Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Opinion

Ostriches on the runway

Published

12 minute read

PAUL WELLS

Dominic LeBlanc says it’s time to rise above partisanship. Watch the skies

“The protection of our democracy demands that we rise above partisanship,” Dominic LeBlanc told reporters Saturday morning in the lobby of the West Block’s backup House of Commons. “Canada isn’t the only country facing the threat of foreign interference. Many of our allies are, even now, having discussions on ways to protect their democracies against this scourge. If they can have reasoned and constructive discussions on this subject, Canada should be able to do the same. That’s why the prime minister tasked me [on Friday] with consulting, over the coming days, experts, legal scholars and opposition parties on what the next steps should look like — and determine who best may be suited to lead this public work.”

You can tell the Trudeau government is really badly rattled when it starts doing what it should have done in the first place. “Consulting experts, legal scholars and opposition parties” was an option in March, when Trudeau decided instead to lay the foundation for Friday’s debacle. Talking to people — in the old-fashioned sense of (a) showing the slightest interest in what they have to say and (b) allowing it to inflect your actions in any perceptible way — is always an option. Nor is it in any danger of getting worn out through overuse, where this government is concerned.

Paul Wells is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“It’s our government’s hope that the opposition parties will treat this issue with the seriousness it deserves,” said LeBlanc, whose boss ignored a string of reports from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and whose early-warning system for news of Beijing’s intimidation against a sitting MP was named Fife and Chase.

LeBlanc opened the floor to questions. The first: Shouldn’t there be a public inquiry? “A public inquiry has never been off the table,” he said. “All options remain on the table.” This was change masquerading as continuity. Johnston took a public inquiry off the table three weeks ago. Trudeau accepted the un-tabling. By putting it back on the table, LeBlanc was bowing to what may be the inevitable conclusion of the last few days: that the opposition parties, by adapting a common line in favour of a full inquiry, may have made one inevitable.

Another characteristic of this government is that it views its tribulations as tests of other people. The short odyssey of David Johnston, in other words, is a learning opportunity for us all. “My job,” LeBlanc said, “is to, in the very next few days, in short order, ask opposition leaders to take this matter seriously. Not just to simply say, ‘Oh, there has to be a public inquiry.’ OK: Make suggestions about who could lead this public inquiry. What would the terms of reference be? What do they see as the timelines? How do they deal with the obvious challenge of respecting Canadian law that protects some of the most sensitive intelligence information?”

I should say I take LeBlanc at his word when he claims to be seeking input in good faith. As a general rule, his arrival tends to mark an improvement in this government’s handling of a difficult file. But just to be on the safe side, it’s worth saying some obvious things clearly.

The opposition parties should give input when asked. It’s useful for each of them to go through the exercise of conceiving in detail the proper handling of the election-interference file. And it’s good of the government to ask, albeit way later than it should have.

But everything LeBlanc plans to ask them — whether to have an inquiry, who should lead it, its mandate and deadlines and legal justification — remains the responsibility of the government. If the opposition parties chicken out, or play dumb games, or deadlock, or suggest people who decline to participate, the responsibility for designing a workable policy remains the government’s. I’m pretty sure Trudeau volunteered for the job of prime minister. In fact I’m sure there was something in the papers about it. He is in this fix now because he wanted Johnston to make his decisions for him. As I wrote nearly three months ago.

Thank you for reading Paul Wells. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

LeBlanc kept saying an inquiry should be run by someone “eminent.” I mean…sure? Whatever? I suppose eminence shouldn’t be actively disqualifying, at least. But to me the craving for eminence is a strange instinct. Eminence is distinctly relative: I suspect more than half of Canadians could never, at any point, have told you who David Johnston is, or Julie Payette, or Craig Kielburger. I’ve come to suspect that “eminent” translates as “impressive to Katie Telford,” which is fine but, again, an odd criterion. Instead may I propose “competent”?

When I wrote about Johnston’s appointment in March, I a suggested a few alternative candidates for the job of deciding how to respond to the mandate for which I already thought Johnston was ill-suited. My list was concocted at random on a few minutes’ notice, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, purely for illustrative purposes. I could come up with a dozen other names, and I don’t even know what I’m talking about. If I were burdened in LeBlanc’s place with such a task, I’d begin by asking for a list of associate deputy ministers at the departments of Global Affairs and Justice, as well as a list of currently serving and recently retired ambassadors. Probably the guy who used to be the national director of the Liberal Party of Canada would be a bad idea, I guess I need to add.

I also might do some reading. I’d recall that when the lawyer Kenneth Feinberg was brought in to decide compensation for families of the 9/11 victims in the U.S., he couldn’t have been further from a household name. When James B. Donovan got Francis Gary Powers released by the Soviets, or Jean Monnet invented the European Union, or Elissa Golberg became Canada’s first civilian representative in Kandahar, they weren’t household names. They still aren’t. They were just good at their work. You know that uncomfortable suspicion that Canada is just six pals from the McGill alumni club who gather every Friday to carve up the spoils of elite consensus over pitchers of iced tea on the verandah of the Royal Ottawa Golf Club? The first step toward perpetuating that suspicion is the urge to find “eminent” people for technical work.

The title of today’s post is cryptic. When LeBlanc said our democracy depends on rising above partisanship, I thought, Uh-oh, and I started thinking about objects or creatures that don’t normally rise above much. Which led to a mental image of ostriches trying to fly. I actually have seen non-partisanship, many times, including from some of the most partisan operators in Canadian politics. But I still wouldn’t bet on it happening in any particular case. The incentives run all the other way. To insulate against it, politicians might want to read the latest from Alliance Canada Hong Kong, the diaspora group that has been chronicling foreign interference for years, for whom the issue is not a fun partisan football and the prospect of testifying yet again, to educate some eminent commissioner, is not appealing.

I keep saying the under-served constituency in this country is the people who would like to see serious problems treated seriously. Not in the sense of cheap theatrics — furrowed brows, jabby index fingers, “my time is limited” — but in the sense of, you know, seriousness. It feels cheap to lodge such a complaint. It’s too easy, too timeless. OK, smartass, what are you proposing? I dunno, more, uh…. seriousness, I guess. But I think everyone senses it.

Last September, the CBC’s Aaron Wherry reported, Justin Trudeau told his caucus “to focus on four Cs: competence, confidence, contrast and campaign-readiness (in that order).” I’m left wondering how the prime minister defines competence and how he thinks he’s doing. This is a guy who, when he made those remarks, was less than a year past deciding that the biggest problem with his cabinet was that Marc Garneau was in it.

Meanwhile, I checked with Pierre Poilievre’s Twitter account to see whether he had responded to LeBlanc’s overture. Here’s how the Conservative leader spent his Friday afternoon:

I sometimes wonder whether these people know we can see them. It’s time to rise above partisanship. Flap, you big gorgeous birds! Flap!

For the full experience, upgrade your subscription to Paul Wells.

Before Post

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Christopher Rufo

How Gender Ideology Captured the State Department

Published on

In a job posting for a security escort position at the U.S. Consulate General in Lagos, for example, applicants are told that “[t]he U.S. Mission in Nigeria supports Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA),” and that “[a]ll genders are welcome to apply.” Some two-thirds of the job summary is dedicated to DEI, as if U.S. security officers should be more concerned with gender pronouns than terrorist attacks.

The U.S. Department of State is charged with advancing American interests abroad through complex and delicate diplomatic missions, as well as maintaining the safety of those missions and the Americans serving them.

The institution’s lodestar should be the national interest, but under President Joe Biden, the State Department has demoted that critical objective in favor of a new global agenda: to spread radical gender theory to foreign nations.

The shift began at the top. President Biden and, in turn, the apparatus beneath him led America’s leftward charge on the world stage. Upon taking office in 2021, the administration used the previous year’s racial unrest as a pretext to issue a slew of executive orders and memoranda entrenching left-wing ideologies in all levels of the federal government, under the guise of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI.

As part of this initiative, the White House required each federal agency to submit detailed DEI progress reports regularly, appoint a chief diversity officer, and create “Agency Equity Teams,” whose leaders were tasked with “delivering equitable outcomes.” These requirements contributed to what the president called “an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.”

The gender component of this agenda spread to the State Department through the president’s “Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons Around the World.” Published in February 2021, this memorandum directed State and other agencies to monitor closely and report on the “LGBTQI+” policies of our allies, to “broaden the number of countries willing to support and defend” the radical Left’s understanding of gender—for example, by funding pro-transgender “civil society advocates” in order to shift public opinion in those countries—and to tie in the principles of gender theory to America’s foreign-aid programs.

If necessary, the memo maintained, agencies should use “the full range of diplomatic and assistance tools” to ensure foreign governments’ compliance with this agenda, including “financial sanctions, visa restrictions, and other actions.”

The policy’s most visible expression was Secretary Antony Blinken’s 2021 authorization allowing American embassies to fly rainbow flags. This symbolic gesture was just the tip of the iceberg, however. Under Blinken’s leadership, State has woven critical theory into the fabric of America’s foreign policy. “I want to be crystal clear about this,” the secretary said upon appointing the agency’s first chief diversity officer in June 2021. “Promoting diversity and inclusion is the job of every single member of this department. It’s mission critical.”

To that end, Blinken spearheaded the adoption of an internal diversity plan that commits the department to hiring “a workforce that reflects the diversity of the United States . . . and implementing a comprehensive recruitment plan that targets underrepresented groups”; conducting a sophisticated “DEIA Climate Survey”; and, bizarrely, producing a “crowdsourced digital storytelling campaign” called #FacingDiplomacy, a self-flagellating chronicle of “the historic impact of discrimination in the Department.”

Material incentives ensure compliance with this official ideology: the “advancement of DEIA” is now considered “as an element for all employees as part of their job performance criteria, career advancement opportunities, and senior performance pay.”

The heart of the department’s effort, though, is not to increase adherence at home but to spread it abroad. State recruited a cadre of gender activists to entrench these theories into foreign policy.

One key figure is gender activist Jessica Stern, whom the president appointed as special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBTI+ persons. She was previously the executive director of OutRight Action International, helped to found the United Nations LGBTI Core Group, and was responsible for the first UN resolution to include the term “gender identity.”

Another key figure is Zakiya Carr Johnson, who stepped in as the department’s chief diversity officer earlier this year. Like Stern, Johnson also has a history of activism, having spent six years at a left-wing NGO in Brazil, as well as at other “inclusive” organizations, such as Atlantic Fellows, ODARA Solutions, and her own start-up, Black Women Disrupt.

These women are not figureheads. They aggressively press gender theory into foreign policy. Johnson, in particular, regularly promotes the State Department’s ideological agenda on social media, spotlighting her exchange with the Brazilian high representative for gender issues, meeting with the Chilean ambassador to applaud his “#FeministForeignPolicy,” or speaking at the Colombian embassy about “diversity” and “inclusion.”

The diversity agenda has been translated to the day-to-day operations at embassies around the world. Some embassies are even screening security positions for adherence to DEI. In a job posting for a security escort position at the U.S. Consulate General in Lagos, for example, applicants are told that “[t]he U.S. Mission in Nigeria supports Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA),” and that “[a]ll genders are welcome to apply.” Some two-thirds of the job summary is dedicated to DEI, as if U.S. security officers should be more concerned with gender pronouns than terrorist attacks.

Inside the embassies, gender has become a near obsession. State’s latest annual LGBTQI+ progress report lists countless present and future efforts across all foreign agencies to make the world safe for queer theory, from “Pride Events at Headquarters” to “Gender Equity in the Mexican Workplace.” Among these is a department-wide partnership with the Global Equality Fund, a public-private entity “dedicated to advancing and defending the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons around the world” that has directed funds to 116 “grassroots” LGBTQI+ organizations in 73 countries.

State itself asserts that U.S. diplomatic efforts should reflect progressive ideology. In a special report on “DEIA Promotion” by the department’s advisory commission on public diplomacy, State evaluates “how U.S. missions adapt existing programs to DEIA principles,” which are to inform “all aspects of the Department’s policymaking as well as efforts to address barriers to opportunity for individuals historically and currently burdened by inequality and systemic discrimination.” Realpolitik, in other words, should give way to critical theory.

These efforts raise a critical question: Does gender theory advance the U.S.’s national interests? The answer appears to be no. But that is hardly an obstacle for State’s gender activists. They want to hang the rainbow flag throughout the benighted parts of the world. This mission trumps all others.

Christopher Rufo is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This article was originally published in City Journal

Continue Reading

Catherine Herridge

CBS News insider says the network knew the Hunter Biden Laptop was verified

Published on

How Hunter Biden Laptop Got The CBS News Treatment

In the 60 Minutes interview with then President Trump, correspondent Lesley Stahl said of the Hunter Biden laptop, “It can’t be verified.”  As I watched the broadcast, I felt sick.

I knew the laptop records could be vetted and confirmed. I was confused by what seemed a disconnect between the CBS News division and 60 Minutes.

TOP LINE:
With new allegations this week about suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the last Presidential election, I can’t help but reflect on my own experience at CBS News — what I believe was a missed opportunity to rebut false claims it was Russian disinformation.
DEEP DIVE
This week, our investigative team revealed new evidence on X from IRS whistleblowers about alleged double standards at the IRS and Justice Department in the Hunter Biden probe.
Case agent Joseph Ziegler told us they were blocked from taking actions that could have revealed the investigation’s existence prior to the 2020 election.
“There were a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election,” Ziegler explained  “And related to the President’s son. So not even the candidate. And we weren’t allowed to do certain investigative steps.” (IRS,DOJ and others declined to comment)
The findings from our investigation on X, called “Bucking the Bureaucracy: The Cost of Coming Forward in the Hunter Biden Tax Case,” were amplified by new reporting from the republican-led House Judiciary committee.
They allege the Hunter Biden laptop reporting was suppressed leading up to the 2020 election to curry political favor, “Facebook executives discussed calibrating censorship decisions to please what they assumed would be an incoming Biden-Harris administration…”
With these new developments, I can’t help but reflect on my own experience with the Hunter Biden laptop in the fall of 2020 after the New York Post broke the story (and bravely stayed with it.)
It’s the question I get asked the most.
“What happened with the Hunter Biden story at CBS before the 2020 election?”
I believe it’s best that the account comes directly from me.
On October 23rd, 2020 about 10 days after the story surfaced, I was contacted by senior CBS News executive Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews for “confirmed reporting” on the Hunter Biden story.  She said the confirmed reporting was for Evening News Anchor and Managing Editor Norah O’Donnell.
Days earlier, I had been tasked with vetting the laptop and its contents after multiple platforms had suppressed the story. Due diligence included working the phones, reaching out to people on the Hunter Biden emails for corroboration and cross-referencing court records.  The vetted documents I collected also indicated the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden.
Million Dollar Retainer from Chinese Energy Firm
Signature Page
I told Ciprian-Matthews the vetted materials included a million dollar retainer from a Chinese energy firm, emails with Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski as well as Hunter Biden text messages.
Asked by Ciprian-Matthews if there was a “Hunter connection,”  I responded, “Yes, all of them.”
I then provided some of the vetted records directly to Ciprian-Matthews.  We did speak briefly on the phone. I don’t know at this point what happened next.
QUESTIONS FOR CBS NEWS/SEEKING A RESPONSE
This weekend, on Saturday, I reached out to CBS News PR with questions for Ciprian-Matthews and Norah O’Donnell. I followed up with a voice mail, and text message to confirm CBS had received our questions as well as the Sunday noon deadline.
When there was no response, Sunday morning, I forwarded our questions, adding the head of CBS PR and O’Donnell’s agent, writing:
“We are taking the extra step this morning of reaching out to you for comment and as a courtesy, extending the deadline until 2pm eastern.
We have copied Ingrid and Norah.  If the email addresses are not accurate, we ask that the queries be shared with them so there is full opportunity to respond.
Thank you in advance for the consideration and confirming receipt of our questions.”
As of this writing, there has been no response, nor the courtesy of acknowledging receipt of our questions.  For transparency, you can read the questions here.
Questions provided to CBS News
Based on my reporting, and as the network’s senior investigative correspondent,  the CBS News investigative unit was not tasked in October 2020 to develop more reporting on the laptop.  That would have been standard practice.
In the 60 Minutes interview with then President Trump, correspondent Lesley Stahl said of the Hunter Biden laptop, “It can’t be verified.”  As I watched the broadcast, I felt sick.
I knew the laptop records could be vetted and confirmed. I was confused by what seemed a disconnect between the CBS News division and 60 Minutes.
OUR FORENSIC REVIEW OF HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP DATA
It took an additional two years for the network to broadcast a forensic review of the Hunter Biden laptop data.  I advocated for the report which determined that both the data belonged to Hunter Biden and it had not been tampered with.  Our report was broadcast in November 2022, after the midterm elections.  I may have more to say about the delay in the future.
Analyzed Laptop Data
By contrast, in October 2020, there seemed little push back to claims from 51 former intelligence officials that the laptop had “classic earmarks” of a Russian information operation.
According to the published transcript of the edited 60 Minutes interview with then candidate Joe Biden, Norah O’Donnell asked, “Do you believe the recent leak of material allegedly from Hunter’s computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?”
Candidate Biden responded, “… And so when you put the combination of Russia, Giuliani– the president, together– it’s just what it is. It’s a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on? What is he running on?”
CBS News executives make the final call on editorial. In October 2020, I believe the preliminary reporting provided to senior CBS News executive Ciprian-Matthews showed the laptop was worth digging into, and more facts should be gathered. I saw it as an opportunity for CBS News to lead on a major story and to rebut disinformation claims.
I was eventually assigned to the Hunter Biden case.   I was encouraged that the most senior corporate executives told me privately they wanted reporting that spoke truth to power on both sides of the aisle.  They even provided additional resources, but based on my experience, it seemed their corporate objectives were frustrated by CBS News executives and other employees who were reluctant to take on a story about the President’s son.
INTEREST WANES
In 2023, the CBS investigative unit did exclusively interview the same IRS whistleblowers, Shapley and Ziegler. But I found, after the July 2023 plea deal for Hunter Biden fell apart and he faced felony gun and tax charges, that the network’s interest waned.
As a senior investigative correspondent at CBS News for more than 4 years, our award winning reports were a catalyst for legislative change, impacting a million service members and their families.
We helped secure 50 Purple Hearts for soldiers who were wrongly denied the award under the Trump administration after an Iranian ballistic missile attack on their base in January 2020.
We obtained the audio tape of former President Trump seeming to brag and discuss secret documents about Iran at his New Jersey golf club.  CNN was first to report the recordings.
We helped right a decades’ old wrong so that retired Col. Paris Davis, one of the first Black officers in the elite Green Berets, could be recognized with the Medal of Honor for his heroism in Vietnam.
Two weeks before my position was terminated in February,  army whistleblower Nick Nicholls came forward with new evidence that service members were exposed to toxic agents at their overseas base after 9/11.
Since, with the help of veterans’ advocates, Nicholls’ courage has opened the door to long overdue VA benefits and recognition.
While I remain proud of these projects, I also believe that prior to the 2020 election, the Hunter Biden laptop was a missed opportunity for CBS News.
Continue Reading

Trending

X