NOW Toronto -- Stephen Harper’s war on bananas
The ties between the PM, the conservative Ethical Oil movement, and the smear job on Chiquita bananas,
December 19th, 2011
When it comes to pushing tar sands oil, the folks over at EthicalOil.org have gone completely bananas.
This week, the website dedicated to convincing the planet that tar sands crude is more “ethical” than the stuff the rest of the world is importing from Middle East “dictatorships” – have you seen how they treat their women? – are urging Canadians in national radio ads to boycott Chiquita. That would be the banana company.
Ethical Oil says it’s launching its campaign to rebut “inaccurate and unfair” criticisms of the oil sands. Namely, the banana company’s own “boycott” of tar sands crude. Predictably, a number of Conservative MPs, Jason Kenney among them, have joined in the boycott Chiquita fun.
Chiquita’s letter [to ForestEthics, committing to move away from Tar Sands] was enough to stir Ethical Oil into campaign mode. Up went the Facebook page and Twitter accounts with handles like @BloodBananas to give the right wingnuts out there on the Web something to be morally outraged about this holiday season.
[...] But let’s pull back the peel on this controversy a little more before we get too high and mighty.
Perhaps those inconvenient truths informed the PM’s careful remarks on the subject of Ethical Oil’s boycott of Chiquita when he was asked about it while in Toronto Friday...
But the PM can’t run too far from his connection to Ethical Oil’s campaign. The site is funded by his buddies in Big Oil.
It also just so happens that the PM’s director of planning, one Alykhan Velshi, founded EthicalOil.org before he took up residence in the PMO [Prime Minister's Office] last month.
[...] On the Chiquita boycott business, making Ethical Oil’s argument slipperier is the seeming absence of any understanding of the company’s history in Latin America, and its role in U.S. colonialism. If Chiquita deserves to be boycotted, it’s for those historical sins.
[...] Perhaps Chiquita’s so-called “boycott” of tar sands oil is PR. Or maybe, as at least one Western Canadian commentator has pointed out, the company is trying to clean up its act. Tar sands pushers like Ethical Oil can learn a lesson from that.
The truth about tar sands development is that, what it’s doing to native people and the environment is not unlike Chiquita’s legacy in Latin America. Or am I comparing apples to oranges?
