Bupkis; that's how much military aid Canada is prepared to give Ukraine

Defence Minister Jason Kenney came clean today about how much lethal weaponry Canada is prepared to donate to Ukraine so it can fend off the forces of Bad Vlad.

Zero.

As in nothing.

Bupkis.

Apparently the Canadian Forces don't actually have any lethal weapons, at least none that they're willing to share out to a bankrupt failed state.

Especially if that failed state is in an on-going squabble with Vlad the Bad.

Yes, Big Steve will continue talking the good talk at least till the autumn election; after all, there's a million Uke-Canuck votes hanging in the balance, and the Harper gang is doing all it can to convince those folks that it's doing all it can to repel "Russian aggression."

But they're not.

And that's probably a good thing!

Canadian media discovers "fascist groups" in Ukraine military!

The mainstream media taboo on reporting anything at all about the neo-fascist elements within the Poroshenko government and the Ukrainian military is crumbling.

While a multitude of international news services have been featuring one story after another about the insidious influence of the neo-nazis on developments in Ukraine over the past year, the topic has been entirely off the radar in Canada. Instead, we get dozens of laudatory press releases from John Baird trumpeting the blossoming of "democracy." How a democracy can be said to blossom when it begins with the overthrow of a democratically elected government is a question neither asked nor answered, thanks to the influence of the Ukrainian lobby in Ottawa, and the eagerness of the Harper gang to court a substantial sub-group of voters.

But that seems to be changing. The National Post, the most right-leaning pro-Harper news organ in the land, has on view a story available months ago at BBC, die Welt, or Agence France-Presse. Canadian readers will no doubt be aghast that the Poroshenko regime is riddled with neo-nazis, anti-Semites, and white supremacists...

Which makes the decision to gift Poroshenko the honour of addressing a joint sitting of the Senate and House of Commons this past week all the more questionable.

Foreign Minister Baird's very undiplomatic brand of diplomacy

John Baird didn't waste any time congratulating Ukraine on the fact of its election.

Baird also takes a moment to crow about Canada's "long and proud history of providing election observers."

If this story from Victoria's Times Colonist is true, Canada's long and proud history of providing bilateral election observers began with the 2004 Ukrainian election and has been entirely limited to the Ukraine. We were part of multilateral observer missions to other countries prior to 2004 and we continue to be today, but in Ukraine we have an entirely different approach.

Why? Because the partisan Russo-phobic Ukrainian-Canadians who make up the majority of the personnel being sent to Ukraine, would never be permitted to be part of those internationally sanctioned observer missions because of their vehemently partisan viewpoints. Election observers are supposed to be neutral.

But that partisanship extends all the way into Baird's office. His congratulatory press release on the election manages to mention Russia twice, in the most undiplomatic terms. Dude, you're Canada's top diplomat! Start acting like it!

There are 101 really important issues that Canada and Russia need to co-operate on, especially around the Arctic. The gratuitous anti-Putin rhetoric so beloved by Harper and Baird is undiplomatic, unprofessional, and not in Canada's interest.

As for that vaunted Ukrainian election, it sure looks to me like they've elected a Yanukovich crony. The "Chocolate King" was also the king of the national bank under Yanukovich, was he not?

And the fact that he was a prime financier of the 2004 "Orange Revolution" means he knows his way around the CIA- State Department's office of colour revolutions.

And the multiplicity of hats the man wears should lead to some questions of just how a billionaire who was head of the national bank of a now-bankrupt state really accumulated his fortune.

At the same time, he has business interests in Russia and recognizes that continued good relations with Russia are essential for Ukraine's long-term prosperity.

And on top of all that, it falls to him to impose the EU-IMF austerity agenda on a people who are already among the most impoverished in all of Europe.

Ukrainians live in interesting times.

Explaining the Harperite infatuation with Ukraine

Canada's Conservative government has made a point of aligning itself with the un-elected leaders who seized power in Kiev a few weeks ago. In their haste to justify their embrace of the new non-elected leaders, both PM Harper and FM John Baird have made numerous convoluted statements about how the democratically elected Yanukovik government was in fact a dictatorship, while the coup itself was a product not of mob rule and years of US-led agitation, but some more authentic manifestation of true democracy.

The following article was written by Lee Berthiaume and appeared in a number of PostMedia titles on March 5th. It does a great job of showing why an incoherent and contradictory foreign policy is actually the result of opportunistic political maneuvering by the Conservatives.

While it might be understandable that a party declining in popularity would bend over backwards to attract the votes of those million plus Ukrainian-Canadians, they might want to remember that there are over 30 million Canadians who are not of Ukrainian ancestry who might be sufficiently put off by the Harperite grand-standing and double-talk to take their vote somewhere else.

***


“I think you have a lot of Ukrainians who will look at a member of Parliament and say ‘He’s really good for the riding and done a nice job, but the party that he or she comes from failed us on this issue,’ ” said Royal Military College professor and Ukrainian-Canadian Lubomyr Luciuk. “Or the party worked with us on this issue. And that can swing some votes and be decisive.”
Here are a few examples:
Manitoba
In the last election, there were several close results around Winnipeg, where Ukrainian-Canadians represent a significant percentage of the population. None was closer than in Winnipeg North where Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux beat his NDP opponent by just 44 votes. The riding is home to 11,105 Ukrainian-Canadians, representing 13.3 per cent of the population.
Luciuk says Ukrainian-Canadians actually helped Lamoureux win, as the Liberal MP opposed the Holocaust being given higher billing in the Winnipeg-based Canadian Museum for Human Rights than other genocides. That includes the Holodomor, a famine in Ukraine in the 1930s that Canada has recognized as a deliberate genocide perpetrated by Soviet Russia.
“So Lamoureux got some votes because he took a position that was positive,” Luciuk said.
Meanwhile, in the nearby Winnipeg riding of Elmwood-Transcona, Conservative MP Lawrence Toet defeated NDP incumbent Jim Maloway by only 300 votes. The riding counts 16,935 Ukrainian-Canadians, or about 20.6 per cent of the population.
And Conservative MP Joyce Bateman beat Liberal incumbent Anita Neville by 722 votes in nearby Winnipeg South Centre, where 10,240 Ukrainian-Canadians live, representing 13.4 per cent of the population.
Outside Winnipeg, Conservative MP Larry Maguire edged out Liberal challenger Rolf Dinsdale in a byelection in Brandon-Souris in November, 2013. Maguire won by 389 votes, in a riding where 17,360 people, or 11.3 per cent of the population, identified themselves as being of Ukrainian descent.
Saskatchewan
If there’s one riding that screams “Ukraine!” more than any other in Canada, it’s Yorkton-Melville in Saskatchewan. That’s because fully 29.3 per cent of the population self-identifies as being of Ukrainian descent, which is nearly five per cent more than the next closest. But it doesn’t appear Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz has anything to worry about; he’s represented the riding since 1993.
The same can’t be said for some other Saskatchewan MPs, starting with Conservative MP Kelly Block. The representative for Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar defeated her NDP challenger by 538 votes, in a riding where Ukrainian-Canadians number 9,720, or 13.7 per cent of the population.

Fellow Conservative MP Ray Boughen, who represents the riding of Palliser, near Regina, edged out his own NDP challenger by 766 votes. Palliser is home to 7,520 Ukrainian-Canadians, who represent 11.1 per cent of the population.

And Liberal MP Ralph Goodale, the only Liberal to have been elected in Saskatchewan since 2006, held onto his seat in Wascana in the last election by just over 1,500 votes. The riding is home to 10,530 people who identify themselves as being of Ukrainian descent, representing 13.1 per cent of the population.
Luciuk says Goodale is an example of an MP who has been a stalwart champion of Ukrainian-Canadian interests and earned the respect of the community, which has translated into continued electoral success.
Ontario
Thunder Bay was the mecca for Ukrainian-Canadians settling in Ontario. The two ridings that surround the northern Ontario city, represented by NDP MP John Rafferty and NDP-turned-Green Party MP Bruce Hyer, are each chockful of people of Ukrainian descent. Both Rafferty and Hyer earned comfortable victories in 2011.
On the other hand, Conservative MP Ted Opitz barely eked out victory in the Toronto-area riding of Etobicoke Centre over Liberal incumbent Borys Wrzesnewskyj, who is of Ukrainian descent. The margin of victory was 26 votes.
Before the election, the Conservatives accidentally released documents that confirmed they were targeting the riding’s Ukrainian-Canadian community, which numbers 7,955 and represents 7.1 per cent of the population.
Luciuk says the Ukrainian-Canadian vote played a critical role in Etobicoke Centre, and while Wrzesnewskyj is a member of the community, this was a situation where party affiliation mattered more than the individual MP’s identity — a situation he says is the norm.
“There were Ukrainian-Canadians working for Ted Opitz against a Ukrainian-Canadian because he was in the wrong party at that time,” Luciuk said. “Whereas the Conservative party was making all the right sounds about things Ukrainian.”
“And I think most Canadians of Ukrainian heritage, even those who would not necessarily politically support (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper if there were an election next week or next month, are looking at his general overall performance on (the current crisis in Ukraine), and saying: ‘Good for you. Thank you Mr. Prime Minister.’ ”

Shoveling bupkus above your weight; the shameless hypocrisy of Stephen Harper

This is Big Steve's Brain; l to r Big John, Big Steve, Big Peter "Pinocchio" MacKay

Truth of the matter is that an awful lot of what looks, sounds, and smells of rank hypocrisy when we follow Mr. Harper's various pronouncements on current events isn't really that at all.

As Canadians, when we foot the bill for Steve's various turns on the world stage, we naturally think he's on the world stage. "Why is that man talking such foolishness on the world stage?" we ask ourselves.

"Does he not know he makes all Canadians look ridiculous?"

For example, one does not need to have a doctorate in history to catch the glaring inconsistencies in the Harperite world view. When this country illegally annexes a neighbour's land, they're our best friend. When that country does the same thing, it's 1938 all over again!

Relax! Harper is not on the world stage; he's on the campaign trail!

Do you ever notice that whenever Harper is on one of these junkets, the only reporters who ever have questions for him are the one's he brought with him from Canada? Nobody, but nobody in the broader world has the slightest interest about where Steven Harper stands on anything.

So when Mr. Harper spends a few days bowing and scraping in Israel, it's not because he has discovered a sudden affinity for the Holy Land; it's because his handlers think there might be a couple of key ridings in the next election where this toadying will be rewarded.

Likewise his fawning over a non-elected cipher in the new non-elected democratic government of Ukraine. Yes, everybody knows that's ridiculous; everybody except those rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian-Canadians who are likely to shower Harper with votes in that next election.

Which is not to say the Ukrainian-Canadians do not come by their Russophobia honestly. Ukraine suffered terribly under Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture.

There are no votes to be lost in Canada by shoveling hysterically over-the-top anti-Putin propaganda.

So give Mr. Harper a break. He's not a hypocrite. He's a pragmatist.