Alice Slater
President
Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE)/ Abolition
2000
Hello Dear Friends
How wonderful to see so many people gathered here today to bear
witness to the tragic suffering of the people of Hiroshima, 59 years
ago and to say never again!. And how inspiring that the brave Hibakusha
are sharing their souls, their stories, and their pain to remind
us of the work we have to do-to say never again! Never again will
we let any place on our planet suffer the cruel inhumanity that
was visited upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The power of the people is rising. Millions of people marched around
the world to protest the global war machine led by President Bush、in
an illegal war against Iraq without the lawful sanction of the UN
Security Council, waged on deceitful information that Iraq was threatening
us with nuclear weapons. Millions more marched the following year
to demand that the war be ended. And now we must go forth from this
World Conference and mobilize millions of people once again to demand
the total abolition of nuclear weapons. Or else, the US will again
use nuclear weapons as an excuse to start an unlawful war on North
Korea or Iran. Who will be next to be attacked by the Empire?
We have a plan! Abolition 2000, a global network of over 2000 organizations
in more than 90 countries has launched its Abolition Now! Dare to
Plan Campaign. We drafted a model nuclear weapons treaty, with scientists,
lawyers and policy makers, that lays out the steps for securing,
dismantling, and guarding dangerous nuclear materials under strict
and effective international control, which is now an official UN
document. It’s not as if we can’t figure out how to do it!. And
last year at this Conference, an Abolition Now petition campaign
was launched from Hiroshima. After this meeting be sure to take
the petitions in your packet to start enrolling the millions of
people we need so we can swamp the United Nations with box loads
of signatures next spring at the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review
Conference. That’s the treaty where all the nations of the world
promised, in 1970, not to get nuclear weapons, if the countries
with nuclear weapons gave them up. Thirty five years later, the
number of nuclear weapons ruining our earth and damaging our very
genetic heritage from the mining, milling, processing and testing
of lethal uranium and plutonium, which remains poisonous for more
than 250,000 years--has more than doubled to 30,000 bombs-and the
Bush Administration is making new ones-smaller more “usable” ones
and planning, with Japan, Australia, and others, to ring the world
with missiles, bankrupting our treasuries and wasting the precious
minds of our scientists, as it strives to dominate and control the
earth from space.. Never again!
Mayors Akiba of Hiroshima and Itoh of Nagasaki’s Mayors Campaign
for Peace is bringing 100 Mayors to the New York NPT conference.
They need your help. Visit your own Mayor and enroll him in the
Campaign. And write letters and petition your Prime Minister to
come to the NPT meeting because we need the Heads of State there
who have the power and authority to set up negotiations for a treaty
by 2010 mandating the total abolition of all nuclear weapons on
the planet by the year 2020. Ask your Prime Minister to come to
the NPT with his own plan to make sure the tons of so-called “peaceful”
plutonium in Japan are never turned into nuclear bombs.
Exercise your citizenship muscles! Nuclear weapons exist because
the people of the world do not have real democracy. Tell your members
of Parliament you’ll vote them out if they continue to use your
tax dollars on joint missile “defenses” with the United States-the
first stage of launching weapons into space. Tell your members of
Parliament you’ll replace them if they try to replace Article 9
of your peace Constitution in order to make it legal to send young
men to serve and die in the aggressive wars of the American Empire.
We can do it!. With the spirit and energy and enthusiasm in this
great hall, let us go forth and join with others around the planet
to make our beautiful world safe and secure. Never Again! Let us
Dare to Plan! No more wars! Abolition NOW!
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