And, while we are on about more Vivoleum feedstock, how about a Banana Republic Update? Of course you knew that in the good, ole, U. S. of A. your home can be searched without a warrant, without you being home. You can be arrested with no charges revealed to you, detained indefinitely with no access to a lawyer and legally tortured. All under the suspicion that you might be a “terrorist”.
(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: amarine88, Bebopsmile, ImageAbstraction, JoesSistah…)
Before this blog focused upon the response to the environmental disaster ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico, there was some ongoing discussion about ethics in federal energy policy and whether there would be testimony that the Bush administration continued detainment of innocent men at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp because they “feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.”
Well, if you were wondering what it will be like in a corporate-police state, here’s a key exchange:
Wheelan: “Am I violating any laws or anything like that?”
Officer: “Um…not particularly. BP doesn’t want people filming.”
Wheelan: “Well, I’m not on their property so BP doesn’t have anything to say about what I do right now.”
Officer: “Let me explain: BP doesn’t want any filming. So all I can really do is strongly suggest that you not film anything right now. If that makes any sense.”
Not really! Shortly thereafter, Wheelan got in his car and drove away but was soon was pulled over.
It was the same cop, but this time he had company: Kenneth Thomas, whose badge, Wheelan told me, read “Chief BP Security.” The cop stood by as Thomas interrogated Wheelan for 20 minutes, asking him who he worked with, who he answered to, what he was doing, why he was down here in Louisiana. He phoned Wheelan’s information in to someone. Wheelan says Thomas confiscated his Audubon volunteer badge (he’d recently attended an official Audubon/BP bird-helper volunteer training) and then wouldn’t give it back, which sounds like something only a bully in a bad movie would do. Eventually, Thomas let Wheelan go.
“Then two unmarked security cars followed me,” Wheelan told me. “Maybe I’m paranoid, but I was specifically trying to figure out if they were following me, and every time I pulled over, they pulled over.” This went on for 20 miles. Which does little to mitigate my own developing paranoia about reporting from what can feel like a corporate-police state.
Come back Richard Claxton Gregory, all is remembered.
Other AG Posts on the topic of Domination by the State and Whose Interests It Serves
- Flailing at This and That
- It’s Only Tax Evasion When You Are A Person
- Aversive Conditioning and Moral Judgment
- The Killing Fields, Big Eddie Version
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HuffPo-er John deCock advises that if you came for the Gulf Disaster, you really ought to stay for the Great Lakes Pollution.
And speaking of doing it for jobs, for the money, honey, Martin Feldman observes, “Oil and gas production is quite simply elemental to Gulf communities.” Who the Hell is Martin Feldman?
Martin Feldman is the U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, who lifted the Obama Administration imposed moratorium on off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP disaster.
The media was quick to tell us about a potential conflict of interest, i.e., energy stocks in Transocean and Halliburton, as well as two of BP’s largest U.S. private shareholders — BlackRock and JP Morgan Chase.
The law Feldman overturned would have halted the approval of any new permits and suspended deepwater drilling at 33 existing exploratory wells in the Gulf, four of which are BP rigs.
Professor Joe says that such a potential conflict of interest, and failure to recuse, will not come as a big shock to Climate Progress readers. Climate Progress has relayed reports that “58 percent of federal trial judges in oil-affected states have a stake in oil industry.”
Nor to Think Progress readers, one might assume. Ian Millhiser observes:
Mac McClelland updates us on BP use of coercion and intimidation down on the bayou, i.e., “an off-duty Louisiana sheriff’s deputy working for BP’s private security detail harassed an environmental activist who was neither on BP’s property nor breaking any laws.”
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[...] speaking about celebrating this Independence Day and the founding of what is now Our Banana Republic, this blog agrees with Reddit commentator limitz that our country has become a corporate police [...]