Christopher Curtis, one of this city’s best journalists, is on his way to Ukraine.
Edited to add: The Rover is Curtis’s website. You can subscribe.
Updates from March, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The Journal says that big screens in the windows of the Griffintown branch of Bouclair are flouting the law and disturbing the neighbours. (“Time Square”?)
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Kate
Iwan Edwards, whose work in choral music here stretched over decades, died recently at 84. (Two solitudes moment: I can’t find any items about him in French.)
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Kate
I don’t understand why the issue of the curfew over the holidays became so much of a political hot potato this week. It seemed obvious to me at the time that with Omicron surging, it made sense to limit New Year festivities. But now it’s being turned into a story pitting Montreal public health against Quebec’s decree.
Meezly
But it’s the CAQ. If the accusations aren’t baseless and the opposition is looking for ways to further discredit them, then I’m totally fine with that!
qatzelok
“It seemed obvious to me at the time…”
This is the beginning of many sentences that try to explain groupthink-related atrocities.
Kate
qatzelok, if you’re equating a brief curfew to an atrocity, the door is there.
H.John
@Kate Paul Arcand and his political correspondent, Jonathan Trudeau, explained Friday morning why it was so troubling . Here’s the segment “C’est très troublant”
https://www.985fm.ca/nouvelles/sante/466976/c-est-tres-troublantTee Owe
Qatzelok has been more interesting than usual lately, his obvious trolling just needs robust response, as you and others provide (I’ll work harder). But it’s your call
Kate
H.John, I’ve gone to that page on two browsers and neither one shows a playable clip. Is there some dark political motivation going on besides wanting to keep people from partying during New Year?
DavidH
Forbidding private gatherings was what was curtailing festivities, not the curfew. With restaurants, bars, etc. closed and private gatherings forbidden, there were only loners, workers and vulnerable people affected. It did nothing to help with the pandemic, quite the opposite. And we knew it from the get go this time. That curfew was strictly political theater.
H. John
@Kate. Sorry my mistake. Arcand’s program posted the info twice, once with the sound clip and then secondly a write up,
Here’s the clip I was aiming for:
https://www.985fm.ca/audio/466940/controverse-a-propos-du-dernier-couvre-feu-au-quebecKevin
My 2 cents: Legault realized in Mid December that he had utterly screwed up when he suggested, earlier in the month, that groups of up to 20 vaccinated people would be able to get together by Xmas. (Because people immediately started gathering in large groups, vaxxed or not.)
His pre-Christmas 5 or 6 pm news conference where he asked people to avoid gatherings, but announced no changes to protocols, demonstrated weakness, fatigue, and a government bereft of ideas.
As the data and modelling rolled in showing how terrible Delta and Omicron were going to be (Mild? Means nothing if 1/3 the province gets infected.) and doctors and public health screamed at him to do something. Papa Legault tried to shock the masses, by re-imposing the curfew as a way of demonstrating that this time Papa Legault was serious. “You’re grounded for a month!”
And now nobody talks about how Legault’s comment in December led to the deaths of more than 2,000 Quebecers in January amd February.
qatzelok
“This is a bombshell,” said Children’s Health Defense (CHD) president and general counsel Mary Holland. “At least now we know why the FDA and Pfizer wanted to keep this data under wraps for 75 years. These findings should put an immediate end to the Pfizer COVID vaccines. The potential for serious harm is very clear, and those injured by the vaccines are prohibited from suing Pfizer for damages.”
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/chd-says-pfizer-fda-dropped-205400826.html
MarcG
The link says Yahoo but it’s an article from silly anti-vax group “Children’s Health Defense” (run by JFK’s nephew). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.
dhomas
Thanks, MarcG.
To put it into context, check the other press releases from this organization. Every single one is about anti-vaxx stuff, from supporting the trucker convoy, to blocking 5G rollouts. These folks are pretty nutso.
https://www.globenewswire.com/en/search/organization/Children's%2520Health%2520DefenseKate
qatzelok is trolling hard these days. I have asked him to leave in another thread, and if he doesn’t leave willingly, he will be banned.
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Kate
Shelters for asylum seekers crossing into Canada at Roxham Road are already almost full, and this before any influx of Ukrainian refugees.
I wonder whether most Ukrainians even want to come to North America, so far from their homes. Maybe some already have family here, which would be different, but most won’t have been planning to emigrate, not till Putin made his move. Won’t most of them want to at least stay in Europe?
Meezly
I knew this in a general sense, but had to fact check before posting. Canada has the largest Ukrainian diaspora after Russia due to the wave of immigrants at the turn of the 20th c. I’m afraid asylum seekers can’t be choosers but many may have some kind of family connection in North America, which would make the transition less difficult.
DeWolf
Canada has opened the front door to Ukrainian refugees so they would have no need to pass through Roxham Road.
If Canada suspended the safe third country agreement with the US, nobody else would need to use Roxham Road, either. But that didn’t happen when Trump was in power and it certainly won’t happen under Biden.
Kate
Has anyone yet written a mournful song about Roxham Road? Because I keep thinking it must exist.
Meezly, a lot of Ukrainians went to farm in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, which I gather have terrain very like the expanse of Ukraine. The Journal has a piece today about the influx of Ukrainian immigrants to Canada from 1890 onwards.
There used to be more of a Ukrainian presence here in Montreal. My mother grew up in Point St Charles when a lot of Ukrainian families were living there, but later it seems the community mostly moved over to Rosemont. Chances are a lot of those folks have since moved to the suburbs or left Quebec.
Tim S.
Lots are still here, but scattered around the suburbs, like most 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation Canadians. Still a bit of a concentration in Rosemont, but the references I’ve seen to ‘Little Ukraine’ are trying a little too hard, imho.
Kate
Tim S., yes, that’s the pattern. Immigrants come here, work hard, maybe buy a duplex. Their kids sell the duplex and move to Laval or beyond.
Tim S.
Yes, in our case a small apartment building. Watching the video of the guy carrying the anti-tank mine put my grandfather’s casual attitude towards household maintenance, in particular electric work, into perspective. Let’s just say it didn’t do much for the resale value…
Raymond Lutz 14:49 on 2022-03-05 Permalink
Will he go to Donetsk? He’ll be able to chat with independent (and colorful amateur) soldier turned journalist Patrick Lancaster, he’s been there since 2017 (and appeared recently on Alex Jones show… I know, I know)
Kate 15:47 on 2022-03-05 Permalink
Curtis is not a personal friend so I don’t know anything about his plans beyond what you can read in the links I’ve posted. But having read him for years I would venture to guess he’s not going to be linking up with any devotees of Alex Jones.
Faiz Imam 17:14 on 2022-03-05 Permalink
I worked with Chris one time a decade ago when I was a photographer with the Link and we went to the yearly Anti-police brutality protests. He was wonderful and inspiring then and i’ve been following his career since.
Really good guy who is doing extra good work since going independent. I’ll support his trip.
H.John 17:53 on 2022-03-05 Permalink
Lancaster has been reporting “independently” for the last eight years from the “Donetsk People’s Republic” in Donbas.
Here’s an interview of “the father of the famous American journalist” when he visited him in Donbas in 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqq6zUgyBis
Not hard to notice that his father flew into a Ukrainian separatist war zone through Moscow, not Kiev, with help from his son’s media friends.
His dad claims the Donbas during the war in 2018 is less dangerous than St. Louis because of the crime level and ethnic problems.
It’s also hard not to notice the clear PR for Russia Today America – as in being asked a few times by the interviewer how much he likes it, and does he watch it.
As to a US navy sailor claiming to be a “journalist”, here’s Bellingcat on his earlier reporting:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/02/28/exploiting-cadavers-and-faked-ieds-experts-debunk-staged-pre-war-provocation-in-the-donbas/
Raymond Lutz 18:49 on 2022-03-05 Permalink
Kate, you’re right. Alex Jones is a disgusting clown but I wrote Lancaster appeared on Infowars, not that he was a devotee. Lancaster probably wanted the exposure… A more recommendable host is India RepublicWorld for whom Lancaster does some live on a regular basis. RW is a good source of impartial information, they cover info you see nowhere in the western media, like the assassination of the Ukrainian peace negotiator Denis Kireev killed today in the street of Kyiv over suspected ‘treason’.
@Faiz, I hope he’s well equipped (Kevlar vest, Helmet, etc..) to cover combat zones, a necessity when cutting through the fog of war… anything else is posturing. Speaking of coverage, maybe he could go to Mariupol to document the interaction between civilians and the Armed Forces of Ukraine and explore the background behind this picture: it does make any sense to me… why take cover below a crumbling bridge being attacked?
mare 19:20 on 2022-03-05 Permalink
@Raymond Lutz From the Twitter feed of the photographer I understood that people are helped by Ukraine soldiers/militia in small groups to cross the river and the big crowd is waiting for their turn, sheltered by the remnants of the destroyed bridge. Most heavy shelling happens at night, so the bridge is relatively safe.
https://twitter.com/EmilioMorenatti/ (great photos)
Raymond Lutz 19:57 on 2022-03-05 Permalink
Thanks, mare. I found the place on gmaps (E373 & Irpin’ River). Indeed, poignant photos, too bad the same Donbass pictures served as illustrations in 2015 NYT articles calling for more bombs.
qatzelok 09:53 on 2022-03-06 Permalink
Spotted: Empire of Lies.
Kate 11:05 on 2022-03-06 Permalink
qatzelok: Please fuck off. Don’t make me ban you.
EmilyG 14:41 on 2022-03-06 Permalink
His first article of the trip:
https://rover.substack.com/p/part-zero-truth-and-unreality-in?s=r
Raymond Lutz 16:14 on 2022-03-06 Permalink
@H.John, Ad hominem critics of Lancaster won’t change the veracity of what he’s showing. Bellingcat? Thanks, I’ll stay with real reporter and analyst like Canadian Aaron Maté who stuck a knife into Bellingcat’s credibility.
That Lancaster is a veteran disqualifies him? Then listen to reports from Anne-Laure Bonnel, here tenant tête à l’immonde BHL, with english subtitles.
I wrote Lancaster was an independent journalist to stress he wasn’t employed by MSM, not that he was neutral. Who is neutral, anyway? Certainly not Christopher Curtis who refers to the Maidan coup d’état as the “2014 Revolution of Dignity”!!!
Let me quote G. Doctorow, who was “an analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defence specializing in the USSR/Russia (and) was a Counsellor in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow 1993-1996”:
“In my essay a couple of days ago about “Bunny Rabbits,” I was talking about the political class in Ukraine, and in particular, about the radical nationalists, call them ‘neo-Nazis,’ call them ‘terrorists,’ who took power in February 2014 following a U.S.-backed and stage-managed coup d’état. Whether you had a stern oligarch like Poroshenko sitting in the presidential seat or, as today, the boyish hyper-communicator Zelensky occupying that seat, makes no difference whatsoever. The presidents are just front men for the militants who have delusional hopes of marching on Moscow with NATO help.” (source)
Kate 19:06 on 2022-03-06 Permalink
Raymond Lutz, you have had worthwhile things to say here about environmental issues, but if you really believe that Ukraine had intentions to attack Russia, and are not just floating this stuff to be provocative, I suggest you get help. And not for Russia.
Mark Côté 23:24 on 2022-03-06 Permalink
Raymond Lutz is quoting some reliable sources here; another is Robert Parry who wrote 7 years ago about neo-Nazis in Ukraine and their nefarious activities against Russian minorities in Ukraine. I don’t know that much about journalism, but Robert Parry seemed like a major figure who just couldn’t handle the mainstream media outlets and founded his own organization. Furthermore, there seems to be ample documentation about the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and the support it gets, which is pretty scary and, well, bananas.
I have a whole bunch of questions and thoughts after reading a few of these things:
1. I had no idea what was going on in Ukraine before (and I know I am still only barely cognizant of anything). I doubt most people do. It’s not straightforward and not many outfits are reporting on it (I haven’t even read anything of any detail in The Economist which has pretty good reporting, generally).
2. It needs to be stated, though, that it is extremely difficult to justify a full-fledged invasion of a sovereign country by another. Yes, the US has done this a whole bunch, but I’m sure lots of us here opposed those incursions as well.
3. Mainstream media is now a weird thing to talk about. People on the left questioned MSM narratives way before the right co-opted that skepticism and turned it into the truth-is-completely-relative/only-weirdos-on-YouTube-really-know-what’s-going-on cult of nowadays. I think the reaction to this mass psychosis has made people on the left suddenly more trusting of MSM. But let’s not forget this is the MSM that happily reported on totally false justifications for US-led invasions over the last couple decades. There must be important things that aren’t being reported and questions going unasked unless mass-media journalism has radically changed recently.
4. All that said, when people post about the complicated situation in Ukraine, it seems to be presented (or maybe just interpreted?) as some sort of rationalization for the invasion (I make the assumption we can trust that it is an invasion of one country by another). They come across as non sequiturs and people react badly to them.
Sorry for the ramble but does anyone grok what I’m saying?
Kate 23:30 on 2022-03-06 Permalink
Mark Côté, I see what you mean up to a point, but even if Russia has some beefs with Ukraine not only do they not seem to add up to a justification of invasion, it isn’t even obvious how Russia thinks it will improve the issues they allegedly have a problem with by invading.
And as many have pointed out, Ukraine’s president is Jewish and there are other Jewish people in its government, so the country hardly seems to be run by Nazis. Of course it has some wacky hard-right ethnonationalists but they’re everywhere.
Mark Côté 23:46 on 2022-03-06 Permalink
I totally agree with your first paragraph, but I think their neo-Nazi/extreme-right problem is not small. There appears to be a fair bit of evidence that a very wealthy Jewish businessman funded Azov Battalion and other similar groups. This has been even reported in mainstream-ish media, depending on how you define that (like Al Jazeera or even Newsweek). It’s crazy to think about, but money can turn anyone into a monster.
In general, MSM relies on simple narratives to get people to think “well this situation is obvious” when it almost never is.
Again, absolutely none of this should ever be read as supporting an invasion, and I feel kinda weird even bringing any of it up, but since it’s out there I figured I’d throw out some random facts and thoughts because, well, this is the Internet.
Tim S. 00:15 on 2022-03-07 Permalink
1) Every country has hard-right nationalists – see the fears in Canada, just two weeks ago, that our police and military were filled with Convoy sympathizers. If you put them on the frontlines of a war of attrition, you will soon have many fewer hard-right nationalists. I don’t get why people think this is a privilege.
2) I was one of those leftists who criticized the MSM way back when (and still do), but people exaggerate how monolithic it is. It was not hard for even cursory news consumers in 2003 to come across suggestions that the pretexts for war were iffy. All those anti-war protesters were not secretly passing around Chomsky zamisdat.
Ant6n 08:55 on 2022-03-07 Permalink
Let’s remember the incredibly difficult history and cultural influence of being a Russian puppet state for so long. Real democracy in Ukraine is still in development – 2014 was actually an important milestone – but it’s constantly under attack and under negative influence from Russia (for one by stoking and maintaining a civil war for the last 8 years). I totally believe that the Russian minority didn’t have a great time during the last decade or so, ever since the Ukrainians took over (ppl in Quebec can probably relate to having this bi-ethnic struggle). Ironically, the EU could probably be a much better steward for the Russians in Ukraine than Russia, because EU likes minority protections, internal peace, democracy and prosperity in its member states, whereas the current Russia, well, doesn’t. Right now, the Russians in Ukraine are probably having the worst time of their lives with the “liberation”. It must suck to be used as a pretense for imperialist expansion (right out of Adolfs playbook).
Mark Côté 09:12 on 2022-03-07 Permalink
Tim, read this article in The Nation from 2018 and tell me it’s the same in Canada. Lots of links to reputable sources in there, including the World Jewish Congress that said in 2018, “Ukraine is currently witnessing an unprecedented new surge of anti-Semitism. Last month alone, there were over 12 well-documented incidents of anti-Semitism. It must stop.”
Also speaking of Chomsky, this was an interesting primer on NATO.
Tim S. 09:21 on 2022-03-08 Permalink
Marc, I spent a while composing a response to the Chomsky interview, but really this isn’t the venue. Short version – he thinks only the US and Russian governments have agency; no one else, either individual human beings or the governments of other countries, are capable of having desires of their own. All just pawns. A really weird position for a supposed democrat to wind up in, but I guess the only possible one once you convince yourself the CIA is the Deus ex machina of the whole world.
As for everything else, yes, it’s complicated, but I’ll just quote this by Anne Applebaum, who knows the history and situation as well as anyone: “The point of Putinist propaganda is always to make people feel like there is no truth, nothing can be understood, everything is a lie or a conspiracy theory. People who fall into that trap are then unable to act, they become nihilists.”
Also, everything Ant6n wrote.
Mark Côté 09:48 on 2022-03-08 Permalink
Imperialism is a serious force.
Also everything about Putin can be true while everything I wrote about can also be true. This is part of my concern about all the stuff about internal Ukrainian struggles being perhaps viewed as as non sequitur though.
DeWolf 10:46 on 2022-03-08 Permalink
That’s absolutely true. Putin is bad and Ukraine also has a serious problem with far-right infiltration. But there’s a time and a place for these discussions. Lev Golinkin, the Ukrainian-born journalist who wrote the Nation article you linked to and has spent years reporting on the rise of far-right and neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine, isn’t banging on about Ukrainian Nazis, because he’s not a propagandist or a demagogue. Instead, he has this to say:
“President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who denies that Ukraine is a sovereign nation, is waging far more than a physical war: He, like his predecessors in the Kremlin, is working to erase the very concept of Ukraine from existence. With each new report of a Russian bombing, I find myself becoming more Ukrainian, seizing the identity that first the Soviet Union — and now Russia — has long fought to suppress. I hope others can help keep Ukraine alive. Learn the history. Light a candle on Holodomor Remembrance Day in November. Mourn the dead. Remember Ukraine.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/opinion/ukraine-putin-stalin-history.html
It’s important to discuss the danger of fascism in Ukraine, just as it is in every country where it is a threat. Just not now, when Ukraine has been invaded and civilians are being slaughtered as they try to escape to safety. We need clarity, not equivocating. It’s one thing to add context at the appropriate time, quite another to do the dirty work of Kremlin propaganda that wants us to think Ukraine brought the invasion upon itself.
Mark Côté 11:25 on 2022-03-08 Permalink
Yeah, I think that’s fair. Thanks, DeWolf.