by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

It is one of the greatest joys of my life to see the dream of The WIP coming true this year - a dream for real news stories as they affect real people; a dream for news that is unencumbered by the agendas of advertising and the corporate world; a dream for a platform where everyday people from all walks of life, in all corners of the world, can come together in conversation about the issues as we see them, through our own eyes and our own unique perspectives and experiences.

It is, however, breathtaking and frightening to look back on the stories we published in 2008. Wars raged on with very little respite. Natural disasters ravaged innocent victims from Burma to the Caribbean. The world participated in and protested one of the most anticipated Olympics in recent history. The USA elected its first African American President. Food is inaccessible for many around the world, and a global financial crisis is upon us like nothing we have witnessed since The Great Depression. And all this barely scratches the surface.

As we prepare to close a year’s worth of coverage, The WIP’s editors will be taking a week off to rest, spend time with our families and friends, and reflect on this incredible year. Our hope is to start the New Year fresh so we can do an even better job delivering quality news from the unique perspectives of women in 2009.

by Katharine Daniels & Sarah McGowan
- USA -

Sunday’s news that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from the Zimbabwean runoff race spurred international media coverage and outrage on a crisis that has been raging for years. According to the opposition’s Movement for Democratic Change, "some 86 of its supporters have been killed and 200,000 forced from their homes by militias loyal to the ruling Zanu-PF party."

• An image from last year's violent police crackdown on Zimbabwean activists. Photograph courtesy of The Zimbabwean. •

WIP Contributors Constance Manika and Lelety Mabasa, along with Sharon Njobo, Grace Kwinjeh and Sandra Nyaira, have published article after article over the past year, outlining the methodical behavior of a political despot who is both cunning and ruthless, and who will stop at nothing to preserve his power.

In our second week of publication, Sharon Njobo (living in exile in Canada) wrote about women in her country taking the lead to protest against Mugabe's economic policies. In this early article we first learned of Zimbabwe's skyrocketing inflation rates (currently at 355,000 percent), and the rising price of basic foodstuffs - putting cooking oil, cornmeal, bread, and milk beyond the reach of many families in a country that was once considered the 'food basket' of Africa. The deteriorating Zimbabwean economy has now earned the country the dubious distinction of having the lowest life expectancy in the world for women. At just 34 years, a woman's life span (37 years for a man) is now half of what it was only 18 years ago.

by Katharine Daniels
Founder & Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

On March 8th, we will celebrate The WIP’s one year anniversary. In that time, The WIP has made its way into homes, offices, and Internet cafés in 146 countries. Whether you’re a reader in the USA, Indonesia, Nigeria, Argentina or South Korea – you’ve found us somehow. You’ve read our articles and joined our community. Through your commentary you’ve added your voices to the critical dialog that begins with a story. In just one short year The WIP has built a community of men and women from all over the globe.

On the pages of The WIP, readers and writers have built a meeting place where everyone is invited to listen to each others’ voices, histories, and insights. On these pages we’ve come to realize that issues such as the plight of vulnerable children, genocide, and rising food prices are not just the misfortune of somebody else. Looking past the headlines, we see clearly how national policies have international consequences. We’ve come to understand that we are all interconnected and through our stories we are educating ourselves. By responding to the women who write our stories, we let them know we are listening and together we are discovering fair, workable solutions to the problems we all face in our world today.

by Katharine Daniels
Founder & Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

On Tuesday Hillary Clinton made a campaign stop in Salinas, California. Otherwise known as ‘the lettuce capital of the world’ or John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Salinas just happens to be the farm town I call home.

Nearly 3,000 of Senator Clinton’s supporters showed up at the Hartnell College gymnasium to hear her speak. She was greeted in true Salinas Valley fashion, with mariachis and shouts for Viva la Causa (“Long Live Our Cause"). Clinton’s campaign stop was pulled together in just twenty-four hours following an official endorsement by the United Farm Workers of America, the union co-founded by Dolores Huerta and César Chávez that today represents more than 27,000 farm workers.

by Roshi Pejhan
Community Outreach & Development, The WIP
- USA -

Katharine Daniels
Founder & Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Every year this nation’s priorities move further and further away from the concerns of the majority of American citizens, making daily life harder and harder. The prices we pay for housing, utilities, medications, transportation and food are all going up. Meanwhile, big business interests, profiting every time we lose, monopolize our policymakers’ attention. While companies boasting record profits are rewarded with tax breaks, ordinary citizens struggle each day to get basic needs met for themselves and their families.

by Katharine Daniels and Patricia Vásquez
- USA -

Headlines around the world are reporting the news of the shocking yet seemingly inevitable assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi this morning. In Al Jazeera’s report “Daughter of Tragedy,” Kamran Rehmat describes what happened as “An inescapable aspect of the near-Greek tragedy governing the Bhutto family.” He comments that “What ever else the mind-numbing killing of Benazir Bhutto in Thursday’s suicide attack will mean for Pakistan’s future, there is little doubt that politics in this south Asian country will never be the same again.”

Benazir Bhutto was killed just a few miles from the scene of her father's execution 28 years earlier. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former prime minister and the founder of the party that Benazir led, was executed by hanging on charges of conspiracy by the then-military regime. That event motivated Benazir to devote her life to politics.

by Patricia Meehan Vásquez
Managing Editor, The WIP
- USA -

In 2006, what to Saudi society seemed a routine case settled in Sharia court, exploded into headlines of outrage, protest and disbelief across the globe. Qatif is a center of the very large Shia minority in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, near where I lived for almost eight years. Most of Saudi practices the Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam.

• Taken with a camera phone, public photography is banned in Saudi Arabia. Photograph by Majib. •

by Louise Belfrage
News Editor, The WIP
Argentina

• Flag of Argentina. Centered in the white band is a radiant yellow sun with a human face known as the Sun of May. Courtesy of CIA World Factbook. •

True, but nonetheless, the always-crowded Plaza de Mayo was empty that night. No one was there except for the usual scores of doves flying about.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

On Monday afternoon Managing Editor Patricia Vásquez and I changed gears and filmed seven questions The WIP wants answered by the next President of The United States. Reporting to you from behind a camera is something I will certainly have to get used to, but nonetheless these powerful questions coming from Bahrain, Malawi, Argentina, Germany, Zimbabwe and the USA get to the heart of the US policies that matter most to the international community.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

Five long years after the 2003 invasion of Iraq the chatter coming from the White House reads like déjà vu. Despite the calls from world leaders and weapons experts to “stop and think,” the White House appears stubborn and determined to rush into another ill-conceived, poorly executed, and unsupported pre-emptive strike. In 2003 there were very few women’s perspectives in the debate that ultimately led to the war. The foreign policy experts, the politicians, and the journalists on television and in print during the critical period before the invasion were overwhelmingly male. The lack of women’s voices parallel a lack of perspective. That lack of perspective is similarly noticeable today as the White House drums up support for another war.

• Global demands to pursue diplomacy with Iran over nuclear development fall on the deaf ears of the Bush administration. Photograph by
Nic Persinger. •

by Patricia Vásquez
Managing Editor, The WIP
USA

Think about it. The headlines scream it out. Lives of unspeakable pain and loss. And usually it is women, the caretakers of children and a vulnerable population by themselves, bear the vast brunt of the suffering. But even worse is that a pattern of growing violence, more and more barbaric, is being directed at women at a level never seen before in the annals of human history.

Genocide. Ethnic Cleansing. War. Terrorism. Torture. Human rights abuses. Repressive military governments. Repressive religious fundamentalist governments. Rape as a tool of war. Child soldiers. AIDS. Ebola. Global warming. Epic drought. Famine.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

The issue of deforestation hasn’t been on my radar for some years. It is one of the problems on our planet that I’d assumed would be so obvious that surely “they” would have discovered something more sustainable than chopping down our last remaining virgin forests for profit!

Yet, earlier this month, while driving up the Oregon coast for the first time, to my horror, I saw that the situation appears to be even worse than the last time I checked. Fresh scars mar hillsides; small, random patches of trees are left standing with no apparent logic dictating what has been cut and what left behind. Virgin forest has been shamelessly clear-cut all the way from the edge of the highway, up and over what were once green, pristine mountainsides.

In this critical period of climate change, healthy forests play a crucial role. They abate global warming by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide. Thriving forests also regulate the water cycle and stabilize soils. What look more like Christmas tree farms have replaced some of the old forest land. These young trees will take decades of growth to absorb and store the same amount of carbon their old growth ancestors once did. When wilderness is destroyed, the carbon it stored is either burned or oxidized. The threat of deforestation is even greater today than it was twenty years ago. With all the discussion surrounding biofuels, one topic embarrassingly absent is “where will all the land needed to produce biofuels come from”?

by Louise Belfrage
News Editor, The WIP
Argentina/Sweden

Having spent the summer months in Europe, away from my home in busy, wintry Buenos Aires, many observations have become permanent tenants in my mind. One of the issues that I am most consumed by is how much personal interest in or caring about critical international issues differs from continent to continent. Personally, I find myself hungrily reading everything written on the four yearlong conflict in Sudan and the horrific, unabated genocide in Darfur.

• A young African man at NYU's
"One Week for Darfur"
candlelight vigil held in March.
Photograph by Sarah VanTassel. •

I encountered similar levels of disinterest in France and in Italy. The French seem to be either very upset or very thrilled about their new Le President de la Republique, as many call Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy. Italians on the other hand seem most concerned about the difficulties switching to the European currency is causing them. They complain loudly about how they no longer can afford the month-long vacations they used to be able to enjoy. “Now only Americans come to spend their cash,” sighed the owner of my bed and breakfast inn in Bellagio, by Lake Como in northern Italy.

by Patricia Vásquez
Managing Editor, The WIP
USA

• Haleh Esfandiari. Photograph courtesy of the WWICS •

The outlook was grim. That day, Sharon McCarter, communications director of the Woodrow Wilson Center declared, “We are extremely dismayed about Haleh’s situation, and our concerns about her health and mental well-being have only increased as weeks of captivity have stretched into months. A renowned scholar and a tireless advocate for greater dialogue between Iran and the United States, Haleh has committed no crimes.”

by Louise Belfrage
News Editor, The WIP
Sweden

Yesterday, August 8th, was an auspicious date, symbolically, for China – it was one year to the day before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Unfortunately, a well known and extremely effective activist and frequent spokesperson for the Tibetan independence movement, Lhadon Tethong, the Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet International, was detained by the Chinese authorities on undetermined charges. She had been in China for only six days while covering the human rights situation at the one-year run-up to the Olympic Games.

• Lhadon Tethong, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet, gives a speech in New York City on March 10th, 2007. Photo courtesy of Students for a Free Tibet. •

By the third day of her stay, her blog had become increasingly popular, especially in Tibet, where many saw her visit to China as courageous and inspiring: she was putting her own freedom at risk for the cause of Tibet. Before being detained, Ms. Tethong had said, “The Olympics is an opportunity to push China for change, and it’s our responsibility to take the mask off the face of the Beijing regime.”

At first, the Chinese authorities had ordered only a few security officers to follow Tethong, but by the 5th day there were up to 30 plain clothes “minders” (aka plain clothes security agents) as well as vehicles following her every step.

Tethong had reported on the action that took place on the morning of August 8th at the Great Wall: the hanging of a “Free Tibet” banner by six international activists. She began her coverage of the arrests by saying, “I am at a loss for words. This morning, six amazing people of conscience risked their lives to defend the Tibetan people.” These six -- three Americans, two Canadians and one British citizen -- were detained after two hours, on charges that they threatened national security. The whereabouts of the six activists are still unknown.

by Patricia Vásquez and Katharine Daniels
The WIP

On August 7, 2007, The WIP, in its Byline Portal, linked to an outstanding and shocking article, “The Black Sites: A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program” by Jane Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker. Mayer conducted a “major investigative report” amassing interview after interview with C.I.A. analysts and interrogators, with professors, journalists, and Washington insiders. Despite the Bush Administration’s repeated declarations that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed divulged information of tremendous value during his detention, she concludes that the CIA and the US government have been lying both about many of their “successes” in uncovering terrorist networks and crimes, and have been lying to hide the degree to which they have tortured detainees. What a shock.

It’s hard to say which are the most surprising revelations in Mayer’s report. Several of the experts she cites have serious doubts as to whether the notorious captured terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed actually is guilty of killing murdered American journalist Daniel Pearl -- even though Condoleezza Rice herself told Mariane Pearl in 2003 that Mohammed had confessed not only to masterminding that crime, but to the actual beheading of her husband.

Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

This past weekend I attended the third annual BlogHer conference in Chicago, Illinois. Participants networked, socialized, and attended presentations by successful female bloggers from all online spheres of life. This year’s event, called “A World of Difference,” is precisely what I found.

• Elisa Camahort, Lisa Stone and Jory Des Jardins, founders of Blogher at this year's conference. Photograph by Josh Hallet •

BlogHer was developed in 2005 “to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community, and economic empowerment.” The founders call it a “do-ocracy” that gives women online the opportunity “to help ourselves and work together to voice and achieve our individual goals.” It is no surprise that Blogher’s founders, Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort, and Jory Des Jardins are three successful internet pioneers who had the chutzpah to follow an intuitive hunch, and they have developed something great and important.

by Patricia Vásquez
Managing Editor, The WIP
USA

• Haleh Esfandiari. Photograph courtesy of the WWICS •

The would-be documentary claims it demonstrates the “confessions” of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, Director of the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program and her fellow Iranian-American, New York-based social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh. The program featured blurry footage of revolutions in progress in Eastern Europe; only snatches of the two prisoners’ voices could be heard.

by Patricia Vásquez
Managing Editor, The WIP
USA

An incredible story broke worldwide on Tuesday, July 17, 2007:

• Haleh Esfandiari. Photograph courtesy of the WWICS •

Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh both spoke in Farsi and appeared to be in homes or offices. Esfandiari was sitting, wearing typical Islamic clothing - a black headscarf that completely covered her hair, and what appeared to be the traditional black cloak called a chador.

Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

On the 29th of June The WIP posted a link to Anti-Americanism Hits New Record in Turkey from Today’s Zaman, an online Turkish newspaper. Apparently Turks now dislike the United States more than any other country in the world. A report from The Pew Global Attitudes Project documented that today only 2 percent of Turkish respondents had a favorable opinion of US President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, despite the fact that only five years ago 52 percent were supporters of The United States. This is in Turkey, a US ally and a member of NATO!

by Marianne Taflinger
Intern, The WIP
USA

• A woman and her children on the banks of Lake Atitlán in the highlands of Guatemala. Photograph courtesy of Bruno Girin •

So how do you change your own life and the lives in your community? Enter TechnoServe, a nonprofit dedicated to creating business solutions to rural poverty. TechnoServe‘s answer is to give hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs a hand up. It helps them develop businesses that will lift their entire community out of poverty. But how do you find, encourage and develop such entrepreneurial talents? In 2005, TechnoServe sponsored Idea Tu Empresa, a national business competition supported by the Guatemalan government and USAID, the official development arm of the United States.

By Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

On Monday we celebrated Memorial Day, a federal holiday commemorating soldiers who have died at war and a tradition in our country since the Civil War. Most Americans have the day off and spend it with their families at picnics or sporting events. Some visit cemeteries or memorials and flags around the nation are commonly flown at half-staff from dawn until noon.

• Photograph by Sarah McGowan •

by Sarah McGowan
Content/Photo Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Denise and Esteban, both in their early 50’s, moved into my apartment building eight months ago. Our first encounter occurred in the hallway while I precariously lumbered up the 53 stairs leading to my apartment on crutches, my leg in a cast. Their moving boxes dominated our shared landing and while at first I flushed with frustration, both were so instantly compassionate, offering their assistance and clearing out of the way, that I immediately forgave the transgression.

When they invited me into their apartment months later, I was enthralled by the beauty of their home and the artifacts they had collected on their many travels.

Photograph by Sarah McGowan

Denise and Esteban had relocated from another large city, where both had worked for over a decade with the homeless population on Skid Row, Denise as a psychiatric nurse and Esteban as an advocate. When referring to his 17 years on the Row, Esteban demurred, “It’s not that long, really.” An interlude in Mexico had found the couple contented personally, but the reality of a paycheck had brought them back to California and their respective professions.

by Marianne Taflinger
USA

When Iqbal Quadir’s computer crashed one day, he flashed back to his time in Bangladesh when he went out walking to find a pharmacist, only to find the pharmacist out walking to find medicine. In that flash, he realized that “connectivity is productivity,”—if you cannot connect, you cannot be productive, no matter where you are, or what your circumstances might be.

Quadir and his partners built this business in Bangladesh where the per capita GDP is $415, or the equivalent of $1,197 dollars a year in purchasing power. 83% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, and electricity is virtually nonexistent outside of the capital city. In 2005, the Bangladesh government was tied for last place with Chad in central Africa on international corruption. You could say it’s “top of the list” on perception of corruption when viewed by the foreign business community.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Gandhi

The earth was designed to sustain every generation’s needs, not to be plundered in an attempt to meet one generation’s wants. – Matthew Sleeth

What do you get when you cross the chief of medical staff at a large New England hospital with an evangelical Christian? In the case of Dr. Matthew Sleeth, you find an environmental crusader with both the scientific understanding of how the environment impacts our health, and the spiritual understanding of our moral obligation to reverse the destruction humans inflict on this planet. This combination may just save us and succeed where both environmentalists and politicians have failed.

In Serve God Save The Planet, Matthew Sleeth defines the moral challenge of protecting the environment for future generations. As an emergency room physician, Sleeth saw first hand troublesome rising trends in illness. His patients were sicker than ever from cancer, asthma, and other chronic diseases.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

* The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, the new book from Dr. Riane Eisler, has allowed us at The WIP to take our mission to a new depth that I personally was not at before. I know that it will make the same impact on many other readers.

So to celebrate the release of Dr. Eisler's The Real Wealth of Nations, The WIP is proud to repost an editorial I wrote after I had the honor of interviewing her. This editorial first appeared on The WIP on March 31, 2007.

I read a book about Economics—something I don’t do very often. Actually, I think this was the first book I’ve ever read in my life about economics. It’s by Dr. Riane Eisler, The Real Wealth of Nations. It was accessible and legible, and interesting, and even inspiring. It was historical, thought provoking, and if what she proposes is true, life changing.

It was around the third chapter that I had eased into my couch and her statistics started to resonate with me—stats like the fair wage for a typical stay-at-home parent would be $134, 471 per year, or a 1995 United Nations report that calculated the annual unpaid work by women at 11 trillion dollars.

by Marianne Taflinger
Intern, The WIP
- USA -

• Photograph by Chad Johnson •

As a child, I was a blond, blue-eyed little girl in a small Southern Indiana town where my father was the itinerant principal of both the elementary school and the middle school. As the principal's child, I was far more visible than I’d ever wanted to be, with over 100 kids informing when “Mr. Taflinger is in the building,” or “Your dad is here,” all day long. On my first day of school, it was my photo that appeared in the newspaper, accepting a textbook from my mother, and it was more likely my father's status of principal, rather than my status as a blond that caused me to be the one chosen over any of the other children in my class.

by Katharine Daniels
Founder and Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

• The WIP's editors and women writers have a lot to celebrate as we look back on 2007. •

A colleague of mine in radio news congratulated us this week, saying that The WIP has over delivered on our promise to create quality international news reports from the unique perspectives of women. In our first two weeks, we’ve demonstrated that local stories from around the world are both thought provoking and relevant. We’ve published 34 stories from women across the globe. Each piece is a journey into the life of someone neither one of us knew before—writers like Viktorija Plavcak, who laments the national heritage and identity lost in Slovenia with the adoption of the Euro. Or Glory Mushinge, in Zambia, who denounces the substandard goods and services that have flooded the Zambian market through increased Chinese investment in her economy. In Mumbai, we met Lara Vogel and her discoveries in a society where doctors, out of circumstance, remain loving caregivers and are forced to practice medicine versus the over-reliance on science and machinery we’ve grown accustomed to in the west. In education, Janelle Weiner exposes what is lost in the culture of standardized testing—genuine and meaningful learning experience.

by Louise Belfrage
News Editor, The WIP
- Argentina -

Dec. 26 - As we approach the new year, we thought it appropriate to revisit our editors' thoughts as we prepared to launch The WIP in March 2007. - Ed.

• Tango in Bueno Aires, Argentina. Photograph by Zabara Alexander. •

I had just moved from Stockholm to Buenos Aires, intending to set up a life in one of the world’s most exciting cities. I was also looking for a way to start my own business, not knowing the least of where to start. At this transitory stage, it so happened that my best friend, Nina, had gotten me in touch with Katharine Daniels. Nothing surprises me anymore—life works its magic and all one has to do is follow along with it. Without hesitation.

Kate asked me if I’d be interested to work on a brave new project, The WIP, and edit international news written by women—for all readers. What an astonishing woman, I thought. She’s on to something fundamental.

by Sarah McGowan
Content/Photo Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Dec. 27 - As we approach the new year, we thought it appropriate to revisit our editors' thoughts as we prepared to launch in March 2007. - Ed.

I don’t believe in accidents; I think that everything happens for a reason. So when Kate told me about a project she had brewing called, The WIP, I felt the familiar twinge of serendipity. The hair on the back of my neck even stood on end.

I had just moved to Los Angeles, leaving behind a very fulfilling career teaching social justice to thousands of San Diego county teenagers. With more than a little wistfulness, I set out in search of an outlet for my creativity, but specifically to do some writing. When Kate began describing The WIP, I immediately registered that this was an amazing opportunity to blend two interests that had previously competed for my exclusive devotion. I knew then that I was in the right place at the right time and I volunteered without hesitation.

by Katharine Daniels
Founder and Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

Today is not only a celebration of International Women’s Day, but for us it is also a celebration of a great year of discovery, insight, growth, and development.

The WIP is official today. Our first day online.

International Women's Day was developed in response to the centuries-old struggle women faced to participate in society on equal footing with men. Similarly, The WIP was created to balance the under-representation of women in media and is a platform for women writers to expand their base and reach the general public. The WIP is a place for women writers to tackle the same broad political and social issues as our male counterparts. Our mission is to provide quality news from the unique perspectives of women, accessible worldwide and free to our readers.