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[lemon10]

I'm not worried either, its a small portion of right wing extremists against the US military industrial complex. This is not a fight a small faction of the right wing is ever going to win. As much as I hate money in politics sometimes the money is simply on your side.
As strongpoint says though, if Trump wins in 2024 everything can change very quickly. I would be pretty surprised if Trump won, although it remains a very frightening possibility.

[Random_Dragon]

I'd be more concerned that it's basically an inevitably that we'll get another domestic terrorist attack on the capital or some other proud boy tantrums in the aftermath, even if the orange cunt wins.

[Loud Whispers]

Oh, my. I've only now learned about that fuckup in the Canadian parliament from like a week ago. By watching Russian propaganda, no less. Who are of course having a field day with it.

I still don't get how only one guy in that entire parliament seemed to clock something was funny when the speaker said "fought against the soviet union for ukrainian independence in WWII"

Buncha historically illiterate muppets run the world

I'm not worried either, its a small portion of right wing extremists against the US military industrial complex. This is not a fight a small faction of the right wing is ever going to win. As much as I hate money in politics sometimes the money is simply on your side.
As strongpoint says though, if Trump wins in 2024 everything can change very quickly. I would be pretty surprised if Trump won, although it remains a very frightening possibility.

Not to mention that even if a pro-Ukraine anti-Russia president gets elected, there's plenty a US government could do to harm certain areas of arms procurement. E.g. defence industry mandems want long term contracts to justify their own investments into scaling up production of shells. So it's easy to see how a hostile US president could royally muck up Ukraine's arms supplies in key areas like shells, as well as fighter jets & armaments

[Madman198237]

Oh, my. I've only now learned about that fuckup in the Canadian parliament from like a week ago. By watching Russian propaganda, no less. Who are of course having a field day with it.

I still don't get how only one guy in that entire parliament seemed to clock something was funny when the speaker said "fought against the soviet union for ukrainian independence in WWII"

Buncha historically illiterate muppets run the world

Yes indeed, the Soviet Union that had its own secret police, massive purges, killed more of their own people in said purges and similar than Nazi Germany killed people TOTAL, and started the war on the side of Nazi Germany. After spending years helping the Germans rearm against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

The Soviet Union was not some great member of the Allies, they were an ally of convenience guilty of greater atrocities than the Nazis. It is a great tragedy that they didn't fall apart after or during WWII. I wouldn't be hasty to judge anyone who decided that it was better for their friends and neighbors that they fight with the Germans against the Soviets, not if they'd already been under the Soviet boot.


Now, obviously, this particular case is probably different because the guy literally served in an SS unit according to what I've seen thrown around the internet. That is just some bad fact-checking on the part of somebody in the Canadian parliament.


So historically illiterate, not necessarily. Generic illiterate? Probably.

[Loud Whispers]

From the article I linked (paywalled):

In the aftermath of the fight against ISIS, for example, demand from the Pentagon declined significantly. The DoD “invested all this money to ramp up Hellfire production to 10,000 a year and then the US said ‘we don’t want those anymore’”, says Pettyjohn. A scramble to find foreign buyers ensued, leaving the primes wary of a repeat scenario.

“[The manufacturers] couldn't responsibly just go out and build a factory and hire 3,000 people without any hope of a budgetary [signal],” says Martin of Rand Corporation. “And is the government doing it? No, absolutely not.”

Just adding on to the point of "US government could fuck up the armament issue, even by accident, moreso with an actively obstructive president"

Yes indeed, the Soviet Union that had its own secret police, massive purges, killed more of their own people in said purges and similar than Nazi Germany killed people TOTAL, and started the war on the side of Nazi Germany. After spending years helping the Germans rearm against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

The Soviet Union was not some great member of the Allies, they were an ally of convenience guilty of greater atrocities than the Nazis. It is a great tragedy that they didn't fall apart after or during WWII. I wouldn't be hasty to judge anyone who decided that it was better for their friends and neighbors that they fight with the Germans against the Soviets, not if they'd already been under the Soviet boot.

Now, obviously, this particular case is probably different because the guy literally served in an SS unit according to what I've seen thrown around the internet. That is just some bad fact-checking on the part of somebody in the Canadian parliament.

So historically illiterate, not necessarily. Generic illiterate? Probably.

My guy you couldn't have explained my point any better

They are historically illiterate, actually illiterate, any kind is fine. This was not a conscript or a wermacht regular, he was Waffen SS. Reason why I say they're historically illiterate for not picking up on "fought against the soviet union" to say the soviet union was best chums with the "good guy allies" because it's not like the United States, the British Empire or the French Empire were moral paragons either. No one is saying fighting against the Soviet Union is immoral or evil. It's a factual point that if you fought against the Soviet Union in WWII, in the eastern theatre... You were fighting in an axis formation.

It's to point out that in this country any school child could tell you fighting against the USSR in WWII means you were fighting for the axis. Nearly everyone in the Canadian parliament was applauding with a stupid smile on their face at the first opportunity to be patriotic without actually considering if they were applauding a nazi. This isn't some issue of top-secret due diligence, this is bare minimum "fought for who?" questions. Everyone who knows the bare minimum about WWII already knows about Soviet-Nazi collaboration, the partition of Poland e.t.c. and it was a common criticism in parliament during WWII that the British justification for opposing Nazi Germany on the grounds that they were genocidal and annexed Poland was undercut by allying with the Soviet Union who were genocidal and annexed Poland. Hence Churchill's quote “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

This isn't tankie nonsense. A regular citizen may be as generous to a Finnish or Ukrainian regular soldier making an alliance of convenience with the axis to try and secure independence from the Soviets; but a parliament full of politicians are the last people in the world who should be blindsided by their own standing ovations to a Waffen SS member

This is way, way way way below "oops I didn't fact check."

How the fuck do you not know who fought in WWII

HOW

AND HOW DO YOU END UP RUNNING A COUNTRY WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW THAT

[Madman198237]

In point of fact there were resistance groups and nations like the Finns and Poles who at various points were not aligned with the Axis and fought against the Soviets.

My point was that fighting with the Axis isn't the be-all end-all of evil; and that the part they were blindsided by was based on their own inability to do research on exactly who they were about to acclaim in front of an entire nation and not a lack of historical comprehension. I wouldn't have a problem with praise for a Finnish soldier who may well have fought on every single side of WWII.

There were plenty of people who had no choice but to cooperate with an otherwise-enemy group by the immensely polarizing situation of the war, after all. If the Chinese communists and nationalists could work together to fight the Japanese we shouldn't be surprised that groups that absolutely do not agree (i.e., Nazis and most everyone else) might fight together to fight the immediate existential threat. And probably shouldn't hate unreasonably those who make that decision instead of, say, seeing their country fully invaded and occupied by a genocidal regime. Working with the other genocidal regime in the mix (or just your sworn enemies) is preferable to seeing your neighbors, friends, family, and self fed into a concentration camp/gulag/various atrocities the Japanese committed, after all.

[Il Palazzo]

However many personal reasons and justifications can be levied against condemning the bloke on a human level, and however blindsided and swept in the moment the whole of the assembly was, the speaker damn well knew how smashing it'd look to have 'those Nazis in the West' and 'that Nazi Jew from Kyiv' applaud a member of an actual Nazi formation when he had him invited.
It's like the whole picture was made to order from the propagandists.

[Loud Whispers]

In point of fact there were resistance groups and nations like the Finns and Poles who at various points were not aligned with the Axis and fought against the Soviets.

My point was that fighting with the Axis isn't the be-all end-all of evil; and that the part they were blindsided by was based on their own inability to do research on exactly who they were about to acclaim in front of an entire nation and not a lack of historical comprehension. I wouldn't have a problem with praise for a Finnish soldier who may well have fought on every single side of WWII.

There were plenty of people who had no choice but to cooperate with an otherwise-enemy group by the immensely polarizing situation of the war, after all. If the Chinese communists and nationalists could work together to fight the Japanese we shouldn't be surprised that groups that absolutely do not agree (i.e., Nazis and most everyone else) might fight together to fight the immediate existential threat. And probably shouldn't hate unreasonably those who make that decision instead of, say, seeing their country fully invaded and occupied by a genocidal regime. Working with the other genocidal regime in the mix (or just your sworn enemies) is preferable to seeing your neighbors, friends, family, and self fed into a concentration camp/gulag/various atrocities the Japanese committed, after all.

I actually agree with you. None of this has any sway whatsoever in my judgement that every democratically elected politician should know better, and the appropriate time to debate the merits of joining the Waffen SS is not when hosting the men who are fighting for independence and survival are already being accused of being nazis in need of eradication. Likewise that the fairness and inevitability of war making strange friends is utterly irrelevant to the basic standard of:

1. A democratically elected politician should know which sides fought in WWII
2. A democractically elected politician should not give a standing ovation to the agents of war crimes
3. A democratically elected politician should be aware of the domestic and international consequences of defending axis fighters in parliament

Similar things happened when people started joining ISIS from European nations. It's all fine and well for an academic to begin talking about the real motives for why people are joining ISIS, but when a politician begins talking about how female ISIS fighters are joining ISIS to kill people too "politician endorses girlboss terorrism" is the headline the next day. I don't know how much clearer I can make myself; I agree with everything you say factually. I don't hate this guy. He did not deserve two standing ovations. Everyone in parliament should have known better. They are historically illiterate for not picking up that he would've fought in an axis formation. If the speaker knew the guy was Waffen SS... Well, it's even worse if you know the history but don't care.

[Strongpoint]

I'd also add that Ukrainian Diaspora in Canada and whoever organized Zelensky's visit has also fucked up in the most idiotic way possible.

No matter what we, Ukrainians, think* about those people, we should turn on their brains and think about the possible consequences of such "smart" decisions. It wasn't hard to guess!!! They also majorly screwed this guy and his family.

*not that there is a unified opinion.

___________
The 14th SS Waffen Grenadier Division was a youth fascination of mine (sadly I forgot almost everything I knew), its history is complex and bloody and I hate any simplification of it into whatever side.

Fun fact:  Veterans of this division stayed alive only because Polish general, commander of The Polish II Corps, saved them from being handled to the USSR because most of them were Polish citizens. Irony, considering what modern Poles think about those guys.

[bloop_bleep]

But of course Polish citizen doesn't equal ethnic Pole? Considering their location of activity I wouldn't be surprised for them to be ethnic Ukrainian Polish citizens.

[Strongpoint]

But of course Polish citizen doesn't equal ethnic Pole? Considering their location of activity I wouldn't be surprised for them to be ethnic Ukrainian Polish citizens.

In the beginning, ALL of them were volunteer ethnic Ukrainians from Galicia, which was a pre-war region of Poland and before WW1 it was a part of Austro-Hungary. Because of the latter part it never was a part of Reishcomissariate Ukraine and was governed quite differently and, frankly speaking, as long as you weren't a Roma or a Jew it was a far better than 1939-1941 Soviet period and, for Ukrainians, at least comparable to the Polish period.

The first version of the division consisted mostly** of patriotic and very religious* young people who volunteered when Germans started recruiting in mid-1943 after their war started to go really bad.
All top officers and the majority of other officers were Germans. Many of those, including the division's commander, were already 

* Plus soldiers from Roland and Nachtigall battalions which were under the direct command of Abwehr before those battalions were disbanded after relations between Ukrainian Nationalists and Germany were ruined
**AFAIK, it was the only Waffen SS unit with chaplains.

During training, elements of the division (mostly those who had some prior combat experience) were involved in anti-partisan duty in Western Ukraine\Eastern Poland fighting against partisans. Naturally, some major war crimes may have been committed during this period but I haven't seen any conclusive evidence of that.

Then this division was pushed to the front, participating in the battle of Brody, where it was defeated and surrounded. The majority were KIA, captured (being SS and collaborators it was the same as KIA but less pleasant), or dispersed and hid among supportive civilians. Some managed to breakthrough.

And, to my last breath, I will see those who perished in that battle as heroes and Ukrainian patriots who died fighting for Ukrainian freedom and who deserve to be remembered and admired far more than a random Ukrainian Red Army conscript. Anyone who calls them war criminals, traitors, monsters or whatever simply because they are EVIL SS NAZI can go F themselves with the largest object they can find. Most of them didn't even have a chance to commit any war crimes. They went volunteer>train>fight bravely>die in the first battle

__________________

After this defeat, the division was refilled with various people, including  Ukrainian Red Army POWs and various collaborators who retreated with Germans from the Soviet Ukraine.  Then it was used in rear-line\anti-partisan duty in Eastern Europe (mainly in Slovakia, suppressing local resistance). Those Ukrainians who think that this part of the division's history is heroic and there were no war crimes involved are... idiots who ignore evidence and common sense.

Then again, even this version of the division has way more atrocities attributed to it than it actually committed. The first major reason is Soviet propaganda, second one is the tendency of attributing actions of ALL Ukrainian collaborators to this well-known Waffen-SS division.
______

I got carried away... I can talk about this stuff for hours

[scriver]

I completely missed whatever this Canadian thing that happened was. What happened?

[hector13]

Zelensky was visiting Canada, the speaker of their parliament brought a guest, who was a Ukrainian veteran from WWII, who was a member of an SS regiment fighting the Soviets, and the speaker said something along the lines of him being a hero and everyone gave him a standing ovation and then everybody got embarrassed because they didn’t realise he was a member of the SS and blamed the speaker who stood down.

[Loud Whispers]

I completely missed whatever this Canadian thing that happened was. What happened?

The common Canadian L

[EuchreJack]

Ah yes, Canada. The country that could’ve been French cuisine, American technology, and British culture, but ended up British cuisine, French technology, and American culture.