Rally against the 2012 Halifax NATO War Conference
Once again this year, the organization No Harbour for War, joined by many others, has come forward to say, “It is unacceptable that Halifax, or any Canadian city, be used as a venue to plan further crimes against the peace and the peoples of the world.”On Saturday, November 17, these organizations are calling on Haligonians to “Bring your banners and placards, bring your music and statements, and most of all bring your friends to oppose this war conference.”Participation in the rally is being fuelled by people’s justified anger and outrage against the brutal crimes of Israel against the Palestinians, “Operation Pillar of Defence,” and the Harper and Obama government’s support for the assault on Gaza as self-defence. All across Canada and around the world people are staging rallies this weekend in defence of the people of Palestine.The rally is being held on the second day of the conference.Activists highlight that the “Halifax” International Security Forum is actually based in the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. In its own words, the HISF is “an invitation only weekend”: this means all participants are selected, vetted and invited from the United States.Even though the HISF features live streaming on its website, three quarters of the sessions are classified as “off-the-record” and thus held in absolute secrecy. Of 34 sessions, 26 are “off-the-record.”The embedded media, consisting of invited senior correspondents and editors from leading mass media in the NATO bloc, any number of whom have been enlisted as moderators, have never been allowed – nor expressed any desire to – to report on the closed door discussions and conclusions which have great ramifications for Canadians and all citizens of the world. The public is excluded. The main feature is that it is organized so that the Canadian people have no say. Despite such significant discussions, no representatives of workers’ organizations, or those with knowledge and legitimate concerns or the First Nations of either country are invited to speak about the questions of democracy, sovereignty and peace.The opulent hotel is totally locked down, surrounded by HRM Police outside with a private security force inside, becoming an armed camp. Last year the Israeli secret service Mossad accompanied Gen Ehud Barak, head of the Israeli Defence Force who commanded the murderous invasion of Gaza in 2009, killing over 3,000 Palestinians including some 600 children, to the podium where he conducted a 30-minute “public interview session.” Meanwhile, following the lively rally outside, over one hundred participants surrounded the plush hotel, shouting over the heads of armed HRM police, “this is what democracy looks like” and “the real criminals are inside!” That said it all.Towards this end, the 2011 forum highlighted the participation of leading liberal representatives of such agencies of the U.S. state as the National Endowment for Democracy and two of its core agencies, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, together with Freedom House and Human Rights Watch. Its agenda was synchronized with the program of subversion of these agencies known to specialize in the “soft power” techniques of intervention, political destabilization and regime change under the pretext of “people power,” “democracy,” “open society,” “non-violence” and “human rights.”At the same time, more attention was given to the Middle East and Africa, especially Syria and Iran. For the first time, “dissidents” were introduced as ”human rights” “experts” -- all from Syria and Iran and all resident in the U.S. and Canada. Although NATO claimed it had “liberated” Libya, not one single representative attended from Africa, including Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.Specialists in manipulation and subversion of “colour revolutions” in Eastern Europe and Lebanon and the “Arab Spring” were recruited from the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House and the Council on Foreign Relations to the newly-created board of directors formed in 2011 to operate the HISF. These included president David Van Praagh (NDI, NED), vice-president Joseph Hall (NDI) and secretary David J Kramer (president, Freedom House). In fact, four of the five directors are resident in New York and Washington, where its office is based. The headquarters are located in Suite 610, 1717 Rhode Island Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. Importantly, the HISF has no organic connection with Halifax, a small city with a strategic port on the Atlantic coast of Canada, except to appropriate its name and cynically use its locale as an out-of-the-way venue for the U.S. war conference.This year, the agenda for HISF continues to focus on the role of the U.S. and NATO in the promotion of so-called democracy on a global basis, while maintaining dominance of Western countries in global affairs, especially with respect to China.Focus on the “Arab Spring” has now shifted to a specific focus on interference in Syria and Iran in particular, with the sub-text justifying Israel’s related and indefensible assault on Gaza.In statements issued just before the Conference, Peter MacKay, John Baird and Stephen Harper joined the Zionists’ disinformation, trying to construe their aggression and war crimes as self-defence. Israel has sent eight representatives to Halifax, including from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Office of the Prime Minister and two newspaper correspondents, as part of its campaign for a more perfect marriage with NATO as a full member.The Syrian panel is a pertinent example of how the agenda and format of War Conference is designed and used for war to incite war in the form of further Western “humanitarian intervention” in that country and the region, which has hit a brick wall in Syria, Iran and Lebanon. It is thus one of only six sessions that are classified as open and is being televised for elite and public consumption. One of the main speakers is Washington-based Radwan Ziadeh of the widely discredited U.S.-sponsored Syrian National Council, which has been folded into the “unified opposition” just formed in Qatar by the U.S. and the Gulf feudal regimes to, as Obama falsely claimed in his press conference of November 13, 2012, “represent the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people.”Nevertheless, only Britain has recognized this latest entity as a government-in-exile.Both Ziadeh and another SNC representative, Mohammad al-Abdallah from New York, work with U.S.-financed agencies, i.e., they represent the U.S. state, not the Syrian people. Ziadeh has publicly called for “Kosovo-stye military intervention” and is involved with the U.S. Institute for Peace on formulating a “transition plan,” i.e., regime change of the Iraqi type. Politically, the SNC calls for a new rapprochement with Israel and a reversal of Syria’s long-standing fraternal relations with th Islamic Republic of Iran. The "Syrian Free Army" has attacked with arms Palestinian refugee camps inside Syria. The HISF has suspiciously kept their SNC affiliation off its published list of invitees, as it did in 2011, presenting them as “dissidents,” academics and independent champions of “human rights.”They are joined on this panel by a representative of the Al Hayat newspaper, based in London and funded by Saudia Arabia, one of the regional organizers of the armed gangs smuggled into Syria, and a Kurdistan member of the Iraqi government. The HISF aims to give the agents of Washington legitimacy and respectability within NATO, other participating countries and the media -- together with an international platform to consolidate elite opinion and disinform public opinion as a necessary part of inciting new levels of interventionThe implications that the events in the Middle East will have on “energy security” and oil supplies to the U.S. empire are also being brought to the table of the Halifax Conference.Latin America and the Caribbean are noticeable by the near-complete absence of representation with the exception of the Jamaican military (where Canada is establishing one of its new overseas military bases), the Colombia minister of defence, and Mexico and Brazil.No Harbour for War!Not In Our Name!All Out to Oppose the Halifax NATO War Conference! [ED NOTES:PLEASE CLICK LINK FOR WHOEL EXPOSE,JUST CITING FEW PARAGRAPHS!!!