To start with: Putin has always been a KGB agent and an autocrat, Ukraine has been a playground for corruption of all sorts and the soulless, vile West morally postures in such a way that you could scrape the hypocrisy and impotence off of it.
Such is the human tragedy in eastern Europe:
Transport Canada says it has laid thousands of dollars worth of fines against those involved with a charter flight carrying two Russian civilians that was grounded in Yellowknife Tuesday.
Because that's helpful.
Also:
Canada told its citizens on Saturday to leave Russia “while commercial means are still available,” saying security conditions were unpredictable and could deteriorate without notice.
We don't want a repeat of Afghanistan.
**
Justin talks and no one cares.
Someone will listen to the Israeli prime minister, though, because he is an actual leader:
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Saturday to discuss the war in Ukraine and later spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Bennett’s spokesperson said.
Bennett is coordinating his efforts in the crisis with the United States, France and Germany, an Israeli official said.
After his meeting with Putin, Bennett headed to Berlin for talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, his spokesperson said.
French President Emmanuel Macron had spoken to Bennett before he flew to Moscow to brief him on Macron’s previous conversations with Putin, the Elysée said.
“They will stay in touch with the aim of obtaining a ceasefire, and this in coordination with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz,” an Elysée official said.
Israel, at the behest of Zelenskyy, has offered to mediate in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, though officials have previously played down expectations of any breakthrough.
Also, as a former IDF officer, Bennett is used to running to conflict and not from it, unlike a certain pants-wetting, blackface-wearing poseur one could mention.
**
As Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese at the end of April 1975, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese scrambled on to planes and helicopters, or took their chances on decrepit and impossibly overcrowded ships in the South China Sea. Under U.S. escort, those ships arrived in convoy in the Philippines beginning May 5; from there, most of the refugees were flown to Guam to be processed. The first of what would become more than 100,000 “boat people” to arrive in Canada landed in Vancouver on May 6, just seven days after South Vietnam unconditionally surrendered.
Twenty years earlier and 9,000 kilometres away, on Nov. 4, 1956, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest and crushed the student-led revolution that had begun in earnest two weeks earlier. An estimated 200,000 Hungarians fled across the Austrian and Yugoslavian borders, with roughly 40,000 eventually winding up in Canada. The first of those arrived in Montreal on Nov. 17, just a week after the revolutionaries conceded defeat.
On Thursday’s edition of CBC’s Power and Politics, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser explained why Canada cannot immediately open its doors — even temporarily — to the tens of thousands of Ukrainians, mainly women and children, who are fleeing Vladimir Putin’s insane bombardment.
“I asked myself, ‘could we stand up and expedite the refugee resettlement process?’ And the answer (from his department) was no, not in a timely way,” Fraser said. “My next reaction was to consider whether we could actually issue a visa waiver” — which is what the New Democrats, Conservatives and Bloc Québécois are calling for. “What we learned very quickly is it would have taken certain regulatory changes, and certain changes to our IT systems across three different government departments, as well as potential changes to the systems airlines use, and the timeline that we understand could be workable for that would be 12 to 14 weeks.”
But no one minded the unvetted illegal migrants and their Louis Vuitton bags ambling across Roxham Road or the fighting age Afghan men who walked over women and children to catch the first plane out.
Also - you don't have to go home, Ukrainians, but you can't stay here:
Many a warning has come in the form of a familiar phrase: “be careful to read the fine print.” We apply the theory to Immigration Minister Sean Fraser’s declaration regarding those currently fleeing war in Ukraine:
“Canada prepared to welcome an ‘unlimited number’ of Ukrainians fleeing war, minister says” reads the headline from CBC News. His wording fails to note a critical detail. The arrivals must leave Canada within a two year period:
“Today, I announced a new program that will cut through red tape and expedite arrivals to offer Ukrainians safe harbour for up to two years, tweeted Liberal MP Sean Fraser.
Why? Do you need them when the world lets you invade the Baltic states?:
Moscow demanded on Saturday that authorities in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania take measures to protect Russia's embassies after a Russian diplomat was attacked in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, the Russian RIA news agency said.
"We are warning Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn that they are responsible for the consequences of the anti-Russian psychosis they have unleashed," the Russian foreign ministry was quoted as saying.
"A Russian diplomat in the Lithuanian capital was attacked with the use of physical force, attempts were made to put pressure on the Ambassador," it added.
Lithuania's national broadcaster reported last week that a third secretary of the Russian embassy was beaten on the evening of Feb. 24 near the embassy, in a residential courtyard. The broadcaster cited a Lithuanian police spokesperson.
A suspect in the beating, which took place as an estimated 10,000 people gathered in front of the embassy to show support for Ukraine following the start of Russia's invasion earlier that day, was arrested, the spokesperson was quoted as saying. The diplomat declined medical help, she added.
The bad news is that the breed is called “Russian Blue.” Given the outcry against all things Russian these days, I worry that the anti-Putin police may suddenly decide to recall all the Russian Blues and return them to sender.
Does that sound far-fetched? Perhaps it does. But is it more far-fetched than the news, just in, that the International Cat Federation (who knew?) has banned Russian cats from international competitions and even from being registered in its pedigree book? Condemning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as an “unprecedented act of aggression,” spokesmen for the organization declared on its website that we “cannot just witness these atrocities and do nothing.”
I am happy to condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, too. But I do wish that someone would supply the virtuous folks at the Fédération Internationale Féline with a dictionary and a brief history of the world. It behooves them to learn what the word “unprecedented” means and what a dismal record humanity has had when it comes to treating neighbors with consideration.
I would also like to supply an affidavit stipulating that Sabrina is utterly innocent of colluding with Vladimir Putin in his military advances against Ukraine. She has never met the Russian dictator and would not, I am confident, like him if she did meet him. She is a most particular cat, especially in her choice of friends.
The trouble is, Vladimir Putin has just been nominated to be this month’s Emmanuel Goldstein, the character in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four who furnishes the populace with the chief object for their daily “two-minutes-of-hate” ritual.
Putin himself is not always on hand for the cathartic moments, however, so there are a lot of stand-ins recruited for the exercise. The soprano Anna Netrebko, for example, has performed nearly 200 times at the Metropolitan Opera. But she will not be performing there this year because she has had some nice words for the Russian dictator. Something similar happened to Valery Gergiev. He was supposed to be conducting the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, but his association with Putin put paid to that.
Vancouver police are investigating after a cultural institution of the Vancouver Russian community was targeted by vandalism.
The Russian Community Centre near 4th Avenue and Arbutus Street was splashed with blue and yellow paint — the colours of the Ukrainian flag — sometime early Saturday.
I guess church-burnings are so passe!
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