A number of supposedly “non-partisan” US think tanks and public policy organizations---like Freedom House, the Henry Jackson Society, New America Foundation, Centre for American Progress, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs---will have representatives at the forum. Their degrees of partisanship differ, but they share a common goal---to bring democracy to the undemocratized masses of the world.
One prominent organization presenting at the Forum is Freedom House, headed up by the forum’s secretary, David Kramer. Freedom House has long been a supporter of aggressive US foreign policy. In 2006, Guy Dinmore of the *Financial Times* accused Freedom House of interfering in Iran using US State Department funding to engage in “clandestine activities” in that country..
The Forum will be protested by the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Halifax War Conference. The group---which wishes to see an end to NATO as well as war---will be holding a rally across the street from the hotel, at Cornwallis Park, rebranded by the protestors as the Halifax Peace and Freedom Park. Occupy Nova Scotia protestors are also planning to protest.