UPDATE: Also listed in Alexandre Trudeau's documentary "The New Great Game" as "producers in association," but not acknowledged by the CBC, was Iran's state-funded propaganda arm Press-TV, along with the reviled anti-Israel broadcaster Al-Jazeera Arabic, and the Media Education Foundation (producer of the anti-Israel film "Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land" found by CBC Radio-Canada's ombudsman to be propaganda that never should have aired). CBC appearing alongside Iran's hateful mouthpiece is damning enough. Did any of these producers provide financial, facilitation, or material support to this film that the CBC aired on national airwaves? Either way, CBC didn't disclose this matter to its viewing audience.
In the face of international condemnation of Iran's destructive pursuit of nuclear weapons and its repeated calls for Israel's destruction, filmmaker Alexandre Trudeau, son of the late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau and senior advisor to his brother Justin's campaign team for leadership of the Liberal party, reports that Iran's atomic ambitions are for "defensive" purposes only, serving as an effective "deterrent" against Israeli "aggression" and belligerence. That is at least the way Trudeau framed the second instalment of his three-part documentary that aired on CBC's The National on October 14.
Entitled The New Great Game, CBC lauded Trudeau's film as a "special documentary for The National," with the film's proprietors and distributors listing CBC and its French counterpart SRC, as producers "in association." Trudeau's point-of-view documentary was described as investigating "how the movement of oil is shaping a new world order." In reality, the only thing "special" about this film was how it singled Israel out for exclusive opprobrium while downplaying the grievous threat that a nuclear Iran poses to the Jewish state, the U.S., and the world.
To watch this feature documentary click here. For a full transcript please click here.
Trudeau did not mince words when it came to presenting Israel as a bellicose nuclear-armed threat when he remarked:
"While there is no proof that Iran has even made the decision to start a nuclear arms program. Israel's nuclear arsenal will largely out-gun whatever weapons Iran might acquire, but from the vantage point of Iran, it is the one being threatened not the one doing the threatening."
Despite Trudeau's contentions, it's been recently reported that the UN atomic agency has received new and significant intelligence that Iran has moved further toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon. According to the Jerusalem Post, the IAEA has reported seeing "activity at Iran's Parchin military site, an apparent reference to suspected efforts by Iran to clean the site of any illicit operation." Trudeau also conveniently failed to mention that Iran continues to deny IAEA inspector's access to its nuclear sites.
Irrespective of whether or not Israel possesses nuclear weapons (a matter which Trudeau claims he has conclusive proof of despite Israel's policy of "nuclear ambiguity") it's simply absurd to equate democratic Israel with the terror-supporting, Holocaust-denying theocratic Iranian regime. Israel has never tested, used or threatened the use of nuclear weapons, has called for the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East and has stated many times that it will not be the first state to introduce nuclear weapons into the region. Israel never signed the non-proliferation treaty, whereas Iran is bound to its conventions as a signatory.
Importantly, Iran's leadership continues to incite genocide in its calls for Israel's annihilation with President Ahmadinejad declaring recently that "The very existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to humanity" and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei proclaiming that Israel would "disappear from the geographical landscape."
Not to be outdone, Iran's Foreign Minister recently described Israel as "a malignant tumour." Iran's bellicose statements were never mentioned in this hour-long film. Trudeau would have you believe that it is Israel that wants to "wipe Iran off the map" and not the other way around.
Trudeau continued to perpetuate Iranian victimhood and to present Israel as the aggressor by interviewing renowned anti-Israel activist Noam Chomsky who claimed that Iran's "strategic doctrine is defensive... What country in the world could have a greater need for a deterrence?"
Trudeau then stated the following in voice-over narration:
"Lacking the ultimate deterrent of nuclear weapons, Iran only has conventional forces to defend itself against an attack. Iran could respond by firing missiles at Israel or it could target Hormuz. Mines and fast boats fitted with rockets could be deployed to sink oil tankers and the waters where the progress started its journey would quickly become a battlefield, the flow of oil would be stopped."
Trudeau seemed to be implying that Iran needs nuclear weapons only as a means to bolster its weak national security infrastructure.
Trudeau's film was further marred as it featured a chorus of hostile anti-Israel extremists well known for their virulent disdain of the Jewish state to support his argumentation. His contention that his interview sources were expert-based was entirely misleading. Trudeau happily trotted out Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security advisor under the Carter administration, well-known for his anti-Israel statements.
He also interviewed Chas Freeman of the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) who framed Israel as a hostile and gross human rights violator. Freeman made the following inflammatory statement that Trudeau let go unchallenged: "The question that many Arab public's pose is how can you cooperate with the United States when it is so firmly supportive of Israel, and Israel is humiliating and even killing such a large number of Arabs."
Unbeknownst to CBC viewers, Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, has been described as having an "irrational hatred of Israel" and for being a "mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia" in exchange for money from the Saudi royal family. Freeman courted controversy in 2009 when news broke that he was being nominated for the top U.S. intelligence position at the National Intelligence Council. The New York Times chronicled scores of incendiary statements he made against Israel prompting Jewish and pro-Israel groups to call on the White House to reconsider his candidacy. Freeman later withdrew his name from consideration citing a campaign orchestrated by "the Israel lobby."
Apart from featuring a cavalcade of tainted interview sources, Trudeau's true colours came out when he made the following statement with file footage of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in the background to reinforce his argument : "Israeli threats (against Iran) are a ploy to distract the world from its Arab problems..." For Trudeau, Israel is not facing imminent annihilation from weapons of mass destruction, Israeli pronouncements are a weapon of mass distraction, a ruse to divert the world's attention away from the Arab problems which this filmmaker seems to believe is of Israel's own making.
This isn't Trudeau's first offense. In 2004, he produced The Fence a totally unbalanced view of life on the Israeli and Arab sides of Israel's security barrier favouring the Palestinian narrative. In the same production he profiled Zakaria Zubeidi, then leader of the terrorist group Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades portraying him as a Robin Hood-like "leader of the resistance." He never once told viewers that Zubeidi's organization had murdered Arabs, Israeli Jews and foreigners, including a Canadian citizen killed in a bus bombing. Trudeau is also known for his offering public praise for Fidel Castro and for his criticism of the Israeli naval blockade of the Hamas-held Gaza Strip.
CBC's journalism codes permit "compelling" point of view documentaries provided "the creator has special knowledge, expertise..." That the CBC felt that this production was either "compelling," or that Trudeau had "special knowledge" and "expertise" reflects poor editorial decisions made by senior editors of CBC's flagship news program The National and showed a remarkable lack of judgement in airing his Iranian apologist film. In so doing, CBC viewers were misled into believing that Israel, not Iran, is the real international pariah, aggressor, and nuclear global menace.