US Gov't declares it a federal felony to report on the BP oil volcano!

[devil21]

Just saw this on ATS. Seems legit. Bye-bye freedom of the press. This wasn't even passed through Congress! THE PRESIDENT (OR THE COAST GUARD) CAN NOT MAKE LAWS!

On the eve of July 4th no less.

http://current.com/11fh84c



As CNN is now reporting, the U.S. government has issued a new rule that would make it a felony crime for any journalist, reporter, blogger or photographer to approach any oil cleanup operation, equipment or vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Anyone caught is subject to arrest, a $40,000 fine and prosecution for a federal felony crime.

Video evidence:
YouTube - First Amendment Has been Suspended (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXsmLMV1CrM&feature=player_embedded)

[tangent4ronpaul]

Incredible! - the word "volcano" was not mentioned once in that clip (and it's basically BS.... The volcano part)

Media crews can come withing 65 feet.... fireworks displays launch point can be within 2-300' of spectators. This is danger close! We are talking about a lot of energy being released. In fireworks displays, sometimes mortars to launch the displays become pipe bombs. Maybe it's only 150-200' but still, a significant safety distance. It's not common, but sometimes bad things happen.

300' - well there are lenses out there that should be able to capture a eyelash (singular hair) in stunning detail, at 300'. Does the media's optics budget just totally suck?

-t

[sevin]

This is getting crazy. What the hell are they hiding?

[micahnelson]

So reporters are allowed to be embedded in war zones, but being next to one of these vehicles is too dangerous.... riiiight.

[Working Poor]

This is getting crazy. What the hell are they hiding?

Maybe an upside down volcano:cool:

[Dr.3D]

Maybe an upside down volcano:cool:

Interesting your should mention that.

Back in the '60s my dad used to wonder if there ever would come the day when one of those wells would start taking ocean water into the bottom of the ocean and make a lot of problems. I doubt that could happen, but one never knows what is under the floor of the ocean. There could be vast cavities down there that no one knows about.

[GunnyFreedom]

Incredible! - the word "volcano" was not mentioned once in that clip (and it's basically BS.... The volcano part)

Media crews can come withing 65 feet.... fireworks displays launch point can be within 2-300' of spectators. This is danger close! We are talking about a lot of energy being released. In fireworks displays, sometimes mortars to launch the displays become pipe bombs. Maybe it's only 150-200' but still, a significant safety distance. It's not common, but sometimes bad things happen.

300' - well there are lenses out there that should be able to capture a eyelash (singular hair) in stunning detail, at 300'. Does the media's optics budget just totally suck?

-t

whether the slaver is benevolent or not we are still slaves. Our system does NOT allow a President to declare felonies by fiat. "Congress shall make no law..." so it's OK for the President to make law? Um, no.

[RM918]

Haha, NOW they care about transparency! Aren't they helping the oil terrorists by betting against our clean-up troops?

[t0rnado]

A new rule? This isn't a school where the principal can just create rules and punish people for violating them. There is a process in the Constitution for creating laws and that is through Congress.

[MN Patriot]

Maybe an upside down volcano:cool:

The media HAS been the enemy of the people for years, promoting the liberal socialist agenda.

This may be the volcano that has been tapped into by BP:

YouTube - Lindsey Williams Talks with Alex Jones About Deadly Gases Leaking from BP Spill 3/9 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adiZE3cwYDM&feature=related)

[JeNNiF00F00]

..

[fedup100]

Just like mass graves, out of site out of mind. Tyrants always give cover to their killings.

[silverhandorder]

Omg Alex Jones and his guests are clowns. The compounds the guy mentioned evaporate from crude oil. Any chemists will tell you that oil is processed and these compounds are taken out of it to a certain degree in the refinery.

It is possible for there to be a volcano but they presented zero evidence so far to back that up.

[Uncle Emanuel Watkins]

Interesting your should mention that.

Back in the '60s my dad used to wonder if there ever would come the day when one of those wells would start taking ocean water into the bottom of the ocean and make a lot of problems. I doubt that could happen, but one never knows what is under the floor of the ocean. There could be vast cavities down there that no one knows about.

The earth does recycle ocean water spewing it back out in super heated vents. The amount of oil per ocean water is like less than a drop per a good sized swimming pool.

[RCA]

So reporters are allowed to be embedded in war zones, but being next to one of these vehicles is too dangerous.... riiiight.

or weather reports:

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/WBv7JAoisn0/0.jpg

[Zippyjuan]

Interesting your should mention that.

Back in the '60s my dad used to wonder if there ever would come the day when one of those wells would start taking ocean water into the bottom of the ocean and make a lot of problems. I doubt that could happen, but one never knows what is under the floor of the ocean. There could be vast cavities down there that no one knows about.

Afraid somebody might pull the wrong plug and all the ocean water runs out the bottom?

[Golding]

Just saw this on ATS. Seems legit. Bye-bye freedom of the press. This wasn't even passed through Congress! THE PRESIDENT (OR THE COAST GUARD) CAN NOT MAKE LAWS!

On the eve of July 4th no less.Complete BS for this to happen. That said, I selfishly can't help but feel some sense of delight at watching those who shill for authoritarian candidates (and cheerlead their authoritarian decisions) cry foul when it's their rights being stepped on. What did they expect?

Even though I know that this won't prevent cable newz pundits from suckling the ballhairs of the Obama administration, it should.

[devil21]

I don't believe they drilled into a physical volcano. It's just my term for it since it's neither a spill nor a leak. Lots of oil flowing out of a hole in the ground seems like an oil volcano to me. YMMV.

[erowe1]

Where in there does it say anything about reporting on anything being a felony?

I don't see how this law has anything at all to do with the 1st Amendment.

[libertybrewcity]

any "violation" of this "law" would be easily beaten in court.

[ninepointfive]

it's really not funny that Anderson Cooper believes he's not the enemy. Who would be an enemy who wants to visit the coast? Is it anyone not in the media? Is he saying that the media isn't the enemy, but others are?

[devil21]

Where in there does it say anything about reporting on anything being a felony?

I don't see how this law has anything at all to do with the 1st Amendment.

First, the very act of declaring something to be a federal felony without Congress specifying such a crime, and the penalty attached, is unconstitutional. Second, beaches are mostly public property and the media has the right under the 1st Amendment to report as they see fit, as long as they are not harrassing anyone or violating private property rights. If they wish to stand on the beach and film booms from 25 feet away that is their right and the President and the Coast Guard can't just declare everything to arbitrarily be off limits (by 65 feet) suddenly. IMO, this is the gov't response to reports spreading about workers being threatened to not speak to the media and pics of damaged wildlife coming out. Now they've just forced the media to stay away but on public property. That is suspension of the 1st Amendment freedom of the press.

[ninepointfive]

We need Sheriffs who will stand tall and kick them the fuck out.


Now please excuse the language there, although I feel it's totally appropriate.

[erowe1]

First, the very act of declaring something to be a federal felony without Congress specifying such a crime, and the penalty attached, is unconstitutional.
Did that happen? Do you have any evidence of that?


Second, beaches are mostly public property.
And by "public" you mean "government owned." Right?


and the media has the right under the 1st Amendment to report as they see fit
The 1st amendment isn't just for the media, it's for all of us. And it's not about being allowed onto government property, it's about our use of speech and the press. But who's preventing anyone from saying whatever they want via speech or the press here?


If they wish to stand on the beach and film booms from 25 feet away that is their right.

Since when is that a right?


and the President and the Coast Guard can't just declare everything to arbitrarily be off limits (by 65 feet) suddenly..
That's correct, they can't do that arbitrarily. They can only do it on the property the government owns. Are they also doing it on private property?


Now they've just forced the media to stay away but on public property. That is suspension of the 1st Amendment freedom of the press.
That's ridiculous.

[Anti Federalist]

Interesting your should mention that.

Back in the '60s my dad used to wonder if there ever would come the day when one of those wells would start taking ocean water into the bottom of the ocean and make a lot of problems. I doubt that could happen, but one never knows what is under the floor of the ocean. There could be vast cavities down there that no one knows about.


Afraid somebody might pull the wrong plug and all the ocean water runs out the bottom?

Lake Peigneur: The Swirling Vortex of Doom

http://www.damninteresting.com/lake-peigneur-the-swirling-vortex-of-doom

Written by Alan Bellows on 28 September 2007

Early in the morning on November 21, 1980, twelve men decided to abandon their oil drilling rig on the suspicion that it was beginning to collapse beneath them. They had been probing for oil under the floor of Lake Peigneur when their drill suddenly seized up at about 1,230 feet below the muddy surface, and they were unable free it. In their attempts to work the drill loose, which is normally fairly easy at that shallow depth, the men heard a series of loud pops, just before the rig tilted precariously towards the water.

At the time, Lake Peigneur was an unremarkable body of water near New Iberia, Louisiana. Though the freshwater lake covered 1,300 acres of land, it was only eleven feet deep. A small island there was home to a beautiful botanical park, oil wells dotted the landscape, and far beneath the lake were miles of tunnels for the Diamond Crystal salt mine.

Concluding that something had gone terribly wrong, the men on the rig cut the attached barges loose, scrambled off the rig, and moved to the shore about 300 yards away. Shortly after they abandoned the $5 million Texaco drilling platform, the crew watched in amazement as the huge platform and derrick overturned, and disappeared into a lake that was supposed to be shallow. Soon the water around that position began to turn. It was slow at first, but it steadily accelerated until it became a fast-moving whirlpool a quarter of a mile in diameter, with its center directly over the drill site.

As the whirlpool was forming on the surface, Junius Gaddison, an electrician working in the salt mines below, heard a loud, strange noise coming down the corridor. Soon he discovered the sound’s source, which was rushing downhill towards him: fuel drums banging together as they were carried along the shaft by a knee-deep stream of muddy water. He quickly called in the alarm, and the mine’s lights were flashed three times to signal its immediate evacuation. Many of the 50 miners working that morning, most as deep as 1,500 feet below the surface, saw the evacuation signal and began to run for the 1,300 foot level, where they could catch an elevator to the surface. However, when they reached the third level, they were blocked by deep water.

Clearly, the salt dome which contained the mine had been penetrated by the drill crew on the lake. Texaco, who had ordered the oil probe, was aware of the salt mine’s presence and had planned accordingly; but somewhere a miscalculation had been made, which placed the drill site directly above one of the salt mine’s 80-foot-high, 50-foot-wide upper shafts. As the freshwater poured in through the original 14-inch-wide hole, it quickly dissolved the salt away, making the hole grow bigger by the second. The water pouring into the mine also dissolved the huge salt pillars which supported the ceilings, and the shafts began to collapse.

As most of the miners headed for the surface, a maintenance foreman named Randy LaSalle drove around to the remote areas of the mine which hadn’t seen the evacuation signal, and warned the miners there to evacuate. The miners whose escape was slowed by water on the third level used mine carts and diesel powered vehicles to make their way up to the 1,300 foot level, where they each waited their turn to ride the slow, 8-person elevator to the surface as the mine below them filled with water. Although it seemed to take forever to get out, all 50 miners managed to escape with their lives.

Meanwhile, up on the surface, the tremendous sucking power of the whirlpool was causing violent destruction. It swallowed another nearby drilling platform whole, as well as a barge loading dock, 70 acres of soil from Jefferson Island, trucks, trees, structures, and a parking lot. The sucking force was so strong that it reversed the flow of a 12-mile-long canal which led out to the Gulf of Mexico, and dragged 11 barges from that canal into the swirling vortex, where they disappeared into the flooded mines below. It also overtook a manned tug on the canal, which struggled against the current for as long as possible before the crew had to leap off onto the canal bank and watch as the lake consumed their boat.

After three hours, the lake was drained of its 3.5 billion gallons of water. The water from the canal, now flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, formed a 150-foot waterfall into the crater where the lake had been, filling it with salty ocean water. As the canal refilled the crater over the next two days, nine of the sunken barges popped back to the surface like corks, though the drilling rigs and tug were left entombed in the ruined salt mine.

Despite the enormous destruction of property, no human life was lost in this disaster, nor were there any serious injuries. Within two days, what had previously been an eleven-foot-deep freshwater body was replaced with a 1,300-foot-deep saltwater lake. The lake’s biology was changed drastically, and it became home to many species of plants and fish which had not been there previously.

Of course numerous lawsuits were filed, and they were subsequently settled out-of-court for many millions of dollars. The owners of the Crystal Diamond salt mine received a combined $45 million in damages from Texaco and the oil drilling company, and got out of the salt mining business for good.

No official blame for the miscalculation was ever decided, because all of the evidence was sucked down the drain, but the story described here is the generally accepted theory of what caused this massive disaster.

[osan]

A new rule? This isn't a school where the principal can just create rules and punish people for violating them. There is a process in the Constitution for creating laws and that is through Congress.

Tell them that.

[osan]

That said, I selfishly can't help but feel some sense of delight at watching those who shill for authoritarian candidates (and cheerlead their authoritarian decisions) cry foul when it's their rights being stepped on. What did they expect?

You're talking about people lacking the intellectual sophistication and/or honesty to see that they do not hold the monopoly on rights. For such imbeciles and pimps, their rights are the only true rights and those with which they disagree are false and therefore violable. One must not expect reason from morons.

[osan]

any "violation" of this "law" would be easily beaten in court.

Are you willing to bet years in prison on that opinion?

[devil21]

Did that happen? Do you have any evidence of that?

Did you read the article and watch the video? Your failure to research further isn't my problem but since Im a nice guy Ill get you started.

http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/726955/


NEW ORLEANS - The Captains of the Port for Morgan City, La., New Orleans, La., and Mobile, Ala. , under the authority of the Ports and Waterways Safety Act, has established a 20- meter safety zone surrounding all Deepwater Horizon booming operations and oil response efforts taking place in Southeast Louisiana.

Vessels must not come within 20 meters of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.

The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom.

In areas where vessels operators cannot avoid the 20-meter rule, they are required to be cautious of boom and boom operations by transiting at a safe speed and distance.

Violation of a safety zone can result in up to a $40,000 civil penalty. Willful violations may result in a class D felony.

Permission to enter any safety zone must be granted by the Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New Orleans by calling 504-846-5923.

Happy now? That website is where you should be looking as these sorts of "directives" are being posted there, including these "safety zones" in various iterations that this report was based on.



And by "public" you mean "government owned." Right?

That's a pretty wide brush to paint with. Well unless you believe the federal government "owns" everything, even state, local and private beaches.



The 1st amendment isn't just for the media, it's for all of us. And it's not about being allowed onto government property, it's about our use of speech and the press. But who's preventing anyone from saying whatever they want via speech or the press here?

Preventing the media (in all forms, not just the MSM) from getting reasonable access to the beaches prevents the media from reporting fully. They are then left to just rehash whatever they are fed by BP and the Feds.



Since when is that a right?

Since the federal government can't obstruct the freedom of the press with unconstitutional "declarations" of crimes and punishments. Look, neither BP nor the feds wholly "own" the beaches in question and therefore they have no jurisdiction to tell anyone what they can or can't do on said beaches or on legally registered vessels. Has martial law been declared? If not, then the freedom of press and speech is an inalienable right that can't be taken away by some bureaucrat on a whim.



That's correct, they can't do that arbitrarily. They can only do it on the property the government owns. Are they also doing it on private property?

Who knows? No one can go down there anymore without approval! That's the whole issue here.



That's ridiculous.

Your opinion and you're entitled to it. I find it more ridiculous that the media has already been choked off from reporting in-depth on this disaster and now faces criminal penalties for attempting to investigate deeper. Part of me wonders if martial law wasn't already quietly declared...

[Anti Federalist]

NEW ORLEANS - The Captains of the Port for Morgan City, La., New Orleans, La., and Mobile, Ala. , under the authority of the Ports and Waterways Safety Act, has established a 20- meter safety zone surrounding all Deepwater Horizon booming operations and oil response efforts taking place in Southeast Louisiana.

Vessels must not come within 20 meters of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.

The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom.

In areas where vessels operators cannot avoid the 20-meter rule, they are required to be cautious of boom and boom operations by transiting at a safe speed and distance.

Violation of a safety zone can result in up to a $40,000 civil penalty. Willful violations may result in a class D felony.

Permission to enter any safety zone must be granted by the Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New Orleans by calling 504-846-5923

That's for vessels and that is a pretty standard penalty for violating a COTP order.

[devil21]

That's for vessels and that is a pretty standard penalty for violating a COTP order.

Do I have to do your research too? That's just one of the orders declaring it to be a federal felony to violate an imaginary and arbitrary "safety zone", which only protects BP and our inept governments from pictures of all the ineffective boom and dead animals floating in the muck. Did you think about the "no fly zone" over top of nearly the entire spill area too?
Go to the website and look around for yourself. Never though I'd have to hand hold on RPF...

Here's the 10 page ATS thread where it's been hashed out in detail. Go read that then research more on your own. There's a lot of links out there, even MSM.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread590160/pg1

More info on media ban:
http://hurricane-katrina.org/2010/07/facing-the-future-as-a-media-felon-on-the-gulf-coast.html

[Anti Federalist]

Do I have to do your research too?

You haven't got a clue about what I know about this situation.