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A tapestry of Pablo Picasso’s haunting Guernica hangs mutely in the
foyer of the United Nations Security Council. The 25 by 11 foot
recreation of the Spanish artist’s cri de coeur recalling the ruthless
bombing of civilians in that Basque town in 1937 had served as backdrop
for press conferences by that august body until February 3rd, 2003 when,
fearing life imitating art in the form of George Bush’s coming “shock
and awe” destruction of Baghdad, the UN custodians of decorum covered it
from the cameras, preemptively shielding Secretary of State, Colin
Powell from any embarrassment the image might cause America and its
accomplices as he laid forth his bogus casus belli for the second Iraq
war.
The “Blitzkrieg” of Guernica inspiring Picasso so long ago has been
reenacted daily in Gaza for the last month; with many times more men,
women, children, and animals killed, injured, made homeless, and
traumatized. Thousands are dead. Hundreds of thousands wounded, but the
great resistance feared by Bush and his claque way back when is
apparently not a worry for current leaders of the Western world, who
remain unanimous and unapologetic in their support of Israel and its
project for the new Israel despite the horrendous cost.
William S. Geimer is a peace
activist, Professor Emeritus of Law at Washington and Lee University,
military veteran who resigned his 82nd Airborne commission in opposition
to the war against Vietnam, and author of the book, ‘Canada: The Case
for Staying Out of Other People’s Wars’. In 2020 Bill founded the
Greater Victoria Peace School, which he says has, since his retirement,
“been a success and my board members are carrying on admirably with
peace education.
William S. Geimer in the first half.
And; most here have probably forgotten entirely about Guantanamo Bay
prison, set up so long ago to confine “the worst of the worst” in George
Bush junior’s Global War on Terror. Incredibly, all these years later,
prisoners still languish there, without the benefit of the protection of
laws that were once the pride of Western Civilization.
Andy Worthington remembers though; and more, he’s been working all
these years to both publicize the plight of those held, and get them
real justice. Last week he attended in London one of the “ten coordinated global vigils for the closure of Guantanamo“.
He reminds: Sixteen of the thirty men are still held, after having been
approved for release, as of November 1st, between 404 and 5,031 days.
Andy Worthington and remembering Guantanamo in the second half.
But first, Bill Geimer and the Gaza atrocity happening before our eyes.
Eighteen days into Israel’s campaign of destruction in Gaza thousands
are dead, tens of thousands wounded, orphaned, and rendered homeless.
And still the bombings continue, with the full support of every Western
government.
The slaughter of innocents through air attacks and distant artillery
parallels the experience of civilians in Donbas, but elicits the
opposite reaction in establishment media and Parliaments like Canada’s,
where unconditional public support of Israel is, as of this date,
unanimous. The federal government’s minority coalition partner, the NDP
has proven most strident in its statements encouraging Israel, with its
foreign affairs critic, Heather McPherson saying in the House, “Israel has every right to eradicate Hamas.”
Dan Kovalik
is a lawyer, educator, labour, peace, and justice activist, democracy
defender, journalist, author, and filmmaker. His book titles include:
‘Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture’ the
“Plot to” series on American efforts to undermine the governments and
economies of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, ‘No More War: How the West
Violates International Law by Using ‘Humanitarian’ Intervention to
Advance Economic and Strategic Interest’, and his latest, ‘Nicaragua: A
History of US Intervention & Resistance’, which “explores the
pernicious nature of US engagement with Nicaragua from the mid-19th
century to the present in pursuit of control and domination rather than
in defense of democracy“.
Dan Kovalik in the first half.
And; Israel’s stated determined erasure of Hamas – and the apparent
complete destruction of civic life on the Gaza Strip it says that
ambition necessitates – is destroying more than the lives of the tens of
thousands of captured Palestinians living in the besieged enclave.
Across the Western nations allied with Israel’s project, draconian
anti-democratic laws are being drafted forbidding demonstrating in
support of the Palestinian people and their just resistance to the
brutal occupation, while social media outlets cancel those in support,
and employers are pressured to fire people who attend rallies, or
exercise their rights to free speech online.
The latter is just such a case, where physician, Dr. Ben Thomson was
recently suspended by his employer, Ontario based, Mackenzie Richmond
Hill Hospital for, as they put it, “social media posts… that do not reflect our views or values as an organization.”
Tarek Loubani is a London, Ontario-based doctor and humanitarian. Tarek runs the Glia Project, which seeks to provide medical supplies to impoverished locations, one of which is the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
Dr. Ben Thomson
Tarek Loubani and the silencing of Canadian humanitarian dissenters in the second half.
But first, Dan Kovalik on war, more war, and nothing but war.
The second demonstration in solidarity with Palestine in as many
weeks took place Sunday, October 22, 2023 on the grounds of Victoria’s
Legislature. A similar outpouring of support from the citizenry for what
Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank now, with Canada’s tacit
approval, was held there last week too.
Approximately a thousands souls attended, waving flags and placards
of support. Speakers included long-time Gaza friends, Terry Wolfwood and
Barbara Hanson. Other speakers’ names and affiliations are contained
within the body of the recording, which I’ve left largely raw.
Not content with just aiding and abetting the ruination of countries
on the other side of the World, Canada has announced its intention of
doing likewise in the western hemisphere’s most benighted nation, Haiti.
In many ways, it’s really just more of the same for the Great White
North, which has meddled in and actively undermined any and every
prospect for independence and prosperity there.
The latest iteration of Canada’s determination to help Haiti was
delivered by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Melanie Joly, who on top of
sanctions already in place, and allocations of millions of dollars to
the Haitian National Police, voiced her support for the United Nations
decision to again intervene militarily in Haiti saying, “Canada has always been involved in issues related to Haiti. We will continue to be… We want to do more.”
What “more” means may be revealed during this week’s Canada-CARICOM Summit, started in Ottawa this morning.
Yves Engler is an independent, Montreal-based journalist, activist,
and author. He’s written twelve books on Canadian foreign policy,
including ‘Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority’,
co-authored with Anthony Fenton. Yves hosts the Canadian Foreign Policy Hour online every Monday at 6pm eastern time.
Yves Engler and are Canada’s Haiti aid policies paved with good intent?
As the appalling situation in Palestine
worsens, populations and countries around the World are demanding a stop
to Israel’s grotesque violation of international human rights law. But
where it counts, in the UN Security Council, there’s been no action
since the bloody assault against Gaza’s captive population began.
Yesterday, even Russia’s anodyne resolution to condemn the violence was
vetoed by the council, with no other motions proposed.
John Helmer is a journalist and author
who’s spent decades living in and reporting from Russia. Principle
behind the web news site, Dances with Bears, Helmer has too been a
professor of political science, sociology, and journalism, and served as
advisor to governments at the highest levels.
Among his many book titles are: ‘Skripal in Prison,’ ‘The Man Who Knows
Too Much About Russia,’ ‘The Jackals’ Wedding: American Power, Arab
Revolt’, ‘The Lie That Shot Down MH-17’, and his latest, ‘SOVCOMPLOT:
How Pirates Tried to Capture the Treasure of the Russian Seas, and Were
Caught Out’.
John’s latest article at Dances with Bears is, ‘WHITE FLAG IN A BLACK HOLE — IS RUSSIAN NEUTRALITY A FORCE OR A TRADE?’
John Helmer and Russia’s curiously sanguine Israel position in the second half.
Not content with just aiding and abetting the ruination of countries
on the other side of the World, Canada has announced its intention of
doing likewise in the western hemisphere’s most benighted nation, Haiti.
In many ways, it’s really just more of the same for the Great White
North, which has meddled in and actively undermined any and every
prospect for independence and prosperity there.
The latest iteration of Canada’s determination to help Haiti was
delivered by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Melanie Joly, who on top of
sanctions already in place, and allocations of millions of dollars to
the Haitian National Police, voiced her support for the United Nations
decision to again intervene militarily in Haiti saying, “Canada has
always been involved in issues related to Haiti. We will continue to be…
We want to do more.” What “more” means may be revealed during this
week’s Canada-CARICOM Summit, started in Ottawa this morning.
Yves Engler is an independent, Montreal-based journalist, activist,
and author. He’s written twelve books on Canadian foreign policy,
including ‘Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority’,
co-authored with Anthony Fenton. Yves hosts the Canadian Foreign Policy
Hour online every Monday at 6pm eastern time.
Yves Engler in the first half.
And; as the appalling situation in Palestine worsens, populations and
countries around the World are demanding a stop to Israel’s grotesque
violation of international human rights law. But where it counts, in the
UN Security Council, there’s been no action since the bloody assault
against Gaza’s captive population began. Yesterday, even Russia’s
anodyne resolution to condemn the violence was vetoed by the council,
with no other motions proposed.
John Helmer is a journalist and author who’s spent decades living in
and reporting from Russia. Principle behind the web news site, Dances
with Bears, Helmer has too been a professor of political science,
sociology, and journalism, and served as advisor to governments at the
highest levels.
Among his many book titles are: ‘Skripal in Prison,’ ‘The Man Who Knows
Too Much About Russia,’ ‘The Jackals’ Wedding: American Power, Arab
Revolt’, ‘The Lie That Shot Down MH-17’, and his latest, ‘SOVCOMPLOT:
How Pirates Tried to Capture the Treasure of the Russian Seas, and Were
Caught Out’. John’s latest article at Dances with Bears is, ‘WHITE FLAG
IN A BLACK HOLE — IS RUSSIAN NEUTRALITY A FORCE OR A TRADE?’
John Helmer and Russia’s curiously sanguine Israel position in the second half.
But first, Yves Engler and are Canada’s Haiti aid policies paved with good intent?
About 150 Victorians came out to the lawns of the provincial
Legislature to voice support for the people of Gaza, currently in dire
circumstance with the Israeli government attacking the entirety of the
walled enclave’s population.
There is perhaps no greater symbol of the vagaries of empire than
Granada’s Alhambra. The fabulous palace, product of the thirteenth
century Nasrid Dynasty, last bastion of the Moors on the Iberian
Peninsula, and home to Emperor Carlos the Fifth before its abandonment
in the eighteenth century during the French occupation of Spain, played
host last week to The Third Summit of the European Political Community.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s brainchild is meant to be a, “platform
for political coordination among European countries across the
continent… to promote political dialogue and cooperation… to strengthen
[…] security, stability, and prosperity“.
Though the third iteration of the EPC was dismissed in the press as a
failure on multiple fronts, the summit did provide a further chance for
the would-be Technocrat Emperors of a New Europe to cement plans for
the digital transition of the continent, something they have made a “key goal“.
Stavroula Pabst is a writer, comedian, and PhD student in
Communications and Mass Media Studies at the National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens. Her writing appears online at The Grayzone,
Reductress, the Harvard Business Review, and Unlimited Hangout.
Stavroula’s work is also featured at Substack, where she’s just launched
the TechXGeopolitics Newsletter, and it’s where I found her latest
article, ‘EU Digital Identity Wallet Pilots Roll Out Under the Radar‘.
Stavroula Pabst in the first half.
And; as the leaders of Western civilization cheer the obliteration of
the captive population of Gaza, no one need be reminded we live in dark
and dangerous times. But even the most jaded are ill-prepared for the
revelations of the abysmal depth and gaping width of depravity afforded
through the aegis of the Covid-19 response.
T. J. Coles is director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research
and the author of numerous books, including: ‘The War on You’,
Manufacturing Terrorism’, ‘Capitalism and Coronavirus: How
Institutionalized Greed Turned a Crisis into a Catastrophe ‘,
‘Biofascism: The Tech-Pharma Complex and the End of Democracy’, and many
others. His latest is, ‘The Pfizer Papers: The Secret Documents Exposing Big Pharma’s COVID Vaccine Crimes‘, an investigation into what is certainly the greatest crime of this young century, and perhaps the greatest in history.
T.J. Coles and going through the Pfizer Papers in the second half.
But first, Stavroula Pabst and the digital architecture of dystopia being built right before your eyes.
News of the Canadian Parliament’s recent celebration of the career of
veteran 14th Waffen SS Division ‘Halychyna’ soldier, Yaroslav Hunka has
now circled the globe, projecting in glaring relief the stark contrast
between this nation’s public pronouncements of principles, and the base
reality of its actions.
But more than shining light into the shadowed corners of Canada’s
past, the Nazigate Affair reveals too extant fascist sympathies of the
country’s leaders in government, business, and the media – where even
now the chorus of denial and pleas of ignorance -reminiscent of those
heard in Nuremberg – serve to obliterate the memory of the murdered,
muting the voices of those massacred in Ukraine in their tens of
thousands by Hunka’s brothers in arms.
As at Babi Yar, where the bodies of the dead were disinterred the
burial pits and burned, their ashes spread across the verdant fields
around Kyiv to better conceal from the World the atrocities conducted
there, another “scattering” is being conducted for the same purpose.
This time, those throwing ashes in the eyes of History are doing so from
the Parliament. Like our government leader of the House of Commons,
Karina Gould, who responds to the indignation and disgust of her fellow
citizens, and that of those elsewhere made aware of hers and her
colleagues egregious behaviour, saying,
“Like all MPs, I had no further information than the
Speaker provided… As a descendant of Jewish Holocaust survivors I would
ask all parliamentarians to stop politicizing an issue troubling to
many, myself included.”
Troubling indeed.
Glenn Michalchuk is President of both Peace Alliance Winnipeg, and
the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, or AUUC. He’s been active
in the peace movement for forty years, going back to Ronald Reagan’s
Dirty Wars in Latin America.
And; Alex Boykowich is a third-generation Ukrainian-Canadian,
president of the Edmonton Branch of the Association of United Ukrainian
Canadians, and active member of the Edmonton Peace Council and the
Communist Party of Canada.
Today, the Ukrainians in Canada: The tale of a people divided in two nations with Glenn Michalchuk and Alex Boykowich.
North Bay, Ontario, is a small Canadian city of immigrants from
Europe, their upwardly mobile children, and their children’s children.
It’s the town where Yaroslav Hunka (lead image) lives after
he left the British prisoner of war camp where he and other Ukrainian
soldiers of the SS Waffen Grenadier Galician Division were held after
the end of fighting in Europe in 1945. North Bay is where his son Martin
Hunka was chief financial officer of Redpath Mining, a mine engineering
company. By North Bay standards, the Hunka family is better educated
and wealthier than most, donating substantial sums of money to the local
hospital, universities, and Ukrainian national organisations, and
through the Redpath mining company to local politicians.
North Bay is also where the children of these men demonstrate Hitler salutes and Nazi Party slogans on the local high school football field.
This is the model of small-town church-going people of modest but
respectable means who share the prevailing ideology of their homeland
grandparents who were on the side of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and
Stepan Bandera in the last world war. The smiles remain the same, the
stand-up stiff-arm salutes have changed. The minds remain fixed where
they were in their grandparents’ ideology – that was the collective
fascism of a century ago.* These people continue to believe that for
their liberation, the Russian race should be destroyed – “suffocated” is
the state policy term used by Canada’s Foreign Minister, Melanie Joly.
The churches they attend organised a rally for this goal at the North
Bay City Hall featuring statements by the two Hunkas; they were St.
Andrew’s United, Trinity United, Emmanuel United Church, and Omond
Memorial United Church. “Nothing has changed,” Yaroslav Hunka said at
what the churches called a “peace vigil”. “The same enemy. First Stalin
was there and now this idiot. But Ukraine is not by itself like it was
before. The whole world knows about Ukraine and the whole world supports
Ukraine and that is very important.”
Martin Hunka added:
“I think the support in Canada, the support around the world has been
fantastic. At least now we have friends, whether that is going to
translate into anything concrete on the ground, I think it already is.”
This is the town where the first Italian to become Speaker of the
House of Commons in Ottawa ran a business and collected election
campaign donations. That’s Anthony Rota, the man who invited the two
Hunka men to be guests in the Speaker’s Gallery during the speech of
Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky on September 22. Rota and the
government’s leader of the House of Commons, Karina Gould, arranged for
the two Hunka men to be seated in the front row of the gallery next to
the leaders of Canada’s military and internal security forces, General
Wayne Eyre, the chief of the Defence Staff, and Deputy Commissioner of
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Bryan Larkin, protected by two armed
bodyguards.
When Rota spoke to introduce Hunka, he had just read from his script
that in December 1941, after World War II had begun, the then-British
Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill appealed to the House in Ottawa
“to rally for continued support of his country at war. It was a defining
moment of history, and one that must never be forgotten.” Hunka and the
SS Galicians came next on the same page of Rota’s script.
“We have here in the Chamber today Ukrainian-Canadians,
Ukrainian-Canadian veteran from the Second World War who fought [for]
Ukrainian independence against the Russians, and continues to support
the troops today, even at his age of ninety-eight [cheering; applause]….
We thank him for all his service, thank you [cheering; applause].”
Rota was making an explicit equivalence in Canadian policy for war
against Russia between Zelensky, Churchill, and Hunka. Ideologically,
this was also the equivalence between Hunka’s service to the Reich,
“and what is at stake — Ukraine’s freedom, but also preservation of the
rules-based order which is a fundamental part of the future of the
democratic world,” Rota wound up.
Rota didn’t write this 7-minute, multi-page 2,500 word speech by
himself. In draft, Rota sent it for review and editing by Joly, the
foreign minister; by Gould, in charge of the government’s business in
the House; and by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. An Access to
Information Act (ATIA) request for the circulation list of the draft
speech and for the other preparations for the Zelensky appearance,
including the invitation list for the Speaker’s Gallery, would provide
the evidence. No Canadian reporter or publication has attempted to do
this, yet.
For Canada’s black voters, underrepresented in the House of Commons, Rota also tried to link Zelensky’s and Hunka’s war against Russia to Nelson Mandela’s speech to the Canadian parliament.
Every member of the House of Commons, General Eyre and Commissioner
Larkin, stood and applauded Hunka’s wartime killing of Russians. Twice.
Top: the front row of Canadian officials in the Speaker’s
Gallery of the House of Commons: from left to right, unidentified
Canadian official; General Wayne Eyre (red ring), chief of Canada’s
Defence Staff; Bryan Larkin, Deputy Commissioner of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police in charge of “specialized policing services”;
unidentified Canadian official; Martin Hunka, retired chief financial
officer of Redpath Mining, a mine engineering company of North Bay,
Ontario; and his father Yaroslav Hunka of North Bay (red arrow). The
two unidentified men not wearing decorations have been identified by a
local source as bodyguards for the two ranking officers between them;
the vetting by them of those seated next to them, the Hunkas, and those
seated behind them, would have gone into considerable detail of their
security files – details now denied by every senior official of the
government who were on the House floor applauding. Bottom: https://www.cbc.ca/
Source: https://pdba.georgetown.edu/ This
is the House of Commons floor plan of 2005. There have been
renovations, seating changes, and rule variations since then. Number 21
in this diagram is the Speaker’s Gallery where Eyre, Larkin, Martin and
Yaroslav Hunka and the bodyguards were seated during Zelensky’s speech
on September 22. In an attempt to explain how the Speaker’s Gallery was
filled, the government organ CBC reported
through a former chief of prootocol, Roy Norton, that in the
standard procedure Joly’s ministry would have been consulted on filling
the Speaker’s Gallery guest list. Notwithstanding, Norton claimed the
government would have had “zero role in inviting Mr Hunka, or for that
matter most of the people who sat in the gallery”. Norton had been a
Canadian foreign ministry diplomat for many years, ending up as chief of
protocol until 2019.
He was out of government before wartime security measures surrounding
the Ukrainian president and Canadian general officers took effect.
The standing, smiling, cheering, hand-clapping display of September
22 in Ottawa was, sociologically and psychologically speaking,* the same
as German communities of the North Bay-kind and German officials of the
House of Commons-type displayed throughout the 1930s and 1940s until
they were stopped by the Red Army and silenced by Germany’s capitulation
in May 1945. Not that their descendants in North Bay and across Canada
have surrendered that German ideology in the seventy-eight years which
have elapsed since then. The enthusiasm of the MPs to jump to their
feet, shouting and saluting Hunka for killing Russians is evidence
plain.
So are the subsequent attempts by the MPs, government ministers, and
General Eyre to pin responsibility on Rota and claim ignorance for
themselves. Eyre’s spokesman has announced
“[the decision to recognize Hunka] was made independently within the
Speaker’s office, without the involvement or awareness of people in
attendance, including DND/CAF [National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces]
members present.” The implication is that the chief of the Defence
Staff twice stood to applaud without knowing who or why, and without
understanding what Rota had said.
Deputy Prime Minister Freeland’s acute nervousness at concealing her
role in celebrating Hunka and the Galician division was visible when she
was questioned by a reporter six days after the event, on September 28.
Asked whether she supports the reopening of the Deschênes Commission,
the Canadian government investigation of war criminals in 1985-86,
so that “Canadians can know how many veterans who fought with the
Nazis are here in our country”, Freeland fidgeted with her hands for
several seconds before evading a direct answer.
“As a government,” she said, “we are going to be very thoughtful about any further steps that need to be taken.”
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland at her press conference on September 28. Source: https://twitter.com/
A new investigation, if it were held and if the Deschênes Commission
files on immigrant Ukrainian participants in German war crimes were
reopened, would identify the German Army, SS and Nazi career of
Freeland’s maternal grandfather, Mikhail Chomiak, who was still wanted
for his war crimes in Poland in the 1980s.
The first report of Chomiak’s active involvement in the liquidation
of the Jewish communities of the Galician region around Lvov, appeared
here in January 2017. At the time Freeland dismissed the evidence as Russian propaganda.
Hunka has identified the British Army and its intelligence units as
likely to be holding files on him and other members of the Galician
division during their time in British prisoner-of-war camps between 1945
and 1951. According
to Hunka, “on the last day of the war, the Galicia Division broke
contact with the CHA in Styria, Austria, and surrendered to the British
Army. In the prisoner-of-war camp in Italy, I met many guys from
different villages of the Berezhany region. I remember that Yaroslav
Babuniak, Stepan Kukuruza, Yaroslav Lototskyi, Lev Bahlay, Volodymyr
Bilyk, Ostap Sokolskyi, Lev Babiy, Yaroslav Ivakhiv were there from the
Berezhany gymnasium. I think it was God’s will that we should go around
the world like the tribe of Israel, tell the world about Ukraine, and
forty-five years later come to it with help.”
A Canadian government press release claims
the British government asked Canada to take Ukrainian POWs like Hunka
as immigrants. Hunka himself has not revealed where he met Margaret
Edgerton, the English woman he married in 1951, before the two moved to
Canada in 1954.
Edgerton’s obituary reveals she was born in Warwickshire, but this does not reveal
how she met Hunka “after the Second World War.” Altogether, nine
years of British Army, MI6, and MI5 records on Hunka are so far
unmentioned in the Canadian and international reporting of his case.
Published in 2011 in Combatant News,
a US-based platform for Ukrainian soldiers who had served the Ukrainian
National Army (UNA), Hunka titled this statement “My Generation
Memoirs”.
During two years of interrogations of Hunka and the other Galician veterans in Italy, the British government prepared
some for covert operations against the Soviets in the Ukraine, and
resettled others in the UK. “When the 8,500 Ukrainian former soldiers
of the Galicia Division were transferred to the UK from Italy in
May-June 1947 they were accommodated in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps in
various parts of the UK, mainly in the agricultural areas of eastern
England and southern Scotland. Occasionally the men were moved between
camps. In July 1948 the numbers of men in camps at or near various
locations were as follows: Hempton (Norfolk) – 1,682 men, Mildenhall
(Suffolk) – 1,401, Allington (Lincolnshire) – 1,319, Moorby
(Lincolnshire) – 1,264, Botesdale (Suffolk) – 1,010, Dalkeith (Scotland)
– 958, Lockerbie (Scotland) – 463, other locations (including
hospitals, where invalids were held) – 300. After the men were released
from POW status (August-October 1948) and admitted into the European
Voluntary Workers (EVW) scheme, the POW camps in which they were being
held were taken over by civilian authorities and redesignated as
hostels.”
Another Ukrainian account of British efforts to prevent Hunka and the
other Galician veterans from being repatriated to Soviet Ukraine to
face war crimes trials is described here.
Because Hunka came from Berezhany, in the Ternopil region, the British
classified him as a Polish national rather than a Soviet, and this
protected him from deportation to his homeland.
That he and his associates may have participated
in the killing of between 4,000 and 8,000 Jews in the area between 1941
and 1943 is suggested in this brief timeline. Hunka claims that in
1940 when he was a 15-year old high school student in Berezhany, he was
one of six Ukrainians in a class of forty; two were Poles; and “the rest
[32] were Jewish children of refugees from Poland. We wondered why they
ran away in front of such a civilised Western people as the Germans.”
In 1941, when the killing of the Jews of Berezhany was under way,
Hunka has written that “I was just 16 years old, and the next two years
[1942-43] were the happiest years of my life. I did not imagine that
what I experienced in those two years would give me love for my hometown
so much that it would be enough for me for the rest of my life. Little
did I know then that dreams of those two years, of the company of
charming girls, of cheerfully cheerful friends, of fragrant evenings in
the luxurious castle park and passages through the city would help me
overcome the troubled times of the following years.”
In 1943, Hunka, then 18 years old, reports
that “in two weeks, eighty thousand volunteers volunteered for the
division, including many students of the Berezhany gymnasium. None of us
asked what our reward would be, what our provision would be, or even
what our tomorrow would be. We felt our duty to our native land – and
left!” The massacres of several thousand Polish villagers started in
the Ternopil region after this mobilisation in 1943, and after the Jews
had been wiped out, including all of Hunka’s schoolmates. The most
notorious of the Galician division’s attacks was the destruction of the
Polish village and inhabitants of Huta Pieniacka in February 1944.
Hunka’s whereabouts as the Galician units moved through his home
region killing Poles was almost certainly recorded by British military
interrogators when Hunka was in their POW camp in Italy from 1945 to
1947. The British evidence on Hunka would have been passed to the
Canadian immigration authorities if they had requested it at the time
Hunka applied to leave the UK for Toronto.
The same evidence, and more, was gathered by the Polish authorities
in Warsaw, where the Galician division and individual name files are
being opened now at the Institute for National Remembrance (IPN). Soviet
military and security files on Hunka are also available in Moscow.
In January 2017 Galicians vandalized the memorials to the villagers of Huta Pieniacka with Ukrainian national and SS graffiti.
British government propaganda is reporting the Hunka affair as a
debate between elderly Jews and nonagenarian Ukrainians arguing over
past and disputed history which Rota, government ministers, General
Eyre, and every member of the Canadian parliament knew nothing of until
now. This is also the line taken by Gould whose first tweet to protect
Hunka and herself claimed: “Like all MPs, I had no further information
than the Speaker provided. Exiting the Chamber I walked by the
individual and took a photo. As a descendent of Jewish Holocaust
survivors I would ask all parliamentarians to stop politicizing an issue
troubling to many, myself included.” What Gould meant was that she and
the Jewish community do not want Hunka’s past record to upset the
current alliance between the Jews and Ukrainians of Canada to prosecute
the war against Russia.
The German Foreign Ministry, headed by Annalena Baerbock, the leading
promoter in Berlin of race war against Russia, defended the standing
salute for Hunka given by Sabine Sparwasser, German ambassador to
Canada, who was in the Speaker’s Gallery near Hunka. According to the
ministry spokesman, Sebastian Fischer (right), reading from a prepared statement, Sparwasser had no idea
what she was standing to applaud. “The true identity of Mr. Hunka,
namely that he was a volunteer member of the Waffen-SS, was not known to
those present, since his participation had not been announced.”
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) version of what happened
in the past claims “the Galicia Division has been accused of committing
war crimes, but its members have never been found guilty in a court of
law.” This BBC report
makes no reference to Poland or to the Polish massacres at all. It
depicts public criticism of Hunka as a Jewish community protest, boosted
by Moscow. “While far-right extremism still exists in Ukraine, it is
much smaller than what Russian propaganda tries to make people believe…”
The Polish government investigation of Hunka has begun since the Hunka affair was publicised.
The mainstream Canadian media are also trying to restrict the public
controversy to a debate between Jews and Ukrainians, and direct the
ensuing public apologies to the Jewish community. Here, for example,
Irwin Сotler, former Canadian justice minister and Liberal Party
attorney-general, speaking from Jerusalem, makes the point that in 1948
“it was easier to get into Canada if you were a Nazi than if you were a
Jew.” Сotler explained
the reason for this was “indifference and inaction by successive
Canadian governments. As a result we became a sanctuary for Nazi war
criminals and no accountability.”
Сotler was misrepresenting the record. He knows that before the
German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Anglo-American alliance
took the same view as the German Reich that the “Judaeo-Bolshevik
conspiracy” put Jews and Russians into the same category for targeting
as enemies. After 1945 it took time before the same alliance, including
Canada, removed Jews from the war targeting. Russians have remained,
however. Сotler is as committed to waging the present war against them
as Hunka and everyone else in the Canadian parliament.
[*] Fascism has been repeatedly defined on this website, and
in the author’s books, to mean the state when rule is by force (and the
fear of it); when state budgets, parliamentary votes, and oligarch
fortunes are frauds upon the taxpayers; and when government propaganda
has become so pervasive, no alternative public beliefs are permitted,
and subversion is the rule. That’s when the majority of people believe
what it is demonstrably not in their interest; and when they encourage
the use of state force to suppress everyone who dares to calculate and
say otherwise, so that no one can any longer apprehend what is in their
interest, or not. There have been countless experiments by US
psychologists to identify the fascist citizen or totalitarian
personality, ever since this became a wartime priority in the 1940s. The
most telling of these is Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments
at Yale in the 1960s. They demonstrated that normal individuals will
administer fatal electrocution to others if they are convinced the
authority to order them to press the button is legitimate. With a wave
to Hunka, Rota got Canada’s parliament to demonstrate how easy it is to
press the button.
More than three and a half years later, and we still don’t have
definitive answers to that Covid-19 outbreak; the immensity of which
touched arguably every person on Earth. How is it possible the source
and cause of Covid, the focus of thousands of minds and scores of
millions of research dollars, still eludes us? Health authorities may
say, science is often complex and not prone to easy answers, and often
that’s true, but not always.
Right now in BC, between 15 and 16 more British Columbians will die
every day than the actuarial tables predict. Those tables contain the
hard data insurers and others use to forecast who and how many will
live, and how many die; the better to set your life insurance premiums,
among other things. Not entirely simple, but not brain science either.
So, surely BC’s health department can tell us what these nearly 7,000
unforeseen annual deaths mean… Shirley?
Alan Cassels has been a drug policy researcher and
pharmacy-journalist for 29 years, and he’s the author of four books
including the bestseller ‘Selling Sickness’.
His many essays have appeared at Victoria’s Focus Magazine, and other
places too. His latest topic of inquiry is ‘Why are so many extra BC
people dying than usual?’
Alan Cassels in the first half.
And; just as Covid policy and the war in Ukraine have divided
Canadians, so too gender identity and definition is creating camps of
passionate disagreement, and even violence. And, it’s not only in this
country. Throughout Western democracies, where protecting minorities’
rights is a cornerstone of policy, governments and citizens are being
forced to face difficult and fundamental issues of what the nature of
society is and should look like. In Canada it means the creation of
“thought crimes”.
Meghan Murphy is a Mexico-based Canadian writer, and founder of
Feminist Current. She is too the host of The Same Drugs podcast. You can
also find all her work online at www.meghanmurphy.ca.
Meghan will be in Nanaimo October 1st for Vancouver Island Speaks
Out: Gender Identity Ideology, Women’s Spaces & Parental Rights.
Meghan Murphy and the hate and loathing of Canada’s gender identity debate in the second half.
But first, Alan Cassels and the “dead” elephant in the post-Covid excess death living room.
Alan Cassels Reading Recommendations:
Tom Jefferson and Carl Henneghan https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/trustthevidence
Paul Alexander https://palexander.substack.com/p/excess-all-cause-mortality-deaths
Joel Smalley https://metatron.substack.com/p/excess-mortality-analysis-germany
Murray Hunter: https://murrayhunter.substack.com/p/the-unexplained-rise-in-excess-deaths
Jennifer Brown: https://docbrown77.substack.com/p/excess-mortality-has-tripled-since
Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
Yesterday, the American president took the podium at the United
Nations to perform his annual liturgical duty, repeating the lies and
hypocrisies defining his nation. Yes, the United States is – as it
wreaks havoc across the planet – really keen for a World where “…our
children do not go hungry and everyone has access [to] quality
healthcare, where workers are empowered and our environment is
protected… where conflicts are resolved peacefully and countries can
chart their own course.”
If that doesn’t bring the bile to your mouth, you need to know more
about what America does to countries who try charting their own course.
Especially if that course includes feeding the hungry, providing
healthcare to the sick, and empowering workers.
There are many examples to choose from, including Nicaragua; a nation
that has felt the Yankee boot on its neck for very nearly two
centuries.
Jeremy Kuzmarov is a journalist and author who also serves as Managing Editor at CovertActionMagazine.com.
His book titles include, ‘Obama’s Unending Wars’, and ‘The Russians Are
Coming, Again’, written with John Marciano. His latest article at CAM, ‘Biden Has Relaunched Reagan’s Murderous War Against Nicaraguan Democracy–How Many Is He Willing to Kill to Win?‘ examines America’s ongoing campaign against the country that still will not bend a knee to Empire.
Jeremy Kuzmarov in the first half.
And; America’s persistent historical interference in Nicaragua and
its more recent machinations in Ukraine differ only in scale. And though
the ruination being made out of the latter is fast becoming total,
still the NATO alliance and its international collaborators say, “push
on”.
Dimitri Lascaris is a Montreal-based activist, journalist, and
lawyer. He served as Justice Critic in the Shadow Cabinet of the Green
Party of Canada and likewise for the Green Party of Quebec. Dimitri’s
interviews for TRNN are at TheRealNews.com. Dimitri’s articles appear at
various sites online and at his website, DimitriLascaris.org, where I found his latest piece, ‘Ukraine’s Worst Enemies Are Those Who Demand Russia’s Strategic Defeat‘.
Dimitri Lascaris and Ukraine’s ‘friends like these’ in the second half.
But first, Jeremy Kuzmarov and Biden ridin’ the legacy of Reagan in Nicaragua.
Earlier this year, Britain decided to include depleted uranium shells
with its deliveries of their Challenger II tanks gifted to Ukraine.
Russia charged the so-called CHARM3 munitions are in effect “dirty
bombs” and would decision effectively “nuclearized” the war there.
DU munitions were first used in the Gulf War of 1991, again in the
Former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Syria.
The deleterious, long-term effects of DU is well documented, yet still
contested by NATO and America, who recently announced it too would send
depleted uranium weaponry to Ukraine.
Ken Stone is an activist and author working for peace with the Syria
Support Movement International and Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War.
His book, ‘Defiant Syria: Dispatches from the Second International Tour
of Peace to Syria’ is a compilation of his dispatches from the Second
International Tour of Peace which visited Syria from April 12-18, 2016.
Ken and the Hamilton Coalition
are hosting the webinar, ‘Cluster Bombs & Depleted Uranium Weapons
in Ukraine: 2 More Reasons to End the War Now’ today, September 20th.
As the Ukraine front of the West’s war
against Russia continues its collapse – by all accounts, save
Zelenskyy’s – the battle to defeat the recalcitrant energy giant
continues. Not content with attaching bank accounts and confiscating
airplanes, agents of the West have taken too to piracy, seizing
oil-laden Russian registered tankers on the high seas. But even that
age-old tactic of America’s maritime empire and its English predecessor
pales beside the backroom buccaneering being employed to wrest from
Russia the richest prize, the World’s greatest tanker fleet.
John Helmer is a journalist and author
who’s spent decades living in and reporting from Russia. Principle
behind the web news site, Dances with Bears, Helmer has too been a
professor of political science, sociology, and journalism, and served as
advisor to governments at the highest levels.
Among his many book titles are: ‘Skripal in Prison,’ ‘The Man Who Knows
Too Much About Russia,’ ‘The Jackals’ Wedding: American Power, Arab
Revolt’, ‘The Lie That Shot Down MH-17’, ‘Australian Fascism: How It
Destroyed the Courts’, and his latest, still steaming hot of the
presses, ‘SOVCOMPLOT: How Pirates Tried to Capture the Treasure of the
Russian Seas, and Were Caught Out’.
John Helmer in the first half.
And; America has been at war with Russia
much longer than most people today appreciate. In 1944, though allies in
the fight against the Axis Powers, the United States planned, after
Hitler’s fall, to turn its super secret super-weapon the A-bomb on its
“friend” the Soviet Union, killing tens of millions of its people, and
crippling its society. The plan was to send Russia back to the Stone
Age.
And the plan may have succeeded but for the
Soviet’s miraculous development of its own super weapon, promising any
such action against it would provoke a mutual response. Mutually Assured
Destruction, the MAD Doctrine, has hung over the heads of us all at
varying degrees of imminent catastrophe ever since.
But, how did the Soviets manage their miracle of atomic deterrence?
Dave Lindorff is an Izzy Award-winning
investigative journalist, author, founder of the web news site, This
Can’t Be Happening.net, and documentary producer whose now released
film, ‘A Compassionate Spy‘ tells the tale of Ted Hall, wunderkind
physicist and spy who may well have saved Russia and the World from
nuclear conflagration. Dave’s been working on a companion book of sorts
for the film titled, ‘Spy for No Country’, due out any day.
Dave Lindorff and Ted Hall saving Russia, saving the World in the second half.
But first, John Helmer and Russia beating too the high seas picaroons.
“Rather than assist people afflicted by droughts, impoverishment and
intensifying wars, the United States is acting in its own perceived self-interests
and entertaining Saudi demands for even more military power.”
There's a refugee trail from the Sahel drought region in Africa, into war-ravaged
Yemen, and up through Saudi Arabia towards Iraq and Turkey. It’s known as “the Eastern
route,” or sometimes “the Yemeni route.”
The Saudi monarchy, already leading an eight-year starvation and
bombardment campaign against Iran-aligned, rebel-governed Yemen, has been
massacring Ethiopian (and other African) refugees, allegedly in the thousands, to
send a message that drought-stricken Africans should choose to die at home and
not risk their lives to die in Yemen. It’s a chilling, cruel message.
U.S. imperial policies in the region, which have propped up the brutal Saudi
monarchy, ensure continued bloodshed, hunger, division and destabilization.
These degenerate policies undermine desperately needed collaboration in the
face of ecological collapse. Rather than assist people afflicted by droughts,
impoverishment and intensifying wars, the United States is acting in its own perceived
self-interests and entertaining Saudi demands for even more military power. The
purpose of wooing Saudi Arabia with military contracts is, apparently, to head
off a further economic integration of Saudi Arabia with China and Russia, global
rivals of the United States.
Sometime during the week of September 3, two U.S. State department
representatives will arrive in Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh, to resume
negotiations with the Saudi royals. A recent report suggests
that the meetings will discuss a NATO-like agreement between Saudi Arabia and
the United States, a measure which might then move Saudi Arabia closer toward
normalizing relations with Israel. What does Riyadh seek in return? "Riyadh
has been seeking a NATO-like mutual security treaty that would obligate the US
to come to Saudi Arabia’s defense if the latter is attacked,” according to The
Times of Israel. The Saudis also seek to strengthen a US-backed civilian
nuclear program in Saudi Arabia and they want assurance about acquiring more
advanced weaponry from U.S. military contractors.
At
the recent summit of the BRICS+ coalition led by U.S. rival, China, Saudi
Arabia was announced as a new member to join in January 2024. Earlier this year
China had brokered a resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia
and its (and the U.S.') chief regional rival, Iran, which has also been invited
to join BRICS+ early next year. The U.S.
State Department's Brett McGurk and Barbara Leaf, in their Riyadh trip, will be working to counter integration
of the oil-rich Saudi nation into a coalition of nations the U.S. fears as threats
to U.S. unipolar hegemony. Routinely, the United States condemns China and
Russia for human rights abuses, – abuses
paling beside the worst of Saudi Arabia's.
Since
2015, Saudi Arabia has bombed, starved, blockaded and tortured Yemeni
civilians. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to persecute and execute its
own civilians for speaking out about cruel wrongdoings.
This widespread and systematic pattern of attacks
featured incidents, the report states, when “Saudi border guards asked migrants
what limb to shoot, and then shot them at close range. Saudi border guards also
fired explosive weapons at migrants who were attempting to flee back to Yemen.”
The rights group cited eyewitness
reports of attacks by troops and images that showed dead bodies and burial
sites on migrant routes, saying the death toll could amount to “possibly
thousands”.
Also of interest to the two U.S. envoys
should be a report from the Guardian which says the U.S. and German
militaries have trained and
equipped Saudi border guards.
There
is a reason for the massive migrant flight from the Sahel into the killing zone
that Saudi Arabia, with its international partners, has made of Yemen: The
planet is boiling.
Collaboration is surely needed among all peoples in order to cope with and
solve the tragic problems, including horrific human rights abuses, certain to escalate
because of intensifying climate catastrophes. But military agreements with
Saudi Arabia will increase the readiness of Saudi Arabia to attack weaker
countries and persecute its own citizenry. Green lighting development of
nuclear technology will exacerbate the environmental assaults caused by war.
The United States' policy of confrontation to beat down economic rivals can
only worsen these crises.
During
years when the United States collaborated with and armed dictators, militaries
and paramilitaries in Central and South America, several notable leaders
demanded an end to the violence. El Salvador’s Archbishop
Oscar Romero, now canonized as a saint, spoke up:
“I would like to appeal in a
special way to the men of the army, and in particular to the troops of the
National Guard, the police, and the garrisons. Brothers, you belong to our own
people. You kill your own brother peasants; and in the face of an order to kill
that is given by a man, the law of God that says ‘Do not kill!’ should prevail.
“No soldier is obliged to obey an
order counter to the law of God. No one has to comply with an immoral law. It
is the time now that you recover your conscience and obey its dictates rather
than the command of sin. . . . Therefore, in the name of God, and in the name
of this long-suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven every day more
tumultuous, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you! In the name of God: ‘Cease
the repression!’”
In
a sense, he signed his own death warrant when he signed this statement. On
March 24, 1980, Romero was assassinated for his courageous words and deeds.
President
Joe Biden would do well to heed this Catholic saint, revise the mandate he
gives to diplomats working in Saudi Arabia, and rely on Archbishop Romero’s
words: Recover your conscience! Stop the repression, stop the killing.
Rather
than normalize militarism and human rights abuses, the United States should
seek, always and everywhere, to salvage the planet and respect human rights.
