Canada, Harbouring Terrorists

"Representatives of the organization are active in many countries in Europe and North America, led by Khaled Barakat, who is part of the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) abroad."

"Barakat is involved with establishing militant cells and motivating terrorist activity in Judea & Samaria and abroad."

National Bureau for Counter-Terror Financing report, Israel

"It's highly alarming that modern terror organizations, in their tactics of concealment and disguise, have methodically adopted pseudonyms from the world of human rights and civil society organizations to hide behind."

Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Ronen Hoffman

"The links between the PFLP, a listed terrorist entity in Canada and Samidoun are clear. We are deeply troubled that the funder and leader of Samidoun, Khaled Barakat, and his wife Charlotte Kates are able to lead Samidoun from Canada with apparent impunity."

"This should be shocking to all Canadians."

Shimon Fogel, president, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! interviewed Khaled Barakat, and Charlotte Kates, co-ordinator of the Samidoun Palestinian prisoners’ solidarity network.

Many of questionable character have found themselves a comfortable niche in Canada, far from the turmoil of the geographic locations abroad that represent the focus of their activities, generally actions engaged in that result in turmoil, threat and murder of those whose ideologies or sectarian choices or, in the case of Israel and the Palestinian diaspora, an antipathy to the very location of a historical homeland restored to the rightful inheritors, to the murderous rage of usurpers claiming the land as their own.

Again, in the case of Palestinians, there is a propensity to migrate abroad and from their new perches plan and execute atrocities to take place that target the Jewish state or Jews in general as symbols of the self-imposed 'victimhood' of Arabs who saw fit to 'inherit' the identity-nomenclature of the original inhabitants; Jewish Palestinians denoting a Roman-era designation for Judea and Judeans. Where not only have those Arabs taken possession of the name of Palestinian but they are claimants to all symbolic and real religious sites aligned with Judaism.

Young Palestinians in Canada on study visas are enabled to become landed immigrants and eventually citizens, while others immigrate with full families to make a place for themselves within Canadian society. Yet rather than accepting the prevailing Canadian culture and values they bring with them venomous hatred of Israel and of Jews, fulminating against both as usurpers in their very land of ancestral inheritance.

Palestinian Khaled Barakat, now 51, has lived in Canada posing as a Palestinian rights activist and freelance writer for the last 20 years. He and his defenders claim he is a victim of Israeli intimidation and persecution simply because he is a voice for Palestinians in exile from 'their' land. In fact he is an active and senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group, listed as such in North America, the European Union, Japan and Australia.

In Palestinian news websites the man is described as a "leader of the PFLP", and sometimes as a member of the PFLP's governing central committee. According to Israeli intelligence, PFLP documents identifying him as a key operative in their organization have been intercepted, completely validating identifying him as a covert terrorist living freely in Canada. His true identity is fully known by Canadian intelligence agencies, law-enforcement authorities and senior federal politicians.

Many of Samidoun’s activists are also members and leaders of pro-BDS organizations in the United States.

• Khaled Barakat, coordinator of Samidoun, is also a member of the Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition, an organization that supports BDS.



  Khaled Barakat (shown in a photo that appears on the Samidoun website). Photo by Aage Christensen/samidoun.net

• Charlotte Kates, co-manager of Samidoun, is a member of the “Organizing Collective” of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) and was previously an activist with New Jersey Solidarity Activists for the Liberation of Palestine (NJS), an organization that called for the destruction of Israel.

NGO Monitor

He has appeared for years at rallies and meetings across Canada and travelled widely in Europe. In 2019 he was detained in Berlin and deported for what German authorities spoke of as violent, antisemitic rhetoric. The PFLP's major financial and political backers are the regime in Damascus, Khomeini's Iran and Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Barakat himself is involved with an organization called the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network that Israeli intelligence identify as a PFLP "proxy" functioning as the group's overseas recruitment, fundraising and propaganda arm.

Samidoun  was designated last year as a terrorist organization in Israel, with Barakat identified as central to its operations. Shortly afterward, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network was formally registered by the federal Corporations Canada agency under the Canada Not-for-Profit Corporations Act. Alarmed, under information-sharing terms of the 2014 Canada-Israel strategic partnership agreement (signed under the previous Harper Conservative government)m\, Israel proposed a briefing spurred by the PFLP having "inexplicably been allowed to set up shop in this country".

A meeting between Israeli and Canadian officials, including representatives from Canada's CSIS (security intelligence establishment), the RCMP and the Canadian Border Service Agency was arranged. Nothing of any substance came of the meeting. Samidoun's registry was not revoked and nor was the organization dissolved in Canada. B'nai Brith's chief executive wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pointing out that the government's inattention was "inexcusable".

"This hate rally [Al Quds march taking place in Canada on April 30] is particularly troubling given that later this week, Jewish communities around the world will pause to mark Yom HaShoah [the Holocaust anniversary]."

"We are equally alarmed by the apparent involvement [in the Al-Quds parage] of terror-tied organizations, like Samidoun."

Gail Adelson-Marcovitz, CIJA national board chair

Russia's Special Military Operation in Ukraine

"There was an attack on Kyiv -- it shocked me, not because I'm here but because Kyiv is a sacred city for Ukrainians and Russians alike."

"[The Security Council had failed to prevent or end the war in Ukraine.This was] a source of great disappointment, frustration and anger."  

"Let me be very clear: [it...Security Council] failed to do everything in its power to prevent and end this war." 

"I am here to say to you Mr President [Zelenskyy], and to the people of Ukraine, we will not give up." "[While the Security Council had been] paralyzed, [the UN was taking other actions]." 

"The UN is the 1,400 staff members in Ukraine who are working to provide assistance, food, cash [and] other forms of support."

"Mariupol is a crisis within a crisis. Thousands of civilians need life-saving assistance, many are elderly and in need of medical care, or have limited mobility. They need an escape route out of the apocalypse."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

 

"[The blasts are] proof that we need a quick victory over Russia."

"We must act quickly ... more weapons, more humanitarian efforts ... because every day Ukraine pays a high price for the protection of democracy and freedom."

Andrey Yermak, chief of staff, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Smoke rises after missiles landed at sunset on April 28, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (John Moore/Getty Images)

A member of the United Nations Security Council took especial notice with the UN's Secretary General appearing in Kyiv, to give him a surprise welcome. Warm, in the sense that two missiles blasted the historic city while Antonio Guterres was there, visiting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to see for himself what the population of Russia's neighbour is suffering under an endless barrage of bombs and missiles.

And while Mr. Guterres hugely regretted that the Security Council failed to intervene to convince one of its permanent members that invading another country with violent intent, even naming it a 'liberation' move under a special military operation is uncivilized at best, criminal in its most severe outlook. But then, Russia is accustomed to being misunderstood and blamed for events it is not responsible for. As Vladimir Putin would have it, he was provoked by American interference.

Moreover, the events described as war crimes -- rapes, destruction of civic infrastructure, mass graves are not his doing; they are in reality the malevolent orchestration developed by Ukraine that devised a grisly scenario of ghastly atrocities, enacted by Ukraine's own military and then ascribed to Russia. This is the kind of adversary Moscow faces, a fascist, neo-Nazi Ukrainian administration impudently accusing solicitous Russia of ill intentions toward Ukraine.

American and NATO provocations have brought this situation to pass, not Russian aggression. Russia will always enter the fray to protect its interests, to ensure that Russian-speaking citizens of a neighbouring country are not victimized by Russia-hating neighbours. Those two missiles fired at long range into Kyiv Thursday were just a friendly reminder that Moscow expects Kyiv to do the right thing and surrender its war-mongering government to Russia.

After all, Russian troops withdrew from the suburbs around Kyiv. To focus on the Donbas, where Luhansk and Donetsk are already declared Russian territories. The intention, of course, just to tidy things up, drive the Ukrainian military out of its lair there and leave both Republics in peace. Just incidentally Mariupol's destiny is to welcome its new status, contributing to the land bridge delivering  a direct route from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula.

 

A destroyed apartment building in the southern port city of Mariupol

 Moscow is thoroughly displeased with its nemesis, the United States. Not only has the White House pledged a $33-billion gift in humanitarian and food security and weaponry aid to Ukraine, it has outright stated its hope that Ukrainian forces beyond repelling Russia's assault on the east, but succeed to a degree that Russia's military will be reduced in strength so it cannot continue to threaten its neighbours. Russia, a threat to its neighbours? What effrontery; the U.S. is revealing its mendacious spirit, wounding Russia beyond mere words.

Now entrenched in the east, Russian forces are focusing on the separatist Russian-speaking rebels' success in accessing the entire Donbas along with the secession provinces. The southern city of Kherson, the sole regional capital captured by Russia's military since the invasion had overnight blasts to awaken its still-stunned residents. Whose Wednesday pro-Ukrainian protests were faced by Russian troops using tear gas and stun grenades in their peaceful occupation.

Moscow has reported a series of Ukrainian strikes on Russian regions bordering Ukraine. Issuing a stern warning that such attacks risk escalation to a significant degree. In the Russian city of Bellgorod two large explosions occurred. It is simply outrageous that Ukraine would take their battle with Russia into Russia, endangering the lives of innocent Russians...

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Cliff-Hanger : Rattling Nuclear-Tipped Spears

"If someone from the outside tries to intervene in what's happening, if they create threats,threats of a strategic nature, our retribution, our counter0strike will be instantaneous."

"We have all the necessary instruments, ones that no one else can boas of. And we will not be bragging about them, we will use them if necessary."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

"I don’t think [Putin] will [use nuclear weapons]."

"[Russia’s President has committed] massive strategic blunders. His so-called lightning invasion of Ukraine hasn’t gone too well."

"I don’t feel rattled by it. Because we have strong Armed Forces and a nuclear deterrent and we’re part of a NATO partnership of 30 nations who outgun him, outnumber him and have potentially all the capabilities at our disposal."

"I don’t fear him. I think we should be very grateful in this country that we have a nuclear deterrent, I think that is a really important part of his calculations."

"There are many, as we know, who wanted to get rid of it over the years."

"I’m very grateful that somewhere under the sea, some amazing men and women are deep underwater, hiding, waiting, in case Britain needs to be protected. That’s important."

U.K. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace

One of Britain's Trident nuclear submarines leaves on deterrent patrol from the Clyde Naval Base, Scotland

Sergei Lavrov, Kremlin spokesman had warned of the danger of nuclear confrontation: "We must not underestimate it". Who is talking nuclear to begin with? In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops surrounded Ukraine's civil nuclear power plants, including the decommissioned Soviet-era Chernobyl plant, risking rising radiation levels by their interference with the monitoring/tending Ukrainian nuclear-plant crew ensuring vigilance and safety.

 

The Russian-Ukraine conflict is fought with conventional weaponry, with the West and NATO countries supplying Ukraine with more up-to-date military hardware to equal the footing between the attacker and the attacked. With that assistance, along with the transfer of high-security intelligence, Ukraine's military has more than countered the Russian attack, and continues to do so. Enraging Vladimir Putin, inciting him to threats against any possible 'intervention' by NATO or its members.

 

That threat made initial oblique references to nuclear weapons, until Mr. Putin formally placed his nuclear defences on standby. Purely a self-protective device, to ensure that if any of his opponents nursed a measure of stupidity sufficient to unleash a nuclear device as a deterrent against further Russian advances and atrocities against Ukraine's civilians Russia would be obliged to counter-strike.

Knowing full well that no country other than his would deploy nuclear strikes, Vladimir Putin's ploy was sufficiently transparent to shock his adversaries at its sheer recklessness. Making it quite clear that nothing would detain a decision on his part to 'reciprocate' for any such move against Russia. As though anyone but himself would contemplate the use of such weapons. The threat of which is more than enough to convince his critics to take care and step back from the brink he has imposed.

In 1947, atomic scientists devised the Doomsday Clock, setting it at seven minutes to midnight in their assessment of the-then risk of atomic weapons once again seeing the light of day after the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, concluding World War II. That clock has been reset numerous times, forward -- never backward. It sits now at 100 seconds to midnight. Vladimir Putin has arrested the world's attention.

As Putin sees the conventional strength of his military wane under a situation he never imagined, with a surprise war of attrition causing him to lose an astonishing number of elite commanders and generals on the battlefield in Ukraine, along with the wreckage of armed personnel carriers, tanks, planes, helicopters and the Russian navy's pride, the Moskva to Ukrainian defence/offence tactics, he has become increasingly morose and vengeful.

Behind his pride in Russia's  projection of power with its nuclear weaponry, with the largest arsenal of nuclear devices of any country in the world, fantasizing pride, fear and admiration, he is obsessed with the belief of being advantaged over his adversaries. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's statement at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany at the first meeting of the Ukraine Defence Consultative Group where he urged allies to "Move heaven and earth" in stocking Ukraine with weapons, cannot have pleased Putin.

 

The aggression of the U.S. is not equally shared across NATO. European members find themselves too geographically close to Russia for comfort. They are also too dependent on Russian oil and gas to be comfortable about having their energy source cut off. Poland and Bulgaria have been. Germany, always uncomfortable at pressure from the U.S. and NATO to lift its reluctance to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons, foresees a recession in agreeing to stop importing Russian energy.

 

There are fears that Russia may contemplate a 'small' nuclear bomb on a Ukrainian city, as a crude coercion strike, forcing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into an immediate, unconditional surrender. That fear evokes pressure on the United States to transition from proxy war to direct involvement, to send troops into Ukraine. A decision on the part of the U.S. that would see push-back by other NATO members fearing repercussions. 

 

 

Bringing the Middle East to Canada

 

Bringing the Middle East to Canada

"I speak from personal experience, having observed the Al-Quds Day rally at Toronto's Queen's Park a few years ago. I was shocked that it was allowed to take place on government property."

"While I support freedom of expression for everyone, the Al-Quds Day rally was nothing but undiluted hate being spouted by speaker after speaker."

"Statistics tell us that antisemitic incidents are on the rise in Canada and around the world."

"Antisemitism thrives on hate, so if there is hate being spouted on our streets, shouldn't our government take notice and do something about it?"

Raheel Raza,  Pakistani-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker, media consultant, anti-racism activist, and interfaith discussion leader

 

Raheel Raza is puzzled that in Canada expressions of hatred against Jews find no barriers erected by the Government of Canada. Canada has an increasingly large Muslim population, Its Jewish population is small, by comparison. For Canadan politicians votes can be lost when they address issues linked to voting demographics. As for antisemitic demonstrations, and acts of intimidation or violence against Jews, their emergence corresponds with the growing Muslim population.

 

Practising Muslims who know their Islamic history and values take umbrage at their co-religionists actively sowing suspicion, hatred and acts of passive and violent Jew-hatred in their adopted country which it boasts with pride is one where a multitude of languages can be heard on the street, a rainbow of pigmentation can be seen everywhere, and refugees and immigrants live in fairly reliable harmony among one another; often in cliques and districts where their ethnic and religious cultures give them comfort.

 

Among the 1,053,945 Muslims who make Canada their home, a significant enough proportion express anti-Jewish, anti-Israel sympathies which the 392,000 Canadian Jews must live with. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement enjoys great popularity among Muslim Canadians who view Canadian Jews and their attachment to the State of Israel as antithetical to their own values revolving around the conviction that Israel exists on land consecrated to Islam, and which Arab Palestinians claim as their own.

 

Slanderous invective, engagement in 'progressive' causes on university campuses that elevate Israel to the status of institutionalized violence against Palestinians, naming Israel as an 'apartheid' state has brought these hate groups adherence in the larger general population, convinced that sympathizing with the Palestinian 'cause', its opposition to Israel as an 'occupier' that targets Palestinian children for death, makes a mockery of reality. 

 

When, in fact, it is the Palestinian Authority that schools Palestinian children in hatred for Jews, convincing children vulnerable to suggestion that their highest calling is to become a martyr, and to anticipate a future where Jews will be slaughtered en masse, freeing up the land the Jewish state sits on, ancestral to Jews as ancient Judea, so that Arab Palestinians who identify as the authentic indigenous peoples of the land, to create their own state 'from the river to the sea'. 

 

That Israelis must live with the constant threat of violent attacks and indiscriminate murders by whatever means Palestinian Arabs find at hand, is conveniently overlooked in favour of disinterest in the fact that Palestinians constitute 20 percent of the Israeli population, with full citizenship. That Arab Palestinians, Christians, Druze, Ba'hai and other minorities live in Israel as citizens, freely voting for their own parliamentary representation. There are Arab Israelis appointed to judgeships, diplomatic posts and who join the Israeli police and military. So much for apartheid.

 

Participants wave Iranian flags and display a portrait of the Ayatollahs at the June 1, 2019 Al-Quds Day march in downtown Toronto. Photo by Jack Boland / Postmedia News

In Canada, Palestinian sympathizers and 'activists' among the population of Muslim-Canadians feel free to mount an annual Al-Quds march, decrying the existence of the State of Israel. An event that was instituted by the Islamic Republic of Iran that has sworn to erase Israel from the Middle East, and taken up by the wider Muslim public. Raheel Raza. a devout Muslim is outraged that Canadian Muslims would defile the holy month of Ramadan, a time of quiet reflection, the antithesis of hate, vengeance, anger and violence -- on the streets of Canada.

 

She has written of her disgust for the actions of the hate-mongers among her co-religionists. She has appealed to the larger Muslim population in Canada for common sense and the need to leave old antipathies behind, along with tribalism and secular violence. She has communicated with Muslim-Canadian authorities representing different sects of Islam, to find no welcoming committee for her pleas for respect and tolerance between Muslims and Jews; all to no avail.

 

People attend an Al-Quds Day rally in Toronto interspersed with pro-Israel supporters. Photo by Jack Boland/Toronto Sun

 

Inclusiveness ... Or Exclusion?

"The targets are in place to address a historic and persistent under-representation in the program of individuals from the four designated groups as identified in the employment equity act: women, racialized minorities, Indigenous Peoples, and persons with disabilities."

Statement, Canada Research Chair program

 

"[Only a small number of positions are advertised with such exclusive criteria, as a way to help institutions meet their targets to ensure that we have representation."

"Men are not being barred from participating in the program."

Marie-Lynne Boudreau, director of performance, equity and diversity, Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat, Canada Research Chair program

 

"On the surface, to the Canadian general public [this does] seem very discriminatory in the sense that it's reverse discrimination, right?"

"When [a hiring committee] they have an open call, other subjective factors, sort of overwhelm and hijack the actual qualifications needed."

"To me, what Canada's doing is to actually make it fair. People who have access to influence and resources and know how to make the system work for them -- that is not meritocracy."

Eddy Ng, Smith Professor of Equity & Inclusion in Business, Queen's University

The University of Waterloo campus in Waterloo, Ontario. Photo by Lars Hagberg/The Canadian Press/File

The University of Waterloo recently posted a Canada Research Chair for climate change, water or future cities research in the faculty of environment. The posting restricts potential entrants for the position to anyone self-identifying as female, transgender, non-binary or two-spirit. In the faculty of engineering a  job notice lists the same exclusionary requirement. And to complete the trifecta, a second engineering position has opened singularly to "First Nations, Metis, Inuit/Inuk and those from other Indigenous communities across Turtle Island."

 

There was a time, not so long ago, when it was the other half of recognized binary humanity, women, who were being highlighted as disadvantaged against male applicants for university positions. Equity at that time was labelled 'affirmative action'. And at that, it was white men and women candidates for university positions. Then the search for equality extended to black candidates. And now it has moved to fully embrace all those whom liberal-progressives identify as the ignored, disadvantaged minority groups within society.

 

Initiated in 2000, the Canada Research Chairs program funds these positions to the tune of about $311 million annually with the intention of spurring science and research, finding the most suitable candidates to fill the chairs, individuals recognized for their outstanding professional capabilities in their areas of expertise. The intention is "to attract and retain a diverse cadre of world-class researchers, to reinforce academic research and training excellence". 

Latterly, the program set targets to increase representation of certain groups, to address a lack of diversity among the chairs; women and gender minorities to constitute 50.9 percent of all such Chairs across the entire program, with 22 percent visible minorities, 7.5 percent people with disabilities, and 4.9 percent indigenous, roughly corresponding to population statistics.

According to the latest information on the CRC program website, at October 2021, 40.9 percent of positions across the program were held by women and gender minorities, 22.8 percent by visible minorities, 5.8 percent by persons with disabilities and 3.4 percent by Indigenous  people. Men constitute a majority (54.2 percent) of Canada Research Chairs; the gender ratio persists within other designated categories. 

 

Human rights complaints arguing that white men were over-represented in the program to the detriment of those represented by protected groups spurred deadlines the universities must meet for diversity targets, extending to 2027. According to research out of the University of Saskatchewan, 82.4 percent of respondents agree that diversity is 'fairly' or 'very' vital to the workplace. This widespread belief aside, 59.8 percent of respondents feel demographics should not factor into hiring decisions. The focus should be on perceived merit, at risk of reducing workplace diversity.

There was a time, in the early quarter of the last century, in early years of the 1900s when universities practised strict quotas against admitting Jews to Canadian universities. Either as students and even more so, teaching positions. Jewish intellectuals found themselves persona non grata at Canadian universities until the 1930s when those restrictions began to ease. Jewish academics practising in the teaching profession were a rarity; a result of racial prejudice rife at the time. Exclusion then, inclusion now.

"Had we continued our discrimination against Jewish professors ... there would have been a significant deficit in the advancement of knowledge."

"Thankfully, we moved in the right direction against discrimination. But now, somehow, we've embraced this false notion that discrimination can be good and it simply cannot."

"In general when immutable characteristics become the bar by which someone is offered a job, well, of course, you're going to have people who are not as qualified."

"And, the thing that concerns me is ... it's suggesting that they could not make it on their own merit."

"This is the height of racism. This is an incredibly racist policy, to say that someone who was a person of colour could not compete on their own competency and merit."

David Millard Haskell, professor, faculty of liberal arts, Laurier University 

Ukraine Under Russian Fire

"We are inspired by the resilience of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine in the face of President Putin's brutal war of aggression."

"We are continuing to support them and, today, we wish them and all others celebrating Easter hope and a swift return to peace."

U.S. Secretary of /State Antony Blinken

 

"Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and re-organize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness."

British military intelligence

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht gives a statement on the sidelines of a meeting with members of a Ukraine Security Consultative Group at the US Air Base in Ramstein, Germany, on April 26, 2022. (Andre Pain/AFP)

Easter celebrations were shattered in the Luhansk region of the Donbas, stated Seerhiy Gaidal, its governor. Seven churches in his region were "mutilated" by artillery, and an unspecified number of civilians killed by Russian shelling. Both Ukrainians and Russians celebrate the very same Orthodox Catholic traditions and religious culture. It appears that the Russian tradition of conflict, however, supersedes the sacred nature of Easter and its message of peace and regeneration.

 

Moscow's "special military operation", however, is badly misunderstood. It is a liberating, compassionate move on the part of Vladimir Putin, who so much empathizes with his Slavic cousins in Ukraine. The wider world fails to comprehend -- through sheer spite -- that Kyiv has staged atrocities attributing them to Russia, quite deliberately, with the purpose of undermining peace talks. While Ukrainian refugees fill churches across Central Europe.

"I pray that this horror in Ukraine ends soon and we can return home"; the poignant words of Naaliya Krasnopolskaia, now in Prague where she fled from her home in Odesa, one of over five million Ukrainians to escape the raging conflict in their homeland. The Kremlin's focus is the capture of Mariupol, that utterly destroyed port town that was formerly home to 400,000 Ukrainians. Ukraine authorities succeeded in repulsing a dozen attacks on Donetsk and Luhansk, destroying four tanks, 14 armoured equipment units and five artillery systems.

Russia is outraged that a village in its Belgorod region that borders Ukraine was shelled on Sunday from across the frontier. Despite Russian gains, British military intelligence assessment is that Ukrainian resistance is strong, particularly in the Donbas. Speaking with anonymous confidentiality, U.S. sources assess that Russia will rely on artillery strikes to try to pound Ukrainian positions while moving in ground forces from multiple directions with the intention of enveloping and wiping out a large portion of Ukraine's military.

On the other hand, they also say that Russian units are depleted, some operating with large personnel losses,as high as 30 percent; too steep to continue fighting. Anecdotes have arisen that Russian tanks have sole drivers and no crew with substandard equipment, prone to breakdowns, or out of date. According to British assessments some 15,000 Russian personnel had died, 2,000 armourd vehicles destroyed, including 530 tanks, 60 helicopters and fighter jets. 

 

Yet Russia still possesses forces in superior numbers with a willingness to continue to direct soldiers and units into the conflict. Ukraine, on the other hand, shines with high morale, creativity and adaptive battlefield tactics -- and familiarity with the fighting terrain. Arms and intelligence from the United States and NATO allies continue to benefit Ukraine. "They can win if they have the right equipment, the right support", remarked U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, as he left Ramstein Air Base in Germany where discussions on Ukraine took place among representatives of over 40 countries.

US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, rear center, delivers a speech as he hosts the meeting of the Ukraine Security Consultative Group at Ramstein Air Base in Ramstein, Germany, on April 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Canada's Conscience Pay-Outs to Islamists

"In the aftermath of Sepember 11, 2001, Slahi was again arrested in Mauritania at the behest of the United States."

"He was kidnapped and transported against his will on a CIA-orchestrated rendition plane to Jordan, where he was interrogated and tortured for eight months, before being rendered to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and then onwards to Guantanamo Bay."

$35-Million lawsuit Statement of Claim

 

"Canadians need to understand this is a Canadian story."

"Without Canada I'd never have been kidnapped. Without Canada I'd never have [been] tortured."

Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Mauritanian

 

"You provide information, which results in someone's detention."

"And then even though you're not the party detaining them -- you're not the one waterboarding them -- when you receive that information back from torture and you act on it, you're justifying it."

Jody Brown, lawyer represent Slahi 

Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who wrote a best-selling book about his experiences in the U.S. military prison, is shown in October 2016, after he was reunited with his family in his native Mauritania. He was detained for 14 years and is now suing the Canadian government for its alleged role in his detention. (AFP/Getty Images)

 

That the United States has enemies is indisputable. The sole global power that is the United States of America, for good or for ill, involves itself in foreign conflicts, has collegial relations with some, and is clearly antagonistic toward others. At a time when radical Islam became a threat to be reckoned with, rising in Saudi Arabia among Wahhabist extremists and military arms of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as terrorist groups fostered by the Islamic Republic of Iran, all of which considered the West and the U.S. in particular, enemies of Islam, it isn't surprising that symbolic structures of that global power were targeted for destruction and thousands of innocent lives were lost.

The al-Qaeda-originated plan to attack the World Trade Centers in New York and the Pentagon, along with a failed passenger flight meant for Washington but ending up in a Pennsylvania field, was a product of Saudi Arabia. Where the official Islamist sect of Wahhabism gave impetus to Osama bin Laden's terror group that carried out the surprise attacks of 9/11. An event that saw great celebration in parts of the Islamic world, and brought shock and horror to the world of the West. Little wonder that horror of vibrant, hateful terrorism made the world take notice of violent, deadly Islamist terrorism.

There can have been little surprise anywhere that the U.S. set out on a mission to stop further atrocities being committed by al-Qaeda, and in the process sought those who might have been involved in the attacks, along with others who took inspiration from it, and went on to commit other, similar mass murders. Suspicion under such circumstances would naturally fall on all young Muslim men in the freshness of the horrifying deaths of almost three thousand innocent people who happened to be working in the targeted buildings.

In the past, Canada agreed to settle lawsuits brought by Muslim men held under suspicion and incarcerated and tortured because of perceived links to Islamist terrorist groups. The lawsuits contended that Canadian investigative authorities had erred in collaborating with their Intelligence partners in other countries, most notably the United States at a time when it was locating men suspected of links with terror, rounding them up and incarcerating them under special emergency provisions beyond normal law and justice.

Now, a man who had lived in Montreal for close to two months has filed a $35-million lawsuit against the government of Canada for its part in the alleged claim of responsibility for his incarceration for 14 years in Guantanamo prison. That it was Canada's 'contribution' to intelligence-gathering that implicated him as a possible terrorist leading to his imprisonment and torture. National security and intelligence agencies have the responsibility to investigate potential threats and identify them for the purpose of thwarting attacks.

In so doing, exchanging information with a collegial power, an action considered normal cooperation by those agencies with the responsibility to be alert and prevent violent attacks that had become increasingly common throughout Europe and North America, by Islamists dedicated to wreaking havoc, destruction and death purportedly doing the will of Islam where the Koran identifies non-Muslim countries as countries of 'war', considering Islamic nations to be countries of 'peace'. An inversion in fact, which justifies Islamic nations warring on non-Muslim countries to bring 'peace'; aka Islam to them.

Authorities with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police began questioning Sllahi about ties to Ahmed Ressam, the millennium bomber who had planned an attack on Los Angeles airport. The link between the two was superficial; attendance at the same Montreal mosque. The Federal Court of Canada ruled that Slahi was not entitled to intelligence documents as being neither a citizen nor subject to legal proceedings in Canada.

Because of the surveillance he was under in Canada, he decided to return to West Africa where he was arrested in Senegal and interrogated there by American officials. When he was released from prison in 2015 he was ordered restricted to movement within Mauritania. It was not until 2020 he was able to leave the country. Guantanamo filings for his interrogation were based on a telephone conversation thought to be coded. According to Mostafa Farooq of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the perceived Canadian complicity in Slahi's detainment and torture was a result of Islamophobia,

Given the circumstances, the horrendous events of 9/11, the terrorist attacks in the U.K., in Spain, in France and elsewhere, it is little wonder that young Muslim men were viewed with suspicion. All the more so that many young Muslim men living in Europe and North America saw fit to answer the call to Islamist jihad, travelling to the Middle East to join terrorist groups fighting against the West. The cautionary principle to know your enemy does lead to stereotyping inevitably. On the other hand, some of Islam's faithful distinguished themselves as jihadists; little wonder they were singled out for special attention; the circumstances and the times demanded it.

This Nov. 30, 2017 photo shows former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi speaking about his experiences under CIA interrogation via video from his home in Mauritania to an anti-torture group in Raleigh, NC. (AP Photo/Emery Dalesio)

"Barbaric War Crimes"

'The biggest war crime of the 21st Century was committed in Mariupol. This is the new Babyn Yar."

"Then, Hitler killed Jews, Roma and Slavs. Now, Putin is destroying Ukrainians."

"Unfortunately, we have seen that the bodies of dead Mariupol residents have begun to disappear from the streets of our city."

"And there [30 meter-long (98-feet-long) ditches] they bury them, bring the bodies of the dead by trucks and throw them into these ditches," 

"Unfortunately, it is not possible today to evacuate civilians from Azovstal, because we are asking for a stable ceasefire. Somewhere we need one day to be able to accommodate those residents who have been hiding there for 57 days in a row, and they are being bombed, bombed and bombed."  

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko

A satellite image from April 3 shows what appears to be a newly dug mass grave site, next to the cemetery.

Another mass grave discovered. This one may carry at minimum an estimated thousand bodies of Ukrainian citizens murdered by Russian troops as they attacked Mariupol. An estimated 100,000 people still remain in the besieged port city that stands in the way of Moscow capturing and annexing Mariupol and Odesa, as it did the Crimean Peninsula and Sevastopol, in eastern Ukraine, where Russian troops are massing to target the Donbas and proclaim the Donetsk and Luhansk regions firmly in Russia's possession.

 

The newer, much larger mass grave has been unearthed in the village of Manhush, roughly 20 kilometres distant from Mariupol. Another piece of evidence that Russian troops are committing war crimes against civilians in Russian-occupied areas. Images provided by Maxar Technologies highlight rows of graves in four sections, each one of which measures close to 85 metres.

 

In reviewing the images the company dates the graves having appeared between 23 March and March 26; and that over 200 burial plots exist alongside an existing cemetery. Officials on the Mariupol City Council believe that up to 9,000 civilians could be buried in the mass grave. Russian forces "dug new trenches and filled them with corpses every day throughout April", stated the Council. 

In addition, according to the Council, information exists indicating that the bodies were "buried in several layers". It is the belief of Ukrainian officials that 20,000 people at least, were killed in Mariupol since the beginning of the invasion, that the new mass grave is significantly larger than graves discovered in Bucha, the Kyiv suburb strewn with corpses on the street following the Russian withdrawal.

 

Some Ukrainian troops are holding out at the Azovstal steelworks. Photograph: Mariupol City Council/Reuters

 

In speaking of the discovery of the mass grave site, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko compared it to the largest mass graves in Europe that were located in the Kyiv outskirts during World War Two, where 33,000 Jews were slaughtered in 1941 by Nazis in the larger extermination program meant for European Jewry that ultimately annihilated the lives of six million Jewish children, women and men.

According to Mayor Boichenko, Russian trucks collected corpses from Mariupol streets to transfer them to Manhush in an effort to cover evidence of "barbaric war crimes" on Moscow's part. Investigators throughout Ukraine have begun painstaking work to identify the murdered Ukrainian civilians to document war crimes being committed by Russian troops.

When Russian troops withdrew from satellite towns and suburbs around Kyiv, mass graves were found in numerous places such as Bordyanka, Vorzel, Moshchun and Makariv. Public authorities in Mariupol had themselves buried roughly 5,000 people killed in Mariupol by mid-March. Russian troops were accused of dumping bodies in plastic bags down an embankment identified in the satellite images.

A destroyed residential building in Mariupol on 22 April. Russia is effectively now in control of the devastated port. Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

The Lord's Shepherd : "The Language of Jesus": A New Schism?

"Disheartening!"

"Ukrainians did not want to hear a less-than-supportive voice from the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church."

"They were gravely hurt that the Holy Father would be willing to preside over a world prayer event that could cast doubt over what was really happening in Ukrainian towns and cities."

Reverend Michael Kwiatkowski, chancellor, Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy, Winnipeg, Manitoba

"It's painful for this to happen, and at Easter."

"I get it, he's the Pope, he's supposed to preach peace, he's supposed to preach reconciliation. But this is a war that Ukrainians didn't start and it's happening right now. People are being murdered, people are being raped, people are being forced from their homes ... It's the wrong time."

Lubomyr Luciuk, political geography professor, Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario

"One thing needs to be understood: Francis is not a politician, he is a pastor, [speaking] the language of Jesus."

"Francis acts according to the evangelical spirit, which is one of reconciliation even against all visible hope during this war of aggression."

"His primary interest is not geopolitics but -- as he said three days after the outbreak of the war -- 'ordinary people, who want peace and that in every conflict are the real victims, who pay for the follies of war with their own skin'."

Father Antonio Spadaro, Jesuit priest, editor of journal La Civilta Cattolica, il manifesto

The pope has previously called the invasion “sacrilegious” | Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images

 

Pope Francis has declared himself emphatically shocked and has wasted few words in condemning a war of aggression by one neighbour against another, leading to a massive wave of refugees, thousands of people killed, a country's infrastructure massively destroyed and the world in turmoil. In his earnest denunciations of the criminality and lack of humanity involved in any conflict, others of which have occurred in other areas of the world, he also spoke of the inequity of world attention and commiseration in settling refugees, based on racism.

Delivering a pastoral message, at the same time as neutralizing the shock over a European area of conflict and its accompanying civilian victims by conflating it with what is occurring outside of Europe. And while Pope Francis earnestly deplored the war that Russia is waging against its neighbour, he confines himself to notional 'neighbours', never once identifying the aggressor nation -- Russia -- or the man behind the implacable decision to mount a violent campaign against Ukraine -- Vladimir Putin.

Worse, as the Christian world's Shepherd of good faith and brotherly love, at the very time that Russian troops are battering Ukrainian towns and cities, deliberately targeting schools and hospitals and civic institutions, burying some of their victims in mass graves, leaving other corpses to lie in the streets of towns they hurriedly abandoned on orders from Moscow to muster from the north to the eastern Ukraine, Pope Francis decided it would be very 'Christian' to choreograph a tender little play.

During the Vatican's annual Easter 'Way of the Cross' ceremonial procession through the Colosseum in Rome on Good Friday, it was arranged that a Ukrainian and a Russian woman, known to one another, in a friendly professional working relationship, held the cross during the procession. A text accompanied the event, stressing peace and reconciliation between peoples. Nowhere any indication that a brutal war is in progress, initiated by Russia against Ukraine.

On that very day, another event that raised critical eyebrows of disbelief from among the Ukrainian community, when the Vatican's Kyiv ambassador along with a cardinal from Poland held a meeting with the main Ukrainian leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. Pope Francis's champions may point out sanctimoniously that the Pope plays no political games, but the emissary of the Russian Orthodox Church represents a church faction led by its Patriarch who has given strong support to the invasion of Ukraine.

What has created a sense of moral indignation and huge disappointment from the Ukrainian communities abroad observing the painful conflict in their country of origin, and as faithful Christians observing the Julian calendar, is their April 24 Easter, leaving them bereft and abandoned in their church. While condemning the barbarity the Ukrainians are facing, Pope Francis avoids naming the aggressor country and its leader, a devout Orthodox Catholic, intransigent and malevolently violent against Ukraine.

Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, hearing of the Pope's Way of the Cross procession plan attempted to warn Francis it was poorly timed, incoherent, ambiguous and "even offensive" to his members, leading to the text being shortened, but the two women, signifying the two nations at peace, not war, remaining to hold the cross, hand over hand. 

 Moscow's Patriarch Kirill, has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has enthusiastically endorsed Putin's war against Ukraine, as 'just' and needful. Russia's Orthodox Church clearly politically motivated, clearly eschewing its pastoral duties, and clearly unwilling to denounce an illegal, destructive conflict brought from his country to a neighbouring country. Patriarch Kirill, with whom Pope Francis fairly recently held a 'reconciliation', spoke of a righteous fight between Western decadence and traditional values, in support of the conflict.

 

Mychailo Wynnyckyj, sociology professor at Ukraine's National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was scathing in his condemnation of the Pope in effectively helping to perpetuate an injustice by saying nothing to offend Russia and Vladimir Putin. According to his assessment the Good Friday events were an effective "slap in the face to Ukrainians" in an outreach to Russian religious leaders involved in Putin's war against Ukraine.

Reminiscent of Pope Pius XII, whose lack of action during the Second World War and neutrality over the Holocaust the Vatican still defends. The Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox churches are in early discussions of a potential merger. It is now entirely possible that a unified church will no longer consider falling under the Catholic banner, for Pope Francis, according to Mr. Wynnyckyj has made "a massive step in the wrong direction".

Mariupol. Putin's Special Operation

"This is just the first step [for Russia]= to gain control of eastern Europe, to destroy democracy in Ukraine."

"We are fighting not only for our independence, but for our survival, for our people so that they do not get killed, tortured and raped."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

 

"There's no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities..."

"Block off this industrial area so that not even a fly can get through."

"Taking control of such an important center in the South as Mariupol is a success."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Smoke rises above Azovstal steelworks, in Mariupol, Ukraine. Photo by MARIUPOL CITY COUNCIL /via REUTERS

It was not a glory moment for Vladimir Putin when he was forced by Ukrainian military resistance against Russian troops' orders to enter Kyiv and take it under control so the government could be removed and yet another Russian-puppet could be installed -- and his only possible move left to him in the face of massive Russian losses of men and materiel was to withdraw troops stating his real intention was to contest for the entire Donbas region so it too could be annexed as the Crimean Peninsula was, in 2014

 

If Mr. Putin is committed to anything at this point, close to two months after he launched his surprise 'special operation', it is to cover himself, not to lose any more 'face' in the court of world opinion, and to uphold his champion-standing in the opinion of the Russian public. Capturing Mariupol, the port city on the Sea of Azov is of primary importance to his Donbas-Crimean plan. And Ukrainian forces are inconveniently stalling his intentions.

 

Hundreds of fighters and up to a thousand civilians, including many children are ensconced in dozens of bunkers in the vast underground network of Mariupol's steel fort, the Azovstal plant. Their nuisance presence is stalling the Russian military's strategy of 'liberating' Mariupol. Their frustrating insistence on holding on in the face of a two-month siege is insolently intolerable to the Russian president.

 

That intransigence has led the Russian leader to order his troops to tighten the siege and close in on the plant. In the face of that resistance, it is entirely feasible that Mr. Putin could order those holding out in the plant to be smoked out or to resort to the use of proscribed deadly chemical weapons. The niceties of international war conventions do not appear to have a particularly strong hold on this man's sense of moral appropriateness.

Ukraine's interpretation to these tense periods that present as Mariupol's final hours as a Ukrainian possession, that Putin is anxious to avoid a final clash with Ukrainian forces, lacking troop numbers to ensure the Ukrainians can be defeated in a conventional urban military clash. In addressing the Portuguese parliament recently, Mr. Zelenskyy appealed yet again to the West for more weapons and the imposition of added economic sanctions on Moscow.

Once home to 400,000 people, Mariupol has fought the most intense battle of the war and has suffered the conflict's worse humanitarian consequences where hundreds of thousands of civilians were under Russian siege for close to two months, under constant bombardment. The Azovstal steel complex, one of the larges metallurgical facilities in Europe, covering 11 square km with its huge infrastructure, underground bunkers and tunnels, is a formidable site offering protection to Ukrainians and impotence of action to Russians.

Journalists who managed to reach Mariupol during the siege reported streets littered with corpses, with most buildings destroyed, residents huddling in the cold in cellars, only venturing out to cook sparse amounts of food on makeshift cooking arrangements. According to Ukrainian estimates, tens of thousands of civilians died in Mariupol. Some of whom were found buried in mass graves.

President Putin was informed by his Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, that Russia had succeeded in killing over 4,000 Ukrainian troops in the Mariupol campaign, with an additional 1,478 surrendering to Russian forces. In addition Moscow claims to have taken in 140,000 civilian Ukrainians from Mariupol in a humanitarian evacuation from the war zone. To which Kyiv responds that some had been deported by force, a war crime.

An emergency management specialist pauses while searching for the bodies of people killed in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on Thursday. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

Sacrilege

Sacrilege

A group of Jews, including a small boy, is escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers in this April 19, 1943 photo. The picture formed part of a report from SS Gen. Stroop to his Commanding Officer, and was introduced as evidence to the War Crimes trials in Nuremberg in 1945

To Jews, ever mindful of Jewish history and a never-ending plague of assaults on their presence by communities wherever diaspora Jews have put down alternate roots, after their second expulsion from Judea, their ancestral homeland in the Middle East, the Holocaust represents an unspeakable atrocity committed by Nazi Germany with the considerable assistance of eastern and western Europe and the determined oblivious attitude of the West in general to their plight. 

 

When Jews repeat in their minds 'never again' it means that they will do their utmost personally to fight back against the persecution and defamation they are endlessly subjected to. 'Fighting back' is a passion expressed in the struggle for survival. Slights, born of an inbred, taught and sought discrimination  expressed against the Jewish presence has a habit of becoming socially institutionalized. It ebbs and flows, like the oceans surrounding continents.

 

A German in a military uniform shoots at a Jewish woman after a mass execution in Mizocz, Ukraine. In October of 1942, the 1,700 people in the Mizocz ghetto fought with Ukrainian auxiliaries and German policemen who had intended to liquidate the population. About half the residents were able to flee or hide during the confusion before the uprising was finally put down. The captured survivors were taken to a ravine and shot. Photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial

 

And whatever continent Jews happen to populate, a minority group within much larger groups, they are always 'noticed' as outsiders. With that notice comes a degree of suspicion. A suspicion often a nudge away from contempt and hatred. For within the larger population there are always those whose antipathy toward Jews -- even and particularly if those haters know nothing about Jews, do not know any individual Jews, have never met Jews -- twists them toward rage against Jews.

 

There are Holocaust memorials erected in various geographies across the world, in a determined effort never to forget the stark inhumanity that humans are capable of exerting against other humans. Where governments and individuals embrace the opportunity to learn and to empathize, committed to ensuring as believers in elementary human rights that nothing of this dread magnitude will ever re-occur. And yet, on a smaller, and equally inexcusable scale, they do, and each time they do humanity is shamed and shocked anew.

 

The arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, a region annexed in 1939 to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, in May of 1944. The picture was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 by Lili Jacob

 

Start small? With ignorance about the fact that a fascist horde schemed to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe, on its way to conquering the world for Aryan purity. That the organized industrial-scale mass murder succeeded to the degree that an estimated six million Jews were systematically slaughtered. The corpses were used to produce soap and fertilizer. Children and adults alike fed into death chambers where Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide, killed them, and their bodies were shovelled into vast, non-stop crematoria. The odour of burning flesh and the ash circulating as particulate matter lifted by the smoke exuded by the giant chimneys to fertilize the fields of Europe. 

Canada was late to erecting a memorial to the Holocaust; but one was finally built and opened to the public in 2017. On a number of occasions, the stark, grey angular walls of mourning attracted professional photographers on fashion shoots, as likely backgrounds to show off glamorous designer apparel featuring poised, sleek female models. The photographers in each instance appear not to have known, or really gave no thought to the fact that their commercial enterprise in artistry and mercantilism in a place sacred to the memory of millions of people was an assault on social morality and values.

In the latest of these events, the photographer was scathing in his response to criticism over his obtuse choice of backdrop for a photo shoot:

"If taking a photo with grey walls as a backdrop is a crime, lock me up."

"If you don't want people shooting at certain walls in the city, you should put on a reflective vest, get a whistle and go stand in front of them year 'round."