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A selection of prayers from a peace and justice vigil at All Saints, Cleadon, Saturday, 1st March, 2003. The event, attended by more than 50 people, was organised by the South Tyneside Churches Together movement and supported by the Stop the War Coalition.
Lead me from death
to Life; from falsehood
to Truth; lead me from despair
to Hope; from fear
to Trust; lead me from hate
to Love; from war
to Peace. Let Peace
fill our hearts,
our world,
our universe.
[Jain community (Prayer of Peace Movement, 198l)]
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
and give you peace.
[Ancient Hebrew blessing (Numbers 6:23-24)]
The sins of the world,
such dreadful sins:
not just the personal sins,
but the solidarity of sin
greater than the total
of individual sins,
nuclear evil in endless fission,
O Lamb of God.
The sin of racial pride
that sees not the faith
that all men are divinely made,
nor the riches of the pigment
in portrait faces,
the same psychology
and religious search,
that each is the sibling
from whom Christ died.
The burgeoning greed
that never heeds the needs of others
involved in a merciless system,
looking only at profit and dividend,
the last possessions that cannot accompany us
at our last migration:
Take away these sins
O Lamb of God.
The massive sin of war,
millions of lives impersonally destroyed,
billions of pounds wasted
on weapons, bombs,
truth enslaved,
the hungry still unfed,
grief stalking unnurnbered homes:
Weep over us, O Lamb of God.
The sin of the world,
alienation from thee
not just weakness
but evil intention,
organized and unrestrained
with its own momentum
leading to death;
O Lamb of God
take away this sin.
Begin with me,
O Lamb of God,
forgive my sins,
cleanse my heart,
disarm my will
and let me fight
armed with thy truth,
righteousness and love
with thy cross of love
incised upon my heart
O Lamb of God.
[Christian]
Give more than human wisdom, O Lord, to those who now take counsel for the nations of the earth. Across the divides of north and south, east and west, across the divides of culture and religion, ideology and history, grant a commitment to take away terrorism and anarchy, and to establish a lasting commitment to justice and peace; for you are the loving, merciful God for whom our souls long.
[Christian]
Merciful Lord, we pray for peace.
but not for peace without justice,
not for peace that ignore the cries of the poor,
not for peace that ignores reconciliation between peoples,
not for peace that tolerates cruelty and oppression.
We pray for true peace:
a peace where all your children are free,
a peace where human rights are honoured,
a peace where human diversity is celebrated,
a peace which you alone can give.
[Christian]
When all seems very dark, O Lord,
and we are afraid.
When evil seems to have the upper hand
and our foundations are shaken,
let the light of hope burn brightly in our souls,
that trusting in your goodness
and reflecting your love,
we may be messengers of hope and light
for your name's sake.
[Christian]
In the name of God, the merciful Lord of mercy.
Praise be to God the Lord of all being,
the merciful Lord of mercy,
Master of the day of judgement.
You alone we serve' to you alone we come for aid,
Guide us in the straight path,
the path of those whom you have blessed,
not of those against whom there is displeasure,
nor of those who go astray.
[Musil Surah I, The Fatilah or Opener]
All that we ought to have thought and have not thought.
All that we ought to have said and have not said,
All that we ought to have done and have not done;
All that we ought not to have thought, and have thought.
All that we ought not to have spoken, and yet have spoken,
All that we ought not to have done, and yet have done;
For thoughts, words and works, pray we, O God, for
forgiveness.
[Ancient Persian]
O god
let us be united;
let us speak in harmony;
let our minds apprehend alike,
common be our prayer;
commend be the end of our assembly;
common be our resolution;
common be our deliberations,
alike be our feelings;
unified be our hearts;
common be our intentions;
perfect be our unity.
[Hindu Scriptures]
O God I fear thee not because
I dread the wrath to come; for how
can such affright, when never was
A Friend more excellent than Thou?
Thou knowest well the heart's design
the secret purpose of the mind,
And I adore Thee, light divine,
Lest lesser lights should make me blind.
[Abu-l-Husain al-Nuri]
Eternal god, whose image lies in the hearts of all people,
we live among peoples whose ways are different from ours,
whose faiths are foreign to us,
whose tongues are unintelligible to us.
Help us to remember that you love all people with your great love,
that all religion is an attempt to respond to you,
that the yearnings of other hearts are much like our
own and are known to you.
Help us to recognise you m the words of truth,
the things of beauty,
the actions of love about us.
We pray through the anointed one,
who is a stranger to no one land more than another,
and to every land no less than to another.
[World Council of Churches]
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Late News ...
May 2003, UK recruits more mass-murder consultants
Or ...
Britain increases nuclear weapons research
24 May 2003
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
by Rob Edwards
Hundreds of extra scientists are being sought to work on Britain’s nuclear bomb programme. Their job will be to maintain Britain’s Trident warheads, to help ensure that new weapons can be designed in the future and to conduct joint research with the US.
But the recruitment drive has raised fears that Britain risks being sucked into fresh US research on low-yield nuclear weapons so-called "mini-nukes" for use as bunker busters on the battlefield.
Britain "is being dragged down the slippery slope towards new nuclear weapons and nuclear testing by the US," says Kathryn Crandall, an analyst with the British American Security Information Council, an independent think tank in Washington DC.
A spokesman for Britain’s Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston, Berkshire, confirmed to New Scientist that it is planning to increase its workforce from 3500 to 3800 "or even higher" by 2008. It hopes to hire up to 80 physicists, materials scientists and systems engineers in 2003 alone.
The AWE says the increase is needed because it is having to adopt new skills to enable it to work on nuclear bombs without detonating them. Britain and the US agreed to cease their joint underground nuclear testing programme in 1996, though there are fears that the US now wants to start testing again.
The new recruits will service the 200 warheads for the Trident missiles carried by four British submarines. They will also help "maintain the capability" to design a replacement for Trident, if that is ever required.
The AWE says that some recruits are "highly likely" to be involved in research with the US under a 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement. This research includes a joint investigation into the properties of plutonium in a series of subcritical tests at an underground laboratory in the Nevada desert, the first of which took place in February 2002.
There are more than 200 visits a year to the US by AWE staff and there are some 16 joint working groups, including one on nuclear weapons engineering and another on nuclear warhead physics.
And the Bush administrationıs request to conduct research into mini-nukes weapons with a yield of less than five kilotons is due to be considered by Congress this week.
If this mini-nuke research goes ahead, some believe itıll be tough for British researchers not to become involved.
"These are creative, curious scientists who want to explore new concepts. They will obviously be interested in any new US research," says Ivan Oelrich, director of the strategic security project at the Federation of American Scientists.
So while AWE says it is not currently working with the US to produce "any kind of nuclear weapon", its denials have failed to dispel suspicions in the antinuclear camp.
Rachel Western of Friends of the Earth believes Britain will eventually investigate mini-nukes, because she says it is on the same weapons production "treadmill" as the US.
For more details: http://www.newscientist.com
Related New Scientist stories:
Special report: A struggle for nuclear power
22 March 2003
Nuclear bunker busters come under scrutiny
28 February 2003
US plans for mini-nuke arsenal revealed
19 February 2003
For more related stories:
search the New Scientist online and print edition archives.
Weblinks - You might 'google' your way to ...
Atomic Weapons Establishment
Federation of American Scientists
Friends of the Earth
Etc
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Tuesday, 23.12.03
Facts
Number of days since U.S.-U.K. forces began an invasion of Iraq, mostly on the pretext that the then Iraqi government possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’: 279.
Number of days since the start of that invasion during which credible evidence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ has not been found in Iraq: 279.
Comment
With every day that passes [and with each dead former weapons inspector - and every ‘panic attack’ by the British Prime Minister], the scale of the deception seems to grow - and how many would believe that ‘they’ had planted it if ‘they’ claimed to find evidence now?
Let us be quite clear what this means. Before the invasion of Iraq, the governments of the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland strongly suggested to their own citizens and to the wider world that they had ‘overwhelming evidence’ that Saddam possessed huge stockpiles of quickly usable ‘weapons of mass destruction’ - and ‘hence’ represented a threat that ‘had’ to be disarmed rapidly with military force. This suggestion by the governments was simply untrue [and an indication of fundamental dishonesty at the cores of the two governments]. That it was untrue can now be regarded as a proven fact, given that 279 days into the occupation of Iraq no significant finds have been made of any physical evidence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’. To put it briefly, no one can hide huge stockpiles of ‘overwhelming evidence’.
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Questions for News Readers:
Why am I being told this?
What does it really mean?
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A Rewind of the Tape, August 2003
About a year ago, in August 2002, there was a meeting between U.S. president George Walker Bush and two of his senior advisers Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. They suggested to him that he should show caution over Iraq since an attack might unleash exactly what he was saying in public that he wanted to prevent. They reminded him that in Afghanistan U.S. forces had not been able to find bin Laden, Mullah Omar and other suspected al-Qaeda leaders. They told him that then [i.e. a year ago] U.S. intelligence did not actually ‘know where Saddam is’. They suggested he should avoid more ‘possible fruitless manhunts’.
[Question: who benefits from having menacing seeming ‘bogeymen’ figures ‘out there’ somewhere ... mysteriously unaccounted for?]
+++++
Privatized Power Politics: Some Facts, Summer/Autumn 2003
The USA has about 175,000 petrol stations and about 200,000,000 private cars.
In 1973, as a consequence of the Arab-Israeli war - and with a Ford making a surprize drive-in appearance to take up the post of U.S. vice-president - OPEC countries put an embargo on oil exports to the USA.
As a consequence of the embargo, petrol prices doubled, and for once in a lifetime U.S. motorists had to queue lengthily at petrol stations.
Since that time, a major driving force of U.S. policy has been to prevent a reoccurrence of that ‘domestic crisis’.
Find your own examples ...
Here is just one of many possible examples:-
British Petroleum [despite its name, it is not a state-owned firm - though links between it and individuals connected with the present British ‘New Labour’ government are worthy of further investigation] is building a £3,000,000,000 [who is paying?] pipe-line from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Turkey. There are existing oil pipeline routes through Russia and Iran ... but they are prone to political blockages (from an Anglo-American perspective). The USA has appointed a ‘special ambassador’ whose job is to ensure a ‘trouble-free’ new oil-tube. A former Azeri government official has suggested: ‘Azerbaijan used to report to Politburo in Moscow. Now it reports to President at Politburo {sic!} in Washington’.
[p.s. Lest we forget, ‘president of Politburo in Washington’ is George Walker Bush, a member of a leading Texas oil family.]
Footnotes, 06/09/03
Proposition. The governments of the USA and the U.K. ‘misled’ their citizens over the issue of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ [WMD].
Definitions. ‘Misled’: past-tense of ‘mislead’. ‘Mislead’: to misinform [knowingly or unknowingly]; to lead astray; to lead badly.
Argument. The governments of the USA and the U.K. said there was ‘overwhelming evidence’ that Iraq under the rule of Saddam possessed huge stockpiles of quickly usable WMD and was ‘hence’ a threat to world peace who ‘had’ to be disarmed by military force. About 250 days since the start of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by U.S. and U.K. led military forces, no significant physical evidence of usable WMD have been found in Iraq.
Conclusion. The governments of the USA and the U.K misled their citizens.
Footnotes, 08.09.03
George Walker Bush has informed American taxpayers that their ongoing involvement in the occupation of Iraq is going to cost them an estimated further 87,000,000,000 [87 billion] dollars. British taxpayers are yet to be adequately informed of what their involvements in the ongoing occupation is going to cost them.
One way of interpreting these facts is to say that money-laundering on a very big scale is going on. [Further reading might include: Crime Should Not Pay .]
Another interpretation might suggest plots are in motion to bolster a new kind of American militaristic imperialism - and to raise cash for the arms corporations. [Further reading might include: The Plot of The Project: A Review .]
However one interprets these facts, it does seem true to say that arms and oil corporations [and high profile Texan oil families] seem likely to benefit financially from the present situation in Iraq - whether the wider world, and humanity generally, is likely to benefit must be highly open to question.
Another potentially interesting interpretation of the present situation in Iraq is that George Walker Bush and Tony Blair have badly misled [misinformed, led astray, and led badly] the people they were elected to represent, and that they personally now find themselves in a situation in which they are being controlled by events, rather than being in control of events themselves.
Footnotes, 11.11.03
These are the closing words of the foreign policy speech delivered by the British Prime Minister to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, London, 10.11.03: “The hardest thing in politics is to keep clarity of vision when all around the clatter of political intrigue and day to day policy from the petty to the profound, swirls around you, jostling your footing, confusing your senses and unnerving your courage. Remove it all and the vision is indeed clear and sharp. Europe and America together. Britain in the thick of it. The world, a darn sight safer as a result.”
Is this the accent of an authentic British Prime Minister? or the accent of someone who is selling out the better interests of Britain and the wider world to American corporations? - those are ‘damned’ difficult questions, are they not?
In his speech Tony Blair also said: ”... the task now is not to argue about what has been, but to make what is happening now, work and work for the very Iraqis we all say we want to help.”
With such lines, Tony Blair is clearly suggesting the past - including his own gross errors of judgement, actions at variance to the normal processes of international law, and [probably deliberate] massive deceptions over such matters as WMD - should be brushed under the carpet and forgotten.
Well, sorry Mr Blair, but some of us will not be forgetting how you disgracefully misled this country over Iraq and associated matters ...
and the future history books will rightfully write you off as the disgrace to your country that you are/were ...
[Please note: words attributed to the mouth of Tony Blair above are taken from a text version of the speech on his own personal 10 Downing Street website: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page4803.asp
The text of the speech has the following advisory note attached to it: ‘check against deivery’ {sic}.
{p.s. It is not just pedantry to point out such 'delivery' slips - one would have hoped that the large teams highly paid ‘experts’ surrounding Blair and other ‘world leaders’ would have checked their work more carefully. }]
Tuesday, 09.12.03
Sources close to the Daily Telegraph / Halliburton are claiming to have found a frontline Iraqi army officer who claims he once saw a box of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ with a ‘Made in Iraq’ written on it. This man, who wants to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, was reportly the single ‘source’ of the British government’s claim that it had overwhelming evidence that Saddam possessed biological and chemical weapons ready to use at 45 minutes’ notice.
It is notable that even mainstream media ‘defence’ [sic] analysts are treating these claims with scepticism. For example, Major Charles Heyman, editor of Jane’s World Armies [a ‘must read’ stocking filler for all boys and girls wanting more war stories and militaristic 'toys' for Christmas] has been reported as saying: ‘This is a very strange report, frankly. Biological wapons can’t really be used effectively at short range, and are no use to a frontline commander.’
More mischief from the ‘intelligence’ community is presumably to be expected over the festive season.
[Page compiled by Philip Talbot]
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