Stephen Lendman

Self-promotion? Fair enough, but for a good purpose - to introduce more people to what the GRNH provides:

-- real democracy advocacy live, on-air, daily;

-- an antidote to government and corporate propaganda;

-- a force against war, injustice and inhumanity;

-- championing universal freedom;

-- a voice for social justice, human rights, and beneficial change - of, for, and by the people;

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San Francisco Chronicle

[This article originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, January 10, 1977.]

With at least the tacit backing of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971. Six weeks later an outbreak of the disease forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic.

A U.S. intelligence source told Newsday last week he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at a U.S. Army base and CIA training ground in the Panama Canal Zone, with instructions to turn it over to the anti-Castro group.

The 1971 outbreak, the first and only time the disease has hit the Western Hemisphere, was labeled the "most alarming event" of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. African swine fever is a highly contagious and usually lethal viral disease that infects only pigs and, unlike swine flu, cannot be transmitted to humans. All production of pork, a Cuban staple, halted, apparently for several months.

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Najwa Sheikh Ahmed

Sometimes I wonder from the children’s capacity to say the truth without any retouches, so easily, so spontaneously. Their simple words can be wiser than the words of an adult, without any need to think, revise, their words struck you strongly, until you realize that these children are speaking and thinking not like normal children, but more like a sole that is tormented, reshaped with the experiences, horrors, and life they lived.

I was backing some biscuits for my children yesterday, as they were going to a trip supervised by their school, they were very happy, and excited from the idea of going to this trip, though it was postponed many times. However, the idea of joining their class mates and spending a day outside the school, without having any homework, sounded worthwhile in this hot weather.

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Stephen Lendman

It continues to use civilian men, women and children as human shields.

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights is a Gaza-based Palestinian NGO mandated "to promote, protect and prevent violations of human rights in general, and economic, social and cultural rights in particular, to provide effective aid to those victims of such violations, and to enhance the quality of life of the community in (Gaza's) marginalized sectors."

It monitors and documents violations, provides legal aid and advocacy, and helps Gazans on "fundamental issues such as basic human rights, democracy, and international humanitarian" matters. It also produces reports and publications on its work.

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Mary Shaw

I am writing this on April 26, 2009, the 23rd anniversary of the tragic and deadly explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The Chernobyl disaster is widely considered to be the biggest technological and industrial disaster the world has ever known.

And I am remembering the 1979 meltdown at the nuclear plant on Three Mile Island, about 100 miles from where I currently sit.

Today, about a block from my home, I can look to the west and see the cooling towers of the Limerick nuclear power plant sending a steady flow of steam into the sky.

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chycho

So, we are able to go to the horn of Africa, bring back 16-year old children and put them on trial as adults for piracy, but we succumb to the demands of the Wall Street pirates within our midst?

"Sure, the pirates are like a small-time, entrepreneurial version of the big-time crooks on Wall Street. The financiers and investment bankers hijack the economy for their own quick profit, and then when they're caught, they hold the economy's future hostage while they demand humongous amounts of money. The only differences are that the Somalis may actually need the money, and they pulled guns while the bankers didn't even have to."

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Gaither Stewart

In Rome, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who long ago decided
that Parliament is unnecessary continues his trip toward Fascism.

(Rome-Paris) Four parties and movements of the quarrelsome and divided Italian Left have allied for the European parliamentary elections next June. That is good news. Communist Refoundation, Party of Italian Communists, Socialism 2000, and United Consumers have agreed to unify their meagre forces in order to surpass the 4% electoral barrier so that Communists, with their red flag with the hammer and sickle emblem, can again sit in the Assembly of the European Union.

For many years now such unity on the Italian Left has been painfully absent, its former voters, bewildered and confused, wandering from center-left to right, in an electoral diaspora. Running separately in national elections in 2006, the two parties using the name Communist garnered a total of 10% of the vote. In comparison to today’s numbers those were the good old days. For during the breakdown of Left unity, proletarians in the Rome periphery even voted for the neo-fascist National Alliance and workers in north Italy cast their votes for the rightwing Northern League. Communists now hope to win back their traditional Left vote that once—though today almost a political relic—counted one-third of the nation’s electorate.

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Mary Shaw

During last year's presidential campaign, one of the many reasons why I supported Barack Obama so strongly was because I believed that he could multitask. A U.S. President has a lot on his plate.

I think back to when Republican rival John McCain canceled an appearance on the David Letterman show at the last minute last fall, alleging that he was hurrying back to Washington to save the economy, when in reality he chose instead to appear on air with Katie Couric. McCain clearly does not know how to multitask. If he is unable to juggle Letterman, Couric, and the economy -- two of which are relatively easy and straightforward -- then he most likely would have trouble dealing day-to-day with the multitude of issues that currently face the nation.

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eileen fleming

Pope Benedict announced that he would visit the Holy Land this May to pray "for the precious gift of unity and peace for the Middle East and for all of humanity," but he would not be going to Gaza.

Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Vatican custodian of the holy sites stated, "This visit is aimed first and foremost at encouraging them to remain in this country."

Prayer without action is hypocrisy and faith without works is dead.

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David Kendall

It seems ridiculous to speculate about what Dr. King might say to Barack Obama when we have a published record of what King actually did say to his government immediately before they had him assassinated. [1]

"Humanity is waiting for something other than blind imitation of the past. If we want truly to advance a step further, if we want to turn over a new leaf and really set a new man afoot, we must begin to turn mankind away from the long and desolate night of violence. May it not be that the new man the world needs is a nonviolent man? Longfellow said, "In this world a man must either be an anvil or a hammer." We must be hammers shaping a new society rather than anvils molded by the old. This not only will make us new men, but will give us a new kind of power. It will not be Lord Acton's image of power that tends to corrupt or absolute power that corrupts absolutely. It will be power infused with love and justice, that will change dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, and lift us from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. A dark, desperate, confused and sin-sick world waits for this new kind of man and this new kind of power." [2]

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