Reuters, Russia and Radio New Zealand

The standing ovation Canada’s parliament gave last Friday-fortnight to a 98 year-old veteran of the notorious Ukrainian Waffen-SS, a moment that shames the civilized world, has links to the recent railroading of a Radio New Zealand journalist accused of injecting pro-Russian propaganda into Reuters’ news stories.

Yaroslav Hunka, one of thousands of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators allowed into Canada after WW2, was a guest at the September 25th official parliamentary reception for Ukraine’s President Zelensky, who was in Canada to lobby for more military and financial aid for his war with Russia.

Introducing the veteran Nazi to a full house, the Speaker of Canada’s Parliament said; “We have in the chamber today a Ukrainian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians”, going on to call him a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and to thank him for all his service.” 

As cheers erupted throughout the chamber, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Zelensky, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre and the assembled leaders of Canada’s political elite all stood (twice)  to applaud the veteran Ukrainian Nazi’s wartime “service”. 

The disbelief and horror that greeted news of this horrendous event, Canada celebrating a veteran Nazi’s “service” with the Waffen SS, responsible for countless war crimes, has lifted the lid on Canada’s post-war policy of fast-tracking citizenship for known Nazi collaborators. 

The Ukrainian Waffen SS Galacia Division was formed in 1943, and deployed against Soviet, Polish and Yugoslav guerrilla partisans (all allies of ours) but also took part in the Pidkamin, Palikrowy and Huta Pieniacka massacres. In Huta Pieniacka, after first surrounding the village, men, women and children, who had taken refuge in the village church, were taken outside in groups and murdered. Kids were executed in front of their parents, their heads smashed against tree trunks, one witness testified. Others were burned alive in houses. Around 850 people were murdered.

At the same time as it was fast-tracking known Nazis’ for citizenship, Canada classified thousands of Jewish refugees as “enemy aliens” and put them behind barbed wire in a network of internment camps, because it was feared they might infect Canada with communism. See link to 60 Minutes documentary.

One of those Ukrainian Nazi immigrants was Michael Chomiak, who was a leading Nazi propagandist in German-occupied Poland and future grandfather of Canada’s current Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, who cheered the Nazi veteran at the parliamentary reception.

Throughout the Nazi occupation of Poland in WW2, Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather edited Krakow News, a virulently anti-Semitic newspaper which cheered on the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia. Glorifying Nazi savagery Michael Chomiak encouraged Ukrainians to participate and so Yaroslav Hunka, joined the Waffen SS.

After her grandfather’s death, and before entering Canadian politics, Chrystia Freeland followed his footsteps into journalism. Writing for Ukrainian nationalist publications she helped white-wash Ukraine’s record of Nazi collaboration, and routinely wrote stories damning Russia, going on to join Canada’s Ukrainian News, which her grandfather had once edited.

While an exchange student in Soviet-era Ukraine, Chrystia Freeland disguised her collaboration with regime-change activists and her supply of anti-Soviet stories to international media, by posing as a Russian literature major from Harvard. 

The Kiwi Connection

When earlier this year Radio NZ journalist, Mike Hall, was accused of subbing Reuters’ Ukraine war stories to “give them a Russian slant”, Chief Executive Paul Thompson described the edits as “pro-Kremlin garbage” which, “represented a serious breach of standards that had let down RNZ’s audience and in particular the Ukrainian community”.

The NZ establishment media rushed to support Buchanan. Describing Reuters’ copy as “sacrosanct” they said Hall had “doctored” the Reuters reports so breaching the Reuters’ contract. They claimed Reuters’ copy been “inappropriately edited to reflect pro-Russian or anti-Western perspectives”, and represented “rogue behaviour”, which former Herald editor Gavin Ellis called an “appalling situation”.

All of which begs the question; if Reuters’ reporting is inviolable, beyond need of scrutiny, why is their copy even handed to an editor at all?

Opposing the attacks on Hall, many giants of journalism, including Pulitzer prize winners, John Pilger and Chris Hedges and international scholars of global conflict, Professors John Mearsheimer, Jeffery Sachs and Joseph Boyd-Barrett, all judged Hall’s editing to have brought a previously lacking balance and objectivity to the Reuters’ reports.

The New Zealand Consumers Guarantees Act protects us from being sold shoddy products and that must also apply to news reporting. But how does the Consumer Complaints Council measure the quality of news reporting? Quite simply, that’s the job of an editor – to test the quality of copy and, based on knowledge of the subject, make adjustments to ensure fullness, fairness and accuracy, which Mick Hall did.

But if, as the media establishment insists, Reuters’ news reports must be treated as “Gospel”, beyond reproach and so infallible, then Reuters has effectively replaced the editors that our media employ to ensure “fullness, fairness and accuracy”.

Why?

If our media establishment is truly devoted to presenting the truth why is it so selective in choosing which version of the news is published? 

Why has it not published anything substantive about Canada’s shameful feting of a Nazi War veteran last Friday fortnight.? 

Why is it that we can’t be told of Canada’s shameful past and of its deputy Prime Minister’s career as a virulent anti-Russia propagandist? 

Why, for that matter, why is it that Robinson, Ellis and their ilk defend the creeping genocide being waged on Palestinians? 

Why, if it’s so concerned about people being informed, does our media ignore the plight of Julian Assange, a fellow journalist ten years imprisoned without conviction and under threat of spending the rest of his life that way, for releasing the truth about, among other things, war crimes? 

Why, if it’s so concerned about the truth, does our media refuse to acknowledge the United States’ involvement in the 2015 overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government and its substitution with the Fascist Zelensky regime?

Why does it refuse to report the Nazi-like measures Zelensky has since taken to suppress the culture of Russian-speaking Ukrainians and its killing of many thousands of them since, in the regions in which they are most numerous?

Why has our media suppressed all reporting of Russia’s efforts to secure a peaceful solution through the Minsk accords, which Ukraine had agreed to sign till the United States intervened?

Why is our media’s lapdog approach, to publishing only what the United States wants, so plainly evident and yet oblivious to our media establishment?

Why will this researched account never be published in any establishment media?

With just one scintilla of the righteous indignation our establishment media brought to the RNZ affair, we might have been made aware of these things. But no, held captive by their rewarding careers and post-career “celebrity”, our gutless establishment media bows down to infamy.

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” 

Recognizing the threat often posed by those in control, the Roman poet Juvenal famously wrote; “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” (who will watch over the watchmen?) which is now a principle of democracy.  So, we might ask, “Who edits the editors?”

To its credit, the official inquiry into the RNZ affair rejected many of the claims that Hall had injected bias into the Reuters reports, which means that Hall’s editing must have been justified, so Reuters’ reports can’t be “sacrosanct”.

But really, who are these people that write for foreign news agencies like Reuters and whose account of events our establishment media says must be taken as “Gospel?”

How do we know that when it comes to the war in Ukraine, for instance, Reuters writers aren’t feeding us propaganda. How do we know they’re not anti-Russia activists, re-writers of the history of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis and cheer leaders for those who escaped justice after WW2? 

If truth is to be served these are very valid questions because were it to look, our media might learn that just such a person, an anti-Russia propagandist and rewriter of the history of Ukraine’s collaboration with the Nazis, and now the deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland, was for a long time a senior editor at Reuters!

References;

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canadas-soft-pedalling-ukraine-ss-galicia

A Nazi Skeleton in the Family Closet (consortiumnews.com)

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/honoring-nazi-canada-parliament-history-world-war-ii-holocaust-trudeau

Canada’s honoring of Nazi vet exposes Ottawa’s longstanding Ukraine policy – Information Clearing House.info

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/02/patrick-lawrence-tampering-with-history/