MERSEYSIDE CND

The return home today of Private Jessica Lynch, the US soldier who was so dramatically ‘rescued’ by her compatriots from her ‘abusive’ Iraqi ‘jailers’, will be to a welcome fit for a hero as portrayed by the US spin machine. No matter that the true story came out in the end and showed how generous the Iraqi people had been to her after she was taken to one of their scarce hospital beds; still the folks back home believe the full US fairy tale. Meanwhile here in the UK, we are witnessing the sorry spectacle of a Prime Minister desperate to show how right he was in his slavish support for George Bush’s “Axis of Evil” foreign policy, hounding unmercifully those who question the wisdom or veracity of this policy. Fearful scenarios are presented almost daily to the public to persuade them that George Bush’s apocolyptic vision of parts of the world must be right. If you don’t go along with this you are either a traitor or a wimp and must be crushed Fortunately there are millions of people all over the world, ready and willing to object to the barbarous and hypo-critical thinking of their governments. In a recent speech Janet Bloomfield, former Chair of National CND, highlighted the dangers of taking this line of least resistance, the “axis of acquiescence” and the importance of finding out where people are at and how they might be influenced to take a more objective view of world affairs. Copies of her speech are available from Merseyside CND, address below.