12. Letter to President Barack Obama

Global Harmony Association (GHA)

June 28, 2009

His Excellency Barack Obama

President of the USA

CC: The Honorable Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education

SUBJECT: A $27M investment over a three year period to create pilot National Harmony/Peace Academy (NHPA) at a suitable location in the USA

Dear Mr. President:

We have been very encouraged with your statement when you said: "I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in your own democracy again." Indeed, this is what we as a community have been doing!

We’ve learned from a history of 6,000 years of human civilization that every government that relied o­n solving problems through weapons and the wars had later its economy collapsing. Your Excellency, you are o­ne president, who is doing his very best to bring the nation together and the rest of the world as well. We at the Global Harmony Association (GHA) congratulate you and stand by you o­n your efforts to nuclear zero as the humanity first step to global harmony. In a separate letter, we delineate GHA support and assistance to your anti-nuke initiative. A paramount factor for success in this endeavor is through global harmony.

In 2007-08, 65 co-founders of Global Harmony Association (GHA) from 20 countries created an educational project: World Harmony/Peace Academy (WHPA) to be developed in many countries. Details are found in “World Harmony Peace Academy and General Harmonious Education,” posted o­n GHA website: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=277 in five languages: Russian, English, Chinese, Spanish and Romanian and in the attached book.We offer to start the National Harmony/Peace Academy (NHPA) in the USA o­n the basis of the WHPA project to provide national leadership in the area of harmonious education based o­n the new science of social harmony and new information technology (IT).

All nations, especially those that take the lead, separately or together, will benefit from this project. The first country, which will create the NHPA, will become the educational cradle for world harmony and for harmonious civilization.

Education is the most effective way of development and care of the people. Confucius, founder of the Chinese culture of harmony, maintained this point of view as far back as 2500 years ago, when he said, “If you are thinking 100 years ahead - educate the children.” In November, 1921, Mahatma Gandhi emphasized also: “If we are to reach real peace in this world, we shall have to begin with the children”. o­nly education can bring the needed transformation, about which Nelson Mandela spoke: “Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world.” Today our charter should be: “It is o­nly with the children’s harmonious education that we can achieve global peace, common good, justice, and prosperity for all.”

The GHA has the following resources necessary to initially pull off the WHPA project:

1. Staff: Now 80 co-authors of the WHPA project, 50 of who are ready to enter its faculty.

2. International resource: 300 active members from 48 countries and more than o­ne million participants in more than 80 countries from the GHA collective members. The WHPA project was approved by the 18^th World Peace Congress of the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP) held in Malaysia, October 29-31 2008 (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=355). The Malaysian Congress emphasized: “The modern tendency of global harmonization requires general harmonious education. Therefore, a conclusion made in Congress was natural: The World Harmony Peace Academy (WHPA) as the generator of general harmonious education will inevitably be created. For realization of this project it is required $27 million for 3 years, o­n $9 million per o­ne year: It is a paltry sum for the budget of any country, even for the smallest o­ne.”

3. Information resource: A new science of social harmony – Tetrasociology, which has been under development for more than 33 years (since 1976). It is presented in more than 200 scientific works, including 12 books in 1- 16 languages. Tetrasociology resulted in many social discoveries, more than 100 projects, and has been taught in universities of Petersburg for 10 years (1993-2003). o­nly Tetrasociology, as the science of social harmony, gives to general harmonious education an essentially new form as a proposed "education revolution” (Eleanor Roosevelt) for the 21^st century.

4. Management resource: 16 co-authors of the GHA WHPA project, who form the WHPA General Directorate, from the 16 countries of the world.

The GHA has all the needed initial resources for creation of the WHPA except a physical location, material, equipment and finance. An initial layout of approximately $27M ($9M/year) over a three-year period is a minimum amount needed for rental space, sociological research, technology development, textbooks publication, salaries, tuition and living expenses for invited registrants.

We believe the NHPA is well suited for educational reform in the USA to establish technology-based market-driven harmonious/peace education. The NHPA will retrain the teachers for schools, colleges and universities through appropriate educational curricula. The NHPA will also train experts for the other areas: commerce, economy, finance, information, environment protection to cultivate harmony and peaceful resolution of inter-groups conflicts. The innovative technologies developed through the NHPA have a great potential for the USA businesses to make large profits both inside and in the world markets. In three years, the NHPA will become a self-supporting and profitable educational entity.

The emerging society, culture and politics in the USA offer a fertile ground to establish NHPA. They are the peaceful people of the USA and mass peace movements which united millions of Americans; National campaign to establish a US Department of Peace; 13 towns in the USA have ‘Harmony’ in their names reflecting American dream and aspiration; Annual National Harmony Festival in California since 1978; 14 ‘Harmony Schools’ have arisen in the states of Texas and Louisiana since 2000 (on the basis of these schools for retraining of their teachers the first USA NHPA can be created); tens of educational and public establishments are devoted to peace and harmony and etc. Above all, Mr. President – through your “change” campaign platform you’ve o­nce again harmonized the interests of different groups of the country o­n the base idea of “United States of America.”

The NHPA presents nine great opportunities for the USA:

1. An allocation of a small percentage of the budget for Iraq and Afghanistan wars can finance the establishment of NHPA with its satellite branches in Iraq and Afghanistan and other countries that offer potential for reduction of the terrorism sources in the future.
2. In 2 years the USA could offer WHPA to Russia as a joint project, which would be important for global peace and nuclear disarmament. Such policies with Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and others countries will be an embodiment of a new, positive principle of the international relations: “Harmonization through education instead of confrontation through armament,”
3. In 2 years the NHPA could develop new humanitarian technologies for harmonization of the youth and for economic and financial harmonization to prevent the local and global financial crisis in the future.
4. In 2 years the USA could mass construct the schools of harmonious education and NHPAs in all states and worldwide, which will help solve the unemployment problems and recovery from financial crisis. Just as after the crisis of 1929-31 and WWII, the USA built the interstate highway systems, so in 2011, the USA can build mass NHPAs.
5. In 2 years the USA, o­n the basis of prepared in the NHPA specialists, could create a national service network of the Harmony Centers for the country population and then globally.
6. In 2010-11, under the auspices of the UN, host the First World Harmony Festival and Summit, “Peace Harmonization through Education instead of Confrontation: Strategy for Disarmament, Survival, Global Peace, Prosperity and Sustainable Development,” and proclaiming the UN decade 2011-2020 as "Decade of Harmonious Education of Children for Global Peace.”
7. Understanding and imbibing the concept of ‘intellectual city’ through NHPA. In 4-6 years each Academy will potentially turn to ‘harmonizing intellectual city,’ constantly generating the new harmonizing ideas and projects of regional and global influence.
8. In 1-2 years the NHPA will be a World Centre o­n scientific, educational, cultural and civil maintenance for the USA antinuclear initiative and harmonization of relations with Islamic world – the two great USA policy changes, which you initiated in April and June 2009.
9. The NHPA, the educational reform and economic harmonization in USA will be your great national reform, change and legacy for the future generations.

As stated Martin Luther King, Jr. “we must shift the arms race into a peace race.” o­nly general harmonious education through the NHPA can make this shift worldwide, that the peace race becomes a priority for all nations and to exclude ‘clash of civilizations.’ The USA must take the first place in this great initiative.

A WHPA will inevitably be created by humankind for its survival. The o­nly question is where and when? We believe that Your Excellency recognizes its importance and will embrace this historic opportunity to make an unprecedented contribution to the USA and to global harmony.

To provide a practical efficiency of the NHPA technologies in the USA, we propose a trial project that could be run in the first year at 10% of the total amount requested, i.e., $2.7M.

GHA has the honor to nominate Your Excellency as the USA NHPA Honorary President.

Sincerely Yours,

The WHPA General Directorate of 16 members as representatives from 16 countries of the world:

- Dr. Leo Semashko, Russia; GHA President; Chair, WHPA General Directorate, leo.semashko@gmail.com;  

- Dr. Laj Utreja, USA; General Director, NHPA, ish0001@aol.com;

- Prof. Ernesto Kahan, Israel; Vice-Chair, WHPA General Directorate, ekahan@post.tau.ac.il; 

WHPA General Directorate members:

Prof. Ammar Banni, Algeria; Prof. Maria Cristina Azcona, Argentina; Prof. John W. Forje, Cameroon; Prof. Alexei Stakhov, Canada; Prof. Jiang Yimin, China, Mr. Takis Ioannides, Writer, Greece; Dr. Bernard Scott, England; Dr. Guy Crequie, France; Dr. Tholana Chakravarthy, India; Dr. Renato Corsetti, Italy; Ms. Helene F. Klingberg, Poet, Norway;Prof. Reimon Bachika, Japan; Mr. Jean de Dieu Basabose, Rwanda.

Endorsements from USA:

-Prof. Charles Mercieca, USA, President, International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP). Founded in 1967, IAEWP is devoted to the goals of peace education, environmental protection, human rights and disarmament (http://www.iaewp.org). Headquartered in Huntsville, AL (USA), it has branches in more than 80 countries with over 50,000 members; mercieca@knology.net,

-Mr. Robert M. Weir, USA, Writer, Congressional District Leader for U.S. Department of Peace initiative in Michigan's 6th Congressional District, www.thepeacealliance.org; Robtweir@aol.com,

-Mrs Rose Lord, USA, Program Director, Global Coalition for Peace; www.globalcoalitionforpeace.net; rose@food4peace.com,

-Prof. Rene Wadlow, USA, Editor, Transnational Perspectives:

www.transnational-perspectives.org, wadlowz@aol.com; and others.

The US President Barack Obama response to the GHA letter about creation of the USA National Academy of Harmony, which has been sent by Dr. Laj Utreja

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