The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What's Brian Stewart's Favourite Book On The Origins Of War?

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

With the year-end in sight, Brian Stewart's regular weekly commentary on the war in Ukraine takes a twist: questions for him from you.  Including my favourite, "Brian what's your favourite book on war?"  Plus 2022 has been a year of records, we list some of them.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. What book has taught Brian Stewart more about war than anything else? You asked many times actually. Today, he answers. And hello there, welcome to Tuesday and Tuesdays as it has been almost throughout this year has been an opportunity for my friend, your friend, Brian Stewart to talk about the situation in Ukraine as it relates to the Russian invasion in February and has been a constant story throughout this year. Well, Brian is with us again today. And one of the things about these last few months, as Brian's Tuesday commentary has become increasingly popular among many of you who are trying to understand this conflict and the fallout from it. One of the constant questions has been, why does he know so

much? Well, as I've mentioned before, he's one of the most experienced war correspondents, foreign correspondents of our time. Just in terms of covering conflicts. And I'm probably going to miss a few out here. I'm just going from my own memory, having worked with him on some of these on location, but most of them, you know, from a distance, from the studio in Toronto where I'd be, and he'd be out there in the field. But Brian covered the Falklands War in 1982, and he covered it from both London and from Buenos Aires in Argentina. So he covered a lot of ground, or sea, as you might say, in that conflict.

Lebanon in the mid-'80s, the civil war in Lebanon, in one of certainly the Mediterranean's most beautiful cities, devastated both its people and its infrastructure by the war in Lebanon. Brian was there covering that. Bosnia, the first Gulf War in the early-'90s, the second Gulf War as a result of 9-11. He was in Afghanistan. He's covered natural disasters, which are a conflict in their self. He was one of the first reporters to many ways to the world reaction to Ethiopia and how people and countries got together to help. what year was that, 2004?

It was right late in the year in 2004, so the impact of it flowed also into, and I'm sorry to use that word, into 2005. So he's got the cred. But it's more than just having experienced it on the ground. It's being a student of conflict and war, which Brian has been. And part of that obligation of being a student is to read. And it's been interesting in the last little while, the number of letters I've received from people who,

I guess the question boiled down to this. If Brian Stewart could name one book that's taught him more about war, conflict, what would that book be? And so that's the way we decided to start things off in our conversation today as well as move into the nitty-gritty of what's happening in Ukraine right now. So enough from me. Let's get to our conversation, our conversation with Brian Stewart. So, Brian, they continue to write in wanting to ask questions.

They never ask me any questions, but every week there's like questions for Brian, questions for Mr. Stewart. And so I've got three questions for you here this time, and we'll do it quickly because we still have other issues to talk about. The first one is one I mentioned last week on the air. Somebody wrote in and said, what's Brian Stewart's favorite book on war that teaches him an understanding of conflict? Boy, that's a hard choice, Peter, but I would go right back to when I was 20 in 1962, when The Guns of August came out by Barbara Tuchman. It was perhaps the most influential history book of its time. It was about the disastrous diplomacy that led to the First World War and that first disastrous,

chaotic first month of war. And it was so influential that President Kennedy used it throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis to sort of brief his cabinet members on and the rest of it, how not to fall into a trap like that again. I think it's a book that everybody should read every now and then just to remind oneself that wars can come about by absolute carelessness and a lack of understanding what's involved. And Barbara Tuchman's book was not only a brilliant book in that sense, but it was wonderfully well-written. And clearly stands the test of time. Oh my gosh, yes, it really is. I think Margaret Macmillan, Canada's great historian, said of it that when she read it in 1963, history turned from black and white to color. And I think that had the same effect on me and a lot of my generations. I read for the first time the first world war that wasn't seen in flickering

black and white film, but was actually in vivid color and made decisions made by very human people who made terrible mistakes and very human people who sometimes were absolutely brilliant. It was an amazing human drama. Next question involves the Wagner or the Wagner Mercenary Group. You mentioned this last week or the week before on the bridge in terms of the impact of it. Tell us a little more about this group.

Well, it's kind of like a, it's a private mercenary army. And like any others, you almost have to go back to the pirates of the Caribbean to find anything quite like it. It is, it is a Russian private army set up by a former chief caterer, if you can believe it, to the Kremlin, a friend of Putin's. And it is roughly about 1,500 strong, about a battalion, sorry, a brigade strong. And it is fought in many areas of the world where Russia wants dirty things done

and effective things done. It is fought in syria libya libya sorry the central african republic and mali and of course now it's been fighting very hard in ukraine it fights on the eastern front it's made up of well paid soldiers who aren't in any kind of legal entity so if they're killed it doesn't show up as russian casualty figures it is a mysterious ghost-like force and for reasons that no military analyst can quite understand it is hammering its head over and over and over again uh trying to take parts of the eastern front to try and give a victory to Putin.

It's believed that it is there to gain as much influence as it possibly can and will have huge influence in the Kremlin in future. It's so popular in the sense of private armies that several others are trying to spring up to compete with it. One very important thing to note though it does a lot of its recruiting right in the prisons it goes into prisons it goes after particularly robbers and murderers it likes to it's got thousands of those apparently signed up certain crimes it won't sign but those that will sign they're given an option guys facing

maybe 15 years and the slammer can get uh do six months in ukraine they will be paid a decent wage and at the end of it they'll get a full parole and if you wonder why the un and other human rights organizations are constantly finding horrible crimes committed by the Wagner group, these soldiers, these mysterious soldiers. That's why they're a criminalized group. Reminds some of the, during the Second World War, Hitler had a particularly Waffen-SS Dirlewanger Brigade, which was made up entirely of criminals. And they did some of the worst, most vile things that are almost impossible to read about nowadays. And the Wagner Group, frankly, isn't far off that level of savagery, frankly,

if you can put it into a war context. Okay. Last question. And I've had a number of versions of this over the last couple of days, people writing in saying, ask Brian about this prisoner swap for the American basketball star. And was it one that will be shown to be to the advantage of the Russians? The Russians got this fellow named Boot for Griner,

the American basketball player. And Boot is an arms dealer and a very well-known one in terms of world arms dealings. And the fear upon the part of some of these letter writers is the Russians are getting back exactly what they need, somebody who can get arms for them in their struggle against Ukraine. So is it that cut and dry or is boot a thing of the past? Well, you will get a lot of Americans and not just Republicans, but also Democrats and a lot of diplomats who will say that was a very bad deal.

Basically to trade a basketball star, Whitney Griner, who had been in prison for 10 months for somebody who was the most notorious arms dealer in the world who had dealt arms to terrorist groups that were specifically targeting Americans to kill in places like Colombia. And just that's all you get. You know, when the Americans had originally started trying to deal in Paul Whelan, who's a U.S. Marine who's been four years in a Russian prison, a very miserable prison. He's been four years. The Americans keep, a very miserable prison. He's been four years. The Americans are, uh, keep insisting. He's completely innocent of any espionage charges, which he's held under. And to have just got one person instead of the two seems a bad deal. Now,

the administration on its side will say, no, no, we didn't have a choice of two. Uh, that was in our dreams maybe, but that we only could do one-on-one and we didn't have a choice of two. That was in our dreams, maybe, but that we only could do one on one. And we don't have anybody else we can trade to the Russians to get Paul Whelan back. They keep mentioning this guy, Vadim Kresilov, who's a assassin, who's in a German jail. He has nothing to do with our custody. But the Russians say, we really want this guy back. He's been in jail four years now after literally killing a Chechen activist in Berlin, I think of Berlin Park, I believe it was. And now he's in jail. And the Russians say, we want him back, whatever happens.

So it's a mess in some respects. A lot of Republicans are saying, well, Biden was obviously going out and checking all the political boxes, what would be popular at home. But we're insisting it's a poor deal. We should have got much more than we did get. And it's up in the air. It's a really difficult situation

as Canada has learned to its own peril, dealing for basically hostages. You know, I heard one of the American networks this morning using Canada as the example of how delicate, difficult, and on the knife's edge some of these negotiations could be because of Canada's most recent experience with the two Michaels. All right, let's get to some of the issues of the day

beyond those questions. And, you know, as I mentioned last week, Brian sends me some ideas each week of things that he'd like to talk about. And I love this because this is the first one. I'm just going to read what you wrote me in the first sentence because it's a great description pity the poor diplomats trying to make sense of moscow's latest statements on the ukraine war which often seem a flurry of contradictions talk about that well so they do you know last at one stage last week um putin came out and said you know we're not mad we know what nuclear weapons are we as if we're not going to use them you know we're not mad. We know what nuclear weapons are. We as if we're not going to use them, you know, we're not going to use them. And there was a huge sigh of relief, especially

coming, I think, from Germany and leader Schultz, who said that he thought that nuclear weapons were off the table. Now, we didn't have to worry about them. The next I think it was the next day, Putin is back saying, well, on the other hand, we're going to drop the no first use clause in our constitution. And we'll be able to use nuclear weapons for the, be the first to use them whenever we feel that Russian territory is really existentially threatened. So in 24 hours, you flip flop. The same way he says at one stage, we're open to talks and he looked very much like he was ready

to sit down and start talking the next day he says actually we're preparing for a very long war indeed and so the i mean the european diplomats are saying oh no not a long war that's almost worse than a nuclear exchange because you know this is going to go on and on and on. So it's becoming very hard to predict what he's going to do. When I heard about the talk about the long war, I put it down to that old political saying that the British always had, which is, he wouldn't say that, wouldn't he? I mean, if you want to really upset your enemies and make them really start wondering, should we go on supporting Ukraine? Should we go on pouring all this money and weapon is what you want to do is not talk about, let's sit down and negotiate an end as soon as possible to this war. What you want to start talking about is this is going to be a very long war and you better have very deep pockets

and very strong ability to withstand cold and misery because you're going to get all of that. So I think it was a bit of play acting on Putin's charge. But he's now flip-flopping his positions every single day. And today he declared he wasn't going to have his annual press conference, a very major event in his year. He sits down and talks for four hours sometimes in his press conferences. Now he's not going to have them. I always think that any politician who's suddenly canceling his press conference has a problem.

Well, he's clearly had a problem throughout the year, but it still leaves a lot of people wondering, and I think both of us wondering at times, as whether he's falling apart or getting unhinged or whether he's too smart by half with some of these contradictory statements well i think he's yeah i think he's he's basically trying to shore up all of supporting get in russia because they're having some alarming signs now that the russians are very quietly starting to say enough of this 55 in a poll that the kremlin actually ran 55 say they favored peace talks over only 25

who said they wanted to prolong war and uh he's he's in a bit of a bind because we don't really spend all that much time thinking about the Russian economy, though it is absolutely a central part of this war. It's one of the key fronts. And he's been getting some very alarming signs from top economists in Russia, including Elvira Nabi-Ulyana, who is chairwoman of the Central Bank, who recently sent messages to the Duma, which is their parliament, saying that, you know, this this can't call it a war in Russia. You have to call it a military operation. This needs to be approached very soberly, very soberly indeed. In fact, there has to be a fundamental restructuring of the Russian society because it is now getting so much out of our normal practices. It's taking away all of our kind of consumer economy and more and more of it's going into a kind of a war economy, which is what startling, is jumping up 35% in one year,

from 63 billion U.S. to about 90 billion, somewhere around that area. 90 billion for a country that basically its GDP is smaller than Russia, Canada, sorry, is no bigger than Canada's, is pretty startling. And then on top of that, for internal security, they're adding another 46 billion. They're increasing by half all the internal securities they have. 400,000 National Guard, intelligence units, secret police, all of them are bringing the total spending on defense and internal security up to 130 billion dollars. And that's taking away more and more of the regular economy. People are starting to find it hard to get the clothes they wanted now

because they're being turned into army gear, and factories are doing double and triple shifts, trying to turn out enough ammunition and other munitions that can be used in the war in Ukraine, and having a hard time keeping up. Their GDP has declined 7% since the sanctions had full force. This is not a pretty picture. So no matter how isolated the people in the Kremlin are and how much of a bubble they are,

they can't help noticing that when paper crosses their desks now, it's talking about a huge number of human casualties in the war and a vast almost unbelievable amount of damage and equipment and munitions and then on top of that a budget that has to be approached very soberly which in moscow probably has a double meaning. But it's, you know, it's really a very, very serious run up. So I think that Putin is somebody who's, I don't think he's flailing around. He's not the kind of guy to flail.

He's pretty cold, cool, calculating person, so we are led to believe. But he's also hearing from the Chinese and from the Indians that they don't like this war at all, and they want it ended as soon as possible. The Turks from near his border are also saying they want it ended as soon as possible. Very few friends in the world, only Iran, really. And really, nothing is going very well for them that on the battlefield or frankly at home right now and iran's probably a friend because they're making money out of the war by selling weapons to russia okay now um you you pointed out how

how russia has changed its tune on some key points here in the last little while but as you point out in your note to me so the americans have been changing uh their tune as well on some key areas well one key area in particular i'm sure your listeners will have noticed that uh recently there's been a number of quite dramatic attacks inside russia itself well inside r itself, 300, 400, 500 kilometers inside. In fact, in four days, two major fires broke out at shopping plazas near, right, very close to Moscow, in the suburbs of Moscow, essentially. This, you know, when asked about it, the Ukrainians always say, well, you know, the Russians have this smoking problem. They're always smoking carelessly. That's what's causing all these fires to break out. But in actual fact, there's clearly attacks going on inside Russia by Ukrainians.

And they appear to be using old Ukrainian, sort of Soviet era, I should say, not Ukrainian. They were actually Russian era, but Soviet and Ukrainian era drones of a particular sort. And they're using them to fly in apparently. But some military analysts are also convinced they're staging guerrilla attacks inside the country because they are able to pass through Russia, speaking Russian very easily. They're a real threat inside there as well. So the Americans have come out because they are able to pass through Russia, speaking Russian very easily.

They're a real threat inside there as well. So the Americans have come out, and they've been saying all along, we don't want you firing weapons inside Russia. We don't want you hitting inside Russia, because that would escalate the war. That would bring the dangers of the war closer to us all the time. Well, whether theicans have had a change of thought on that and think well you know frankly the america the russians have escalated all they're prepared to do anyways that's what they're doing now or they're beginning to think there's no way to really hold the ukrainians back given the hammering they're getting day after day from the air, drones and rockets and cruise missiles and the rest of it.

We can't really hold them back. So the Americans have now started, if you can believe the UK times, to be saying to the Ukrainians, well, OK, we're not going to forbid you to use weapons as long as you don't use our weapons. We don't want you using NATO weapons. Don't be using our cannons to fire into Russian territory. But if you have drones or old missiles or crews or any kind of missiles from the Soviet era that you made yourself or the Russians made, you can certainly be using it. And that's probably what they're doing right now, which means a very big deal because Russia is a very target rich country. It has masses of targets,

targets itself that are just sitting there, you know, power lines, fuel lines, water lines, railways, bridges, all of that, the infrastructure. And those are open to attack. And I think the Ukrainians will be attacking much more if the Russians continue to try and escalate these air attacks. And I think that's a dangerous way the war is going. But I don't see why the Ukrainians would hold back, quite frankly, given they've got that stuff. The Americans have made one other condition I should mention, and that is whatever the attack is in Russia, it has to be run by the rules of war or the Geneva Convention. In other words, no assassinations and no attacking civilians per se. You can go after infrastructure,

but you're not supposed to be going after civilians in the way that Russia is now going after them to the outrage of the UN and other human rights observers. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but I've got another question for you, and I'll get to it right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge right here on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, Wednesdays and Fridays, we're also on our YouTube channel. You can find how to get to that by looking at my profile on either Instagram or Twitter. Take you right there. There's no fee, no subscription fee.

You can watch The Bridge in production on Wednesdays and Fridays. Okay, we're back with Brian Stewart, Brian's last commentary for this year, 2022. And I guess that's what I want to get around to in terms of my question. I mean, I don't think we started the year thinking we were going to be looking at a prolonged conflict in Ukraine

after a Russian invasion. There was certainly talk of a Russian invasion as the year began, but most people at that time, as we well know, thought if they did do it, it would only last a couple of days and it would be all over. Here we are at the end of 2022. It's still very much ongoing, or at times it seems stepped up from the earlier days, the conflict now spreading, as Brian just outlined, in terms of inside Russia. Now, I want you to put your sort of thinking cap, predicting cap on and look into the future. It seems now generally accepted that we're looking at a prolonged conflict,

that this could last not weeks or months, but more years. What are you thinking on that front, first of all, in terms of length? And secondly, what are you thinking in terms of the significance of this war as it plays out in front of at times an astonished world at what it's seeing, but in a world that's involved on many levels in terms of at times an astonished world at what it's seeing but in a world that's involved on many levels in terms of support for Ukraine well I've thought for a long time there was going to be a very major cycle of conflict in the spring after the winter's over I'm changing my mind a little bit on that because I think the Ukrainians are going to be attacking

as soon as the ground is firm enough to handle their tanks and armor vehicles and the rest of it they absolutely have to keep the momentum up to keep western support up so that is my first prediction we will see some offensives beginning the next two maybe three weeks. But there will be very major battles in the spring.

If there's one thing that disturbs my thinking about that and makes me wonder is, you know, the Ukrainians are being asked to take an awful lot. This is really murderous kind of attacks because the temperatures there will go well below freezing. This is a civilian population that doesn't have the best health to begin with. And it's worn down. It's weary. I think we could be watching, looking at an enormous loss of life of the hundreds of thousands, potentially. Some health officials are warning us that when you don't have heating

when you have people crammed into one or two rooms where there's there is the only possibility for heating where this goes on you you could get uh ukraine becoming very afraid but their morale is so high their courage is so strong. It's just impossible to count them out. Therefore, I do think there will be a major fighting in the new year, unless Putin does one more giant flip-flop of all flops and goes for a peace agreement, which is impossible for anyone to predict right now. In terms of its meaning for our time,

I really put it up there with kind of Munich 1938 or 39. I think that this is an instance where the rule of law, if it means anything at all, certainly in the Central Europe, has to mean that Russia just can't desire to rebuild its great imperial vision of itself when it sees fit by attacking neighbors. And the stand has to be taken. The stand has been taken by one country.

The rest of us are all supporting it to some extent, but it's a safe support we're giving them. I think we can't lower this to a debate between just real politicians. What's real politic here? Forget the emotions. Forget the principles at stake. This is a very principled war. The Ukrainians, I think, are fighting for their own liberty against an imperial master, it's known in the past. And I think that's going to keep them going even beyond a point where most people would be looking for ways to get out of the war. And I think that's going to keep us

pretty much supporting them because I don't see how we can conceivably walk away from that. So it is a long war, not just for the Ukrainians and the Russians, but really for all of us. And, you know, the Ukrainians use a good line when they're talking about what they're fighting for, because what they say, and increasingly have been saying it lately when they worry about, you know, breaks within the alliance of countries that have been supporting them.

They say, we're not just fighting for our liberty. We're fighting for yours too. You know, we're the front line of this fight against Russia and against autocracy. And that's why you have to support us. And, you know, okay. I found this on the web for, they say, we are not just fighting for our liberty. We are fighting for yours. to you know where the front line of this fight against russia and against autocracy check it out thank you thank you siri isn't it amazing how they interrupt our conversations you're making a good point too so remake it yeah well i i mean, you know, I've made it. You know, I'll let Siri speak for herself. But I think, you know, it's no surprise that the Ukrainians are saying that.

And it seems to be having an impact, although clearly there are some Republicans in the States and perhaps some in France and Germany who are ready to back off a bit. Yeah, I think they are. It's well to remember that historically long wars tend to be long when people, one side or another or both, are fired by principle and vision. And the Russians are fired by, I think, a very evil desire to get back an empire which is questionable to begin with. And the Ukrainians are fired by a real vision of freedom and standing up and being free forever of that kind of boot on the neck, you know, the iron boots stamping on the neck.

And I think that that makes it very hard to call a war off, you know, despite the threats, the hardships and all the rest. And it makes it extraordinarily hard for something like NATO and the European Union to say, oh, well, you know, we've done pretty well our bit. We've given you a lot of weapons. We can't really help out much more. You know, we haven't even confronted the real, not the real challenge, a major challenge here, which is the whole finances of Ukraine.

Ukraine needs to be, you know, going to need a trillion dollars to repair and rebuild itself. All of that is going to be needed. And people are quite welcome to run around looking for diplomatic breakthroughs. And if they find it, all well and good. But I don't think they're going to find it anytime soon. And if you don't and you haven't found it, then at least get behind the main effort that is underway for basically all of us. All right.

We're going to call it a year on this conversation, Brian, and we're all better for it. So we're going to take the next couple of weeks are going to be a bit of a break for everybody. But we will see you again in the first week of January.

Who knows what will have happened on this story by then. Indeed. But we do know that you'll be able to bring us up to date. So, Brian Stewart, thank you as always, my friend. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. Brian Stewart with us. And wasn't that something near the end there when that other voice came in? Now, I said it was Siri at the time. Maybe it was Siri. And wasn't that something at the end, near the end there, when that other voice came in?

Now, I said it was Siri at the time. Maybe it was Siri. I don't know. I can't tell the difference between all these voices. It might have been Google. It might have been Zoom. It might have been who knows what it was. But whoever it was, was listening.

So Brian said, eh, probably the Russians. Maybe. Maybe. Okay. Great conversation. Brian will be back January 3rd. I believe that's the Tuesday in the first week of January. So he, as well as many of us, will be taking what we hope is considered a well-deserved break. We got some time for some end bits. You love those end bits, at least your mail suggests you do.

So 2022 has been a year of record busting on a lot of different fronts. So we're going to go through some of those. And I should say that these are in no particular order of importance, but the first one that I picked up was quite naturally, it was about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February caused a massive jump in energy and food costs, with the UN and agriculture organizations' food price index hitting a historic peak in March, and the cost of gas in Europe reached a record high.

And that can be blamed on the Ukraine war as well. The Eurozone annual inflation climbed steadily to 10.6 percent in October, the biggest increase since the index began in 1997 refugees the war also triggered the biggest wave of refugees in europe since the end of world war ii more than seven million ukrainians fled to other european countries and a further 6.9 million were displaced internally according to the the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR. North Korea fired a number of missiles into the Sea of Japan in response to large-scale joint military exercise staged by South Korea and the United States.

A particularly intense peak saw 23 missiles fired in 24 hours. That wasn't that long ago, just on November 2nd. Now, after 70 years on the throne, Britain's longest-serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth, passed away on September 8th, aged 96. Look at that, already three months ago. In some ways, it feels like yesterday. Before her massive state funeral, an estimated quarter of a million people

queued around the clock to view the coffin as it lay in state. Elon Musk. No surprise he's made the list here. It was a big year for Musk, the world's richest man whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at close to $200 billion at the start of December. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX added Twitter to his portfolio for $44 billion and swiftly caused controversy by firing half the staff, unbanning people who had been thrown off the platform,

including Donald Trump. Just today, I think he scrapped the moderation panel. I don't know what his plan is. I know the guy's a genius, but I don't get it. I don't get what he's doing. Certainly don't agree with it. Temperatures. Europe sweated through its hottest summer on record,

with records tumbling in many countries, including England, where the mercury topped 40 degrees Celsius for the first time. Forest fires linked to the hottest, driest conditions also guzzled more land than ever before. Over 600,000 hectares. conditions also guzzled more land than ever before. Over 600,000 hectares. The art collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, which included works by Cezanne, Klimt, and Van Gogh, was sold by Christie's for

$1.62 billion, the biggest amount ever for an art auction. Marilyn Monroe was a big hitter too, with one of her photo portraits by Andy Warhol selling for $195 million, making it the most expensive 20th century artwork. You liking this? You liking these records? Tennis Titans.

When Rafael Nadal won the French Open for the 14th time, the Spanish ace raised his own record of Grand Slam titles to 22. That's just ahead of Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer. It was also a year of farewells with two of the sport's greatest players calling time on their glittering careers, Federer and Serena Williams, who has 23 grand slams to her name. The 10th album by U.S. megastar Midnight's, that's Taylor Swift, caused such a frenzy that Spotify broke down as more fans sought to listen to it

over a single day than any other album. Ten of its tracks were listed in the top ten Billboard Hot 100, also a first. The Billboard Hot 100 is a staple for disc jockeys. Even I remember it from the 60s when I was a kind of DJ terrible. But I was a DJ of DJ terrible DJ, but I was a DJ in Churchill, Manitoba. And we used to do it every week, waiting for the Billboard Hot 100 to come in.

It was quite something. And, you know, you look to see, you know, where they all were, where the Beatles were, where the top Canadian band might be, you know, whether it was the Guess Who or whomever it may be. Less glorious for Swift was her topping the list for the worst private jet CO2 emission offenders among celebrities for her extensive private jet use.

In August, when she was awarded the unenviable prize, celebrities for her extensive private jet use in August. When she was awarded the unenviable prize, she had already clocked up to 170 flights in her private jet. And finally, we mentioned this when it happened a couple of weeks ago, in November, the world's population, which numbered 2.5 billion in 1950, exceeded 8 billion, according to the UN. Well, well, well. Okay, look ahead to the rest of the week.

Tomorrow, it's Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. He'll be by. We'll get his thoughts on last night's by-election victory. I'm not sure it's been declared official quite yet, but it's certainly a wide gap. In favor of the Liberals, and we talked about this a number of times in the last couple of weeks

on the importance of that by-election, as important as by-elections ever are. We'll talk about that, I'm sure. The Liberals holding on to that seat after Pierre Polyev had spent a fair amount of time working on that riding. Turnout was horrible low. Really low. Really low.

And I don't know what that means. They usually are low in turnouts and by-elections, but still, this was really low. So we'll talk to Bruce. I'm sure he'll have some thoughts on Elon Musk as well and his comments about Dr. Fauci. So that's tomorrow. Thursday is your turn, so if you have some comments,

and some of them have been coming in, I'm trying to focus it around what did you think was the biggest story of the year right a couple of lines should suffice in terms of naming your biggest story and perhaps the reason why you think it is the biggest story and already there's been a variety of different answers so that's great to hear. So don't be shy. Send it in. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The ranter will be by as well. The ranter, formerly known as Random, he'll be by. He's been asked, implored by some of you listeners,

to do a rant that says nice things about something. It's Christmas. Be nice. Well, we'll see. We'll see whether that happens. Friday, good talk, of course, with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson and a year-end program with a difference. We're not going to go with the traditional kind of year-end,

who was the best this, who was the best that, who did the worst this, and who did the worst that. I guess there'll be a little bit of that, but we're going to try and raise it up a notch, raise it up a level in terms of the discussion. So that's Friday on Good Talk, Chantel and Bruce. And both Wednesday and Friday are available also on the YouTube channel, as we've pointed out before.

That's going to wrap it up for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.