National Guardsmen Censor CNN Cameraman Trying To Film Oil Soaked Birds

"Ma'am? I'm gonna have to ask you to stop taking pictures here."

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3HHSxc_rPI&feature=player_embedded

What bullshit is this? What COUNTRY is this? So, first the Coast Guard, and now the National Guard is answering to BP?

the culprit was a Louisiana state official.

Keep cashing those DLC checks.

:puke:

RL

K&R

I don't think in this particular case it's a big conspiracy. This is what is advised for the oiled birds by the people trying to care for them.

filming a quick piece outside the yellow line will not add any more stress. It is bologna.

and she says one of the worst stressors for any wild animal--bird or mammal--is proximity to humans. Movement, voices, lights, etc. are really bad for them when they are unable to escape. The clinic she works in has a policy of no visitors and no talking because of the stress on the injured critters.

The fact that they are already stressed does not mean that it is okay to add more stress.

Just my opinion, but I feel sure it's based in fact.

and I do rabbits and armadillos as a specialty. Rabbits are notoriously prone to stress. I have done them for over a decade as a specialty and I speak to them in a low calm voice all the time. They pick up on stress around them, if you are calm then they are calm.
The photographers were behind yellow tape. A quick photo or video without flash from that distance wouldn't have added added any more stress. JMO
I have my own reasons for wondering about the lack of transparency right now and I am not the only rehabber that feels this way.

this whole horrific mess. And I certainly understand why you are suspicious. I was just trying to point out something that others may not be aware of.

Off topic, today we picked up one bunny--the sole survivor from a nest of four--that my wife thought was going to expire on the way home. She started working on it and now it's snuggling with another bunny with a broken leg. I am always amazed at the way she can keep those little buggers alive long enough to release. She also has three little ones that haven't opened their eyes yet.

Thanks for your work as a rehabber. I don't know about where you are, but around here the influx of injured critters is off the charts. And donations for medicine and other important expenses like vet care are way down.

My wife's sister is also a rehabber who does raccoons. She lives right on the Gulf in Mississippi. We are waiting to hear more from her about how the oil is affecting them. She was scheduled to go to a seminar for animal rescuers to train on how to deal with the oiled critters, but we have not gotten a report on that.

I have 16 rabbits, (cottontail and marsh) and four armadillos just now and that is after a big release. Most of the buns are orphans though I have an adult cottontail with a nasty abscess and one very degloved juvie marsh from a lawn mower accident. It has been an extraordinarily busy year here too.

I took the BP hazmat internet course
but the 24 hour class is not being offered here yet and I am on the list to be called to help clean. I am hearing some things through back channels that make me a bit uncomfortable though about how this is being managed. I would feel a lot better about the whole thing if there was more transparency.
Hope those buns do well! They are nosy little things and I really adore them.

waiting for help to arrive for them, or picking them up to take them to Tri-State or International, then they weren't helping the birds.

to the area. It is a big public relations mistake to say that access will be permitted and then have guards who block access.

BP is in charge of this operation, and for some reason, government assets are such Coast Guard and National Guard are acting as agents of BP.

It's appalling, and our president has explaining to do about it.

"It's appalling, and our president has explaining to do about it."

When this happens send a pm to 'blueboy'...

In response to being told that BP had lifted the gag order.

It's so transparent yet they and gov folks continue to deny there is a coverup going on and censorship of the peoples right to be informed.

Disgusting.

Your community has been on my mind nearly every day for five years. Tears have replaced the thoughts. I'm so sorry you get to be the front runner of impact yet again. After the hurricane, it was about not losing the character of a town I view as culturally and historically significant, which had been a battle in its own right. Now I just feel an open ended mourning that I can't deny or contain.

Thank you for the welcome, but more so, thank you for caring and understanding with appreciation the oddity and uniqueness that is this funky place.
Thank you most of all though for your attention in helping make those responsible accountable, and by doing so, to help your fellow citizens out.

K and R

Did Obama declare marshal law???

I guess our country has been taken over by a foreign corporatation.

Oh well. :boring:

From the very beginning, I could see BP's effort to limit damage to its reputation was more important to them than limiting the physical damage of the spill. The use of dispersants, the low estimates of flow, and denial of undersea plumes are just three things pointing in this direction.

I took the position that the government response was well meaning, but slow, and ineffective. It is looking more and more like the government is engaged in the same type of damage control as BP, worrying more about the perception of the response than the response itself.

Unless someone taking pictures or scientists gathering samples are actually hampering legitiamate clean up efforts, these should be allowed and encouraged.

Not a great time to jump to conclusions. It's enough that CNN uses it to promote their broadcast and look like they are "on the side of the people".

they need to go down the chain to find out who isn't passing the message on, someone up the chain should know who's hiring those guards.

Thanks for the thread, Bluebear.

I saw this explanation today:

"The operations cannot be photographed or observed by outsiders, because they are part of a massive body of evidence outlining the harm that the spill has caused wildlife, in violation of federal laws such as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act."

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/when_animal_rescues_fall_short.html

Very strange sentence. Raises more suspicions than it allays.

I mean, it's one thing in a criminal case where crime scenes have to be protected to find the culprit based on what they know of the crime scene, but we know who the culprits are in this case. The evidence convicting them should be wholly public, and independently verified by environmental NGOs.

There's a lot of information in that article. Here's another quote:

"It is not so much the number of dead creatures as how they died that matters to the government, although obviously the more the harm, the higher the possible penalty," said University of Michigan Law School professor David Uhlmann, who worked for seven years as chief of the environmental crimes section at the federal Department of Justice. Uhlmann said the government likely will bring charges under the Clean Water Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, both of which were used after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

The guy being quoted from U of MI a former DOJ chief. He is saying the government will likely bring charges under the CWA and MBTA. And of course they will! They could hardly avoid it given how much the public has already seen. However, a former DOJ official saying BP will likely be brought up on charges is very different from my calling for an independent NGO to assess the damage and wildlife casualty rates.

The government is restricting press access to the Coast, thus controlling the national narrative (which is a nice way of saying they're engaging in propaganda). The government may have what they consider a compelling reason for low-balling the casualty numbers. One I can think of off the top of my head is international relations with the UK, or even just to control domestic political spin/fallout. Of course it makes no sense to us mere mortals, but to trust the government to fully disclosure the wildlife casualty rates is to believe the government works for the people who elect it and not the corporations that fund election campaigns.

bringing justice. Do not crime scenes/victims have the area/person photographed extensively to document the situation?
So, are the government investigators sending in teams of photographers to document? I do not see any attempt by the government, and feel the press, the '4th estate' as ESSENTIAL in this.

They may use the excuse of for the animals' protection, but lets face it, half of even those rescued are going to die. What better way to have their deaths mean and count for something, if only to convey through photographs, the testimony of their plight.

someone could add or remove evidence. Now I understand what is going on. It may be that the area is considered to be a crime scene. That may well be why no one is allowed to go there.

Remember the O.J. Simpson case? One of the problems was that some employee of the police department, not sure whether it was a detective or someone from forensics, was alleged to have carried a vial of blood from Simpson to the crime scene. Something like that can make it possible for a defendant to claim that the evidence against the defendant was tampered with by the police or others.

So, that could be the reason that no press is permitted in certain areas.

How else does preventing photographs relate to a body of evidence other than to diminish the amount of evidence???

welcome to DU :hi:

...Control what We the People think about.

only to be censored or called names..
Our government along with BP have been engaged in a huge cover up. FROM THE GET GO!

Many or most of us on the gulf coast in numerous states have known for 50 days or so what you are only now learning about!

We have tried to tell people..but when people don't want to know they shut out truth,some deliberately and some for other reasons..I don't not understand, nor do I want to.

Our local news were immediately shut down by the Coast Guard and BP ..long before the national news corps showed up and got serious about this gusher. As well as animal rescue people and our scientists.

Dead Dolphin are being hidden ..as well as whales and manatee.

The worst is yet to come.

Our government is and has been der-licit in their duty to protect the American people and our nation and has turned over their responsibility to a foreign corporation!

This is both angering and beyond sad to learn that our government would sell us all out this way. But they have nonetheless.

Much of it is CYA..and the rest they do not want the entire nation pissed off..They are willing to let us on the Gulf get fucked..but they could not withstand the entire nation pissed off or in panic. There are dangers with this Gusher that has scientists scared shitless!

Understand this..our government's main job is to protect the American people..and our nation ..they have failed miserably at that, and they don't want you to know it!

Sure, you will get the lovely Photo opps..but we on the gulf will get bad air ..water supply cut or exposed to god knows what..dead fish and marine life on our beaches ..dead wild life and dead marshes and a dead ocean...oil and toxic shit in our air and on our beaches...loss of livelyhoods and a ruined economy..for perhaps decades..but this government of ours doesn't want you to get pissed off in the rest of the nation..so they will do anything..and I mean anything, to try to minimize the damage that YOU know about.

:thumbsup:

It's critically important to know the truth.

and dolphins who are trying to avoid the shorelines. Dispersants will assure that. And there is another law that was broken: failure to get a permit to drill in a habitat for endangered species.

to take pictures of oil soaked birds, and sealife.


:evilgrin:

totally unregulated. America 1890-1935.

Unions trashed and weakened. A federal government that is owned and operated by the powers that pay off under the table.

Keep in mind Ludlow and Matewan. Times when the national guard became the energy company's private Einsatzgruppen.

The more it changes...

doesn't have nothing to do with this.

So much for freedom in general.

the libertarian dream

We let them do it then.

Of course they will go back to the same playbook.

We already lost America.

It happened for good sometime during the Bush presidency. 9/11 facilitated it.

It was happening back then in the first year when everyone drove around with the little 99 cents flags displayed proudly outside their car windows. Remember, the little Chinese-made US flags? When everyone was cheering about shock N awe? That's when they really knew they had us.

They manufactured reality and, during the break, they stole the furniture.