Dear Facebook friends and fellow anti-fracking activists:
Today is a special day.
The folks at Energy in Depth (Marcellus) have made a decision for me. They have banned me from posting on their Facebook page. This is not because I have threatened anyone (this is something I have never done and would unequivocally never do). This is not because I have been mean to anyone. It’s not because I smell (I might very well smell-but you can’t tell from such a distance).
It’s because the propaganda drones at EID are cowardly. I was getting real and disturbing traction on their FB page. Folks were posting me to ask questions about fracking. Some folks were turning on EID. Some of their supporters were rethinking their pro-frackism.
EID cannot abide that. They’re a propaganda machine devoted to an entire campaign built on deception, exaggeration, fabrications, distortion, and omissions. I had become an unremitting stinging gadfly on their fracking billboard.
I want their motives to be plainly clear: such a strategy of control is dictatorial. In the truest, most uncluttered sense of that term, their refusal to brook ANY criticism, ANY unsupportive fact, ANY argument which did not conform to their profiteering worldview epitomizes not strength but fear-terror, even. EID is terrified of the possibility that people might really begin to review their decisions to lease their land in light of the facts about contaminated water, air, and soil, about gross social injustice meted out by the corporations, about obscene profits at the expense of the public health.
As Dory Hippauf rightly puts it, EID is a PR firm. Indeed, but they are more. EID is a hit squad devoted to stamping out opposition, and in that they are not merely a PR firm, their attack drones are fracking-soldiers-snipers-dispatched to cauterize the enemy. And the enemy is anyone who gets in the way of the land grab that IS the fracking boom.
Perhaps they think that by burying their collective head in the sand about one of their opponents, that she’ll be silenced. This is not only wrong-it’s asinine. Now EID just won’t know what I’m up to-but I, like so many of us in this movement-will keep working to gain the attention to the issues from rational folks. And the EID folks will discover that putting their head facing toward the sand is naught but a prescription for silicosis.
Energy in Depth effectively fancies itself as the National Rifle Association of fracking. They will stridently defend the rights of their “members” to destroy water, soil, and air in much the same way Wayne LaPierre defends the “right” to purchase assault weapons. EID is every bit as much a front for the fracking corporations as is the NRA a front for the gun manufacturers-the members of both profiteer from a “product” that endangers the lives and health of others. That the NRA’s is an assault rifle and EID’s is a chemical cocktail exploding under the ground makes little difference. Both involve explosions. Both threaten the welfare of anyone within their range. Both advertise for companies that make enormous profits at the expense of those endangered by their “product,” and both are manifestly opposed to unions and collective bargaining rights. Both are supported by the Koch Brothers, Freedom Works, and the far right wing of the Republican Party.
Both must be challenged and exposed.
So here is my New Year’s 2013 resolution: Fight Harder. Fight Smarter. Fight for the Good: Clean Water, Clean Air, Social and economic justice.
Our movement demands but six things from any of us: intelligence, objectivity, a moral compass, compassion, a sense of fairness, and courage.
Unlike our adversary who has but money, we have these six things in immense abundance.
Wendy Lynne Lee
Second, the Un-Banned
Very shortly thereafter, I was re-instated/un-banned-but the case is most curious, hence I am posting here what will be my last post on the EID FB page, and what is awaiting moderation on the EID-Marcellus website thread:
While I accept Mr. Shepstone’s claim that he does not know how I was banned from the EID Marcellus Facebook page, there remain at least two things left unresolved:
a) How I was banned in the first place
That Mr. Shepstone apparently exercises this little control over the managerial aspects of his staff’s actions is not reassuring. After all, it’s not merely arbitrary banning of folks EID doesn’t like that’s at issue. His staff can ban, and they can also, say, alter text, use poster information to spam, or worse. If Mr. Shepstone’s primary paid job here is to administer this site and its related FB adjunct, he’s not done a very good job. It bespeaks the level of competence we have come to expect from workers in the Marcellus–not well-safeguarded, and not well done.
b) Tom Shepstone does hypocrisy
Here he claims the following (in full):
“You did get banned somehow, Wendy, but it wasn’t me and apparently was unintentional by whoever did it. I simply don’t know how it happened. Regardless, I unbanned you immediately when I saw this comment. I wouldn’t want to deprive our readers of your tirades, which are always wildly entertaining, this one included. My apologies for temporary depriving you of the ability to yell at us. We do sometimes ban folks who try to turn the site into one of their own or cross some line or another but you’re not one of those, at least not yet. Even those folks often get unbanned after a period and I took the opportunity of doing a few of those when I corrected whatever happened in your instance. Sorry, I know you love playing the martyr, but we love engaging you, so we’re not giving you this badge to wear.”
In other words, banning me was an accident, but of no real import because unintentional, and would have been justified anyways even if it had been intentional since all I do is engage in tirades, yell, and play martyr.
So, sorry–but not really.
Moreover, the only reason EID un-banned me, says Mr. Shepstone, is so I can’t wear the badge of having been banned. Put more pointedly: If we thought we could get away with banning you and not have you expose that fact, we would have. But we can’t so we don’t.
Third, the Un-Banned, but Conciliatory
Compare that comment with the following sent to me by email, again, unedited:
“I don’t know how you got banned. I checked with everyone on our team and no one else does either. Regardless, I unbanned you immediately upon learning of it. I also posted your comment on the blog and answered it. We make it our business to engage folks on the other side and, frankly, your one of the more interesting conversationalists among those we do engage.”
Here, Mr. Shepstone is clearly trying to perform damage control. I am now an “interesting conversationalist” as opposed to a yelling, tirade-mongering martyr. But these two things are obviously very different.
Which is it, Mr. Shepstone? In the first, Mr. Shepstone is writing FOR his EID audience–and trying to look all the tough PR administrator that he pretends to be.
In this version of un-banning, he strikes a far more conciliatory tone as if he were trying to make sure I let this banning go–to make sure I don’t yell at EID for this lapse of adequate monitoring. Why the two very different posts? Why go to all the trouble to appease me in the second (and this did appear second)?
Mr. Shepstone tries too hard–he didn’t need to go all the way to my email to “make amends,” but he did. Why? Could it really be true that he doesn’t know how this banning happened?
This seems wholly unlikely.
Having some administrative privileges on other websites, I can say with experience that this can’t really happen without there being a trail to follow. Perhaps Mr. Shepstone doesn’t want to know who among his staff at EID usurped his authority, but it is unlikely that he could not find out. It’s either that, or Mr. Shepstone doesn’t have the administrative authority he says he does–both make him look incompetent.
Someone DID something.
Energy in Depth as PR Machine and Army of Rhetorical Snipers
As Dory Hippauf points out, EID is a PR machine. As I argue, they fancy themselves as something more: rhetorical snipers whose job it is to silence the enemy by any rhetorical means necessary–ridicule, personal attack, name-calling. When Mr. Shepstone claims that EID values the point of view of the other side, he is speaking disingenuously. Were this true, he’d not allow anonymous posters (from either side) to simply fire at will.
Apparently someone at EID takes their “stamp out the enemy” charge just one step further, banning those who would challenge the organization’s reason for being–and someone thinks they can get away with anonymously.
Such a strategy may feel to its executor like power–but its motive is nothing but fear.I’ll no longer be posting on the EID Facebook page. And this is a loss for EID whose ill-informed members have bought the pro-fracking horn-swaggle as cover for their own avarice-driven objectives. Some of these soldiers for Big Gas are particularly ugly, and clearly enjoy assault for its own sake.
The anonymous Stage Coach Inn, for example, is not merely an advocate for fracking, but effectively a soldier of fortune for sheer meanness. His/Her posts are largely generic (they could be an assault on anyone on any topic) and brutal without even pretense to an argument. Mr. Peckham hurls naught but invective and insult–but at least he uses his name.
Tim/Kay insists that He/She has always posted anonymously as if this were some justification for hiding behind a pseudonym–but that’s like the parent who says “Well, since my daddy used the strap, I’ll use the strap.” History is virtually never its own justification, and anonymous postings are almost never justified. I not only use my name but am wholly transparent about my affiliations, my work place, my motives. I can be googled–the anonymous cannot–and THAT is a difference of great magnitude.
I point this out because it casts a particularly stark light on the “banning instance”–as Mr. Shepstone likes to put it. Banning someone who posts anonymously might at least be effective. After all, the anonymous potentially risk the exposure of their identity if they raise a ruckus over being banned. I, on the other hand, face no such dilemma. Mr. Shepstone had to know I’d make any such move public.
Hence, he could not ignore it, and he had to respond as quickly as he did. But this is no indication of integrity or “making it a point to engage folks on the other side.”This is just damage control, and thus further evidence that we “on the other side” are making inroads behind the walls of the EID cyber-fortress.
Whoever hit the “ban” button knew this. So does Mr. Shepstone. But now, the EID drones will simply have to stalk me, because I’ll not be making their sniper attacks as convenient as surveying their own FB pages.
EID=Big Tobacco of Fracking
And this brings me back once more to the comparison of EID with the current incarnation of the NRA: both are nothing more than paid propagandists for a product–fracking in one case, assault rifles in the other.
That they’re paid makes ALL the moral difference in the world because their agents don’t have to believe one word of their own propaganda. In other words, Mr. Shepstone and company needn’t believe that fracking is safe, that it creates jobs, etc. All they have to believe is that “money to be made” is its own justification–just like the gentlemen sitting in front of Congress defending cigarettes in the face of definitive evidence that cigarettes cause cancer and just like Wayne LaPierre who insists that putting armed guards at elementary school doors will protect children.
Every one of these claims would be laughably false did people, their lives, and their property not stand to be so damaged if not destroyed. Mr. Shepstone may believe every word he says in defense of fracking–but the point is that it doesn’t matter. He’d say it all anyways because he is PAID to say it.
And this distinguishes the EID/Tobacco/NRA agents in copious moral magnitude from, for example, the Park Foundation whose aims are explicitly philanthropic–and not profiteering.
So, this post is as long as it needs to be to make its philosophical and moral point: banning is certainly morally troubling–but it pales in comparison to the effort to adjudicate it with faux-apologies in the interest of saving face for an organization whose reason for being is mercenary propagandizing for an industry whose history is the incubator of climate change, and with it the famines, migrations, and ultimately wars that may kill us all.
In a world strewn with nuclear, chemical, and biological arsenals, in a world of folks who think men like Wayne LaPierre evince reason, this is not hyperbole. A war over water is a war over life–and that is a prescription for suicide.
For Mr. Shepstone’s post, please see:
Napolean’s Children Attack Natural Gas Bonanza | Energy In Depth – Northeast Marcellus Initiative
I reach out twice to make sure you know we didn’t intentionally ban you and you turn it into a gran conspiracy. You know we have publish everything you’ve ever wrote except for deleting long quotes that were available by link. Your decision to not to post is your loss and proves you were only after martyrdom and eager to have an excuse, as I earlier suggested.
Judy Muskauski says
I’ve been banned for about two yrs.! I never questioned the ban, although I know I also never threatened anyone or did anything to warrant the ban……except maybe call out one or possibly two of their paid shills on the Pipeline wall. Back then, I was a frequent visitor to that page and a few of the EID participants there, blocked me so I assume, they also had me blocked from the EID page, as well. No problem as I love my Badges of Honor!! 🙂
They boast at conventions about using “psycho-ops” against “insurgents” but cannot take a few hits from a raging chicken ? Wow. Kinda sums it up, huh ?
Been banned from EID Marcellus some time ago. They didn’t like me talking about how they cyber squated the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalitions website. They bought GDACoalition.com, GDACoalition.info etc., then diverted all that traffic to their EIDMarcellus website. Our site is GDACoalition.org. I even have an email from Chris Tucker lying about it. I think it was Bill DeRosiers (who now works for the reputable Cabot Gas & Oil) who actually did the dirty work.
Here’s a little story about ShaleShock Media and how you folks are making it up as you go along:
http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/natural-gas-opponents-at-shaleshock-media-make-it-up/16684/#more-16684
Follow up:
When the frackers are frightened, they will resort to any smear campaign they think they can get away with-except fot that reason and evidence backfire on them: http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/natural-gas-opponents-at-shaleshock-media-make-it-up/16684/#comment-8032.
Response: Dear Mr. Massaro,
Let’s dissect your reasoning step by step:
1. As I said “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about” with respect to the alleged alteration and/or misrepresentation of your claims. I haven’t the faintest idea what happened or did not happen at Shaleshock. Moreover, “having some administrative privileges” in no way means or implies that I should or could know. Therefore, that allegation has, in fact, nothing to do with me, and your effort to somehow smear me with it is precisely that: a SMEAR.
2. I will endeavor to find out whether either of these things occurred, and if they did-or anything remotely like them-I will leave Shaleshock immediately, and I will not post there again.
3. I have deep-going commitments to freedom of expression-all expression short of direct or thinly concealed threats. The first amendment that protects your rights protects my rights. Period.
3. I was in fact banned from the EID Facebook page. Whether an hour, a day, or a month is irrelevant. Mr. Shepstone-primary site administrator-acknowledged it as banning, and the only reason it was brief, as Mr. Shepstone also acknowledges, is because EID knew I would call it out.
4. That the banning was brief because I called EID out shows only that EID does not have the same commitment to freedom of expression that I do. Mr. Shepstone can call it whatever he wants, say, “inadvertent.” But “inadvertent” is a weasel word-Mr. Shepstone is simply trying to downplay and thereby excuse what someone did, namely, delete all of my interaction with the EID hit-drones, and ban me from posting on the FB page. It is Mr. Shepstone’s job to know who this is, to prevent it from occurring. He failed at his job. I have no similar job at Shaleshock.
5. “Having some administrative privileges” is very different than having the job at which Mr. Shepstone fails as primary site administrator. Site administrator is not my paid job. It is Mr. Shepstone’s. While I could not fail to recognize that a frequent-flier poster disappeared from a site or a Facebook page, I could not remove them, ban them, or know who had performed this action. That is what Mr. Shepstone is supposed to know. To compare what I should/can know to what Mr. Shepstone should/can know is absurd, and it omits a crucial fact: MR. SHEPSTONE IS A PAID ADVERTISER AND SITE ADMINISTRATOR FOR FRACKING. I am an unpaid voluntary activist for clean air and water.
6. There is a world of difference between altering and/or fabricating claims that someone did not make and deleting and/or banning someone from making any claims. The former is not a violation of free speech; the latter is. The former is a gross abuse of privilege, and should never occur. The latter is sometimes, though, rarely justified.
7. There are cases where posters ought to be banned: the making of threats, libel. No threats have been made anywhere here. Neither of these cases are libelous. If your words were altered, that is wrong wrong wrong. But no one called you names or sought to discredit you in a fashion that could injure you personally and/or professionally. That is libel. If there’s been any libel, it’s all on your side of the fence, Mr. Massaro. Talk to your libel-machines, Mr. Peckham, Mr. McMurtry, Mr. Weiss, Stage Coach Inn.
8. Whatever did or did not happen at ShaleShock, the attempt to make out the argument that alteration and/or fabrication of the opponent’s claims is standard practice in the anti-fracking movement is beyond laughable. It is, in fact, to engage in fallacy of projection: projecting onto your opponent that of which you are yourself guilty, and it is the stock MO of EID.
9. And that’s precisely what you’re doing here: This faux-outrage post is nothing but an attempt to
(a) deflect responsibility away from Mr. Shepstone’s failure as EID Facebook page administrator by making out the allegation that altering/fabricating speech is somehow the same thing as attempting to silence speech. Both are very wrong-but for very different reasons.
(b) make EID a victim, and you a poster-child for that victimization when, in fact, your representation of anti-fracking opponents is so devoted to mis-representation that you can’t even write the hit-piece on Dory Hippauf’s GDAC presentation without it exposing you as the paid advertiser regardless truth for fracking that you are.
10. The EID hypocrisy and trampling of their faux-commitment to engagement and freedom of expression continues: The “Real Promised Land” Facebook page is a venture of EID—and I have been banned today from that page.
Let’s sum up: Mr. Massaro is attempting to smear me with something I absolutely did not do, had no knowledge of, and had nothing to do with indirectly.
Hence, he is guilty of precisely what he accuses ShaleShock: MAKING IT UP.
Mr. Massaro’s motives are to save face for his erstwhile and evidently incompetent employer: EID’s Mr. Shepstone. Mr. Massaro epitomizes the EID “ethos, namely, when you’re really afraid they’re making headway, go rhetorically postal—surely something will stick.
Except for that it doesn’t.
Joe Massaro’s words in commenting on your piece are totally replaced and he calls out Shaleshock Media on it (following your standards) and you accuse him of smearing you. No one will buy that, Wendy, absolutely no one.
However, I am glad to know you did not do the deed (contrary to you, I except your word on that) and I am pleased you plan to dig into it and leave Shaleshock Media if you learn they did and will not post there again. I take you at your word on that as well.
Let me note, however, the site administrator, whoever that is, obviously did it or bears responsibility for it, given that you didn’t do it and we didn’t. I also notice my comment, which was submitted prior to yours on Shaleshock Media. is still awaiting moderation but yours went up immediately. So someone is paying attention and deliberately refusing to deal with my comment. I don’t think you can ignore that. There is a problem at Shaleshock Media.
Energy in Death is completely hypocritical. It BANS those who do not support its pro-fracking line from its own Facebook pages and from those it sponsors: “The Real Promised Land.” So much for EID’s commitment to freedom of expression! How frightened are the frackers of an anti-fracking film? VERY! So frightened, in fact, that they have to seal off their fragile little fabebook page from those who’d post the truth about the dangers of the enterprise lining their wallets!
Dear Mr. Shepstone:
Mr. Massaro ought not to have mentioned, discussed, included me in this piece at all.
He not only does, he implies by affiliation that I am the one who undertook the distortion/fabrication of his words.
YOU have just confirmed this by confirming that YOU accept that this wasn’t me. So YOU also clearly made the very connection Mr. Massaro was trying to allege. And here you’re trying to reinforce it by denial.
Mr. Massaro’s is a SMEAR piece. You know it. I know it.
Whether there is a problem at Shaleshock, I don’t know. I will find this out.
There IS a problem at EID–a problem as clear as daylight, and it is called PAID charlatanism–you are the National Rifle Association of fracking.l
Funny, Chris Tucker did the same thing Stepstone did when I confronted him about the cyber squating of the GDAC sites. He denied knowing who did it and took steps to correct the problem within one hour. Funny thing is, the Go Daddy rep told me that if you own the domain names, you could have them removed in one hour. If you don’t know who did it, you have to file a complaint and that would take several days for them to be removed. Hmmm….
This is a test comment. I have edited this comment. I have edited this comment after the grace period. I have again edited this comment.
Posted at: http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/natural-gas-opponents-at-shaleshock-media-make-it-up/16684/#comment-8073
Some facts about just how forthright Energy in Death really is (and this article is circulating widely-especially to folks excited about going to see the film EID is SO afraid of they have resorted to BANNING opposing commenters and posters on their fake “community” page “The Real Promosed Land”:
“IPAA/EID’s “about” page says its “supporting members” are state associations of gas producers. It displays their logos, instead of the global corporations that launched it.What the logos cloak – in classic PR sleight of hand – are the larger interests behind the IPAA/EID operation. It has been described by some in the press as merely a “pro-drilling group” (in contrast with “anti-drilling” groups or citizens), but here’s how IPAA described EID in a leaked internal memo from 2009, obtained by DeSmogBlog last year. IPAA privately told its allies that EID was its new ”online resource center to combat new environmental regulations,” created with funding from Shell, BP, Chevron, and more.
In other words, IPAA/EID is more accurately described as a front group launched by global gas companies in order to fight a public relations battle against new environmental protections on fracking.”
Who are the REAL funders of the EID “Promised Land”-a land paved with the gold bars of money derived from STOLEN properties RUINED wells, DESTROYED communities, and RAPED eco-systems?
SHELL: “which is the second largest company in the world in terms of revenue, with income of almost a half a trillion dollars in 2011: $470 billion, just behind Exxon. Royal Dutch Shell is a Dutch company registered in London. In 2010, Shell bought “East Resources,” which had gas holdings in Pennsylvania and nearby, for $4.7 billion. Shell’s environmental record includes the largest fresh water spill of oil in the world (in 1999 in Argentina), a major oil spill near Alaska in 1988, and numerous spills in the Niger delta in Africa. (East Resources’ founder, Terry Pegula, and his wife gave at least $300,000 to Tom Corbett’s campaign for governor of Pennsylvania.)
BP: “which is the sixth largest company in the world in terms of revenue, with revenue of $375 billion in 2011. BP is a British oil and gas company, which took over two US companies, Amoco and ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company) about a decade ago. Last month, BP and three of its employees were indicted on criminal charges, including manslaughter and obstruction of Congress, in connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and it also agreed to pay a $4 billion fine related to the disaster. (And, although many are unaware of it, BP’s decisions also made the Exxon Valdez disaster worse.)”
CHEVRON: “which is a US company that is the tenth largest in the world in terms of revenue, with income of $253 billion in 2011. Last year, Chevron obtained gas leases for over a million acres, plus hundreds of thousands of acres of development rights, from smaller companies like Chief Oil & Gas. Chevron and other companies have been sued for damaging our environment through the use of the MTBE gasoline additive that has contaminated water and soil. (Chief’s CEO, Trevor Rees-Jones, has been active in politics, giving at least two million dollars to Karl Rove’s Crossroads operations.)”
The Koch Brothers: “Like IPAA/EID, CRC keeps many of its big funders secret, although foundation filings show that its funders have included the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the family foundation of the CEO of the multi-billion dollar Koch Industries — which in turn is led by Charles and his brother David Koch and is one of the richest privately held gas, oil, and chemical companies in the world. Koch Industries has reaped undisclosed profits from ventures benefiting from expanded fracking, such as from the lower cost of the natural gas used as a feeder to make its fertilizer by Koch Nitrogen, one of the Koch companies.”
Then there’s XTO.
Encana.
Talisman
Occidental Petroleum
Schlumberger
Halliburton.
KBR
Anadarko
But you are not merely paid shills for some of the most egregious human rights violators and environmental rapists in the world, you are also paid SMEAR CAMPAIGNERS:
“Here’s a recent example of its disinformation: the Capital Research Center (CRC) – itself part of the CEO-fueled echo chamber – quoted EID’s flack Tom Shepstone this month implying that the Park Foundation spent more than $17 million helping to oppose fracking in just one year. Wrote CRC: “In 2009, the Park Foundation had net assets of $246 million and spent $23 million, which included $17.6 million in grants and contributions to green groups opposed to fracking, according to Shepstone,” a Pennsylvanian who’s official title is “Campaign Director” for EID’s “Northeast Marcellus Initiative.”
But, as reported earlier this year, the Park Foundation’s public filings show that only a fraction of that amount was spent on grants for projects to educate the public about fracking. The total for 2009 was approximately $700,000, which is 1/25th of what Shepstone claimed. In contrast, the industry’s biggest trade group, API, spends over a $180 million a year on its entire budget, including tens of millions of dollars on PR.
MR. SHEPSTONE, THE FACTS ARE ABSOLUTELY CLEAR. YOU ARE PAID TO DO ANYTHING-INCLUDING LIE, SMEAR, DISTORT, FALSELY DISCREDIT-ANYTHING THAT ACCOMPLISHES THE GOAL OF YOUR MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR SECRET-UNTIL-NOW EMPLOYERS. TO SAY THAT YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED IS TO TRIVIALIZE WHAT YOU STAND FOR.
EID really is the NRA of natural gas-a propaganda agency that, just like the NRA, will exploit whatever it has to-including death-to sell its dirty, ill-got product.
Compared to what EID does and what EID stands for, what happened to Mr. Massaro-though still VERY wrong-is trivial. For EID to exploit it as if EID were somehow a victim-THAT is perverse.
I now know what happened at Shaleshock, and I know who is responsible for the misrepresentation of Mr. Massaro. I will not reveal who this is; this is not my place. This person must own up to that themselves. If they do not, I will leave Shaleshock. Instead of posting a pathetic update, however, Mr. Massaro OUGHT to have posted a complete retraction of his absurd and made-up accusation against me along with an apology. Instead he left up the piece.
How tactless and dishonest-and predictable.
And I am still BANNED from your fake community page whose aim is to dull the impact that The Promised Land is going to have. I’ll look forward to being reinstated there too.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11921/“energy-depth”-–-reporters’-guide-its-founding-funding-and-flacks
Wendy
I edited the comments because I thought they were over the top. My apologies. Why you engage in these tit-for-tats is beyond me. This is a recent piece on your sparring partners:
http://blog.shaleshockmedia.org/2012/12/29/energy-in-depth-fracking-shills/
Thank you Chip. I engage in these “tit-for-tats” because they demonstrate just what kind of animal EID is-and we need to know this. They are not just an ad agency; they are soldiers of fortune much like Wayne LaPierre is a soldier of fortune for the NRA. They’re willing to resort to any strategy to “win” where “win” means make as much money as possible from being affiliated with fracking promotion until the boom goes bust.
My last post on the relevant thread at EID is below:
Dear reader,
Some facts–please check each out on your own:
1. Mr. Shepstone is lying #1. His comments concerning the incident of my being false accused by Mr. Massaro of altering his words were posted at Shaleshock, 12.28 at 5:38PM:
http://blog.shaleshockmedia.org/2012/12/27/being-banned-for-about-a-half-a-minute-from-energy-in-deaths-depths-facebook-page-a-new-years-resolution/#comments. That’s day before yesterday.
2. Mr. Shepstone is lying #2: his comment that “I am glad to know you did not do the deed ” is cancelled by ““This isn’t a court or I wouldn’t take Wendy on her word that she had nothing to do with it..”
3. Mr. Shepstone is lying #3: EID in fact alters comments, and is fully guilty of precisely what it accused Shaleshock. My post above (12.29) concerning the damning exposure of the EID propaganda machine by PR Watch contained a claim that Mr. Shepstone deleted. The claim was not threatening, and it was not–contrary to Mr. Shepstone’s insistence–ad hominem. It is simply fact: “MR. SHEPSTONE, THE FACTS ARE ABSOLUTELY CLEAR. YOU ARE PAID TO DO ANYTHING–INCLUDING LIE, SMEAR, DISTORT, FALSELY DISCREDIT–ANYTHING THAT ACCOMPLISHES THE GOAL OF YOUR MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR SECRET-UNTIL-NOW EMPLOYERS. TO SAY THAT YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED IS TO TRIVIALIZE WHAT YOU STAND FOR.” This is what the PR Watch piece shows, and it’s claim are fully researchable.
What Mr. Shepstone really means is not that my comments are “irrelevant,” but that they are wholly relevant. His is a pathetic attempt to get the light of EID and onto a very different organization, the Park Foundation. But the fact that his numbers are completely wrong has already been demonstrated–so his CENSORSHIP AND ALTERATION OF MY WORDS is a rearguard action to cover EID’s painfully compromised and dirty keester.
Lastly, the person who did alter Mr. Massaro’s words has come clean here at 12.30.12, 8:58AM:
http://blog.shaleshockmedia.org/2012/12/27/being-banned-for-about-a-half-a-minute-from-energy-in-deaths-depths-facebook-page-a-new-years-resolution/#comments.
I am therefore entirely vindicated in this–and so are all of the bloggers at Shaleshock–a blog that exemplifies the integrity EID cannot because honor would require Mr. Shepstone own the fact that his “field directors” are nothing more than paid soldiers of fortune for the gas industry, that EID not only operates as a smear campaign, but that its agents will censor, alter, and fabricate claims to forward its agenda, and that, he, himself, is deeply morally compromised.
None of these claims apply to Shaleshock, and certainly not to me.
I tell the truth.
Shepstone and his EID soldiers of fortune know it. It’s plainly fear that motivates their rearguard vicious endeavors to malign and discredit–but this time, Mr. Shepstone, I assure you, your efforts have back-fired.
Mr. Massaro’s theater has accomplished nothing but the further galvanizing of the anti-fracking movement.
And with the above post, I have been banned from posting at EID-Marcellus. Such is their commitment to free expression, to truth, and to integrity.
Wendy
Ha !
Congratulations. Look what you’re missing:
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11921/%E2%80%9Cenergy-depth%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-reporters%E2%80%99-guide-its-founding-funding-and-flacks
My last post for Raging Chicken Press, 2012:
http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2012/12/30/energy-in-depths-soldiers-of-fracking-fortune-why-we-must-understand-who-they-are-and-what-they-do/#comment-16358
Banned? I’ve been called names, threatened and worse by “anti-frackers”, all for having the nerve to present a coherent counter-arguement to your position. Pathetic.