The African Addiction

If there is any continent that better demonstrates the murderous futility of Marxism, it's Africa. Maybe someone reading this Blog can tell me otherwise, but I believe every African country has experimented with it (Marxism - the experimental, untested, unknown side effects social drug of all time). I can only imagine one African nation has not used the ideology in its governance and that is Morocco, which, it is conceded, is hardly a model of Anglo-American capitalism and constitutionalism.

And what have been the results of this addiction? All but two of the African nations, Botswana and Cote D'Ivoire, are in the mostly unfree to repressed section of the "Economic Freedom Index" of the Heritage Foundation. (two, Libya and Somalia are "unranked" due to their failed state status) while 15 are in the Repressed section alone. Not surprisingly, their rankings for GDP mirror closely the bottom 95 nations ranging from the all African bottom 16 from $712 per year (Central African Republic) to Burkina Faso at just under 2000. You must go through another 21 African countries before you find more than $5000 per capita income (about $6000 for oil giant, Nigeria).

The result of this addiction has been an unmitigated disaster. It seems to know no distinction based on racial, tribal, cultural, linguistic, imperial or colonial legacy nor is it linked to religious or geographical or even strategic connection one way or the other. All Africans at some point were and many today continue to be miserated by their leadership's obsession with this ideological way of organizing society. Although tribal and religious distinctions are at the root of much of the mayhem that has occurred from time to time there, all factions seem to agree on one fatal conclusion - whoever is in  power, Karl should provide them with the manual for their economies. And it has exacerbated natural disasters like famine.

Of course, there is another thing the African "elites" have had in common - their addiction to money. What better way to make that money accessible than by confiscating it in the Marxist way and then convincing likeminded and naive foreign aid workers and UN bureaucrats to help them help themselves to more bucks? This addiction (assisted by inept, wrongminded and counterproductive aid policies, and downright hypocritical protectionist trade policies by the West) is the key reason why Africa is the only landmass never to catch the wave of prosperity in the rest of the World and is now so vulnerable ironically to the "No Strings Attached" Belt and Road programs of the insidious, poisonous, corrupting China.

For What It's Worth

Here, for what they're worth, are my election predictions and why:

Conservative - 35%, 161 seats

Liberal - 30%, 108

NDP - 19%, 30

Bloc Quebecois - 6%, 36

Green - 8%, 1

People's Party - 2%, 1

Independent - Trace element, 1 (Jody Wilson-Raybould, BC)

Maritimes - 10 C; 22 L

Quebec - 15 C; 25 L; 1 NDP; 36 BQ; 1 PPC (Bernier)

Ontario - 55 C; 54 L; 12 NDP

West/Prairies - 59 C; 1 L; 2 NDP

British Columbia - 22 C; 5 L; 13 NDP; 1 Green (May); 1 IND (Raybould)

Territories - 1 L; 2 NDP

What is particularly interesting is that I am only relying on the margin of error so called of most polls. Most of them show that it is perfectly possible that the Tories will have 35% not 32 and the Liberals go down to 29 but I give them 30, instead. Further, even if you gave ALL of the new BQ seats in PQ to the L, which is quite generous obviously, they still would lose clearly to the Tories. Essentially a tie in Ontario is plausible when you realize how exaggerated a provincial poll can be in estimating Liberal strength due to the GTA. The Tories are bound to get at least a third of the Maritimes seats (what goes up... and two coat of paint voters). I give them technically less than that. 

In the West, the people are angry and there is only one place to put that anger - the nearest candidate with blue (NOT purple!) signs. The Tories have easily swept this region before, they can do it again with a Leader from the Region with this new western rage. They still want in and a government that owes their @#$ to them is the best way to undo the damage done to them. Oh, and, at some point, as in the rest of Canada, all those Provincial Tory victories (the latest just last month in Manitoba) count for something.

IN BC, yes, you need to be a nuclear physicist to correctly guess this. I have not taken Science since Grade 9 but I'll give it a try. Many people in the Interior in particular and some of the suburbs are not thrilled with their NDP/Green government's climate fanaticism and the Liberals' refusal to intervene to stop an Albertan economic disaster turning into a BC disaster. After all, it never made any sense - BC v. ALTA? Really? Between the notorious splits that occur in many mainland seats and residual embarrassment over the antics of a PM many here viewed as a favourite son, there it is - a very, very strong Tory Minority that will essentially rely on no one (much as Harper 2006-2011 did).

As for Quebec, the 2011 figures do have a cautionary tale for me. The BQ got 6% of the vote then and still only got FOUR seats. But, even if the BQ wave thankfully does not materialize, if say a third of the new BQ seats (almost all outside of Red Montreal Island) I'm predicting each go to the Tories, Liberals and NDP/Green/PPC, the Tories would get a Majority! The 2011 figures also make my argument further for me. In that year, the NDP won 103 seats with only 30% of the vote. Also in 2011, the Tories won a majority government of 166 seats (in a House of Commons that was 10% smaller at the time) with just under 40% of the vote.

I am predicting that the Tories win the 2011 equivalent of a minority of 145 seats with only about 4% less of the vote. I am predicting the Liberals will win almost exactly the same 2011 delegation as the NDP did with the same vote %. Finally,  a seemingly big problem with my predictions is the NDP would lose about a third of their seats in the last election but win the same % of the votes. This is almost entirely due to the young leadership of Singh, an historically inefficient distribution of the NDP vote and, above all, their collapse in PQ. Our electoral system, as the PR nuts will tell you as well as poor Ms. May, can be and, on my prediction, will be cruel again.

Take the "Shy Tory Voter" effect (well proven and as recently as this year in Manitoba and Alberta and last year in Ontario and Quebec), take a teaspoon of the PPC not making an impact, throw in a big cup of "What do you mean the Economy is 'good'!",add in the youth vote turnout collapse mainly due to the PM's missteps, and throw in a dash of Liberal complacency (yes, I said complacency - why follow up a week of the usual Liberal dire desperate warnings about not "wasting" your vote on the Leftwing parties and THEN spread it about your willing accomplices in the Press and the Polling firms that you are winning?) leading to unexpectedly low Liberal turnout and my theory can make eminent sense. Oh and don't count out, as I refuse on principle to do so, a whole pint of the People deciding the Rule of Law means something to them, after all. It all should add up to an historic rejection of a one term majority government (the first since 1935). Or...so I hope!

Stay tuned!

First Brexit Pear Tree

On the First Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, A Leave Vote That Says That Were Free

On the Second Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, A Two-Faced BBC

On the Third Day of Brexit , my People gave to me, Three At Number Ten

On the Fourth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Four Meaningful Votes

On the Fifth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Five National Elections

On the Sixth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Six  Betraying

On the Seventh Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Seven Pounds Devaluing

On the Eight Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Eight Remainers Moaning

On the Eight Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Nine Fears Campaigning

On the Ninth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Ten Junckers Junking

On the Tenth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Ten Irish Borders

On the Eleventh Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Eleven Judges Judging

On the Twelfth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Twelve More Possible Doable Endless Deal.

Divas?

The surgeon wields his scalpel artfully but deliberately and therapeutically. The lawyer studies his brief from all sides and then argues it quietly but persuasively. The farmer toils hard and employs all that agricultural college and often generations of farming have taught him to get the greatest yield from his fields. But the politician increasingly does not exercise the arts of his trade and is downright afraid and/or unwilling to do so.

Our politicians in all parts of the West increasingly resemble what would be a strange display, indeed, of another profession - the opera singer, divo and diva. It is as if a grand opera's cast sprinkled the air with mutterings, grumblings and mumblings and stoutly refused to deliver the climactic arias, recitatives and ensembles that the libretto demands and the conductor, in increasing desperation, tries to elicit from them in vain. Right now, there are apparently three types of politician opera performers. 

First, there is the least numerous, the truly talented, bold and fearless artists who make you cry via their brilliant and moving voices. These are the divos and divas who make you ecstatic you are an opera fan or sad that you are not. In our World there are but a few pols like this - Trump, Kenney or Johnson, perhaps, on the Right. There are even fewer from the Left. Although, Bill Clinton and Obama are two of them. It feels like we had an inordinate number of them in the not so far off past - Lincoln, MacDonald, Laurier, Churchill, the Kennedy's, Reagan, the Roosevelt's, Levesque, Trudeau, Dief, Mulroney and Chretien. (No wonder LBJ used to ask of a speech being written for him,"Has it got music?") Even Nixon had an ear for the right notes (after all, he was an accomplished pianist) and relished a good fight in what he once called,"The Arena".

Then there are the second, most numerous group - the mutterers. They, again, refuse to sing openly and vigorously. They stutter and mutter, do not really like opera themselves and are perpetually suffering from stage fright. They are the men and woman we saw tonight. They are the vast majority of our "statesmen" today. If it was possible to be such, Davis, Clark, Harper and Martin were masters at it. Theresa May, Carter, Pelosi, Romney, Brown, Dole, Mondale or Ford come to mind. They resemble a young singer who is unsure of his pitch and tone in that they often do not know what the Hell they really stand for or believe in, if at all.

The third type are becoming increasingly numerous - they are the tone deaf. They have no fear in sharing with us their cacaphony. They do not realize they are bad and are assured by their adoring fans in the Press that they are great and it is only the petty, jealous or evil that do not see how truly wondrous and indispensable they are. Think the Diva in Phantom of the Opera, the Wannabes in Waiting for Guffman or Citizen Kane's second wife. They are often from the Left and grow more in their din with the hour it seems. Think Hillary, AOC, Corbyn or E. May. On the Right, Farage and Le Pen may be the bipartisan manifestation of this fell group. They know what they stand for and passionately fight for it but they send you running out of the Opera House with their often frightful noise.

The scary thing is...the Democratic Presidential hopefuls don't seem to be sure whether they want to be tone deaf screamers or revert to their more customary and natural guise as fearful mutterers. But there's not a Diva or Divo amongst the lot of them. 

They Bombed (or, Apocalypso)

When did the apocalyptic movement, that afflicts our society today via Climate Change campaigning, begin? It started with the Right Reverend Malthus, that walking talking philosophical time bomb. He of the "surplus population". A top christian, he advocated that we CAN have too many of God's children. He did not have Climate Change at hand but he did have Hobbes and his Leviathinite belief that we needed to bow down to some Lord High Executioner if we knew what was good for us: an omnisicient, all-knowing omnipotent state who would steer us away from our natural tendency to self destructive behaviour.

He had a willing accomplice in bourgeoisie like Ebeneezer Scrooge, whose own life was ok. But not if you were, well, surplus to requirements. More of us would lead paradoxically to less of us and we would die after a "short brutish" life as more of us were forced to make do with ever shrinking finite resources and, above all, less and less food. Thank God and our indomitable,inventive spirit that, in every metric respect, he was incorrect. From Malthus' time (early 19th Century) until today, the population of the earth went up but incomes went up. So, too, did the availability of not only staples but many goods that only the richest could afford in his time or that no one could afford because they did not exist.

His immediate intellectual descendants were the Darwinians and the Eugenicists whose earnest, chilling cry was for Survival to be dictated by the Fittest. Their sinister beliefs that "the line of idiots" wretches and cripples had to end (Justice Holmes, Margaret Sanger) helped justify the great totalitarians who crushed tens of millions under the jackboot of ethnic hatred and economic expedience. Mao's Great Leap Forward, Hitler's Holocaust and Stalin's endless 5 Year Plans all owed their brutalizing DNA to the Apocalypt's theory of exterminating misery by miserable extermination. Despite the cataclysmic catharses of 1945 and 1989, they still live in Pyongyang and Havana, often celebrated by today's Malthusians. As Shaw said of the USSR ("I have seen the future") so Sean Penn says of Venezuela or Tom Friedman of China.

Malthus' next disciple and prophet was Paul Erlich. Malthus would envy his best selling book title "The Population Bomb". He too predicted apocalypse (all oil gone by 1980 and food in 2000) and prescribed  megalomaniacal solutions to be applied by an all-directing and encompassing state. The opposite of what he predicted came true.The World doubled in population, found more reserves of oil than ever and saw hunger and poverty collapse. The genius of human existence, far from being a bane, was a boon. In other words, the more people, the richer. (Still, hundreds of millions were aborted as respectable Malthusians, like Justice Ginsberg, said that Roe v. Wade got rid of a lot of people we did not want).

After a merciful all too brief interlude, we were accosted again by the gloomsters. They had a new weapon that Erlich and Malthus were not smart or imaginative enough to brandish - Climate Change. A phenomenon we cannot possibly control was presented as an excuse for running our lives. "Sure, Marxism is dead but, if the astronauts tell us there's an emergency, who are we to argue?" A lesser prophet of doom came next. Al Gore won an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize for predicting climate change would drown polar bears and sink Manhattan. The happy problem for us was that his "Inconvenient Truth" was that none of it came to pass.

Today, the latest apostle, the Swedish Scoldilocks, who, in accuses us deluded growth junkies of robbing her of a childhood and bringing on her mass extinction in 10 years, wants policies and attitudes that would rob whole generations yet unborn of any chance at a childhood. The only good thing about Malthus and his followers is that they were all proven wrong in detail. The bad thing about them is the misery and destruction they cause, with grotesque -isms like "Carbon Bomb" to refer to a baby in the womb, before we finally do the right thing and ignore them even as we effortlessly prove them wrong and stun all again with our wondrous innovation, creativity and resilience.

John James Cowperthwaite - A Bureaucratic Fable

Sir John James Cowperthwaite will not be remembered by many. Most of the people who live now in Hong Kong, which he governed as Financial Secretary in the 1960's, will likely not recall him. But he deserves to have memorials built to him and posthumous international decorations awarded to him for a signal achievement for mankind. 

He architected the greatest economic miracle in modern history. His wise, humane and benevolent policy of "positive non-interventionism" - low taxation, low regulation, low spending and free trade - saw Hong Kong rise in barely a generation from being a dirt poor, resource free, refugee-packed backwater to the 10th largest economy with the 4th largest stock market in the World. And he left a legacy that should  be an instructive lodestar for us today.

His fundamental observation - that no centralized decision made by bureaucrats can ever be as wise, good or positive as that of a businessman (and that none of the businessman's mistakes can ever be counteracted by the state as well as he can). But, obviously, he must have felt the same about ordinary Hong Kongers (who he lived and worked with for 15 years before), too. After all, they were the sharp consumers whose everyday decisions enriched that businessman and of whom many were also aspiring entrepreneurs. In other words, a St. Andrews and Cambridge educated Scotsman bureaucrat of 50 realized that he did not understand the best interests of a bunch of mostly destitute, uneducated Asiatics better than they did. This was a miracle of tolerance and wisdom by the standards of any day. It is a moral and a fable that I wish more of our governors around the World would learn and apply.

My favourite aphorism of his that he offered as part of his advice for poor countries I paraphrase here: Abolish your Office of National Statistics. It only gives government an excuse for harmful intervention in the economy. Cowperthwaite, who my Wife calls the "Dr. Spock" of economic theory, thus offers us an economic blueprint and a warning for us at the same time. In that sense,  The Hippocratic Oath should be repurposed and rephrased for would be governors,"Do no Harm that your People can do for themselves."

Leaders' Debate of Last Week

Lisa Laflamme worries that the Leaders only have about 20 minutes to introduce themselves to the voters in the debate. If you cannot explain yourself and your merits and the demerits of your opponents in 20 minutes, you're in the wrong profession and it is not being a barrister. Most people will have problems tolerating listening to these people for FIVE minutes.

Laflamme pointed out how the participants have been warned that they'll be instantly nailed for getting their facts wrong. This surely misses the point. If you're an opposition leader, especially Scheer, and you let yourself get mired in reciting facts, you will be schmeared by a PM and his willing Press who have never let facts bother them when it came time to defend the Liberal Government. Andrew must show passion and maybe, occasionally, another facial expression. Passion, not facts or issues (unless presented passionately) is what wins elections in great countries. And the People are angry and they do not know why the Opposition Leader cannot articulate their anger without seeming like an opportunistic partisan.

For example, Mulroney, in the most famous debate encounter of all time made Turner, who after all was PM, the issue in 1984 by confronting him about the Patronage Scandal. But, even better, the famous "You had an option" moment came as a result of the hapless Turner saying,"I had no option." It looks at first like serendipity that Mulroney then was able to turn the tables on Turner using his own words against him on the spot, seemingly ad lib. But, no. You can bet that, being the trained lawyer he was, Mulroney had already figured out several ways to do this to Turner even if he had not obliged with his feeble riposte. But none of it would have worked without passion and yes, God help me for saying this: genuine authentic sincerity.

Similarly, Scheer, if given a chance to confront Trudeau on his corruption scandal directly should ask him:"Why did you stop the RCMP investigating SNC?" JT:"As you know, I had to because of cabinet secrecy..." AS:"Wait I thought it was the decision of the Clerk of the Privy Council." JT:"Well...I had to, you see..." AS:"No, you did not "have" to. You could have ordered the govt. to open up the books to the RCMP so that we could all have the transparent govt. you promised us in 2105, and you did not. You chose to block out the people who you work for and own the govt - the People of Canada (turns directly to the camera) On October 21, vote for me and I will help you take your govt. back!" Will it work exactly that way? No. But, there must be literally thousands of combinations and permutations of how to get across the same point and above all with passion.

If the self righteous pompous liberal factota known as the moderators sidle over to insurance licenses and Yankee passports, you say the following:"(deep sigh and face of sorrow) I have already answered that question but I will take the next minute to repeat my answer and pretend yours is a serious question but then I'm going to ask on behalf of the Canadian People that we stop playing the Liberal Trudeau game of arguing over nothing so as to avoid the woeful record of my friend the PM and stick with the issues that Canadians care about. I hope that my colleagues will agree with me that that's the best way to use our sadly limited time." Is it bold, daring maybe even arrogant? Yes.  But the other side acts like that all the time for far less noble purposes. Millions will cheer and thousands will need to take their heart pills just from the shock of Scheer saying something so tart!

Does showing passion mean you have to come across like a maniac? No. As McCain found. But McCain had the rhetorical subtlety of a battering ram. Reference re Reagan and his "There you go again" v. Carter or Harris and his smooth, gentle voice backed up  by a placid face as they no less passionately explained their (for the times) radical conservative positions. Above all, they made sure to address the people directly and into the camera.