Kristi McGarity - previously featured quotations

Press and Media:

"We talk about this being the age of information, but this is not the age of information. This is the age of misinformation. And the thing we have to remember is that misinformation tends to be simpler and more stable than information, kind of like an intellectual Parkinson's law where bad money drives out good." -- Samuel Delany

"I don't believe there's any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can't completely ignore."-- George Carlin

"The media is always a part of the story. Every single story which is written implicitly inserts the media into the story. Reporting the 'news' is not a passive event without consequences, it shapes events."--Duncan Black

"Many Republicans' biggest beef with Democrats is closely tied to the lack of morality in our nation. . . . [T]hese alarmed Republicans have a right to be upset. Yet they have a slight problem in the blame game. . ..

Clue: It isn't the Democrats.

It's the media, stupid.

. . . . Before the FCC voted to increase media monopolies in America, it received a far greater outcry among citizens than from those worried about Janet Jackson's breast. . . .Although more than 90 percent - 90 percent! - of Americans said they were against the changes, the House Republicans stealthily approved a slightly smaller version of media consolidation. . . .

Bush and Powell gave more of that market to the purveyors of the coarse and the crass. Funny that the biggest preachers of media morality are largely responsible for sinking it to a new low." -- Guy Reel

"The recent ruling of the FCC to further deregulate the media, though now under challenge in Congress, is further evidence of the power of the media giants. But for the irrepressibly optimistic, there are beacons of hope: Dozens of independent and small-network stations are regularly whipping the Clear Channel rivals in their markets. If quirky, original, community-oriented music radio is dead, how to these tenacious little outfits keep beating Clear Channel and its ilk at their own game? And what can small-time stations and local radio networks learn from their examples? Part of what separates these scrappy stations from the competition is a bet they're making that the big consolidators' fundamental philosophy-- that Americans only want to hear familiar music that doesn't challenge them-- is wrong and can't last." -- Brooke Shelby Biggs

"The FCC has initiated a proceeding that will lead to further dramatic changes in our media system. It's clear the FCC Chairman Michael Powell and the Bush-controlled Federal Communications Commission plans to end or weaken federal policies that have served as an important 'check and balance' system for much of our media. These changes will have an impact in every community in the US, where there will soon be even fewer owners of TV and radio stations, newspapers, and cable systems. Nationally, a smaller number of conglomerates will control most of the major media outlets. Given the Powell FCC's recent policy decisions on the Internet, the few remaining dominant owners of 'old' media will have their power extended to the new online medium as well. In short, this is a huge giveaway of public resources and political power to a tiny few." -- Center for Digital Democracy

"The results, says the owner of one Southeastern advertising agency, would, 'be a disaster for small business, or anybody smaller than Clear Channel.' The executive, who requested anonymity, says local Clear Channel radio-sales reps, wielding leverage drawn from an unprecedented stable of stations in his market, routinely bully agencies and clients. 'Clear Channel will do anything they can, threaten me, go to my clients directly, anything to get control of the markets. And once they've got that control they can do whatever they want, including raise the rates,' he says. 'They're a clear example of what can happen with deregulation. They've ruined radio, as far as I'm concerned. And now they're licking their chops to be able to control more of what the public sees and hears.'" -- Eric Boehlert, Salon

"A handful of media giants have attained absolute control over the content of news and the range of ideas that are broadcast on the public's airwaves, arbitrarily shrinking the democratic debate . . . . Who the hell are these people? Who elected them to run our world? Why are we putting up with this crap?. . . . Pause for a moment to think of what an incredible treasure it is to have the right to govern ourselves. . . . Having it on paper, though, doesn't make it so. Only people can make it so. . . .Democratic power is never given; it always has to be taken, then aggressively defended, for the moneyed powers relentlessly press to gain supremacy and assert their private will over the majority." -- Jim Hightower

"It is said that democracy is not something we have, but something we do. But right now, we cannot do it because we cannot speak. We are shouted down by the bullhorns of big money. . . .They indeed threaten our democracy now at every turn. If they get any larger, any more concentrated, how is that different from the economic and political totalitarianism that we thought we defeated with the fall of communism?" -- Doris "Granny D" Haddock

"Media reform is not an issue that is best cast along left-right lines. It is better thought of as elementary democracy." -- Robert McChesney

"Concentration of power over what we see in the news is a danger to democracy." --William Safire

"Since 1983, the number of corporations controlling most of America's daily newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books, and movies has dropped from 50 to ten." - Common Courage Press

"Americans believe our constitution guarantees our rights of free speech and press. Without access to the means of mass communication, these rights exist in name only. Our so-called free press is not free. It is owned by powerful corporate interests who use the public airwaves to enrich themselves at out expense. "--http://www.radio4all.org

"I think this is where you have a responsibility as a journalist, as a writer, as a communicator, to scrutinize what's going on. To tell people what's going on. . . . The media by and large follow the ideological line of the State. But nevertheless people within that have to try to uncover stories that may go against that line. That's just a responsibility you and I share, isn't it?" -- indieWire interview with Ken Loach

Social Justice and Democracy:

"The real fight is between cronyism and the rest of us, and an advantage of democratic government, even in its debased forms, is that its failures can sometimes be exposed and addressed. " - Patrick Nielsen Hayden

"Sometimes a few people can win great battles with words." -- C. Vann Woodward

"When things are done in our own name
: Are we as much to blame?; Now it's become clear to me, but only lately
: And the ground is removed underneath; Shout it from the brink; You're louder than you think."
: -- Jamie Cullum, "21st Century Kid"

"I don't doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world, but first they have to get past all the bigger groups of armed half-wits." -- Deborah Birkett

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." -- twist on Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law, variously attributed

"When I was writing the Parable books I read Rise and Fall of The Third Reich. I wanted to understand how a country embraces Fascism . . . And I worry about the direction we're headed in." --Octavia Butler

"Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) told the crowd that he explained his theory to President Bush and Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) on the porch of the White House one night. Johnson said he told the president that night, 'Syria is the problem. Syria is where those weapons of mass destruction are, in my view. You know, I can fly an F-15, put two nukes on 'em and I'll make one pass. We won't have to worry about Syria anymore.' The crowd roared with applause." -- Roll Call

"American for nuking them all and starting over" -- yard sign in Austin, Texas

"There is no decent accomplishment you can have through unjust means that you couldn't have reached justly." -- Donald Johnson

"Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country." -- Bill Moyers

"Liberals have not supported the current war on terror precisely because it does not confront the real nature of the terrorist threat. " --David Neiwert

"55,554,114 is still a hell of a lot of people. If you had a party and 55,554,114 people showed up, you would probably have to make SEVERAL additional trips to the liquor store." --Tom Tomorrow

"Make no mistake. America's cause is good. And there is a fight to be fought. . .as anybody with eyes acknowledges. The sort of terrorism blossoming in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion has to be defeated. The problem is, the show is being run by a bunch of incompetents who are daily making things worse and from whose errors, misjudgements and idiocy it is going to take a long time to recover." -- Tim Dunlop

"The US (incorrectly) perceived as Iraq a WMD-proliferating militarist rogue state. I (correctly) predicted that the US wanted to turn Iraq into an democracy-promoting American client state. Instead (as I did not expect) Iraq has turned into a terrorist-propagating fundamentalist failed state." -- Jack Strocchi

"A while back, I met a young man named Shamus at the VFW Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid, six-two or six-three, clear-eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he'd joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. As I listened to him explain why he'd enlisted, his absolute faith in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all any of us might hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he was serving us? I thought of more than 900 service men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who will not be returning to their hometowns. I thought of families I had met who were struggling to get by without a loved one's full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or with nerves shattered, but who still lacked long-term health benefits because they were reservists. When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

. . . . The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America." -- Barack Obama

"We felt that a lot of rights have eroded in this country. Our freedom of speech may be the only one we have left to regain what we have lost." -- Pat Gowdy, juror in the 1998 Oprah Winfrey "beef disparagement" trial

"Tenacious pursuit of accountability from our public servants is the height of patriotism and emblematic of why this is a great country." -- Ron Erskine

"You celebrate the greatness of America this week with gratitude and pride, but also with a mature understanding that greatness does not preclude grievous failure, nor does it consist in static perfection that is above criticism. . . . America has long contained within itself - 'We hold these truths... ' - principles of its own self-criticism. . . . The founding Americans are thus honored not for having established the just society but for erecting structures of mind and union within which the just society can continually be pursued. . . . That capacity for self-criticism and change is what you celebrate this week." -- James Carroll

"On April 26, President Bush said in his weekly radio address, 'My jobs and growth plan would reduce tax rates for everyone who pays income tax.'

That turned out not to be true. According to the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an unspecified number of low- and middle-income families received no tax cut at all because they'd been excluded from an expansion of the child-care tax credit. . . . .

Fleischer had specifically stated, 'People in the 10 percent bracket, they benefit the most' from the Bush tax cut. That turned out not to be true. Crunching the Tax Policy Center numbers, CBPP found that 89 percent of all single taxpayers (as opposed to 'head of household' taxpayers) in the 10 percent bracket would receive no tax relief. It said some 'head of household' taxpayers in the 10 percent bracket were left out, too." -- Timothy Noah

"An example I like to cite about the vast gap between the decency of people versus the success of the propaganda machine is that most Americans believe that we spend too much on foreign aid-- they think it's about 20 percent of the budget. They think it should be about 10 percent. Well, we know it's less than one percent. . . ." -- Zeynep Toufe

"The study results were surprising. Far from opposing foreign assistance, the Americans polled-- both Republicans and Democrats-- overwhelmingly supported the principle of giving foreign assistance, provided that it is directed toward helping the needy rather than merely funding political allies. . . . When asked what an 'appropriate' amount of foreign aid would be, the median level proposed by those polled by CSPA was 15 percent of the federal budget, an amount 15 times greater than the amount actually spent."--Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences

"Being patriotic doesn't mean agreeing with the government. The most fundamental American right is to not agree with the government and to raise hell about it." -- Molly Ivins

"Despite legislation aimed at silencing our voices, relatively speaking, we still have the ability to raise them. All protest does not necessarily involve banners and slogans. We must Think. Write. Convince. Discuss. Learn. Educate. Resist. Above all, Speak". -- Shirin Vossoughi

"Child care is critical if mothers leaving welfare are required to work, and if the welfare of the child is not to be sacrificed. And child care is essential to millions of other low-income working mothers who have not been on welfare and do not want to be, but who cannot make ends meet because they cannot afford care. . . . President Bush was so intent on showing his compassionate conservatism and interest in the futures of the youngest, most vulnerable Americans that he co-opted the Children's Defense Fund's own motto to 'Leave no child behind.' Mr. President, we want our slogan back." -- Marian Wright Edelman

". . .one hundred million Americans. . . will choose not to vote at all. . . . They are not homogenous, though largely young and poor. They proportionately include women and men, black and white, Asians and Hispanics. They have dropped out because they intuit that their vote means nothing, that deals have been cut, that public policy has been bought, that jobs have been peddled, that favors have been traded, that big money has made folly out of our democratic exercise, fools of our citizenry." --Randall Robinson

"The Greek word for "people" is demos, and "democracy" means rule by the people . . . . Freedom is participation in power-- the necessary expansion of democracy to include the dispossessed an the voiceless. . . . The Green Party recognizes that every major social-justice movement in our history was made possible by a shift of more power to the people, away from the power that the few control."--Ralph Nader

Human Needs:

"No one in the world would go to bed hungry if we spent just 1 percent of military expenditures on food aid. . . . Global hunger can be prevented, even largely eradicated. What is needed is the will - both globally and nationally - to combat it."

- Amitabh Pal

Much of the public conversation reduces structural issues--transportation problems, health impairment, day care issues--to judgments such as 'lack of motivation' or 'lack of will.'. . . [C]onversations that reduce economic injustice to personal choice issues are not only distracting from the real work that needs to be done, but unjust themselves." -- Adrian Nicole Leblanc

"[T]hose who protest should be making a promise. They are promising their society that a better way is indeed possible. They are saying that the bigotries, the injustices, the indignities, the indifference, and the unnecessary violence we experience today will not have the last word." -- Jim Wallis

"For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. . . . This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter." -- Robert Kennedy

"Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people." -- Molly Ivins

"Imagine if every day there were headlines saying: '29,000 children died yesterday from preventable diseases and malnutrition.' Would the aid money rush in?" -- Michael Lerner, Tikkun

"But if those pictures kept coming day after day, year after year, they'd become as easy to tune out as Save the Children commercials. Relentless pleas become a bad joke.

That's the double bind: Few people are moved to help until they're hit over the head. And if you hit them over the head enough times, they become unconscious. . . . The larger problem is that most of the misery in the world is never going to be on CNN at all, because it is not in the interest of the powerful to have it appear on CNN."

"Empathy comes naturally to most human beings.

Sustained empathy does not."

-- Jeanne d'Arc, Body and Soul

"45 million more children will die needlessly by 2015, because rich countries are failing to provide the necessary resources they promised to overcome poverty. The report, Paying the Price, finds that rich countries' aid budgets are half what they were in 1960 . . . . In 1970 rich countries agreed to spend just 0.7 percent of their incomes on aid. Thirty-four years later, none of the G8 members have reached this target and many have not even set a timetable." --Oxfam

"One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows." -- Primo Levi

"The deaths of 3,000 people, mostly Americans, at the hands of terrorists in 2001 dramatically altered the course of human events, but the deaths of 3,000 Haitians from last summer's killer hurricanes hardly registered in the public's consciousness. We regard the 9/11 attacks as one of history's greatest crimes -- yet the millions who have died in Sudan, Rwanda, The Ivory Coast and elsewhere in equally willful attacks merit, for many of us, little more than a sigh. . . . Our inability to rationally process mass death makes us resort to arbitrary standards of analysis -- a death close to us is more important than 10 far away. A death we cause is more easily pardoned than one other people cause. Death by natural disaster is more regrettable than death by war. The only thread connecting Iraq and Southeast Asia is the scale of human misery." -- Robert Steinback

"Citigroup, with profits of $17.85 billion in 2003, will donate $3 million, or an infinitesimal proportion of its profits. The same Citigroup got $4.6 billion in tax breaks in 2001-03. That's billion." -- Robert Kuttner

"There's a broader context here that bears consideration. Two days before Christmas, the media reported that unprecedented U.S. deficits. . . had led the Bush administration to cut substantially its previously agreed contributions to world food programs. By going back on its commitments, the Bush administration forced numerous aid agencies to suspend ongoing programs in many impoverished nations -- including, ironically as it would turn out, Indonesia. " -- Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Every year hunger kills 12 million children worldwide." --FoodFirst.org

"Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times. " --FoodFirst.org

"[T]he 497 billionaires registered a healthy combined wealth of $1.54 trillion, well over the combined gross national products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa ($929.3 billion) or those of the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North Africa ($1.34 trillion). Indeed, this collective wealth of the 497 is also greater than the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity." -- John Cavanagh and Sarah Anderson

"What is lost is lost. . . . I think it's the same with people. I see in them little details, so specific to each of them, that move me and that I miss and will always miss. You can never replace anyone because everyone is made of such beautiful, specific details." -- Richard Linklater/Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy

"As leaders of some of the most prominent U.S.-headquartered international humanitarian, development and advocacy organizations, we believe the United States has a responsibility to provide leadership among the nations to address global health, hunger and poverty. We particularly want to encourage the commitment and action needed to meet the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The 9/11 Commission also emphasized that the war against terrorism will not be won through military measures alone, but will also require attention to 'issues of economic development, more open societies, and opportunities for people to improve the lives of their families and to enhance prospects for their childrenÕs future.'" -- Neal L. Keny-Guyer, Chief Executive Officer, Mercy Corps

"At Baghdad's General Teaching Hospital for Children, children die each week from diarrhea because of poor sanitation, shortages of equipment and poorly trained staff. . . . The doctors said U.S. Army medical teams and various humanitarian groups have come to the 160-bed hospital in recent months and made lists of the medicine and supplies that are needed. But nothing has arrived." --Scheherezade Faramarzi, Associated Press

"At a local paediatric hospital, a doctor checks up on two-year-old Fatima Nasser, who has been sick with diarrhoea for two months and is now badly malnourished. The child, who recently learnt to walk and talk, can now only cry or lie listlessly in her hospital bed and the likely culprit is dirty water. The family has no running water. Her mother says they buy it in by tank, but do not know what the source is. 'Things haven't got better since the war,' she says. 'We still have no water and no sewage system. There are lots of people in my area whose children are falling ill.' More than half the children now being treated at the hospital have water-borne diseases. The doctors say they can only treat the symptoms of the real problem - the state of Iraq's infrastructure." -- Caroline Hawley, BBC

"So far, occupation officials have reassigned $184 million appropriated for drinking-water projects to fund the operations of the U.S. Embassy after the provisional authority is dissolved June 30." --Jonathan Weisman and Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post

"Just before Memorial Day, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi said, 'Our active military respond better to Republicans' because of 'the tremendous support that President Bush has provided for our military and our veterans.' The same day, the White House announced plans for massive cuts in veterans' health care for 2006. Last January, Bush praised veterans during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The same day, 164,000 veterans were told the White House was 'immediately cutting off their access to the VA health care system'. . . .

With the release of the 2006 budget, we're constantly finding instances of programs that Bush, the candidate, proudly claims to support, while he prepares to cut them drastically. . . .

Teachers say the No Child Left Behind law should be called 'No Dollars Left Behind to Pay for It.' Head Start is to be cut by $177 million, and the highly successful nutrition program for women, infants and children is to be cut by $100 million. Any time Bush goes out into the country and claims credit for, or praises the work being done by, some government program, it is an almost-certain kiss of death. . . ." -- Molly Ivins / Center for American Progress

"Deeply etched in the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value, the heirs of a legacy of dignity and worth. If we feel this as a profound moral fact, we cannot be content to see men hungry, to see men victimized with starvation and ill health when we have the means to help them." --Dr. Martin Luther King

"The great paradox of our time is that the massive suffering of the world's poor -- from disease, hunger, unsafe water and more -- could be readily overcome with just a modicum of help from the richest countries. For less than 1% of the income of the wealthiest countries each year, the worst afflictions of poverty could be substantially reduced, if not eliminated. Indeed, rich and poor countries have solemnly promised, not just once but at least four times in the last three years, to work to accomplish exactly that: a breakthrough in the elimination of poverty. The greatest puzzle in economic development is not how to alleviate the suffering but how to get rich and poor countries to follow through on their repeated promises." -- Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sakiko Fukuda-Parr

"Currently, the UN is warning that Africa is on the brink of a famine that could rival, if not surpass, the severity of the one in the early 80s. An estimated 10 to 14 million people may be facing starvation over the next few months. Must we wait for harrowing images of starving people to hit our TV screens before we can take the time to care? What lessons have we learned from all this? We have learned that, ultimately, people do care. When confronted with undeniable images of suffering, people will reach out to help. . . . People really do want to do the right thing. When they feel a connection to the problem and see a solution they can contribute to, they respond." -- Catherine Clyne

"I never even imagined that a drought could be this bad. It's worse than 1984-85. Most of our animals have died or we've had to sell them because we had nothing to feed them. We have nothing left. If our government doesn't bring us food, we will all die here." -- village elder, Ila Babu, Eritrea

Same time, different stories, part 2:

"There is no humanitarian crisis." -- Retired general Jay Garner, American civilian administrator for Iraq, April 30

"The people of Iraq are suffering. Insecurity and uncertainty persists across Iraq. In parts of the country the situation is critical. . . . Hospitals are overwhelmed, diarrhoea is endemic and the death toll is mounting. Medical and water staff are working for free, but cannot continue for long. Rubbish, including medical waste, is piling up. Clean water is scarce and diseases like typhoid are being reported in southern Iraq. . . . Medical and water staff are working for free, but cannot continue for long. Rubbish, including medical waste, is piling up. Clean water is scarce and diseases like typhoid are being reported in southern Iraq. . . . Unless comprehensive action is taken now by the occupying forces to ensure security and orderly delivery of humanitarian assistance based on need...this already acute situation will only worsen." -- joint statement by Oxfam, Islamic Relief, Caritas, Cafod, Christian Aid, Action Aid and Save the Children, May 2

The date is the same, but the stories are very different:

"By delivering food and water and medicine to the Iraqi people -- even as coalition units engaged the enemy -- we have helped to avert a humanitarian crisis. Emergency supplies are now moving freely to Iraq from many countries." -- President George W. Bush, April 16, 2003

"On April 16th 2003 a small team of Mercy Corps staffers crossed the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border for an assessment mission into southern Iraq. Despite having all the required paperwork in order, the team was briefly held-up at the border crossing. Humanitarian aid organizations have been delayed in getting into Iraq and providing desperately needed aid to the civilians due to security problems and bureaucratic procedures required to legally enter Iraq. Nigel Pont, Mercy Corps' Program Advisor, negotiates with the British military who are manning the border and manages to convince them to the team proceed into Iraq. The team's arrival in An Nasiriyah is greeted with cheers and thumbs up signs from the Iraqi children. Everyone is happy to see humanitarian aid organizations finally arriving. The parents tell Mercy Corps staffers of the hardships they have had to endure: no water, no electricity, no jobs, no medicines. . . The list is long. The children play in dirt streets with waste and sewage piling up. There is no garbage collection and the sewage system operates on electricity that has been off since the war. There are real concerns of outbreak of disease as the temperature begins to skyrocket in the coming summer months. . . . Water is one of the most critical emergency needs of the people in southern Iraq. The water system is dependent on electricity but the power has been off since the war. Families are forced to walk long distances to collect water and the quality of the water is extremely poor and unfit for drinking. Children are often tasked with the job of collecting water. They scoop it up in makeshift containers and carry it home in small cans and buckets. This chore consumes much of their day as the lines of people waiting for water are long and the supply is short. Most families do not have any place to store water, so this job must be repeated every day." -- Mercy Corps, April 16, 2003

"I hope people around this country realize that agencies such as this food bank need money. They need our contributions. Contribution are down. They shouldn't be down in a time of need." -- President George W. Bush, appearing at Austin's Capitol Area Food Bank

"Number of seniors who will be cut off of meal programs because of the Bush budget: 36,000. - Number of families who will be cut off of heating assistance because of the Bush budget: 532,000. - Number of homeless kids who will be cut off of education programs because of the Bush budget: 8,000. - Number of kids who will be cut off of after-school programs because of the Bush budget: 50,000. - Number of kids who will be cut off of child care because of the Bush budget: 33,000. Question: Which news got more attention from the media--Bush's photo-op at the food bank or the facts in his budget?" -- Molly Ivins

"On the theory that the world will be saved not by irony but by empathy, I'd like to quote the end of an article in a recent issue of The New York Times Sunday Magazine about adopting Ethiopian AIDS orphans. This beautifully written account about saving a handful of the millions of African AIDS orphans was written by Melissa Fay Greene, the adoptive mother of one of the orphans. She reports of her new daughter, "One day not long ago, she collapsed in my arms to cry about her late mother. I held her as she writhed, wailing, `Why she had to die?' A few moments later, she said, amid tears: `I know why she died. Because she was very sick, and we didn't have the medicine.' `I know,' I said. `It's true. I'm so sorry. I wish I had known you then. I wish I could have sent her the medicine.' `But we didn't have a phone,' she cried, `and I couldn't call you."'

Pretend that they have phones--the AIDS orphans and the homeless kids and the hungry families. . . . And if you can only save one orphan or help one homeless kid or feed one hungry family once, well, that's something, isn't it?" -- Molly Ivins

"Distancing by invisibility happens even more with global life-and-death issues. Thirty thousand people die every day of hunger-related causes worldwide-the equivalent of nearly ten World Trade Center attacks. According to the respected hunger advocacy group Bread for the World, a yearly appropriation of $13 billion would meet their basic health and nutrition needs and save their lives. That's about what America spends on pet food, or a thirtieth of Bush's $400-billion-dollar defense budget. We could also cover this amount seven times with the yearly cost of the recent tax cuts for the wealthiest one in a hundred Americans. . . .

You'd think that so many preventable deaths would shock us. They would if we felt their full human impact. But we get little chance to do so. The Pennsylvania miners felt real to us, because we saw their families, heard their stories, and got a sense of them as human beings with lives as weighty, worthy, and complex as our own. They weren't just statistics. We don't get that close to those who starve halfway around the world. . . .Without this emotional connection, it becomes easy to deny the human toll of the actions we allow to be taken in our common name." -- Paul Loeb

"All too often the plight of the people of these countries is overlooked. Occasionally an event occurs - a civil war, a drought - that catches our attention and results in an outpouring of outrage and short-term action. Then the least developed countries again disappear from view. . . . We the citizens of the world are being asked to help these countries fight the toughest opponents on the planet today: disease, discrimination, ignorance, hunger, and poverty. Most of these countries are far from American shores. Their peoples are often seen as different from us: different color, different religion, different culture. While these external differences are real, they mask the fact that in our hearts and souls we share far more with them than the things that set us apart. We all want our children to go to bed with food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads. We all want to live in peace. We all want a chance to earn a decent living. We all want a chance." -- Muhammad Ali

"The World Bank predicts that two-thirds of the world's population will run short of adequate water in the next 20 years." --Jim Hightower

"Water must be declared a basic human right. It this sounds elemental, it was the subject of hot debate at the World Water Forum in The Hague, with the World Bank and the water companies seeking to have it declared a human "need." The point is, if water is a human need, it can be serviced by the private sector. And if it's a "right"? You cannot sell a human right." -- Maude Barlow

"Water has moved from being an endless commodity that may be taken for granted to a rationed necessity that may be taken by force." -- Global Water Corporation

"i say come, and return to the fight; this fight for the earth
: this fight for our children; this fight for our life
: we need your hurricane voices; we need your sacred hands" --Sonia Sanchez