From Dr. Chuck Overby
28 April 2010 [slightly revised 5/14/10]
TO: My Japanese Article 9 loving friends –
Greetings and best wishes on this May 3rd sixty third Anniversary of the adoption of your post World War II Constitution, with its Article 9 species wisdom – most all humanity’s cry for an end to that dominantly masculine obscenity called war.
Some of my recent writings suggest that we “Imagine The Magic Of An Article 9 Without Borders.” See my web-site www.article9society.org [English only].
Your supreme challenge, my dear Japanese friends, is not only to “imagine” a world in which all nations have an Article 9 type clause in their founding documents -- but to make it happen – and by vigorously working to keep Article 9 alive as a model for all nations on Planet Earth to emulate. Nations of the world so desperately need to be weaned from their age old “lust” for “Rules of War” and freshly nourished with Article 9’s wonderful non-violent “Rules of Law.”
Please, my dear friends, keep your Japanese and my U.S. governments from completely destroying Article 9 – and keep your government from its often stated passion to be like all the other “big-boys” on Planet Earth – a so-called “normal nation,” meaning one that bullies its way around the world with a military fist.
My 84 year journey on Planet Earth has profoundly helped me to understand how important Article 9 is for all life and for Mother Earth herself. My life-trip includes -- [1] service in two of America’s wars, World War II and the Korean War [combat pilot in Korea] – [2] over half a century as an engineering professor [and passionate humanist internationalist] – [3] over four decades of, thus far mostly unsuccessful, professional engineering dedication to the ideas of Green Technology By Design [GTBD] as means for enabling us to help prevent “oil” and other “resource wars” – and “global warming” – [4] and a growing understanding that there are no military solutions what-so-ever for the multitudes of problems and challenges we as a species face on Planet Earth.
If we do not replace “rules of war” with Article 9 like “rules of law,” and constrain our unjust and profligate material consumptions -- our trajectory points in the not too distant future to the end of life on beautiful Planet Earth. We will end things by one or the other of the following two means; or with both in synergy -- [1] our exponentially increasingly lethal science and engineering designed systems for killing and destruction and/or with [2] polluting and globally warming ourselves into Martian lifelessness with our “possessive-individualist” culture’s often greed-driven, mindless, profligate, and inequitable consumption of beautiful Mother Earth’s resource treasures -- converting them into entropic randomness -- resources over which we increasingly fight “resource wars.”
Never-ending economic “growth” “growth” and more “growth,” a philosophy, for which we in the USA have been Earth’s chief proponent, must be replaced across the planet with an equitable “no-growth-steady-state” model – both in “consumption” and in “population.”
One dimension of this “steady-state” model needs to be GTBD in all its multiplicity of possibilities -- something that Japan is uniquely equipped to demonstrate across Planet Earth. Please see my unsophisticated web site, www.article9society.org [unfortunately English only] for materials on GTBD along with much more on Article 9 and the things that Japan might do so as to provide leadership for Planet Earth in non-violence and in war and violence prevention with Article 9 as its “badge of honor.” Please also see pages 130 – 203 of any edition of our bilingual book [Japanese and English] -- Overby, Kunihiro, and Momoi, A Call For Peace: The Implications of Japan’s War-Renouncing Constitution, for much additional amplification on these themes.
Finally -- at this time, early May 2010, when you celebrate the 63rd anniversary of the adoption of your new constitution and its Article 9 wisdom -- a “review” is taking place at the United Nations on the 40th anniversary of the adoption of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] -- the “NPT 2010 Review.” Significant international demonstrations are being planned for this “NPT 2010 Review” event.
If everything materializes as planned, I hope to participate in some of these international demonstrations with my Veterans For Peace [VFP] friends by doing a bit of “Street Theater” -- in costume as Uncle Sam. I will be carrying signs that call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons from Planet Earth, with the help of Articles VI and VII of the NPT. Articles VI and VII of the 1979 NPT read as follows:
Article VI --“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
Article VII -- “Nothing in this Treaty affects the right of any group of States to conclude regional treaties in order to assure the total absence of nuclear weapons in their respective territories.”
Best wishes in your efforts to save Article 9. You in Japan have primary responsibility for this challenge because A9 resides in your constitution.
Please wish us well in our New York City demonstrations at the “NPT 2010 Review” event.
Peace,
Chuck Overby
-- 1991 Founder of the Article 9 Society – USA
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