As we prepare this Annual Report we look back on a year of ever-increasing violence around the globe, and forward to more violence still, as the dogs of war pace and prowl, stripping their enemies of humanity while pleading the righteousness of aggression. This young millennium - a millennium that was promised to offer the dividends of peace - has been marked by the most intense militarization that the planet has ever seen, a militarization that is, for the first time, truly global.
This is the new significance of "globalization".
This militarization is not only the phenomenon of pervasive global military build-up and influence. It is the imposition of military logic, and the power of arms, to maintain or contain deep global social and political contradictions that instead demand understanding, tolerance, and justice to resolve.
Militarization is a process of control - social control and mind control, as much as physical coercion. And when nations, or empires, prepare for war, the people who must be conquered first are their own citizens, whose hearts and minds and bodies must be bent, by persuasion or force, to the political will of the state, and to its military ends. It is said that the first casualty of war is truth. In fact, the first casualty of war is civil liberty - the indispensable liberty of each of us to know the truth, to speak the truth, to act on the truth as free and conscious citizens.
Militarization and freedom cannot co-exist. The right arm of militarization is propaganda, and propaganda also is its shield. It is for this reason that military means so rarely bring about the ends of freedom that are so often used to justify aggression.
Propaganda's goal is to induce in citizens a will and desire to escape the responsibilities of free consciousness and political action - what Erich Fromm described as an "escape from freedom". All so that war can be waged in our name; the "Other" maimed and destroyed in our name; the "Other" conquered and controlled in our name.
And so today - in Canada just as certainly as in the rest of the world - we find that misinformation is so pervasive that it is difficult for citizens to trust any source, even to trust our own minds. And misinformation is not merely the charge of government. The concentration of media in the hands of singular ideological interests has transformed major information outlets into platforms for polemic, prejudice, and paranoia.
At the same time, however, we are also seeing a profound mobilization worldwide of citizens joining together to repudiate militarism, propaganda, and the erosion of freedom and human rights. These are people who are taking back their voice to declare: "Not in our name, this violence, this aggression - not in our name!"
Inter Pares acts in common cause with organizations around the world who are part of this mobilization and whose mission is to promote peace and freedom in their communities, their nations, and internationally. This is not merely a process of resistance. It is a positive movement to re-invent peace and freedom in our societies and in all that we do, acting in our own name, and in common cause with others who have taken back their voice.
What are the elements of peace in this sense? Peace is rooted in justice. It is rooted in the principle of selfdetermination of all people and peoples, free of coercion, acting in their own name. Peace implies, therefore, profound respect for people, their places, their ideas, their aspirations, and their actions to realize the world they imagine. Peace means the acceptance and nurturance of diversity. It means openness to embrace others as ourselves. Peace means dialogue, within and among diverse societies and cultures.
Peace is also rooted in civic responsibility and accountability, where governments are accountable to citizens, and citizens are responsible to each other. Peace can only be built, consolidated and protected if people have been able to create the norms and mechanisms to express their aspirations and resolve differences to determine common interests and courses of action.
The ground of peace is affinity. It is cultivated by making connections, across space and time and culture. It is nurtured in a myriad of actions taken every day by citizens working together to make the world a safe and caring place to create and sustain livelihoods and community, in mutuality and social solidarity.
Inter Pares works in collaboration with people who understand peace in these terms and who are acting in their own name to create their future in harmony with others. This annual report summarizes some of the principles behind Inter Pares' work, and activities that we have been supporting over the past year.
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| Reviewed June 1, 2004 |  |
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