Knowledge

Dear Friends,

I think that it was Sir Francis Bacon that first coined the phrase "Knowledge is power."  So anytime a government wants to prevent its citizens from knowing what is going on that government is trying to take away from the people the power to control the government and the power over their own lives.  Unfortunately, our government has on way too many occasions sought to keep the public from knowing what is going on.

The most recent blatant case of attempting to keep the public from knowing what is going on is in connection with the BP oil disaster.  Here is the first part of an article from Newsweek (here)

BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill

Photographers say BP and government officials are preventing them from documenting the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Gerald Herbert / AP

Jean-Michel Cousteau (center) was turned away from a wildlife sanctuary by the U.S. Coast Guard after they discovered that an AP photographer was on board.

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.

The same denial of access is happening in connection with the health problems associated with the BP oil disaster.  Here is an article from The Huffington Post (here):

The latest chapter in the media's ongoing struggle to cover the Gulf Oil Spill comes courtesy of PBS Newshour's Bridget Desimone, who has been working with her colleague, Betty Ann Bowser, in "reporting the health impact of the oil spill in Plaquemines Parish." Desimone reports that on the ground, officials are generally doing a better job answering inquiries and granting access to the clean-up efforts.

But Desimone and Bowser have encountered one "roadblock" that they've struggled to overcome: access to a "federal mobile medical unit" in Venice, Louisiana: "The glorified double-wide trailer sits on a spit of newly graveled land known to some as the "BP compound." Ringed with barbed wire-topped chain link fencing, it's tightly restricted by police and private security guards."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up the facility on May 31. According to a press release, the medical unit is staffed by "a medical team from the HHS National Disaster Medical System -- a doctor, two nurses, two emergency medical technician paramedics (EMT-P) and a pharmacist."
For over two weeks, my NewsHour colleagues and I reached out to media contacts at HHS, the U.S. Coast Guard and everyone listed as a possible media contact for BP, in an attempt to visit the unit and get a general sense of how many people were being treated there , who they were and what illnesses they had. We got nowhere. It was either "access denied," or no response at all. It was something that none of us had ever encountered while covering a disaster. We're usually at some point provided access to the health services being offered by the federal government.

It seems that our government is working very closely with BP to be certain that we never know the true extent of the problems caused by the BP oil disaster.  Here is part of an article from ProPublica entitled "When the Police Control the Press" (here):

...when we received a call last week at ProPublica from Lance Rosenfield, a freelance photographer we had hired to work in Texas City, Texas, on stories about BP's refinery there.
Rosenfield said he had been detained by local police [1] after snapping a picture on the road into Texas City. Rosenfield said he had shown the officers and a BP security guard a letter from ProPublica that said he was on assignment. Police said he would be "taken in" if he did not let them look at the photos in his camera.
The senior officer present, Cpl. Thomas Robison, pressed Rosenfield to describe ProPublica's forthcoming story.
Rosenfield demurred but did allow police to review his photos. No threat to national security was detected -- the pictures were innocuous shots of the refinery and signage nearby. Rosenfield was eventually allowed to leave after being warned to clear further photography with the local authorities. At the request of police, he turned over his social security number and date of birth which were promptly given to the BP security officer who was present.

Our government working is involved in a coordinated effort with BP to be sure that we do not know what is really going on.  The supporters of this censorship use excuses like national security, disruption of clean up efforts, safety and other spurious claims to stop real reporting of the BP oil disaster and the unbelievable problems that it is causing.  There is no legal basis for restricting the access the way it is being restricted now.  It is yet another infringement on our Constitutional rights.

President Obama is suppose to be a Constitutional law expert.  How can he permit this kind of censorship to continue?

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal