Holly MacGibbon graduated from NYU's theater program with $120,000 in debt, which has obviously prevented her from taking any entry-level theater jobs. "Without $600 a month in loan payments, I could take a lower-paying theater job instead of working outside my field. Summer theater jobs, where most young performers start out, pay $200 to $300 a week, which is just not enough when you have $600 in loan payments."

And Julia Stubben's post-graduate life has been entirely governed by her student debt. "Being in debt has greatly affected my financial decisions. I do not enjoy my job, and it is not the career I would have chosen for myself, and in order to take the job I had to move three hours away from my boyfriend, family, and friends. Pretty much, I live in seclusion in a relatively boring rural area and hate this stage of my life. The only reason I am in this situation is because of the job -- which is paying off my loans."

According to Toby Chaudhuri, communications director at the progressive research group Campaign for America's Future, continuing to charge exorbitantly for education will have grave results. "If you want to create an America that works for everybody, you have to give every child the right to education," he said. "Families are getting hit with interest rates and across the country they are pinching pennies to afford to send their kids to college."

What's behind the high cost of education

Student debt is climbing for three reasons: Interest rates have begun to rise, tuition is skyrocketing, and student aid programs are stuck in 2003.

2006 has been the worst in history for government action against student borrowers. In February, President Bush rolled out the Deficit Reduction Act, which cut $12 billion in federal student aid money. Part of the plan includes a hike in interest rates on federal student loans and loans taken out by parents. The interest rate on Stafford Loans to students rose from 5.3 percent to 7.14 percent on existing loans and to 6.8 percent on new loans. Interest rates for Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students (PLUS) loans increased even more dramatically, from 6.1 to 7.4 percent on existing loans and to a whopping 8.5 percent on new loans.

These interest rate hikes are designed to ease the federal deficit, but this very budget plan also includes tax breaks for Americans making more than $1 million a year -- a move that negates anything saved in the interest rate increase.

The Deficit Reduction Act is particularly egregious because low interest rates have historically been the way students paid for college. Just as low mortgage rates ease the ever-increasing value of real estate, low interest rates allow students to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees, and even have a little time to outrun their slowly collecting debt. Now, with those rates going up as tuition skyrockets, recent graduates will be caught and buried before they have time to throw their caps in the air.

Though it is not a new problem, student debt has quickly climbed in the last few years. Between 1993 and 2004, the percentage of students needing to borrow money jumped from 46 to 66 percent [PDF]. Debt for graduates averages around $19,000 across public and private schools. Ten years ago, public school borrowers needed about $8,000. Now they borrow about $17,250 -- a 65 percent increase, adjusted for inflation.

Parents and families are also increasingly debilitated by higher education costs. In 2004, 15.3 percent of parents of graduating high school seniors took out PLUS loans. Their average debt load was $17,709 -- $14,056 at public institutions and $21,984 at private schools.

In the past five years, tuition and fees at public universities have risen by 40 percent, adjusted for inflation. Over the same time period, consumer prices in general rose less than 9 percent. Comparisons to tuition costs over the last 30 years are even more dramatic: adjusted for inflation, college tuition is roughly triple what it was in the '70s.

In addition to swelling tuition costs and interest rate hikes, student debt has been crushed by flagging amounts of direct aid. Since 2003, Congress has flat-funded the Pell Grant, the most common form of direct aid for students. Currently, the maximum Pell Grant is $4,050 a year.

According to Luke Swarthout, who works for the State PIRGs' Higher Education Project, "The buying power of the Pell Grant has decreased. Today, it doesn't even keep up with inflation, let alone college costs." To wit: In 2004, more than 88 percent of Pell Grant recipients who graduated with a bachelor's degree also had student loans.

According to Richard Vedder, author of "Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much," tuition rates are exorbitant and increasing for a variety of reasons. One factor is that universities have shifted their spending toward expensive research, administration and student services like residences, and student centers to boost schools' reputations and attract more students -- a move that he believes has hurt student instruction considerably.

Interestingly, Vedder also suggests that the increase in student loans facilitates rising tuition costs. Vedder believes that because virtually no one can go to school without financial aid, no one expects to, which makes it easier for students to accept exorbitant tuition rates. The thinking goes, neither these students nor their peers are paying for school right now, so tacking on a few more thousand to their school loans barely makes a conceptual difference. Furthermore, as tuition increases, loans necessarily increase, but students continue to earn and spend as they did before -- their debt goes from unimaginably huge to more unimaginably huge -- a somewhat elusive differentiation for most students, making it difficult to protest or even feel as if there is anything they can do about it.

School loans can be a lifelong decision

As today's students and recent graduates age, they're going to find their lives very different than preceding generations. High monthly debt payments will reduce their opportunities, and without a major change, it will only get worse.

Toby Chaudhuri with Campaign for America's Future estimates, "In the next decade, over 4.4 million low- and moderate-income academically qualified students will opt not to enroll in four-year university degree programs, and another two million will opt not to enroll in higher education at all." As a result, Campaign for America's Future reports that in 2002, student loan debt caused 14 percent of graduates to delay marriage, 27 percent to delay a medical or dental procedure, 30 percent to delay buying a car, 21 percent to postpone having children, and 38 percent to put off buying a home.

For some, the burden of student debt negates the advantage of a college education at all. MacGibbon holds a bachelor's degree, but she wishes she never went to school. "I definitely regret going. I wish that I had just come to New York and done an intensive theater training program -- a good one for around $20,000. I guess it's great to have a degree, but I would definitely not make this decision again."

This is precisely the fear that haunts the progressive lobby in Washington: that tuition and the lack of adequate aid will make students feel that higher education is just "not worth it." Chaudhuri worries about the global consequences of the cost of American education. "We are faltering while other countries are making investments -- China graduated 500,000 engineers in 2004; the United States graduated 70,000. We have to do better for families if we want to stay on top," he adds.

Luke Swarthout notes that students are naïve about how their debt is going to affect their life after school. "What I find is that students don't realize their debt until after they graduate," he says.

When they do realize how much debt they have accumulated, student borrowers' choices immediately following graduation are often dictated directly and expressly by that burden. Many students go right back into school after graduation to get more skills, get qualified for higher-paying jobs and continue to defer their loans. Or, they join the workforce, where their options are limited by their debt burden.

Recent graduates are far less likely to pursue a career in public service where they won't make as much money as they would in the private sector. One attorney, who asked not to be named, graduated from NYU in 2005 with $185,000 in debt and currently works 10-12 hour days for a large law firm in New York City. He says that the public sector was not an option for him, and he maintains that he is not nearly the only one. "It is true for many of my colleagues: If we weren't in so much debt, we would quit tomorrow! We know we brought it upon ourselves when we chose to get educated at one of the best and most expensive schools in the country, but taking on this debt does really trap you: Salaries are just lower anywhere else in the country. I would not be living in New York if I didn't have this debt."

Solutions to the student-debt crisis

How are graduates able to get out from under their debt? For borrowers in financial dire straits, declaring bankruptcy is an often-attempted but rarely viable option. But the passage of the business-friendly and individual-hostile Bankruptcy Bill in April 2005 has all but closed that option as well.

Aside from declaring bankruptcy, several organizations are working to reform school loan policies. The state PIRGs, for instance, propose a three-pronged approach. As Luke Swarthout describes it, "We need to increase grant aid at the federal level and lower tuition rates at the state level. We need reforms in loan programs, especially for people that want to go into social and public service careers. The third piece is cutting out waste in the student loan programs and redirecting it to students."

There are also various plans circulating in Congress to cut interest rates. The state PIRGs' Higher Education project has proposed a bill that would cut interest rates in half for borrowers with the most need. Under this bill, the typical undergraduate borrower would save $5,600 over the life of his or her loans.

Lauren Asher, associate director at the nonprofit Project on Student Debt, emphasizes reshaping the current lending system to make it more accessible to borrowers. The group's aim is to create a lending system that adjusts repayment based on a number of factors: dependents, borrowers' current income and public service. "You have to pay back your loans, but you can pay them back in a way that has some relationship to what you can really afford," Asher said. "We want to create a system that encourages work and repayment, and can reduce default."

In addition to providing solid information up front to prospective borrowers, Asher believes lenders should make room for unpredictability in recent graduates' earning capacities. "There's a limit to certainty about the value of a degree in the marketplace -- we think people need some protection so they can afford to take the risk that going to college entails."

On august 9, a federal commission on the future of higher education published a report that called for, among other things, broad changes in tuition costs and the way we pay for school. The report suggested increasing the Pell Grant and professed that tuition should increase in proportion to income increases. Furthermore the panel called on policy makers to find new ways to make school affordable.

The PIRG program calls for more in the way of debt relief for borrowers who choose to enter public service. Currently in place are several loan-forgiveness programs on both the federal and state level that offer loan forgiveness to a small number of teachers, nurses, health-care professionals, social workers, military personnel, and federal employees like House and Senate staff. For example, the federal government relieves elementary and high school teachers who teach in high-poverty schools for five consecutive years a total of $5,000 in relief. Americorps and VISTA volunteers receive $4,735 a year for up to two years. Child-care providers in low-income communities are eligible for 100 percent relief from their Stafford student loans after five consecutive years of service.

For Swarthout, this is on the right track, but the government must do more. "We are calling for reforms in loan programs so that students with high debt to salary ratio are able to manage that debt, especially people who want to go into social and public service careers."

On federal, state and municipal levels, some programs have been introduced that aim to prevent debt accumulation in the first place. Using a work-study approach, these initiatives offer to pay for subsidize degree programs in exchange for commitments to public service.

The New York City Teaching Fellowship is one example: Fellows commit to teaching "high need" subjects (high school math and science, special education) to students in a "high need" school district for two years while getting a masters in education from a City University of New York (CUNY) school. They are paid a teacher's salary and receive all the benefits of state employees, and their education is subsidized by the municipal government. In the end, participants end up paying about $5,000 for their education. Response to this program has been highly positive from all sides, and advocates say increasing the availability of this kind of opportunity would encourage more students to enter public service.

Making education free may not solve the problem

As much as it seems like a promising solution, the problem with following a European model and aiming to make school free or extremely low in cost is the potentially adverse effect it could have on the quality of education. Taking away the vast majority of tuition revenues would limit what schools could offer, so for Swarthout, making education free is not the object. He says, "We have the best higher ed system in the world because we have an incredibly diverse range of opportunities that allow access to different types of students and programs. I don't look to other systems -- I tend to consider ways of improving our system."

For some students, there is something in between free and what we currently pay. "I think we could maintain the quality of our universities with a lower cost," says Christina Arnold, a recent University of Pennsylvania graduate. "We could do without such a nice gym."

Daniel Parcerisas Land, a UC Berkeley exchange student from Barcelona, Spain, who also spent a year at the Universite de Paris X-Nanterre, wonders if the vast discrepancy between tuition at European schools and here is justified by the quality of the education. He says, "even though Berkeley was better than my schools in Barcelona and Paris, I don't think it was 4,000 times better."

Talia Berman is a freelance writer living in New York City.

A new study from the Brookings Institute documents the "ghetto tax," or higher cost of living in low-income urban neighborhoods. It comes at you from every direction, from food prices to auto insurance. A few examples from this study, by Matt Fellowes, that covered 12 American cities:

* Poor people are less likely to have bank accounts, which can be expensive for those with low balances, and so they tend to cash their pay checks at check-cashing businesses, which in the cities surveyed, charged $5 to $50 for a $500 check.

* Nationwide, low-income car buyers, defined as people earning less than $30,000 a year, pay two percentage points more for a car loan than more affluent buyers.

* Low-income drivers pay more for car insurance. In New York, Baltimore and Hartford, they pay an average $400 more a year to insure the exact same car and driver risk than wealthier drivers.

* Poorer people pay an average of one percentage point more in mortgage interest.

* They are more likely to buy their furniture and appliances through pricey rent-to-own businesses. In Wisconsin, the study reports, a $200 rent-to-own TV set can cost $700 with the interest included.

* They are less likely to have access to large supermarkets and hence to rely on the far more expensive, and lower quality offerings, of small grocery and convenience stores.

I didn't live in any ghettoes when I worked on Nickle and Dimed --a trailer park, yes, but no ghetto -- and on my average wage of $7 an hour, or about $14,400 a year, I wasn't in the market for furniture, a house or a car. But the high cost of poverty was brought home to me within a few days of my entry into the low-wage life, when, slipping into social-worker mode, I chastised a co-worker for living in a motel room when it would be so much cheaper to rent an apartment. Her response: Where would she get the first month's rent and security deposit it takes to pin down an apartment? The lack of that amount of capital -- probably well over $1,000 -- condemned her to paying $40 a night at the Day's Inn.

Then there was the problem of sustenance. I had gone into the project imagining myself preparing vast quantities of cheap, nutritious soups and stews, which I would freeze and heat for dinner each day. But surprise: I didn't have the proverbial pot to pee in, not to mention spices or Tupperware. A scouting trip to K-Mart established that it would take about a $40 capital investment to get my kitchenette up to speed for the low-wage way of life.

The food situation got only more challenging when I, too, found myself living in a motel. Lacking a fridge and microwave, all my food had to come from the nearest convenience store (hardboiled eggs and banana for breakfast) or, for the big meal of the day, Wendy's or KFC. I have no nutritional complaints; after all, there is a veggie, or flecks of one, in Wendy's broccoli and cheese baked potato. The problem was financial. A double cheeseburger and fries is lot more expensive than that hypothetical homemade lentil stew.

There are other tolls along the road well-traveled by the working poor. If your credit is lousy, which it is likely to be, you'll pay a higher deposit for a phone. If you don't have health insurance, you may end taking that feverish child to an emergency room, and please don't think of ER's as socialized medicine for the poor. The average cost of a visit is over $1,000, which is over ten times more than what a clinic pediatrician would charge. Or you neglect that hypertension, diabetes or mystery lump until you end up with a $100,000 problem on your hands.

So let's have a little less talk about how the poor should learn to manage their money, and a little more attention to all the ways that money is being systematically siphoned off. Yes, certain kinds of advice would be helpful: skip the pay-day loans and rent-to-pay furniture, for example. But we need laws in more states to stop predatory practices like $50 charges for check cashing. Also, think what some microcredit could do to move families from motels and shelters to apartments. And did I mention a living wage?

If you're rich, you might want to stay that way. It's a whole lot cheaper than being poor.

Visitors to the New Orleans Gift and Jewelry Show this week could have been forgiven for thinking that life in the Big Easy is back to normal.

Hundreds of people descended on the city's Ernest N. Morial convention centre to hunt for bargains among stalls selling everything from loose diamonds and Rolex watches to crystal glassware and designer perfume, with a Starbucks coffee kiosk on hand to stave off thirst.

Nowhere in the sprawling venue was there any sign of the horror and suffering that occurred under the same roof a year ago next week, when more than 20,000 people sought refuge in the building following Hurricane Katrina.

For three days, the overwhelmingly poor and black refugees were left to fester in sweltering, airless conditions without food or liquid as the relief effort stalled.

The harrowing scenes, reminiscent of a third world camp, exposed an urban, black underclass that appeared to have been abandoned - literally and metaphorically - by the wealthiest nation on earth. For a brief period, the US was shamed into a national debate about its racial and economic divisions.

President George W. Bush acknowledged the "deep, persistent poverty" experienced by many blacks and blamed it on "a history of racial discrimination that cut off generations from the opportunity of America".

"We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action," he said.

But 12 months later, the business-as-usual atmosphere at the refurbished convention centre demonstrates how quickly the issue of social justice has fallen off the national agenda.

According to the Washington Post, Mr Bush has mentioned the word "poverty" in public only six times since his post-Katrina speeches and the debate over racial inequality proved no more durable.

"Katrina created an opening for America to deal seriously with these issues," says David Dante Troutt, editor of After the Storm, a collection of essays by black intellectuals about the disaster. "But the opportunity was missed."

Despite growth in the economy, the proportion of African-Americans living below the poverty line has increased during the Bush presidency to nearly a quarter - double the national average.

Nowhere are African-Americans more disadvantaged than in New Orleans, where four out of 10 black families lived in poverty before Katrina and 60 per cent of poor blacks had no access to a car, leaving them stranded as the storm approached. A year later, most of the city's black population is still dispersed across the country, many without the resources to return and rebuild.

Standing outside her mother's damaged home in the Gentilly district, Joanne Johnson makes no attempt to hide her bitterness. "We had their attention for five minutes, then they moved on," she says. "They can afford to pay for a war in Iraq but they can't afford to look after their own people."

To Ms Johnson, 45, a supermarket worker, "they" seems to refer to the Bush administration and white America, as if the two are interchangeable.

Like many African-Americans, she believes the authorities intentionally broke the levees near black neighbourhoods to spare wealthier, white districts. "People heard the explosion," she says.

The allegation is a rehashed version of an urban myth dating back to Hurricane Betsy in 1965. But the widespread belief in the theory underlines the extent of mistrust among blacks towards the white-dominated state and federal governments. "Katrina has exacerbated racial divisions rather than healed them," says Douglas Brinkley, a New Orleans historian and author of The Great Deluge.

For many whites, the lasting impression of Katrina's aftermath was not images of poverty, but instead the pictures of black people looting stores and reports of rape and murder in the convention centre and Superdome. "Many whites saw the looting as a violation of a social contract," says Lance Hill, executive director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University in New Orleans. "It strengthened the association in their minds between poor blacks and criminality and made them feel less guilty about the poverty."

Subsequent investigations showed that the reports were wildly exaggerated. But the perception that New Orleans was descending into anarchy delayed the relief effort as officials shifted focus from aid to security.

Some in New Orleans resent the focus on black poverty, arguing that many middle-class people, white and black, also lost homes to Katrina. But, as the anniversary nears, even the briefest drive through the city reveals an obvious truth: wealthier neighbourhoods are recovering much quicker than poor black ones.

The only part of life that has returned to normal for poor black communities is gang-related crime. The city recorded 21 murders in July, most of them involving young black men.

This apparent return to the bad old days raises doubts about whether the billions of dollars of federal aid committed to New Orleans can solve the city's social ills. June Cross, a filmmaker researching a documentary on Katrina, doubts there is the will to even try. "America views urban poverty in the same bracket as famine in Africa," she says. "People think it's sad but there's nothing that can be done about it."

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

An estimated 50 million Americans lack medical insurance, and a similar and rapidly growing number are underinsured. The uninsured are excluded from services, charged more for services, and die when medical care could save them-an estimated 18,000 die each year because they lack medical coverage.

But it's not only the uninsured who suffer. Of the more than 1.5 million bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, about half are a result of medical bills; of those, three-quarters of filers had health insurance.

Businesses are suffering too. Insurance premiums increased 73 percent between 2000 and 2005, and per capita costs are expected to keep rising. The National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) estimates that, without reform, national health care spending will double over the next 10 years. The NCHC is not some fringe advocacy group-its co-chairs are Congressmen Robert D. Ray (R-IA) and Paul G. Rogers (D-FL), and it counts General Electric and Verizon among its members.

Employers who want to offer employee health care benefits can't compete with low-road employers who offer none. Nor can they compete with companies located in countries that offer national health insurance.

The shocking facts about health care in the United States are well known. There's little argument that the system is broken. What's not well known is that the dialogue about fixing the health care system is just as broken.

Among politicians and pundits, a universal, publicly funded system is off the table. But Americans in increasing numbers know what their leaders seem not to - that the United States is the only industrialized nation where such stories as Joel's and Kiki's can happen.

And most Americans know why: the United States leaves the health of its citizens at the mercy of an expensive, patchwork system where some get great care while others get none at all.

The overwhelming majority - 75 percent, according to an October 2005 Harris Poll - want what people in other wealthy countries have: the peace of mind of universal health insurance.

A wild experiment?

Which makes the discussion all the stranger. The public debate around universal health care proceeds as if it were a wild, untested experiment &ndash if the United States would be doing something never done before.

Yet universal health care is in place throughout the industrialized world. In most cases, doctors and hospitals operate as private businesses. But government pays the bills, which reduces paperwork costs to a fraction of the American level. It also cuts out expensive insurance corporations and HMO's, with their multimillion-dollar CEO compensation packages, and billions in profit. Small wonder "single payer" systems can cover their entire populations at half the per capita cost. In the United States, people without insurance may live with debilitating disease or pain, with conditions that prevent them from getting jobs or decent pay, putting many on a permanent poverty track. They have more difficulty managing chronic conditions - only two in five have a regular doctor &mdash leading to poorer health and greater cost.

The uninsured are far more likely to wait to seek treatment for acute problems until they become severe.

Even those who have insurance may not find out until it's too late that exclusions, deductibles, co-payments, and annual limits leave them bankrupt when a family member gets seriously ill.

In 2005, more than a quarter of insured Americans didn't fill prescriptions, skipped recommended treatment, or didn't see a doctor when sick, according to the Commonwealth Fund's 2005 Biennial Health Insurance Survey.

People stay in jobs they hate - for the insurance. Small business owners are unable to offer insurance coverage for employees or themselves. Large businesses avoid setting up shops in the United States - Toyota just chose to build a plant in Canada to escape the skyrocketing costs of U.S. health care.

All of this adds up to a less healthy society, more families suffering the double whammy of financial and health crises, and more people forced to go on disability.

But the public dialogue proceeds as if little can be done beyond a bit of tinkering around the edges. More involvement by government would create an unwieldy bureaucracy, they say, and surely bankrupt us all. The evidence points to the opposite conclusion.

The United States spends by far the most on health care per person - more than twice as much as Europe, Canada, and Japan which all have some version of national health insurance. Yet we are near the bottom in nearly every measure of our health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the U.S. health care system 37th of 190 countries, well below most of Europe, and trailing Chile and Costa Rica. The United States does even worse in the WHO rankings of performance on level of health &mdash a stunning 72nd. Life expectancy in the U.S. is shorter than in 27 other countries; the U.S. ties with Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia for infant mortality - ahead of only Latvia among industrialized nations.

The cost of corporate bureaucracy

Where is the money going? An estimated 15 cents of each private U.S. health care dollar goes simply to shuffling the paperwork. The administrative costs for our patched-together system of HMO's, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospitals, and government programs are nearly double those for single-payer Canada. It's not because Americans are inherently less efficient than Canadians - our publicly funded Medicare system spends under five cents per budget dollar on administrative overhead. And the Veterans Administration, which functions like Britain's socialized medical system, spends less per patient but consistently outranks private providers in patient satisfaction and quality of care.

But in the private sector, profits and excessive CEO pay are added to the paperwork and bureaucracy. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry averages a 17 percent profit margin, against three percent for all other businesses. In the health care industry, million-dollar CEO pay packages are the rule, with some executives pulling down more than $30 million a year in salary and amassing billion-dollar stock option packages.

Do those costs really make the difference?

Studies conducted by the General Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and various states have concluded that a universal, single-payer health care system would cover everyone &ndash including the millions currently without insurance &mdash and still save billions.

Enormous amounts of money are changing hands in the health-industrial complex, but little is going to the front line providers - nurses, nurse practitioners, and home health care workers who put in long shifts for low pay. Many even find they must fight to get access to the very health facilities they serve.

Doctors complain of burnout as patient loads increase. They spend less time with each patient as they spend more time doing insurance company mandated paperwork and arguing with insurance company bureaucrats over treatments and coverage.

Americans know what they want

In polls, surveys, town meetings, and letters, large majorities of Americans say they have had it with a system that is clearly broken and they are demanding universal health care. Many businesses &mdash despite a distaste for government involvement &mdash are coming to the same view. Doctors, nurses, not-for-profit hospitals, and clinics are joining the call, many specifically saying we need a single-payer system like the system in Canada. And while we hear complaints about Canada's system, a study of 10 years of Canadian opinion polling showed that Canadians are more satisfied with their health care than Americans. Holly Dressel's article shows why.

Although you'd never know it from the American media, the number of Canadians who would trade their system for a U.S.-style health care system is just eight percent.

Again, the public dialogue proceeds from a perplexing place. Dissatisfied Canadians or Britons are much talked about. But there's little mention of the satisfaction level of Americans. The Commonwealth Fund's survey, for instance, shows that, in 2005, 42 percent of Americans doubted whether they could get quality health care. At a series of town hall meetings in Maine, facilitators asked participants to discuss dozens of complex health care policies but excluded single-payer as an option. (See Tish Tanski's article. Only after repeated demands by participants was the approach that cuts out the corporate middle-men allowed on the list.

The same story played out across the country at town meetings convened by the congressionally mandated Citizens' Health Care Working Group. In Los Angeles, New York, and Hartford, participants simply refused to consider the questions they were given about tradeoffs between cost, quality, and accessibility. They insisted that there's already enough money being spent to pay for publicly funded universal health care.

But it's not only about the money. Comments from participants in the town meetings, from Fargo to Memphis, from Los Angeles to Providence, revealed an understanding that this is about a deeper question. It is an issue of the sort of society we want to be &ndash one in which we all are left to sink or swim on our own or one in which we recognize that the whole society benefits when we each can get access to the help we need.

Likewise, when we asked readers of the YES! email newsletter what would make you healthier, nearly all answered in terms of "we." Any one of us could get sick or be injured. Any one could lose a job and with it insurance. Our best security, they said, is coverage for all.

What form might this take?

As elections near and the issue of health care tops opinion polls as the most pressing domestic issue, various proposals for universal health care are circulating. The bipartisan NCHC looked at four options: employer mandates, extending existing federal programs like Medicaid to all those uninsured, creating a new federal program for the uninsured, and single-payer national health insurance. All the options saved billions of dollars compared to the current system, but single payer was by far the winner, saving more than $100 billion a year.

Meanwhile, the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, which held those town meetings around the country, has issued interim recommendations. They state the values participants expressed: All Americans should have affordable health care, and assuring that they do is a shared social responsibility. Sadly, that bold statement is followed by inconclusive recommendations: more study, no preference for public funding, and a strong commitment to get everybody covered by 2012-but with no means to do it. The commission will make final recommendations to the president and Congress, and is accepting public comment through the end of August.

What is the obstacle?

With all the support and all the good reasons to adopt universal health care, why don't we have it yet? Why do politicians refuse to talk about the solution people want?

It could be the fact that the health care industry, the top spender on Capitol Hill, spent $183.3 million on lobbying just in the second half of 2005, according to PoliticalMoneyLine. com. And in the 2003-2004 election cycle, they spent $123.7 million on election campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Politicians dread the propaganda barrage and political fallout that surrounded the failed Clinton health care plan. But in the years since, health care costs have outpaced growth in wages and inflation by huge margins, Americans have joined the ranks of the uninsured at the rate of 2 million each year, and businesses are taking a major competitiveness hit as they struggle to pay rising premiums.

Health Care for All is holding town hall meetings throughout the United States (they've held 93 so far), and people are pressing their representatives to take action. Over 150 unions have called for action on universal health care, and polls show overwhelming majorities of Americans feel the same way.

Some political leaders are pressing for universal health care. Remember Joel, who was kicked out of the hospital with $100,000 in medical debt? He started giving speeches about the catastrophe of our health care system, and eventually got hired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to head his universal single payer health care effort. Conyers' "Medicare for All" bill now has 72 co-sponsors. Rep. Jim McDermott's (D-WA) Health Security Act has 62.

Around the United States, state and local campaigns for universal health care are making progress. (See Rev. Linda Walling's update).

One of these days, the lobbyists and their clients in government may have to get out of the way and let Americans join the rest of the developed world in the security, efficiency, and quality that comes with health care for all.

Sarah van Gelder is Executive Editor of YES! Magazine. Doug Pibel is Managing Editor of YES!

© 2004-06 YES!

The once hot housing markets in Las Vegas and Phoenix are cooling off rapidly and defaults there are on the rise as well, she says.

"Both Las Vegas and Phoenix were impacted by speculators," says Ms. McGee, and more than 25 percent of new home sales in both markets were going to out of state investors who had no intention of ever occupying the homes they purchased.

Now those who came late to the party find themselves squeezed by rising interest rates and resulting negative cash flows, she says.

"The speculators are definitely on the run, and walking away from properties they cannot afford to hold and cannot sell at a profit," says Ms. McGee.

In Colorado, foreclosure activity has put Denver well up in the top 10 of metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates, according to Foreclosures.com's figures.

"Almost 5,300 homes in Colorado have already been lost in foreclosure and, as of August 11, over 11,300 were in the pre-foreclosure process," says Ms. McGee. She cites recent reports by economists that showed that Colorado was lagging behind the rest of the nation in economic recovery from the 2001-2002 recession.

"A more severe situation, however, is in California," she says. "A primary reason is the overwhelming use of so-called creative mortgage products people were sold in order to buy ever more expensive homes."

More than $1 trillion of these exotic mortgages were due to reset in the next 18 months, she says, "and payment shock to such homeowners would be severe if not financially fatal."

In October 2005, the Kashmir region of Pakistan experienced one of the most violent earthquakes in its history, with terrible consequences in the poorest and most isolated areas to the north. On 15 October an advance party of 200 emergency doctors arrived from Cuba with several tonnes of equipment. A few days later, Havana sent the necessary materials to erect and equip 30 field hospitals in mountain areas, most of which had never been previously visited by a doctor. Local people learned of Cuba's existence for the first time.

To avoid causing offence in this predominantly Muslim country, the women on the Cuban team, who represented 44% of some 3,000 medical staff sent to Pakistan in the next six months, dressed appropriately and wore headscarves. Good will was quickly established; many Pakistanis even allowed their wives and daughters to be treated by male doctors.

By the end of April 2006, shortly before their departure, the Cubans had treated 1.5 million patients, mostly women, and performed 13,000 surgical operations. Only a few severely injured patients had to be flown to Havana. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, an important ally of the US and friend of Bush, officially thanked the Cuban authorities and acknowledged that this small nation in the Caribbean had sent more disaster aid than any other country.

First medical brigade
Cuba set up its first international medical brigade in 1963 and dispatched its 58 doctors and health workers to newly independent Algeria. In 1998 the Cuban government began to create the machinery to send large-scale medical assistance to poor populations affected by natural disasters. After hurricanes George and Mitch blew through Central America and the Caribbean, it offered its medical personnel as part of an integrated health programme. The Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti and Belize all accepted this aid.

Cuba offered massive medical assistance to Haiti, where healthcare was chronically inadequate. In 1998 Cuba even approached France, Haiti's former colonial power, with a proposal to establish a humanitarian association to help the people of Haiti. The French government did not respond (although, finally, in 2004, it sent troops). Since 1998 Cuba has sent 2,500 doctors and as much medicine as its fragile economy permits.

This free aid - the Cuban government funds the personnel - has been effective. The willingness of the new barefoot doctors (1) to intervene in areas where their local equivalents refuse to go, because of the poverty of the clientele or the danger or difficulty of access, has persuaded other countries, especially in Africa, to apply for assistance.

Between 1963 and 2005 more than 100,000 doctors and health workers intervened in 97 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America (2) By March 2006, 25,000 Cuban professionals were working in 68 nations. This is more than even the World Health Organisation can deploy, while Médecins Sans Frontières sent only 2,040 doctors and nurses abroad in 2003, and 2,290 in 2004 (3).

The most seriously ill patients are often brought to Cuba for treatment. Over the decades these have included Vietnamese Kim Phuc, the little girl shown in the famous war photograph running naked along a road, her skin burned by US napalm. Cuba also took in some 19,000 adults and children from the three Soviet republics most affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986.

In June 2001 the United Nations General Assembly met in special session to discuss Aids. Cuba, with an HIV infection rate of 0.09% compared with 0.6% in the US, made an offer of "doctors, teachers, psychologists, and other specialists needed to assess and collaborate with the campaigns to prevent Aids and other illnesses; diagnostic equipment and kits necessary for the basic prevention programmes and retrovirus treatment for 30,000 patients".

If this offer had been accepted, "all it would take is for the international community to provide the raw materials for the medicines, the equipment and material resources for these products and services. Cuba will not charge and will pay the salaries in its national currency" (4).

The offer was rejected. But eight African and six Latin American countries did benefit from an educational HIV/Aids intervention project which broadcast radio and television programmes, treated more than 200,000 patients and trained more than half a million health workers.

There are currently some 14,000 Cuban doctors working in poor areas of Venezuela. The two governments have also set up Operation Milagro (miracle) which, during the first 10 months of 2005, gave free treatment to restore the eyesight of almost 80,000 Venezuelans, transferring those suffering from cataracts and glaucoma to Cuba for operations (5). More widely, the project offers help to anyone in Latin America or the Caribbean affected by blindness or other eye problems. Venezuela provides the funding; Cuba supplies the specialists, the surgical equipment and the infrastructure to care for patients during their treatment in Cuba.

So far no other government, private body or international organisation has managed to put together a global medical programme on such a scale or to offer such a level of assistance to those in need of care. Operation Milagro's goal is to operate on the eyes of a million people every year.

A few hours before he took up office as president of Bolivia in December 2005, Evo Morales signed his first international treaty, which was with Cuba, setting up a joint unit to offer free ophthalmological treatment. As well as the national institute of ophthalmology in La Paz, recently equipped by Cuba, there will be medical centres in the cities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. Young Bolivian graduates from the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) will take part in the programme.

ELAM was founded in 1998, just as Cuba began to send doctors to the Caribbean and Central America. It operates from a former naval base in a suburb of Havana and trains young people of poor families from throughout the Americas, including the US. There are also hundreds of African, Arab, Asian and European students. Cuba's 21 medical faculties all participate in training. In July 2005 the first 1,610 Latin American students graduated. Each year some 2,000 young people enroll at the school, where they receive free training, food, accommodation and equipment in return for a commitment to go back home and treat their compatriots (6).

Really doctors?
Ideological considerations have inspired the medical and ophthalmologic associations of some countries to launch a campaign against this initiative. The review of the Argentine council of ophthalmology, for example, questioned whether the Cuban ophthalmologists really were doctors and announced that it was taking steps, along with humanitarian NGOs, to fund a similar programme (7).

There was the same reaction in 1998 in Nicaragua, where, despite the severity of the catastrophe caused by hurricane Mitch, President Arnoldo Alemán refused to admit Cuban doctors. Similar reactions have been seen in Venezuela since 2002 and now in Bolivia. Conservative doctors, who prefer to specialise in diseases of the credit-worthy and refuse to enter shantytowns, accuse Cuba's barefoot doctors of incompetence, illegal medical practice and unfair competition.

In April 2005 the legal authorities in the Brazilian state of Tocantins ordered out 96 Cuban doctors who had been treating the poor. The state governor disagreed, but could do no more than "recognise the professional bravery of the doctors who were welcome here and whom we wish to thank".

The medical associations are afraid that if the Cuban medics bring down prices or even offer some services free, medical treatment will cease to be a profitable, elitist service. As each new doctor graduates in Cuba, they intensify their protests and political pressure.

There is also a threat that diplomas obtained in Cuba will not be recognised elsewhere. Excessive charges in Chile have prevented many Cuban-trained doctors from validating their medical qualifications there. But, as the BBC has pointed out, if Latin America's medical associations persist in their opposition they risk losing the support of populations deprived of access to health services, for whom the project is a glimmer of light in the darkness (8). In the US, where 45 million people have no health cover and medical studies cost about $300,000, a blockade forbids students to study in Cuba, threatening up to 10 years' imprisonment and fines of up to $200,000.

Sceptics see the humanitarian aid offered by Cuba as a publicity stunt, an investment to secure diplomatic support in the face of continuing US hostility. They point out that when the UN Human Rights Council was established in March 2006, Cuba was elected with the support of 96 of the 191 UN member states, whereas Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela, where political opposition is legal, as it is not in Cuba, were rejected.

But a western diplomat was prepared to recognise that Cuba's policy of exporting doctors was an initiative which benefited so many people that it should be applauded even by its political enemies (9).

© 1997-2006 Le Monde diplomatique.

"It's not going to be the easiest of winters and we need to manage this with care and make sure we get it right," said Mr Wicks from the sidelines of an energy industry conference in Norway. "It's looking the same as the last two or three years."

Dwindling output from the North Sea has turned the UK into a net importer after decades as an exporter of surplus gas. New pipelines were meant to relieve the pressure this year.

Industry experts had previously argued that the last two winters would be the end of the energy squeeze as new outlets opened and more storage capacity was put in place. But though the pipelines have been built, the storage facilities have seen delays in obtaining planning consents, leaving the country vulnerable at a time when demand is growing and domestic production is falling faster than expected.

The government has met with leading gas suppliers to ensure that maintenance work on platforms and pipelines has been carried out before the winter. But the Health and Safety Executive warned two weeks ago that some companies were falling behind on repairs, increasing the likelihood of breakdowns and disruptions to output.

The consumer group energywatch agreed with the minister's downbeat assessment and said a vicious cold spell could lead to another round of price increases on top of unprecedented rises over the past 12 months.

Ebico, a supplier of power to 10,000 customers, has become the latest company to raise its prices, with the gas tariff going up by 30% and electricity prices by up to 25%.

"We have kept the prices stable for the last 12 months but we cannot resist the wholesale prices rises any more and have had to move," said its chief executive Phil Levermore.

Paul Green, chief executive at energyhelpline.com, a company that offers consumers help with switching providers, said the Ebico rise was a blow for those who had been enjoying some of the cheapest prices on the market. "Ebico has been forced to follow the big six suppliers and put up its prices to balance skyrocketing wholesale costs," he said.

"As Ebico buys its energy from Scottish and Southern Energy, we are likely to see a further price rise announcement from SSE later this year as it passes rising costs on to customers. This will affect a further 6.7m UK households."

Energywatch defended Ebico's rise and pointed out that it was still a relatively cheap supplier that ensured that pre-payment customers on low incomes were not discriminated against.

"This really needs to be put in context," said a spokeswoman for energywatch. "This is a small company that had stood aside while the big six providers increased their prices three times."

According to energywatch, SSE has already put its gas prices up by a cumulative 35% and electricity prices by 22.5% through a series of changes in 2006. The consumer group says British Gas has increased its gas tariff by 37% this year and Powergen by 47%.

The National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday that sales of existing homes and condominiums dropped by 4.1 percent in July from June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.33 million. That was the lowest level since January 2004.

The latest snapshot of housing activity was weaker than analysts anticipated. Economists were forecasting the pace of sales to fall to 6.55 million.

"The housing sector is fragile," said David Lereah, the association's chief economist.

The median price of a home sold last month was $230,000. That was up just 0.9 percent from the same month last year and marked the smallest year-over-year increase since May 1995. The median price is the middle point, where half sell for more and half sell for less.

The inventory of unsold homes in July rose to a record high of 3.86 million. At the current sales pace, it would take 7.3 months to exhaust that overhang. That is the longest period to exhaust the supply of home since the spring of 1993.

On Wall Street, the weak housing report dragged stocks down. The Dow Jones were down 8 points in morning trading.

By region, sales dropped by 5.4 percent in the Northeast. They fell by 5.9 percent in the Midwest and 1.2 percent in the South. Sales declined by 6.4 percent in the West.

Wednesday's report shows that the bloom is off the rose.

For five years running, home sales had hit record highs as low mortgage rates lured buyers. But the housing sector has lost steam this year as mortgage rates have gone up and would-be buyers have grown cautious amid high energy prices and a slowing economy.

Against that backdrop, the
Federal Reserve earlier this month decided to halt a rate-raising campaign that had pushed interest rates steadily higher over the last two-plus years to fend off inflation.

The Fed's goal is to raise rates sufficiently to thwart inflation but not enough to hurt the economy.

One of the things that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are watching closely is the housing slowdown. If home prices and sales were to crash, that could spell big trouble for the overall economy. Thus far, Bernanke has said the market's slowdown has been fairly orderly and smooth.

Lereah said he still expects a "soft landing" for the once high-flying housing sector. But he urged the Fed to leave interest rates alone and refrain from bumping them up again - as some analysts have said is a possibility.

The housing sector's transition from a red-hot market to a cool one has important implications for the overall economy.

Consumers who watched their homes rise rapidly in value over the last several years felt wealthy and more inclined to spend. They also borrowed against their homes - treating them like ATMs - to support their spending ways.

But with home values not going up as much now as the double-digit gains seen in the past several years, consumers have tightened their belts. That has contributed to a slowing in overall economic activity.

Recent reports underscore the housing slowdown's impact.

Luxury home builder Toll Brothers on Tuesday reported a sharp drop in third-quarter profits. One day earlier Lowe's Cos., the nation's second-largest home-improvement chain, warned that a slowing housing market will hurt its earnings for the rest of the year.

Last week the National Association of Home Builders reported that confidence among builders sank to a 15-year low.

When a child is born on this planet, his first perception of the three-dimensional world is that he or she is the "center". All activities in his or her immediate perception revolve around them and their needs. This perception of the world ( particularly in this country ) doesn't evolve much over time beyond one's team, community, or country, and as a result severely hampers one's ability to understand events in the world. Any event that occurs outside of our perceived world that doesn't support our understanding is deemed "wrong" or a "threat" to our "way of life" and must be destroyed, denied, or converted into something that makes us "comfortable". This ego driven undeveloped mentality keeps us at odds with any other perception on the planet and by it's nature denies any possibility of the conditions necessary for Peace.

Perspective is one of the primary components of Evolution. The only limit to Human Understanding is the scope of one's vision and the willingness to continuously expand it. The locked state of Ignorance in which we currently exist is a self-imposed condition formed from an obsolete and self-destructive fear that being wrong, accepting it, and making the tremendous effort to change it somehow diminishes us. I can tell you in Truth ( having experienced numerous stages of Evolution ) that exactly the opposite is the case. The only thing "diminished" in the process of expanded understanding is the validity of Ego.

The problem we face on this planet is that the "wrong" we have to admit to is massive. It is all encompassing and it exists at the core of our society's foundation. It is a self perpetuating fabrication that motivates our national consciousness. That fabrication is that Freedom exists on this planet, and that we are the only ones who have it. Neither of those things is even remotely true.

Everyone on this planet is in slavery whether they are cognizant of it or not. In fact it is the very same underdeveloped ability to perceive that prevents Man from recognizing this reality, but it's a fundamentally simple equation. Individuals in this country ( and on this Planet ) have "jobs" which occupy most of their waking life to produce goods and services for the Institution of the Corporation for generally meager compensation, which they promptly give right back to the Institution of the Corporation for the same goods and services. At best you live in indentured servitude, but in reality you are still on the Plantation.

However, the Slave Owner has learned through millennia of trial and error the value having the slave not perceive himself as a slave. Hence this entire society and all of it's components are geared to preventing the slave from awakening. Every new meaningless product or coffee flavor creates the illusion of "progress" and keeps the slave occupied. Every "news" broadcast is designed to focus your attention to anything other than the reality of the world and your position in it. The endless series of recreational products and events ensure that any chance of free thinking that hasn't already been destroyed is lost in some feeble attempt at having "fun".

So while Americans stay isolated, ignorant, and enslaved, the world evolves without our knowledge. Such a perspective might lead you to think I am a pessimist, but again I would tell you exactly the opposite. My field of vision is much larger than that. For the first time in this incarnation I can see the reality of Freedom in Our Time. While we in this country are subjected to endless coverage of fake bomb plots and a ten year old dead white girl case, the 33 Day War has dramatically altered the Middle East and the World. The slaves of Lebanon took the full wrath of their master and did not blink. This is a powerful turning point in the balance of power and marks the beginning of the end of subjugation. The Lebanese people have demonstrated the power, will, and right to exist not in Peace, but Free. This to the Slave Owner is the most terrifying development imaginable.

What is happening in Lebanon will change ( by example ) a variety of things on this planet that people accept as fact. The fundamental reason for this is that when Hassan Nasrallah says he cares about the Lebanese people, he means it. Not that anyone in this country would know that of course, since mainstream media hasn't played more than thirty seconds of any of his statements followed by the "white man's overview", but if you had the opportunity to actually hear him you would surely know differently. This makes him unique as a leader since there are very few leaders ( certainly not ours ) that actually care for the people they are supposed to serve and protect. We should all be very well aware by now that leaders on this planet aren't elected, they are "installed" and are there to support the desires of the Global Corporation at the expense of the individual.

One glaring example of this was Hezbollah's immediate response to the cease fire. Engineers and doctors were immediately dispatched, and registry centers were set up all over the south for people in need of aid. The response was so swift that European aid agency that went in after the cease fire couldn't find people that had not already been visited by Hezbollah. The aid workers reported that "The people were happy to take the extra supplies but said Hezbollah had already taken care of all of their needs". Two days after registering, people were called back in and given $12,000 U.S. Dollars each ( the equivalent of two and a half times the average annual salary ), no questions asked. All of this occurred within three days of the end of the bombings. Nasrallah has additionally pledged to not only rebuild their houses, but to build them better ones.

Contrast this with the U.S. response to Katrina. Weeks after the event the most the U.S. was willing to offer these people was a $1,200 impossible to get debit card ( which isn't equivalent to anything ) for which they have now spent untold millions in tracking down supposed "fraudulent" use of those funds. A year after the event these people are still homeless, the city is still in rubble, and the only thing our government did for them was to stigmatize them for not being wealthy enough to get out of the way on their own.

Which of these responses seems like the act of a terrorist government to you? Unless you're a fool, you would have to choose the latter. Is that the kind of environment you expect the peoples of the world to warmly embrace? If they wholly reject it, does that mean they hate your "freedom"? If they say "No, you can't have our land, you can't have our resources, and you can't have the servitude of our people", will you call that terrorism?

I assure you, the awakening is coming. A year from now ( barring the incessant interference from Israel and the U.S. ) Lebanon will be a city like it never was before. A city truly built by the people and for the people. The lie of endless autocratic processes delaying reconstruction all over the world will be exposed as the farce it is and people will have to take a good hard look at who is actually lying to them. If you insist on believing that the United States propaganda is "right" and everyone else is wrong, you are in for a grave and psychologically brutal awakening to your own ignorance. It behooves you to reexamine your perspective while it is still a choice, as opposed to having to endure the utter and crushing defeat of your belief in the Face of Truth.

All is Well in the Kingdom of God...

Bill Noxid, is a 40 year old ex-corporate engineer who spent fifteen years in service, and realized the dark nature of the Corporation. I've spent the last decade studying the evolution and/or de-evolution of the species and society.

Two plaster Madonnas are in her tiny well-kept front yard. On a blazing hot summer day, Ms. Mosely used her crutches to gingerly come down off her porch to open the padlock on her fence. She has had hip and knee replacement surgery. Ms. Mosely worked in a New Orleans factory for over thirty years sewing uniforms. When she retired she was making less than $4 an hour. "Retirement benefits?" she laughs. She lives off social security. Her house had never flooded before. Because of her tight budget tight, Ms. Mosely did not have flood insurance.

Thousands of people like Ms. Mosely are back in their houses on the Gulf Coast. They are living in houses that most people would consider, at best, still under construction, or, at worst, uninhabitable. Like Ms. Mosely, they are trying to make their damaged houses into homes.

New Orleans is still in intensive care. If you have seen recent television footage of New Orleans, you probably have a picture of how bad our housing situation is. What you cannot see is that the rest of our institutions, our water, our electricity, our healthcare, our jobs, our educational system, our criminal justice systems - are all just as broken as our housing. We remain in serious trouble. Like us, you probably wonder where has the promised money gone?

Ms. Mosely, who lives in the upper ninth ward, does not feel sorry for herself at all. "Lots of people have it worse," she says. "You should see those people in the Lower Ninth and in St. Bernard and in the East. I am one of the lucky ones."

Housing

Hard as it is to believe, Ms. Mosely is right. Lots of people do have it worse. Hundreds of thousands of people from the Gulf Coast remain displaced. In New Orleans alone over two hundred thousand people have not been able to make it home.

Homeowners in Louisiana, like Ms. Mosely, have not yet received a single dollar of federal housing rebuilding assistance to rebuild their severely damaged houses back into homes.

Over 100,000 homeowners in Louisiana are on a waiting list for billions in federal rebuilding assistance through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. So far, no money has been distributed.

Renters, who comprised most of the people of New Orleans before Katrina, are much worse off than homeowners. New Orleans lost more than 43,000 rental units to the storm. Rents have skyrocketed in the undamaged parts of the area, pricing regular working people out of the market. The official rate of increase in rents is 39%. In lower income neighborhoods, working people and the elderly report rents are up much higher than that. Amy Liu of the Brookings Institute said "Even people who are working temporarily for the rebuilding effort are having trouble finding housing."

Renters in Louisiana are not even scheduled to receive assistance through the Louisiana CDBG program. Some developers will receive assistance at some point, and when they do, some apartments will be made available, but that is years away.

In the face of the worst affordable housing shortage since the end of the Civil War, the federal government announced that it refused to allow thousands of families to return to their public housing units and was going to bulldoze 5000 apartments. Before Katrina, over 5000 families lived in public housing - 88 percent women-headed households, nearly all African American.

These policies end up with hundreds of thousands of people still displaced from their homes. Though all ages, incomes and races are displaced, some groups are impacted much more than others. The working poor, renters, moms with kids, African-Americans, the elderly and disabled - all are suffering disproportionately from displacement. Race, poverty, age and physical ability are great indicators of who has and who has made it home.

The statistics tell some of the story. The City of New Orleans says it is half its pre-Katrina size - around 225,000 people. But the U.S. Post Office estimates that only about 170,000 people have returned to the city and 400,000 people have not returned to the metropolitan area. The local electricity company reports only about 80,000 of its previous 190,000 customers have returned.

Texas also tells part of the story. It is difficult to understand the impact of Katrina without understanding the role of Texas - home to many of our displaced. Houston officials say their city is still home to about 150,000 storm evacuees - 90,000 in FEMA assisted housing. Texas recently surveyed the displaced and reported that over 250,000 displaced people live in the state and 41 percent of these households report income of less than $500 per month. Eighty-one percent are black, 59 percent are still jobless, most have at least one child at home, and many have serious health issues.

Another 100,000 people displaced by Katrina are in Georgia, more than 80,000 in metro Atlanta - most of whom also need long-term housing and mental health services.

In Louisiana, there are 73,000 families in FEMA trailers. Most of these trailers are 240 square feet of living space. More than 1600 families are still waiting for trailers in St. Bernard Parish. FEMA trailers did not arrive in the lower ninth ward until June - while the displaced waited for water and electricity to resume. Aloyd Edinburgh, 75, lives in the lower ninth ward and just moved into a FEMA trailer. His home flooded as did the homes of all five of his children. "Everybody lost their homes," he told the Times-Picayune, "They just got trailers. All are rebuilding. They all have mortgages. What else are they going to do?"

Until challenged, FEMA barred reporters from talking with people in FEMA trailer parks without prior permission - forcing a reporter out of a trailer in one park and residents back into their trailer in another in order to stop interviews.

One person displaced into a FEMA village in Baton Rouge has been organizing with her new neighbors. Air conditioners in two trailers for the elderly have been out for over two weeks, yet no one will fix them. The contractor who ran the village has been terminated and another one is coming - no one knows who. She tells me, "My neighbors are dismayed that no one in the city has stepped forward to speak for us. We are "gone." Who will speak for us? Does anyone care?"

Trailers are visible signs of the displaced. Tens of thousands of other displaced families are living in apartments across the country month to month under continuous threats of FEMA cutoffs.

Numbers say something. But please remember behind every number, there is a Ms. Mosely. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people each with a personal story like Ms. Mosely are struggling to return, trying to make it home.

Water and Electricity

New Orleans continues to lose more water than it uses. The Times-Picayune discovered that the local water system has to pump over 130 million gallons a day so that 50 million gallons will come out. The rest runs away in thousands of leaks in broken water lines, costing the water system $2000,000 a day. The lack of water pressure, half that of other cities, creates significant problems in consumption, sanitation, air-conditioning, and fire prevention. In the lower 9th ward, the water has still not been certified as safe to drink - one year later.

Only half the homes in New Orleans have electricity. Power outages are common as hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs have not been made because Entergy New Orleans is in bankruptcy. Entergy is asking for a 25 percent increase in rates to help it become solvent. Yet Entergy New Orleans' parent company, Entergy Corporation reported earnings of $282 million last year on revenue of $2.6 billion.

Health and Healthcare

Early this month, on August 1, 2006, another Katrina victim was found in her home in New Orleans, buried under debris. The woman was the 28th person found dead since March 2006. A total of 1577 died in Louisiana as a result of Katrina.

A friend of mine, a lawyer with health insurance and a family physician, went for an appointment recently at 11am. The office was so crowded he had to sit out in the hall on the floor to wait his turn for a seat in the waiting room. Three hours later he met his doctor. The doctor thought might have a gall stone. The doctor tried to set up an ultrasound. None were available. He ordered my friend to the emergency room for an ultrasound. At 4pm my friend went to the hospital emergency room, which was jammed with people: stroke victims, young kids with injuries, people brought in by the police. At 5am the next morning, my friend finished his ultrasound and went home. If it takes a lawyer with health insurance that long to get medical attention, consider what poor people without health insurance are up against.

Half the hospitals open before Katrina are still closed. The state's biggest public healthcare provider, Charity Hospital, remains closed and there are no current plans to reopen it anytime soon. Healthcare could actually get worse. Dr. Mark Peters, board chair of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans said within the next two to three months, "all the hospitals" will be looking seriously at cutbacks. Why? Doctors and healthcare workers have left and there is surging demand from the uninsured who before Katrina went through now non-existent public healthcare. There is a shortage of nurses. Blue Cross Blue Shield officials reported "About three-quarters of the physicians who had been practicing in New Orleans are no longer submitting claims."

There is no hospital at all in the city for psychiatric patients. While the metropolitan area had about 450 psychiatric beds before the storm, 80 are now available. The police are the first to encounter those with mental illness. One recent Friday afternoon, police dealt with two mental patients - one was throwing bricks through a bar window, the other was found wandering naked on the interstate.

The elderly are particularly vulnerable. Over 70 percent of the deaths from Katrina were people over 60 years old. No one knows how many seniors have not made it back home. Esther Bass, 69, told the New York Times, after months of searching for a place to come home to New Orleans, "If there are apartments, I can't afford them. And they say there will be senior centers, but they're still being built. They can't even tell you what year they'll be finished." As of late July 2006, most nursing homes in the 12 parish Gulf Coast area of Louisiana are still not fully prepared to evacuate residents in the face of a hurricane.

The healthcare community has been rocked by the arrest of a doctor and two nurses after the Louisiana Attorney General accused them of intentionally ending the lives of four patients trapped in a now-closed local hospital. The accusations now go before a local grand jury which is not expected to make a decision on charges for several more months. The case is complicated for several reasons. Most important is that the doctor and nurses are regarded as some of the most patient-oriented and caring people of the entire hospital staff. It is undisputed that they worked day and night to save hundreds of patients from the hospital during the days it was without water, electricity or food. Others say that entire hospital and many others were abandoned by the government and that is what the attorney general should be investigating. The gravity of the charges, though, is giving everyone in the community pause. This, like so much else, will go on for years before there is any resolution.
Jobs

Before Katrina, there were over 630,000 workers in the metropolitan New Orleans area - now there are slightly over 400,000. Over 18,000 businesses suffered "catastrophic" damage in Louisiana. Nearly one in four of the displaced workers is still unemployed. Education and healthcare have lost the most employees. Most cannot return because there is little affordable housing, child care, public transportation and public health care.

Women workers, especially African American women workers, continue to bear the heaviest burden of harm from the storm. The Institute for Women's Policy Research reports that the percentage of women in the New Orleans workforce has dropped. The number of single mother families in New Orleans has dropped from 51,000 to 17,000. Low-income women remain displaced because of the lack of affordable housing and traditional discrimination against women in the construction industry.

Tens of thousands of migrant workers, roughly half undocumented, have come to the Gulf Coast to work in the recovery. Many were recruited. Most workers tell of being promised good wages and working conditions and plenty of work. Some paid money up front for the chance to come to the area to work. Most of these promises were broken. A tour of the area reveals many Latino workers live in houses without electricity, other live out of cars. At various places in the city whole families are living in tents. Two recently released human rights reports document the problems of these workers.

Immigrant workers are doing the dirtiest, most dangerous work, in the worst working conditions. Toxic mold, lead paint, fiberglass, and who knows what other chemicals are part of daily work. Safety equipment is not always provided. Day laborers, a new category of workers in New Orleans, are harassed by the police and periodic immigration raids. Wage theft is widespread as employers often do not pay living wages, and sometimes do not pay at all. Some of the powers try to pit local workers against new arrivals - despite the fact that our broken Gulf Coast clearly needs all the workers we can get.

Public transportation to and from low-wage jobs is more difficult. Over 200 more public transit employees have been terminated - cutting employment from over 1300 people pre-Katrina to about 700 now.

Single working parents seeking childcare are in trouble. Before Katrina, New Orleans had 266 licensed day care centers. Mississippi State University surveyed the city in July 2006 and found 80 percent of the day care centers and over 75 percent of the 1912 day care spots are gone. Only one-third of the Head Start centers that were open pre-Katrina survived.

Public Education

Before Katrina, 56,000 students were enrolled in over 100 public schools in New Orleans. At the end of the school year there were only 12,500. Right after the storm, the local school board gave many of the best public schools to charter groups. The State took over almost all the rest. By the end of the school year, four schools were operated by the pre-Katrina school board, three by the State, and eighteen were new charter schools.

After thirty-two years of collective bargaining, the union contract with the New Orleans public school teachers elapsed and was not renewed and 7500 employees were terminated.

For this academic year, no one knows for certain how many students will enroll in New Orleans public schools. Official estimates vary between a low of 22,000 and a high of 34,000.

There will be five traditional locally supervised public schools, eighteen schools operated by the State, and thirty-four charter schools. As of July 1, not a single teacher had been hired for fifteen of the state-run schools. As of August 9, 2006, the Times-Picayune reported there are no staff at all identified to educate students with discipline problems or other educational issues that require special attention.

Whatever the enrollment in the new public school system is in the fall, it will not give an accurate indication of how many children have returned. Why? Many students in the public charter schools were in private schools before the hurricane.

Criminal Legal System

Consider also our criminal legal system. Chaka Davis was arrested on misdemeanor charges in October 2005 and jailed at the Greyhound station in New Orleans in October of 2005.

Under Louisiana law, he was required to be formally charged within 30 days of arrest or released from custody. Because of a filing error he was lost in the system. He was never charged, never went to court, and never saw a lawyer in over 8 months - even though the maximum penalty for conviction for one of his misdemeanors was only 6 months. His mother found him in an out of town jail and brought his situation to the attention of the public defenders. He was released the next day.

Crime is increasingly a problem. In July, New Orleans lost almost as many people to murder as in July of 2005, with only 40 percent of the population back. There are many young people back in town while their parents have not returned. State and local officials called in the National Guard to patrol lightly populated areas so local police could concentrate on high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. Arrests have soared, but the number of murders remain high. Unfortunately, several of the National Guard have been arrested for criminal behavior as well - two for looting liquor from a home, two others for armed robbery at a traffic stop.

Criminal Court District Judge Arthur Hunter has declared the current criminal justice system shameful and unconstitutional and promises to start releasing inmates awaiting trial on recognizance bonds on the one year anniversary of Katrina. The system is nearly paralyzed by a backlog of over 6000 cases. There are serious evidence problems because of resigned police officers, displaced victims, displaced witnesses, and flooded evidence rooms. The public defender system, which was down to 4 trial attorneys for months, is starting to rebuild.

"After 11 months of waiting, 11 months of meetings, 11 months of idle talk, 11 months without a sensible recovery plan and 11 months tolerating those who have the authority to solve, correct and fix the problem but either refuse, fail or are just inept, then necessary action must be taken to protect the constitutional rights of people,' said Hunter.

In the suburbs across the lake, Sheriff Jack Strain told the media on TV that he was going to protect his jurisdiction from "thugs" and "trash" migrating from closed public housing projects in New Orleans. He went on to promise that every person who wore "dreadlocks or che-wee hairstyles" could expect to be stopped by law enforcement. The NAACP and the ACLU called in the U.S. Justice Department and held a revival-like rally at a small church just down the road from the jail. Though the area is over 80 percent white, the small group promised to continue to challenge injustice no matter how powerful the person committing the injustice. Recently, the same law enforcement people set up a roadblock and were stopping only Latino people to check IDs and insurance. I guess to prove they were not only harassing black people?

Finally, a grand jury has started looking into actions by other suburban police officers who blocked a group of people, mostly black, from escaping the floodwaters of New Orleans by walking across the Mississippi River bridge. The suburban police forced the crowd to flee back across the two mile bridge by firing weapons into the air.

This is the criminal legal system in the New Orleans area in 2006. None dare call it criminal justice.

International Human Rights

The Gulf Coast has gained new respect for international human rights because they provide a more appropriate way to look at what should be happening. The fact that there is an international human right of internally displaced people to return to their homes and a responsibility on government to help is heartening even though yet unfulfilled.

The United Nations has blasted the poor U.S. response to Katrina. The UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva accepted a report from Special Reporter Arjun Sengupta who visited New Orleans in fall of 2005 and concluded: "The Committee...remains concerned about information that poor people, and in particular African-Americans, were disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans implemented when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States of America, and continue to be disadvantaged under the reconstruction plans."

Asian tsunami relief workers who visited New Orleans over the summer were shocked at the lack of recovery. Somsook Boonyabancha, director of the Community Organisations Development Institute in Thailand, told Reuters she was shocked at the lack of progress in New Orleans. "I'm surprised to see why the reconstruction work is so slow, because this is supposed to be one of the most rich and efficient countries in the world. It is starting at such a slow speed, incredibly slow speed."

Warnings to the Displaced

Local United Way officials see the lack of housing, healthcare and jobs and conclude that low-income people should seriously consider not returning to New Orleans anytime soon.
United Way wrote: "Most of these people want to come home, but if they do not have a recovery plan they need to stay where they are. Some of these evacuees think that they can come back and stay with families and in a few weeks have a place of their own. But the reality is that they may end up living with those relatives for years. Sending people back without a realistic plan may have serious consequences: the crowding of families into small apartments/homes/FEMA trailers is causing mental health problems - stress, abuse, violence, and even death - and this problem is going to get worse, not better. Also, when the elderly (and others) are those returning and living in these conditions, their health is impacted and then the lack of medical facilities and hospital beds is a problem. Again the result may be death....Basically if an evacuee says they have a place to stay - like with relatives - those communities will give them bus fare back or pay for U-hauls. If an evacuee was a renter here and they want to return they should be told to plan on returning in 3-7 years, and in the meantime stay there, get a job, and be much better off."

FEMA officials in Austin are also warning people about returning to New Orleans. They wrote: "Before you return....New Orleans is a changing place...you should consider the conditions you may be returning to. Many neighborhood schools will not be open by August. Your children may have to travel some distance to get to school...Grocery and supermarkets have been slow to return to many neighborhoods. Sometimes there aren't enough residents back in your neighborhood for a store to open and be profitable. You may have to travel a large distance to groceries. Walking to the store might not be an option...If you or your family members require regular medical attention, or if you are pregnant or nursing, the services you received before the storm may be scattered and in very different and distant locations. Depending on your medical needs, you may have to drive across the river or even as far away as Baton Rouge...If you or your family members have allergies, remember that there is lots of dust and mold still in the city. While you may have suffered from allergies before the storm, please consider that being in the city will only worsen your allergies. If you have asthma, other respiratory or cardiac conditions, or immune system problems, you would be safer staying out of flooded areas due to the mold, particles and dust in the air. If you must return to the city, wear an approved respirator when working in moldy or dusty areas. ...Additionally, police, fire and emergency personnel are stretched to their limits...If you own a car, gas and service stations are limited in many areas. You may need to purchase a gas can in the event you cannot get gas near your home...Public transportation (busses) are also limited and do not operate in all areas....Available and affordable housing is extremely rare. Waiting lists for apartments are as large as 300 on the list, depending on how many bedrooms you need. Living inside your home could be dangerous if mold has set in of if your utilities are not in top working condition...Living in New Orleans may be easier said than done until we have fully recovered from the storm."

This is New Orleans, one year after Katrina.

Where Did the Money Go?

Everyone who visits New Orleans asks the same question that locals ask - where is the money? Congress reportedly appropriated over $100 billion to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion was allocated to temporary and long-term housing. Just under $30 billion was for emergency response and Department of Defense spending. Over $18 billion was for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure. $3.6 billion was for health, social services and job training and $3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion was allocated for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture.

One hour in New Orleans shows the check must still be in the mail.

Not a single dollar in federal housing rehab money has made it into a hand in Louisiana. Though Congress has allocated nearly $10 billion in Community Development Block Grants, the State of Louisiana is still testing the program and has not yet distributed dollar number one.

A lot of media attention has gone to the prosecution of people who wrongfully claimed benefits of $2000 or more after the storm. Their fraud is despicable. It harms those who are still waiting for assistance from FEMA.

But, be clear - these little $2000 thieves are minnows swimming on the surface. There are many big savage sharks below. Congress and the national media have so far been frustrated in their quest to get real answers to where the millions and billions went. How much was actually spent on FEMA trailers? How much did the big contractors take off the top and then subcontract out the work? Who were the subcontractors for the multi-million dollar debris removal and reconstruction contracts?

As Corpwatch says in their recent report, "Many of the same 'disaster profiteers' and government agencies that mishandled the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq are responsible for the failure of 'reconstruction' of the Gulf Coast region. The Army Corps, Bechtel and Halliburton are using the very same 'contract vehicles' in the Gulf Coast as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are 'indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity' open-ended 'contingency' contracts that are being abused by the contractors on the Gulf Coast to squeeze out local companies. These are also 'cost-plus' contracts that allow them to collect a profit on everything they spend, which is an incentive to overspend."

We do know billions of dollars in no-bid FEMA contracts went to Bechtel Corporation, the Shaw Group, CH2M Hill, and Fluor immediately after Katrina hit. Riley Bechtel, CEO of Bechtel Corporation, served on President Bush's Export Council during 2003-2004. A lobbyist for the Shaw Group, Joe Allbaugh, is a former FEMA Director and friend of President Bush. The President and Group Chief Executive of the International Group at CH2MHill is Robert Card, appointed by President Bush as undersecretary to the US Department of Energy until 2004. Card also worked at CH2M Hill before signing up with President Bush. Fluor, whose work in Iraq was slowing down, is one of the big winners of FEMA work and its stock is up 65 percent since it started Katrina work.

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has raised many protests and questions over inflated prices. "It is hard to overstate the incompetence involved in all of these contracts - we have repeatedly asked them for information and you get nothing." Republican U.S. Representative Charles Bustany, who represents an area heavily damaged by Hurricane Rita, asked FEMA for reasons why the decision was made to stop funding 100 percent of the cost of debris removal in his district. FEMA refused to tell him. He then filed a Freedom of Information request to get the information, and was again refused. When he asked to appeal their denial, he was told that there were many appeals ahead of his and he would have to wait.

If a US Senator and a local U.S. Republican Representative cannot get answers from FEMA, how much accountability can the people of the Gulf Coast expect? There are many other examples of fraud, waste and patronage.

How did a company that did not own a truck get a contract for debris removal worth hundreds of millions of dollars? The Miami Herald reported that the single biggest receiver of early Katrina federal contracts was Ashbritt, Inc. of Pompano Beach, FL, which received over $579 million in contracts for debris removal in Mississippi from Army Corps of Engineers.

The paper reported that the company does not own a single dumptruck! All they do is subcontract out the work. Ashbritt, however, had recently dumped $40,000 into the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which had been run by Mississippi Governor and former National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt also trucked $50,000 over to the Republican National Committee in 2004.

How did a company that filed for bankruptcy the year before and was not licensed to build trailers get a $200 million contract for trailers? Circle B Enterprises of Georgia was awarded $287 million in contracts by FEMA for temporary housing. At the time, that was the seventh highest award of Katrina money in the country. According to the Washington Post, Circle B was not even being licensed to build homes in its own state of Georgia and filed for bankruptcy in 2003. The company does not even have a website.

FEMA spent $7 million to build a park for 198 trailers in Morgan City Louisiana - almost 2 hours away from New Orleans.

Construction was completed in April. Three months later only 20 of the trailers were occupied. One displaced New Orleans resident who lives there has to walk three miles to the nearest grocery.

Hurricanes are now a booming billion dollar business. No wonder there is a National Hurricane Conference for private companies to show off their wares - from RVs to portable cell phone towers to port-a-potties. One long time provider was quoted by the Miami Herald at the conference that there are all kinds of new people in the field - 'Some folks here said, 'Man, this is huge business; this is my new business. I'm not in the landscaping business anymore, I'm going to be a hurricane debris contractor.' "

On the local level, we are not any better.

One year after Katrina the City of New Orleans still does not have a comprehensive rebuilding plan. The first plan by advisors to the Mayor was shelved before the election. A city council plan was then started and the state and federal government mandated yet another process that may or may not include some of the recommendations of the prior two processes. One of the early advisors from the Urban Land Institute, John McIlwain, blasted the delays in late July. "It's virtually a city with a city administration and its worse than ever...You need a politician, a leader that is willing to make tough decisions and articulate to people why these decisions are made, which means everyone is not going to be happy." Without major changes at City Hall the City will have miles of neglected neighborhoods for decades. "We're talking Dresden after World War II."

Signs of Hope

Despite the tragedies that continue to plague our Gulf Coast, there is hope. Between the rocks of hardship, green life continues to sprout defiantly.

Fifteen feet of water washed through Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School for Science and Technology in the lower 9th Ward. When people were finally able to get into the building, the bodies of fish were found on the second floor. Parents and over 90% of the teachers organized a grass-roots effort to put their school back together. Their first attempts to gut and repair the school by locals and volunteers from Common Ground were temporarily stopped by local school officials and the police. Even after the gutting was allowed to resume, the community was told that the school could not reopen due to insufficient water pressure in the neighborhood.

But the teachers and parents are pressing ahead anyway in a temporary location until they can get back in their school. Assistant Principal Joseph Recasner told the Times-Picayune: "Rebuilding our school says this is a very special community, tied together by more than location, but by spirituality, by bloodlines, and by a desire to come back."

New Orleans is fortunate to have a working newspaper again. The Times-Picayune won a well-deserved Pulitzer for its Katrina coverage. Its staff continues to provide quality documentation of the Gulf Coast region's efforts to repair and rebuild.

The New Orleans Vietnamese people continue to inspire us. They were among the very first group back and they have joined forces to care for their elders, rebuild their community church, and work together in a most cooperative manner to resurrect their community. Recently they took legal and direct action to successfully stop the placement of a gigantic landfill right next to their community. Their determination and sense of community-building is a good model for us all.

The only Republican running for Congress in New Orleans is blasting President Bush over failed Katrina promises. Joe Lavigne is running radio ads saying, "Sadly, George Bush has forgotten us. He's spending too much time and money on Iraq and not enough living up to his promise to rebuild New Orleans. His priorities are wrong. I'm running for Congress to hold President Bush accountable." Maybe other Republicans will join in.

Tens of thousands of volunteers from every walk of life have joined with the people of the Gulf Coast to help repair and rebuild. Lawyers are giving free help to Katrina victims who need legal help to rebuild their homes. Medical personnel staff free clinics. Thousands of college, high school and even some grade school students have traveled to the area to help families gut their devastated homes. Churches, temples, and mosques from across the world have joined with sisters and brothers in New Orleans to repair and rebuild.

Despite open attempts to divide them, black and brown and white and yellow workers have started to talk to each other. Small groups have started to work together to fight for living wages and safe jobs for all workers. Thousands came together for a rally for respectful treatment for Latino and immigrant workers. Seasoned civil rights activists welcomed the new movement and pledged to work together.

Ultimately, the people of the Gulf Coast are the greatest sign of hope. Despite setbacks that people in the US rarely suffer, people continue to help each other and fight for their right to return home and the right to live in the city they love.

On Sunday morning, a 70 year old woman told a friend where her children are. "They are all scattered," she sighed. "One is in Connecticut, one in Rhode Island, one in Austin." When he asked about her, she said, "Me? I am in Texas right now. I am back here to visit my 93 year old mother and go to the second line of Black Men of Labor on Labor Day. But I'm coming back. Yes indeed. I will return. I'm coming back."

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach him at Quigley@loyno.edu

For more information see www.justiceforneworleans.org

Now the Germans have no untapped friends or resources, and only the slenderest and weakest of mobilisable reserves. To the military eye their case is hopeless.

If we look closely into German military comments, the reliance is always on unknown factors. It is a "race between Allied arms and the coming new German arms".

The object of German strategy is "to delay the enemy by all means," until the Germans "have caught up with the material superiority of the enemy".

This faith in the magic of V2 and V3 may buoy up the people but it can have no virtue with the German armies. Still, it serves as the carrot dangled before a people driven harder than ever before.

From the Baltic to Silesia, the call to the population is to "dig, dig, dig" against the Russian enemy. Schools and shops are closed, industries are cut down to half their size, and all available, from boys of 12 and girls of 14 to the aged, are toiling.

Behind the heroic rhetoric about the people's "rising" is the ruthless force of the party. Anyone who leaves his post at the digging will be treated as a deserter. The strings are tightened. The 60-hour week is ordered, shops, schools and universities, newspapers, theatres and cinemas are partially shut down, postal services are reduced.

The use of the labour so released is the unsolved problem. It must be months before the new reserves can be felt, and these are the decisive months. The desperate efforts of the home front must be wasted.

The amateur digging will keep back neither the Russians nor the western Allies; the new labour reserves will make up neither for the material losses by Allied bombing nor the shattering of the armies.

But one thing will have been done. The Germans will have been dragged down still farther into suffering and exhaustion. The German leaders know this; they are determined to make their own fate also that of their people.