Seeing Red

It's Russians all the way down. This bit of fear-mongering from The Daily Caller:

Intelligence Report: Anti-Fracking Enviros Are Funded By Vladimir Putin
President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is funding and supporting anti-hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, environmental activists, according to an intelligence community report.

The Russian government, which relies heavily on selling oil to other countries for revenue is concerned “about the impact of fracking and U.S. natural gas production on the global energy market,” according to the intelligence report. The intelligence community points out that RT, the country’s government-funded international media outlet, ran 62 different anti-fracking stories of dubious legitimacy in 2015.

Unreal - talk about making mountains out of molehills. The title of the referenced report is:  Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution and it talks about the website Russia Today and how it is popular with western readers. Big deal, they write well and cover politics from a different angle - I read it couple times/week myself.

The only reference to fracking in this 25-page "intelligence report" (and I use the term loosely) is this:

RT runs anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health. This is likely reflective of the Russian Government's concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom's profitability (5 October).

The Daily Caller has nothing and they know it - this is another example of Fake News writ large. They are gambling that very few people will actually click through to the "intelligence report" and read through the 25 pages of abject drivel. There is absolutely zero mention of "62 different anti-fracking stories".

The bit at the top about It's Russians all the way down comes from this: Turtles all the way down - click and read. It's fun.