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Friday, April 10, 2009
Is Canada a safe-haven for Communist apparatchiks?
The chairman of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Union published an opinion piece yesterday in the Kiev Post expressing concern about Canada becoming a safe-haven for the criminal minds of Communism. He notes that in April 2005, a journalist broke a story in a national Canadian newspaper about Communist NKDV members in Canada. Since then, the issue seems to have dropped off the Canadian media's radar. In the author's words:
Even more intriguing is how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s War Crimes Unit, asked to investigate allegations about Communist collaborators in Canada, responded with the rather limp finding that they had insufficient evidence upon which to act.
Apparently, when a man admits he was in the NKVD and brags about the people he killed and provides his memoirs in English in a book available in public libraries, the police don’t see that as proof of any wrongdoing. Maybe they’re waiting for Hollywood to turn the manuscript into a movie.
After World War II, screening procedures were supposed to exclude Nazis and Communists from Canada. So if a man declares he was in the NKVD and broadcasts that fact from Toronto, either he is a liar or he lied to get into Canada. In any case, we know that Communist killers are here. They shouldn’t be.
All of Stalin’s surviving minions are elderly. Yet it’s not too late to see justice done. They deserve no more mercy than they meted out. And now they should be expelled. They can finish out their lives as burdens upon those whom they served. I’d bet they won’t find Moscow or Minsk as comfortable as Montreal.
Canadians are compassionate. Not only do we strive to do what’s right, we also honor the righteous. We did in 1985 when Canada conferred honorary citizenship on Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. Yet it was not the Nazis who did him in. SMERSH agents abducted Wallenberg in Budapest in January 1945, then carted him off to the notorious Lubyanka prison in Moscow. Probably no one now here was directly involved, yet all who served Stalin in those days are complicit. No one wants such scoundrels here. You’d think a Conservative government would get that. Apparently they don’t. They will.
I don't think the author is being unfair here. This is not a free speech issue; he is not calling for outlawing the Communist Party of Canada, for example. He is merely pointing out that Canada should not be a safe-haven for Communist oppressors. The fact that many of these Communist oppressors have not been officially designated war criminals is a result of failings in the international community to apply human rights law to the crimes of the Soviet Union and former Eastern bloc states. It is not because this criminal class of Communists does not exist.
The conservative Canadian government should exercise more discretion in offering the privilege of citizenship. Perhaps Stephen Harper's political courtship of the radical center is distracting him from maintaining a conservative position on who is deserving of Canadian citizenship. After all, citizenship is not available to wild animals or convicted Nazis-- why should former Communist criminals receive this privilege? I can't imagine how men like Joe Schlesinger might feel knowing that these communist criminals could end up living across the street from him.
Posted by Alina on April 10, 2009 in Canadian Conservative Politics, Freedom of expression | Permalink
Comments
It didn't realize it's illegal to be a communist in Canada. Kind of a bad turn of events for the Communist Party of Canada.
Considering how many Nazis were allowed into Western Canada after the war, I wouldn't get too upset over a few commies. The Ukranian community is still proud of their alliance with Hitler, and many members of the Waffen SS have been preaching their filth to several generations of Ukranian Canadians.
As far as I'm concerned, Alina, (you) are the pot, calling the kettle black.
Posted by: dp | 2009-04-10 9:54:40 AM
As I noted in the post, it is NOT illegal to be a communist in Canada. Just as you should be upset if Canada accepts Nazis as citizens, you should be upset if Canada accepts former NKDV members as citizens.
Ukrainian Canadians who are "proud of their alliance with Hitler" are ridiculous human beings, to put it sweetly.
As for being a pot calling the kettle black, I'm afraid that level of abstraction is beyond my simple, little mind. Do you mean that I am a Ukrainian Canadian? (I'm not.) A Nazi? (No way in ispita.) A member of the Waffen SS? (Impossible.) Or a Communist? (Laughable.) Perhaps you can enlighten me as to the nature of your comment.
Humbly,
Alina the Pot
Posted by: alina | 2009-04-10 10:15:00 AM
I was fairly sure that you aren't Ukranian, and I gathered that you aren't a commie. Most of the complaints I've seen so far have been from Ukranian special interest groups. You seemed to be aping their ideas, so I instinctively put you in their camp.
I apologize if I've failed to recognize the complexities of 20th century Europian politics.
Where did you get all the vowels in your name? Did your family buy those when you got off the boat?
I'm sure you can see by now, that I don't give a rat's about your east europian grievances. Canada has allowed way too much political baggage off the boat, and it's time to put some of it into landfill.
Posted by: dp | 2009-04-10 10:39:30 AM
Why so insecure, dp? I haven't even beat you at a game of badminton yet.
Posted by: alina | 2009-04-10 10:56:46 AM
dp: Just what do you mean by your last paragraph? Because I'm inclined to think ill of you if you mean what I think you do.
Also, it's "European," not "Europian." (I think irony is lurking somewhere around here).
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2009-04-10 11:03:04 AM
I don't get it dp, what's gotten under you skin here?
I'm inclined to think we already have a subtle form of communism underlying all aspects of our government, and I'm ok with bringing it to the forefront by any means of conversation.
Posted by: JC | 2009-04-10 12:01:03 PM
Think ill of me? Oh dear!
I was referring only to the "baggage". You have an evil mind.
Speaking of insecure, why should Canadians keep fighting battles between you sloped-brow europeans anyway?
Have a nice day skichuckichscu.
Posted by: dp | 2009-04-10 12:04:19 PM
Just about all Canadians are "sloped-brow" Europeans. Of course, you might be, for example, an Inuit. Are you?
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2009-04-10 12:36:28 PM
All of my ancestors are European. Sloped Brow?
Disappointed dp...you just having a bad day or what?
Posted by: JC | 2009-04-10 1:12:16 PM
>>Even more intriguing is how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s War Crimes Unit asked to investigate allegations about Communist collaborators in Canada, responded with the rather limp finding that they had insufficient evidence upon which to act.
Sadly, the same RCMP has already a history of being unable to find much evidence dealing with drug users and pushers, crooked and bad cops, crooked civil and public servants, tax evaders, crooked Liberals, and crooked Conservatives to start off with...they also now cannot even manage a Taser and they are too costly and too ineffective to use as a police service to start of with...especially to give out any traffic tickets also...they know how to get drunk though...pathetic.
Posted by: thenonconformer | 2009-04-10 6:06:22 PM
Do we have proof that these men did anything but file papers? The CIA, FBI, and MI5 have some goons in them, too, but past membership in those organizations is no barrier to residence in Canada. While the KGB, NKVD, and OGPU--and the Okhrana for that matter--were used for oppression, they also performed legitimate security and intelligence work. In fact, included in the NKVD's ranks were all civilian police (such as detectives and traffic cops), all firefighters, all borders guards, and many state archivists.
Should we ban all former members of Russia's military, too, on the pretext that some of its members have committed atrocities in Afghanistan and elsewhere? As well as all members of all civic services such as police and firefighting from all current or former communist or totalitarian states?
I call bullshit. It's one thing to exclude the Eichmanns and Mengeles of the world. It's another to expand the exclusion to the guy who caught the dirtbag who knifed the old lady in the dark, or carried a sleeping infant out of a burning building.
P.S. Alina, isn't your name Romanian?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-04-10 6:38:24 PM
Ukrainian Canadians who are "proud of their alliance with Hitler"
Just like neocons are proud of that mass murdering bastard Lev Davidovich Bronstein.
The Trotskyist pedigree of neoconservatism is no secret; the original neocon, Irving Kristol, acknowledges it with relish: "I regard myself to have been a young Trostkyite and I have not a single bitter memory."
Of course they get away with it. Never could figure out why?
why should Canadians keep fighting battles between you sloped-brow europeans anyway?
The Romanians are a dolicocephalous Mediterranean people. The Slavs are a brachycephalous group. The Romanians are long headed and narrow faced just like big Irish Nordics, only less hairy. :)
It's one thing to exclude the Eichmanns and Mengeles of the world.
Leave it to the ethnomasochistic koolaid drinkers to bring up Eichmann and never mention Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich and Genrikh Yagoda," the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU's deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people (a lot Ukrainians). His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html
Of course Jewish and Ukrainian special interest groups worked together when they desired to undermine Canadians freedom of association. It makes you laugh when immigrants tell you they came to Canada because they loved freedom because the first time they experience it, they don't like it.
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/59/patrias.html
Posted by: DJ | 2009-04-11 12:58:43 AM
Alina - I'm fairly "racist" and "sexist" by contemporary standards, but your commentary and analysis is pretty damned good IMHO.
True story: I'm in a cab recently, the conversation turns to politics. I hate talking politics with cabbies because they are almost all Liberals. Anyway, I begin with "Look, I'm very right wing, and..." the driver says "You too? You and I are the only ones in this city!" We had a good laugh. Turns out he was Romanian; I understand there is some debate over who is Moldavian and who is Romanian where you are from, but the point is that those who lived under communism are often some of the more freedom loving people in Canada.
I'm not sure what happened to our leftist friend Jaworski (kidding, sorta).
"The conservative Canadian government should exercise more discretion in offering the privilege of citizenship. "
Agreed, but Harper's raised immigration to levels not seen in decades, and they still call him a Nazi. They'd storm Parliament Hill if he messed with immigration, and after seeing the Tamil terrorists take over Ottawa this week I'm not exaggerating when I say that. I'd support any initiative to deport any NKVD/KGB living in Canada as a matter of fairness; since we deport Nazis I see no reason why we don't deport their arguably more evil communist counterparts.
Posted by: Que | 2009-04-11 2:48:50 AM
The problem is Canada and the US were so short sighted they thought the Soviets were are allies until Truman finally noticed the stick smacking his head to wake up and smell the coffee. Why is it the US has Nazi hunters but former Communist genocidal maniacs are given a pass?
Posted by: Faramir | 2009-04-14 3:32:19 PM
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