Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • 2009 Hiroshima Peace Declaration

    This declaration was read by Mayor Akiba at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on August 6, 2009

    That weapon of human extinction, the atomic bomb, was dropped on the people of Hiroshima sixty-four years ago. Yet the hibakusha’s suffering, a hell no words can convey, continues. Radiation absorbed 64 years earlier continues to eat at their bodies, and memories of 64 years ago flash back as if they had happened yesterday.

    Fortunately, the grave implications of the hibakusha experience are granted legal support. A good example of this support is the courageous court decision humbly accepting the fact that the effects of radiation on the human body have yet to be fully elucidated. The Japanese national government should make its assistance measures fully appropriate to the situations of the aging hibakusha, including those exposed in “black rain areas” and those living overseas. Then, tearing down the walls between its ministries and agencies, it should lead the world as standard-bearer for the movement to abolish nuclear weapons by 2020 to actualize the fervent desire of hibakusha that “No one else should ever suffer as we did.”

    In April this year, US President Obama speaking in Prague said, “…as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.” And “…take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.” Nuclear weapons abolition is the will not only of the hibakusha but also of the vast majority of people and nations on this planet. The fact that President Obama is listening to those voices has solidified our conviction that “the only role for nuclear weapons is to be abolished.”

    In response, we support President Obama and have a moral responsibility to act to abolish nuclear weapons. To emphasize this point, we refer to ourselves, the great global majority, as the “Obamajority,” and we call on the rest of the world to join forces with us to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020. The essence of this idea is embodied in the Japanese Constitution, which is ever more highly esteemed around the world.

    Now, with more than 3,000 member cities worldwide, Mayors for Peace has given concrete substance to our “2020 Vision” through the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, and we are doing everything in our power to promote its adoption at the NPT Review Conference next year. Once the Protocol is adopted, our scenario calls for an immediate halt to all efforts to acquire or deploy nuclear weapons by all countries, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which has so recently conducted defiant nuclear tests; visits by leaders of nuclear-weapon states and suspect states to the A-bombed cities; early convening of a UN Special Session devoted to Disarmament; an immediate start to negotiations with the goal of concluding a nuclear weapons convention by 2015; and finally, to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020. We will adopt a more detailed plan at the Mayors for Peace General Conference that begins tomorrow in Nagasaki.

    The year 2020 is important because we wish to enter a world without nuclear weapons with as many hibakusha as possible. Furthermore, if our generation fails to eliminate nuclear weapons, we will have failed to fulfill our minimum responsibility to those that follow.

    Global Zero, the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament and others of influence throughout the world have initiated positive programs that seek the abolition of nuclear weapons. We sincerely hope that they will all join the circle of those pressing for 2020.

    As seen in the anti-personnel landmine ban, liberation from poverty through the Grameen Bank, the prevention of global warming and other such movements, global democracy that respects the majority will of the world and solves problems through the power of the people has truly begun to grow. To nurture this growth and go on to solve other major problems, we must create a mechanism by which the voices of the people can be delivered directly into the UN. One idea would be to create a “Lower House” of the United Nations made up of 100 cities that have suffered major tragedies due to war and other disasters, plus another 100 cities with large populations, totaling 200 cities. The current UN General Assembly would then become the “Upper House.”

    On the occasion of the Peace Memorial Ceremony commemorating the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing, we offer our solemn, heartfelt condolence to the souls of the A-bomb victims, and, together with the city of Nagasaki and the majority of Earth’s people and nations, we pledge to strive with all our strength for a world free from nuclear weapons.

    We have the power. We have the responsibility. And we are the Obamajority. Together, we can abolish nuclear weapons. Yes, we can.

    Tadatoshi Akiba is Mayor of Hiroshima, Japan and President of Mayors for Peace (www.mayorsforpeace.org).

  • Renewed Hope for Peace

    With so much sadness around the Santa Barbara/Montecito fires, I’m deeply grateful to see so many here tonight.

    I am also very delighted to share tonight’s honors with Stanely Sheinbaum. We have been friends, colleagues and co-workers for justice and peace for over three decades. What a great man. I love him dearly. I’ve known David Krieger and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation throughout your courageous history. What important, innovative, challenging work you have done over all these critical years. Twenty-five yeas and still going strong; what a great achievement.

    It is a profound honor to follow people like the Dalai Lama, Jody Williams, Desmond Tutu, King Hussein of Jordon, and Walter Cronkite. And coming after last years honorees, the incomparable singing trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, I feel like I should begin by singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “If I Had a Hammer” – but I will spare you.

    This Distinguished Peace Leader Award means so very much to me and I’m very grateful. I will cherish it. That wonderful introduction by Mark Asman and Anna Grotenhuis warmed my heart. But it does remind me of a story. One day a speaker was introduced to his audience with these words: “Listen to this man. He is a most gifted person, which is evidenced by the fact that he made a million dollars in California oil. So listen to him.”

    The speaker responded with thanks, but he was somewhat confused and embarrassed. Many items were essentially there, but a little misinterpreted. He said:

    “First, it wasn’t oil – it was coal. Second, it wasn’t California – it was Pennsylvania. Third, it was not a million dollars – it was $100,000. Fourth, it was not me, but my brother. Fifth, it didn’t make it; he lost is. But facts aside, I’m glad to be here.”

    Well, I am George Regas and I, too, am glad to be here. I don’t know much about making a million dollars – but I do know something about peacemaking.

    PRESIDENT ELECT OBAMA AND PEACEMAKING

    There is a deep, deep rejoicing with the election of Barack Obama. All over the world, Obama’s election has sent the message that hope is viable, that change is really possible, that peace is on its way.

    President elect Obama – hear us. Your first decision as President must be to instruct The Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare a sensible plan for ending the Iraq war and occupation. Get us out of Iraq. No more arguments about time tables. And if you establish a Peace Department and let Rabbi Leonard Beerman and George Regas head it up – Peace just might have a chance!!

    When both John McCain and Barack Obama, during the Presidential Campaign, would say, “we are the greatest country in the world…the ‘city shining on the hill’, that America with our history is exceptional” – that rhetoric always pushed me away. Not that I don’t love America because I love my country dearly. But this kind of thinking, this exceptionalism, is central to the Iraq tragedy.

    At the grave, we are all equal, and the suffering of one is not more important than the suffering of another. This reality is tragically missing from the American psyche. I think of all those children killed in Iraq as a result of our war; I think of those 30,000 children across the globe who die every day of malnutrition and hunger — and my heart is broken. Very clearly, modern war is total war. With the lethality of modern weapons, there can be no discrimination between combatants and civilians. Some studies say more than 1 million Iraqi civilians have been killed in this war. We need to proclaim as loudly as possible that war with the face it wears today is sin itself. Jesus would bless Howard Zinn when he says, “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

    The sin and evil at the heart of this war in Iraq is the belief that an American child is more precious than an Iraqi baby. Therefore, a reaffirmation of our common humanity and our equality in joy and in pain must be given primacy if there is ever to be peace in our world.

    Barack Obama must restore American moral credibility. Closing Guantanamo, banning all torture and ending the Iraq war and occupation will provide a start but only that. He must inspire the world as he has America that great things are possible; we can have a world without war.

    NOW LOOK AT ECONOMICS

    The world wide economic crises are overwhelming. There are significant moral issues surrounding this bleak situation.

    Larry Bartels of Princeton University and one of the country’s leading political scientists says some provocative things in his book, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Guilded Age. He indicates that from the 1940s to the 1970s the real income of the poorest fifth of Americans more than doubled, advancing faster than any other quintile. Since 1974 the pattern has been skewed significantly toward the rich.

    The years 1979 through 2008 have been calamitous for poor and middle class people in the U.S.

    Larry Bartels writes that he was surprised to find in his research how profoundly partisan differences affected economic outcomes.

    It is true there are many causes for the growing inequality in our globalized economy. But it is unwise to assume there is no cause and effect relationship between government policies and income distribution. Professor Bartels asserts “economic inequality is, in substantial part, a political phenomenon.”

    The war system is deeply embedded in this nation: in education, in government, in industry.

    Joseph Stiglitz, nobel laureate for economics, is saying in a new book that the Iraq war will eventually cost the U.S. $3 – $5 trillion. 40% of the 1.65 million people who have been deployed are coming home with disabilities – some very serious disabilities. That’s an obligation we must honor and we will be paying this for decades to come. We have borrowed every dime for the Iraq war. George Bush has tried to pretend that you can have a war and not pay the price. What a tragedy. The war system is a criminal mismanagement of humanity’s resources.

    NUCLEAR WEAPONS

    The political reality that nuclear war still remains an option for America, Russia, China, Britain, France, Pakistan, India and Israel – that reality is the paramount moral issue of our time.

    James Carroll, a great peace leader, writing in the Boston Globe October 13, 2008 says that the word “meltdown” came naturally to the lips last week, referring to the collapse of the financial markets. But Carroll talks about another meltdown which is the purpose of a nuclear bomb.

    He says the economic meltdown caused us to ignore a much greater problem. That very week over the signatures of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, the government released the statement “National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century.” The two officials argue that the time has come for the development of a new nuclear weapon, the so called Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). Because “nuclear weapons remain an essential and enduring element” of American military strategy, the aging arsenal of several thousand deployed nukes (and many more “stored” nukes) must be replaced.

    Obviously, President Bush will not succeed in getting new nuclear weapons approved in Congress. What Gates and Bodman are doing at the urging of the nuclear establishment is putting this item at the very top of the next President’s agenda.

    Carroll writes that for 20 years the United States has been ambivalent about its nuclear arsenal. The indecision was enshrined in the policy that America would “lead” the post Cold War world in the ongoing reduction of nuclear weapons, aiming at the ultimate abolition called for by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. However, at the same time we would maintain a sizable nuclear force, both deployed and stored, as a protection, a “hedge”, against the re-emergence of some Cold War-style threat.

    This nuclear policy was a deadly contradiction. It simply made U.S. leadership on meaningful nuclear weapons reduction impossible.

    Today nuclear nations want to renew and expand their arsenals, keeping their own nuclear advantage, and non-nuclear states, especially Iran, are moving towards acquiring nuclear weapons.

    The Gates-Bodman recent proposal is saying that if the policy of deterrence fails there will be an actual use of nuclear weapons to “defeat” an enemy. That is incomprehensible. Once nuclear war begins, all notions of victory and defeat are meaningless.

    During the days of the Interfaith Center to Reverse the Nuclear Arms Race, organized by Rabbi Leonard Beerman and Leo Baeck Temple and All Saints Church, Dr. Marvin Goldberger, distinguished physicist and former Cal Tech President, spoke at an event in the mid 1980s. I can still hear his words: “Those who use the rhetoric that suggests we can survive and win a nuclear war are certifiably insane. Such rhetoric is the greatest illusion of our day. It points to the moral bankruptcy of our age”.

    The Non Proliferation Treaty has integrity only if we are committed to the centerpiece of that treaty – a movement toward nuclear abolition.

    In the United States the public has been manipulated to focus almost exclusively on nuclear proliferation. And so there is no attention given to the possession and continued development of nuclear weapons and the thinly disguised reliance on their threatened use.

    When we deal with Iran, we are using a nuclear double standard. We only discuss proliferation. The U.S. must commit to nuclear disarmament if we are to have integrity. The reason Iran should not have nuclear weapons is because no country should have them. The only way to prevent Iran and other aspiring countries acquiring those deadly, world destroying nuclear weapons is for this country and Russia to disarm.

    Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2005, says we must always remember the goal of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is a world free from nuclear weapons. So we must move on two fronts: Non-proliferation and equally the disarmament front. To deal with Iran with any integrity we must build an effective system of collective security that doesn’t rely in any way on nuclear weapons.

    GRASS ROOTS ORGANIZING

    None of this will happen without us. If there is to be a progressive agenda, Barack Obama must use his bully pulpit to continue to inspire and educate America to move this country in a new direction. But he needs a grass roots movement for peace at the center of the Obama agenda if he is to succeed.

    Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized his ability to push legislation through Congress depended on the pressure generated by protestors and organizers. He once told a group of activists who sought his support for legislation, “you’ve convinced me. Now go out and make me do it.”

    There were many factors contributing to Obama’s great victory, but the real key to his success was grass roots organizing.

    Now Obama’s supporters will need to transform that electoral energy into grassroots movements for change.

    Winning the election was only the beginning, the first stage, of a broader movement to help America become a nation of compassion, justice and peace.

    Do you remember during the Vietnam War the Newsweek cover in 1971 of a naked 9 year old Vietnamese girl running down the road screaming – her skin on fire from a napalm bomb? The picture epitomized the horrific tragedy of the Vietnam War. Americans began rather miraculously to identify with that child. She was just like our own children. She, too, was precious to a mother and father, and precious to God. That realization of the sacredness of all life was central to the mobilization and final victory of the peace movement during the Vietnam War. The same motivating experience of compassion can help us build a peace movement today.

    Virtually every meaningful social transformation in the history of the United States has resulted from nonviolent movements that have mobilized grass roots “people power.” “Together,” as Jody Williams said when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, “we are a superpower. It’s a new definition of superpower. It’s not one of us; it’s all of us.” All of us can fuel a new movement – to free the world of nuclear weapons, to bring justice to the world’s poor, to end the ways of war and destruction and see peace reign across the globe.

    As I close, I want us to remember there is such a thing as being too late. Will we learn about the perils of revenge, violence and war soon enough to act and change our ways? Will we learn before it is too late?

    Of all Michelangelo’s powerful figures, none is more poignant than the man in the Last Judgment being dragged down to hell by demons, his hand over one eye and in the other eye a look of dire recognition. He understood, but all too late.

    Michelangelo was right: Hell is truth seen too late.

    The call goes out to all of us to join the movement for peace. The call to act before it is too late.

    So hold on to hope. Cynicism and despair are deathblows to any movement for peace and disarmament. Good people will do nothing if they have lost hope. Teillard de Chardin said, “the world of tomorrow belongs to those who gave it its greatest hope.” I love that.

    My sisters and brothers don’t give up. It’s not too late yet. God needs you and me to save this wondrous creation and calls us to share this mission. What a privilege.

    The Rev. Dr. George Regas is Rector Emeritus of All Saints Church in Pasadena, California, and the recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2008 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. He delivered these remarks at the 2008 Evening for Peace in Santa Barbara, California.
  • 2008 NAPF Evening for Peace

    2008 NAPF Evening for Peace

    Remarks delivered at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 25th Annual Evening for Peace on November 22, 2008 in Santa Barbara, California.

    Tonight marks a quarter century that the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been holding this annual Evening for Peace. We are gathering at this 25th anniversary event at a time of renewed hope for peace.

    We are honoring two extraordinary individuals – Reverend George Regas and Stanley Sheinbaum – who have together spent over a century, often behind the scenes, working for a more just and peaceful world. This evening we shine a light on their acts of peace and world citizenship, and it is our hope that their lives will inspire all of us, and particularly the young people who are here, to lives of greater compassion, courage and commitment.

    Renewed hope is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

    We still live in a world in which conflicts are too often settled by force rather than law, in which we spend far too much of our precious resources, human and economic, on war and its preparations.

    The world’s nations are spending some $1.3 trillion annually on military preparations and war, with the United States is spending roughly half this amount. Since the beginning of the Nuclear Age, our country has spent some $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. We are still spending some $50 billion annually on nuclear arms.

    We need change in our world and, dare I say, change is coming.

    One thing is absolutely certain: Nuclear weapons do not and cannot protect their possessors. They can be used to commit monstrous acts of mass murder, by a first strike or in retaliation for a preceding attack, but they cannot protect their possessors.

    The only way we can be sure that we are safe from a nuclear attack is by abolishing these weapons.

    This is what President-elect Obama has said: “A world without nuclear weapons is profoundly in America’s interest and the world’s interest. It is our responsibility to make the commitment, and to do the hard work to make this vision a reality.”

    When he says “our responsibility to make the commitment,” I think he means all of us. I think that Barack Obama and America need this commitment from all of us. But it is up to him and to all of us to fulfill this commitment with our actions.

    At the Foundation, we have developed a Nuclear Disarmament Agenda for President Obama during his first 100 days in office. We ask that he take three steps:

    First, make a public commitment for US leadership for a world free of nuclear weapons in a major foreign policy address.

    Second, open bilateral negotiations with Russia on a range of nuclear policy issues. We need Russia as a partner in this journey to sanity.

    Third, initiate global action to convene a meeting of all nine nuclear weapons states to negotiate a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

    The proposed agenda has some additional details that can be found in your programs.

    The main point I’d like to leave you with is that a world free of nuclear weapons is not an impossible dream. The genie can be put back in the bottle. The process may begin with a dream, but it continues with a politics of peace and justice. If it also increases our security, as it surely will, we are far the better for it.

    I would ask you to also take three actions:

    First, send the “First Hundred Day Agenda” to President-elect Obama, along with an encouraging note from you about why you want a world with zero nuclear weapons.

    Second, sign the Foundation’s Appeal to the Next President for US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World and gather another 15 or 50 or 500 signatures and send them to the Foundation by early January.

    Third, watch the Foundation’s DVD, “Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future,” and arrange a showing to a group you organize or that you belong to.

    Let me conclude with some thoughts by General Lee Butler, a former commander in chief of the United States Strategic Command – in charge of all US nuclear weapons. General Butler became an ardent abolitionist after retiring from the military and is one of our past awardees. Referring to the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, he said, “We cannot at once keep sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it. It is time to reassert the primacy of individual conscience, the voice of reason and the rightful interests of humanity.”

    I believe that the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and each of us have an important role to play in the transformation to a peaceful and nuclear weapons-free world. Your hope, commitment, involvement and support are making and will continue to make all the difference.

    Thank you for being with us; thank you for caring.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a councilor on the World Future Council.
  • Leadership and Social Change: Making a Difference in the World

    Leadership and Social Change: Making a Difference in the World

    Leadership is a concept that can be confusing because it has both institutional and individual dimensions. Institutional leadership is generally based upon role and rank. Think of organizations like government, corporations and the military. The higher you rise in the organizational structure, the more authority that vests in the leadership role. There is a hierarchical structure, and power vests in the upper ranks. At its worst, organizational leadership is authoritarian and dictatorial. At its best, it has open channels of communication for a broad range of ideas to influence decisions and policies.

    A good question to consider in thinking about institutional leadership is: To whom is the leader responsible? If the answer is no one, you may have a serious problem. Think of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin. Think of Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. Even in a government with checks and balances, like our own, institutional restraints can be repressed and diminished by leaders bent on concentrating power, bending rules and seeking to stand above the law.

    Now, let’s shift from the institutional stage, and look at the qualities of leadership in an individual. The three most important qualities in achieving success for an individual leader are vision, commitment and persistence. A leader must have a vision – a goal or set of goals to be obtained. A leader must be committed to achieving this vision. And a leader must be prepared, if necessary, for a long-term struggle. Think of the Dalai Lama, who repeatedly advises, “Never give up!” That is the spirit of every strong leader.

    Vision often will exceed one’s life span, and the commitment to a cause may put one’s life in jeopardy. Think of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Gandhi, or of Cesar Chavez. But think as well of Hitler and Mussolini, who also had visions that exceeded their own life spans, and were committed and persistent.

    These qualities, then, by themselves, may be necessary for strong leadership, but not sufficient for decent leadership. To these qualities must be added integrity and honesty, as well as compassion and courage in seeking a greater good for humanity. As Horace Mann, a noted educator, said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

    Great leaders who seek victories for humanity are usually not individuals who only fill institutional roles. They are individuals who have a great vision that will benefit humanity, are committed to achieving it with integrity and honesty, and persist in their efforts with compassion and courage despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. How many US presidents can you think of who have been great leaders? How many even come close in the quality of their leadership to Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.?

    In our society, leadership is too often dedicated to accumulating wealth and power. Wealth and power are not “a victory for humanity.” They are means to an end. The end may be something decent, such as combating poverty and hunger, but it may also be something selfish, such as personal aggrandizement, or something criminal, such as aggressive war. We must judge leaders not only by what they say, but by what they do, and we must hold them accountable for their actions.

    There is much that needs changing in our world. A large percentage of the world’s population lives in dire poverty, without safe drinking water or adequate nutrition. A billion people live on less than one dollar a day. Another billion live on less than two dollars a day. Some 25,000 children under the age of five die daily of starvation and preventable diseases. At the same time, the world spends over a trillion dollars annually on military forces, with the United States alone spending well over half the global total.

    We are not living sustainably on the planet. Climate change may result in submerging large portions of the earth under water, causing enormous dislocations, destruction and death. The survival of the human species is endangered due to global warming. It is also endangered, even more urgently, by nuclear weapons – weapons capable of omnicide, the death of all.

    And what do we do as a species? The answer is very little. We are mostly ignorant and apathetic. Is this not a situation crying out for leadership? We cannot just continue with business as usual. We are on a collision course with disaster. For many inhabitants of Earth, disaster has already arrived. The world cannot continue to tolerate the myopic visions and cowardly and testosterone-driven actions of some of our most prominent leaders. We need change. We need new vision and hope. We need leadership that points our country and the world in a new direction.

    We need to rethink what it means to be number one. We are all perishable, and we live on a perishable planet. The minimum responsibility of each generation is to pass the planet on, if not better than it was inherited, at least intact to the next generation. The power of our technologies, when combined with our capacity for complacency and our penchant for militarism, casts doubt on our ability as a species to continue to fulfill this responsibility.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a civil society organization that educates and advocates for a world free of nuclear weapons and for strengthening international law. It also seeks to empower a new generation of peace leaders.

    The Foundation educates people about the continuing danger of nuclear weapons, and the tragedies that await us if we do not come together to abolish these devices of indiscriminate mass murder. It seeks to awaken people to a real and present danger, a danger that did not go away with the end of the Cold War nearly two decades ago. To end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity will require US leadership, so we must work to awaken Americans to act to abolish these weapons.

    The Foundation currently has an Appeal to the Next President for US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World. We are gathering one million signatures. The Appeal asks the next president to take seven steps that will make the world safer on the way to achieving the total global elimination of nuclear weapons. This is not a call for unilateral disarmament. It is a call for the phased, irreversible, verifiable and transparent global elimination of nuclear weapons. To succeed will require a far stronger commitment to international law. It will also require that people throughout this country snap out of their apathy and lethargy and get involved. It is an awesome challenge and it is a necessary one. It is also achievable.

    How does the Foundation empower youth? Actually, we don’t. We encourage young people to empower themselves. We have held a series of Think Outside the Bomb conferences for university students. These conferences teach leadership skills to make a difference, as well as provide information on the enormous nuclear dangers that threaten all of us living on the planet as well as future generations.

    We also have a campaign called UC Nuclear Free. It is about awakening students to the fact that the University of California provides management and oversight to the two major nuclear weapons laboratories in the country. Every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal has been designed and developed under the auspices of the University of California. If these weapons are ever used, the death and destruction that ensues will be a foreseeable consequence of the University of California’s involvement. The fact that a great university would lend its name and prestige to the creation, development and improvement of the most deadly weapons ever invented shows how deeply embedded militarism and nuclearism are in our society. The Foundation also has internships and volunteer opportunities for young people. You can find out about these and much more at our www.wagingpeace.org website.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is now 25 years old. We have accomplished a lot in that period, and we still have much more to do. We are gaining in strength, and our work is becoming much more widely embraced. We will not give up and we will attain our goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. When we do, we will have taken a large step for humankind.

    We must all live as though the future matters. Since we have technologies capable of foreclosing the future, we must act today to assure that there is a future. An Indian proverb states, “All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” Shall we plant the seeds for a future of peace and decency in which we live sustainably on the planet and respect the human rights and dignity of all people and other forms of life? Or, shall we continue to plant the seeds of unsustainability, injustice and war? The latter may be the weeds that overtake the garden due to indifference and apathy.

    It is up to each of us. I ask you to commit today to taking three steps. First, envision a better future for humanity. Second, commit yourself to being a leader to create that better future. Third, never give up.

    David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and has served as its president since 1982. This article is based upon remarks made to the Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society at Santa Barbara City College on May 5, 2008.

  • Opening Remarks for the Washington, DC Think Outside the Bomb Conference

    Welcome to the Second annual Washington, DC Think Outside the Bomb, conference. Before going forward, I would like to thank American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute and Americans for Informed Democracy. Without their help, this event would not be possible.

    My introduction to nuclear weapons issues came from American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. As an undergraduate student, I was fortunate enough to travel to Japan to see the effects of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even after 60 years the physical and emotional scars on the people of Japan have not dissipated. It was a life-changing experience for me and ultimately has led me here today. I hope many of you have the opportunity to travel to Japan.

    Before going ahead with the conference, I’d like to talk for a moment about what this conference is and why now more than ever there is a need for a new generation of peace leaders.

    I am an American born after 1978. According to pop culture and statistical studies, we are known as Millennials or Generation Y. We are considered socially progressive and politically active. However, my generation does not consider global nuclear disarmament a priority. I believe the reason for this is that we are the first generation to come of age in a post-Cold War society. We are the first post-Cold War Americans.

    At the end of the Cold War there was a common belief that the nuclear threat would subside. Rather than work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, the Clinton Administration missed an opportunity to make sweeping changes and instead, to a large extent, reaffirmed antiquated Cold War policy already in place. The existence of nuclear weapons continued, but the public’s attention towards them waned.

    Unlike those who came before, my “post-Cold War Generation” was not exposed to a strong public outcry for the abolition of nuclear weapons. We also did not experience the nuclear arms race first hand. We did not live with the fear of duck and cover drills, nuclear testing, the Cuban missile crisis, and an unprecedented nuclear arms build up.

    The current generation of young people is a “post-Cold War Generation” that has been incorrectly taught that nuclear weapons are acceptable if possessed by responsible people. Instead of disarmament, they have embraced nonproliferation.

    There is a small window of opportunity before this generation takes seats of power in federal government and decide nuclear policy. Now more than ever, it is critical that young people learn about the dangers of nuclear weapons and the need for US leadership toward nuclear disarmament.

    In 2005 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation responded to this growing need by bringing together 50 young leaders in the nuclear field to Santa Barbara, California for the first national Think Outside the Bomb Conference. That August, the Think Outside the Bomb Participants created a Statement of Principles that guides the work of the young people in the network.

    Those principles are as follows:

    • Inspired by the need for a new generation of leaders working toward a nuclear-free world, Think Outside the Bomb is a group of young people;
    • Aware of the historical context and the current urgency to address the devastating effects of the nuclear complex;
    • Recognizing the need to develop connections between the nuclear complex and global, environmental, racial, economic and social justice;
    • Emphasizing the importance of the right to self-determination of all indigenous peoples, who have been among the most affected by the nuclear complex;
    • Drawing attention to the need to redefine security in terms of human and environmental needs;
    • Underlining the need to move beyond military force as the principal means of solving conflict and instead resolve conflict by nonviolent means;
    • Understanding the devastation caused by nuclear weapons and memorializing the many victims of bomb production at every step – from uranium mining to design, to production, to testing, to use and threat of use; and
    • Reaffirming our humanity through mutual respect, nonviolence and consensus-building.

    Nickolas Roth is Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Washington, DC office.

  • Science, Peace, and Sustainability

    Science, Peace, and Sustainability

    Speech delivered to INES Conference in Mexico City on March 1, 2008

    We are meeting to explore relevant issues of Science, Peace, and Sustainability. The relationship between science, peace, and sustainability affects the lives of all of the planet’s inhabitants as well as the lives of future generations yet unborn. The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) takes seriously issues of global responsibility, and we believe that engineers and scientists, because of their training, knowledge and privileged place in society, have a special role to play in improving the human condition and assuring a better future for humanity.

    INES has worked since 1991 in three principal areas: Peace and Disarmament, Sustainability, and Ethics in Science. INES is an international network of some 70 organizations in 34 countries. It also has individual members throughout the world. INES has held major conferences in Berlin, Amsterdam and Stockholm; and smaller meetings in many places in the world, including Buenos Aires, Argentina and most recently Nagpur, India. We are very pleased to be having our first meeting in Mexico. It is our hope that from this meeting will emerge many important and innovative ideas that will help strengthen the ties between science, peace and sustainability.

    Many years ago, in the early 1980s, I had the pleasure of working on a Reshaping the International Order (RIO) Foundation project on Disarmament, Development and the Environment with the great Mexican diplomat and Nobel Peace Laureate Alfonso Garcia Robles. He skillfully negotiated the world’s first Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone in an inhabited region, that of Latin America and the Caribbean. Last year that treaty celebrated the 40th year of its existence. It has been one of the significant success stories in the area of preventing nuclear proliferation.

    Many other regions of the world have followed in the footsteps of Latin America and the Caribbean, and we have Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones now in the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, Antarctica and Central Asia. Virtually the entire Southern hemisphere has become a series of Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones. Now countries in the North need to learn from the South, and cease their hypocritical and dangerous posturing and brandishing of nuclear arms.

    Around the same time that the Treaty of Tlatelolco, establishing the Latin American and Caribbean Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, was being agreed to, another treaty was being negotiated to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. That treaty, known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), was signed in 1968 and entered into force in 1970. It contains a major trade-off. In exchange for the non-nuclear weapons states agreeing not to acquire nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapons states agreed in Article VI to “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament. The International Court of Justice advised in 1996 that this meant bringing to a conclusion “negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    What I wish to emphasize is the abysmal lack of “good faith” on the part of the nuclear weapons states and, in particular, the United States. In UN General Assembly voting on nuclear disarmament matters in 2007, the United States had the distinction of voting against every one of the 15 measures put before the UN. France voted against 10 measures, the UK against 9 and Israel against 8.

    In 1982, I helped found an organization, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which believes that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age. This belief was earlier pronounced by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto issued on July 9, 1955. The Manifesto concluded, “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    This is the power that scientists and engineers have placed in the hands of humanity: the power to create a new Paradise on Earth, and the power to foreclose the future by means of technologies capable of causing “universal death.” What shall we do? Which path shall we take? Which power shall we exercise? Science has contributed abundantly to war and continues to do so. Can science and scientists play a role in tipping the balance toward peace?

    And what about sustainability? Shall we go on using up the world’s resources because rich countries consider them to be inexpensive? Nothing irreplaceable can be considered inexpensive. This is another way of foreclosing the future. As an alternative course, scientists can contribute to protecting the world’s resources and developing sustainable forms of energy that do not place heavy burdens on future generations. To succeed in sustainable development, we will also need sustainable disarmament. They are inextricably linked.

    Resource depletion is a cause of war. So is greed. So is crushing poverty. If we want peace, we must protect our environment, conserve our resources, and have global standards of human dignity. We must also control and eliminate the weaponry we have created that could destroy human life on the planet, as well as most other forms of life.

    If we want peace, we must reverse the Roman dictum and prepare for peace. That means that we must use sustainable technologies and conserve our resources. It also means that scientists must work for constructive rather than destructive ends. They must also set appropriate professional standards that delegitimize destructive uses of science and technology. And they must speak out against such destructive uses and those scientists and engineers who succumb to such projects. We need a Hippocratic Oath for Scientists and Engineers based upon the commitment to “do no harm.”

    At our conference over the next few days, we will be exploring some critical issues:

    1. science, education and social responsibility;
    2. militarization and the spread of nuclear weapons;
    3. climate change and other serious environmental issues; and
    4. the paradigm of sustainability.

    All of this will be infused with the perspectives of Latin America.

    Time is not on our side, but perhaps in our deliberations we can make progress on deflecting the course of history that has divided humanity in the past, been conducive to wars, generated human rights abuses, tolerated environmental degradation, and set humanity on a collision course with catastrophe. Let us use our human capacities to choose hope and set a new course for the future, one rooted in peace, sustainability and the constructive uses of science and technology.

    I will conclude with a poem that is part of my first poetry book, Today Is Not a Good Day for War. The poem is about the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those who are victims, but also the ambassadors, of the Nuclear Age. It is called Hibakusha Do Not Just Happen.

    HIBAKUSHA DO NOT JUST HAPPEN

    For every hibakusha there is a pilot

    for every hibakusha there is a planner

    for every hibakusha there is a bombardier

    for every hibakusha there is a bomb designer

    for every hibakusha there is a missile maker

    for every hibakusha there is a missileer

    for every hibakusha there is a targeter

    for every hibakusha there is a commander

    for every hibakusha there is a button pusher

    for every hibakusha many must contribute

    for every hibakusha many must obey

    for every hibakusha many must be silent

    Of course this is not just about hibakusha. It is about us as well. It is about our responsibility and also our silence. In today’s world, we all are at risk of becoming hibakusha. We must choose peace, sustainability and human decency, while outspokenly refusing to allow the gifts of our human talents and skills to be used to improve warfare and its capacity for slaughter.

    We must break the silence and be leaders for peace and sustainability. We must each play our part in reversing the militarization of our planet and moving it toward a peaceful and sustainable future, the Paradise that Russell and Einstein believed was within our grasp.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • 2007 Sadako Peace Day

    2007 Sadako Peace Day

    Welcome to Sadako Peace Day, which this year is also on Nagasaki Day – the day 62 years ago that Nagasaki was destroyed by a single nuclear weapon.

    Please join me in a moment of silence for the victims of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and for Mayor Iccho Itoh of Nagasaki, who was cut down during this past year by an assassin’s bullet.

    Three days ago, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima delivered the 2007 Hiroshima Peace Declaration. It began with this description:

    “That fateful summer, 8:15. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast – silence – hell on Earth.” I will spare you the gory details he goes on to recount.

    Now, 62 years later, we would be remiss not to ask: What lessons have we learned from the use of nuclear weapons? Judging from the fact that there are still 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world and 3,500 of these are on hair-trigger alert, it seems we have clearly not learned enough.

    The overriding facts about nuclear weapons are that they kill massively and indiscriminately – soldiers and civilians; men, women and children; the aged and the newly born.

    Weapons that kill indiscriminately are illegal under international law. Therefore, nuclear weapons are illegal under international law.

    They are also immoral, cowardly and anti-democratic. In a world in which states rely upon nuclear weapons for security, children are not safe.

    Nuclear weapons destroy cities, and are capable of destroying civilization and possibly the human species.

    And there is no physical protection against nuclear weapons. Not duck and cover. Not deterrence. And certainly not missile defenses.

    It should be obvious that if we want to create a world that is safe for our children, we must rid the world of nuclear weapons, and use the financial resources heretofore devoted to nuclear weapons – some $40 billion annually – for food, education, health care and housing.

    It isn’t complicated. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had it right when they said, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.” Which side are you on – that of steel-hearted nuclear weapons or that of humanity? We each choose by our actions.

    We should not elect anyone to high office who believes that “all options are on the table.” That is code for “If state X does Y (Y being something we don’t like), we hold open the option of responding with nuclear weapons.” That is further code for “Do what we want, or we are willing to destroy you and to risk destroying the world.” That is not the kind of leader that we need – not if we want security and the assurance of a human future.

    We need courageous leaders who will stop promoting nuclear double standards, meet their obligations under international law for nuclear disarmament, and lead us back from the nuclear precipice. We need leaders who have a vision of a nuclear weapons free world, and who are willing to act upon that vision – not leaders who try to outdo each other with their macho, nuclear or otherwise. We will not have such visionary and courageous leaders without an informed and active citizenry who make known and persist in pursuing an uncompromising demand for a nuclear weapons-free future.

    I will end with a poem.

    PARALLEL UNIVERSES

    “If only I had known, I would have become a watch maker.” — Albert Einstein

    In a parallel universe, Einstein sits at his workbench making watches. Light still curves around bodies of mass, but the watch maker knows nothing of it. He only makes watches, simple and precise. In this universe, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have no special meaning. David Krieger

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org)

  • Jakob von Uexkull Speaks on Humanity’s Future

    Jakob von Uexkull, a former member of the European Parliament, recently delivered the 6th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future in Santa Barbara, California. The lecture series, a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, honors Frank K. Kelly, a founder and Senior Vice President of the Foundation.

    The lecture series was created in the belief that humanity’s future deserves our consideration and best thinking. Our future today is imperiled by the power of human-created technologies that threaten civilization and even human survival on the planet. Those who will inhabit the future deserve our advocacy and our stewardship of the planet. Those alive today have no right to threaten the future of humanity by depleting or seriously diminishing the resources of the planet or by destroying the environment of those who will follow. Rather, we have a moral responsibility to preserve the planet and to pass it on intact to future generations.

    Jakob von Uexkull was born in Sweden and currently resides in London. He is one of the world’s leading visionaries, and is a man who has acted upon his vision to create a better world. Understanding the power of the Nobel Prizes, he went to the Nobel Foundation over 25 years ago with a proposal to add two new categories to their award prizes: one for protecting the environment and one for alleviating poverty. He even offered to raise the funds to support these awards.

    After consideration, the Nobel Foundation, which had added only one new award to the initial awards, said no to his request. Von Uexkull then decided to move forward on his own with these new awards, which he named the Right Livelihood Awards (www.rightlivelihood.org). He funded the first awards with the sale of his stamp collection. The first awards were presented in Stockholm on December 9, 1980, the day before the presentation of the Nobel Prizes.

    At first, the Swedish press questioned whether von Uexkull was working for the CIA or the KGB in seeking to undermine the Nobel Prizes. The next year the press ridiculed the awards. But within five years, the awards were being presented in the Swedish Parliament and soon became known as the “Alternative Nobel Prizes.”

    The Right Livelihood Awards have now been presented for more than 25 years, and each year three or four recipients of the Award split a prize of approximately $250,000. Awards have been made to more than 100 leaders throughout the world who are working in the areas of environmental protection and sustainability, development and poverty alleviation, peace and human rights.

    The overwhelming majority of Nobel Prizes go to American and European men, with countries in the southern hemisphere having received only 11 percent of the Nobel Prizes. By contrast, 44 percent of the Right Livelihood Awards have been made to groups and individuals in the Global South. Women have received only five percent of the Nobel Prizes, whereas women, including women-led organizations, have received 34 percent of the Right Livelihood Awards.

    Von Uexkull’s latest innovative project is the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org) . The purpose of the Council is to bring together wise elders, pioneers and youth leaders to be a voice for shared human values and for fulfilling our responsibilities to future generations. The Council will recommend best practices to ensure a positive future for humanity. The first meeting of the Council will take place in Hamburg, Germany in May 2007.

    The title of von Uexkull’s Kelly Lecture is “Globalization: Values, Responsibility and Global Justice.” It will be posted on the Foundation’s www.wagingpeace.org website. A DVD of the talk will also be available from the Foundation. Previous Kelly Lectures on Humanity’s Future by Frank K. Kelly, Richard Falk, Anita Roddick, Robert Jay Lifton and Mairead Maguire can also be found at the www.wagingpeace.org website.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • 2006 Annual Dinner Speech: World Citizenship Award to Bianca Jagger

    2006 Annual Dinner Speech: World Citizenship Award to Bianca Jagger

    Let me state the obvious: We are living in deeply troubling times. Having learned little from our mistakes in Vietnam, we repeat them in Iraq. Having learned little from the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have moved again to the nuclear precipice. Our cities, our country and civilization itself remain at risk of catastrophic nuclear devastation.

    The North Korean nuclear test did not happen in a vacuum. It happened after continued failures to negotiate in good faith with the North Koreans and after failures of our country to lead in fulfilling our obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also happened after our government performed 1,054 nuclear tests, and has continued to the present to conduct sub-critical nuclear tests. Current US nuclear policies are leading us in the same direction with Iran, and other countries will follow if we do not change these policies.

    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we are convinced that we cannot trust the future of civilization and humanity itself to political or military leaders. We must bring about change – change in vision and in leadership. Our work is to educate and inspire you and others throughout the world to become the leaders we have been waiting for so that together we can change the barren landscape of nuclear arrogance, threat and absurdity to a beautiful global garden, alive with diversity, which assures a future for our children and all children, including those of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. We will not be safe until all the world’s children are safe, and this cannot happen in a nuclear-armed world.

    In the past week, the Foundation sponsored its third Think Outside the Bomb Conference, bringing together more than 150 young people to learn about nuclear dangers and to develop the tools of leadership that they will need to change the world. I’d like to ask our Youth Empowerment Director, Will Parrish, who organized this conference, to stand and be recognized. Next week Will travels to New York, where he will lead an East Coast Think Outside the Bomb Conference with more than 100 young leaders. Let me also ask the rest of our committed and hardworking staff at the Foundation to stand and be recognized.

    I’ve recently returned from Japan where I participated in the 3rd Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The event was sponsored by the city of Nagasaki, and reflected the desire of the people of Nagasaki to assure that they would remain the last city ever to be destroyed by nuclear weapons.

    At the conference, there was considerable concern expressed about the North Korean nuclear test, which took place very much in the neighborhood of Japan. Rather than seek heavy sanctions on North Korea or push for Japan itself to develop a nuclear force, the desire of the Global Citizens’ Assembly was for the creation of a Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone to include all the countries in the region as well as the nuclear weapons states, such as the United States, with nuclear forces in the region.

    The conference concluded with the adoption of a 15-point Appeal. I’d like to share with you just two points from this Appeal.

    The first point stated: “We strongly proclaim that nuclear weapons are the most barbaric, inhumane and cowardly of weapons, and we call upon the governments of all countries, without exception, to renounce the practice of seeking security through nuclear weapons.”

    The final point of the Appeal stated: “We call upon citizens everywhere to add their voices to those of the Hibakusha [atomic bomb survivors] in calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons before these weapons destroy our cities, our countries and civilization itself.”

    The survivors of the atomic bombings speak as World Citizens, as does our honoree for our World Citizenship Award tonight.

    A World Citizen recognizes the fundamental unity of humankind, and the increased need to embrace that unity brought about by the dangers of the Nuclear Age. A World Citizen recognizes that our greatest problems can neither be contained nor controlled within national borders. Solving all the great problems of our time – from preserving the environment, to halting global warming, to upholding human rights, to living in peace and preventing war, to ending the nuclear threat to humanity – all of these require global cooperation that must be built on a foundation of World Citizenship.

    Bianca Jagger was born in Nicaragua and witnessed first-hand the terror and brutality of the Somoza regime. Witnessing the greed and injustice of this regime set her on a lifetime path of speaking out and working for the oppressed and dispossessed of the world.

    Ms. Jagger has traveled the world in support of the poor, the infirm and the disadvantaged, those whose lives have been torn apart by war and environmental devastation. Wherever she has gone she has taken a strong and outspoken stand for peace and justice. She has put her life at risk in war-torn countries, and used her celebrity to be a voice for those who would not otherwise be heard or even noticed.

    For her tireless efforts, she has received many awards, including the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. She honors us with her presence this evening, and we are very pleased to present her with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2006 World Citizenship Award.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.

  • We Are Not Powerless

    My father, Judge Blase Bonpane of the Superior Court, died here in Santa Barbara in 1977. He arrived in the United States in 1898, probably without papers, and that is one reason why some people were called WOPS (without papers). Dad went to law school at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio. On January 16, 1914, dad gave the winning oration at the Dr. Albert Edwin Smith Annual Oratorical Contest. The prize money of $50.00 covered his room and board for almost six months.

    The title of my father’s oration was, “The Call of Our Age.” World War I had begun in Europe. There was no League of Nations; there was no United Nations, but the second Hague Conference had been held in the spring of 1907, giving the global hope of making war illegal. World War I crushed that hope. Here are some of dad’s words that cold and snowy evening in Ada, Ohio.

    Public opinion has enacted a law against murder; so should international public opinion demand a law against war, which is merely organized murder. Shall we execute a man for taking a single life, and glorify nations for slaughtering its thousands? To curb crime, to protect justice, police powers are instituted in all realms. Why not go beyond the transitory interest of a nation and establish an international police power? Let the representatives of the world powers meet in one body! Let a world code be compiled! God made humanity one. But man is now divided against himself…through common interest, through common needs, the world must move towards the unity of all its peoples. Let internationalism be our watchword, our aim, our duty. Let us hear the call of our age! Then the “Golden ‘Cestus of Peace” shall clothe all with celestial beauty; and serene, resplendent, on the summit of human achievement shall stand the miraculous spectacle, the congress of nations, with a common purpose of agreeing, not upon military plans, not to foster cruelty and incite other people to carnage, not to bow before the god of battles, but to announce the simple doctrine of peace and brotherhood—our only hope, our only reliance against which all powers of the earth shall not prevail.

    That was January 16, 1914. Dad’s entire oration is found in my book, Common Sense for the Twenty-First Century. On that same date, January 16th, exactly 77 years later, I had just returned from Iraq, my wife Theresa, my son Blase Martin and I were handcuffed and on our bellies on the marble floor of the Los Angeles Federal Building because we blocked the doors of that edifice with scores of other protesters in a massive act of national civil disobedience. Later that day, from holding cells deep in the bowels of the Federal Building, we heard that the bombing of Iraq had begun. Eighty-eight thousand tons of bombs, very dumb bombs, represented the beginning of a war initiated by George Herbert Walker Bush, continued by Bill Clinton and still raging out of control with the current incumbent in the White House. Anyone igniting a one-pound bomb against innocents should be called a terrorist. Just what name do we have for an opening salvo of 88,000 tons of bombs on a civilian population?

    So here we are, nearly a century after my dad’s oration, living in a run-away war system. We are living in the midst of the greatest crisis in history. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights have been placed on hold. There is a plan in place to attack Iran. Actually there are many possible futures. The best of those futures depends on our response to the current crisis.

    The greatest myth in our culture is that we are powerless. I hear that myth frequently, “we are so powerless!” But we are not powerless; we are powerful and every worthwhile change in our society has come from the base, not from the top down. What makes us feel so powerless? Mass commercial media has a large role in this. Television creates a sense of passivity—life going by as a river over which we have no control. But we can transcend that passivity.

    As we hear of wars and rumors of wars we are inclined to ask: what can I do? I certainly will not attempt to tell you what to do, but I can tell you some things that are being done and some things that need to be done. Here in Santa Barbara, as well as in Santa Monica and many other locations, we have the amazing statement of Arlington West on the beach. Markers representing the troops who have died are placed on the beach every Sunday. Respect is shown for the Iraqi dead as well, but the Veterans cannot put up 650,000 markers every Sunday, so they express their respect for the Iraqi dead in a poster (that figure is only the dead from 2003; millions have died since 1991).

    The Veterans are a vanguard of the peace movement. A parade of military people are coming forward and following their conscience. They are refusing to serve. Some have exposed the rampant practice of torture, which now, to our shame, has been codified.

    Let’s not have any parlor games about saving the whole world by torturing someone into telling us where they hid their nuclear bomb. Torture is nothing else but a classic form of terrorism designed to get people to agree with the torturer and to frighten other members of the society into compliance. But justice does not permit exceptionalism. Our hypocrisy rattles the heavens as we chip away at others doing nuclear research, while we have planet-busting nukes ready to fire in all directions.

    No exceptionalism in regard to weapons of mass destruction. No exceptionalism regarding torture. Our dogs and cats are protected. If we should torture one of them the way we torture our “suspected terrorists,” we would be guilty of a felony.

    What is to be done? We need you to volunteer with these Veterans of Arlington West on your beach every Sunday. We need you to support them financially as well. I also want to mention a nuclear vanguard. Sister Ardeth Platte, Sister Carol Gilbert and Sister Jackie Hudson symbolically disarmed weapons of mass destruction by pouring their blood on a nuclear silo in Colorado. Forty-one months in prison for Ardeth Platte, 33 months in prison for Carol Gilbert and 30 months in prison for Jackie Marie Hudson. The vast majority of us may not imitate such acts of heroism by the nuns. But we can be in solidarity with them and so many others like them who are standing up in the face of evil. We can tell their story; the commercial media is certainly not telling it. The commercial media has new and meaningless stories to tell us about the rich and the famous.

    What can we do? Imagination and creativity are required. We can ask the corporate sector to come out against our wars as many did during Vietnam. We can tell our political servants that they do not have a future in politics unless they demand an immediate end to the rape of Iraq. Surely the Congress must become more than a group of clappers who stand around and applaud the president as he fosters organized murder and mayhem.

    Ours is a spiritual quest. The struggle to end nuclearism and war forever is doable. We have the technology and legal structure to outlaw and destroy every nuclear weapon on the planet. We can have a functional peace system, and we have the basis for such a system in the universal declaration of human rights.

    We must demand that our media cover the acts of peacemaking rather than attempting to marginalize or demonize them. Let us live each day as if it were our last; let us do now what we want to be said in our eulogy. If we are retired, let’s get back to work for peace and justice.

    Please bear in mind that we who believe that an international peace system is possible are the realists of our time. On the contrary, it is the militarists, as the title of Bob Woodward’s new book states, who are in a state of denial. These people are not realists. They are living in a fantasy land of unreality. The military of the world at peace is the biggest threat to the global environment. And should militarism and nuclearism prevail, there is no future for life on this planet. So it really makes no difference how much some may love war. They can’t have war and also have the planet.

    We are now in the fifteenth year of the Iraq disaster. We will never be able to count the dead or the myriad of ruined lives of Iraqis and of our young and trusting troops. We have yet to do protests that are proportional to the Holocausts we have created in Korea, Vietnam, Central America, Iraq and Afghanistan. None of our peace actions have been proportional to the evils committed in our name. Actually, war is the most prominent expression of conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is a waste of time.

    There is another wisdom which I would call the wisdom of the ages. This is the wisdom that says, happy are you who work for peace, you shall be called the children of god. This is the wisdom of the ages:

    Happy are you who hunger and thirst for justice, you shall be satisfied. Indeed this is the answer to what we can do. Junk the conventional wisdom which surrounds us and live with the wisdom of the ages.

    We must use new and sacred instruments of change in place of the clubs, guns, bombs and nukes of the past—the general strike, the boycott, mass mobilizations, non-cooperation with the war-making machine. These are non-violent instruments of change. And taxation without representation is still tyranny. There is not one thing to do; there are many things to do. As Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero said, “Everyone can do something.”

    Yes, electoral politics is a legitimate place for our peacemaking efforts and so are the plethora of non-governmental organizations such as the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the Office of the Americas. We must make use of peacemaking efforts in education and recall the mandate of Einstein that we concentrate on creativity and imagination. I fail to see creativity in standardized tests and I certainly don’t want to see any standardized students.

    War is made sacred by the very manner in which young students study our revolution and the endless wars that followed. As we change our way of thinking, we will continue to study the past, but we must make it clear that to repeat the past is to be unfaithful to the past. To be faithful to the past, we must foster change in our static educational practices. The only question to ask after students study a war is, “now tell us how that war could have been avoided.”

    We have become isolated by our militaristic nationalism, but at this time the nation state as the terminus of sovereignty is as outdated as the city states of old. We live on a small planet that is in extreme danger. Various religions have developed by way of anthropology and geography. Corrupt politicians have used and continue to use religion as a cloak for malice. But the ideals in religion are known as the fruits and gifts of the spirit. These are the qualities that will unite the planet as one family. Sectarian, dogmatic and fundamentalist approaches are counterproductive.

    I am a Roman Catholic and served in Guatemala as a Maryknoll priest, but I would have more in common with an atheist working for peace than I would have with a fellow Catholic who happens to be a war monger. The name of our religion or non-religion is really not very meaningful. We are known by the fruits of our labors. Let us join together with like-minded people to create an international community of justice and peace.

     

    Blase Bonpane was the recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2006 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award