By Ezra Levant, QMI Agency, Toronto Sun
Saudi Arabia has hired lawyers to threaten Canadian broadcasters who dare to run a TV ad critical of Saudi conflict oil.
I know this because I am the volunteer chairman of EthicalOil.org, the non-profit website that promotes Canada’s oilsands as an ethical alternative to the conflict oil of Saudi Arabia and other OPEC dictatorships.
Alykhan Velshi, who runs EthicalOil.org, produced a 30-second TV ad comparing the treatment of women in Canada with the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. That’s a place where women can’t drive, can’t vote and can’t even get medical care without the permission of their husbands/owners.
Compare that to Canada, where the mayor of the oilsands capital, Fort McMurray, is a young woman named Melissa Blake.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t like criticism like that, though. They are a fascist state without a free press or any opposition political parties. And now they’ve hired one of the world’s largest law firms, a 2,600-lawyer monstrosity called Norton Rose, to threaten Canada’s media into silence, too.
Rahool Agarwal, one of the lawyers at Norton Rose, has been contacting broadcasters across Canada, threatening them if they air the ad. Already two networks have capitulated in the face of such threats, including CTV, Canada’s biggest private broadcaster. Agarwal has also threatened EthicalOil.org with a lawsuit, too. He won’t say for what he clearly has no legal case. But the point is silencing dissent. And it’s working.
The only way we heard about this campaign of threats was when one concerned Canadian who received a threat tipped us off. When our lawyer contacted Agarwal, he sounded genuinely surprised that he was caught. The Saudis prefer to operate under the radar.
Saudi Arabia is an enemy of Canada. They’re an enemy of the West. They’re an enemy of freedom. This is not a new revelation. Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden was from a prominent Saudi family. Saudi Arabia continues to finance terrorism around the world.
Normally, Islamic extremists focus their hatred on the Great Satan the United States. But Canada is now an enemy of the Saudis, too. Because we’re competitors to them for oil. Within ten years, the oilsands could totally replace Saudi exports to the U.S.
Recently, Saudi billionaire Prince Walid bin Talal said it was in his country’s interest not to let the price of oil get too high, lest alternative sources of oil become practical. Well, the largest unconventional oil reserves in the world are in the oilsands. He didn’t use the word, but he clearly meant it.
Like Greenpeace, the Saudis hate our oilsands. They’re usually content to let Greenpeace do the heavy lifting. But this time, the Saudis were caught red-handed.
The oilsands can take care of themselves. But what about Canada?s media? At least two broadcasters have already caved to this Saudi legal pressure. The Saudis are destroying our culture of freedom and replacing it with their sharia culture of tyranny and bullying.
Foreign Minister John Baird must summon the Saudi ambassador at once. If their foreign meddling and bullying doesn’t cease immediately, he should be expelled.
Canada is free, and our media should be free no matter what some dictatorship wants, and what that dictatorship’s well-paid lawyers threaten in secret.
Doesn’t need to be. Can you imagine how many jobs would be generated by such a change of policy?
And just contemplating the shot in the arm that would inevitably be created by that policy’s overall effect on the economy damned well staggers the mind . . . .
“Using our own petroleum & nat gas resources would decisively destroy the power of the cartel, because we’ve got enough to meet our needs for 100 years — and the cartel knows it.”
Yes, but our labour is not as cheap as the imported “slave labour’ of S.Arabia……………..
What’s more, if this president (or any sitting president) were to announce tomorrow morning — merely ANNOUNCE — that from now on, the country’s largest user of automobiles [the Fed. govt] would require all of its vehicles to be constructed with engines maintaining flex-fuel capacity (gasoline/natural gas), the announcement would promptly send the price of light sweet crude plummeting on world markets.
He could kick its arse in a heartbeat, if he were so motivated.
If we converted all of the diesel trucks in the USA to run on natural gas, we would cut our foreign oil imports by 50%.
Adios Saudi Arabia
Using our own petroleum & nat gas resources would decisively destroy the power of the cartel, because we’ve got enough to meet our needs for 100 years — and the cartel knows it.
Wouldn’t it be better if we used all their oil first? You know, save ours for when a barrel is selling at 1800 USD?
As soon as the west extricates itself from arab oil, the war will over.
We’ve got oil, too.
Lots of it.
Also natural gas
— in massive quantities.
Alotta good it does us. . . .
I wonder how much saudi money Greenpeace and other environmental groups are receiving for blocking oil drilling in North America. Between American and Canadian energy resources we could easily be energy independent long into the future. I wish someone would investigate the funding sources of environmental organizations.