Comment

Ekklesia is reporting on the letter sent from the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to US President George W Bush this week and rejected by the US administration.

Iranian president asks Bush, what would Jesus do? - The White House has publicly dismissed an extraordinary letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which challenges President George W. Bush’s attachment to Christian values by time-and-again asking how his warlike actions square up with the teachings of Jesus. [Ekklesia News]

Ekklesia is reporting that the British National Party (BNP), a British political party established on a racist ideology, is helping to establish a new church in Lincolnshire.

Listening to the posturing and denunciations over the supposed global threat posed by Iran that we're hearing almost daily from the US and UK governments, I feel like I'm listening to a re-run of old TV and radio shows from 2003. The language being used is almost identical - threats to national/global security, the need for Iraq/Iran to clarify its intentions and so on - and yet again the power and might of the big Western nations is being exerted on a nation far smaller and far weaker, isolating and persecuting it on the grounds of military security and masking the real agenda of political security for precious oil reserves.

I received this email yesterday regarding a new citizens' peace initiative focussed on the rising tensions over Iran called Negotiate Peace - www.negotiate-peace.org.

News networks are reporting this morning that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the State Department in the USA confirmed that the body of an American citizen found dead in Iraq yesterday is that of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) worker Tom Fox, one of four CPT peace activists kidnapped on 26 November 2005.

Corporal Gordon Alexander Pritchard, 31, a soldier from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards became the 100th UK soldier to die in Iraq since the conflict began in 2003 when he was killed in a blast in Umm Qasr, Basra province.

Yesterday, members of the Stop the War Coalition, including Respect MP George Galloway and former Labour MP Tony Benn, were in Parliament Square to mark the 100th death. The names of the dead were read out and wooden crosses with red poppies were placed in the turf.

Further vigils are planned nationwide this evening. The vigils will coincide with further vigils for Norman Kember, Tom Fox, Harmeet Singh Sooden and James Loney, the four Christian Peacemaker Teams workers abducted in Iraq in November 2005.

The UK government has announced that it is to sell its majority stake in defence firm Qinetiq and float the business on the stock exchange.

The UK Defence Secretary, Dr John Reid, said an initial public offering for Qinetiq shares would take place in February.

Controversy over the sale of Qinetiq focusses on the value of the business and the revenue for the current shareholders. The flotation is expected to raise £1.1bn, but the government said it would retain a major stake in the firm. Currently, the Ministry of Defence holds a 56% share in the business, with 13% owned by managers and staff of the business. The other 31% is owned by the US private equity firm The Carlyle Group, whose European Chairman is former Prime Minister John Major, making the sale worth around £340 million to The Carlyle Group. The government said The Carlyle Group would also 'continue to retain a significant stake in the company.'

Controversy has surrounded Carlyle's involvement, partly because it holds its stake through special-purpose vehicles in Guernsey, which is outside the jurisdiction of the British tax authorities.

Controversy also arises as floatation would result in the interests of shareholders determining business decisions for the defence research and technology company.

The Turkish man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II nearly 25 years ago was released from a Turkish prison on Thursday.

Agca, 48, shot the Pope in St Peter's Square in 1981 hitting him four times, but has never explained why. The pontiff later visited him in jail and publicly forgave him.

BBC News Online reports that the Palestinian group Hamas is launching a TV station to spread the organisation's message. Broadcasting from Gaza, the group aims to expand the TV operation significantly and hopes to enter satellite broadcasting.

The station is named al-Aqsa after the mosque in Jerusalem, and the channel plans to air programmes on political and social ideas drawn from the Qura'n.

This development is another milestone in the rise of Hamas as a political force, not just a militant one. The group is now strong enough to pose a major challenge to the ruling Fatah political party in the parliamentary election campaign.

Isn't this the second time in recent months Pat Robertson's got himself into deep doodoo with his extreme opinions? And to think, he was once a US presidential candidate!

Televangelist condemned by White House and Evangelicals for Sharon comments - Calls for controversial US televangelist Pat Robertson to retire are likely to intensify after the White House and Evangelicals sharply criticized the Christian broadcaster for suggesting that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for "dividing God's land." [Ekklesia News]

In the most recent development in the fate of the Christian peace activists abducted in Iraq in late November, the BBC reports that the Muslim Association of Britain has issued an appeal for the safe release of the British peace worker Norman Kember and three colleagues taken hostage with him. Norman Kember, 74, was working in Iraq with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), and was taken captive in Baghdad on 26 November along with Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, and an American Tom Fox, 54.