Columnists

“I say to the masters of my people, beware. Beware of the thing that is coming, Beware of the risen people who shall take what yea would not give.”
Padraic Pearse, Irish poet and revolutionary, executed May 16, 1916 for his part in the Easter Rebellion.

It is almost a hundred years since Pearse and his comrades were executed in the aftermath of the failed rising of 1916, but the people who run the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) might take a moment to read his poem—originally read over the grave of the great Fenian leader, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa—and take notice: an election is scheduled for Feb. 25, and Irish eyes are not smiling.

At stake is whether Ireland will lock itself into decades of high unemployment, burdensome taxes, and eviscerated social services in order to bail banks and real estate speculators out of trouble, or rise up and say “enough.” -more-

The new Republican House majority had no sooner settled into their offices than they proposed savage restrictions of women’s reproductive rights. Americans might question the GOP actions, since the new laws have nothing to do with Republican campaign promises to create jobs and reduce the Federal deficit. But it’s consistent with their archconservative ideology, yet another brutal attack in the three-decades-old Republican war on women. -more-

Last October, a Kampala, Uganda tabloid newspaper ran a diatribe identifying 100 individuals it described as "Uganda's top homos." The article was accompanied by a front-page picture of David Kato, the most outspoken gay rights advocate in Uganda, saying "Hang Them." On January 26, 2011, David Kato was beaten to death at his home outside Kampala. No one really believes the murder of Kato was not related to the article and Uganda's governmental animosity towards homosexuals. -more-

When someone uses the word, “Schizophrenic,” (applied to a mentally ill person and not used as modern slang to represent a dichotomy) the first association for many people is “split personality.” However, Schizophrenia is not the same thing as multiple personalities. When a doctor uses the term split personality, it means that the afflicted person’s personality has split off from reality. The personality could be intact, but stuck in an internally generated false world. Input from the five senses gets reinterpreted in bizarre and strange ways. An obvious fact could be ignored, dismissed, or given a completely different interpretation. -more-

There’s too little emphasis on seniors as individuals as well as on their involvement in senior center programming. -more-