The Gulf's Ruined Fishery Guarded by Wackenhut Butt-Cracks

Michael Whitney is at the oil spill catastrophe ground zero for Firedoglake, and you should be reading his dispatches every day. Here's today's:

I spent a heartbreaking three hours with Louisiana fishermen Jim and Angel. They work and live on a mid-size shrimping boat docked on Grand Isle, Louisiana. They’ve been through Hurricanes Katrina, Gustav, and Ike. They’ve been through more hardships than many of us can imagine. Each time, they’ve got through because they had the one thing on which they could always count: the water and its bounty. And now it’s gone.

Watch Jim and Angel describe how the oil disaster affects them. This is just four minutes of much more footage, including some time on their boat to come tomorrow. Their story is heartbreaking, and truly representative of the pain many feel here in Grand Isle and across Louisiana and the Gulf.

Where do they go from here? No one knows.

Click here to watch the video. Then support Michael's superb work with a donation.

As Scarecrow wrote:

Yes, there’s anger and frustration, but more than that, there’s a deep sadness. FDL’s Michael Whitney has been reporting from Louisiana, and he tells us the most common emotion he sees is that everyone is heartbroken. They know they’re losing an irreplaceable treasure, part of their American heritage, part of who they are. It’s being taken from them and no one seems able to stop it.

And in case President Obama's visit to Grand Isle today gave you hope, check out this report on the butt-crack idiots "guarding" BP's oil-soaked kingdom.

From the Nation:

"The whole Gulf Coast is a corporate oil state," she told me. "It's like BP broke it, so now they own the entire Gulf Coast." She added: "We might accept the premise that BP is best positionioned to know how to fix the blow up at 5,000 feet, but that also seems to mean they think they should control media access and the entire clean up of a massive national emergency. BP is in charge of everything. We were on the water in open seas the day before the Wackenhut incident and a boat pulls up next to us and asked if we worked for BP and we said, "No," and they said, 'You can't be here.'" It is completely sci-fi. It's a corporate state."

Read the whole thing.