WORKING TO ACHIEVE A PEACEFUL SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FREE FROM THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Dear Friends,
One road leads to greener pastures, another to blazing fires. 

Mythical thinking is fine for addressing psychological understanding but insufficient for dealing with the laws of the natural world. The myth of a perpetual growth economy that ignores boundaries set by the very climate of the planet is but one example. Failing to be realistic is leading to blazing fires. Slow burn. 

Mythical thinking in the development of weapons of mass destruction to enhance national security is similarly unable to produce a road map to peace. Strategic stability will not be enhanced by the use of nuclear weapons in battle as is asserted in the US Joint Chiefs doctrinal statement (https://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_72.pdf) nor by a new arms race titled modernization that will squander trillions of dollars. In fact strategic stability regarding nuclear weapons is a mythical abstraction, utterly unverifiable and regularly assaulted by another myth, gaining security through the pursuit of overwhelming military strength. This second myth leads to arms racing, utterly incompatible with the alleged pursuit of strategic stability, and a theft from the resources needed to obtain a just sustainable future based on fulfilling real human security needs.  

Realism dictates working to achieve human security. First and foremost in such an endeavor is a cooperative approach to the health of all people everywhere, a direction embodied in the UN Sustainable Development Goals to which all nations are pledged to pursue.  

We have a wake up call that can help lead us to that greener pasture. The COVID-19 virus does not recognize distinctions of race, nation, social status, gender, or religion. The vaccine, when it comes, must be understood as a global common good. Its administration requires cooperation at a global level. Is the alternative a vaccine apartheid world? For more information I recommend https://www.vaccinecommongood.org.

Similarly, security is a global common good and achieving it requires cooperation, diplomacy, law, and the best of our humanity. . 

Failure to recognize the folly of pursuing security through the ongoing readiness to annihilate billions of people with nuclear weapons will lead to the blazing destruction evidenced by the first and hopefully the last uses of these devices: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

So that we remember the past and pursue realistic ways forward, we share with you notices of several relevant events in which GSI is actively engaged. Please share these notices. 

Warmly,
Jonathan Granoff
President, Global Security Institute
Senior Advisor and Special Representative to the UN for the Permanent Secretariat of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates
Invitation: The 75th Commemorative Remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, featuring former President of the U.S.S.R. Mikhail Gorbachev, former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, and the Mayors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima

August 6 and 9, 2020
Join us for an historic event. This one-hour presentation will commemorate the
75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 6
and 9, 1945, and will honor the lifelong achievements of former President Gorbachev and former Secretary Shultz.

The first Voices Youth Award will be presented. The nine actions listed in the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Accord will be introduced.

Speakers will include:

  • Kazumi Matsui, Mayor of Hiroshima

  • Tomihisa Taue, Mayor of Nagasaki

  • Former US Senator Sam Nunn

  • Mohamed ElBaradei, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

  • Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

  • Jonathan Granoff, President Global Security Institute

  • Kehkashan Basu, Winner 2016 International Children’s Peace Prize, Founder and President Green Hope Foundation
REGISTER:

After you register, you will
receive an email with the
social media links to the
different presentation platforms.


VISIT FACEBOOK:


QUESTIONS?
BROADCAST TIMES:

Thursday August 6, 2020:

5AM PDT San Francisco
8AM EDT New York
2PM UK, 5:50PM Dehli, 9PM Japan
12PM PDT San Francisco
3PM EDT New York, 9PM UK,
9:30PM Delhi, 4AM Japan (Aug.7)
5PM PDT San Fransisco,
8PM EDT New York, 2AM UK (Aug.
7), 5:30PM Delhi (Aug.7), 4AM
Japan (Aug 7)

Saturday August 8, 2020:

5PM PDT San Francisco, 8PM New
York, 2AM UK (Aug.9), 5:30AM
Delhi (Aug 9), 9AM Japan (Aug.9)

Sunday August 9, 2020:

12PM PDT San Francisco,
3PM EDT New York, 9PM UK, 9:30
PM Delhi, 4AM Japan (Aug.10)
Webinar: The Application of the Timeless Wisdom of Gandhi and King Today

with the Hon. Ela Gandhi, Parliamentarian ( South Africa), Peace Activist, Granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi 

August 6, 2020
6 pm to 8 pm India Standard Time
8:30 am to 9:30 am Eastern Daylight Time
and rebroadcast on Facebook
Organized by Department of English, Rajiv Gandhi University in Collaboration with Gandhi-King Initiative Centre, Stanford University, USA & Gandhi King Foundation, Hyderabad, India
The importance of the guidance of Gandhi and King in bringing justice peace and unity into action today.

Keynote Address
Jonathan Granoff
President, Global Security Institute, USA

Speakers
1. Ela Gandhi, Gandhi Development Trust. Durban, South Africa.
2. Tore Naerland, Bike for Peace, Norway
3. Christian Bartolf, Gandhi Information Centre, Berlin, Germany
4. Dr. Sriram Sonty, Chicago, USA
5. Willian Arias, Peace Activist, Columbia, US
United Religions Initiative Webinar:
Lessons from Nagasaki
August 8, 2020
7-8pm, EDT
Panelists:
Amb. Thomas Graham, Jr.
Barbara Newsome
Jon Ramer
Sachiko, a Nagasaki survivor. 

The webinar will include youth calling for engagement in freeing the world from nuclear weapons and end with Interfaith prayers. 
Interfaith Call to Action:
The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing
Swamini Adityananda Saraswati
Jonathan Granoff
Vincent Leong
Dot Maver

Lessons Into Action: Youth Voices
Skyler Oberst
Isaac Thomas
Senator Douglas Roche: 75 years after Hiroshima, I wonder if the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons is just a dream

Former senator Douglas Roche was Canada’s Ambassador for Disarmament from 1984 to 1989. In 2010, he was made an honorary citizen of Hiroshima for his work on nuclear disarmament.

At 8:15 on the fateful morning of Aug. 6, 1945, as the Second World War was drawing to a close in the Pacific, an American atomic bomb exploded 580 metres above the heart of Hiroshima, Japan. Thermal rays emanating from a gigantic fireball charred every human being in a two-kilometre circle. Old and young, male and female, soldier and civilian – the killing was utterly indiscriminate and, in the end, 140,000 people were dead. Three days later, similar atomic carnage obliterated Nagasaki.

That was the beginning of the nuclear age, 75 years ago.

I was 16 at the time and I remember sitting at the kitchen table, listening to the radio news about “a new kind of bomb.” The destruction was so massive that government officials were predicting the war in the Pacific would be over in a matter of days. My parents sighed with relief: I would be spared having to go to war.

There’s a dwindling number now of hibakusha – the name for Japanese people who survived the attacks – which means there are few left with direct memory of the horror of mass destruction. Soon Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be but history.

But they are not history for me. With 13,400 nuclear weapons possessed today by nine countries, they are a living reality. The United Nations’ top official on disarmament affairs, Izumi Nakamitsu, visited Ottawa recently and said that the risk of use of nuclear weapons deliberately, by accident or through miscalculation, “is higher than it has been in decades...”
PNND: Calendar of Official and International Events Commemorating Hiroshima/Nagasaki nuclear bombings 75th anniversary
August 6 and 9, 2020 mark the 75th anniversaries of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There will be official commemoration ceremonies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki organised by these cities, as well as events organised by civil society around the world, many of which are happening online due to the pandemic.

Abolition 2000, the global civil society network to eliminate nuclear weapons, has compiled a calendar of international and national commemoration events, including key events on Hiroshima Day, key events on Nagasaki Day, plus links to calendars of local events in Germany, the United Kingdom and the USA.

For more information on the official commemoration events click here for national and international events and actions.
Jane Goodall and Parliament of Parliament of the World Religions Present a Must-Watch Video

GSI Advisory Board member and world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall speaks with other world leaders on the value and threat to our tropical rain forests. Click on image to watch.
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