On Thursday (eCampaign 101: Protect Your Domain) we looked briefly at ralphgoodale.ca, wondering if someone had hijacked the domain or not. Further investigation shows that a number of domains one might reasonably visit in an effort to find our current Minister of Finance’s campaign web site are either silent or obviously hijacked.
ralphgoodale.ca and rgoodale.ca are both connected to Chris Thauberger, of Allstartech in Regina.
Subdomain: rgoodale.ca
Renewal-Date: 2006/07/13
Date-Approved: 2000/11/24
Date-Modified: 2003/11/12
Organization: Allstartech
Admin-Name: Chris Thauberger
rgoodale.com is registered by Robert Peterson, who appears to have some connection with Allstartech as well.
%whois rgoodale.com
Name: Robert Peterson
Address:Box 3445
Regina, SK S4P 3J8
CA
Email Address: xxxxxx@allstartech.com
(I’ve x’d out the email account to save them from even more spam)
Whether Peterson and Thauberger are acting on behalf of Mr. Goodale or to thwart him is unknown.
More obvious is the intent displayed by some anonymous individual or group who have hijacked the domains ralphgoodale.com and ralphgoodale.net using an anonymous registration service offered by Domains by Proxy.
%whois ralphgoodale.org
Domain Name:RALPHGOODALE.ORG
Created On:20-May-2005 17:36:33 UTC
Expiration Date:20-May-2006 17:36:33 UTC
Registrant Name:Registration Private
Registrant Organization:Domains by Proxy, Inc.
Both RalphGoodale dot NET and dot ORG were created this year by the hijackers, underscoring once again – if you are going to run for office, grab any obvious domain (yourname.ca, .NET, .ORG and .COM for starters) or someone else will take them from you and you might not appreciate the attention!
Perhaps the CBC might be interested in this site, since the hijacker has seen fit to copy the CBC page lock stock and barrel.
Remember Don Boudria…
Speaking of the CBC, I’m reminded of one recent and humorous case of domain hijacking, chronicled by Canadian comedian Rick Mercer on his weblog back in June.
Don is seriously pissed by the anti same-sex marriage crowd. It seems they have gone out and purchased one of Don’s domain names and they have been playing silly buggers with it. Take a look for yourself at http://www.donboudria.ca/
Conservative MP Jason Kenney got into the act on the floor of the House of Commons:
Mr. Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the only additional element that the hon. member has brought to the Chair’s attention relates to a matter which is in no way, shape or form within the purview of this House or your honour and it never has been, and hopefully never will be, that is to say, the registration of domain names on the World Wide Web.
I understand my hon. friend opposite is learned with respect to parliamentary procedure but I must infer from his remarks that he is stupefiedly ignorant about the commercial practices on the Internet.
Mercer’s version was funnier:
Anyway, long story short, Jason told Boudria it was his own fault for not registering his own domain name. I tend to agree with Jason on this; I mean, doesn’t the liberal Party have access to a teenager who can advise them on this kind of stuff? I bet a guy like Jason does.
Of course, Mercer did the only logical thing, for a comedian—he acted like a teenager and spent 2 minutes and 10$ and hijacked jasonkenney.org! Originally Mercer pointed the domain to the Marxist Leninists, but currently if you visit http://www.jasonkenney.org/ you’ll be redirected to to Egale.ca, an organization describing itself thusly:
Egale Canada advances equality and justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-identified people, and their families, across Canada.
Kenney is reported to have laughed hard.
%whois jasonkenney.org
Domain Name:JASONKENNEY.ORG
Created On:02-Jun-2005 19:18:23 UTC
Last Updated On:02-Aug-2005 03:54:34 UTC
Expiration Date:02-Jun-2006 19:18:23 UTC
Hey Rick, it’ll be time to renew soon!
Following up on my comments regarding Martin’s jab at the US on climate change, it would be good to illustrate why the US assertion that they are leading the world on this issue is a political statement, not a strictly factual one.
The US assertion is rooted on a misleading statistic that shows US greenhouse gas emissions rising by 13% over the period from 1990 to 2003, while countries like Canada have significantly higher emissions growth (24% in our case) during that same period.
Why is this so? We Canadians like to think ourselves as being green, so what gives?
A big part of the increase differential can be found coming out of the Canadian petro-complex, and the best way to get down to brass tacks is to understand how much US petroleum supply has shifted from domestic to foreign supply over that period.
The US produced significantly less petroleum from domestic sources in 2003 than it did in 1990. 7.355 million BOE per day vs 5.681 MBOE per day in 2004 – a 23% decline in domestic production. Their domestic production peaked in the 70’s and has been in steady decline ever since.
An important aside: some believe world production peak is not that far off; the US itself thinks this is 2025 – 2030, others (and with some reason) feel the peak is a lot closer. In either case, you can well imagine the demand for Canada’s oil resource will be strong. The world is not prepared for peak production, period.
Canada’s contribution to US imports rose over that same period from 0.934 million BOE per day in 1990 to 2.072 MBOE in 2003, a 122% increase in our supply (and a relatively linear increase in our CO2 emissions).
Virtually all oil exported from Canada during that period of time went to the US.
Total US oil imports (all sources) over that same period rose from 8.018 million BOE per day to 12.264 MBOE, a 53% increase, of which Canada’s share accounted for 27% of the total.
The single biggest contributor to the relative differential in GHG production by the US and Canada is that the US has effectively “outsourced” the GHG emissions to petroleum exporting countries such as Canada, and in Canada, oil sands and the petro-chemical industry are the single biggest contributor to our GHG emissions growth profile—there’s no magic to predicting that our GHG emissions are going to grow rapidly over the next decade as the 100 billion plus in new oil sands projects (and growing) turn into new production.
From 1996 where there was no production to 2003 oil sands grew to 0.855 million BOE per day – when the current planned investment is on-line that will be measured in multiple-millions.
While some conventional production will be lost (exhausted), there’ll still be a significant net gain in our production and thus GHG output.
Bottom line: the US progress on climate change and dependence on foreign oil is minuscule when compared to the enormity of the issue. They, and we, have nothing to crow about.
Data sources:
Call by PM for US to listen to ‘global conscience’ riles US delegation, Bush
Yesterday at the UN Climate Conference in Montreal the PM said:
“To the reticent nations, including the United States, I say there is such a thing as a global conscience, and now is the time to listen to it.” Prime Minister Paul Martin
Apparently Bush considers this the biggest slight against him since… the dawn of time.
An official with close contacts in the U.S. delegation said any hopes of drawing Washington into the process were killed when Martin pointed a finger of blame at the United States in a news briefing at the conference. “That was a big mistake,” said the delegate, speaking on condition of anonymity Thursday. He said the U.S. delegation, which is directed from Washington by Vice-President Dick Cheney, was deeply angered by Martin’s comments. Toronto Star
Given that the US position is being driven by Cheney, was there ever any hope that the US would have taken a meaningful step further on this file? Not a chance.
Outrage from the Bush administration is all for show; my only beef with Martin, on this issue, is not what he said as his comments were perfectly valid, but that he allowed himself to be set up as the scapegoat to take the blame for continued US intransigence on the climate change file.
In the context of an election, Martin likely knew exactly what he was doing and in that context his statement should be viewed as cynical and self-serving. Stirring the Canadian nationalism pot with a little anger from Bush can’t hurt Martin, on balance.
Canada’s performance on the climate change file is laughable too, and you won’t find Martin or anyone go too close to that issue during this election. Neither the Liberals nor we Conservatives have a decent story to tell on climate change; we Conservatives in particular are afraid to touch the subject, because the oil patch is so important to us in terms of moral and financial support from industry and employees of the industry, most of whom reside in Western Canada but also in Atlantic Canada.
Facts:
- In 2002, 20% of Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions came from the oil and gas industry, up from 16% in 1990.
- Upstream oil and gas production and natural gas transmission, which now account for 16% of Canada’s GHG emissions, saw their emissions increase by 56% between 1990 and 2002.
- Petroleum refining and natural gas distribution, which now account for 4% of Canada’s GHG emissions, saw their emissions increase by a more modest 17% over the same period.
- Total GHG emissions from Canada’s oil and gas industry rose by 47% between 1990 and 2002.
These are dated figures from the Pembina Institute—when the data is available for 2004 and 2005 we’ll see the trend and totals point to an even more dramatic increase. Over the next two decades many hundreds of billions of dollars are / will be spent to increase oil sands production from many hundreds of thousands of barrels per day to several million barrels per day, and there is no magic pill the industry can swallow to stop dead in its tracks the related rise in CO2 emissions.
Canada is the largest supplier of crude oil and petroleum products to the US bar none, and their dependence on Canada is only going to rise.
So when you look at US climate change statistics being bad but relatively better than ours, keep this in mind: their stats are only better because they are in effect “outsourcing” CO2 emissions to Canada and other petroleum exporting nations, as US domestic oil production continues to drop year by year.