the Kyoto agreement and they got quite upset! Let's try thousands of bags of rice!

You will need:

4 oz (125g) of uncooked rice

1 small plastic bag (small freezer bag or sandwich bag)

1 sturdy C5 envelope or a small padded envelope

1 piece of paper

72p in postage - 2 first-class stamps plus 1 second-class stamp =73p

Place the 4 oz. (125g) uncooked rice in the small plastic bag.

Squeeze ou tthe excess air and seal the bag. Wrap it in a piece of paper on which you have written,

"If your enemies are hungry, feed them. (Romans 12:20.) Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not attack them."

Place the paper and bag of rice in the envelope or jiffy bag and address

them to:

Rt Hon Tony Blair MP

10 Downing Street

LONDON

SW1A 1AA

Attach 73p in postage. Please post this TODAY: It is important to act NOW

so that Tony Blair gets the letters ASAP.

In order for this protest to be effective, there must be tens of thousands of such rice deliveries to Downing Street. We can do this if you each forward this message to your friends and family.

There is a positive history of this protest. In the 1950s, Fellowship of Reconciliation began a similar protest, which is credited with influencing US President Dwight D. Eisenhower against attacking China. Read on:

"In the mid-1950s, the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, learning of famine in the Chinese mainland, launched a 'Feed Thine Enemy' campaign. Members and friends mailed thousands of little bags of rice to the White House with a tag quoting the Bible, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him." As far as anyone knew for more than ten years, the campaign was an abject failure. The President did not acknowledge receipt of the bags publicly; certainly, no

rice was ever sent to China.

"What nonviolent activists only learned a decade later was that the campaign played a significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing nuclear war. Twice while the campaign was on, President Eisenhower met with the

Joint Chiefs of Staff to consider U.S. options in the conflict with China over two islands, Quemoy and Matsu. The generals twice recommended the use of nuclear weapons. President Eisenhower each time turned to his aide and asked how many little bags of rice had come in. When told they numbered in the tens of thousands, Eisenhower told the generals that as long as so many Americans were expressing active interest in having the U.S. feed the Chinese, he certainly wasn't going to consider using nuclear weapons against them."

Let's see if rice can make a difference on this side of the ocean, too.

John Whitmore

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