KUCINICH PROPOSES
DEPARTMENT OF PEACE-Congressman from Ohio

It will include the following:

• Establish a cabinet-level department in the executive branch dedicated to peacemaking and the study of the conditions that are conducive to both domestic and international peace.
• Headed by a Secretary of Peace, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
• Mission of the Department: hold peace as an organizing principle; endeavor to promote justice and democratic principles to expand human rights; strengthen non-military means of peacemaking; promote the development of human potential; work to create peace, prevent violence, divert from armed conflict and develop new structures in nonviolent dispute resolution.
• Department will create and establish a Peace Academy, modeled after the military service academies, which will provide a 4 year concentration in peace education. Graduates will be required to serve 5 years in public service in programs dedicated to domestic or international nonviolenct conflict resolution.
• Principal officers are listed in the formal proposal.
• The first day of each year, January 1st will be designated as Peace Day in the United States and all citizens should be encouraged to observe and celebrate the blessings of peace and endeavor to create peace in the coming year.

For further information contact Dennis Kucinich at www.house.gov/kucinich

As people of faith, we understand that God created the universe and everything in it. Our world is an astonishingly beautiful, rich complex, tiny piece of that creation, teeming with life and beloved in God's sight.

Since the nuclear age began in 1945 this glorious world has been faced with a fundamentally new kind of threat from nuclear weapons. Their vast power could destroy not only the present world, but with long-term radiation effects and the possibility of nuclear winter, nuclear weapons could destroy the future. Even when they are unused, their production and deployment cause significant evironmental degradation, divert massive resources from human need, and add destabilizing fear to tense political situations.

Contemplating the use of nuclear weapons is an affront to God. Preparing to unleash such destructiveness runs against all the life-giving creativity that comes from God. As people of faith, we affirm life and all that nurtures it. We abhor nuclear weapons and the destruction they portend. As people of faith, we choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19).

AN URGENT CALL
END THE NUCLEAR DANGER

A decade after the end of the Cold War, the peril of nuclear destruction is mounting. The great powers have refused to give up nuclear arms, other countries are producing them, and terrorists are trying to acquire them.

Poorly guarded warheads and nuclear material in the former Soviet Union may fall into the hands of terrorists. The Bush administration is developing nuclear 'bunker busters' and threatening to use them against non-nuclear countries. The risk of nuclear war between India and Pakistan is grave.

Despite the end of the Cold War, the United States plans to keep large numbers of nuclear weapons indefinitely. The latest U.S.-Russian treaty, which will cut deployed strategic warheads to 2200, leaves both nations facing "assured destruction" and lets them keep their total arsenals (active and inactive, strategic and tactical) at more than 10,000 warheads each.

The dangers posed by huge arsenals, threats of use, proliferation, and terrorism are linked: The nuclear powers' refusal to disarm fuels proliferation, and proliferation makes nuclear materials more accessable to terrorists. The events of September 11 brought home to Americans what it means to experience a catastrophic attack. Yet the horrifying losses that day were only a fraction of what any nation would suffer if a single nuclear weapons were used on a city.

WE URGE YOU TO GO TO OUR HOME PAGE www.mupwj.org/index.htm to endorse this urgent call. You will find more detailed explanation at the site.

Aftermath of Iraq War suggests a new vision for humankind.
by James Hipkins, Editor, Peace Leaf

Dr. Robert Mueller, former assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, was speaking in San Francisco just before the Iraq War began. His comments are a challenge to human-
kind in the aftermath of a period of war.

I want to share with you some of the insights he shared which are visionary and powerful figures for the post-war world.

He commented that "he feels honored to be alive at such a miraculous time in history. He said, "I am so moved by what's going on in our world today. Never before in the history of the world has there been a global, visible, viable, and open public dialogue and conversation about the legitimacy of war."

He commented: " Is war legitimate? Is it illegitimate? Is there enough evidence to warrant an attack? What will be the consequences? What will happen after a war? How will this set off other conflicts? What might be the peaceful alternatives? All of this is taking place in the context of the United Nations Security Council, the body that was established in 1949 for exactly this purpose."

He noted that it had taken us more than fifty years to realize that function, the real function of the United Nations. It is at this point in history that the United Nations was at the center of the stage.

He said, " We, the world community, waging peace. It is difficult, hard work. It is constant and we must not let up. It is working and it is an historic milestone of immense proportions. It has never happened before --never in human history-- and it is happening now--waging peace through global conversation.

As we reflect on Dr. Mueller's words, it is clear that the aggressor was so angry and upset that the line of the warheads and the gathering of the military forces burst forth in one night's bombing of Baghdad.

Every moral principle that had been used for centuries to determine whether a war was just or unjust was thrust aside.
It was as if some force had lunged forward and grabbed the arm of humankind and shook them to point them in a new direction.

During the days prior to the beginning of the Iraq War the largest peace demonstrations in the history of the world were taking place. In every continent people gathered by the thousands to join in the echo of "Peace Not War". In countries who had never had peace demonstrations found themselves swept up in the movement of a giant wave of affirmation that the world should "Give Peace A Change".

Dr, Mueller commented that "this is what waging peace looks like".

Do we not find ourselves today at a most unique spot in the history of the world? Never before have so many in so many countries pled for peace. Is this not the time for the world to rethink the meaning of living in a world community? How can we bring to the United Nations a new birth of hope and optimism? How can we keep alive the spark of hope which has been ignited in the hearts and minds of people in every corner of the globe?

At the same time we must confront in the United States a point of view that is diametrically opposed to world peace.
The Project for the New American Century has outlined and guided the Bush Administration in the development of a point of view that insists that the American view is the only acceptable view in today's world. It sounds as if they have laid out the foundation for an American Empire encompassing the world.

Dr. Mueller has given us a great challenge. Can we keep alive the vision of a world waging peace, as we work our way through the reconstruction of Iraq? Will this not take the best thought and plans that hmankind can muster in order to enable peace to prevail? The United States has the unique opportunity to sense the mood of the world and grasp the moment to suggest that the United Nations must take the lead in rebuilding Iraq and in the birth of their new government.

Your editor feels as if we are at a cross-roads. One road leads to a hope-filled world. The other road leads to division, disunity and chaos. Hopefully, in the midst of all the turmoil and struggle for power, people will not lose sight of what occurred in the United Nations at it debated the issue surrounding Iraq and its former leader. Waging Peace is not just a one time event. It is the commitment of a life-time.

A reader writes:
We should not expect biblical people to be familiar with 20th century science. When we insist the science of biblical days is correct the science of the 20th century is wrong, we usually have "egg on our face."

We have a much more important roll with science! Science is a monster (WW1, WW2, crime, etc.) Science is wonderful! (could feed the world, educate citizens, control over-population, eliminate inherited birth defects, etc.)
If only science could be guided in the right direction, we would have a wonderful world.

At Christmas time, we are reminded that God sent the baby Jesus into the world to show us how to live in peace.(instead of a mighty warrior) Jesus taught us to pray the Lord's Prayer. We would feed the hungry, educate good citizens, control over-population, eliminate inherited birth defects, etc.

Could it be that we need to apply Jesus' teaching to modern times? Could it be that guiding this wonderful monster(science) is our responsibility.

Charles E. Morrison, Ironton, OH

HAROLD S. BIDMEAD writes from Kolbotn, Norway.

THE LOGICAL ALTERNATIVE

Millions of protesters against a US-led war on Saddam Hussein have demonstrated that they want peaceful solutions of international disputes. Millions, usually the same people, regard the so-called "United" Nations as the only alternative problem solver. They fondly imagine the UN to be a law-maker, a source of law, of just and impartial law, a law-enforcement agency. Not so!

In the last resort, the UN is an organization than can seek to maintain peace only by threatening war. Thus it is scarcely logical to regard the UN as a peacekeeping authority. Nor is it even an authority, since its own Charter gives it no power to do anything else but make recommendations. Its Members, being sovereign (Article 2) are not bound to follow any recommendation, not even Sates that voted in favour.

Itself unable to take action, the UN can in the last resort merely appeal to one or more of the Member States to make war or enforce warlike measures such as sanctions, which punish the weak, the poor and the innocent rather than the guilty. Being sovereign, its Members will of course engage in war or impose sanctions only if they would have done so anyway, even if the UN had never existed. As a peacekeepers the UN is thus a negligible factor in world affairs.

Our present choice is thus between two evils, war or appeasement. Appeasement would not have prevented Mussolini from invading Abyssinia, nor Hitler from conquering the whole of Europe including Britain. Yet just when Saddam Hussein was teetering and Iraqi dissidents were about to eliminate him, granted him a reprieve.

Considering that the ignorant, unthinking and badly educated are in a majority in this world, it might be logical to assume that the minority have the right idea. But look how at the end of WW2 the self-proclaimed elite revived the League of Nations under the name of the United Nations, despite the ignominious failure of the former! The physicians prescribed "the mixture as before."

It seems logical to conclude that the vast majority of the world's population hates war and demands something better than the UN to provide the alternative. What is needed is genuine peacekeeping authority with the de jure and de facto power to reach decisions without shady horse-trading and to enforce such decisions peacefully without having to beseech possible lawbreakers to carry out its decisions on its behalf.

If such an authority compromised all the nations of the world, all with voting powers, it would be like a barrel of fruit containing many rotten apples. It would fail as ignominiously as our two world leagues. Yet such a union of the democracies would be potentially so successful that all others would clamour to join, and democracy might spread like wildfire across the despotic world. Remember the dramatic collapse of the Communist empire!

The governing body of such a union would of course have to be controlled by a democratically elected parliament, and would be constitutionally empowered to deal only with a limited list of power. e.g. defense (including anti-terrorism), foreign policy, civil aviation and power tot ax for its own existence. All other powers would remain with the national governments and citizens where they already rest.

( Ingierkollvn. 74 N-1410 Kolbotn,Norway)

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