Section: National Post (Canada)
Kelly McParland: Trudeau’s plan for regaining Canada’s global prominence: scold your friends, engage their enemies
The old Canada of Stephen Harper is gone and the new Canada of Stéphane Dion is ascendant. We no longer take sides on global affairs. We don’t pass judgment on right or wrong. We issue “tough messages” to our “friends” in Israel, while agreeing to let bygones be bygones with Iran. We signal our sympathy for Ukraine, but also our willingness...
Dion gets tough with Israel, welcomes back Iran, and other reasons to fear for humanity
1. Dion gets tough with Israel, welcomes back Iran Ronald Zak / APIran’s Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, Reza Najafi. Ottawa wants to lift sanctions and let bygones be bygones. Did anyone doubt for a minute that Ottawa was going to play kissy-face with Iran first chance it got? On Sunday it sent a “tough message”...
Sorry Israel, Canada is climbing back on the fence. And other reasons to fear for humanity
1. Liberals climb back on the fence in Israel Sebastian Scheiner / APThe family of Israeli Dafna Meir attend her funeral at a cemetery in Jerusalem Monday, Jan. 18, 2016. A Palestinian attacker stabbed and wounded a pregnant Israeli woman in the West Bank before being shot, Israeli officials said. Just what Canada needed is Ottawa climbing back...
Ukraine’s prime minister says his country won’t repay $3 billion debt owed to Russia
MOSCOW — Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk says his country won’t repay a $3 billion debt owed to Russia by this weekend. Yatsenyuk announced at a televised government session on Friday a “moratorium” on any debt repayments to Russia. That effectively means that Ukraine is defaulting on the debt. He did not indicate when Ukraine...
Matt Gurney: In Ukraine conflict, Vladimir Putin banking on a distracted West
TORONTO – While the West remains preoccupied with climate change and ISIL, on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, the fighting has never really stopped. It’s slowed. Both sides have pulled most of the heavy weapons back, and that means fewer civilian settlements being chewed over by artillery and mortar fire. But Russian forces — let’s...
Leonid Bershidsky: Dutch art heist stirs opposition to EU membership for Ukraine
A bizarre episode involving two dozen stolen paintings by old Dutch masters shows how far Ukraine still has to go before it becomes a European nation — and explains why many Dutch people have misgivings about ratifying Ukraine’s association agreement with the European Union. The Westfries Museum in the idyllic Dutch town of Hoorn was robbed...
Ukrainian ultra-nationalists hold trove of stolen Dutch paintings for $74 million ransom
AMSTERDAM — A trove of Dutch Golden Age paintings stolen a decade ago is being held for ransom by a Ukrainian far-right militia group with “contacts on the highest political levels,” a museum in the Netherlands said Monday. Westfries Museum in Hoorn said it believed the 24 looted artworks, which had an estimated value of 10 million euros...
Lubomyr Luciuk: Canada has been good to refugees — including my family
Canada has been good to refugees. I should know. My late parents were both political refugees, fleeing the Soviet and Nazi occupations that eviscerated Ukraine, before, during, and after the Second World War. Like millions of others, they found themselves in Western Europe at war’s end, their homeland no longer theirs. They could not...
‘How to find and kill the guy who just killed your friend’: Canada’s Ukrainian battle class
…read more Source: National...
Janice Gross Stein: The order that held dysfunctional Middle East states together is over
We live in disruptive times. Russia annexes Crimea and invades Ukraine. The Islamic State conquers a large swath of territory that crosses the old border between Iraq and Syria, and the rump government of Bashir Al-Assad bombs its own people. Millions of refugees are on the move, desperate to escape the barrel bombs falling from the skies. It...
