Date: Fri, 08 Jan 1999 12:56:47 -0500
Subject: sanctioning peace (was "an invitation to fast")



During the December bombing of Iraq, a couple of people started a
fast for peace. The fast began on the Thursday after the bombing
started, when Angela Showalter lost her appetite in New York. Instead of
eating, she sent an e-mail message to some friends.

By late Saturday, people in half a dozen of the United States, Canada,
England and Angola had joined, including at least four pastors who
pledged to encourage their congregations to get involved in some form of
repentance and protest. Many thanks to you postcolonialists [annoying
e-mail smiley face here] who responded with messages of support!

People are obviously ashamed and angry at what is going on. But what IS
going on? It's almost impossible to find anything besides
finger-pointing and sound-bites in either the morning paper or the
evening news, or in the usual infotainment websites like MSNBC and CNN.

So we've started Sanctioning Peace (www.justlanguage.org) - a response
not only to the military action by the U.S. and U.K., but also to the
superficial and event-centered coverage of the conflict by the
mainstream media.

With this website, we seek to help people learn about the conflict by
providing quick and easy access to sites around the world which contain:
   -relevant news and background information.
   -analysis and commentary on the conflict.

We also seek to help people:
   -learn about existing organizations and initiatives for change, and
ways they can get involved.
   -locate and contact U.S. policymakers and daily U.S. newspapers
online to express their views.

Please visit the site and tell us what you think. If you think it's a
good thing...spread the word.

Please feel free to recommend other links, especially those which offer
perspectives from Iraqi groups. This list is easily the most
well-informed one I subscribe to, so I'm hoping for feedback from you,
even if it's not all positive.

Peace to you and yours,

-rod king

--
Sanctioning Peace
www.justlanguage.org


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