World Peace Congress 2008

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto on World Peace

Letter from the Trustee on Congress format

Millenium

There they came, wave upon wave,
Titans of the mighty Tribe, goose-stepping
Cadres of Civilization Mongers
flying flags bearing bright Charters,
vivid visions, of scopious Human Redemption:
peremptory in short command
and Organized like generals
with no intelligence overlooked
to press all Rhetoric into instant Service
of the Great Emancipatory Cause
of Liberty, Life and Lust for Unilateral Happiness -

We the Little People mired in Microscosms
watched , waved, jumped and clapped
as they marched in Grand Parade
down from our meager perches
in the craven cul de sacs of jaded
loss of hope, reason and
ordinary norm of Co-respecting
Decency with our own Philosophy
of Bread and the sweet elixir
of Collective Amnesia,
as they rocketed on overhead

Ribbons and flags, curled and fluttered,
lay festooning the grandiloquent
boulevards of Wealth and State
as we scampered like mice,
After the March, to nibble the Souvenirs
of the Great Epoch just unveiled
by the Orchestra of Imperial Design:
Here Democracy there Liberty,
Property, Rule of Law all gaudy and glistering -
and how we rushed to collect the swag,
run home, and gorge like expectant Children

We celebrated in swoon all night long
this Arrival of the Promised Day
raising cheap, copious libations to the health
of our Great Captains who smiled rich, ravishing smiles
and bared immaculately polished teeth of steel:
shimmering, glaring television screens distending
the raucous audio of their Manifest Assembly
in deafening bytes of syncopating
timbre, tone and Declamatory Excess.

Then the last tanks rolled ,clunking away
the P.A. systems fell sudden silent
and the grim Mondays of somber Sobriety
returned to haunt the ineffable Drudgery
of our new Speedocratic workaday week:
The Great Machine cranked, creaked
its stilted wheels back on rails again,
as we sang the Song of the Shirt
quiet now under our unsweetened breath

And then came the clumping, clustering Pictures
blinking like sorties of streaming glow-worms
dotting in digitals our Great Advantage
bright proclaimed over the Perilous Planet,
as we set down dinner forks to
digest its meaning for our limping lives,
as laser rockets razed the riveting screen
and great plumes of Distal Destruction
filled adult minds with unthinkable dread -
as children huddled struck dumb seeking
comfort in their parents' flinching eyes

Like merrymakers tossed dizzy off whirling roundabouts
we re-inform our distrusting hearts of Logic and the Great Game
of Reason played by the aerial Mandarins of State -
seeking shreds, shrapnels, shards of meaning
in the obscure behemoths of hopeless Corruption
of Speech, Image, Word, and new-fangled Archetype; but infertile
assurance born of Impotence breeds not the sterile contentments
of yore: and we stoop warily to wonder how and why
and when we lost even the merest semblance of control

The music eternal blares and streaking strobes
scan the hypertrophic universe , lit up like holograms ,
of this barren Realm of Discontent:
born of seething Madness , the Toxic nostrums of Smith , Locke,
the Buonopartism of Commerce and the Calvinism
of rampant Greed become now the fodder Popcorn and Soda
of our daily viewing; like incapacitated Voyeurs
nailed to our seats , staring fixedly ahead
at the desolation of our own Disempowering lives

How now to move to Love or Care?
billows of cleaving empathy made alien by the
Hobbesian pall envelope us like a miasma,
seeding descending clouds of disabling distrust:
crucified in dessicating Hate, we dry up
in near and far domains ,shedding sanguine lives
of Vitals that fire the fusions of stirred Emotion
stoking the furnace of warmth, affection and passion-
We live but in wan Dress Rehearsal of Death.

The Guardians prattle on in their glib Discourse
of Death: enchain resolve, entombing
the native springs of Sovereign Actions;
denude , intoxify Earth, Sea, and Sky,
dismembering our Collective Memory
of Mutual Convenance in trade for
crass , consumptive stupefactions: now bought ,
now sold for spoonfuls of lusting, desire
and sprigfuls of all-requiting Bigotry

Slim pontoons of slender Hope still straddle
the yawning Abyss of Despair; as they run their Last Race
upon our Free-gifted Spaces, we gather up the fringes
in rousing Counter- Prophecy: Nothing lives or dies in vain -
the Clockwork Universe of Order and Exactitude
Self-Aware, corrects all ravages in Rectifying Time;
and we as Conscious Atoms may yet breathe into that
Incorrigible Cosmic Plan our Ragged Philanthropy of Indemnifying Love
in lucent, lustrating streams of unstinting, Immaculate Beatitude

Copyright Rajani Kanth, 2006

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The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Issued in London, 9 July 1955

Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein
IN the tragic situation which confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should
assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of
the development of weapons of mass destruction, and to discuss a resolution in
the spirit of the appended draft.

We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation,
continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose
continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts; and,
overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between Communism and
anti-Communism.

Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or
more of these issues; but we want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings
and consider yourselves only as members of a biological species which has had a
remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire.

We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than
to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there
is hope that they may collectively avert it.

We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not
what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer,
for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is:
what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must
be disastrous to all parties?

The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not
realized what would be involved in a war with nuclear bombs. The general public
still thinks in terms of the obliteration of cities. It is understood that the
new bombs are more powerful than the old, and that, while one A-bomb could
obliterate Hiroshima, one H-bomb could obliterate the largest cities, such as
London, New York, and Moscow.

No doubt in an H-bomb war great cities would be obliterated. But this is one of
the minor disasters that would have to be faced. If everybody in London, New
York, and Moscow were exterminated, the world might, in the course of a few
centuries, recover from the blow. But we now know, especially since the Bikini
test, that nuclear bombs can gradually spread destruction over a very much
wider area than had been supposed.

It is stated on very good authority that a bomb can now be manufactured which
will be 2,500 times as powerful as that which destroyed Hiroshima. Such a bomb,
if exploded near the ground or under water, sends radio-active particles into
the upper air. They sink gradually and reach the surface of the earth in the
form of a deadly dust or rain. It was this dust which infected the Japanese
fishermen and their catch of fish. No one knows how widely such lethal
radio-active particles might be diffused, but the best authorities are
unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the
human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal
death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of
disease and disintegration.

Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in
military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain.
What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure
that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts
on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They
depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the
particular expert's knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the
most gloomy.

Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and
inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce
war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to
abolish war.

The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national
sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than
anything else is that the term "mankind" feels vague and abstract. People
scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their
children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity.
They can scarcely bring themselves to grasp that they, individually, and those
whom they love are in imminent danger of perishing agonizingly. And so they
hope that perhaps war may be allowed to continue provided modern weapons are
prohibited.

This hope is illusory. Whatever agreements not to use H-bombs had been reached
in time of peace, they would no longer be considered binding in time of war,
and both sides would set to work to manufacture H-bombs as soon as war broke
out, for, if one side manufactured the bombs and the other did not, the side
that manufactured them would inevitably be victorious.

Although an agreement to renounce nuclear weapons as part of a general reduction
of armaments would not afford an ultimate solution, it would serve certain
important purposes. First, any agreement between East and West is to the good
in so far as it tends to diminish tension. Second, the abolition of
thermo-nuclear weapons, if each side believed that the other had carried it out
sincerely, would lessen the fear of a sudden attack in the style of Pearl
Harbour, which at present keeps both sides in a state of nervous apprehension.
We should, therefore, welcome such an agreement though only as a first step.

Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember
that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that
can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or
anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black,
then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be
understood, both in the East and in the West.

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge,
and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our
quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity,
and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if
you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

Resolution:

WE invite this Congress, and through it the scientists of the world and the
general public, to subscribe to the following resolution:

"In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly
be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind,
we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly,
that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them,
consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of
dispute between them."

Max Born
Percy W. Bridgman
Albert Einstein
Leopold Infeld
Frederic Joliot-Curie
Herman J. Muller
Linus Pauling
Cecil F. Powell
Joseph Rotblat
Bertrand Russell
Hideki Yukawa

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Letter from the Trustee:

Should you choose to attend Congress 2008 please be aware that this is not a formal professional convention but an active interactive Congress of peoples.

Panelists and Participants will engage each other in Dialog and Discussion in both Panel Sessions and in Open Plenaries. Panelists will draft globally spread out Grassroots Projects, that the Congress is aiming at, within individual Panel Sessions and then will submit them to the Review of the Assembly of the Whole that will suggest alternations and improvements. Think of it, again, as a microcosmic Global Town Meeting.

Each Panel will be charged with delivering concrete Projects that will embody the Vision contained in the relevant Resolutions emanating from Congress 2007.

As such this is less of a Talking-Congress much as a Doing-Congress. We will also, as far as humanly possible, aim at Consensual decision-making rather than "majority" rule.

Warm wishes,

Rajani Kannepalli Kanth

Trustee