Halifax International Security Forum/2012
The 2012 Halifax International Security Forum was held November 21-23, 2012, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.[1]
War lobbyism and agendas
The Halifax International Security Forum in November 2012 took place against the backdrop of the 2012 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip.[2][3] This conflict and the civil war in Syria were major topics of Forum debates. Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay stated that Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas,[4][5]
Regarding Syria, MacKay called on Russia to - very conveniently - help end the "civil war"[6]which in reality was a NATO regime change operation.
US Senators John McCain and Mark Udall called for a no-fly zone in Syria,[7] - which would have led to a direct confrontation with Russia. McCain dismissed any talk of a potential US ground intervention given the lack of popular support for such a step by the American people. "Americans are war-weary", the Senator declared.[2]
During a panel discussion on the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afghan politicians and business leaders described the situation in their country as "very, very vulnerable". According to Abdul Rahim Wardak, advisor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and former defense minister, Afghanistan needed "a lot of resources and patience on the part of the international community".[8]
At a panel on technology and modern warfare, Vic Toews, Canadian Minister of Public Safety, declared that Canada was "as prepared as anyone else" to defend itself against cyberattacks.[9] During the same panel, Minister MacKay announced plans to procure drones for the surveillance of Canada's Arctic territories.[9]
Sessions
Plenary Sessions[10]:
- Plenary 1: What is the New Normal and When Will It Get Here? "Before addressing the question of what the new normal will look like, it might be helpful to take a step back: Who will own the new normal? Are our perceptions of Western decline reasonable? Will China, for example, continue to rise in the manner we have come to expect over the last decade or two, or could it all come to a stuttering halt as it did in Japan, the last Asian power predicted to mount a major challenge to Western hegemony?"
- Plenary 2: Syria’s Terror, The Middle East’s Tragedy
- Plenary 3: Mischief or Miscalculation? China and the Rise of Confusion-ism
- Plenary 4: The Good Guys? The Special Burden of Democratic Nations
- Plenary 5: American Global Leadership After the Election
- Plenary 6: North America Off Foreign Oil and It’s Impacts Everywhere Else
- Plenary 7: Is Afghanistan Pakistan’s Problem? (Or Vice Versa?)
- Plenary 8: Automated or Automatic? Cyber, Drones and the Consequences of Modern Warfare
Known Participants
35 of the 335 of the participants already have pages here:
Participant | Description |
---|---|
John Barrasso | US physician and politician, multiple visits to the MSC |
Ian Brodie | Attended the 2008 Bilderberg as Chief of Staff to the Canadian Prime Minister |
Eliot Cohen | Spooky academic labelled "the most influential neocon in academe" |
Heather Conley | Spooky German Marshall Fund President 2022- |
Irwin Cotler | Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada 2003-2006. "Totally unabashed defender and supporter of Israel". Member of numerous spooky think-tanks. |
Paula Dobriansky | Spookily connected US politician |
Liam Fox | UK politician |
Wolfgang Ischinger | Spooky German diplomat. Chaired the Munich Security Conference |
Bruce Jackson | US spook. His later career focused on accelerating the integration of the Western Balkan countries, Turkey, Ukraine and Georgia into the European Union and NATO. Member of the Henry Jackson Society. |
Peter Jennings | US TV news anchor |
Josef Joffe | Publisher-editor of Die Zeit |
David Kramer | US academic with multiple deep state connections. Conduit for giving the Steele Dossier to Buzzfeed. |
Miroslav Lajčák | Slovak diplomat with WEF AGM habit |
Stephen Larrabee | RAND political scientist, MSC |
Peter Lavoy | US MIC "terror expert". |
Ariel Levite | Israeli nuclear expert and war hawk who attended Bilderberg/2012, where one of the subjects was "What Can the West Do about Iran?". Works for Carnegie Endowment. |
Gal Luft | "Terror expert" and co-founder of the Set America Free Coalition |
John McCain | Vietnam War veteran, sang about bombing Iran to voters, called the JFK assassination "the intervention". appears on a picture with Simon Elliot. |
Alan Mendoza | Executive Director of The Henry Jackson Society |
Pauline Neville-Jones | BBC governor, Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee |
Ana Palacio | Spanish politician, member of various spooky groups, signed the People’s Vaccine, attended 10 meetings of the Brussels Forum |
Tom Perriello | US politician |
Dana Priest | |
Alison Redford | Attended the 2012 Bilderberg as Premier of Alberta |
Rafal Rohozinski | Canadian expert and practitioner active in the fields of counterinsurgency, cyber warfare, and the globalization of armed violence. |
Gideon Rose | US journalist, WEF regular |
David Sanger | central New York Times correspondent |
Randy Scheunemann | US neocon foreign policy advisor to presidential candidate John McCain. |
Robin Shepherd | Former Moscow Bureau Chief for The Times now working for intelligence think tanks. |
Nobuo Tanaka | Executive Director of the International Energy Agency |
Mark Udall | US senator who publicly criticised the CIA torture programme. |
John Vinocur | US editor/journalist who attended Bilderberg/2005 and Bilderberg/2006. |
Kurt Volker | US deep state operative, US Permanent Representative to NATO |
Cansu Çamlibel | Turkish transatlantic journalist |
Cengiz Çandar | Turkish journalist with Middle East as expertise area |
References
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130628021417/http://halifaxtheforum.org/2012-forum/participants/2012-participants/
- ↑ a b https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/mccain-surprised-by-petraeus-testimony-on-benghazi/article5403190/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20121122001631/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-11/17/c_131980281.htm
- ↑ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/11/18/ns-security-summit-mackay.html
- ↑ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/mackay-urges-restraint-in-israeli-palestinian-conflict/article5405993/
- ↑ https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/11/18/peter_mackay_asks_russia_to_help_end_syrian_civil_war.html
- ↑ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/obama-urged-to-consider-no-fly-zone-in-syria/article5403768/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130605190856/http://o.canada.com/2012/11/18/stay-with-afghanistan-or-face-chaos-says-forum-panel/
- ↑ a b http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/181099-as-prepared-as-anyone-else
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130628021448/http://halifaxtheforum.org/2012-session-descriptions/