Imagine: One World Without Nuclear Weapons

"I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The only trouble is they are not aware they can get it. It's all down to you, mate …All we are saying is give peace a chance…All you need is love…Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one."-John Lennon

In a country that possesses 11,000 nuclear weapons with many in excess of 20,000,000 tons of TNT [the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 12,000 tons] yet claims to be based on the Judeo-Christian ethics, which includes the commandment that thou shall not kill, is staggering in it's hypocrisy.

In March 2008, President Bush announced his plan to build a new multi-billion dollar plan to rebuild the nation’s nuclear weapons capabilities through the Department of Energy’s Complex Transformation proposal. [1]

The centerpiece is a new nuclear weapons plant for the production of plutonium pits, the primary detonators in modern nuclear weapons and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is the site slated for the new bomb plant.

America signed the NPT and thus is legally and morally obliged to reduce its nuclear weapons arsenal.

Mankind is the only species that has the choice of annihilating itself. "Since the end of the Cold War, the world has spent more than $10 trillion on armaments. The Untied States alone spends approximately $100 million every day to keep its nuclear arsenal at the ready." [2]

American money proclaims "In God We Trust" but the facts on the ground are that we have become an empire of blasphemers, for what we trust in are weapons of destruction.

Cesar Chavez said the key to peace is: "Public Action! Public action! Public action!"

In the '60's Eldridge Cleaver reminded us that if we are not a part of the solution, we are a part of the problem.

Filmmaker and peace activist, Bud Ryan recently went to Japan to shoot a film about the Hiroshima Peace Museum. He met Emiko Okada, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb who sent this invitation:

Dear President Bush,

As a hibakusha, a survivor of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb, I would like to invite you to come and visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum while you are in Japan for the G8 Summit (in July).

All of my friends, many of whom are fellow bomb survivors, are waiting to be your guides around the Peace Memorial Museum and Peace Memorial Park. We are the people who can give you the best perspective of the horrors of nuclear weapons as we have lived through it and many of us have suffered numerous physical ailments over the last 62+ years and lost loved ones in the blast.

I myself suffer from aplastic anemia and I lost my 12 year old sister whose last words were "I go now" as she left our house that fateful August morning in 1945.

Our world is now full of worries like global warming, environmental issues, regional conflicts, poverty and a questionable world economy, so none of us need the specter of nuclear weapons to add to those concerns. As a bomb survivor my only wish is that these horrible weapons never be used again. To insure that these awful weapons are never used again ALL of the Nuclear Weapons States must live up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which requires that all nuclear stockpiles be dismantled.

I would ask that you, with the tremendous authority that the Office of the President of the United States possesses, take the first step in fulfilling your Treaty obligations by coming to Hiroshima to see for yourself firsthand what these weapons have wrought and to talk with some of the people who have lived through the blast.

I would also ask that you use your international influence to invite the other leaders of the Nuclear Weapon States – Great Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – to join you in Hiroshima so they too can see and hear for themselves the destructive nature of these nuclear weapons that do not discriminate between soldier and civilian. In point of fact, nuclear bombs kill mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, the old and the young.

Thank you for reading my invitation and listening to my plea about helping to remove the 30,000+ nuclear weapons around the world today. I look forward to meeting you and the other leaders in July in Hiroshima.

Sincerely,

Ms. Emiko Okada
11-6 Nakayama Kagamigaoka
Higashi-ku, Hiroshima 732-0022
Japan

"You must give birth to your dreams; they are the future waiting to happen."-Rilke

One dream can change everything and change only occurs from the bottom up. It is up to each one of us individually to do something to bring the dream of a nonviolent world into reality. The way to wake up in a new world begins with a spiritual evolution that sees all others as equal human and sacred beings.

"Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."~ Martin Luther King Jr

Love is a choice and so is nonviolence. Hearts that are stuck in the past turn to stone and fear numbs the imagination.

The way to peace is not brain surgery and only justice will reap it. The day that the gold standard of law is implemented as outlined in International Law and the Declaration of Human Rights and when Governments meet their obligations under these Laws, peace will be reality.

Treaties, legislation, resolutions and promises are irrelevant, until we as individuals evolve and are transformed into one human family, and that will lead to an enlightened and humane way of living together and nonviolently solving conflicts so that we will share, nurture and love the one world we all inhabit.

Send a letters or email:

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

1. Learn more about Complex Transformation:
http://www.faithfulsecurity.org/html/complex_transformation.html
2. Jonathon Granoff, TIKKUN Magazine 9/11/03