Those conspiracy theorists might be right after all
Man never set foot on the moon, 9/11 was a joint CIA-Israeli operation, and the atrocious slaughter of youngsters at Sandy Hook Elementary didn’t happen — the grieving parents were actors playing a part.
Such are some of the popular delusions held by the conspiracy theorists that increasingly troll among us.
The touch paper for this growing phenomenon was probably lit long ago with the JFK assassination, and it has since set off a firestorm of bizarre mental meanderings — multiplied by the ubiquitous nature of social media — in which nothing is ever as it seems and some massive, secret governmental force is in play, relentlessly raising so-called false flags at every significant event.
Never bother trying to convince such folk they’re wrong. You would have a better chance of succeeding with that “Canadian team to win Stanley Cup” wager.
Still, for me, at least, the whole carefully contrived edifice of strange beliefs allied to resolute certitude eventually crashes and breaks upon the rocks on one salient fact — governments have trouble even organizing proper garbage collection, so are we to believe the same bunch can successfully engineer feats of intricate deception on a level that billion-dollar con man Bernie Madoff would applaud from his prison cell?
Which is why I don’t believe the United States is involved in a massive and deliberate plot to ensure Canada remains a vassal state and that, by sabotaging our dreams of becoming a global energy exporter, it ensures such a convenient situation stretches toward eternity.
Still, there is a better case to be made for such a nefarious scheme fashioned by our southern cousins than there is in suggesting Neil Armstrong made his famous small step for man in some secret Hollywood back lot.
Regardless of whether there is some deep state involvement, or if it’s just rich folk south of the border wanting to feel empowered in saving the planet by screwing a neighbouring economy, rather than risk the blowback of doing the exact same thing in Texas, there is no doubt the last decade has seen many millions of U.S. dollars funnelled into environmental activism campaigns aimed directly at Alberta’s oil industry.
Heck, 10 years ago, when the well-funded North American Tar Sands Campaign came into being, thanks to an alliance of rich benefactors, the goal was simple. Its own website made that plain.
“The campaign strategy was to land-lock the tar sands so the crude could not reach the international market where it could fetch a high price per barrel.
This meant national and grassroots organizing needed to block all proposed pipelines.”
Well, you’ve got to hand it to them. With the subsequent death of the Energy East and Northern Gateway projects, and the current threat to the twinning of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline, they have proven, both in the past and in the present, to be highly effective in stirring up the required local eco-warriors.
Strange, however, that the one new pipeline that appears as though it has a decent chance of carrying Alberta crude in the years to come is the Keystone XL.
And, wonders never cease, where will those additional barrels be headed? Southward, to the good old U.S. of A, of course. Naturally, it will flow only at a highly discounted rate because, with no other market, they have us, so to speak, over a barrel.
As Canada now exports about three million barrels each day, with 99 per cent of it headed to the U.S., then a 20 per cent price discount on much of such volume certainly adds up.
Do we see these well-funded and organized environmental attacks focusing on the current fracking bonanza going on in North Dakota or Texas? Well, this is strange indeed, but the answer would be negative.
So U.S. protest dollars flow north, which ensures Canadian oil can only flow south at a cheaper price. Maybe those conspiracy folk aren’t quite so crazy after all.
Chris Nelson is a Calgary writer. This first appeared in the Calgary Herald.