The Alliance of Sahel States (French: Alliance des États du Sahel), or AES is a confederation formed between Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, located in the Sahel region of Africa. The AES has been actively breaking colonial ties and its anti-imperialist stance has placed it in conflict with many of its African neighbours (as well as France, the former colonial master). Peace Alliance Winnipeg held a public forum on August 19, 2025 to explore this topic.
The forum was moderated by Canadian Dimension magazine columnist Owen Schalk and featured Professor Amina Mire of Carlton University and Prudence Iticka, an organizer with Black People United Calgary.
On June 24, 2025, members of and supporters of Peace Alliance Winnipeg rallied in Winnipeg to speak out against militarism and Canada’s membership in NATO. The rally was held in the wake of the recent illegal attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, the ongoing slaughter in Gaza by the Israeli military and plans announced by the Canadian government to greatly increase its level of military spending.
Peace Alliance Winnipeg held its annual general meeting on April 12, 2025. This year’s meeting featured a keynote address by Manitoba author Owen Schalk entitled “Confronting imperialism in the age of Western decline.” Owen is a columnist for Canadian Dimension, the author of Canada in Afghanistan: A story of military, diplomatic, political and media failure, 2003-2023 and the co-author of Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy with Yves Engler.
On March 20, 2025 I recorded the Winnipeg segment of the cross-country tour of Israeli refuseniks Tal Mitnick and Einat Gerlitz. The venue, Home Street Mennonite Church, was packed. The speakers were impressively articulate, poised and wise beyond their years.
In 2023, Tal Mitnick became the first conscientious objector to refuse military service after the October 7th attack by Hamas. After serving 185 days in military prison, Mitnick became a leader in the movement of young Israelis who are now refusing military service.
Einat Gerlitz was sentenced to 87 days in prison in 2022 for her refusal to join the Israeli army. An advocate for climate justice and LGBTQ+ rights, Gerlitz brings a feminist and queer perspective to her activism.
The pair were on a 12-city tour of Canada co-sponsored by Independent Jewish Voices Canada and the Mesarvot Network. Local sponsors in Winnipeg included the United Jewish People’s Order, Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba, Students for Justice in Palestine – University of Manitoba, Peace Alliance Winnipeg, MCM Palestine Israel Network, and the local chapter of Independent Jewish Voices.
Miguel Enríquez was a physician and a founder of the Chilean Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria – MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left). He was General Secretary of the MIR between 1967 and his death, on October 5, 1974, in a gunfight with agents of Chile’s secret police, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, a Gestapo-like tool of the Pinochet dictatorship that tortured and murdered opponents of that vicious regime with impunity.
On October 5, 2024, members of Winnipeg’s Chilean-Canadian community celebrated his life and work. A half-century has passed, but the hopes and dreams for a better world live on. As Canadian singer-songwriter Nancy White sang about Víctor Jara, another famous Chilean murdered by Pinochet’s thugs, “they killed the man but they couldn’t kill the song!”
Professor Michael Lynk, who teaches law at the University of Western Ontario, served as the United Nations “Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967” from 2016 to 2022. He spoke in Winnipeg on October 18, 2024, about the occupation of Palestinian territory by the State of Israel, why this has been judged illegal under international law and why Israel stands accused of the crimes of genocide and apartheid.
Professor Lynk’s appearance was co-sponsored by Canadian Muslims for Palestine, Peace Alliance Winnipeg, Independent Jewish Voices Winnipeg, Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba, University of Manitoba Muslim Students’ Association, Diversity for Palestine and Faculty for Palestine.
On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. On August 9th, the Americans dropped another atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki. The immediate combined death toll of the two raids was about 200,000. Over the decades that followed, many more thousands would suffer and perish from radiation induced illnesses.
Winnipeg is one of more than 8400 cities that belong to Mayors for Peace, an organization devoted to nuclear disarmament. Annually, in early August, Winnipeggers gather to affirm their commitment to peace and freedom from nuclear terror with a Lanterns for Peace Ceremony.
In this video, co-authors Yves Engler and Owen Schalk discuss their most recent book, one which reveals Canada’s foreign policy to be profoundly antidemocratic and in service to imperial and corporate interests. In their book, Schalk and Engler describe and analyze Canada’s role in the overthrow of twenty democratically elected governments between 1953 and the present day.
Yves Engler is a Montréal-based activist and author who has published 12 books and is a columnist for Canadian Dimension. In recent years Yves has sought to mobilize activists to confront politicians through peaceful, direct action. He has interrupted about two dozen speeches/press conferences by the prime minister, ministers and opposition party leaders to question their militarism, anti-Palestinian positions, climate policies, imperialism in Haiti and efforts to topple Venezuela’s government.
Owen Schalk is a writer from rural Manitoba. In addition to co-authoring Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy, he is a columnist for Canadian Dimension magazine and the author of Canada in Afghanistan: A story of military, diplomatic, political and media failure, 2003-2023. He is currently working on his third book, which details Canada’s role in the 2011 NATO war on Libya.
Winnipeg, April 4, 2024: Members of Peace Alliance Winnipeg marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with an information picket in the Osborne Villlage neighbourhood of Winnipeg. Following is the text of the statement they distributed.
Canada Must Get Out of NATO It’s High Time and Long Overdue!
The Biden Administration and the heads-of states of other Western powers, including Canada, are preparing to mark the 75th anniversary of the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It will be a gala affair, with much fanfare and chest-thumping among the economic and political elites. But NATO’s continued existence is nothing to celebrate; rather, it is a time for a sober reappraisal of the dangerous role of this political-military alliance, and of Canada’s membership within it.
Neither the parties in the Canadian parliament nor the mainstream corporate media are prepared to seriously examine, much less question, our NATO status. And yet it is precisely our NATO membership – and the ‘obligations’ that entails – which is the mechanism driving increased military spending and preparations for more aggression and war.
Peace activists and organizations in Quebec and across the rest of Canada, together with allies in the labour and people’s movements, need to move this festering issue to the front burner, and intensify grassroots efforts across the country to demand Canada’s withdrawal from NATO and call for the dissolution of this dangerous military pact as a whole.
NATO was formed on April 4, 1949, with Canada as one of its founding members. This aggressive alliance was ostensibly created to preserve peace and stability, and to “safeguard the freedoms of its peoples”, based on the “principles of democracy” and “the rule of law”. Its primary raison-d’être however was to prepare for war against the former Soviet Union, which it considered an existential threat to ‘Western values’, the capitalist order and the maintenance of U.S. hegemony around the world.
Ever since its founding in April 1949, NATO has served as the vehicle to spur the arms race in the name of ‘peace through strength’. In that very same year, the Truman Administration in the United States secretly developed “Operation Dropshot’ to launch a devastating nuclear ‘first-strike’ against the former Soviet Union. Throughout the ‘cold war’ years, the U.S. and its NATO allies always maintained an overwhelming military superiority over the USSR and the Warsaw Pact – a fact that they cynically concealed from public view at the time, but now readily admit.
But NATO did not dissolve when, in the early 1990s, the USSR was dismantled and broken up (along with the Warsaw Treaty). Instead, it seized the opportunity to launch a massive expansion program into Eastern Europe, right up to the borders of the Russian Federation. In February 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker promised that NATO would not expand eastward following the reunification of Germany. His famous phrase “not one inch” was followed by a relentless NATO expansion program.
U.S. imperialist wars, taken under the mantle of NATO, have included the 78-day aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in October 2001, and the toppling of the Kaddafi government in Libya in 2011, to name only a few examples.
At its core, NATO is the muscle enforcing class domination on behalf of Western monopolies and banks, and reflects the colonialist, supremacist policies of its ruling elites. Through its ‘Partnership’ program, NATO is extending its tentacles far beyond the North Atlantic. And it is now openly preparing to launch an Asian variant of NATO, extending its sphere of operations to the Far East to tighten the encirclement of the People’s Republic of China. In today’s world, NATO has become the primary obstacle to peace and stability. Its policies of confrontation are global in scope. Take the war in Ukraine, for example. In the early days of that horrendous conflict, Washington dispatched its NATO puppet, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Kyiv on April 9, 2022 to block a potential peace treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The proposed treaty would have seen the Russian Federation withdraw its troops in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality but NATO insisted on trying to bring Ukraine into the alliance. The results of NATO meddling have been catastrophic for Ukraine with hundreds of thousands killed and injured.
The USA is aggressively pursuing a similar approach in south-east Asia. With support from Canada and other NATO powers, the U.S. empire is trying to provoke a confrontation with China over the province of Taiwan. This provocation includes “academic exchanges” with Taiwanese military personnel being trained at NATO’s Defence College in Rome and training its fighter pilots in the United States, selling weapons to the island province dating from 1979, stationing U.S. troops and regular navy war ships and aircraft passing through the Taiwan Strait. Clearly such actions promote instability in the region and can certainly lead to another war.
NATO promotes instability, aggression and war around the world. On behalf of U.S. imperialism, it threatens, intimidates and uses military might to plunder any country or region in service of its economic and geopolitical interests. It is a monster driving a new round of militarization, bringing humanity to the precipice of nuclear annihilation. It must be dismantled, and Canada must free itselffrom its shackles and move towards a foreign policy of peace and disarmament, based on the UN Charter and international law. Canada’s membership in NATO comes with an incredibly high price-tag. It chains our country to an aggressive, militaristic alliance dominated by the United States, and makes it virtually impossible to deviate from foreign policy decisions made in Washington DC. For instance, NATO’s nuclear “first-use” policy is routinely trotted out as an excuse why Canada (and other NATO countries) must refuse to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Canada’s NATO commitment also drains massive amounts of budget resources away from desperately needed social programs such as health, education, housing and environmental protection. NATO demands member countries commit 2% of their annual GDP to war and aggression, euphemistically referred to as “defence spending”. Currently Canada wastes $35 billion on war preparations, but with Canada’s $2.9 trillion GDP, that means $58 billion annually must be diverted away from social programs and services like education, healthcare, affordable housing and environmental protection.
The Canadian Peace Congress and the Mouvement Québécois pour la Paix are organizing a country-wide campaign to get Canada out of NATO (as well as NORAD and the ‘Five Eyes’ spy network). This will include organizing public protest actions on Saturday, April 6, 2024 in as many cities and localities as possible. We are also producing leaflets and posters denouncing NATO, educational activities to expose the true nature of this criminal organization, and other initiatives. We appeal to our local Peace Councils and affiliated members, and to other anti-war, labour, women’s and youth organizations to support and join these anti-NATO actions, and to help promote cooperation in building a stronger, more effective peace movement across Canada.
Canada Out of NATO! No to war, Yes to Peace!
Winnipeg, April 4, 2024: Members of Peace Alliance Winnipeg marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with an information picket in the Osborne Villlage neighbourhood of Winnipeg. Photos and video by Paul S. Graham
Winnipeg, March 24, 2024: Members of the Manitoba-Cuba Solidarity Committee rallied to show support for the Cuban people in their six-decade struggle to end the United States economic blockade of their country. Following is the text of a statement the Committee distributed at the rally.
BIDEN, END THE CRIMINAL U.S. BLOCKADE OF CUBA!! TAKE CUBA OFF THE STATE SPONSORS OF TERRORISM LIST!! LET CUBA LIVE!!
Statement of Manitoba-Cuba Solidarity Committee for the Rally Against the Blockade, March 24, 2024
Protests in Santiago de Cuba last Sunday – people worried about the serious shortages of food, electricity and other basic necessities – have been used by the U.S. and enemies of Cuba to stir up calls once again for regime change in Cuba. The international media has called them ‘anti-government’ protests. A U.S. Department of State official posted “The United States stands with the Cuban people as they exercise their rights to assemble peacefully. The Cuban government will not be able to meet the needs of its people until it embraces democracy and the rule of law and respects the rights of Cuban citizens.”
This statement is a blatant threat and the height of hypocrisy! It is the U. S. blockade of Cuba, now in its 62nd year, and Trump’s addition of Cuba to the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in 2021, one week before his term as President ended, that have caused and exacerbated the economic crisis in Cuba which has led to the serious shortages of necessities around the country.
An infamous U.S. declassified 1960 document (one year after the victory of the Cuban Revolution) written by Lester Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs concludes that “the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” It adds . . . “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba”. The ‘every possible means’ over the years have included bombings, military interventions, sabotage, assassination attempts in addition to the provisions of the Blockade. The financial damage to the Cuban economy has added up to more than 1 trillion U.S. dollars. Had Cuba not been subjected to the Blockade for 62 years, its ability to develop the economy and meet ALL the needs of the Cuban people would have led the way in the world to showing what a socialist economy could accomplish.
In spite of all the efforts, the Cuban people are strong and determined. They will survive this latest attempt as they have overcome all the attempts from the U.S. over the past decades to bring Cuba back into its fold, to become once again a playground for the rich, a colony with materials and labour to exploit.
Cuba will defend socialism and its right to independence, sovereignty and self-determination.
Cuba has so many friends all around the world! The solidarity movement in Canada and in the heartland of imperialism is strong and will not falter. It is our role to continue supporting Cuba in its defense of humanity, on its path to determining its own society and future.
President Biden, you have just over 7 months left in this term. Do something positive and . . .
TAKE CUBA OFF THE SSOT LIST! END THE BLOCKADE OF CUBA! LET CUBA LIVE!
