Canada to lead Nations of Virtue in seizing assets of despots and dictators

Perennial do-gooder Lloyd Axworthy has come up with a great idea; lets help ourselves to the frozen bank accounts of dictators and despots and use the money to address the global refugee crisis! Lloyd figures we should be able to raise ten to twenty billion a year from the bad guys on our shit list.

Whose bank accounts we seize is of course a question of politics rather than morality. You'll notice that it tends to be leaders Washington doesn't like who have their assets seized. Maduro and Putin are despots, but MBS and Erdogan get a pass.

As for the refugees themselves, what are they fleeing? In the great European refugee crisis of 2015-16, 75% of the arrivals came from only three countries; Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. What do those countries have in common? They've all been targeted for regime change by those same Nations of Virtue now wringing their hands over the refugee crisis, Canada included. How ironic to read such nonsense on the very day that we're remembering those 158 Canadians who gave their lives in the noble mission to bring freedom and democracy to Afghanistan.

This is not a fact that the Axworthys of the world address or even acknowledge. So long as disinterested experts like Ahmed Chalabi or Bill Browder can be trotted out to spin scary stories, that's good enough for Lloyd.

Here's an alternative funding source for staunching the refugee crisis; a modest tax on international weapons sales. Since eight out of ten of the top weapons purveyors are in the Nations of Virtue club, reaching a consensus on such a tax would be a snap!

Refugee crisis solved!

Even better, although "thought leaders" like Axworthy can't seem to get their heads around the concept, we in the virtuous West could end most refugee crises simply by minding our own business and giving up the idea that it's our right to meddle in other countries.

We are not afraid

"We" being a bunch of multi-millionaire pop-culture superstars who have signed on to the project of convincing the masses that refugee/immigrants are nothing to be afraid of.

And they don't have anything to be afraid of. After all, the likes of Keith Richards or Yoko have so many levels of handlers between themselves and the public that it's unlikely that they'll ever set eyes on a refugee, never mind having their bottoms groped at a public bath. And it's not as if a recent immigrant is gonna be bumping them out of their jobs or anything, is it?

Note that lovely second paragraph; "We are not afraid" is a global campaign aimed at raising funds for the refugee crisis and victims of political and religious violence.

And where are all those refugees coming from, pray tell? Why, mostly from Islamic states that have been in the cross-hairs of America's "war on terror." Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan...

So our governments here in the Nations of Virtue continue to pursue the policy of bombing Muslim countries, and our pop-culture mega-stars are going to rally us to provide alms for the refugees our policies create? Almost looks like a perpetual motion machine, doesn't it?

And just what has it cost to create the refugee crisis? Here's a timely story from The Atlantic. Writer Uri Friedman posits that the actual bombings and invasions have run to about three trillions post 9/11, and the all-in cost when we factor in the war debt will run closer to five trillions.

Five trillion dollars to create a refugee crisis, and then our entertainment industry elite will put on a full court press to raise a few millions to ameliorate that crisis?

Sounds like bullshit to me.

Here's an idea; why don't we just stop bombing those people? I mean, with all due respect to W and the rest of the elite cretins who claim not to understand why those people hate us, I think they hate us because we've been bombing them to ratshit for the last fifteen years.

Stop that and you'll stop the refugee crisis.

The tyranny of stereotypes

Everybody knows what a native community looks like. Gas-sniffing juveniles, gang-banging teens, drunken adults passed out in public at high noon...

Well, not really.

Most native communities I've ever seen are virtually indistinguishable from their non-native neighbours. But we don't ever hear about them. That's just not news!

No, what we hear about are a few isolated and dysfunctional communities that provide 100% of the bad-news stories about natives.

Which is not to suggest that there isn't much to be done, but the big picture is not nearly as bleak as you might assume after reading a few mainstream stories about our native brothers.

And Mexicans. They'll be the ruin of America, God help us all...

No less an authority than Donald Trump has given Latinophobia a new lease on life. I know for a fact that Mexicans are prized among Canadian employers of Temporary Foreign Workers for their honesty and their work ethic. Could that be because the Darwin effect strands all the unmotivated lazy and shifty ones south of the 49th parallel?

Seems unlikely.

While there's no question that a few bad apples come over in the barrels of both legal and not-so-legal Latinos, you can't deny the contribution they've made to America.

In fact, I've got Mexicans in my very own extended family. Back in the day my dear Uncle Jack and his wife, who were as middle-America as apple pie, after having a couple of kids of their own, adopted a number three from Mexico.

That kid from Mexico had his chance at the American Dream and batted it out of the park. The company he created has been voted one of the best employers in his state.

And we're not talking landscaping; we're talking high-end social services.

He's a success story that's done nothing but contribute to his local community, and every one of the 150 plus professionals who work for him are Americans.

Like Pope Francis said the other day, most of us were foreigners at one time... let's not be so quick to judge foreigners.

That's why I'm a little suspicious of stories like this. Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Finland are allegedly turning up their noses at Finnish hospitality and high-tailing it back to Sweden.

Let's look at the stereotypes being promoted here; Syraqi refugees are fussy ingrates just looking for the best deal on welfare payments etc. We should not rush to judgement on the verity of their refugee claims.

The story appears at Arab News, a news site financed by Saudi Arabia. It is sourced from France 24, the web portal of France's AFP news conglomerate.

Both France, which has been working overtime to dissuade refugees from arriving there, and Saudi Arabia, which has been working overtime at creating refugees in Iraq and Syria, have a vested interest in portraying these refugee throngs as opportunists looking for an easy life in the EU.

And so the stereotype of the Middle East refugee as shifty malingerer takes root, at least among that segment of the population predisposed to think that way in the first place.

I have no doubt that a few shifty malingerers among those refugees will be exposed in the fullness of time. And when they are, they'll get an inordinate amount of attention in our media. But, there were no doubt a few of those shifty malingerers among the European immigrants who flooded into America post WW II.

So the point is, you'll always be able to find a story or two to justify the stereotypes.

But the truth of the matter lies elsewhere.

We need to remember that we were indeed, most of us, foreigners at one time.

And we have to get past the stereotypes.