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Canada, Corruption, Ideology, Media, Uncategorized

The Harper government, Ethical Oil and Sun Media connection

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By Emma Pullman
January 20, 2012

Just over a week before the Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings began, EthicalOil.org and its allies launched a pre-emptive PR offensive on environmental and First Nations groups who oppose the pipeline. Their new website, OurDecision.ca, and ad campaign are an attempt to invalidate opposition to the pipeline by pointing to the small amount of American funding going to some environmental groups, and claiming that pipeline opponents are actually the “puppets” of “foreign interests.”

Sun News was first to promote the campaign, and by the end of the week, numerous papers across Canada were repeating the story. After mentioning last November that “significant American interests” would line up against the pipeline, Stephen Harper eagerly picked up where he left off, touting EthicalOil.org’s cause, decrying the foreign influence attempting to “overload” the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Review. By Monday, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver had penned a letter to Canadians denouncing the foreign interests trying to “hijack” the review process “to achieve their radical ideological agenda”. The same ominous tone and divisive talking points were parroted over and over by EthicalOil.org, Harper, Oliver and the credulous media, driving an entire week of news coverage.

The OurDecision.ca campaign was timed to hit national news just as many Canadians were tuning into this issue for the first time, and this frame (“foreign interests” vs. a “Canadian decision”) could have a lasting impact on how people view one of the most important debates in a generation.

So how did a small industry front group with secretive funding sources manage to have so much impact on the national conversation? Well, it looks like the Harper government, EthicalOil.org, and Sun Media have coordinated with one another to create an echo chamber that turns industry talking points into national news. We’ll show how one digital communications company intimately connects EthicalOil.org, the Harper Government and Sun Media.

Ethical Oil Echo Chamber

The ‘ethical oil’ echo chamber was built in 2010, after the release of Ezra Levant’s book of the same name. As Donald Gutstein writes, Sun papers prominently featured three excerpts from Levant’s book, giving it national exposure. Through a series of articles and appearances in Sun-owned papers, the National Post and right wing talk shows, an echo chamber of voices amplified the ‘ethical oil’ message. Then came bloggers like Alykhan Velshi, who helped to turn Levant’s book into the ethicaloil.org website, and before long it reached the mouths of politicians.

From Gutstein’s perspective, ideas often take years to percolate through public opinion filters before they end up on national policy agendas. But in this case, it appears that industry and government synced up messaging very rapidly.

Go NewClear

Last week, we reported an extensive web that connects EthicalOil.org with oil interests, the Harper government, and other conservative leaders and groups. At the centre is Go Newclear, a Vancouver-based digital communications agency with a focus on public affairs and politics. An analysis of the web server hosting of gonewclearproductions.com reveals an intricate network of over 50 websites connected primarily to the Conservative Party of Canada, the Wildrose Alliance Party, EthicalOil.org, and other right wing causes and politicians.

Go Newclear’s President and COO is Hamish Marshall, the husband of current Ethical Oil spokesperson Kathryn Marshall, and a former Conservative campaigner, former PMO staffer and Conservative strategist deeply connected to oil interests. The other two principals in the company have deep connections to the Harper government as well.

One of the principals, Brendan Jones, worked as a website administrator for the Office of the Leader of the Opposition from August 2005-February 2006. Following Harper’s election, he worked as the special assistant for the Prime Minister from February 2006-November 2007. Jones then moved to the Conservative Resources Group, or Conservative Caucus Research Bureau, an agency responsible for developing political communication products, branding and marketing decisions and liaising between the federal Conservative caucus and Prime Minister’s Office, until 2009. In that role, he was a television and radio specialist. The third principal of Go Newclear, Travis Freeman, is still listed with the Conservative Resources Group.

Now that we know that EthicalOil.org and the Conservative government are deeply connected, what about the other part of the Conservative echo chamber, Sun Media?

Digital fingerprints

A follow-up analysis of the network neighborhood around the Go Newclear server revealed some amazing coincidences. Almost right beside their “birds of a feather” server is another server that hosts suntvnews.ca, suntvnewchannel.ca, suntvnewschannel.com, suntvnewschannel.net and suntvnewschannel.org. The IP addresses for these servers are different by only two numbers, and it is highly likely they are sitting right next to each other.

Deepclimate notes some considerable similarities between the websites. In addition, an analysis of many of the websites either currently or previously on the neighboring servers show a number of striking similarities at the code level including naming conventions and comment style. Of particular interest is the CSS Reset. The sites we have analyzed use the exact same derivative of Eric Meyer’s classic CSS Reset.

EthicalOil.org, OurDecision.ca, JasonKenney.ca, JoeOliver.ca, GoNewclear.com, the original SunTVNews.ca website, Amerians4OPEC.com, Wildrosecaucus.ca, RichardDur.ca, CalgaryWard14.ca, Cummins4BC.ca, CorrieAdolph.com, HeatherForsyth.com, PaulHinman.ca, PierreMP.ca, and DriveOutTheTax.com contain the same CSS Reset.

Go Newclear’s Brendan Jones also has the same CSS Reset on his personal website.

The websites of KathrynMarshall.ca, abingdon.ca, campusPC.ca, JohnParker.ca, DavidYager.ca, DustinNau.com, VoteDougCooper.ca and axethegastax.ca also have the same CSS Reset, and are all listed as authored by Newclear.

As Evan Leeson, the Principal of Catalyst Internet (which is DeSmogBlog’s IT team) and a 19 year veteran of website development writes:

Developers have their bag of reusable tricks to make coding efficient. In this case, all of these sites use precisely the same CSS reset — same elements, same formatting, down to the character. Many sites will use something similar to this one, but this is exact. It’s even used on Newclear’s own custom home page. It is highly likely the same developer did all these sites.

Connecting the Dots

The aforementioned Sun TV News websites were registered in December of 2008, prior to Sun Media’s application with the CRTC (the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) in 2010. When Go Newclear moved the site onto its server in June 2010 SunTVNews.ca was a promotional website that invited Canadians to pledge to watch the channel when it was launched.

At the time of the website registration, Kory Teneycke was Prime Minister Stephen Harper‘s director of communications. He had been the director of the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau while both Jones and Freeman worked there.

On March 30, 2009, Prime Minister Stephen Harper went to New York to meet with Ruport Murdoch. The meeting did not appear on Harper’s itinerary, and was intended to be secret, according to reporting by Bruce Cheadle of the Canadian Press. The pair were joined by the President of Fox News (and legendary Republican communications expert), Roger Ailes, and Kory Teneycke.

Within four months of this meeting, Kory Teneycke took a contract with Quebecor to explore the creation of a new Canadian media outlet. Then, ten months later, Quebecor launched Sun Media. Teneycke is now the vice president of the Sun News Network.

This new information sheds some new light on this meeting, and provokes a few fundamental questions. Why does a website for our new conservative-leaning media institution, dubbed “Fox News North,” appear to have a direct link to government staffers? On whose orders were these websites created by Go Newclear? Were any of these orders from government? From oil companies?

It’s time for the media to ask some hard questions about the relationships that are powering the EthicalOil.org echo chamber.

Check out this funny Rick Mercer video mocking the “foreign influence” campaign.

This post first appeared on DeSmogBlog.

Emma Pullman is a Vancouver-based writer, researcher and campaigner focused on climate and sustainability issues. She is a contributor at DeSmog Blog where her research focuses on Canadian climate issues, including Alberta’s tar sands, and hydraulic fracturing, and their impacts on First Nations Communities. Emma’s research has been featured in outlets such as the Huffington Post. Emma is the Research Director for Leadnow.ca.

continue reading source: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alex/2012/01/harper-government-ethical-oil-and-sun-media-connection

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Elections Canada, Ideology, Military, Political, Uncategorized, US

Harper’s 2003 Commons address mirrors Australian PM’s speech, Rae says

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CBC News } Tuesday, September 30, 2008 | 5:04 PM ET
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A staff member has apologized for plagiarizing a speech read by Stephen Harper in a 2003 address in the House of Commons as leader of the Opposition.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, left, is seen on a television screen addressing the Australian Parliament in March 2003, alongside an image of Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, right, speaking two days later. (CBC)”Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech,” Owen Lippert says in a news release sent out by the Conservative camp on Tuesday afternoon.

“Neither my superiors in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition nor the leader of the Opposition was aware that I had done so.”

Lippert worked for Harper, then leader of the Canadian Alliance, when the speech calling for Canadian troops to be deployed to Iraq was written.

Lippert, a former policy analyst for economic think-tank the Fraser Institute, has announced his resignation from his current position working in the Conservative campaign headquarters.

The apology came hours after Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae accused Harper of plagiarizing from the Howard speech.
Tory camp dismisses issue as irrelevant

At a campaign appearance in Toronto in the morning, Rae played video showing Howard speaking to the Australian Parliament on March 18, 2003, alongside video of an address by Harper two days later in Ottawa.

The two speeches, which the Liberals posted to their website, appear to have lengthy duplicate passages, according to a comparison of the two parliaments’ Hansard transcripts.

Earlier in the day, Harper’s spokesman, Kory Teneycke, dismissed the issue as irrelevant, saying the video’s release was an “act of desperation” by the Liberal campaign on the eve of the first leaders’ debate.

“I’m not going to get into a debate about a five-year-old speech that was delivered three Parliaments ago, two elections ago, when the prime minister was the leader of a party that no longer exists,” Teneycke said.

“We’re going to focus on the economy, which is the No. 1 issue Canadians want to talk about. We’re not going to be distracted by attacks from the Liberal war room.”
‘Shocking’ duplication: Rae

In an interview with Don Newman of CBC’s Politics, Rae called the Conservative party’s earlier attempt to brush off the issue “totally pathetic.”

He described the 2003 address as Harper’s “big coming-out speech as leader of the opposition.”

Immediately following the speech, then-foreign affairs minister Bill Graham praised Harper for his “thoughtful and powerful presentation of his party’s case.”

Rae called the apparent duplication “shocking,” saying it reveals the ideological approach of the Harper government in shaping Canada’s foreign policy and indicates the party’s own voice on foreign policy issues was weak.

“How does a political leader in Canada’s Parliament, on such a crucial issue, in fact an issue that in many ways defined our foreign policy for a generation, end up giving the exact same speech as another country’s leader?” Rae said earlier in the day. “Let alone one who was the key leader of George W. Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing.’ ”

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion earlier in the day called for Harper to be expelled from the House of Commons over the affair.

“It matters a lot, tremendously,” he told reporters at a campaign stop in Gatineau, Que. “Canadians want that their country [to] speak with its own voice on the world stage. It’s true for the prime minister; it’s true for the Opposition leader.”
Australian leader ally of Bush government

Howard was a stalwart ally of the Bush administration in the Iraq war and deployed Australian forces to participate in the U.S.-led invasion of the country in March 2003, which other world leaders, including then Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien, opposed.

Rae pointed to Chrétien’s decision as a moment that “made us proud to be Canadians.”

“The Liberal party has always believed that Canada must have its own voice on the world stage,” Rae said. “He did the right thing and said, ‘No.’ ”

The Liberals said they noticed the similarity between the two speeches only recently, when one of their staffers was searching for a copy of Harper’s editorial on the Iraq invasion published in the Wall Street Journal, the CBC’s James Cudmore reported from the campaign trail.

The staffer entered a portion of Harper’s comments into Google and came up with a link to Harper’s remarks and another to Howard’s. The party said it then ordered a video copy of Howard’s speech.

The revelation came as the federal party leaders were scaling back on campaign appearances to focus on preparing for this week’s debates ahead of the Oct. 14 election.

Segments of speeches

In one segment, both leaders are heard saying:

“It is inherently dangerous to allow a country, such as Iraq, to retain weapons of mass destruction, particularly in light of its past aggressive behaviour. If the world community fails to disarm Iraq we fear that other rogue states will be encouraged to believe that they too can have these most deadly of weapons to systematically defy international resolutions and that the world will do nothing to stop them.”

The clips then jump to Howard saying:

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae says the similarities between the two speeches show that the Conservatives’ foreign policy cannot be trusted.Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae says the similarities between the two speeches show that the Conservatives’ foreign policy cannot be trusted. (Canadian Press)”As the possession of weapons of mass destruction spreads, so the danger of such weapons coming into the hands of terrorist groups will multiply. That is the ultimate nightmare which the world must take decisive and effective steps to prevent. Possession of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by terrorists would constitute a direct, undeniable and lethal threat to Australia and its people.”

According to the Hansard transcripts, Harper said:

“As the possession of weapons of mass destruction spreads, the danger of such weapons coming into the hands of terrorist groups will multiply, particularly given in this case the shameless association of Iraq with rogue non-state organizations. That is the ultimate nightmare which the world must take decisive and effective steps to prevent. Possession of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by terrorists would constitute a direct, undeniable and lethal threat to the world, including to Canada and its people.”

source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/story/2008/09/30/rae-harper.html

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