Canada "Fox News North" Campaign -- Attempted Sabotage, Avaaz Responds

Yesterday Avaaz experienced an attack on our “Stop ‘Fox News North’” petition consisting of fraudulent sign-ups of targeted individuals .

There is evidence of a deliberate and illegal effort designed to discredit Avaaz and violate an important form of democratic expression for Canadian citizens. If this is confirmed we will request a full investigation, and help to bring the perpetrators to justice .

It seems likely that the people behind this attack wanted the public to think that Avaaz is a spamming organization. They targeted key journalists in an effort to damage Avaaz’s reputation in the press .

But the truth, the law, and 414,000 very real Canadian Avaaz subscribers -- the largest online activist community in Canadian history -- will set the record straight, about us, and about the forces behind this attack.

It's deeply disturbing that in all Avaaz's years of campaigns against US President George Bush, Burmese, Zimbabwean and Sudanese dictators, irresponsible multinational corporations and corrupt politicians, no one has ever yet stooped to this kind of tactic to undermine our members' right to express their views.

We do not yet have all the facts, but it appears to speak to the poisonous political climate and deeply deceptive tactics that have been bred by the radical right in Canada and its progenitor in the US. It is precisely this kind of bare-knuckled, brazenly deceptive and often hateful political climate that Sun TV's "Fox News North" appears keen to promote.

Canadians understand this, which is why, in just over 36 hours, well over 50,000 Canadians have signed our petition against Stephen Harper's attack on the independence of the CRTC as it resists the Sun TV request for access to Canadian’s cable fees.