by Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
- USA -

Dear Senator Obama,

We write to congratulate you on the tremendous achievements of your campaign for the presidency of the United States.

Your candidacy has inspired a wave of political enthusiasm like nothing seen in this country for decades. In your speeches, you have sketched out a vision of a better future--in which the United States sheds its warlike stance around the globe and focuses on diplomacy abroad and greater equality and freedom for its citizens at home--that has thrilled voters across the political spectrum. Hundreds of thousands of young people have entered the political process for the first time, African-American voters have rallied behind you, and many of those alienated from politics-as-usual have been re-engaged.

You stand today at the head of a movement that believes deeply in the change you have claimed as the mantle of your campaign. The millions who attend your rallies, donate to your campaign and visit your website are a powerful testament to this new movement's energy and passion.

by Halimah Abdallah Kisule
- Uganda -

Ms Akullo Flavia, a retail shop owner in a Kampala suburb, stands puzzled in the local market not knowing what to buy for supper. Her initial plan to buy fresh fish is ruined - there is no fish for sale at the stalls. A local hajati, or fish dealer, is disappointed too. She explains that the moon’s recent brightness is helping the big fish to see the net and escape. The little fish that get trapped in the nets are all sold on the beaches at much higher prices to the waiting refrigerator trucks of fish processing companies who export to countries like China and several parts of Europe. Officials from the fisheries department say that even these companies are facing a deficit and only exporting a third of their capacity due to declining fish populations in the lakes and rivers.

by Remi Adeoye
- Nigeria -

There is stiff opposition to the proposed Niger Delta Summit slated to be held in Abuja, Nigeria. The Delta’s most prominent militant group, known as The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), called it a “circus,” and "a face saving measure” by the slow-moving Yar'Adua administration to show that it has a plan to solve the area’s problems. The line of battle has been drawn between the federal government and the militants, with tensions increasing after the deployment of more soldiers and two naval warships to the oil-rich Delta, which militants described as a “callous, wicked attempt to wipe the Ijaw nation from the face of the earth.”

• The environmental devastation from installations like this one in Ikot Ada Udo has left nearly everyone living off the land without a livelihood. Photograph by Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR. •

To the indigenous Egi women of Ijaw, it is crucial that more come out of the Abuja summit than political posturing. As the women say, “We are farmers, fisherwomen and hunters. With all the flaming and pumping oil into our swamp areas, the oil companies have denied us every living thing. Today, we have no hope, while they are making billions of naira with our gifts from God. They don’t care or hear our cry; they only throw tear gas on us, beat us, and drive us out of our land.”

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Paying upwards of $10 USD to see a movie about economics, particularly in these increasingly desperate financial times, hardly seems like a prudent decision – much less a pleasurable way to spend a Sunday afternoon. But if you’re willing to shell out the cash to see the new documentary I.O.U.S.A., which opens in theatres this August, you may be surprised at just how enjoyable and educational a film about America’s economy can be.

The federal debt seems too incredible a sum to even fully grasp; an easier way to understand such an enormous figure is that if the debt was equally divided among the country’s population, each American would owe over $30,000.

If you have no idea or don’t even care that this debt exists, I.O.U.S.A. makes you want to learn. The film’s complex premise and daunting numbers are made more accessible by the use of colorful graphs and illustrations. Creadon effectively contrasts what average people think (or think they know) against experts’ analysis, which keeps the film from being too weighed down by statistics and theories. The film’s tone can be summed up by student activist Mike Tully who yells at passersby in one scene: “Would you like to go on a date with me? No! Would you like to learn about the debt? Yes!”

by Jennie S. Bev
- USA / Indonesia -

I live in Northern California, considered one of the wealthiest regions in the United States, where the global intellectual hub of Silicon Valley neighbors the panoramic San Francisco Bay area and where luminaries like Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the “Google Guys”), writer Amy Tan, and comedian Robin Williams call home. Here, millionaires oftentimes still go to work and live in cramped houses due to skyrocketing housing prices. A decent dim sum meal costs at least $20 USD per person and a modest one-bedroom apartment rental costs about $1,500 USD per month. A dollar can probably buy you one can of soda in a deli, but not in a movie theater, where it might be four times as much.

• A man adds extra cuts to the lumps of meat ready for distribution to the less fortunate in the nearby community. 250g of red meat is a luxury for the poor in Jakarta. Photograph by Danumurthi Mahendra •

What a contrast. What a divided world we live in.

by Beena Sarwar
- Pakistan -

It was painful to think of Rehmat Shah Afridi on death row, haggard and ill.

I had worked with him at the English language daily paper he launched from Lahore in 1989, The Frontier Post, originally started from Peshawar, capital of his native North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in the mid-1980s. He was not highly educated but he had a liberal, progressive vision of independent media and had brought one of the country’s finest journalists, Aziz Siddiqui, on board as the editor.

• Rehmat Shah Afridi celebrates his release from prison with his sons. Photograph by Rahat Dar, The News on Sunday. •

Aziz Siddiqui had by then joined the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) as co-director along with his close friend and fellow journalist I.A. Rehman who was Director of HRCP. The organization was among those that protested Afridi’s arrest in 1999 on what most journalists believe to be trumped up charges of drug trafficking. After a district court on June 27, 2001 condemned Afridi to death by hanging, he spent the next three years on death row. There was sporadic news of him once he was convicted. One of his lawyers told me that he was terribly ill at one point and had lost much weight. The Lahore High Court on June 3, 2004 commuted his death sentence on the grounds that trafficking in hashish is not a capital crime. Still, he remained in Lahore’s notorious Kot Lakhpat Jail for nearly a decade, with courts periodically turning down his bail applications, pleas to move him to a prison in Peshawar closer to his family and appeals for proper medical care. He was finally released on bail in May this year.

by Nadia Gouy
- Morocco -

The results of the September 2007 elections were no landmark victory for female representation in the Moroccan legislature – apart from the 30 female lawmakers elected through a 2002-instituted quota system, only four women were able to squeak into the lower house. Yet, for a country that is determined to lead the Arab pack in gender equality, the executive is a good counterbalance. And the new government counts five female ministers along with two undersecretaries, accounting for 19.2 percent of the total ministerial posts – a percentage that earns Morocco the 39th rank, second to no other Arab country, in the 2008 Women in Politics Report jointly prepared by the United Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

• Anti-corruption crusader, Yasmina Badou has met with resistance by what many have referred to as her “inflexibility and refusal to negotiate” in her attempt to improve Morocco's health care system. Photograph by Houda Andaloussi. •

Just like any Moroccan, I took a deep interest in Yasmina’s proclaimed crusade for reforming the health sector. Born to a family that could pay the doctor’s bill in a city that has the lion’s share of clinics and hospitals, I was under the delusion that high maternal and infant mortality rates were ancient history. Yet, pursuing a Master’s in international development showed me the bitter reality. An ever-ailing health sector, all the more blighted by the flagrant inequalities between the up-to-date private clinics and hospitals and their dilapidated public counterparts, is a good enough reason for Morocco to rank 126th out of 177 countries according to the UNDP-commissioned Human Development Report 2007-08 – this time behind most Arab countries. Among the disquieting facts and figures: the number of physicians per 100,000 people stands at 51 with an extremely disproportionate concentration in the urban areas; among the poorest 20 percent, only 30 percent of births are attended by skilled health personnel compared to 95 percent among the richest 20 percent; the infant mortality rate stands at 62 per 1,000 live births against 24 for the richest 20 percent; and the mortality rate for five years and under stands at 74 per 1,000 infants compared to 26.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

On 8-8-08 when the Beijing Summer Olympics begins, the world will see that the Maoist doctrine of the Cultural Revolution has been replaced by capitalism and McDonald’s – all in the name of progress. This Modern China bears a striking resemblance to the West it once condemned. But what will not be proudly displayed in shiny new shopping malls is the reality that modernization comes at the displacement of millions of people who must abandon the only way of life they know and join a new China.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

They live in the richest states in the world but cannot afford to buy essential commodities because their countries were busy promoting oil related investments, rather than securing profitable food and agriculture industry.

• Once flush with cash, many families in the Gulf are adjusting to higher prices. Photograph by Biju Hari. •

In the journey to protect and improve oil revenues, many of the important occupations at the core of the regions’ economy before the discovery of oil, such as fishing and farming, were scrubbed. Once these countries realized that oil, as a natural resource, would eventually deplete, they shifted their focus to business and development, leading to an environmental crisis marked by shrinking agricultural lands and reclamation. This problem is especially significant for Bahrain, a tiny island.

by Diane Solomon
- USA -

Like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. before them, when Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez organized California’s exploited and marginalized farm workers into the United Farmworkers of America (UFW) in the 1960s they built a nonviolent movement that empowered poor and disenfranchised people to help themselves.

• Dolores Huerta, circa 1968. Photograph courtesy of the Dolores Huerta Foundation. •

During her career with the UFW, Huerta organized field strikes, directed boycotts, and negotiated and administered agreements. Huerta also was one of the first to speak out against pesticides that harm farm workers, consumers, and the environment. Five years ago she left the UFW and started the Dolores Huerta Foundation to teach community organizing. She still works as an advocate for farmworkers, whose pay and working conditions have worsened in recent years.

I spoke with Huerta at Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose, California.

by Afsaana Rashid
– Indian-administered Kashmir -

While the world has progressed by leaps and bounds in technological advancement, the Kashmir valley remains rooted in cultural tradition. The state of Kashmir abounds in ancient literature, language, religion, arts, crafts, dance, and music. Its culture is steeped in story telling, philosophy and folklore, even when it comes to medicine. In the Kashmir valley there are hundreds of families who turn to faith healers for solutions to their problems, especially those with psychiatric issues. Researchers Dr. Mushtaq Ahmad Margoob, a leading psychiatrist of the valley, and Huda Mushtaq, point to the decades long conflict in Kashmir for the phenomenal increase in the region’s psychological problems.

“My family, including my children, treated me like a lunatic a few years back when I could not cope up with certain problems. Consequently, I tried many doctors, including psychiatrists, but nothing worked,” says Hajra, a woman in her mid-forties.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Every Sunday afternoon my college journalism advisor, who everyone lovingly called “Coach,” would meet with the newspaper staff and critique the past week’s articles. As a portly middle-aged man who had won numerous awards for his work at a major newspaper, Coach would often encourage us to cover our stories with a “Gonzo” approach. The concept of participatory journalism seemed feasible, but drinking a bottle of bourbon while driving around Las Vegas in a Cadillac convertible with a trunk full of drugs didn’t really seem conducive to writing articles about our school’s basketball team.

by Eva Sohlman
- Sweden -

In Haiti people eat cakes baked with mud for lack of flour. In Bangladesh, Indonesia and across Africa, riots are spreading among the hungry. And in the world’s richest country, the United States, the breadlines are growing.

• Photograph by Bruce Gilbert, courtesy of The Earth Institute. •

by Zubeida Mustafa
- Pakistan -

Anil is now a young man of 19, studying for his high school examinations at Bahria College. He is also working a summer job with a cell phone company to earn a few extra rupees for his family.

• Shabina (standing at left) and her first group of students at the original Garage School site. •

Coming from a poor family – his father works as a part-time cleaner – Anil’s chances of improving his life were indeed bleak until his mother sent him to Shabina. In a country that spends barely two percent of its GDP on education, Pakistan has only scarce resources to provide a decent education to 60 million or so children under 15; not all can hope to be educated. According to Pakistan’s 2007-2008 Economic Survey, only 57 percent of children (age 10 years and above) are enrolled in school.

by Emily Rose Herzlin
- USA -

On July 1st, the top post on the ID Project’s Blog proclaimed: No More Plastic Bags Y’all! We are going Back to the Sack!

Where’s your plastic bag stash? Everyone has one. It’s a kitchen cabinet or a drawer stuffed to the gills. It’s a corner of the hallway closet. Better yet, it’s a plastic bag filled with plastic bags. One New York City meditation center, The Interdependence Project (ID Project), has taken on the environmental issue of plastic bags as part of their ongoing effort to connect their meditation practice to their everyday lives. July 1st marked the start of their Low Impact Consumption Month and “Back to the Sack” initiative to eradicate plastic bag usage in New York City.

by Maria H. Lewytzkyj
- USA -

I keep a blog on MySpace devoted to coverage of the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. By giving life to this blog, my initial goal was to bring together a network of people from civil society who would become involved and stay informed. Early on, I posted an op-ed about China's role in Darfur and how the world was more interested in technological advances than the worsening human conditions in Darfur. A few of my friends on MySpace showed interest. One turned it into a podcast, and another started to correspond with me regularly. Soon we were adding people to our blogs who were genuinely interested in what was happening in Darfur, and though they felt completely helpless, they still wanted to stay informed. My experience in keeping this blog demonstrates the advantage bloggers have over the mainstream media - free press. Bloggers have the freedom to include perspectives and ideas that are often not included in mainstream coverage. This article is a jumping-off point for me to begin sharing my blog with readers of The WIP by cross-posting my Darfur coverage on The WIP's TALK blog.

by Susan Enuogbope Majekodunmi
- USA -

As a child growing up in Nigeria, I was familiar with military coups. I would wake up in the morning and on TV a new President in military uniform would state that there had been a coup and he was now our new leader. He would order everyone to stay home until the situation stabilized. Later that night, on the 9pm news, he would reappear to tell us how he was the person to rescue the country from the clutches of the one he seized power from. However, time would show our new leader repeating exactly what he accused his predecessor of doing, many times to an even higher degree. As time passed, it would also become obvious that our new president had no intention of leaving office, ever.

• Despite widespread criticism, Robert Mugabe attended the global food summit in Rome in early June. Photograph by Malcom M. •

In Nigeria, military dictator Sani Abacha, who seized power from his fellow military predecessor, annulled the June 12th, 1993 democratic election of Chief Moshood Abiola, a civilian businessman who, by all accounts, won the election. Abacha refused to give up power and Abiola fled abroad for his safety. However, he was lured back to supposedly take what was rightfully his, only to be swiftly charged with treason and killed while in Abacha's custody. Since I lived close to Abiola's residence at the time, I witnessed the chaos and violence his death caused as many people took to the streets to protest.

by Riane Eisler
- USA -

There’s an invisible elephant in today’s political debates: a major issue that’s getting no attention. Sure, there’s some recognition that behind many attacks on Hillary Clinton lie virulent traditions of sexism. But so devalued is anything stereotypically associated with women that crucial matters that directly impact our lives and our families aren’t even mentioned.

• Women's issues take a backseat in American politics. Photograph by Rebecca DeLisle. •

This relegation of “women’s issues” to a secondary place is obviously terrible for half of America (actually the majority, since women are 52 percent). But it’s also terrible for the political and family health of our entire nation.

Let’s start with politics. For both the mullahs in Iran and the rightist-fundamentalist alliance in the United States, “getting women back into their traditional place” in a “traditional family” has been a top priority. There’s a basic reason for this. Rigidly male-dominated societies are also authoritarian and violent. Along with the imposition of a brutal dictatorship by the Nazis, their mantra was returning women to their "traditional" roles in a male-dominated family. Nor is it coincidental that the 9-11 terrorists came from cultures where women are terrorized into submission. Or that regressive fundamentalists in the United States (who also believe in top-down rule and “holy wars”) first organized as a powerful political block around a “women’s issue”: the defeat during the 1970s of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

by Imelda V. Abaño
- Philippines -

Hunger is the most crucial manifestation of poverty. In many parts of the world, the soaring prices of food, fuel and other basic goods have triggered social unrest and a growing sense of urgency.

• In Haiti, an estimated 46% of all children under five are severely or moderately stunted in growth due to malnutrition. Photograph by Imelda V. Abaño. •

Witnessing the realities of the devastating consequences of poverty and rising food prices up close reminded me of my first visit to Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries.

In June, I went to Haiti with five other journalists for an experience unlike any of my previous trips abroad. The abject poverty and despair I witnessed there is far more extreme than in my own country. Never before have I seen such deprivation than that which I saw in Haiti; the human suffering is all too real and heart-rending.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, is plagued by violence, hunger, unrelenting extreme poverty, disease, high unemployment rates, low life expectancy and crumbling health and educational systems.