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The Collapse of Global Liberalism: And the Emergence of the Post Liberal World Order

I’ve been enjoying the numerous archived interviews etc., so far

https://www.youtube.com/@theburningarchive/featured

This channel looks at World History and how it affects geopolitics today – Great Powers, Changing Cultures, & Civilization States. And great history books, of course. I share book recommendations, deep dives into world history, and commentary on current world politics. I am an author, historian and retired government official who lives in Melbourne, Australia. 33 years in government and a lifetime reading history gives can help live in tune with a changing world.

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I also have a channel focused on world literature @WorldLit Archive

thanks to Ms Cat for directing me towards this channel

Via Archive.ph

Ukrainian community leaders are planning a legal challenge to keep secret the names of alleged Nazi war criminals who came to Canada after the Second World War.

They have started to raise funds for a Federal Court action to be triggered if Ottawa decides to release a report naming hundreds of alleged Nazi war criminals who settled in Canada, including those who fought in a Ukrainian SS divisions

Libraries and Archives Canada has been consulting on releasing Part 2 of the 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada led by retired Superior Court of Quebec judge Jules Deschênes. That part of the report has been kept secret for decades. The consultation is in response to access to information requests lodged by The Globe and Mail and two other organizations.

Part 2 of the Deschênes report contains the names of around 900 alleged war criminals who came to Canada after the Second World War, including members of the Ukrainian SS Galicia division. Last year, there was an outcry after a veteran of the SS division, Yaroslav Hunka, received two standing ovations in the House of Commons during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Former Commons Speaker Anthony Rota, who invited Mr. Hunka and praised him as a hero, later resigned.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress has written to its supporters asking for donations to fund a possible Federal Court challenge to protect “the good name of our community.”

Not sure the entire Ukrainian community has that good of a name- Sure, some do. But not all.

The letter, sent last week by Ihor Michalchyshyn, chief executive officer of the Congress, said “it is appalling that the Canadian Government could attempt, for no good reason, to subject innocent Canadians, their family members and descendants to public scorn.”
“When the announcement is made, we will have to be ready to go to the Federal Court challenging the Government’s authority to ignore Justice Deschênes on confidentiality,” the letter says, adding that if the government opts to release the names, “the UCC will have to be ready at a moment’s notice.”

Libraries and Archives Canada consulted in June and July on whether to release the second part of the Deschênes report, but it has faced a backlash for failing to consult leading historians, human rights and Holocaust organizations, and Holocaust survivors.
Historian John-Paul Himka, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, who has extensively researched the Holocaust in Ukraine and is an expert on the Ukrainian SS Galicia Division, was among those not invited to participate in the consultation.

He is one of more than 70 academics worldwide to sign a petition to the government last year asking for the report to be released in full.
“After World War II, many Ukrainians who had one way or another collaborated in the crimes of the German occupation retreated westward, fearing repression by the returning Soviet regime. Many later migrated to Canada, where they and their descendants have dominated the organized Ukrainian diaspora community,” he said.

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, on Thursday wrote to Leslie Weir, the Librarian and Archivist of Canada, saying that as the leading Holocaust education and advocacy organization in Canada, it should have been included in the consultation. She asked for a chance to contribute.
“The omission of critical stakeholders appears to have left your consultation process with a heavily biased set of findings and recommendations,” the letter says, referring to a report by Libraries and Archives Canada about what it heard during its consultation. “We consider the repeated concerns raised during the consultation process about the trauma that might be experienced by war criminals if evidence of their crimes is made public to be particularly outrageous.”

The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights – whose International Chair, Irwin Cotler, was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s former special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism – was also not included in the consultation.
Dara Solomon, executive director of the Toronto Holocaust Museum, said it would have liked to have been consulted, too, adding experts on the period in history should have the chance to contribute before a decision is made.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, which did take part in the consultation, urged caution about how names are released.
“Nazi war criminals should not be allowed to live carefree in Canada, they should be held accountable and pay for their crimes. The issue of releasing Part 2 of the Deschênes Commission report, however, is not black and white,” said president and CEO, Shimon Koffler Fogel.

I find the CIJA take somewhat curious. Given the historical priority of hunting down and jailing Nazis or other deniers, globally. Including but not limited to a 95yr old Grandma

“We support the principle of transparency. However, as Alti Rodal, director of historical research at the Deschênes Commission justly said, context was crucial and that these were merely allegations ‘that were minimally investigated. They were not well researched, let alone proven in a court.’”

Ms. Rodal was among those consulted by Libraries and Archives Canada.
“Any form of disclosure should be done smartly and properly contextualized. This cannot turn into a witch hunt where all those named are tried and convicted by the court of public opinion as war criminals, as that may not be the case.”

Mr. Michalchyshyn of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress said the government should be “bound by the ruling of Justice Deschênes,” who said Part 2 of his report is “destined to remain confidential.”
“The position of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress has always been that no war criminal should ever find safe haven in Canada,” he said. “All alleged war criminals, regardless of their ethnic, religious, racial or cultural origin, or where or when they committed their crimes, should be brought to trial in Canada under Canadian criminal law.”

There are previous posts on this subject as it relates to Canada- just search them in the search bar above.

Niagara Falls, Ontario has been called on of the most scenic locales to view this event- Hotel rates are off the chart!!

Check the link below for path of totality map

We’ll likely set up right in our backyard!

The Weather Network

“Mother Nature gives human beings several different shows,” he said. “I mean, you could say forest fires, hurricanes — I know people who chase hurricanes, they chase tornadoes, too — but the solar eclipse is one of those spectacles that’s harmless, in the sense that it doesn’t leave destruction behind it; it leaves a whole bunch of shouting and cheering and happy people for the most part.”

It’s that human experience that he loves so much.

“I also say I’m a little bit of an eclipse vampire, because I like to position myself beside somebody who’s never seen it before, and sort of feel the emotion coming off of them a little bit, too,” he said.

“I love the moments after the eclipse when everybody is just, I mean, just euphoric, really. And it’s a feeling we don’t often get collectively as human beings.”

A bit of Canada/Eclipse trivia

Carly Simon’s song includes a reference to the total eclipse that took place in Nova Scotia, Canada- 1972

Carly Simon- Your so Vain

Original url below

https://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-strange-case-of-alexei-navalny.html?zx=528aa423795c7f49

Unlike Navalny’s theft of state property, Weiner’s act was a private affair. Yet, there has been an avalanche of criticism about Weiner and editorials and national leaders in the US have urged him to drop out of the mayoral race following the tawdry revelations about his escapades last week.

In comparison, all the animated discussions in Russia about Navalny bypass the core issue, namely, he has a record of embezzlement of public property and, therefore, ineligible to hold office. Ironically, it is on the issue of corruption that Navalny built up his strange career in the blogosphere from where he tiptoed into politics with magical ease.

It is even bigger hypocrisy that the American commentators apply to him an entirely different yardstick when their peer group back home would cast Weiner as the original sinner. To be sure, the strange case of Navalny raises some big issues.

He (Navalny) went to Yale under an American scholarship and returned to Russia as a freshly-minted public crusader – telegenic, English-speaking and audacious. But does that absolve him of a criminal past? This is one thing.  

The independent pollsters put Navalny’s rating as somewhere around 15 percent, which won’t stop incumbent mayor Sergei Sobyanin from winning outright in the first round. The polls show that the people’s distrust about Navalny is only growing and they feel troubled not only by his shady past but also by his brand of Russian nationalism that pits Russia against Muslim Central Asia.

Despite the West lionizing him, Navalny looks less and less convincing as a leader of a coherent opposition. And it raises a question: Is Navalny an individual or is he a project? There is something sinister going on.

Why else should the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] sponsor a 22-year old Russian young thing, Vera Kichanova, to visit the White House in Washington last week as “one of the faces of the new generation of political opposition in Russia.”

Ever heard of Vera?

I’ve never heard of Vera Kichanova?

The NED, which specializes in staging ‘colour revolutions’ in the former Soviet republics, acted as recruiting agency, while Vera’s appointments in Washington, DC, included Susan Rice, US national security advisor, Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations, et al and the high officials at the White House and the State Department were eager to pick Vera’s mind about “what the US can do to help promote reform in Russia.”

Wow, this Vera Kichanova must be something ‘special’? Has anyone else heard of or know anything about this individual?

The spirited Vera promptly suggested to the Obama administration to expand the Magnitsky List “to include others, like the people responsible for the arrests of protestors on Bolotnaya Square [in Moscow in May 2012].”        

That’s an interesting suggestion from the 22 year old Vera, no?

The real reason behind such manifestly anti-Putin frenzy in the US needs to be understood. Gangster capitalism began in Boris Yeltsin’s time. It was Yeltsin who destroyed in 1993 the nearest thing Russia ever got as a parliament by ordering tanks to fire shells on its White House home. Yeltsin nonetheless enjoyed a good press in the West. There were no Veras hanging around Bill Clinton’s White House. Why so?

There were two reasons. One, the only alternative to Yeltsin was the Russian communist party, whose return to power was unthinkable for Washington, which, therefore, duly ensured Yeltsin won the 1996 election. The second reason was that a huge transfer of wealth was taking place from Russia, thanks to the bizarre situation in Russia.

On the other hand, the post-Yeltsin Russian political system proved “non-cooperative”. Vladimir Putin is an immensely popular national leader and doesn’t need the US’ support for political survival, thanks to his assertive international stance and his relatively successful economic policy, which saw a higher trajectory of growth, drop in unemployment and rise in real wages.


Obviously, it meant that the sort of dizzying levels of influence that Washington held over Yeltsin’s Russia has become a thing of the past. And, the sort of “business opportunity” to fish prize specimens from the muddy pool of Russian economy no longer exists as in those halcyon days of the nineties.

In other word’s Putin does not need Washington to stay in his leadership role in Russia

The real idea behind building up the Navalnys and Veras is to get under the skin of the Russian political establishment...................

I can’t disagree with that. And would take it a step further and throw Snowden into the whole attempt at  ‘getting under the skin’ of the Russian political establishment.

I”ll end this flashback by suggesting.. Don’t jump to the conclusion that Russia killed Navalny. Or Putin strangled him with his bare hands? This is simply too obvious- Ask who benefits from this man’s alleged death? It’s not Putin. Navalny was political nobody to the Russian people. And was not a threat to Putin's leadership.

Via Rumble

Of course share some thoughts… I’ve posted a few excerpts below but suggest the piece be read entirely at the link above. Both hubby and I found it an interesting read.

This war began in the early morning hours of June 22, 1941, when the German Wehrmacht jumped off its start lines and implemented Operation Barbarossa. This operation, like the larger war that it inaugurated, was unprecedented in its scope. The German force numbered well over three million men – dwarfing the forces involved in the invasions of Poland or France. Even more uniquely, however, Barbarossa was an attempt to wage a campaign of maneuver and annihilation on a genuinely continental scale. The planned areas of operation ranged from the Baltic States and Leningrad in the north all the way to Crimea in the south. The entire battlespace was on the order of half a million square miles. This is entirely unique. Neither before nor after would any army attempt a fully continental scale operation – and for good reason.

Barbarossa and its immediate follow up operation (Operation Typhoon) are much mythologized and frequently misrepresented in popular histories. The most simplistic story that is usually told centers strongly on the Russian winter. The Germans, it is said, were on the verge of capturing Moscow when they were caught out by the onset of winter weather, which froze their advance and allowed the USSR to recover (usually, it is said, with the generous aid of American lend-lease). A slightly more sophisticated, but still incorrect story points to the decision in the early autumn to redirect forces towards Kiev as a critical moment – allegedly, this reflected Hitler getting distracted by secondary objectives and causing a fatal delay which left the Germans unable to reach Moscow in time.

The failure of Barbarossa was in fact rooted in the highest conceptions of the operation, rather than in the details of its implementation. Barbarossa failed because it was simply impossible to successfully wage a continental scale maneuver campaign in the Soviet Union with the resources available to the German Wehrmacht in 1941. Tellingly, Barbarossa achieved all its objectives – but these successes did not translate to strategic victory.

Found it interesting for sure! Lots of information concerning the present situation occurring in Ukraine.

Then a reflection on the Battle of Verdun.. and the rather gruesome coin issued to commemorate that battle-

The Battle of Verdun was conceived by the German high command as a way to cripple the French army by drawing them into a preconfigured meatgrinder. The notion was to attack and seize crucial defensive high ground – ground so important that France would be forced to counterattack and attempt to recapture it. The Germans hoped that France would commit their strategic reserves to this counterattack so that they could be destroyed. While Verdun failed to completely sap French combat power, it did become one of the most bloody battles in world history. A German coin commemorating the battle depicted a skeleton pumping blood out of the earth – a chilling but apt visual metaphor.

But the bit about the Schelling points (Game Theory) was really enlightening.

In a state of political turmoil, or even anarchy, the system works itself towards Schelling points – obvious figures and institutions that radiate authority, and are therefore the conspicuous choice to assume power and issue commands.

The Bolsheviks, for example, understood this very well. Immediately after declaring their new government in 1917, they dispatched commissars to the various office buildings in Saint Petersburg where the Tsarist bureaucracies were headquartered. Trotsky famously turned up at the foreign affairs ministry building one morning and simply announced that he was the new Foreign Minister. The employees laughed at him – who was he? how did he presume to be in charge? – but for Trotsky the point was to insinuate himself on a Schelling point. In the state of anarchy that began to spread in Russia, people naturally look for some obvious focal point of authority, and the Bolsheviks had cleverly positioned themselves as such by claiming control over the bureaucratic offices and titles. On the other side of the civil conflict, political opposition to the Bolsheviks clustered around Tsarist army officers, because they too were Schelling points, in that they already had titles and position within an existing hierarchy.

All of this is to say that in the event of a coup or state collapse, new governments are virtually never formed sui generis – they always arise from preexisting institutions and hierarchies. Why, when the Soviet Union fell, did political authority devolve to the Republics? Because these Republics were Schelling points – branches that one can grab for safety in a chaotic river.

Hope you read the piece, check the outbound links and share some thoughts!

I’m more than half way through it- about 1 hour and 15 minutes in and think it’s worth posting it here. So, it’s here!

If you do listen and want to offer up some input, perspective and opinion. Please do.

In late April more than 50 members of the U.S. Congress condemned the government of Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to glorify “Nazi collaborators.”

The letter, signed by both Republicans and Democrats, outlined concerns about ongoing ceremonies to glorify leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as well as 14^th SS Galizien Division (aka 1^stGalician/Galizien or the 1^st Ukrainian Division). “It’s particularly troubling that much of the Nazi glorification in Ukraine is government-supported,” noted the letter to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan. The letter was initiated by Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California and David Cicilline of Rhode Island.

Contrast that to how the Canadian government handled a related issue last year when the Russian Embassy in Ottawa tweeted out that, “There are monumets (sic) to Nazi collaborators in Canada and nobody is doing anything about it.”

As those members of the U.S. Congress have pointed out, the Ukrainians who served in the SS Galizien Division were indeed Nazi collaborators.

So too was Roman Shukhevych

A monument in Oakville commemorates those who served with the 14^th SS Galizien Division. Another monument in Edmonton honors Roman Shukhevych, the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

As my Postmedia colleague Marie-Danielle Smith discovered, the Russian tweet sent bureaucrats at Global Affairs Canada into overdrive as they tried to defend the SS unit and Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. Documents she received through the Access to Information law show government officials were under a lot of pressure from the “Centre” (the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister’s Office) to counter the news about the monuments to Nazi collaborators. The bureaucrats came up with a strategy. The would label the tweet as “disinformation” and they came up with a plan to spread the word to the news media as part of their efforts to defend Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators.

This is all on Trudeau’s watch. And the Ukrnazi’s killed Polish Christians as well as Polish Jews, because they just killed ethnic Poles whatever their religious belief ( this is the history on one side of my house- devout Polish Christian grandma to my husband)

Shukhevych was later assigned to a new unit whose role in Germany’s war, according to one Holocaust expert, was “fighting partisans and killing Jews.” Shukhevych later turned against the Nazis.

Then there is the SS Galizien Division. They were eager Nazi collaborators. Some 80,000 Ukrainians volunteered to join the SS but only those who could meet the strict requirements were selected.

The SS used some of its most seasoned killers to oversee the development of its new division. SS Gen. Jurgen Stroop, who would later be executed as a war criminal for his brutal destruction of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, was brought on as an advisor.

Other commanders of the division were all versed in the murder of Jews throughout occupied territories in eastern Europe. “Many of the Ukrainian officers, like SS- Haupsturmfuhrer Michael Brygidryr, had previously served in SS Schuma battalions, routinely used to kill partisans, burn down villages and, when the opportunity arose, murder Jews,” wrote award-winning author Christopher Hale in his 2011 ground-breaking book, Hitler’s Foreign Executioners.

SS Galizien Division was used by the Nazis in a variety of operations, one of the most controversial being the 1944 destruction of the village of Huta Pieniacka. Huta Pieniacka was considered a “Polish” village that just months before had been the shelter for several hundred Jews, Hale noted. The SS units surrounded the village. (The Jews were gone) Men, women and children, who had taken refuge in the village church, were taken outside in groups and murdered. Kids were executed in front of their parents, their heads smashed against tree trunks, one witness testified. Others were burned alive in houses. Around 850 people were murdered.

Some Ukrainians see Shukhevych and SS Galizien Division members as heroes. They argue that those individuals served the Nazis because they saw them as liberators from the Russians. Their ultimate goal was an independent Ukraine.

This whole issue isn’t about “fake news” or Russian “disinformation.” It is about nations trying to whitewash their Nazi collaboration and rewrite history, while attacking journalists who don’t want to let that happen.

It is a positive development that members of the U.S. Congress could see through these efforts to glorify members of the SS. They are speaking out.

But in Canada, the federal government is more than happy to play along with defending Himmler’s SS divisions and Nazi collaborators.

A sordid history the Canadian government is happy to cover up for political reasons- To attempt a cleaning their dirty hands perhaps?

I’m less inclined to see this as an issue of religious beliefs. The Ukrainians wanted (want) to eradicate anyone who was not Ukrainian. The ethnic Poles of any faith were the issue. They were not Ukrainian. The ethnic Russians were to be done away with as well. This was and is to this day a case of ethnic cleansing. The Ukrainians have attacked the Greeks in Ukraine mercilessly as well, at this time!

Link

Hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists held a torchlight march in the capital of Kyiv to mark the birthday of Stepan Bandera,