Bits & Pieces

Diana Butler Bass writes – After the Amish school
shooting, I was captivated by 4 public acts of forgiveness by the
Amish in one week. First, some Elders visited Marie Roberts, the
wife of the murderer, to offer forgiveness. Then the families of
the slain girls invited the widow to their own children’s
funerals. Next, they requested that all relief monies intended
for Amish families be shared with Roberts and her children.
Finally, in an astonishing act of reconciliation, more than 30
members of the Amish community attended the funeral of the
killer.

As my husband and I talked about the spiritual power of these
actions, I commented it was an amazing witness to the peace
tradition. My husband said, "I don’t think so – this
went well past witnessing. They weren’t witnessing to
anything, they were making peace." He was right!

In the most straightforward way, they embarked on imitating
Christ when He said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what
they do." They forgave, and forgiveness, as Christianity teaches,
is the prerequisite of peace.

Then an odd thought occurred to me. What if the Amish were in
charge of the war on terror? What if, on Sept 12, 2001, we had
gone to Osama Bin Laden’s house and offered him
forgiveness. What if we had invited the families of the hijackers
to the funerals of the victims of 9/11? What if a portion of the
Sept 11 Fund had been dedicated to relieving poverty in a Muslim
country? What if we had dignified the burial of their dead with
respectful grief? What if we had tried to make peace?

So here is my modest proposal. We’re 6 years too late
for an Amish response to 9/11, but maybe we should ask them to
take over the Department of Homeland Security. After all,
actively practising forgiveness and making peace are the only
real alternatives to perpetual fear and a multi-generational
global religious war. If it worked in Lancaster, maybe it will
work in Baghdad also.

A USA contact reports that the Ford Motor Company for the
first time in 103 years, has mortgaged itself.

Collateral mortgages have been entered into against its
factories, equipment, office buildings, patents, trademarks and
even subsidiaries like Volvo, to raise $18 billion dollars to
"overhaul itself".

The amount they have borrowed EXCEEDS the value of all its
stock by $2 billion dollars. They claim to have a terrific
turn-around plan to restore profitability, but they just
committed what may come to be seen as a bank robbery! Who has
ever taken loans exceeding their entire net worth and survived
financially?

If Ford goes under, the bankers will be the top creditors,
meaning stockholders will be left with absolutely nothing if the
"overhaul" plan fails.

Owners of Ford stock or Pension Plan holders would need to
think fast and hard about their portfolio.

The world, and America in particular, lurches toward a money
crash of massive proportions with news just released. China has
said it is taking one trillion dollars of its USD currency
reserves and trading them for the Euro.

Further details so it seems, have been suppressed by the major
news carriers, for what reason we do not know. What we do know is
that President Bush and various representatives of the Federal
Reserve Board have been pleading with China, both by phone and
personal visits, not to carry through with their intentions.

America stands to lose in so many ways if this takes place. It
could well be the trigger that causes America to face financial
disaster of monumental proportions. Can you imagine then, the
fear the Administration must be facing in the light of reports
that OPEC, the cartel of major oil producing nations, are also
considering right now to have all petro-dollars, which have been
US dollar based, to be traded in Euros in the future. The US
economy and status as the major world power, hangs in the
balance.

Britons could be implanted with micro-chips like pet dogs an
official report warns. The team of academics who drew up the
report claim that Britain is a world leader in the use of
surveillance technology and its citizens are the most spied on in
the free world.

The use of RFID chips to identify animals has been used for 6
years in Europe. Their use in humans has already been tested in
America, where chips were implanted in 70 mentally-ill elderly
people to monitor their movements.

A spokesman for civil liberties campaigners Liberty said,
"There is a rather scary underlying feeling that people may worry
that these microchips are less about being a human being than
becoming a bar-coded product."