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...) ..

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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.


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About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and
author with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and
the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored and published
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like health and the environment, impacting the lives of millions of
readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits
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and uses a
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