Conrad Black weighs in on the CBC

This was written by Conrad, Lord Black of Cross Harbour.  It is brilliant, as usual with his musings:

Black and his gorgeous wife Barbara Amiel.

"Regrettably, an exchange on social media between two former CBC journalists, Keith Boag and Travis Dhanraj, was inflicted upon me today and it perfectly captures the invasive rot afflicting and spreading forth from the CBC's newsroom and college campuses into the collective consciousness of our society.

"For reference, Mr. Dhanraj was given the high jump from the CBC last year when he attempted to gently nudge that organization in the direction of diversity of opinion. Mr. Boag, on the other hand, was a CBC lifer, retiring after 35 years of blissful ignorance to any opinion outside the CBC's ideological monoculture. The exchange comes within the context of a recent revelation (by Warren Kinsella) that the CBC’s senior director of journalistic standards was demanding avoidance of the t-word in describing the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"Mr. Boag seems to be defending this position by categorizing 9/11 as a run-of-the-mill "attack on civilians for political purposes,” giving several other examples to imply there is no clear distinction between any instance of civilians being killed in pursuit of some political purpose. By implication, Osama bin Laden and Nelson Mandela (an implication Boag made explicitly in a subsequent exchange with Ezra Levant) are morally equivalent; they are either both terrorists or neither are. It is not a serious position. It is moral illiteracy formatted into the CBC's perverse style guide. Sadly, the idea is not original, or unique. In fact, it is the pervasive view on campuses and among large swathes of the Canadian media landscape. It is also very dangerous, and it needs to be answered.

"Mr. Boag's position is bunk. If the “political purpose” in question is to kill and terrorize civilians in the service of global jihad or the extermination of a people, it belongs in a distinct category. That was 9/11. That was October 7. That was the Holocaust. These acts were genocidally motivated and carried out by groups that would never accept any peaceful resolution.

"On the other hand, using decisive force to destroy war criminals who will never make peace, belongs in a completely different category. It is not terrorism. Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas is a righteous cause. Israel is not only within its rights, but morally obligated to uproot the terrorist apparatus that hides behind its own population. And Israel should be lauded for the strategically disadvantageous lengths it has gone to limit Palestinian casualties, even while Hamas has tried to maximize them. Accusing Israel of genocide is either credulous stupidity or intellectually flaccid anti-Semitism attempting to disguise itself in a threadbare cloak of righteousness.

"The atomic bomb was developed by the Allies and used to save lives and compel a surrender that would not otherwise have come. One may argue, and I would agree, that a demonstration on a remote island, a sort of nuclear warning shot, might have been preferable. Likewise, using another of Boag's examples, one could argue the ANC should have continued with their Gandhi-inspired peaceful protest movement even after the Sharpeville massacre. The fact is, no act of violence toward civilians, whether in pursuit of a greater good or not, should be whitewashed. But nor should they all be grouped lazily together, as Boag attempts to do, as if genocide and global domination were indistinguishable from self-defense or peace-through-strength. As if they can all be neatly filed away as 'political reasons'.

"After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States did not proceed to conquer the world, though it could have with a four-year monopoly on nuclear weapons. It used it geostrategic leverage to rebuild Europe and Japan, establish the United Nations — which, believe it or not, was once a righteous and laudable organization — and strive for peace. Had the Nazis or Imperial Japan developed nuclear weapons first, no sane person believes they would have pursued the same strategy.

"I should not unfairly single out Mr. Boag, as his perspective is plagiarized from an intellectually and historically illiterate world view that has been building up steam for 30 years. It is a view that dispenses with the indispensable distinction between good and evil. It is not moral seriousness. It is relativism, and it is contemptible. This mass amnesia about who the forces of good in the world are, and who the forces of evil are, is a serious problem. That this worldview has captured the CBC and so many North American campuses is not surprising, but it is a genuine cause for concern. The West has ceded too much of, and must reclaim, the moral high ground."

Makes sense to a small C conservative like me

 

Why Are Liberals Prone To Groupthink? Bill Donohue August 28, 2026   In the early 1970s, Pauline Kael, film critic for the New Yorker, was stunned when Richard Nixon won the presidential election. She was famously quoted saying, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” That was odd. Nixon won 49 states. Kael claimed she was misquoted. But she admits to saying something similar, “I live in a rather special world.” That’s putting it mildly—she lived in an intellectual ghetto where groupthink is commonplace. So do most liberals today. Just walk into the faculty lounge on any college campus to validate this verity. In that same year, 1972, psychologist Irving Janis coined the term “groupthink.” He meant by that the uniformity of thought that occurs when members of a group fail to consider alternative views. The gist of what he said was picked up by writers in the late 1940s. That is when Orwell wrote about “doublethink” in his novel 1984. Harold Rosenberg, a Marxist art critic who moved to the center after the war, wrote an influential essay, “The Herd of the Independent Minds,” that accurately described the same phenomenon; he said the herd mentality was especially true of New York intellectuals. Why intellectuals, most of whom are on the left? Rosenberg seized on the tendency of intellectuals to deal with abstract constructions, and not real-world experiences; this accounts for their lack of independent thinking. Writing at the same time was Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. Author of many powerful books, he wrote an essay that sought to explain the same worldview. He found that the utopian bent that so many of these writers shared explained their propensity to think in terms of grand ideas, dismissing practical concerns. Why does any of this matter? Consider the findings of a recent study on the occupations of those who give to Republicans and Democrats, published by InstaPundit. It makes it unmistakably clear that in occupations that favor the Democrats, almost all of those who work in these jobs donate to their favorite party; but the level of agreement is considerably smaller among those who work in jobs where members favor Republicans. This gives a decisive advantage to Democrats. Commentators are correct to say this finding shows that Democrats are much more likely to live in a bubble than Republicans. Yes, they are  guilty of groupthink. But what is most troubling is the nature of the occupations that mark members of the two parties. Democrats are found in high numbers among those who work in higher education, publishing, the arts, executives in the non-profit sector, psychotherapists and television. Republicans are found in high numbers among those who work in insurance, landscaping, the trucking industry, farming, construction, and the health field. In other words, Democrats not only exemplify the herd mentality, they are in a position to affect the thinking of the public; this is not true of Republicans. Professors shape the minds of young people; landscapers do not. Utopian visions, and a proclivity to abstract thinking, are hallmarks of liberals, most of whom are Democrats. Their lack of interest in practical, real-world, experiences is not a virtue. Indeed, it is a vice.

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$112

In the late eighteen hundreds, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie gave more than $50 million ($3 billion today) to build 2,509 libraries worldwide.  His goal was to give free access to public information for all citizens -- regardless of wealth.

The great Carnegie

Yesterday, B and I went in to Calgary and thought we'd get a membership in the Crowfoot library because we're in there quite often and they have a wider selection than the Cochrane library.  What I learned was shocking!  

To get a card, it would have cost us $112 because we live in Cochrane.  Just because we no longer live around the corner doesn't mean it's costing the library $112 more to deal with us.  What's the $112 for?  That's ludicrous!  Naturally Indigenous people don't have to pay that fee.  (Funny, didn't seen many of those folks there when I lived in the area.)  I thought libraries were created so kids with little money could check out books and improve their education, no?  Apparently, it's a profit business and I was very surprised.  What am I missing here?  

I think libraries have gotten over their skis, with a myriad of programs, staff and weird stuff disconnected to their basic mission.  So, I guess we'll stick with our local library and just wait longer for the remote, esoteric books B orders.

The other thing that surprises me is that you have to fork over $50 to get into the zoo.  So, for a family of four, that's $200 to stroll around to look at a few monkeys.

Either I am out of it, or the rest of the world is.

Lord Black weighs in.

Conrad Black, Lord Black of Cross Harbour, has an interesting take on where Canada is at. If anyone knows Canada, it's Lord Black. p.s. I knew him at Carleton and he asked me out. Maybe I should have accepted, hahaha!
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"When I was a young person, we were neck and neck with the Australians and quite closely behind the United States,” he said. “And now Netherlands, for example—a fine and great historic country liberated by our Canadian army in 1945, a country that in 1945 was a rubble heap, flooded out by the Germans who blew the dikes, trampled over by the German and Allied armies—they have a higher standard of living than we do."

Author and scholar Lord Black

He made similar observations about South Korea and Israel, countries that were “pile[s] of mud” or “sand, camels, and Jehovah” within living memory, now approaching Canadian standards of living.

Black attributed Canada’s underperformance largely to its failure to develop natural resources, particularly in energy infrastructure, and he was insistent that the decline is recent and reversible: “But we’re not keeping pace, and we should, there’s no excuse for it because we did up until about 10 years ago.”

Pierre Poilievre will be the next prime minister—and he’s doing something that hasn’t been done since Borden.

Despite Poilievre’s loss in the recent federal election, Black sees the Conservative leader as a transformational figure in Canadian political history and predicts he will eventually form government.

“I think he’s doing, trying to do, and I think successfully doing…selling conservatism in a way that has not been done since Sir Robert Borden’s time in this country,” Black said. “He’s taking it from Thatcher and Reagan.”

Black believes that Poilievre’s contrasting of the idea of personal responsibility and leaving more money in Canadians pockets, instead of high taxes and big government solutions, will resonate with more and more of the electorate.

“Poilievre is selling the country the virtues of conservatism in the sense of greater liberty from government. ‘We’ll take care of the needy, we’ll take care of the disadvantaged, but for the rest we’ll leave as much to you as we can so you can use the money you have earned in the way you want to use it."

Black also said his confidence in Poilievre rests on the data from the last campaign. Poilievre came within 1.5 points of the Liberals in popular vote, picked up 15 seats in Ontario, and won the 18-to-35 demographic. He argues this signals a genuine shift in Canadian politics—from the one-and-a-half-party Liberal dominance that prevailed for most of the 20th century toward a genuinely competitive two-party dynamic.

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Can't find where I copied this from, but I do agree with the author and Black.

What now?

So, after 17 months of "Elbows Up" and "I'm the only guy who can deal with Trump", it's basically "Tits Up" at this point.

Carney's current negotiating position.

If he was, "The only guy who could get it done", why did he send Leblanc all this time and layer on the bizarre Charette?  Carney has been an abject failure.  Frankly, I think he took a hissy fit when J.D. Vance's private hot mike comments were leaked.  Vance said Carney thought he could "out tough" Trump.  He laughed at him, talking about how he puffed himself up and tried to get the tariffs lifted.

Carney's position was basically a stupid one.  He said it was "All tariffs lifted, or no deal."  As I have said before, that was a dumb position because it was impossible.  Now Greer is blaming Canada and Carney is blaming the U.S.  But when Carney heard Vance mocking him, he couldn't take it.  Carney's problem is he has 'Duck's disease':  His ar-e is basically too close to the ground, rendering him overly-sensitive.

The other problem was while he was vacationing in Tuscany with Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt, negotiations were at their most fraught,.  Carney very unwisely chose to stay in his Italian villa.

So dumb.  But it shows that he definitely did not want a deal.  He wants to be head of his precious "middle power" group and get out from under Trump.  He forgets, however, that 20 percent trade with this country or that will never equal what we are losing with the U.S.   Have a watch of the brilliant Georgeanne Burke on YouTube.  She nails it.

His latest genius move is to declare we are, "At war with the U.S."  Danielle Smith is the only one advocating back to the table, but he won't do it.  

But Trump also needs a history lesson.  He has apparently forgotten the consequences of the 'Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act', of 1930, which put huge tariffs on a whole range of things.  He did, however, dig into the archives to use one provision of this 96-year-old act to apply the tariffs, a provision which has never been used before by any president, but he forgot how long it took for those tariffs to be lifted?  Sixty years!  That Act, which triggered a destructive global trade war, only raised tariffs 20 percent, yet still caused international trade to collapse and deepened the economic crisis.

We're in much worse shape, with 50 percent tariffs on a whole range of goods and services totaling $27.5 billion in trade.  Will all the Liberals still drinking Karney Koolaid wake up?  I doubt it.

  

Same old same old

With apologies to my status friends, I have to comment on a column by Joe Dion, CEO of the Western Indigenous Pipeline Group, in which he claims natives are all for pipelines.  They just was the money that comes out of them.

Mr. Dion claims that the federal government has blocked his group from purchasing any shares in the new pipeline being proposed for the Trans Mountain corridor, while allowing Pembina a defined stake in the line.  

Frankly, I think I know why.  The feds know, from costly experience, that any partnership with the Indigenous communities along the line will be fraught.  Pembina, anxious to make money, will not pose such a threat.  Instead, they will cooperate to ensure the line is expedited every inch along the way.

"Reconciliation is not measured in news releases and memoranda," Dion writes.  "It is measured in ownership, in shared governance and in shared wealth reaching our communities."  (Don't kid yourselves, folks, "reconciliation" is spelt "money".)

And therein lies the rub.  Unlike Pembina, whose revenues and profits depend entirely on the pipeline's completion, Indigenous funding is completely separate.  They get their money regardless.

Pipelines support the entire country.  Those opposed need to wake up to that fact.

"Consultation" does not mean approval or veto.  It means "consultation".  But the Indigenous have never seen it that way.  I penned the following letter to 'The Globe and Mail' the other day, knowing it would not be published.  So far, it hasn't been:

"Dear Editor,

"Mr. Dion says that the "Indigenous groups have been ready to invest in pipeline assets for years."  As an observer, it seems to me that the starting position of most Indigenous consultations is usually vocal and flamboyant public opposition. 

"To fully realize Canada's potential, we need to get our vast resources out of the ground and into the markets that want to buy them.  Yes, there have been few companies waiting to start building, but I believe this is because experience tells them negotiations will be protracted, difficult and may, or may not, result in success. 

"Added to this is the prime minister's toothless MOU, which belies his true position as basically anti-pipeline.  That's why nothing has been accomplished on this file since he took office.  It would wonderful if we could finally get a pipeline built, but I'm not holding my breath.

"Nancy Marley-Clarke"

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Cindy Woodhouse-Nepinak, AFN chief, has never met a sacred headdress she doesn't love to don at a podium, while trashing every agreement anyone anywhere is trying to hammer out.  Do you think this would be any different?  

Dion concludes by saying, "Before a single metre of new pipe is laid in our corridor (just for the record, it's not your corridor.  It is all Crown Land, given for Indigenous use, but not ownership), close the deal on the pipeline already there.  We are a prepared, willing and capable Indigenous partner, waiting to negotiate a meaningful interest in Trans Mountain with real governance rights for both sides.

"The federal government has invited investors from around the world to consider buying into Canadian resource and infrastructure assets, but they are not even engaging with Indigenous groups that have been ready to invest for years."

To me it's clear why.  It'd only be on their terms and it'd never end.

Booze

Carney has asked the premiers to stock US booze again.  I agree with this move, but Ford, Holt and Fréchette are resisting.  That's just dumb.  The Quebec premier has had her precious supply management scam protected, so the least she could do is put a little Jack Daniels on the odd shelf or two.

This would be a good move and show some good will.

As for Susan Holt, she's always struck me as just dim.  Ford, on the other hand, is a diehard blowhard, prone to gimmicky press conferences and running dumb ads in the US that set us back months, so I doubt he will immediately comply.  However, he will be forced to at some point; too much money at stake.

The customer, however, is free not to buy any American hooch.  People opposed can certainly stick to Canadian Rye and shitty wine.  Go ahead, make your point.  I personally don't care because I am a "cheap drunk", as the saying goes.  I shop by price -- although I draw the line at Smirnoff.

As for the "done" deal, as I understand it, the auto sector is still a sticking point.  If the late, great Bob White were still around, I predict he'd have got it done.  He was the head of the UAW and the CLC in the eighties and a charmer to the back teeth.  

I ran into him in a bar back in 1984, when I was running federal communications for EXPO '86 and had to travel all over Canada promoting the fair.  Can't remember which city we were in, but I was sitting with my colleague, Angèle, going over strategy before a meeting the next morning and who was sitting at the next table?  Bob White and a couple of his boys.  We got to chatting and it was clear they wanted us to join them.  Bob was the instigator and kept chatting away.  "Why don't you girls (I was 37 at the time, so still technically "young-ish") join us," he kept saying, as he tried to buy us drinks.  We politely refused, but it was clear he had had much success in the charming lounge lizard department.

The charming Mr. White in action.

So, yes, I think Bob could have played a pivotal role in the auto negotiations currently running into sticking point after dead end.  I mean, the bulky, lumbering, ungainly Dominic Leblanc isn't a patch on Mr. White when it comes to mounting a charm offensive camouflaging a tough position.  And as for Janice Charette?  Her dreadful appearance speaks for itself.

Ah yes, those EXPO days were some of the most fun I had during my entire career.