Canadian Cynic Legal Defence Fund

Ezra Levant of Rebel Media is suing the Big Dog for defamation.

Go show him some support :

https://www.gofundme.com/28gudys


Bonus track : Ezra Levant sues self for defamation
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The Duffy Tarsands Diaries

Never mind the Senate vagaries on where Duffy actually resides or whether other Senators  porking out at the public trough is criminal or just Senate-business-as-usual. Forget all that.  
Of the various narratives emerging from the Duffy trial, the story that should be getting a lot more attention is that Con Party fundraiser Senator Mike Duffy appears to have served as a behind-the-scenes go-between between Enbridge and Stephen Harper while simultaneously connecting up environmental charities attack dog Vivian Krause, referred to by Ezra Levent as Sun TV's "forensic environmental detective", for an energy sector speaking tour.

National Observer : Redacted diary reveals oil's hidden route to Harper :

"Redacted entries in Mike Duffy’s diary suggest he was in regular undisclosed contact with pipeline giant Enbridge during the height of the federal government's scorching attacks on environmental activists and charities in 2012.

The suspended senator’s journal shows a flurry of conversations and emails with or about top-level Enbridge executives, then PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright and the Prime Minister between January and June of 2012, just as the National Energy Board started its hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal."

CBC : "Duffy appears to be a fan of Krause's work, mentioning her at least 10 times in his daily diary and setting her up with an agent for speaking appearances."

Setting her up with an agent?
According to Krause, speaking fees for appearances before the resources industry now comprises over 90% of her income going back to 2012.

So what else we got on PMO/tarsands-related events which took place during just the first month of the Duffy Diaries' January to June 2012 time period.

January 6, 2012 G&M : Foreign money could gum up pipeline approval, Harper warns.

"The Prime Minister is threatening to prevent foreign environmental interests from delaying the approval of a pipeline that would take bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to the West Coast for shipment to Asian markets.

Kathryn Marshall, a spokesperson for EthicalOil.org. said Canadians have much at stake in the construction of the pipeline and “must take a stand against foreigners and their lobbying groups interfering in our decision.”

Cue Ethical Oil's Kathryn Marshall that same month with her "foreign special interests and their deep pocket puppets" :

"I'm just a student with a website", said Kathryn,whose husband Hamish Marshall was former manager of strategic planning in Stephen Harper’s PMO, and whose company Go Newclear Productions, created and hosted websites for Ethical Oil and Con MPs Joe Oliver, Pierre Poilievre and Jason Kenney.

DeSmog Blog : Friends with Benefits: The Harper Government, EthicalOil.org and Sun Media Connection

Ethical Oil of course bragged about lobbying the Canada Revenue Agency for Krause-tagged audits of environmental charities critical of tarsands development. In the 2012 budget, the Canada Revenue Agency launched a special $8M program aimed at punishing environmental political activity, later topped up to $13.4 million.

On January 8, 2012,  Duffy's diary notes an email and phone call exchange with Ethical Oil author and SunNews *personality* Ezra Levant  "re: Vivian Krause". He then met with Krause on three occasions and had two telephone conversations.

On February 9, 2012 Krause testified before the Standing Committee on Natural Resources about "deep-pocketed supporters south of the border" funding campaigns against the Canadian energy sector.  Duffy was in attendance; his diary that day reads: "Lunch - Vivian Krause."

And just for lulz ...February 10, 2012 : Star :  Harper speaks from China: PM blasts foreign money in oilands debate while welcoming China   

Also Feb.10 : The G&M, the Star, and Vancouver Observer all carry stories about environmentalists being understandably pissed at being lumped in with white supremacists among the listed "issue-based" terrorist threats in Canada's new counter-terrorism strategy -   Building Resilience Against Terrorism :

"...domestic extremism that is “based on grievances – real or perceived – revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism."

It's not like that's gone away. An RCMP report released this February raved on about “violent anti-petroleum extremists” and  “violent aboriginal extremists,” driven by an “anti-petroleum ideology." Particularly concerning in light of the new Anti-terrorism Bill C-51 with its new engorged mandate to act against “activity that undermines the security of Canada”, the RCMP report suggests pipeline opposition movements should be seen and treated as national criminal security threats. It is 44 pages long. To back up its position, a full nine of those pages, or 20% of the entire report, are quotes from articles by Vivian Krause.

And finally the PMO/Enbridge/Duffy connection in the diary : 

Feb.17, 2012 - “PM asks “Send me a note on Enbridge Line #9 problems” 

Good on National Observer, local Vancouver Observer now gone National, for looking beneath the redacting pencil in the Duffy diaries to publish these PMO/Enbridge/Duffy/Krause/Ezra connections.

Update : Our Oily Media - Media critic CanadaLand interviews National Observer founder Linda Solomon Wood on how the energy sector has flooded Canada's media with money, be it in ad dollars, speaking fees, charitable donations or "native content" partnerships. Rex. Mansbridge. PostMedia-CAPP partnership.

Btw, CBC, I see the pro-tarsands astroturf group "British Columbians for Prosperity" is still going strong in its campaign against the deep pockets of "foreign special interests". Is your frequent commentator Alise Mills still running the show at BC4P, as she told Vancouver Observer a year ago?

Good news - Bruce Livesey, canned from Global for his spiked report on the Koch brothers' influence in Canada, has joined National Observer and will rework the story there.

May 7 Update : National Observer : Duffy connected charity critic to lucrative industry cash

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Omar Khadr, the "James Bond of Jihad", is granted bail.

National Post : "One way or another, Omar Khadr will soon be a free man.

On Friday, moments after judge J.M. Ross of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta granted the 28-year-old Toronto native bail from an Edmonton-area jail pending appeal of his war crimes conviction in the United States, the government announced — as predictably as day follows night — that it would appeal."

The government did not argue that Khadr posed any danger to Canada but rather that his release would show disrespect for the US justice system.  You know - this justice system.

It's difficult for those of us who are relatively sane to appreciate the pants-pissing opportunistic hysteria Omar Khadr apparently provokes in those who are not.

Two years ago, the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews tacked a few additional "terrorism" charges onto Omar Khadr's Canadian file that were not in his original conviction, based on a *confession* written by the prosecution at the discredited Guantánamo Bay military tribunal :

"Ottawa’s file on Omar Khadr contains faulty information based on a memo prepared by a senior policy analyst for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews ... Among other things, the government alleges the late terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was an accomplice of a 15-year-old Khadr, and that the Canadian citizen killed two Afghan militia men.

You following along here?  -  the Canadian Public Safety Minister says Osama bin Laden was the accomplice of a 15 year old!

“Mr. Khadr engaged U.S. military and coalition personnel with small-arms fire, killing two members of the Afghan militia force. He threw and/or fired grenades at nearby coalition forces, resulting in numerous injuries to them.”

Presumably the Ministry of Public Safety's laughable embellishments were garnered from Ezra Levant's appalling book, The Enemy Within: Terror, Lies, and the Whitewashing of Omar Khadr, published the previous year in 2012. Some selections : 

Levant describes the 16-year-old GWOT political prisoner as "the James Bond of Jihad", "the biggest, smartest, most deadly fish in a pond teeming with the most vicious, depraved men on Earth", "a degenerate Agent 007," and a “psychopathic” “degenerate” “gangster,” “deranged … every bit as demented as Paul Bernardo, Canada’s infamous schoolgirl serial killer” who "gave himself a licence to kill Americans and Jews." 

He wrote that Khadr's - as yet still unproven in any reputable court - act of throwing a grenade was part of his plan to rise to the top of AlQaida and become the "biggest, most brutal Godfather ever" and the "top dog of terror".

It's unhinged. 

How, as Boris is wont to ask, did we ever allow ourselves to be governed by such vile, vindictive, tawdry, incompetent, opportunistic fools?

More from Montreal Simon and Thomas Walkom

The silver lining for Khadr is that upon his release, after the government has exhausted all legal means of betraying common decency, he will be living with his lawyer Dennis Edney.

I know -you've seen Edney's 2010 speech before as I like to post it once a year as a reminder of what actual common decency looks like. 

Edney : 

"We cannot rely upon governments or others to help us make society better. Each and every one of us has to be our own leader."

Saturday Update : 
In their attempt to deny him bail, Dept. of Justice lawyers declined to make a case in court that Khadr is either a flight risk or a public safety risk. 

Lautens : Harper vs Omar Khadr - You Can't Get What You Don't Argue.

"Instead, they tried to argue that Canadian law - including his right to fundamental justice under the Charter of Rights and that most ancient human right in British jurisprudence, habeas corpus - didn't apply to Omar Khadr because of our treaty with the USA."

The judge didn't buy it.
Canadian Cynic : "Sadly, the Harper Gov't is in the enviable position of having a bottomless public treasury to keep funding stupid, doomed appeals."
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Girls night with Kathryn Marshall and BC4P

This past February, Kathryn Marshall, former spokesy for Ethical Oil, and Brittany Allison, Interim Executive Director of British Columbians For Prosperity, had a "girls night" at a West Vancouver restaurant. 




You'll recall Ethical Oil's Kathryn Marshall, formerly of the Koch-funded Fraser Institute :

"Successfully recruited major prospects for donations and sponsorships and built and maintained relationships between the Fraser Institute and donors. May 2008 – July 2009 "

... and her hapless tv stints raving against "foreign special interests and their deep pockets" that secretly funded opposition to the tarsands' efforts to get its ethical bitumen to Chinese markets. 

"I'm just a student with a website," insisted Kathryn - wife of Hamish Marshall, former manager of strategic planning in Stephen Harper’s PMO, whose company Go Newclear Productions, created and hosted websites for Ethical Oil and Con MPs Joe Oliver, Pierre Poilievre and Jason Kenney.

She took over the job from former American Enterprise Institute intern Alykhan Velshi, who left Jason Kenney's employ in 2011 to head up the website based on Ezra Levant's book of the same name and returned to Harper's office afterwards as planning director. 
After her came Jamie Ellerton, executive assistant - first to Jason Kenney til September 2010 and then to teabaggin' Tim Hudak .

Ethical Oil's specialty was attack ads. 
Recently, climate change skeptic Ezra Levant, who interned with Koch 20 years ago, has pondered in the pages of the Edmonton Sun whether environmentalist groups in Canada are funded by Putin.

For all their concern about foreign funding, neither Velshi nor Marshall ever answered repeated media questions about whether Enbridge or any other Canadian corporate interest was backing Ethical Oil.  Ironically, at the timeEnbridge's chair and 5 out of 12 directors were American.


Kathryn's 'girls night' buddy, Brittany Allison, also maintains a focus on shadowy foreign funding from her perch at BC4P moneytrail.ca : 

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL AND EXPLORE THE U.S. FOUNDATION FUNDING HYPOCRISY THAT'S IMPACTING CANADA'S SOVEREIGNTY

"Wealthy American Foundations pump millions of dollars into campaigns to halt Canadian oil sands production and pipelines."

According to BC4P, that would be the Foundations Rockefeller, Pew, and Tides, among 70 odd others.

BC4P Interim Policy Director Brittany Allison was previously :

"Policy Researcher in the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa and Research Officer in the B.C. Legislature in Victoria"

prior to being Public Affairs Advisor for Fraser Surrey Docks coal expansion project.

Like Ethical Oil, BC4P director and frequent CBC commentator Alise Mills also declines to reveal their sources of funding.

Foreign funding researcher Vivian Krause, who you would expect to be a natural political soul sister to these two, stated in a Kootenay Co-op radio interview in April that in addition to her objection to BC4P's flawed arguments - [transcript in comment #8 ] :

"I'm not involved with that group at all. They asked me to be involved but they wouldn't disclose their own funding sources so I wasn't willing to work with them."

Like Ethical Oil before them, BC4P has likely come to the end of its robocalling astroturfing usefulness, only to be replaced by yet another *grassroots org* of undisclosed funding - - like this one :

Canada Action Plan

"Full Value for Canadian Resources - Support Northern Gateway"

Just two guys with a grassroots website ...

... and an op ed in the CAPP/Postmedia partnership world of the Vancouver Sun a month ago :
Pipeline fear factor is inappropriate

... and a *surprise* visit from Ezra Levant at the "No Enbridge!" Sunset Beach protest in Vancouver where their Canada Action counter-protest banners were big enough to block the view of the ocean.

... and an endorsement on their Support the Northern Gateway Pipeline pledge from Bruce Lounds of BC4P.

Two days ago, Olivia Ward had a piece in The Star : Billionaire Koch brothers are big oil players in Alberta as the largest foreign landholder. 

"During an ill-fated run for vice-president in 1980, David Koch campaigned on a platform that promoted destruction of the social welfare system, repeal of taxation and an end to public education, children’s services, government medical care, minimum wage laws and environmental regulation.
But through the Kochs’ persistence and lavish funding, their libertarian ideas are now part of the Republican Party’s agenda, and they have helped to change the face of America.

Founding or funding groups like the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the American Enterprise Institute and the State Policy Network — which acts as a seed bank for dozens of others — the Kochs gradually inched across the political landscape.

In Canada, Koch’s presence in the oil sands has set environmentalists’ teeth on edge as the brothers back U.S. climate skeptics, tout fossil fuels and oppose the Obama administration’s environmental agenda."

The Kochtopus with its unfettered free market oil-friendly political tentacles winding 

"into the mainstream through the tea party and "dark money" political coalitions that allow donors to shield their identity while funding attack ads "

In the same article, Ward interviews Kenneth Green, the Fraser Institute's Energy and Natural Resources director. Although she doesn't mention it, Green spent 3 years with the Fraser Institute and then seven with the Koch and Exxon-funded American Enterprise Institute before cycling back to the Fraser Institute again last year. In 2007 while with AEI, Green offered $10,000 each to any scientists willing to refute the IPCC's climate change report. 

Ward :

"Fraser Institute president Niels Veldhuis says that although Koch contributed $115,000 to the Fraser Institute in the past year, “it is for our Economic Freedom of the World project”

You know, the next time you two girls get together to talk 'foreign special interests and their deep pockets', you might want to have a look into that. 

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Paging Snuffleupagus to the SunNews white courtesy petition

The last time Sun News needed help with an online petition, Snuffleupagus and Homer Simpson were there to help, mysteriously adding their names  to 80,000 others on a "Stop Fox News North" Avaaz petition in 2010, along with a number of real people like Kady and Stephen Maher who didn't sign it.

Sun News mastermind, Kornkob ethanol lobbyist, and Steve's former director of communications Kory Teneycke 'discovered' the fraudulent names and wrote it up in his Sun News column on Sept 3 2010 in a bid to discredit the petition ....  only to get busted by Kady who pointed out the names on the petition were not published so how did he know about them then, huh?

Kory, who had wanted a Fox News for Canada as far back as 2003 and in March 2009 went with boss  Harper to meet with Fox News magnates Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes in New York, resigned unexpectedly from Sun News four days after his Homer/Snuffy column, but returned as Sun News VP three and a half months later.

The very same day Homer and Snuffy were helping out Sun News with their bogus petition entries, Kory went on CBC's Power and Politics :

"We are not nor have we ever asked for mandatory carriage of this station where Canadians would have to be obliged to pay. We are saying that we would like to have it offered but theoretically it could be carried by no one ... these are all private sector negotiations." 

Or, as he put it in his Homer/Snuffy column :

"Sun TV News is not, nor has it ever, asked for “mandatory carriage” by cable or satellite companies. As the critics correctly point out, this would be tantamount to a tax on everyone with cable or satellite service"

Well that was then; this is now. 
Now they are asking the CRTC for exactly that - mandatory carriage to be included in every basic cable package in Canada plus guaranteed placement on the lower end of the dial. Because it turns out the 'free market' they go on about so relentlessly turns out to be just another of the many many obstacles they have to overcome on their path to Spun News greatness, like Ezra wearing that orange wig above to mock Jack Layton's funeral.

Sun News Network is arguing its signal must be broadcast into every Canadian home if it is ever going to recover from losses that have already reached $17-million a year.

This would generate about $18-million a year for the network ...

... sparking a whole slew of "then cancel my cable" comments under the G&M article.

Sun News argues that many Canadians have expressed enthusiasm for its conservative commentary-intensive programming, and would watch the channel regularly, but they don’t know it even exists. The digital cable or satellite connections currently required to see it haven’t been adopted by enough viewers in the senior citizen demographic that Quebecor concedes it is largely appealing to.

So Sun News has put up its own petition to the CRTC, presumably appealing to the angry racist misogynist xenophobic pro-gun pro-christian anti-choice anti-environment anti-union anti-gay anti-pot anti-Quebec anti-government anti-Roma anti-FN anti-Islam anti-arts tough-on-crime "senior citizen demographic" who "don't know it even exists" to lend their support. 

Well ok then. Maybe Homer and Snuffy could help out here.

Update : Arghh. Alberta Diary : SUN NEWS PLEADS WITH ANTI-CHOICE GROUP TO BACK ITS QUEST FOR 'RIGHT TO LIFE' SUBSIDY

Brian Lilley : "Sun News is the strongest voice for the pro-life cause on television in Canada. Bar none."

Sun VP Teneycke : " we need to demonstrate a groundswell of support for Sun News, and the readers of LifeSiteNews can help."

You can submit your opinion on SunNews' application directly to the CRTC here.
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Six Degrees of Separation

From Matt Price @ HuffPost, who in turn credits Deep Climate and DeSmogBlog for the research

Meanwhile, about that "foreign money" and "foreign special interest groups" that Steve and Joe are so worried will influence what should be a purely Canadian decision on the Enbridge Northern Gateway project : 
Enbridge would like you to know that only its Chair and 5 out of 12 of its directors are American.
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Ethical Oil Ethics For Dummies

Ethical Oil's new spokesy Kathryn Marshall had a little think yesterday about whether the tarsands are still ethical even if bits of it are owned by China and its unethical oil company, and even if Ottawa and Alberta are successful in their bid to hawk the stuff to communist China.

"Is Canadian oil suddenly less ethical, " she asks, "when it's produced and used by unethical countries?"
No! she answers, it's still ethical! 
You're shocked, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, over at the Christian Science Monitor :

"The whole notion of ethical oil sets up a false dilemma because the very viscous Canadian crude needs to be cut with lighter oils from places like Saudi Arabia in order to be transported down a pipeline, says Chris MacDonald, a visiting scholar for the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics at the University of Toronto. 

"So what's the point of having ethical oil if you are mixing it with this 'conflict oil'?"

Andrew Nikiforuk @ The Tyee : 

"By 2025, for example Canada could be importing more than two million barrels of foreign or so-called "unethical" oil a day, just to transport bitumen to U.S. refineries."

 The problem of adding imported diluents to tarsands crude is of considerable concern to CAPP, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says Nikiforuk. Seems foreign diluents could be subject to US country-of-origin duty charges both when it is imported into Canada from non-NAFTA sources via US ports, and again when it is shipped from Canada back to US refineries.


CAPP, November 2010 : Rethinking NAFTA Certification of Canadian Heavy Crude Oil

• After 2005 regional condensate/pentanes + supply was no longer sufficient to satisfy diluent needs
• This has led to a rapid increase in diluent imports
• Initially, diluent imports were small and were sourced from the U.S.
• With development of the EnCana/Cenovus Kitimat terminal, non-NAFTA diluent began entering the western Canadian diluent pool
• Export to U.S. of Dilbit and Diluted Heavy Crude in 2009 – 970,000 BPD
• Export to U.S. of Light Crude in 2009 - 300,000 BPD
• If U.S. duty were charged on both streams, annual cost to industry - $30,000,000

Huh.


When former Ethical Oil spokesy Alykhan Velshi slagged Saudi Arabia's human rights record in a 30 second ad which resulted in Saudi cease and desist lawyery letters sent to CTV/Bell Media, Velshi's former boss Immigration Minister Jason Kenney leapt to his defence, and Dame Ezra, author of Ethical Oil : The Book and The Website, milked the speechey hell out of it over at SunTV. 


This time I'm betting Steve is thinking : Just STFU about ethics, Kathryn, we're trying to do a deal here.

Tune in next week when Kathryn considers whether it's ok for ethical oil to steal a loaf of bread to feed a hungry child ... 

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Update : The CAPP Industry presentation "Rethinking Nafta Certification of Canadian Heavy Crude Oil" link appears to no longer be available so here's a google cache copy and a pdf copy . 
Info quoted above is from pages 5 to 10.
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Ethical oil in Syria explained

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced on May 24 that Canada would be banning all further arms exports to Syria, as well as banning 25 senior members of the Syrian government from visiting Canada, should they have any desire to visit the country that is its third largest direct investor.

Baird's statement was made in response to reports that more than 1,000 demonstrators in Syria have been killed on the orders of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, pictured here on the left touring Suncor's $1.2 billion Ebla Natural Gas Plant in Syria a year ago.

Senior Suncor VP Mark Little explains in the Suncor 2010 Report on Sustainability :

"The fact is that, on a per-barrel basis, it’s much more expensive to produce a barrel of oil synthetic crude oil from oil sands than to produce a barrel of conventional oil or gas in either Syria or Libya. In Syria, now that we are producing natural gas, the operation will generate positive cash flow for the company. In Libya we have significantly reduced the funding that the country requires, and as we learn more about specific opportunities, we have realized that they come in relatively small investments with strong returns. So these foreign operations can help provide the near-term cash flow and return on capital needed to invest in long-term growth in the oil sands."

Suncor CEO Rick George in early May : "So what I would say is I think it's in everybody's interest...that we keep that facility up and running."

So there ya go. Our home-grown "ethical oil", as lauded by Environment Minister Peter Kent and Ezra Levant in his book of the same name, is financed in part by making a quick buck in the "blood oil" states of Libya and Syria.
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Update : Re link above to "third largest direct investor"
On Aug. 11, 2011, the Government of Canada Canada-Syria Relations webpage was changed to delete the following sentence but a Google cache of the original page can be found here.

"Canada is now the 3rd largest foreign direct investor in Syria due to a $1.2 billion Suncor/Petro Canada gas project."

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