Kinder Morgan - Syria - NAFTA - and the CBC | The View from Canada |Axisoflogic.com

Miles Report No. 98 - Kinder Morgan - Syria - NAFTA - and the CBC

The CBC continues with its obvious bias in reporting on a variety of different news items domestically and globally. The two main highlights from the last short while have been the BC/Alberta Kinder Morgan pipeline fight and the US/Russia Syria fight.

Kinder Morgan
I have to congratulate Bill Morneau as his effort on the news programs today demonstrated a high degree of proficiency of political ambiguity and evasiveness for which the most seasoned politicians would be proud. All his talking points centred on two main points: jobs and risk. Or maybe even two associated ideas not stated: money and power.

Counter arguments were not addressed at all. If jobs are the man priority, common sense (yes, I know, this is seriously lacking in someone practicing their political finesse) would indicate that those jobs be created where they are most useful and apparently most needed: Alberta. Building a pipeline creates a large number of very temporary jobs and much fewer long term jobs. If the Federal government and Alberta were genuinely concerned about employment, a logical project creating many short and long term jobs would be to build a refinery in Alberta. Not only would that create ongoing jobs, it would also assure an independent supply of oil for Canada.

As for the “risk” factor, Morneau spoke entirely in terms of risk for Kinder Morgan and future prospective investors in Canada.   The concerns for that are all about money: political money and corporate money. Never once did I hear “risk” mentioned in terms of risk towards the environment, the people and life for those living along the pipeline route and around the Salish Sea.

Another factor ignored is that of the Indian land through which the existing pipe already passes and which then is concerned with the new pipe.   As presented by Kennedy Stewart (oh my gosh, an opposing view on CBC) the issue of unceded Indian territory in most of B.C. has been brought up numerous times in Parliament, mainly to be ignored by the mainstream media - not in this instance, but within all the reporters questions to Morneau during his evasive answering of mostly soft ball questioning.

Native land is theoretically owned by the Crown - but in B.C. the land has never been ceded to the Crown and thus ownership cannot be established by the Crown. Much of the dispute for B.C. originates with this land issue and the corporate power and money should not be allowed to override indigenous rights as has been done in the past.

Syria
Once again, the CBC hosts an “expert” dragged from some right wing U.S. think tank ( or “institute”) to comment on the Syria situation. This afternoon Carole MacNeil interviewed Alexander Bick from the U.S. Kissinger Institute. The very name indicates that this is a very biased commentary along the lines of the right of the U.S. to police the world and its opponents are all the evil other (e.g. Pinochet in Chile; Lon Nol in Cambodia). Kissinger did not moderate as he grew older, but maintained his stance that the U.S. was “to condition its stance on the alignment of its interests with the actions of the government in question,” a refined way of saying we want governments to act as our interests are concerned, not theirs.

At any rate, Bick’s comments were pure neocon Americana - Russians all bad, U.S. being the good guy victim as it tries to protect innocent women and children, as if that ever bothered the U.S. in any of its warrior actions historically and in Iraq/Syria. Bick reiterated the old U.S. canard about Russian aggression and bad behaviours that needed to be stopped without even being capable of thinking that the U.S. had a major hand in the creation of the mess in Syria and the Middle East in the first place.

Okay so fine, a biased view, understandable if ignorant. But Carole MacNeil did not question any of the statements put forth by Bick about the culpability for the gas attack, for wondering who benefits from it (not Assad, certainly the U.S. political spin machine), for warning about Israel (ahh, Israel, the tail that wags the U.S. - and Canada - dog) being surrounded by thousands of missiles. Sure, Israel has lots of missiles pointed its way, but being the instigator of all but the 1973 Yom Kippur war, it is their military aggressiveness and ongoing occupation and military rule of Palestine that has brought about the other countries defensive posturing. And certainly they are not surrounded, but face only two effective enemies - otherwise Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are all essentially dominated by or are not so secret allies of Israel.   Besides, Israel has a large nuclear arsenal, they won’t lose any wars unless they get caught up in instigating a WW III, in which case we all lose.

But back to possible questions including ones about who was most effective in fighting against ISIS, who provided financial and military assistance to ISIS, why is the U.S. illegally in Syria in the first place (yeah, okay, the so called war on terror forever). So without any questions that searched for some truth, neither were there any guests to argue a contrary position. There are lots available if the CBC was really interested in its professed “balance” or interested in more information as its investigators like to brag about their questioning skills ‘cause that is what we do. Try two for starters: Stephen Cohen and Gary Leupp. Both would probably be willing to argue with Bick’s presentation and show it up for what it is - U.S. hyperbole and aggressive rhetoric, lies and dissimulation.

Overall, the CBC ranks with the rest of the U.S. mainstream media in its presentation of corporate sponsored biased information concerning domestic and foreign topics.   Even Fox news has been doing better than the CBC on this - watch Tucker Carlson on Youtube.

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