What’s most striking about Energy in Death’s Joe Massaro’s latest hit-piece, Corbett’s Corner Hears From Local Natural Gas Fractivists | Energy In Depth – Northeast Marcellus Initiative is that he writes as if he’s all ready for the backlash his patently absurd essay would naturally receive—but he knows he’ll have to deal with no such thing.
That must be a hell of a confidence builder!
He’s got all the moxie of a guy who thinks he’s scored big. The problem is that he rigged the game.
Fact is, at EID-Marcellus it’s only the comments that make their field reporters look good that get posted. EID is kind of like the sycophant who surrounds himself with paid pattootee-smoochers to tell him how handsome he is even though he’s come to resemble a rotting rutabaga.
Of course, he knows that—so he rigs the jig.
The irony is just as over-ripe: Massaro claims that the anti-fracking activists are wrong wrong wrong when we point out that the proof we’re gaining traction against this genocidal industry is that propaganda outfits like EID keep coming after us.
But not only do the soldiers of fracking fortune keep coming after us, they fake-up their entire enterprise to insure that we can’t respond to them-but make it look as if we could. If they can’t allow us to respond, and then beat us into silence through ridicule, name-calling, false accusation, and other assorted endeavors to discredit, they just put the shaft to free expression and cut us off their page—all the while pretending we’re still there!
Ergo, Joe Massaro responds to the anti-fracking respondents to the Steve Corbett radio show on WILK:
The first call came from a woman named Wendy from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Listening to her speak for 10 minutes I could only imagine this must have been Wendy Lynn Lee, who we have featured on our blog for her strident anti-development views…Wendy always assumes we fear her, her friends and their activities, but it’s hard to fear a movie whose writers repeatedly show they know little about the science behind hydraulic fracturing…Wendy somehow believed our “fear” is portrayed through The Real Promised Land, but in reality the site was created to provide factual information and to connect viewers with individuals who actually live in areas experiencing natural gas development. We thought, quite rightly, that anyone who didn’t like the way Matt Damon and John Krasinski presented the information in the movie might want to hear from real people living in the Marcellus Shale region. We were correct and that’s why our Facebook page is gaining such traction.
Massaro does get one thing right: that’s me on WILK chatting with Corbett (though Massaro might try to spell my name right—he has issues here).
Let’s quickly dispel two things: first, “anti-development” is just code in BIG GAS world for “anti-fracking.”
But that’s just silly.
I’m quite for the development of alternatives, and I’m big on conservation.
What being pro-development really means is being on the side of, say, Massey Energy whose mine accident safety record includes 29 dead miners at Big Branch (For 29 Dead Miners, No Justice - NYTimes.com).
Or it means being on the side of Shell—and against hundreds of Nigerian farmers whose livelihoods were destroyed by the giant multinational (Farmers sue oil giant Shell over Niger Delta pollution - CNN.com).
Or how about being on the side of BP in the Gulf of Mexico. That certainly looks like “development.”
Or no doubt, and a little closer to home (and the smell of those rutabagas), sidling up to EXCO—a company that locates deep injection disposal wells in poor African American communities in places like Panola, Texas because they know they won’t get much resistance even though the drinking water is so polluted by gas drilling that folks there get their water delivered in five gallon jugs by the EPA (Texas Lawsuit Includes a Mix of Race and Water - New York Times).
If that’s your idea of development, well, thanks, but no thanks, Mr. Massaro.
Second, Promised Land isn’t about the science of hydraulic fracturing—that’s just a ruse to get us off the track. It’s about what landmen do—and how thoroughly dirty is the game they play to take grandma’s land right out from under grandpa’s feet.
That’s not “development” either, Mr. Massaro. That’s baiting, gutting, and eating while your prey is still alive.
Douglas MIller. CEO, EXCO
What happen in Promised Land is also not fiction—it’s standard “operating procedure,” hence the endeavor to red-herring us away from the plot.
Here’s a nice example: Fake “Community” Meeting: EXCO Lookin’ for Some Love-Money
On the other hand, The Real Promised Land EID sponsored Facebook page is a propaganda machine that bans any and all postings that don’t tout its pro-gas line. That it has more hits that the Promised Land page is no doubt the product of a coordinated effort by EID-N-Fracker-Friends to insure hits. Fact is, The Real Promised Land is a commercial about an entirely fictional “community” pretty much like Peter Weir’s The Truman Show offers Truman Burbank a faked-up life.
Nice place to live if you can buy your way in.
But Frackland doesn’t really look like The Truman Show. Just ask the folks whose water has been permanently destroyed by the likes of, say, EXCO’s Mr. Miller:
04/12/2012: EXCO Resources to Pay Penalty for Safe Drinking Water Act Violations in Clearfield County, Pa.
And Mr. Massaro can’t be this dumb, so he’s just lying: the notion that “liking” a page means you like the page is just plain daft. “Liking” a Facebook page means you want it to show up in your feed-and that might be for lots of reasons, say, monitoring its Bull-Pucky.
The only thing real about The Real Promised Land is that it’s intended as a prophylactic against the real damage the film could produce for the gas industry—and EID knows it, or its soldiers just wouldn’t go to the trouble of faking up a Facebook page.
Fact is, EID’s The Real Promised Land epitomizes precisely what Promised Land is about: the mercenary and greed-driven strategies of corporations who hold that they’re entitled to commodify anything they think they call sell: land, water, air, people.
It’s an unwitting self-satire of a transparent attempt to cipher attention away from what the landmen just like them really do.
It’s pretty simple, really: if EID had honest goods to sell, they’d be able to respond to criticism with the truth. They can’t, so they don’t. First they offer us all kinds of re-dunculous “schmarguments” about watering golf courses, and how fracking makes H2O, and how it’s been around since the Neanderthals.
And we shoot the “schmarguments” down one by one.
DEP Permit Hearing: Moxie Patriot Power Plant, Clinton Township, Lycoming County, PA,1.3.13
Now, they’re running out, and running scared—so they reconfigure their websites and Facebook pages to look as if anyone can comment—as if they cared about the first amendment—all the while making up bat-poo-crazy stories about their opponents in order to “schmustify” banning them.
If the natural gas industry had honest goods to sell, they wouldn’t need EID and its soldiers of fracking fortune to run interference for them.
Imagine the manufacturers of, say, all those landmines still blowing off kids’ legs in Cambodia running a website, let’s call it Energy in Depth. They “field directors” like Massaro to run interference and write hit-pieces on those pesky folks who insist that it’s somehow bad to have live landmines in your farm fields. For awhile they just run a big fat propaganda line:
Landmines are good! Think of the jobs they bring getting them all planted, making sure they’ll explode only when they’re supposed to… Landmines are patriotic! We can become weapons independent! People who aren’t for landmines are Un-American!
But, gosh-darnit, some folks just don’t buy the punchline. They start to point out all of the really horrific consequences landmines come with—blown off limbs, blindness…They figure out that the landmines are being manufactured for anyone and everyone who’ll pony up the moola for them—including some pretty unsavory folks who will surely deploy them against us. They figure out that “Cheap, Abundant, American” is just a lot of hooey covering for the fact that a tiny handful of folks and their paid mercenaries are getting really rich off a venture that endangers all of the rest of us—and especially the poor farmer who’s kid in unlucky enough to step on a live one.
The only real difference between the manufacture of landmines and fracking is that fracking is part of an industry that has made it it’s business to make sure we’re dependent on fossil fuels—not because we’re addicts mind you, but because they are—to the money.
We’re out here ready and willing to make the leap to renewables and conservation, but we know that that’s not something most folks can do without the support of government and community.
And they know it too.
Indeed, the near-psychotic desperation of an industry willing to engage in something as blisteringly devastating as tar sands mining, mountain top removal, and fracking just to keep the fossil fuel train choking out the bucks for a few more years is reflected in the wholly sleezy rotting rutabaga tactics deployed by their soldiers of fracking fortune at EID.
But the jig is up.
So what’s a propaganda machine like Energy in Death supposed to do?
Rig the jig.
That’s what the soldiers of fracking-fortune are paid to do. Might as well be landmines, or Thalidomide, or cigarettes. West Virginia, The Niger Delta, the Gulf, a Southern Texas town. It’s all the same: genocidal profiteering, and the smell of that makes rotting rutabagas smell like Riverdale roses.
regarding Massaro’s statement of “We were correct and that’s why our Facebook page is gaining such traction.”
if you actually go to EID/IPAA’s facebook page, or even the EID/IPAA blog and read the comments, the so called traction is NOT from people who support EID/IPAA’s public relation talking point of the day, but rather it’s from people disputing the EID/IPAA public relation talking point of the day.
Hits to a website or “likes” on a FB page do not necessary translate to overwhelming support, it just means someone went there, clicked a button, even a click by accident counts in a web stat. Note on some FB pages, it is necessary to “Join” or click the “Like” button in order to leave a comment.
need to also mention, there are businesses out there which offer to boost your website or FB page or Twitter account visits/”likes”/follows for a small fee. If you only gauge the “popularity” and/or credibility of a site by Hits/likes/follows you are sadly being misled
fred jones says
I have to concur here. I went to EID’s ” The Real Promised Land” FB page and sure enough………..a good portion of comments by FB members is negative toward the page. In some posts, a majority of comments is negative. So unless they took all those negs down this morning, I have to disagree with Wendy here. I also comment a lot on EID’s site and not once have they took down my comments. Why? I’m as civil as I can be, but for the most part, I go against the “grain” and call them out on many subjects and articles they post. Vera Scroggins has posted many times on EID…..she’s still up and commenting as is Bill Huston, but he has had some posts removed. EID does have a boiling point, but I get to post because I am a moderate and believe I can get more bees with some honey that I can with vinegar. I’m not saying Wendy is wrong, she is very right in what she is doing, I comment her staunch stance and courage, but even in the Civil Rights movement, we had Marten Luther King….and we had Malcolm X. I admire them both.
Hi Fred-that there remain some negative comments only means they haven’t gotten round to trashing them yet. EID is, in fact, banning folks they don’t like from that page-I’m one of them, and I am aware of at least a half dozen others. That they ban even one commenter-for whatever reasons-puts the lie to the page as a “community” page. Communities include everyone who wants to have a say-this is manifestly not the case here. They allow to stand what makes them LOOK like a democratic forum-when they are thoroughly mercenary. I am also banned (as are a number of others) from the EID website-and on entirely erroneous charge of having fabricated Joe Massaro’s words. I appreciate that you’re civil-good!-but this has nothing to do with whether or not they’ll ban you. They simply don’t perceive you as a threat (yet). That they remove ANY posts at all-Vera Scroggin’s or anyone else’s puts the lie to their alleged respect for the first amendment. Censorship of any comment short of a direct or thinly veiled threat is censorship-and EID claims that’s not what they’re about. They’re lying. This is not at all about any “boiling point.” It’s about who they perceive as gaining traction, who they perceive as in their interest. The former get canned; the latter posted. Notably, Joe Massaro never did get around to writing up the GDAC meeting of Dory’s presentation of the dirty money links EID depends on. That’s called “selective ignoring.” I’m also not assaulting anyone personally here-what they don’t want to be confronted with are facts laid out starkly. They don’t like a comparison of what they do to cigarettes and landmines. But the comparisons are apt. 🙂
fred jones says
I hear what you are saying Wendy, but you know that censorship from EID is almost expected, say, no big surprise. And EID lie? Shocking! 🙂 As far as my posts……..on EID……well, I’ll do my best to weave in and out of conversations with succinct data and questions that hopefully come off as educational and corrective with a splash of civility that EID will put up with, enough to get my point across, without getting banned. Walking a thin line with those who I don’t see eye to eye with and maybe, just maybe, interject the truth so subtly, no one will know they are being swayed, but swayed none the less.
Hey thanks for this colorful piece…I love how you paint them frackers…now I wanna see them debunk the energy “interdependency risk” when switching from coal to NG at the power plants…I hate coal-this is an opportunity to tell our leglislators to add more solar and wind to the grid-especially those increasingly using NG at the power plants that supply our electricity.
ERCOT’s Dirty Little “Cleaner Burning” Secrethttp://barnettshalehell.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/freezing-arlington-gas-wells-here-is-housewifes-check-list/
Thanks Kim-yes, the alternative to NG is certainly not coal-it’s sunlight. Literally. Metaphorically. Politically. 🙂
HI Fred-I do hear what you’re saying as well-and there are hard questions here to be sure. My worry is that too much subtlety can result in folks just missing your point-sliding past it because they’re already predisposed not to see it. To hammering, and they ignore you as a nut. In this piece, what I’ve gone for is a kind of dark-but revealing-humor. I think the most important lines are these:
“Fact is, EID’s The Real Promised Land epitomizes precisely what Promised Land is about: the mercenary and greed-driven strategies of corporations who hold that they’re entitled to commodify anything they think they call sell: land, water, air, people. It’s an unwitting self-satire of a transparent attempt to cipher attention away from what the landmen just like them really do.”
This neither picks out a particular person for criticism, nor pits fact against fact (per se). It’s analysis of motives and objectives.
And this: “If the natural gas industry had honest goods to sell, they wouldn’t need EID and its soldiers of fracking fortune to run interference for them.”
EID is not an advertiser like, say, your local sub shop. Presumably your local sub shop doesn’t have nearly as much to hide.
Thanks for your observations!
w
fred jones says
It is two different approaches to the same objective. I do know, that being too aggressive on a pro-gas site just pisses folks off, for the most part. It’s the same as being anti-gas on a anti-gas site, you’re really just preaching to the choir or aggressively pro-gas on an anti site…..folks get defensive and even more closed minded.
Great article Wendy! I’m realizing that we as individuals will have to buy our own solar panels, wind generators, & etc. in order to change the energy industry’s hold on us. If we don’t buy what they’re selling, they won’t produce it. We can’t wait for the government to be free from the corporate strangle hold. We need to lead the way as individuals. I’ll be buying a house soon, and I’m going to make it independent from gas, oil, coal, & nuclear power. But of course, in the meantime we have to stop these energy corporations from destroying all of our natural resources.
Posted at Politico: http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=1&subcatid=4&threadid=7335481&start=1¤tPage=1
It has to be noted that Energy in Depth is not a “research and education program.” It’s not even merely a public relations firm for the gas industry. As is copiously well-documented EID is a propaganda and interference running assault machine whose purpose is to silence opponents of hydraulic fracturing. There are absolutely no reasons whatever to take this review seriously in that Mr. Everly is PAID to promote hydraulic fracturing as safe regardless the evidence; agents for EID are PAID to discredit their opposition.
That Politico permits paid salesmen to pose as legitimate reviewers on its Op-Ed page is disappointing at best-misleading, in fact.
Mr. Everly is not paid to offer objective assessments of films and the like-but to discredit any and all efforts to critique the claims of the natural gas extraction industry. His interest is in no way Promised Land as a film-but only as a potential problem for the industry.
The fact is that Energy in Depth is so afraid of the potential for backlash against the industry that they have erected an entirely bogus “community” Facebook page, “The Real Promised Land” where they claim to permit anyone to post their experience in Pennsylvania with respect to fracking, but they ban and delete posts from opponents. This, needless to say, is not a “community,” it is a strategy to discredit the opponents of the gas industry.
The Real Promised Land FB page is an excellent example of precisely the underhanded and truly sleazy tactics the industry is willing to deploy via its landmen to coerce, manipulate, guilt, and bribe people into leasing their land to the destruction of their property values, and potentially their water.
For a more accurate assessment of what Energy in Depth is and does relevant to Promised Land, please see:
http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2013/01/11/bait-you-gut-you-eat-you-while-youre-still-alive-the-landmen-energy-in-death-will-do-anything-to-get-to-your-farmhouse-door/
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/
Hopefully, Politico will do a better job of screening its submissions in the future. At the very least, Politico ought to disclose the fact that EID reviews are not informed by an interest in objective evaluation, but rather in paid compensation for selling a technology so controversial that its industry hires what are effectively soldiers of fortune to insure its continued profitability.
A couple of Aprils ago, when Calvin Tillman and I were on a speaking tour through the Marcellus, one of the EID people were out in the audience. With a camcorder. Secretly videotaping us. What was funny was there were a number of people there, armed with digital cameras and camcorders, not secretly videotaping us. In between presentations, Calvin and I even did interviews with the local TV news.
I say that EID ‘secretly’ videotaped us, because they posted the highly edited video on their website, and the guy who video taped us even had a few segments of his knee in the picture, and he was seated with a few rows of people in front of him.
I read what they wrote, bashing me and Calvin, taking some very cheap shots. But the video was very edited and very obviously edited. Their rush to get the video out-and rush to judgement-got them caught in some very bold faced lies. I called them out on it, and responded point by point. They must have been asleep at the internet wheel that day, as there were a number of comments posted before they caught it. Then POOF, the video and article, as well as my comments and everyone else’s disappeared.
The stooges at EID have grown a bit smarter since then. Now comments are monitored, and if you post something they don’t like, then you get blocked. They do, however, let some people post things of a lesser nature, and I suspect it’s to create the illusion that they let everyone post whatever they wish. I know too many people who have been blocked from the EID pages as well as their Facebook pages not to believe this.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for these comments. Yes, EID is more than willing to resort to any strategy they can to fulfill their mission to pave the avenue for the profit-generation of the extraction corporations. As per the story above, they simply exploited an opportunity offered to them by another blogger at Shaleshock to get rid of an anti-fracking activist they did not like-me. I am still banned at EID-and the reasons are transparent despite their fig leaf arguments. I’m not sure I think they’re really smarter. After all, they’re promoting FrackNation.