Voices from the Hive 6

Welcome to Voices from the Hive 6, the first of my Eco Intelligence newsletters of 2020. While we’ve all been away on holiday the stories covered in the run up to Christmas and the New Year have been developing slowly, and the issues that they raise becoming ever more serious, in spite of the mainstream media’s continual attempts to distract us from the real issues at the heart of the Ecological Crisis and the Climate Emergency. Over the course of the holiday period the European Energy Security and Diversification Act has been given the green light by Congress, paving the way for another $1B in subsidies intended to promote highly controversial exports of U.S. fracked gas to the European Union. Although some of the Democrats involved in helping to railroad the legislation through have cited ‘Russiagate’ as their principal reason for coming out in support of the bill, donations from the likes of fossil fuel billionaire Wes Edens are more likely the real motivation for their role in assisting the Trump Administration to further expand the international market for the Fracking Industry’s dirty biproducts.

In the run up to Christmas and the New Year I looked at the situation in Massachusetts, where a huge public backlash against the decision of the current Republican administration, led by Governor Charlie Baker, to give the go ahead for the construction of the highly controversial Weymouth Gas Compressor. As the Holiday Season kicked off Governor Baker found himself being confronted by angry protesters in central Boston while he was out and about engaging in the usual acts of festive goodwill that are obligatory for mainstream politicians, this time whilst taking part in an event organised by the Salvation Army in Downtown Crossing. Meanwhile, across the State, at Worcester, Mass. news broke Friday that activists from the Climate Disobedience Center had successfully managed to stage their sixth successful coal train blockage since early December throughout Thursday night and into Friday morning by erecting scaffolding to block tracks at Harvard MA with the aim of choking off coal supplies to the Merrimack Power Station in Bow, New Hampshire.

In my last newsletter I focused on allegations surrounding a number of individuals linked to the fringe right wing news channel UK Column, whose ‘expose’ of Extinction Rebellion towards the end of December was little more than a rehash of the long since discredited Policy Exchange document which attempted to brand XR as a ‘terrorist’ organisation earlier in the year. Since that initial report I have unearthed some interesting new facts relating to the previous involvements of two more of UK Column’s contributors with the military industrial complex and GCHQ. The first of these people is Alex Thomson, who, in addition to his regular appearances on the UK Column Youtube Channel has also given presentations at the so called Alternative View Conferences. According to the alternativeview.co.uk  website, the conferences were the brainchild of Ian R. Crane, whose own website describes him as a former ‘oilfield executive who now lectures, writes and broadcasts on the geo-political webs that are being spun; with particular focus on US (Global Corporatist) Hegemony and the agenda for absolute control of all global resources.’ Well I never?

No marks out of ten for guessing then that prior to Alex Thomson’s involvement with UK Column and the British Constitution Group, he had spent much of his twenties as, you guessed it, ‘a GCHQ officer’. The plot thickens! For those of my readers completely unsurprised by all of this it probably comes as even less of a surprise that Thomson’s colleague at the UK Column, David Ellis, describes himself as a ‘director of Strategic Defence Initiatives, a defence policy research consultancy and lobbying organisation.’ No surprises there either then. A group of right wing conspiracy theorist wannabe journalists with links to the Fossil Fuel Industry have seized upon a long discredited and badly put together document put out by people with links to the same vested interests in an attempt to portray XR as a ‘terrorist’ organisation intent on undermining ‘democracy’. Of further interest for those with a taste for conspiracies is the description of Mr. Ellis’s now dissolved private limited company’s ‘Nature of business’ on the Companies House website: ‘47910 – Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet’. Jump back in amazement!

And last, but not least, the big scary story which the mainstream media have managed to sideline, ignore or keep under wraps since 2018 finally broke in the New York Times nine days before Christmas, having been largely ignored by most news agencies more concerned with the ups and downs of celebrity culture than the intricacies of Climate Science. Apart from a reference on the space.com website just three days before Christmas, when the specialist Space and Astronomy website revealed that an anonymous gas well at a little known Exxon Mobil fracking site in Ohio had released potentially catastrophic levels of methane into the atmosphere following an accident at the facility which had resulted in a major blow out. According to a research article published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. website last November, this event, which took place between February and March of the previous year, had resulted in a methane release said by the scientists involved in the compilation of the report ‘to be equivalent to a substantial fraction of the annual total anthropogenic emission of several European countries.’ A fact which in itself is illustrative of the complete lack of awareness that the average man or woman in the street still has when it comes to some of the less talked about environmental issues that arise as a direct result of the fracking of both oil and gas, with particular reference to Climate Change.

Newcomers to this newsletter can catch up with our previous issues here at this link.

‘Dulcis ex asperis!’