On September 11, 1973, Popular Unity Government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a violent coup d’état carried out by the Chilean military with the backing of the government of the United States. The coup leader, General Augusto Pinochet, implemented a bloody campaign of torture, imprisonment and murder. Thousands were killed; thousands more imprisoned; perhaps 200 thousand more were forced into exile. Several hundred found a safe haven in Winnipeg, Canada.
These political exiles, along with friends and supporters in Winnipeg, came together at the Franco-Manitoban Cultural Centre on September 11, 2023 to remember those dark, terrifying days from half a century ago and to honour the many brave men and women who resisted Pinochet’s tyranny. Here is the video I recorded of this commemoration.
Winnipeg, August 9, 2023 — Winnipeggers held a Lanterns for Peace Ceremony to mark the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These ceremonies are conducted each year to help keep alive the memory of these attacks so that current generations understand we must never allow nuclear weapons to be used again.
This year, our focus is on the need for Canada to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by the UN July 7, 2017. Winnipeg is now one of 19 Canadian cities to support the treaty. Thus far, 92 countries have signed the treaty; Canada’s federal government refuses to support it.
Winnipeg Lanterns for Peace 2023 was sponsored by Peace Alliance Winnipeg, the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba, and the Winnipeg Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
In this webinar, organized by Peace Alliance Winnipeg, Colleen Bell and Yves Engler explain how governments in Canada and the United States shape public opinion to support their wars. The webinar was moderated by Professor Radhika Desai.
Panelists
Colleen Bell: Professor Bell is an associate professor in the political studies department at the University of Saskatchewan. She is an international relations scholar specializing in theorizations of war and security, and the contested boundary between military and civilian operations in Western counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and stabilizations missions. She is author of The Freedom of Security: Governing Canada in the Age of Counterterrorism (UBC Press) and co-editor of War, Police and Assemblages of Intervention (with Jan Bachmann and Caroline Holmqvist). Her current research projects examine police power in global politics, martial public diplomacy, and the security politics of Canada’s feminist foreign policy. Bell is past president of the International Studies Association-Canada section and current editor of Critical Studies on Security.
Yves Engler: Dubbed “Canada’s version of Noam Chomsky” (Georgia Straight), “one of the most important voices on the Canadian Left” (Briarpatch), “in the mould of I. F. Stone” (Globe and Mail), “part of that rare but growing group of social critics unafraid to confront Canada’s self-satisfied myths” (Quill & Quire), “ever-insightful” (Rabble), “Chomsky-styled iconoclast” (Counterpunch) and a “Leftist gadfly” (Ottawa Citizen), Yves Engler (yvesengler.com) has twelve published books. His latest is Stand on Guard for Whom? — A People’s History of the Canadian Military.
Radhika Desai (moderator) is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, at the University of Manitoba. Her books include Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy (2023), Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month.
On August 12, 2023, supporters of Palestinian liberation in Winnipeg held a vigil across from the Israeli Folklorama Pavilion to raise awareness of the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
Canada has declared war on the environment. That is the only conclusion one can draw after viewing Tamara Lorincz’s presentation at the most recent annual meeting of Peace Alliance Winnipeg (of which I am a proud member).
In her talk, Tamara discusses the key lessons contained in three reports – the 6th Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Canada’s most recent federal government budget, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) most recent report on the arms trade.
With the IPCC advising that the planet has to reduce green house gas emissions by almost half by 2030, it seems indisputable that Canada is on the wrong path. Over the past decade, Canadian military spending has increased by 70 per cent. We rank 13th in terms of military spending and Trudeau’s budget commits Canada to spending $55 billion on the military over the next 20 years. According to SIPRI, Canada is the 16th largest seller of arms on Earth.
This is not only a deadly misallocation of resources that could be better spend elsewhere, but war is bloody assault on Mother Earth and all living creatures that are caught in its path.
Tamara’s expertise is indisputable. Tamara is a member of the Canadian Pugwash Group, the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She is on the international board of Global Network Against Nuclear Power and Weapons in Space. Tamara was a co-founding member of the Vancouver Island Peace and Disarmament Network (now World Beyond War-Victoria).
Tamara has an LLB/JD and MBA specializing in environmental law and management from Dalhousie University. She is the former Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Environmental Network and co-founder of the East Coast Environmental Law Association. For several years she was on the national board of Ecojustice Canada and the Nova Scotia Minister’s Round Table on Environment and Sustainable Prosperity.
Her research interests are the military’s impacts on the environment and climate change, the intersection of security and peace, gender and international relations, Canadian defence and foreign policy, feminist foreign policy, disarmament, resistance to NATO, and military sexual violence.
Short story: she knows her stuff!
Now is not the time for Canada to increase military spending. We need to work for an end to the war in Ukraine, dial down the China bashing and work for a world in which nations share their wealth and lift each other up.
Free Speech for Peace was presented by Ethnorama News Winnipeg and Al Cafe and recorded at Winnipeg’s historic Ukrainian Labour Temple on March 31, 2023.
The event arose out of a need to raise money to sustain this alternative publication when key advertisers (local NDP Members of Parliament) opted to stop advertising because they disagreed with some of its content. (If you want to know more, watch the video.)
The Ukrainian Festival Choir
Speakers emphasized the need to support media that provide informed alternatives to the mainstream news media in their role as stenographers to the ruling class. But, of course we knew all of that; that’s why we were there. The evening was well attended, entertaining and informative — and featured excellent performances by the Ukrainian Festival Choir, the Quedel Dancers, Rodrigo Muñoz of Papa Mambo fame, and the ever popular Raging Grannies of Winnipeg.
At the close of the evening, journalist, lawyer and peace activist Dimitri Lascaris spoke to the audience in a pre-recorded video about his upcoming fact-finding mission to Russia and the ever-present need for people to find ways to speak with their adversaries.
Listening to Dimitri reminded me of how much better Canada’s Green Party’s politics would have developed had he succeeded in becoming party leader in 2020. Maybe the party would have continued to support nonviolence. But I digress . . .
Proceeds of the evening went to support the publication of Ethnorama News Winnipeg. Sponsors included Las Americas and Chilean Human Rights Council, Peace Alliance Winnipeg, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, Migrante Manitoba, Al Cafe, the Solidarity Committee for Ethiopian Political Prisoners, and Philippine Advancement through Arts and Culture.
Joining with peace groups across Canada and around the world, Peace Alliance Winnipeg marked the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine with an information picket in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village. Here’s a bit of video I shot at that less-than-toasty-warm action.
Winnipeg, January 21, 2023: Members of Peace Alliance Winnipeg distributed literature in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village calling for an immediate ceasefire and negotiated peace agreement to end the Ukraine War. Following is the statement they distributed. Please share widely.
More war and weapons are not the way to peace!
Statement of Peace Alliance Winnipeg, January 21, 2023
On January 18 NATO’s secretary general said “Weapons are the way to peace” in Ukraine and this was echoed by Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand as she announced Canada will send more weapons to Ukraine.
The world has been gripped by the dangers and repercussions of the war in Ukraine for almost one year. There have been disruptions to food and energy supplies and soaring inflation as a result of the war.
The cost of the war is mounting as Canada and NATO countries spend billions of dollars to fuel the war. Canada alone has spent $5 billion on this war, $1 billion of which has been for weapons. With NATO weapons and support for Ukraine there is the ever-present danger the war will escalate into a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.
As the war has progressed various facts have emerged and none of them support this war or pouring more Canadian supplied weapons into Ukraine.
First, a peaceful, united Ukraine is not the goal of Zelensky and the reactionary Ukrainian nationalist ideology that predominates in the Kyiv government. One year ago, the Kyiv government was engaged in an eight-year civil war with its population in the Donbas that killed 14,000 and forced one million to flee the region. That conflict stemmed from the 2014 Maidan coup organized by the US to ensure Ukraine would be in its sphere of influence.
Second, as recently revealed by Merkel, Poroshenko and Macron, the Minsk Agreements, signed in 2014 to end the civil war in eastern Ukraine were but a diplomatic ruse to prepare Ukraine for war with Russia. This war, though maybe not to the timing of NATO and the West, was long in the works.
Third, the Canadian government is not interested in peace in Ukraine. One year ago, Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland described the lead up to the war as a battle between ‘democracy and autocracy.’ Clearly, this war is motivated by the ideology of the Cold War. Ukraine is the proxy to wage that war. Thus, Canada continues to pour weapons into Ukraine with recent announcements of $400 million for a US missile defence system and $90 million for 200 armoured vehicles.
This war could have been averted. Time to say enough is enough, drop the cold war ideology and end the use of Ukraine as a US/NATO proxy. The urgent need is for a de-escalation of the conflict, a ceasefire and negotiations for peace.
Canadian MPs need to hear this message. We urge you to contact your MP and urge them to support a ceasefire and peace negotiations.
Winnipeg, Oct. 28, 2022: Members of Peace Alliance Winnipeg picketed outside Winnipeg’s Delta Inn, site of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress conference, attended by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Defence Minister Anita Anand.
In this webinar, viewers discuss the film Haiti Betrayed with director, Elaine Brière, and the current Haitian situation with activist Jennie-Laure Sully. The webinar was hosted by Peace Alliance Winnipeg on Nov. 13, 2021.
Background
In 2004, Canada collaborated with the U.S. and France to overthrow Haiti’s elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, who enjoyed widespread support among the poorest Haitians. Since then, with Canada’s support, a series of right-wing governments have overturned Aristide’s reforms and violently repressed his supporters.
Released in 2019, Elaine Brière’s documentary, Haiti Betrayed, exposes the role Canada played in the 2004 coup. You can watch it here, in English or French.
Biographies
Elaine Brière
Elaine Brière is a Canadian filmmaker and photojournalist. Her first documentary, Bitter Paradise: The Sell-out of East Timor, won Best Political Documentary at the l997 HOT DOCS! festival and Production Excellence award at Seattle Women in Film in l998. Bitter Paradise aired on TVO, CBC Radio-Canada, CFCF-12 Montreal, BC Knowledge Network, SCN, WTN, PBS and Swedish National Television.
The Story of Canadian Merchant Seamen, released in 2006, aired on SCN and Knowledge Network and toured extensively in New Zealand, the UK and Australia.
Elaine’s photographs have been collected by the visual arts section of the National Archives of Canada. Her work has appeared in The Globe & Mail, the New York Review, Canadian Geographic, Carte-Blanche, and the Family of Women. East Timor, Testimony, was published in 2004. She is the founder of the East Timor Alert Network and received the Order of Timor-Leste in 2016 for her contribution towards the liberation of East Timor from Indonesian occupation.
Her current feature documentary, Haiti Betrayed, on the role of Canada in the 2004 coup d’état in Haiti, was released in late 2019. It was translated into French in the summer of 2020 and aired on TV5 in Québec and France.
Jennie-Laure Sully
Jennie-Laure Sully is a researcher at the Socioeconomic Research Institute (IRIS) and a community organizer at CLES, a center for sexually exploited women.
She studied anthropology and public health and has a master’s degree in biomedical sciences from the University of Montreal. She has worked as a research coordinator in hospitals and as a psycho-social caseworker in rape crisis centers.
Jennie is very active in the women’s movement and in the movement for the human rights of migrants. She was born in Haiti and moved to Quèbec with her family when she was 2 years old. Among the many causes she cares about, the fight against imperialism and for the sovereignty of Haiti is among her top priorities.
Paul S. Graham 