Fw: Rice for peace

["cabassi riccardo" <cabax@tin.it>]

Degli amici inglesi mi hanno segnalato una campagna contro la guerra
in Irak che ha preso
 piede in USA e poi in Inghilterra,
si tratterebbe di inviare al presidente del consiglio un pacchetto
contenente una piccola quantita' di riso ed
un biglietto con una citazione biblica (almeno credo...) :
"Se i tuoi nemici sono affamati, dagli da mangiare. Per favore non
attaccate la gente dell'Irak, speditegli questo riso".
Qui sotto allego il testo che ho ricevuto: che cosa ne pensate?

r. cabassi



         The Petition
         ---------------

There is a grassroots campaign underway to protest war in Iraq in a
simple, but potentially powerful way.

Place 1/2 cup uncooked rice in a small plastic bag (a snack-size bag
or sandwich bag work fine). Squeeze out 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 an envelope (either a letter-sized
or padded mailing envelope-both are the same cost to mail) and address
them to:

President George Bush White House,
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

Attach $1.06 in postage. (Three 37-cent stamps equal $1.11.) Drop this
in the mail. It is important to act NOW - TODAY so that President Bush
gets the letters ASAP, especially since the inspector's report comes
out on the 27th.

In order for this protest to be effective, there must be hundreds of
thousands of such rice deliveries to the White House. 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 President 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 quote in 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."

      Commentary
      ----------------

The  "Rice for Peace" campaign is real in the sense that it is a
genuine grass roots effort, organized by Stirling Cousins of the Rocky
Mountain Peace and Justice Center. As the Boulder Daily Camera
reported:

Stirling Cousins of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center
organized the Rice for Peace campaign as a grassroots effort to urge
President Bush to avoid war with Iraq. Cousins sent e-mail letters to
more than 200 peace organizations across the nation with instructions
for anyone with an anti-war sentiment to send the White House a
half-cup of uncooked rice in a bag with a note imploring: "Rice for
Peace -- No War on Iraq."

"The idea is to inundate him with these packages of rice so he gets
the idea that we don't want a war," she said. "It's something people
can do to personally send a message about what they want. If we're
going to send something to Iraq, it should be food, supplies and peace
negotiations, not bombs."

Cousins said the response so far has been strong, and she expects the
number of bags the White House receives to be in the tens of
thousands.

Although the current "Rice for Peace" campaign is a sincere effort
aimed at heading off a war between the USA and Iraq, the premise on
which it is based is false. The anecdote reproduced above, about the
Fellowship of Reconciliation's waging a similar campaign in the 1950's
which supposedly influenced President Eisenhower's decision not to
wage (nuclear) war against China during the political crises over the
islands of Quemoy and Matsu in 1954-55 and 1958-59, is taken from
David H. Albert's 1985 book, People Power: Applying Nonviolence
Theory. However, Albert's book includes no annotations or footnotes to
indicate from where he obtained the information that the 'Feed Thine
Enemy' campaign influenced Eisenhower's thinking and to explain how
peace activists "learned a decade later that the campaign played a
significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing nuclear war."

In fact, this anecdote appears to be a garbled account of a 1954
effort undertaken by the Fellowship of Reconciliation to have small
bags of wheat (not rice) sent to the White House for the purpose of
prompting the Eisenhower administration to undertake relief efforts on
behalf of China, where a catastrophic flood on the Yangtze River had
left thousands homeless and hungry. Nothing in contemporary news
accounts of the 1955 'Feed Thine Enemy' effort mentions the campaign's
being tied to an anti-war cause -- the issue was that since China had
declined aid from international relief organizations (such as the Red
Cross) and would not allow private voluntary organizations from the
"free world" into the country to supervise the distribution of food
and other supplies, the Fellowship of Reconciliation's director felt
that the U.S. government should extend a "no strings attached" offer
of assistance to the Chinese government.

As The New York Times reported in March 1955:

The Administration has another wheat problem.

This time it is hundreds of bags of wheat. They are tiny bags,
weighing about two ounces, and are addressed to President Eisenhower
at the White House.

The bags carry the inscription: "If Thine Enemy Hunger, Feed Him." In
smaller letters are the words: "Send Surplus Food to China."

The bags are being mailed to the White House from all over the
country. They come from citizens who have responded to the appeal of
the Fellowship of Reconciliation, 21 Audubon Avenue, Manhattan.

This organization started its drive for the Administration to heed St.
Paul's injunction and send surplus foodstuffs to Red China after the
Yangtze River flood of last summer. The flood left thousands homeless
and in need.
WHEAT SENT TO WHITE HOUSE: One of tiny bags of wheat mailed by
citizens at urging of a group that is campaigning for the sending of
surplus U.S. food to the Chinese.

The Fellowship['s director, Alfred Hassler] stated that an offer "with
no political strings attached" would be hard for the Peiping
Government to refuse.

The organization also said that distribution should be left to the
Chinese Government "even though we might feel that we could do it
better, and even though we fear that some food might be diverted to
other ends."

"Part of the world problem America faces is the suspicion on the part
of Asians and others that we think we can do everything better than
they," the fellowship said.

That the Red Chinese Government had not asked for aid is "hardly
significant," Mr. Hassler wrote.

"On the other hand," he said, "the fact that the United States has
offered help freely to 'friendly' nations stricken by similar
disasters but not to China, is significant."
Herbert L. Pankratz, a helpful archivist at the US National Archives
and Records Administration (NARA), provided additional corroborating
information via e-mail:
Report re the Fellowship of Reconciliation Food for China Campaign and
the Formosa Straits Crises of 1954-55 and 1958

The Fellowship of Reconciliation was an organization of religious
pacifists whose leaders and members contacted the White House on
numerous occasions advocating giving food to the USSR, opposing
military aid to Pakistan, favoring clemency for the Rosenbergs,
opposing the rearming of West Germany, urging clemency for Communists
convicted under the Smith Act, opposing nuclear tests in the Pacific,
favoring clemency for Japanese war criminals, and opposing the sending
of spy planes over Russia. This organization had also supported
efforts of the U.S. Government to send food aid to East Germany and
Hungary.

In 1954 China suffered major flooding along the Yangtze River in some
of its key rice-growing areas. Life magazine (8-23-54) even ran an
editorial favoring the concept of food aid to Communist China. In late
1954 the Fellowship of Reconciliation began a campaign to get people
to send small bags of wheat (not rice) to the President in order to
get our government interested in giving food to the Chinese. People
started sending bags to the President in late 1954 and continued
during early 1955. The New York Times (3-6-55) reported that hundreds
of bags of wheat kernels, each weighing about 2 ounces, had been sent
to the White House. The bags were inscribed with a Bible verse, "If
Thine Enemy Hunger, Feed Him" and the statement, "Send Surplus Food to
China." The Times article indicates that the White House sent the bags
to the Foreign Operations Administration for a response. F.O.A.
Administrator Harold Stassen noted that they had sent out over 4,500
such responses. The letters to individuals who had sent in a bag of
wheat reminded them of some Cold War realities. The International Red
Cross had offered assistance to China but had been turned down. In
addition, the Chinese government was continuing to export food to the
Soviet Union and other countries to fulfill trade agreements while
their own people suffered.

There is no indication in our files or in the New York Times article
that this food for China campaign was intended as a protest against
the possibility of the U.S. going to war with Communist China. It
appears that it was strictly a humanitarian effort.

There is a small note in the file on the Fellowship of Reconciliation
which indicates that it was considered a "subversive" organization. A
lot of the correspondence from its leaders to the President was
referred to the Protective Research Section of the Secret Service.
With this classification, justified or not, there is virtually no
likelihood that the President would have paid any attention to any
bags of wheat or letters sent in by this organization or its members.

Communist Chinese forces threatened the Nationalist-held island of
Quemoy and Matsu on two occasions, September 1954-March 1955 and
August-September 1958. During both of these crises various military
and civilian advisers advocated the use of atomic weapons if war broke
out and the U.S. had to intervene. President Eisenhower, while
acknowledging the fact that the U.S. would need to use the ultimate
weapon if full-scale war with China occurred, indicated that Congress
and our allies would have to be consulted first. He continued to work
for peaceful solutions which would avoid U.S. involvlement in an Asian
war.

We have checked summaries of discussion and memoranda of conversation
for various meetings Eisenhower had with military advisers and the
National Security Council and have found no references to the bags of
wheat or food for China campaign. There is no documentation in our
files to support the story that the bags of wheat influenced
Eisenhower's decisions during the Formosa Straits crisis. The
documents reveal that Eisenhower made his decisions based on his
understanding of the strategic and diplomatic considerations as well
as on intelligence reports and military options. An account of
Eisenhower's handling of the Formosa Straits crises can be found in
the book, Eisenhower: The President by Stephen E. Ambrose (Simon and
Schuster, 1984).

Additional information:      Boulder activist hopes rice effort will
influence Bush
(The [Boulder] Daily Camera)
Last updated:   2 February 2003

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Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2003
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
   Sources:
    Albert, David H.   People Power: Applying Nonviolence Theory.
    Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1985.   ISBN 0-86571-064-3
(pp. 42-43).

    Blair, William M.   "Eisenhower Urged to Feed Red China."
    The New York Times.   6 March 1955   (p. 3).

    Pekarek, Romi.   "Boulder Activist Hopes Rice Effort Will
Influence Bush."
    The [Boulder] Daily Camera.   21 January 2003.