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"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

MAYORS FOR PEACE win 2007 Nuclear-Free Future Award

The Nuclear-Free Future Award for "solutions" creating a world free of nuclear weapons and nuclear power, was awarded to Mayors for Peace, an international organization of cities.

Former Hiroshima mayor Takeshi Araki established Mayors for Peace in 1982 to promote global peace. Forty-five cities, mostly in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, joined this year. Along with Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which cooperate in Japan with the 230-member cities in the National Council of Japan Nuclear Free Local Authorities), there is now a membership of 1,982 cities represented from 126 countries and regions. In 2007, Mayors for Peace celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Members from East Asia include 7 cities in China: Beijing, Dalian, Wuhan, Chengdu, Fuzhou, Chongqing, and Hangzhou – 2 cities in Indonesia: Jakarta and Padang – 4 cities in Mongolia: Arvayheer, Darkhan, Dornogovi, and Ulaanbaatar – 14 cities in the Philippines: Valenzuela, Tagig, Angono, Binan, Bustos, Cagayan de Oro, Calumpit, Kalookan, La Trinidad, Muntinlupa, Naga, Pasig, Pulilan, and Quezon City – 3 cities in Malaysia: Miri, Penang, Johor Bahru – Phnom Penh in Vietnam – Taipei in Taiwan – Daegu and Jeju in South Korea – three cities in Vietnam: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and Hue – and Kanchanaburi in Thailand.

West, Central, and South Asian cities include Jerusalem among 4 cities in Israel – Damascus and Quneitra in Syria – Istanbul among 10 cities in Turkey – 26 cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Palestine) – Columbo among 20 cities in Sri Lanka – Karachi among 12 cities in Pakistan – Kathmandu among 5 cities in Nepal – Amman and Irbid in Jordan – Tripoli in Lebanon – Tehran among 11 cities from Iran – Bhopal and Calcutta among 16 cities in India – 3 cities in Cyprus – Thimphu in Bhutan – 8 cities in Bangladesh – Kabul in Afghanistan – and Baghdad among 45 cities in Iraq.

At the individual level of activism, Mayors for Peace are asking people around the world to join their ongoing petition drive, a part of its 2020 (the 75th Anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings) Vision Campaign: Cities are not Targets (CANT):

"The Mayors for Peace project is designed to lift the voices of cities and citizens to say, “No! You may not target cities. You may not target children.” Through these activities, we intend to bring to the attention of mayors, citizens and national leaders the fact that cities are, in fact, still being targeted for annihilation and the International Court of Justice has found this threat itself to be a war crime. Furthermore, we hope this project will intensify our demand that the nuclear-weapon states fulfill their promise to “negotiate in good faith” to abolish all nuclear weapons.

"The goal of this project is not a shifting of nuclear weapons away from cities but their total elimination. And, when we speak here of “cities,” we refer not to a municipal entity of a certain size but to any area in which children and non-combatants are living routine daily lives."

The Nuclear-Free Future Award, a Munich-based organization, seeks to facilitate the end of the "Atomic Age." Instituted in 1998, it will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2008.

Other recipients this year include Charmaine White Face and the Defenders of the Black Hills for their "opposition" to nuclear weapons. An article, "America's Secret Chernobyl," tells how radioactivity affects the residents of the upper midwestern United States, where over 1,000 uranium mines and prospects are located.

German scholar Siegwart Horst Günther was awarded the "education" part of the award. He was the first person to demonstrate the medical connection between the Gulf War Syndrome and the US military's widespread use of depleted uranium. He received his third Nuclear-Free Future award in for refusing to yield to pressure against his visit to Iraq to research the consequences of depleted uranium use.

German Freda Meissner-Blau received the Lifetime Achievement Award for her half-century opposition to the nuclear industry.

Armin Weiss, also a German scholar, organized resistance to the construction of a nuclear processing plant at Wackersdorf, Bavaria, in the 1980's, and as a member of the Green party of the Bavarian state government, he continued to oppose nuclear energy plants.

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