WorldPeace - "The universe, the children, and little George's wars" by John WorldPeace on daily press photos

(CNN) -- A band of bright blue stars encircles a central yellow core in one of the strangest galaxies observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

AFP [ SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 07, 2002 4:45:42 AM ] WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush and key ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday launched a double-pronged diplomatic drive to win over global leaders about the mounting crisis over Iraq.

The universe, the children, and little George's wars

Hoag's Object is less than a tiny dot in the vastness of our physical universe and yet its size is as large as our own galaxy which contains billions of stars.

One cannot look at these photographs taken by the Hubble telescope and not consider for a moment just how infinitely large is the physical universe and the domain of God.

We are less than a speck of dust among the infinite planets and stars that we see in the night sky. No one can look up on a clear night and not be humbled by the breath taking view. We are little more than a tiny island of humanity in an overwhelming unfathomable ocean of life.

Here on earth, American children have been traumatized by the horrific acts of the 911 terrorist. As other infamous acts have traumatized previous generations, 911 permanently altered the global vision of America's children. The images and drawings of children in reaction to 911 tell a story of fear and anxiety and shared pain. Yet everyday in Palestine and Israel children ask themselves if there is any escape from the endless murders.

And then there is little George who is not even humbled by the awesome infinity of space and is too deaf to hear the children's cries. Little George is preparing to send a message to the children of America that endless killings and murder is the only solution he has to the plight of oppressed people.

Little George has said to the children, there is no global warming, there is no human rights problem in the world, the United States has done nothing to deserve 911, and refusing to attend the Earth Summit last week in South Africa which focused on sustaining the planet, easing poverty and listening to the world's concerns would have been a waste of his time.

So the message of little George is that War is good, and cooperating with the rest of the world is a waste of time. Little George would teach the children that as the most powerful nation in the world we have a natural born right to do as we please. Little George would teach the children that it is OK to kill world leaders who we do not like.

Is Little George really afraid that Saddam is going actually send a nuclear missile to strike the United States? Is that why he is intent on murdering him?

Hubble sees galactic wheel within a wheel

The galaxy is about 120,000 light-years across, slightly larger than our own Milky Way. The ring is composed of hot young stars, while the interior is packed with much older, cooler ones.

The dark break between the bright circle and nucleus could actually contain clusters of stars too dim to detect, Hubble researchers said.

The image captures a face-on view of the galaxy, "revealing more detail than any existing photo of this object," they said in a statement this week.

"This image may help astronomers unravel clues on how such strange objects form."

Such star groups can evolve through numerous processes, according to astronomers. In some cases, one galaxy might pass through another, stoking an intense period of star births.

Yet this galactic oddity exhibits no sign of a collision with a second galaxy. Some scientists theorize that the blue star circle is the remnant of a galaxy that passed close by the central one, some 2 billion or 3 billion years ago.

In 1950, astronomer Art Hoag first detected the galaxy. Dubbed Hoag's Object, it is about 600 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens.

The image, which the Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera captured in July 2001, was released by the Hubble Heritage Team, which is based at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush and key ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday launched a double-pronged diplomatic drive to win over global leaders about the mounting crisis over Iraq.

But the initiative, ahead of crucial talks between the two at Camp David on Saturday, appeared not to have convinced some of the world's most powerful countries to back a US-led military strike on Iraq.

Bush and Blair separately telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin and France's Jacques Chirac, both of whom have expressed serious reservations about seeking to topple the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

And Bush spoke to Chinese President Jiang Zemin, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Bush, Putin, Chirac, Jiang and Blair represent the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and all hold veto power over any UN resolution on Iraq.

"The (US) president told the foreign leaders that he values their opinions. He stressed that Saddam Hussein is a threat and that we need to work together to make the world more peaceful," Fleischer told reporters.

A spokesman for Blair said: "The Prime Minister is keeping in touch with his colleagues on the present international situation."

Yet Bush and Blair appear increasingly isolated, with international concern mounting that a unilateral US-led strike on Iraq could have disastrous consequences in the volatile Middle East.

Russia's Putin told Bush and Blair on Friday he had "serious doubts" about Bush's arguments for striking Iraq, Interfax news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Alexei Gromov as saying.

"In the course of the (telephone) discussions, the president expressed his serious doubts concerning the basis, both in international law and in the global political sense, of using force against Iraq," Gromov said.

France's Chirac also told Bush any military action against Iraq needed prior UN approval even though he believed the international community had to show determination in dealing with Baghdad.

"The attitude of the international community should be determined and its reaction should be clearly legitimate," Chirac's spokeswoman Catherine Colonna quoted him as saying.

Baghdad also issued a warning to Bush not to challenge Iraq. "The little Bush must get it into his head that Iraq is united and stands as an impregnable fortress," said Ath-Thawra newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Baath Party.

"With a glorious past on which to look back, the Iraqi people will remain united behind their chosen and historic leader, Saddam Hussein," the paper said, adding Washington's "psychological warfare" would prove useless.

Iraqi press reports made no reference to claims by Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper that US and British aircraft had raided an Iraqi air defence installation on Thursday in the biggest operation over the country in four years.

The Pentagon said on Friday that the airstrike, which used a dozen US and British warplanes, was larger than usual but not out of the ordinary.

The Telegraph said that the attack appeared to be a prelude to special forces operations aimed at removing Iraqi air defences. That would allow helicopters to fly easily into the country via Jordan or Saudi Arabia to hunt down Scud missiles before a possible war, the paper said.

How can we manifest peace on earth if we do not include everyone (all races, all nations, all religions, both sexes) in our vision of Peace?