We have noticed, recently, as anti-gas interests increasingly get backed into a corner, that they are adopting a more belligerent attitude, calling on supporters to engage in a special brand of civil disobedience and all but inviting forms of violence.  Some of this is blatant, while in other cases it’s a bit more subtle, but the message is the same – the anti-gas forces are committed  to doing whatever it takes to impose their views and stop natural gas development.

Some examples quickly come to mind.  Jeff Andrysick, while touring our region on the Magical Mystery Tour repeatedly indicated his desire for a “French Revolution” to stop natural gas development, and his promotions for the not so epic event in Ithaca included an appeal to fellow “frack fighters” to “rally like the French Revolution against frack, with 10,000 united unstoppable concerned citizens!”

There’s no Bastille in Ithaca, but it is the location of the Park Foundation headquarters and that’s where the monarchy hangs out, so maybe that’s what they were thinking?  No, that can’t be, because that’s where the orders from headquarters going out to most anti-gas groups originate.  I guess they must have been talking about someone else.  I sure hope it wasn’t me, as I find those guillotines a bit off-putting.

Jeff, and wife Jodi, have also been hustling attendance for their civil disobedience training camp, but just how their appeals for “non-violent direct action” in conjunction with that event reconcile with their call for a French Revolution at previous events, is not readily apparent.  The soft talk and comparison of their cause to the civil rights movement is a bit overdone, to say the least.  Soft talk, however, is how radicals try to mainstream their message.

There is another excellent example of this in a presentation made by Attorney Mary Jo Long at a “Ban Hydrofracking Conference” that took place earlier this year (we cannot insert the video directly because there is, ironically, a capitalist advertisement that accompanies it).  Her talk starts at about 12:00 minutes in, so spare yourself the nonsense that precedes her.  Take a look and pay particularly close attention to what she says at 16:00 minutes.  Indeed, play it back a few times and capture the full meaning of those softly spoken words – so soft they’re almost a whisper.

She says “Lawyers will probably come to represent people who have been charged with vandalizing property or tresspassing if they’re on property trying to monitor gas drilling activity.  There are all sorts of ways lawyers will be useful, but they’re tools.”  She then goes on to say the “muscle of activists is necessary to drive those tools.”

What other possible conclusion can be drawn from these words other than that Mary Jo Long, an officer of the court by virtue of her profession, believes vandalism and trespassing are appropriate exercises of “muscle” by anti-gas obstructionists and that lawyers exist to get them out of trouble after the fact?

Attorney Long’s position is made worse by the fact she is also an elected public official, a Town Board member in the Town of Afton, New York.  She is a member of the Green Party (a former candidate for Attorney General on that line), so her actions are hardly surprising, but this particular exercise of radicalism stands in such stark contrast to her responsibilities as to “shock the conscience.”  That’s a legal term, by the way.  You can look it up.

Long is also a long-time member of the National Lawyers Guild, an extremely radical organization with documented roots in the hard left of old (a very revealing link to say the least).  Finally, you’ll notice who put up the video, a website known as Essential Dissent, which goes by the byline “Videos From the Last Days of the American Empire.”  You don’t need to know a lot more than this, do you?

What all this reveals is the hard left agenda of anti-gas obstructionists.  The only thing green about their agenda is the color of the money (and support) they hope to raise to pound on the “American Empire” using environmental concerns as an excuse.  Their goals are much deeper and much broader and they”ll do anything, anything that’s necessary, to achieve them, from trespass to vandalism to a new “French revolution,” whatever is meant by that.  They call themselves non-violent and speak softly but the muscle they talk about is more than a matter of persuasion.