My back ground is music. Music music and more music. I have been on a magical journey (albeit it sometimes scenic) since the heady days of 66/67 and made my living from it for best part of 35 years. My apprenticeship was being part of an activist workshop based in Worthing, Sussex during the late 60's and early 70's. That set the tone for my journey. From the Worthing Workshop and Phun City through punk rock (Stranglers management) and 80s rock (Big Country and The Cult management) I maintained my love of music and my spiritual and humanist beliefs. I became aware of the Association Of World Citizens organisation in the newspapers during the build up to the Iraq war. There were these people heading there and volunteering to be human shields. Some of them carried the passport of 'Association of World Citizens' and actually got there using one. This and what was happening at the time made an impresson on me so, I contacted the head quarters of the organisation by email to congratulate them and the founder - Douglas Mattern, quickly answered it. He asked if I would like to be the UK Director.
I humbly accepted but have done very little to date to do justice to the position he asked me to honour. Hopefully, with the building of this site and profile that may come from it, that will change.
Myspace gives me the opportunity to finally start a ball rolling. I hope it builds into something akin to the original thoughts of those who started the Association of World Citizens. Lets face it, humankind need each other more than ever and anything that harnesses communication and energy between the human race, can only be a positive thing.
Ian Grant - March 12th 2007
Passports and badges will soon be purchasable and hopefully newsletters and all kinds of stuff relating to the interaction that this site may bring about.
Here is some information lifted from the Global site in San Francisco.
THE ASSOCIATION OF WORLD CITIZENS (AWC) is an international peace organization with branches in 50 countries. Initiated in 1975, AWC has NGO status with the UN's Department of Public Information (DPI), and Consultative Status with the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
The goal is working with people, progressive governments, and international institutions to create a Global Village of lasting peace, social and economic justice, and the foundation for a new civilization based on respect for life and the environment. The key to achieve this goal is for people to think and act as responsible Citizens of the World.
World Citizenship is not a replacement for national citizenship, but rather a new responsibility in this interdependent world to work together across national boundaries to secure our common fate.
AWC is working with people, progressive governments, and international institutions to help create a democratic world community with global governance capable of maintaining lasting peace and justice through international law. The key to achieve this goal is for people to think and act as responsible Citizens of the World.
"The age of nations is past, the task before us now, if we are to survive is to shake off our ancient prejudices, and build the earth."
- Teilhard de Chardin
ERADICATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: A top priority is the complete elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth with legal constraints to ensure they can never be built again. There can be no security until this goal is attained. There are 30,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled in this third year of the new millennium. Moreover, thousands of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads are on a hair-trigger alert, ready for launch in a few minutes notice. The immediate task is for all nuclear warheads to be taken off hair-trigger alert status. This would eliminate the possibility of nuclear war through an accidental missile launch or miscalculation and the subsequent destruction of both the United States and Russia within an hour. The elimination of nuclear weapons will lead to the eradication of all weapons of mass destruction.
THE WAR SYSTEM: The goal is the elimination of the war system itself, with future conflicts between peoples and nations to be settled through the framework of world law under the jurisdiction of a much strengthened, democratic, representative, and reformed United Nations. There is no alternative to perpetual war, leading to an ultimate disaster for humanity, or the constant preparation for war, with all the economic, political, and cultural elements that support and rely on the war system. An immediate task is to stop the militarization of space, which would turn the heavens above into a new terrorism for humanity below, and make disarmament steps more difficult, if not impossible.
"Abolition of war is no longer an ethical question to be pondered solely by learned philosophers and ecclesiastics, but a hard core one for the decision of the masses whose survival is the issue. Many will tell you with mockery and ridicule that the abolition of war can only be a dream. that it is the vague imagining of a visionary. But we must go on or we will go under! We must have new thoughts, new ideas, and new concepts. We must break out of the strait jacket of the past. We must have sufficient imagination and courage to translate the universal wish for peace - which is rapidly becoming a universal necessity - into actuality."
"The very triumph of scientific annihilation has destroyed the possibility of war being a medium of practical settlement of international differences. If you lose, you are annihilated. If you win, you stand only to lose. War contains the germs of double suicide. Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations all in turn have failed. We have our last chance. If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door."
- General Douglas MacArthur
GLOBALIZATION: Globalization can be a step toward a progressive world community. However, this term has been co-opted by those whose goal is a world ruled by a few powerful nations, their corporations, an elite rich minority, and backed by the massive military power of the United States. This is essentially a de facto world government. It is the antithesis of democracy; moreover, corporate economic globalization is a disaster for our planet because this system is dependent on constantly expanding markets and mass consumption, which inevitably leads to a polluted and resource depleted planet. Corporate globalization has also widened the shameful gap between rich and poor.
Globalization must be democratic and beneficial to all the people rather than the few. And it must include both social and economic justice. Today, only 20 percent of the world's population has more wealth than the remaining 80 percent. Moreover, this rich 20 percent consume over 80 percent of the world's resources. There is no possibility to establish democracy and a peaceful world under this gross disparity of wealth.
THE UN AND CIVIL SOCIETY:
"We seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system. capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished. The will requires a new effort to achieve world law."
- President John Kennedy
REFORM AND DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS, a "Third Generation UN" as former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali terms it, must include direct representation of people. In cooperation with the Campaign for a More Democratic UN (CAMDUN), AWC actively works for the inclusion of a Peoples Assembly within the UN system, which is possible under Article 22 of the UN Charter. One concept is a two-tier parliament as suggested by former UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar. One tier would be the General Assembly of nations, and the second tier comprised of civil society, perhaps represented by NGOs.
A HUMAN MANIFESTO
This document was first published in 1972 by Planetary Citizens Registry (no longer in operation) as a full-page ad in the New York Times. The inspiration for this document was initiated by UN Secretary-General U Thant.
The Association of World Citizens has gathered a new list of prominent personalities as endorsers for the reissue of this document· A Human Manifesto is a message of hope and vision in this time of violence and war.
Publication of the Manifesto is the first phase of our Global Peace Campaign. The second phase will be a major peace conference scheduled for San Francisco in late 2003 with the title: "Creating a World Beyond Terrorism and War." Many of the endorsers of A Human Manifesto will participate.
ENDORSE "A HUMAN MANIFESTO"
(Include Name, Country & Organization if applicable in email)
------------------------------------------------------------
------------
A HUMAN MANIFESTO
Human life on our planet is in jeopardy.
It is in jeopardy from war that could pulverize the human habitat.
It is in jeopardy from preparations for war that destroy or diminish the prospects of decent existence.
It is in jeopardy because of the denial of human rights.
It is in jeopardy because the air is being fouled and the waters and soil are being poisoned.
It is in jeopardy because of the uncontrolled increase in population.
If these dangers are to be removed and if human development is to be assured, we the peoples of this planet must accept obligations to each other and to thee generations of human beings to come.
We have the obligation to free our world of war by creating an enduring basis for world peace.
We have the obligation to safeguard the delicate balances of the natural environment and to develop the world's resources for the common good.
We have the obligation to place the human interest, and human sovereignty above national sovereignty.
We have the obligation to make human rights the primary concern of society.
We have the obligation to create a world order in which man neither has to kill or be killed.
In order to carry out these obligations, we the peoples of this world assert our primary allegiance to each other in the family of man.
We declare our individual citizenship to the world community and our support for a United Nations capable of governing our planet in the common human interest.
The world belongs to the people who inhabit it. We have the right to change it, shape it, nurture it.
Life in the universe is unimaginably rare. It must be be protected, respected, cherished.
We pledge our energies and resources of spirit to the preservation of the human habitat and to the infinite possibilities of human betterment in our time.
Endorsers of the 2002 reissue of A Human Manifesto
Hafsat Abiola
Founder
Kudirat Initiative for Democracy
Nigeria
Tadatoshi Akiba
Mayor of Hiroshima
Japan
Tony Benn M.P.
English Parliamentarian
United Kingdom
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Former UN Secretary General
Egypt
Willie L. Brown, Jr.
Mayor
City & County of San Francisco
USA
Fritjof Capra
Founding Director
Center for Ecoliteracy
USA
Ingvar Carlsson
Former Prime Minister of Sweden
Co-Chair
Commission on Global Governance
Sweden
Eugene J. Carroll, Jr.
Rear Admiral, US Navy, Retired
USA
President Jimmy Carter
Nobel Laureate, Peace, 2002
USA
Sir Authur C. Clarke
Author
Sri Lanka
Mairead Corrigan Maquire
Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1976
N. Ireland
Walter Cronkite
Journalist
USA
Mario Cuomo
Former Governor of New York State
USA
His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso
the 14th Dalai Lama
Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1989
India
Marian Wright Edelman
Founder and President
Children's Defense Fund
USA
Paul Ehrlich
Population and Environmental Scientist
USA
Richard R. Ernst
Nobel Laureate, Chemistry, 1991
Switzerland
Adolfo Perez Esquivel
Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1980
Argentina
Benjamin B. Ferencz
Author
Former Prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial
USA
President Gerald R. Ford
USA
Arun Gandhi
Co-founder
M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence
USA
Jane Goodall
Scientist
Founder, Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research
USA
Hazel Henderson
Author, Futurist, Economist
USA
John Hennessy
President, Stanford University
USA
Arthur Hiller
Film Director
Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
2002 Academy Award Ceremony
USA
Barbara Marx Hubbard
Author, President of Foundation for Conscious Evolution
USA
Wolfgang Ketterle
Nobel Laureate, Physics, 2001
USA
Frederik Willem de Klerk
Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1993
Former President of South Africa
South Africa
David Krieger, President
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
USA
Dennis Kucinich
U.S. Congressman
USA
Ervin Laszlo
Author, Scientist, Founder
Club of Budapest
Hungary
Norman Lear
Author, Television Producer
USA
Federico Mayor
Former Director General of UNESCO
Spain
Zubin Mehta
Music Conductor
USA & Israel
Edgar Mitchell
Astronaut
Founder, Institute of Noetic Sciences
USA
Robert Muller
Former Asst. UN Secretary General
Chancellor, University for Peace
Costa Rica
Robert K. Musil
Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility
USA
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Professor of Islamic Studies
George Washington University
USA
Anaisabel Prera
Director General
Fundación Cultura de Paz
Spain
Sir Shridath Ramphal
Co-Chairman
The Commission on Global Governance
United Kingdom
Robert B. Reich
Former US Secretary of Labor
USA
Douglas Roche O.C.
Senator of Canada
International Chairman
Middle Powers Initiative
Canada
Eleanor Roosevelt
Author, Speaker
Niece of Eleanor Roosevelt
USA
Mstislav Rostropovich
Cellist, Conductor
USA
Joseph Rotblat
Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1995
United Kingdom
Oscar Arias Sanchez
Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1987
Former President of Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Frederick Sanger
Nobel Laureate, Chemistry, 1958, 1980
United Kingdom
Martin Sheen
Actor, Activist
USA
Rt. Rev. Bishop William Swing
Founder, United Religions Initiative
USA
Charles H. Townes
Nobel Laureate, Physics, 1964
USA
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1984
South Africa
Lynne Twist
Author
Vice Chair, Institute of Noetic Sciences
USA
Elie Wiesel
Writer, Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1986
USA
Jody Williams
Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1997
Founding Coordinator
International Campaign To Ban Landmines
USA
Muhammad Yunus
Founder & Director
Grameen Bank
Bangladesh
ENDORSE "A HUMAN MANIFESTO"
(Include Name, Country & Organization if applicable in email)
MySpace Profile Photo Editor
