Counterterrorism Mamas

Edwards Poverty Campaign Met with Media Blackout

Peter Dreier, HuffPost

On Tuesday, the day before he announced his support for Barack Obama, former Senator John Edwards launched a campaign to cut the nation's poverty rate in half in the next ten years. You can be excused if you hadn't heard about it. Only one major daily newspaper -- the Philadelphia Inquirer -- covered the event, which took place at a Baptist church in North Philadelphia. (Larry King on CNN, Matt Lauer on the "Today Show" on NBC-TV, and Michele Norris on NPR interviewed Edwards about the topic in recent days, but they were more interested in whether he was going to endorse Obama or Clinton).

On Wednesday, of course, Edwards' presidential endorsement lead the nightly news, rocketed through the blogosphere, and landed on the front pages Thursday morning. Once again, "horse race" journalism prevailed over policy ideas aimed at addressing serious problems.

Edwards' endorsement of Obama, which took place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is certainly major news. But the complete failure of the media to cover Edwards' anti-poverty event tells us a great deal about what the journalistic establishment considers important.

When Obama and Hillary Clinton made their pilgrimages to Edwards' home in North Carolina in February to solicit his endorsement, he told them he wanted to see their campaigns pay more attention to poverty. At the Philadelphia event, Edwards -- along with representatives of the community organizing group ACORN, the Center for American Progress, Coalition on Human Needs, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights -- launched what they called the Half in Ten campaign. Edwards said he wanted the candidates to commit themselves to the goal of reducing poverty in half within ten years. (At the endorsement event the following day, Obama embraced the Edwards proposal.)

In 2006, 36.5 million Americans -- 12.3 percent of the population -- lived on incomes below the official poverty line -- about $20,400 for a family of four. Few media stories point out that among the world's affluent nations (primarily Canada, Japan, Australia, and the countries of Western Europe), the U.S. has the highest poverty rate (more than twice that of many European countries) and by far the widest gap between the rich and poor.

The number of Americans in poverty has increased by almost 5 million since George Bush took office. And if the poverty threshold was raised by 25 percent -- to $25,555 for a family of four -- which many economists think is a more realistic figure, the number of Americans in poverty would increase to almost 50 million, about 17 percent of the population.

More than a third of America's poor are children under 18. A growing number of the poor are working in low-wage jobs. A declining proportion of those jobs provide health insurance.

After his defeat as John Kerry's running mate in the 2004 election, Edwards created a center on poverty and work at the University of North Carolina. He began criss-crossing the country speaking at union rallies, joining picket lines and campaigns to raise the minimum wage and visiting homeless shelters, low-income housing developments and emergency food banks -- hardly the typical path to the White House.

When he announced his campaign for president, he did so in an impoverished area of New Orleans, a neighborhood hard hit by Hurricane Katrina. During his presidential campaign, which ended nearly four months ago, he tried to shine a spotlight on poverty. As one of the leading candidates for his party's nomination, Edwards was able in July to get reporters to follow him on a three-day, eight-state, 1,800-mile poverty tour that included stops in New Orleans, Kentucky, Mississippi, Cleveland and elsewhere.

Many of the stories that came out of that tour focused on the human side of poverty, and on the candidate's policy ideas. But others reflected journalistic cynicism, viewing Edwards' anti-poverty crusade as simply a political gambit to grab attention. They failed to mention that none of the eight states on Edwards' poverty tour were among the key early primary states that would make or break his bid for the White House. Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman wrote that Edwards' calls to reduce poverty "sound like more empty promises from a politician."

No longer a politician, Edwards this week called poverty "a moral cause facing every single one of us" in the United States. "What we do for each other says something about who we are," Edwards said, speaking at the Thankful Baptist Church. "It says something about our character."

The Half in Ten campaign will focus on policy solutions identified in the Center for American Progress' poverty task force report (pdf) issued last year. These include expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit; raising both state and federal minimum wages; increasing the number of low-income families receiving child care assistance; increasing eligibility for unemployment insurance; and preventing predatory lending practices and preserving home ownership.

The last time the U.S. committed itself to dramatically tackling poverty was during the early 1960s.

At the time, progressives like Rev. Martin Luther King and United Auto Workers union president Walter Reuther advised Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to champion a bold federal program for full employment that would include government-funded public works and the conversion of the nation's defense industry to production for civilian needs. This, they argued, would dramatically address the nation's poverty population, create job opportunities for the poor and the near-poor (including blacks living in America's ghettos), and rebuild the nation's troubled cities without being as politically divisive as a federal program identified primarily as serving poor blacks. We often forget that the theme of the 1963 March on Washington-- at which King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech and which the UAW backed with both money and marchers-- was "jobs and justice."

Johnson's announcement of an ''unconditional war on poverty'' in his 1964 State of the Union Address was, in reality, a patchwork of small initiatives that did not address the nation's basic inequalities. Testifying before Congress in April 1964, Reuther said that ''while [the proposals] are good, [they] are not adequate, nor will they be successful in achieving their purposes, except as we begin to look at the broader problems [of the American economy].'' He added that ''poverty is a reflection of our failure to achieve a more rational, more responsible, more equitable distribution of the abundance that is within our grasp.''

Despite these valid criticisms, the programs Johnson and Congress put in place in the 1960s bore fruit. Indeed, the nation's War on Poverty, which President Johnson launched in 1964, was making steady progress until it was detoured by the other war-- in Vietnam. In 1960, when Kennedy was elected, 22 percent of Americans lived below the official poverty line. By 1968, that number had dropped dramatically, to 12.8 percent-- a result of a combination of general economic prosperity and anti-poverty policies like raising the minimum wage, creating public works jobs, providing job training programs, raising Social Security benefits, and launching Medicare and Medicaid. By 1973, the nation's poverty rate had fallen to 11.1 percent, an all-time low.

Since then, poverty has increased, but now the dilemma of poverty is linked to the broader problem of widening inequality and declining living standards for the middle class. In contrast to the 1960s and early 1970s, when the rich, middle class and poor all shared in the nation's prosperity, America today has the biggest concentration of income and wealth since 1928. Headlines about outrageous compensation packages for corporate CEOs have focused attention on the concentration of wealth at the top. The share of income going to the richest 1 percent of families has doubled since 1980, while their federal tax burden has fallen by a third. Meanwhile, a growing number of working families are now in debt, while the number facing foreclosure has spiraled. American workers face declining job security and retirement security. College tuition is increasingly out of reach, while government aid has shrunk. The cost of housing, food, gas, health care, and other necessities is rising faster than incomes. Between 2000 and 2007, median weekly earnings increased by 0.6 percent, while the cost of a typical home grew by 72.2 percent.

Starting in the 1970s, an effective business-sponsored rightwing attack on "big government" social spending, and efforts to stereotype the poor as lazy welfare cheats, undermined support for policies to help lift people out of poverty. Americans are now tired of Bush's noblesse oblige prescriptions for addressing poverty -- like encouraging people to donate to charity and volunteer at homeless shelters and soup kitchens. They want a new social compact that requires people to work, corporations to act responsibly, and government to protect people during tough times with a stronger safety net.

Americans are more receptive than they've been in decades to a new effort to address the widening economic divide, including poverty, according a recent report, Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007, from the reputable Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The study found that 69 percent of Americans-- including 58 percent of Republicans-- now believe that "government should care for those who can't care for themselves". Also, 69 percent of Americans -- including 83 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of independents, and 47 percent of Republicans-believe that the government "should provide food and shelter for all." According to the Pew report, more than half of Americans-- including 68 percent of Democrats, 57 percent of independents, and 34 percent of Republicans-- believe that "government should help the needy even if it means greater debt." These are all significantly higher figures than during the mid-1990s.

Polls also show that support for labor unions has reached its highest level in more than three decades. Since welfare reform was enacted in 1996, Americans have viewed poverty primarily through the prism of working conditions. A few years ago, surveys revealed that a vast majority of Americans wanted to raise the federal minimum wage, which had been stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1997. After they won a majority in Congress in 2006, the Democrats hiked the federal minimum wage to $7.25, still below the poverty line, but an improvement.

The popularity of Barbara Ehrenreich's book about the working poor, Nickle and Dimed, and TV shows like The Wire, as well as the growing challenges to Wal-Mart for its low-wage policies, and the remarkable growth of the "living wage" movement (about 200 cities have now adopted such laws) reflect an upsurge of concern that America is in the midst of another Gilded Age-- a concern bubbling up from the grassroots, and just now surfacing in our national political life. But most of the media are entirely out of touch with these sentiments and with a burgeoning activist movement for reform.

Until Obama gets elected -- and perhaps appoints Edwards as his poverty czar-- it appears that the new grassroots war on poverty won't be televised.

Peter Dreier is professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles and coauthor of Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century and The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City.

Shameless Thugs Bomb Largest Slum in World

PEPE ESCOBAR, THE REAL NEWS ANALYST: It’s been five years since George W. Bush proclaimed Mission Accomplished in Iraq. Now take a very good look at these images. Yes, they are disturbing. You won’t see them on Western TV networks. And no, there’s not a hint of mission accomplished about them. These are innocent civilians-– poor Shi’ite Arabs living in the three million-strong Sadr City in Baghdad, one of the largest slums in the world. As The Real News has reported Sadr City is being walled in–- transformed into a gulag, and pounded relentlessly by US air strikes. The Pentagon-–and the Iraqi government–-say they are “protecting the Green Zone” by attacking Sadr City.
As if that traumatic scene of the helicopter leaving the roof of the US embassy in Saigon in 1975 was rattling too many military minds. 1745 Iraqi civilians were killed in April-– against 159 policemen and 104 soldiers. Over 400 people were killed in Sadr City alone. Only 10% were guerrillas. This carnage is a direct consequence of Dick Cheney’s recent tour of the Middle East, Iraq included. This carnage is a direct consequence of Gen. David Petraeus’ surge. These are victims of a vicious political battle between the al-Maliki government in Baghdad, supported by the al-Hakim family, and the US, against Muqtada al-Sadr, who they fear will win the next elections in October-–because, of course, he is immensely popular. And in the big picture, these deaths are a graphic example of how the sophisticated Pentagon machine plans to deal with “problematic” urban slums in the future. We wall them, we isolate them, and we bomb the hell out of them. Who cares about collateral damage? It may be very harsh to say, but that's how it is.

Hillary Threatens Iran

Iran’s response to Senator Clinton’s remarks in which she issued a severe warning to Iran in the event that it attacked Israel came out of Tehran today. Last month the Democratic presidential hopeful said:

SOUNDBITE: Hillary Clinton

"Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be? And I want the Iranians to know, that if I'm the President, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that, because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.

On Friday Iranian cleric, and Assembly of Experts Leader, Ahmed Khatami responded to Senator Clintons’ remarks.

4. SOUNDBITE: (Farsi) Ahmed Khatami, Member of Experts Assembly and leader of Friday prayers:

"A disreputable American (presidential) candidate has said that if Iran attacks Israel, she will obliterate Iran if she is the president. I tell the American people, it is a shame for them that their presidents are servants of Israel without any willpower."

"What they are saying recently is just psychological war. However, if the crazy people in Washington or Tel Aviv take any military action, the Iranian nation will hit them with such a slap that they will not be able to get on their feet again."

We are observing the siege of Shiite Sadr City in Iraq. It seems Americans would like to make what happened in Gaza happen in Sadr City too. We can only conclude that America is fighting Islam."

Iraqi lawmakers call for end to Sadr City siege

Amidst clashes that kill five, multi-partisan group of lawmakers urges US to stand down in Sadr City

Monday April 28th, 2008

Sporadic clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood killed at least five people on Sunday. As the fighting raged, a group of 40 lawmakers gathered in the war-torn neighborhood to announce they are willing to work with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and urged the US and Iraqi military to pull out of the area.

Transcript:

VOICE OF ZAA NKWETA: Sporadic clashes continued on Sunday in Baghdad. Police said that five people died and 14 were wounded in a clash between militiamen and Iraqi and US forces in the southern suburb of ["ma-LEEF"]. The US military denied that its forces had been engaged there. Associated Press television news footage from the scene showed a minibus riddled with bullets, and a pool of blood in another minibus that was reportedly carrying children. Also on Sunday, a delegation of about 40 lawmakers from various Sunni, Kurd, Turkomen, and Shiite parliamentary parties visited Sadr City and urged the government to end the military campaign there.

MOSTAFA AL-HITI, DIALOGUE FRONT PARTY MEMBER (SUBTITLED TRANSLATION): We appeal to the government to lift the siege imposed on the city. And we also call upon the military troops to pull out of government offices and buildings. We are ready to work with the Sadr bloc to bring any wanted people to justice, as we believe that the weapons are only in hands of government.

NKWETA: As the delegation met, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was meeting with the Sunni Vice President, Tariq al-Hashimi, to discuss reintegrating Sunni political parties into a Shiite-dominated government.

Source: The Real News

Gr33ndata, Global Voices

Egyptian blogger Zeinobia attacks Pope Shenouda III in one of her recent posts here, for his Easter speech this year.

Still I feel so sad and angry from what the Pope Shounda said and did this Easter from praying for Mubarak to have longer life !! and warning his people from listening to those vandals over the Internet who will be sent to hell !!??

She continues:

For the Muslims this is something usual ,I know from long time that the speeches of the Emam in the Mosque in our neighbourhood are approved by the security , so I do not care much for what they said , not to mention that the religious men in Islam do not have this holy status of the religious men in Christianity.
But for someone like Pope Shounda in his position comes and says these nonsense about those facebookers who will be roasted in hell , then we need a stand here.

She ends her post with:

There is no excuse for the Pope or the for Sheikh of Al-Azhar in fact I will dare and say that they should fear the Lord not the President

Cyberactivism, blogging and the use of Facebook has recently come under the scrutiny of Egyptian officials, following claims that a nation-wide strike on April 6, which culminated with the Mahalla workers revolt. Several bloggers as well as the founder of a Facebook group named April 6 were among hundreds of activists, politicians and passer-bys detained by the authorities on the day and the days which followed. That said, the fact remains that it wasn't the Facebook group which has led to the strike and workers calling for higher wages and better salaries to meet increasing living expenses.

Michelle Malkin

The story of Afghanistan: One step forward, one hundred steps back. The re-Talibanization of the country continues apace. If you are saying to yourselves, “What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks,” well, this is what happens when you allow the embedding of sharia law into a “democratic” constitution: Afghanistan’s lower house of Parliament passed a resolution Monday seeking to bar television programs from showing dancing and other practices deemed un-Islamic.

DARK DAYS FOR WOMEN

RIGHTS-IRAN: Dark Days for Women
By Omid Memarian*

BERKELEY, United States, Jul 9 (IPS) - Judicial authorities in Iran have sentenced two women activists who participated in a peaceful protest against discriminatory laws in June 2006 to more than 30 months in jail and ten lashes.

The harsh sentences come amid the recent arrests of more than a dozen student activists, the government closure of the popular Hammihan newspaper, and pressure on Iran's Labour News Agency to stop its activities, in another sweeping crackdown on the Islamic Republic's civil society.

Delaram Ali, who is a member of the "One Million Signatures for Equality Campaign", was sentenced to 34 months in prison plus ten lashes on Jul. 1. A day later, Alieh Eghdamdoust, another women activist, received a sentence of 40 months and 20 lashes.

Their advocacy campaign was launched to change the discriminatory laws against women in Iran's constitution.

"There is no precedent for such ruthless sentences against women. The punishments do not fit the alleged crimes," Nasrin Sotoodeh, Delaram's lawyer, told IPS by telephone from Tehran.

"These ladies are facing these sentences because of participation in a peaceful gathering, which is basically permitted by Iran's constitution. Article 27 states that people have the right to peacefully gather unless they carry guns or violate Islamic laws. The government must provide proof that these women have violated the law."

Some of the main grievances of the campaign are equal inheritance rights (women currently receive half of what men do), the elimination of polygamy and fair custody rights. "In all the women's protests to date, they peacefully convened to change such laws," added Sotoodeh, who represents many women rights activists in Iran.

The pressure on women activists increased dramatically when government security agents and police violently put an end to a peaceful protest in Tehran in June 2006. Dozens of participants were arrested and released afterwards on bail.

The second round of confrontation occurred when security agents arrested more than 30 women who had gathered in front of Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Court to support five women on trial inside the courthouse on Mar. 4, 2007 for participating in the protest rally.

Four of the women in that trial ended up being sentenced to one to three years in prison. They have filed an appeal.

"Delaram Ali's arm was hurt and had to be put in a cast for two months, when she was attacked by female police officers. We filed a lawsuit against the police. It has been a year now, and although we understand the case investigator has asked the police to attend a briefing session to provide information about the incident, they have not honoured this request," Sotoodeh said.

"The last update is that the case investigator has declared that if a [police] representative does not appear before the court, the court will be forced to issue a verdict in their absence. While these women's complaints about their beatings [by the police] have not been processed, one by one they have received heavy sentences, and are exposed to further violence," she said.

The campaign against discriminatory laws in Iran has caught Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's attention, indicating that the women's voices are reaching high-ranking ayatollahs.

"In our country... some activist women, and some men, have been trying to play around with Islamic rule in order to match international conventions relating to women," Khamenei said during a speech last Thursday to commemorate National Women's Day according to his official website and the state-run television. "This is wrong."

However, he emphasised that "some of the women issues which exist in religious jurisprudence are not the final word and it is possible to make new interpretations through research by a skillful jurist." The supreme leader has absolute power over all state matters.

Despite all their achievements since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women still endure tight restrictions under the constitution, such as requiring a male guardian's permission to work or travel abroad. Women are not allowed to become judges or run for president, and a man's court testimony is considered twice as valid as a woman's.

Fariba Davoodi Mohajer, another activist in the women's movement, who was sentenced to five years in prison last May but is currently free on bail pending appeal, believes that women's quest for equality raises critical questions about the validity of a constitution based on Sharia, or Islamic Law.

"The hardliners want to control the women's movement at the domestic and international levels. In many of these cases, harsh sentences, repeated summons or interrogations, and legal and illegal threats are designed to stop the women's movement," Davoodi told IPS. "These sentences by the hardliners are intended to intimidate civil society and prevent the growth of independent social movements."

"In recent years, the women's movement has acted as a catalyst to refuel student and labour movements which had been silenced. The latest crackdown against women is an effort to pacify the civil society and intimidate other activists such as students, labour leaders, journalists and activists."

In an interview with IPS, Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, editor of Farzaneh, a quarterly publication dedicated to women's issues, and director of the NGO Training Centre in Tehran, said that "increased police brutality over the past few months, paired with harsh sentences, clearly convey the message that public gatherings and protests will no longer be tolerated."

Abbasogholizadeh, who was one of the 33 women imprisoned last March, believes that the hardliners' confrontations with activists reflect their fear that such demands for change are a strategy to overthrow the Islamic regime.

"A faction of the hardliners identifies our peaceful activities as tactics for a so-called 'soft overthrow' of the regime. This paranoia has inflicted additional pressure on civil society. They do not realise that women's demand are basic necessities and impossible to ignore," she said. "Compared to two years ago, all public resources have been removed from civil society activists, especially women, and have been handed to religious propaganda and charity organisations."

"The hardliners have a plan for extensive suppression, beginning with pressuring independent papers. Therefore, it is safe to say that the prison sentences for those women must be viewed within the larger picture: authorities who believe in suppression of civil society have gained momentum over the more moderate factions who do think that the Islamic government should control or halt these types of activities."

*Omid Memarian is an Iranian journalist and civil society activist. He has won several awards, including Human Rights Watch's highest honour in 2005, the Human Rights Defender Award.

(END/2007)

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