NDAA 2007 basically overrode Posse Comitatus, even though it's overreach was repealed later. NDAA 2012 extended the definition of covered persons to include " any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities." A covered person is someone that is subject to martial law and exempt from Posse Comitatus. Of course, it's kinda hard to declare martial law on just one person which is why you saw martial law in full effect following the Boston bombing.

However, to answer your question, this was a military exercise, not US Armed Forces (with the exception for the National Guard and Coast Guard) enforcing domestic law. Of course, extrapolating from @chingalera 's tags, this exercise serves a more sinister purpose. I'll leave it up to him to expound on that.

My pleasure! I was actually going to sift this yesterday morning, had the submission form all filled out, but then narcolepsied out before I actually put it in. Glad you were there to pick up the slack!

In reply to this comment by geo321:
Thanks so much! :

In reply to this comment by NicoleBee:
*doublepromote

Thanks so much!

In reply to this comment by NicoleBee:
*doublepromote

Transcript
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Coast Guard have a great tendency to be in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing! Goooo coast guard!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'tsunami, japan, sea, huge, swell, coast guard, wave' to 'tsunami 2011, tsunami, japan, sea, huge, swell, coast guard, wave' - edited by lucky760

>> ^TangledThorns:

Don't forget to correct Obama on his pronunciation of 'corpsman.' Hint: It's not corpseman. Also, remind him we have a Coast Guard and France is not our greatest ally.


ok, I'll let him know next time I see him

Don't forget to correct Obama on his pronunciation of 'corpsman.' Hint: It's not corpseman. Also, remind him we have a Coast Guard and France is not our greatest ally.

fixed
In reply to this comment by eric3579:
*dead

Your video, Another Reason Why the Japanese Coast Guard is Badass, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 1 Badge!

Here's the other reason: http://videosift.com/video/Why-the-Japanese-Coast-Guard-is-Badass

Sounds like someone is attempting to shift blame from the myriad of other problems. I can understand looking into this to see how it could have been handled better, but blaming anyone for possibly damaging/sinking a burning structure....and one that is so fully engulfed in flames that multiple boats aren't able to extinguish it in the process.....is nuts. Unless those people got on board this oil rig and started the fire in the first place, I don't see the point of trying to shift attention onto their efforts to put it out as a bad thing.

The alternative to let it burn itself out would have resulted and just as likely may have resulted in this rig sinking due to temperatures causing metals to fatigue/warp and other things just simply explode from having massive temperature changes due to the fueled fire taking place on much cooler water.

The only thing this investigation could possibly benefit from is that it may allow them to stand a chance to extinguish fires like this in the future, but it looks to me like there's a bit of a campaign here going to try to blame the Coast Guard for BPs failures to take the time to properly close off a well resulting in much more than just a burned up rig but the deaths of people, and the resulting oil spill killing off countless wildlife and creating potential (more likely than not in my opinion) long term health problems for everyone exposed.

And there is the underlying problem of the government regulations being too lax when it comes to oil drilling where as other countries require relief wells to be in place before disaster strikes. Non-existent oversight.......no requirement for oil cleanup R&D.......just a policy of make as much money as you can off government contracts and hope nothing goes wrong so people won't look at hard at all of us.

The coast guard is featured in a much better light on shows like "The Biggest Catch" where a boat has catastrophic failures and these guys have to go out to save their asses from a fiery, freezing, drowning, etc death. Or when they have their specials and show the coast guard and such rescuing people from rooftops after hurricane Katrina and developing new techniques on the spot to be taught as part of the training after it's all over.

Blaming the coast guard is just an attempt to shift blame off BP and regulations committees/politicians in bed with them. It's akin to blaming the police department for 9/11 or the fire department for being unable to deal with large radioactive contamination. Who expects some crazy bastards to create the conditions for catastrophic failures and not let anyone know what the hell they did before it's too late to act on it? Some do, but you'll run out of funds trying to prepare for everything and you'll go crazy trying to predict them all. So you do the best you can and punish the people who CAUSED the problem, not the people who were unawares of it until it's exploding in their face. That's just ass backwards.

>> ^srd:

Ah come on. 65 feet is plenty with TV cameras. 300 feet is over the top and I would be able to understand. But do you REALLY need to stick your TV camera up a stressed out oiled birds beak to get the images needed to penetrate the jaded mind-shell of the average TV viewer who is happily munching his TV dinner, exhilirated in his induced 30 second outrage? And do you need to get closer than 65 feet to a clean up boat to shoot it? Maybe you'd be interfering with their work if you're any closer? And not just one, but a whole flock of journalists in boats.
You're behaving as if a media black out was being enforced - and all that's happening is getting the media to give a little room. So what?


40 Thousand dollar fine, and Class D felony charges. Pretty much says, "Fuck you 1st ammendment." As if the media being two feet from boom on the beach is a problem. Perhaps you weren't watching the same video as I was. But it's not just a water 65ft rule. It's also for beaches too, if not by extension but by use. If a boater cannot get to an island that is affected by oil because of the rule, then they cannot photograph the impact it has having on said beach.

It's not the rule itself, or the numbers. It's a matter of principle. If you can't understand that, go read a constitution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#United_States:_three_branches

The Media should be up the cleanup crew's, coast guard's asses with a flashlight and magnetic probe, after all that's exactly what we expect of them.

The article below is beside the point, but interesting nonetheless.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/26/the-missing-oil-spill-photos.html

I understand the need to keep people from the work areas and allowing the work to continue unhindered. I even understand preventing the guy from approaching the rest area to some degree. But there are ways to deal with it that don't involve what is being shown in this video. They could simply barricade the area, post signs to keep the unauthorized out, and have their guards escort anyone off who enters the area without authorization.

But that is implying that they have the right to do that, which a lot of these areas are public locations. If they had the power it would be announced on the news and radio, and posted to keep away from these areas until announced otherwise. And that would be the best way to deal with the problem of camera men and the public at large, and made it a crime at the same time giving more deterrent. Except that I don't think they want to keep all the public from within speaking range of the workers, they just want to keep the people with cameras away. If it were truly dangerous to the public at large, it would be done by now. And we all know the public at large can't keep from driving through construction sites without barricades, avoiding uncovered man hole covers without barricades, and dealing with much of anything out of the normal where they can stick their nose to find out what's going on (don't those rubberneckers just piss you off? Especially when they drift all over the place.)

And this isn't just actual work sites they are preventing people from going to and filming. There are plenty of videos of the COAST GUARD stopping people from filming and exploring the coast line from sea because BP said so with no other reason than that. No booms were in place, there was absolutely nothing but oil coated coastline and dead/dying birds, sea life, etc.

And Im rather curious that there isn't a lot of personal footage being shot from people's own land of the mess and sent to these news networks to be aired, but I suspect that is being discouraged in another unknown manner as of yet.

As a sidenote: BP has been putting out low ball estimated reports for the leak, that webcam is underwater with no real frame of reference for the public. Without scale, that thing could be a pin prick in a garden hose or the size of that sink hole in Chile. They've since repositioned the camera a little to give better footage, but scale is still pretty hard to judge if you don't know how big the items being shown are. It's kinda like the realtors who like to shoot everything with that fish eye lens that warps everything out of shape to make it appear bigger...wasting your time looking at that shit since it could have been taken in a barbie house for all you know.


Coast Guard with BP guys stop reporters trying to check out oil covered location..they say it's not their rules by BP's rules "under threat of arrest".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/19/bp-coast-guard-officers-b_n_581779.html

Hadn't seen this one myself yet...it's even more apparent that they are blocking media exclusively...even from flying over:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/10access.html


Common sense and critical thinking tell me that they don't want the public at large getting pissed off and pressuring Congress to actually punish the company. The longer they can keep the illusion alive that the problem isn't horrifically bad, the more time they have to let the oil sink under the surface of the water and clean up those beaches...so it won't look as bad as it truly is. Oh and the illusion helps keep their stock prices up, if the clean up outlook is grim...their stock prices will tank. Can't have that happening. If they can keep the stock up, and Congress off their back...they'll only be out up to 75 mil in damages when the lawsuits start coming in...pretty nifty deal with the government contracts already having paid them 800+ million this year.

And upon watching it again, the supervisor gave the media permission to approach the rest areas (after the guards denied it, didn't ask the supervisor at any point as well) to see if the workers would speak to them. The security guards told them not to and continued to do so until they spoke for themselves. At which point the reporter thanked them for cleaning up the beaches and left. And as for the "deadness" of the shots, they didn't shoot much beyond the guards blocking access and their attempt to ask workers to speak to them. We don't know how many people the guards have chased off with or without the authority to do so under the law.

>> ^BrknPhoenix:

Please do re-read your hippie comments and reflect for a bit. These things are why you are throwing fire on an Internet website and not making actual decisions.
Let's think about it a minute. If BP/the gov't gives carte blanche for all reporters, what's going to happen? The next day they're going to have thousands of reporters standing in the way of the actual work being done. All of the workers will be talking to reporters instead of working. They will create a disruption.
I'm not defending BP for the oil spill at all, but having a little fucking common sense, people. The media does have access. There's a web cam on the spill itself for Christs' sake. That does NOT mean any random person can just walk right up to it and get in the way. It's no difference than me going to the White House, and after being denied access, claiming that because of that, they have something to hide.
Also, take a look at that shot. It's dead. There's not a ton of reporters there. Everyone knows the rules. These douchebags know the rules too. They're deliberately trying to stir shit up by asking questions to "Rent-a-cops" about what the CEO of the company says, and making unreasonable demands about going onto a work-site.
Do keep this in mind one day when you finally go over the edge, and after mowing down half a school's worth of kids in your Prius after a hella cocaine bender, the media can't follow you right into your place of work because you too enjoy protections like the workers of BP! Isn't America wonderful.
The steps go like this. Step 1) Think critically. Step 2) Lynch. Not the other way around.

someone doth protest...

Who opened up drilling and was blab blabing about how great drilling was? Obama.

Who has sat back and let BP control the Coast Guard and local police for the LA shoreline? Obama.

Who has ignored the EPA repeated fines and sanctions to BP?