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Being the Change: Day 2 – Dialogue Across Divides: Pugwash and the Nobel Peace Prize

The afternoon plenary session on Day 2 of the Being the Change peace conference at Mount Saint Vincent University that I attended was a look at the important role that dialogue plays in breaking down barriers and working toward peace. The moderator of the session was John Eaton, grandson of Cyrus Eaton who provided Thinker’s Lodge in Pugwash as a location for the first Pugwash Conference and the presentation was by Sandra Ionno Butcher, Director of the Pugwash History Project and former coordinator of Young Pugwash USA.

The focus of the session was on how beginning with Joseph Rotblat leaving the Manhattan project and the Russell-Einstein Manifesto setting the peace movement in motion that lead to the establishment of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs that continue today. A clip from the documentary film, The Strangest Dream established the context and then some audio from the press conference in Caxton Hall on July 9, 1955 where Bertrand Russell read the manifesto to the world.

With a manifesto as a rallying point, the work then began to move things forward with a meeting of the top scientists in the world. That meeting happened in July of 1957 with 22 scientists assembling to relax and discuss peace. In many ways, this was one of the first non-governmental organizations and the scientists were able to influence the political decisions made back in their countries. An important part of the presentation was broadening the history by also looking at the role of women such as Ruth S. Adams (later an editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), who was the only woman at the first Pugwash meeting. Adams said that the Pugwash conferences only became a community once the families started to come. The hostess of the first meeting was Anne Kinder Jones (later Eaton) and she formed the heart of the conference which established a template of light schedules and good food.

Pugwash has been involved in most of the major arms control treaties and has been vital in fostering dialogue to prevent conflict in the world. A backchannel that laid the foundation for peace during the Vietnam War, Pugwash works quietly in the background to encourage discussion and peaceful resolution of tense international disagreements. It’s a vital force combining science and technology to establish world peace.

In recognition of the role that Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences played in the cause of peace, a Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to them in 1995. In a beautiful tribute to the important influence that Joseph Rotblat had on her life and work, Sandra Butcher named her son Joey after Rotblatt and she showed a lovely image of her son and her mentor together in Thinker’s Lodge in Pugwash. She also reflected on what an amazing experience it was to be present when Rotblat accepted the award. In his Nobel lecture Rotblatt concluded by saying:

The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task.
Above all, remember your humanity.

July 12, 2010 btc10, conference, history, johneaton, nobelpeaceprize, peace, pugwash, sandraionnobutcher

Being the Change: Day 2 – Pugwash Movement Retrospective – No Strange Dream

The morning workshop session that I attended at the Being the Change peace conference at Mount Saint Vincent University was a retrospective on the Pugwash movement. The workshop was set up and moderated by the wonderful Dennice Leahey (a corporate leader, member of the Order of Canada, active mentor, Pugwash resident and board member of the Pugwash Peace Exchange).

Eric Bednarski a documentary filmmaker currently based in Warsaw, screened a clip from the NFB documentary, The Strangest Dream which he directed. The film came about in 2005 when he spoke to an NFB producer about making a documentary film about the history of the Pugwash movement. The challenge was to figure out how to make a film about conferences and the way to make the film was by focussing on Sir Joseph Rotblat, who became the heart and soul of the project. Rotblat was the only scientist who was part of the Manhattan Project who left before it was completed. Rotblat was one of the signatories of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto which was issued on July 9, 1955 in London. The businessman and financier Cyrus Eaton wrote to Bertrand Russell to offer to host a conference in the town of his birth, Pugwash, Nova Scotia to give scientists a chance to work toward peace in a beautiful setting. The summer home was named “Thinker’s Lodge” and was one of the locations where the meetings took place at the first conference, which began on July 7, 1957.

The next presenter in the workshop was Ru Ling Susie Chou (Physicist, retired Professor of Cardiology at Columbia University Medical School) who is also the daughter of Pei-Yuan Chou, who was the sole participant from China at the first Pugwash conference in 1957. She established the development of the research history of physics leading up to the 20th century and the atomic bomb. She then gave an overview of the historical circumstances in China along with a personal perspective on her father, who was a Physicist. Pei-Yuan Chou was the first person from the People’s Republic of China to visit North America in 1957, which required special permission and negotiation to allow him to travel to Pugwash. Her father helped to build a platform for East and West to talk.

The final presenter in the workshop was Sandra Ionno Butcher, who gave another perspective on the Pugwash conferences and those who were involved with them. She highlighted the important fact that at the time talking amongst scientists and with those from other countries that were considered hostile was a radical notion. She shared how her son Joey was named after Joseph Rotblat (and wrote a moving open letter to her son on the death of Rotblat) and the remarkable person he was. She also talked about being present when Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. The historically important work that happened in Pugwash continues to this day and she connected the personal and the political in a compelling way.

July 11, 2010 btc10, china, denniceleahey, ericbednarski, history, peace, pei-yuanchou, pugwash, rulingsusiechou, sandraionnobutcher, thestrangestdream

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

In the late 70s Harrison Ford was mainly Han Solo to me. He’d been in other films, but it just seemed as if that’s who’d he be. George Lucas was on a roll with a dark sequel to Star Wars in The Empire Strikes Back. Steven Spielberg seemed to be in a bit of slump after the big-budget 1941. But then the announcement came out about Raiders of the Lost Ark starring Ford with Lucas and Spielberg involved and I was 14 and very excited about it. I hadn’t seen the serials that were the inspiration, but I really wanted to see a fun summer movie. From the very start of Raiders of the Lost Ark I loved it.
Some people are a bit perplexed by the excitement and glee anticipating the new Indiana Jones film, and if you know the context, I think it’s a bit easier to understand. The first film came out before E.T., Ghostbusters, Time Bandits, and in the same summer as the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only with Roger Moore as Bond. Other summer movies from 1981 were Cannonball Run, Superman II, Stripes, Endless Love, Outland, and Escape from New York. Raiders of the Lost Ark managed to balance the excitement, the fun and the attitude that we were watching a film with a more old-fashioned style of filmmaking that relied on a lot of solid stunts and cinematography to tell a story. Continue…

May 24, 2008 film, history, review

Bitdepth Year 6

Six years ago I started this blog and it’s been my online home for that time as everything changed around it. Now everything is spread out much more and overall it’s a lot easier to do this stuff and you don’t need to get your hands very dirty with HTML and SQL and CSS to have a blog. As I write this, I’m not even using my own laptop and not having my laptop with all of the files also gives me the opportunity to reflect on how things have changed over the past few years with the technology that I use to communicate with you and how everything ties together.

Continue…

May 19, 2008 43things, bitdepth, blog, blosxom, flickr, history, marsedit, twitter, wordpress

Blogger

I’ve been using Blogger to create a new Screen Arts blog and I really like it. I tried out Blogger when it first started and had a bit of the usual, “that’s too simple for a geek like me” attitude, but it was an important step in the development of the blogosphere. I found In the Beginning: A Video on Weblogs History by Alberto Gonzales that takes us back to 1999 when Pyra was making Blogger and other cool stuff. Google bought Pyra last year and they’ve been revamping and developing Blogger. I was looking for an alternative to Movable Type since the pricing structure changed and I wasn’t sure if I could get all of the pieces in place to continue having the site hosted at work. So I tried out Blogger again and I was very pleasantly surprised. It’s simple and it works well. But the neat thing is how it is evolving. I can audioblog or blog by mail (which I haven’t done yet) and you can also work with Flickr to add photos to the free Blogspot hosting. They also removed the ads from Blogspot and added a toolbar at the top. It’s a good thing to be with Google and I’m hoping that somehow I’ll be able to get a Gmail account soon as well to play with that too. It’s all part of the evolution of a lot of this stuff where it doesn’t really matter where you are or what particular device you are using. Tim O’Reilly talks about it in the IT Conversations interview with Doug Kaye called The Software Paradigm Shift.

August 20, 2004 blogger, flickr, gmail, history, movabletype, pyra, screenarts

The Fog of War

Errol Morris is a film craftsman. His films tell challenging stories in visually interesting ways. The Fog of War won the Academy Award for Best Documentary and it is also one of Morris’ best films. The film is built around interviews with Robert S. McNamara. The score by Philip Glass moves the film forward with a steady pace along with archival footage, stills and significant, but understated visuals illuminate, but don’t distract from the lessons of the film. Morris knows how to build a film from various elements that suit the material and The Fog of War is divided into 11 lessons as the organizational principle. While the man and his personal insight are at the centre of the film, it is a fascinating glimpse into the history of the United States and how individuals shape that history. McNamara is amazing to watch and he engages with Morris through the Interrotron, which is a camera with television in front of it. McNamara at one point outlines a fundamental rule for dealing with the media – “Never answer the question that has been asked of you. Answer the question you wish you had been asked.”

Is McNamara spinning us? Yes, of course. But what is the truth? How do we know what happened? How do we know what will happen? These questions form the core of many of Morris’ films and he doesn’t flinch from dealing with them. One of the many things that I admire in Morris’ work is how he lets the audience make up their mind. He takes a point of view, he presents evidence, but he doesn’t hide edits. With earlier Morris films he would insert some black frames to indicate that parts of an interview were cut out, but now he jump cuts because I think that with the interviews it would probably be distracting. The biggest challenge in making a non-fiction film is treating the interviewees with respect, presenting them fairly and telling the story with all of the pieces fitting together to illuminate a life, tell a story and to give us some insight. Errol Morris does that very well and I’m glad that he’s making films.

May 24, 2004 documentary, errolmorris, film, fogofwar, history, philipglass, review, robertsmcnamara, war

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