The Mackenzie Institute

NEWSLETTER #85

 

Editor’s Remarks:

Now that Moammar Gadhafi is dead and there are hopes that Libya will return to stability, many commentators are wondering if it is time for NATO to go after Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

It is true he is a paid-up monster with thousands of deaths on his hands. He is the heir to an even more monstrous father and is chummy with both Iran and Hizbollah. Nonetheless, perhaps it is time to be prudent.

Many Russians could not wait to get rid of Czar Nicholas II, and they got Lenin and Stalin instead. The French dumped Louis XVI and ended up after years of bloody tumult with Napoleon. The Nicaraguans dumped the Somoza clan and got Ortega and the Sandinistas. Knocking a tyrant off centre stage is a fine thing but too often a worse one is lurking in the wings.

Assad is pragmatic enough not to be entirely committed to Iran or Hizbollah; he can be dealt with. He also protects the Alawites, the Druze and the Christians. His main opposition are Sunnis backed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Oust Assad and 25% of the Syrian population will be in mortal peril as the Wahhabi/Salafist revolution gets underway.

One hates to say this, but let us please leave Syria alone. Assad might be a monster but it is always better to cope with a goblin than an ogre.

 

John Thompson is Editorial Director of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: institute@mackenzieinstitute.com

Hunting al Qaeda

2011 looks like a winning season in the hunt for the principal members of al Qaeda. Consider the following:

Five key deaths in as many months are good news, but this is no reason to relax. In essence, any counter-terror campaign is an exercise in attrition.

Terrorist groups will keep forming cells and developing people with experience in leadership, operational planning, recruiting and technical skills like bomb-making. If they produce such people faster than the authorities can arrest or kill them, or force them into hiding, then the terrorists are winning. If the reverse occurs, then the authorities are winning.

The process is seldom swift. The IRA were the foremost experts on bomb design in the terrorist world in the early 1980s, with such masterpieces as the 1984 Brighton Hotel bombing . A decade of determined counter-terror effort later and they were mostly reduced to pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails in London. The British held a number of advantages in that decade such as good intelligence, cooperation with Ireland, and an increasingly fatigued Catholic population in Ulster; all of which allowed the British to get on top of the IRA in the attritional struggle.

Al Qaeda had the better part of a decade to gel together and had considerable advantages during the 1990s. The hunt for some of its members is likely to go on for a long time. This is the track record of targeted US killings of senior al Qaeda members so far:

  1. Khalid Habib was a rising star within al Qaeda because of his great experience in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq. A Predator got him in his Toyota SUV in South Waziristan in October 2008. A highly experienced terrorist, it is still unclear whether he was a Moroccan or Egyptian.

  2. Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi was hit by a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone in November 2002. He was believed to be the senior al Qaeda leader in Yemen; and was killed in a remote corner of that country. Five other al Qaeda members were with him in his SUV when it was destroyed, including Kamal Derwish, an American citizen also known as Ahmed Hijaz, who may have helped recruit the Lackawanna Six.

  3. Usama al-Kini, a Kenyan on the FBI’s most wanted list was wanted for the bombing of the Mariott hotel in Islamabad. The CIA Drone Program celebrated New Year’s Day 2009 with a Predator strike on an al Qaeda safe house in South Waziristan. The same missile attack also accounted for Sheik Ahmed Salim Swedan, his Kenyan lieutenant.

  4. Abu Laith al-Libi, one al-Qaeda's most senior figures and on the U.S.'s Afghanistan 'wanted list', was killed in January 2008 by a Predator drone in Pakistan. Apparently a Libyan, he was killed along with four other AQ members. Canadians may recall he was a friend of the Khadr family.

  5. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan was the Kenyan leader of al Qaeda in Somalia, and was wanted for his part in the African Embassy bombings as well as the 2002 Mombasa attacks in Kenya, when he was intercepted in Southern Somalia in September 2009. US Navy Seals shot up his vehicle from two helicopters.

  6. Abu Khabab al Masri (aka Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar), was the Egyptian head of al Qaeda’s chemical and biological weapons programs and had also trained Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui while heading a major AQ training facility in Afghanistan. He was killed with five other AQ members in a Predator attack on a house in South Waziristan in July 2008.

  7. Baitulloah Mehsud was killed by a Hellfire missile from a Predator in August 2009 along with his aide, seven bodyguards, his wife and her parents in South Waziristan. Mehsud had assembled several Taliban factions into Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan; which had some 5,000 gunmen and may have been responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto along with dozens of suicide bombings.

  8. Abu Hamza Rabia an Egyptian was reportedly the third in command of al Qaeda when he was killed with four of his bodyguards and two others in a Predator attack in a house in North Waziristan in December 2005.

  9. Rashid Rauf, the British and Pakistani architect of the 2006 plot to down a number of airliners more or less simultaneously, was reported killed by a US Predator drone attack on a Taliban compound in North Waziristan in November 2008.

  10. Nek Muhammed Wazir was a charismatic Taliban commander and a facilitator for al Qaeda (and various other groups within the AQ network). He was operating out of a haven carved out of South Waziristan when a Predator Drone got him with a Hellfire missile in June 2004 along with five of his subordinates.

  11. Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid (also known as Saeed al-Masri) was an Egyptian and early member of al Qaeda. He was killed in May 2010 by a Predator Drone Strike in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. At one point, he handled al Qaeda’s finances but at the time of his death he was a commander of their forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  12. Haitham al-Yemeni was an al Qaeda explosives expert from Yemen. At the time he was killed by a Predator Drone in North Waziristan in March 2005, it was thought he was being promoted and was about to go into hiding.

  13. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the al Qaeda franchise in Iraq, was killed in June 2006 along with his lieutenant and spiritual adviser Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, two of the latter’s family members, and four bodyguards. Two smart bombs were dropped on what they fondly thought of as their safe house.

The American targeted killings of key AQ personnel take a lot of work. The targets have to be identified by name and then by appearance and searching for them can take years. Once located, it may take a while to track them and determine the best time for a successful attack. In a Hollywood thriller, the whole process might look like a matter of hours or days. In reality it takes far longer.

There are critics of the US who believe that somehow these figures should have been arrested and subjected to a criminal trial. However, these critics need to take several factors into account. The Yemeni interior, Somalia, and Pakistani tribal areas like Waziristan are outside of the control of any competent legal authority. Moreover, commando raids are far more sophisticated and dangerous operations than having a Predator flying at 30,000 feet under remote control. The rough spots in the well-planned and rehearsed Osama bin Laden raid show how difficult commando operations can be.

The people who were killed were not so much fugitives from justice as they were actively involved in planning further attacks. Police seldom subdue and arrest suspects with a loaded guns in their hands, they shoot them to prevent harm to themselves or the public. The use of Predators with Hellfire missiles is the same dynamic writ large.

The process and system to hunt down and destroy these figures took years to establish, but it looks like it is finally taking full effect now. Consider the following:

Year
Killings
2002
1
2003
0
2004
1
2005
2
2006
1
2007
1
2008
4
2009
3
2010
1
2011
5

Still, this is not the time for the personnel in this program to rest on their laurels. There are a number of identified senior members of al Qaeda who have so far escaped any kind of justice. They include;

  1. Saif al-Adel: An Egyptian, once in charge of Osama bin Laden’s security, he was jailed by Iran in 2003 and may be at large now.

  2. Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (numerous aliases): An Egyptian who was involved in the East Africa Embassy bombings and sat on the AQ Sura Council, he is currently believed to be under house arrest in Iran.

  3. Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali: Egyptian member of AQ wanted for his role in the African Embassy bombings; reportedly killed in a US airstrike in northern Pakistan in 2010 but this is unconfirmed.

  4. Jamal Ahmad Mohammed al Badawi: A Yemeni involved in the attack on the USS Cole who is in Yemeni custody (from which he has escaped twice before) and the US really wants to apprehend him.

  5. Abdel Droukdel (aka Abou Mossab Abdel Wadoud): A link between AQ and the old Algerian GIA, now the head of the AQ franchise al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

  6. Jaber A. Elbaneh: An American and member of the Lackawanna Six; currently in prison in Yemen.

  7. Adam Yahiye Gadhan: A convert to Islam and a US citizen (with a treason trial waiting if taken alive). Not an inner member of al Qaeda but an occasional propagandist.

  8. Khalid al Habib: An alias (as is Khalid al Harbi) for the Moroccan commander of AQ forces inside Afghanistan.

  9. Mustafa Hamid: Previously a liaison between AQ and the Iranians; jailed by the Iranians in 2003, he may be at large now.

  10. Isnilon Totoni Hapilon: An Abu Sayyaf leader involved in kidnapping and murder, he is currently on what passes for medical leave, whereabouts unknown.

  11. Ali Saed Bin Ali El-Hoorie: Involved in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.

  12. Hamza al-Jawfi: A Gulf Arab, probably AQ’s current head of external operations – although he has been reported killed by a Predator strike in both May 2010 and 2011.

  13. Saad bin Laden: Osama bin Laden’s adult son and aide, possibly killed by an American Hellfire missile in 2009.

  14. Abu Yahya al-Libi (aka Hasan Qayid and Yunis al-Sahrawi): A Libyan who has emerged as a leading AQ theologian and spokesman. He escaped from the Bagram Detention facility in July 2005.

  15. Abu Khalil al-Madani: Probably a Saudi and on the AQ Sura Council since 2008.

  16. Ahmed Ibrahim al-Mughassil: Involved in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.

  17. Midhat Mursi: Egyptian explosives expert who also was heavily involved in AQ chemical and biological weapons experiments.

  18. Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed al-Nasser: Involved in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and linked to the Saudi Shiite Group Saudi Hizbollah.

  19. Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso (numerous aliases): Veteran bomb-maker with much experience, now believed hiding out with AQAP in the Yemeni interior.

  20. Matiur Rehman: A Pakistani militant and AQ planning chief and bomb designer.

  21. Nazih Abdul –Hamed Nabi-al Ruqai’: (aka Anas al-Liby and other names): Wanted for the East Africa Embassy bombings and reputed to be one of al Qaeda’s computer experts; current whereabouts unknown.

  22. Adnan el Shukrijumah: A Saudi who lived in Canada and the US for over 15 years, he was reported to have become chief of AQ’s External Operations Council in August 2010, which places him in charge of attacks outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  23. Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi: A former aide to Osama bin Laden and now the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)

  24. Ibrahim Salihh Mohammed al-Yacoub: Involved in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.

  25. Abdul Rahman Yasin: An American of Iraqi descent, he was one of the AQ bomb-builders for 1993 WTC Attack. He has been missing since being jailed by Saddam Hussein in 2002

  26. Ayman al Zawahri: An Egyptian, deputy to Osama bin Laden, and now the current leader of AQ.

With this much work still ahead of them, there is only one thing that needs to be said to the US Targeted Killing program: Good luck and happy hunting.

 

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Chaos and Kerplunk

There is a children’s game called Kerplunk that was first marketed in 1967. The game features a transparent plastic cylinder perforated with numerous holes through which thin plastic straws are laced. Then a handful of marbles are dumped in the top of the cylinder. The players take turns pulling the straws out until the marbles can no longer be supported and they all come tumbling down.

Aside from the under ten-set, Kerplunk wasn’t much of an amusement although it certainly seems like a fitting analogy for our times.

The marbles are the looming crises that threaten to beset us and most of them are touch each other. The straws are the safeguards, practices and conditions that have kept the marbles from dropping.

The Subprime Follies

Most of the World has not recovered from the ‘Great Recession’ triggered by the US Housing Bubble in 2008 and now another recession looms before us. While there is no consensus among economists as to what constitutes a depression rather than a recession; it would seem having a second recession before recovering from the first must come awfully close.

There is a terrifying assortment of marbles touching each other in a recession: Major increases in unemployment, shortages of credit for economic growth, shrinking industrial output, diminished trade, increased bankruptcy and so on. These are conditions that have almost become the new ‘normal’ since 2008 and may worsen; particularly if Greece and some other nations default on their debts.

What straws were pulled out of the Kerplunk Tower? According to the January 2011 findings of the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: “The crisis was avoidable and was caused by: widespread failures in financial regulation, including the Federal Reserve’s failure to stem the tide of toxic mortgages; dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance including too many financial firms acting recklessly and taking on too much risk; an explosive mix of excessive borrowing and risk by households and Wall Street that put the financial system on a collision course with crisis. Key policy makers were ill prepared for the crisis, lacking a full understanding of the financial system they oversaw; and there were systemic breaches in accountability and ethics at all levels.”

The findings are entirely accurate except that they may not be strong enough in their condemnation of the US government. Legislators slackened the reins on Wall Street in the late 1990s and failed to curb them despite repeated warnings between 1999 and 2008. Moreover, governments’ addictions to deficit spending have severely hampered all ability to cope with crisis and the recovery from it.

Quantitative Easing (the practice of some governments of summoning money out of thin air and using it to buy their own debt) was a short term solution in Europe and the US in 2008, but there is only one way that confidence in the money markets will be restored. Governments have to intelligently trim their spending. There is little sign of an appetite for that in the US and much of Europe.

There was another straw pulled out of the tower. The bankers and traders of Wall Street like most politicians, most bureaucrats and too many others had become an inclusive world of self-selected experts. Convinced of their own genius and stripped of concepts like modesty and obligation, they had taken to the absence of regulation like alcoholics in an unlocked distillery. Both the internal and external governors on their behaviour had vanished.

It is interesting to compare the relative integrity of Canada’s financial institutions with their American and Western European counterparts. The internal and external governors on the behaviour of Canadian banks have weakened in recent decades but not vanished. Canadian banks tend to follow the old Edinburgh system and most of their senior personnel know each other and consult with each other regularly on the industry’s practices.

There is an anecdote (related to the author by a senior official with one of the big banks) that when the first Wall Streeter came up with the new ‘financial instruments’ based on Sub-Prime Mortgages, he met with vice presidents from all of Canada’s main banks at the Canadian Bankers Association. They heard his sales pitch, looked at each other, and said something along the lines of ‘No thanks’. An anecdote to be sure but some prominent Canadian bankers like Ed Clark and John Cleghorn made no secret of their dislike for both the flim-flam dazzle and some of the products associated with the sub-prime mortgages such as CDOs (Collateral Debt Obligations).

Canadian governments have also opposed the greater deregulation of our banks and financial institutions. Whatever beefs one might have with the governments of Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien, or Stephen Harper; successive finance ministers have kept a tighter rein than their counterparts elsewhere. This prudence might be characterized as some sort of Scottish Presbyterian hangover from the 19th Century but tighter regulation of our banks has given our national finances a greater stability. Let us remember this.

The mass of marbles in a Kerplunk tower all touch each other and this is likewise true of the analogy.

The Food Crisis

When Eugene Whelan, the longtime Liberal Minister of Agriculture, was President of the World Food Council and the Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), he often talked to friends and colleagues about the situation the world would face in the middle of the 21st Century. It was obvious that the world’s food production was not keeping pace with population growth and at some point a crisis would occur.

What Ambassador Whelan and many FAO officials did not expect were the following developments: Around the world, more liberalized trade and increasing economic freedom would lead to improved economic growth in many nations. More and more societies urbanized which meant that many women entered the work force and had better chances to become educated. In almost all cultures, this means they have fewer children. The predictions of a Global population of over 11 billion people by the middle of the 21st Century have fallen off; median predictions from the UN and the US now see a peak total population of around 9 billion by 2050, and some estimates anticipate that human numbers will peak at 7.3 billion in the late 2030s and slowly decline after that period.

However, what the FAO also forgot was that prosperous people want more on their dinner plates. Growing prosperity in much of what used to be called the Third World has accelerated the demand for food. Nowhere is this more obvious than in China and India. In China, before the economic reforms of the late 1980s, supermarkets, convenience stores and the like were virtually unheard of; this year such stores in China expect to sell $370 Billion worth of food-products to Chinese consumers.

Other nations, although smaller than China and India, are also starting to experience rapid and sustained economic growth. Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, Thailand and Vietnam are among them. Some of these countries were net exporters of food, now they may evolve also into net importers as their economies develop and mature. As an aside, back when some of these countries were more socialistic (or were outright Communist), they were barely able to feed themselves. Adopting capitalism allowed growth – a point utterly lost on the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ types.

Set against this was a steady increase in food production as new strains and techniques constantly appeared. However, even with the growth in population slowing, crop yields have been slowing too – especially for wheat and rice. The fruits of the 1960s Green Revolution are tapering off, and the Global effects of higher input and labour costs are being felt by many farmers around the world, while getting a reasonable profit is harder to accomplish.

In the first five months of 2008 food prices reached unprecedented heights -- essentially 115% higher than they had been in 2004 around the world. Particularly high demand on grains and cooking oils sparked food riots and violent protests in some 35 countries. This sparked a dramatic intervention by the US, UK and China (domestically) to stabilize prices which then dropped to a level about 40% above the 2004 benchmark.

During 2009 and 2010, prices climbed steadily back to where they were in the peak of 2008 and then continued to climb. In February 2011, prices were essentially double where they had been in the summer of 2010. This was the real cause of the unrest in the Middle East, beginning in Tunisia and then Egypt, followed by civil war in Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.

Troublesome nations like Iran are nervous about an even more unsettled citizenry than usual; and the standard reaction of other troubled Middle Eastern elites is to provoke confrontation with Israel as a distraction. The risk of a major war in the Middle East is climbing. This in turn keeps oil prices high and may drive them into the stratosphere still if a war actually manifests.

The main driving element for higher food prices is a combination of the globalized market, higher demand, and commodities speculation. As outlined in books such as Andrew Nikiforuk’s Pandemonium and Paul Roberts’ The End of Food; food production has become incredibly intricate with the stress on maximized production at the lowest cost. There is now little room for major error.

The commodities speculation that has done so much to drive up food and energy prices in the last few years is also a direct response to the Great Recession. With so much market uncertainty and the loss of so much investment capital, commodities speculation is one of the few reasonably safe activities for investors. Unfortunately, as it so often does, the threat of scarcity can drive prices up and induce shortages thanks to stockpiling.

The globalized market not only places a heavy stress on the most efficient possible production but the shipment of so much food so quickly has ushered in a virtually universal disease and pest environment. In 2001, illegal imported sausages from Mongolia caused a major outbreak of a new strain of Hoof and Mouth disease in Britain that resulted in the culling of 10 million animals and a loss of $16 Billion to the British economy. In 2007, an African fungus essentially wiped out most of the North American bee population; with catastrophic effects for many crops that depend upon bees for pollination. The rapid spread of UG99 Yellow Rust from Uganda throughout northern Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia in four years is another case in point of the effect of globalization on one small mutation in what had been a long vanquished problem.

Genetically modified foods are a partial solution, but there is also ample evidence that the diversity of crop types allows for much greater resilience. Optimum solutions require careful controls, something every farmer instinctively knows is not always achievable.

The other aspect of the globalized market is that financial analysts now pay close attention to every report of poor weather, parasites and pests, and every estimate of production around the world. This results in immediate speculative commodities transactions on trivial reports. Minor news items and speculation about weather patterns are sparking immediate Global price hikes.

In most years over the last two decades, Global consumption of food has outstripped production with the net effect that overall surpluses have been slowly diminishing. In the US, for example, stockpiles of corn, soybean and wheat are all slightly less than they were last year and demands in advance of the harvesting of this year’s crop are heavier than ever. Many nations are finding it harder to maintain a strategic grain reserve of 3-4 months’ supply; even the US strategic grain reserve shrank to 2.7 million tons of wheat (with no cheese, powdered milk or other critical stocks) in early 2008.

We have been taking food for granted for too long, and have been ignoring too much of the human and material capital necessary to feed ourselves. In a game like Kerplunk, all the marbles drop at once. Our lack of attention to the most fundamental industry of them all will have dire consequences.

Energy Woes

The high price of food underlies the increased turmoil in the Middle East this year. The indirect risk for the agricultural sector also comes out of the effect the food crisis is having on energy costs. Unrest in the Middle East invariably means higher costs for oil and natural gas. Increases in fuel oil and natural gas (from which most fertilizers are derived) then drive up food costs yet again.

Modern farming techniques expend fuel for plowing, planting, spraying pesticide and fertilizers and for harvesting. The annual demand for fertilizer consumes about 4% of global production of natural gas. While economists have found direct correlations between the price of fuel and farm profitability, most farmers would wonder why anyone would ever need to research such a question when the connection is self-evident.

The matter of exact timing is still being debated but “Peak Oil” -- that point where the Global discovery of new sources of oil is outstripped by production – was predicted to occur sometime between 2004 and 2015. Inevitably, while demand is not outpacing production because of the renewed recession, in a few years this will be the case. In any event, the days of cheap oil have long been over. Production costs for both oil and natural gas have nowhere to go but up.

Peak oil may be a misnomer, the real issue is cheap oil. We have plenty of oil available that is more expensive and environmentally risky to extract.

There are as yet untapped reserves of oil and fields that are far from being fully exploited. The bad news is that the easily available light sweet crude from the Middle East (which had the lowest refining costs) are not just in heavy demand but it is clear that some fields will soon be mostly depleted.

The newer sources of oil and natural gas are all more expensive to develop. These include deep water wells off the continental shelves (with well heads deeper than 200m). As was seen in the 2010 British Petroleum accident in the Gulf of Mexico, accidents this deep are very difficult to control and the environmental clean-up is very expensive.

In 2007, the world had 1,317 trillion barrels of conventional oil in existing reserves – 42 years’ worth of oil remaining at the 2007 consumption rate of 31.1 billion barrels of oil a year. The world also has between 2.8 and 3.3 trillion barrels locked up in shale oils (62% of which appear to be in the US); and more remains to be found. However, oil shale is very expensive to extract and refine.

Canada’s Tar Sands also constitute a reserve of 1.7 trillion barrels of oil; but only about 10-15% of it is economically recoverable with current prices and technologies. Like oil shales, oil from the tar sands is expensive to process and seems to carry a high environmental price although, as always, the environmental lobby oversells its case.

In 1996, crude oil was selling for $20 per barrel; the price reached $147.10 in 2008, dipped again to $40 in mid-2009, and is just coming off a high of $126.65 in early April 2011 and is hovering around $1.05 in late September. We should not expect to see oil prices stay much below $100 often or for very long anytime in the next few years.

The ethanol diversion may prove to be just that – an economic diversion. While Brazil’s experiment with sugar is proving economically successful (their ethanol plants can switch in seconds to making crystallized sugar for human consumption and then back again) American ethanol production is consuming 40% of its corn crop and only yielding 8% of its fuel requirements. This is thanks to massive subsidies and technological inefficiencies that may never be overcome. It is also driving up livestock feed prices around the world and contributing to the overall grain shortage.

Economists dread stagnant economic growth when combined with inflation; but despite all the rosy words and pasted on smiles of reassurance, this is precisely the situation we face. Food and oil costs are creating inflationary circumstances for consumers, even as our economies slow down still more. The risk of ‘stagflation’ is already being realized in some European countries.

Corn ethanol programs are another straw in our Global ‘Kerplunk’ tower except in this case it makes more sense to remove the straw than to keep it there. Other costly ‘green’ energy solutions to power generation make little sense at all if they also keep the cost of electricity too high. Windmills and such might be a part of any society’s power generation solutions but it may be folly in the long run to expect too much of them.

The problem is that logic and clear thinking has become scarce today.

Political Correctness

If there is a better technique for shutting your eyes, sticking your fingers into your ears, and going ‘Nyah, nyah, nyah; I am not listening” than resorting to the inverted ethics that characterize political correctness, it has yet to be discovered. There is a whole class of bureaucrats, politicians and commentators that deserve to be given a paddling and sent to their rooms until they are ready to behave themselves.

George Orwell’s novel 1984 warned us about the dangers of the use of inverted ethics and the control of language by a political class to dominate society. As Orwell’s hapless characters in the novel would put it: Too Doubleplusungood for us to fail to imagine that an entire political culture would see the novel as a primer to guide their behavior rather than a warning about traps to avoid. (For those who do not understand the reference to ‘Doubleplusungood’ and think it so much ‘Duckspeak’ – read the book).

Postmodernist thought sets itself against classical liberalism, rejects the West’s value systems, thinks history is unimportant and dismisses all cultural relationships against the needs of the moment. Naturally, the last of the old Romantic-Era rebels who opposed Classical Liberalism and the tradition of the Enlightenment embraced Postmodernism. The Left took to it like a Junkie to cheap heroin and we’ve been living with the results ever since, particularly as the gestalt that resulted spread through all our institutions.

In the last 30 years, much of the old ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ distinction has become meaningless. American Democrats and Republicans debate by shouting slogans at each other and no debates of any real import occur anymore. Wall Street has abandoned prudence and given itself over to inventing new ‘financial instruments’ in unfettered greed. But who has been running Wall Street the last few decades but the products of the same self-selected ‘elite’ schools that send lawyers to Washington? The core of the America’s political parties and its financial institutions come from the same background and exclude all others from their select circles.

European bureaucrats and parliamentarians are little better. Ignoring the screams of outrage from the streets of their cities as waves of Islamic immigrants settle in as colonists, they dismiss and prosecute those who raise the alarm. One can almost imagine them saying ‘Well, this is the natural outcome of the post-colonial rejection of Western hegemonism and so we should be tolerant…’

Fundamentals like sound economic practices, security of food supply, and all those other tedious boring things are so unimportant compared to insuring that a new generation of youngsters do not have their minds cluttered up by old-fashioned Enlightenment thinking. Our past has become unimportant as it interferes with an exciting new future imagined by people who resent details.

Perhaps things are not so bad here in Canada as our Parliamentarians are not always mindlessly partisan and certainly have to be answerable to their constituents. Regardless, we have seen the future elsewhere and it does not look good.

‘Kerplunk’ and someday soon we’ll lose all our marbles… if we haven’t lost our own already.

 

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Royalty and Canada

Between a visit by the Queen’s grandson and his new bride, and the Harper Government’s announcement about the return of the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force; a minor debate about the monarchy and Canada has resumed. Frankly, it is hard to imagine how any Canadian could possibly be against the idea of the monarchy and the role it plays in our government and society.

Unfortunately, too many Canadians are not that well informed about the nature of their government and the monarch’s role in it. A 2002 Ekos Research Associates Poll found that 69% of Canadians think the Prime Minister is the head of the Canadian state while 9% thought that was the function of the Governor General. Only 5% correctly identified the Queen as our head of state.

A poll taken by Ipsos Reid in October 2009 reported that 53% of Canadians want Canada to end its constitutional ties with the monarchy after Queen Elizabeth II dies. Worse still, the same poll found that some 60% of Canadians believe the monarch and her family to be celebrities and nothing more.

A sampling of published letters to the editor in various Canadian newspapers revealed a wide number of negative opinions about the monarchy and arguments about why Canada should sever its connections with it. Some writers opined that the monarchy was a link to our ‘colonial past’ and a potential insult to newcomers from diverse backgrounds. Others held that the role of the monarchy represented a fundamental immaturity that Canada could dispense with.

Alas, the Tower of London has not been available for imprisoning and beheading traitors since the 11th Lord Lovat was dispatched in 1747 for siding with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the last men to be held and executed there were German spies in the Second World War. Nor has any case of lese majesty against the British Crown been prosecuted since 1715. In the absence of dungeons and big sharp axes, the defence of the monarchy is going to have to be waged with reason.

The first civics lesson for Canadians about the monarchy is to understand precisely what a Parliamentary monarchy is and what it means. The great British novelist Terry Pratchett had one of his characters in his novel, Soul Music, observe: “Here’s an important rule: Never give a monkey the key to the banana plantation.” P.J. O’Rorke also observed that giving politicians access to power was the equivalent of handing the keys to the liquor cabinet and to the car to young boys. The oldest story we have, the Epic of Gilgamesh, describes the vexation that an untrammelled leader can be to his people.

It is a fundamental aspect of Western society for the last 3,000 years that we are governed because we allow ourselves to be governed. All through the history of the Western world, it is clear that most of us occasionally recognize a need for executive power in the hands of our leaders and that we otherwise resent and distrust its exercise. The struggle to develop and control political power is the history of democracy and after many centuries of painful evolution we have two models that work.

There are two basic forms of democratic government: Republics and Parliamentary Monarchies. The difference between the two largely rests on the availability of executive power balanced against the power of the legislatures and the judiciary.

In a republic, the president has the executive power but the only way to guarantee (hopefully) that it won’t be used too much is to hedge the President’s office with laws and regulations. The problem is the perennial human itch to acquire and use executive power. Most republics are short-lived for that reason as there is always someone eager to ‘reform’ the Constitution for some noble reason that leaves them with more authority in their hands. So far the Americans have managed to last 224 years without fraying the chains around the office of the President too much. Other republics have managed to last a few days.

Parliamentary monarchies operate around a very simple compact. The monarch holds executive power with the implicit promise that he or she does not exercise it. Laws and constitutions can be changed and often are -- all too easily. Tradition and custom are harder to alter and easier to reinstate. Besides, theoretical executive power has to be deftly managed which leads to a style of government more prone to quiet negotiation and compromise.

The British North America Act that created Canada contains the dedication of Canadian government to the provision of peace, order and good government. Two and a half out of three isn’t bad, and the slow deliberate changes wrought by a Parliamentary Monarchy have given us many reasons to be grateful.

We have had politicians who meddled and tried to assume executive authority for themselves. Trudeau ‘repatriated’ a constitution we hadn’t really needed in our hands, and Mulroney just had to do the equivalent of breaking into the liquor cabinet and taking the car for a spin with his constitutional experiments. A lot of Canadians who even voted for both of them (as the author did) still despise both of them for this. It is best to keep executive power theoretical, especially with so many special interests and amateurish politicians hungry for access to it.

Parliamentary monarchies have some special advantages. Britain has been more or less politically stable for over three centuries and one should look at the stability of other European parliamentary monarchies such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, plus an assortment of very stable principalities and dukedoms. The French are now working on their fifth Republic (with time out for two Empires) in 200 years and Italy’s governments used to come by at dizzying speeds. Spain, after centuries of Left-Right turmoil has enjoyed an unparalleled domestic tranquility since the return of the monarchy in 1975.

North America largely consists of three major nations: Ourselves, the United States, and Mexico. In terms of population, Canada is third. The US is a republic, so too is Mexico; which has not enjoyed the relative stability of the US. Why would any Canadian want to replace the monarchy to become yet another North American Republic?

The distinctiveness of Canada as a parliamentary monarchy allows a Canadian to have a lot of fun when talking to American colleagues. One can discuss current military events and military history by tossing in the names of the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force (and how lovely it is to see their old glorious titles restored); or such of our regiments as the Princess Patricia’s, the Royal 22nd Regiment, or the Queen’s York Rangers.

George Washington was George Washington but John A. Macdonald was Sir John A. A conversation on legal or criminal matters allows one to sprinkle in terms like ‘Queen’s Bench’ and ‘Crown Attorney’; and so on. It is also worth using the full name of our national police force: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (or the Gendarmerie Royale du Canada if one prefers). It would be marvelous to drop ‘the Post Office’ or ‘Canada Post’ for a return to the ‘Royal Mail’ too; one can only hope that the Harper Government might be quietly considering this.

These are small differences, but they allow Canadians a degree of distinctiveness when conversing with Americans. Why should we want to be rid of these differences?

Let us not forget that it was loyalty to the Crown that helped create Canada and kept it apart from the United States. Much of the early English settlement in eastern Canada was by political refugees from the American Revolution – the Loyalists -- and many of our Aboriginal peoples were likewise refugees from the US. They trusted the Crown more than the promises out of Congress. The people of Quebec twice had a choice (in 1775 and in 1813) of staying with the Crown or acceding to the Americans and they let their muskets speak for them. Why belittle these historic choices?

For that matter, what is with the disrespect to the Royal Family? They are living symbols, not celebrities. They might not be perfect but they are a link with a long past. Moreover, it is not difficult to notice that they take the ‘family business’ extremely seriously. A lot of Canadian soldiers have noticed that the Queen takes her role as commander in chief to heart; she meets the gaze of as many of them as she can and an inspection by her is not a mere formality. Her late mother effortlessly turned duty into love in a number of cases (she is still deeply missed by the Toronto Scottish Regiment) and no politician can work a room as well as Prince Andrew does with his real gift for making ordinary people feel appreciated and important. The family business is in good hands and has been for some time.

Canada is not an ‘immature’ country with some sort of ‘colonial hangover’ because of the role of the British Monarchy in our government. We are a confident nation with a strong international presence but a great deal of our character derives from our historic links with the Crown and this adds to our distinctiveness from our closest neighbours.

Parliamentary monarchies rock and Queen Elizabeth rules!

 

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Voices of Freedom

These days are too dark and disturbing for comfort, and the drawing in of the autumn is always a dismal time. Accordingly, this installment of favorite quotes is drawn from two essayists who are well known for their sense of humour. Please enjoy.

 

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

- Dorothy Parker

 

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”

- Dorothy Parker

 

“It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.”

- Terry Pratchett

 

“The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap and much more difficult to find.”

- Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

 

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

- Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

 

“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”

- Terry Pratchett

 

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John Thompson is Editorial Director of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: institute@mackenzieinstitute.com