Joe Oliver, Dangerous Allies and Carbon Footprints [updated]

Oil sands pipeline battle turns ugly | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Cananda’s natural resources minister Joe Oliver has issued a public letter, which an article in the Guardian calls “an extraordinary rant,” attacking opponents of the tar sands pipelines, including Keystone XL, saying they have a “radical ideological agenda” and “dangerous allies.”

“They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources,” he said.

Oliver would know all about ideological agendas and dangerous allies.  His background is in investment banking and securities–you know, the folks who brought you the global financial crisis:

Prior to his election to Parliament, Mr. Oliver had a career in the investment banking industry. He began his investment banking career at Merrill Lynch, and served in senior positions at other investment dealers and as Executive Director of the Ontario Securities Commission. He was then appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada. (via Meet Joe « Joe Oliver.)

Clearly, based on their sterling role shepherding the global economy, investment bankers are the best choice for overseeing natural resources.   Seriously, though, if you appoint someone with this background as natural resources minister, your take on things is pretty clear: nature is a pile of economic resources to be exploited for profit. So it’s hardly surprising that Oliver is apoplectic about resistance to his money-spinning plans for pipelines running across the continent and oil shipping in sensitive waters.

As for his comment about the carbon footprint of those “jet-setting celebrities” who have opposed the Keystone XL project and other tar sands exploitation projects, I’ve written to his office and requested that he provide details on his carbon footprint, both in his role as minister and also personally, for himself and his family, as well as for any businesses in which he might hold a controlling interest.  In the interests of full disclosure and a “fair and balanced” assessment of his attack. In this day and age, it really makes sense to request ecological as well as economic transparency and accountability from government officials.

[Update: Still haven’t heard from him.]

If you want to write to him yourself, the email address for his Ottawa office is: joe.oliver@parl.gc.ca

Finally, in the current climate of the war on terrorism, and after the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act with its provision for indefinite detention, language about “dangerous allies” and “radical ideology” should sound alarm bells.  In the UK, we’ve seen recently the extent of government infiltration of radical environmental and peace groups. It doesn’t seem a huge leap to imagine groups such as those, groups branded as dangerous and as having a “radical ideology,” in the UK, the United States and Canada, getting identified as “terrorist” and subject to the full power of the endless war, anti-terrorist surveillance state that the US is fast become.

For more…

• Oil sands pipeline battle turns ugly | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
• WWF Report on “Unconventional Oil”
• Canadian tar sands: Is our neighbor to the north becoming a jingoistic petro-state? – Slate Magazine.
• An open letter from the Honourable Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources , on Canada’s commitment to diversify our energy markets and the need to further streamline the regulatory process in order to advance Canada’s national economic interest « Joe Oliver.
• Free Carbon Footprint Calculator | The Nature Conservancy.
• Oil Sands/Tar Sands – Wikipedia
• The New York Times thinks the tar-sands pipeline sucks. Here’s why. | Grist.
• Joe Oliver, Minister Of Natural Resources Takes Pot Shots At Protesting Stars | Archemdis’s Blog.
• Daryl Hannah debates Keystone pipeline – Video Dailymotion.

Read This: Through Islamic Center Debate, World Sees U.S.

even though many in the United States have framed the future of the community center [Park51, aka the “Ground Zero Mosque”] as a pivotal referendum on the core issues of religion, tolerance and free speech, those outside its borders see the debate as a confirmation of their pre-existing feelings about the country, whether good or bad.

“America hates Islam,” said Mohaimen Jabar, the owner of a clothes shop in Baghdad, Iraq.

“If America loved us, it would help the Palestinians and stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said. “It would stop Iran and Israel from distorting the image of Islam.”

read the whole article: Through Islamic Center Debate, World Sees U.S. – NYTimes.com.

BP Oil Spill: Real Cause and Culprits Revealed

After extensive investigation, and with the help of a courageous whistleblower, we can now reveal the true cause and real culprits behind the Deepwater Horizon / BP oil spill: right-wing extremists.

Home-grown terrorists with connections to neo-Nazi survivalists in Idaho and eastern Oregon and militia groups in Michigan and Texas deliberately sabotaged the oil rig, leading to the explosion and subsequent spill that is still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. The sabotage was planned by an Alaskan sympathizer, a devotee of Sarah Palin with a background working in the oil industry, and was carried out by a member of the group from Texas who managed to get a job on the rig. It is not known at this time whether this individual is among the survivors, or if in fact he perished in the explosion he himself caused.

Originally, the act of sabotage was planned for April 19 – a day of great significance among American right-wing extremists, as the day of the fiery end of the Waco Siege and the Oklahoma City bombing (see, eg, here for some background). However, the group feared that this might make it too obvious not only that it was a deliberate act of sabotage, but also who was responsible – which would have interfered with their overall aims. The sabotage was therefore moved to April 20 – as Hitler’s birthday still a significant date, but it was felt the connection would not be made.

Their primary aim was to discredit President Obama with a Hurricane Katrina-scale disaster on his watch. To that end, members of the group infiltrated a number of disaster management organizations in the region, including FEMA, the Coast Guard and the Red Cross – planning to subtly disrupt and sabotage the emergency response to create a more widespread and damaging situation that would reflect badly on the Federal government in general, and the Obama administration in particular.

Another motive behind the attack, and the factor that determined the specific choice of targets, was concern about foreign control of what the group had come to see as a crucial component of national security: oil, and energy supplies more generally. The hope was that the spill would reflect so badly on BP – British Petroleum – that both they and Shell would be blocked from further oil extraction activities in America’s strategic energy reserves in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

For these reasons, it was crucial that the true cause of the spill – deliberate sabotage – and the identity of those responsible be kept hidden. The Alaskan sympathizer’s study of the Deepwater Horizon facility made it clear that the safety systems in place were woefully inadequate, with a major lack of redundancy and backups; it seemed likely that only minor and almost certainly detectable sabotage would lead to an explosion and a major spill, as in fact proved to be the case…

Now…

As you may have guessed, this is a complete fabrication, a work of fiction. Nothing I’ve written here – beyond the issue of the inadequacy of the safety systems on the rig – has any basis in fact (as far as I know).

What I find interesting is that it is not really any less plausible than the conspiracy nonsense being spewed by people like Rush Limbaugh – who reportedly suggested that environmental extremists might have deliberately caused one of the worst environmental disasters in years.

In fact – stripped of the thriller aspects – my conspiracy theory actually seems a bit more plausible: that right-wing extremists might be behind it as an attempt to discredit Obama and/or foreign control of American oil, and that the date of the explosion was chosen deliberately.