RANT: CLOWN SHOW

 

IN OTTAWA last week, there was a bit of hoo-ha on Parliament Hill during the Second Coming of Christ Zelensky (actually, it’s his first visit to Canada). Besides the cringe-worthy fawning President Zee received in the House of Commons, with standing ovations and cheers heard from every corner of the room, along with an additional six-hundred million bucks from the Canadian taxpayer for Italian villas weapons and aid (more than twice what he got during his U.S. trip, days earlier, BTW*), the Speaker of the House, Anthony Rota, had the bright idea of honouring a Ukrainian WWII veteran, one Yaroslav Hunka, who emigrated to Canada after the war. We honour our veterans, as we should, for putting their lives on the line to fight for our country, and we respect other countries’ veterans for doing the same. Problem is, Yaroslav seems to have fought on the wrong side. He was introduced and lauded with two standing ovations as a veteran who “fought against Russia,” and I guess those credentials were enough for whoever vetted the 98-year-old. If you’re an enemy of Russia, you must be a friend of ours! (NOT!)

YOU SEE, it turns out Hunka indeed had fought against Russia in WWII—but as a member of the “14th Waffen Grenadier Division” of the SS (Schutzstaffel: "Protective Echelon") also known as the “1st Galician Division.” That’s right, folks, our Yaroslav was a member of a dyed in the wool Nazi army that fought against the Allies (which included the USSR). Oopsie, big time!

 

Now, everyone knows how it is when you’re out in the country, in summer, breathing all that fresh air. The sky is blue, troubled thoughts are miles away. And you just feel good about life and living. You walk in grassy fields light and carefree. The day goes peacefully on and in that warm sunshine you’re grateful just for being alive. Then you step in something soft and squishy, clingy, and enveloping. You feel warmth oozing over the toe of your sandals and you think: “Yep. Cow patty.”  I imagine House Speaker Rota must have felt something similar because he really stepped in it. The Parliament Hill faux pas was noted in numerous newspapers in Canada and abroad. There have been criticisms from several governments as well as from Jewish organizations. The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center advocacy group said it was “incredibly disturbing to see Canada’s Parliament rise to applaud an individual who was a member of a unit in the Waffen-SS, a Nazi military branch responsible for the murder of Jews and others and that was declared a criminal organization during the Nuremberg Trials.”

In Canada, Michael Mostyn, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada called honouring Hunka in Parliament

 

“…beyond outrageous.” He added that “no apology is acceptable that does not also provide the public with a detailed explanation as to how this could possibly have taken place in the heart of our democracy.” (RT)

 

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING last week's execrable session of parliament, newspapers, media and governments worldwide continued to express condemnation and puzzlement over how  a Nazi war veteran came to be lauded in Canada's House of Commons.  THE ‘black swan' event took place last Friday, and by Sunday a sheepish Speaker Rota offered apologies to one and all for introducing the Nazi veteran at the Parliamentary shindig worshiping hosting Ukraine’s President Zelensky, who can be seen giving a ‘fist-bump’ to the old seig hiel-er as the room exploded in applause. By the following Wednesday, Rota had fallen on his sword and resigned as Speaker.

 

Canadians should be embarrassed and disturbed by this turn of events. Surely vetting persons given such high-profile acknowledgment in parliament should be done with more rigor beyond merely accepting the claim that Hunka was a WWII veteran who “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians,” quoting Speaker Rota. 

It is strange turn of affairs when those in the highest ranks of Canadian political life seem to lack a proper understanding of basic history.

 

IN 1939, Germany and the USSR (United Soviet Socialist Republics)signed a non-aggression pact, which surprised the world when it was announced. At the time, Britain and France had been negotiating with Stalin to form an alliance against the growing threat of fascist Germany, hoping to contain the Nazi regime by threats of a two-front war. 

 

IN AUGUST of that year, those negotiations failed when Moscow chose what it thought was the safer bet in signing a non-aggression pact with Germany. As part of the agreement, Poland was invaded in September of 1939 and divided between the two powers to act as a buffer zone between their two spheres of influence. In addition, the USSR took control of the Baltic States, and later, part of Finland to further strengthen its borderlands against both the capitalist West and its problematic treaty partner. As part of the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”, the USSR provided raw materials and equipment to Germany after its invasion of western Poland (Russia took the eastern half) when Britain and France declared war against Germany and began blockading and closing off its global supply lines. Note that the USSR and Germany were uneasy pact partners, with different political and economic systems, each wary of the other as a potential foe. Their non-aggression pact lasted until 1941 when Hitler made the disastrous decision to invade Russia and the Soviet Union joined with the Allies against Hitler's Germany.  Thus the USSR was not an enemy to be "fought against" by the Allies during WWII. It had formed a pact with Germany to limit the threat of Hitler's suspected expansionist plans. This historical fact, that from 1941-45, the USSR (today's Russian Federation) was our ally in the fight against Nazi Germany, should have twigged someone organizing the FUBAR  in Ottawa to touch base with Yaroslav and ask him which side  he fought on during the war. This question either did not occur to anyone through ignorance of history or, more disturbingly, through indifference to Hunka's Nazi past--because the only thing that mattered was that he fought against Russia. 

 

ACCORDING TO HIS newly minted Wikipedia* page, YAROSLAV HUNKA was born in 1925, in Urman Poland, SE of Lviv, in the multi-ethnic region of Eastern Europe known as Galacia (see map, above).

As a teen, the ethnically Ukrainian Yaroslav lived in USSR-occupied Poland from 1939-41 after which war broke out between the Germans and Soviets, who were forced to surrender the entirety of Poland to Germany. By 1943, when he was eighteen, he had become a member of the 1^st Galician Division of the Waffen-SS. One assumes he had a simmering hatred of the former occupiers of his homeland (the Soviets) that drove him to make the misguided decision of joining the Germany's notorious Nazi SS legions. Germany was now at war with USSR. The USSR stood in the way of Ukrainian independence, so Yaroslav must have reasoned that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  (Or maybe he just liked their cooler uniforms.)  Anyway, he trained in Munich prior to his placement with the 1st Galician. And as a member of the Waffen-SS, he swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler directly (unlike the Bundeswehr, the regular German army, which pledged allegiance to their country.) Even at the young age of 18, surely, he must have been aware of the odious ideology that guided those who became members of an “SS” (Schutzstaffel: “Protective Echelon”)  organization. 

 

And the Waffen-SS was already active along the Eastern Front. Surely, he would have known what they were about. Did his hatred of Russia convince him that joining the ranks of Nazis was the lesser of two evils? That to fight against Russia alongside Nazis was the only thing he could do, the only way he could fight against those who had stolen his land. Or did he believe, or come to believe, the dogmas and hateful rhetoric fostered by the Nazi regime, and was it that which drew him to the ranks of the Waffen-SS? We will never know. 

In 1945, the 1st Galician changed its name to the "1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army" (UNA) and surrendered to British and American forces on May 10, 1945.

After the war, Hunka emigrated to Canada, while the region where he was born was incorporated into the Republic of Ukraine as part of the Soviet Union. He became part of the Ukrainian diaspora that migrated to Britain and later Canada, where he remained an active member of Northern Ontario's Ukrainian community.

 

IT MUST BE REMEMBERED, in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, and along the Eastern Front, Waffen-SS brigades destroyed towns and villages, and committed genocidal murders of Jews and other groups, among numerous other war crimes. The 1985 Russian movie, “Come and See”, one of the world's great anti-war films, describes the horrors loosed by Nazism and the carnage it wrought during those years. The atrocities depicted in the movie have been laid at the feet of the Waffen-SS. Note: The entire Waffen-SS organization was declared a “criminal organization” guilty of “war crimes” during the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46.  However, in a 1986 review of WWII Ukrainian emigres who'd arrived en masse in Canada after the war, the Deschênes Commission found there was insufficient evidence to charge members of the  1st Galician Division  with war crimes. No serious investigation of the emigres who settled here after the war was conducted by immigration officials at the time, and the findings of Deschênes  closed the books on the matter. 

IT IS DISTURBING to learn that hundreds of former Waffen-SS soldiers were dispersed among Canada’s large Ukrainian diaspora, those immigrants who had come earlier to Canada untainted by the disease of Nazism.

 

In 1945, why were these folks shoveled out of Europe and into Canada, the U.S. and Australia? Activities of the 1st Galacian were swept under the rug and hushed-up. I am reminded of Operation Paperclip which resettled Nazi scientists in the United States at the war's end, to exploit their skills in industry and Cold War scientific projects. [Missiles? Moon shots, anyone? Ed.] Never mind whether they had blood on their hands. In Canada's case, did we 'take out Europe's garbage' with promises of future benefits? 

The 1st Galician Division was guilty of war crimes despite the whitewashing that's been done over the years to rehabilitate its image. They fought on the Eastern Front against Russia, as well as committing atrocities against civilian populations behind the lines, with genocidal purges of Jews, dissidents and partisans. They raped and pillaged with the best of them. These volunteers in the 1^st Galician were traitors and quislings, Nazi adherents who knew well their lands and peoples, and betrayed them to the conquering Germans.    

 

MEANWHILE, IN 2023 OTTAWA, Speaker Anthony Rota was so anxious to be seen as anti-Russia, like the rest of parliament, that he jumped at the chance to highlight someone during Zelensky’s visit who’d fought the good fight against those evil Ruskies. But his brain froze, and he failed to connect the dots which would have given him the full picture of Hunka’s real war record, and the fact that--hello!--Russia was on our side fighting the Nazis from 1941 to 1945, and that maybe Hunka’s 'fighting Russians for Ukraine' stance wasn’t so noble, after all. "Yaroslav Hunka," Rota said, “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians,” and he did so as a Nazi. 

 

I SHOULD SAY that the history of Ukraine, Poland, Galicia, Russia, and Eastern Europe in general is complicated, and the 'players' and 'teams' are not always clear. But former US marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter gives a short but helpful summary of the Neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine, and he shines a light on the influence Waffen-SS 'expats', and their ideology, may have had in Canada and elsewhere today.  Recall that President Putin announced in February of last year that the "special military operation" he began in Ukraine had as one of its key goals the "de-Nazification" of Ukraine. To me, this always seemed to be a vague goal and I just chalked it up to spin-doctoring on Putin's part. 

However, Ritter's short discussion, that I've linked to above, provides an important context for understanding the dark undercurrent of Neo-Nazism in today's Ukraine and the real dangers it poses both for Ukraine and Russia, and possibly for Canada as well.

[Photo above: Ukrainians dressed in SS Galicia Division uniforms march past graves during a re-burial ceremony at the SS Galicia Division cemetery near the village of Chervone, Ukraine, in 2013.  Photo right: Azov Battalion, Ukraine, circa 2020. Nice flags, guys.]

 

FINALLY, IT SEEMS SPEAKER ROTA is taking one for the team. He says inviting Hunka was all his fault, that no one knew he would introduce the veteran, and that he had not done due diligence in screening him beforehand. There were calls for the Speaker to resign from numerous parliamentarians, as well as foreign governments. Update: Rota resigned on Wednesday, five days after his catastrophic blunder. But, is that the whole story?

 

There's  something else that's a bit of a puzzle. The German ambassador to Canada, Sabine Sparwasser, also attended Zelensky's speech and Hunka's "recognition" by parliament, and she clapped enthusiastically like the rest of the trained seals. Question: Why was she there? She didn't show up hoping to get a selfie with Zelensky. Her invitation must have come from the PMO to attend parliament that day. They (the PMO and German embassy officials), must have known Hunka fought for Germany during WWII. Why else would they invite her, other than to have Sparwasser acknowledge and applaud, as a German, someone who fought Russians in WWII, in spite of the fact the old fellow had fought in  the ranks of a Nazi SS unit. 

It's almost like we're being 'groomed' or conditioned to accept Nazism as something that just happened in the normal course of things, that it was in the past and is not a problem today. 

It's like we're in a cult, inundated with the same message over and over: Russia is bad. Ukraine is good. Nato is good. Trudeau is good, Russia is bad...etc.,  until all of us are pacified and under control. Are elites so invested in keeping control of the narrative, of distorting and obfuscating the truth, that they are always trying to direct us to look at the shiny objects over there while they maneuver in the background somewhere else? Is this where we're headed? [Why yes, Jethro. That's exactly where we're headed. Ed.] It's starting to feel claustrophobic, here in Oh, Canada.

 

THIS affair must have been quite the embarrassment for the German government, with their representative applauding a former Nazi. However, the German Foreign Ministry offered an excuse for Sparwasser, saying she may have misinterpreted Hunka's war record, thinking he had "fought against Russia" in some other capacity, as a Polish or Ukrainian partisan, for example, and not in the Ranks of of Waffen--SS. Didn't they bother to Google the guy? It's not as if his past was a state secret. 

“The incident has sparked international reactions, with Moscow condemning it as a cynical misuse of the memory of Nazism's victims and a display of blatant Russophobia. Russia has raised the possibility of launching a probe into potential war crimes and requesting Hunka's extradition. Poland, a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, has also called for an investigation into potential war crimes committed by Hunka.” (Republicworld.) 

 

[Fascism comes in many flavours. Be careful what you lick. Ed.] Our government is making us eat shit sandwiches while telling us they're cream cheese. 💩💩💩

    He's not waiting for the ice cream man.

HERE'S THE THING:  You would think the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) would have been in the loop as far as Hunka’s invite goes. Aren't there security checks run of persons who enter parliament and meet with the Prime Minister and high profile guests like Zelensky?  The PMO says the PM and Zelensky did not meet with the 98-year-old but what's he waiting for in this photograph? The dessert cart to come around? Did someone forget to wheel the nonagenarian into the place? 

Cummon! They met. There was a background check. They knew who Hunka was, but it was more important to elevate someone who'd fought against Russia, even if his past was more than a little janky. Just where does the buck stop? It's too damn convenient to lay the blame on Speaker Rota.  It looks like Justin (“Duck and Cover”) Trudeau¹ will fob responsibility for this latest mess off on someone else. Again. 

 

THE MORE I LOOK at this abysmal display, the more it seems that values and morality have taken a back seat to display and performance. Everyone in parliament was supposed to applaud Hunka like it was a scene from a movie or something, and the only important thing for them was that he fought against Russia. And it's doubleplus good to fight  Russia, isn't it. It doesn't  matter which team you were on. As long as you're fighting against Putin, you can ignore all that Nazi stuff. Look over here! Look how our Prime Minister ignores the fact that sweet Opa up there in the public gallery was a Nazi thug in his youth. Just like Canadians have been conditioned to ignore the fact that since 2015, our military has been training and equipping neo-Nazis in Ukraine's military. We're real good at ignoring things. It's like learning to clap on cue. 

 

Trudeau is a broken record spouting the same dismal mantra: "We support Ukraine for as long as it takes," yadda-yadda-yadda, until we're all blue in the face, all the while ignoring inconvenient truths like: Neo-Nazism is alive and well  in western Ukraine, and perhaps over here as well. Along with swallowing today's seig-heilers, we're also meant to ignore the systemic graft and corruption within Zelensky's regime, where billions of Canadian taxpayer dollars has gone into that money pit. Or else ignoring the wider truths around why we are supporting this war and for whom. Why do we ignore what's right in front of of us? It's because we're a team fighting Putin! That's why! 

Why do we keep listening to this fool of a Prime Minister?

 

The Monday following Friday's clusterfuck in Canada's parliament continued the Bizarro World-themed parliamentary session with Liberal House Leader, Karina Gould calling for a vote to strike all records of Speaker Rota's recognition of Yaroslav Hunka  from the parliamentary archives.² Fortunately, her shocking motion was voted down.  But WTF, man!!😱

IF THIS doesn't send a chill down your spine with whispers of things to come, I don't know what will. Winston Smith, the main character in George Orwell's 1984 had as his job deleting old news items that no longer conformed to current ruling orthodoxy and then rewriting them to fit with the Party's latest message. For example: "Oceania has always been at war with East Asia." Or: "No Nazi has ever been applauded in the House of Commons." [Monument erected in Oakville, Ontario commemorating the SS Galicia Division.]  

👉Erasing the news or whitewashing the past have no place in a liberal democracy. That's why Liberal House Leader Gould's disturbing attempt to delete parliamentary records is an obscenity. 

👉This government is long past its sell-by date.

 

IN A RECENT CBC news report, dickface J.P. Tasker concluded his coverage of the Hunka debacle by helpfully reminding viewers that Putin is poised and ready to take advantage of our fuckup: 

 

“Regardless, Russian propagandists have already pounced, using Hunka's presence in parliament to malign Ukraine and Canada’s support for their war effort.”

And in his non-apology over Hunka's "recognition"³ our Prime Minister said much the same when he ended his short speech on Wednesday with his usual empty-headed, woke babble and Russian talking points:

 

“It is extremely troubling to think that this egregious error is being politicized by Russia and its supporters to provide false propaganda about what Ukraine is fighting for.”

 

Q: What the hell does Russia have to do with this clusterfuck? A: Nothing. This shit is all on us. 💩💩💩

THIS whole disgusting affair makes Canada look like a complete and utter clown show….😂

Cheers, Jake________________________________________

 

 

[On Tuesday, Poland announced it would be issuing an extradition request for Hunka to stand trial for war crimes in Poland. Russia says it may also file an extradition request for Hunka, whose 1st Galician Division committed atrocities against Russian citizens during WWII.]

 

* It says on Hunka’s Wikipedia page that his entry is being "considered for deletion", only days after it was put up. Why? Does the cock-up in Ottawa, when our political leaders applauded in parliament a former Waffen--SS Nazi, draw attention to the inconvenient truth that Ukraine has its own Nazi “problem”—in its military (Azov battalion) and legislature (the Azov’s political arm)? Not to mention western Ukraine’s widespread adulation of the WWII “Ukraine nationalist” Stephan Bandera who collaborated with the Nazi’s during the war and all that implies. 

Does Hunka’s story hit a little too close to home? Does it remind us there were Nazi sympathizers in Poland and Ukraine at the time who hated the USSR. Poland (Hunka’s land of birth, though I assume he is ethnically Ukrainian) had been carved up between Germany and the USSR in 1939. And earlier, in 1931-32, Stalin had enacted harsh agricultural policies that resulted in the starvation of up to four million Ukrainians, a time remembered as the “Holodomor” (“death by starvation”).  Hatred for Russia in the long knives of memory has bred in western Ukraine an unwholesome Neo-Nazi subculture that exists to this day.

[Note: Wikipedia has acted in the past to censor or disappear voices that do not conform to mainstream narratives and neoconservative orthodoxy. In other words, read Wikipedia articles with a pinch of salt. Ed.]

 

AT A PRO-UKRAINE RALLY in 2022, Hunka was interviewed, saying he supported Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Now that his Nazi past is revealed, are we reminded of another uncomfortable truth, that Canada continues to support in Ukraine adherents of an ideology our parents and grandparents fought to eradicate?

 

+ By 1943 Hunka had morphed into a soldier in the 1st Galacian Division of the German Waffen-SS. Note: The Waffen-SS and “SS” (Schutzstaffel: “Protective Echelon”) divisions in general had those ‘special duties’, running concentration camps, murdering dissents, raping and pillaging and so forth. The bulk of German armies, the “Wehrmacht”, were less psychopathic in their conduct of war.

Tip: If you belonged to the Waffen-SS, you might want to keep that under your hat. And keeping in touch with former Waffen-SS buddies on your internet blog until a few years ago (as Yaroslav did) is not a good look, either. Just sayin’.

 

1. Trudeau announced during Zelensky’s visit another $600M is to be wizzed down the drain in Ukraineland. That’s almost twice what Zelensky hustled got from the Americans earlier in the week. Increasingly, there are articles appearing in the MSM saying it’s possible, just possible that Ukraine has gone as far as it can and it’s time to negotiate. Earlier this month, EU leaders visited Kiev, giving Zelensky the say-so that he needs to open talks with Russia. But Zee might be too busy counting all the loot he’s stashed away to take their suggestions to heart. He’d better listen, because there’s scuttlebutt going around that the West (i.e., the U.S.) is getting ready to ‘Afghan him’ (i.e., dump him). What are friends for if you can't dump them? Neo-Cons, ya gotta love ‘em!)

Question: Has Trudeau not received the memo? The one that says we are so over Ukraine. It’s yesterday’s news. Zelensky is squaresville, Daddy-o! Trudeau’s boiler-plate speeches in parliament on Friday and the next day in Toronto, where he and Chrystina Freeland and Zelensky addressed a Ukrainian-Canadian gathering, were as about as interesting as warm rootbeer. 

REALITY CHECK: So far, Canada has given the grift-king nine billion dollars in weapons and cash. It's turning out that we may be Zelensky's staunchest ally, more pro-war than even Britain AND the U.S. which is damned depressing when you think about it. Ukraine and Canada are like the last couple on the dance floor. The music’s stopped. The lights have been turned up. It's time to end this slow dance; we’re tired of being groped. Trudeau is like the dopey kid in the choir that keeps singing after everyone has stopped. Give it a rest, Prime Minister! For all our sakes….

 

2. This story has so many twists and turns. I was listening to a discussion by Max Blumenthal and Aaron Matte on a Grayzone podcast  and they reminded me about our current Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland and her grandfather. It bears remembering that Michael Chomiak was chief editor of a Nazi newspaper in Krakow, Poland during the war. Freeland herself is of Ukrainian heritage, and Max and Aaron speculate that the motion to censor parliamentary records around Hunka's visit to Parliament Hill last week was her idea. It makes sense given she is #2 in Cabinet and the most powerful government apparatchik minister after Trudeau. She would have more incentive than most to want to limit the PR damage from last week's clusterfuk, and turn the spotlight away from 'inconvenient truths' that reporters might be inclined to ask. [If we had reporters who could do their job.] In government, Freeland has been rabidly anti-Russian, and until this Nazi soirée in parliament, she had her sights set on being the next Sec Gen of NATO.  Who knows, maybe her neo-conservative, Nazi-adjacent creds will work in her favour over there. 

Also, she would have known about Hunka's past. 

 

I don't know. Maybe those in the know around Hunka's invite, like Freeland , thought that Canadians would be blasé about the whole thing. Or perhaps they thought Hunka would be seen as representative of the resolve Canada has to support Ukraine's struggle against Russia, that the struggle is generational, that fighting Russia was the most important thing, even if it was unfortunate that you had to do it as a Nazi.  Or maybe it's about shoring up Ukrainian-Canadian votes. Something like that. 

That democratic bar of excellence we gloat about here in Canada keeps getting lower by the minute. 

 

3. Recognition: That's the parliamentary term used when an individual in the public gallery is singled out for acknowledgement by the House.  

 

 

 

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