Harper is right: Foreign radicals are after the oil sands

Stephen Harper?s Conservatives have courageously chosen to expose and confront foreign interests that have surreptitiously been infiltrating the Canadian oil industry ? and they don?t mean their Chinese Communist partners. They are apparently in possession of revelations about these extremists and criminals that, in the words of Senator Nicole Eaton, ?would make your blood boil.?

More related to this story

Launching a much-needed Senate inquiry into ?interference of foreign foundations in Canada?s domestic affairs? and their ?abuse? of registered charitable status, Ms. Eaton stated: ?There is political manipulation. There is influence peddling. There are millions of dollars crossing borders masquerading as charitable donations.? I am glad to contribute to their work.

Welcome to the world of American brothers David and Charles Koch. According to Forbes, in 2011 Koch Industries was the second-largest privately held company in the United States with annual revenue of about $98-billion; the total revenue for the government of Canada for 2011-12 was $248-billion. The brothers each had a net worth of $25-billion, more than the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame. Among the most powerful men in the world whose holdings included major commercial investments in the Alberta oil sands, for years the Kochs have moved heaven and earth to protect the unrestrained pursuit of oil from environmental considerations.

You can learn a great deal about the Koch?s business dealings that they don?t want known from, of all sources, Bloomberg Markets. It?s a glossy monthly magazine ?aimed at global financial professionals? and last November its cover was ablaze with the cheeky title of its main story: ?The Secret Sins of Koch Industries.? Fifteen Bloomberg journalists contributed to what the Daily Kos called a ?bombshell?, ?a fine piece of investigative reporting? and ?a bold and spectacular move.? The article is long, thoroughly documented and quite devastating, fully justifying its lurid title. Let me give merely the gist, quoting directly:

?Charles and David Koch, billionaire brothers and major Tea Party backers, run a corporate empire that has made illicit payments to win contracts, sold chemical equipment to Iran in defiance of a US trade ban, stolen oil on federal land and lied to regulators about toxic [cancer-causing]emissions. ? For six decades around the world, Koch Industries has blazed a path to riches ? in part, by making illicit payments to win contracts, trading with a terrorist state , fixing prices, neglecting safety and ignoring environmental regulations. At the same time, Charles and David Koch have promoted a form of government that interferes less with company actions.?

An accompanying graphic is called, even more scathingly, ?Crimes and Misdeeds: Koch?s history of flouting rules covers more than two decades.? You can check out the full report here. The specifics will make your blood boil.

It?s only two years ago really that the Koch brothers lost their long struggle to keep their affairs private, mostly thanks to a major profile called ?Covert Operations? by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker. Suddenly the two men were ubiquitous, having abruptly moved from obscurity to either fame or notoriety, depending on your politics. Theirs is not in doubt, as Ms. Mayer meticulously showed and as thousands of news stories have since confirmed.

The perfect archetypes of the 1 per cent, the Kochs now fund everything from the government-hating Tea Party to the far right wing of the Republican Party, to a vast labyrinth of think tanks, foundations, not-for-profits and political front groups. All are designed with two related objectives: to oppose any government regulation that limits the unrestricted operations of the oil industry, the basis of their fortune, and to discredit climate science and clean energy while denying global warming.

adele beach boys tony bennett joe walsh the civil wars paul mccartney duggar miscarriage