The Guardian's Latest Attempts at PR for the Ukraine Nazis
written by BlackCatte This profile of the females in the infamous Aidar Battalion appeared on the Graun front page today: The women fighting on the frontline in Ukraine
Though it didn't stay there long, being swiftly removed and hidden away in the Ukraine section. It would be nice to think the reason for this was some sort of residual shame on the part of a one-time great liberal newspaper, being suddenly less than comfortable doing PR photo features on Neo-Nazi chic. It would be great to think that they were not happy showing sympathetic pix of white-supremacists Hitler-fans, even if they did have bewbs.
But no. The one and only reason the Guardian moved this shameful "Hello" magazine parody from their main page was the hurricane of condemnation it received in the comments.
Yes, it was once again left to the much-maligned heroes of CiF to uphold the ethical and intellectual traditions of the Guardian, and remind the editors that even after 12 months of almost North Korean style hardcore brainwashing about the "heroes of Kiev" people in the west are just not ready for Nice Nazis. And as usual it was in CiF that we found the kind of full-spectrum ethical "journalism" that once flourished above the line.
A user called SneakyPeete was particularly trenchant and eloquent about the undisclosed agenda on display ATL:
But the Guardian didn't think this particular comment deserved to be free, and canned it:
In fact the Guardian editors responded to the flood of condemnation in the usual way by scything through the comment section with Stalinist aggression and Orwellian agenda. Mention the word "nazi" in conjunction with the Aidar Chicks and your comment would disappear before the ink was even dry.
A user called Bananasandsocks pointed this out…
But not for long…
If you want to know what the establishment doesn't want discussed in public on any one day visit the Guardian BTL and check out what facts are being regularly scrubbed.
Today, in this article, it was the numbers on this van…
…and what they mean… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
For some reason, even mentioning the fact that the "1488" scrawled on the van in that pic was a pro-Hitler, pro-white power slogan could get your comment deleted in seconds. Happily, this only resulted in more and more CiFers posting and re-posting the link. Hopefully some of these may even have survived the cull.
It'd be nice if this article and the policy behind it were a one-off. We all know it isn't. The "normalising of the unthinkable" is the prevailing campaign in western media. Nazis are being divested of their untouchable status and repackaged as freedom fighters. Our governments are sending US and UK troops to train these Hitler-worshippers to kill their fellow Ukrainians.
And the Guardian, flagship of the liberal left, has nothing to say about that at all. UPDATE: March 12 According to this site, the Guardian has done another of its Orwellian "silent revisions" with this article. The above pic of the charming lady and her van was originally captioned:
"Anaconda says she is being treated well by the men in her battalion, but is hoping that the war will end soon."
But has now been seamlessly amended to read:
"Anaconda alongside a van displaying the neo-Nazi symbol 1488. The volunteer brigade is known for its far-right links."
So, maybe all those censored opinions and banned contributors actually forced a change above the line? Will they now reinstate all the comments that were deleted for simply saying the very thing they belatedly admit to be true?
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
I'vr snipped from a longer article some background on the 36th Waffen SS "Dirlewanger" Brigade from Wow.com
Quote:
36th Waffen Grenadier Division Of The SS
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_Waffen..._of_the_SS
Updated: 2015-01-19T08:18Z [TABLE="class: infobox, width: 315"]
[TR]
[TH="bgcolor: #B0C4DE, colspan: 2, align: center"]36th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: center"]Semi-official insignia of the division
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Active[/TH]
[TD]19401945[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Country[/TH]
[TD]Nazi Germany[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Allegiance[/TH]
[TD]Adolf Hitler[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Branch[/TH]
[TD]Waffen SS[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Type[/TH]
[TD]Infantry[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Role[/TH]
[TD]Anti-partisan operations[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Size[/TH]
[TD]Brigade Division[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Nickname[/TH]
[TD]SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger
Dirlewanger Brigade[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Engagements[/TH]
[TD]Anti-partisan operations in Belarus Warsaw Uprising Slovak National Uprising Battle of Halbe[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger (1944),[SUP][1][/SUP] or simply the Dirlewanger Brigade, was a military unit of theWaffen-SS during World War II, and was led by Oskar Dirlewanger. Originally formed for anti-partisan duties against the Polish resistance; the unit eventually saw action in Slovakia, Hungary, and against the Soviet Red Army near the end of the war. During its operations it engaged in the rape, pillaging and mass murder of civilians.
The unit participated in some of World War II's most notorious campaigns of terror in the east. During the organization's time in Russia, Dirlewanger burned women and children alive and let starved packs of dogs feed on them.[SUP][2][/SUP] He was known to hold large formations with the sole purpose of injecting Jews with strychnine.[SUP][3][/SUP] Dirlewanger's unit took part in the occupation of Belarus, where it carved out a reputation within the Waffen-SS as an atrocious unit. Numerous Heer and SS commanders attempted to remove Dirlewanger from the SS and disband the unit, although he had patrons within the Nazi apparatus who intervened on his behalf. His unit was most notably credited with the destruction of Warsaw, and the massacre of ~100,000 of the city's population during the Warsaw Uprising; and participating in the brutal suppression of the Slovak National Uprising in 1944. Dirlewanger's Division of the Waffen SS generated fear throughout Waffen SS Organizations including the SS-Führungshauptamt (SS Command Headquarters) and earned the notoriety as the most criminal and heinous SS unit in Hitler's war machine.
The history of the Dirlewanger Brigade is inextricably linked to the life of its commander, Oskar Dirlewanger, a known sadist, often called the most evil man in the SS.[SUP][4][/SUP] After receiving the Iron Crossfirst and second class while serving in the Imperial German Army during World War I, Dirlewanger joined the Freikorps and took part in the crushing of German Revolution of 191819. He joined the Nazi Partyin 1923. After graduation from Citizens' University, Dirlewanger worked at a bank and a knit-wear factory. He became a violent alcoholic, and in 1934 was convicted of the statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl and stealing government property. The National Socialist Party expelled him and later compelled him to reapply for membership. After serving a two-year jail sentence, Dirlewanger was released. Soon after, he was arrested again for sexual assault. He was interned in a concentration camp. Desperate, Dirlewanger contacted Gottlob Berger, an old Freikorps comrade who worked closely with Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS. Berger secured his friend's release where he travelled to Spain to enlist in the Spanish Foreign Legion and later transferred to the Legión Cóndor, a German volunteer unit which fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) for Franco'sFalange Española.[SUP][5][/SUP]
After returning to Germany in 1939, Dirlewanger enlisted with the Allgemeine SS (General-SS) with the rank of SS-Untersturmführer. In mid-1940, following the invasion of Poland Berger arranged for Dirlewanger to train a partisan-hunting military unit under his own control, composed of men convicted of poaching.[SUP][4][/SUP][SUP][5][/SUP][SUP][6][/SUP]
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Then there this from Counterpunch on a similar vein
Quote:Better Deal With It
Fascist Formations in Ukraine
by PETER LEE The Guardian published an adulatory feature on "The Women Fighting on the Frontline in Ukraine".
One of the women profiled was "Anaconda", fighting in the Aidar Battalion bankrolled by Igor Kolomoisky:
Anaconda was given her nickname by a unit commander, in a joking reference to her stature and power. The baby-faced 19-year-old says that her mother is very worried about her and phones several times a day, sometimes even during combat. She says it is better to always answer, as her mother will not stop calling until she picks up.
"In the very beginning my mother kept saying that the war is not for girls," Anaconda says. "But now she has to put up with my choice. My dad would have come to the front himself, but his health does not allow him to move. He is proud of me now."
Anaconda was photographed in combat dress resolutely holding an assault rifle in front of a rather decrepit van. The caption read:
"Anaconda says she is being treated well by the men in her battalion, but is hoping that the war will end soon."
As reported by the gadfly site OffGuardian, several readers posted critical observations on the van's insignia in the comments section of the piece. One, "bananasandsocks", wrote: "We learn from Wikipedia that the image on the door is the "semi-official" insignia of the 36[SUP]th[/SUP] Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS…" and also pointed out the neo-Nazi significance of the number "1488".
"bananasandsocks" seemingly temperate comment was removed by the Guardian for violating its community standards, as were several others, apparently as examples of "persistent misrepresentation of the Guardian and our journalists".
But then the Guardian thought better of it. While not reinstating the critical comments, it quietly deleted the original caption to the photo of Anaconda and replaced it with:
Anaconda alongside a van displaying the neo-Nazi symbol 1488. The volunteer brigade is known for its far-right links.
Problem solved? Maybe not. Maybe it's more like "Problem dodged". Specifically, the problem of the pervasive participation of "ultra-right" paramilitary elements in Kyiv military operations, which even intrudes upon the Guardian's efforts to put a liberal-friendly feminist sheen on the debacle of the recent ATO in eastern Ukraine.
As to "1488", I'll reproduce the Wikipedia entry:
The Fourteen Words is a phrase used predominantly by white nationalists. It most commonly refers to a 14-word slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children." It can also refer to another 14-word slogan: "Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth."
Both slogans were coined by David Lane, convicted terrorist and member of the white separatist organization The Order. The first slogan was inspired by a statement, 88 words in length, from Volume 1, Chapter 8 of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf:
…
Neo-Nazis often combine the number 14 with 88, as in "14/88″ or "1488". The 8s stand for the eighth letter of the alphabet (H), with "HH" standing for "Heil Hitler".
Lane died in prison in 2007 while serving a 190 year sentence for, among other things, the murder of Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg. David Lane has considerable stature within global white nationalist/neo-Nazi/fascist circles as one of the American Aryan movement's premier badasses (in addition involvement in to the Berg murderin which he denied involvementand a string of bank robberies to finance the movementalso denied, Lane achieved a certain martyr's stature for enduring almost two decades in Federal detention, frequently in the notorious Communications Management Units).
And David Lane was a big deal for the "ultra-right" & fascists in Ukraine,according to the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Lane's death touched off paeans from racists around the country and abroad. June 30 was designated a "Global Day of Remembrance," with demonstrations held in at least five U.S. cities as well as England, Germany, Russia and the Ukraine.
Judging by this video, the march/memorial on the first anniversary of his death, in 2008, organized by the Ukrainian National Socialist Party in Kyiv, was well enough attended to merit a police presence of several dozen officers. The sountrack to the clip, by the way, is an elegy to David Lane performed by Ukraine's premier white nationalist metal band at the time, Sokyra Peruna.
There is a photograph of a shield inscribed "1488" at Maidan.
More significantly, perhaps, the name of the armed wing of the Svoboda Party, C14, apparently invokes Lane's "14 words" .
It should be said that Lane's views, including those that inspired the 1488 tag, are esoteric even within the fascist/Neo-Nazi/white supremacist world he inhabited.
In a letter from prison, Lane wrote:
You know that the three greatest movements of the last 2,000 years have been Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Judaism allowed Jews to conquer and rule the world. I believe only a religious fervor can save our kind now. The 14 Words must be a divine command of Nature's God whom we call Wotan Allfather.
…
As the 666 man, and the Joseph Smith of Wotanism my rewards will be zero. Death in prison, scorn from those with no vision, and hate from the stupid goyim and their kosher masters. But sometimes a man is condemned to a higher cause. And cheerfulness in adversity is still a virtue. Take care. 14 88
Lane composed his "88 Precepts" to instruct believers in the ways of white nationalism. While apparently riffing off the 88 word Mein Kampf passage and "88=HH=Heil Hitler", it also refers to Lane's numerological/messianic preoccupations.
Ukrainian fascists' admiration for Lane is a reflection of the pervasiveness of indigenous Ukrainian fascism, which looks for models and partners internationally while drawing plenty of strength and inspiration from its own profoundly deep historical and ideological local roots.
As I wrote in a piece for CounterPunch, Ukrainian fascism seems almost inevitable:
Ukrainian fascism is more durable and vital than most. It was forged in the most adverse conditions imaginable, in the furnace of Stalinism, under the reign of Hitler, and amid Poland's effort to destroy Ukrainian nationality.
Ukrainian nationalism was under ferocious attack between the two world wars. The USSR occupied the eastern half of Ukraine, subjected it to collectivization under Stalin, and committed repression and enabled a famine that killed millions. At first, the Soviets sought to co-opt Ukrainian nationalism by supporting Ukrainian cultural expression while repressing Ukrainian political aspirations; USSR nationalities policies were "nationalist in expression and socialist in essence". Then, in 1937 Stalin obliterated the native Ukrainian cultural and communist apparatus in a thoroughgoing purge and implemented Russified central control through his bespoke instrument, Nikita Khrushchev.
Meanwhile, the western part of the Ukraine was under the thumb of the Polish Republic, which was trying to entrench its rule before either the Germans or the Russians got around to destroying it again. This translated into a concerted Polish political, security, cultural, and demographic push into Ukrainian Galicia. The Polish government displaced Ukrainian intellectuals and farmers, attacked their culture and religion (including seizure of Orthodox churches and conversion into Roman Catholic edifices), marginalized the Ukrainians in their own homeland, and suppressed Ukrainian independence activists (like Bandera, who spent the years 1933 to 1939 in Poland's Wronki Prison after trying to assassinate Poland's Minister of the Interior).
Ukrainian nationalists, therefore, were unable to ride communism or bourgeois democracy into power. Communism was a tool of Soviet expansionism, not class empowerment, and Polish democracy offered no protection for Ukrainian minority rights or political expression, let alone a Ukrainian state.
Ukrainian nationalists turned largely toward fascism, specifically toward a concept of "integral nationalism" that, in the absence of an acceptable national government, manifested itself in a national will residing in the spirit of its adherents, not expressed by the state or restrained by its laws, but embodied by a charismatic leader and exercised through his organization, whose legitimacy supersedes that of the state and whose commitment to violence makes it a law unto itself.
It's not just a matter of historical sentiment or inclination. Ukraine's contemporary fascists share a direct bloodline with the fascists of the Soviet era, especially in the matter of Roman Shukhevych, the commander of Ukrainian nationalist forces fighting with the Nazis during World War II and also responsible for horrific atrocities while attempting to cleanse Galicia of Poles in the service of Ukrainian independence. From my CounterPunch article:
In February 2014, the New York Times' Andrew Higgins penned a rather embarrassing passage that valorized the occupation of Lvivthe Galician city at the heart of Ukrainian fascism, the old stomping grounds of Roman Shukhevych and the Nachtigall battlaion, and also Simon Wiesnthal's home townby anti-Yanyukovich forces in January 2014:
Some of the president's longtime opponents here have taken an increasingly radical line.
Offering inspiration and advice has been Yuriy Shukhevych, a blind veteran nationalist who spent 31 years in Soviet prisons and labor camps and whose father, Roman, led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army against Polish and then Soviet rule.
Mr. Shukhevych, 80, who lost his sight during his time in the Soviet gulag, helped guide the formation of Right Sector, an unruly organization whose fighters now man barricades around Independence Square, the epicenter of the protest movement in Kiev.
Yuriy Shukhevych's role in modern Ukrainian fascism is not simply that of an inspirational figurehead and reminder of his father's anti-Soviet heroics for proud Ukrainian nationalists. He is a core figure in the emergence of the key Ukrainian fascist formation, Pravy Sektor and its paramilitary.
And Pravy Sektor's paramilitary, the UNA-UNSO, is not an "unruly" collection of weekend-warrior-wannabes, as Mr. Higgins might believe.
UNA-UNSO was formed during the turmoil of the early 1990s, largely by ethnic Ukrainian veterans of the Soviet Union's bitter war in Afghanistan. From the first, the UNA-UNSO has shown a taste for foreign adventures, sending detachments to Moscow in 1990 to oppose the Communist coup against Yeltsin, and to Lithuania in 1991. With apparently very good reason, the Russians have also accused UNA-UNSO fighters of participating on the anti-Russian side in Georgia and Chechnya.
After formal Ukrainian independence, the militia elected Yuriy Shukhevychthe son of OUN-B commander Roman Shukhevych as its leader and set up a political arm, which later became Pravy Sektor.
There's plenty of indigenous fascism to go around. Interviews with Ukrainian ultra-rights reveal a welter of views befitting the country's fraught and contested status in central Europe, ranging from "autonomous nationalists" (whose demeanour and tactics mirror on the right mirror those of European anarchists on the left); ultras who emerged from the football club wars; and determinedly theoretical scientific fascists. The common thread of the diverse and syncretic Ukrainian fascist movement is the conviction that the survival of the Ukrainian people is under threat from a multitude of forces and mechanisms (Russians, Jews, the EU, democracy, capitalism, communism etc.), and can only be assured by autonomous armed force under charismatic leadership; and yes, apparently a shared belief that Adolf Hitler showed how it could and should be done.
Rooting fascism out of Ukraine's cultural, social, and political matrix is going to take a lot of work. Unfortunately, the opposite is going on right now.
The leading Ukrainian observer of Ukrainian ultrarights, Anton Shekhovstov, did not deny the presence of ultraright formations at Maidan, but tried to square the circle philosophically by characterizing the Ukrainian conflict as an anti-imperialist/anti-colonial struggle that might elicit and safely incorporate fascist activism. Then, when the Russian threat had been dealt with, Ukrainian civil society could neutralize the fascist factor. In January 2014, when Maidan was white-hot, Shekhovstov wrote:
Thus, a fight against fascism in Ukraine should always be synonymous with the fight against the attempts to colonise the country. Those who separate these two issues or crack down on the Ukrainian far right without recognising the urgent need for national independence will never be successful in their attempts to neutralise the far right. Moreover, they can make the situation worse.
However, Ukrainian fascists have not been disempowered and marginalized by the circus of defeat and dysfunction that is the current Kyiv government. In fact, "ultra-right" is trending upward in Ukraine governance, as Shekhovtsov glumly observed in a recent post discussing the emergence of yet another powerful ultra-right formation:
[T]he electoral failure of Svoboda and the Right Sector [in the recent parliamentary as well as presidential elections] did not mark "the end of history" of the Ukrainian far right…
… The recent developments in Ukraine marked by the rise of the previously obscure neo-Nazi organisation "The Patriot of Ukraine" (PU) led by Andriy Bilets'ky…
… the PU formed a core of the Azov battalion, a volunteer detachment governed by the Ministry of Interior headed by Arsen Avakov. From the very beginning, the Azov battalion employed imagery such as Wolfsangel and Schwarze Sonne that in post-war Europe is associated with neo-Nazi movements…
The political perspective raises troubling questions: Why did Ukrainians elect a neo-Nazi into the parliament? Why did the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior promote the leaders of the neo-Nazi organisation?…
Shekhovtstov finds an explanation for Avakov's footsie with the PU in the cronyism (and demand for extra-legal street muscle) that permeates Ukraine business and politics. His conclusion is not a particularly happy one:
Conclusion
Avakov may consider the PU-led Azov battalion as his "private army", but not everybody in the PU and Azov see the current cooperation with the Ministry of Interior as a goal in and of itself. The PU may benefit from this cooperation, but it still has its own political agenda that goes beyond this cooperation. The PU has also started advertising employment in the Security Service of Ukraine on their webpages. [emphasis added]
Further infiltration of the far right into the Ukrainian law enforcement and other institutions of the state will most likely lead to the following developments. First, the coalescence of the police and the far right who were engaged, inter alia, in the illegal activities will necessarily increase the corruption risks. Second, the growth of the far right within the law enforcement will lead to the gradual liberation of the PU from the personal patronage of Avakov that will likely result in the PU's independent action.
While Svoboda and the Right Sector have failed in the 2014 parliamentary elections, the infiltration of some other far right organisations in the law enforcement is possibly a more advanced long-term strategy in their fight against not particularly well established liberal democracy in Ukraine.
One of the awkward facts of Ukrainian politics is that Ukraine's fascists have the ambition if not yet the demonstrated capability of opportunistically using the current regime's needand factions' desiresfor effective armed formations to catapult the extreme-right into power.
And it seems that the West has zero strategy for dealing with this problem. In fact, if disorder and discontent escalate in western Ukraine as a result of the US insistence on confronting Russia and the ethnic Russian opposition in the West, I expect the fascist problem will get worse before it gets better.
And it isn't going to be solved by ignoring, downplaying, wishing away, or dismissing Ukrianian fascism as an irrelevant historical and political anachronism…or by discretely recaptioning some of its embarrassingly blatant manifestations.
It's not just amusing or disturbing that the Guardian appears determined to graft a misleading liberal, Europe-loving image onto the fascist friendly Ukraine adventure; it's downright dangerous. Peter Lee edits China Matters and covers Asia for CounterPunch.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
[/URL]191,039PAGES ON
THIS WIKI [TABLE="class: infobox, width: 315"]
[TR="class: hproduct"]
[TH="class: fn, bgcolor: #B0C4DE, colspan: 2, align: center"]14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician)[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: center"]
Divisional insignia of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Country[/TH]
[TD]Germany[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Branch[/TH]
[TD]Waffen SS[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="class: fn, bgcolor: #B0C4DE, colspan: 2, align: center"]Service history[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Active[/TH]
[TD]28 April 1943 15 April 1945[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Size[/TH]
[TD]Division[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Nickname[/TH]
[TD]Galician Division
Dyvizzia Halychyna[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Colors[/TH]
[TD]Blue & Yellow [SUP][1][/SUP][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Battles[/TH]
[TD]Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive Slovak National Uprising Vienna Offensive[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="class: fn, bgcolor: #B0C4DE, colspan: 2, align: center"]Commanders[/TH]
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[TR]
[TH]Commanders[/TH]
[TD]Walter Schimana Fritz Freitag[/TD]
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[TH="class: fn, bgcolor: #B0C4DE, colspan: 2, align: center"]Insignia[/TH]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) (German language: 14. Waffen Grenadier Division der SS (galizische Nr.1), prior to 1944 titled the[B]14th SS-Volunteer Division "Galician" (German language: 14. SS-Freiwilligen Division "Galizien")[SUP][1][/SUP] was a World War II German military formation initially made up of volunteers from the region of Galicia with a Ukrainian ethnic background[SUP][2][/SUP] but later also incorporated Slovaks, Czechs[SUP][2][/SUP][SUP][3][/SUP] and Dutch volunteers and officers.[SUP][4][/SUP] Formed in 1943, it was largely destroyed in the battle of Brody, reformed, and saw action in Slovakia, Yugoslavia and Austria before being renamed the first division of the Ukrainian National Armyand surrendering to the Western Allies by 10 May 1945.[/B]
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
And if would've been remiss of me not to mention the foregoing facts about the SS Galician Division, it would be even more remiss now mentioning that over 8,500 men of that SS Division were brought to the UK and to safety in 1947. Many then went on to Canada. I believe others went to Oz and Sth. Africa, but that is not stated in the below Guardian article (yes, the Guardian).
Quote:Yard reopens inquiry into former Nazi soldiers still alive in Britain
· Labour MP insists search sends important message · Researcher believes police hunt is 10 years too late Ian Cobain Saturday 4 February 2006 00.12 GMT Scotland Yard has relaunched its search for war criminals almost seven years after its specialist Nazi-hunting unit was disbanded, the Guardian has learned. An eight-strong team from the anti-terrorist branch has been examining the backgrounds of British residents suspected of committing atrocities during the second world war.The team is focusing on former members of a division of the Waffen SS which was recruited by the Nazis in the Ukraine and brought to Britain en masse to provide farm labour after the war. Home Office officials believe several hundred former members of the unit may still be living in the UK. The Guardian has identified and located more than a dozen survivors of the Galizien division. Most still live in small clusters in the East Midlands, Yorkshire and East Anglia, a short distance from the PoW camps where they arrived almost six decades ago.
The new inquiry has been shrouded in secrecy since it was quietly resumed last year, and the Yard has even attempted to deny that it is under way again. Two senior officers have been assigned to lead the team of two detective sergeants, two detective constables and two civilian researchers. A Yard spokesman confirmed that they are scouring old war crimes files and "liaising with other government departments, including the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, to establish the best way forward".
It is unclear whether statements have been taken from the former members of the unit, the 14th Waffen SS Galizien division. Scotland Yard is also declining to say whether any witnesses have been located in Poland, Slovakia or the Ukraine, the countries where the Galizien division operated, and where some members stand accused of participating in the massacre of Jewish and non-Jewish civilians.
Police are understood to be attempting to identify members of the Galizien division who attended a training centre for concentration camp guards as well as examining the war records of other surviving members. With the youngest former members of the unit now in their 80s, however, and with the memories of surviving witnesses fading fast, the chances of any successful prosecutions appear slim. The decision to relaunch the hunt is thought to reflect a renewed appetite for war crimes investigations at the Home Office, and comes after continuing calls for action from a number of backbench MPs. Investigation
However, it is unclear how much enthusiasm there is at Scotland Yard for an investigation that could divert detectives from anti-terrorist duties at a time of mounting security concerns.
The Yard's specialist war crimes unit was disbanded in May 1999 after investigations costing an estimated £6.5m resulted in just one conviction. Anthony Sawoniuk, a retired railway ticket inspector from south London, was jailed for life earlier that year after being convicted of two specimen charges concerning the murder of 18 Jews. He died in Norwich prison last November, aged 84.
Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon, who has been pressing for action against surviving war criminals, said the Yard deserves extra funding for the inquiry. "Making sure old war criminals can never sleep easy in their beds sends an important message to the would-be war criminals of tomorrow," he said. Trial
But Professor David Cesarani, who was the principal researcher for the group of MPs which campaigned successfully for the introduction of the War Crimes Act 15 years ago, believes that men who could have been prosecuted at that time are now highly unlikely to face trial. "This has come 10 years too late," he said. "The Home Office should be asking whether this is going to do more harm than good, and whether embarking on a judicial process, which will take years to come to fruition, is the best way to proceed. Regretfully, it may be that an inquiry by government historians will now be the best way to investigate what these people did, how they came to be here and why they have not been prosecuted before."
Hitler's Ukrainian SS division was created from the merger of many different units, including the Nightingale battalion, said to have participated in the massacre of thousands of Jews in Lvov, Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Self Defence Legion, accused of murdering villagers in eastern Poland. Some Galizien troops are said to have played a part in the bloody suppression of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, while others are alleged to have murdered a number of British and American airmen who were being sheltered by partisans in Slovakia. Its soldiers were Ukrainian nationalists, who later insisted that they had no love for Germanyor the Nazis, but joined the German army to take up arms against the Russians, and against communism. Those who survive in Britain today deny any involvement in war crimes.
Few people noticed when they arrived in Britain in May 1947: one Labour MP, Barnett Janner, complained bitterly in the Commons that members of the Galizien division "murdered hundreds of people in cold blood", while a solitary letter in the London Evening News, signed with the correspondent's concentration camp number, 3399, complained that he or she had witnessed first-hand the "brutal, uncouth and bloodthirsty" behaviour of Ukrainian guards. Most newspapers devoted just one paragraph to reporting the division's arrival, however. The men were dispersed among PoW camps. Over the next three years just eight "undesirables" were deported to Germany, while some emigrated to Canada, the US or Argentina. Parachuted
A handful are now known to have been recruited by MI6 and parachuted back into the Ukraine, where they were betrayed by the double agent Kim Philby. Most remained in the UK, however, and were granted civilian status. Many married, started families and, by the 1990s, those who survived were British subjects.
Among the survivors of the Galizien division identified by the Guardian is Mykola Lehkyj, 84, who says he volunteered to fight for the Germans after they overran his home town of Rohatyn, in western Ukraine, in 1941. Although both his brothers served in the Red Army, Mr Lehkyj, then aged 19, volunteered to join the Ukrainian unit that the invaders were raising. "We hated the Germans, but we wanted to fight the Russians more than anything," he said. "The Germans allowed us to make a Ukrainian army in German uniforms. Our aim was to join this Ukrainian army and create a Ukrainian nation."
After training in Germany, he fought with the rest of the Galizien division at Brody, where it suffered heavy losses. "We couldn't hold them. But fighting against the Russians was a pleasure, to be honest with you, because I was fighting on my own land."
Mr Lehkyj was then sent to Slovakia, where he fought partisans, and ended the war as a corporal. He remains proud of his service - "I have nothing to hide" - but denies that he took part in, or witnessed, any war crimes. "The Russians tried to blame us for everything. They say we killed children and women - it isn't true."
After being shipped to Scotland he was sent to a prison camp near Braintree, Essex, to work on farms, and has remained in the region ever since. Today he lives in Ipswich with Helen, the Englishwoman he married in 1953. They have four children, one of whom served in the RAF, and six grandchildren.
"I love this country," he said. "It gave me life. I call it Merry England: this is a country that will help any bugger." Backstory
Labour shortages in post-war Britain were so severe that few questions were asked when Hitler's Ukrainian soldiers were shipped here. With large sections of the British population still in the armed forces, most farms depended on German prisoners of war, despite forced labour being prohibited by the Geneva convention
The 8,528 officers and men of the 14th Waffen SS Galizien division had been languishing for two years at a prisoner of war camp near Rimini, on Italy's Adriatic coast.
Attempts to identify war criminals among them were promised by the Foreign Office, but they had had so much time to prepare cover stories that Fitzroy Maclean, a war hero and Tory MP who had been handed the task, complained that it was hopeless. He warned Whitehall: "We only have their own word for it that they have not committed atrocities or war crimes."
All concerns about the unit's war record were brushed aside during a series of cabinet meetings in March 1947. Foreign Office minister Hector McNeil reported that "United States opinion was sensitive" about continuing use of Germans as farm labourers.
Mr McNeil conjured up a deft solution: to meet the demand for labour by using displaced Ukrainians in place of the German prisoners. When Home Office officials complained that immigration rules were being waived to bring suspected war criminals into the country, they were told that the prime minister, Clement Attlee, had "decreed" that it must happen.
It's amazing how editors seem to forget what they wrote earlier isn't it.
And I don't think those men of the SS Galicia were brought to the UK to work on farms or in factories, as the Guardian implies - but doesn't actually say. They were brought to the UK to fight on the side of the godly against the Soviet Union, I believe. And the Guardian won't say that either. Even today, almost 70 years later.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Center for Russian & East European Studies
University Center for International Studies
University of Pittsburgh
4400 W. W. Posvar Hall
230 South Boquet Street
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260
(412) 648-8716
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"
Quote: There is little 27
doubt that cadres of the Ukrainian rebel undergroundand an indeterminate part of
the Soviet populationactually believed a new world war would soon begin.
Inevitably, as the story was told and retold second-, third- and fourth-hand,
embellishments were added to adapt the tense international situation to local needs.
War was expected to break out at any moment. "If not today, then tomorrow England
will declare war on the USSR." "There will be a war and Ukraine will be made
independent, under the protectorate [sic] of America." "Although there is not yet a
war, there still remains at least one front that operates actively at all hours: the [war]
of the MVD. In the words of the chronicler: There will come a time when each man
lives a whole kilometer from the next,' and the American atom bomb will help us to
live this way." "America demanded from the Soviet Union: liberate West Ukraine
from Soviet power. If [Stalin] doesn't fulfi ll the ultimatum, a war will fl are up with
England and America against the Russians." It was commonly heard that riots had
started in the bigger cities of West Ukraine directly following Churchill's speech.
Or that "the war has already begun. England and America will help us to build an
independent Ukraine. Our people must start preparing immediately!"80
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
From The World Socialist Web Site - reference Frank Wisner (Office of Policy Coordination) and use of SS Galician Division in post WWII sabotage and Ukrainian nationalists etc
Quote:
German public broadcaster criticised over biased report on Ukraine
By Sybille Fuchs
20 December 2014
A formal complaint was lodged at the end of November by the Permanent Viewers' Council for Publicly Funded Media against a contribution shown on German public broadcaster ZDF's Heute Journal programme entitled "Lemberg fights for more Europe" by Armin Zoerper. The Viewers' Council accused the contribution of "displaying an ignorance of history", an uncritical attitude toward Ukrainian nationalist narratives and failing to mention the fascist past of one of the program's interviewees. The report was broadcast on 21 October, immediately prior to the Ukrainian parliamentary elections. The complaint was mainly related to an interview with 90-year-old Ivan Mamtshur, who was casually introduced by the reporter using his first name as a former prisoner of the Soviet KGB intelligence agency. Armin Zoerper walked with him through the KGB prison where he was detained in 1946 and asked him if he believed in the freedom of Ukraine today. Mamtshur answered, "Well of course. The world will help us. Europe, America." The report fails to mention that Mamtshur was no innocent victim of Stalinism. He was a combatant on the side of the German Wehrmacht and a member of the Waffen-SS Galician division and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which is still proud of its history today. The Waffen-SS Galicia was formed in July 1943 out of 14,000 volunteers who mainly also belonged to OUN. They mainly served in combat against Soviet partisans and played an important role in the Nazis' war of destruction. They treated the Polish and Jewish populations with extreme brutality and carried out massacres against the populations of Huta-Pieniacka, Podkamień and Palikrovy. After the war they continued to fight the Soviet Union, this time under the direction of the western intelligence agencies, including the predecessor organisation to the German intelligence service (BND) and the CIA. The online magazine Teleopolis wrote: "By 1951, this group of freedom fighters had murdered some 35,000 people, according to estimates by the CIA's Frank Wisner, head of the CIA Directorate of Plans. The CIA, along with Britain's SIS, supported the struggle for freedom of the Ukrainian SS butchers. The war only ended in 1957, when the Soviet Union formally protested to the UN and most of Ivan Mamtshur's comrades were in the very KGB prison that Armin Zoerper carefully presents to the German viewers." A video shows Mamtshur as the participant in an eerie ceremony in 2013, in which members of the SS Galicia were ceremonially exhumed and hailed as heroes of Ukraine's fight for freedom. Mamtshur is not named in the report, but can be clearly seen in the front row of the veterans. Oleg Pankevitch, deputy leader of the fascist Svoboda Party, took part as an honorary guest in the reburial ceremony for the SS Galicia members. Nationalist poet Teodor Kukuruza from Lviv contributed one of his own works to the ceremony and shifted to speak in German during his speech. At the end, a Polish eyewitness recalls how the SS division, which was caught in the siege of Brodov in 1944, virtually demolished an entire village in Volhynia. The few who survived, mainly children, were murdered the next day by supporters of nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. The video shows Ukrainian nationalists dressed in SS uniforms firing a salute over the grave of the reburied fighters in the presence of a priest from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In another video, broadcast by the ARD's Panorama program, Mamtshur, on the occasion of the 66th anniversary of the founding of the SS Galicia division, declared himself a hero who had fought for the freedom of Ukraine. The journalist Armin Zoerper has been the head of ZDF's Warsaw studio since January 2011 and has already been criticised for biased reports in support of the Kiev regime. In early April 2014, he was present "by surprise" in a Kiev supermarket with his camera team at the same time that a group of political activists threw themselves on the ground in a sort of flashmob action to illustrate how "Russia killed". The report was also broadcast by ZDF. In its complaint, the Viewers' Council provided detailed evidence of the political background of the Ukrainian fascists and right-wing nationalists, particularly the OUN and its leader Stepan Bandera. In Zoerper's report it was stated that Bandera had "made a pact with the Nazis against the Soviet Union with the aim of securing freedom for his people." He thereby uncritically embraced the "western Ukrainian nationalist myth," questions "incontrovertible historical facts to the benefit of the culprits' perspective," and abused "not only the Ukrainian victims of Bandera, whose movement was heavily involved in the Holocaust'." The complaint over the report cited as evidence Anton Tshekovtsov, a researcher on Ukrainian right-wing extremism, who writes of Bandera, "Stepan Bandera was one of the most notorious Ukrainian fascists, terrorists and Nazi collaborators, who was responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of Polish Russian, Jewish, and Ukrainian deaths. He played a key role in terrorist activities in Poland and other countries." Bandera had been striving for a fascist one-party dictatorship, without the participation of national minorities. According to Ivan Kashanovki of Ottawa University, the OUN which Bandera led was "a terrorist organisation, which was involved in the murder of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war." The ARD report also allows Dmitri Yarosh, head of the right-wing militia Right Sector, to speak. His western-backed militia played a key role in the coup in Kiev last February. Yarosh explains in the report that he sees himself as a Ukrainian nationalist, and by no means a fascist or Nazi. Although Zoerper noted that Right Sector members greet each other sometimes with the Hitler salute, he allows Yarosh's remark to pass without comment. In recent months, the Viewers' Council, founded in late February, has lodged several complaints over reports broadcast by public television, mainly on Ukraine. Other organisations, like ARD's program council, criticised the biased reporting. In 2014 Germany's ruling elite once again openly endorsed a war policy. Germany's public broadcasters, for their part, have been increasingly transformed into propaganda instruments to impose this policy on the significant majority of the population which is opposed to a return to militarism.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Jon Ronson's compelling heroism in the service of truth:
Quote:Nosing around a Bilderberg Group meeting in Portugal for Them, Ronson notices his car is being followed, and in a panic he rings the British embassy. "I am essentially a humorous journalist,' I explained. I am a humorous journalist out of my depth. Do you think it might help if we tell them that?'"
From Steven Poole's review of Ronson's latest farrago-tome, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, The Grauniad, Review, Saturday, 7 March 2015, p.7
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"
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