Letters

Friends United for Peace

We appreciate receiving your PEACE Magazine regularly. By reading PEACE Magazine we have learned about activities conducted by your organization and views on international issues.

We believe that continuing to exchange periodicals between our two organizations is conducive to the enhancement of understanding between us.

Wu Kesheng, Chinese People's Association for Peace and Disarmament

Keeping Track of ARMX

Your support in spreading the word about conversion is greatly appreciated.

Glad to here that Peace Magazine uses Press for Conversion! Our publication deals specifically with issues related to conversion. Peace Magazine, however, has a broader mandate and covers many important peace issues.

In Peace Magazine (PEACE, Jan/Feb 1994, p.3 1) there was an item stating that Press for Conversion! reported that ARMX may return in 1994. This item was taken from our summer issue published in August 1993. The cover letter which went out with that issue explained that after going to press we learned that ARMX would not be back to Ottawa in 1994 as it was moving to Washington, DC. We have since reported, in our November issue (p.8-9), that ARMX, aka "Peacekeeping 94," may be back in 1995.

Richard Sanders, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade

Politicians Fund

Thank you for your good wishes on my election to Parliament. I also want to thank you for the free subscription of Peace Magazine which is being sent to my Ottawa office. I look forward to receiving your magazine in the future.

Maria Minna, MP, Beaches-Woodbine

Using Civilian Defence on Global Capitalism

When reading "Nonviolent Action Against NAFTA" (Jan/Feb), I found myself in agreement with Crowell, Beaudet, and MacQueen. I too believe that action needs to be taken against the centralizing tendency of global capitalism (through transnational corporations and the international banking system). This action needs to be global and experientially based, and it must begin with education. The power of the movement will come from people who have suffered from systemic violence and

poverty.

As a student of Dr. Crowell's at the University of Windsor I have been influenced by his arguments for nonviolent civilian defence. In Canada we are faced with foreign ownership of many of our industries (automotive, chemical, coal, petroleum, rubber, tobacco, transportation, etc.). This foreign centralization and concentration of ownership constitute the same force that has already devastated dozens of "Third World" countries (from the copper mines of Chile to the IMF's involvement in Mexico). Institutions that threaten life need to be challenged. Global capitalism and the international banking system destroy local self-sustaining communities. This systemic violence can be seen in terms of a "war system," whereby the conditions of war (deprivation, starvation, death) are replicated even when direct military violence is non-existent. We must develop a peace-based economy. Through a nonviolent civilian-based defence strategy in Canada we could begin economic resistance.

Kenneth G. MacKendrick, Windsor