by Irish Artist Hints at
a Green Light for Peace
Www.PeaceWish.Com "Gives Peace A Chance" to
be Remembered at Major Holidays
| by Irish Artist Hints at a Green Light for Peace
Www.PeaceWish.Com "Gives Peace A Chance" to be Remembered at Major Holidays |
|
LONDON, March 17. Irish artist Michael Keating has designed the e-greeting card with the theme, "The Luck of the Irish to All," superimposed on a globe with sprouting green shamrocks, symbolizing peace breaking out everywhere.
It's a new kind of holiday greeting that has just appeared on the Internet this year - E- greetings for popular holidays, combined with a peace theme. You download them from www.PeaceWish.com to send to friends and family.
"Nothing like this had been done before," says PeaceWish founder John Leonard, "even though peace is what just about everybody on this planet wants. It's also part of the legacy of many big holidays, but we have an imbalance on the calendar now - half a dozen red letter days on the calendar have a martial tone, but I couldn't find a single holiday greeting card with a peace message."
PeaceWish.com differs from other e-card sites which "personalize" and send the message for you, but don't let you download the images. Many of these sites appear to earn their keep by harvesting addresses. At PeaceWish.com, you download the cards freely and anonymously to send on to loved ones by e-mail. There are two types, flash video clips as well as flat card images.
The e-card venture is a grand-daughter of the book business, Progressive Press. Their bestselling "9/11 Synthetic Terror" by Webster Tarpley features Guy Fawkes, the fall guy in a fake terror plot to trump up a war on Spain, 400 years ago on Nov. 5th, 1605. His day is a big holiday in England, but even there almost everyone still thinks he was the real villain. So for Guy's 400th anniversary, Leonard hatched the idea of celebrating Peace Week from Nov. 5th to Nov. 11th, Veteran's Day. The Guy Fawkes card led to Halloween cards, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentines.
Right now Leonard is looking for creative ideas for Mother's Day and Easter. "It's on April 16th this year, which happens to be my Mom's birthday. She's the one who actually started this publishing business," Leonard says.
The business end is still the books from ProgressivePress.com, on a related theme: "peace is possible because modern wars are are mostly artificial and preventable, but first more people must learn this. For example," Leonard says, "take the current uproar over Iran. My author Tarpley has written an article called The Mohammed Cartoons: Recruiting Europe for Bush's Attack on Iran. It shows the whole affair is a planned provocation." (text at www.waronfreedom.org/wgt/cartoon.html)
"With the Internet, your audience can be anywhere - it's globalization. With so many people on this shrinking planet, we'll completely ruin it if we don't stop fighting wars. Our cards are a tactful way to hint at this with people you know, and put peace wishes back into the mainstream."