The controversial Ethical Oil ads, which enjoyed an exclusive run on the Oprah Winfrey Network at the end of August, have earned a new enemy: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The tar sands industry ad campaign, which criticizes our reliance on oil imports from Saudi Arabia due to its poor human rights record, tells viewers that choosing between womenโs rights and tar sands expansion is โa choice we must makeโ.
The ads argue instead that intensifying tar sands production will actually help liberate women from oppressive petrocracies like Saudi Arabia. They also imply that we must support the controversial Keystone XL pipeline because it will decrease our reliance on โconflict oilโ.
According to the ads, โWe bankrolled a state that doesnโt allow women to drive, doesnโt allow them to leave their homes or work without their male guardianโs permission and a state where a womanโs testimony only accounts for half of a manโsโ.
A female voice pleads to the viewer, โWhy are we paying their bills and funding their oppression?โ
The ad has angered Saudi Arabia, who in response sent a cease and desist letter to Telecaster Services from the Television Bureau of Canada, demanding approval for the ads be withdrawn.
Ethicaloil.org is now using the cease and desist letter as a public relations stunt. According to the industry groupโs spokesman, former Tory communications director Alykhan Velshi, โWe caught this foreign dictatorship trying to undermine freedom of the press here in Canada and trying to export its own contempt for democracy, its own contempt for freedom of the press here in Canadaโ.
Velshi has even used the plea to get the ad on Canadian television. As of Monday, Sun Media (A.K.A. Fox News North) will air the ads on its network. Ethical oil cheerleader and Conservative operative Ezra Levant is an anchor for the network and the registrant of the ethicaloil.org website.
Velshi has also alerted Foreign Minister John Baird (whom Velshi worked for as a Director of Parliamentary Affairs) and Dean Allison of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade about the incident, calling for an investigation into a โforeign dictatorship trying to censor what Canadians can and cannot see on their televisionsโ.
Levant and Velshi have used the lawsuit to shore support for their ads, which are at their very core misleading. Yes, Saudi Arabia abuses womenโs rights. But the link that the ads are trying to force โ that expanding tar sands production will somehow liberate Saudi women โ does not hold up to scrutiny. The ads present incorrect information & use alarmism to catch people in a false choice.
As I wrote earlier, tar sands expansion wonโt hurt Saudi oil imports: the Keystone XL pipeline was created to keep Gulf coast refineries at capacity, not to reduce reliance on foreign oil. The United States and Canada combined hold less than 5 percent of the worldโs proven oil reserves, so increasing output from the tar sands wonโt substantially decrease our reliance on foreign oil, and it wonโt reduce the worldโs demand for Saudi Arabiaโs crude.
These diversionary tactics are, however, distracting us from having the long-overdue conversation about the environmental and human impact of tar sands expansion on downstream and First Nations communities, and about the need to rapidly pursue a clean energy future.
If the goal here really is to hurt Saudi sheiks for their treatment of women, we should support a transition from dirty fossil fuels to renewable energy.
But instead we see a circus act by Velshi, who has challenged the Saudi ambassador to a debate โ โmoderated by a womanโ โ to settle, โwhich one is the bigger asshatโ.
Whoโs your money on?
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