Dispatches

D4_out of poverty

For the fourth issue of dispatches, editors Mort Rosenblum and Gary Knight have returned to their reporting roots. Travelling through decaying corners of Ohio with notebook and camera, they meet the newly poor; the jobless and hopeless of formerly thriving Midwest towns where you can now buy a house for $800 and get a second thrown in for free.

Crossing continents, in India, our editors focused on the two thirds of Indians who, despite the recent economic miracle, live on less than $1.40 a day. Where people are hungry they also get angry. "We will fight," says one Indian farmer, "all we need is a leader."

"Out of Poverty" puts itself among the poor - in America, in Africa, in India, in Europe. We look at how aid is spent, how an area of former conflict tries to rebuild and lift itself from poverty, and how inner city poverty is echoed through the generational changes within gang culture.

To be impoverished is more than a lacking of assets; it spawns generational despair and endemic hopelessness.

D3_on russia

"On Russia" prods deftly at the Russian psyche. Commissioned for their insider knowledge of the subject, dispatches contributors lay bare the contradictory soul that makes up modern Russia. Putin's hold on power; the strongmen who control the oil and the nation's businesses; a disenchanted and disavowed youth; the new KGB pumped up and decked in black under its new guise of the FSB all echo the disposition of a nation which, despite the applause for Yeltsin's antics on top of a tank nearly 20 years ago, has struggled to take to its heart the principles of democracy. A photo essay put together by curators from FotoDepartament spans 150 years of Russian portraiture, while Seamus Murphy travels across the Far Eastern reaches of the country and its border with China.

D2_beyond iraq

"Beyond Iraq" is a hard-hitting look at the Iraq conflict's impact on the Middle East and its relationship with the West. Rod Nordland, Newsweek's chief foreign correspondent, described reality on the ground, "Reality in Eye-rack: It Only Gets Worse." Jamie Tarabay, an Australian-Lebanese reporter for National Public Radio talks to Arabs across the Middle East to see how conflict changed their lives - and their view of the Unites States.

Yuri Kozyrev of Time magazine and Noor photo agency, who has photographed the war in Iraq from its opening salvos, dramatically pictures each stage of conflict and collapse in the first comprehensive retrospective of his coverage from 2003 to 2008.

Rémy Ourdan of Le Monde explains how U.S. policy in Iraq strengthens al Qaeda and swells terrorist ranks, and Keith Richburg of The Washington Post follows around the world the ripples that have spread beyond Iraq. Jeff Danziger's cartoon panel captures the anguish of young Americans stuck with an unwinnable war.

D1_in america

"In America" explores the US from the inside out and the outside in. Author Paul Theroux frames the subject with an essay: "Mind Blindness and the Decline of Hitchhiking." In "Of Turbans and Neckties," fabled New York Times correspondent John Kifner shows how Americans ignore history to their peril. Muzamil Jaleel, a wry and wise Kashmiri reporter, tours the country as a Sufi Muslim with questions to ask. Samantha Powers offers thoughts on American "exemptionism." Antonin Kratochvil takes his critical eye from coast to coast, "In God's Country." And Gerald Scarfe, noted London Sunday Times political cartoonist for 40 years, contributes this issue's cartoon.