"Indeed, there's something significant somewhere in all this. I was thinking last night (and this isn't an ageist put-down) how, in the year when you were born, I was about to take my first acid trip using Californian Owsley acid (I grew up in Liverpool, where things were happening quite bigtime, at the time) - and somehow there's a connection there. (There's also a connection inasmuch as I was born in what had been the American Generals' HQ in England in WW2). I became aware, when recently at the Green Gathering, surrounded by thirtysomethings, enjoying it and also noticeably valued by them, of this energy-connection to do with the choices for change that I made at that time - which many of my generation, of course, don't share (or they've buried), and which many of your generation variously embody. The interesting thing here is that, while physically my generation is older (with some of the dubious and sometimes jaded wisdom arising from that) your generation is evolutionarily more advanced - as it now is with our respective children and juniors too."

The stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction is not a warrant for waging war. Weapons of mass destruction whether they are nuclear, chemical, biological, or conventional are a threat to human life and habitat by whoever possesses them. They are not tolerable in the hands of any state, whether it is large or small, rich or poor, and headed by a dictator or by an elected politician. Such weapons need to be eliminated from the arsenals of every state, a task that is not the self-declared prerogative of any government but the responsibility of the global community of all peoples and states. There will be no lasting peace on earth until all weapons of mass destruction are destroyed, their production and stockpiling proscribed, and strategies calling for their use replaced by strategies of dialogue, negotiation and, if necessary, internationally agreed economic and political sanctions.

Attempting to eliminate weapons of mass destruction with weapons of mass destruction is to fight violence with violence on the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, a policy that can end up making everyone blind and toothless. Aggressors and terrorists must be stopped, but war is not the way to stop them.

The Club of Budapest is an informal association of creative people in diverse fields of art, literature, and the spiritual domains of culture. It is dedicated to the proposition that only by changing ourselves we can change the world - and that to change ourselves we need the kind of insight and perception that art, literature, and the domains of the spirit can best provide.