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

Story by Dahr Jamail, Photography by Erika Blumenfeld | t r u t h o u t | Report

James “Catfish” Miller, Mississippi commercial fisherman, turned whistleblower. (Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)

The rampant use of toxic dispersants, out of state private contractors being brought in to spray them, and US Coast Guard complicity are common stories now in the four states most affected by BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

Commercial and Charter Fishermen, residents, and members of BP’s Vessels Of Opportunity (VOO) program in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana have spoken with Truthout about their witnessing all of these incidents.

[Read more →]

Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010

Dear Readers:

I have been on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana for well over a month now, and together with my partner, Erika Blumenfeld, we have brought you stories and photographs that document and archive the human and environmental impact of the historic and horrific disaster that is the BP oil catastrophe.

We produced a report for Inter Press Service, Scientists Deeply Concerned About BP Disaster’s Long-Term Impact, which investigates the future of the Gulf’s ecosystems after being inundated by toxic mixture of crude oil and BP’s Corexit.

In our story, Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Even when it’s not out of sight), we expose the impressive oil catastrophe cover-up across all four Gulf States being enacted by the US Government and BP, and look at how this tactic is similar to Russia’s attempt to hide the severity of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

In our most recent piece, Gulf Coast Fishermen Challenge US Government over Dispersants, we wrote about how commercial fisher folk in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida are sick from the ongoing exposure to BP’s use of dispersant, and are uniting to demand government agencies to force BP to discontinue its use and conduct accurate scientific testing of the waters before opening them up to fishing.

The complexity and breadth of this continued crisis is beyond what we could have imagined, and our questions have led us to dynamic and impassioned interviews with environmental philosophers, activists, scientists, sociologists, riverkeepers, bayoukeepers, indigenous tribes, and fisher people.

As a freelance team, we could not have produced this important work without your generous support. We are deeply grateful to those who were able to contribute to our efforts thus far.

Our work here is ongoing, and with so much of our investigation requiring that we be out in the field, I am humbly appealing for your continued support to help us extend our reporting, so that we may continue to bring you the unfolding events of this devastating issue that clearly effects us all.

Please support our work in the Gulf Coast by making a donation. There are several ways you can donate:

If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation, International Media Project (IMP) is providing fiscal sponsorship to Dahr Jamail.

Checks for tax-deductible donations should be made out to “International Media Project.” please write “Dahr Jamail” in the memo line and mail to:

International Media Project/Dahr Jamail

1714 Franklin St.
#100-251
Oakland, CA 94612

Online, you can use Paypal to donate HERE.

Donations can also be mailed to:

Dahr Jamail
P.O. Box 970
Marfa, TX 79843

Direct links to our pieces produced thus far, thanks to your support:

Living on a Dying Delta (June 29)
Fending for Themselves (July 4)
No Free Press for BP Oil Disaster (July 7)
Mitigating Annihilation (July 7)
Hell Has Come to South Louisiana (July 11)
Toxic Dispersants Near Gulf Harm Humans and Wildlife (July 13)
The Source of Our Despair (July 18)
BP’s Scheme To Swindle The “Small People” (July 19)
BP Oil Poisons the Gulf of Mexico’s Food Chain (July 20)
Gulf Coast Residents Outraged that Money Earned on Cleanup Might Be Subtracted from $20 Billion Claim Fund (July 20) Dahr interviewed on Democracy Now!
What Happens Next? (July 23)
BP Response Workers Report Low Morale, Lack of Pay, Sickness (July 27)
Our Complicity (July 29)
Scientists Deeply Concerned About BP Disaster’s Long-Term Impact (August 2)
Gulf Residents Likely Face Decades of Psychological Impact From BP’s Oil Disaster (August 6)
Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Even when it’s not out of sight) (August 8)
Gulf Coast Fishermen Challenge US Government over Dispersants (August 10)
Gulf Health Problems Blamed on Dispersed Oil (August 12)

Direct link to Erika Blumenfeld’s photographs from our reporting on the Gulf Coast oil catastrophe:

Gulf Coast Photo Gallery

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Alabama - BP says it is no longer using toxic dispersants to break up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Gulf Coast residents claim otherwise, and say they have the sicknesses to prove it.

On Aug. 5, Donny Mastler, a commercial fisherman who also works on boats, was at the Dauphin Island Marina.

“I was with my friend Albert, and we were both slammed with exposure,” Mastler, told IPS, referring to toxic chemicals he inhaled that he believes are associated with BP’s Corexit dispersants. “We both saw the clumps of white bubbles on the surface that we know come from the dispersed oil.”

Both of their eyes were watering and their throats were burning, so Albert went to sit in his air-conditioned truck, while Mastler headed home.

“I started to vomit brown, and my pee was brown also,” Mastler said. “I kept that up all day. Then I had a night of sweating and non-stop diarrhea unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”

BP has been using two oil dispersants, Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527, both of which are banned in Britain. More than 1.9 million gallons of dispersant has been used to date on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. [Read more →]

by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Book Review

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: The U.S. Army, K. OS, whiteblot)

While most media continue to ignore the US-installed disaster in Iraq, author Nicolas Davies refuses to do so, and his book “Blood on our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq” could not be released at a better time.
This sweeping work covers US policy in Iraq that spans decades, and is written as a call to action for the US to begin following international law - not just in Iraq, but everywhere. For it was the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq that, more than perhaps anything else, continues to defile what is left of the tattered reputation of the US.

“The US foreign policy establishment’s response to this crisis of legitimacy has been to withdraw from the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ; to oppose both the formation and the functioning of the new International Criminal Court; to withdraw from other multilateral treaties; and to hire new experts and lawyers to devise far-fetched rationales for exempting US behavior from international legal constraints on a case by case but increasingly systematic basis,” writes Davies, in what is essentially a prelude to a brilliant analysis of why and how the US has systematically destroyed the country of Iraq.

“I started out with a firm conviction that everything the US was doing in Iraq was illegitimate and that everything we were being told about it was propaganda, and the outrage I felt made me determined to find and expose the reality behind the lies,” Davies told Truthout, “I was able to place events within a coherent context of criminal aggression, hostile military occupation, and popular resistance because that was the way I saw it all along.”

Studying US foreign policy has always been a passion for Davies. In addition to this, he added several books and articles on international law to his reading list, and went to work.

[Read more →]

Story by Dahr Jamail, Photography by Erika Blumenfeld, t r u t h o u t | Report

Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010

Commercial Fishing communities in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida have united to demand that local, state, and federal agencies force BP to discontinue the use of toxic dispersants and conduct better testing before reopening fishing waters.

“We need to get our government to get a handle on this situation and shut down our fishing waters until they test for dispersants, and get the use of dispersants stopped unless they can prove to us they are not harmful,” Kathy Birren, a spokesperson for commercial fishermen in Florida, told Truthout, “We are seeing fish kills. They [US Government and BP] are covering this all up.”

Since the BP oil disaster began in late April, the secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) was granted emergency powers to open and close fishing areas. The department recently announced the opening of three shrimp management zones for August 16. These areas include zones that have been severely affected by the oil disaster. Dates were also set to open fishing for sea trout and harvesting oysters.

These moves are being questioned by commercial fishermen, who are skeptical of the motives of the state and federal governments’ decision to begin reopening fishing areas that had been closed by the oil disaster.

[Read more →]