Ukraine War Day #587: “Sorry aboot the nazi…”

O Fortuna!
Velut luna,
Statu variabilis,
Semper crescis
Aut decrescis.
Vita detestabilis
Nunc obdurat
Et tunc curat.
Ludo mentis aciem:
Egestatem,
Potestatem,
Dissolvit ut glaciem.
Sors immanis
Et inanis,
Rota tu volubilis.

[O Fortune!
Changeable like the moon,
Ever waxing
Or waning.
Hateful Life
Can be hard sometimes,
And then soothing.
A line laid down from a gamble of the mind:
First Poverty,
Then Power,
But all melting like ice.
Immanent Fate,
You are mindless,
You are like a rolling wheel.]

(Carmina Burana)

Dear Readers:

Even as Hunka-Gate recedes back into Orwell’s Memory-Hole, and everybody climbs back into their usual grooves… I thought I would do one more piece on it, just as a farewell offering.

Orff’s medieval Wheel of Fortune

Offering some random flotsam and jetsam which I gleaned here and there.

Rota tu volubilis

Some people might feel sorry for Canadian Parliament Speaker Anthony Rota, and how he got tossed under the Wheels of the Carmina bus. But you should feel even sorrier for Yaroslav Hunka himself. Hunka is almost the epitome of the turning of the wheel: From powerful soldier to poweless prisoner of war, then back to powerful and influential member of the Canadian community. But his Luna wanes, at least for now, as the press reports his fund has been shut down and everybody started treating him like a leper. Somehow, in the course of his life, Hunka and his family became very wealthy, able to contribute lots of $$$ to various charitable causes such as Ukrainian Nazi veterans groups, and even University faculties. But now nobody wants to be seen taking his filthy lucre. Russia’s Ambassador to Ottawa, Oleg Stepanov, took credit for shutting down the fund. The University of Alberta even decided to give the money back. I never thought I’d live to see the day…

He Won’t Show His Face

Previously, in the course of this story, we became acquainted with a Hunka family friend, a woman named Barb Barrill Bonenfant. Which, if I recall my French, means “Goodchild”.

Barb is the one who tweeted: “He is so delighted to be there. Most kind of Anthony Rota to do this.” I.e., allow “Dedo” Hunka to meet privately with Trudeau and Zelensky in the reception hall.

A few days later, Barb was eagerly sought after, by Canadian press, for her reaction. This is what she had to say to CBC: “They are afraid to show their faces.” Barb confirmed that the entire Hunka family had gone into hiding. And this after decades of being fairly upfront about their political views and affiliations. It is my understanding that American Nazis were always more discrete than their Canadian counterparts, they used to warn their children: “Never ask Grandpa about the war!” But Canadians were more like, “Please ask Grandpa about the war, he loves to reminisce aboot those good old days…”

Himmler: “Ach! This looks like some good Hunka fresh meat!”

Nazi Has A Canada Problem

Okay, now we have this youtube piece from the Liberal, pro-Ukrainian website “Democracy Now!”

This podcast features Lev Golinkin, a Liberal journalist (anti-Putin) who nonetheless makes a lot of good points: Lev knows Ukrainian propaganda memes inside and out, and all their “cheap rhetorical tricks”, as he calls them. He also knows the history, for example, one of the reasons why the Canadians wanted to import Nazis into the country, was to use them as anti-union goons and strike-breakers. These Nazis were the type of men who were needed to help crush the waxing mass trade union movement, as soldiers returned to the work force after the war.

Golinkin is worth listening to, even though he drops an egregious blooper when he wrongfully ascribes to Putin some quote about “All Ukrainians being Nazis.” Commenters to the piece rightfully take him to task for that. Golinkin represents the “good, Liberal, woke Jew” who still clings to his belief that Zelensky is a worthy fellow; but that religious belief starting to fray around the edges.

Banderites vs Melnikites

This other podcast is from a more obscure site and has many fewer comments, but offers a good in-depth analysis of Ukrainian Nationalist history and politics. From the guest, historian Richard Sanders I learned a lot about the different factions of Ukrainian Nationalists, for example Banderites vs Melnikites, their mutual relations, and their separate relations with Nazi Germany. Good background info:

You Don’t Get To Talk About Babi Yar

And last, but not least, as King Lear once said, when hoisting up the cold dead corpse of his favorite daughter:

We have these strong statements by the one and only Maria Zakharova, who refutes the duplicitous opinions of Antony Blinken. Blinken is still busy trying to rewrite history. If he can get American dopes to believe that Russia dropped the nukes on Japan, then maybe he can also get them to believe that Russians killed the Jews at Babi Yar. Step #1 in this shell game is to accuse the Soviets of being indifferent and trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Which is what they would do, if they actually did this.

Zakharova responds: “Antony Blinken permitted himself to lie about one of the most horrifying tragedies of the Second World War: Namely the execution of the peaceful population of Kiev on 29-30 September 1941 in the tract at Babi Yar. The Nazis, having occupied the territory of the city, proceeded to commit these purges. Just in those 2 days, 29-30 September, the German fascists, in the most bestial fashion, destroyed 34,000 people.”

Babi Yar: images from a documentary film made in 2021.

Zakharova refuted Blinken’s lie about the Soviets trying to sweep this crime under the rug: “No other nation in the world so consistently as the Soviet Union, accused the National Socialists of the crimes of the Holocaust.”

Zakharova reminded people that in March of 1945 the Soviet of Peoples Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, along with the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, adopted the resolution (#378) to construct a monument and park at Babi Yar, at the place where the Nazi occupiers had mass-buried their victims. The park was opened on July 2, 1976, in Kiev.

According to Zakharova, Babi Yar, along with other atrocities such as Khatyn, Treblinka and Auschwitz, are still open wounds for the Soviet and Russian peoples: “Where did Blinken get the gall to write that we allegedly don’t even remember our own tragedies!” she fumes. And then couldn’t resist pointing out how “the most influential Jew in the world” [does she mean Zelensky or Blinken?] did not condemn the presence of a literal Nazi in the Canadian Parliament.

And then lets it go at him with both barrels:

“But what can we expect from the Secretary of State of the United States of America, who continues to finance the Nazi regime in Kiev, which glorifies the collaborationists Bandera and Shukhevych? What can we expect from the Secretary of State of the United States of America, who gave the order to vote against a Resolution in the General Assembly of the UN, to condemn Neo-Nazism, racism and xenophobia?”

Zakharova ended her rant on a melancholy note, pointing out that Blinken’s step-father Samuel Pisar was a Holocaust survivor himself, who had passed through a series of Nazi concentration camps. And who, to the end of his life, expressed his gratitude to the USSR and to the Soviet soldier, for their role in defeating Nazism. “It would be interesting to hear what he would have had to say about the lies of his step-son,” Zakharova wondered.