“The Nuclear Threat”

The Nuclear Threat
by Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

The essay “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” published in this newspaper [Wall Street Journal] on Jan. 4, was signed by a bipartisan group of four influential Americans — George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn — not known for utopian thinking, and having unique experience in shaping the policies of previous administrations. It raises an issue of crucial importance for world affairs: the need for the abolition of nuclear weapons.                 …

We must put the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons back on the agenda, not in a distant future but as soon as possible. It links the moral imperative — the rejection of such weapons from an ethical standpoint — with the imperative of assuring security. It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing year they make our security more precarious. …

http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2007/01/31_gorbachev_nuclearthreat.htm

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

“If a team of evil geniuses had come to Harry Truman in August of 1945 with a dozen Japanese babies and a blowtorch, and said, “Mr. President, just take this blowtorch in your hands and burn these infants to death one at a time, live on worldwide radio, and we guarantee that the Japanese will surrender right away,” Truman, I’m sure, would have turned away in disgust.

But, under the multiple spells of revenge, racism, weapons-intoxication, and self-deceiving abstractions like ‘the enemy’ and ‘military target,’ Harry Truman and his earnest, sober colleagues consigned thousands of infants and children to their fiery deaths.”

http://www.nonukes.org/library/hope_from_ashes.pdf

“Hope from Ashes” by Dennis Rivers in

Hold Hope, Wage Peace edited by David Krieger and Carah Ong

Speak peace

“I see a different world than most people do on television. I work in many of these same places that are in the news, such as Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Burundi, Bosnia and Serbia, Colombia, and the Middle East as well. I’ve worked in both Rwanda and Nigeria with people who have had everybody in their family killed, so I know what can happen in this world.

But all over the world I work with people who tell me it doesn’t have to be that way. I work with people who have a different world view, a different consciousness…  Their courage, their vision, and their ability to keep their energy up – under even the most difficult circumstances – inspire me beyond words.”

Marshall B. Rosenberg from Speak Peace in a World of Conflict

War Prayer

 …When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it….

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them!…

“O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;

Help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;

Help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;

Help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;

Help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;

Help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -

“For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

“We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”…

Mark Twain from “War Prayer”

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1110-04.htm

“Loving Your Enemies”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness;

only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate;

only love can do that.

Hate multiplies hate,

violence multiplies violence,

 and toughness multiplies toughness

in a descending spiral of destruction….

The chain reaction of evil -

hate begetting hate,

wars producing more wars -

must be broken,

or we shall be plunged

into the dark abbyss of annihilation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.  “Loving Your Enemies”

from Strength to Love

prepare for peace

“There is a Roman dictum, ‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’  This has been diligently followed for over 2,000 years. It has always resulted in more war. We need a new dictum: ‘If you want peace, prepare for peace.’”

from David Krieger’s essay ”The Challenge of Peace”
in the book Hold Hope, Wage Peace
David Krieger has a website at http://www.wagingpeace.org/

“a certain way of life”

“War is not an accident.

It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.”

             A. J. Muste

             The Essays of A. J. Muste edited by Nat Hentoff

Nonviolent Soldier of Islam

“They called themselves Khudai Khidmatgars, ‘Servants of God.’ Their motto was freedom, their aim, service. Since God himself needed no service, they would serve his people.

The Khudai Khidmatgars, under the leadership of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, became history’s first professional nonviolent army – and its most improbable. Any Pathan could join, provided he took the army’s oath:

I am a Khudai Khidmatgar; and as God needs no service, but serving his creation is serving him, I promise to serve humanity in the name of God.

I promise to refrain from violence and from taking revenge.

I promise to forgive those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty.

I promise to refrain from taking part in feuds and quarrels and from creating enmity.

I promise to treat every Pathan as my brother and friend.

I promise to refrain from antisocial customs and practices.

I promise to live a simple life,

to practice virtue and to refrain from evil.

I promise to practice good manners and good behavior

and not lead a life of idleness.

I promise to devote at least two hours a day to social work.”

from Nonviolent Soldier of Islam by Eknath Easwaran

Peace people

   “At the beginning of the Peace People movement, some of us started out to change Northern Ireland and the world. In the years since, I have come to believe that the real struggle starts in my own heart and in all our own hearts and that ‘inner change’ should be the first priority in life. Learning ‘to be still’ and peaceful is our daily work, a lifetime’s work, but it must be done. Otherwise, do we have anything to offer?”

 Mairead Corrigan Maguire, winner of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize

www.peacepeople.com    

Olive leaves in 1846

Elihu Burritt was born on December 8, 1810.  At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, yet managed to teach himself Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian and German. He became known as the “learned blacksmith.”  Gradually he came to see that “there was something to live for beside the mere gratification of a desire to learn – that there were words to be spoken with the living tongue and earnest heart for great principles of truth and righteousness.”

In 1846, Burritt began to publish leaflets called Olive Leaves.  They were sent out to 1500 American newspapers and “scattered in trains, railway stations and other public places and circulated in every other conceivable way. “  His Olive Leaves contained statistics about the cost of war, quotations about peace and anecdotes that illustrated the absurdity of war.