“The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities… It is best to win without fighting.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Coos County is under siege and an occupying army has already breached the perimeter and aligned itself with the local economic development cabal. We may not be seeing armed and camouflaged troops walking through our streets yet but many of the traditional elements of war are well underway. Ongoing attempts to win “hearts and minds” in favor of the occupiers, Veresen. Inc., has been in full sway for sometime, aided and abetted amongst others by the industry funded pro-gas “grassroots” organization calling itself BS Oregon. The spoils of this occupation include more than 400 water bodies, clean air, and the acquisition of private timber and ranch lands from unwilling landowners. Allies of the invasion have even figured out a way to plunder the treasury without firing a shot in the form of the so-called CEP (Community Enhancement Plan).

Meanwhile, our defensive line, the boots on the ground, the very people who must live with the consequences, our local infantry as it were is constrained by rules established from what any combat veteran will refer to as “rear echelon mother-fuckers” or REMFs. REMFs are defined as those who issue orders but never have to carry out their own missions or bury the results. In the matter of the proposed Jordan Cove LNG export terminal, a project that The Oregonian reports would become the single largest CO2 emitter in the State of Oregon, the REMFs in our war is FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission).

As seasoned victims of many a dirty industrial development campaign Coos County citizens recognize psy-ops when they see them. The astroturf BS Oregon is running ads with handsome, smiling construction workers wearing pristine hardhats and promising that Coos County will see decades of prosperity even though these same promises by the same industry have fallen way short in other communities. Yesterday, Senator Barbara Boxer (CA) argued against Congress approving construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline and used Port Arthur, Texas as one of her examples of how prosperity and fossil-fuel development do not coincide.
Documents prepared by a public relations firm for Transcanada and believed to also be working with Veresen, Inc detail the depths that the industry is willing to stoop to, in the words of Sun Tzu, get the opponent to surrender.

“All warfare is based on deception.” Sun Tzu

  • One of the campaign’s most important steps involves developing a narrative that clearly tells the compelling Energy East Pipeline story and provides the opportunity for TransCanada to define the project on its own terms… the four agreed-upon campaign platforms of Safety; Environmental Stewardship; Economic Benefits & Jobs; and National (or Strategic) Interest. To do this, we will audit existing positive messaging and creative assets, and will meet with key members of the project team to develop an umbrella message and core messages about the pipeline
  • We will research the editorial calendars of key media and align our promotional efforts with them for long-lead opportunities especially.
  • Media will prove a critical player in conveying our messages. We will build upon existing relationships and foster new ones with key local/national media
  • Paid Media: Amplification of any promote efforts will be critical to expanding the people we reach with our stories. When positive earned coverage is published, we will amplify it using a content amplification vendor. In addition, we will use Paid Media to effectively deploy our narrative in highly contextual and targeted spaces to inform or engage the audience.


“If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground. All we need to do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.” Sun Tzu

As an occupied territory how do we avoid hostilities yet still fight back against such an organized enemy while being simultaneously tethered by our own government? The right of local, community self-government is a fundamental, individual political right – exercised collectively – of people to govern the local communities in which they reside. The right of local, community self-government is inherent and inalienable. It derives necessarily from the fundamental principle that all political power is inherent in the people, is exercised by them for their benefit, and is subject to their control. Local communities, when exercising the people’s right of local, community self-government, are not subject to constraints on local lawmaking imposed by state and federal governments. This is our community and we decide, not FERC.

We fight back not by engaging on the regulatory battlefield and playing by the enemy’s rigged rules but by exercising our inalienable right to local self government and forcing the battle onto an unexpected front. We enact law. State authorized powers of such local governments are distinct and apart from the people’s right of local, community self-government. The peoples’ right is not dependent upon state delegation, and so, cannot be diminished by limitations placed on local governments by other governments.

A citizen initiative to assert and reclaim our right to local self-government was filed on November 4, 2014. The Coos County Right to a Sustainable Energy Future Ordinance will ensure that our community, not FERC, has the right to democratically decide whether we want to risk our health and environment and our economy on non sustainable energy systems.