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.

The imminent resurrection of Ahmed Chalabi

There's a blast from the past!

If you recall the glory days of American vengeance, those high-octane months leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the name "Ahmed Chalabi" should ring a few bells.

Chalabi faded from view as the Iraq cake-walk became a blood-soaked morass. Rumour had it he was lying low in Iran, living off the many millions the US government had kindly provided for his insights and influence in the Iraqi political sphere.

Both his insights and his influence turned out to be bogus, but that's not preventing no less an authoritative authority than the New York Times to moot him as a future presidential candidate once we rid ourselves of the reviled democratically elected al Maliki.

US policy has never had so many fighting roosters coming home to roost at the same time. ISIS is entirely a US foreign policy creation; trained, financed, and equipped by America via a clique of American allies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey) to oust that evil dictator in Syria. Little did the American policy wonks anticipate that their ISIS puppets might grow an independent streak and head south to Baghdad instead of west to Damascus.

So we are faced with a mess that is entirely the result of American over-reach. America armed and trained the Iraqi defence forces. America armed and trained the ISIS "terrorists" now threatening their bumboy in Baghdad.

We are witnessing blowback writ large...

And Ahmed Chalabi will save the day?

Wiping Syria from the map

While researching the topic of oil embargoes and oil pipelines this morning I ran across this quote:

This is a new world order now. This is what things look like... particularly if we wipe out Syria... it is all about oil.

The speaker is James Akins, American ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the 1970's and a man who knew the oil business and petro-politics as well as anyone on the planet.

He's speaking in 2003 and quoted in a Guardian article about the feasibility of an Iraq-Haifa oil pipeline.

Those were heady times, those triumphalist months basking in the first blush of victory over Sadam. Anything was possible. The Pentagon had big plans for Ahmed Chalabi, international man of mystery and bullshitter supreme. With Chalabi in the driver's seat in Baghdad, not even the sky was the limit!

Then of course it all went for a shit.

Democracy, however imperfect, reared its head and cut short Chalabi's political career in Iraq. He is in many quarters today regarded as an Iranian agent.

The Israel-Iraq pipeline was never built, but according to a Guardian article by Richard Silverstein in 2008, the Haifa refinery met its crude oil needs by buying Iranian oil.

Also around that time, Iran and Iraq announced an agreement to build a pipeline from Basra in the south of Iraq to the Iranian city of Abadon. At the time, I believe the plan was to pump Iraqi crude to a refinery in the Iranian city.

One of the marvels of a pipeline is that its contents can flow in either direction. Would the Shia government in Iraq support their Shia brothers in Iran by shipping Iranian oil from Basra as Iraqi product? Just wondering.

A rise in Iraqi exports in step with a decline in Iranian exports could very well signal that this is happening.

The US-led embargo seems to be a fickle creature. Just the other day one of America's closest allies in Africa, Kenya, signed a major deal with Iran to import their oil.

One would almost think that the embargo is more about optics than about oil.

As for Syria, it looks like Akins' plan is running about ten years behind schedule.