Rice-laced letter closes post office Associated Press Saturday, February 15, 2003
BOSTON -- Authorities sealed off a post office at the Faneuil Hall historic site yesterday when an employee noticed a powdery substance on an envelope addressed to President Bush that turned out to contain grains of rice.
The letter apparently was being sent to Bush as part of an anti-war movement in which protesters are mailing rice to the president and asking him to pass it along to the people of Iraq, Assistant U.S. Postal Inspector Harold Lane said.
Lane said a woman dropped the envelope off at the post office late yesterday morning. The woman then left the post office and was not detained. An employee saw the powder on the outside of the envelope and notified supervisors.
The post office was then sealed off with crime-scene tape and agents in decontamination suits retrieved the letter to send it for testing. Two post office employees were decontaminated.
Laboratory tests showed that the envelope contained harmless white rice and the powder was its starchy residue, said Lane.
According to its Web site, the "Rice for Peace" movement encourages those who oppose a U.S. war on Iraq to send rice to Bush with a Biblical quote, Romans 12:20, that refers to feeding one's enemies.
>o:
>Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 12:21 PM
>Subject: Fw: rice him
>
>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 TODAY. It is important to act
>NOW so that President Bush gets the letters ASAP,
>preferably before the
>report from the inspectors 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
>quoting 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."
>
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