Ban the Halifax War Conference! Oppose Canada’s stated war aims!

November 21, 2009. Demonstration against the first Halifax International Security Forum demands “Warmongers Out of Halifax!”

Third in a series

From November 20 to 22, the 12th Halifax International Security Forum (HISF) convened as a platform for warmongering and empire-building of U.S. imperialism and the NATO bloc, in which the Trudeau Liberal government is fully embroiled. The HISF was convened in a virtual format. For the 12th consecutive year, the anti-war forces in Halifax are organizing to oppose it. On November 20, No Harbour for War organized a public anti-war webinar. On November 21, a rally is organized at Halifax Peace Park across from the venue of the HISF.

This Day. Allende and Chile: ‘Bring him down’

Salvador Allende’s Historic Inauguration 50 Years Later – Declassified White House Records Show How Nixon-Kissinger Set Strategy of Destabilization – And Why

Naul Ojeda photo

Briefing Book #732, National Security Archive, Edited by Peter Kornbluh and Savannah Bock

(Washington D.C., November 3) – Several days after Salvador Allende’s history-changing November 3, 1970, inauguration, Richard Nixon convened his National Security Council for a formal meeting on what policy the U.S. should adopt toward Chile’s new Popular Unity government. Only a few officials who gathered in the White House Cabinet Room knew that, under Nixon’s orders, the CIA had covertly tried, and failed, to foment a preemptive military coup to prevent Allende from ever being inaugurated. The SECRET/SENSITIVE NSC memorandum of conversation revealed a consensus that Allende’s democratic election and his socialist agenda for substantive change in Chile threatened U.S. interests, but divergent views on what the U.S. could, and should do about it. “We can bring his downfall, perhaps, without being counterproductive,” suggested Secretary of State William Rogers, who opposed overt hostility and aggression toward Chile. “We have to do everything we can to hurt [Allende] and bring him down,” agreed the secretary of defense, Melvin Laird.

This Day. The CIA and Chile: Anatomy of an Assassination

General René Schneider official portrait

(October 22, 2020) – On October 23, 1970, one day after armed thugs intercepted and mortally wounded the Chilean army commander-in-chief, General Rene Schneider, as he drove to work in Santiago, CIA Director Richard Helms convened his top aides to review the covert coup operations that had led to the attack. “[I]t was agreed that … a maximum effort has been achieved,” and that “the station has done excellent job of guiding Chileans to point today where a military solution is at least an option for them,” stated a Secret cable of commendation transmitted that day to the CIA station in Chile. “COS [Chief of Station] … and Station [deleted] are commended for accomplishing this under extremely difficult and delicate circumstances.”

This Day. ‘Extreme Option – Overthrow Allende’

National Security Archive marks 50th anniversary of Nixon order to foment coup in Chile

Salvador Allende on the street | Naul Ojeda

(September 15) – On September 15, 1970, during a twenty-minute meeting in the Oval Office between 3:25 pm and 3:45 pm, President Richard Nixon ordered the CIA to foment a military coup in Chile. According to handwritten notes taken by CIA Director Richard Helms, Nixon issued explicit instructions to prevent the newly elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, from being inaugurated in November – or to create conditions to overthrow him if he did assume the presidency. “1 in 10 chance, perhaps, but save Chile.” “Not concerned [about] risks involved,” Helms jotted in his notes as the President demanded regime change in the South American nation that had become the first in the world to freely elect a Socialist candidate. “Full time job – best men we have.” “Make the economy scream.” 

On the 47th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile

September 11 marks the 47th anniversary of the US imperialist coup d’état organized in Chile. To this day, relatives of the victims are fighting to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice.

March in Santiago, September 2017, commemorates 44th anniversary of the coup in Chile.

By Dougal MacDonald

September 11 marks the 47th anniversary of the U.S. imperialist coup d’état organized in Chile in which the Pinochet regime murdered, tortured, and imprisoned thousands of people. On this occasion, let us remembers the victims of the Pinochet regime and Operation Condor[1] that extended these crimes to Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. To this day, relatives of the victims are fighting to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice.

The other side of the Washingon Post’s Katharine Graham

The Post’s Watergate team, including from left to right, publisher Katharine Graham, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, Howard Simons, and editor Ben Bradlee.

Hollywood loves to make heroes of The Washington Post, whose sole owner is a CIA contractor, for the rare moments when it has seemingly stood up for journalism – while forgetting the blood-soaked cases of the Post spreading lies to justify wars, writes NORMON SOLOMON*. To this day it continues to violate universal journalistic protocol by refusing to disclose its $600 million conflict of interest when reporting on the US intelligence community. Its recent efforts include publishing a predictably fact-challenged op-ed arguing that the US Congress must reauthorize the surveillance program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is deliberately used to collect communications of US citizens. – TS

(Dec. 20) – Movie critics are already hailing “The Post,” directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Meryl Streep as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. Millions of people will see the film in early winter. But the real-life political story of Graham and her newspaper is not a narrative that’s headed to the multiplexes.

Liberal cabinet ministers’ selfies with notorious war criminals (1)

It is very distressing to many Canadians to see the Minister of Canadian Heritage Mélanie Joly and Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains twittering like tweens from Washington with those they clearly consider to be the heroes of modern American history, war criminals Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell. It brings the Trudeau government no honour to portray people such as these as someone to emulate.

John Pilger on ISIS: Only when we see the war criminals in our midst will the blood begin to dry

 By JOHN PILGER / johnpilger.com

In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”.  As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s murderous honesty.

US Senator McCain calls police on anti-Kissinger protesters

Warmongering Sen. McCain, who praises mercenaries in Libya and Syria as his “heroes” and “moderates” and dines with Ukrainian fascists in Kiev, promptly orders the arrest of anti-war Americans and denigrates them as “low-life scum.”

By PATRICK MARTIN

wsws.org (Jan. 31) –John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the Capitol police and had antiwar activists arrested and ejected from a hearing Thursday when they protested the appearance of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Cuba mourns anniversary of terrorist bombing of Cubana Flight 455

“The reality that the U.S. government failed to charge Posada with terrorism — in connection with either the Cubana bombing, or the 1997 Havana hotel bombings — is a travesty of justice,” said Canadian author Stephen Kimber.

Cuba protests the release of Posada Carriles in the United States, 2007 | Photo: EFE

TeleSUR (Oct. 6) – Twenty-five years before September 11 there was October 6.

In 1976, on October 6, anti-Castro terrorists planted and ignited two bombs on a Cuban passenger plane killing all 73 passengers and five crew members on board after it crashed off of the coast of Barbados. It was Cubana de Aviacion, flight 455.

Stephen Kimber, author of “What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five,” told teleSUR English it was “the most deadly act of air terrorism in the Americas prior to 9/11.”

Kissinger and Ford considered attack on Cuba to defend apartheid South Africa

Cuba’s direct, critical and extensive role in the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa is little known in the West. November 5th marks the 39th anniversary of Cuba’s decision to deploy combat-troops, at the request of the Angolan government, to repulse a major South African invasion of October 1975. Now a new book confirms previously secret plans to defend racist and fascist South Africa by “clobbering” the island Republic of Cuba itself. “I think we are going to have to smash Castro,” Kissinger told President Ford. 

The first page of the memorandum of conversation of the historic July 9, 1975, U.S.-Cuba meeting at the Pierre Hotel (see Document 9). (Click to enlarge)

(Oct. 1) – U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered a series of secret contingency plans that included airstrikes and mining of Cuban harbors in the aftermath of Fidel Castro’s decision to send Cuban forces into Angola in late 1975, according to declassified documents made public today for the first time. “If we decide to use military power it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures,” Kissinger instructed General George Brown of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a high-level meeting of national security officials on March 24, 1976, that included then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “I think we are going to have to smash Castro,” Kissinger told President Ford. “We probably can’t do it before the [1976 presidential] elections.”

“I agree,” the president responded.