Democracy Now's Amy Goodman did some follow up to Al Jazeera's reporting on the state of the Gulf of Mexico and the fishing industry there, two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Gulf Oil Spill: BP Execs Escape Punishment as Fallout from Disaster Continues to Impact Sea Life:

Two years since the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, we look at its impact on the Gulf of Mexico’s residents and wildlife even as no BP officials have faced criminal prosecution for the disaster. Eleven workers died when the Deepwater Horizon well exploded, and almost five million barrels of crude oil leaked into the ocean before the well was plugged after 51 days. BP maintains the Gulf is rapidly recovering thanks to the company’s efforts, but Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail describes how scientists say shrimp, fish and crabs in the Gulf of Mexico have been deformed by oil and chemicals released during the spill cleanup effort. Meanwhile, ProPublica’s environmental reporter, Abrahm Lustgarten, says the company failed to learn from past mistakes that could have helped avoid the explosion. He is the author of the new book, "Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster."

Full transcript is available at the link above. Our corporate media actually did a small amount of reporting on this news after Al Jazeera broke their story on the diseased fish and shrimp coming out of the Gulf, but I'll be surprised to see much more follow up from sources other than those like Al Jazeera and Democracy Now.

From The Daily Show:

The Transocean executives responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history pat themselves on the back for an exemplary safety record

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We've got an economy that's a mess, people who have been unemployed forever that need jobs, massive flooding in Pakistan, millions of gallons of oil and dispersants still floating in the water in the Gulf of Mexico and what is the media spending hours upon hours covering? That ginned up non-controversy over the Islamic center near ground zero and now a new poll that shows about one in five Americans think that President Obama is a Muslim. I wonder where they got that idea?

I hate that they're spending this much time on this nonsense that most people don't care about but if they're going to do it, we need to be pushing back against the lies and point out who's helping to spread them and hold the corporate media accountable when they help to push the latest right wing meme of the day and give it legitimacy.

During John King's show on CNN, Paul Begala says it's not CNN that is attributing to those poll numbers.

BEGALA: Mostly, no. You're right to just observe that as contrasted with Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter for that matter or certainly George W. Bush, this Christian president talks about his Christianity less. That perhaps makes him more like say George Bush's father, a devout Christian, a fine man who just didn't like to wear it on his sleeve as much as maybe some others.

No, in that survey, the Pew poll, most, the vast majority of people who think he's a Muslim. When you ask them why do you think that they say because of the media. And not to put too fine a point on it, they don't mean CNN, John. They mean the kook right wing media that has been attacking this president. It's fine to attack him on issues. But they're trying to attack him with any kind of crazy conspiracy theory they can.

I'd beg to differ.

A little later in the show John King brings on evangelical leader Franklin Graham who suggests that the "confusion" is being caused because President Obama was "born a Muslim" and of course if he says he's a Christian now (wink... wink) we'll just have to take him at his word that he is (but he might really be a dirty Kenyan Muslim usurper... you never know).

There are plenty of places where these rumors are being spread such as email chains, on right wing talk radio and on Fox News, but interviews like this aren't helping matters any. We got zero push back from John King against Graham's nonsense. He's really good at the false equivalency "you decide" game where he lets his viewers figure out for themselves who's telling the truth and who's spouting nonsense that should have been stopped in their tracks for telling lies but wasn't. Heaven forbid that might not make for a polite interview and we couldn't have that sort of incivility now could we?

Does anyone think John King didn't know exactly what he was going to get from Franklin Graham before he came on the air? Here's some of what happened during his encounter with then presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama back in 2008.

Franklin Graham to Obama: Are You A Muslim? (And How Obama Courted Hagee's Publisher):

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Now that BP has gone from 1000-5000 barrels to 12,000-19,000 barrels, to 35,000 to 60,000 to 62,000 a day, Rachel feels about the same way I do about this. The latest line of B.S. from our government is that the oil and those dispersants they put out there with them are mostly gone now. Yeah right.

As Maddow reports they're now claiming 25% of the oil was boomed or skimmed, 25% evaporated or dissolved, 24% was dispersed through "human operations" and there's 26% residual that's still out there and they swear to god they're going to clean that up.

They're pretending some of these waters are safe to fish in now as well. I'll believe that when Thad Allen, all of the CEO's from BP and our EPA head start eating that fish for part of their daily diet on camera.

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BP's COO Doug Suttles apparently thinks that most Americans are completely ignorant or that even if they aren't, it's not going to matter because the media and our government are going to allow them to cover up the amount of damage done by this catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mr. Suttles gave a press conference this weekend where he downplayed the dangers of the dispersants that have been poured into the Gulf and laid it squarely back on the feet of our government for allowing them to poison the waters. He also claimed that he'd eat the seafood coming out of the Gulf and thinks it's safe. I'd like to personally see for myself someone catch some fish from those waters full of chemicals and watch him eat it and feed it to his children if that's true.

Laffy over at The Political Carnival has been keeping in touch with whistleblower and former EPA investigator Hugh Kaufman and here's her latest take on the media coverage of this disaster and the media downplaying the use of dispersants.

“Shame on LSU, shame on Rush Limbaugh, shame on CNN, shame on Anderson Cooper!” + VIDEO

As she noted in this post as well, I'm not sure how much of what BP is being allowed to get away with has to do with fears of what would happen on Wall Street if their company went down and the government's horrid response to this disaster, but it makes about as much sense as anything else I've read and has also been my gut feeling as to why they haven't done more to keep BP in check as well. All I know is that watching what has gone on has made me feel almost as sick as I did when I watched the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The people in the Gulf deserve better than this and it looks like they're being hung out to dry again.

This time they might be poisoning all of us if they want to tell us those waters are safe for fishing now. I want to hear that the fish being pulled out of that water along with the water they're saying is safe to fish in doesn't have Corexit in it or petroleum products from the spill. I don't believe for one minute that millions of gallons of oil and dispersants just disappeared and those waters are now safe to fish in and swim in.

VIDEO: “Clues to the Obama Administration’s Passive Response to the BP Disaster”

Transcript of the Suttles press conference below the fold.

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h/t Mugsy:

As if the dispersants themselves weren't toxic enough, the 1.8 million gallons of Corexit 9500 (oil dispersant) sprayed on BP's spill in the Gulf of Mexico breaks down the oil, releasing some of the most toxic chemicals already in the oil into the water, dramatically increasing the toxicity of the spill.

From NBC News Scientists: BP dispersants have made spill more toxic:

Amid growing concern about the use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, a group of scientists working for law firms suing BP says their testing indicates that the dispersants being used to break up the oil are making this spill even more toxic to marine life.

Dr. William Sawyer, a toxicologist, is part of a team of scientists hired by law firms — led by Smith Stag of New Orleans — that are representing Louisiana fishermen and environmentalists.

The scientists collected and analyzed globs of oil, sand, and water from more than a dozen sites in four states along the Gulf.

Sawyer told NBC News that the findings are troubling. "We now have compelling evidence that the dispersant has enhanced and increased the toxicity from the spill," he said.

Last week, a group of independent scientists called for an "immediate halt" to the use of dispersants. In what was called a "consensus statement," they warned that dispersants pose "grave risks to marine life and human health." Read on...

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Lawrence O'Donnell talks to EPA whistleblower Hugh Kaufman about the claims that the oil is now "disappearing" from the Gulf of Mexico. There's no way in hell that much oil just goes away. Digby's got more on this here The Good News Is The Poison:

BP seems to have ably headed off the worst of the PR disaster by keeping the worst of the oil more or less off the shoreline. The actual disaster may have been made worse by the use of toxic chemicals. So it's all good.

That's what they want us to believe anyway. We need more Hugh Kaufman's out there to counter this nonsense.

O‘DONNELL: Today is day 100 of the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, and a whistle-blower has come forth from the Environmental Protection Agency, charging the EPA with helping BP to downplay the environmental impact of its supposed cleanup efforts. You will meet him in a moment.

But if the cleanup has been compared to letting the criminal clean up the crime scene—we begin our fourth story tonight with news about the cops.

“The Washington Post” reports that federal agents who call themselves the BP squad are investigating whether BP, Transocean, or Halliburton, even before the blowout, lied to regulators, obstructed justice, or faked the test results for their equipment—including the blowout preventer that, needless to say, failed to prevent a blowout. Specifically, sources told “The Post,” investigators are asking whether inspectors at the Minerals Management Agency went easy on the rig and why.

BP, yesterday, revealed that it is now the subject of an investigation by the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, into something—no word yet on exactly whether that is related to the spill.
And while Jane Lubchenco, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says the oil is becoming harder to find, the Natural Resources Defense Council‘s annual report on beaches found no downturn in the number of beach closures or advisories since the spill was capped. The NRDC reports that the number of beach closures and advisories this year, 2,200, is roughly 10 times more than last year. And it predicts that the impact will last for years.

And in a cable news exclusive, that whistle-blower we mentioned joins us now. EPA senior policy analyst, Hugh Kaufman, is a veteran and legend of the agency, having had a hand in Love Canal and the creation of the Superfund and helped expose the EPA cover-up of air quality at ground zero.
Mr. Kaufman, what should we know about the dispersants used in the Gulf that the EPA isn‘t telling us?

KAUFMAN: Well, first of all, the dispersants mixed with the oil and the water is extremely toxic. Sweden has done studies on this. Israel has done studies on this.

And the only real purpose of using so many dispersants with the oil was to cover up the volume of oil that was released from that well. So, that and lying about how much is coming out was a mechanism to help BP save billions of dollars in fines.

O‘DONNELL: Should they have not used dispersants at all?

KAUFMAN: That‘s correct. If they did not use dispersants, they would have been able to get most of that oil off of the surface and would not have endangered all of the fish and ecosystem underneath the water that now will be affected for decades on down the line.

I was listening to some of the, quote, “experts” who are being paid by BP at universities who are saying that the oil has disappeared. It hasn‘t disappeared. It‘s throughout thousands of square miles in the Gulf, mixed with dispersants, and because the temperatures down there are so cold, they‘re going to be around for decades.

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More bad news on BP's latest fiasco. As Rachel reports they've been attempting to hire marine scientists to make sure those same experts cannot be used later to testify against them. Think Progress has more.

BP Launches Effort To Control Scientific Research Of Oil Disaster:

Foreign oil giant BP is on a spending spree, buying Gulf Coast scientists for its private contractor army. Scientists from Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University and Texas A&M have “signed contracts with BP to work on their behalf in the Natural Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA) process” that determines how much ecological damage the Gulf of Mexico region is suffering from BP’s toxic black tide. The contract, the Mobile Press-Register has learned, “prohibits the scientists from publishing their research, sharing it with other scientists or speaking about the data that they collect for at least the next three years.” Bob Shipp, head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama — whose entire department BP wished to hire — refused to sign over their integrity to the corporate criminal:

We told them there was no way we would agree to any kind of restrictions on the data we collect. It was pretty clear we wouldn’t be hearing from them again after that. We didn’t like the perception of the university representing BP in any fashion.

The lucrative $250-an-hour deal “buys silence,” said Robert Wiygul, an Ocean Springs environmental lawyer who analyzed the contract. “It makes me feel like they were more interested in making sure we couldn’t testify against them than in having us testify for them,” said George Crozier, head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, who was approached by BP. Read on...

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A security contractor who was once responsible for keeping reporters away from cleanup workers is now coming forward to blow the whistle on BP.

Adam Dillon claims he was fired by the oil company after he took pictures showing how dispersants were being used in the Gulf.

WDSU anchor Scott Walker first met Dillon in June while trying to report on cleanup efforts on Grand Isle, Louisiana.

"When you met me, and you were straight with me and I saw the way that you were being treated, I told you I wished I could tell you more," Dillon told Walker in an interview Friday. "And after the way BP treated me, I'm telling you now that you deserve an answer, and that's why you're getting an answer."

Dillon maintains that he was fired several weeks later. "I took pictures of something and I brought it to the attention of the command structure and whatever I took pictures of, 12 hours later I was gone," he said.

"Dillon believes the photos showed how dispersants were being used in the Gulf of Mexico," reported WDSU. The former security contractor did not provide specifics about how photos of dispersants might have angered BP management.

"What this company is doing to this country right now is just wrong," said Dillon.

WDSU did not find anyone at BP willing to comment on Dillon's dismissal.

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h/t Raw Story: Toxicologist: Oil/Corexit mix caused heart trouble, organ damage, rectal bleeding:

Shrimpers who were exposed to a mixture of oil and Corexit dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico suffered severe symptoms such as muscle spasms, heart palpitations, headaches that last for weeks and bleeding from the rectum, according to a marine toxicologist who issued the warning Friday on a cable news network.

Dr. Susan Shaw, founder and director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, said during a CNN broadcast that after personally diving the oil spill in late May, a "very fiery sore throat" plagued her from inhaling fumes coming off the water. Because she was covered from head to toe in a protective suit, Dr. Shaw was spared direct exposure.

Shrimpers who had bare-skin contact with the mixture of oil and Corexit, she said, were not so lucky. Read on...

And as Laffy noted at The Political Carnival the LA Health Dept. is getting into the act now: La. Health Dep’t. Memo: “We have serious concerns about the lack of information related to the use of dispersants”:

My friend and senior policy analyst at the EPA’s office of solid waste and emergency response, Hugh Kaufman (altakocker on Twitter), sent me a link to the above memo.

He reminded me, and I will now remind you, that BP is in charge of poisoning the Gulf with dispersants. The EPA is just along for the ride. However, necessary technical studies were not done before the Big Decision.

The following memo is proof that the necessary studies were not, and have not yet been, done by BP (or the EPA) before BP decided to continue killing our ocean, harming sea life and wild life, and poisoning Amercians with toxic dispersants, with the EPA rubber-stamping the whole thing. Read on...

And she has much more on the concerns about the use of the dispersants here. Scientists: Obama not doing enough + VIDEO: Shrimpers exposed to Corexit “bleeding from the rectum”.

Transcript of Dr. Shaw's interview via CNN below the fold.

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