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"The Plan is to Take You Over by Force"

As the economy implodes, the social fabric frays and nutball groups organize for Armageddon. Pam Martens describes the national game-plan of the “Free State Project”. He was the richest man on the planet and in 1973 he pledged to shut down the illegal drug industry in New York. Thousands, mostly blacks and Hispanics were pitch-forked into prison for decades. This year New York State will repeal its drug laws. Read Bruce Jackson on Nelson Rockefeller’s curse. Half a million new jobless every month and the salesmen of “free trade” still hawk their credo. Paul Craig Roberts describes what offshoring has done to America. Get your new edition today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.

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Today's Stories

April 23, 2009

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No Amnesty for Torturers

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Jim Goodman
The Control of Food

Kathy Sanborn
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April 16, 2009

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George Wuerthner
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Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

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April 15, 2009

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W, the Torture Decider

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Habeas at Bagram?

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94 Years of Serfdom

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Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
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Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
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No Blank Check for the IMF

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The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

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Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

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April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
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Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
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Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

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Chris Floyd
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Mike Whitney
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How the Media Bought the Surge

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Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

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The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
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America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

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David Macaray
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What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

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Jeremy Scahill
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Binoy Kampmark
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April 8, 2009

John Prados
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Bill Moyers /
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Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

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Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

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James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
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Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

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Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
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Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

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Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
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Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
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Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
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Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall

Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
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Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
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Saul Landau
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Steve Early
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John Goekler
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Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
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Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
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April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
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A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
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April 1, 2009

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Stanley Heller
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Richard Morse
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March 31, 2009

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Ron Jacobs
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Wiliam S. Lind
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David Michael Green
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Benjamin Dangl
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Johnny Barber
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March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
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Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
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Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
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Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
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Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

 

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April 23, 2009

Will There be Blood?

The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

By ADAM FEDERMAN

In an age of diminishing resources, the discovery of an untapped oil or natural gas reserve can stir messianic visions. Salvation is to be found in tar sands and what were once prohibitively expensive methods of extracting crude oil or natural gas from the earth. ‘Drill, baby, drill,’ 21st century scripture in some quarters of the United States, reflects the sort of devil may care attitude that, remarkably, in an age of scarcity still drives much of our energy policy.

Last summer, when oil was fetching $140 a barrel and the price of natural gas reached record highs hundreds of landmen descended on the Catskills and Poconos in New York and Pennsylvania. They crisscrossed the Delaware basin holding meetings with local residents in an attempt to persuade them to lease their land. They want what’s underneath that land—trillions of cubic feet of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale, a formation that stretches from Ohio to New York and runs through West Virginia and Pennsylvania. There were tales of deception, of fraud, and of large sums promised. The frenzy has been described as a modern day gold rush.

In New York, even though the drilling hasn’t begun, the battle lines have been drawn. Environmental organizations have been forced to play catch up; to educate the public about a drilling process that has not been widely used in this part of the country; and to argue against drilling, at a time of unparalleled economic distress and budget shortfalls, in what may be the largest natural gas reservoir in the nation. And they’re also up against the oil and gas companies. “We’ve never seen the circus come to town before,” says Bruce Ferguson, a member of Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy who lives in Sullivan County.

As the landmen made their rounds, the New York State legislature passed a bill (A10526), at the eleventh hour on the final day of the legislative session, that made it easier to issue permits for horizontal drilling by establishing uniform standards for well spacing and effectively streamlining the process. The Governor, in a press release, said that the new legislation would “lead to greater administrative efficiency, result in more effective recovery of oil and natural gas, and reduce unnecessary land disturbance.” Previously, public hearings for each well and a more cumbersome permitting process would have been required for horizontal drilling, significantly slowing down the potential number of wells that could be exploited.

According to a summary of the bill, “The vast majority of proposals that are expected for oil wells and horizontal wells would not conform to current statewide spacing sizes, and would therefore require notice, public comment and possibly a hearing on an individual well basis. With hundreds of such wells likely to be proposed in the near future, the potential burden on the DEC and the industry would be substantial, with no commensurate benefit in ensuring that the policy objectives of ECL S23-0301 are met. [italics added]”

The environmental community and even some legislators were caught off guard. “We in the environmental community didn’t wake up until very close to the vote,” says Kate Sinding a Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Many had been told that the bill would not pass, that it needed work, and that there was nothing to worry about. About a month before the bill passed, State Assembly Member Aileen Gunther (who voted against the measure), in a letter to one of her constituents said that, “My understanding from Mr. Parment [the bill’s sponsor] is that the bill is not in its final form and will, in all likelihood, not be voted on this session.”

Queens assemblywoman Toby Ann Stavisky told WNYC Radio that she and most of her colleagues learned of the DEC sponsored bill just hours before they were asked to vote on it.

“Why didn’t I have more information was my first reaction because it’s very detailed scientific language. What’s going to happen to the environment, to the air quality, noise pollution, what about pipelines?”

Information it seems has been in short supply. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have not exactly been the subject of dinner table conversations until very recently (on the East Coast anyway). And the industry would like to keep it that way. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a controversial method of capturing natural gas by injecting a long list of chemicals and millions of gallons of water and sand at high pressure into the ground to break open or fracture the bedrock. The prized gas is released from the shale and then recovered.

The chemicals used in the process, developed by Halliburton in the 1950s, are considered an industry trade secret and have not been fully disclosed. Some of the known additives include hydrochloric acid, nitrogen, biocides, surfactants, friction reducers, benzene and other hazardous chemicals. It is believed that fracking fluids have contaminated water supplies in Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming--all places where hydraulic fracturing has been widely used. In Pennsylvania, where drilling in the Marcellus Shale began last year, there have been numerous reports of contaminated wells.

“If these chemicals reach our drinking water supply,” the City’s Council on Environmental Protection wrote in a briefing paper, “they can potentially have significant adverse health effects.” A small part of the Marcellus Shale lies within the New York City watershed, which supplies water to more than fourteen million people in New York City, upstate New York, Philadelphia and northern New Jersey, the largest unfiltered drinking water supply in the United States.

Since the spacing bill was passed, environmental organizations have moved quickly to make sure that if drilling begins—and there are few who think it will be stopped al together—it is done with strict regulatory oversight and adherence to the highest environmental standards. Catskill Mountain Keeper, an environmental organization in Youngsville, NY, and seven other groups, national and local, drafted a letter to Governor Paterson calling on him to “institute a moratorium on all new gas drilling permits” until an environmental impact statement is completed. They met soon after with the Governor’s office and the DEC and, groups that until then had been working largely on their own, started to come together.

A compromise was reached and when the governor signed the bill he also required the DEC to issue a Scope Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) that responds to concerns of citizens and environmental organizations (the document will likely be released this summer). It was an important reprieve and, combined with a steep drop in the price of natural gas and oil and evidence of contaminated wells in nearby Pennsylvania, there is hope that the rush to drill has been tempered at least for now.

“One thing that’s happened,” says Wes Gillingham, Program Director of Catskill Mountain Keeper, “is that this whole issue has awakened people to the complexity of hydro fracking and the whole issue of regulatory oversight and whether it’s adequate or not. And to the basic question of whether it can be done safely at all.”

Or as Ferguson puts it, “You cannot pick up a local paper up here now and not see something about it.”

Local environmental organizations see their role as primarily raising public awareness. Most don’t have the money or resources to file lawsuits and will rely on the bigger players--the NRDC, Sierra Club and others--to take legal action if necessary.

“I think our feeling really is that education is the key here,” says Ferguson. “We don't have the resources to stop this either legally or financially or any other way. But we certainly can inform people of what's at stake, which is huge because many people don't understand what a bad outcome could be.”

In the end, when the state begins to issue permits the choice will largely be up to individual landowners. It is not clear exactly how many leases have been singed thus far but some estimates are as high as 100,000. In the town of Hancock (“the gateway to the Delaware river”) over 20,000 acres have been leased. And even though gas prices have plummeted, landmen are still canvassing the region.

“Given the industries druthers,” Gillingham says, “they’d have a checkerboard across the whole landscape, which would industrialize the whole area.” Gillingham learned of the Marcellus Shale just over a year ago when a geologist told him to google “Marcellus Shale Play.” At that time it was only industry insiders and speculators who were talking about the issue. Google it today and you’ll still turn up sites trumpeting the “Next Great Gas Play” or the “hottest natural gas play in North America.” The industry is on the march. But the environmental community is ready to meet them head on.

“All the environmental groups are on the same page,” says Samara Swanston legal counsel for the New York City Committee on Environmental Protection. “We cannot afford to let New York City’s water be threatened by greedy gas drillers. This is a very serious matter and I don’t think that anybody who rubber stamps this will get away unscathed.”

Adam Federman can be reached at: adamfederman@gmail.com

This article originally ran on Earth Island's EnvironmentaList blog.

 

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