, “Dr. King himself once acknowledged that he didn’t see “the real meaning of the movement” until he saw young people singing in the face of hostility. …You see, it’s easy to sing when you’re happy. It’s easy to sing when you’re among friends. It’s easy to sing when times are good. But it is hard to sing when times are rough. It’s hard to sing in the face of taunts, and fear, and the constant threat of violence. It’s hard to sing when folks are being beaten, when leaders are being jailed.”

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In January, U.S. Army officials announced four separate court-martial charges against Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother who missed her deployment to Afghanistan in early November 2009 when her childcare plans for her infant son, Kamani, fell through at the last minute. Hutchinson was jailed and threatened with a court-martial if she did not agree to deploy to Afghanistan. Kamani was placed into a county foster care system.

Hutchinson, in accordance with the family care plan of the U.S. Army, had been allowed to fly to Oakland, California to leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes. However, after a week, Hughes realized she couldn’t care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister. She told Hutchinson and her commander, Captain Gassant and the Army granted a Hutchinson an extension so that she could find someone else to care for Kamani. In the meantime, the boy came back to Georgia to be with his mother.

But only a few days before Hutchinson’s original deployment date, she was told by the Army she would not get the time extension after all, and would have to deploy despite the fact that her son had nowhere to go. Faced with this choice, Specialist Hutchinson chose not to show up for her plane to Afghanistan. The military arrested her and placed her child in the county foster care system.

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From the National Radio Project:

Will the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ever end? And when they do, how will we measure victory? For journalist and author Dahr Jamail, who’s reported from Iraq and the middle east extensively since 2003, both wars have already been lost. And it’s only getting worse.

On this edition, we interview Jamail about the stresses on U.S. soldiers, on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing refusal to serve among members of the US military. Jamail’s new book is titled: The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Appearance on Al Jazeera English’s Riz Khan Show:

Veterans Day is this week, and the shootings at Fort Hood this week brought to the forefront many questions about soldiers and military personnel: how are soldiers surviving the wars, and readjusting to life at home? What are we doing to help them, and is it enough?  With the war in Iraq supposedly winding down and the war in Afghanistan ratcheting up, it’s time to take a serious look at some of these questions, and try to understand the role that the military plays in all of our lives.

We discuss these questions and more with Anuradha K. Bhagwati, executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network, Dr. Anna Burton, psychiatrist with The Soldiers Project, Dahr Jamail, independent journalist and author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Nadia McCaffrey, Gold Star mother and founder of the Patrick McCaffrey Foundation.