Since when does BRITISH Petroleum make and enforce laws in the United States?

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/26/the-missing-oil-spill-photos.html

...snip...

Last week, a CBS TV crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach. On Monday, Mother Jones published this firsthand account of one reporter’s repeated attempts to gain access to clean-up operations on oil-soaked beaches, and the telling response of local law enforcement. The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.

more at link

Since when can a private company deny American citizens access to the open sea? This is beyond outrageous.

n/t

on the CBS video"


I'm getting tired of all this "Coast Guard under 'BP control'" crap based on the CBS video
http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8392701


If you watch the video and listen to the reporter, she says "a boat of BP contractors with two Coast Guard officers on board, told us to turn around under threat of arrest."

She's not saying the boat is a coast guard boat, as I'm seeing some DU'ers now start claiming, and it obviously isn't. As well, if you look at the people on the boat it appears the coast guard officers are standing in the rear...the guy leaning out the window who says "these are BP rules, not ours" is almost certainly not even a coast guard officer. Watch the video.

The coast guard has responded, according to Rawstory, as follows:

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"The only time anyone would be asked to move from an area would be if there were safety concerns, or they were interfering with response operations. This did occur off South Pass Monday which may have caused the confusion reported by CBS today."

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0520/coast-guard-bps-rules

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And the Coast Guard has also clearly stated who's in charge. From AP:

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"That sense of frustration is shared by an increasing number of Gulf Coast residents, elected officials and environmental groups who have called for the government to simply take over.

In fact, the government is overseeing things. But the official responsible for that says he still understands the discontent.

"If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I'm frustrated, too," said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen."

....

He and Coast Guard Adm. Mary Landry, the federal onsite coordinator, direct virtually everything BP does in response to the spill — and with a few exceptions have received full cooperation, Allen said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was even more emphatic.
"There's nothing that we think can and should be done that isn't being done. Nothing," Gibbs said Friday during a lengthy, often testy exchange with reporters about the response to the oil disaster.
There are no powers of intervention that the federal government has available but has opted not to use, Gibbs said.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_bp_in_charge

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What you have is some contractor on a non-government boat telling a news crew to stay away from a beach under the auspices of "BP rules" and there happens to be two coast officers on board. I assume the officers were the ones who threatened arrest...we don't see that on video (strangely), but if the beach should not have boats coming to shore because there's oil on it and a boat driving a wedge into the sand could hamper clean up efforts or WHATEVER, then the order makes sense.

What we DON'T have here is a takeover of the coast guard by BP, or a "media blackout" of a BP coast guard takeover, or any real evidence of anything of the sort. There's just no evidence of it.

I think CBS did a crappy job on this report. The reporter didn't bother to clarify why they were being kept from the beach...leaving all the conspiracy theists to assume it's so the oil can't be filmed. As if everyone's not already seeing the oil, and as if the oil couldn't be seem from their boat. The idea that BP would commandeer coast guard officers to chase around in an effort to hide oil from the media is beyond ludicrous.

alright, i'm done.

where the military guards sweatshop factories to keep the press out.

being barked at and given orders.

Shameful IMO, absolutely shameful!

BP OUT OF AMERICA!

:kick:

they own most of our politicians of both parties.

They bribe the regulators just like they do in other third world nations.

We need to change this. Now is our chance.

Their job is to either take the credit or the blame for whatever happens in the "free market."

Politicians (middle management) come and go, but the multi-nationals are always moving forward with their agenda.

Assholes.

Have they shown their papers?
Don't immigration laws apply to corporate persons too?

just for the hell of it. :mad:

:kick:

“It’s BP’s Oil”

Running the corporate blockade at Louisiana's crude-covered beaches.
— By Mac McClelland

Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, even after all the warnings, looks worse than I imagined. Pools of oil black and deep stretch down the beach; when cleanup workers drag their rakes along an already-cleaned patch of sand, more auburn crude oozes up. Beneath the surface lie slimy washed-up globules that, one worker says, are "so big you could park a car on them."

It's Saturday, May 22nd, a month into the BP spill, and I've been trying to get to Elmer's Island for the past two days. I've been stymied at every turn by Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies brought in to supplement the local police force of Grand Isle, a 300-year-old settlement here at the very southern tip of Louisiana. Just seven miles long and so narrow in some spots that you can see from the Gulf side to the inland side, Grand Isle is all new clapboard and vinyl-sided bungalows since Katrina, but still scrappy—population 1,500, octuple that in tourist season. It's also home to the only route to Elmer's, a barrier island to the west. I arrived on Thursday with my former University of New Orleans lit prof, John Hazlett; a tandem kayak is strapped to his Toyota Tacoma. At the turn to Elmer's Island Road, a deputy flags us down. Can't go to Elmer's; he's just "doing what they told me to do." We continue on to Grand Isle beach, where toddlers splash in the surf. Only after I've stepped in a blob of crude do I realize that the sheen on the waves and the blackness covering a little blue heron from the neck down is oil.

The next day, cops drive up and down Grand Isle beach explicitly telling tourists it is still open, just stay out of the water. There are pools of oil on the beach; dolphins crest just offshore. A fifty-something couple, Southern Louisianians, tell me this kind of thing happened all the time when they were kids; they swam in rubber suits when it got bad, and it was no big deal. They just hope this doesn't mean we'll stop drilling.

The blockade to Elmer's is now four cop cars strong. As we pull up, deputies start bawling us out; all media need to go to the Grand Isle community center, where a "BP Information Center" sign now hangs out front.

Grand Isle residents are not amused by the beach
closing.Inside, a couple of Times-Picayune reporters circle BP representative Barbara Martin, who tells them that if they want passage to Elmer they have to get it from another BP flack, Irvin Lipp; Grand Isle beach is closed too, she adds. When we inform the Times-Pic reporters otherwise, she asks Dr. Hazlett if he's a reporter; he says, "No." She says, "Good." She doesn't ask me. We tell her that deputies were just yelling at us, and she seems truly upset. For one, she's married to a Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputy. For another, "We don't need more of a black eye than we already have."

"But it wasn't BP that was yelling at us, it was the sheriff's office," we say.

"Yeah, I know, but we have…a very strong relationship."
There's a lot more: http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/oil-spill-bp-grand-isle-beach

It would appear that there is a lot of cahooting related to BP.

(if not earlier)