Gulf Coast now a BP police state as law enforcement conspires with BP to intimidate journalists

Gulf Coast now a BP police state as law enforcement conspires with BP to intimidate journalists
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)




(NaturalNews) Normally I would open this article by explaining this is the story the mainstream media won't dare report. Except in this case, they are reporting it. It's right on CNN, on the Anderson Cooper "360" report.

What happened is that Lance Rosenfield, a photographer working for ProPublica (http://www.propublica.org), was standing on a public road, taking photos of a BP refinery in full public view. After taking his photos, he was tailed by local law enforcement officials to a gas station, where they demanded to look at the photos he had just taken. A private BP security goon then showed up at the scene, and an official from the Department of Homeland Security soon arrived and began to intimidate Lance.

With his wits about him (and some basic knowledge of the Bill of Rights), Lance at first refused to show his photographs to local law enforcement. They threatened to detain him (probably under the Patriot Act) if he didn't, so he gave in and let them see the photos. Later, when private BP security personnel asked for Lance's personal information, he refused to give it to them. So -- get this -- the police turned over his private information to the BP security goon!

As Lance explained on CNN:

"The BP -- the BP security guard showed up at that point and asked me for my personal information, and I declined, because he's a corporate security guard. And he turned to the police officer, who then turned over all my personal information. And I protested. I said I didn't understand under what legal -- what legal grounds he was able to give him my personal information."

The reporter, O'Brien, then asks him: "So, when you asked him, what did he say?

Lance replies, "He didn't give an answer. He said, well, we can -- we're going to do it anyway, whether you like it or not. And we can call our Homeland Security officer, Tom Robison, to come down here and explain it. But, you know, this is what I'm going to do anyway. And he didn't give me an answer. And then he did call Tom Robison. ...this Homeland Security officer came, Tom Robison, it seemed like his only point of being there was to intimidate me."

And of course, Lance Rosenfield is right: They are there to intimidate people. Local law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security are now all working for British Petroleum!

This is exactly what I warned about, by the way, in a recent article that was widely read across the 'net, entitled "First Amendment suspended in the Gulf of Mexico as spill cover-up goes Orwellian" (http://www.naturalnews.com/029130_G...)


Why this matters
This is scary stuff, folks. Now we have a police state in America. No one can deny it. You can't argue the point anymore. It is documented fact, and it's happening right now in the Gulf Coast.

If you pick up a professional camera and start snapping photos of a BP refinery, or a BP cleanup vessel, or a beach with an oil boom on it, you risk being followed, detained, questioned and intimidated. And if you don't surrender your own rights and consent to an illegal search of your photos or film footage, you will be hauled into a federal holding facility and held by the Department of Homeland Security until they feel like letting you go.

Your rights as a free citizen have now been obliterated. America is now a fascist corporatocracy that answers to the financial interests of the corporations -- at the expense of the freedoms of the People.

What's really scary about this is that BP is a British corporation that is now controlling American law enforcement officials.

Didn't we fight a war to get rid of a British police state once already? Didn't we declare our independence from British rule a couple hundred years ago? Why are our public streets, beaches and oceans now ruled once again by a conniving, dishonest and downright ominous British corporate giant that has apparently gained control over our local law enforcement officials?

And if this is tolerated, how far will this go? Will BP soon set up roadblocks and checkpoints on public highways to search private vehicles for digital photos and video footage? Can BP's private security goons arrest and detain you even if you're on public property? (Apparently they can...)


The real story
See, rather than tell the truth about what's happening in the Gulf, BP has resorted to police state tactics to threaten the media and intimidate journalists, threatening them with arrest, detainment and felony crimes if they get close enough to snap photos of what's really going on in the Gulf Coast.

Why was ProPublica targeted for intimidation? Probably because they just published a story exposing BP's 40-day release of toxic chemicals into the air from a Texas refinery. The story is entitled, "BP Texas Refinery Had Huge Toxic Release Just Before Gulf Blowout" and you can read it right here: http://www.propublica.org/article/b...

The story reveals that the BP refinery being photographed by Lance Rosenfield illegally released 538,000 pounds of toxic chemicals including "17,000 pounds of benzene, a known carcinogen; 37,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides, which contribute to respiratory problems; and 186,000 pounds of carbon monoxide."

Salon.com is also covering the police state tactics now being used by BP to stiff-arm the media. In a story called "The BP / Government Police State", Salon reports: (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/g...)

"These are true police state tactics, and it's now clear that it is part of a pattern. It's been documented for months now that BP and government officials have been acting in unison to block media coverage of the area."

It goes on to repeat text from Newsweek, which states:

"As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials -- working with BP -- who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers."

Salon concludes with this surprisingly blunt statement: "The very idea that government officials are acting as agents of BP (of all companies) in what clearly seem to be unconstitutional acts to intimidate and impede the media is infuriating. Obviously, the U.S. Government and BP share the same interest -- preventing the public from knowing the magnitude of the spill and the inadequacy of the clean-up efforts -- but this creepy police state behavior is intolerable. "


What it all means
On one hand, it's fascinating to see the mainstream media suddenly discovering that we all live in a police state. Gee, Alex Jones and other freedom commentators have been warning about this for years, and they all got written off as "conspiracy theorists." But it turns out they were dead on.

There is a conspiracy under way right now. It's a conspiracy between the U.S. government and British Petroleum to cover-up all evidence of what's really happening in the Gulf Coast. "Conspiracy" is precisely the correct word to describe their behavior in all this, and I can only wonder how long it will take before the mainstream media reluctant utters the "C" word on air.

What's happening is exactly a conspiracy. The Random House Dictionary defines "conspiracy" as:

1. an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.

2. a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose.

3. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.

Does that sound like what's happening with BP and the federal government? It sure does.

BP and the U.S. government are now clearly conspiring to use police powers to intimidate, threaten, detain and potentially imprison anyone who seeks to report on the truth of what's happening in the Gulf Coast.

And this, in turn, is the classic definition of what happens in a Police State.

From the same dictionary, a "Police State" is "a nation in which the police, especially a secret police, summarily suppresses any social, economic, or political act that conflicts with governmental policy."

Once again, that's exactly what we're seeing in the Gulf Coast. BP's private security goons are the new "secret police." And with the help of local and federal law enforcement officials, they are actively suppressing the public's right to know the truth about what's happening there.

You see, the real loss of what's happening with the BP oil catastrophe isn't merely the damage being caused by the oil; it's the destruction of our freedoms as BP stream rolls the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights to destroy our freedoms and once again place us under British rule!

You are now subjects, not citizens, once you enter the Gulf Coast zone in America. Your "rights" have been stripped away and replaced by threats and intimidation, backed by an armed band of corporate-sponsored secret police.

You are witnessing the end of America the free and the rise of a fascist corporatocracy where all your rights and freedoms have been suspended until further notice.

And now, shamelessly, even local law enforcement isn't on your side anymore. They've sold out to their corporate slavemasters to the point where BP is now covering the salaries of nearly all the cops and Sheriffs working in certain areas there. As Mac McClelland from Mother Jones reportedly said, "One parish has 57 extra shifts per week that they are devoting entirely to, basically, BP security detail, and BP is paying the sheriff's office."


The truth is too scary
All this can only make you ask the obvious question: What could possibly be happening in the Gulf Coast right now that's so scary that BP and the federal government is willing to destroy your rights in order to protect their secrets?

That's the relevant question here, no?

Clearly there must be a very big secret in the Gulf of Mexico -- a secret so devastating to BP's financial future that it is willing to do almost anything to avoid that secret from getting out.

Why are beach cleanup workers being required to sign non-disclosure agreements? Why are journalists being threatened and intimidated? Why are local cops being used as BP's private security force?

I can only shudder at the possible answers to this all-important question. A secret so dark and so dangerous that BP would do anything to keep it from getting out.

There can only be a couple of possible answers to this that would justify such police state actions:

• Perhaps BP and the federal government is about to unleash a nuclear explosion to stop the oil outflow, and they don't want anyone knowing about it until it's already done.

• Perhaps the U.S. government is planning a multi-state roundup and evacuation of the population to clear out the entire Gulf Coast region in anticipation of something big and dangerous (such as a nuke, or an oil-soaked firestorm of a major U.S. city, or a dangerous new chemical being dumped in the Gulf by BP, etc.)

• Perhaps human bodies are washing up on the beaches for some unknown reason, and the shock of it would be too much for the public to bear.

... or maybe there's some other unimaginable reason none of us "little people" have thought of yet.

In any case, the situation doesn't look pretty. The very freedoms that we just celebrated on Independence Day have been obliterated by a British corporation which now rules our U.S. law enforcement and Department of Homeland Security.

I can only conclude that our government has been infiltrated by a foreign corporation that is now using our own government to enslave us by destroying the very freedoms we once fought so hard to acquire. We are now living under a fascist corporatocracy, and we are seeing first-hand that these corporations will stop at nothing to protect their interests, even if it means sacrificing our freedoms.

B.P. = Beyond Prosecution.