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COAT
has held
marches, rallies, conferences and many campaigns
to oppose arms sales, to protest the glorification of warplanes at
family 'air shows,'
to raise concerns about war toys, to expose CPP
investments in weapons industries, to challenge Canada's role in
US/NATO-led wars, and to unmask the UN's Canadian-led
'Responsibility-to-Protect' doctrine. While imperial
wars are cloaked as peace missions, they remain an institutionalized racket. The confidence scams of war racketeers use
propaganda to entrap their marks with deceits like 'defence' &
'security.' Such euphemistic sleights of hand hide the real, economic reasons for war.
From ARMX to CANSEC:
Over the decades, COAT has exposed and opposed ten arms
trade shows in Ottawa. Our first campaign against
ARMX '89, led
Ottawa to ban all such shows from
city property. By cancelling ARMX '91 during
the Iraq
War, they avoided bad PR for arms buyers, sellers and users.
Rebranding itself "Peacekeeping '93," it was held at a province-owned
centre downtown (when Bob Rae's NDP was in power). This show was later replaced by CANSEC.
Between 1997 and 2002, COAT led protests at Ottawa's militarised "air
show" and its trade show event. In 2008, COAT rallied opposition to three
arms expos. These were cancelled, and protesters were blamed. That year, COAT
began a huge effort to stop Ottawa
from ending its 20-year ban. To Ottawa's shame, arms shows were allowed
back on
city property. CANSEC has now moved to a private venue near the airport.
Although CANSEC '20 was banned due to COVID,
the struggle continues!
Press
for Conversion!
(P4C!)
magazine
began in early 1990. In its first decade, P4C! was a
quarterly focused on converting military industries to socially-useful,
eco-friendly, civilian uses.
In the late 1990s, P4C!
embraced a broader view. Because the virus of war
profiteering has so deeply infected our body politic, the
idea of conversion needs to include transforming a wide variety of
institutions, reallocating budgets, changing official narratives,
rethinking history and renewing the social-change movement. Each issue of
P4C! explores a different anti-war subject. Many have
focused on dispelling national peace myths about "Canadian values." These
captivating myths are
effective in conjuring support for wars because they inspire public faith
in the deceit that
Canada is a global force for peace, human rights and
democracy.
COAT
and Press for Conversion!
were started by
Richard Sanders,
who maintains this website.
Here are some of his COAT articles
which debunk various aspects of Canada's national peace mythology.
See 160 newsclips about ARMX
Learn more about each issue
or click any of the 30 covers below
COAT's website
Canada Pension Plan
Investments in War
The Freeland-Chomiak
Connection
(March 2017)
These 21 articles provide details about the WWII career of
Chrystia Freeland's maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, the Nazi's top Ukrainian
news propagandist. It also reveals much about her own work since the late 1980s
when she was:
(1) a political activist meddling in the politics of
Soviet Ukraine, and (2) a journalist for four, far-right
media entities with close links to the Ukrainian fascism.
Chomiak had previously been deeply involved in two of the Edmonton-based
publications that Freeland worked for.
Read a summary
Freeland Watch on
Facebook
Mothers'
Day at the War Show
Watch COAT's 30-minute anti-war film
for free online!
Narrated by Ottawa's former Mayor, Marion Dewar.
'Air shows'
epitomize a cultural epidemic in which the
world's most advanced weapons systems are glorified
as a major source of family fun and entertainment.
When Ottawa's highly-militarized 'air show' was held on Mothers' Day, May 11, 1997, COAT set up a display inside the show to exhibit original paintings by Iraqi children. This film jarringly juxtaposes war planes doing air-show stunts for thrilled families; Pentagon footage of these same kinds of war planes that bombed Iraq; pilots doing runway poses for adoring fans; air-show kids gleefully describing their favourite war planes; interviews from Iraq with victims of the war describing the effect of aerial attacks, and former US Att.Gen. Ramsey Clarke who describes the horror of economic sanctions. These sanctions, enforced throughout the 1990s by the US, Canada and others, killed 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five! There are statements by Iraqi mothers, songs by Iraq Kurds and the Raging Grannies, degrading images of woman painted on US and UK warplanes that bombed Iraq, and footage of peace activists at work inside the show, including the film-maker interviewing his own mother. (Learn more here.)
Read
COAT's magazine free online
Click here to access all of the articles,
to read summaries of each issue
and to see reviews by supporters
The UPCOMING issue of
Press for
Conversion!
Cold War Canada:
The WWII Collaborationist Origins
and Ongoing Propaganda Efforts of
EthnoNationalist,
East European
Émigré Groups in Canada
Before and during WWII Canada's Liberal government refused the entry of Jewish and communist refugees trying to flee Nazi repression in Europe. During the war, when Britain sent such refugees to Canada (mixed among POWs) Canada imprisoned about 2300 Jews and communists in eight prison camps in three provinces.
In contrast, right after WWII, Canada's Cold-War Liberal government gave safe haven to about 100,000 antiSoviet émigrés from eastern and central Europe. The founders and early leaders of the ethnonationalist organizations that these émigrés built in Canada were riddled with Nazi collaborators, including Holocaust perpetrators, war criminals and veterans of fascist armies that had fought Canada's Red-Army allies and its partisans.
The upcoming issue of Press for Conversion! will examine the political origins of these ethnonationalist associations in Canada which still represent diaspora of the following identities: Czechs, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Slovaks and Ukrainians. The publication will document the close, Cold-War collaboration between these groups and various Canadian governments, Liberal and Conservative, as well as examine their links to such far-right networks as the AntiBolshevik Bloc of Nations, the World AntiCommunist League, and the CIA.
Indigenous Slaves and the Captivating Narratives of a Mythic Nation
Renditions of the Peaceable Kingdom at War, from Narratives of WWI and the Red Scare to Mass Civilian Internment
CPP Investments in Corporations Supporting Israel's
Military-, Police-, Surveillance-, Prison-Industrial Complex
SILENT PARTNER:
Canada's Quiet Complicity
in the Iraq War
War is Business
How CIDA-funded 'NGOs' waged a propaganda war
to justify Haiti’s 2004 coup
in Aiding & Abetting:
CIDA's Agents of Regime Change in Haiti's 2004 Coup
Haiti's 2004 Coup:
Funding Regime Change, Dictatorship and Human Rights Atrocities, one Haitian 'NGO' at a Time"
Coup in Haiti:
The Top 10 Ways that Canada’s Government helped the 2004 Coup
and its Reign of Terror
in Afghanistan:
How "Democracy" Empowered
our Allies - the Fundamentalists,
Warlords & Drug Barons
The Warfighters’
Eye in the Sky and its
links to "Missile Defense
Trojan Horse for the
Weaponization of Space
The Apple does not Fall Far
from the BUSH
Sea-based, Theatre
Ballistic Missile Defense
NORAD, Government
Largesse and the ABC’s
of Corporate Complicity
Corporate Roots
of American Fascism
Embedded Complicity:
Canada, Playing our Part
in the Business of War
and Regime Changes
in the Middle East and
North Africa since WWII
The American use of
War Pretext Incidents
for the Invasion of Iraq?
Reaching New Heights in the Glorification of War
Understanding the
India-Pakistan Conflict
Oil, Terror and the
War Against Afghanistan
Militarism and
Corporate Globalization
Fuelling wars and abusing international human/labor rights
of the CIA:
The Subversion of Democracy from Australia to Zaire
to War and Injustice
COAT Research Archive
Click above for past reports, articles,
tables and databases including:
WikiWeapons Canada
A detailed database of Canadian military exports to
the US
Profiting from the
Slaughter of Innocents in Iraq
An Exposé
of Canadian War Industries aiding and abetting
production of major US Weapons Systems in the Iraq War
Canadian
Military Exports to Countries at War
Canadian Military
Exports to Israel:
Aiding and Abetting
War Crimes in Gaza (2008-2009)
Canada's military
exports Middle East and North Africa
Seven different tables detailing exports
of small arms, explosives, ammunition, armoured vehicles and more.
A Chronology of
Haitian Protest and Resistance
immediately after the January 12, 2010, Earthquake
InvAID:
The Militarisation of Aid to Haiti
of Nuclear Weapons
COAT Slide Shows
Iraq, Afghanistan and
Missile-Defense weapons
Making a
Killing!
The CPP's War Investments in the News!
Escaping the Canada
Syndrome
Deception, Delusion and Duplicity in the Peaceable
Kingdom
Arms Trade Treaty (ATT)
The top supporters of the UN's ATT are the governments of the world's top weapons exporters. So, why do so many large mainstream peace, human rights and development organizations also support it?
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