Famine in the Horn of Africa

The international news has been inundated with urgent appeals on the famine in the Horn of Africa. Here in the U.S. not enough attention has been paid to it. While it is critical to support and contribute to famine relief, we believe it is equally important to understand the nature and political reality of the famine and what U.S. militarism and corporate land grab have to do with it.

West funds full blown genocide in Ethiopia

For the past four years all aid agencies, including the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and U.N. relief agencies, have been blocked by the Ethiopian military from feeding starving people in Ogadenia. There are millions of starving people, maybe as many as 6 million, though no one can say for sure because no one is allowed into the region.

Western funded genocide: Ethiopia and the Ogaden

Ethiopian troops are in the oil rich, contested Sudanese Abyei region in accordance with a new U.N. Security Council resolution invoking sovereign nations’ “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations from genocide and mass atrocities if their own governments aren’t protecting them. But what about Ethiopia’s own genocide in the Ogaden Basin that the West is funding?

Bombing Libya 1986-2011

In 1987 I was a member of the first U.S. Peace Delegation to Libya to commemorate the first anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986. When I return next year, how many flowers will we need for all the graves of Libyan children killed in this latest massacre?

African immigrants and refugees in Europe, Part 2

The historic city of Rome is known for breathtaking sights from the Vatican to the Coliseum and beyond. However, there are little known areas not far from the historic routes frequented by tourists, areas where large numbers of refugees from a number of African countries reside in poverty but with dignity.

African immigrants and refugees in Europe, Part 1

Saint Calogero, an African priest, is the patron saint of the Sicilian town of Agrigento. But in the 21st century, African refugees who traverse the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean Sea find Calogero’s city, indeed the entire country, unwelcoming, even hostile to them.

Nada for Gaza: The McKinney Israel trip

Cynthia McKinney, the outspoken former congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, recently got out of jail.

Yeah. That’s right. Jail.

It’s possible that you had no idea she was in jail.

That’s because she was in detention for almost a week in Israel.