Reading from the Introduction of "Voices for Peace and Social Justice"

International Flotilla Bound for Gaza

July 2, 2011 -  An international flotilla including some four hundred activists is preparing to depart for Gaza in order to bring much needed supplies and draw attention to the plight of the residents of Gaza and the devastating blockade imposed by the State of Israel.  The U.S. contingent is abroad the Audacity of Hope.

Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6 1917; she was the daughter of Jim and Ella Townsend.  She was one of twenty children – 14 boys and 6 girls.  In growing up in Montgomery County, Mississippi, the young Hamer suffered from the twin insults of poverty and racism.  One has to keep in mind the daunting cultural, economic and political realities that a black person faced in Mississippi at that time; Mississippi had the most repressive racist policies of that era.

Throughout the American South, African-Americans were subjected to the satellite of laws and customs that were instituted to actively repress blacks and enforce their inferior status.  Collectively, these restrictive policies were referred to as Jim Crow.  Some examples of Jim Crow included –

·         Separate and unequal education

·         Separate hotel, bathroom, restaurant and sports  accommodations which even included drinking fountains

·         Poll taxes and voter qualification tests specifically designed to exclude blacks from voting

·         Laws outlawing mixed-race marriages.

In regards to the origin of the word Jim Crow, it seems to have first appeared around 1930.  A white minstrel show actor, Thomas "Daddy" Rice, darkened his features using charcoal and danced a ridiculous dance to the lyrics of a song entitled, "Jump Jim Crow."  Some believe that Jim Crow was the name of a slave holder who "owned" the slave that Rice mimicked in his routine.

These were the conditions of life Hamer experienced as a girl and young woman.  Her father was a Baptist preacher and a bootlegger, and her mother was a domestic servant.  Jim and Ella Townsend were sharecroppers.   The life of a sharecropper was one of hard work, poverty, exploitation and violence.  Sharecropping was, in fact, an ante-bellum system designed to replace slavery with cheap labor.  Although the institution of slavery had been abolished, the extreme economic disparity between the races was maintained.  The landlord provided tenants with housing, food, seed and farm equipment from the owner's plantation store at typically exorbitant interest rates and half of the crop.  This system was designed to make it exceedingly difficult for the sharecropper to break free from this onerous system and get ahead.  As a matter of fact, Hamer related a story that testifies to this system.  There was a time when the Townsends were actually getting ahead when a white neighbor intentionally poisoned their animals when they were away.  This singular event proved to be a major economic setback and undermined all the progress they had made.

Hamer started picking cotton when she was six - working twelve to fourteen hours per day.   By the time she was thirteen, she was picking 200-400 pounds of cotton per day and receiving one dollar for her efforts.  She had a markedly inferior education.  The school year for black sharecroppers lasted for four months and was three months shorter than for their white counterparts living in rural Mississippi.  The average expenditure for black children in the state of Mississippi was about twenty percent of what it was for whites.  Hamer left school when she was twelve and joined the Strangers Home Baptist Church where she continued her education.

  

Her mother exerted the most powerful influence in her life.  According to Hamer, "My mother was a great woman.  She went through a lot of suffering to bring the twenty of us up, but she still taught us to be decent and to respect ourselves, and that is one of the things that has kept me going."  In her own admission, her faith contributed to her strength.  One of the important lessons that Hamer learned from her mother was that hating made one weak, and that she should honor and appreciate her heritage.  It was from her mother that Hamer learned the horrors of slavery.  Her maternal grandmother, Liza Bramlett, was a slave and had twenty-three children; twenty of these children were the products of rape on the part of powerful white men.

Hamer ultimately became a remarkably influential civil rights leader.  In appearance, Hamer seemed unassuming – she was short, stocky and walked with a limp.  This limp resulted from an attack of polio she had as a child.  She was desperately poor and lived in a house without hot water and no indoor toilet.  The work on the plantation was arduous and exhausting.  In striking contrast, the plantation owner's dog had his own bathroom.  Hamer was also known for her sense of humor – a quality that probably helped maintain her sanity under exceedingly trying conditions.  As a married woman, she and her husband, Pap, often took upon themselves the care of other people's children.

There was another dramatic event in her life that helped shape her thinking and her resolve to actively work towards a better world for her people.  When she was in her early forties (1961), she went to the hospital to have a small uterine tumor removed.  Following the operation, she discovered that she was sterilized involuntarily - her uterus had been removed.  This was an outrage of major proportions to her, yet it was not a totally uncommon practice in regards to black women's healthcare in that region of the country.

In 1962, the civil rights movement was well underway; Hamer was 44 years old and still was unable to vote.  In Mississippi at that time, blacks were required to take a "literacy test" before being legally allowed to vote.  The test was purposefully designed to exclude blacks from voting.  As a result, she joined the struggle to gain the right to vote.  At that time, blacks were relegated to being servants, working in the cotton fields, teaching in all-black schools, preaching or working as funeral directors.  All aspects of social and economic  life was under the iron-fisted control of whites.  Those who attempted to defy the numerous prohibitions imposed on their lives were treated harshly and extra-legal and summary executions were quite common.  The reality of lynching parties, a common phenomenon in the American South at that time, has been recently brought under public scrutiny.  It was not unusual for black males to not only be lynched but also tortured and physically mutilated.   It should be noted here that when the horrible fate of the young black Emmett Till came to light in the national press, the conditions of blacks in the American South became widely known.

On August 28, 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen years old African-American boy from Chicago who was visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta, was brutally murdered after allegedly flirting with a white woman.  He was physically removed from his relative's home and transported to a barn, where he was brutally beaten, mutilated and shot through the head.  His body was subsequently disposed of in the Tallahatchie River, weighted with a 70-pound (32 kg) cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.  His body was discovered three days later.  This event outraged the entire nation and helped to propel and energize the civil rights movement. 

As a result of the extremely repressive conditions that plagued the black population, many fled to East St. Louis, the South side of Chicago, Gary Indiana or Detroit Michigan.  It is the cumulative effect of these experiences that awakened Hamer to the horrific conditions of her people and made her determined to work tirelessly for change.  She exclaimed that, "All of those things, when they would happen, would make me sick in the pit of my stomach and year after year, every time something would happen it would make me more and more aware of what would have to happen in the state of Mississippi."

Young civil rights workers arrived in Rubeville in 1962.  Mass meetings were organized.  It was there that Hamer joined the drive to register black voters.  The support of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) helped to mobilize the effort to improve the political and economic plight of the blacks by helping to shatter the feelings of isolation and powerlessness that individuals had come to accept as the inescapable reality of their existence.  With a group of seventeen others, she traveled to Indianola, 26 miles from Ruleville, to register to vote.  They were met with open hostility; as a matter of fact, a white crowd had congregated with some carrying guns in full view.  Indianola was the birthplace of the White Citizens Council – an extremist group believing in white supremacy that was formed in response to the famous Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that deemed segregated schools to be unconstitutional.  It was a humiliating process.  She and her colleagues were ordered to enter the registration office in pairs.  Hamer was required to answer questions containing personal information that she understood could be used against her and her family, since this information would be made freely available to the White Citizens Council.  This procedure was designed to intimidate.  In fact, violence was subsequently perpetrated against members of her Rubeville community.  Following this questioning, she and the others were required to take a so-called "literacy test" to qualify for voting.  She was quizzed on section sixteen of the Mississippi state constitution.  She, of course, failed in this first attempt.  When she returned to the plantation, she was accosted by the owner, who demanded that she withdraw her registration for voting or face severe economic consequences.  Refusing to be intimidated, she ultimately left the plantation and her family, at least for a time.  She subsequently returned to Indianlola at a later date and passed the literacy test.

 

This marked a definitive turning point in her life.  From this point on, she became very involved with SNCC and traveled with them.  Hamer attended leadership training and voter registration workshops.  She traveled with SNCC and became a fiery and eloquent spokesperson for the movement for black equality, especially in regards to voter registration.  She also became an effective fundraiser.  Hamer did this with remarkable courage, especially living in Mississippi in the midst of the horrors of Jim Crow as alluded to above.  Her tenacity and courage were inspired by her moral convictions and to some extent by the bitterness she felt towards her oppressors.  Her courage was undoubtedly accentuated by the hard life she led that helped make her extremely resilient. 

The extent of the horror that Hamer had to endure in her struggle was made clear in the spring of 1963.  Hamer, along with a group of other civil rights activists, boarded a bus that would take them across the state border to Georgia.  Their purpose was to test the Interstate Commerce Commission ban on segregated bus terminals.   Facing extreme and unbridled hostility, they ultimately decided to abandon their efforts and returned to Columbus, Mississippi.  While awaiting their transfer to another bus that would take them home, they were physically accosted by the driver and forced to sit in the back of the bus.  The next destination was Winona, Mississippi where some of the blacks got off the bus as a rest stop.  When they attempted to eat at the lunch counter alongside whites, they met with overt and violent opposition and were eventually arrested by the local authorities and taken to jail.  At the jailhouse they were separated into separate cells and horribly beaten.  As a result of the injuries Hamer sustained, she was blinded in one eye and her kidneys were permanently damaged.   Among those savagely beaten was a sixteen year old girl, June Johnson.  They were then taken to court where they were charged and convicted of "disorderly conduct" and "resisting arrest."

With the help of Julian Bond and the United States Justice Department, charges were brought against the offending officers, but they were tried in Mississippi with an all-white jury and the guilty police officers were deemed innocent of all charges – a verdict that was not unexpected.  This was undoubtedly Hamer's worst experience in her activist life.  It did not deter her, however, from continuing in the struggle.

Hamer ultimately became nationally prominent.  She launched a nationwide speaking tour that enhanced her national exposure and highlighted the plight of blacks in Mississippi.  On April 26, 1964, some three hundred black citizens of Mississippi arrived in Jackson to form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).  Hamer took on a prominent leadership role.  The party formed a delegation that went to the 1964 Democratic Convention held in Atlantic City, New Jersey for the sole purpose of challenging the all-white Mississippi delegation.  Ironically, the delegation ended up with wretched accommodations in a segregated hotel; Jim Crow existed in the North as well.

Hamer had numerous opportunities to emphasize the plight of the blacks in her home state; she was often on national television.  These appearances did much to heighten the awareness of Americans to the evils of Jim Crow.  The MFDP challenge made the likely Presidential nominee, President Lyndon Johnson, exceedingly nervous.  Ultimately, through a series of political machinations, the MFDP lost their bid.  Hamer left upset and embittered.  By the 1968 Democratic National Convention, however, the Credentials Committee made a momentous policy decision – no delegation would be seated if blacks were excluded from electoral participation in their state.

Hamer continued working for the MFDP and appeared as a delegate to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago as a member of the Loyalist Democrats that was a coalition of various black-affiliated groups including the NAACP and the MFDP.  She spoke before one of the hearings at the Platform Committee and outlined her proposals for inclusion in the party platform - among these were land grants and low interest loans for cooperatives, a guaranteed minimum income, extended day care, comprehensive medical care, increased federal provisions for food programs and free higher education.  In regards to foreign policy, she called for an end to the Vietnam War and the draft, renewed diplomatic ties to Cuba and China and an arms embargo imposed on the Apartheid regime of South Africa.

Hamer remained politically active, engaged and involved even when she was plagued by ill health and dying from breast cancer.  She suffered considerably in her final days and was exceedingly poor.  She had suffered both remarkable successes and serious political setbacks during her life, but she remained deeply involved in causes that touched the heart of her humanity and her generosity of nature.  Hamer passed away in March of 1977; she left us a remarkable legacy.  She served, unwittingly, as the moral conscience of the nation during her time, and continues to be an inspiration to those who actively work towards a better world.

Joseph Aprile
Email - josephaprile@comcast.net
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Home Phone - 206 497-8640
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What Lies at the Core of Human Conflict?

If the overarching concepts of good and evil were to be stripped away from examples of unimaginable acts of violence of the recent past such as the use of commercial airliners filled with passengers as incendiary devices to destroy the World Trade Center in New York, or the attempt by the leaders of Fascist Germany to exterminate an entire race of human beings, or the use of the atomic bomb – essentially the most awesome and powerful weapon ever devised by human beings – on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the underlying reality would remain the same.  In all these examples, large numbers of human being lost their lives under horrific and violent circumstances.

 

The haunting question is what characteristics of the human brain drive such events.  In my thinking, it would be efficacious to examine the behavior of a much simpler organism.  The social insect represents a highly successful biological machine, beautiful in its exquisite simplicity.  For the purpose of discussion, we will focus on the leaf cutter ant – a species prevalent in the tropics.  In relation to the survival of the species, the life and death of the individual leaf cutter ant is of no significance.  Each ant is designed to fulfill a particular and essential function.  The continued life of the colony is paramount to any other consideration; all behavior is directed towards this goal.  In addition, the members of colony fit into distinct groups with particular and precise roles.  These roles are exquisitely and genetically programmed and every member does not deviate from its function.  This societal architecture precludes violence within the colony.  Conflict arises only when the colony must defend itself from attack originating from outside the colony.  This particular design is so efficient and successful that the species will endure well into the future as long as planetary conditions are capable of supporting life.

 

Over the hundreds of millions of years that spanned evolutionary time, the complexity of life increased exponentially, and eventually led to the appearance of Homo sapiens.  From the enhanced interconnections of hundreds of billions of neurons within the human brain, sprang self consciousness, and existence suddenly took on meaning beyond considerations of the survival of the species.  Within the human brain, the idea of person arose and humans acquired the quality of self awareness.  Consciousness brought with it the reality of choice; as individuals we became capable of making choices between alternative paths of behavior.  In essence, we suddenly had the capacity for self-direction.  We became responsible for our own actions – an aspect of being that was entirely new for life on the planet.

 

Armed with this new capability, humans inevitably found themselves competing with one another for sustenance.  Whether or not the propensity for violence became hard-wired within the human brain as a consequence of the environment of early humans is, of course, a matter of conjecture.  In a relatively brief interval of cosmic time – some six million years since our ancestors branched off from the line that yielded the chimpanzee – humans fashioned societies, established diverse cultures, erected cities, contrived advanced technologies and killed each other at an alarming rate.

 

Collectively, we have assumed the staggering responsibility for the stewardship of the planet.  There is sufficient reason to doubt whether humans are competent enough to function effectively at this level.  Yet, the choices we can make are clear as well as their respective outcomes.  There is reason for hope and equal justification for despair.  Nonetheless, the future is ours to shape as our actions dictate.

 

Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly has challenged the use of  U.S military power on numerous occasions; she has sought to uplift the dignity and humanity of the victims of that power.  According to Milan Rai - a British peace advocate who was arrested in 2005 for refusing to stop reading the names of Iraqi civilians killed during the Second Gulf War - she is, "…someone who has made nonviolence into a passionate confrontation, an active living force."

Kelly grew up on the Southside of Chicago; she was the third of six children.  Her parents met in London during the Blitz – the sustained aerialbombardment of Britain by Nazi Germany during the early part of World War II between September 1940 and May 1941 .  Her Dad was a G.I. who had left the Christian brothers and was serving in London.  Her mother studied nursing and, as a student, cared for children with disabilities.  Prior to that, she was an indentured servant in Ireland and subsequently in England.  Ultimately they moved to the United States and settled in Chicago.  Her mother had three children in the space of one year. 

Kelly grew up in Chicago in the 1950s and 60s.  Her family struggled economically; she lived in relatively cramped quarters with her siblings and ended up sleeping on the living couch. It was an epic period in the nation's history – a time of social upheaval marked by the turmoil generated by involvement of the U.S. government in Vietnam and the strongly polarizing influence of the civil rights movement.  It was a time in which the evidence of racism, sexism, militarism and classicism was quite evident. 

She attended St. Paul-Kennedy high school and found inspirational teachers there.  It was a shared-time experimental school in which she went to the local public school for part of the day.  Kelly experienced firsthand the virulent effects of racism that often put Chicago in the national news.  Commenting on her own experience at school, Kelly said that it "broke the code of fatalism that was part of my upbringing."  She was particularly impressed with Martin Luther King Jr. and Daniel Berrigan, whose exceedingly controversial anti-war activities were well known at the time and whose life we have examined earlier in this book.  There was a particular comment that Berrigan made that remained with Kelly – he said that, "One of the reasons we don't have peace is that the peacemakers aren't prepared to make the same sacrifice demanded of the soldiers."  It was during this period in her life that she decided to work actively towards peace. 

During the Vietnam War, Kelly was mostly involved from an intellectual perspective – she wrote articles against the war but took no direct action.  During her graduate studies at Chicago Theological Seminary, she made the decision to get directly involved in issues of peace and social justice.  In the spring of 1977, she moved to an uptown neighborhood of Chicago to work with the Francis Assisi Catholic Worker House.  The St. Francis Assisi House of Hospitality is still extant. 

Within these houses, such as this one, Catholic Workers live simply within the community, serve the poor, and resist war and social injustice.  The Catholic Worker movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, began in 1933,.  Its reason for being is based on the principle that every human being has dignity and is deserving of respect and support.  This movement continues to thrive with over two hundred active communities.

It was there that she met Roy Bourgeois.  He was imprisoned for six months for flinging blood on a poster of his friend, Rutilio Grande, who was assassinated by a member of a death squad in Central America.  His story moved Kelly to become involved in more direct action against injustice.  At the Catholic Worker House, she also met Karl Meyer, who she was later to marry.  He convinced her to join him in an action to protest draft registration; this led to her first arrest and the beginning of her long career of non-violent direct action against injustice.  They were married for twelve years.

Kelly ultimately received a Masters degree in religious education and taught at St. Ignatius College Preparatory School.  In 1985, she received a professional development grant that took her to Nicaragua.  There she met with Miguel D'Escoto, the Foreign Minister who was also part of the Marynoll religious order.  He organized a plan to fast for peace in, "defense of life and against contra violence.  The Contras were a group of fighters that was financed by the United States and whose goal was to subvert, undermine and eventually overthrow the democratically-elected government led by the Sandinistas, who had an active socialist political agenda.  President Ronald Reagan's administration was eventually implicated in the covert and illegal funding of the Contras, using monies obtained through the illicit sale of military hardware to the government of Iran – the so-called "Iran-Contra" scandal.  Kelly was deeply impressed and inspired by D'Escoto's commitment to peace.  As a consequence she quit her position in 1986 at St. Ignatius following her return.  In her letter of resignation she said, "I am quitting my job to devote full time to opposing contra aid."

Kelly became totally dedicated to not only speaking out about that which she felt was detrimental to the causes of peace and social justice but also acting on her beliefs.  She became involved in non-violent opposition to U.S. aid to the Contras, nuclear weapons, Israeli government policies regarding the Palestinians, militarism, sanctions against Iraq and its disastrous impact on Iraqi children, U.S. policies in Central America and the Second Gulf War.

 

In April of 2003, Kelly was instrumental in forming the Voices in the Wilderness group based in Baghdad for the purpose of providing witness to the devastation wrought by U.S. policy in Iraq.  Kelly has devoted much of her energy towards exposing the disastrous impact the First and Second Gulf Wars have had on the people of Iraq. 

Anticipating the likelihood of the Second Gulf War, Kelly took up residence in Baghdad during the first phase of the American military invasion in March 20, 2003 during so-called "Shock and Awe," - the expression coined by Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary of Defense at that time.  The individual lives that she reported on are testimonials to the horror of warfare that is so often aimed at civilian populations.

As a gauge of Kelly's own feelings regarding the attack, she stated that, "Yes, we are angry, very angry, and yet we feel deep responsibility to further the nonviolent antiwar efforts that burgeon in cities and towns throughout the world.  We can direct our anger toward clear confrontation, controlling it so that we won't explode in reactionary rage, but rather draw the sympathies of people toward the plight of innocent people here who never wanted to attack the U.S., who wonder, even as the bombs terrify them, why they can't live as brothers and sisters with people in America."  This statement illustrates the difficult task of remaining non-violent and clear-headed under horrendous circumstances.

On Aril 15, 2003, Kelly reported the following, "Nurses are digging graves in front of the Al Mansour Hospital.  Plumes of smoke are rising from the campus of Baghdad University.  Other disasters loom, as the Red Cross warns that Baghdad's medical system is in complete collapse."  Kelly visited the gravely injured and dying who were flooding Iraq's understaffed and poorly equipped hospitals.

In her testimony before Judge Crocker on October 26, 2003, she attempted to explain her involvement in Iraq during the Shock and Awe campaign.  She went on to clarify the role of the Tomorrow House that she had set up in Baghdad.  These explanations fell on deaf ears; she was sentenced to spend a month in Federal prison.  She subsequently returned to Iraq in August of 2003 to serve as a witness to the horrific consequences of that war.

In April 2004, Kelly was sent to the Pekin Illinois Federal Maximum Security Prison for nine months.  She was accused of violations of law pertaining to the delivering of medicines and relief supplies to Iraq.  She was previously imprisoned in 2003, as previously mentioned, and in 1989 for a protest against the US Army's military combat training school in Fort Benning, Georgia. 

 

With equal vigor, Kelly has been active and relentless in defense of the plight of the Palestinians as well.  She has been an ardent opponent of war and social injustice wherever it may appear.  She has shown remarkable courage, persistence and a relentless tenacity in pursuing what she has felt is right in the face of grievous injustice.  On three separate occasions, she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts.  Kathy Kelly has been and continues to be an effective voice for the powerless throughout the world.  

Joseph Rotblat and the Bomb

Joseph Rotblat is known primarily for his contributions to the understanding of nuclear physics and his work on the development of the atomic bomb as part of what was referred to as the Manhattan Project.  What is less well known about his life was his role as a proponent of peace during the dangerous cold war period following World War II.  In fact, after spending only one year on the Manhattan Project, he resigned from his position and was suspected of being a Soviet spy on account of his opposition to the project. 

Rotblat was a leading researcher on the biological effects of radiation and from the early 1950s to his death in 2005 he was an eloquent spokesman for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the promotion of peace.  He played an instrumental role in the establishment of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1995.

He was born in Warsaw, Poland on November 4, 1908 and had what he personally described as a happy childhood.  At that time, Poland was divided and Warsaw was under the control of the Tsar of Russia.  His father was a successful businessman and horse breeder.  Their prosperity was severely impacted by the First World War, for the borders were closed and horses were requisitioned by the government without compensation.  So severe was the family's economic decline that they endured extreme poverty.

Motivated by his economic plight, Rotblat became an apprenticed electrician, and began his own business installing electrical lighting when the concept of electrification was in its infancy.  Although his business proved successful, he had a penchant for science and possessed an active imagination.  In 1929, he joined the Free University of Poland.  It was an unusual environment in that the staff held socialist views.  The Free University had close ties with the Miroslaw Kerbbaum Radiological Laboratory of the Polish Scientific Society where Madam Curie served as the honorary director.  Rotblat joined the Radiological Laboratory where he met the man who would be his mentor, Ludwig Wertenstein.

Wertenstein spent two years in the prestigious Cambridge Laboratory in England where he worked with Ernest Rutherford, who discovered the atomic nucleus and James Chadwick, who discovered the neutron, a subatomic particle.  In addition to his enviable scientific credentials, Wertenstein was a linguist and a poet.  From an ethical and moral standpoint, he was a humanist.  It was the depth of Wertenstein's moral character and his belief that a scientist always owns responsibility for the products of his endeavors that strongly helped form Rotblat's own thinking.

Rotblat's early research involved the area of radiation detection, and he constructed Geiger counters for this purpose.  At the University of Warsaw, he studied inelastic collisions and discovered the presence of Cobalt 60, a radioactive isotope, as a byproduct in experiments in which he was bombarding gold with neutrons.

Neils Bohr, a leading nuclear physicist and a pioneer in the area of nuclear research, suggested that uranium 235 was the element responsible for atomic fission, and in 1939 the idea of a fission bomb was conceived.  Rotblat joined Chadwick in Liverpool, and became recognized for his abilities in the arena of nuclear physics along with his notable colleagues.

 

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and war was declared.  Unfortunately, Rotblat's wife, Tola, was trapped in Poland despite his attempts to rescue her.  Tola was later to die in the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.  This infamous Nazi concentration camp was located in the outskirts of Lubin, Poland.  Over 79,000 died there during the war; the majority of those killed were Polish Jews.  Rotblat was not informed of her death until 1945; he was devastated by this news.  On account of his close proximity and personal experience with the disastrous and destructive impact of Hitler's' regime, Rotbalt felt that Hitler needed to be deterred.  In fact, he suggested the feasibility of a uranium-fueled bomb to Chadwick.  He wrestled with his conscience for although he believed that it was imperative to deter the Hitler's onslaught, he also felt strongly that it was not his job to work towards such a weapon of mass destruction.

Ultimately, Rotblat was invited to join the Manhattan Project in the U.S. and he accepted.  He moved to the Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico in 1943.  He worked in the Oak Ridge Lab specializing in uranium isotope separation – a critical step in making the bomb.  The Manhattan Project was under the direction of Robert Oppenheimer and had such notable scientists on board as Edward Teller, Richard Feynman and Enrico Fermi.  From the early stages of his involvement, Rotblat had ambivalent feelings about his role in the project.

He once attended a meeting in which General Groves, military head of the Manhattan Project, declared that the primary reason for developing the bomb was to defeat Stalin and subdue the Soviets.   This explanation troubled Rotblat, for it seemed to have no connection to Nazi Germany.  In addition, he concluded that the enormous resources required to successfully create a fission device was beyond Germany's capability.   He joined forces with Niels Bohr, who also wished to prevent an arms race with the Soviet Union, in trying to convince the allies to place the project under international supervision.  This recommendation was ignored.

By the end of 1944, Rotblat resigned from the project.  In 1985, Rotblat presented his point of view in the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists in an article entitled, Leaving the Bomb Project.  In this piece, he claimed that the notion of using his knowledge to effect mass destruction was totally abhorrent to him.  An excerpt of this paper is shown below.

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"My concern about the purpose of our work gained substance from conversations with Niels Bohr. He used to come to my room at eight in the morning to listen to the IBBC news bulletin.  Like myself, he could not stand the U.S. bulletins which urged us every few seconds to purchase a certain laxative! I owned a special radio on which I could receive the BBC World Service. Sometimes Bohr stayed on and talked to me about the social and political implications of the discovery of nuclear energy and of his worry about the dire consequences of a nuclear arms race between East and West which he foresaw.  All this, and the growing evidence that the war in Europe would be over before the bomb project was completed, made my participation in it pointless. If it took the Americans such a long time, then my fear of the Germans being first was groundless.  When it became evident, toward the end of 1944, that the Germans had abandoned their bomb project, the whole purpose of my being in Los Alamos ceased to be, and I asked for permission to leave and return to Britain.  Why did other scientists not make the same decision?  Obviously, one would not expect General Groves to wind up the project as soon as Germany was defeated, but there were many scientists for whom the German factor was the main motivation. Why did they not quit when this factor ceased to be?  I was not allowed to discuss this issue with anybody after I declared my intention to leave Los Alamos, but earlier conversations, as well as much later ones, elicited several reasons.

The most frequent reason given was pure and simple scientific curiosity-the strong urge to find out whether the theoretical calculations and predictions would come true.  These scientists felt that only after the test at Alamogordo should they enter into the debate about the use of the bomb.  Others were prepared to put the matter off even longer, persuaded by the argument that many American lives would be saved if the bomb brought a rapid end to the war with Japan. Only when peace was restored would they take a hand in efforts to ensure that the bomb would not be used again.  Still others, while agreeing that the project should have been stopped when the German factor ceased to operate, were not willing to take an individual stand because they feared it would adversely affect their future career.

The groups I have just described-scientists with a social conscience-were a minority in the scientific community.  The majority was not bothered by moral scruples; they were quite content to leave it to others to decide how their work would be used. Much the same situation exists now in many countries in relation to work on military projects.  But it is the morality issue at a time of war that perplexes and worries me most.  Recently I came across a document released under the Freedom of Information Act. It is a letter, dated May 25, 1943, from Robert Oppenheimer to Enrico Fermi, on the military use of radioactive materials, specifically, the poisoning of food with radioactive strontium. The Smyth Report mentions such use as a possible German threat, but Oppenheimer apparently thought the idea worthy of consideration, and asked Fermi whether he could produce the strontium without letting too many people into the secret.  He went on: "I think we should not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men."  I am sure that in peacetime these same scientists would have viewed such a plan as barbaric; they would not have contemplated it even for a moment. Yet during the war it was considered quite seriously and, I presume, abandoned only because it was technically infeasible.  After I told Chadwick that I wished to leave the project, he came back to me with very disturbing news.  When he conveyed my wish to the intelligence chief at Los Alamos, he was shown a thick dossier on me with highly incriminating evidence. It boiled down to my being a spy: I had arranged with a contact in Santa Fe to return to England, and then to be flown to and parachuted onto the part of Poland held by the Soviets, in order to give the secrets of the atom bomb.

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From 1945 – 1950 Rotblat was in charge of nuclear physics in Liverpool.  He was so appalled by the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that he devoted his energy to the development of medical applications using nuclear radiation.  In collaboration with Chadwick, the radioactive isotopes of iodine and phosphorus were found to have useful application.  In addition, he collaborated with George Ansell in developing the use of radioactive iodine for the treatment of thyroid problems, a treatment protocol used to this day.  He continued this kind of work – beneficial application of his knowledge of nuclear physics – at Bartholomew's Medical College in London where he worked for twenty-six years starting in 1949.

 

On the news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Rotblat was devastated, for he had hoped that the weapon would not work or that it would be used as a demonstration project in order to show the Japanese the awfulness of this weapon.  He strongly believed that scientists should not be involved in the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons.  In 1946, he set up the Atomic Scientists Association (ASA) to stimulate public debate around the issue of nuclear weapons.  The association had a non-political agenda geared towards educating the public on the peaceful uses of radioactivity.

Rotblat established a relationship with Bertrand Russell.  On December 23, 1954, Russell made a radio broadcast highlighting the dangers of nuclear testing; he was firm in his conviction that scientists should take the lead in informing the public.  To this end, he convinced Einstein to help draft a manifesto.  The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was signed by ten scientists including Rotblat.

Rotblat was tireless in his efforts to draw attention to the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing.  He set up the Pugwash conferences that ultimately had twenty-two participants and was international in scope.  The participants included physicists, chemists, biologists and one lawyer.  The focus of this conference was in the areas of radioactive fallout, abetting the arms race and the social responsibilities of scientists.

On December 10, 1995, Rotblat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his vigorous and extensive effort to facilitate peace and understanding in a troubled world.    A brief excerpt of his acceptance speech follows –  

 

 

"The practical release of nuclear energy was the outcome of many years of experimental and theoretical research.  It had the great potential for the common good.  But the first the general public learned about this discovery was the news of the destruction of Hiroshima by the atom bomb.  A splendid achievement of science and technology had turned malign.  Science became identified with death and destruction."

 

 

He died in 2005.  He was an extremely ethical and a profoundly thoughtful human being, who courageously lived up to his convictions and exerted a positive influence on the public understanding of the dangers of nuclear weapons and helped awaken scientists to their responsibilities to society and the people they serve.

Why Peace?

There are many armed conflicts raging all over the planet in the beginning of the twenty-first century.  The war in Iraq that has considerably diminished in intensity and the War in Afghanistan are the results of superpower (United States) intervention supposedly acting in its national interest.  Many of these are civil wars like the ongoing conflicts in Columbia, Sudan and Libya.  In the latter example, the military wing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has become involved with an obvious stake in the outcome.  Others represent territorial conflicts like the conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir and the long standing conflict between the Palestinians of Arab descent and the Israeli occupation.  There is obviously a strong religious component to these clashes as well.  Other confrontations are fueled by powerful religious and ethnic differences as exemplified by Lebanon's civil war in the 1970s due in large part to the enmity between Muslims and Christians.  Of course, the horrific and tragic genocide that took place in Rwanda in ***** prompted by ethnic and socio-economic differences between tribes cannot be overlooked.  This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the various trouble spots that exist in the precarious world of humans.  Overshadowing all these calamitous events is the inexorable deterioration of the global environment that is often exacerbated by human conflict and the chaos it ordinarily engenders.

On examining the ferocity of warfare, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that the human species has not learned very much over its protracted history.  The history of Europe from the Ancient Roman and Greek civilizations to the present, as an example, is replete with carnage that is the inevitable outcome of wars. 

Within the individual human psyche there exists a constant tension between the force and power of the emotions driven by the passions embodied in territory, tribe and nation and that of reason.  The more reactive and violence-prone emotions stem in large part from the evolution of the species in an environment that was essentially hostile and in which the forces of nature that impacted human experience were not understood and the causes of calamities were attributed to the gods, malevolent spirits or an enemy. 

In the beginnings of the human kind, ignorance was prevalent and fear and suspicion dominated and shaped human behavior.  Although the advancement of science and technology has shed light upon many aspects of the human experience that were once shrouded in mystery, the inherent tendency to strike out violently against that which is feared and poorly understood remains to haunt human societies.  In addition, in the so-called developed world there is tendency on the part of a strong segment of the general population to hold science and scientific knowledge in suspicion.  What is particularly unique about humanity in the twenty-first century is the inescapable reality that the application of overwhelming force against a perceived enemy is no longer a viable solution especially considering the destructiveness of modern weaponry.

Over the thousands of years of human civilization, great empires have risen and eventually fallen.  The cycle of empire building and dissolution has generally followed the same inexorable path. The beginning stage is represented by the rise of a local community of common origin followed by a gradual accretion of power, usually by force. Success at this initial stage leads to a steady rise in military strength and technological capability that overshadows all adversaries.  As power becomes increasingly concentrated into an overweening empire, there is a tendency to overextend the sphere of control and influence.  This expansion ultimately leads to an exhaustion of resources both material and human.  Finally, the empire contracts and ultimately dissolves.  The entire process might take place over a thousand years as exemplified by the Roman Empire or a few hundred years as demonstrated by the British Empire.

In all of human history, cycles of expansion and warfare were tolerable given the low density of human populations on the planet and the relatively benign effects of the primitive weaponry on the global environment.  This model of human behavior where economic, political and social differences and rivalries are settled through violent means is no longer tenable in the modern era. 

The essentially tribal nature of human interactions has evolved over the generations into competing national sovereignties.  The idea that each nation state is a power unto itself is no longer compatible with the rapidly evolving global character of human endeavor.  There is currently too much at stake in maintaining the status quo, especially in regards to the survival of the species.  The development of technological weaponry, especially nuclear and chemical weapons, has created a situation in which warfare necessarily leads to horrific consequences both locally for the populations involved and globally due to the environmental effects as witnessed in the nuclear attacks against the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the use of anti-personnel cluster bombs in Cambodia, the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam and the use of Depleted Uranium (DU)  hardened ordnance in Iraq.

The daunting issues that face humanity are no longer local but rather global in nature.   The remarkable savagery of the First and Second World Wars of the Twentieth Century awakened the idea of a world organization as a forum for international communication so as to foster dialog between nations and forestall the possibility of future wars of such magnitude.  The first experiment in a world organization as a vehicle for adjudicating international disputes was the League of Nations that was created in the aftermath of World War I.  This met with limited success and was eventually disbanded.  Subsequently the United Nations was created at the end of World War II.  The United Nations is still extant but remains hostage to the dominance of the powerful industrial nations that constitute the Security Council.

The will to empire is still very much with us.  Apparently, no significant lessons have been learned from the horrid mistakes of the past.  The undeniable need for true international cooperation as a means to effectively circumvent a catastrophic future that now seems so inevitable is still not recognized.  Many nations remain fixated on the ferocious competition for dominance and supremacy at the expense of those sovereignties that are weaker and more fragile.  This competition has usually been over the resources required to fuel and sustain national economies.  The need for additional natural resources such as land for expansion of national populations or energy and mineral resources has often been the focus of competition.  As needed resources such as oil or water become scarce, the competition will, by necessity, grow more fierce and explosive.

This particular mindset has become problematic; the species is in desperate need of a completely new paradigm.  The new model must be based, by necessity, on a spirit of cooperation, compassion, generosity and a willingness to reach meaningful compromise to avert disaster.  The chasm that currently exists between the so-called "haves" and "have-nots" both within and between sovereign states is helping to sustain the extreme level of violence that continues to plague humanity.  Fundamental issues of social and economic justice need to be uppermost on the agenda.  Such a focus would require a serious implementation of the role of social responsibility and conscience in the behavior of governments.  The idea of belonging wholly to one nation must be superseded by the idea of being a member of the world community.  This, of course, represents a momentous leap in understanding, tolerance, compassion, and, most importantly, requires an obligation to act in the best interests of all humanity.

To continue down the current path in which domestic and international behavior is dictated by a passion born of fear and ignorance is to take a journey leading into a horrific future.  This is not the only possible destiny of the human species.  There are other more benign and desirable alternatives.  There is a way out of the madness.  Humans are quite capable of using reasoned and mindful intelligence to direct and guide their behavior and plan for a future in which all of humanity can share in the benefits of collective action for the good of all people.  To do this, however, old patterns of behavior and thinking need to be discarded and replaced by a new understanding that envisions all of us as being of equal worth and recognizes that we wholly depend upon a fragile planet with limited resources.  Beneficial change demands that fear and ignorance be replaced by compassion, understanding and a determination to work for true social justice and freedom.  These goals cannot be achieved by an imposition of a particular set of values by brute force or economic coercion.  Imperialism represents a viewpoint that depends upon a world out of balance and it is an idea that is no longer tenable.  The urge towards empire is not yet dead, but is has become completely ineffectual and counterproductive.

I believe I can say with some assurance that all people desire a world for their descendents in which peace is a reality and a future in which the planet retains its natural beauty and the majesty of all of life.  To achieve this result, a great deal of work is required.  This is a completely different kind of work, since it requires profound self examination and a will towards significant change.  The question remains as to whether the species has the wherewithal to take on this challenge.  I hope for the sake of future generations that this is so.   

 

The first images of the planet taken from space clearly demonstrated that for all human beings and for all of life, for that matter, the earth is our only home.  This conception has, in my judgment, become such an integral part of human consciousness that the current and obvious threat posed by climate change, that is a direct outcome of human activity, may offer some impetus for change.  The time may be right to open more effective channels of communication between nations with the focus on the development of sustainable economies that would help insure a livable planet for future generations of not only the human species but all the magnificent creatures that constitute the living world.  Simply moving through life with self-interest as the guiding principle is not enough to forestall a major calamity that only concerted human action can avert.

There seems to be a paradoxical aspect of human nature that may help explain the penchant for aggression and violence. On the one hand, humans as members of a family, group, tribe or nation, are able to work harmoniously with cooperative effort towards goals that benefit everyone. This collective behavior operates effectively; unless, severe catastrophic conditions such as profound environmental calamities, famine, epidemics, etc disrupt this cohesiveness, or an individual is plagued with mental illness. I believe that this capacity for concerted endeavor is wired into the human brain as a result of millions of years of social and biological evolution.

Juxtaposed to this natural propensity for harmonious behavior is the equally potent fear and mistrust of those outside the community whether it is family, group, tribe or nation. Fear can trigger the body, directed by various chemical signals from the brain, to react with the classic "flight or fright" response. The urgency of such a reaction, precludes rational thought or reasoned consideration; it is a purely survival mechanism. This propensity is also wired within the fabric of the human brain.

As individuals, we are often confronted by choices that may illicit responses dictated by either of these pathways. I view this as a life long struggle between the voice of intellect and reason and that of the emotions. It is both these aspects that define us as humans; we cannot extricate them from our being - that would be a useless endeavor bound to fail.

The path that a society chooses in confronting possible collective conflict or crisis, i.e. the path of reason or that of the emotions, depends largely upon education. If the culture at large condones and encourages violence as a legitimate response to threat and punishment as the primary means to promulgate justice, then individuals within that culture will adopt these methodologies. The violence used does not necessarily have to be physical in nature; it can also be economically or culturally based. However, if the intellect and reason are the attributes that are encouraged and nurtured, then an entirely different set of outcomes are possible.

Although human civilization has tended in the past to succumb to the reactive pathway as dictated by hostility, suspicion and fear, this does not preclude alternative outcomes in the future. The utopian ideal for human societies is not outside the grasp of human history. We need, as a species, to reeducate ourselves and transform our view of self and other.