Last month I discovered a piece on Feministing about a recent Canadian ad campaign for Ethical Oil. According to Ethical Oil’s website, the group:
Encourages people, businesses and governments to choose Ethical Oil from Canada, its oil sands and other liberal democracies. Unlike Conflict Oil from some of the world’s most politically oppressive and environmentally reckless regimes, Ethical Oil is the “Fair Trade” choice in oil. Countries that produce Ethical Oil protect the rights of women, workers, indigenous peoples and other minorities including gays and lesbians. Conflict Oil regimes, by contrast, oppress their citizens and operate in secret with no accountability to voters, the press or independent judiciaries.
The group’s now infamous ad, which can be seen here, speaks of the abuse women endure in Saudi Arabia, and paints Canada’s environmentally disastrous tar sands as the only alternative. But intelligent women aren’t falling for it.
“I am a feminist and I am an environmentalist. I don’t really appreciate being asked to compromise one to support the other….If Ethical Oil was truly interested in women’s rights, they’d be campaign for fuel efficiency standards. Instead they’re using the condition of Saudi women as a disgusting gateway to destroying the planet and encouraging an environmental disaster.”
The ad currently runs on Oprah’s OWN network. Upon discovering this, the exceptionally thorough environmentalist and writer Emma Pullman did some investigative work and found the following, which she then included in an open letter to Ms. Winfrey (the article also does an amazing job of unraveling the absurd logic Ethical Oil operates by):
According to Deep Climate, Ethical Oil isn’t the low budget grassroots organization it purports to be. Its principals are some of the rising stars of the conservative movement in Canada, and one is a lawyer for tar sands firms.
Here’s the back story: Ezra Levant turned “ethical oil” into a meme late last year. Almost overnight, pro-industry and government officials, keen to sell the filthy oil to a skeptical public, picked up the term and ran with it. After the Conservative election victory in May, Conservative government spokesperson (and former American Enterprise Institute intern) Alykhan Velshi took over at the helm of the ethicaloil.org blog. The blog is registered to Levant, who also has strong links to the Conservatives.
And, here’s another thing that just doesn’t add up for me. How is it that a former advisor to Environment Minister John Baird, and communications director for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, would find himself taking an “unpaid” job as a blogger?
Thanks to the folks over at Deep Climate, it makes a lot more sense. EthicalOil.org is connected to the obscure Ethical Oil Institute. Though there is scant reference to them online, according to their notice of incorporation, the institute was registered on March 9, 2011 to an Edmonton address, 12220 Stony Plain Road, Edmonton AB T5N 3Y4.
That just so happens to be the address of the law firm McLennan Ross. McLennan Ross makes bathtubs full of money doing work for tar sands firms.
The two members of the Ethical Oil Institute’s board of directors are Ezra Levant and McLellan Ross partner Thomas Ross. Thomas Ross is one of ten lead partners in McLellan Ross’s OilSandsLaw.com initiative, a “slick new oilsands cross-selling strategy” and marketing campaign.
But it gets better. Pullman mentioned that Alykhan Velshi also contributes to the group. In fact, Ethical Oil openly states this, saying the site “began as a blog created by Alykhan Velshi.” More than simply an “intern for the American Enterprise Institute,” Velshi was also head of research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, where he co-founded the Center for Law and Counterterrorism. He is an open supporter of Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war, does not believe the Geneva Conventions should apply to those captured in the War on Terror, and advocates the creation of a special National Security Court to try terrorism suspects.
More importantly, Velshi is an open and unabashed Zionist, working for Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney as his Director of Communications and Parliamentary Affairs. You might recall that Kenney made the news in 2009 as he was embroiled in a battle with Canadian Arab Federation president Khaled Mouammar in which Kenney and Velshi were able to successfully defund CAF after comments Mouammar made criticizing Kenney’s support for Operation Cast Lead. According to Velshi, Mouammar was “anti-Semetic.” See here for the full story.
And there’s more. Writing for the Huffington Post, Velshi criticized the Saudi government’s attempt to get Ethical Oil’s ad off the air, explaining:
I have also alerted Foreign Minister John Baird and Dean Allison, Chairman of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, about the incident in writing, calling on the Harper government and the parliamentary committee to investigate a foreign dictatorship trying to censor what Canadians can and cannot see on their televisions.
While in a free, open, and democratic society, we can have vigorous disagreements about energy policy and the role Canada’s oil sands should play in the energy supply mix, when a foreign dictatorship like Saudi Arabia tries to censor one side of that debate, we all need to stand as one in defending our rights as Canadians. That means that all of us — including oil sands critics like Greenpeace — need to condemn this brazen act of domestic political interference by a blood-soaked, conflict oil-fueled foreign dictatorship.
Wait, what? Need I remind you, this is the same man who played an instrumental role in successfully banning British PM and outspoken Israel critic George Galloway from entering Canada. From wiki:
Velshi told the media that the Canadian government would not reverse this decision, stating that Galloway had expressed sympathy for the Taliban cause in Afghanistan and describing him as an “infandous street-corner Cromwell who actually brags about giving ‘financial support’ to Hamas, a terrorist organisation banned in Canada.[33] The decision to ban Galloway was supported by the Canadian Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith Canada and the far-right Jewish Defence League of Canada, which took credit for initiating the action.[34] It was subsequently noted that Velshi had begun preparing media lines regarding Galloway several days before the ban was announced.[32]
The Canadian border police would not let Galloway into the country based on instructions from Velshi. Now tell me again, what did he say about free speech and debate?
I guess Velshi has no sense of irony. Either that, or he’s just a hypocrite. A neoconservative Zionist taking talking points from the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Birth Canada, which act as in part as agents of Israel to insulate its “blood-soaked” apartheid regime from Western criticism has the gall to talk about other countries meddling in Canadian affairs. What exactly is his angle here?
In truth, Ethical Oil is guilty of myriad hasbara-esque techniques, among them greenwashing, pinkwashing, and the old familiar but-look-at-those-evil-Arabs-over-THERE excuse by comparison, except this time they’re in the service of Canada rather than Israel. But these obfuscations don’t work for Israel, and they shouldn’t work for Canada either.
This post originally appeared on Maggie Sager’s blog Resisting Occupation.
“Conflict Oil regimes, by contrast, oppress their citizens and operate in secret with no accountability to voters, the press or independent judiciaries.”
Hmmmm, kind of sounds like the American “regime.”
Ezra Levant is woefully uninformed about the Alberta Oil Sands and the history of Canada’s Energy Policy, even though he thinks he’s their great Calgary champion. He is obstreperous and crude (so am I, but I’m not representing a group).
That said, this business that Alberta’s Oil Sands are “Canada’s environmentally disastrous tar sands” is high-grade nonsense. I am the only person you know who’s bothered to read the 438-page 14-month study by the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel: Environmental and Health Impacts of Canada’s Oil Sands Industry, December 2010, written by seven scientists checking into the claims against the Oil Sands that it was harming the environment and making the indigenous people sick. And that includes Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Robert Redford, David Suzuki (and his entire group) and I suspect, the entire province of Alberta, and possibly most of Canada. I am the only person you know who actually contacted some of the scientists to verify information in it. When I told one of the scientists that I read this 400+ page tome, he said, “You’re probably one of three who did.”
I am not in the mood to go into chapter and verse here. It’s Monday and I have things to do. But to put this in a broad perspective, Canada’s global CO2 count is 1.8%. (The US is around 18.x%.) The Oil Sands produces about .07% for about 22% of the US entire consumption of oil. (Check out what Saudi Arabia produces: 1.44%…and it’s at least 1/5 the size of Canada.) It is produced mainly in situ, meaning underground, via recycled steam. The province of Alberta is the only place in North America—yes, including the US—that has draconian reclamation laws in place requiring producers to return the land to the same or better condition, or face fines and jail. (They have to save everything they dig up and replace it.) One barrel of their concentrated crude when it reaches the refinery equals three barrels of Saudi sweet crude. And how you can tell that the critics haven’t bothered to do Homework 101 on this, or physically investigate what they are talking about, is that they still call it the Tar Sands. This gush from deep within the bowels of that earth is Mother Nature’s biggest Oil Spill. It’s what the Florida coast would look like if the BP spill was still destroying the beach coast. They’re cleaning it up.
Ezra Levant is a rabid, pernicious piece of business who should be shut up. He’s using this to advance his anti-Muslim sentiment. You ought to see the other crap he puts out.
http://oilsandstruth.org/
there is nothing ethical about extracting oil out of tar sands.. the canadian oil industry with the buffoon harper are looking for any way they can to put the proper packaging on a pack of deception…
This is begging for a Photoshop edit.
I’ll post something later on this evening.
RE: “I guess Velshi has no sense of irony. Either that, or he’s just a hypocrite.” ~ Maggie Sager
ALSO CONSIDER A FEW DEFENSE MECHANISMS:
• Compartmentalization is a process of separating parts of the self from awareness of other parts and behaving as if one had separate sets of values. An example might be an honest person who cheats on their income tax return and keeps their two value systems distinct and unintegrated while remaining unconscious of the cognitive dissonance.
• Denial is the refusal to accept reality and to act as if a painful event, thought or feeling did not exist. It is considered one of the most primitive of the defense mechanisms because it is characteristic of very early childhood development.
• Repression is the blocking of unacceptable impulses from consciousness.
• Projection is the attribution of one’s undesired impulses onto another. Thus, an angry spouse accuses their partner of hostility.
• Rationalization is the cognitive reframing of ones perceptions to protect the ego in the face of changing realities. Thus, the promotion one wished fervently for and didn’t get becomes “a dead end job for brown nosers and yes men”.
ALSO SEE: COGNITIVE DISSONANCE & DEFENSE MECHANISMS – https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2011/09/the-privileged-divide-non-jews-want-to-talk-the-issue-jews-dont.html#comment-365465