By Dahr Jamail and - -
NEW ORLEANS, Apr 19 2012 (IPS)

“The fishermen have never seen anything like this,” Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. “And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 fish, I’ve never seen anything like this either.”

Bird washed ashore in Perdido Key, Florida. Credit: Susan Keith/IPS

Cowan’s findings reflect those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants.

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP’s 2010 oil disaster.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp – and interviewees’ fingers point towards BP’s oil pollution disaster as being the cause.

Eyeless shrimp

Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.

“At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.”

“Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf (of Mexico),” she added, “They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.”

On Apr. 20, 2010, the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded, triggering the release of at least 4.9 million barrels of oil. BP then used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersants to sink the oil.

Keath Ladner, a third-generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing.

“I’ve seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out,” Ladner told Al Jazeera. “The shrimp are immune-compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumours on their heads, and are seeing this everyday.”

While on a shrimp boat in Mobile Bay with Sidney Schwartz, the fourth-generation fisherman said that he had seen shrimp with defects on their gills, and “their shells missing around their gills and head.”

“We’ve fished here all our lives and have never seen anything like this,” he added.

Ladner has also seen crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one of their claws.

Darla Rooks from Port Sulphur, Louisiana told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs “with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they’ve been dead for a week”.

Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills.

“We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills.”

Rooks, who grew up fishing with her parents, said she had never seen such things in these waters, and her seafood catch last year was “ten per cent what it normally is.”

“I’ve never seen this,” she said, a statement Al Jazeera heard from every scientist, fisherperson, and seafood processor consulted about the seafood deformities.

The Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental United States.

BP’s chemicals?

“The dispersants used in BP’s draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease and rubber,” Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor, told Al Jazeera. “It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known.”

The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP’s disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.

Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic – able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or foetus – and carcinogenic.

Cowan believes chemicals named polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), released from BP’s submerged oil, are likely to blame for what he is finding, due to the fact that the fish with lesions are from “a wide spatial distribution that is spatially coordinated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon, both surface oil and subsurface oil. A lot of the oil that impacted Louisiana was also in subsurface plumes, and we think there is a lot of it remaining on the seafloor.”

Marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia published results of her submarine dives around the source area of BP’s oil disaster in the Nature Geoscience journal.

Her evidence showed massive swathes of oil covering the seafloor, including photos of oil-covered bottom dwelling sea creatures.

While showing slides at an American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington, Joye said: “This is Macondo oil on the bottom. These are dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads.” Macondo is the well that ruptured in the BP accident.

Wilma Subra, a chemist and Macarthur Fellow, has conducted tests on seafood and sediment samples along the Gulf for chemicals present in BP’s crude oil and toxic dispersants.

“Tests have shown significant levels of oil pollution in oysters and crabs along the Louisiana coastline,” Subra told Al Jazeera. “We have also found high levels of hydrocarbons in the soil and vegetation.”

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PAHs “are a group of semi-volatile organic compounds that are present in crude oil that has spent time in the ocean and eventually reaches shore, and can be formed when oil is burned.”

Cowan explained: “The fish are being exposed to PAHs, and I was able to find several references that list the same symptoms in fish after the Exxon Valdez spill, as well as in lab experiments. There was also a paper published by some LSU scientists that PAH exposure has effects on the genome.”

The University of South Florida released the results of a survey whose findings corresponded with Cowan’s: a two to five per cent infection rate in the same oil impact areas, and not just with red snapper, but with more than 20 species of fish with lesions. In many locations, 20 per cent of the fish had lesions, and later sampling expeditions found areas where, alarmingly, 50 per cent of the fish had them.

“I asked a NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) sampler what percentage of fish they find with sores prior to 2010, and it’s one-tenth of one percent,” Cowan said. “Which is what we found prior to 2010 as well. But nothing like we’ve seen with these secondary infections and at this high of rate since the spill.

“What we think is that it’s attributable to chronic exposure to PAHs released in the process of weathering of oil on the seafloor,” Cowan said. “There’s no other thing we can use to explain this phenomenon. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Official response

Questions raised by Al Jazeera’s investigation remain largely unanswered.

Al Jazeera contacted the office of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who provided a statement that said the state continues to test its waters for oil and dispersants, and that it is testing for PAHs.

“Gulf seafood has consistently tested lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the levels of oil and dispersant contamination that would pose a risk to human health,” the statement reads. “Louisiana seafood continues to go through extensive testing to ensure that seafood is safe for human consumption. More than 3,000 composite samples of seafood, sediment and water have been tested in Louisiana since the start of the spill.”

At the federal government level, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the EPA – both federal agencies which have powers in this area – insisted Al Jazeera talk with the NOAA.

But the NOAA won’t comment to the media because of its involvement in collecting information for an ongoing lawsuit against BP.

BP refused Al Jazeera’s request to comment on this issue for a television interview, but provided a statement that read:

“Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident.”

BP claims that fish lesions are common, and that prior to the Deepwater Horizon accident there was documented evidence of lesions in the Gulf of Mexico caused by parasites and other agents.

The oil giant added:

“As part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, which is led by state and federal trustees, we are investigating the extent of injury to natural resources due to the accident.

“BP is funding multiple lines of scientific investigation to evaluate potential damage to fish, and these include: extensive seafood testing programmes by the Gulf states; fish population monitoring conducted by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Auburn University and others; habitat and water quality monitoring by NOAA; and toxicity tests on regional species. The state and federal Trustees will complete an injury assessment and the need for environmental restoration will be determined.”

Before and after

But evidence of ongoing contamination continues to mount.

Crustacean biologist Darryl Felder, in the Department of Biology with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is in a unique position.

Felder has been monitoring the vicinity of BP’s Macondo well both before and after the oil disaster began, because, as he told Al Jazeera, “the National Science Foundation was interested in these areas that are vulnerable due to all the drilling. “So we have before and after samples to compare,” he added. “We have found seafood with lesions, missing appendages, and other abnormalities.”

Felder also has samples of inshore crabs with lesions. “Right here in Grand Isle we see lesions that are eroding down through their shell. We just got these samples last Thursday and are studying them now, because we have no idea what else to link this to as far as a natural event.”

According to Felder, there is an even higher incidence of shell disease with crabs in deeper waters.

“My fear is that these prior incidents of lesions might be traceable to microbes, and my questions are, did we alter microbial populations in the vicinity of the well by introducing this massive amount of petroleum and in so doing cause microbes to attack things other than oil?”

One hypothesis he has is that the waxy coatings around crab shells are being impaired by anthropogenic chemicals or microbes resulting from such chemicals.

“You create a site where a lesion can occur, and microbes attack. We see them with big black lesions, around where their appendages fall off, and all that is left is a big black ring.”

Felder added that his team continued to document these problems, and said they were finding “a far higher incidence” since the spill.

“We are also seeing much lower diversity of crustaceans,” he said. “We don’t have the same number of species as we did before (the spill).”

Felder has tested his samples for oil, but has not found many cases where hydrocarbon traces tested positive. Instead, he believes what he is seeing in the deepwater around the BP well is caused from the “huge amount” of drilling mud used during the effort to stem the gushing oil.

“I was collecting deepwater shrimp with lesions on the side of their carapace. Under the lesions, the gills were black. The organ that propels the water through the gills, it too was jet-black. That impairs respiratory ability, and has a negative effect on them. It wasn’t hydrocarbons, but is largely manganese precipitates, which is really odd. There was a tremendous amount of drilling mud pumped out with Macondo, so this could be a link.”

Some drilling mud and oil well cement slurries used on oil extraction rigs contains up to 90 per cent by weight of manganomanganic (manganese) oxide particles.

Felder is also finding “odd staining” of animals that burrow into the mud, and said: “It is consistently mineral deposits, possibly from microbial populations in (overly) high concentrations.”

A direct link

Andrew Whitehead, an associate professor of biology at Louisiana State University, co-authored the report “Genomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes”, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October 2011.

Whitehead’s work is of critical importance, as it shows a direct link between BP’s oil and the negative impacts on the Gulf’s food web evidenced by studies on killifish before, during and after the oil disaster.

“What we found is a very clear, genome-wide signal, a very clear signal of exposure to the toxic components of oil that coincided with the timing and the locations of the oil,” Whitehead told Al Jazeera during an interview in his lab.

According to Whitehead, the killifish is a key indicator species because it is the most abundant fish in the marshes and is the most important forage animal in that ecosystem.

“That means that most of the large fish that we like to eat and that these are important fisheries for, actually feed on the killifish,” he explained. “So if there were to be a big impact on those animals, then there would probably be a cascading effect throughout the food web. I can’t think of a worse animal to knock out of the food chain than the killifish.”

But we may well be witnessing the beginnings of this worst-case scenario.

Whitehead is predicting that there could be reproductive impacts on the fish, and since the killifish is a “keystone” species in the food web of the marsh, “Impacts on those species are more than likely going to propagate out and affect other species. What this shows is a very direct link from exposure to DWH (Deepwater Horizon) oil and a clear biological effect…that could translate to population level long-term consequences.”

Back on shore, troubled by what he had been seeing, Keath Ladner met with FDA officials and asked them to promise that the government would protect him from litigation if someone was made sick from eating his seafood.

“They wouldn’t do it,” he said.

“I’m worried about the entire seafood industry of the Gulf being on the way out,” he added grimly.

‘Tar balls in their crab traps’

Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer, as well as a marine and oyster biologist, has “great concern” about the hundreds of dolphin deaths he has seen in the region since BP’s disaster began, which he feels are likely directly related to the BP oil disaster. “Adult dolphins’ systems are picking up whatever is in the system out there, and we know the oil is out there and working its way up the food chain through the food web – and dolphins are at the top of that food chain.”

Cake explained: “The chemicals then move into their lipids, fat, and then when they are pregnant, their young rely on this fat, and so it’s no wonder dolphins are having developmental issues and stillbirths.”

Cake, who lives in Mississippi, added: “It has been more than 33 years since the 1979 Ixtoc-1 oil disaster in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche, and the oysters, clams, and mangrove forests have still not recovered in their oiled habitats in seaside estuaries of the Yucatan Peninsula. It has been 23 years since the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska, and the herring fishery that failed in the wake of that disaster has still not returned.”

Cake believes we are still in the short-term impact stage of BP’s oil disaster.

“I will not be alive to see the Gulf of Mexico recover,” said Cake, who is 72 years old. “Without funding and serious commitment, these things will not come back to pre-April 2010 levels for decades.”

The physical signs of the disaster continue.

“We’re continuing to pull up oil in our nets,” Rooks said. “Think about losing everything that makes you happy, because that is exactly what happens when someone spills oil and sprays dispersants on it. People who live here know better than to swim in (the water) or eat what comes out of our waters.”

Khuns and her husband told Al Jazeera that fishers continue to regularly find tar balls in their crab traps, and hundreds of pounds of tar balls continue to be found on beaches across the region on a daily basis.

Meanwhile Cowan continues his work, and remains concerned about what he is finding.

“We’ve also seen a decrease in biodiversity in fisheries in certain areas. We believe we are now seeing another outbreak of incidents increasing, and this makes sense, since waters are starting to warm again, so bacterial infections are really starting to take off again. We think this is a problem that will persist for as long as the oil is stored on the seafloor.”

Felder wants to continue his studies, but now is up against insufficient funding.

Regarding his funding, Cowan told Al Jazeera: “We are up against social and economic challenges that hamper our ability to get our information out, so the politics have been as daunting as the problem (we are studying) itself. But my funding is not coming from a source that requires me to be quiet.”

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
DOHA, Aug 11 2011 (IPS)

The aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis has been marked by an outcry in Japan over radiation leaks, contaminated food and a government unable to put the public’s fears to rest.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the meltdown that resulted from March’s earthquake–triggered disaster, activists and citizens have said, is the uncertainty that has ensued.

In the months since the catastrophe, the Japanese government, its nuclear watchdogs and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), have provided differing, confusing, and at times contradictory, information on critical health issues.

Fed up with indefinite data, a group of 50 volunteers decided to take matters, and Geiger counters, into their own hands.

In April, an independent network of like-minded individuals in the Japan and United States banded together to form Safecast and began an ongoing crusade to record and publish accurate radiation levels around Japan.

The group handed out mobile radiation detectors and uploaded the readings to the internet to map out exposure levels.

Sean Bonner, director of Safecast, told Al Jazeera that volunteers have so far logged more than 500,000 radiation data points across Japan.

He said the group is the only organisation he knows that is tracking radiation on a local level. The findings, Bonner added, have been shocking.

“People keep asking how we are doing it, when the government isn’t,” he said.

Lack of information

Dr Yuko Yanagisawa, a 51-year-old physician at Funabashi Futawa Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, feels the government’s response to health concerns has been grossly inadequate.

In the area where Yanagisawa lives and works, approximately 200 km from Fukushima, unhealthy radiation levels have been recorded.

Even so, she said the only information the government has released was to raise the acceptable radiation exposure limit for children from one millisieverts (mSv) of radioactivity a year to 20.

“This has caused controversy, from the medical point of view,” Yanagisawa told Al Jazeera. “This is certainly an issue that involves both personal internal exposures as well as low-dose exposures.”

From the start, the government’s track record on public health announcements has been poor.

As early radiation readings from the disaster site emerged, Japan’s then-minister for internal affairs, Haraguchi Kazuhiro, alleged that monitoring station data was actually three decimal places greater than the numbers released to the public.

In late March, the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission conducted a survey that found an estimated 45 per cent of children in the Fukushima region had experienced thyroid exposure to radiation.

But the commission has not carried out any surveys since.

Contaminated food fears

Recent disclosures from government agencies and TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima plant, suggest that public information has hardly improved.

Earlier this month, TEPCO said it detected 10,000 mSv of radioactivity at the heavily damaged plant.

A dose this high would be fatal to humans, and was 250 per cent more than the previous high levels at the plant in March soon after the disaster.

Authorities have also been vague about the extent of the radiation, and how the potential spread may be affecting vital food crops and livestock.

Jyunichi Tokuyama, a specialist with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, said he was shocked to find radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, more than 300km from the stricken Fukushima nuclear site.

“The biggest cause of this contamination is the rice straw being fed to the cows, which was highly radioactive,” Tokuyama told Al Jazeera.

On Aug. 1, Iwate became Japan’s forth prefecture to suspend all of its beef exports due to cesium contamination.

Neighbouring governments have announced plans to test Japan’s agricultural exports for radioactive cesium after concerns over soil contamination.

‘Not getting the data’

Despite the alarm inside Japan and abroad, specific information about radiation levels and its range are still mostly unavailable. This lack of information is what Safecast is trying to overcome.

“We spoke with a woman in Japan on Saturday who said since March she’s been calling her local offices, and the federal government, just trying to get data, and she’s not been able to get a single reading close to her house,” Bonner said.

“Part of that is that the information is just not there, the government doesn’t have it. I don’t think they are necessarily withholding, but I think they are just not getting the data.”

Bonner said he was disturbed by the readings he took last weekend nearly 28km outside the Fukushima site.

The Japanese government maintains a mandatory evacuation zone around the plant that extends to 20km, the next 10km is the voluntary evacuation zone.

People who live there are not given any financial compensation by the government if they choose to evacuate.

“Sunday [Aug. 7], we found ground contamination of 20,000 cpm,” said Bonner, referring to counts per minute, a method he believes is more accurate in analysing radiation than measuring mSv.

“It was about 28km from the plant. There were police officers there standing around all day making sure nobody went into the mandatory evacuation zone, wearing no protective clothing.

“They said they didn’t know what the readings were, they were just told to be there.”

Global debate

The Japanese government does not consider non-government readings to be authentic, and has urged the public to only rely on government data on radiation.

Still, Bonner said he will return to Japan with a team of volunteers each month. He said he plans to continue Safecast’s radiation mapping “indefinitely”.

“Getting into this has showed us there is a lack of data everywhere,” Bonner said.

“We’re going to start getting devices to people around the U.S. and Europe. We’re going to set up fixed sensors and we’re making a device that we’ll sell to the public. We’re hoping to continue to get lots of data from lots of sources.

“Bonner’s ambitions appear timely against the backdrop of a revitalised global debate on the dangers of nuclear energy, especially in Japan.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan recently pledged to lower Japan’s reliance on nuclear power due to the consequences of the Fukushima crisis.

He and other officials have admitted to deep concerns about radiation-induced health risks.

“Japan will reduce its level of reliance on nuclear power generation with the aim of becoming a society that is not dependent on nuclear power,” Kan said last week in Hiroshima in a speech to mark the 66th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of the city.

* Published under an agreement with Al-Jazeera.

Excerpt:

Attorney Kenneth Feinberg, paid by BP to administer the firm’s 20-billion-dollar compensation fund, has become the focal point of anger for Gulf residents who are angry, frustrated and desperate for help following last year’s massive oil disaster.

Louisiana residents have expressed their anger at BP's lack of adequate compensation for loss of livelihood due to the oil disaster. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

“Most of the people I care about are hungry, they’ve lost their house, they’re losing their cars,” Cherri Foytlin, the co-founder of Gulf Change, a community organisation in Louisiana, told IPS.

“I’ve met so many people who had red beans and rice for dinner last Christmas while this man’s firm is getting 850,000 dollars a month for this,” she said. “I saw people on their knees in these meetings begging this man. I don’t know how he sleeps at night. He takes money from BP and claims to represent and care about people in the Gulf.”

Foytlin refers to Feinberg’s firm being paid approximately one million dollars per month by BP to administer the compensation fund, money that BP claimed would be used to “make people whole” who have lost their livelihoods because of the months-long disaster that began on Apr. 20, 2010.

Rudy Toler from Gulfport, Mississippi is a fourth generation fisherman. He submitted 62 pages of documentation to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF), but says: “My claim got denied on Dec. 4, with about 100,000 other people.”

A failing grade

Most of the claims that have been paid are temporary emergency payments.

“You’ve paid 30 percent of the claims,” Gulf Shores City councilman Jason Dyken told Feinberg at a meeting earlier this year in Gulf Shores, Alabama. “Seventy percent of the claims have not been paid. Where I went to school, that’s an ‘F’.”

The amount paid out averages nearly 16,000 dollars per claimant. But according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the 2009 poverty threshold for a family of three was 18,310 dollars.

With mounting problems from an escalating health crisis and decimated fishing and tourist industries, many consider this an inadequate amount of compensation for their loss of livelihood.

While Feinberg admits that mistakes have been made in processing claims, he has also said that many claims lack sufficient documentation to warrant payment.

“I’m trying to do the right thing,” Feinberg has said. “This is an unprecedented job. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of claims. But we’re getting through them, and the money is going out.”

During a visit to the Gulf earlier this year, Feinberg said: “I will bend over backwards to pay claims.” But large numbers of Gulf residents and fishermen beg to differ.

“I spoke up at the Town Hall meeting in Bay St. Louis, and Feinberg told me to give him my number and information and he would personally take care of it,” Toler says. “Here it is a week later and I’ve not heard from him. You can’t get answers from nobody. Nobody. Now, I’m 15 days past due on my rent. It don’t seem right to me.”

Conflict of interest?

Attorney Brian Donovan, with the Donovan Law Group in Tampa, Florida, believes Feinberg is simply doing what he is being paid by BP to do.

“He’s doing his job,” Donovan told IPS. “Feinberg is a defence attorney representing BP. To think otherwise is being foolish. As a defence attorney, he’s doing a great job for BP. But they are saying ‘go with us, or sue us’.”

Donovan has written: “In lieu of ensuring that BP oil spill victims are made whole, the primary goal of GCCF and Feinberg is the limitation of BP’s liability via the systematic postponement, reduction and denial of claims against BP. Victims of the BP oil spill must understand that ‘Administrator’ Feinberg is merely a defence attorney zealously advocating on behalf of his client BP.”

The criticism from angry residents, business owners and fishermen of Feinberg’s handling of the GCCF has mounted over this last year, and there continues to be a simmering rage about it.

At a Jan. 10, meeting in Grand Isle, Louisiana, resident and seafood worker Karen Hopkins handed Feinberg a petition demanding his resignation.

“We need him to pay us the money that the company he’s working for owes us,” Hopkins said. “He’s not working for our interests. He’s working to save as much of that fund for BP as he can. If he was here to serve us, he’d give us a plan for long-term testing for the chemicals they’ve poisoned us with.”

The chemicals Hopkins referenced are the at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic dispersants BP has used to sink the oil from sight.

At the same meeting, Feinberg said: “We’ve paid out one billion dollars in Louisiana alone. Somebody’s getting money. It might be the wrong people, but somebody’s getting money.”

Hopkins believes Feinberg is pressuring people to take the smaller, immediate payments, rather than pursue litigation in order to obtain appropriate levels of compensation.

“He’s saying to opt in to the fund, you’ll come out with more money than if you litigate this,” she says. “He’s scaring these people. He’s not our lawyer. But he’s basically saying if you try to sue us, we’ll f*** you up. He’s condescending. He’s completely crooked and corrupt. He’s trying to pull every trick in the book on us.”

Multiple lawsuits

Attorney Stuart Smith in New Orleans has assembled a working group of lawyers from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Pennsylvania to prosecute claims for those who have been affected by BP’s disaster.

His firm, Smith Stag LLC, along with the firm Sacks and Westin they are working with, have successfully litigated cases against every major oil company in the world.

Smith’s team has filed suit on behalf of their many clients, as has the Donovan Law Group, against BP.

Another Gulf Coast-based law firm, Brent Coon and Associates (BCA), is also in the midst of litigation against BP. BCA is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on BP, having led lawsuits against BP following BP’s 2005 explosion at the company’s Texas City Refinery that killed 15 people.

BP, which is also being charged with manslaughter for the deaths of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded, is facing mountains of litigation.

BCA has threatened the oil giant in no uncertain terms:

“We have built the most comprehensive understanding of BP’s corporate culture of any law firm in the United States. As Lead Counsel in the 2005 BP Texas City litigation, we reviewed seven million documents, taped over 10,000 hours of depositions from BP employees and industry experts, spent millions of dollars and took the fight to depose BP’s CEO Lord John Browne all the way to the Texas Supreme Court. Now we’re taking on the oil giant once again.”

The litigation process will most likely take years.

By Dahr Jamail
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, Apr 15 2011 (IPS)

As the one-year anniversary of the record-breaking BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico approaches, mental health experts and social scientists warn of decades of impact on Gulf residents.

A fisherman and other Gulf Coast residents at a community meeting in New Orleans. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

The environmental destruction, while massive, is still only in the beginning stages, and experts warn that it will take decades to see the full consequences.

For Gulf residents, fishermen, and business owners, the same amount of time is expected for their struggles with depression, anxiety, anger, fear, and other psychological impacts directly attributed to this human-made disaster.

“People are on edge,” Dr. Janet Johnson, an associate professor of psychiatry at Tulane University, told IPS. “People are feeling grief. I’m hearing of physical illnesses related to the oil and people are worried about losing their home, their culture, their way of life.”

“People are becoming more and more hopeless and feeling helpless,” Dr. Arwen Podesta, a psychiatrist at Tulane University in New Orleans, told IPS. “They are feeling frantic and overwhelmed. This is worse than [Hurricane] Katrina. There is already more post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and more problems with domestic violence, threats of suicide and alcohol and drugs.”

Dr. Podesta, who also works in addiction clinics and hospitals, said, “It’s a remarkably similar experience to that of the stressors of Katrina. There is an acute event, but then a long-term increase in hopelessness with every promise that is broken. Like a promise for money to rebuild a life, then people are put through red tape and each time they fail to move forward, they take five steps back in their psychological welfare.”

Many of the broken promises Dr. Podesta refers to stem from the lack of adequate financial compensation for those who have suffered financial losses directly because of the disaster.

Kenneth Feinberg, the so-called compensation czar of BP’s 20-billion-dollar compensation fund, only paid out 3.6 million dollars in claims in the last year. Feinberg’s firm has been paid over one million dollars per month to administer the fund.

Sociologists studying the current BP disaster, along with other human-made disasters, make a distinction between “natural” and “technological” catastrophes.

“What we find in our field when we study technological disasters, i.e., human-made disasters, is that the impacts are chronic,” Dr. Anthony Ladd, a professor of sociology at Loyola University, explained to IPS.

“They don’t really end,” Dr. Ladd explained. “With a natural disaster, like Hurricane Katrina, people move through it. They actually end up building a stronger community, there’s more social capital [trust] going on in the community and people find they have to rely on each other.”

“But with technological disasters, you don’t get that. It’s a very different spiral into a malaise, into anxiety, into a feeling that there is no end in sight. You don’t know when the impacts are going to stop,” he said.

Oil and tar balls continue to wash ashore across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, along with dead newborn dolphins and endangered sea turtles. The fishing and tourism industries are suffering, and residents have been shown they cannot trust their local, state, or federal government to deal adequately with this ongoing crisis.

Dr. Ladd, whose major area of research centres around the impacts of environmental disasters on communities, draws direct parallels between the BP oil disaster and the Exxon Valdez disaster.

“You don’t know when the BP cheque is going to show up in the mail, if ever,” he said. “You don’t know when the feds and the state are going to do their thing toward recovery. It’s a chronic unending spiral of people into often deeper and deeper levels of anxiety, and research shows that one of the major sources of anxiety is the litigation process itself.”

“So on top of everything else the disaster throws at you, then you have the decade-long experience of trying to litigate your way back to your economic livelihood or trying to get some kind of economic compensation for what you’ve lost and of course that never comes,” he said.

Using the 1989 Exxon disaster as an example of this, in 2008 a corporate-friendly Supreme Court took the original five-billion- dollar judgment against Exxon from 1994 and ended up granting only one-tenth the amount, 500 million dollars, to the citizens of Cordova, Alaska.

“So they weren’t able to save their businesses and many weren’t able to stay in the community,” Dr. Ladd said. “The litigation process itself is a huge source of anxiety and we’re not anywhere near seeing what that’s going to be like in this case, given that the dimensions of this disaster are way beyond what we saw in Alaska.”

Dr. Irene McIntosh, an associate professor at the University of South Alabama, works as a counselor/educator.

“After a storm you can do something,” Dr. McIntosh told IPS. “But with this, you really are at the mercy of BP and the folks in charge, as to how much you can do. So it’s a very disempowering sense that is prevalent.”

Dr. McIntosh admits to feeling much of the same anxiety and anger that people she has listened to are experiencing.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen the level of distrust of any government entity in the people here,” she said, “I don’t believe any of these [officials] either. After being lied to so efficiently and thoroughly for so long, and I mean shut down and told you cannot talk about this, I’m cynical. I’m furious, and there is nothing I can do.”

Dr. McIntosh told IPS she is concerned about the long-term psychological impacts of this disaster.

“That is what I’m concerned most about because any time you’re under long-term stress, whether it’s economic, you’re losing your home or boat and your business, then those translate into experiences of depression, increased family chaos, increased difficulty with interpersonal relationships and a decrease in self-efficacy that I can take care of myself and my family,” she said.

“There is anger that exists throughout our region and it’s an anger of feeling betrayed by those who were in charge, that they didn’t make sure there were legitimate steps taken to respond to this,” McIntosh added.

Dr. Ladd believes recovery from the BP oil disaster will take decades.

“We need to stop thinking of this as a sprint and think of it as a marathon. This disaster and its impacts are going to go on for at least a decade and it could be more. It’s hard to put into words the astronomical ways in which this disaster is likely to affect the Gulf Coast.”

“The total number of years this will affect us is unknown,” Dr. Podesta said, adding, “However, it could affect us for possibly 20 to 30 years.”

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas, U.S., Apr 4 2011 (IPS)

In a nuclear crisis that is becoming increasingly serious, Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed that radioactive iodine-131 in seawater samples taken near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex that was seriously damaged by the recent tsunami off the coast of Japan is 4,385 times the level permitted by law.

Airborne radiation near the plant has been measured at 4- times government limits.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the company that operates the crippled plant, has begun releasing more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water that was used to cool the fuel rods into the ocean while it attempts to find the source of radioactive leaks. The water being released is about 100 times more radioactive than legal limits.

Meanwhile, water that is vastly more radioactive continues to gush into the ocean through a large crack in a six-foot deep pit at the nuclear plant. Over the weekend, workers at the plant used sawdust, shredded newspaper and diaper chemicals in a desperate attempt to plug the area, which failed. Water leaking from the pit is about 10,000 times more radioactive than water normally found at a nuclear plant

Thus, radiation from a meltdown in the reactor core of reactor No. 2 is leaking out into the water and soil, with other reactors continuing to experience problems.

Yet scientists and activists question these government and nuclear industry “safe” limits of radiation exposure.

“The U.S. Department of Energy has testified that there is no level of radiation that is so low that it is without health risks,” Jacqueline Cabasso, the Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation, told Al Jazeera.

Her foundation monitors and analyses U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies and related high technology energy, with a focus on the national nuclear weapons laboratories.

Cabasso explained that natural background radiation exists, “But more than 2,000 nuclear tests have enhanced this background radiation level, so we are already living in an artificially radiated environment due to all the nuclear tests.”

“Karl Morgan, who worked on the Manhattan project, later came out against the nuclear industry when he understood the danger of low levels of ionising radiation-and he said there is no safe dose of radiation exposure,” Cabasso continued, “That means all this talk about what a worker or the public can withstand on a yearly basis is bogus. There is no safe level of radiation exposure. These so-called safe levels are coming from within the nuclear establishment.”

Risk at low doses

Karl Morgan was an American physicist who was a founder of the field of radiation health physics. After a long career in the Manhattan Project and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he became a critic of nuclear power and weapons. Morgan, who died in 1999, began to offer court testimony for people who said they had been harmed by the nuclear power industry.

“Nobody is talking about the fact that there is no safe dose of radiation,” Cabasso added, “One of the reasons Morgan said this is because doses are cumulative in the body.”

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a report in 2006 titled Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) report, VII Phase 2. NAS BEIR VII was an expert panel who reviewed available peer reviewed literature and wrote, “the committee concludes that the preponderance of information indicates that there will be some risk, even at low doses.”

The concluding statement of the report reads, “The committee concludes that the current scientific evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that there is a linear, no-threshold dose-response relationship between exposure to ionising radiation and the development of cancer in humans.”

This means that the sum of several very small exposures to radiation has the same effect as one large exposure, since the effects of radiation are cumulative.

For weeks engineers from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) have been working to restore power to the plant and have resorted to having seawater sprayed on radioactive fuel rods that have been at risk of meltdown.

Despite this, Japanese officials conceded to the public on Mar. 31 that the battle to save four crippled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been lost. On Mar. 29 a U.S. engineer who helped install the reactors at the plant said he believed the radioactive core in unit No. 2 may have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor.

Tepco’s chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, said they had “no choice” but to scrap the No’s 1-4 reactors, but held out hope that the remaining two could continue to operate, despite the fact that he admitted the nuclear disaster could last several months. It is the first time the company has admitted that at least part of the plant will have to be decommissioned.

But the government’s chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, repeated an earlier call for all six reactors at the 40-year-old plant to be decommissioned. “It is very clear looking at the social circumstances,” he said.

Even after a cold shutdown, scrapping the plant will likely take decades, and the site will become a no-man’s land.

Tonnes of nuclear waste sit at the site of the nuclear reactors, and enclosing the reactors by injecting lead and encasing them in concrete would make it safe to work and live a few kilometers away from the site, but is not a long- term solution for the disposal of spent fuel, which will decay and emit fission fragments over tens of thousands of years.

Near the plant, the radiation levels dangerously escalated to 400 milliseiverts/hour. Considering background radiation is on the order of 1 milliseivert per year, this means a yearly background dose every nine seconds, based on industry and governmental “allowable” radiation exposure limits.

That compares with a national “safety standard” in the U.S. of 250 millisieverts over a year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a single dose of 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause internal hemorrhaging.

Meanwhile, more than 168 citizens organisations in Japan submitted a petition to their government on Mar. 28 calling for an expanded evacuation zone near the Fukushima nuclear disaster site. The groups are also calling for other urgent measures to protect the public health and safety.

Residents of evacuated areas near the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant have been warned that they may not be able to return to their homes for months as Japan’s nuclear crisis stretched into a third week.

The neighbourhoods near the plant will remain empty “for the long term,” Yukio Edano, the country’s chief cabinet secretary, said on Apr. 1.

Though he did not set a timetable, he said residents would not be able to return permanently “in a matter of days or weeks. It will be longer than that.”

The official evacuation zone remains only 20 kilometers, while the government has encouraged people within 30 kilometers to evacuate.

Yet levels of cesium-137 in the village of Iitate, for example, have been measured at more than twice the levels that prompted the Soviet Union to evacuate people near Chernobyl. Iitate is 40 kilometers northwest of Fukushima.

Radioactive Iodine has already been found in the tap water in all of Tokyo’s 23 wards.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission had already recommended an 80-kilometer evacuation zone for U.S. citizens in Japan.

Fukushima as Chernobyl

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

“There are still no-go areas there, and the workers town has long since been abandoned, and we are seeing radioactive refugees from there, like we are now seeing generated in Japan,” Dr Kathleen Sullivan, a disarmament educator and activist who has been engaged in the nuclear issue for over 20 years told Al Jazeera.

“Tepco is trying to cover their ass, and the Japanese government is being cagey about it, and I believe people don’t understand that radiation is a major problem and issue.”

Dr Sullivan cited Albert Einstein, who said, “The splitting of the atom changed everything, save man’s mode of thinking; thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.”

“So we don’t understand this mistake because of the timeless invisible nature of the problem that radiation is,” Sullivan, who has been an education consultant to the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs, added.

Some experts have warned of a nightmare scenario where clouds of radioactive material could spread lethal toxins across the planet for months on end if the spent fuel rods catch fire due to lack of coolant.

The Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics of Vienna told New Scientist on Mar. 24: “Japan’s damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

“Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors – designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests – to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl.”

The same group of scientists stated, “The Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site,” while, “the Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes.”

According to a report from the New York Academy of Sciences, due to the Chernobyl disaster, 985,000 people have died, mainly from cancer, between 1986-2004.

Monitors have detected tiny radioactive particles which have spread from the reactor site across the Pacific to North America, the Atlantic and even Europe.

Andrea Stahl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, told Reuters, “It’s only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere.”

Tens of thousands of people living near the plant have been evacuated or ordered to stay indoors, while radioactive materials have leaked into the sea, soil and air.

Last week also marked the 32nd anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in Middletown, Pennsylvania, in the United States.

250,000 years of radiation

Sullivan explained that when dealing with long-lived radioactive materials, in addition to carcinogens there are inter-generational effects that include the mutation of the genetic structure of life.

“This is permanent and irreversible,” she added.

Sullivan uses Fukushima reactor No. 3 as an example, because it is fueled with Mox fuel uranium and plutonium. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, which means it is carcinogenic and mutagenic for up to 250,000 years, or 12,000 human generations.

A radioactive half-life means that in this case, in 24,000 years, half of the ionising radiation will have decayed, then in another 24,000 years half of that radiation will decay, etc.

“That’s not really understandable or explainable in a conventional sense of knowing,” Sullivan said, “We have to apply our moral imagination to 12,000 generations to even begin to understand what we are doing in this moment.”

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
TAMPA, Florida, Mar 1 2011 (IPS)

A first-of-its-kind lawsuit alleging gross negligence and fraud has been filed in a Florida state court against Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of the 20-billion-dollar compensation fund for victims of BP’s Gulf oil spill, and the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF).

Attorney Brian Donovan of the Donovan Law Group from Tampa filed the complaint against Feinberg, his firm Feinberg Rozen, LLP and the GCCF on behalf of Pinellas Marine Salvage, Inc. and John Mavrogiannis.

The complaint alleges, in part, gross negligence, fraud, fraudulent inducement and unjust enrichment on the part of the defendants.

“Feinberg and the GCCF have done more damage than the oil spill,” Donovan told IPS. “My client has relied on what Feinberg said he would do. They’ve made promises they didn’t keep. John’s company was promised money they have not received.”

Mavrogiannis told IPS, “We’re sick and tired of this runaround. I’m tired of Feinberg’s lies. He’s made promises he hasn’t kept. He’s manipulating the system and that’s not right.”

Mavrogiannis is far from alone in not having received compensation for the severe losses his business has suffered as a direct result of BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that began last April.

It was recently revealed that more than 130,000 compensation claims will be refused by Feinberg, who claims they lack adequate documentation.

State governments of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are accusing Feinberg of delaying claims and causing great hardship to local businesses, as well as underestimating losses to coastal businesses.

Donovan believes Feinberg is simply doing what he is being paid by BP to do.

“He’s doing his job,” Donovan told IPS, “Feinberg is a defence attorney representing BP. To think otherwise is being foolish. As a defence attorney, he’s doing a great job for BP. But they are saying ‘go with us, or sue us’.”

Feinberg’s Washington-based firm, Feinberg Rozen, was being paid 850,000 dollars a month by BP to administer the compensation fund and claims process for Gulf residents and fishermen.

A 46-page contract between BP and Feinberg detailing the arrangement was made public on Jan. 7 when it was filed in the U.S. District Court in New Orleans as part of the multi- district spill litigation against BP.

As of Jan. 15, the firm’s fee, according to the document, will be “mutually agreed to by the parties on a quarterly basis in advance of the first day of each successive calendar quarter.” This clause has led many critics to believe that Feinberg could stand to gain from dispensing less of the fund’s 20 billion dollars to claimants and tying the amount of its payments to Feinberg’s success in limiting BP’s liability.

Any funds remaining from the 20 billion would revert to BP under an agreement with the White House. Feinberg has told reporters, “My understanding is that if 20 billion dollars is sufficient and there is money left over it is retained by BP.”

In late December, Feinberg told Bloomberg Television that he anticipates about half of the fund should be enough to cover claims for economic losses.

Donovan believes lawsuits haven’t been filed against Feinberg before now “because of politics”.

“His political connections is all I can think of. I can’t think of why more people won’t go after Feinberg for this, because it’s obvious they should,” he said.

“The only attorneys involved in the BP oil spill who I know are those trying to sign up victims for class action lawsuits,” Donovan added. “This is understandable given that Reuters recently reported that fewer than three percent of the approximately 470,000 businesses and individuals who have filed claims with GCCF have lawyers helping them negotiate.”

Mavrogiannis feels their complaint is solid, “Because Feinberg has lied to us on several occasions. Had he told me from the beginning he was working for BP, I would have filed suit against BP right when this happened. I believed he was impartial with no ties, but he has deceived me, and that’s fraud.”

“If I lose my property, business, and house because I can’t make my mortgage payments because Feinberg is late in paying me, who is going to compensate me for this?” Mavrogiannis, whose home is close to being forclosed, told IPS. “I have to take my IRA’s [individual retirement accounts] out to pay my bills. I can only hang in there for another month or two then the banks are going to want their money.”

Mavrogiannis’ lawsuit alleges, in part, “The defendants employ a ‘Delay, Deny, Defend’ strategy against claimants. This strategy, commonly used by unscrupulous insurance companies, is as follows: Delay payment, starve claimant, and then offer the economically and emotionally-stressed claimant a miniscule percent of all damages to which the claimant is entitled. If the financially ruined claimant rejects the settlement offer, he or she may sue.”

The amount paid out so far averages nearly 16,000 dollars per claimant. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the 2009 poverty threshold for a family of three was 18,310 dollars.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
CIUDAD ROMERO, El Salvador, Feb 23 2011 (IPS)

Women are playing a leading role in a powerful social movement addressing natural resource protection, adaptation to climate change, and corporate accountability in this coastal village in El Salvador.

Cristina Reyes, president of the local community council, is working to improve women's lives. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

Her work bringing electricity, potable water, roads and services for women to her area helped get her elected as head of the community council.

Her life before this — and the lives of many others living in this area — reads more like an epic story of adventure, survival, and resistance.

Reyes and her family had to flee their home village during the political violence that preceded the 1980-1992 civil war that claimed some 75,000 lives.

After living in the jungle and caves with her sister while fleeing the U.S.-backed counterinsurgency forces, Reyes finally sought refuge in neighbouring Honduras.

“But in 1980 we had to return to El Salvador because the Honduran military were conducting a campaign of repression against civil society that was just like what the military in El Salvador were doing,” Reyes told IPS at her home in Ciudad Romero. “Back in El Salvador, however, the military here was still doing the same thing.”

Reyes described a brutal campaign that included the burning down of homes, arrests, and repression of Catholic priests who were defending human rights.

The village where she now lives was named in honour of one of them, Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who was assassinated by a sniper in 1980 while celebrating mass.

“When I came back home there was nothing left, not even a dog,” Reyes continued. “We became guerillas because of the massacres we were witnessing.”

By then, various leftwing groups had joined together in the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). She and her sister worked at a radio station run by the guerrillas, while working to assist and comfort women who had lost their husbands and children in the war.

This led to her work in women’s organisations in the capital city of San Salvador, before she moved to the Lower Lempa River region in Usulután, where Ciudad Romero and other communities were built by former insurgents and refugees who returned to the country after the war.

“We helped start food programmes, and now we’re working on improving electricity availability,” Reyes said. “And we have plans to build a hospital here.”

Reyes is part of a broader social movement called La Coordinadora de Bajo Lempa y Bahía de Jiquilisco, a coalition of grassroots groups active in more than 100 communities in this region, which was declared the Xiriualtique-Jiquilisco Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Educational Organisation) in 2007.

This coastal area, through which the Lempa River runs, is home to the country’s largest expanse of mangroves.

Political decisions in the local villages are taken by the community councils.

The Mangrove Association, a group that forms part of La Coordinadora, is a grassroots response to the frequent crises caused by climate change — the overflowing of rivers and flooding.

The social movement aims to increase diversified sustainable farming, organic agriculture, food security and adaptation to climate change.

“In our social movement, communities manage their own resources,” Estela Hernández, a member of the board of directors of the Mangrove Association, told IPS at her office.

“And at the same time we’re working to ensure that the policies of the new national government include our actions and strategies about food sovereignty, environmental management, water, and decision-making on a local level,” she added.

The government is now in the hands of the FMLN, which laid down arms after the 1992 peace agreement, and after becoming the main opposition party, won the 2009 elections that carried the left to power for the first time in this small Central American country of six million people.

María Elena Vigil, who is also on the board of directors of the Mangrove Association, is working to help communities organise against the state-run Lempa River Hydroelectric Commission (CEL) that manages four dams.

In the rainy season the water releases by one of the dams, known as the 15 de Septiembre dam, which are sometimes carried out without providing ample warning to downstream farming communities, cause loss of crops and even lives, she said.

“Affected communities are having to leave because of this flooding,” Vigil told IPS. “So we are now actively organising against the hydroelectric companies.”

Vigil is also leading the fight by local communities against the sugar cane industry’s use of toxic herbicides and fertilisers that are causing illness, including kidney failure.

“There is more and more illness in this area,” she said, complaining about “aerial spraying of these chemicals that then get into our food and water, and even wash down into the mangroves on the coast.”

Dolores Esperanza Maravilla, who works with La Coordinadora, is organising local resistance against CEL, which she blames for the flooding of crops and local communities.

Standing at the edge of a levy breached by flooding last summer, Maravilla told IPS, “The hydroelectric companies are responsible for this, and there are other breaches in the levy like this one.”

She was one of the first on the scene when the levy broke, and used photos of the disaster she took with her cell phone to pressure the Ministry of Agriculture to come and take measurements and begin preparing an adequate response effort.

Besides their involvement in grassroots community organising efforts, many women in El Salvador have taken it upon themselves to further their education in a national adult literacy programme.

In a literacy circle in the village of El Carmen, three woman use workbooks to practice math problems and currency conversion tasks provided by their instructor.

“We’ve waited a long time for this,” María Concepción Ortillo, one of the students, told IPS. “The war prevented us from studying, and most of us were guerillas or soldiers. Today I’m happy to be here and we women can now continue to move ahead in this society.”

Reyes said one of the most important achievements of women’s organising work in recent years has been “the confidence we have given each other.”

She has helped build a shelter managed by her community, a service for women that includes psychological counseling, and a way for women to file confidential reports on domestic violence or sexual abuse, and to obtain support.

Reyes’ busy life is indicative of the increasingly important and prominent role that women are playing in grassroots social movements in El Salvador.

“We’re at a place where we’re trying to figure out what else we can do to help women,” Reyes said. “We look forward to the future and to more of this work.”

Excerpt:

In an emotionally charged meeting this week sponsored by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, fishermen, Gulf residents and community leaders vented their increasingly grave concerns about the widespread health issues brought on by the three-month-long disaster.

Cherri Foytlin, co-founder of Gulf Change, at a rally at the state capital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, October 2010. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld

“Today I’m talking to you about my life,” Cherri Foytlin told the two commissioners present at the Jan. 12 meeting. “My ethylbenzene levels are 2.5 times the 95th percentile, and there’s a very good chance now that I won’t get to see my grandbabies…What I’m asking you to do now, if possible, is to amend [your report]. Because we have got to get some health care.”

Ethylbenzene is a form of benzene present in the body when it begins to break down. It is also present in BP’s crude oil.

“I have seen small children with lesions all over their bodies,” Foytlin, co-founder of Gulf Change, a community organisation based in Grand Isle, Louisiana, continued.

“We are very, very ill. And dead is dead. So it really doesn’t matter if the media comes back… or the president hears us, or… if the oil workers and the fishermen and the crabbers get to feed their babies and maybe have a good Christmas next year… Dead is dead…I know your job is probably already done, but I’d like to hire you if you don’t mind. And God knows I can’t pay you. But I need your heart. And I need your voice.”

Commissioner Frances Beinecke, president of the National Resources Defence Council, vowed to convey her concerns to the White House.

“We hear what you are saying,” said Beinecke. “We will take these health issues and concerns back to the president.”

The commission, appointed by President Barack Obama, released its final report this week after a six-month investigation into the nation’s worst-ever oil disaster.

However, most of the 250 people at the meeting here focused on the health crisis that has exploded in the wake of the April 2010 disaster, leaving former BP clean-up workers and Gulf residents alike suffering from ailments they attribute to chemicals in BP’s oil and the toxic dispersants used to sink it.

Dr. Rodney Soto, a medical doctor in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, has been testing and treating patients with high levels of oil-related chemicals in their bloodstream.

These are commonly referred to as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Anthropogenic VOCs from BP’s oil disaster are toxic and have negative chronic health effects.

Dr. Soto is finding disconcertingly consistent and high levels of toxic chemicals in every one of the patients he is testing.

“I’m regularly finding between five and seven VOCs in my patients,” Dr. Soto told IPS. “These patients include people not directly involved in the oil clean-up, as well as residents that do not live right on the coast. These are clearly related to the oil disaster.”

Nevertheless, U.S. government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with President Obama himself, have declared the Gulf of Mexico, its waters, beaches, and seafood, safe and open to the public.

Gulf residents at the meeting on Wednesday made sure the two commissioners were aware of the health crisis they are facing.

Tom Costanza of Catholic Charities in the New Orleans area stated that the region is in the middle of a social service crisis and faced a claims process he said is fraught with problems.

“People call me crying and dying,” he said. “They need medical attention and support to get through this.”

Ada McMahon works with Bridge the Gulf Project, a citizen journalism website that highlights stories from Gulf Coast communities about justice and sustainability. She told IPS that “the unmet health issues are the biggest issue, along with residents turned advocates going to meetings of the commission or with [BP oil spill fund administrator Kenneth] Feinberg to tell people about their health problems.”

“People who can afford the 300-dollar blood tests have found alarming rates of chemicals in their bodies, and these people are concerned and doing what they can to speak out,” she said. “But they feel they can’t wait for Congress or Obama to address this, because they need doctors and support now in the communities.”

LaTosha Brown, director of the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health, which works with 250 community groups, agreed that “the key concern expressed by the community in response to the report is the overwhelming need for access to health care.”

“Over and over, people exposed to crude and dispersants from the drilling disaster told stories of serious health issues – from high levels of ethylbenzyne in their blood, to respiratory ailments and internal bleeding – and expressed an urgent need for access to doctors who have experience treating chemical exposure,” she said.

Stephen Bradberry, executive director of the Alliance Institute, a non-profit that provides community organising support in the Gulf South, worries that the Gulf Coast Claims Facility is not accepting health claims, thus leaving sick residents unable to work and without any income to pay their medical bills.

“There is bruising and skin lesions, not just with clean-up workers, these are residents not involved in the clean-up,” Bradberry told IPS. “Just yesterday I learned of five people on Grand Isle who passed away…people who did not have health problems prior to this. Nevertheless, there has not been any talk of monitoring of these communities.”

Bradberry, who also attended the forum on Wednesday, also said, “We need a separate health task force that can focus solely on testing, monitoring, and studying the long-term health issues from exposure to crude and dispersants. And this needs to happen now.”

By Dahr Jamail
ORANGE BEACH, Alabama, Nov 15 2010 (IPS)

Increasing numbers of U.S. Gulf Coast residents attribute ongoing sicknesses to BP’s oil disaster and use of toxic dispersants.

Children playing in the surf at Orange Beach, Alabama. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

Rednour lives near the coast and has been walking on the beach nearly every day since a BP oil rig exploded on Apr. 20. She has noticed a dramatically lower number of wildlife, and said that many days the smell of chemicals from what she believes are BP’s toxic dispersants fill the air.

Yet her primary concern is that she and many people she knows in the area have gotten sick.

“I have pain in my stomach, stabbing pains, in isolated areas,” Rednour added. “The sharp stabbing pain is all over my abdomen where this discolouration is, it’s in my arm pits and around my breasts. I have this dry hacking cough, my sinuses are swelling up, and I have an insatiable thirst.”

Rednour’s recent problems are a continuation of others that have beset her for months, including headaches, respiratory problems, runny nose, nausea, and bleeding from the ears.

In response to the massive spill last summer that released at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons of Corexit dispersants – which have been banned in 19 countries – to sink the oil. The dispersants contain chemicals that many scientists and toxicologists have warned are dangerous to humans, marine life and wildlife.

A March 1987 report titled “Organic Solvent Neurotoxicity”, by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), states: “The acute neurotoxic effects of organic solvent exposure in workers and laboratory animals are narcosis, anesthesia, central nervous system (CNS) depression, respiratory arrest, unconsciousness, and death.”

Several chemicals and chemical compounds listed in the NIOSH report, such as styrene, toluene and xylene, are now present in the Gulf of Mexico as the result of BP’s dispersants mixing with BP’s crude oil.

Captain Lori DeAngelis runs dolphin tours out of Orange Beach, Alabama.

“All my muscles hurt,” DeAngelis told IPS. “By the time I climb my stairs every muscle in my legs are in spasm. I’m coughing, I have a constant sore throat and hoarse voice.”

In addition to these symptoms, her memory is fading. “I have totally blanked out on a lot of important stuff,” she said. “I can hardly remember having talked to people who’ve interviewed me. That’s how bad it is. I’m having to bring pen and paper with me and write down everything so I don’t forget.”

Last month, Dr. Wilma Subra, a chemist and Macarthur Fellow, conducted blood tests for volatile solvents on eight people who live and work along the coast.

“All eight individuals tested had Ethylbenzene and m,p- Xylene in their blood in excess of the NHANES 95th Percentile,” according to Subra’s report. “Ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene and Hexane are volatile organic chemicals that are present in the BP Crude Oil. The blood of all three females and five males had chemicals that are found in the BP Crude Oil.”

DeAngelis was one of the people tested.

The health problems she and Rednour are experiencing are now common along the Gulf Coast, from Louisiana all the way to Florida.

Chuck Barnes is director of the Alabama district of the Eastern Surfing Association, and is responsible for organising surfing competitions.

“In early September our local government gave the all-clear so surfers started going back into the water,” Barnes told IPS. “But we immediately had several surfers get sick with headaches, upper respiratory problems, and other things and that’s when I decided we needed to test the water.”

Barnes says that tests conducted in the Orange Beach area “all came up toxic”.

“Now I’m worried about the fact that everybody is still giving the all clear signal, but nobody [government] is doing honest testing,” he said. “We have fresh tar balls washing up right now. They just turned the Gulf into their huge science experiment, and we’re just sitting here under the microscope waiting to see what happens to us.”

Joe Overstreet, a merchant seaman, lives in Fairhope, Alabama, which is on the coast and Mobile Bay. He also had his blood tested by Dr. Subra.

“I have a new rash on my body now, on my chest, and this is after an older rash I’ve had that turned into blisters. I did the blood test in Pensacola, and when it was returned I tested positive for six of the nine chemicals in BP’s dispersants,” he said.

Overstreet worked as an oil disaster response worker for BP.

“I take Benadryl pretty much every night so I don’t wake up with a headache,” he told IPS. “I have pains on my right side recently, and unbelievable headaches. When they start happening I have to stop everything. I have them every day.”

Overstreet, who has worked in the oil fields and is familiar with the dangers and chemicals used, said he and his neighbours “could smell the Benzene coming up into the bay. I was working on the beaches, and on low tides we can see the clams out there. They used to be white. Now they are all black. And nobody seems to pay any attention to this. I’ve lived here all my life and I know it’s not right.”

Like others, he is mystified by the lack of appropriate response by government authorities.

“I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. Nobody seems to be doing anything or talking about it,” he said.

DeAngelis is worried about the dolphins she has come to love and protect, as well as humans living along the coast.

“It’s devastating,” she said. “My identity is wrapped in being Captain Lori, but I don’t know if I can go on my waters and watch out for my babies, and nobody will tell us what is happening. I can’t come up with the right words. This is the meanest, most deceitful, most horrible thing the government could do to us.”

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana, Nov 1 2010 (IPS)

Gulf coast fishers, conservationists, seafood distributors and oil workers rallied here at Louisiana’s capital over the weekend to demand that oil giant BP be held accountable for the “ongoing” use of toxic dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico.

Louisiana fishers, seafood distributors, oil-field workers, conservationists and concerned citizens rally in Baton Rouge on Oct. 30. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

Hopkins, who works for Dean Blanchard Seafood, a large and well-known seafood distributor, was a member of the Oct. 30 Rally for Gulf Change, whose organisers said they were working towards “preserving our God-given rights to clean air and water for future generations.”

Drew Landry, who describes himself as “a songwriter who works for a commercial craw-fisherman”, told IPS that he first grew concerned about BP’s mishandling of the oil disaster, which began on Apr. 20 when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, by what he saw the oil giant do the following day.

“I played a concert in New Orleans on Apr. 20, and the next morning went to take one of the classes on how to clean oil,” Landry told IPS. “I realised it was not about cleaning oil, but rather BP’s effort to get a roster of names of commercial fishermen from whom they’d have to defend themselves against in the future.”

The organisers and speakers at the rally that was held on the steps of the state capitol building on a sunny Saturday were most concerned with BP’s massive use of toxic dispersants to sink the oil. The dispersants were also injected at the wellhead to keep most of the oil from reaching the surface.

BP used Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527, both of which are banned in Britain and at least 19 other countries. Chemicals released from the combination of crude oil and dispersants can cause health problems that include central nervous system depression, respiratory problems, neurotoxic effects, genetic mutations, leukemia, birth defects, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage, among many others.

“I’ve had lung problems, auto-immune problems, nausea, headaches, and bronchitis because of BP’s disaster,” Beverly Armand from Grand Isle told IPS. “When I leave the area it clears up, and when I go back, I get sick again.”

Armand said her doctor has placed her on three different antibiotics, none of which has been very effective, and had her blood tested for hydrocarbons.

“My creatine level is high, and they found creosote in my blood,” she explained. “And we still have fresh oil coming in, and BP is still spraying Corexit. The stuff they are calling algae is foam caused by the dispersants.”

Protesters held signs that read “Hell No It’s Not Over”, “Ban Corexit Now”, and a drawing of a pelican with the words “I want my life back” – the last also a reference to comments by the former chief executive of BP, Tony Hayward, which were widely deemed insensitive to struggling Gulf residents.

Organisers told IPS that several people were unable to attend the rally because the interstate 10 highway from Lafayette was closed due to a chemical spill.

Susan Price, a small business owner from Chauvin, Louisiana, told IPS that she has been suffering from health problems since she was exposed in August to chemicals she believes are from the oil disaster.

“I’m worried for my grandchildren,” Price said at the rally. “The seafood is woefully under-tested for toxins, while the government and BP are patting themselves on the back for a job well done. We will not be lulled, be silenced, or stand down. We will fight to protect our people and our land.”

James Miller, a commercial fisherman from Mississippi, told onlookers that he found oil and dispersants in the water while fishing recently.

“I’ve had diarrhea, vomiting, the sweats, and been hospitalised for three days,” said Miller, who worked 73 days for BP as an oil spill responder. “I’ve seen the dead turtles, dead birds, dead dolphins and dead fish, and I’ve taken people out on my boat to show them the oil. It’s still there, and I can tell you the seafood is not safe to eat.”

Later that afternoon, the group convened a meeting at the Manship Theatre in downtown Baton Rouge.

Rob Coulan, a businessman from Harvey, Louisiana, spoke of neuro-toxic side effects of the dispersants that have been well documented since at least 1987. “BP knew what this stuff would do long before they ever used it in the Gulf,” he said.

“BP used a world record amount of dispersants in our Gulf,” Marylee Orr, the executive director of Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said. “And we are doing petroleum hydrocarbon tests on soils, waters, and seafood and finding extremely high levels.”

“We still have oil, and all the problems associated with it,” Orr added. “And all the fishermen in this room will tell you that they [BP] are still using Corexit. The dead and dying birds and wildlife are merely a reflection of what is happening to us.”

Cherri Foytlin, whose husband works in the Gulf oil industry, announced that every Louisiana state representative and senator had been invited to both events. While she said that two had responded to her invitation by agreeing to meet with them, no one showed up at either event.

“In five to 10 years from now, people all along the Gulf Coast are going to be dropping dead from cancer, and that includes children,” Foytlin said, before directing her next comments towards BP. “I’m not your experiment. This is my life. Our Gulf is not your experiment.”

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
NEW ORLEANS, Oct 26 2010 (IPS)

Massive slicks of weathered oil were clearly visible near Louisiana’s fragile marshlands in both the East and West Bays of the Mississippi River Delta during an overflight that included an IPS reporter on Oct. 23. The problem is that, despite this, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has left much of the area open for fishing.

Weathered BP oil in bays near Southwest Pass, Louisiana. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

Both bays cover an area of roughly 112 square kilometres of open water that surround the Southwest Pass, the main shipping channel of the Mississippi River. While East Bay remains closed for fishing, West Bay was open for fishing when IPS spotted the oil on Oct. 23, despite the fact that the day before a BP oil cleanup crew had reported oil in West Bay to a local newspaper.

“They are literally shrimping in oil,” Jonathan Henderson, the Coastal Resiliency Organiser for the environmental group Gulf Restoration Network, who was also on the flight, exclaimed as our plane flew over shrimpers trawling in the oil-covered area.

Others remain concerned about the use of toxic dispersants that BP has used to sink the oil.

“Potential ecosystem collapse caused by toxic dispersant use during this disaster will have immediate and long-term effects on the Gulf’s traditional fishing communities’ ability to sustain our culture and heritage,” Clint Guidry of the Louisiana Shrimp Association told IPS.

“This has been an exercise in lessening BP’s liability from day one. I think we’re moving into a situation where the PR is saying the area is safe to fish and it’s safe to eat, but that’s not the reality,” he said.

The waters in the East and West Bays are under the jurisdiction of Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), while waters further from the coast are under federal jurisdiction. LDWF does receive input, however, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Earlier on the same day IPS spotted the oil, a spotter pilot for LDWF had flown over the same area and told Southern Seaplanes there was no oil.

“He is the spotter for LWDF and saw that bay, and it is still open,” Henderson told IPS. “He should have closed the bay for fishing. So now you can see how sophisticated they are in tracking this. Either this guy is completely incompetent, or has an agenda to keep as much of Louisiana’s waters open for fishing as he can, whether there is oil or not. I don’t see how he could have flown down there today and not seen it. It’s criminal.”

When IPS called the LWDF requesting to talk with the LDWF oil spotter, department officials said “that person is not available to comment”.

The LWDF website has a number to call in order to report oil sightings. When IPS called that number, the call was answered by a BP response call centre.

On Oct. 23, the Coast Guard claimed that the substance floating in the miles-wide areas of West Bay appeared to be “an algal bloom”.

Lt. Cmdr. Chris O’Neil said a pollution investigator for the Coast Guard collected samples from the area, and while they had yet to be tested, “based on his observation and what he sees in the sample jars, he believes that to be an algal bloom.”

Fishermen who have traveled through and fished in the area over the weekend, however, refuted these Coast Guard claims.

“I scooped some up, and it feels like oil, looks like oil, is brownish red like all the dispersed oil we’ve been seeing since this whole thing started,” fisherman David Arenesen, from Venice, Louisiana, told IPS.

“It doesn’t look like algae to me. Algae doesn’t stick on your fingers, and algae isn’t oily,” he said. “The area of this stuff spans an area of 30 miles, from Southwest Pass almost all the way over to Grand Isle, and runs very far off-shore too. We rode through it for over 20 miles while we were going out to fish, I dipped some up, and it’s oil.”

Arenesen saw the substance on Friday, the same day it was reported by the Times Picayune newspaper in New Orleans.

“It was at least an inch thick, and it went on for miles,” Arenesen said, adding, “It would be easy to clean since it’s all floating on the surface.”

IPS spoke with Gary Robinson, a hook and line mackerel commercial fisherman working out of Venice who was also in the substance in question recently.

“I was out in West Bay on Oct. 22, and I was in this thick brown foam, about five inches thick, with red swirls of oil throughout it, and there was a lot of it, at least a 10-mile patch of it,” Robinson said while speaking to IPS on his boat. “I’ve never seen anything like that foam before, the red stuff in it was weathered oil, and there was sheen coming off my boat when I came back into harbor. I’m concerned about the safety of the fish I’m catching.”

Dean Blanchard, of Dean Blanchard Seafood Inc. in Grand Isle, Louisiana, spoke with IPS about the Coast Guard claim that the substance was likely algae.

“Hell, we got oil coming in here every day, it’s all around us, we know what oil is,” Blanchard said. “The Coast Guard should change the colour of their uniform, since they are working for BP. We’ve known they are working for BP from the beginning of this thing. None of us believe anything they say about this oil disaster anymore.”

“Everyone, including the feds, are talking about the fact that less of the oil actually reached the surface than was below,” Captain Dicky Tupes of Southern Seaplanes told IPS, “And now we’re seeing some of that submerged oil surface here. How long will this go on?”

The East Bay area appeared to be completely covered in kilometres-long strands of weathered oil of various colors. While flying approximately 16 linear kilometres across the bay, IPS saw nothing but streaks of the substance across the surface.

“That oil is covering just about the entire length of Southwest Pass,” Tupes said.

A recent month-long cruise by Georgia researchers reported oil on the sea floor that they suspect is BP’s. While government officials question whether there is oil on the sea floor, the Georgia scientists say the samples “smelled like an auto repair shop”.

The research team took 78 cores of sediment and only five had live worms in them. Usually they would all have life, said University of Georgia scientist Samantha Joye, who went on to call the affected area a “graveyard for the macrofauna”.

“The horrible thing is they’ve been inundated with this oily material… There’s dead animals on the bottom and it stinks to high heaven of oil,” Joye added.

University of South Florida’s Ernst Peebles said the oil on the floor if the Gulf “is undermining the ecosystem from the bottom up”.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Sep 21 2010 (IPS)

Iraqis promised development with the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the arrival of the U.S. are now suffering lack of development as never before. And where it hurts every moment is through the collapse of power supply.

More than seven years into the U.S. occupation, most Iraqis lack electricity, leading to demonstrations in towns and cities across the country.

“The big problems began in 2003 with the occupation of Iraq,” 61-year-old Hashim Mahdi told IPS in Baghdad. “The occupiers destroyed all the institutions and the country’s infrastructure, including power plants. More than seven years later there is no improvement.”

Like other Iraqis, Mahdi agreed there had been infrastructure problems before the U.S. occupation, due to Iraq’s war with Iran, and then the U.S. bombing campaigns throughout the 1990s that targeted power plants. But after those attacks, the former regime was able to get the electricity supply restored.

The problems since 2003 have been far worse.

“Why did the government not reform the power plants until now? I think the U.S. commander in Iraq exploited the crisis to put pressure on Iraqi politicians,” Mahdi said.

Mahdi also blames corrupt local politicians for the problem.

“The electricity ministers appointed under the occupation are inexperienced and incompetent. They allow corrupt officials in the department to steal the funds allocated for importing generators and repairing transmission networks,” he added.

The lack of reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq’s water infrastructure and power grid has been devastating to farmers and city dwellers alike.

Ahmed Jihad, 35, owns a generator business in Baghdad. He told IPS, “The problem of electricity has existed since the U.S. occupation of the country began, but I hope to help people have one hour of electricity per day now. With rising fuel costs, though, we are all suffering.”

The average family income in Iraq is 200 to 300 dollars a month and families are paying an average of 80 dollars of that to the government for an electricity supply that hardly ever comes.

The many Iraqis who need fuel for their generators run into another problem.

“It is difficult to bring fuel into our areas because of the checkpoints at the entrances to cities and neighbourhoods. The Iraqi security forces make things hard for us, demanding bribes to allow us through. Besides, the fuel is not clean and of poor quality so it damages the generators.”

Others complain about the price of electricity. “Under Saddam, electricity costs were a pittance,” Um Taha, a 30-year-old mother of four told IPS. “But with the U.S. coming in, none of us can afford their prices.”

Abdul Wahab is a chief technical engineer at an electricity distribution station in north-eastern Baghdad.

“Since the U.S. occupation we have suffered from a lack of spare parts for the station. We do not believe there is any intention or genuine effort to repair or upgrade the outdated equipment,” Wahab told IPS.

“All that the government provides are false promises,” he said.

Ongoing security problems complicate the repair work as well. “Our maintenance teams face access problems because of bombings, road closures, traffic chaos and concrete walls, which caused the closure of many streets in Baghdad and other cities,” he explained.

June 14 was the hottest day ever recorded in Iraq, with the maximum temperature reaching 52 degrees C (125 degrees F) in Basra. And most of the country’s residents had to suffer through it with no airconditioners, no refrigerators and no fans.

Two Iraqis were killed by the police in Basra in June while protesting against the power shortages. The deaths, and ongoing protests over the summer, prompted Iraq’s electricity minister Karim Waheed to resign.

“Because Iraqis are not capable of being patient in their suffering, which would be alleviated by the projects I mentioned that will eliminate the shortages of electricity, and as this matter has been politicised on all sides, I am declaring in front of you, with courage, my resignation,” Waheed said in a televised address Jun. 21.

(*Abdu, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who reports extensively on the region).

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi, U.S., Aug 26 2010 (IPS)

Another massive fish kill, this time in Louisiana, has alarmed scientists, fishers and environmentalists who believe they are caused by oil and dispersants.

Dead fish wash up at Port Fourchon, Louisiana. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

“By our estimates there were thousands – and I’m talking about 5,000 to 15,000 – dead fish,” St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro told reporters. “Different species were found dead, including crabs, sting rays, eel, drum, speckled trout, red fish, you name it, included in that kill.”

The next day, a thick, orange substance with tar balls and a “strong diesel smell” was discovered around Grassy Island, near the fish kill, according to a news release.

Taffaro admitted that there was oil in the area, but cautioned against assuming it was the cause of the fish kill.

Dr. Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer, as well as a marine and oyster biologist, has “great concern” about this fish kill, and many others in recent weeks, which he feels are likely directly related to the BP oil disaster.

“As a scientist, my belief is that this fish kill is 75 percent likely due to hypoxic conditions, not enough oxygen in the water to sustain life,” Dr. Cake said. “Because it was both bottom dwelling fish and crab, and other fish from the middle of the water column, whatever caused this covered the entire water column. That gives me great concern. The scientist in me says there was some other triggering mechanism.”

Dr. Cake believes the “triggering mechanism” is likely oil and toxic dispersants from the BP oil disaster.

Recent weeks have seen other huge fish kills. One occurred in Mississippi from Long Beach to Pass Christian, and another at Cat Island. The kill earlier this week in East St. Bernard Parish is of note, because taken in the context of the other two, all of these areas share the same body of water – that which comprises both of the Mississippi and Chandeleur Sounds.

On Aug. 18, a team from Georgia Sea Grant and the University of Georgia released a report that estimates that 70 to 79 percent of the oil that gushed from the well “has not been recovered and remains a threat to the ecosystem”.

Nevertheless, regarding the St. Bernard Parish fish kill, the head fisheries biologist for the state of Louisiana, Randy Pausina, blamed it solely on hypoxic conditions caused by extreme heat mixed with nutrient-rich waters.

But Dr. Cake, along with commercial fishermen and Gulf Coast environmentalists, are drawing direct parallels to BP’s oil disaster and the use of toxic dispersants as the likely cause of the increased numbers of fish kills they are witnessing.

“There are several parallels to the spill,” Dr. Cake added. “We have evidence from fisherman operating in the VOO [Vessels of Opportunity] fleet and fishermen in the area who observed the spraying of dispersants by both aircraft and vessels in the immediate vicinity of the fish kills. Therein lies one triggering mechanism.”

He said another factor is that dispersed oil “provides nutrients for phytoplankton, and this may have triggered a bloom of plankton, otherwise known as a red tide, and you would then have a fish kill from the red tide organisms. I understand that the phytoplankton out there is causing fish kills, but still the triggering mechanism is the presence of the oil and dispersants.”

“A fish kill from a red tide, as I’ve observed, causes fish to come to the surface to be in distress, flopping around, and slowly they die, and new ones come up. This was not observed in any of these kills. All we had was a massive amount of dead fish coming to the surface,” he said.

Two commercial fishermen in Mississippi who worked in BP’s VOO programme, James Miller and Mark Stewart, recently told IPS they were eyewitnesses to BP spraying dispersants via airplane and from boats into areas of the Mississippi Sound, as well as outside the barrier islands.

“Right now there’s barely any shrimp out there to catch,” David Wallis, a fisherman from Biloxi, told IPS. “We should be overloaded with shrimp right now. That’s not normal. I won’t eat any seafood that comes out of these waters, because it’s not safe.”

Chasidy Hobbs, with Emerald Coastkeeper in Pensacola, Florida, is on the City of Pensacola Environmental Advisory Board and directs the environmental litigation research firm, Geography and Environment.

Hobbs recently informed IPS of a one mile-long fish kill on Aug. 20 near Pensacola, and said of the BP oil disaster and ongoing use of dispersants, “We’re poisoning the entire Gulf of Mexico food web. It’s criminal.”

“There are two theories on what is causing these fish kills,” Jonathan Henderson, with the Gulf Restoration Network, told IPS. “Hypoxia and the BP disaster. Whichever is the cause, they are both still bad.”

Henderson has logged hundreds of hours in boats and planes across the Gulf documenting the oil disaster. He has seen fish kills himself.

“A few weeks ago at Pass Christian, I saw flounder, trout, and crabs, washed up into the rock barriers in front of the marina,” he said.

The growing dead zone in the Gulf, which scientists believe will be the size of Massachusetts this year, is now already extremely close to shore.

“The fact that the dead zone is this close to shore is alarming to me,” Henderson said, “And we don’t know the effect the dispersants are having on the dead zones and it very well may be that they are making it worse.”

According to the EPA’s latest analysis of dispersant toxicity released in the document ‘Comparative Toxicity of Eight Oil Dispersant Products on Two Gulf of Mexico Aquatic Test Species’, Corexit 9500, along with 9527 – BP’s two dispersants used in the Gulf – “at a concentration of 42 parts per million, killed 50 percent of mysid shrimp tested.” Most of the remaining shrimp died shortly thereafter.

“Local fisherman in Alabama report sighting tremendous numbers of dolphins, sharks, and fish moving in towards shore as the initial waves of oil and dispersant approached in June,” Environmentalist Jerry Cope wrote recently. “Many third- and fourth-generation fishermen declared emphatically that they had never seen or heard of any similar event in the past. Scores of animals were fleeing the leading edge of toxic dispersant mixed with oil. The Gulf of Mexico from the Source into the shore is a giant kill zone.”

“I was amongst all these dead fish in St. Bernard Parish,” Dr. Cake added, “And there were off-bottom fish there as well, which was the same thing we had at the fish kills at Cat Island and Long Beach-Pass Christian, so I see a trend here. Prior to the BP oil spill and the widespread applications of dispersants in all three of these recent fish-kill areas, we have never had evidence of such widespread kills.”

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BILOXI, Mississippi, Aug 20 2010 (IPS)

The U.S. state of Mississippi recently reopened all of its fishing areas. The problem is that commercial shrimpers refuse to trawl because they fear the toxicity of the waters and marine life due to the BP oil disaster.

The Mississippi Sound was recently reopened, but Mark Stewart and other commercial fishermen fear oil and dispersants, and refuse to fish. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

On Aug. 6, Mississippi’s Department of Marine Resources (DMR) and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, in coordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, ordered the reopening of all Mississippi territorial waters to all commercial and recreational finfish and shrimp fishing activities that were part of the precautionary closures following the BP oil rig disaster in April. At least five million barrels flowed into the Gulf before the well was shut earlier this month.

But Miller, along with many other commercial shrimpers, refuses to trawl.

Miller took this reporter out on his shrimp boat, along with commercial shrimper Mark Stewart, and Jonathan Henderson of the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group working to document and alleviate the effects of BP’s oil disaster.

The goal was to prove to the public that their fishing grounds are contaminated with both oil and dispersants. Their method was simple – they tied an absorbent rag to a weighted hook, dropped it overboard for a short duration of time, then pulled it up to find the results. The rags were covered in a brown oily substance that the fishermen identified as a mix of BP’s crude oil and toxic dispersants.

Miller and Stewart, who were both in BP’s Vessels of Opportunity programme and were trained in identifying oil and dispersants, have been accused by some members of Mississippi’s state government of lying about their findings.

“Why would we lie about oil and dispersant in our waters, when our livelihoods depend on our being able to fish here?” Miller asked IPS. “I want this to be cleaned up so we can get back to how we used to live. But it doesn’t make sense for us or anyone else to fish if our waters are toxified. I don’t know why people are angry at us for speaking the truth. We’re not the ones who put the oil in the water.”

This reporter watched Miller and Stewart conduct eight tests in various places around Mississippi Sound. One of them was less than a quarter mile from the mouth of Pass Christian Harbor, and another was less than one mile from a public beach. Every single test found the absorbent rags stained with brown oil.

During an earlier test round, the two fishermen brought out scientist Dr. Ed Cake of Gulf Environmental Associates.

Dr. Cake wrote of the experience: “When the vessel was stopped for sampling, small, 0.5- to 1.0-inch-diameter bubbles would periodically rise to the surface and shortly thereafter they would pop leaving a small oil sheen. According to the fishermen, several of BP’s Vessels-of- Opportunity (Carolina Skiffs with tanks of dispersants [Corexit?]) were hand spraying in Mississippi Sound off the Pass Christian Harbor in prior days/nights. It appears to this observer that the dispersants are still in the area and are continuing to react with oil in the waters off Pass Christian Harbor.”

Shortly thereafter, Miller took the samples to a community meeting in nearby D’Iberville to show fishermen and families. At the meeting, fishermen unanimously supported a petition calling for the firing of Dr. Bill Walker, the head of Mississippi’s DMR, who is responsible for opening the fishing grounds.

On Monday, Aug. 9, Walker, despite ongoing reports of tar balls, oil, and dispersants being found in Mississippi waters, declared “there should be no new threats” and issued an order for all local coast governments to halt ongoing oil disaster work being funded by BP money that was granted to the state.

Recent days in Mississippi waters have found fishermen and scientists finding oil in Garden Pond on Horn Island, massive fish kills near Cat Island and Biloxi, “black water” in Mississippi Sound, oil inside Pass Christian Harbor, and submerged oil in Pass Christian, in addition to what Miller and Stewart showed IPS and others with their testing.

“We’ve sent samples to all the news media we know, here in Mississippi and in [Washington] D.C.,” Stewart, a third generation fisherman from Ocean Springs, said in an interview. “We had Ray Mabus’s people on this boat, and we sent them away with contaminated samples they watched us take, and we haven’t heard back from them.”

Raymond Mabus is the United States secretary of the Navy and a former governor of Mississippi. President Barack Obama tasked him with developing “a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan as soon as possible.”

Mabus has been accused by many Gulf Coast fishermen of not living up to his task.

Stewart said, “Normally we have a lot of white shrimp in the Sound right now. You can catch 500 to 800 pounds a night, but right now, there are very few people shrimping, and those that are, are catching nothing or maybe 200 pounds per night. You can’t even pay your expenses on 200 pounds per night.”

“We think they opened shrimp season prematurely,” Miller said. “How can we put our product back on the market when everybody in America knows what happened down here? I have seen so many dead animals in the last few months I can’t even keep count.”

On Thursday, several commercial shrimpers, including Miller and Stewart, held a press conference at the Biloxi Marina. Other fishermen there were not fishing because they feared making people sick with seafood they might catch.

“I don’t want people to get sick,” Danny Ross, a commercial fisherman from Biloxi told IPS, “We want the government and BP to have transparency with the Corexit dispersants.”

Ross said he has watched horseshoe crabs trying to crawl out of the water, and other marine life like stingrays and flounder trying to escape the water as well. He believes this is because the water is hypoxic due to the toxicity of the toxic dispersants, of which BP admits to using at least 1.9 million gallons.

“I will not wet a net and catch shrimp until I know it’s safe to do so,” Ross added. “I have no way of life now. I can’t shrimp and others are calling the shots. For the next 20 years, what am I supposed to do? Because that’s how long it’s going to take for our waters to be safe again.”

David Wallis, another fisherman from Biloxi, attended the press conference.

“We don’t feel our seafood is safe, and we demand more testing be done,” Wallis told IPS. “I’ve seen crabs crawling out of the water in the middle of the day. This is going to be affecting us far into the future.”

“A lot of fishermen feel as we do. Most of them I talk to don’t want the season opened, for our safety as well as others,” Wallis added, “Right now there’s barely any shrimp out there to catch. We should be overloaded with shrimp right now. That’s not normal. I won’t eat any seafood that comes out of these waters, because it’s not safe.”

*This story is part of a series of features on biodiversity by Inter Press Service (IPS), CGIAR/Biodiversity International, International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), and the United Nations Environment Programme/Convention on Biological Diversity (UNEP/CBD) — all members of the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
DAUPHIN ISLAND, Alabama, Aug 12 2010 (IPS)

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.

Pathways of exposure are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts include headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, dizziness, chest pains and tightness, irritation of eyes, nose, throat and lungs, difficulty breathing, respiratory system damage, skin irrigation and sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic damage and mutations, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage, among several others.

Not along ago, at the same marina, WKRG News 5 took a water sample to test for dispersants. The sample literally exploded when it was mixed with an organic solvent separating the oil from the water.

Bob Naman, the chemist who analysed the sample, told the station, “We think that it most likely happened due to the presence of either methanol or methane gas or the presence of the dispersant Corexit.”

As for Mastler’s physical reaction to his exposure, Hugh Kaufman, an EPA whistleblower and analyst, has reported this of the effects of the toxic dispersants:

“We have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do…And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death age is around 50. It’s very dangerous, and it’s an… economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.”

By early July, the Alabama Department of Public Health said that 56 people in Mobile and Baldwin Counties had sought treatment for what they believed were oil disaster-related illnesses.

Mastler had a previous exposure when he was working on a boat for a BP contractor and brought aboard an oil-covered absorbent pad he found in the water. That exposure, too, found Mastler with rashes on his arms, a soar throat, and nausea. He told IPS he knows many island residents who stay inside to avoid toxic fumes that blow in from the Gulf.

BP claims to have conducted air monitoring of oil-effected areas. A written statement by the company says, “The monitoring data shows that few people, if any, are exposed to levels of oil or dispersants that have even the potential to cause any significant adverse health effects.”

Many scientists and doctors disagree.

“The dispersants used in BP’s draconian experiment contain solvents such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol,” Dr. Riki Ott, toxicologist and marine biologist, told IPS.

“Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber. Spill responders have told me that the hard rubber impellors in their engines and the soft rubber bushings on their outboard motor pumps are falling apart and need frequent replacement…Divers have told me that they have had to replace the soft rubber o- rings on their gear after dives in the Gulf and that the oil-chemical stew eats its way into even the Hazmat dive suits,” Ott said.

“Given this evidence, it should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known,” Dr. Ott added. “In ‘Generations at Risk’, medical doctor Ted Schettler and others warn that solvents can rapidly enter the human body: They evaporate in air and are easily inhaled, they penetrate skin easily, and they cross the placenta into fetuses. For example, 2- butoxyethanol is a human health hazard substance: It is a fetal toxin and it breaks down blood cells, causing blood and kidney disorders.”

Even the federal government has taken precautions for its employees. U.S. military officials decided to reroute training flights in the Gulf region in order to avoid oil and dispersant tainted-areas.

Public health agencies operating in the region have told their researchers who test the air quality to wear respirators when they are offshore, and in preparation for a long-term study of health effects from the BP disaster, the U.S. Labour Department has started gathering data from thousands of workers.

Meanwhile, physical evidence around the Gulf continues to mount daily. Ongoing reports of fish kills and wildlife deaths are a daily occurrence now.

On Aug. 5, in Port St. Joe, Florida, city officials closed a public boat ramp following an unexplained fish kill in St. Joseph’s Bay that caused hundreds of dead fish and crabs to wash ashore. Witnesses sighted a brown, sludgy material roughly six miles offshore.

“My voice is gone,” Mastler, speaking to IPS with a gravelly voice. “Another time I was at the marina and got exposed again, I could smell the oil. I’ve got a lot of burning in my mouth right now.”

On Aug. 8 he said that his urine was still “brown”, but said he was starting to feel “a little better”. Given that Mastler already had a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, he believes he is “like the canary in the coal mine” with dispersant exposure.

Over the last six weeks, IPS has spoken with several people along the Gulf Coast who have complained of skin rashes, respiratory problems, nausea, headaches, burning eyes, and other problems they believe to be associated with BP’s toxic dispersants.

Mastler told IPS he chose not to work for BP because he never trusted them.

“That’s why I never went to BP, and I’m not going to, and I don’t appreciate the people they let die over this, and how they’re making us sick, and we’ve already had some deaths around this island,” he added, “They put untrained people out on the water, with faulty equipment, and with faulty respirators.”

On Wednesday, Mastler was still suffering.

“I’m still feeling terrible. I’m about to go to the doctor again right now. I might end up in the hospital. I’m short of breath, the diarrhea has been real bad, I still have discolouration in my urine, and the day before yesterday I was coughing up white foam with brown spots in it.”

Mastler plans to file a claim against BP for his medical expenses.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
GULFPORT, Louisiana, Aug 2 2010 (IPS)

Contrary to recent media reports of a quick recovery in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists and biologists are “deeply concerned” about impacts that will likely span “several decades”.

Louisiana is building sand berms, like this one in the Chandeleur Islands, in an attempt to keep oil from reaching barrier islands. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

Cake’s grim assessment stems partially from a comparison he made to the Exxon Valdez oil disaster and the second largest oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (BP’s being the largest), that of the Ixtoc-1 blowout well in the Bay of Campeche in 1979.

“The impacts of the Exxon Valdez are still being felt 21 years later,” Cake said, “The impacts of the Ixtoc-1 are still being felt and known, 31 years later. I know folks who study oysters in bays in the Yucatan Peninsula, and oysters there have still not returned, 31 years later. So as an oyster biologist I’m concerned about that. Those things are still affected 31 years later, and that was a smaller spill by comparison.”

He is also concerned about deepwater habitats. Given that BP has used at least 1.9 million gallons of chemically toxic dispersants, the vast majority of the oil has remained beneath the surface, and much of that has sunk to the sea floor.

As an example, he cited “a new coral colony ecosystem” within 10 miles of BP’s blowout Macondo Well, which was found by a pipeline company whilst it was producing an environmental impact assessment statement of the route of the pipeline.

“They found some amazing coral communities that no one knew about, and now they will be covered in oil,” Cake said, “Those will not recover.”

Dr. Stephen Cofer-Shabica, an oceanographer in South Carolina, focuses on the biology of barrier islands. He monitored the affects of the Ixtoc-1 oil disaster on Padre Island National Seashore in south Texas.

“You can go back now, 31 years later, and there’s still oil in the sand there [Padre Island],” he told IPS. But his main concern is now about what the state of Louisiana is doing in response to BP’s oil disaster.

Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal has authorised the dredging and building of sand berms near Louisiana’s barrier islands in an effort to keep oil away from the shore. One area where the dredging project is still underway is the Chandeleur Islands.

“The Chandeleur project is totally futile and a waste of resources, and I can’t believe they are still doing it,” Dr. Cofer-Shabica said, “That’s what I find totally unfathomable. There’s oil floating around underwater, that has been dispersed and these barrier islands, as constructs, will not have any effect on that oil at all.”

According to Dr. Cofer-Shabica, the so-called fix is actually a hugely destructive problem. “From an oceanographic perspective, this was biologically destructive, especially when you start digging up the bottom in shallow water, and building these barrier islands.”

He added, “Louisiana is in a precarious position anyway because of the subsiding that is happening in the delta, and on top of that you have worldwide sea-level rise, so it has two physical factors that are working against its marshes. So building barrier islands to presumably keep oil out, amidst rising sea levels, makes no sense.”

In addition to this, he said that the biological impacts of building islands “are larger than the physical impacts,” and said this of dredging sediment from those areas: “You’re in shallow water that is biologically rich with clams, worms, and bacteria, that will all be dug up and destroyed.”

Dr. Cake is also worried about oil contaminating the oysters. He has seen much oil in Louisiana’s marshes. “One of the experts with us worked for NOAA on the Exxon Valdez spill, and he told me if the oil is on the marsh grass, it’s in the oysters.”

BP and the Coast Guard are currently under scrutiny for having used so much oil dispersant, an industrial solvent that breaks up the oil so that it will sink below the surface.

For example, a 1979 report, “Effects of Corexit 9527 on the Hatchability of Mallard Eggs” in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, showed that even though dispersants are applied to minimise oil impacts to visible and charismatic species, Corexit actually enhances the lethal effects of crude oil on birds that are exposed.

Corexit 9527 penetrates eggshells and shell membranes as readily as crude oil. When applied to an eggshell near the embryo, the embryo would fuse to the shell membrane and die within 24 hours.

“Corexit breaks the oil up into micro-globules,” Dr. Cake said, “That’s the harmful part for oysters. Oysters are filter feeders, and they feed on a range of three to 12 millionths of a meter as particles. You can grind up graphite from a pencil in fine enough particles and they’ll run it through their system. It’s the same with the micro- globules of oil. They’ll be taken in, but in going through the system, and in absorbing some of that oil, it’ll cause lesions. So it’s actually what the Corexit does to the oil that’ll affect the oysters in the end.”

According to Dr. Cake, his study teams have people watching and monitoring affected areas.

“In the past month, in Bretton and Chandeleur Sounds, oil was there during the day, it was sprayed with Corexit at night, and the next day it was gone. Where did it go? It went to the bottom, and that’s adjacent to where these oyster farms are. So at that point, there’s a lot less water for that Corexit to disperse into, and there may be an impact from that on the oysters.”

Cake said that while scientists have found very large plumes of dispersed oil at depth, “I’m not sure that oil will ever get here as dispersed clouds. It’s getting here as sunken clouds, because that’s what they [BP] wanted it to do. Sink it, get it out of sight out of mind.”

Chasidy Hobbs with Emerald Coastkeeper in Pensacola, Florida, is on the City of Pensacola Environmental Advisory Board and Escambia County Citizens Environmental Committee. Hobbs also directs the environmental litigation research firm, Geography and Environment.

“We’re poisoning the entire Gulf of Mexico food web,” Hobbs, who is also an instructor and advisor in the Environmental Studies Department at University of West Florida, told IPS. “It’s crazy, and it’s criminal. I’m deeply concerned with the long-term ecological and human impact.”

Dr. Cake is among a large and growing group of scientists who are discussing a grim future for much of the Gulf of Mexico as a result of BP’s disaster.

“The oil itself on the bottom is being eaten by bacteria. This has always been the case in naturally occurring seeps across the Gulf. But now we’ve introduced much more oil, and as the bacteria grow they are consuming the oxygen that is in that area. And that oxygen loss will result in dead/hypoxic zones, like the one off the West side of the Mississippi over towards Galveston where there’s one that is 3,000 square mile area of dead bottom. Now we’re looking at that along the eastern part because of the presence of so much more bacteria.”

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
NEW ORLEANS, United States, Jul 20 2010 (IPS)

Shellfish in the Gulf of Mexico grow with drops of petroleum inside them, coyotes eat oil-soaked birds, and sharks suffocate when the oil coats their gills.

Uncontaminated blue crab can only be found in a few of southern Louisiana's bays and canals. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

Many kinds of fish and shore birds feed on those young crabs. And this is just one of the many examples of how the crude oil that began to spill Apr. 20 from British Petroleum’s (PB) Deepwater Horizon well has already taken its toll on the Gulf’s food chain.

Jonathan Henderson, with the Gulf Restoration Network, explained to this reporter that oil-soaked birds are being eaten by coyotes, which are then later eaten by alligators further inland.

“Do you know how the pelicans die of oil?” asked Dean Wilson, executive director of Atchafalaya Basinkeeper. “They open their wings, thinking they are drying them in the sun, and they just cook in the sun. Thousands of birds are dying like that because of the greed of a foreign company.”

The organisation Wilson heads is dedicated to preserving the ecosystems of the Atchafalaya Basin on the Louisiana Coast. He is incensed at the catastrophic impact the BP oil disaster, which has been ongoing for nearly three months.

Oil began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico following an explosion Apr. 20 on the Deepwater Horizon oilrig, which BP leased from the Swiss firm Transocean. Two days later, the platform sank. As of Jul. 20, the company had capped the well and stopped the flow of oil, though tests continue on the cap’s structural integrity.

Wilson is angry about what he perceives as BP’s lack of willingness to implement measures necessary to adequately protect wildlife.

For example, the company is not rescuing the chicks of oiled adult birds, nor is it allowing local environmentalists, like himself, to go out and participate in animal rescue efforts.

“You have to realise that it takes two parents to raise the chicks in these areas. If one of the parents gets into the oil, the other parent alone cannot raise the chicks, and the chicks are going to die,” he said.

There are at least as many chicks that have died as there are rescued pelicans, and the number rescued is “only the tip of the iceberg,” said Wilson.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as of Jul. 14, 553 miles of Gulf Coast shoreline was oiled, 2,930 birds had been recovered (1,828 of them dead and 1,102 of them oiled), along with more than 500 dead sea turtles and other mammals.

More than 45,000 workers are currently responding to the BP oil disaster, but higher-end estimates show that as much as 8.4 million barrels of BP oil has been released into the Gulf, and more than 6.8 million litres of chemical dispersants Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527 used (the same chemicals are banned in Great Britain).

The dispersants are believed to cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, irritation of eyes, nose, throat and lungs, difficulty breathing, respiratory system damage, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic damage and mutations, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage.

“This is the second most important delta in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most important deltas on the planet,” said Paul Orr, an officer with Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper, a group focused on keeping the lower Mississippi River pollution-free.

“We just have no idea what this amount of oil in this close proximity to the delta could do. The decision was made to use the dispersants intensively to sink the oil — the rationale was to minimise shore impacts at all cost,” he said.

“But now it seems like the real reason they’ve been doing that is to get the oil to disappear because if it was staying on the surface, at least you could collect it, even if it starts impacting the shore in some way,” said Orr.

“Now we have unknown millions of barrels of oil floating around in the water column and sticking to the sea floor. We may not ever know some of the long-term damages,” said the activist.

Orr, like many Gulf region environmentalists and scientists, is critical of BP’s lack of adequate efforts towards helping oil-contaminated wildlife. “They have to look like they’re doing something,” he said, alluding to the relatively small number of birds the company has treated.

He is concerned about all the Gulf species, but in particular those that were already endangered before the spill. For example, the Kemp’s Ridley and leatherback sea turtles, the sperm whale, the Gulf sturgeon fish, and birds such as the piping plover.

“There are at least 75,000 square miles of the Gulf covered in oil as we speak,” Henderson told this reporter.

Likewise, Wilson expressed concern for microorganisms that are feeding on the oil, particularly in the deeper regions in the Gulf where BP has sunk the oil through the use of dispersants.

“There is a big population of whales and whale sharks that migrate right where the oil is. We’ve already seen that the shark won’t avoid the oil. We’ve seen schools of hundreds of whale sharks migrating through the Gulf of Mexico. They open their mouths to filter plankton — so the oil contaminates their gills, and they will suffocate.”

“We can’t play around with BP’s toxic science experiment and sit around and wait for the outcome in the Gulf,” said Henderson.

And, with a note of pessimism, added: “I have a feeling this isn’t going to be the last of this kind of oil well blowout.”

*This story is part of a series of features on biodiversity by Inter Press Service (IPS), CGIAR/Biodiversity International, International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), and the United Nations Environment Programme/Convention on Biological Diversity (UNEP/CBD) — all members of the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
NEW ORLEANS, Jul 7 2010 (IPS)

Last week, the U.S. Coast Guard, working in concert with oil giant BP, instituted new restrictions across the U.S. Gulf Coast that prevent the media from coming within 20 metres of booms or response vessels on beaches or water. But the insidiousness of the restrictions runs even deeper.

An oiled brown pelican receives treatment at Fort Jackson Bird Rehabilitation Center in Buras, Louisiana. Credit: Courtesy of International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC)

Inside, the International Bird Rescue Research Center, one of the companies hired by BP to clean wildlife, works to wash oiled birds before returning them to the wild.

The centre has limited access to the media, and had been open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for two hours at a time. IPS arrived at the centre on a Wednesday, only to learn that it had just reduced its media days from three to two, and was no longer open to the media on Wednesdays.

When asked who he worked for, the private security guard informed IPS, “I work for HUB, a security company hired by BP.”

Hub Enterprises out of Broussard, Louisiana has a contract with BP to provide “security officers” and “supervisors”. Don is being paid somewhere between 13 and 14 dollars an hour to do his part in helping BP keep a media lid on what is happening with the largest oil-related environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Up to 60,000 barrels of oil are still leaking into the Gulf every day, more than two months after the Apr. 20 explosion on the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Last week’s new media restrictions imposed by the Coast Guard subject journalists and photographers to as much as a 40,000-dollar fine, and from one to five years in jail as a class-D felon if they violate the 20-metre rule, that Unified Command calls a “safety zone”.

There have been many indications of a growing and deepening media clampdown in the region in other ways as well.

Last week, IPS had an interview scheduled with the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. The interview was with an individual affiliated with LSU’s research strategies into how the BP oil disaster will affect the region.

The morning the interview was to take place, the interview subject, who shall remain anonymous, sent IPS an email stating, “I have been told to cancel the interview. I regret any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

When IPS asked him if there was a reason the interview was cancelled, he replied, “No.”

An anonymous source later informed IPS that the decision to cancel the interview was made by Chancellor Larry Hollier, who heads the LSU Health Sciences Center.

BP is providing the bulk of the funding to be used to study the effects of the oil disaster, and has promised 500 million dollars for research and restoration projects.

Robert Gagosian is president of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, which represents ocean research institutions and aquariums and manages a programme on ocean drilling research. A marine geochemist, Gagosian is concerned about how that money will be spent, and hopes it will be handled through peer-reviewed grants.

His concern, shared by other scientists and researchers, stems from BP’s interest in preserving its business, and whether the proper criteria will be used in assessing what research should be done.

Jeff Short, a former scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is now with the conservation group Oceana, said that by having BP pay for the research, the government cedes control over what studies are to be conducted.

“I find myself wondering, why would BP want to guide money into projects that would clearly show much larger environmental damage than would have come to light otherwise?” he said.

The first 25 million dollars of the BP funds were quickly distributed to Louisiana State University, the Florida Institute of Oceanography at the University of South Florida and a consortium led by Mississippi State University.

Many independent scientists and journalists fear this is part of an effort to influence what studies are conducted and how willing these public institutions will be to talk to the media about the BP disaster.

In another incident, on Jul. 2, Lance Rosenfield, a photographer for the non-profit investigative journalism outlet ProPublica, was briefly detained by police while shooting pictures near BP’s refinery in Texas City, Texas. According to Rosenfield, he was confronted by a BP security officer, local police, and a man identifying himself as an agent of the Department of Homeland Security.

Rosenfield was released after police reviewed his photos and recorded his date of birth, Social Security number and other personal information. The police officer then turned this information over to the BP security guard, under what Rosenfield said was, according to the police officer, “standard operating procedure”.

There have also been restrictions placed on the airspace above areas where clean-up and containment operations are occurring. The Federal Aviation Administration has placed restrictions prohibiting media flights below 900 metres over oil-affected areas.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Apr 20 2010 (IPS)

The assassination of Sheikh Ghazi Jabouri, a prominent Sunni Imam in the Al- Adhamiya district of Baghdad, has raised fears of renewed sectarian violence in the wake of the Mar. 7 elections.

Tensions have been reported in the area following the assassination Wednesday last week. At least two gunmen killed Sheikh Jabouri, 42, as he walked home after completing morning prayers at the Rahman Mosque.

His brother Sarmad Faisal Jabouri, like many Iraqis in Adhamiya district, blames the government. “We hold the government fully responsibility for the killing of my brother, because they are supposed to be in control of security at the entrances and exits to the area,” Jabouri said.

The attack came on a morning when a high-ranking officer in Iraq’s anti- terrorism police was killed by a bomb planted in his car. The attack also killed two nearby policemen.

The violence comes amidst a wave of increasing attacks across the capital, and amidst political instability in the wake of last month’s elections, that have yet to yield a clear winner.

The U.S. fears that rising sectarian violence could begin to match the 2006- 2007 sectarian violence that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths across the war-torn country.

Sectarian violence had erupted across much of Iraq earlier in 2006, forcing the Bush administration to add 30,000 more troops to the occupation forces in Iraq.

Gen. Ray Odierno in charge of U.S. forces in Iraq says any repeat of that kind of sectarian violence could stall the scheduled drawdown of U.S. troops, currently numbering about 96,000.

Adding tension to the already precarious political situation, Iraq’s Election Commission announced Apr. 19 that it was ordering a full manual recount of all ballots cast in Baghdad. The move is likely to alter the results of the vote, Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has said. His bloc is trailing that of Ayad Allawi 91-89.

Sheikh Abu Arabiya Al-Adhami, imam of a mosque in Adhamiya district, told IPS he believes the killers of Sheikh Ghazi Jabouri were trying to fuel sectarian violence.

“We do not know who wants the Iraqis to be in worse condition, and who wants to destroy our nation,” the sheikh told IPS after the burial. Iraqi army personnel, he said, “were in the neighbourhood but did not try to catch the criminals.”

A 38-year-old resident who gave his name as Tariq told IPS: “At five in the morning we awoke to the sound of gunshots near our house. There was a weak voice pleading ,’Why? Why, I did not do anything, please’.”

After that, Tariq said, he heard another shot and then silence. “I went out to catch the criminals, but they had fled quickly. I say to the Iraqi government: if you cannot protect us, why have our weapons been taken by the Iraqi Army? Why not let us protect ourselves?”

This area of Baghdad has seen much violence recently. The last few weeks have seen the assassination of the commander of the U.S.-formed Sunni militia known as the Sahwa, or the Awakening groups. Sniper fire killed a pharmacist a week ago, and a car bomb attack nearly killed a university professor.

Forty-year-old Khalil Naimi, a security official with the local Sahwa in Adhamiya, said there was a year of peace under their charge, but problems began again after the Iraqi government security forces took control at the end of 2008.

“We therefore demand the recovery of the Awakening movement for real, and not as a formality, as is happening now.”

The U.S. has formally handed control of the Sahwa to the Iraqi government, after helping set them up. Since then the Sahwa have been disenfranchised and largely left out of the security forces in predominantly Sunni areas like Adhamiya.

The formation of the predominantly Sunni Sahwa by the U.S. was a method of ending attacks against U.S. forces, as the Sahwa are largely comprised of former resistance fighters.

Government security forces dominated by Shias are widely believed to be largely sectarian. In the past, as now, many Iraqis in areas like the predominantly Sunni district of Adhamiya fear that Kurdish or Shia government forces do not adequately protect people in the district, and sometimes attack them.

Naimi says “there is a conspiracy to bring sectarian problems back to the country.” But he said he hopes this can be averted because “Iraqis have learned the lesson and will not repeat mistakes of the past again.”

Former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi, warned last Wednesday that Iraq could slide back into sectarian violence if his group is shut out of the next government. He said the U.S. should work more aggressively to prevent that from happening.

In another development that is heightening sectarian tensions, Amnesty International called on Iraqi authorities Apr. 19 to investigate allegations that government security forces tortured hundreds of Sunni detainees at a secret prison in Baghdad.

The Sunday LA Times quoted Iraqi officials as saying that more than 100 of the facility’s 431 prisoners were tortured using electric shocks, suffocation with plastic bags and beatings. Prisoners reportedly revealed that one man died in January as a result of torture.

(*Abdu, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who reports extensively on the region).

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Mar 12 2010 (IPS)

Under Saddam Hussein, women in government got a year’s maternity leave; that is now cut to six months. Under the Personal Status Law in force since Jul. 14, 1958, when Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy, Iraqi women had most of the rights that Western women do.

Now they have Article 2 of the Constitution: “Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation.” Sub-head A says “No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.” Under this Article the interpretation of women’s rights is left to religious leaders – and many of them are under Iranian influence.

“The U.S. occupation has decided to let go of women’s rights,” Yanar Mohammed who campaigns for women’s rights in Iraq says. “Political Islamic groups have taken southern Iraq, are fully in power there, and are using the financial support of Iran to recruit troops and allies. The financial and political support from Iran is why the Iraqis in the south accept this, not because the Iraqi people want Islamic law.”

With the new law has come the new lawlessness. Nora Hamaid, 30, a graduate from Baghdad University, has now given up the career she dreamt of. “I completed my studies before the invaders arrived because there was good security and I could freely go to university,” Hamaid tells IPS. Now she says she cannot even move around freely, and worries for her children every day. “I mean every day, from when they depart to when they return from school, for fear of abductions.”

There is 25 percent representation for women in parliament, but Sabria says “these women from party lists stand up to defend their party in the parliament, not for women’s rights.” For women in Iraq, the invasion is not over.

The situation for Iraq’s women reflects the overall situation: everyone is affected by lack of security and lack of infrastructure.

“The status of women here is linked to the general situation,” Maha Sabria, professor of political science at Al-Nahrain University in Baghdad tells IPS. “The violation of women’s rights was part of the violation of the rights of all Iraqis.” But, she said, “women bear a double burden under occupation because we have lost a lot of freedom because of it.

“More men are now under the weight of detention, so now women bear the entire burden of the family and are obliged to provide full support to the families and children. At the same time women do not have freedom of movement because of the deteriorated security conditions and because of abductions of women and children by criminal gangs.”

Women, she says, are also now under pressure to marry young in family hope that a husband will bring security.

Sabria tells IPS that the abduction of women “did not exist prior to the occupation. We find that women lost their right to learn and their right to a free and normal life, so Iraqi women are struggling with oppression and denial of all their rights, more than ever before.”

Yanar Mohammed believes the constitution neither protects women nor ensures their basic rights. She blames the United States for abdicating its responsibility to help develop a pluralistic democracy in Iraq.

“The real ruler in Iraq now is the rule of old traditions and tribal, backward laws,” Sabria says. “The biggest problem is that more women in Iraq are unaware of their rights because of the backwardness and ignorance prevailing in Iraqi society today.”

Many women have fled Iraq because their husband was arbitrarily arrested by occupation forces or government security personnel, says Sabria.

More than four million Iraqis were estimated to have been displaced through the occupation, including approximately 2.8 million internally. The rest live as refugees mainly in neighbouring countries, according to a report by Elizabeth Ferris, co-director of the Brookings Institution-University of Bern Project on Internal Displacement.

The report, titled, ‘Going Home? Prospects and Pitfalls For Large-Scale Return Of Iraqis’, says most displaced Iraqi women are reluctant to return home because of continuing uncertainties.

The Washington-based Refugees International (RI) says in a report ‘Iraqi Refugees: Women’s Rights and Security Critical to Returns’ that “Iraqi women will resist returning home, even if conditions improve in Iraq, if there is no focus on securing their rights as women and assuring their personal security and their families’ well-being.”

The RI report covered internally displaced women in Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region and female refugees in Syria. “Not one woman interviewed by RI indicated her intention to return,” the report says.

“This tent is more comfortable than a palace in Baghdad; my family is safe here,” a displaced woman in northern Iraq told RI.

The situation continues to be challenging for women within Iraq.

“I am an employee, and everyday go to my work place, and the biggest challenge for me and all the suffering Iraqis is the roads are closed and you feel you are a person without rights, without respect,” a 35-year-old government employee, who asked to be referred to as Iman, told IPS.

“To what extent has this improved my security,” she asked. “We have better salaries now, but how can women live with no security? How can we enjoy our rights if there is no safe place to go, for rest and recreation and living?”

(*Abdu, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who reports extensively on the region)

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas, Feb 10 2010 (IPS)

Army Specialist and Iraq war veteran Marc Hall was incarcerated by the U.S. Army in Georgia for recording a song that expresses his anger over the Army’s stop-loss policy. Now he waits to be shipped to Iraq to face a court martial.

Stop-loss is a policy that allows the Army to keep soldiers active beyond the end of their signed contracts. According to the Pentagon, more than 120,000 soldiers have been affected by stop-loss since 2001, and currently 13,000 soldiers are serving under stop-loss orders, despite public pledges by President Barack Obama to phase out the policy.

Attorney David Gespass, a member of the National Lawyers Guild and founding member of the Military Law Task Force, has been consulting on the case and will possibly represent Hall.

“It’s not clear to me if he’ll be tried in Kuwait or Iraq,” Gaspass told IPS. “It may be a matter for the military judge to decide, once there is one.”

Gespass explained he believes the Army is handling the case this way for two reasons.

“One, it will make it much more difficult to defend because it’s impossible to get witnesses over to a war zone, and two, it denies Hall’s right to a public trial. I think the fundamental reason is to make it more difficult for his supporters and witnesses to be there,” he said. Gaspass believes the Army’s position “is that that’s where all the alleged victims are [Iraq], and they wanted to have the trial where their witnesses are going to be. For me, it’s a lot easier for the Army to get witnesses back to the states than it is for Marc to get his witnesses to a war zone.”

Hall, who is in the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, was placed in Liberty County Jail for the song, in which he angrily denounces the continuing policy that has barred him from exiting the military.

On Dec. 12, Hall was thrown in jail by his command, on the pretext that the song he had written is considered a threat, and he is facing charges under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which covers communication threats.

“The charges are connected to song lyrics allegedly written by Spc. Hall that allege deadly threats against his chain of command and fellow Soldiers, specifically shooting them,” reads a statement released the by the Fort Stewart Public Affairs Office.

“I explained to [my first sergeant] that the hardcore rap song was a free expression of how people feel about the Army and its stop-loss policy,” explained Hall, in response to the charges. “I explained that the song was neither a physical threat nor any threat whatsoever. I told him it was just hip-hop.”

Military service members do not completely give up their rights to free speech, particularly not when they are doing so artistically while off duty, as was the case with Hall.

The military is claiming that he “communicated a threat” with his song. Hall mailed a copy of the song to the Pentagon after the Army unilaterally extended his contract for a second Iraq deployment.

The Army’s latest decision to deploy Hall to Kuwait is an unusual twist in a case that has already attracted widespread criticism from GI rights lawyers. Once in Kuwait, Hall will be driven into Iraq to meet up with his is old unit, and placed in confinement and court martialed there.

Kevin Larson of the Fort Stewart Public Affairs Office says the trial will be held in Iraq because that is where important witnesses are.

“It makes sense from the standpoint of witnesses. Most of the witnesses are deployed,” he said.

Jim Klimanski, a civilian military lawyer and member of the National Lawyers Guild and the Military Law Task Force, told IPS that he feels the military is overreacting to the case, and that it is simply a matter of free speech and that the Army’s actions violate Hall’s First Amendment right to free speech.

“It’s a political case, and the military should know that,” Klimanski explained. “I think they are overreaching and overreacting because of Maj. Hassan (who went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood on Nov. 5), and I can understand that to some degree, but cooler heads should prevail and they should deal with stop-loss, and maybe we’ll get the case thrown out.”

IPS obtained a redacted copy of the Army’s Charge Sheet against Hall, filed by Marcus Seiser, which includes five charges. On the sheet, Hall is accused of telling someone he would “go on a rampage,” that “the song makes threats of acts of violence,” and that Hall is accused “of planning on shooting the brigade or battalion commanders.”

Jeff Paterson, the director of the soldier advocacy group Courage to Resist, which is assisting Hall, told IPS, “Marc’s case is unique in that the military hasn’t shown a propensity to go after these political speech cases for several years. We think this is an important case because it could set precedent for free speech rights for those in the military.”

Klimanski, along with underscoring the importance of the case for the First Amendment, thinks the case highlights the military’s ongoing use of stop-loss, which also contributes to how they have responded to Hall’s song.

“It’s a song, and he puts it out to the public,” Klimanski told IPS. “We’re not talking about a Major Hassan who is quietly plotting violence … this is political hyperbole. This is his rant on stop-loss. It’s political speech.”

“He’s over there saying I have no control over my life,” Klimanski added, “I could be in here forever. We’re talking about a war that could go on forever. So poor old Marc Hall could possibility be in the military forever. I see this as an issue of political speech. The military may not like what they’re hearing, but that’s what it is. There are people in the military saying their being in it is/was wrong, and they want out.”

“They are sending him to Iraq just to punish him,” Klimaski believes. “Not that they need to do that to conduct a court martial. They are trying to find any which way to inflict punishment on Marc.”

Hall’s supporters also say that it is highly unlikely that his current military lawyer will be available to deploy at a moment’s notice.

“He will get a new military lawyer who is probably very busy and won’t have time to build a proper defence,” said Klimaski, “They are trying to stack the deck. It is illegal to ship him to Iraq or Kuwait, but who is going to contest it? You would have to go to Iraq to contest it. They know that they are not going to have a civilian lawyer out there. They are just trying to punish him without due process.”

At the time of this writing, Hall was awaiting his being shipped to the Middle East, which could happen any time.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas, Dec 11 2009 (IPS)

With a military health care system over-stretched by two ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, more soldiers are deciding to go absent without leave (AWOL) in order to find treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Eric Jasinski enlisted in the military in 2005, and deployed to Iraq in October 2006 as an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Army. He collected intelligence in order to put together strike packets – where air strikes would take place.

Upon his return to the U.S. after his tour, Jasinski was suffering from severe PTSD from what he did and saw in Iraq, remorse and guilt for the work he did that he knows contributed to the loss of life in Iraq.

“What I saw and what I did in Iraq caused my PTSD,” Jasinski, 23-years-old, told IPS during a phone interview, “Also, I went through a divorce – she left right before I deployed – and my grandmother passed away when I was over there, so it was all super rough on me.”

In addition, he lost a friend in Iraq, and another of his friends lost his leg due to a roadside bomb attack.

Upon returning home in December 2007, Jasinski tried to get treatment via the military. He was self-medicating by drinking heavily, and an over- burdened military mental health counsellor sent him to see a civilian doctor, who diagnosed him with severe PTSD.

“I went to get help, but I had an 8 hour wait to see one of five doctors. But after several attempts, finally I got a periodic check up and I told that counsellor what was happening, and he said they’d help me… but I ended up getting a letter that instructed me to go see a civilian doctor, and she diagnosed me with PTSD,” Jasinski explained, “Then, I was taking the medications and they were helping, because I thought I was to get out of the Army in February 2009 when my contract expired.”

As the date approached, a problem arose.

“In late 2008 they stop-lossed me, and that pushed me over the edge,” Jasinski told IPS, “They were going to send me back to Iraq the next month.”

During his pre-deployment processessing “they gave me a 90-day supply of meds to get me over to Iraq, and I saw a counsellor during that period, and I told him “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I go back to Iraq.”

“He asked if I was suicidal,” Jasinski explained, “and I said not right now, I’m not planning on going home and blowing my brains out. He said, ‘well, you’re good to go then.’ And he sent me on my way. I knew at that moment, when they finalised my paperwork for Iraq, that there was no way I could go back with my untreated PTSD. I needed more help.”

When Jasinski went on his short pre-deployment leave break, he went AWOL, where he remained out of service until Dec. 11, when he returned to turn himself in to authorities at Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas.

“He has heavy duty PTSD and never would have gone AWOL if he’d gotten the help he needed from the military,” James Branum, Jasinski’s civilian lawyer who accompanied him to Fort Hood told IPS. “This case highlights the need of the military to provide better mental health care for its soldiers.”

Branum, who is also co-chair of the Military Law Task Force, added, “Our hope is that his unit won’t court-martial him, but puts him in a warrior transition unit where they will evaluate him to either treat him or give him a medical discharge. He’d be safe there, and eventually, they’d give him a medical discharge because his PTSD symptoms are so severe.”

He’s turning himself in “because he is not a flight risk and wants to take responsibility for what he’s done,” Branum stressed.

“It’s been a year, I want to get on with my life and go to college and become a social worker to help people,” Jasinski said of why he is turning himself in to the military at this time. “I want to get on with life, and I don’t want to hide.”

Kernan Manion is a board-certified psychiatrist, who treated Marines returning from war who suffer from PTSD and other acute mental problems born from their deployments, at Camp Lejeune – the largest Marine base on the East Coast.

While he was engaged in this work, Manion warned his superiors of the extent and complexity of the systemic problems, and he was deeply worried about the possibility of these leading to violence on the base and within surrounding communities.

“If not more Fort Hoods, Camp Liberties, soldier fratricide, spousal homicide, we’ll see it individually in suicides, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, family dysfunction, in formerly fine young men coming back and saying, as I’ve heard so many times, ‘I’m not cut out for society. I can’t stand people. I can’t tolerate commotion. I need to live in the woods,’” Manion explained to IPS. “That’s what we’re going to have. Broken, not contributing, not functional members of society. It infuriates me – what they are doing to these guys, because it’s so ineptly run by a system that values rank and power more than anything else – so we’re stuck throwing money into a fragmented system of inept clinics and the crisis goes on.”

“It’s not just that we’re going to have an immensity of people coming back, but the system itself is thwarting their effective treatment,” Manion explained.

According to the Army, every year from 2006 onwards there has been a record number of reported and confirmed suicides, including in 2009.

There has also been an escalation of soldier-on-soldier violence, as the Nov. 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Hassan indicates. In 2008 there was also a record number of suicides for the Marine Corps.

Jasinski’s case is representative of a growing number of soldiers returning from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan who are going AWOL when they are unable to get proper mental health care treatment from the military for their PTSD.

A 2008 Rand Corporation report revealed that at least 300,000 veterans returning from both wars had been diagnosed with severe depression or PTSD.

Jaskinski’s experience with the military has inspired him to offer advice for other soldiers who need PTSD treatment but are not receiving it.

“Do not, do not let a 5-10 minute review by a military doctor determine if you go to Iraq,” he told IPS. “Even if you have to pay out of pocket, go civilian to a doctor… the military mental health sector is so overwhelmed, they won’t take care of you. Go see a civilian, and hopefully that therapist will help you… even then I’m not sure that will help… but you have to take that chance.”

When asked what he feels the military needs to do in order to rectify this problem, he said: “A total overhaul of the mental health sector in the military is needed… we had nine psychiatrists at our centre, and that’s simply not enough staff, they are going to get burned out, after seeing 50 soldiers each in one day. We need an overhaul of the entire system, and more, good psychiatrists, not those just coming for a job, but good, experienced mental health professionals need to be involved.”

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas, Dec 7 2009 (IPS)

Kernan Manion, a psychiatrist who was hired last January to treat Marines returning from war who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other acute mental health problems borne from their deployments, fears more soldier-on-soldier violence without radical changes in the current soldier health care system.

Working for a personnel-recruiting company which was contracted by the Defence Department at Camp Lejeune, Manion became alarmed at the military’s inability to give sufficient treatment to returning soldiers. He was also concerned by their reports of outright abuse meted out by some commanders against lower-ranking soldiers who sought help.

Manion told IPS that last April two Marines urgently sought his help soon after the clinic opened at 7am. They told him, “One of these guys is liable to come back [from Iraq or Afghanistan] with a loaded weapon and open fire.”

This episode is just one that is indicative of pervasive and worsening systemic problems afflicting a military mental health care system that is overburdened, overstressed, under-staffed, and ill equipped, but one that, according to Manion. Care is also administered by career military officers who are “ill- trained to provide the complex psychiatric expertise necessary to effectively treat psychologically impaired soldiers.”

Manion explained to IPS that upon returning home, troops suffering from myriad new-onset deployment related mental health problems were flooding the available resources. When they did come in, they had to bear the brunt of pervasive harassment, and oftentimes outright psychological abuse from Marine Corps superiors who refused to acknowledge the validity, much less the severity of their problems.

“I saw previously strong Marines, people who were now very fragile – who were broken by two or more deployments – come back to be squashed by their commanders, who told them they were “goddamn losers”,” Manion told IPS.

Manion went on to warn his superiors of the widespread systemic problems – he informed them that he was alarmed at the possibility of these leading to violence on the base.

Rather than being praised for his series of increasingly urgent memos on the impending disaster, Manion was fired by the contractor that hired him. While a spokeswoman for the firm says it released Manion at the behest of the Navy, the Navy preferred not to comment on this story.

Chuck Luther is a two-tour Iraq war veteran and a former sergeant who served 12 years in the military. He is also the founder and director of “The Soldier’s Advocacy Group of Disposable Warriors,” and lives in Killeen, nearby Fort Hood, where he used to be based.

Luther told IPS that he is working on 20 cases of soldiers suffering from PTSD who have been either maltreated by their commanders, have not been given proper treatment for their PTSD, or both.

He hopes to avoid another disaster like that which occurred on Nov. 5, when Major Nidal Hassan – suffering from a combination of secondary trauma and dealing with major ongoing harassment for being a Muslim – went on a shooting spree that killed 13 soldiers, and wounded dozens more.

“The ground has been laid for another crisis, another shooting… it’s volatile here, nothing has been resolved,” Luther told IPS, “The average Joe on the street thinks things are resolved here, but they are anything but resolved. We are primed to have more soldier on soldier violence if something doesn’t change right away.”

Manion holds deep concern for the future of both those treating traumatised soldiers, and the soldiers themselves.

“If not more Fort Hoods, Camp Liberties, soldier fratricide, spousal homicide, we’ll see it individually in suicides, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, family dysfunction, in formerly fine young men coming back and saying, as I’ve heard so many times, “I’m not cut out for society. I can’t stand people. I can’t tolerate commotion. I need to live in the woods.” That’s what we’re going to have. Broken, not contributing, not functional, members of society,” Manion explained.

In 2008, according to the Marine Corps, at least 42 Marines committed suicide, and at least 146 others attempted to do so.

An example of what Manion and Luther are concerned about is U.S. Army Specialist Lateef Al-Saraji, a decorated combat veteran, who came back from the occupation of Iraq with severe PTSD.

When Saraji returned to the U.S., it took him months to get an appointment with a counsellor on his base. He was then referred to an off-base psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with severe PTSD.

In an email to Luther, Saraji wrote that he “felt that the Army did not care about me and my superiors did not seem to care. On Jul. 1 the psychologist, Mr. Leach, wrote a letter recommending I have 2 weeks off.”

Rather than his commander, Sergeant 1st Class Duncan, follow the recommendation of Leach, Saraji was accused of going absent without leave and told he would not be given the 2 weeks off, along with being written up.

“I got too depressed,” Saraji wrote of his experience, “I was going to kill myself. I was depressed and tired of the racism and prejudice that I was receiving. I was talking on the phone with the Chaplain and he heard me cock my gun.”

Luckily, very shortly thereafter three officers appeared at his door and took him to nearby Fort Hood, where he was admitted into a psychiatric unit for a week. From there he was transferred to a facility in Wichita Falls for three weeks, where he was jumped by five soldiers who harassed him and called him a “towel head” and “sand nigger.” He was moved to a different floor of that hospital, but wrote, “I was afraid for my safety so I tried to run away from the hospital.”

Saraji returned to Fort Hood, only to find Duncan writing him up yet again. According to Saraji, when Duncan learned Saraji had nearly attempted suicide, he coolly told Saraji that he should go kill himself.

“Either Duncan was about to end up injured, or Saraji was going to injure himself,” Luther, who is appalled at Saraji’s treatment by his commander, told IPS, “These lower level commanders continue to intimidate and harass these soldiers, even soldiers who want to be deployed. Saraji had even offered to go back to Iraq. When you go find these guys getting kicked out for misconduct- you’ll find that prior to this you had commanders pushing them, punishing them, and harassing them, then they break.”

The warnings of Luther and Manion have already proven prophetic.

On Nov. 22, Killeen police reported that Fort Hood soldier, Army Spc. David Middlebrooks, was stabbed to death. The next day, 22-year-old Joshua Wyatt, another Fort Hood soldier, was shot to death in his residence. The killers of both soldiers are alleged to be Fort Hood soldiers as well.

Killings involving Fort Hood soldiers have been commonplace in recent years, even prior to the mass killing on Nov. 5. In the years leading up to that event, soldiers from Fort Hood were involved in the deaths of at least seven people in the previous five years alone, several of these incidents being soldier-on- soldier violence.

Taking one of these as an example, in Sep. 2008, Spc. Jody Wirawan fatally shot 1st Lt. Robert Fletcher. When Killeen police arrived, Wirawan proceeded to commit suicide.

In addition, Luther told IPS that at least two soldiers at Fort Hood have attempted suicide since Nov. 5.

And the killings are not limited to Fort Hood.

In upstate New York in the town of Leray, on the outskirts of Fort Drum, home of the 10th Mountain Division, between Nov. 29 and 30, soldiers Waide James and Diego Valbuena were murdered by Joshua Hunter, another Fort Drum soldier, according to Jefferson County Sheriff John Burns.

Both victims died of multiple stab wounds.

On Sep. 29, five weeks before the massacre at Fort Hood, Manion sent a letter to President Barack Obama.

Manion’s letter stated, “Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I have never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness – literally, a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines, deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experiences.”

The letter went on to explain how he had, over the previous six months, raised serious concerns “about several very dangerous inadequacies of the clinics [at Camp Lejune] operations as well as recurring incidents of significant psychological abuse of Marines who were seeking our care.”

The doctor warned President Obama that his experience at Camp Lejeune “represents a more pervasive problem at Camp Lejeune and perhaps even throughout the institutional culture of the military.”

Seeing the clear potential for the impending disaster of soldier-on-soldier violence as a result of untreated PTSD, Manion’s letter continued with a sense of urgency: “Mr. President, given what I’ve witnessed and personally experienced, I think that, beyond the immediate issue of my firing and my patients’ care, it’s vital that these flaws be named and examined.”

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Nov 16 2009 (IPS)

According to a soldiers’ advocacy group at Fort Hood, the U.S. base where an army psychiatrist has been charged with killing 13 people and wounding 30 in a Nov. 5 rampage, the official suicide figures provided by the Army are “definitely” too low.

Chuck Luther served 12 years in the military and is a veteran of two deployments to Iraq, where he was a reconnaissance scout in the 1st Cavalry Division. The former sergeant was based at Fort Hood, where he lives today.

“I see the ugly,” Luther told IPS. “I see soldiers beating their wives and trying to kill themselves all the time, and most folks don’t want to look at this, including the military.”

Luther, who in 2007 became the founder and director of the Soldier’s Advocacy Group of Disposable Warriors, knows about these types of internal problems in the military because he has been through many of them himself.

Luther told IPS that he believes the real number of soldiers at Fort Hood committing suicide is being dramatically underreported by the military.

“There are suicides of active-duty troops occurring regularly both on and off base,” Luther said. “One of them I knew personally since I served with him in Iraq and he was one of my soldiers, and they still have him listed as under investigation for suicide.”

“From what I know right now, there are at least three suicides they are not reporting at all. Most notably, there is a soldier who committed suicide that the Army confirmed through a press conference, and this is not being reported, and I’m working with the Pentagon to try to find out why that is not being reported,” he said. “The Army won’t even release his name.”

Yet Luther believes the situation is even worse.

“I definitely believe there are more than these. If this is what they’ve hidden from us that we know of, we can rest assured there are many, many more than this. We filed a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] to get information from them [Army], but they bog you down in red tape,” he said.

Due to the military’s continued attempts to mask the true number of suicides in the ranks, along with an ongoing refusal to make the radical policy changes necessary to properly treat soldiers and psychiatric care providers exposed to secondary post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Luther fears the worst for the future.

“There will be more 5 November [referencing the recent Fort Hood tragedy] attacks on fellow soldiers, and they will likely be even more drastic,” he said.

“Everybody has to outdo someone, so the next are likely to be worse. Violence breeds violence. I was trained to be very violent in combat as a scout…we killed or detained Iraqis before anyone else got there. Two months ago I warned the Army’s Chain of Command that before we had an attack by a soldier on other troops when they come home, we needed to make some dramatic changes.”

At the time of the interview, one week after army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan’s shooting rampage left 13 dead and over 30 wounded at Fort Hood, Luther informed IPS that in the previous three days at Fort Hood, “I’ve heard commanders tell soldiers requesting psychological help that they are full of crap and don’t have PTSD…so if we can’t implement these needed changes quickly and rapidly we are going to have more loss of life on U.S. soil by soldiers killing other soldiers.”

While not on the scale of the recent shooting incident, several other killings by soldiers have been reported at Fort Hood over the last two years.

According to official military statistics, Fort Hood already suffers the highest number of suicides among Army installations since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. While Luther believes the number is far higher, Army officials at Fort Hood admit to at least 10 suicides on the base from January to July of this year, and at least 75 “confirmed” suicides since 2003.

Several years of repeated war-zone deployments are taking their toll, as Army personnel are experiencing record rates of PTSD, depression, other mental health problems, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicides.

According to the Army Suicide Event Report, a total of 99 soldiers killed themselves in 2006, the highest rate of military suicides in the 26 years the military has been keeping statistics on suicides. More than a quarter of them were by troops in combat postings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The figure does not include post-discharge suicides by military personnel.

In 2007, at least 115 suicides were reported by the Army, another record. Last year set another record, with at least 133 reported suicides, in addition to there being a record number of suicides in the Marine Corps that year.

The suicide rate for the Army for 2008 was calculated roughly at 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, which for the first time since the Vietnam War is higher than the adjusted civilian rate.

Thus far, 2009 is on pace to set another record for the number of suicides in the Army.

Private Michael Kern, an active-duty Iraq war veteran who is based at Fort Hood, served in Iraq from March 2007 to March 2008.

On Nov. 9, four days after the shooting spree at Fort Hood, Kern told IPS, “The 20th Engineering Battalion was hit hard in this rampage. They are scheduled to deploy in January to Afghanistan, and lost a lot of good folks on Thursday [Nov. 5]. I personally know a soldier in that Battalion who attempted suicide last night.”

Mental health problems and suicide appear to now be systemic in the military.

By October 2007, data within the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicated that approximately 12 percent of combat troops in Iraq and 17 percent of those in Afghanistan were coping by taking prescription antidepressants and/or sleeping pills to cope.

In 2008, the Daily Telegraph of London reported that two out of five suicide victims among troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found to be on antidepressants.

In April 2008, the RAND Corporation released a stunning report revealing, “Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan – 300,000 in all – report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment.”

A 2008 court case in California revealed a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) email that revealed 1,000 veterans who are receiving care from the VA are attempting suicide every single month, and 18 veterans kill themselves daily.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
VENTURA, California, Nov 13 2009 (IPS)

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas.

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson with her son, Kamani. Credit: Courtesy of Alexis Hutchinson

Hutchinson has been threatened with a court martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan on Sunday, Nov. 15. She has been attempting to find someone to take care of her child, Kamani, while she is deployed overseas, but to no avail.

According to the family care plan of the U.S. Army, Hutchinson was allowed to fly to California and leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes of Oakland.

However, after a week of caring for the child, Hughes realised she was unable to care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister.

In late October, Angelique Hughes told Hutchinson and her commander that she would be unable to care for Kamani after all. The Army then gave Hutchinson an extension of time to allow her to find someone else to care for Kamani. Meanwhile, Hughes brought Kamani back to Georgia to be with his mother.

However, 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 not having found anyone to care for her child.

Faced with this choice, 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.

Currently, Hutchinson is scheduled to fly to Afghanistan on Sunday for a special court martial, where she then faces up to one year in jail.

Hutchinson’s civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, told IPS, “The core issue is that they are asking her to make an inhumane choice. She did not have a complete family care plan, meaning she did not find someone to provide long-term care for her child. She’s required to have a complete family care plan, and was told she’d have an extension, but then they changed it on her.”

Asked why she believes the military revoked Hutchinson’s extension, Sussman responded, “I think they didn’t believe her that she was unable to find someone to care for her infant. They think she’s just trying to get out of her deployment. But she’s just trying to find someone she can trust to take care of her baby.”

Hutchinson’s mother has flown to Georgia to retrieve the baby, but is overwhelmed and does not feel able to provide long-term care for the child.

According to Sussman, the soldier needs more time to find someone to care for her infant, but does not as yet have friends or family able to do so.

Sussman says Hutchinson told her, “It is outrageous that they would deploy a single mother without a complete and current family care plan. I would like to find someone I trust who can take care of my son, but I cannot force my family to do this. They are dealing with their own health issues.”

Sussman told IPS that the Army’s JAG attorney, Captain Ed Whitford, “told me they thought her chain of command thought she was trying to get out of her deployment by using her child as an excuse.” ‘

Major Gallagher, of Hutchinson’s unit, also told Sussman that he did not believe it was a real family crisis, and that Hutchinson’s “mother should have been able to take care of the baby”.

In addition, according to Sussman, a First Sergeant Gephart “told me he thought she [Hutchinson] was pulling her family care plan stuff to get out of her deployment”.

“To me it sounds completely bogus,” Sussman told IPS, “I think what they are actually going to do is have her spend her year deployment in Afghanistan, then court martial her back here upon her return. This would do irreparable harm to her child. I think they are doing this to punish her, because they think she is lying.”

Sussman explained that she believes the best possible outcome is for the Army to either give Hutchinson the extension they had said she would receive so that she can find someone to care for her infant, or barring this, to simply discharge her so she can take care of her child.

Nevertheless, Hutchinson is simply asking for the time extension to complete her family care plan, and not to be discharged.

“I’m outraged by this,” Sussman told IPS, “I’ve never gone to the media with a military client, but this situation is just completely over the top.”

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
PHOENIX, Arizona, Nov 6 2009 (IPS)

While investigators probe for a motive behind the mass shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas Thursday, in which an army psychiatrist is suspected of killing 13 people, military personnel at the base are in shock as the incident “brings the war home”.

“Fort Hood is pretty much a ghost town right now,” Specialist Michael Kern, an active duty veteran of the Iraq war, told IPS by telephone. “Most units gave their soldiers the day off. Security is heightened all over. There are soldiers on guard everywhere. In my opinion, they are afraid of another attack.”

Kern, who is based at Fort Hood, served in Iraq from March 2007 to March 2008.

“We’re all in shock,” Kern added, “Every single person that I’ve talked to is in shock. I’m surprised this hits so close to home, but at the same time, I knew something like this was going to happen given what else is happening – the war is coming home, and something needs to be done.”

“Innocent civilians are being wounded and killed here at home by soldiers, and this is completely unacceptable,” he said.

The alleged gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, entered a Soldier Readiness Center (SRC), where troops get medical evaluations and complete paperwork just prior to being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and opened fire with two non-military issued handguns.

Maj. Hasan killed 13 people, 12 of them soldiers, and wounded over 30 others, before being shot four times by a civilian police officer. Hasan is now in stable condition in a local hospital, where he is in the custody of military authorities.

Col. John Rossi, a spokesman at Fort Hood, told reporters that Hasan was “stable and in one of our civilian hospitals”. Rossi added, “He’s on a ventilator.”

Maj. Hasan joined the army just out of high school and is 39 years old. He had counseled wounded war veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, and was transferred to Fort Hood in April. He had recently received orders to deploy to Afghanistan.

His cousin, Nader Hasan, has said in media interviews that Maj. Hasan was very reluctant to be deployed overseas and had agitated not to be sent. “We’ve known over the last five years that was probably his worst nightmare,” he said.

Responding to the allegations in the media that the attack was based on his Muslim faith, Kern told IPS that he did not know of anyone on the base who felt this was the case.

“We all wear the same uniform here, it’s all green. I’ve seen the news, but most folks here assume it’s just a soldier that snapped,” Kern explained. “I have not talked to anyone who thinks what he did has anything to do with him being a Muslim. There are thousands of Muslims serving with dignity in the U.S. military, in all four branches.”

Fort Hood, located in central Texas, is one of the largest U.S. military bases in the world. It contains up to 50,000 soldiers, and is one of the most heavily deployed to both occupations.

Tragically, Fort Hood has also born much of the brunt from its heavy involvement in both occupations. Fort Hood soldiers have accounted for more suicides than any other Army post since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In this year alone, the base is averaging over 10 suicides each month – at least 75 have been recorded through July of this year alone.

In a strikingly similar incident on May 11, 2009, a U.S. soldier gunned down five fellow soldiers at a stress-counseling centre at a U.S .base in Baghdad.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a news conference at the Pentagon at the time that the shootings occurred in a place where “individuals were seeking help”.

Mullen added, “It does speak to me, though, about the need for us to redouble our efforts, the concern in terms of dealing with the stress… It also speaks to the issue of multiple deployments.”

Commenting on the incident in nearly parallel terms, U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said that the Pentagon needs to redouble its efforts to relieve stress caused by repeated deployments in war zones that is further exacerbated by limited time at home in between deployments.

The condition described by Mullen and Gates is what veteran health experts often refer to as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

While soldiers returning home are routinely involved in shootings, suicide, and other forms of self-destructive violent behaviours as a direct result of their experiences in Iraq, we have yet to see an event of this magnitude on a base in the U.S.

To many, the shocking story of a soldier killing five of his comrades does not come as a surprise considering that the military has, for years now, been sending troops with untreated PTSD back into the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to an Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center analysis, reported in the Denver Post in August 2008, more than “43,000 service members – two-thirds of them in the Army or Army Reserve – were classified as non-deployable for medical reasons three months before they deployed to Iraq.

In April 2008, the RAND Corporation released a stunning report revealing that, “Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan – 300,000 in all – report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment.”

President Barack Obama, speaking during an event at the Department of the Interior in Washington, said that the mass shooting at Fort Hood was a “horrific outburst of violence”. He added: “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an army base on American soil.”

Victor Agosto, an Iraq war veteran who was discharged from the military after publicly refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, has had firsthand experience with the SRC at Fort Hood, where he too was based.

“I knew there would be a confrontation when I was there, because the only reason to do that process is to deploy,” Agosto, speaking to IPS near Fort Hood, explained.

Agosto was court-martialed for refusing an order to go to the SRC to prepare to deploy to Afghanistan.

“I was court-martialed for refusing the order to SRC in that very same building. I didn’t enter the building, but I didn’t go in because I was refusing the process,” Agosto continued. “It’s a pretty important place in my life, so it’s interesting to me that this happened there.”

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas, May 26 2009 (IPS)

"It’s a matter of what I’m willing to live with," Specialist Victor Agosto of the U.S. Army, who is refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan, explained to IPS. "I’m not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong."

U.S. Army Specialist Victor Agosto, a veteran of the U.S. occupation of Iraq who is refusing deployment to Afghanistan. Credit: Courtesy of Victor Agosto

While in Iraq, Agosto never left his base, located in northern Iraq.

"I never had any traumatic experiences, never fired my weapon," Agosto told IPS in a phone interview. "I mostly worked in information technology, working on computers and keeping the network functioning well. But it was in Iraq that I turned against the occupations. Through my reading, and watching what was going on, I started to feel very guilty."

Agosto added, "What I did there, I know I contributed to death and human suffering. It’s hard to quantify how much I caused, but I know I contributed to it."

Having served three years and nine months in the U.S. Army, Agosto was to complete his contract and be discharged on Aug. 3. But due to his excellent record of service and accrued leave, he was to be released the end of June. Nevertheless, due to the stop-loss programme, the Army decided to deploy him to Afghanistan anyway.

Stop-loss is a programme the military uses to keep soldiers enlisted beyond the terms of their contracts. Since Sep. 11, 2001, more than 140,000 troops have had tours extended by stop-loss.

A copy of his Counseling Form from the Army, dated May 1, reads, "You will deploy in support of OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] on or about [XXXXX] with 57th ESB. This is a direct order from your Company Commander CPT Michael J. Pederson."

Agosto posted copies of the Counseling Statements issued by the Army on his Facebook page. Counseling Statements outline actions taken by the Army to discipline Agosto for his refusal to obey a direct order from his company commander.

On one of them, dated May 1, Agosto’s written statement appears: "There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect."

In another, dated May 18, he wrote: "I will not obey any orders I deem to be immoral or illegal."

On that day, Agosto was ordered to get his medical records in preparation to deploy to Afghanistan. He refused to do so. The Army threatened to take punitive measures, but Agosto wrote on the Counseling Statement, "I am not going to Afghanistan. I will not take part in SRP [Soldier Readiness Processing]."

If Agosto continues to refuse orders, he almost assuredly will face court martial, and likely jail time.

When IPS asked Agosto if he is willing to take whatever consequences the Army is prepared to mete out, he replied, "Yes. I’m fully prepared for this. I have concluded that the wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] are not going to be ended by politicians or people at the top. They are not responsive to the people, they are responsive to corporate America."

Agosto added, "The only way to make them responsive to the needs of the people is if soldiers won’t fight their wars, and if soldiers won’t fight their wars, the wars won’t happen. I hope I’m setting an example for other soldiers."

Agosto has overtly refused to follow any order that has anything to do with his taking an action that would support the occupation of Afghanistan. For a time, according to Agosto, he was given simple orders to clean the motor pool, or pull weeds.

"They switched that recently," he told IPS, "I’ve continued to be fairly defiant, so on Tuesday I have to meet with Trial Defense Services, which then begins the process of getting an Article 15, which is movement towards being court-martialed, if these reprimands continue."

"If I take the Article 15, I’ll take a reduction in rank and pay. I don’t’ know what is going to happen. I agreed to sweep the motor pool and pull weeds, but nothing else that I feel directly supports the war. I’m not going to follow orders I’m not comfortable with."

Agosto’s case is not unique. The group Courage to Resist, based in Oakland, California, actively engages in assisting soldiers who refuse to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.

"Although the efforts of Courage to Resist are primarily focused on supporting public GI resisters, the organization also strives to provide political, emotional, and material support to all military objectors critical of our government's current policies of empire," reads a portion of the group's mission statement.

IPS spoke with Adam Szyper-Seibert, an office manager and counselor with Courage to Resist.

"Currently we are actively supporting over 50 military resisters like Victor Agosto," Szyper-Seibert told IPS, "They are all over the world, including André Shepherd in Germany, and several people in Canada. We are getting five to six calls a week just about the IRR [Individual Ready Reserve] recall alone."

U.S. Army Specialist André Shepherd, who went AWOL after serving in Iraq, has applied for asylum in Germany after refusing military service because he is morally opposed to the occupation of Iraq.

The IRR is composed of former military personnel who still have time remaining on their enlistment agreements but have returned to civilian life. They are eligible to be called up in "states of emergency." The Army is currently undertaking the largest IRR recall since 2004, despite the recent inauguration of a so-called anti-war president.

Szyper-Seibert said that the number of soldiers contacting Courage to Resist has been increasing dramatically in the last year, and particularly in recent months.

"The number of soldiers contacting us is increasing," he explained, "With five to six IRR’s contacting us a week, plus others going absent without leave [AWOL], the numbers are all climbing, as compared to a year ago. Since May 2008, we’ve had a 200 percent jump in how many soldiers are contacting us."

According to Courage to Resist, there have been at least 15,000 IRR call-ups since Sep. 11, 2001, for deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sgt. Travis Bishop, who served 14 months in Baghdad and is also stationed at Fort Hood, recently went AWOL when his unit deployed to Afghanistan.

Like Agosto, Bishop feels it is immoral for him to deploy to support an occupation he morally opposes.

"I love my country, but I believe that this particular war is unjust, unconstitutional and a total abuse of our nation’s power and influence," Bishop’s blog reads, "And so, in the next few days, I will be speaking with my lawyer, and taking actions that will more than likely result in my discharge from the military, and possible jail time… and I am prepared to live with that."

The reason he made this decision is addressed in his blog.

"My father said, ‘Do only what you can live with, because every morning you have to look at your face in the mirror when you shave. Ten years from now, you’ll still be shaving the same face.’ If I had deployed to Afghanistan, I don’t think I would have been able to look into another mirror again."

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas, United States, Apr 29 2009 (IPS)

Sexual assault of women serving in the U.S. military, while brought to light in recent reports, has a long tradition in that institution.

U.S. army recruiting poster from 1944. Women are no longer targeted separately. Credit: Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC

Maricela Guzman served in the Navy from 1998 to 2002 as a computer technician on the island of Diego Garcia, and later in Naples, Italy. She was raped while in boot camp, but was too scared to talk about the assault for the rest of her time in the military.

In her own words she, "survived by becoming a workaholic. Fortunately or unfortunately the military took advantage of this, and I was much awarded as a soldier for my work ethic."

Guzman decided to dissociate from the military on witnessing the way it treated the native population in Diego Garcia. Post discharge, her life became unmanageable. The effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from her rape had taken a heavy toll.

After undergoing a divorce, a failed suicide attempt and homelessness, she moved in with her parents. A chance encounter with a female veteran at a political event in Los Angeles prompted her to contact the veteran’s administration (VA) for help. She began seeing a therapist there who diagnosed her with PTSD from her rape.

She told IPS that the VA denied her claim nevertheless, "Because they said I couldn’t prove it … since I had not brought it up when it happened and also because I had not shown any deviant behaviour while in the service. I was outraged and felt compelled to talk about what happened."

Two testimonies April Fitzsimmons served in the Air Force from 1985 to 1989, as an intelligence analyst and intelligence briefer for a two-star general. Early in her military career, another solider sexually assaulted her. Nineteen years old at the time of her rape, Fitzsimmons reported the assault, and named her perpetrator, who was removed from the base. However, she declined the offer of counselling “because there was a stigma attached to it,” she told IPS. “Those who seek counselling are perceived to be at risk, as being too weak and vulnerable and it would have meant forfeiting my top-secret clearance to keep military intelligence classified,” she explained. Another reason for maintaining silence on the matter was that Fitzsimmons was declared “airman (sic) of the year,” in the European command. “I didn’t want to lose that,” she says, “I wanted the whole thing to go away.” Fitzsimmons created a one-woman play, Need to Know, which has been running for six years. In the play, she addresses her own sexual assault in the military. When news of rapes and sexual assaults by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, against both other soldiers and Iraqis began to surface, Fitzsimmons became more active. “After reading about the 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza, who was raped by several soldiers, and about Suzanne Swift, a soldier who after being raped by another U.S. soldier went AWOL (absent without leave) rather than redeploy with the command that was responsible for allowing the rape to occur, I was convinced that there was a cycle of sexual violence in the military that was neither being seen nor addressed,” she says. It is not difficult to ascertain the reason for so few sexual assaults being reported in the military. Jen Hogg of the New York Army National Guard told IPS, “I helped a woman report a sexual assault while she was in basic training. She was grabbed between the legs from behind while going up stairs. She was not able to pinpoint the person who did it.” Hogg explained that her friend was afraid to report the incident to her drill sergeant, and went on to explain why, which also sheds light on why so many women opt not to report being sexually assaulted. “During training, the position of authority the drill sergeant holds makes any and all reporting a daunting task, and most people are scared to even approach him or her,” Hogg told IPS, “In this case, the drill sergeant’s response was swift but caused resentment towards the female that made the report, because her identity was not hidden from males who were punished as a whole for the one.” The incident displays another tactic used in the military to suppress women’s reportage of being sexually assaulted – that of not respecting their anonymity, which opens them up to further assaults. “After this incident many of the males said harassing things to her as they passed her during training, so much so that she regretted having addressed the issue,” Hogg continued, “You can be ostracised as the woman who had dared to speak up. Women willing to speak up are trained to shut up, which results in an atmosphere of silence. After my experiences in basic and advanced individual training I never reported an incident again.” Hogg herself faced verbal sexual harassment. “When I removed my protective top in the heat I would often hear comments such as ‘where you been hiding them puppies’ in reference to my breasts.” Based on her friends’ experience, Hogg did not even consider reporting. To make matters worse, according to Department of Defense statistics, 84-85 percent of soldiers convicted of rape or sexual assault leave the military with honourable discharges. Not only are they not penalised, they are honoured.

Like countless others, Guzman learned early that the culture of the military promoted silence about sexual assault. Her experience over the years has convinced her that sexual violence is a systemic problem in the military.

"It has been happening since women were allowed into the service and will continue to happen after Iraq and Afghanistan," Guzman told IPS, "Through the gossip mill we would hear of women who had reported being raped. No confidentiality was maintained nor any protection given to them making them susceptible to fresh attacks."

"The boys’ club culture is strong and the competition exclusive," Guzman added, "To get ahead women have to be better than men. That forces many not to report rape, because it is a blemish and can ruin your career."

She is not hopeful of any radical change in policy anytime soon, but, "One good thing that has come out of this war is that people want to talk about this now."

More than 190,000 female soldiers have served thus far in Iraq and Afghanistan on the front lines, often having to confront sexual assault and harassment from their own comrades in arms.

The VA’s PTSD centre claims that the incidence of rape, assault, and harassment were higher in wartime during the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq than during peacetime. Thus far, the numbers from Iraq show a continuance, and increase, of this disturbing trend.

The military is notorious for its sexist and misogynistic culture. Drill instructors indoctrinate new recruits by routinely calling them "girl," "pussy," "bitch," and "dyke." Pornography is prevalent, and misogynistic rhymes have existed for decades.

Understandably, Department of Defense (DoD) numbers for sexual assaults in the military are far lower than numbers provided by other sources, primarily because the Pentagon only counts rapes that soldiers have officially reported. Even according to the Pentagon, 80 percent of assaults go unreported.

Pentagon spokesperson Cynthia Smith told IPS, "We understand this is very important for everyone to get involved in preventing sexual assault, and are calling on everyone to get involved, step in, and watch each others’ backs."

According to the DoD Report on Sexual Assault in the Military for Fiscal Year 2007, "There were 2,688 total reports of sexual assault involving Military Service Members," of which "The Military Services completed a total of 1,955 criminal investigations on reports made during or prior to FY07."

The criminal investigations yielded the shockingly low number of only 181 courts martial. "We understand that one sex assault is too many in the DoD," Smith told IPS, "We have an office working on prevention and response."

A 1995 study published in the Archives of Family Medicine found that 90 percent of female veterans from the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq and earlier wars had been sexually harassed. A 2003 survey of women veterans from the period encompassing Vietnam and the 1991 Iraq attack, published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, found that 30 percent of the women soldiers said they were raped.

In 2004, a study of veterans from Vietnam and all wars since, published in the journal of Military Medicine, found that 71 percent of the women were sexually assaulted or raped while serving.

At the 2006 National Convention of Veterans for Peace in Seattle, April Fitzsimmons, who early in her career was raped by a soldier, met with 45 other female vets, and began compiling information.

"I asked for a show of hands of women veterans who had been assaulted while on duty, and half the women raised their hands," Fitzsimmons told IPS, "So I knew we had to do something."

She, along with other women veterans like Guzman, founded the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) to help military women who have been victims of sexual violence.

It is an uphill battle for women in the U.S. military to take on the system that clearly represses attempts to change it.

"When victims come forward, they are ostracised, doubted, and isolated from their communities," Fitzsimmons told IPS, "Many of the perpetrators are officers who use their ranks to coerce women to sleep with them. It’s a closely interwoven community, so the perpetrators are safe within the system and can fearlessly move free amongst their victims."

Fitzsimmons shared with IPS a view that underscores the gravity of the problem.

"The crisis is so severe that I’m telling women to simply not join the military because it’s completely unsafe and puts them at risk. Until something changes at the top, no woman should join the military."

* Dahr Jamail is an award-winning independent journalist who writes for IPS.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Mar 6 2009 (IPS)

Prompt medical care is at last on offer in Iraq, for those who can find the dollars for it.

“Why would I want to go to government-run hospitals where there is no care, no functioning instruments, long lines, and in the end the same doctor who treats you there can treat you at a private hospital,” says Mohammed Abbas, 35, an employee at Iraq’s Ministry of Oil.

Abbas, speaking at the private Saint Raphael Hospital in the Karrada area of Baghdad, wanted treatment on time, and was prepared to pay for it. Like him, many are coughing up money for private treatment. When they have money, that is, in an economy with more than 50 percent unemployment.

For medical care, many scramble to find money somehow. “It is a catastrophe at the government-run hospitals,” says Hayder Abud, 30, at the private hospital for a check-up. “When you finally get a doctor to see you there, they are so rushed and sleep deprived, you can’t be sure you are getting proper treatment.”

Most treatment at government hospitals is free. Getting an x-ray at a private hospital may cost 40 dollars. But at a private hospital the job can get done on time.

“Iraq’s Ministry of Health is struggling,” said Khaled, administrative manager at the Saint Raphael Hospital, requesting that his last name not be used. “We have had problems with the Ministry of Health because they are angry at us for treating so many more people nowadays.”

The state medical system is on its knees. It was one of the best in the region before the U.N.-backed economic sanctions for more than 12 years, followed by the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.

Government hospitals are short of doctors. A small increase in pay over the last three years has lured some doctors back, but what they pay cannot match income in the private sector.

On average, a general practitioner in a government hospital earns about 300 dollars a month; a private hospital pays twice or three times that much. More and more doctors are shifting away from government hospitals.

“I and my family were unable to live on the pay I earned at a government hospital,” says Dr. Kubayir Abbas, 34, an anaesthetist. “So I decided to come over to the private sector instead, and now it is much better.”

Dr. Shakir Mahmood Al-Robaei, another anaesthetist, said “it’s better for us to work here than in the public sector. We earn more money, it is safer, and we don’t have to worry about having the right equipment and supplies. When I worked in the public sector, we were short of everything most of the time.”

And so government hospitals continue to run short of doctors, while some private hospitals have a surplus. What has improved since 2007 is that violence against doctors, and even against patients who attend certain hospitals, has dropped notably.

Government hospitals also lack basic supplies such as gauze, rubber gloves, clean needles, surgical instruments and drugs for anaesthesia. Non-medical basics such as clean bedding, disinfectants and air-conditioning are often lacking, even in the largest medical complex in the country, the Baghdad Medical City. Iraqis have for years had to buy their own medicines and even oxygen supplies on the expensive black market.

Corruption within the Ministry of Health, and the near total lack of reconstruction that was promised by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in the first year of the occupation have left Iraq’s healthcare system depleted of resources.

A report ‘Rehabilitation Under Fire’ released last year by the health organisation Medcat said Iraq has only around 9,000 doctors, after most fled the country. That gives a ratio of six doctors for every 10,000 people. The ratio in Britain is 23 to 10,000.

Given the crisis in government medical care, the business of private hospitals is booming. Raphael hospital, which currently has 35 beds and sees on average over 1,000 patients a day, will soon expand to 90 beds and increase its staff.

Dr. Rhamis Mukhtar, the only surgeon for morbid obesity in Iraq, has been working at this private hospital since 2000, while also working at a state hospital. “I’m thinking of moving here full time,” he said. “There are much better supplies, services, and overall care for the patient. This centre is the best for laproscopic surgery in the country.”

For complicated emergency cases, government hospitals are still the best, Dr. Mukhtar said. They have special equipment most smaller private hospitals lack. It has to get very bad for someone before they can hope to get the best out of a government hospital.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Feb 21 2009 (IPS)

Seventy percent of Iraq’s doctors are reported to have fled the war-torn country in the face of death threats and kidnappings. Those who remain live in fear, often in conditions close to house arrest.

Dr. Thana Hekmaytar Credit: Dahr Jamail

Dr. Hekmaytar, a head and neck surgeon, has now been practising at the Saint Raphael Hospital in Baghdad for the last five years.

It is difficult now both as woman and as doctor, she says. Most women are now living in repressive conditions because the government is less secular. And that is besides the chaotic conditions around Iraq.

“It is particularly difficult for female doctors,” Dr. Hekmaytar says. “Large groups in Iraq only want us to stay at home, and certainly not be professionals.”

“We’ve had doctors kidnapped, and so many others have fled,” said Khaleb, a senior manager at the hospital who requested that his last name not be used. He named several doctors who had been kidnapped. This IPS correspondent, he said, was the first media person allowed into the hospital since the U.S. invasion of March 2003.

Doctors and other professionals become targets for kidnapping since they earn more money than most, and so fetch higher ransom.

“I’ve had to ask for security to protect the hospital,” Khaleb said. “After this, I went to Amman and convinced many of our doctors there to return. They did, but now they live in the hospital and never go outside. This has been the case since 2005. Every two months they leave to go visit their families in Jordan.”

Saint Raphael is a 35-bed hospital, but sees more than a thousand patients daily, says Khaleb. “Of our specialist doctors, ten live here full time. In addition, we have three younger doctors living here full time.”

Large concrete blocks restrict entry to the street leading up to the hospital. Iraqi army personnel guard the front door. Everyone entering the hospital is searched.

The hospital is located in the Karrada area of Baghdad, just across the Tigris river from the Green Zone. The neighbourhood is relatively safe by Baghdad standards, although attacks and car bombings still take place.

The hospital is on a side street close to several apartment buildings and private homes. Unlike most government hospitals it is clean and well stocked.

Dr. Hekmaytar is one of the doctors Khaleb persuaded to return to Baghdad. “Of course nobody likes to leave her home country, I was so sad,” she said. “I am grateful to be back, but wish it wasn’t under these difficult circumstances.”

Sitting with several doctors outside an operating room, she told IPS that death threats have never gone away.

“This is common here even now, but was especially so during 2004,” she said, as other doctors nodded in agreement. “Now I live and work in the hospital, and never leave.”

Dr. Hekmaytar, a Christian, received death threats twice. One came by way of a note in an envelope telling her to convert to Islam, or else. The second time she received a note in an envelope instructing her to where hijab. The note was enclosed with a bullet.

Dr. Shakir Mahmood Al-Robaie, an anaesthetist, too lives on the premises of the hospital where he works. “I both live and work here because I was threatened,” he told IPS. “My family is in Jordan.”

The doctor said his family received an envelope containing just a single bullet. After this, he moved his family to Jordan, and then returned to Iraq to get an income for himself and his family.

“Common? These threats are not just common,” said Dr. Jafir Hasily, a surgeon sitting across from Dr. Hekhaytar. “They are routine. This happens all the time.”

The Iraqi government estimates there were 36,000 doctors and medical personnel in Iraq when the U.S. invasion was launched in March 2003. Most escaped to neighbouring Arab countries, especially Jordan and Syria.

In early 2008, the Iraqi Health Ministry said that 628 medical personnel have been killed since 2003. Many believe the real figure is far higher, and that there is additionally a very large number of doctors who have been kidnapped and tortured.

In the absence of the doctors who left, particularly of senior doctors, the medical system is on the brink of collapse. It is short not just of doctors but also of other qualified staff, equipment and drugs. Patients are often forced to buy their own medicines on the black market.

The security situation that led to the exodus of doctors is now somewhat better, but remains unstable.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Feb 19 2009 (IPS)

“We only want a normal life,” says Um Qasim, sitting in a bombed out building in Baghdad. She and others around have been saying that for years.

Nasir Fadlawi at the squatters camp in Baghdad. Credit: Dahr Jamail

Five of her children are girls. Homelessness is not easy for anyone, but it is particularly challenging for women and girls.

“Me and my girls have to be extra careful living this way,” Um Qasim told IPS. “We are tired of always being afraid, because any day, any time, strange men walk through our area, and there is no protection for us. Each day brings a new threat to us, and all the women here.”

She rarely leaves her area, she says. Nor do her girls, for fear of being kidnapped or raped.

“I don’t like being afraid all the time,” says one of Um Qasim’s daughters. “But my mother tells us to always be careful, and I can see her fear, so it scares me.”

The compound, which was the headquarters of former dictator Saddam Hussein’s son Qusay Hussein, was heavily damaged by U.S. air strikes during the invasion in March 2003. Buildings like this became shelters for thousands displaced then and later.

In all 135 families, about 750 people, live in this compound.

“It is living in misery,” says Um Qasim. Home is a bare concrete room shared by eight of her family members. “The government gives us 50 litres of heating and cooking oil each month, but we run out of it very soon, and then we have to try to find money to buy more so we can cook and try to stay warm.”

The bombed building is in a state of total disrepair. Concrete blocks hang precariously from metal bars, many ceilings are partially collapsed, and all of the outer walls are gone.

There is no water, no electricity, no sewage, and no garbage disposal. Piles of garbage, diapers, decaying food scraps and human excrement are scattered around the area.

“We have no water, no money, and no work,” says Ahmed Hussein, 15. “How can a human live in this misery? We are so tired.”

Opportunities to find a way out are few. Unemployment across Iraq is high, between 40-65 percent. And the price of oil, the source of 90 percent of government revenue, has fallen. The government has not much to give out.

Last month the government decided to evict all people who have been squatting in government buildings or on government land since the invasion. Local NGOs estimate that more than 250,000 squatters live on the streets or in such shelters all over Baghdad.

“The Iraqi Cabinet has decided to evict all squatters in or on government property – land, houses, residential buildings or offices. They will be given financial help to find alternative places to live,” said a government statement Jan. 4.

The government gave squatters 60 days from Jan. 1 to leave or face legal action, but later decided to give them more time. No one knows when the next order might come.

“We want help from the Iraqi government,” says Nasir Fadlawi, 48, unofficial manager of Qasim’s compound. “I am asking the government to care for us, as we are the sons and daughters of Iraq. We would not be here if they would help us.”

Fadlawi says most people in the area are either economic refugees, or those displaced from their homes during the sectarian violence that racked Baghdad in 2006. “The Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army often come here and threaten us,” he said. “But we have a right to live.”

Fadlawi says it is difficult to find work or alternative places to live in also because of the corruption. The last time he applied for a job he was asked for 700 dollars. “Where am I going to get that money when I don’t have a job to begin with.”

The government may have to delay plans to build new housing. The Ministry of Displacement and Migration is reported to have postponed some new housing projects until 2010.

“We asked for 40 billion Iraqi dinars (34.2 million dollars) for the ministry’s investment budget but we were told that only 8 billion (6.85 million dollars) could be allocated,” said Ali Shaalan, head of the Ministry’s planning directorate in a statement Jan. 4. “This could prevent us from achieving our goals for this year.”

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) released a report Jan. 1 that estimated there are 1.6 million internally displaced persons in Iraq. The report said that almost two-thirds, just over a million, live in Baghdad, more than half of them women or girls. The report pointed out that displaced women are more prone to rape and other forms of sexual violence.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Feb 11 2009 (IPS)

There is less water now in the Tigris, and it is less clean. The river has fewer fish, and rising fuel and other costs mean they are more costly to catch. It’s not, as Hamza Majit finds, a good time to be a fisher.

Hamza Maji Credit: Dahr Jamail / IPS

“You see the low water level,” Majit said, touching the bottom of the river, just two metres down, with a wooden pole. “We need higher water to hold our nets up. And this is the deepest point in the Tigris in this area. With the water this low, it makes it difficult to catch any fish.”

Plastic bottles, grocery bags and other garbage are now more commonly seen floating down the once clear river. “Fish are a treasure from God, but now so much is preventing us from reaping our treasure,” said Majit.

Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Majit says, it was common to catch several dozen fish daily. Now, “we are lucky to catch ten.”

Now the government too is alarmed.

“The Tigris remains extremely polluted, and this situation continues to worsen,” Minister for the Environment Narmin Othman told IPS. “So many Iraqis are suffering from this. We realise it is a crisis, and we are looking for more ways the government can actively begin to solve the problem.”

The matter is being considered urgently, she said. “We have to do this, because if we don’t, nobody else will, and the suffering will continue. The Tigris is one of Iraq’s treasures, and we must safeguard our treasures.”

The government has been before. “The situation is critical,” Prof. Ratib Mufid, environment expert at Baghdad University, said back in 2007. “The river is gradually being destroyed, and there are no projects to prevent its destruction.”

Since then it has only become worse. The new difficulties begin at the source, and multiply along the way.

“The problem of decreasing water flow starts in Turkey’s Taurus mountains,” Seif Barakah, media officer at the Ministry of Environment had warned, about the same time in 2007. “Between there and Kurdistan, many dams have been built which reduce the water flow. The idea was to prevent floods which over the years affected northern communities, but the consequence can now be seen with nearly half the previous water flow.”

The Tigris flows from the mountains of south-eastern Turkey through Iraq, where it ends up in the Persian Gulf.

Majit has been a fisher since he was 10, and like most fishers on the Tigris, inherited the family business of generations. Two of his children work with him.

Fishing is not just difficult now, but also unpleasant and hazardous. The smell of burning plastic, or at places of raw sewage, is overpowering. And, Majit says, he has been shot at by U.S. soldiers from the Green Zone, whose concrete walls line the banks along one stretch.

Iraqi environmentalists report that the river is contaminated with war waste, oil derivatives, industrial waste, and toxins. “Sometimes I find crude oil on my nets when I pull them up,” Majit said. “The fish also sometimes taste like crude oil.”

Big rubbish heaps have come up on the banks. Dumping garbage in the river was punishable during the days of former dictator Saddam Hussein. Today there is nothing to stop people.

The ripple effect of fish scarcity has inevitably hit the markets. The average cost of a fish has risen from two dollars to eight dollars (8,000 Iraqi Dinars).

“That is too expensive, so fewer people are buying,” says Amar Hamsa, a 25- year-old fish seller. “Business is bad, it’s not a good situation for us nowadays.”

Roast fish was considered a treat once, says Ali Sabri, still in the business though with many empty fire pits around him of vendors who had to abandon business. “Few people in Baghdad can afford this now as they used to.”

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By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Feb 5 2009 (IPS)

Amidst the soaring unemployment in Iraq, the gravediggers have been busy. So busy that officials have no record of the number of graves dug; of the real death toll, that is.

Cemetery manager Abu Ayad Nasir Walid with his logbook of the dead. Credit: Dahr Jamail.

“Twenty-five percent of these were from violence, and another 70 percent were killed by the Mehdi Army (the militia of Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr).” Only a few appeared to have died from natural causes.

“Most of the dead were never logged by anyone,” Ali said, “because we didn’t check death certificates, we just tried to get the bodies into the ground as quickly as possible.”

An Iraqi Army checkpoint was set up outside the vast cemetery a year ago.

“We opened this checkpoint because people were burying the dead and no information was being given to anyone,” a soldier, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told IPS.

“Most of this (lack of reporting the dead), we found, happened during 2006,” the soldier added. “Anyone could be buried here, and nobody would know about it.”

Not far, in the Al-Adhamiya area of Baghdad, what used to be a park is now a cemetery with more than 5,000 graves. According to the manager, most of the dead are never counted.

“Most of the bodies buried here are never reported in the media,” Abu Ayad Nasir Walid, 45, manager of the cemetery told IPS. He has been the manager here since the park was converted into a cemetery amidst the bloodletting from sectarian violence in early 2006.

“I have the name here of the first martyr buried,” Walid said, pointing to a tombstone. “Gaith Al-Samarai, buried on 21 May 2006, he was the sheikh of the Al-Hurria mosque.”

Latif produced the cemetery logbook. “As of this hour, exactly, there are 5,500 bodies in this place. I log their names in my book, but we’ve never had anyone come from the government to ask how many people are here. Nobody in the media nor the Ministry of Health seems to be interested.”

Such graveyards, and there are many, raise questions about the real death toll in Iraq.

The last serious study, by a group of doctors in the U.S. and Iraq, was published in the British peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet on Oct. 11, 2006.

The study said about 655,000 Iraqis (2.5 percent of the population) had been killed as a direct result of the invasion and occupation. The research was carried out on the ground by doctors moving from house to house, questioning families, and examining death certificates.

Homes were surveyed in 47 separated clusters across Iraq. The Lancet says the study, carried out by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore in the U.S., has been validated by four independent experts.

The worst of the violence followed the Feb. 22, 2006 bombing of the Al- Askari shrine in Samarra. The bombing of one of the most sacred Shia mosques in the world sparked sectarian violence that lasted months, with sometimes more than 300 killed in a day.

“During that time we buried 30-40 bodies daily,” Sehel Abud Al-Latif, a gravedigger at the Al-Adhamiya cemetery told IPS. “Often we had to work through the night, otherwise the bodies would just remain outside.”

Some estimates of the death toll have been considerably lower than that of The Lancet. The group Iraq Body Count (IBC), which describes itself as an “ongoing human security project,” estimates the number to be 98,850 as of the time of this writing.

The group says on the methodology: “Deaths in the database are derived from a comprehensive survey of commercial media and NGO-based reports, along with official records that have been released into the public sphere.”

IBC adds that figures are included from “incident-based accounts to figures from hospitals, morgues and other documentary data-gathering agencies.”

The website adds, however, that “IBC’s main sources are information gathering and publishing agencies, principally the commercial news media who provide web access to their reports.” Also, the IBC only records violent deaths, and only those of civilians.

The unofficial cemeteries around Iraq hold their own additions to the numbers doing the rounds. And no one knows what these add up to.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Jan 31 2009 (IPS)

After strong polling for the provincial elections Saturday, Iraqis are looking out for new signposts of political recovery from the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.

Campaign posters on a Baghdad wall. Credit: Dahr Jamail

The four provinces that did not vote are in the Kurdish controlled north. Polls were not ordered here mostly due to the controversy over control of the oil- rich Kirkuk region. Kirkuk, along with Dahuk, Arbil and Sulaymaniyah will hold elections later.

The provincial elections were earlier scheduled for Oct. 1 last year, but were delayed due to disagreements over electoral procedures for Kirkuk, which is hotly contested between Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and Turkomens.

Both provincial and legislative elections were last held Jan. 30, 2005. The focus in that election was on election to the 275-member Iraqi National Assembly. The next national assembly elections are scheduled late 2009 or early 2010.

Most Sunni Muslims boycotted the 2005 election in the face of persecution and violence at the hands of the U.S. forces and Shia militias. Sunnis currently have a disproportionately small representation on provincial councils also because of the 2005 boycott.

The provincial councils have powers to make laws and allocate funds for finance and reconstruction projects within the province. Provincial governors can also appoint and dismiss provincial police chiefs and senior security officials in the governorate.

The last provincial elections in 2005 led to increasing power struggles, sectarianism, and greater fragmentation of the country. This time there is some hope they will bring stability.

A total of 502 political parties registered for the election this time, fielding 14,431 candidates, including 3,912 women, contesting for 440 seats. Most parties have come up after the 2005 elections.

Partly as a result of the Sunni boycott, the political leadership in the National Assembly and in the provincial councils has so far been mostly Shia. But Sunni participation in the 2005 election, around 2 percent, is being estimated by some to be as high as 60 percent this time.

Two parties supported by the majority Shia Muslim community won a majority of seats between them in 2005. Parties representing the Kurdish community were also strongly represented.

While there are no accurate figures, an estimated 60 percent of Iraq’s population are Shia Muslims, 20 percent Sunnis, and 20 percent Sunni Kurds. Iraq has a population of about 26 million.

Within Sunni groups, differences have arisen between the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), an Islamist party that holds council seats already because they participated in the 2005 vote, and the pro-U.S. Awakening Councils, some of which have threatened to use “any means necessary” to fight the IIP if they take the elections by fraud.

In the Shia areas, particularly in southern Iraq where they are the clear majority, there is expected to be even more volatility, with rival Shia political groups contesting for power.

Fierce competition surfaced also between the government Islamist parties and the opposition Sadrist movement, which considers itself non-sectarian. Many analysts believe the Sadrists will win a majority of seats across southern Iraq and parts of Baghdad.

Many are expecting a backlash against the incumbent religious parties in favour of more secular parties.

About two million internally displaced Iraqis were given a choice between voting in their original areas or where they now live. Another two million who have fled Iraq could not vote.

Women were originally guaranteed at least 25 percent of the seats in elected councils under earlier drafts of the election law. But the Electoral Commission interpreted the law to declare that this is not guaranteed.

The 2005 provincial and national elections were held under a “closed list” system, where voters selected a party or coalition and the party or coalition then selected the individual parliamentarian. Voters did not know who they were voting for. This time, the election was held under an “open list” system, where voters could select either a party or an individual candidate.

Security was tight, and violence successfully kept to a minimum. A curfew was in place from 10 pm Friday until 5 am to block all vehicular traffic in the main cities. Iraq’s borders with Syria and Iran were closed.

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