Blogspot | 29Mar2011 | blackrod
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/
http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/03/nuke-ukes-fp-preps-nuclear-option-to.html
Nuke the Ukes: the FP preps the
nuclear option to save the Holocaust gallery at the CMHR
Well, so much for the high road.
The Winnipeg Free Press has gone from alluding to Ukrainian-Canadian
activists as thugs threatening to knee-cap politicians who won't do
their bidding to denouncing them as ignorant and uninformed rabble.
Sneering condescension gives way to undisguised insults.
The newspaper was tipped over the edge last week by a national poll
that showed a strong majority of Canadians (over 60 percent) opposed
plans by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to have only one
permanent exhibit --- a Holocaust gallery.
All other genocides throughout history will be relegated to a "mass
atrocities" zone.
And that's the way it should be, blustered the Free Press editorial
writer, because the Holocaust is ssssspecial.
"Why does the Holocaust
get a place in the front seat? Only the uninformed ask
questions like that,"
shouted the voice of the newspaper.
With that, the Winnipeg Free Press started a journey down a very, very
dark path.
We'll get to that in a minute.
The CMHR has been on the defensive since late last year when the
Ukrainian community launched a campaign to get equal exposure for the
victims of Communism, centered on the Holodomor, the state-sponsored
famine that killed millions of Ukrainians. To break the back of
Ukrainian nationalism, Stalin literally starved millions to death as
the world watched and, neither did, or said anything.
"The campaign against a
separate place for the Holocaust in the Canadian Museum for Human
Rights has always
seemed parochial..."
sniffed the Winnipeg Free Press dismissively.
The respondents to the Nanos poll were probably ignorant about the
facts and their opinions should be ignored, the newspaper said.
And in any event, the way the Jews of Europe were systematically
murdered by the Nazis is more important than the way Stalin killed
Ukrainians in the grand scheme of things, the FP argued.
"Unlike all other
genocides, the Holocaust was global in its reach. The Nazis killed Jews
in all the nearly 30 countries they occupied in full or in part during
the war. Unlike the Soviets, who wanted to end Ukrainian nationalism
and were indifferent to Ukrainians elsewhere, the Nazis wanted to
eliminate Jews wherever they could find them."
And yet the Communists managed to kill as many or more in an area
barely 1/17th the size of Europe. They turned the entire Ukraine into
one big concentration camp where they could conduct their murderous
plan without interference. Their plans to spread Communism worldwide
never came to fruition and yet they were still responsible for the
deaths of tens of millions. What their ultimate plan for Ukrainians
around the world will never be known.
"The suffering of
individual Jews was no greater than the pain of Ukrainians or others
who have been targets of hatred, but the story of how they lost their
rights, and how their neighbours -- ordinary people -- turned against
them, is
a unique cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy and human
rights."
Do you want a cautionary tale?
The most influential newspaper in the world, the New York Times was aware of
the Holodmor, and failed to report on it.
Leftwing intellectuals
like British writer Arthur Koestler knew of it, and were silent in
the cause.
To this very day, in
Canada, Nazis are reviled, but Communists are treated with respect.
Earlier this month the board of directors of the National Capital
Commission demurred when asked to approve a new monument commemorating
Victims of Totalitarian Communism.
http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2009/09/10/10827176.html
“We should make sure we are politically correct concerning this
position ... I feel this name should be changed,” said board member
Helene Grand-Maitre.
Possibly the greatest genocide in the Twentieth Century went unreported
and its perpetrators are being defended to this day.
Why? By Whom? Now, that's a cautionary tale.
And how the CMHR and the
Winnipeg Free Press reacted to the challenge to a permanent Holocaust
gallery is also a cautionary tale.
The proponents of the museum have publicly professed to welcome debate
and multiple points of view on all matters relating to human rights.
But the museum isn't even open and already the board of trustees is
announcing exceptions.
The position of the Holocaust in the museum is beyond challenge. There
will be no discussion, no argument.
Is there anything else, that cannot be discussed?
Former COO Patrick O'Reilly didn't mince words when talking to the
Carleton alumni magazine last fall.
http://cualumni.carleton.ca/magazine/fall-2010/whats-the-story/
The article summarized O'Reilly's viewpoint and that of a fellow
executive of the museum, both of whom have since mysteriously packed
their bags and silently slipped away in the dead of night.
"...museum biases will show.
Same-sex equality will be treated as a legitimate human right at the
museum, despite the voting record of the chief executive officer and
even though many Canadians consider homosexuality an illness, a sin or
a moral failing.
“It’s the law,” Victoria
Dickenson, PhD/95, the museum’s chief knowledge officer, says of gay
rights. "
So gay rights join the primacy of the Holocaust as untouchable issues.
Add aboriginal "rights" and colonialism and suddenly the museum's
commitment to full and open discussion of alleged human rights shrinks
precipitously.
It fuels the demand by the Ukrainian groups to reorganize the museum's
board and its exhibits committee to remove Gail Asper's handpicked team
dedicated to reflecting her wishes and political biases.
But that's not going to happen if the Winnipeg Free Press gets its way.
They're already prepping their nuclear option to stop the Ukes.
Remember the dark path mentioned above. We couldn't make out the street
sign the first pass. It was only in hindsight that it came obvious.
Start with two
consecutive questions from the Maclean's interview with Gail Asper, and
one oblique answer.
Q: The
Ukrainian-Canadian Civil Liberties Association has charged that one
horror—the Holocaust—is being “elevated” above all others at the
museum. What’s your response?
Q: Do you think that
anti-Semitism is playing a part in this?
A: I haven’t come face
to face with the group that is saying this, and I wouldn’t want to
accuse anyone of anti-Semitism.
What's that mean?
Was she hinting she might change her opinion once she did come "face to
face" with that group?
We let that slide....until three days later, up popped this story in
the weekend FP, on the Faith page.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/faith/local-institute-to-combat-anti-semitism-118699954.html
"Local Institute to combat anti-semitism" was the headline.
"Catherine Chatterly is
a young academic at the University of Manitoba who is devoting her
career to a study of what is widely regarded as the oldest hatred."
Fourteen turgid
paragraphs later, the story got to the point.
"I think the recent
public exchanges in the newspapers about the Canadian Museum for Human
Rights and its proposed Holocaust gallery clearly illustrate the need
for a permanent curriculum in Holocaust history at Canadian
Universities," Chatterley says.
"Whether people like it
or not, and regardless of their own personal feelings and collective
grievances, the Holocaust is a catastrophic transformative event in
western history and it is unique because its antecedents are 2000 years
old and yet persist today. One cannot say that about the ideologies at
work in other genocides."
"Collective grievances." "It is unique." "Ideologies at work in other
genocides."
It's not hard to put two and two together.
* Gail Asper doesn't want to accuse the Ukrainians of being
anti-Semites, although she hasn't met them face-to-face.
*Only "the uniformed" ask why the Asper human rights museum plans to
highlight the Holocaust over all the other genocides in the world.
* An "expert" on anti-semitism says people have to put aside their
"collective grievances" and recognize the Holocaust as more important
than other genocides.
* Should we conclude that if the uniformed continue to press their
case, then it it because they have another agenda, another motivation?
Hmmm. Maybe a non-profit academic institute can help identify that
motivation.
It didn't take long to
play that card, did it.
Labels: boondoggle, CMHR,
Free Press, Gail Asper, Holodomor