Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1985. július-december (39. évfolyam, 27-48. szám)
1985-10-24 / 40. szám
Thursday, Oct. 24. 1985. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ 9. AN APPEAL fOR PEACE On the eve of the Geneva summit meeting we appeal to President Reagan to harken to mankind's universal desire for peace as enunciated by many of the finest minds of our nation. Noting Mr. Leslie H. Gelb's observation in the N.Y. Times of October 6, 1985 Mr. Reagan prefers concise summaries of weighty opinions on 3x5 cards, we selected a few statements suitable for such presentation. We call upon the reader to send them to the president on such forms. Board of Editors, Magyar Szo, Hungarian Word If we do not want to die together in war, we must learn to live together in peace. Harry S. Truman I have long advocated the complete abolition of war as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes. Gen. Douglas McArthur Millions hunger and starve and we spend a trillion a year on rubbish, on steel, warships, tanks. We are all criminals. There is a Hungarian saying: if you are among bandits and remain silent, you are a bandit yourself. Prof. Albert Szentgyörgyi I We the undersigned members of the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory wish to express ■ our personal concern over the threat posed by the growing militarization of space. We believe that the continued development and eventual deployment of advanced antisatellite weapons will prove harmful to our long-term national security interests. Likewise, we believe that technological panaceas to the problem of national defense, such as the Strategic Defense Initiative, rely on assumptions of questionable technical and strategic validity. These programs are at best an enormous waste of I scientific and financial resources and could in fact increase the risk of nuclear war by destabilizing the existing strategic balance. Therefore, we call upon our j elected representatives to: Resume negotiations for a mutual and 'verifiable treaty banning the testing, pro- jduction, deployment, or use of all space (weapons. ! Carl D. Anderson Professor of Physics I Nobel Prize in Physics 1936 Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics Nobel- Prize in Physics 1965 William A. Fowler Professor of Physics Nobel Prize in Physics 1983 Murray Gell-Mann Professor of Theoretical Physics Nobel Prize in Physics 1969 Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954 Nobel Peace Prize 1962 Roger W. Sperry Professor of Psychobiology Nobel Prize in Medicine 1981 The statement is also signed by sixty- three members of the National Academy of Sciences who are associated with the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. iZttfZc "... and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning- hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." - i Isaiah 2. 4. I Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind John F. Kennedy The Star Wars program is a key obstacle to success at the coming summit meeting. It is ill-conceived... a total waste of money... and it is a counter-productive. Ex-president Carter and former Secretary of State, Muskie Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8.000 people... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953 The Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) program will lead to enormous waste at best, and, at worst, to nuclear disaster. Office of Technology Assessment U. S. Congress We must demand a new effort to prevent war, not to prepare for it. A leadership for peace can be the finest expression of America's dream. We dare not fail. We are only human beings, subject to all the mortal perils of life, all the temptations to power; but, at the same time, in our very humanity, we must seek to pass on to our children and grandchildren not fear, but hope; not an arms race, but arms control; not the death of the Earth but a better and safer world. W. AvereU Harri man W. Averell Harriman, former ambassador to the Soviet Union and to Great Britain, has been an advisor to five presidents and was chief U.S. negotiator of the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty. The central problem of our time - as I view it - is how to employ human intelligence for the salvation of mankind. It is a problem we have put upon ourselves. For we have defiled our intellect by the creation of such scientific instruments of destruction that we are now in desperate danger of destroying ourselves. Our plight is critical and with each effort we have made to relieve it by further scientific advance, we have succeeded only in aggravating our peril. General Omar N. Bradley "All ("Star Wars" proposals) have staggering technical problems. All are likely to cost on the order of a trillion dollars... All violate one or more existing treaties. All are extremely vulnerable. All would be extremely destabilizing, probably triggering the nuclear war which both sides are trying to prevent." Dr. Robert Bowman, head of the Air Force advanced space program between 1976 and 1978.
