NATO defence ministers make final preparations for Madrid Summit, June 29-30

NATO Madrid Summit and War Exercises in Asia Pacific | Steve Rutchinski

NATO defence ministers wrapped up two days of discussions on June 16, just a fortnight ahead of the NATO Strategic Concept Summit scheduled for June 29 and 30 in Madrid. Not a word was heard about finding a negotiated settlement to end hostilities in Ukraine or ways to lower the level of hostilities directed against Russia and China. Responsibility for elaborating that direction and for averting a wider war thus falls to the peoples of the world, especially those of NATO member countries. NATO must be stopped and disbanded for there to be peace and security.

NATO Madrid Summit and war exercises in Asia Pacific

No to NATO’s “New Strategic Concept”! Dismantle NATO!

Information pickets and rallies have been convoked in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Collingwood, Oakville, Hamilton, Waterloo, Winnipeg, Regina, Vancouver and Victoria to oppose the NATO Summit taking place June 29-30 in Madrid. The pickets and rallies will also express opposition to the U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific war exercises (RIMPAC) in the Asia Pacific that start June 29 and run to August 4.

Agenda of the NATO Summit in Madrid, June 28-30

Membership in NATO goes against the longstanding desire of Canadians that their country be a force for genuine peace in the world, as well as their rejection of U.S.-led invasions, occupations and interference in other countries | NICK LIN

May 7, 2022 action, part of mobilization against the Madrid NATO Summit.

US Congress resolution calls for use of NATO for more intervention into member states

Using talk of “democratic principles” NATO is to be further weaponized politically and militarily. Claims of “shared democratic values” will also be used to justify actions against Russia, China, and other countries for purposes of U.S. domination | KATHLEEN CHANDLER

NATO setting sights on East Asia

The military bloc is assuming a stronger posture in relationship to China. US experts call for NATO operations in the Pacific | german-foreign-policy.com

Rimpac (Rim of the Pacific) to be held August 17-31 is the largest naval exercise in the world. Canadian navy is sending HMCS Winnipeg along with HMCS_NCSMRegina for its 27th participation.

BERLIN/WASHINGTON (June 19) – NATO should systematically expand its military exercises and operations into the Asia-Pacific region, an expert of Washington’s Atlantic Council think tank proposes in the intensifying debate on the posture the western war alliance should assume in relationship to the People’s Republic of China. China’s “presence in the Arctic, in Africa and in the Mediterranean” calls for a response, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

All out to oppose annual US-led war conference in Halifax!

Demonstration against fourth Halifax International Security Forum, November 17, 2012

This year’s U.S.-led “Halifax International Security Forum” (HISF), referred to by many as the Halifax War Conference, takes place on November 16-18. An anti-war rally will be held to protest it on November 17.

US-NATO’s drive into Asia

ASIAN NATO CONCEPT FLAG | Pnyxblog

A global military bloc | RICK ROZOFF

(January 29, 2009) – With the sixtieth anniversary summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to occur jointly in the French city of Strasbourg and and the German one of Kehl on April 3-4, the world should take note of how far from its original area of operations this, history’s first international military bloc has expanded in the interim since its creation in 1949.

NATO’s worldwide expansion in the post-cold world era

Scene from the 2012 rally against the Halifax War Conference

The 5th annual Halifax International Security Forum will be convened on November 22-24 as a platform for warmongering and empire building of U.S. imperialism and the NATO bloc, in which the Harper Government is fully embroiled. The first 2009 forum was dedicated to popularizing NATO’s then new “security doctrine.” Ensuing forums have provided a stage to justify NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” in Libya and Africa, Syria and Iran. Typical sessions in 2013 include “The West Today:  Calculated Power or Complete Paralysis?” Anti-war forces in Halifax, the headquarters of Maritime Command, have already given the call to continue and escalate the popular protests against the Halifax War Conference, declaring that war criminals are not welcome in Canada. In this, the first of a series of reference articles for our readers as to the aims behind such a forum, RICK ROZOFF traces the U.S.-crafted mission to expand NATO “into history’s largest and first international military bloc and an unprecedented threat to world peace.”

May 20-21 – NATO Summit in Chicago

The Chicago Summit is to consolidate “Global NATO” into the 22nd century the United States says. Mobilizations are underway to oppose the NATO and G8 Summits taking place in Chicago in May.

By RICK ROZOFF, Stop NATO

NATO incorporates Libyan experience for global war template

By RICK ROZOFF, Stop NATO

(June 18, 2011) – AS THE WEST’S WAR AGAINST LIBYA has entered its fourth month and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has flown more than 11,000 missions, including 4,300 strike sorties, over the small nation, the world’s only military bloc is already integrating lessons learned from the conflict into its international model of military intervention based on earlier wars in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Africa: Battleground for NATO’s 21st century Strategic Concept

By RICK ROZOFF*, Stop NATO

(May 20, 2011) – THE WAR by major North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states against Libya is in its third month and has been conducted under the official auspices of NATO for the past fifty days.

According to the military bloc’s daily online tally [1], Alliance military aircraft have flown over 7,200 missions and more than 2,800 combat flights since NATO inaugurated so-called Operation Unified Protector on March 31.

The world’s only military alliance stands to match or exceed the 78-day duration of its air war against Yugoslavia in 1999 if not to deploy troops in Libya in what could expand into protracted combat and occupation roles like those in Afghanistan and adjoining nations where the Pentagon and NATO will mark the tenth anniversary of their invasion this October 7.

Recently Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko “Pointed out that the operation in Libya is becoming the first actual litmus test for NATO’s new strategic concept,” [2] a reference to the latest Strategic Concept adopted by the 28-nation alliance at its summit in Lisbon, Portugal last November, the first in this century and since that endorsed at the Washington summit in 1999 when NATO was waging its first war (against Yugoslavia) and incorporating its first post-Cold War recruits (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland).

The war against Libya was also the test case for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the first overseas military command launched by the Pentagon since the end of the Cold War (its predecessor, Central Command, was created in 1983), whose Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn was in charge of bombing runs and cruise missile attacks in and a naval blockade of Libya from March 19-30.

What is the HISF, why you shouldn’t like it, and how you can protest it

By MILES HOWE

HALIFAX (November 4, 2010) – WITH the number of ghouls, goblins and ghastlies descending upon Halifax this weekend, you might be excused if you thought Halloween was a weekend late. But unlike All Hallows eve, those aren’t masks, the blood is real, and there is no candy. Only really nasty tricks. That’s right folks, lace up your boots, and get your placards and peace chants ready, because the 2nd Annual Halifax International Security Forum is coming to town!

Atlantic Council: Securing the 21st century for NATO

THIS indepth article by RICK ROZOFF of STOP NATO elaborates the most important features of the imperial agenda of the Obama Administration, particularly its so-called new security doctrine, to be adopted at the upcoming NATO Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, November 17-19. Along with profiling the imperialist cadre behind NATO in the USA and their links, it also deals with the retasking of the NATO bloc on a global basis, in which the Harper government is embroiling the Canadian people. It is published as background information on the Halifax International Security Forum, organized by the German Marshall Fund of Washington, which is interlinked with the Atlantic Council of NATO, and wholly funded by the Canadian Department of National Defence and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

Second Halifax War Conference: Get Canada Out of NATO! Dismantle NATO!

November 21, 2009: Haligonians mount a vigorous protest against the First Halifax International Security Forum.

TML calls on everyone to support and participate in the actions to oppose the Second Halifax International Security Forum (HISF) to be held at the Westin Hotel from November 5-7. Last year’s inaugural event at the same Halifax hotel was opposed by many groups across the Maritimes.

Halifax War Conference: Warmongers are not welcome in Halifax

All Out to Oppose the Second Annual Halifax International Security Forum

Picket at Forum Opening
Friday, November  5 – 3:00 pm

Westin Hotel, Hollis & South Streets.



Anti-War Rally – Saturday, November 6, 2010 – 1:00 pm

Halifax Peace & Freedom Park (formerly Cornwallis Park) Hollis & South Sts

Family-friendly event

Organized by: Ad Hoc Committee Against the Halifax War Conference, Halifax Peace Coalition, NSPIRG, CUPW, Food Not Bombs, and others

Vigorously oppose ‘Halifax International Security Forum’; All out to build the people’s movement against Imperialist war and aggression!

Nova Scotia Committee, Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)

THE Government of Canada has provided an astonishing budget of $2.5-million to fund the two-and-a-half-day “Halifax International Security Forum” to be held November 20-22. The organizing of the Forum is directly linked to promotion of the Atlantic Gateway, a project designed to facilitate rapid transport and military links between South Asia, the Middle East and the U.S. It is thus no accident that this “security forum” is to be held in the port of Halifax, headquarters of Maritime Command and the most important NATO military base in the North Atlantic.

All out to oppose ‘Halifax International Security Forum’! No Harbour for War!

Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls on all the peace-loving and anti-war forces of Halifax and the entire region – workers, youth, students and women – to go into action to oppose the so-called Halifax International Security Forum. Organized by the Canadian Department of National Defence and the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Forum will be held from November 20-22 at the Westin Hotel in Halifax. The official website of the conference states that although “serious conferences about regional and global security have traditionally been held outside of the United States and Canada … [t]oday’s new dangers require new thinking and new solutions, and the Halifax International Security Forum is the new venue to explore serious policy alternatives.”

All out to oppose the ‘Halifax International Security Forum’!

Halifax, December 1, 2004: Demonstration against visit to Halifax of war criminal U.S. President George W. Bush.

Call of the Nova Scotia Committee of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada, 4 October 2009

FROM NOVEMBER 20-22, the Canadian Department of National Defence and the US-based German Marshall Fund are convening the “Halifax International Security Forum” at the Westin Hotel in Halifax. We call on all the peace-loving and anti-war forces of this city and the entire region – workers, youth, students and women – to go into action to oppose this event and the dangerous preparations for imperialist war, which it serves.

‘Halifax International Security Forum’ – who is participating

Participants include

Robert Gates (US Defense Secretary & former chief of the CIA); Sen John McCain (Senate Armed Forces Committee); Gen Stanley McChrystal (Commander of ISAF); Stephen Hadley, George W. Bush National Security Advisor; Gen Victor Renuart (US head of NORAD); Adm Mark Fitzgerald (Cmdr, US Naval Forces Africa);

All out to oppose the Halifax War Conference!

By TONY SEED on behalf of Ad Hoc Committee of Haligonians to Oppose the Halifax War Conference

Endorsed by Halifax Peace Coalition • Student Coalition Against War • Nova Scotia Public Interest Group • Canada Palestine Association • Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) • Food Not Bombs

The imperial pitbull: NATO and its ‘Strategic Doctrine’

By Prof. EDWARD S. HERMAN

Anti-NATO demonstration on April 4, 2009 in Strasbourg. The NATO summit, marking the bloc’s 60th anniversary, took place on April 3 and 4, 2009 in Strasbourg and the neighbouring German cities of Baden-Baden and Kehl | AXEL SCHMIDT/AFP

One of the deceptive clichés of Western accounts of post World War II history is that NATO was constructed as a defensive arrangement to block the threat of a Soviet attack on Western Europe. This is false. It is true that Western propaganda played up the Soviet menace, but many key U.S. and Western European statesmen recognized that a Soviet invasion was not a real threat. The Soviet Union had been devastated, and while in possession of a large army it was exhausted and needed time for recuperation. The United States was riding high, the war had revitalized its economy, it suffered no war damage, and it had the atomic bomb in its arsenal, which it had displayed to the Soviet Union by killing a quarter of a million Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hitting the Soviet Union before it recovered or had atomic weapons was discussed in Washington, even if rejected in favour of “containment,” economic warfare, and other forms of destabilization. NSC 68, dated April 1950, while decrying the great Soviet menace, explicitly called for a program of destabilization aimed at regime change in that country, finally achieved in 1991.