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IF WE WANT PEACE, WE ALL HAVE TO BUILD IT

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MADRID, May 19 2008 (IPS) - \”If you want peace, prepare for war.\” This perverse maxim, a golden goose for the arms dealers, has been used from the beginning of time by the powerful, who had at their disposal the lives of their vassals. So it was, up until the turbulent but hopeful dawn of the new century and millennium, but no longer, because global awareness has grown and the understanding of reality has deepened, writes Federico Mayor Zaragoza, President of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace and ex-Director-General of UNESCO. There is no wartime economy without war, the preparation for war, or pretexts for arming to the teeth. The only force capable of opposing the colossal inertia of this machine is \”the people\”, citizen power, a civil society that does not allow itself to be fooled, that only supports leaders who boldly decide to put in action the universal principles so lucidly expressed in the UN Charter\’s Declaration of Human Rights. Politics must be based on generally-accepted ethical principles. Incorporating certain religious values is insufficient and dangerous, as is basing political action on strictly economic criteria, which is evident today. It is thus extremely important that the excuse of a \”clash of civilisations\” be definitively barred from political logic and replaced with citizen involvement and general acceptance of responsibility by all members of society. If we unite our hands and our voices, we can correct the current disastrous course.

Yes, it will be “the people”, civil society, that constitute true progressive democracies where voters count not only on election day but every day of the year. The major change will be the transition from subjects to citizens, from a culture of imposition and violence to a culture of conversation and conciliation, from force to words. Preparing for peace and not for war. If we want peace, we all must help to build it with our own day-to-day actions, as actors and not merely passive and fearful spectators. The time for silence has passed, both on the personal and the institutional level. As I like to repeat, the silence of the silent is more disgraceful than the silence of the silenced. People must dare to know and know to dare in order to counteract the omnipresent power of the media that infects us with worry and homogenises us to the point that we come to accept the unacceptable – wasting 3 billion dollars on weapons each day, not to mention the cost of anti-missile shields, while 60,000 people die of hunger each day.

Distracted, we do not see the “invisible”, the ordinary. We see only the visible, information deemed “extraordinary”, the unusual, the atypical. We must enable ourselves to use our own power of thought to guide and control our own lives. We must restore to their rightful places the many things that have been overturned:

-the democratic values that according to the Constitution of the UNESCO of 1945 are justice, liberty, freedom, and solidarity – as opposed to the laws of the market which, as was easily predictable, have widened gaps and tears in society rather than closing them; -a strong United Nations in which “the people” are represented and which is provided with the human, financial, and technological resources that will give it the “democratic” authority that the G7 and G8 can never have;

-and a global development economy that makes major investments in sources of renewable low-cost energy that allow general access to goods, production, housing, and the transport and recycling of water for everyone – as opposed to the current economy of war and speculation that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few.

There is no wartime economy without war, the preparation for war, or pretexts for arming to the teeth. The only force capable of opposing the colossal inertia of this machine is “the people”, citizen power, a civil society that does not allow itself to be fooled, that only supports leaders who boldly decide to put in action the universal principles so lucidly expressed in the UN Charter’s Declaration of Human Rights.

Politics must be based on generally-accepted ethical principles. Incorporating certain religious values is insufficient and dangerous, as is basing political action on strictly economic criteria, which is evident today. In the words of Spanish poet Antonio Machado, ”It is foolish to mistake value for price.”

Therefore it is extremely important that the excuse of a “clash of civilisations” be definitively barred from political logic and replaced with citizen involvement and general acceptance of responsibility by all members of society. If we unite our hands and our voices, we can correct the current disastrous course.

Last April 10, in the Montserrat Monastery near Barcelona, a range of figures from different religious faiths convened by the Cultural Foundation for Peace issued a declaration on the causes of conflict and pushed in a very concrete manner for the urgent introduction of a political solution to the dramatic and unending situation in the Middle East, as well as in other parts of the world. Believers or not, human beings must be respected as equals and come together in actions of solidarity with the neediest. The only condition for a dialogue that is open to all opinions is non-violence, non-imposition. “We are all in the same boat, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed. We all share the same destiny,” commented ex-President of Iran Mohammed Khatemi. In the same boat, on the same course. Is it that difficult to provoke the “spiritual explosion” spoken of by poet Federico Garcia Lorca, which involves exchanging force for words?

Religions must make use of the efficient mechanisms for contact and interaction among people that were called for in the Montserrat declaration in order to avoid prejudice and stereotypes and be capable of contributing in this way to building a common future where the desire for peace ceases to be a greeting and becomes instead a joyful reality.(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

 
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