Some Fractivist tactics-- what successful movements are made of

http://saneenergyproject.org/port-ambrose-liquefied-natural-gas-off-long-islands-shores/  Clare Donahue and friends interpretation of what Port Ambrose, an LNG delivery project is. (Hint: The only tactic I have ever seen these activists use is deceit)

With todays perhaps surprising news that the Cuomo administration will ban fracking in NY, I have seen many tweets and statements celebrating the power of "the antifracking movement", most of course written by those in "the movement". Having seen up close and personal how this "movement" operates over the last two plus years, I can only say that the lesson I have learned is that the most necessary ingredient for a movement's success is to be willing to win no matter what the cost. What was the cost for this movement to win in NY state? It's hard to say as the cost may not be completely tabulated yet if as the governor anticipates lawsuits do ensue.

For my part, I think it's fair to say that one of the costs is that the environmental movement has lost a lot of credibility. They certainly don't appear to be too concerned with facts. Nor do they appear to care much about the people they run over along the way.

Recently a video was produced by the fractivist movement, specifically by two women, Susan Van Dolsen and Betta Broad. Neither has any connection specifically with Gateway National Recreation Area or the Rockaways. The video produced under the Love New York Don't Frack It Up campaign is interesting to say the least. It features restaurant owners, Councilman Donavan Richards-- people with zero activity at all in the Rockaway Pipeline issue. And it ends with a conspiracy created by the antifracking movement: that the LNG delivery project known as Port Ambrose is secretly intended to be an export project. Via Love NY Don't Frack it Up's social media efforts and the tweets of others, I've learned that their Rockaway episode was recently screened at Queens College. This is one way "movements" work-- through deceit.

A draft EIS was recently released on the Port Ambrose project which the antifracking movement has deliberately chosen to create a conspiracy theory on. A notice from the United States Coast Guard says the following:

"Please note that this application is only for the construction and operation of a deepwater port that could only be used as a natural gas import facility. The considerable technical, operational, and environmental differences between import and export operations for natural gas deepwater ports is such that any licensed deepwater port facility that proposed to convert from import to export operations would be required to submit a new license application (including application fee) and conform to all licensing requirements and regulations in effect at such time of application. In addition to payment of the application fee, licensing requirements include, but are not limited to, completion of an extensive environmental impact assessment and financial resources review which would include public participation."

Liberty Natural Gas LLC intervened in the Rockaway Lateral FERC docket in the winter of 2013. Pretty soon that will be two years ago. Liberty stated that their project might be effected by the outcome of the Rockaway Lateral docket. The last company that wanted to build an LNG project offshore of the Rockaways in 2009 in the Rockaway prefile docket said that the Rockaway lateral expansion would "help facilitate" their ability to deliver new supply.  Unlike Susan Van Dolsen and Betta Broad's theory that Port Ambrose is likely intended for export, there is actually a document that backs up what I am saying. 

Susan Van Dolsen is a liar. So is Betta Broad. So is Sandra Steingraber as Ms. Steingraber herself has written about how Port Ambrose is certainly secretly intended to export Marcellus Shale Gas. That is what it generally takes to win though. (that and some Occupy puppets!)

I guess there could be a silver lining in that this issue in NY state will be resolved. However, since I've recently seen Kim Fraczek of Occupy and Sane Energy in the news giving advice on other pipeline infrastructure, via Sane Energy's anti-infrastructure campaingn (the You are Here Map campaign) I tend to think "the movement" is just beginning its reign. 

Below some "movement" members from their antifracking campout at Floyd Bennett Field in the summer of 2013. 

Dominic Ryan, Becky Wartell,Owsspag Apollo, Danovis Schufford, Steve Powersuit,Andrea Lomanto, Kaos Rage, Desirée J. DeLoach, Allan Eaton, Susanne Ikekpolor, Monica Hunken, Kim Fraczekand Minister Erik R. McGregor.

The Rockaway Pipeline Protest July 19, 2014

The Rockaway Pipeline Protest July 19, 2014-- by Peter Eliscu

Is that real or is it a movie or a mockumentary? Since what is coming out of the people's mouth's is mostly fiction, it is hard for me to actually tell at this point.

The Rockaway Pipeline Cantastoria by  Owen Crowley featuring Kim Fraczek of Occupy the Pipeline, Sane Energy, Food not fracking and friends. Is that real or is it a movie or mockumentary?

The people's puppets of occupy are actually assholes in person. Imagine that.

Alternate title of this post: I wish that I were kidding.


Tags or labels: Occupy the Pipeline, Food not Fracking, Sane Energy, Owen Crowley, Peter Eliscu, Faux protestors? Rockaway pipeline the musical!, Kim Fraczek, Erik McGregor (Minister), Activists Gone Wild

While You Were Sleeping/Pickling/Taking a Picture of Your Dinner, A Cocktail or an Ice Cream Cone

Here is something that happened, that as my friend Pat who writes poetry would say did not end up in the news today, yesterday or anytime in the last two years.

Occupy puppeteers and activists/fractivists began not just being featured in the news but creating and writing the news. And when Bill McKibben comes to town to protest, the artists and fractivists who have been running around, literally not figuratively saying the most inane and insane things about the Rockaway Pipeline Project, these are his allies.

Complete lunatics who don't actually make any sense when they speak routinely make the news.

How many activists or groups are there currently spreading the latest round of misinformation on the Rockaway pipeline project?

https://www.facebook.com/LoveNYDontFrack?fref=nf&filter=3   Betta Broad and Susan Van Dolsen two of the latest. Betta is hanging out with the usual suspects down at Floyd Bennett Field, Maureen Healy of CARP or United for Action or both and Judith Canepa who it depends on the day of course may be representing one group or another. How much misinformation collectively have Maureen Healy and Judith Canepa produced? At this point it is easier for me to just say that part of the rockaway pipeline project is a cyclinder rather than take the time to explain to people just how much misinformation they have absorbed.

Should Ms. Broad and Ms. Van Dolsen be aware that the people they are interviewing are in fact spreading myths?  They should. The truth is that they don't care about the truth. They are building a "movement". They are filming it. Tweeting it. Facebooking it, instagraming it, Creating it as we speak. Movements it seems require slogans and fists in the air--not a whole lot of complex thoughts.

Here is a list of Brooklyn groups who heard about the Rockaway pipeline project two years ago and have proceeded to take information given them even two years ago, turn it upside down and turn out complete jibber jabber/ propoganda. (The sad part is that most people even when reading what it is these people churn out fail to pay attention and see where the details are off or in many cases, totally and completely fabricated.)

Brooklyn Green Party, Food and Water Watch, United for Action, Sane Energy, Brooklyn Coalition for Peace, Sierra Club, folks either part of Occupy the pipeline or becoming Occupy the pipeline and that is just a small list because some of the people like Edie Kantrowitz apparently can speak for more than one "group".

Is it any wonder that there is now the very same "reporter", and I use that word loosely, named Nick Pinto who covered Occupy and friends antics with the Spectra pipeline, who is now down "covering" the Rockaway Pipeline "protests" for Gothamist (of all places) and Vice? It isn't to me at all. How many words into that article do you need to get to find an error? 10. Does Mr. Pinto appear to even know where he is when he is standing in Queens or at Riis beach? No.

How many "environmental" groups are there out there right now completely fabricating information on the rockaway project and port ambrose? Too many to count.  It has to be one of the great untold stories of our time. The complete failure of the media to fact check anything at all that an activist tells them or to do a stitch of their own research

Diagnosis: Frack Fever. Alternate title: This is Your Brain on Occupy. (Completely confused.)  I cannot count the number of times I have read or watched on video or been treated to reading letters or online rants about this project that are often fact-free or so far from fact as to be close to fiction. This is the untold story of the Rockaway Pipeline.

Is watching this happen fun or inspiring? No. Is it fun to listen to Occupy and fracktivists take over hearings? Hardly. It is about the most disturbing thing I have a feeling I will ever in my lifetime have the mispleasure to witness. There is more than 3 years plus of paperwork including paperwork in the Congressional record that itself tell quite a tale and activists for 2 years have chosen in every moment possible to completely fabricate the actual story of this project. There probably isn't a fact that they haven't mangled at this point.

Lost and Found: A Camera and Inspiration

                                                         Strawberry/ Field (Floyd Bennett Field)

 The first strawberry of the season and a new toy--a camera I promptly scratched the lens on.  What inspired me to remember that moment was this strawberry photo linked to via edible brooklyn.

                                                     
                                                            The bike lane Plumb Beach--

                      I've been missing this ride for too long now and discoveries along the way. The beach has finally been repaired by the Army Corps and hopefully the bike lane soon follows.

                             

Coming home to a weed in a jar identified by Joe

                                       

Attempt at Scaring Foraging Marauders

 I miss Margaret.Though I did get to see some of her columbine this year growing in Martha's garden.

                                                              Buds and leaves and branches.

  It seems like it is more than time to get back to the garden. I could write a book on the activists and what has been going on the last two years but it would the opposite of inspiring. The latest insanity comes via Nick Pinto at Vice Magazine. I don't think it is because I was paying attention to plants and trying to learn something prior to this pipeline project that assisted me so much the last two years in attempting to understand the project and everything that surrounds it, but it very well may have been. It was a humbling experience to realize when I began gardening just how much I had missed seeing for a long time. But at the same time it was so wonderful to be able to see the world in a new way and to be so excited about learning.

I'm trying to find my way back to the source of that inspiration. It won't be the same as a few years ago. And that is a good thing. In the garden, there are seasons and cycles, repetitions and patterns, but there is always also growth.  

Turkestanica

Tulipa turkestanica at the High Line

Over at the High Line, the Turkestanica is blooming again, featured as the plant of the week on the High Line's Blog. The photo above captures the exact moment I fell in love with this tulip in the last sunlight of the day, its petals apparently closing up for the evening. I was at the High Line. It was a few springs back, and at that time I wasn't quite sure exactly what I was looking at.

Tulipa turkestanica at the lot

Susan, Anne and I planted this really sweet species tulip in the stalled construction lot around the corner when trying to squeeze in a guerilla experiment in learning about growing flowers for market in much less than ideal conditions. I was wondering how this tulip would look and last in a small vase. And we were planting things on the sly that we thought might thrive under the conditions of the lot-- the poor soil and lack of irrigation being primary factors.

These bulbs are now buried beneath the 5 story building that has risen since, the construction nearing completion this spring. But in that singular spring a couple years back, seeing those blooms was more than all right.

The Rockaway Pipeline Follies (also a musical!!)

Scenes from a cantastoria. The Story of the Rockaway Pipeline as told by puppeteers & outside activists. (Ultimately the result of a pretty long misinformation campaign by a small number of people called the Coalition Against the Rockaway Pipeline/Sane Energy Project/Occupy the Pipeline getting by with a little help from their friends at United for Action.)

Recently the Coalition Against the Rockaway Pipeline began advertising for a faux fundraiser very aptly titled the Pipeline Follies.  Unfortunately the "Pipeline Follies" as a title pretty accurately describes not just this one event but a very long campaign of misinformation, mostly via facebook and internet postings, by these "activists", as they like to call themselves.

I wish this was all some elaborate prank.

But unfortunately, the reality is that it is very difficult to find a news story on the Rockaway Project that does not feature some form of folly put forth by extremely misinformed people pretending to be experts and educators. And if they cannot get news reporters to cover the story themselves, well they just up and write the story themselves. I'm not even sure the term spectacle would do all the performances justice at this point. I've often felt for the last year and half like I am actually living full time in an ongoing Christopher Guest mockumentary.

Today's charactor: Kim Fraczek. (of Occupy the Pipeline, Sane Energy, the emerging faux coalition Food not Fracking.) It's probably not her fault that the sungstory she has concocted is revisionist history. That's what she's been told.