Canada is standing on the WRONG side of history this time
The UN General Assembly’s Third Committee passed a Russia-proposed resolution condemning attempts to glorify Nazism ideology and denial of German Nazi war crimes. The US, Canada and Ukraine were the only countries to vote against it. [1] The resolution was passed on Friday November 21 2014 by the committee, which is tasked with tackling social and humanitarian issues and human rights abuses, by 115 votes against three, with 55 nations abstaining, Tass news agency reported. [2] Many people are still wondering if yes or no the Kiev regime take its ideological root in a neo-nazi ideology but on thing is certain is that some of the measures taken by Ukraine and its allies is clearly pointing in that direction. [3] The document voiced concern over the rise of racism-driven crimes around the world and the influence that parties with extremist agendas are gaining. It called for a universal adoption of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The bill was about combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The resolution also decried attempts to whitewash Nazi collaborators by depicting them as fighters of nationalist resistance movements and honoring them as such. It condemned any form of denial of Nazi war crimes, including the Jewish Holocaust. In the ensuing vote on 11/21/2014 at 3:17:57 PM, the result showed 115 votes in favor, 3 against and 55 abstentions. The three against were Canada, Ukraine and the USA. In favor were the BRICS (Brazil, China, India, Russia, South Africa) and progressive nations fighting Fascist interference and intrusion, such as Cuba, Syria, Venezuela, also those which defeated Imperialist and Fascist adventures in the past such as Vietnam and the Latin American block (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia even, Peru, Mexico, Equador…). Many nations including the US, the UK, China and India, signed the convention but did not recognize a mechanism resolving individual complaints it establishes, which makes the convention unenforceable in their jurisdictions. [4] Abstentions? Yes there were many. We may ask why the United Kingdom and other NATO lackeys which did not have the guts to vote the way the hearts and minds of their populations would have wished, bringing into question how much power the people have over the way their countries vote. [5] These countries that we we thought as anti-Nazi and democratic now refuses to condemn the glorification of Nazism, maybe not because they particularly like the Nazis, but at least to protect the Ukrainian junta. [6] The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement:
The fact that the US, Canada and Ukraine voted against, while delegations from EU member states abstained in the vote on this draft resolution, which was supported by an overwhelming majority of the UN member states, is extremely regrettable. Ukraine’s position is particularly dispiriting and alarming. One can hardly understand how a country, the people of which suffered their full share of the horrors of Nazism and contributed significantly to our common victory against it, can vote against a resolution condemning its glorification. [7]
The conclusion that the Pravda came up with to explain such irrational political decision is that “Canada has been assimilated by its bed-partner, the United States of America.” [8] This rejection of the anti-Nazi treaty has been dubbed “the most blatant example of political cowardice, a foreign policy which is an insult to the peoples of Canada and an affront to its history.” [9] The sudden sympathy for the welfare of the Ukrainian people coming from Canada may raise eyebrowls. For anyone listening to Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, or his Defence Minister, John Baird, blustering on about the Ukraine Crisis, one might almost believe that Ukrainians were foremost in Canada’s heart, but if we examine Canadian history and study the disgraceful treatment Ukrainians in Canada have received from the 1890s to the present, it reveals the blight of Canada’s past. [10] If we remember correctly, in the 1890s Wilfred Laurier’s government lured unwitting Ukrainians to the Canadian Prairies with colourful, picturesque posters and promises of fertile land, but when they arrived the lands they received were largely unfit for agriculture – the best had already been taken by English and Scottish settlers. Indians, Metis and East Europeans were simply brushed aside along with harsh treatment. With no alternative, Ukrainians were forced to eke out a living in a quasi-Siberian climate and under the harshest conditions imaginable without any assistance from the Canadian government. Ukrainians were simply abandoned to their own devices and suffered immensely. Later, from 1914 to 1920, four thousand Ukrainians were branded as “enemy aliens” under the new War Measures Act and interned at twenty-six different camps across Canada. What little wealth and hard-earned assets they had were confiscated by the Canadian government. Ethnic Ukrainians were rounded up, confined, and then forced into labour camps for the benefit and profit of their gaolers and the provincial and federal governments of Canada for six, full years. East Europeans have never been treated well in Canada and today one can count the number of Ukrainian-Canadians in important federal positions on the fingers of one hand even though they constitute about 7 to 8 % of the Canadian population. From their first entry as third-class citizens into Canada in the last decade of the 19th century, Ukrainian-Canadians have finally worked their way up to being second-class citizens in a country which so proudly portrays itself as “multicultural”. [11] Of all newpapers, it’s the Pravda who came out with the closest approximation of the truth concerning the real feeling of Canada’s government toward Ukrainians:
Canada’s Prime Minister wouldn’t give a Ukrainian-Canadian the time of day if he met one on the street, and John Baird wouldn’t recognize a Ukrainian-Canadian if he met one on the streets of Edmonton, Alberta holding a ring of Kolbassa in one hand and a perogy in the other. [12]
Knowing this we must then ask why Stephen Harper and John Baird have such a sudden love and interest for Ukrainians. The answer is overwhelmingly simple – currying favour with an ethnic group on a current, hot topic for the next general election while accomodating the desire for political support on the part of their US partners in a bid to sucker Ukraine in the arms of NATO and the EU. These days, even in recent weeks, we have seen more and more signs of a deep distaste of the Russians towards the West. In the past, Russian diplomats and politicians were trying to be polite, they are now openly expressing their disgust. For example, they now say openly that Europe has no foreign policy or opinion, it is only a slave colony of the USA. As to the latter, the Russians now say without embarrassment that the whole Ukrainian crisis is merely a pretext and that the goal of the US is only to submit Russia. This is also what Putin said last week, adding that no one had been able to submit Russia and that the US will ultimately fail at this task. These are not just words, because Russia has already announced that it would boycott the summit on nuclear security in 2016. That’s what we learned when the Russians informed other participants that Russia would not participate in the preparatory work of the Summit. [13]
