Please write and send praise, critique, interesting links or random musings to touchthehandthatfeedsyou@yahoo.com

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Things You Can't Make Up - Tar Sands Edition

Sept 1st, 2011

Did you know that opposition to the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline extension is morally wrong? Did you know that such opposition is an endorsement of the oppression of women in the Middle East? Of course you didn't. Because that is very nearly an insane position. However, that is exactly the pitch in a new campaign from the pipeline's supporters.

Kate Sheppard reports over at Mother Jones:

"The promoters of the Canadian oil industry are now resorting to appeals to "women's liberation" to promote tar sands oil. A group calling itself "Ethical Oil" is running ads on the Oprah Winfrey Network asking women to support extracting and exporting oil from the tar sands as a means of protecting women in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, the ad says, "doesn't allow women to drive, doesn't allow them to leave their homes or work without their male guardian's permission." "Why are we paying their bills and funding their oppression?" it asks."


Indeed, the protection of the single most important and fragile water table in the United States, the Ogallala aquifer, is being framed as complicity in the actions of a totalitarian regime's systemic abuse of women.

A video from the campaign highlighted by Sheppard is below.

No comments:

Post a Comment