Stephen Hawking's to lead anti-war protest in U.K on USA election day.....
Stephen Hawking, Britain's most eminent scientist, has become the latest
prominent opponent of the Iraq war by agreeing to take the lead role in a
ceremonial protest to coincide with the United States presidential election.
Peace protesters will gather in Trafalgar Square at 5pm on Tuesday, where
they will read out the names of 5,000 Iraqi men, women and children known to
have died in the conflict.
The full death toll was put last week as high as 100,000.
Playwrights Harold Pinter and David Hare, actress Juliet Stevenson, the
Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and relatives of British soldiers killed
in action in Iraq have all agreed to take part.
Professor Hawking, the author of the best-selling book A Brief History of
Time, is wheelchair-bound as a sufferer from motor neurone disease. He
recorded a message on Friday that will be broadcast at the start of the
rally.
The oldest protester in Trafalgar Square is likely to be a fellow scientist,
the Nobel Peace Prize winner Sir Joseph Rotblat. In the 1940s, he resigned
from his job developing the world's first atomic bomb on moral grounds.
Sir Joseph, who will be 96 on Thursday, said: "In this nuclear age, we
simply cannot allow others to start military action unless
everything else has ... been tried and has failed."
The rally comes at a time when its organisers from the Stop the War
Coalition have been embroiled in controversy with one of its biggest
backers, the giant public sector union Unison, which has links with the
Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, (IFTU) whose general secretary, Subhi
al-Mashadani, spent more than 10 years in prison under Saddam Hussein.
By Andy McSmith, Political Editor 31 October 2004
more goto:
<http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=577860>
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