We knew it was coming. When, in 2010, we watched over 200 million gallons of crude oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico, we knew the after-effects would take years to surface.

Finally, three years later, scientists are finally uncovering the truth about what BP’s oil and the subsequent use of a dispersant called “Corexit” have done to our ocean. And it isn’t pretty.

Last year, Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences reported finding lesions and grotesque deformities in sea life—including millions of shrimp with no eyes and crabs without eyes or claws. Since then, the horrifying effects have been even worse:

• Toxins at 3,000 times the acceptable level in Gulf seafood
• Dead dolphins in record numbers, killed by weakened immune systems and brucella bacteria
• Blue crab populations wiped out
• Oyster beds not reproducing
• 60% of coral on platforms killed

When Deepwater Horizon exploded, it became abundantly clear that BP had absolutely no idea how to stop the leak or clean up the oil that was gushing into the Gulf. Scrambling to look like they were at least trying to do something, the company secured about a third of the world’s supply of dispersants, namely Corexit 9500 and 9527. Of the two, 9527 is more toxic.

“Corexit dispersants emulsify oil into tiny beads, causing them to sink toward the bottom,” explains TakePart. “Wave action and wind turbulence degrade the oil further, and evaporation concentrates the toxins in the oil-Corexit mixture, including dangerous compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), known to cause cancer and developmental disorders.”

At the time of the spill, Popular Science reported, “Dispersants have never been applied on this scale, leaving environmental scientists guessing about the consequences. Corexit may have caused seven cleanup workers to be admitted to the hospital with shortness of breath and nausea.” But nausea turned out to be the least of our worries.

Back in 2010, Care2 warned about the dangers of assigning clean up workers to beaches without protective gear, and we pointed out how BP continued to dump Corexit all over the Gulf Coast even after the EPA ordered it to stop. Since then it has been discovered that the dispersants didn’t degrade as expected, that air deployment likely contaminated crops, and that it could have created toxic rain in other parts of the world.

Countless Gulf Coast residents have reported mysterious and ongoing illnesses since the BP oil spill began. And earlier this week, TakePart wrote about Steve Kolian, a researcher and diver who, along with his team, took water and marine life samples at several locations in the months following the spill after Corexit had been used. Now, they too are sick with symptoms resembling something from a sci-fi horror film, including bleeding from the nose, ears, breasts and even anus.

Related Reading:

Dead And Deformed Sea Creatures in Gulf: BP Oil Spill Suspected

A Legacy Of Lies: The BP Oil Spill Two Years Later

Gulf Oil Spill: 10 Horrifying Facts You Never Wanted To Know

Read more: bp oil spill, Corexit, dispersant, gulf coast, marine life, ocean, oil spill

Image via Thinkstock

• by Piper Hoffman
• April 29, 2013

Animal snuff films are protected by the First Amendment.

Yes. Recording and exhibiting the torture and murder of animals is a constitutionally protected activity in the United States.

This ruling comes courtesy of one Simeon Timothy “Sim” Lake, a judge in the U.S. District Court in Houston. Remember Enron? Well, Judge Lake is the guy who gave executive Jeffrey Skilling the minimum possible sentence and vacated Ken Lay’s convictions, allowing his family to keep his ill-gotten gains.

Thank heavens Lake’s is not the final say, since an appellate court and the Supreme Court could both overrule him.

Lake’s chance to commit this abomination on American law came when a couple, Ashley Nicole Richards and Brent Justice, filmed Richards torturing puppies, kittens, rabbits and others to death. They were charged with criminal violations of a law that was passed by Congress in one of its rare lucid moments. The Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010 prohibits photographing or videotaping acts “in which 1 or more living non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians is intentionally crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or otherwise subjected to serious body injury.”

That law was based on Congress’s finding that ”serious criminal acts of extreme animal cruelty are integral to the creation, sale, distribution, advertising, marketing, and exchange of animal crush videos.”

The couple was facing criminal charges based on several incidents, including one where Richards stomped a cat, then ground the heel of her shoe into the animal’s eye socket.

Judge Lake, a Reagan appointee, didn’t see the difference between doing and videotaping that and the “humane slaughter of a stolen cow,” so he decided the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act was too broad and prohibited things that should have been protected as free speech. For some reason the explicit exception in the Act for “the slaughter of animals for food” wasn’t enough for Lake.

At least he recognized that the actions in the video were “disturbing and horrid.”

The Richards/Justice case was the first one brought under the 2010 Crush Video law. The pair still faces criminal charges for the animal abuse itself. The question Judge Lake’s ruling raises is whether they can face additional charges for taping what they did.

The First Amendment acknowledges that certain forms of expression are not worthy of constitutional protection. “Fighting words,” for example, “are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.” Crush videos certainly aren’t essential to develop any ideas or get at any truth, and any benefit they may have is to help sadistic perverts get off. That benefit is outweighed by pretty much any positive consideration at all, and certainly by preventing the torture and painful death of innocent animals.

Judge Lake acknowledged in his opinion that child pornography should not be protected by the First Amendment because, among other reasons, banning it would reduce the supply, which could dry up the market for these products. Whether or not the economic argument makes sense, the motivation behind this rule should apply in this case: to reduce and eventually end harm to children forced to participate in the production of pornography. Surely preventing the torture of animals is a compelling reason to ban crush videos.

On the other hand, our government condones any number of ways to torture animals, from factory farming to zoos to research laboratories. With such low regard for animals’ basic well-being, it isn’t all that surprising that even a consideration as objectionable as the sexual urges of sickos outweighs it.

Related Stories:

Victory! Obama Signs the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act

Supreme Court Overturns Law Protecting Animals

Will Dog Fighting Videos be Protected by Freedom of Speech?

Read more: animal crush video, animal crush video prohibition act, animal snuff film, first amendment, judge lake

Photo credit: Fuse