How Canada emerged as a haven for Ukrainian Nazi collaborators

Damn you US puppet politicians! The Crimean population voted 94% to rejoin Russia. Stop spreading American lies Canada!

Source

http://www.wsws.org

By Roger Jordan
29 July 2019

Earlier this month, Canada hosted the third Ukraine Reform Conference, a gathering of diplomats and officials from over 100 countries aimed at bringing Kiev even more directly under the geopolitical and economic domination of the western imperialist powers.

After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the conference sidelines, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed “to stand with Ukraine against Russian interference and aggression,” and to support it in the struggle to end Russia’s “illegal annexation” of Crimea.

Trudeau’s portrayal of Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine and Eastern Europe turns reality on its head. It conceals the fact that Canada played a major supporting role in the US-orchestrated, fascist-spearheaded February 2014 coup that chased Ukraine’s elected president from power and brought a far-right, pro-western regime to power in Kiev; and that the 2014 coup was the continuation of a longstanding US-led, Canadian-backed drive to expand NATO to Russia’s borders and harness Ukraine to the West.

Moreover, Canadian imperialism has been playing a leading role in the subsequent US-NATO war drive against Russia. This includes supporting Washington’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia; taking command and providing the bulk of the troops for one of NATO’s four new “forward deployed” battalions in Poland and the three Baltic states; and deploying 200 Canadian Armed Forces personnel to Ukraine since 2015 to help prepare its army and National Guard to, in Trudeau’s words, “liberate” Ukrainian territory.

But Canada’s intimate alliance with far-right Ukrainian nationalists did not begin in 2014, or even Dec. 1991, when Canada became the first western country to recognize Ukraine as a sovereign state. In the decades following World War II, Canada became a haven for far-right Ukrainian nationalists, many of whom had collaborated with the Nazis both in their drive to find “lebensraum” (living space) through the conquest of the Soviet Union and their genocidal “final solution to the Jewish problem.”

Under conditions of the postwar US-led military-strategic offensive against the Soviet Union—what euphemistically came to be known as the Cold War—these ultra-reactionary political forces came to be seen as useful allies due to their virulent anticommunism and hostility to anything and anyone associated with the Soviet Union.

In the immediate postwar period, Canada’s then Liberal government, working in close cahoots with US and British intelligence, opened Canada’s doors to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. These included members of the infamous 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS, also known as the Galicia Division.

Among the beneficiaries of this policy was Mikhail Chomiak, the grandfather of current Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. Chomiak served as editor of a pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalist newspaper during the war, Krakivs ’ ki Visti, which used publishing equipment commandeered by the Nazis from a Jewish newspaper they had shut down. Chomiak emigrated to northern Alberta after fleeing to Vienna in late 1944 in the face of the advancing Red Army (see: Canadian media denounces exposure of foreign minister’s grandfather as Nazi collaborator).

The scale of the influx of Nazi collaborators only became public knowledge in the 1980s. A comprehensive study carried out by Alti Rodal on behalf of the federal government-appointed Deschênes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada uncovered records proving that US intelligence agents in Europe had funneled Nazi collaborators from Eastern Europe through the Canadian immigration system using false papers. Rodal revealed that large numbers of identically typed applications were received by Canada’s immigration department from one address in West Germany. On closer inspection, this address turned out to be a US military base.

The Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney established the Deschênes Commission in 1985, in response to a mounting public outcry over exposures of Nazis and Nazi accomplices who had found a safe haven in Canada and tasked the inquiry with identifying Nazi war criminals residing in Canada.

Around the same time, the Simon Wiesenthal Center estimated that upwards of 2,000 Nazis and Nazi collaborators emigrated to Canada in the years after the war. A quarter-century later, in 2011, it would give Canada an “F minus” in its annual report ranking countries on their efforts to prosecute war criminals. This placed Canada on a par with Ukraine and the former Baltic republics, i.e. countries where the right-wing, nationalist regimes that have emerged since the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union openly venerate the ultranationalists who aligned with the Nazis when they invaded the USSR.

War criminals in Canada

A significant number of those who made their way to Canada were members of the Nazi SS’s Galicia Division, which was made up of Ukrainian nationalist volunteers who fought on the side of the Wehrmacht against the Red Army during the Nazis’ war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. This preplanned onslaught—launched in June 1941 when a 3 million-strong force comprised of German troops, their Axis allies and fascist volunteers invaded the Soviet Union—led to the deaths of 27 million Soviet citizens and the Holocaust.

In waging war, suppressing the population, and pursuing the annihilation of the Jews, across Eastern Europe and above all in the USSR, Hitler’s Wehrmacht and SS shock troops relied on the loyal collaboration of ultraright-wing, anti-Semitic forces. Among the Ukrainian nationalists, in both occupied Poland and the USSR, the Nazis found eager collaborators. The Galicia Division was formed in 1943 out of a faction of the Stepan Bandera-led Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists Bandera (OUN-B) and fought with the Nazis against the Red Army throughout 1944.

Massacres perpetrated by the division against Polish and Jewish civilians have been well documented, including at Huta Pieniacka, Podkamien, and Palikrowy. At Podkamien, 100 Polish civilians were massacred in a hilltop monastery, and at least a further 500 in surrounding villages as the Red Army approached the German-occupied area in March 1944.

Members of the Galicia Division were initially prohibited from entering Canada due to their membership in the SS. But in 1950, Britain made an appeal to the Commonwealth for volunteers to accept a total of 9,000 division members who were at that time residing in the UK after being disarmed by British troops at the war’s end.

When Canada’s External Affairs Department, prompted by complaints from the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), raised concerns about the division’s ties to the Nazis and role in Nazi atrocities, the British government insisted that it had carried out background checks. “While in Italy these men were screened by Soviet and British missions and neither then nor subsequently has any evidence been brought to light which would suggest that any of them fought against the Western Allies or engaged in crimes against humanity,” claimed the British Foreign Office. “Their behaviour since they came to this country,” added London, “has been good and they have never indicated in any way that they are infected with any trace of Nazi ideology.”

With this letter serving as political cover, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent and his cabinet declared that Galicia Division members would be permitted to immigrate to Canada unless it could be proved that they had personally committed atrocities against civilian populations based on “race, religion or national origins.” Simply having been a Galicia Division member would not be considered a valid reason to prevent entry, even though after the war all Waffen-SS members had been deemed complicit in war crimes.

The immigration of Nazi and Nazi-allied war criminals continued for more than a decade after the war and was a significant factor in Canada’s emergence during the Cold War as a political-ideological centre of far-right Ukrainian nationalism.

Speaking to a CBS “60 Minutes” programme in 1997, Canadian historian Irving Abella, who is currently Professor for Canadian Jewish history at York University, bluntly summed up the political climate of the time. “One way of getting into postwar Canada,” he said “was by showing the SS tattoo. This proved that you were an anti-Communist.”

Ottawa carried out this policy in close collaboration with US authorities, who similarly permitted ex-Nazis to settle in the US and recruited hundreds to act as spies against the Soviet Union and the Soviet-allied regimes in Eastern Europe. According to investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau, up to 1,000 former Nazis were made use of by the CIA in Europe, within the US itself, the Middle East, and in Latin America.

The open-door policy towards Nazi collaborators stood in stark contrast to the cold shoulder given by Canada to Jews desperately fleeing persecution. Abella coauthored a well-known book, None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, which was published in 1983 just prior to the establishment of the Deschênes Commission. Abella and Harold Troper detailed how Canada accepted a mere 5,000 Jewish refugees between 1936 and 1945. Most infamously, Canada was among the countries to refuse to provide asylum to the 900 Jewish refugees on the ship the MS St Louis, which sailed from Hamburg for the Americas in April 1939. Canada’s refusal to accept any of the refugees forced the St. Louis to return to Europe, where over 200 of its passengers later died in the Holocaust.

Exoneration of the Galicia Division

Due to the continued high-level protection members of the Galicia Division enjoyed from the government and other establishment circles, the Deschênes commission granted the Brotherhood of Veterans of the First Division of the Ukrainian National Army (Galicia Division) special intervener status in its hearings. This meant it was able to cross-examine testimony from witnesses, as well as make use of the standard right to submit legal documents and provide its own testimony.

The Nazi War Criminals commission also refused Soviet offers to gather testimony in the USSR, on the purported grounds that Moscow had refused to allow Canadian officials to interrogate witnesses in accordance with Canadian rules of evidence.

Outrageously, the Deschênes commission exonerated the Galicia Division of any wrongdoing in its December 1986 final report. Its most important findings in this connection read: “The Galicia Division (14 Waffengrenadierdivision der SS [gal. Nr. 1]) should not be indicted as a group,” and “Charges of war crimes against members of the Galicia Division have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this Commission.”

The commission also summarily dismissed the charge that hundreds, if not thousands, of Nazi and Nazi-allied war criminals had immigrated to Canada, declaring these figures to be “grossly exaggerated.”

Another Ukrainian nationalist outfit given special representation rights before the Deschênes commission was the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (UCC), which has since renamed itself the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. In 1950, the UCC had successfully campaigned for the lifting of the ban on Galicia Division veterans entering the country.

The UCC continues to uphold the legacy of the Galicia Division. On Remembrance Day in 2010, the organisation saluted Ukrainian veterans of the Waffen SS as fighters for “freedom of their ancestral Ukrainian homeland.” The press release came from Paul Grod, the current head of the UCC. Grod has accompanied both Trudeau and his predecessor, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on their trips to the Ukraine.

The case of Vladimir Katriuk

Nobody should believe that the Canadian ruling elite’s defence of pro-Nazi war criminals is a thing of the past.

In 2015, Vladimir Katriuk, a Ukrainian and member of the SS during World War II, died in Quebec at the age of 93. His personal fate exemplifies how the Canadian state actively connived to ensure Nazi war criminals escaped justice.

Katriuk, who came to Canada under a false name in 1951, was accused of war crimes, the most documented of which was his participation in a the Khatyn massacre, carried out in what is now Belarus, in early 1943. In the last years of Katriuk’s life, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre placed his name near the top of its list of the ten most-wanted war criminals.

Katriuk’s case first came to prominence in 1999, when a federal court ruled that he had gained Canadian citizenship on false pretenses, because he had neglected to inform Canadian immigration officials about his Nazi past. After a lengthy period of deliberation, the Conservative government decided in 2007 that it would not revoke Katriuk’s citizenship and claimed there was insufficient evidence for him to be charged with war crimes.

Katriuk, who later joined the SS, was identified by multiple sources as being a machine gunner at the Khatyn massacre, which occurred on 22 March 1943. A total of 149 villagers were either burnt alive or shot by members of Battalion 118, a volunteer auxiliary police battalion of which Katriuk was a member, with the support of a Waffen SS unit. Evidence of his participation in other lesser known crimes has also been documented, as mentioned in a 2012 article by Swedish academic Per Anders Rudling.

Even in the last weeks of his life, when a Russian extradition request was submitted for the Ukrainian-born Katriuk, a spokeswoman for the Conservative government justified Canada’s refusal to allow Katriuk’s extradition to face trial on the basis of the political situation in Russia and its alleged “aggression” against Ukraine. “While I cannot comment on any specific extradition request, to be clear, we will never accept or recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea or the illegal occupation of any sovereign Ukrainian territory,” a spokeswoman for then Justice Minister Peter McKay declared.

Nothing has changed under Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. Anxious to cover up the ultraright-wing character of the forces Ottawa and Washington have allied with in their drive to harness Ukraine to western imperialism and these forces’ ties to the Ukrainian nationalist collaborators with the Nazis, Foreign Minister Freeland has denounced the revelations of her grandfather’s ties to the Nazis as Russian-orchestrated “disinformation.”

When Trudeau visited Ukraine in 2016, he was accompanied by a strong UCC delegation and members of the Army SOS group, set up to procure military equipment for the pro-Kiev volunteer militias, which are drawn overwhelmingly from far-right, fascistic groups.

This author also recommends:

Canadian media denounces exposure of foreign minister’s grandfather as Nazi collaborator
[18 March 2017]

The Many Reasons to Believe Vasily Prozorov’s Testimony About Ukraine’s Role in Downing MH-17

Vasily Prozorov’s testimony will likely be dismissed by Western governments that support Ukraine, but there is plenty of evidence to back his claims about MH-17.

Source: The Many Reasons to Believe Vasily Prozorov’s Testimony About Ukraine’s Role in Downing MH-17

http://www.mintpressnews.com

by Whitney Webb

March 27th, 2019

Former Ukrainian intelligence officer Vasily Prozorov’s testimony will likely be dismissed by Western governments that support Kiev, but there is plenty of evidence to back his claims.

KIEV, UKRAINE — A former top official in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), who recently fled the country, has given explosive testimony regarding the involvement of the Ukrainian government in the 2014 downing of the MH-17 passenger plane. The incident, which killed all 283 passengers and 15 flight crew members on board, had been blamed on Russia by Ukraine’s government, the United States and much of Western media.

In addition, the former official, Vasily Prozorov, told a group of international reporters that Ukraine’s controversial Azov Battalion, known for its Neo-Nazi ideology and symbolism, ran and maintained secret prisons in contested areas of Eastern Ukraine where there is fighting between pro-government forces and pro-Russian separatists. Prozorov, who has sought asylum in Russia, also accused the United States and the United Kingdom of training an SBU division that returned to Ukraine to conduct terrorist attacks in the Donbass region, which has been the site of a civil war since the overthrow of Ukraine’s government in 2014 in a U.S.-backed coup.

Prozorov’s identity was kept secret until the press conference began, in breaking with standard protocol. Prozorov then introduced himself, stating that he had been employed by the SBU from 1999 to 2018, but — after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 — had contacted Russian intelligence and began working undercover in the central office of the SBU. He does not describe himself as a defector, as he stated that his allegiance remains with the Ukrainian people while the allegiance of those who came to power with U.S. assistance in 2014 has long been suspect.

Prozorov then noted that, soon after the coup and before the civil war between Western and Eastern Ukraine had begun, the SBU — at Kiev’s behest — had begun to plan combat operations in the East and that the government had requested that plans be made that would result in mass civilian deaths among ethnic Russian populations, who were to be labeled as “accomplices to terrorists.”

The former SBU officer also detailed how the post-coup SBU had established secret prisons where prominent dissidents of the U.S.-backed government were interrogated, tortured and even killed. One of those prisons, located at an airstrip in Mariupol, was nicknamed “the Library” and Prozorov compared it to a “concentration camp” and showed images of severely beaten detainees he claimed had been imprisoned at the site. The former SBU officer also stated that SBU’s decisions, in regards to the black-site prisons and other areas, were often “led” by foreign advisers from the United States and the United Kingdom. The SBU’s use of torture in Ukraine’s civil war has been well-documented even though the SBU blocked UN efforts to probe its extent.

In addition, Prozorov asserted that the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, a militia that was incorporated into Ukraine’s Interior Ministry as a component of the country’s National Guard, also operates its own prisons in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zones in Eastern Ukraine. The Azov Battalion receives funding from the government of Ukraine as well as from the U.S. government and has also received weapons from the Israeli government.

Insights into the MH-17 downing

Prozorov’s most shocking statements were related to the 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, or MH-17, which was promptly blamed on Russia by the post-coup Ukrainian government, the United States and much of the Western world. Prozorov stated, noting first that it was his personal opinion based on his experiences, that the Ukrainian government had been an “accomplice to the Malaysian MH-17 flight disaster.”

He continued, stating:

The amazingly prompt reaction of the Ukrainian leadership was the first thing that made me feel suspicious. My unequivocal opinion was President Pyotr Poroshenko and his press-service had prior knowledge of the affair. Secondly, hostilities had been underway for several months by then, but the airspace over the area was not closed.”

He also noted that his efforts to learn more about the circumstances of the disaster within the SBU from a senior officer were met with the following reply: “Don’t poke your nose into this business, if you don’t wish to have problems.” However, Prozorov noted that “some information has leaked out in the end, though.”

He then concluded:

On the basis of my own analysis I can speculate who was an accomplice in the crime and who was involved in concealing evidence. In my opinion, there were two men involved – the current deputy chief of the Ukrainian presidential staff Valery Kondratyuk and chief of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence directorate, Vasyl Burba.”

Valery Kondratyuk, left and Vasily Burba, right

Prozorov’s full conference can be watched here (in Russian). A summary with English subtitles can be watched here.

Claims well-supported by independent reporting

Though some may be quick to dismiss Prozorov’s testimony as “Russian propaganda,” many of his claims fit with independent reporting on the Ukrainian conflict. For instance, in regard to Prozorov’s claim of “black site” prisons, the SBU denied the UN access in 2016 to many detention centers in Mariupol — where Prozorov says “the Library” prison is located — and Kramatorsk. The SBU claimed that it blocked the UN inspectors access in order to protect “government secrets.” The UN had first tried to access the areas after several human-rights groups had found credible evidence of torture taking place at facilities in the area.

Prozorov’s claims that the post-coup SBU had made plans to murder ethnic Russians in the Donbass are also supported by publicly available evidence. For instance, when the civil war began, the Kiev-based government stated its intention to specifically target civilians in order “to clean the cities.” In 2016, then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who has been called “Washington’s man in Ukraine,” called pro-Russian civilians in the region “subhumans.” In an interview aired by the U.S.-funded, pro-government Ukrainian news channel Hromadske TV, a Ukrainian journalist aligned with the government asserted that the contested region was home to 1.5 million people “who are superfluous” and “must be exterminated.” With such sentiments having been openly stated by prominent politicians and journalists aligned with the current government in Kiev, Prozorov’s assertions seem hardly unreasonable.

US Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Robert Ashley, right, meets with Vasyl Burba, Chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine. Photo | Defence Intelligence of Ukraine

In regard to Ukraine’s alleged role in the downing of MH-17, it is worth noting that past reports by late American investigative journalist Robert Parry described in detail how the “independent” MH-17 investigation was almost completely dependent on information from Ukraine’s SBU in piecing together the event. According to Parry:

[This control by the SBU, combined with its past obstruction of the UN torture probe],suggests that the SBU also would steer the JIT away from any evidence that might implicate a unit of the Ukrainian military in the shoot-down, a situation that would be regarded as a state secret which could severely undermine international support for the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev. Among the SBU’s official duties is the protection of Ukrainian government secrets.”

In addition, one of Parry’s sources maintained that the CIA had, like Prozorov, found evidence that Ukraine’s government had indeed been “an accomplice” to the MH-17 incident:

A source who was briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the CIA’s conclusion pointed toward a rogue Ukrainian operation involving a hard-line oligarch with the possible motive of shooting down Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official plane returning from South America that day, with similar markings as MH-17. The source said a Ukrainian warplane ascertained that the plane was not Putin’s but the attack went ahead anyway, with the assumption that the tragedy would be blamed on the pro-Russian rebels or on Russia directly.”

Another reason Prozorov’s testimony should not be outright dismissed as propaganda is the fact that he pushed back on previous Russian media reports involving U.S. infiltration of the SBU. When asked by a reporter if he could confirm reports that foreign military officials, including Americans, occupied their own floor at SBU headquarters, Prozorov adamantly denied those claims, stating that after 2005 there were CIA officials present in SBU headquarters but that the practice had been discontinued. He stated that U.S. intelligence officials regularly visited SBU headquarters after the 2014 coup but were not based in the building.

Thus, while Prozorov’s testimony will likely be dismissed by mainstream Western media outlets and Western governments that support Kiev, there is plenty of evidence suggesting that many of his claims — including his most shocking — deserve careful consideration, not outright dismissal. Indeed, were Prozorov a defector from a country currently at odds with the U.S. — be it Russia, Venezuela or Iran — it is highly likely that mainstream media would repeat and his promote his claims regardless of their veracity. However, because he has sought asylum in Russia, his recent statements are unlikely to gain international traction merely because of where he is now located, in spite of the evidence supporting many of those statements.

 

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism

Ukrainian Security Official Says Ukraine Shot Down MH-17

Source: Ukrainian Security Official Says Ukraine Shot Down MH-17 – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

http://www.globalresearch.ca

298 Passengers and crew were murdered by Ukraine in order to create a propaganda attack on Russia.  The filth that comprise the Western media and governments hid the truth for the sake of Washington’s anti-Russian propaganda. 

The security official says that his suspicions were aroused by “the amazingly prompt reaction of the Ukrainian leadership,” which “indicated prior knowledge of the affair.”  Perhaps readers will remember that at the time I pointed out that the event was clearly staged as the same propagandistic accusation against Russia appeared everywhere instantly long before any investigation.  Indeed, the investigation was stillborn as it could not be concocted to indicate Russia’s guilt.

Don’t be surprised. Western governments and media only lie.  Never do they tell the truth.  Remember:  Russiagate.  Weapons of mass destruction.  Iranian nukes.  Assad’s use of chemical weapons.  Gulf of Tonkin.  9/11. Russian invasion of Ukraine.  JFK assassination. MLK assassination.  Bobby Kennedy assassination.  Skripal poisoning. Maduro starving his own people.  An endless list of lies.  The entirety of the West is nothing but a lie factory. 

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

See This:

BREAKING: Ukrainian Security Boss Admits Ukraine Shot Down MH-17, Planned Ethnic Genocide in Donbass

Source link

http://www.fort-russ.com

Joaquim Flores

March 21,2019

MOSCOW – Top ranking SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) agent in charge of the ATO operation through 2014 when the operation commenced, Vasily Prozorov, has just made some stunning statements to international media, and has recently escaped to Russia. Moreover, without exaggeration, this is a major blow to the foreign policy positions of Kiev. It is also a very weighty argument for those forces in Europe who want to quickly move the peace process in Ukraine from its present stalemate.

In speaking to journalists, Prozorov’s presentation can be summarized with these points:

– Kiev from the very beginning did not plan to resolve the conflict in the south-east of Ukraine by peaceful means

– Kiev initially planned a large number of victims among the population of Donbass, then they wanted to declare them accomplices of terrorists

– In the area of ​​the ATO there are Ukrainian secret prisons (as he called them concentration camps)

– The neo nazi Azov unit also had its secret prisons. This is not Russian propaganda, people were actually killed there.

– Specialists from the USA and the UK prepared a division of the SBU (Department No. 5) who went to train in the US and abroad to organize terrorist attacks and sabotage in Donbass

– The Ukrainian side was involved in the Boeing crash of the MH17 flight

The Ukrainian side was involved in the MH17 flight disaster over Donbass, a former officer of the Ukrainian security service SBU, Vasily Prozorov, told a news conference on Monday.

“It is my personal opinion and it relies on certain information. The Ukrainian side is an accomplice to the Malaysian MH17 flight disaster,” he said.

Continue:

Source link

The Neo-Nazis in Canada’s Military

With permission from

http://www.counterpunch.org

by Yves Engler

November 26, 2018

Photo Source Savannah River Site | CC BY 2.0

Given that people who espouse neo-Nazi ideology are attracted to the military, it is disappointing to learn what a poor job the generals do to uncover and expel them. Or perhaps the inaction reflects a deeper problem.

A recent stream of stories about right-wing extremists in the Canadian military prompted the leadership to scramble to get ahead of the story. But, the Chief of the Defence Staff’s effort to simply blame low-ranking individual members was neither convincing, nor satisfying.

Ricochet reported that three soldiers in Alberta operated an online white supremacist military surplus store that glorifies white ruled Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

VICE concluded that Nova Scotia reservist Brandon Cameron was a prominent member of the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division.

The three founders of Québec anti-Islam/immigrant “alt right” group La Meute are ex-military. Radio-Canada found that 75 members of La Meute’s private Facebook group were Canadian Forces members.

On Canada Day 2017 five CF members disrupted an indigenous rally in front of a statue of violent colonialist Edward Cornwallis in Halifax. The soldiers were members of the Proud Boys, which described itself as “a fraternal organization of Western Chauvinists who will no longer apologize for creating the modern world.”

The CF’s response to these embarrassing stories is to claim these soldiers don’t reflect the institution. In a Toronto Star article titled “Right-wing extremism not welcome in Canadian Armed Forces — but ‘clearly, it’s in here,’ says top soldier”, John Vance claimed racist individuals slip through “unknown to the chain of command.”But, is that answer convincing or does the CF hierarchy share blame for far rightists in the force?

Over the past four years over 1,000 Canadians troops (a rotation of 200 every six months) has deployed to the Ukraineto train a force that includes the best-organized neo-Nazis in the world. Far right militia members are part of the force fighting Russian-aligned groups in eastern Ukraine. Five months ago Canada’s military attaché in Kiev, Colonel Brian Irwin, met privately with officersfrom the Azov battalion, who use the Nazi “Wolfsangel” symbol and praise officials who helped slaughter Jews during World War II.According to Azov, the Canadian military officials concluded the June briefing by expressing “their hopes for further fruitful cooperation.”

Sympathy for the far right in Ukraine has been displayed by the CF on other occasions. In February 2016, for instance, “nearly 200 officer cadets and professors of Canada’s Royal Military College” attended a screening of Ukrainians/Les Ukrainiens: God’s Volunteer Battalion, which praised far right militias fighting in that country.

More generally, Canadians have fundraised for and joined rightist militias fighting in the Ukraine.For their part, top politicians have spoken alongside and marched with members of Ukraine’s Right Sector, which said it was “defending the values of white, Christian Europe against the loss of the nation and deregionalisation.”

(In a story titled “US-Funded Neo-Nazis in Ukraine Mentor US White Supremacists” Max Blumenthal recently described how Washington’s support for the far right in the Ukraine has blown back. He reported, “an unsealed FBI indictment of four American white supremacists from the Rise Above Movement (RAM) declared that the defendants had trained with Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia officially incorporated into the country’s national guard.”)

In addition to supporting fascistic elements in Eastern Europe, the CF’s authoritarian, patriarchal and racist structure lends itself to rightist politics.

Ranging from Private Basic/Ordinary Seaman to General/Admiral,there are nineteen ranks in the CF. In deference to authority, lower must salute and obey orders from higher ranks. In addition to the hierarchy, the CF has been highly patriarchal. Until 1989 women were excluded from combat roles and the submarine service was only opened to women in 2000. As has been discussed elsewhere, extreme patriarchy represents a sort of gateway ideology to the far right.

The CF has also been a hot bed of white supremacy.For decades institutional racism was explicit with “coloured applicants”excluded from enlisting in several positions until the 1950s. Despite making up 20 percent of the Canadian population, visible minorities represent 8.2percent of the CF (it may be slightly higher since some choose not to self-identify). In 2016 three former CF members sued over systemic racism. Their suit claimed that“derogatory slurs, racial harassment and violent threats are tolerated or ignored …. Victims of racism within the Canadian Forces are forced into isolation, subjected to further trauma and, in many cases, catapulted toward early release.”

Chief of the Defence Staff John Vance’s effort to blame right-wing extremism on a few bad apples won’t do. The CF needs to look at how its decisions and culture stimulates right-wing extremism.

More articles by:Yves Engler

Yves Engler’s latest book is ‪Canada in Africa: 300 years of Aid and Exploitation.

Five years on from Euromaidan: Did ordinary Ukrainians benefit from the Western-backed ‘revolution’?

It has been five years to the day since Ukraine’s ‘Euromaidan’ protest movement began, with anti-government protesters demanding an end to corruption and a closer relationship with the European Union. But what became of the dream?

Source: Five years on from Euromaidan: Did ordinary Ukrainians benefit from the Western-backed ‘revolution’? — RT World News

RT. COM

21 Nov, 2018

An aerial view shows Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square crowded by supporters of EU integration during a rally in central Kiev ©  REUTERS / Vasily Fedosenko

It has been five years to the day since Ukraine’s ‘Euromaidan’ protest movement began, with anti-government protesters demanding an end to corruption and a closer relationship with the European Union. But what became of the dream?

On the evening of November 21, 2013, pro-West protesters began flocking to Kiev’s Maidan Square, carrying banners and waving EU flags. Hours earlier, then-president Viktor Yanukovych had suspended preparations to sign a European Association Agreement, which would have been a potential step on the road to joining the EU – and a move which Russia had warned would be “trade suicide” for the post-Soviet state. The West, on the other hand, was determined to wrangle Ukraine out of Russia’s “orbit” and lure it into its own.

Read more

Ukraine has a Nazi problem and a Western media problem

Ukraine was facing an economic crossroads. The country was being pulled in two directions, asked to choose between closer alignment with the EU or Russia. When Yanukovych chose Russia by refusing to sign the Association Agreement, it sparked outrage within the EU and a protest movement which would quickly be hijacked and used to engineer a Western-backed coup – a shortcut to bringing a pro-West government to power.

Such interference, manipulation and exploitation of Ukraine’s internal political and societal divisions was not without consequences. More than 10,000 died during an insurgency in the eastern regions which began when the ethnic Russian population began to fear it would be swallowed into an anti-Russia nationalist state backed by Western powers. But the West ignored dangerous signs of growing nationalism – and outright Nazi-style fascism – in Ukraine, bargaining that anything was better than Russia ‘winning’ in a game of geopolitical chess.

Five years on, what has become of the protesters’ dreams to rid Ukraine of corruption and build an equal, transparent and functional democracy? The sad answer is that Ukraine’s revolution was a disaster which left the country teetering on the edge of becoming a failed state.

An anti-corruption revolution?

Corruption is still rampant in Ukraine. A recent assessment by the International Monetary Fund suggested that corruption wipes about two percent off the country’s GDP growth per year.

The IMF and World Bank also scolded the Ukrainian government for the “limited results” that have been seen in fighting corruption, with no high-level officials convicted – something which is said to be keeping investors out of the country.

People attend a rally against Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev, Ukraine March 9, 2018. © REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine Satu Kahkonen said that “governance issues” were forcing investors to steer clear. “It’s basically a high level of corruption and the rule of man instead of the rule of law” that have prevailed in Ukraine, she said. “We’re getting a lot of inquiries from various investors, they come to talk to us, and we see the opportunities in Ukraine, but time after time we hear the concerns about the governance.”

Higher living standards?

Ukraine is also emerging as Europe’s poorest country, with a GDP per capita of just €2,960 – well below Estonia’s €22,420 and Slovenia’s €26,590 GDP per capita.

In fact, according to a recent Credit Suisse report, Ukrainians rank among the world’s poorest people, coming a dismal 123rd out of 140 countries, with the net wealth of the country’s citizens lagging behind Bangladesh and Cameroon. Another recent study by the United Nations Development Program found that, despite continuing economic growth, 60 percent of Ukrainians live below the poverty line.

An old woman sells fruit in central Kiev, Ukraine October 4, 2018. © REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

Less income inequality?

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s richest 100 citizens have seen their wealth increase significantly in the years after the Euromaidan protests. A recent report from the Novoe Vremya magazine showed that the wealth of the country’s richest people is growing 12 times faster than Ukraine’s total GDP. Pro-West President Petro Poroshenko is the country’s sixth richest man, increasing his wealth by 10 percent to about $1.1 billion, all while average Ukrainians see little or no improvement in their own living standards or net wealth.

Political reforms?

While some recent reforms in education, pensions and healthcare were welcomed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in its latest country report, there has still been a lack of “meaningful progress” in the reform of governance and an “inefficient court system continues to obstruct the administration of justice.”

European values?

Scant attention has also been paid by the Ukrainian government – and Western powers and media – to the increasingly worrying growth of neo-Nazi sentiment in Ukraine. When, in October 2017, Ukraine witnessed its biggest neo-Nazi march in years, Western media all but ignored it. In fact, in deeds and words, Ukraine’s government has almost encouraged this kind of sentiment, by praising as an “inspiration” the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) fighters who the Nazi marchers were commemorating. In recent months, mainstream media have done more to acknowledge this creeping fascism in Ukraine, but the admission comes far too late.

People, including Ukrainian nationalists and members of far-right radical groups, light flares during a procession to mark the Defender of Ukraine Day in Kiev, Ukraine October 14, 2018. © REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

On the world stage, too, Ukraine’s pro-West President Petro Poroshenko has faded into near irrelevance, barely acknowledged by US President Donald Trump at recent Armistice Day commemorations in Paris, as geopolitics returned to business-as-usual with Kiev fading from the headlines.

Finian Cunningham: Western Collapse… Scapegoating Trump and Putin

“The US and its minions among European allies have destroyed any foundations of international order from their unabated wars and campaigns of mass murder. Their corporate-capitalist plunder has eviscerated the planet.”

Source link

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Finian CUNNINGHAM

29.07.2018

Western Collapse… Scapegoating Trump & Putin

Former US President Barack Obama was in South Africa last week for the centennial anniversary marking the birth of the late Nelson Mandela. Obama delivered a speech warning about encroaching authoritarianism among nations and the “rise of strongman politics”.

Coming on the heels of the summit in Helsinki between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, media reports assumed that Obama was taking a swipe at these two leaders for supposed growing authoritarianism.

Obama’s casting of the “strongman” as a foreboding enemy to democracy is a variant of the supposed threat of “populism” that Western political establishments also seem concerned about.

Trump, Putin, Turkey’s Erdogan, Italy’s Salvini, Victor Orban in Hungary and Sebastian Kurz in Austria, among many others, are all lumped together as “strongman politics”, “populists” or “authoritarians”.

Here we are not trying to defend the above-mentioned political leaders or to make out that they are all virtuous democrats.

The point rather is to debunk the false narrative that there is some kind of dichotomy in modern politics between those who, on one hand, are supposedly virtuous, liberal, democratic, multilateralists, and on the other hand, the supposedly sinister “strongman”, “authoritarian”, or “populist”.

In Obama’s pompous depiction of world political trends, people like him are supposedly the epitome of a civilized, democratic legacy that is now under threat from Neo-fascists who are darkly rising to destroy an otherwise happy world order. That world order, it is presumed, was up to now guided by the magnificence of American political leadership. In short, the “Pax Americana” that prevailed for nearly seven decades following the Second World War.

Following the Helsinki summit, the Western media went full-tilt in hysterics and hyperbole. Trump was assailed for “embracing a dictator” while repudiating Western democratic allies.

In a Washington Post article, the headline screamed: “Is Trump at war with the West?” It was accompanied by a photograph of Trump and Putin, bearing the caption: “The New Front”.

Meanwhile, a New York Times piece editorialized: “His [Trump’s] embrace of Putin is a victory dance on the Euro-American tomb.”

Another NY Times op-ed writer declared: “Trump and Putin vs. America”.

The Western establishment political and media commentary promulgates the notion that the US-led Western order is breaking down because of “populist”, “strongman” Trump. In this alleged assault on the pillars of democracy and rule of law, Trump is being aided and abetted by supposedly nasty, like-minded authoritarians like Russian leader Vladimir Putin, or other nationalistic European politicians.

The premise of this establishment narrative is that all was seemingly salubrious and convivial in the US-led order until the arrival of various renegade-type politicians, like Trump and Putin.

That premise is an absolute conceit and deception. If we look at Obama’s presidency alone, one can see how the supposed guardians of democracy and international order were the very ones who have actually done the most to decimate that order.

Obama, you will recall, was the US president who notched up seven simultaneous overseas wars conducted by American military, arguably without a shred of international legal mandate. Under international law, Obama and other senior officials in his administration should face prosecution for war crimes. He also greatly expanded the executive use of assassination with aerial drones, reckoned to have killed thousands of innocent civilians in several countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, merely on the suspicion of being terrorists.

It was Obama who ramped up the covert war policy of his predecessor GW Bush in Syria, arming and directing terrorist proxies in a failed bid to overthrow the elected government of President Assad. That US-backed covert war in Syria, along with Obama’s overt regime-change war in Libya, largely contributed to the refugee crisis that has destabilized the politics of the European Union.

So here we have the supremely bitter irony. Obama now lectures audiences with his pseudo-gravitas about the specter of strongman politics and xenophobic populism, when in fact it was politicians like Obama who created much of the refugee problems that have given rise to anti-immigrant politics in Europe.

It really is a conceited delusion among US and European establishment politicians, pundits and media that somehow a once virtuous, law-abiding US-led Western order is being eroded by rabble rousers like Trump, Salvini, Orban and so on, all being orchestrated by a “strongman dictator” in the Kremlin.

For the record, Putin, the supposed “strongman” in the Kremlin, warned more than a decade ago in a seminal Munich speech that the international order was being eroded by rampant American unilateralism and disregard for law in its pursuit of illegal wars for US hegemony. That was at the height of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which killed more than one million civilians and forced millions more into infernal destitution.

In truth, the Pax Americana that is presumed to have prevailed over the past 70 years was never about order, peace or justice in the world. The notion that the US guided the world with its “moral authority” and maintained stability throughout is one of the most fatuous delusions of modern history.

From the atomic holocaust in Japan and during subsequent decades, the US has waged wars non-stop in almost every year, whether from covert operations in Latin America and Africa, to full-on genocidal wars in Indochina. The past quarter-century has seen an acceleration and expansion of these US wars, sometimes with the assistance of its military axis in NATO, largely because Washington viewed that its license to kill for mass murder was unchecked after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is the real dynamic underlying why the Western order is now seen to be collapsing. The US and its minions among European allies have destroyed any foundations of international order from their unabated wars and campaigns of mass murder. Their corporate-capitalist plunder has eviscerated the planet.

The chaos from these wars, including economic impacts of gargantuan costs to Western populations, has created social conditions which engender politics of protest, anti-establishment, anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-immigration, and so on.

If the supposed order is shaking for the establishment political class and its flunkies like Barack Obama it is because of their own criminal depredations – depredations which have been going on for decades under the guise of Pax Americana.

The writers at Monthly Review had it so presciently right years ago, when they analyzed the actual Western order as “Pox Americana” – a diseased affliction.

This is the historical context which accounts for why US and European establishments are decrying “strongmen” and “populists”. They are essentially scapegoating others for the historic failure of institutionalized Western criminality led primarily by “democratic” regimes in Washington.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stands out as the one international leader who put a brake on the US-led criminal assault on global peace. Putin’s stand first emerged with his landmark speech in Munich in 2007, and then came into clear expression when he helped put an end to the US-led covert criminal war on Syria.

That is why Putin is so vilified and demonized by the Western establishment. The poachers have been stopped from raiding the globe, and in their exasperation, they have whipped up all sorts of disparaging epithets like “strongman” and “authoritarian”.

No one has practiced more fascist-style criminality and brutality towards law and peace than the polite-sounding pseudo-democrats who have been in office for the past 70 years in the US and Europe.

The Western political establishment and its elite-driven capitalism is rotten to the core. Always has been. Its own erosion and oozing corruption is the source of the putrid smell that it now wishes to waft away by scapegoating others.

Human Rights Activists Demand Israel Stop Arming Neo-Nazis in Ukraine

Azov militia emblem

Source link

theantimedia.com

July 10, 2018

Written by Middle East Monitor

(MEMO) — The arming of neo-Nazi groups by Israel has come under the spotlight once again. This time it’s weapons that are ending up in the hands of a right-wing Ukrainian militia that openly espouses neo-Nazi ideology.

Concerns were raised by a group of more than 40 human rights activists who filed a petition with Israel’s High Court of Justice demanding the cessation of the arms deal. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the petitioners have argued that these weapons serve forces that openly espouse a neo-Nazi ideology and cite evidence that the right-wing Azov militia, whose members are part of Ukraine’s armed forces, and are supported by the country’s ministry of internal affairs, is using these weapons.

While details of the export licenses for armaments are not disclosed to the public, the appearance of Israeli weapons in the hands of avowed neo-Nazis, the activists say, should be a consideration used in opposing the granting of such a license.

The Haaretz pointed out that this was not the first time in which the defence establishment has armed forces that embrace a national socialist ideology, citing its arming of anti-Semitic neo-Nazi groups on a number of occasions.

Previously Israel had armed anti-Semitic regimes, such as the generals’ regime in Argentina, which murdered thousands of Jews in camps while its soldiers stood in watchtowers guarding the abducted prisoners with their Uzi submachine guns, the Haaretz said. Israel has also armed Nazis, such as the war criminal Klaus Barbie in Bolivia.

In addition to arming neo-Nazi groups, Israel is reported to have sold arms to regimes accused of committing genocide. Last year a similar petition addressed to the Israeli High Court called for the suspension of arms trade with Myanmar. Eitay Mack, the petitioners’ lawyer noted that the EU and the USA had imposed an embargo on Myanmar and said that Israel was the only Western state supplying weapons to the military junta. The treatment of Rohingya Muslims was denounced by the UN as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

A similar petition to the High Court of Justice called for the cessation of arms sale to South Sudanwhere Israeli weapons were being used in a conflict where nearly 300,000 lives were said to have been lost and two million people displaced.

Israeli arms also ended up in the hands of groups that carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Over a million were killed in the genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi.

It’s not clear if the petition will be successful. On previous occasions campaigners hit a brick wall after the Israeli government issued a gag order against the country’s High Court.

The Alt-Right Has Killed Far More People Than You Likely Are Aware Of

A new report reveals troubling facts about the latest wave of right-wing extremism.

AlterNet

By Kali Holloway

February 7, 2018

Photo Credit: Michael Candelori / Shutterstock

Last June, the Trump administration rescinded funds previously earmarked to counter right-wing extremism and white supremacist violence. Just two months later, 19 people were injured and protester Heather Heyer was killed by a neo-Nazi demonstrator in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. Though Charlottesville has become the most cited example of contemporary right-wing terror, it hardly offers a full picture of the threat posed by those Trump described as “very fine people.”

A new study from the Southern Poverty Law Center finds there have been more than “100 people killed or injured by alleged perpetrators influenced by the so-called ‘alt-right’—a movement that continues to access the mainstream and reach young recruits.” The SPLC report tracks the rise in alt-right related violence beginning in 2014, when 22-year-old Elliot Rodger murdered six people and injured 14 others in Isla Vista, California. Like many alt-right adherents, Rodger’s radicalization began in men’s rights forums, which helped stoke his racism, misogyny and self-loathing. The study identifies 13 killers who have collectively killed 43 people and injured 67 others. “While some certainly displayed signs of mental illness,” the media tendency to depict these violent right-wing extremists as troubled loners is conveniently misguided. The SPLC notes that the most conspicuous unifying background trait among these individuals is a “history of consuming and/or participating in the type of far-right ecosystem that defines the alt-right.”

A healthy number of those identified in the report are outspoken fans of Donald Trump, the report notes. Nicholas Giampa, who in December murdered his ex-girlfriend’s parents before killing himself, was an “enthusiastic supporter of then-candidate Donald Trump [who] often used racist slurs to attack Trump’s critics.” Charlottesville killer James Alex Fields’ social media pages were reportedly filled with Trump and Pepe memes. A Daily Beast report found Sean Urbanski, the alleged killer of U.S. Army Lieutenant Richard Collins III, “apparently liked memes about Donald Trump, white supremacy, and the alt-right.” Alexandre Bissonnette, the Quebec mosque murderer and the lone Canadian in the group, was reportedly an avid supporter of both Trump and Marine Le Pen. In July 2017, former Breitbart intern Lane Davis stabbed his father to death; a little over a year before, he wrote a rap ode to Trump he posted on YouTube. (Choice lyrics: “Finger on the trigger/Trump might use a nuke, boy/But he’d rather use a tariff/And that’s superb.”)

The alt-right’s visibility has grown alongside Trump’s political career, and the two appear inextricably linked. Nine of the attacks catalogued by the SPLC occurred in the shadow of the Trump presidency, leading the organization to cite 2017 as the most violent year of the alt-right’s existence thus far. Overall, the mean age of far-right killers is 26, with the youngest just 17. Members of the alt-right have been open about their efforts to appeal to young, impressionable minds. An Anti-Defamation League report released late last month noted that there has been a drastic increase in the amount of “white supremacist propaganda—flyers, stickers, banners, and posters—appearing on college and university campuses.” Racism and misogyny have also been allowed to grow unchecked online in spaces such as 4chan and Reddit, and more recently, “alt-tech” sites such as Gab and WASP.love (a racist dating site).  

Back in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security published a report on right-wing extremism that warned of increasing violence from militias, hate groups and other right-wing terrorists. Following pushback from GOP lawmakers who leaked the report, as well as their conservative reporters, the document was officially retracted by DHS and “the Extremism and Radicalization Branch was quietly dismantled,” according to the New York Times. Yet multiple recent studies have shown that white nationalists now pose a far greater terrorist threat to the U.S. than ISIL. The Trump administration’s sympathy for the alt-right and other white supremacists and its refusal to counter their terror, means these fanatics will likely only grow more dangerous. Daryl Johnson, the counterintelligence analyst pushed out of the DHS for his prescient report, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post just after the Charlottesville tragedy, again attempting to offer a warning.

“Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, militia extremists, and other radical right-wing zealots march side-by-side at pro-Trump rallies across the country,” Johnson wrote. “Trump’s endorsement of the border wall, the travel ban, mass deportations of illegal immigrants—these ideas were touted on white supremacist message boards merely 10 years ago. Now they’re being put forth as official U.S. policy…Extremists no longer hide anymore. They number in the hundreds of thousands and are extremely well-armed. The political apparatus and the news media appears confused in their reporting of the scope of the domestic terrorist threat — some ignoring it completely. When 9/11 happened, the government made an effort to connect the dots beforehand, but failed because of a lack of communication among agencies. In this case, the government isn’t even trying—and worse, it appears to be enabling the threat to flourish.”

 

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

FashMaps website tracks neo-Nazis in the US

Source link

http://www.aljazeera.com

by Patrick Strickland

 

A man walks with a bloody lip as demonstrators yell at him at a far-right demonstration in Florida [File: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]

A new anti-fascist website tracks the location and activities of people affiliated with Daily Stormer, one of the largest neo-Nazi websites in the United States.

Launched on January 28, FashMaps is an activist-run initiative that seeks to inform local communities about the presence and gatherings of neo-Nazis in their area.

Simon, a systems analyst who spoke to Al Jazeera with a pseudonym, launched FashMaps for the purpose of “education and awareness”.

According to Simon, a four-person team uses fake accounts to monitor Daily Stormer forum discussions and pin down when and where they plan to hold events, which they often refer to as “book clubs” and “pool parties”.

“It is important to be aware of these groups because as they grow in numbers, they also grow in influence beyond their immediate circle,” he told Al Jazeera.

“When that influence creeps into positions where it has no business being – such as a public office, a school teacher, a police officer – it creates a serious threat to both the safety and civil rights of any person fascists see as less than themselves.”

At the time of its launch, FashMaps had around 700 pins signifying Daily Stormer meet-ups in cities and towns in almost every state across the US, and to a lesser degree, in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Southeast Asia.

The far right has grown throughout the campaign and presidency of right-wing President Donald Trump, with groups proliferating across the country.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based hate monitor, there were 917 “hate groups” in the US as of 2016.

READ MORE

Killed by hate: Victims of America’s far-right violence

Among those were 30 Ku Klux Klan chapters, 100 white nationalist organisations and 99 neo Nazi groups.

For Simon, choosing to put a focus on Daily Stormer was an easy decision.

“It was low-hanging fruit, and publicly available for others to see,” he said, explaining that the SPLC’s designation of SPLC as a hate group “saves us the trouble of having to make the case that the people who seek to organise on that particular forum actually subscribe, to some degree or another, to neo-Nazi ideologies”.

‘Never an advantage to lose a platform’

Daily Stormer, which was named after the German Nazi-era publication Der Sturmer, has been forced to hop from one web host to the next owing to growing public backlash in the wake of the deadly Charlottesville rally on August 12, 2017.

The website was founded in 2013 by Andrew Anglin, who is currently being sued by the SPLC and Tanya Gersh, a Jewish lawyer in Montana, for inspiring a storm of threats and harassment targeting Gersh in December 2016.

During the August rally in Charlottesville – dubbed “Unite the Right” – thousands of white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis converged on the Virginia city to demonstrate against plans to remove a Confederate monument.

Daily Stormer had been issuing marching orders to Unite the Right attendees in the days leading up to the demonstration.

Participants clashed with community members, anti-fascists and anti-racist activists throughout the day.

The demonstration culminated with James Alex Fields, who had been photographed earlier in the day marching with neo-Nazis, allegedly ploughing his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more.

Following the bloodshed, GoDaddy, the Daily Stormer’s web-hosting service, booted the neo-Nazi site over an article referring to the late Heyer as a “fat skank”.

White supremacists clash with counterprotesters in Charlottesville [File: Joshua Roberts/Reuters]

The Daily Stormer has since alternated between various web hosts and the dark web, struggling to maintain a stable online address.

The website’s founder, Anglin, and several of its contributors have also been expelled from Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets as part of the post-Charlottesville backlash.

READ MORE

Can the US alt-right survive divisions and backlash?

Spencer Sunshine, an associate fellow at Political Research Associates, explained that it is difficult to gauge the extent of harm the Daily Stormer’s inability to find a permanent online home has had on its influence.

“But it couldn’t have helped,” he told Al Jazeera, “and my general impression is that it’s harmed them. It’s never an advantage to lose a platform.”

The far-right movement has also become the target of doxxing, a practice in which activists conduct research and post online identities, addresses and other personal information of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

‘If citizens remain silent, fascism will win’

For his part, Simon said that FashMaps does not post the locations of Daily Stormer meet-ups with the hopes of inspiring violence or harassment. All of the information Simon and his team publish is already publicly available.

“Identities and other identifying information are not posted anywhere on our site,” he noted. “And in reality, our map operates more like a ‘heat map’ than anything else… But we link to the source of our data as proof for our findings.”

He added: “By showing people they have a growing problem in their community, it can move them to become more involved in both speaking out against fascism and educating others to the problem in their community.”

Describing Daily Stormer and others like it as “propaganda”, Simon argued that there is a direct connection between street-level violence and the type of racist and white supremacist content posted on these websites.

“Propaganda reinforces beliefs that are intimately connected to deep-seated emotions of fear, anger, and hate,” he said.

READ MORE

A brief dictionary to help understand the US far right

“They can then resolve themselves to violence, which forces the eyes of the world to stop and actually look at them. And when that happens, they are given an amplified platform to spread their ideology even further,” Simon continued, adding that several Daily Stormer contributors were present at the Charlottesville rally last August.

Last month, the Anti Defamation League released a report that found 18 people were killed by white supremacists in 2017.

Simon concluded: “If citizens remain silent, fascism will win.”

SOURCE: Al Jazeera News

Korean nuclear tension: Apocalypse… almost now

“The very public mention of the use of nuclear weapons should be treated as a criminal offense.”

The saber rattling and harsh rhetoric during the current nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula should remind mankind of something we have forgotten. Atomic weapons are terrifying things, and talk of using them should be a taboo subject.

Source: Korean nuclear tension: Apocalypse… almost now — RT Op-Edge

RT Op-Edge

Slavoj Žižek

Sept 12, 2017

Slavoj Žižek is a cultural philosopher. He’s a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London.

 

Published time: 11 Sep, 2017

© Getty Images

 

The saber rattling and harsh rhetoric during the current nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula should remind mankind of something we have forgotten. Atomic weapons are terrifying things, and talk of using them should be a taboo subject.

A week or so ago, I found myself reading Agatha Christie’s 80th, and penultimate, book, “Passenger to Frankfurt,” and its relevance to today struck me. The book was published in 1970, with the subtitle “an extravaganza,” is an utter failure and was often characterized as an “incomprehensible muddle”; however, this “muddle” is not due to Christie’s old age or senility: instead, its causes are clearly political.

Passenger to Frankfurt is Christie’s most personal, intimately felt, and at the same time most political novel. It expresses her personal confusion, her feeling of being totally at a loss with what was going on in the world in the late 1960s – the drugs, the sexual revolution, student protests, murders, etc. So it’s no wonder that Passenger to Frankfurt is not a detective novel. There is no murder, no logic, and deduction. This feeling of the collapse of the elementary cognitive mapping, this overwhelming fear of chaos, is rendered precisely in Christie’s introduction to the novel:

“Hold up a mirror to 1970 in England. Look at that front page every day for a month, make notes, consider and classify. Every day there is a killing. A girl strangled. An elderly woman attacked and robbed of her meager savings. Young men or boys attacking or attacked. Buildings and telephone kiosks smashed and gutted. Drug smuggling. Robbery and assault. Children missing and children’s murdered bodies found not far from their homes. Can this be England? Is England really like this? Not yet, but it could be. Fear is awakening, a fear of what may be. And not only in our own country. There are smaller paragraphs on other pages giving news from Europe, from Asia, from the Americas, in Worldwide News. Hi-jacking of planes. Kidnapping. Violence. Riots. Hate. Anarchy. All growing stronger. All seeming to lead to worship of destruction, pleasure in cruelty. What does it all mean?”

Is our era with “leaders” like Donald Trump and Kim Yong Un not as crazy as her vision? Are we today not all like a bunch of passengers to Frankfurt? 

So what does all this mean? In the novel, Christie provides her answer – a terrible worldwide conspiracy which has something to do with Richard Wagner and “The Young Siegfried.” We learn that, toward the end of World War II, Hitler went to a mental institution, met with a group of people who thought they were Hitler, and exchanged places with one of them, thus surviving the war. He then escaped to Argentina where he married and had a son who was branded with a swastika on his heel – “The Young Siegfried.” Meanwhile, in the book’s present, drugs, promiscuity, and student protests are all secretly caused by Nazi agitators who want to bring about anarchy so that they can restore Nazi domination on a world scale.

Global delirium

This “terrible worldwide conspiracy” is, of course, ideological fantasy at its purest: a weird condensation of the fear of extreme right and extreme left. The least we can say to Christie’s credit is that she locates the heart of the conspiracy to the extreme right (neo-Nazis) and not in any of the other usual suspects (Communism, Jews, Muslims, etc.). The idea neo-Nazis were behind the ’68 student protesters and sexual liberation struggle, with its obvious madness, nonetheless bears witness to the disintegration of a consistent cognitive mapping of our predicament.

Christie is compelled to take refuge in such a crazy paranoiac construct as the only way to introduce some order and meaning into the utter confusion and panic she found herself in. But is her vision really too crazy to be taken seriously? Is our era with “leaders” like Donald Trump and Kim Yong Un not as crazy as her vision? Are we today not all like a bunch of passengers to Frankfurt? Our situation is messy in a way very similar to the one described by Christie: a rightist government enforcing workers’ rights (in Poland), a leftist government pursuing the strictest austerity politics (in Greece). Thus, it’s no wonder that, to regain a minimal cognitive mapping, Christie resorts to WWII, “the last good war,” retranslating our mess into its coordinates.

One should nonetheless note how the very form of Christie’s answer (one big secret agent behind it all) strangely mirrors the fascist idea of the Jewish conspiracy: how there is one big Nazi plot behind which lies the explanation to everything. And, today, the extreme populist right proposes a similar explanation of the Muslim immigrant “threat.” In antisemitic imaginary, the “Jew” is the invisible master who secretly pulls the strings, which is why Muslim immigrants are NOT today’s Jews: they are all too visible, not invisible. They are clearly not integrated into our societies, and nobody claims they secretly pull strings – if one sees in their “invasion of Europe” a secret plot, then Jews have to be behind it. As was the case in a text that recently appeared in one of the main Slovenian Rightist weekly journals where we could read: “George Soros is one of the most depraved and dangerous people of our time,” responsible for “the invasion of the negroid and Semitic hordes and thereby for the twilight of the EU… as a typical Talmudo-Zionist, he is a deadly enemy of Western civilization, the nation-state and white, European man.”

His goal is to build a “rainbow coalition composed of social marginals like faggots, feminists, Muslims and work-hating cultural Marxists,” which would then perform “a deconstruction of the nation-state, and transform the EU into a multicultural dystopia of the United States of Europe.” Furthermore, Soros is inconsistent in his promotion of multiculturalism: “He promotes it exclusively in Europe and the USA, while in the case of Israel, he, in a way which is for me totally justified, agrees with its monoculturalism, latent racism and building a wall. In contrast to the EU and USA, he also does not demand from Israel to open its borders and accept ‘refugees.’ A hypocrisy appropriate to Talmudo-Zionism.”[Quoted from Bernard Brščič, ‘George Soros is one of the most depraved and dangerous people of our time’ (in Slovene), Demokracija, August 25 2016, p. 15.]

Read more

More than 140,000 Americans sign petition against George Soros, but will it make a difference?

This is the end?

Is this disgusting fantasy which brings together antisemitism and Islamophobia so different from the one staged by Christie? Are they both not a desperate attempt to orient oneself in confused times? The extreme oscillations in the public perception of the Korean crisis are significant as such. One week we are told we are on the brink of nuclear war, then there is a week of respite, then the war threat explodes again. When I visited Seoul in August 2017, my friends there told me there is no significant threat of a war since the North Korean regime knows it cannot survive it, but now the South Korean authorities are preparing the population for a nuclear war.

In such a situation, where the apocalypse is on the horizon, one should bear in mind the standard logic of probability no longer applies, we need a different logic, described by Jean-Pierre Dupuy: “The catastrophic event is inscribed into the future as destiny, for sure, but also as a contingent accident… if an outstanding event takes place, a catastrophe, for example, it could not have taken place; nonetheless, insofar as it did not occur, it is not inevitable. It is thus the event’s actualization – the fact that it takes place – which retroactively creates its necessity.”[ Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Petite metaphysique des tsunami, Paris: Seuil 2005, p. 19.] Dupuy provides the example of the French presidential elections in May 1995; here is the January forecast of the main polling Institute: “If on next May 8th, Mr (Édouard) Balladur will be elected, one can say the presidential election was decided before it even took place.”

The moment we fully accept the fact that we live on Spaceship Earth, the task that urgently imposes itself is that of civilizing civilizations themselves, of imposing universal solidarity and cooperation among all human communities.

When applied to the recent tension in Korea, this means: IF the war explodes, it will be necessary and inevitable; IF war will not explode, it was all a false alarm. This, according to Dupuy, is also how we should approach the prospect of nuclear (or ecological) catastrophe: not to “realistically” appraise the possibilities of the catastrophe, but to accept it as our fate, as unavoidable, and then, on the background of this acceptance, we should mobilize ourselves to perform the act which will change destiny itself and thereby insert a new possibility into the situation. Instead of saying “the future is still open, we still have the time to act and prevent the worst,” one should accept the catastrophe as inevitable, and then work to undo what is already “written in the stars” as our destiny.

What is needed is no less than a new global anti-nuclear movement, a global mobilization that would exert pressure on nuclear powers and act aggressively, organizing mass protests and boycotts, while denouncing our leaders as criminals and the like. It should focus not only on North Korea but also on those super-powers who assume the right to monopolize nuclear weapons. The very public mention of the use of nuclear weapons should be treated as a criminal offense. And more than that, a global change in our stance is needed, what Peter Sloterdijk calls “the domestication of the wild animal culture.”

Till now, each culture disciplined and educated its own members and guaranteed civic peace among them in the guise of state power, but the relationship between different cultures and states was permanently under the shadow of potential war, with each state of peace nothing more than a temporary armistice. As Hegel conceptualized it, the entire ethic of a state culminates in the highest act of heroism, the readiness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s nation-state, which means that the wild barbarian relations between states serve as the foundation of the ethical life within a state. Is today’s North Korea with its ruthless pursuit of nuclear weapons, and rockets to deliver them to distant targets, not the ultimate example of this logic of unconditional nation-state sovereignty?

However, the moment we fully accept the fact that we live on Spaceship Earth, the task that urgently imposes itself is that of civilizing civilizations themselves, of imposing universal solidarity and cooperation among all human communities. A task rendered all the more difficult by the ongoing rise of sectarian religious and ethnic “heroic” violence and readiness to sacrifice oneself (and the world) for one’s specific cause.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

The Nations that Accept Nazism Today (US, Canada, Ukraine)

To be fair to Canada, I am Canadian, this vote was made by our ex-Prime Minister Harper’s who was and is a repulsive right-wing dinosaur. He was a USA boot licker.

Source: The Nations that Accept Nazism Today

With permission from

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Eric ZUESSE

American writer and investigative historianAug 23, 2017

 The US Government leads a global operation to make racist fascism ‘respectable’ again.

On 21 November 2014, in a vote at the United Nations on a Resolution opposing a resurgence of the racist-fascist ideology (opposing the ideology that’s commonly called «nazism») which Resolution was titled «Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-nazism and other practices that contribute to contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance», 115 nations voted «Yes» to pass the Resolution, 3 voted «No» to reject it, and 55 voted «Abstain», meaning they didn’t want to express a view on the resolution. An additional 19 didn’t vote at all on it (decided to absent themselves from that roll-call, for whatever reason — basically, not even saying whether they were neutral on it by voting «Abstain» — just said nothing at all on it).

The document that they were voting on had been posted complete on 17 November 2014, and is still posted in its entirety here. As can be seen there, it had been proposed by the following 29 nations: Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Burkina Faso, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Namibia, Nicaragua, the Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkmenistan, United Republic of Tanzania, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), and Viet Nam.

Each of its component 48 paragraphs was entirely moderate, such as these paragraphs, this core passage, from it (and a «Yes» vote on the Resolution meant that the given nation agreed with all 48 of its paragraphs, and so the Resolution was drafted to be extremely non-extreme throughout):

7. Expresses concern about recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons, and in this regard urges States to fully comply with their relevant obligations, inter alia, under article 34 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949;[13]

8. Notes with concern the increase in the number of racist incidents worldwide, including the rise of skinhead groups, which have been responsible for many of these incidents, as well as the resurgence of racist and xenophobic violence targeting, inter alia, persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities;

9. Reaffirms that such acts may be qualified to fall within the scope of the Convention, that they may not be justified when they fall outside the scope of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association as well as the rights to freedom of expression and that they may fall within the scope of article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights2 and may be subject to certain restrictions, as set out in articles 19, 21 and 22 of the Covenant;

10. Condemns without reservation any denial or attempt to deny the Holocaust;

11. Welcomes the call of the Special Rapporteur for the active preservation of those Holocaust sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration and forced labour camps and prisons, as well as his encouragement of States to take measures, including legislative, law enforcement and educational measures, to put an end to all forms of Holocaust denial;…

No nation was named — far less condemned or criticized at all — anywhere in the entire document. This was done so as to welcome support from each and every nation.

The roll-call on the vote, along with each nation’s vote on it, is posted here.

These are the 55 nations that Abstained: Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Chad, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mali, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Samoa, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Sudan, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, United Kingdom, Yemen.

These are the 3 nations that voted «No»: 

Canada, Ukraine, United States.

Among the 115 «Yes» votes on it, were: Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Syria, Thailand, Uganda, UAE, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and many others.

The reason there were 55 who voted «Abstain» is that the US was dead-set against this Resolution (for the reason explained here). Some allies of US, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, had sufficient control over the US Government so that they were free to vote whatever way they wanted on this or on just about any other U.N. Resolution. (Those two nations, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are ‘allies’ of the US not in the sense that they’re vassal-nations of the US Empire, but instead that the US is their vassal-nation — so, they were free to vote however they wished.) Furthermore, if Israel had voted not to condemn nazism and Holocaust-denial, then Israel’s existing leader would have become replaced because of that scandal; and, so, Prime Minister Netanyahu, for domestic political reasons, had to vote (or to have his Government vote) «Yes» on it. The Sauds could vote any way they wanted, because that royal family own their country and because the only entity specifically condemned in the Resolution was «Nazism during the Second World War», meaning Germany’s Nazi Party, which the Saud family (having been vassals of the US during WW II, not masters of the US Government like today) hadn’t ever supported. The fact that Austria and Germany, now under US control, voted «Abstain» instead of «Yes» on condemning the Nazi Party, means that even the two Nazi-controlled nations that FDR’s America had fought against in WW II are now on-the-fence as regards the Resolution that was presented to the U.N. General Assembly for a vote on 21 November 2014 to condemn the Nazi Party. The Obama Administration gave each of its vassals the option to «Abstain», but pressed to vote «No» any nation that it demanded to vote «No», which nations turned out to be only two: Ukraine and Canada.

The United States Government, under President Barack Obama, was actually leading the opposition against this Resolution. 

Prior reporting, by me, about this matter, has included:

24 November 2014, «US Among Only 3 Countries at U.N. Officially Backing Nazism & Holocaust-Denial; Israel Parts Company from Them; Germany Abstains».

21 June 2015, «America’s U.N. Ambassador Continues Standing Up for Nazis».

20 August 2017, «Trump’s Fascism versus Obama’s Fascism».

The only mainstream US newsmedium that covered this matter at all was CBS, which headlined, on 17 November 2014, four days prior to the vote on it, «US votes against anti-Nazi resolution at U.N.», and reported that:

The United States says it was one of three countries to vote against a U.N. resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism over freedom of speech issues and concerns that Russia was using it to carry out political attacks against its neighbors. 

The resolution entitled «Combating glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance», was approved by the U.N.’s human rights committee on Friday with 131 in favor, 3 against with 48 abstentions. 

Ukraine and Palau were the other no votes.

That was reporting only a preliminary vote, even before the Resolution was presented for an actual floor-vote of the entire Assembly. (Obama lost Palau, which ended up reversing totally and voting «Yes» on it, but then he gained Canada as their replacement third «No» vote on it.) That news-report received little exposure at CBS or elsewhere. At CBS News online, there were only 25 reader-comments to it. Typical was: «So we voted against anti-Nazism because it would deprive the Nazis the freedom of expression to demand banning the freedom of expression.» Readers accepted at face-value what was being said. CBS issued no subsequent news-report on the matter, to correct nor even to clarify anything in their cryptic report. However, that reason which had been represented as having been given to CBS for America’s intended vote against the Resolution was not the actual reason that America’s U.N. Ambassador gave for it, as I reported, after the vote, on 24 November 2014:

Samantha Power, the US Representative at the U.N., gave as her reason for voting against the resolution, its unacceptability to the Government of Ukraine. «Her delegation was concerned about the overt political motives that had driven the main sponsor of the current resolution. That Government had employed those phrases in the current crisis in Ukraine. That was offensive and disrespectful to those who had suffered at the hands of Nazi regimes. Therefore, the United States would vote against the resolution.» In other words: the US opposed this resolution, supposedly, because it was offensive to Ukraine, even though the very term «Ukraine», and all other conceivable references to Ukraine, were and are entirely absent from it.

If Ukraine, whose government the US had installed during the US coup in February 2014, had been instructed by the US to vote in favor of the Resolution, they would have done so. The government that the US coup overthrew, would probably have abstained on a Resolution such as this (because it was trying to be accepted both by the United States and by their own neighbor, Russia, which the US Government is obsessed to conquer), but the newly installed Ukrainian Government was being ruled by members and supporters of Ukraine’s traditional two nazi parties and thus would have voted for the Resolution only if the US Government had instructed them to do that. They might then have laughed in private about the matter, but they would nonetheless have done whatever they were instructed by Washington to do. After all, they had to — the US had placed them into power.

In fact, even prior to America’s takeover of Ukraine, Obama’s U.N. Ambassador had been one of only three nations voting «No» on a previous U.N. Resolution, titled «Elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance», which had passed the General Assembly on 20 December 2012, little over a year after the secret planning for the Ukrainian coup had started at the US State Department, and little over a year prior to the coup itself. The other two pro-nazi nations, on that occasion (since Obama hadn’t yet replaced Ukraine’s government by nazis), were Canada, and the Marshall Islands. (America’s U.N. Ambassador at that time was Susan Rice.) Ukraine, then under the President whom Obama was soon going to overthrow, was one of the 57 nations to vote «Abstain.» 120 nations voted «Yes», on that occasion. 

The only international poll that has asked the question «Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?»found that by an overwhelming margin, the United States was mentioned by more people throughout the world than any other. But Americans chose Iran as being the most dangerous country. That was a scientifically sampled poll by WIN/Gallup, of 67,806 people in 65 countries, and was published on 30 December 2013.

Anyone who wants further, and up-to-date (as of August 18^th), information on how nazism proceeds in our time, under US international leadership, will find that here.

By now, it seems clear that the leading feature of today’s nazism is its hypocrisy. George Orwell already had that figured out, in his prophetically futuristic dystopian 1949 novel, 1984. But the real version, of nazism in our era, fascinates me even more than does the fictional one. Not even Orwell’s genius could match it, in my book.

Ukraine imports expensive US coal rather than accept the independence of Donbass

Yo Ukraine, guess who the real dumb ass is?

“Ukraine has proudly announced that it shall receive 700,000 tonnes of American coal this year.

At three times the price of Donbass coal, the hefty price of long-distance coal shipments is not just demonstrative of the Ukrainian regime’s detachment from economic realities, but a wider lesson in how ideology can warp any sense of logic and pragmatism.”

Source: Ukraine imports expensive US coal rather than accept the independence of Donbass

theduran.com

Adam Garrie

August 22, 2017

An expensive way of proving loyalty to a realistically lost cause.

TOPSHOTS Coal miners leave the Zasyadko mine following their work shift in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on June 6, 2014. Donetsk is part of the Donbass coal mining region, which has been hit by separatists protests in recent weeks. AFP PHOTO/ VIKTOR DRACHEVVIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images

In the winter of 2017, the Ukrainian regime following the lead of neo-Nazi radicals, decided to ban all imports of coal from Donbass, one of the most abundantly coal rich places in the world. To add to the troubles, existing coal burning power stations in Ukraine had been designed specifically with Donbass coal in mind as Donbass coal has certain particles which make it unique to other varieties around the world.

The blockade of cheap local coal is said to have cost the regime $550, a figure which becomes all the more magnified when one considers that the regime is practically bankrupt.

The solution to the problem has been found and its an expensive one. Kiev has agreed to purchase large quantities of American coal, coal which has to be expensively shipped from Pennsylvania to the north-west Black Sea. 

Ukraine has proudly announced that it shall receive 700,000 tonnes of American coal this year.

At three times the price of Donbass coal, the hefty price of long-distance coal shipments is not just demonstrative of the Ukrainian regime’s detachment from economic realities, but a wider lesson in how ideology can warp any sense of logic and pragmatism.

If Ukraine accepted the peaceful, democratic self-determination of the Donbass republics and if indeed it accepted the will of other regions to do the same, Kiev could realistically save a great deal of money. There is no chance that the industrial parts of Donbass will ever return to Kiev’s rule and the over all inefficiency of tax collection in Ukraine means that cutting costs is more important and more realistic than trying to find ways to increase revenue. According to many reports, one of the best options Kiev has come up with in order to raise revenue is by selling Soviet made rockets to North Korea.

In trying to save face by pretending that expensive American coal is somehow a better option than cheap coal from a nearby place, Ukraine is doing what all ideologues eventually do: they are putting fanaticism before common sense.

This is what led Hitler to invade Russia in the winter and it is also what has led Donald Trump to think it is possible to ‘win’ a war in Afghanistan.

The move also serves as a lesson to Europe that in paying for expensive imports of US natural gas as Lusitania just did and as Poland is set to do, they are not harming their former Russian suppliers, they are only harming themselves.

Pentagon Denounces American Nazis While Arming Ukrainian Nazis

“What makes the Pentagon’s response to Swastika-flag-waving American Nazis rather bizarre is that this week the US Defense Secretary, General James Mattis, is reportedly traveling to Ukraine where he is to sign over shipments of lethal weapons to the armed forces of the Kiev regime. That regime openly glorifies Ukrainian regiments that collaborated with the Nazi Third Reich during the Second World War.”

Source: Pentagon Denounces American Nazis While Arming Ukrainian Nazis

With permission from

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Finian CUNNINGHAM

Aug 22, 2017

In the wake of violent protests involving white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in the US, the Pentagon’s top military brass issued unprecedented condemnations of «racists and extremists». One veterans spokesman said: «Anyone waving a Nazi flag must be rooted out of our society».

What makes the Pentagon’s response to Swastika-flag-waving American Nazis rather bizarre is that this week the US Defense Secretary, General James Mattis, is reportedly traveling to Ukraine where he is to sign over shipments of lethal weapons to the armed forces of the Kiev regime. That regime openly glorifies Ukrainian regiments that collaborated with the Nazi Third Reich during the World War Two.

Mattis, the top Pentagon official, is due to authorize the transfer of $50 million-worth of military gear to the Kiev regime. This will mark the first official delivery of lethal equipment from the US. Previous military aid to Ukraine was reportedly «non-lethal». Among the inventory Mattis is signing over are Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Modern-day regiments under the control of the Kiev regime, such as the Azov Battalion, publicly self-identify with Nazi-collaborating descendants and former pro-Nazi Ukrainian leaders like Stefan Bandera. This Neo-Nazi ideology of the Kiev-run military is a central impetus in why these forces have waged a three-year war on the ethnic Russian population of the breakaway Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine. The latter refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the Kiev regime which seized power in February 2014 in a coup d’état against an elected government. The American CIA backed that violent coup.

Political and financial support from Washington and the European Union has underpinned the Kiev regime led by the dubiously elected President Petro Poroshenko. This is in spite of the fact that the Kiev regime continues to wage a war on the people of Donbas in violation of a peace deal – the Minsk Accord – brokered by Russia and the EU in 2015. Western governments and media accuse Russia of sponsoring the breakaway Donbas republics and their militia, and of infiltrating its troops into the region. Russia denies direct military involvement, but is believed to be supporting the self-declared Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

The Pentagon’s supply of weaponry to Kiev forces will no doubt embolden their regiments to step up violations of the truce which was supposed to be implemented under the Minsk Accord. Hundreds of breaches are reported on a weekly basis in which towns and villages in Donestk and Lugansk come under fire from heavy artillery. Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, has recently remarked that his defense forces «are not fighting Ukrainians, but rather Banderites» – that is, Neo-Nazi militia who adulate their Third Reich hero Stefan Bandera for assisting the German SS exterminate thousands of fellow Ukrainians deemed to be «sub-human».

The American military support for the Kiev regime and its Neo-Nazi death squads attacking the people of Donbas is a monumental contradiction to what the US Joint Chiefs of Staff were declaring last week about extremists on American soil.

All five of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and National Guard – issued public condemnations of the violence perpetrated by assorted white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in the state of Virginia. The latter groups were protesting the proposed removal of American Civil War statues commemorating Confederate military leaders like Robert E Lee. Counter-demonstrators claim the statues are icons of racial prejudice and white supremacy. Many of the pro-Confederate protesters were carrying Nazi flags and other fascist icons. In a deadly incident in Charlottesville, Virginia, a suspected Neo-Nazi man rammed his car into a crowd killing a woman.

US President Donald Trump came under intense public criticism for being slow to condemn the violence and for appearing to lay blame on both sides, thereby equating Neo-Nazis with anti-fascist protesters.

Prominent news media organizations, like the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN, ran editorial comments lambasting Trump for his equivocal position, which allegedly afforded the Neo-Nazi groups a degree of legitimacy. CNN ran the headline: «Trump is who we feared he was».

A New York Times oped piece declared: «The Test of Nazism That Trump Failed». Adding: «There can be no ‘two sides’. If the president is not against Hitlerism, he is for it».

The Washington Post editorial board said that Trump had «brought the international image of the US into disrepute».

Then there were numerous resignations by business CEOs from White House consultative panels, again in protest over Trump’s alleged association with racists and bigots. Even though to be fair to the president he did explicitly condemn such groups.

The national controversy appeared to be catharsis for politicians, media, business leaders and public alike in which it was proclaimed that «America is not like that» – meaning, not a supporter of Nazis and fascsim. In almost ritualistic fashion, the evils of racism, fascism, white supremacy and Nazism were exorcised from the body politic – or at least supposedly exorcised.

Joining in the catharsis were the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The New York Times reported: «In an unusually public move, the nation’s top military leaders, who typically try to steer clear of social controversy, have come out strongly against racism and extremism in the wake of violent protests over the weekend. Five of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, representing the Navy, the Marines, the Army, the Air Force and the National Guard, posted messages on social media condemning hatred and Neo-Nazis, saying that the extremist violence in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday went against the military’s core values».

As the NY Times noted, the public condemnations by the Pentagon top brass were an extraordinary rebuke to President Trump who, as titular Commander-in-Chief, is their superior.

Its report also quoted Charles E Schmidt, the national commander of the American Legion, who said: «Americans fought fascism and crushed the Nazis in World War Two, and anyone who waves a Nazi flag on our soil is, by very definition, anti-American. The disgusting displays of hatred and bigotry on display in Charlottesville dishonor all veterans who fought and died to stamp out fascism».

The public outpouring is classic American cognitive dissonance. Condemning Nazis at home while at the same time arming Nazis abroad. How does Nazism at home offend «our core values» when «our core values» involve politically, financially and militarily supporting Nazis in Ukraine?

To be sure, there is a long history of such American support for Nazis in Ukraine going back to the end of World War Two, when the Pentagon and CIA covertly backed the Gehlen Organization of former Third Reich General Reinhard Gehlen and his Ukrainian Nazi partisans in their sabotage operations against the Soviet Union.

In explaining American cognitive dissonance there are at least two factors. One is the lack of US media reporting on what is actually going on in Ukraine. How can so many ordinary Americans be alarmed by Neo-Nazis at home while seemingly insouciant about the same kind of fascists in Ukraine? That disconnect is due to ignorance, owing to the lack of US media coverage about what is really happening in Ukraine. US media seem more concerned to report claims that Russia is the culprit for destabilizing Ukraine. Which is all part of the ongoing Russophobia in the US media distorting the reality of international relations.

A second factor for American cognitive dissonance is that the outpouring of condemnation of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in the US by many public figures is simply a cynical PR exercise. Of course, the hate-filled mobs with Nazi regalia in Virginia and other US states are damaging the «American brand» of supposed liberal democracy in the eyes of the world. Therefore the imagery must be swiftly expunged from public view with vigorous condemnations. But the cynical disingenuousness is betrayed by the fact that the US is arming and bankrolling the same hate-filled Nazis in Ukraine.

The arms dealing trip by Pentagon boss James Mattis to the Neo-Nazis in Ukraine this week is the reality check on what the Washington establishment and the American military-industrial complex really think about Nazism and extremists.

We could also add to the list the American arms dealing to fundamentalist regimes like Saudi Arabia and the covert arming of head-chopping Wahhabi terrorists. All of them are welcome clients for American militarism, in the service of US hegemonic world dominance.

Official US condemnation of Nazis, fascists and extremists is just American public relations rhetoric. Evidently, the condemnation has no credibility in terms of objective reality.