SAINTS PRESERVE US

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The House of Commons has 338 seats up for grabs each federal election. You hope that the winners chosen by their fellow Canadians to serve their fellow Canadians view their roles as something of a calling rather than a well-paying job with great perks and benefits. You hope that your member of parliament will think a little beyond their pet projects and pet peeves, be up on current affairs even if they’re beyond their caucus remit. And you hope your MP might read a little history because that subject has a marked propensity to influence or even become a current affair. History can be a tricky subject because it will be reinterpreted, misinterpreted or just plain spun.

Consider this recent and very simple example. The Rolling Stones and Major League Baseball (MLB) together announced this week that Hackney Diamonds, the band’s new album, will be released in 30 different special editions featuring stitched togues in the primary colours of your favourite team and “baseball” white vinyl. I’d probably buy one if the Montreal Expos still existed because the Stones played the Stade Olympique two nights in 1989. MLB and the Stones go way back. This tenuous link is spin, absurd cross-marketing.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week delivered a joint address to Parliament. His country, the non-aggressor, is at war with Russia. His counterpart, a former KGB operative who can’t decide if he’s Peter the Great or Josef Stalin, will sustain the folly which has turned into a protracted grind. Winter is coming to the region. Zelensky sought moral support but mostly money and materiel while in Canada. This country which hosts a significant Ukrainian diaspora is a laggard in its North American and NATO defense commitments, but it’s doing what it can to reluctantly fight the good fight.

So. The Speaker of the House of Commons (since resigned) Anthony Rota had to grandstand for Zelensky, trot out a mascot, a Ukrainian Second World War veteran who fought against the Russians in those years, now a frail ghost in the public gallery, as a symbol of contemporary Canadian solidarity. A bit of a stretch, but hey, simple, inaccurate and feel-good PR that’ll play well on video. Trouble is, Ukraine, one of the world’s great breadbaskets, whether as a region of an occupying power or an independent country, has, like most of Eastern Europe, an awfully complicated history.

A few years ago, when the vandalization of public statues and monuments was all the inarticulate rage, Rota, like most Canadians, would’ve been surprised to learn that Ukrainian social societies in Edmonton, Alberta and Oakville, Ontario had erected stone tributes to the Waffen-SS Galicia division. Now, Rota may not be a history buff, but these SS monuments were a hot topic in current affairs. An engaged MP might want to do some digging. Or have an aide do it for them. Why do they exist?

The majority of Canadians have been relatively lucky. We may share a bed with the elephant south of 49 but we’ve never lived between a rock and a hard place. The Holodomor was Stalin’s systematic attempt to starve the people of Ukraine, the very people who grew grain for the Soviet Union. The western portion of the region, known as Galicia and where Rota’s token patriot (my freedom fighter is your terrorist) was from, was Polish turf. Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Stalin invaded from the other side intent on securing Galicia. When Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, its invasion of Russia, Stalin switched sides, joined the Allies. Hitler’s National Socialist Party created ideologically driven services which unfortunately thrived alongside those of the German state. The Party oversaw its own military, police and foreign intelligence services, among others. The SS was formed originally as Hitler’s bodyguard – and bastards like him need one.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” We all know that one. And we all know those temporary hook-ups of convenience tend not to end well – the Taliban was a great group of guys when Russia invaded Afghanistan. Rota’s war hero was a boy in a wasteland pitted with the open graves of atrocities. This boy made a decision to bear arms for an undefined political or racial homeland amid an international shitshow. Who hasn’t taken advantage of a situation? Tried to leverage it. This boy was motivated to volunteer for the Waffen-SS (the organization’s military arm) rather than the ragtag Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) which was too choosey about whom it would ally itself with, or fighting as a partisan.

Rota’s old man was not ready for his close up, but maybe in his mind he was. Anyway, all of this could have been easily avoided if somebody had just been paying attention. Did a little research. A stray lyric from 1994 “I was a pitcher down in a slump” certainly, at least to me, verifies the Stones’ long and loving relationship with professional baseball (I didn’t have to look the line up, I know my stuff). And that connection rings about as true as Putin’s limited de-Nazification military operation in Ukraine. Rota’s gaffe was a gift to Russian propagandists; I can hear the sustained standing ovation he's receiving in the Kremlin all the way from Edmonton.

The Stones grandstanding with MLB is like a Nancy Sinatra song, kinda stupid, kinda fun. Surface stuff, entertainment acts. But I don’t appreciate that lack of depth, that vacuous shallowness, those hollow talking points, those staged Instagram moments coming down from Parliament Hill in regard to national and foreign affairs, mainly because there’s a big library there and MPs, people like the former Speaker of the House of Commons, should utilize all of its resources. Books, periodicals and records can provide context and nuance, background. Genuine information. Perhaps Rota would’ve paused in the stacks to reconsider an ill-considered, gushing upstaging of Zelensky. 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is celebrating ten years as your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything. My companion site www.megeoff.com has been refreshed, revamped, revitalized and otherwise reinvigorated. Watch and listen to songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer.