Pixiq

Can’t the gov use drones to look at this area? If BP chooses to use the federal government against us then we should use our minds to get the truth to the public.

Overcome… Adapt…

http://www.draganfly.com/
Porcupine Picayune´s last blog ..GetJar – Apps, Apps & More Apps

Overcome and Adapt on the cheap:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/hacking-the-gulf-oil-spill-with...

Typical, and wholly expected.

Er, Carlos, the flight restrictions in place are for operations below 3000AGL which might as well be 3000MSL given that this is over water. http://tfr.faa.gov/tfr_map_ims/html/reg/scale3/tile_3_4.html
Now that said, most of the flight area is within the ADIZ, flight across which requires filing of a Defense Visual Flight Rules Flight Plan. If those are being revoked for flights higher than 3000AGL, then there’s a problem. But the 3000AGL restriction makes sense. There is a lot of low altitude air traffic associated with this disaster and it only makes sense to keep the general traffic clear of the recovery operations.
Now, I am NOT a pilot, a specialist in this, or an authority of any type, this is simply based on publicly available information.

Clark,

The problem is, they can approve flights but they are forbidding the flights when learning there are journalists aboard.

“to prevent media access to what is quickly becoming the world’s largest oil spill in history.” Wow, sensationalist much?

In fact it’s only barely in the top 10 (and only if you take the worst government estimates). It is nowhere near the worst (those were almost all Russian, primarily government owned), and is not on track to be the worst.

How do you, artemis. Are you believing everything what BP is saying?

Yea on government-owned vehicles which they technically have the right to do even if it’s in bad taste. I’m saying that unless I’ve completely misread something, or they have to actually approve DVFR Flight Plans, flights above 3000ft are still allowed.
Again, I’m NOT an authority of any type on this.

Great story, right up to the point where the wars in the middle east were brought in and the point was muddled and politicized.

Also, while I don’t doubt that the media is being prevented from covering, but one example or instance is not enough to say there is a total blackout:

“The problem is, they can approve flights but they are forbidding the flights when learning there are journalists aboard.”

General Petrais has announced that we can not win in Afghanistan without British help. BRITISH petroleum will not be punished or made to pay any significant penalty while we are in a illegal police action. The men and women in Washington the ones elected by corporations to represent corporations will just be the Whores they always are.

It is simply disgraceful. This is our Chernobyl.
George Donnelly´s last blog ..A Million Thankyous

The irony here is that Obama signed the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act last month.

I guess repressing and hindering a “free press” only occurs in foreign countries and not the United States, so the Act does not apply here.

Do what you’re told, but not as we do.

Especially when you’re a second or third world country.

Sorry, this is a ridiculous “story” that you are breaking. First of all, it is no where close to the largest oil spill in history, or even in the Gulf of Mexico. See Saddam Hussein for the former, and Mexico for the latter. All I’ve seen from the media is constant sensationalism against honest companies, notably BP, which has suffered a serious accident and will be unnecessarily paying billions of dollars (when their liability should be no more than $75 million).

Carlos, I love your blog, but I wish you would exercise some editorial judgement. Report on real stories, like when police unlawfully detain photographers for “contempt-of-cop”. You can figure out that “stories” like this are made up trash, considering the enormous amount of media attention this spill has been given.

So there would only be one reporter for one 10 minute period? The problem is that if you let one worker stop to talk to one reporter you have to let them all stop to talk to any reporter.

Here’s a blog from a corporate pilot who just flew over the rig yesterday. doesn’t sound like he had any issues at all.

http://sulako.blogspot.com/

BP Spills Coffee – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AAa0gd7ClM&feature=email

Your coverage on this issue is mentioned on this page: http://www.politicususa.com/en/bp-media

The site gets hacked not too infrequently, so if you get gibberish when logging on, try again the following day.

544K folks on the facebook group Boycott BP and growing.

This makes me so mad! And it’s terrifying. What’s is coming to when our 1 basic Bill of Rights freedom is being oppressed openly by the Federal administration? Freedom of the Press declares that we should have national media cameras on this event from all angles. I hate that the feds are getting away with this, and that they do it because a giant corporation like BP has the upper hand. Curse them.

Keep up the good work, Carlos. I hope that you can garner more attention through your efforts to further 1st amendment rights. Really, we are just fighting to maintain the 1st amendment rights that we already have. We’ll all be in trouble when the government finally gets the idea that they can just ignore the 1st amendment whenever they want to.

Carlos, one doesn’t even have to accept BP’s numbers for artemis to be accurate. Even the highest credible estimates — and I DON’T mean estimates from BP — don’t quite get it in the top 5.

The Ixtoc spill of 1979 (also in the Gulf) was double the size, and the (purposely done) spill during the 1991 Gulf War DWARFS this one; it was three to four times larger than the highest credible estimates we’ve seen on this spill. A handful of others are slightly larger than the peak estimates we’ve seen on this one.

Mind you, none of this takes away from the larger point made in your post, which is well-taken and important to point out. I’m VERY glad you’re among those pointing out that BP is getting heavy-handed in their efforts to control coverage of the issue. Good post, and keep up the good work.

Artemis is right, though, this spill is not on track to be the worst in history, not even by the largest estimates of the spill’s size. The spill is HORRIBLE and tragic and we should be and remain outraged about it, but I think it’s important to keep our hyperbole in check.

But again, minor point that shouldn’t obscure the point of this piece, which is about blocked access to media coverage.

Keep plugging away, man. Love the work you do.

Thanks Sam, I completely agree, sensationalism.

Hasn’t BP already doled out 1.25 billion dollars for efforts to curb this atrocity? And if I remember correctly, doesn’t oil come from the earth(La Brea tar pits anyone)? I agree that independent media coverage is necessary to review the actual scenes of oil spillage and expose where the oil is collecting/drifting to. But if in all seriousness, doesn’t some of the other factors in exposure to the oil leak require restrictions in access(chemical suits)? What’s the probability that if news agencies were allowed to fly over said spill that someone wouldn’t take it upon themselves to exacerbate the situation and possibly/purposefully attempt to bring the plane, or helicopter, down by manipulating the engine?

I’m no BP expert, nor do I support their efforts to cover this up, but I do happen to live in the area where several individuals died as a result of BP’s negligence in Texas City.

And rightly so, as someone alluded to, Mexico had an oil leak that did not get capped for over nine months, and life seemed to go on.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/59442.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/57785.html
http://disinter.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/oil-is-natural-organic-and-biod...

Funny, but of all of the pictures I have seen of the clean-up on the beaches, none of the BP workers were wearing chemical suits. So, you are full of BS on this issue.

Really? I’ve seen tons of videos where the workers are wearing hazmat suits. I’ll cite one of the recent videos on this blog – http://carlosmiller.com/2010/05/26/bp-ceo-barks-orders-to-the-media/

Apparently you just haven’t been paying attention. It’s an OSHA requirement for them to wear hazmat suits when directly working with crude oil or any hazardous material spill.

“And if I remember correctly, doesn’t oil come from the earth(La Brea tar pits anyone)?”

Said tar does not spread across LA, ruining people’s livelihoods and killing wildlife.

Thanks for playing.

Sorry to reply to myself, but said tar does trap wildlife occasionally.

And no reference to the fact that the Jones Act is helping stifle the cleanup efforts in the gulf.

The Netherlands and Belgium have offered their services in picking up the oil saturated waters and cleaning them, but, as this administration has proven before, their interests lie somewhere else.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=166265

Oh, and though it seems unrelentingly inhumane to accept that this much oil has already seeped into the gulf, the fact remains that plant and marine life can still thrive even when oil is present in it’s immediate vicinity:

“Oil is a common, natural presence in the environment, including in the Gulf of Mexico. A 2009 article in Environmental Science and Technology reported that the naturally occurring Coal Oil Point seep field off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. has leaked 150 to 200 barrels of oil into the Pacific every day for probably thousands of years. Yet marine organisms still prosper there.” -Robert H. Nelson

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2810