Saudi Arabia and Ethical Oil Group Go Head to Head Over Ads

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The controversial Ethical Oil adswhich 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 womenโ€™s rights and tar sands expansion is โ€œa 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 โ€œconflict oilโ€. 

According to the ads, โ€œWe bankrolled a state that doesnโ€™t allow women to drive, doesnโ€™t allow them to leave their homes or work without their male guardianโ€™s permission and a state where a womanโ€™s testimony only accounts for half of a manโ€™sโ€. 

A female voice pleads to the viewer, โ€œWhy 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cease and desist letter to Telecaster Services from the Television Bureau of Canada, demanding approval for the ads be withdrawn.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 groupโ€™s spokesman, former Tory communications director Alykhan Velshi, โ€œWe 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 โ€œforeign 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 womenโ€™s 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 wonโ€™t 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 worldโ€™s proven oil reserves, so increasing output from the tar sands wonโ€™t substantially decrease our reliance on foreign oil, and it wonโ€™t reduce the worldโ€™s demand for Saudi Arabiaโ€™s 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€“ โ€œmoderated by a womanโ€ โ€“ to settle, โ€œwhich one is the bigger asshatโ€.

Whoโ€™s your money on?

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