And never think your voice won't count. The government considers that every single call represents 10,000 people (voters). The late Sen. Paul Simon said, of the Rwandan genocide-if just 100 people from each district had called or written, our government would have taken action to prevent the slaughter in Rwanda. Mia Farrow, 5-5-09
The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the well-being of convicted Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who has been treated at Evin Prison's hospital during a hunger strike to protest her confinement ... Committee to Protect Journalists, 5-5-09
Hunger for Justice: A Tale of Two Brave Women -- Mia Farrow & Roxana Saberi
By Richard Power
In Connecticut, Mia Farrow is on Day 9 of her hunger strike for the people of Darfur.
"Please, please contact the White House," she writes. "Leave word that it is not acceptable for you to watch a million or more Darfuris die of starvation, thirst and disease." You can contact the White House online (www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/) or by telephone (202-456-1111). She is calling for Obama and other world leaders to work urgently for the return of the 16 humanitarian agencies that were driven out by the Thugocracy in Karthoum. (I have included her latest video blog below.)
I urge you to heed her request.
Meanwhile, in Iran, photo-journalist Roxana Saberi, who has gone on her own hunger strike to protest her imprisonment by the misogynistic regime in Tehran, is being force-fed intravenously.
Here is an excerpt from Der Spiegel's interview with Saberi's father:
Der Spiegel: SPIEGEL: Legal officials in Tehran dispute the fact that your daughter is actually refusing to eat.
Saberi: My daughter is a very determined woman. She said that she wants out of the prison -- "dead or alive". As her parents, we take that very seriously and we are very concerned. My wife and I have attempted to talk Roxana out of this action. But as far as I know, she has only been drinking water with a little bit of sugar for the past 10 days. Der Spiegel, 5-4-09
And yet today in the US mainstream news media more ink and air time has been given to the death of of actor, comedian and chef Dom Deluise than to either of these two stories of personal courage and conscience.
Our culture too is dying of malnourishment.
[NOTE: If you are reading this via your free e-mail subscription to Words of Power, click here to go to Mia Farrow's video blog for Day 9 of her hunger strike. But if you are reading this post at Words of Power on the WWW, you will find it embedded below.]
As always, I encourage you to follow events in Darfur on Mia Farrow's site, it is the real-time journal of a humanitarian at work; the content is compelling, insightful and fiercely independent.
For a Words of Power Archive of posts on the Crisis in Darfur, click here.
Here are other sites of importance:
Dream for Darfur
Enough: The Project to End Genocide and Mass Atrocities
Genocide Intervention Network
Divest for Darfur.
Save Darfur!
Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.
Darfur, Divestment, Enough, UN, Genocide, Mia Farrow, Dream for Darfur, Sudan, Investors Against Genocide, Roxana Saberi, Mia Farrow, Richard Power, Words of Power
