Tobacco Playbook

Tue, 2013-05-21 09:36Steve Horn
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"Gasland 2" Grassroots Premiere in Illinois Highlights Industry PSYOPS and Ongoing Fracking Fights

"Gasland 2" screened yesterday in Normal, IL and DeSmogBlog was there to gain a sneak peak of the documentary set for a July 8 HBO national premiere. 

Josh Fox's documentary played at the Normal Theater, the second-ever screening since the film officially premiered on April 21 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. 

The movie builds on Fox's Academy Award-nominated "Gasland," further making the case of how the shale industry's hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") boom is busting up peoples' livelihoods, contaminating air and water, polluting democracy and serving as a "bridge fuel" only to propel us off the climate disruption cliff. 

A central theme and question of the film is, "Who gets to tell the story?" That is, industry PR pros and bought-off politicians utilizing the "tobacco playbook" and saying "the sky is pink," or families directly injured by the industry? Fox explains how the industry has gamed the system, ensuring the communities have their voices drowned out. The Gasland films seek to tell some of the victims' stories. 

Another theme is the bread and butter of following any big industry's influence: following the money. In depicting the financial clout of Big Oil, "Gasland 2" shows that the oil and gas industry has gone to the lengths of deploying warfare tactics - literally - on U.S. citizens to ram through its agenda. 

Read more: "Gasland 2" Grassroots Premiere in Illinois Highlights Industry PSYOPS and Ongoing Fracking Fights
Thu, 2013-01-24 10:26Steve Horn
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Smoke and Mirrors: Obama DOE Fracked Gas Export Study Contractor's Tobacco Industry Roots

At first, it was kept secret for months, cryptically referred to only as an "unidentified third-party contractor."

Finally, in November 2012, Reuters revealed the name of the corporate consulting firm the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hired to produce a study on the prospective economic impacts of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.

LNG is the super-chilled final product of gas obtained - predominatly in today's context - via the controversial hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") process taking place within shale deposits located throughout the U.S. This "prize" is shipped from the multitude of domestic shale basins in pipelines to various coastal LNG terminals, and then sent on LNG tankers to the global market. 

The firm: National Economic Research Associates (NERA) Economic Consulting, has a long history of pushing for deregulation. Its claim to fame: the deregulation "studies" it publishes on behalf of the nuclear, coal, and oil/gas industry - and as it turns out, Big Tobacco, too.

Read more: Smoke and Mirrors: Obama DOE Fracked Gas Export Study Contractor's Tobacco Industry Roots
Sun, 2012-11-04 10:16Steve Horn
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Exclusive: Tea Party, Fracking Industry Launch Astroturf Campaign Against Mansfield, OH Community Bill of Rights Referendum

Ohio is referred to as a "battleground state" due to its status as a "swing state" in presidential elections. But another important battle is brewing in the Buckeye State, also set to be settled in the voting booth.

This battle centers around a "Community Bill of Rights" referendum in Mansfield, OH and will be voted on in a simple "yes/no" manner. Mansfield is a city with roughly 48,000 citizens located 80 miles southwest of Cleveland and 66 miles northeast of Columbus, right in the heart of the Utica Shale basin. 

Eric Belcastro, the Pennsylvania Organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), explained the rationale behind the "Bill of Rights" push in a blog post:

Faced with the permitting of two 5,000 foot deep injection wells in Mansfield by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR)...[t]he amendment would drive a community Bill of Rights into Mansfield's charter and then prohibit the injection of fracking wastewater on grounds that such prohibition is necessary to secure and protect those community rights. The amendment also recognizes corporate “rights” as subordinate to the rights of the people of Mansfield, as well as recognizing the rights of residents, natural communities, and ecosystems to clean air and water.

The ODNR, in a study published in March 2012, linked the 12 earthquakes that have occured in Youngstown, Ohio to injection wells located in the city. 

Though the "Bill of Rights" has the full support of the City Council and the Law Director, as well as the city's newspaper, the Mansfield News Journal, one faction in particular isn't such a big fan of the Bill of Rights: the oil and gas industry. In response to the upcoming referrendum vote, the industry has launched an 11th hour astroturf campaign to "win hearts and minds" of those voters still on the fence as it pertains to the "Bill of Rights" in the week before the election. 

DeSmogBlog has obtained images of flyers distributed via a well-coordinated direct mail campaign conducted by the oil and gas industry in Mansfield, made public here for the first time in an exclusive investigation.

Read more: Exclusive: Tea Party, Fracking Industry Launch Astroturf Campaign Against Mansfield, OH Community Bill of Rights Referendum
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