Canadian lobbyists attack Netflix children's film for 'anti-oil propaganda'
The animated film Bigfoot Family has come under fire in Canada – but not because of its stilted dialogue or confusing plot.
Instead, a government-funded lobbying group has targeted the movie – a fantasy epic featuring a human family whose father is Bigfoot – on the grounds that it “peddles lies” about the oil and gas industry.
The Netflix film, panned by critics, centres on an energy company’s nefarious scheme to detonate a bomb in a pristine Alaska valley to flood it with crude oil.
Although the film is set in the US, the Canadian Energy Centre, funded by the province of Alberta, has launched a campaign against the movie, which it says “brainwashes” children with “antioil and gas propaganda”.
“Our children are the key to the future – but they can’t succeed if they’re filled with misinformation,” the centre said, claiming that more than 1,000 people have already emailed Netflix over the film. The streaming giant did not return a request for comment.
Created in 2019 by the governing United Conservatives party, Alberta’s “energy war room” is tasked with combating negative portrayals of the province’s energy sector as it comes under scrutiny for its high emissions and environmental degradation.
The centre was initially given an annual operating budget of C$30m ($24m), but a strain on the province’s finances during the coronavirus pandemic reduced its budget to C$12m.
In addition to targeting cryptozoological children’s films, the centre has taken issue with how journalists report on the province’s energy industry. In recent months, the province embarked on a controversial set of hearings, at a cost of C$3.5m, to investigate allegations – so far-unfounded – that criticism of the energy industry was spurred by “foreign-funded special interests”.
The centre’s criticism of Bigfoot Family centres on a plot to blow up a valley in Alaska to release its oil. “It villainizes energy workers and disparages the industry’s record on and commitment to environmental protection,” said Tom Olsen, head of the Canadian Energy Centre, in a statement emailed to media outlets.
But historians pointed out that – despite appearing in a film about a mythical creature – the bomb storyline wasn’t too far removed from reality.
In the 1950s, the government of Alberta approved a project to detonate a 9-kiloton nuclear device near the town of Fort McMurray as a way of releasing oil from subterranean bitumen. Originally dubbed “Project Cauldron” and then rebranded less ominously as “Project Oilsand”, the plan was cancelled in 1962 when the federal government joined a ban on nuclear testing.
The Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is being held in a prison camp in the Vladimir region of Russia north-east of Moscow known for its strict control of inmates, a message posted on the opposition politician’s Instagram account confirmed on Monday.
Navalny’s precise location had been unknown after his legal team said last week that he had been moved from the nearby Kolchugino jail and that they had not been told where he was being taken.
“I have to admit that the Russian prison system was able to surprise me,” Navalny posted on Instagram along with an old photo of himself with a close-cropped haircut.
“I had no idea that it was possible to arrange a real concentration camp 100km from Moscow.”
Navalny added that he was in Penal Colony No 2 in the town of Pokrov, Vladimir, with a “freshly shaven head”.
Navalny’s lawyer Olga Mikhailova confirmed that she had been able to visit him at the colony.
In his post, Navalny wrote that “video cameras are everywhere, everyone is watched and at the slightest violation they make a report.
“I think someone upstairs read Orwell’s 1984 and said: ‘Yeah, cool. Let’s do this. Education through dehumanisation’,” he added.
Navalny said he had not yet seen any hints of violence at the colony, but because of the “tense posture of the convicts”, he could “easily believe” previous reports of brutality.
Earlier this month, the activist Konstantin Kotov, who spent nearly two years at the colony for violating protest rules, described to AFP an environment in which inmates are not treated “like people”.
In February, the European court of human rights told Moscow to release the opposition politician out of concern for his life, a call Russia swiftly rejected.
In his Instagram post, Navalny said that at night he was woken up “every hour” by a man who snapped a photo of him and announced that the convict, who was “prone to escape”, was still in his cell.
In mid-January, the Kremlin critic was taken into police custody shortly after landing at a Moscow airport from Germany, where he had been treated for a near-fatal poisoning with the Soviet-era nerve toxin novichok.
The anti-graft campaigner, who gained prominence for his investigations into the wealth of Russia’s elites, insists the poisoning was carried out on the orders of President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the claim, but has yet to launch a probe into the attack.
Navalny’s arrest set off a wave of protests across Russia and a brutal police crackdown. The US and EU have called for his release.
In a coordinated action this month, Washington and Brussels imposed sanctions on senior Russian officials, as US intelligence concluded that Moscow had orchestrated the poisoning attack on Navalny.
The brother of a Syrian man killed by suspected Russian mercenaries has called on the authorities in Moscow to investigate the incident and the possible role played by the Wagner Group, a mercenary group run by one of Vladimir Putin’s close allies.
Video footage published by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta shows a group of six men torturing a Syrian detainee. The victim, Mohammed Taha Ismail Al-Abdullah, is believed to have deserted from President Bashir alAssad’s army and then been captured.
The soldiers, speaking in Russian, cut off Abdullah’s head and arms, hang up his body and set it alight. Arabic news outlets believe the killing took place in spring 2017 at an oilfield in Homs province. Wagner mercenaries had recently driven Isis fighters from the area.
On Monday the victim’s family and three campaign groups launched a landmark legal case attempting to force Russian state investigators to examine whether the soldiers involved worked for the Wagner Group, and to bring them to justice.
The US says the Wagner Group is run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an indicted oligarch who financed the notorious St Petersburg troll factory that supported
Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. The FBI has offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
The Wagner Group has allegedly sent mercenaries to Syria, Ukraine and Libya, as well as to other African countries where the Kremlin has a growing strategic interest. Prigozhin denies Wagner exists. Officials in Moscow have so far refused to question the mercenaries seen in the video, who have been identified by Russian media.
“This complaint is important because we aren’t just dealing with a single crime. This is a whole wave of impunity,” Alexander Cherkasov, a senior member of Memorial, the veteran Moscow-based rights organisation, told the AFP news agency.
He added: “People who escape punishment after carrying out crimes like this are given the opportunity to repeat them in places like Chechnya, eastern Ukraine and Syria. In the end they come back to Russia and walk on the streets among us.”
The International Federation for Human Rights, Memorial and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression said they had evidence that clearly linked at least one defendant to Wagner.
“The Russian government must assume its legal and moral responsibilities for the violations committed by its army, including the private entities involved in external military operations under its command, such as the Wagner Group,” said Mazen Darwish, the director of the Syrian Center.
The same day as the case was lodged, unknown attackers targeted Novaya Gazeta’s Moscow office. “In the morning a chemical attack was carried out on the building where our editorial office is located,” said the independent media outlet’s editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov.
Although private military companies are illegal in Russia, Wagner has in recent years played an increasingly important role in buttressing and realising the Kremlin’s ambitions abroad.
Members of the group were reportedly dispatched alongside Russian warplanes and ground troops following Moscow’s intervention in the Syrian war in September 2015 on the side of Assad.
Moscow has never confirmed reports of Wagner mercenaries. It said on Monday that since its operation was launched in Syria, 112 Russian troops had died in combat operations.