 28 Feb 07 - Bill Quigley, STWR The Right to Return Eighteen Months after Katrina Each morning, Debra South Jones drives 120 miles into New Orleans to cook and serve over 300 hot free meals each day to people in New Orleans East, where she lived until Katrina took her home. Ms. Jones and several volunteers also distribute groceries to 18,000 families a month through their group, Just the Right Attitude. Who comes for food? "Most of the people are working on their own houses because they can't afford contractors," Ms. Jones said. "They are living in their gutted-out houses with no electricity."
Why do thousands of people need food and why are people living in gutted-out houses with no electricity? Look at New Orleans eighteen months after Katrina and you will realize why it is so difficult for people to exercise the human right to return to their homes.
Half the homes in New Orleans still do not have electricity. Eighteen months after Katrina, a third of a million people in the New Orleans metro area have not returned.
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24th Feb 07 - Tony Pugh, McClatchy Newspapers The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen. A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year. The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas. |
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15 Feb 07 - Jan Morris, The Guardian/UK
The American swagger has become bombast, the cocky GI a bully. But with luck the pendulum may be ready to swing back. |
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15th Feb 07 - Heather Wokusch, CommonDreams.
Factors linked with mental illness (including poverty, homelessness, violence and social uncertainty) have run rampant during the Bush years while psychiatric treatment options have disappeared.
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23rd Jan 07 - Jime Lobe, IPS Despite two years of a concentrated effort by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her public diplomacy major - doma Karen Hughes to boost Washington's global image, more people around the world have an unfavourable opinion of U.S. policies than at any time in recent memory, according to a new BBC poll released here Monday. |
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 17th Jan 07 - Dennis J. Kucinich, Political Affairs Magazine
Dennis J. Kucinich is a Democratic Candidate for President of the United States. Below is a transcript of a speech he made at the 10th Annual Wall Street Project Conference, Sheraton New York & Towers, Monday, January 8, 2007
We are losing our nation to a philosophy of war and destruction. It is time for policies of peace and construction. It is time for the philosophy of peace, nonviolence and economic justice. This was the philosophy of Dr. King, Gandhi, Jesus, Fredrick Douglas, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Sojourner Truth, Cesar Chavez, and Jesse Jackson.
We are all united with the philosophy which birthed the New Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, the dreams of social and economic justice which could be called forth by those who were ready to stand up, to speak out, to march, to demand, to testify about the good news:
The world is interconnected. The world is interdependent. We are not just our brother and sisters keeper, on a deeper spiritual level we are our brothers and sisters. This is the meaning of the Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is the meaning of Love Thy neighbor as thy self. This is why policies of unilateralism, first strike, and preemption are dead ends. This is why nuclear proliferation is a threat to every person on the planet. This is why the very idea that war should be an instrument of policy needs to be challenge. War is not inevitable. Peace is inevitable if we are prepared to work for it.
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With foreign investors owning 47% of all marketable US Treasury bonds in 2006 compared to 33% in 2001 and foreign holdings of US corporate debt up to 30%, James Petras provides a detailed examination of the financial ruling classes and asks 'who really owns America?'.
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