This day. Anniversary of Dresden fire bombing – Allied war crime prelude to the Cold War

Aftermath of the 1945 bombing of Dresden, Germany by Allied forces – at the Old Market, following bombings on 13 February 1945 | WALTER HAHN/AFP/Getty Images

By DOUGAL MACDONALD

On the night of February 13-14, 1945, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) bomber command carried out two devastating attacks on the German city of Dresden. At the time, Dresden’s pre-war population of 640,000 had been swelled by the presence of an estimated 100,000-200,000 refugees. Seven hundred and twenty-two aircraft dropped 1,478 tons of high explosives and 1,181 tons of incendiaries on the city. The resulting firestorm destroyed an area of 13 square miles, including the historic Altstadt Museum. Shortly after noon on February 14, a fleet of 316 U.S. bombers made a third attack, dropping a further 488 tons of high explosives and 294 tons of incendiaries. On February 15, two hundred and eleven U.S. bombers made a fourth attack, dropping 466 tons of high explosives. [Dresden was attacked again on March 2, this time by the Americans alone. Mustang fighter escorts machine-gunned fleeing civilians while the heavy B-17s achieved the singular distinction of sinking a hospital ship on the Elbe, filled with injured from the earlier raids.–ed.]

This day in 1945: On Holocaust Memorial Day

Red Army doctor attends to Auschwitz prisoner after its liberation on January 27, 1945

In this seminal essay originally published on this website in 2009, Dr Hakim Adi challenges the false narrative around Holocaust Memorial Day. January 27, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army in 1945, is commemorated as Holocaust Memorial Day internationally.

This day. Liberation of Auschwitz – Imbue with new life the clarion call of Never Again!

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, we are republishing an informative article by Dr. Dougal MacDonald, University of Alberta lecturer,  for the information of our readers. Dr MacDonald is being publicly defamed as a “holocaust denier” by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress in collusion with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and the monopoly media for arguing against the false narrative of a genocide committed in Ukraine by the Soviet state. The article, originally published in 2014, refers to the anti-social standpoint of the then Harper government, which has been continued by the Trudeau Liberals to date.

Memorial to the victims of Nazi atrocities at the site of the former Dachau concentration camp representing the demand of the world’s people to never again permit the rise of fascism

(January 25, 2014) – On January 27, 1945, the advancing Soviet Red Army entered the Nazis’ Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp, liberating more than 7,000 prisoners, most of whom were ill or dying. The prisoners were liberated as the Red Army was inflicting one defeat after another on the German troops, driving the Hitlerites steadily backward until the final demise of the Third Reich in Berlin on May 9, 1945.

102nd Anniversary of the Halifax Explosion

 

Infamy of the massacre of the Canadian people in Halifax

Painting of the Halifax Explosion

By TONY SEED

December 6th is the 102nd anniversary of the horrific Halifax Explosion of 1917 – the largest explosion in history before the infamous devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by U.S. atomic bombs in 1945.[1] Some 1,963 innocent men, women and children were massacred, another 9,000 injured and 199 blinded, comprising more than one fifth of the total population, resulting from a massive explosion due to the collision in the inner harbour of the merchant ship Imo and the ammunition ship Mont Blanc loaded with 3,00 tons of chemical explosives. One square mile of the working class quarter of the North End facing the Halifax Narrows was totally destroyed. Six thousand people lost their homes altogether and between 20,000 and 25,000 Haligonians were left homeless and destitute, including ten thousand children. More than 1,600 buildings were destroyed, and 12,000 more were damaged.[2]

This Day. Anniversary of the War Measures Act

Forty-nine years ago on October 16, 1970, the federal Liberal government led by Pierre Elliott Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act. Trudeau declared a state of “apprehended insurrection” in response to kidnappings and mailbox bombings taking place in Quebec. The War Measures Act gave the police the power to act without warrants and to detain people indefinitely without charges or trial.

Soldiers on the streets of Montreal, October 1970

Turkish aggression against Syria: For a principled and permament solution to the Kurdish question

On August 7, Turkish and US officials agreed to jointly manage a buffer zone between the Turkish border and areas in Syria controlled by the Kurdish YPG, which Istanbul considers a “terrorist” threat. On October 6, the Trump presidency announced that US forces would withdraw from the border areas to make way for a “long-planned operation” by Turkish forces. On October 8, Turkey, a member of the US-NATO bloc which hosts a massive US air base at Incirlik – hosting some 5,000 Air Force personnel, tactical nuclear weapons and used to fly sorties over Syria – launched a new military invasion of northern Syria dubbed Peace Spring, which began with airstrikes on positions of Kurdish units. The Syrian Arab Republic branded the operation, part of the old imperialist divide-and-rule of the Middle East on an ethnic and religious basis, as aggression. The Syrian Kurdish forces and the Syrian Arab Army swiftly launched a counter-offensive to block the Turkish advance.

This day. The Barbados crime, Cubana flight 455 (I)

By TONY SEED

This article was first published in October 2014 by TML Weekly and Global Research. It is of particular relevance to an understanding of the ongoing “war on terror” in the Americas and the role of successive US and Canadian governments.

Today, October 6th, is the anniversary of the first act of terrorism against civilian aviation in the western hemisphere – the unparalleled Cubana air disaster on the coastline of Barbados on October 6, 1976 – the Barbados crime. Cubana flight 455 was hit by two C-4 explosives bombs at an altitude of 18,000 feet just after the aircraft took off from the then Seawell Airport (now the Grantley Adams International Airport) in Barbados.