news by the rest of us

Waffen-SS Galician Division still Revered by Canada’s Ukrainian Right

Richard Sanders — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 20:17:37 +0000

This Captive Canada article looks at a Nazi Waffen-SS division of Ukrainians who volunteered to form a 13,000-strong unit under Reichsführer Himmler in 1943. Despite opposition from Jews and Ukrainian leftists, thousands of these vets were welcomed to Canada after WWII -- thanks to our Liberal govt. Vets from both the Nazi-linked OUN/UPA and the Waffen-SS formed groups here that joined the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), which our govt created in 1940 to fight socialists & communists on the homefront. These Nazi vets groups are still listed as members of the UCC. (Read details here.) This history helps us understand current events in Ukraine and Cda's role there.

Liberals brought Nazi vets to Canada: Glorifying Ukrainian-Canadian Veterans of OUN/UPA Terrorism

Richard Sanders — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 16:21:29 +0000

This Captive Canada article examines the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (a Nazi political/military organisation involved in terrorism, mass murder and ethnic cleansing) and its close links to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC). In 1940, the Liberal government facilitated the creation of the UCC and then brought many of its veterans to Canada after WWII. (Read details here.) Liberals, Conservatives and the NDP alike continue to court the UCC.

A Century of Struggle between Left-Right Camps in the Ukrainian Canadian Community

Richard Sanders — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 17:53:33 +0000

This Captive Canada article looks at the century-long struggle between opposing political camps of Ukrainian Canadians. The government's collusion with ultraright Ukrainian nationalists, and its repression of progressives, is illustrated by examining four Canadian internment programs: 1) WWI/Red Scare-era concentration camps, 1914-20, 2) Depression-era "Relief Camps," 1932-36, 3) WWII prison camps, 1940-45, 4) the Cold-War "Profunc Program," 1950-80s.

A modest proposal

6079_Smith_W — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 20:57:43 +0000

And no I don't claim to have Mr. Swift's brilliance, but I would like to invoke his sense of respect and subtlety. And his ability to slice someone's head of it's shoulder's so cleanly that it is left standing there.

You know what I miss most? Not that there are people who think the same way as I do, because frankly I can get that by locking myself in a closet.

But people who are willing to have an honest and respectful conversation about stuff, recognizing that most of our sources have slants and biases, and that we might be completely in opposition on certain issues, but still be able to hear one another out.

A modest proposal

6079_Smith_W — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 20:57:35 +0000

Antisemitism: to be or not to be

eibieman — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 22:36:34 +0000

Antisemitism: to be or not to be

2016-08-28

by abraham Weizfeld Ph.D.

Administrative Secretary of the

Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians

SUMMARY and OP-ED

The sense of the various letters published by the Toronto Star August 27th, in response to Linda McQuaig's op-ed defence of the BDS campaign seem to lack some essential point, which is, the way to a resolution of the conflict that meets all the legitimate concerns from the conflicting points of view.

Capt Cda - From the Russian Revolution (1905-07) to Cda's Internment of Jews & Reds (1940-43)

Richard Sanders — Mon, 04 Jul 2016 21:20:10 +0000

These Captive Canada articles look at the persecution and internment of Jews and Reds in both Csarist Russia and Canada. Few Canadians know much about the "failed" Russian revolution (1905-07). Radicals (including many Jewish activists) organised huge strikes and mass protests which sparked Csarist pogroms, mass executions and the internment of 100s of thousands. AntiSemitism and antiRed sentiments were also rampant in Canada. When Jewish & communist refugees fled fascism, the UK interned them and then shipped them to Canada. The Liberal govt interned 2,300 of these unwanted refugees between 1940 and late 1943!

Canada's WWI Internment of Leon Trotsky, and the Captivating Mass Psychoses of antiSemitism and antiCommunism

Richard Sanders — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 20:37:30 +0000

Soviet revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, was the best-known political prisoner ever held in Canada. (If you have a better example, let me know.) This article from Captive Canada, looks at Trotsky's internment at the Amherst Concentration Camp in Nova Scotia, which continued to hold prisoners 18 months after WWI ended! It looks at why authorities were likely anxious to deport Trotsky from the Camp before his rabble rousing inspired even more inmates to embrace communism. The article puts Trotsky's internment in the context of two mass psychoses (antiSemitism & antiCommunism) which captivated mainstream Canadian culture on the right, left and centre.

Captive Canada - Crushing Rebels, Radicals and Reds: The Bunker Mentality, All in the [JS] Woodsworth Family Tradition

Richard Sanders — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 21:03:28 +0000

Although Rev.J.S.Woodsworth is still revered as an iconic hero within progressive circles, he was the product of a family tradition that exuded racist, xenophobic, classist and imperialist ideologies. Although such belief systems are often propagated through religious bodies, political parties and the mass media, the role of the family in perpetuating these cultural psychoses should not be ignored. Following this article from Captive Canada is a sidebar on J.S.Woodsworth's oldest son, Charles Woodsworth, who continued the family tradition.

Captive Canada - Religious Guardians of the Peaceable Kingdom: Winnipeg’s Key Social-Gospel Gatekeepers of Canada West

Richard Sanders — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 17:23:28 +0000

This article from Captive Canada examines the racist, classist and xenophobic views of prominent Social-Gospellers -- J.S.Woodsworth, Charles Gordon and Joseph Sparling. These AngloProtestant ministers, all based in Winnipeg ("Gateway to the West"), crafted myths about dangerous "Strangers in our Midst." Their eloquent narratives allowed well-meaning Canadians to support such state crimes as holding Indian children captive in Residential Schools, and the internment of 9000 "enemy aliens" in WWI/Red-Scare era Concentration Camps. Those enslaved were largely unemployed, urban, Ukrainian men framed as radical atheist socialists by Canada's fearmongering Social-Gospel gatekeepers.

Captive Canada - The Occupation(al) Psychosis of Empire-Building Missionaries

Richard Sanders — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 21:16:45 +0000

This article, from Captive Canada, plays with different meanings of the term "occupation" from a profession or job (like being a missionary), to the take over of land (such as was done with missionary zeal in Canada's nation-building project. Veblen's concept of 'trained incapacity' (1918), Dewey's 'occupational psychosis' (1931) and Warnotte's 'professional deformation' (1937) are applied to the seizure of Canadian culture by the "missionary mindset." The Christian preoccupation with converting unbelievers, escaped its confines within the missionary field and took over the settler landscape as a whole. The result was a mass psychosis which can aptly be called The Canada Syndrome.

Captive Canada - First Nations, First Captives: Genocidal Precedents for Canadian Concentration Camps

Richard Sanders — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:17:29 +0000

This is from Captive Canada. Following the US model of “aggressive civilisation,” Canada concentrated Indians in ghettos called reservations, held them captive in Christian schools, confined them with laws restricting religious, linguistic, economic & political rights, and framed them with racist narratives. A key to this nation-building was the progressive "Social Gospel" and its leaders, like Rev.J.S.Woodsworth, who sought to "uplift" and ethnically cleanse "savages" & "heathens" by Canadianising, civilising and Christianising them. Social Gospellers were instrumental not only in creating the narratives that allowed well-meaning citizens to turn a blind eye to genocide, they also ran state-funded Residential Schools.

Captive Canada - From Frying Pan to Prairie Fire: One Captivation after Another

Richard Sanders — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 13:49:16 +0000

A century and more ago, many Ukrainians were captivated by the hype of ads churned out by Canada’s government and profit-seeking shipping firms. Enticed to leave the political and economic confines of their homeland, many had their dreams of freedom dashed on the Canadian prairies. As historian Orest Martynowych has noted, Ukrainians were “economically exploited, socially oppressed, culturally neglected, colonized people, preyed upon by foreign landowners, bureaucrats and merchants, and frequently patronized and humiliated by...privileged members of their own nationality.” After fleeing this tyranny, many of these radicalised newcomers were thrown into new struggles for freedom, and thousands were thrown straight into Canadian slave labour camps.

Captive Canada - Empire and Sons: From Sir William Otter, to the NDP and the Waffle

Richard Sanders — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 12:34:21 +0000

This article from Captive Canada begins with General Sir William Otter who led troops against the Northwest Rebellion (1885), the Boer War (1899) and commanded Canada's slave-labour Concentration Camps in the WWI/Red-Scare era (1914-1920). Otter's son, a WWII General, had a son named Desmond Morton, who was a key mover and shaker in the NDP. Morton left the military to work with David and Stephen Lewis. With RCMP help they purged the NDP of the Waffle, a socialist movement co-founded by Jim Laxer and his communist father, Robert Mendel Laxer. (Similarly, in the 1930s and '40s, Social Gospel hero Rev.J.S.Woodsworth had led the expulsion of radical socialists from the CCF.)

Capt Cda - War Mania, Mass Hysteria, Moral Panic: Rendered Captive by Barbed Wire & Maple Leaves

Richard Sanders — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 22:10:59 +0000

Between 1914 and 1920, the Cdn govt used WWI as a pretext to enslave 8000 mostly working-class, east-European men who were recently-unemployed and amassing in Cdn cities. Elites saw them as most likely to be radicalised by militant unionists and atheist socialists. Rev.J.S.Woodsworth, a progressive Social Gospeller who later cofounded the CCF, was instrumental in setting the stage for Cda's Concentration Camps. Still revered in NDP circles, Woodsworth was rabidly racist, classist and xenophobic. Despising Indians, Blacks, Asians and Syrians, he saw Ukrainian radicals as especially loathsome. He was a "socialist" that elites promoted as a safe alternative to Cda's then-powerful Wobblies and Bolsheviks. The NDP needs some Truth and Reconciliation.