WLee

4.24.13 Dear Sandra, I hope my letter finds you, and finds you well. I have followed and, where I could, photographed and documented the defense of Lake Seneca against those whom I have called the industrializing profiteers of the extreme extraction corporations, Inergy in this case. While my temptation is to draft a scorching analysis, I...
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  Beaver Run reservoir is the source of drinking water for 150,000 people. CNX/Consol has as many as twelve fracked well pads on the hills the surround Beaver Run. Reported in 2011 by Truthout: “But the gas operations were hardly a secret. Besides being visible by air, records obtained by SolveClimate News in response...
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Posted to Bloomsburg University faculty as if it were simply one more grant opportunity, The Center for Rural Pennsylvania–effectively an agent of Governor Corbett’s mission to sell off Pennsylvania to the natural gas extraction industries–offers BU professors the following: The Center for Rural Pennsylvania(http://www.rural.palegislature.us/ ) is interested in working with faculty to study the...
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1. The Magical Thinking of Richard Kinder-Stiltskin: Resources versus Reserves If ever an extraction corporation epitomized the spirit of 16th century philosopher Francis Bacon, it is surely Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (KMEP). But this isn’t merely because their record of fossil fuel transport and export rivals the company from which KMEP derives its major players—ENRON—for...
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 You have to wonder whether Sunbury mayor, Dave Persing, really has any very good idea—or even a glimmer of moral compass—about what might be involved in the Clean Harbors construction of a Marcellus Shale Waste Processing Facility smack-dab in the middle of that small city. Planned for the long-idled and stunning eyesore, the Knight-Celotex...
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Why Philosophy Matters to Fracking: The Past is the Future Long ago the foresightful German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that human beings were the sorts of creatures who, in the quest to advance their own self-aggrandizing interests, were compelled to forget acts of violence willingly committed to those ends. And not only acts of...
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I’m as deeply committed a union member/activist as they come. Standing shoulder to shoulder with something like 500 of my fellow APSCUF (Associated Pennsylvania College and University Faculty) members in the frigid cold for several hours in peaceful (though loud—at least me) protest of a contract proposal offered by the State System of Higher...
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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....
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1. Energy in Depth’s Soldiers of Fracking-Fortune In her excellent PR Watch piece, ““Energy In Depth” – A Reporters’ Guide to Its Founding, Funding, and Flacks,” Lisa Graves spells out in copiously well-documented detail the purposes and funding sources of what can only be called a propaganda machine for corporations involved in hydraulic fracturing:...
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Merely “surreal” might describe the interview given by Aqua America’s CEO, Nick DeBenedictis, to Crissa Shoemaker DeBree did the fact that he is lying not portend such devastating consequences for so many people. The security of the nation’s water supply is an important, but often silent, priority for water companies, said the head of...
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