Prague Departure Day

This has to be a quick post because Amber and I have so much to do before leaving tonight for Prague and the Forum 2000! We are so busy this morning that my assistant Martha was driving next to us going over our checklist as we were jogging.

I heard from our friends organizing the conference that I am speaking either before or after the former Russian Prime Minister--this is good news, because it means the room will be full of journalists and dignitaries.

Last night I was up until 2:30am polishing these brief remarks. The idea is to give people a taste, and then let them ask questions. I am looking forward to reporting the response to the speech here.

Here is an excerpt from the draft:

Reliable peace is a special word for “safety”. “Peace” is, very simply, the set of practices that keep us safe from war. Just as we practice road safety, storm safety, and fire safety to protect from those predictable dangers, so we can practice peace as constructive conflict that displaces the destructive danger we call war.

Let us dispel the romantic notions of peace as everyone being nice, of peace as the absence of conflict, of peace as dependent on the culmination of human spiritual evolution. We can no longer afford peace as passive, as fuzzy, as complete—it is the set of standards, measurements and actions that keep us all safe from war. The world is a dangerous place, and war is one of the worst dangers out there, and as a danger, it is not going away.

First Forum 2000

Here is a picture from the first Forum 2000 conference I attended in Prague in 2006. At the time I was looking for my next challenge, and was in what my friend Lekha Singh calls "sponge mode"--soaking up everything around me reading the signals, talking to everyone about everything. Being in that mode led me to this moment with the Dalai Lama in Prague.

The day before this picture was taken the Dalai Lama had been on a panel talking about the nature of religious life as it relates to world peace. At one point a Catholic Bishop from France, Michel Dubost of Eveché D'Evry-Corbeil, referred to religious beliefs, gesturing to the other representatives in the room:Islam, Shinto, Protestant and representing Tibetan Buddhism, HH the 14th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama smiled, leaned into the mike, and said "yes, but I'm a non-believer."

His assertion electrified me, because I realized that all these discussions about peace were revolving around reconciling beliefs, rather than looking at the ground of belief that we all hold in common. This was the moment I realized that I was going to do something concrete around world peace.

For a transcript of the whole panel's conversation, click here.

Preparing for Prague

Amber Lupton, my co-author of Give Peace A Deadline, and I are headed to Prague, Czech Republic soon for the annual Forum 2000 peace conference. Lots of great peacemakers will be there, including Gary Kasparov, the chess grandmaster and current leader of the opposition in Russia.

I am looking forward to speaking with Mike Moore--not the filmmaker, the former head of the World Trade Organization and Prime Minister of New Zealand. I want to see what he has to say about forming a committee to draft the Global Peace Treaty, as well as lots of other advice.

Google is sponsoring a public solicitation to give away $10 million for the best idea that benefits the most people. We will be making a submission and YouTube video by the deadline of Oct 20. Stay tuned, it looks like the public can vote on the best ideas, and you won't want to miss the video.