Gasland II - Fracking is Worse Than You Think

Josh Fox during filming of 'Gasland II'- you'll be appalled at what he reveals.

Part 2 of Gasland II,  Josh Fox's intense and informative HBO documentary,  begins with interviewing Jeremiah Gee, a Pennsylvanian, and Ph.D. candidate at Penn State.  Gee relates the "real" definition of fresh water is - as provided by the company(Shell Appalachia) fracking near his home.  That is, one can no longer go by the standard definition, but rather that "fresh" means "fresh to THIS site" - where they are now fracking.  It doesn't mean pure or free of contaminants, just free of contaminants from previous frack sites - maybe.

Then the camera pans to Gee's barn and the loads of bottled water which he now needs to ship in, because ingesting the fracked water would be a death sentence. At a cost of over $1,000 a month he has no other choice, and as he notes, he even has to provide it to his chickens and pet dogs. The alternative is obviously too horrific to contemplate.  As one watches this, absolute fury builds at the assholes that have destroyed his quality of life and imposed such destruction of his prime life resource. Meanwhile, a realtor conveys the actual current  market value of his home, at 00.00. Readers can see more in this article:

http://www.sungazette.com/page/content.detail/id/565860/Tioga-County-family-struggles-with-methane-in-its-well-water.html

The emphasis then shifts to  Tony Ingraffea, a Cornell Professor of geological engineering. He is a two time award winner - from the National Research Council - for rock mechanics research - so is in no way the bozo that the frackers' anti-Fox disinformation websites have portrayed! Ingraffea explains clearly and with easily understood diagrams, how cement can fail and methane can migrate into ground water. Referencing one of the fracking pipes, Ingraffea sketches the interior cement annulus of 1 -inch which is the sole barrier between the fracking contaminants and the water supply. As he says, "what you don't want is for that cement to fail".

"Failure" includes: corrosion, crumbling, or disappearing entirely as a barrier over time. If that happens, then "what's down there" (i.e. the contaminants) can get into the annulus. He then rubs out the chalk barrier representing the cement in the annulus, using his fingers and indicates an arrow moving into it from outside. To quote Prof. Ingraffea:

"So now shallow gas goes into the open annulus, pressurizes the annulus, and the gas migrates into an underground source of drinking water."

Once this happens, other frack contaminants can also migrate into the water, such benzene, toluene and dozens of cancer causing chemicals.

Alternately, the scene flashes to the lying scumball Tom Ridge - appearing on a talk show- who insists that such problems as methane in water "occurred long before there were any fracking wells." In truth, such incidents were relatively rare and represented no where near the level of contamination of water currently experienced, when water issuing from hoses can be set afire - and homeowners are advised to not even water their lawns. Ridge, as a PR whore hire, is merely repeating the bollocks fed to him by the PR firms underwriting the misinformation campaign waged against citizens, and those like Josh Fox who seek to expose their disastrous schemes.

Prof. Ingraffea notes that the cement failure phenomena he illustrates are "very well known and at least as long as we've been drilling wells and casing them".  He adds that in his view there are only "three things that are certain: death, taxes, and fracture".  In the latter case, he explains that amongst the thousands of gas wells including those offshore, there is a probability of 1 in 20 will immediately show a failure (opening between the well casing and rock), and that means methane migration. It also means anything else stored in the rock, including salts, heavy metals, other deleterious things now have a pathway.

That is, 5 percent of all wells will be affected and woe betide any home owners in their vicinity. Ingraffea invokes the 100,000 odd wells in PA alone, noting that failure rate means 5,000 wells have immediately failed in Pennsylvania alone. That translates to 5,000 methane migrations into the ground water and ruination of citizens' lives. Just one well going bad means one aquifer will be polluted, such as in Dimock.

From Prof. Ingraffea, Josh goes to an expert on corporate public relations, Naomi Oreskes, on the PR Departments that serve the vermin frackers and their lot. She is the author of 'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming'.  Oreskes explains that the job of corporate PR depts. is not to necessarily show they're right, but merely to spur and stir phony debate. Once the debate is consolidated, it becomes a matter of endless back and forth, "he said, she said" etc, and the ruse succeeds by staving off regulation because, hey, "the issue isn't settled". But in reality it is, as much as the fact that 6 million Jews perished in a holocaust.

Josh names the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton which in the 1950s-60s and later was responsible for mounting the phony campaign that tobacco smoke doesn't cause cancer- sowing enough doubt to postpone regulation for decades. America's Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) hired Hill and Knowlton in 2009 as their PR firm, so when you google  'Gasland 2' and find ANGA website blistering Josh Fox and his documentary, you know it's really Hill and Knowlton behind it.  And be sure, they want to sow enough doubt in your mind to foist a national debate, as opposed to the undeniable observed facts that Fox has revealed. (The recently released "DOE study" - see next blog- which claims fracked water is now "safe" - smells to me like another elaborate PR stunt wrapped up in the supposed gravitas of "gov't scientists". Well, hey, government "scientists" i.e. in the Ramsey panel, were also behind the botched acoustic interpretation of the shots fired in the JFK assassination!)

To show ANGA are liars about the extent of gas leaking, Josh presents actually published memos (Some "fell off the back of a truck" - fortunately for the rest of us!) from the gas industry, headed up 'Leaking Through Casing'. They indicate aspects like "2,000 components" in the fracked liquid, the influence of "harsh conditions",  how wells fail and that they've been trying to solve the problem "for decades".  Worse, they concede in the documents that there's no way of completely preventing or fixing the problem.

In one document, from Southwestern Energy, the diagram clearly shows that the gas well has a cement barrier with a casing that prevents gases from migrating upwards. But this isn't a Powerpoint about drilling wells but rather about how cement and casings fail and allow methane gas and other substances to migrate into aquifers.  Thus, we see from their own documents how cement fails.

Another document from Schlumberger, shows that cement failure occurs at alarming rates - as depicted in one of their graphs showing 'fraction of wells affected by cement failure' vs. the well age in years.  Pausing the DVR to show the graph, I can read off a failure fraction of 40 percent after only 12 years, and a failure fraction of 50 percent after 30 years.  That means if 1.5 million new wells are added in the US of A, as projected, 750,000 will leak after thirty years. If 180,000 are added to PA, that means 90,000 will leak after 30 years.

Another document from Archer, a well servicing outfit, shows the existing percent of wells with "integrity issues" and in the Gulf of Mexico this is 45% of all 6, 650 wells (and according to news reports last night, one is already burning, reminiscent of the BP disaster) and 34% in the North Sea, out of some 1, 600 wells. Moreover, 40 percent are at high risk of "uncontrolled discharge".

Another power point slide is shown from the Society of Petroleum Engineers, that shows given an existing global well population of 1.8 million, and that 35% of them are leaking.  Despite this, the idiots plan to drill MORE wells in the next decade than have been drilled in the last 100 years. (All of which, btw, points to the fact we indeed have passed the Peak Oil mark, and which explains the extent to which extreme drilling is now becoming so common- to the point people's drinking water, air quality is an accepted collateral casualty.)

Recent Department of Pennsylvania Environmental Protection stats back up findings of failure, showing 1,609 wells were drilled in 2010 an there were 97 well failures, or a 6% failure rate. Of the 1,972 wells drilled in 2011, 140 failed, for a 7.1% failure rate.  Of the 1, 346 wells drilled in 2012, there were 120 failures, or an 8.9% rate. Who are you going to believe on this, the paid PR liars for the gas fuckers....errrr....frackers, or your lying eyes?

The Dept. document concluded that the published statistics are "consistent with previous industry data" and that the situation "is not improving".

As Josh puts it, "just as there are no safe cigarettes, there is no safe drilling, and they know it".

Indeed they do. So why LIE to us about it? Why make us, the citizens who note the lies and complain about the destruction of our life quality, the bad guys? The "anarchists"? The "terrorists"? Well, because money is on the line, lots of it, and they want to spread this malignancy worldwide!  That is the next part of Gasland II, Part 2 designed to send shivers down your spine.

Thus we see a humble Australian farmer also is having to deal with flaming water, contaminated by methane gas, and an inability to tend to his land. This, in a country with an already at- risk water table because of prolonged drought. But does the industry care? Does the U.S.? Hell no! As Josh goes on to show, in 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration started the 'Global Shale Gas Initiative', charting shale "plays"  in over thirty countries and pledging a "government to government engagement to help develop shale gas around the World, from Europe, to Africa, to the Arabian peninsula to southeast Asia and South America. Everything now will be destroyed, all the planet's remaining potable water, for the profits of the gas -shale oil frackers. So, in a matter of months, the blighted U.S. map (smeared with red for fracking contaminated regions) metastasized into the map of the world undergoing the same. (Believe me the Germans are pissed off at this as well, and my friend Reinhard assured me they're prepared to fight it tooth and nail!)

Now, all this might be accepted IF the technology of hydraulic fracturing was proven safe and reliable, but as the stats presented show, it isn't.  Hence, it follows that the spread of shale fracking is indefensible.

It's even more indefensible because contrary to the spin, according to Prof. of Environmental Biology at Cornell, Bob Howarth, shale gas is not any better for global warming than other fossil fuels. He notes that the hypothesis that natural gas is a "good transitional fuel" has been tested and the answer is 'NO!'. Howarth adds:

"The White House has clearly bought into this idea that natural gas is part of the solution to moving us gradually off fossil fuel. But they didn't do that with good science".

Howarth estimates that between 3.6% and 7.9% of the total amount of gas produced over the lifetime of a well is emitted into the atmosphere as methane. As he notes there is "continual leakage at the well head, at the storage and processing facilities, purposeful venting and also in the pipeline systems."

This is important since methane is 120 times more efficient at trapping heat than CO2 is over a short 20 -year period. That means that if much more methane outgassing also occurs - from melting permafrost in the Arctic- and those global drilling wells are multiplied, we will likely be in the throes of the runaway greenhouse effect much, much sooner.

Sadly, at the end we see the Paar family in Texas moving from their family home, as well as the Gee family in PA, as well as hundreds of other families. None of them are allowed to tell their stories due to binding 'shut your mouth' mandates issued by the frackers. As Josh notes, "there is something inhuman about not even allowing people to talk". And having to leave their life long homes is bad enough.

Louis Meeks, in Pavilion, WY, meanwhile, isn't about to leave and he attends a meeting with neighbors where the water tests conducted by the EPA are being disclosed. The findings?

-Methane in 10 of 28 water wells at "near saturation" level of 19 mg/L, with "similar isotropic signature to production gas"

- Presence of synthetic organic compounds including glycols, alcohols and 2-butoxyethanol.

- Other petroleum -related detections including - benzene at 50 times the safe drinking water level, as well as phenols, tri-methylbenzenes and diesel and gasoline based organics on a "fairly widespread basis"

The last scenes of the documentary are heartbreaking to a real citizen, as Josh attempts to gain access to a House fracking hearing with his camera (to film for the public's benefit) but is instead handcuffed and led away. NO first amendment rights, at least if you show up with a video camera to hold the vermin weasels in our gov't to account for their own words!
Does this nonsense have to be stopped? Absolutely! The alternative is our total water supply being filthed and undrinkable within another five years. 'Good' only for rats and vermin and I doubt even they'd drink it.

THIS is what's driving the anti-fracking movement (including returned, outraged vets from Iraq shown having to deal with fracking effects including from poisoned water and earthquakes), and what's for sure is it will not stop - not so long as citizens are engaged and aware

To be fully aware, citizens need to know the massive misinformation campaign mounted by the gas frackers against Fox and his documentaries. To see one illustration of the misinfo (as well as disinfo) see:

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/09/new-plan-from-gasland-ii-the-faucet-fire-lie-wasnt-big-enough-were-going-full-garden-hose/


Sadly, Fox shows the power basis of much of this is because our government has become corporatized, and now corporations wield more power over it than do citizens. (Whose cyclical votes are inevitably trumped by corporate campaign contributions and lobbyist bribes once the dust settles.) How else explain the writing and passing of a law that actually exempts the frackers from the Safe Drinking Water Act?  Read more at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/06/gasland-part-ii-sequel_n_3554756.html

and: https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/04

Also, see this Youtube presentation on the gas industry's misinformation campaign and why you, as a citizen, need to see this documentary however you can. What befalls and affects your fellow citizens also affects you. The corporate gangster state laying waste to your fellow citizens' lives will also one day come to destroy yours, if you are passive and non-engaged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNhpxIkhgBc

As Fox observes, quoting the mayor of Dish, TX, "Now you know. Once you know, you can't  not know".

Gasland II - Too Intense for Wifey to Continue (Review Pt. 1)

Scene from the Josh Fox documentary ‘Gasland’ in which a homeowner lights his tap water on fire. The gas-sparked "water fires" are still burning in Gasland II!

Josh Fox's documentary "Gasland II" opens with Obama bloviating about a "100 year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our feet" and the goal to "develop it safely" as well as a determined Hillary Clinton saying emphatically: "The United States will promote the use of shale gas. I know that in some places that's controversial" .

Yes, Mrs. Clinton, but we also know for damned sure it's not controversial in any of the gated communities or high rises where the elites live. Their kids don't have to worry about bleeding orifices, sores and lung problems because their water and air, the essentials of life, are contaminated, degraded. But see, the political elites have no use for these facts, since they KNOW Peak Oil has long since arrived (in 2005, to be exact) and the real reason they're going nuts cranking out shale oil and natural gas is because the cheaper, more bang for the buck oil is now receding. "Limiting our imported oil costs" is merely useful PR for the sheep or the proles, since 95% of all the shale oil is sent overseas anyway.

Anyway, past this blitz of elite blather, we behold Josh Fox and his home near the Delaware River, threatened now by the presence of "thousands of natural gas" wells. As Josh notes, playing his banjo and after introducing the family home in Milanville, Penn.:

"Every day I wake up with the fate of my back yard and the watershed - the source for millions of people- up in the air."

The scene then switches to the BP Oil spill disaster in the Gulf and how the elites have kept us from knowing the extent of environmental damage there as well (this is before Josh's place is threatened, in an earlier  filming expedition).  We see how extensively polluted the Gulf is as a result of Josh's plane being able to fly much lower than other journalists' planes.

"It's hard to believe my eyes. As far as I can see the surface of the Gulf is streaked with oil- like ghosts on the surface. Nothing can really prepare you."

Josh notes scenes such as he filmed and reported were not visible on the news, since journalists' flights were restricted to 3,000 ft. and above. (Journalists would call the FAA to clear flights, but BP would answer the phone. Corporatocracy anyone? Gov't in the paws of the corporations!)

By the time Josh Fox documents the extent of havoc in the Gulf, especially with the use of the toxic chemical dispersants that "actually makes the oil more toxic" (damaging the sediment where most aquatic organisms live)  and has been banned in Britain- we return to his homestead- he observes a news "surprise neighbor": a frack well. This was compliments of the Delaware River Basin Commission to open up the river basin to 18,000 gas wells. The commission had approved 15 exploratory wells, one of which abutted Josh's land.(A mile from his home)

Josh's home, he relates, was built by his dad (a holocaust survivor)  in 1972, out of love and dedication. He used a diagram out of 'Popular Mechanics'.  To his family, home was in the right place. Life was good, until receiving a letter in 2008, that the family home was atop a shale deposit, part of the Marcellus Shale - the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas".

The letter indicated a "signing bonus" of $100,000 if he only let the gas frackers "frack"

As Josh noted: "The F-word isn't in the dark anymore. It's in the top three words used in 2011, behind Occupy and deficit."

He adds that "with one to two million wells projected, America is in a fracking frenzy".

But for whom? Not for the elites, or one percenters or toffy-nosed political class who lord it over us proles! They are safely ensconced in tucked away communities where rigorous regulations or locations protect them. It is the ordinary hoi polloi who are burdened by the extreme costs of this crude form of energy extraction, as Josh then proceeds to show.

The frackers claim, and a new Denver Post editorial yesterday attempted to bolster, the notion that "fracking is safe for water". But IF it is, why is fracking exempt from compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act? Surely, NO exemption is needed if it was truly safe. Logically, the only reason one would need the exemption from the Act is if it patently wasn't!  According to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, shown on screen shots 14 minutes into the documentary, the industry doesn't have to tell the public of the chemicals they're using.

The scenes then switch to the families affected, including those in Dimock, PA, featuring a '60 Minutes' snippet where Leslie Stahl asks a group of homeowners 'How many have lost their water supply?" and all raise their hands.

One of the home owners exclaims on having gas in the water, and that he can actually fill up a jug - shake it and light it, and he proceeds to do so to demonstrate. A magic trick? A deception? Hell no! Only the ungodly truth of what the fracker PR firms like Hill and Knowlton are trying to deny. (These are the same twerps that tried to represent smoking tobacco as ok and fine and dandy.)

Just as H&K's PR hacks earlier claimed smoking didn't cause cancer, they now have the frackers claiming they don't believe the flaming water was caused by fracking chemicals. Well, by what then, inflammatory fairies?  Anyone who believes them needs to read the PR expose book, Toxic Sludge is Good for You, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, based on the 1990s tactic of toxic industries to try to soft sell the use of their sludge in fertilizers.


The Dimock families, finally having had enough, banded together to sue Cabot Oil & Gas. One former Cabot worker, now a witness for the families, is quoted as saying:

'We feel like horses being pushed toward a dirty hole. And you know, horses won't drink bad water. They just won't do it"

And as Fox adds at this point: "Or having to tell your kids they can't swim or fish in the water."

Victoria Switzer, one powerful spokesperson, recounts how the families begged Cabot for water. She notes they were originally told there's be only one well and now there were 30. Truth anyone? She then holds a map of the area showing them all, adding: "I dread to imagine what will happen to property values out here. How would you advertise this house? Bring your own water?"

But the issue isn't facetious for the families, kids, elderly who have to be subjected to this crap. Sadly, Dimock wasn't alone, since as Josh notes "a huge change had swept across Pennsylvania, after Governor Ed Rendell had rolled out the carpet for the gas drilling industry."

Well, we already know  - as I exposed earlier - that though a nominal "Dem"- like so many these days- Rendell is actually a Neoliberal punk tool and part of the 'Fix the Debt' battalion now trying to push through the Chained CPI (see also; http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/01/fix-debt-cover-to-undermine-your-future.html )  As I noted therein:

"Philadelphia magazine  notes that Rendell is currently a “corporate consigliere Greenhill & Co investment bank” and the co-chair of “Fix the Debt” — a “blue-chip cabal of 130-plus plutocrats who have anted up a $43 million kitty to fund a multimedia stealth campaign/public relations offensive” pushing to both preserve tax breaks for the wealthy and dismantle Social Security."

So, we understand even before Josh Fox's segment, where this sellout turd stands. With the other Neolib turds trying to destroy the welfare of the actual citizens of this country!  And if the punk has no sympathy for elderly who stand to lose the most via dismantling Social Security, why the hell would he give two shits about some hundreds of people losing their drinking water in Dimock, PA or any other Pennsylvania town? (And I harbor lots of connections to Pennsylvania, places like Lancaster, after tracing dozens of my ancestors back to those areas, including Conrad Brumbaugh who fought in the Revolutionary War.)

Some effort to ameliorate Rendell's gas frack frenzy was initiated by Lance Simmens (liason to Governor for Intergovernmental affairs) when he told Rendell: "We have got to get the people of Dimock clean water. This is the United States of America and we need to have this as a primary right for all of our citizens."

Rendell then agreed and asked Simmens what can be done, to which Simmens responded, "connect Dimock to a public water supply."  This would have been via a water pipeline connection to the public supply in Montrose, PA. In the wake of this, various news releases (from the Dept, of Environmental Policy)  showed the state of the Dimock wells, including: inadequate cement, cracked cement, or now cement, especially in the most crucial part of the well that's supposed to keep gas from migrating to aquifers. Well, those crucial parts had failed. (In part 2 of Gasland II, it would be revealed by a Cornell professor of engineering how 5% of all wells fail this way, so if there are 100,000 wells in a region that immediately means 5,000 failures and this after only 10 years. After 30 years the failure rate becomes 50%)

In a document released as Attachment A, dated Nov. 3, 2010, as Fox narrates, "it showed scientifically that Cabot had contaminated Dimock's water with methane."  This then fueled residents of other PA towns demanding the Dimock water line be "a precedent for the state."

Alas, the ultimate cost of over $12m is rejected when a new Repub administration enters under John Corbett - who received $1.6m from the frackers, and the water project is killed as Corbett's spawn appear on TV ads and drink 'fracked" water - asserting how good it is. They advised residents to move, but the residents have soundly delivered a load of middle finger salutes. Interestingly, three of Rendell's former  top aides (Battisti, Roy and Sexton), go to work for the gas industry in the wake of the administration change and Rendell himself joins a private equity firm with interests in the natural gas industry. He then goes on to advocate publicly for drilling without disclosing his industry ties. (And to think at one time I actually was a fan of this shit wad!)

Josh returns from Dimock to his own worsening situation and the only place left, the Delaware River,  where the gas frackers hadn't despoiled the watershed with their disgusting wells and leaking effluent.  But that was soon to change, bearing out Josh's quote of an old saying: 'you can never put your foot in the same stream twice'.

Flash then to Pavilion, WY where we see the frackers also demolishing the water, and the EPA issuing warnings to residents not to drink it. Louis Meeks, one resident, turns on the tap and releases water into a bottle. It's murky and smells like turpentine. The guy tells it like it is:

"This place isn't much but it's all we wanted. You want to tell me to shut my mouth? Well I'm not gonna!"

Meanwhile, resident John Fenton notes the chemical in his water is "something that's only been seen a couple times....ever'.  He adds:

"If this country worked the way it should. If the laws were designed to protect the people and protect the environment and not to make the corporations rich, they'd have the chemical lists for the water,"

Flash forward then to the Barnett Shale deposits in Texas, and the havoc drilling there is wreaking on residents. We finally meet a one-percenter, a "self made millionaire" who owns a 12,000 sq. foot home which is dubbed by Fox "the nicest gas drilling pad in America".  The proud owner proclaims that while he can control what goes on in his home he can't control the fracking effects outside or how it affect the home, including turning the water into flammable material. (Which he demonstrates for Fox by lighting on fire the water coming out of a hose.)

The self-made millionaire is also warned that if methane -laden water continued to go into the house, it could explode. Testing of the water shows: boron, methane, strontium, benzene, toluene. The lab that ran the tests added a note they'd never seen "anything like it that came from a water well". And "tell that homeowner, he can not use it for anything, even watering the yard." Obviously, because the grass will catch on fire.

Dish, TX is Josh's next stop, where the wife of a homeowner (actually mayor of the place) notes the prevalence of nosebleeds in her kids and that she doesn't want to see Leukemia flare up in them. As the mayor puts it: "Knowing what I know it's my duty as a human that we go and share our experiences here."

He adds that: "Three years ago I was a Republican, now I'm an independent."

We go next to Lisa and Bob Paar in Wise, County, TX. (Not far from Fort Worth in the Barnett Shale). But now,  Lisa has fracking chemicals in her lungs, and she notes there "are twenty one wells around us." We then see photos of Lisa's daughter, covered in a rash and with a nose bleed. Blood is seeping fro her nose as the poor kids tries desperately to get some relief. Outside in the yard, Lisa has come home to dead chickens and a near comatose dog. She then shows photos of her own rash which looks disturbing like a case of run amuck impetigo or cowpox, extending from her mouth, upper torso, arms, legs to the bottoms of her feet - adding her throat would start swelling. Her face then drew p on the left side like she had Bell's palsy.

Tests disclosed chemicals in her lungs including: HCl (hydrochloric acid). She relates that an internal specialist has informed her that if the family didn't move they would "spend more time and money in hospitalization, chemotherapy and morticians than anything else."

She acknowledges the family has been forced to leave because they're all sick. The solution from the head honcho of the town?

"Move! They need to move! Different people have different tolerance levels for getting sick. Those who do need to take the losses financially and get out of where they are. Your personal health is more important than anything else!"

So, in other words, never mind the beautiful home and life quality you may have now. If the gas frackers move in and fuck it up, fuck up your air, water and your life, well.....you had best just move - take your losses, and leave.....or be fucked! Hey, ever heard of the "pursuit of happiness"? How can you entertain such if your health can be destroyed with one frack well pouring out its rotten effluent?

But we haven't see the worst yet from these fucking  fracking reprobates and their corporate-bought, government whores. Oh no! The best is yet to come in terms of turning their attention on the "activist insurgency".   Here, Fox highlights a Powerpoint presentation on how the "gas industry is trading notes on their war effort." We see the advice to PR hacks:

"If you are a PR representative in this room today, we recommend you do three things:

- download the U.S. Army/ Marine Corps Counterinsurgency manual

Because we dealing with an insurgency!"

(Best believe it, fucker! )

"There's also a course provided by Harvard and MIT called 'Dealing with an Angry Public' . Take that course, A lot of officers in our military are attending this course"

It also didn't seem to matter that the U.S. military had already allegedly ruled it was illegal to use psyops techniques against Americans. (Though truth be told, they've been doing it, along with the spy state, since Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963. Thus, every reference to the claim of Lee Oswald being the "lone assassin" is also effectively a use of psyops against the American people learning the truth. This is as egregious and damning as the use of counter insurgency PR is against the people learning the truth about fracking chemicals)

Reference is subsequently made to community outrage, and how "if one loses moral legitimacy one loses the war."

Near the end of Part 1 of Gasland II, we learn now Tom Ridge, former governor of PA and head of Homeland Security, signs on to be the chief spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition. (The same group that fights any regulation of gas drilling). The next month the Pennsylvania Dept. of Homeland Security "begins issuing briefs that lists anti-fracking protest groups as possible eco-terrorists."

This is registered under 'Pennsylvania Intelligence Bulletin No. 131", issued 30 August, 2010. The Bulletin notice reads:

"Environmental extremism trending towards eco-terrorism and criminality was a rising threat to the security of Pennsylvania".

One retired Air Force officer living in Dimock was forwarded the bulletin,and posted it on a gas drilling Listserv. Incredibly, after doing it, Pennsylvania Homeland Security chief James F. Powers, wrote her an email - assuming she was a pro-gas drilling stakeholder. He indicated the Dept, of PA Homeland Security has contacts with pro-drilling groups like the Marcellus Shale Coalition.  He also noted, that agents were "showing up at protests and spying on gas drilling activists"

They weren't only sending their collected information to law enforcement, but to the gas industry. Hearings were held by state rep. Lisa Baker into the misconduct. One activist witness testified that she "no longer feels safe in her home, and worries that her phone calls are being recorded and that her emails are being monitored."

Well, now, thanks to Ed Snowden's revelations, we know how true that is. Also she is likely listed as among those against whom action may be taken in any continuity of government scenario.  Powers, meanwhile, bloviated that any and all communications were only about "situational awareness" - a typical generic PR vanilla term to baffle with BS.

Finally, we're introduced to the 'Institute of Terrorism Research and Response'  - with which the state of Pennsylvania has a contract. Their goal? To assemble lists of terrorists and "anarchists" - including anyone who bitches too loudly about having their water polluted by frack wells or their air. Imagine that these delirious fuckheads actually believe no American has the right to be enraged, outraged and complain when the basic necessities for life are ripped from out under him and his family! What fucking planet do they inhabit? Maybe the same one that the yahoo PR pricks now attacking 'Gasland II' on various websites come from!

By this time, wifey had lost it and was unable to continue watching. Imbued with the sort of idealism shared by many new citizens (she became one in 1998) she couldn't believe what she was seeing and hearing. Was this the nation of freedom, first amendment rights, 4th amendment protections etc. and so on she had signed on to? The issue of the fracking wells and despoiled water and air looms large, since we are also near to supposed deposits here in Colorado..

Despite Janice's staunch refusal to watch Part 2 of Gasland II, I will, and will continue my review of Josh Fox's documentary. Maybe wifey will read about it when my blog post goes up!

We Must Get the "Patriot Act" Repealed in 2015!

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” – Samuel Johnson

“No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of perpetual warfare.”- – Barack Obama, May 23^rd, 2013

"The fundamental reason for the conversion of the state into a gigantic spy apparatus is the nature of deeply destructive domestic and foreign policies which the government has so forcefully pursued. The vast expansion of the police state apparatus is not a response to the terror attack of 9/11. The geometrical growth of spies, secret police budgets, and the vast intrusion into all citizen communications coincides with the wars across the globe. The decisions to militarize US global policy requires vast budgetary re-allocation , slashing social spending to fund empire-building. 

Mass spying is designed to identify the citizens who oppose both imperial wars and the destruction of domestic welfare.”       – James Petras

"People in the U.S. are indoctrinated from birth with the idea that it's the government's job to protect their freedom. That the U.S. is a special place where we have nothing to fear because democracy will keep us free. What they should be taught is that government, no matter what the form, is always (always!) the biggest threat to freedom and that it is up to public at large to throw their butts out when they violate the public trust_"– Commenter on UK Guardian forum, July 17, 2013

“If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged” –  Cardinal Richelieu


The mis-named "Patriot Act" comes up again for review in 2015. When it does, it's time for alert and aware citizens to pressure their congress critters to slay this misbegotten beast once and for all - don't let even one section arrive for "re-approval" which might feed more gov't paranoia against its citizens. If you think in the most remote sense I am "inflating"  things or exaggerating, then you need to watch Josh Fox's "Gasland II" and how ordinary citizens who protest the destruction of their air and water (via fracking)  have now even become "enemies of the state". And how former Homeland Security Head Tom Ridge has become part of a Marcellus Shale "security"  contingent that now employs "counter insurgency" measures on the disaffected citizens of Pennsylvania, and PSYSops methods developed by the U.S. Army while basically labeling them as "terrorist threats".

After one couple saw their medical bills inflated, in the wake of their water and air poisoned and their kid with bleeding nose and other sores, we had to halt the program. Janice, my wife, was in tears and near apoplectic hysteria - she simply couldn't take it any more. (We hope to resume with Part 2 of Gasland II when she "can summon the courage".) But summon the courage you must, fellow citizens, because it was obvious from even watching half this documentary the war is on the citizens and their welfare,  compliments of a depraved corporate gangster state- metastasizing perhaps since the JFK assassination. A gangster state that bails out banksters, allows war criminals like the torturing Bushites and their corporate minions off, but leaves rank and file citizens exposed to every nefarious means of under cutting their lives, including now - tracking all license plates on vehicles and their locations, then storing them (according to an ACLU report).

Anyway, I digress. The Congressional investigative hearings are now focussed on the over reach of the NSA surveillance that Ed Snowden disclosed.  Testifying yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, John C. Inglis - the deputy director of the NSA, admitted that NSA analysts can "perform a second or third hop query" through its amassed telephone or internet records, "to find connections to terrorist organizations"

In other words, my friends, you needn't even be talking to a friend of a "terrorist" (who now may even be an activist protesting against the filthy water on offer after the gas frackers crapped on people in rural PA). It may be only an acquaintance of an acquaintance of that person! And from the NSA logs, those connections then makes YOU part of the web of suspicions!  Anyone here recall the Stasi? The Gestapo?

Meanwhile, two days earlier top spook Keith B. Alexander was asked about the extent of collection, to what degree? According to the WaShPost, Alexander took a "collect it all surveillance approach originally directed at Iraqis in the middle of a (bogus) war, and thereafter transferred it so that it is now directed at the US domestic population as well as the global one"


The Post went on:

"At the time, more than 100 teams of US analysts were scouring Iraq for snippets of electronic data that might lead to the bomb-makers and their hidden factories. But the NSA director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wanted more than mere snippets. He wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency's powerful computers.


Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, 'Let's collect the whole haystack,' said one former senior US intelligence official who tracked the plan's implementation. 'Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it. . . . ".

In other words, just as the entire Iraqi populace became the "enemy" so have ordinary U.S citizens who didn't do a goddamned thing!  The Post author continues:

"Aside from how obviously menacing and even creepy it is to have a state collect all forms of human communication - to have the explicit policy that literally no electronic communication can ever be free of US collection and monitoring - there's no legal authority for the NSA to do this"

Meanwhile, in the House hearings yesterday, the actual author of the Patriot Act, James Sensenbrenner, warned officials that unless they reined in the scope of their surveillance, they'd risk lacking the votes to renew the provisions. My argument is the entire act ought to be trashed, then only parts renewed and only after EVERY manjack has read its provisions carefully! (Let's recall that after Snowden broke the news on this PRISM crap, Sensenbrenner was quoted as saying when he wrote the Section (215) he never ever intended such wide, dragnet surveillance.)

Well duh! Let us now be aware that the Patriot Act itself has not only been responsible for this misbegotten spread of surveillance, but also the militarization of police forces across the nation (what many call the "Swat-ization"), as well as the paranoid reaction by the spy state to many historically ordinary citizen actions, such as conducting legal protests (as Occupy Wall Street did) and complaining to the media about the despoiling of air and water - as the residents of Pennsylvania's rural Marcellus Shale drilling regions have done.  In other words, the Act has single handedly been responsible for the expansion of the "terrorist" meme while also feeding gov't paranoia to justify any technology to spread further suveillance - even now to tracking drivers and their driving locations!

We are now the enemy, the perceived collective  "enemy of the state", and if we don't get this horrific Act repealed or fully rewritten we will pay for it years to come, as the "good Germans" did after the Reich steamrolled all their Weimar democracy liberties to smithereens. Perhaps John Conyers' comment was the most direct and on the mark of all, when he told Inglis, James Cole (deputy Atty. General)  and Robert Litt ( the senior legal counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ) that what NSA  had done with its PRISM was clearly "a violation of the law"  in the matter of transgressing 4th amendment rights. Let us recall again what that amendment states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Lastly, we need to remember we wouldn't even be having this conversation were it not for Snowden's whistle-blowing.

And newsflash to pundit Melissa Harris Perry (who said on her MSNBC show,  “the whole point of civil disobedience” is “to show that you are willing to risk your own freedom, your own body, in order to bring attention to something that needs to be known.”) Well, Snowden did just that. And no, Melissa, he doesn't have to turn into a total masochist to prove that - allow himself to be taken to a U.S. Gulag, stripped and waterboarded 24/7 and experience what others may or may not have. He basically gave up a comfortable life, earning nearly $200k year with a great pad in Hawaii and a beautiful gf. If that's not a sacrifice I don't know what the fuck is.  Besides, what have YOU sacrificed? Evidently nothing, as you won't even speak on his behalf  (in terms of revealing what the gov't has done ) like Chris Hayes has.

The spooks and their defenders and enablers like Lisle, Clapper and Alexander (and much of the media)  can talk all the codswallop they want that their intrusions are "only limited" or they can't really tell who is doing what, or that Snowden is a "traitor" - but the intelligent citizen knows better. And no, WE are not "paranoid" - it's the government that's paranoid else it wouldn't need to scoop up every bit of info under the Sun about us!

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/18/rebecca_solnit_edward_snowden_is_a_modern_day_prometheus_partner/