Newsletter July 2007 #69

Table of Contents:

Editor's Remarks

What elements constitute a failed state? Two are obvious. One is that the national government (or any local government) cannot exercise its authority over a significant portion of its territory. The second is the loss of control of its police and military. By these standards, parts of Mexico are truly sliding into the abyss.

In much of northern Mexico, honest police, crusading journalists, and upright politicians do not last for very long. The tenure of one recent Chief of Police in a border town was only a few hours before he was assassinated. Narcotics and illegal immigration are two of the World's most lucrative industries, and they dominate the economy of northern Mexico. There is also a desire to control both sides of the border -- and officials on the American side have been coming under fire from increasingly well-armed and reckless criminals. But what is even more disturbing is the growing presence on the border (or sometimes over it) of rogue elements of the Mexican military.

The lure of money, the thrill, and the impotence of the authorities has been luring elite Special Forces soldiers from Mexico, Guatemala and other Latin American states into the ranks of organized crime. Los Zetas -- a Mexican drug trafficking organization -- has been luring members of Mexico's Airmobile Special Forces Group and Los Kaibiles (elite Special Forces soldiers from both countries) into their ranks to attack rivals and police in Mexico. Now, these special forces/gangsters are also percolating into the US -- one shudders to think of what they may teach local gangs. As a sanctuary area for blatant criminality, Northern Mexico is rapidly becoming a major threat to security in two nations.

-- JT

On Allegations of Torture

The American humorist P.J. O'Rourke once made an observation about the relative value of the 1913 Encyclopaedia Britannica compared to all encyclopaedias written since the end of the First World War. He pointed out that this was the last edition where observations about non-Western societies tended to be both candid and accurate; but also observed that this edition was the last full expression of that unbounded optimism about the future which used to characterize the West before 'The War To End All Wars.' To illustrate this point, he mentioned the reference about torture -- which pointed out that in Europe, this was (in 1913) an obsolete practice whose day had ended.

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The Anatomy of a Jihadist Lawsuit

In the United States and to a lesser extent in Canada, the supporters of the global Jihad movement have often filed lawsuits against so-called 'Islamophobes', 'extremists' and 'racists' who keep a close eye upon and occasionally identify the Jihad's Wahhabi and Salafist front organizations. These suits have included legal attacks on David Harris, one of Canada's top experts in terrorism; and Ezra Levant of the Western Standard magazine for reprinting some of the Danish cartoons last year (in this case, the plaintiff opted to use the Alberta Human Rights Commission as his vehicle of choice for legal harassment). Other suits have been launched against key analysts of the Jihad in the US, such as Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, and Stephen Emerson.

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Your Forgotten Line of Defence

Our immigration and customs officers (now combined with mixed results into the Canadian Border Services Agency -- the CBSA) tend to be fairly quiet in public and are seldom heard from -- this doesn't mean that they are satisfied... The author of the following submission is one of our frontline workers in protecting our society from terrorism, and he and his colleagues have some complaints

The next time you travel through a border crossing, and the officer greeting you seems a bit tense, we would like you to keep in mind the current issues affecting who you may incorrectly perceive as the 'disgruntled' officers.

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Of Men and Medals

Last winter, I was privileged to be a guest at a RCMP Officers Mess Dinner. It was interesting to observe the formal customs of their service and see how many of their traditions came from military origins; the Mounties are -- at heart -- a paramilitary gendarmerie, rather than your friendly local assembly of constabulary. Both sides of the tables were lined with senior Mounties in their red serge tunics, but what was truly interesting was seeing how many of them sported medals from participation in Military missions to the former Yugoslavia, Haiti and other points of interest.

More than a few of the RCMP officers present at the dinner also sported a small pin (one fellow had two) that signified the award of a commendation for courage. One Mountie I talked to about the pin had earned his by literally dragging a Serbian mayor out of the middle of a Croatian lynch mob, carrying the unconscious man to safety and staring down a number of gunmen as he did so. Judging from the tunics at this dinner, one could see that this sort of courage is not rare among our national police force and that the legacy of Walsh and Steele is very much alive. The core of the RCMP seems more than sound regardless of whatever may flake off from the Force from the current scandals in the Mounties' headquarters.

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Alexander Mackenzie's Bookshelf

A Theory of Combat

Probably one of the best books on modern warfare ever written was Dick Simpkin's Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Manoeuvre Warfare in the 21^st Century. It would be nice to provide more bibliographic information, but the Institute's copy of this extraordinary but much overlooked study went walkabouts a couple of years ago and the search for a replacement has been fruitless (we even violated the Bibliophile's code and ordered from Amazon.com, so far without result).

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"Such is the folly of mankind. Watch for the wolves, and let the weasels slide in the door. The most bloodthirsty of predators, size be damned"

"The past is an uncertain guide to the future, but it is the only one we have."

It would be unjust and ungenerous to suggest that the literature on the causes of war is entirely useless, but such a judgment has much to recommend it.

The Mackenzie Institute

The Institute was formed in 1986 to provide research and comment on such diverse subjects as terrorism, organized crime, political extremism, propaganda, conflict and other such matters. It does not shy away from controversy.

The Institute holds to the proposition that our democratic institutions need to be defended and enhanced, and works to do what it can to protect the stability of Canadian society.

Those who support its purposes are invited to become Friends of the Institute, and those who contribute $60 (or more) to it, receive its publications for the next twelve months.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca