Category Archives: Inequality

Our Protected, Predatory Oligarchy: Dirty Secrets, Dirty Lies

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

If you want to understand why the status quo is unraveling, start by examining the feudal structure of our society, politics and economy.

The revelations coming to light about Hollywood Oligarch Harvey Weinstein perfectly capture the true nature of our status quo: a rotten-to-the-core, predatory, exploitive oligarchy of dirty secrets and dirty lies protected by an army of self-serving sycophants, servile toadies on the make and well-paid legal mercenaries. Predators aren’t an aberration of the Establishment; they are the perfection of the Establishment, which protects abusive, exploitive predator-oligarchs lest the feudal injustices of life in America be revealed for all to see.

The predators reckon their aristocratic status in Hollywood/D.C. grants them a feudal-era droit du seigneur (rights of the lord) to take whatever gratifications they desire from any female who has the grave misfortune to enter their malefic orbit.

Anyone who protests or makes efforts to go public is threatened by the oligarch’s thugs and discredited/smeared by the oligarch’s take-no-prisoners legal mercenaries. (Recall the Clintons’ Crisis Management Team tasked with crushing any Bimbo Eruptions, i.e. any eruptions of the truth about Bill’s well-known-to-insiders predation of the peasantry.)

The dirty secret is that the oh-so-hypocritical power elites of Hollywood and Washington D.C. circle the wagons to protect One of Their Own from being unmasked. The first weapons of choice in this defense are (as noted above) threats from thugs, discrediting the exploited via the oligarchy’s paid goons and lackeys in the mainstream media and dirty lies about what a great and good fellow the oligarch predator is. The last line of defense is a hefty bribe to silence any peasant still standing after the oligarchs’ onslaught of threats, smears and lies.

Should the worst happen and some sliver of the truth emerge despite the best efforts of the thugs, corporate media, legal mercenaries and PR handlers, then the playbook follows the script of any well-managed Communist dictatorship: the oligarch predator is thrown to the wolves to protect the oligarchs’ systemic predation and exploitation of the peasantry/debt-serfs.

Just as in a one-party Communist dictatorship, an occasional sacrificial offering is made to support the propaganda that the predators are outliers rather than the only possible output of a predatory, exploitive feudal status quo comprised of a small elite of super-wealthy and powerful oligarchs at the top and all the powerless debt-serfs at the bottom who must do their bidding in bed, in the boardroom, in the corridors of political power, and in the private quarters of their yachts and island hideaways.

Media reports suggest that the real reason Mr. Weinstein has been fired is not his alleged conduct over the past 27 years but his loss of the golden touch in generating movie-magic loot for the oh-so-liberal and politically correct Hollywood gang that was pleased to protect Mr. Weinstein when he was busy enriching them.

What’s truly noteworthy here is not the sordid allegations and history of payoffs–it’s the 27 years of intense protection the Hollywood/ media /D.C. status quo provided, despite hundreds of insiders knowing the truth. Just as hundreds of insiders with top secret clearance knew about the contents of the Pentagon Papers, and thus knew the Vietnam War was little more than an accumulation of official lies designed to protect the self-serving elites at the top of the power pyramid, only one analyst had the courage to risk his career and liberty to release the truth to the American public: Daniel Ellsberg.

Why are we not surprised that Hollywood, the corporate media and Washington D.C. lack even one courageous insider?

If you want to understand why the status quo is unraveling, start by examining the feudal structure of our society, politics and economy, and the endemic corruption, predation and exploitation of the privileged oligarchs at the top.

Then count the armies of self-serving sycophants, toadies, lackeys, hacks, apologists, flunkies, careerists and legal-team mercenaries who toil ceaselessly to protect their oligarch overlords from exposure.

Open your eyes, America: there are two systems of “justice”: one for the wealthy and powerful oligarchs, and an overcrowded gulag of serfs forced to plea-bargain in the other. If John Q. Public had done the deeds Mr. Weinstein is alleged to have done, Mr. Public would have long been in prison.

As Orwell observed about a totalitarian oligarchy, some are more equal than others.

 

Power Corrupts: A Culture of Compliance Breeds Despots and Predators

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President Bill Clinton and Miramax Chief, Harvey Weinstein at Hillary Clinton’s Birthday Party at the Hudson Hotel in New York City. October 25, 2000 (Photo: Nick Elgar/ImageDirect)

By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”― Frank Herbert

Power corrupts.

Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.

We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.

A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs a civilian hospital and a school and gets away with it.

Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sexual harassment, government corruption, or the rule of law.

For instance, 20 years ago, I took up a sexual harassment lawsuit on behalf of a young woman—a state employee—who claimed that her boss, a politically powerful man, had arranged for her to meet him in a hotel room, where he then allegedly dropped his pants, propositioned her and invited her to perform oral sex on him.

Despite the fact that this man had a well-known reputation for womanizing and this woman was merely one in a long line of women who had accused the man of groping, propositioning, and pressuring them for sexual favors in the workplace, she was denounced as white trash and subjected to a massive smear campaign by the man’s wife, friends and colleagues (including the leading women’s rights organizations of the day), while he was given lucrative book deals and paid lavish sums for speaking engagements.

William Jefferson Clinton eventually agreed to settle the case and pay Paula Jones $850,000.

Here we are 20 years later and not much has changed.

We’re still shocked by sexual harassment in the workplace, the victims of these sexual predators are still being harassed and smeared, and those who stand to gain the most by overlooking wrongdoing (all across the political spectrum) are still turning a blind eye to misconduct when it’s politically expedient to do so.

This time, it’s Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein—longtime Clinton associate and a powerhouse when it comes to raising money for Democrats—who is being accused of decades of sexual assaults, aggressively sexual overtures and harassment.

I won’t go into the nauseating details here. You can read them for yourself at the New York Times and the New Yorker.

Suffice it to say that it’s the same old story all over again: man rises to power, man abuses power abominably, man intimidates and threatens anyone who challenges him with retaliation or worse, and man gets away with it because of a culture of compliance in which no one speaks up because they don’t want to lose their job or their money or their place among the elite.

From what I’ve read, this was Hollywood’s worst-kept secret.

In other words, everyone who was anyone knew about it. They were either complicit in allowing the abuses to take place, turning a blind eye to them, or helping to cover them up.

It’s not just happening in Hollywood, however.

And it’s not just sexual predators that we have to worry about.

For every Harvey Weinstein (or Roger Ailes or Bill Cosby or Donald Trump) who eventually gets called out for his sexual misbehavior, there are hundreds—thousands—of others in the American police state who are getting away with murder—in many cases, literally—simply because they can.

The cop who shoots the unarmed citizen first and asks questions later might get put on paid leave for a while or take a job with another police department, but that’s just a slap on the wrist. The shootings and SWAT team raids and excessive use of force will continue, because the police unions and the politicians and the courts won’t do a thing to stop it. Case in point: The Justice Department will no longer attempt to police the police when it comes to official misconduct. Instead, it plans to give police agencies more money and authority to “fight” crime.

The war hawks who are making a profit by waging endless wars abroad, killing innocent civilians in hospitals and schools, and turning the American homeland into a domestic battlefield will continue to do so because neither the president nor the politicians will dare to challenge the military industrial complex. Case in point: Rather than scaling back on America’s endless wars, President Trump—like his predecessors—has continued to expand America’s military empire and its attempts to police the globe.

The National Security Agency that carries out warrantless surveillance on Americans’ internet and phone communications will continue to do so, because the government doesn’t want to relinquish any of its ill-gotten powers. Case in point: The USA Liberty Act, proposed as a way to “fix” all that’s wrong with domestic surveillance, will instead legitimize the government’s snooping powers.

Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.

Police officers will continue to shoot and kill unarmed citizens. Government agents—including local police—will continue to dress and act like soldiers on a battlefield.

Bloated government agencies will continue to fleece taxpayers while eroding our liberties. Government technicians will continue to spy on our emails and phone calls. Government contractors will continue to make a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

And powerful men (and women) will continue to abuse the powers of their office by treating those around them as underlings and second-class citizens who are unworthy of dignity and respect and undeserving of the legal rights and protections that should be afforded to all Americans.

As Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the at the University of California, Berkeley, observed in the Harvard Business Review, “While people usually gain power through traits and actions that advance the interests of others, such as empathy, collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing; when they start to feel powerful or enjoy a position of privilege, those qualities begin to fade. The powerful are more likely than other people to engage in rude, selfish, and unethical behavior.”

After conducting a series of experiments into the phenomenon of how power corrupts, Keltner concluded: “Just the random assignment of power, and all kinds of mischief ensues, and people will become impulsive. They eat more resources than is their fair share. They take more money. People become more unethical. They think unethical behavior is okay if they engage in it. People are more likely to stereotype. They’re more likely to stop attending to other people carefully.”

Power corrupts.

And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

However, it takes a culture of entitlement and a nation of compliant, willfully ignorant, politically divided citizens to provide the foundations of tyranny.

As researchers Joris Lammers and Adam Galinsky found, those in power not only tend to abuse that power but they also feel entitled to abuse it: “People with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want.”

That sense of entitlement and immunity from charges of wrongdoing dovetails with Richard Nixon’s belief that “when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

For too long now, America has played politics with its principles and allowed the president and his colleagues to act in violation of the rule of law.

“We the people” are paying the price for it now.

Americans have allowed Congress, the White House and the Judiciary to wreak havoc with our freedoms. They have tolerated an oligarchy in which a powerful, elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots. They have paid homage to patriotism while allowing the military industrial complex to spread death and destruction abroad. And they have turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient.

This culture of compliance must stop.

The empowerment of petty tyrants and political gods must end.

For starters, let’s go back to the basics: the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Let’s recommit to abiding by the rule of law.

Here’s what the rule of law means in a nutshell: it means that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.

Let’s demand scrutiny and transparency at all levels of government, which in turn will lead to accountability.

We need to stop being victimized by these predators.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, I’m not just talking about the political predators in office, but the ones who are running the show behind the scenes—the shadow government—comprised of unelected government bureaucrats whose powers are unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and beyond the reach of the law.

There is no way to erase the scars left by the government’s greed for money and power, its disregard for human life, its corruption and graft, its pollution of the environment, its reliance on excessive force in order to ensure compliance, its covert activities, its illegal surveillance, and its blatant disdain for the rule of law.

“We the people”—men and women alike— have been victims of the police state for so long that not many Americans even remember what it is to be truly free anymore. Worse, few want to shoulder the responsibility that goes along with maintaining freedom.

Still, we must try.

And empires die

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Source: Intrepid Report

Nothing ever seems to last, everybody changes oh so fast,
promises made promises lost and pride is kept at any cost,
And flowers die, and children cry, and lonely people carry on.
—Palermo & Farruggio 1970

That was from the song And Flowers Die, by prolific composer Michael Palermo and this writer as lyricist. How appropriate to compare this song with the ‘death song’ of our Military-Industrial Amerikan Empire, now in only its 72nd year of prominence. How great and powerful our empire was for so long. We controlled the economies and governments of so many countries, even continents. Now it is the autumn of our status as Number One. The Asian rim, as many refer to it, being led by China and all those other nations in that region, will become the future economic powerhouse of this planet.

This writer will leave it to the many progressive scholars out there for the explanation of the how and why of this equation. Let me just say that we all, from grade school on, have been fed the pabulum of America as a democracy, benevolent to the entire world. Many sadly still believe that lie, and that strengthens the reason why this empire is in freefall.

Since we became the preeminent world empire at the end of WW2, two things held the greedy ones who run things in we’ll say half check: The progressive federal tax rate and the union movement. The top tax rate from 1953 to 1963 was 91%. Now, we know that the super rich did not pay at that rate, but even after their accountants sharpened a few pencils, many still had to pay at least 50%, for argument sake. Today’s top rate is 39.6%, meaning that folks like mega millionaire Mitt Romney pay at around 15%-20%. Do the math and see how much more went into the treasury then as opposed to now. The second factor that held this empire in half check was the stronger union movement in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. In the 1950s, about 35% of American workers belonged to unions. In 1983, it went down to around 20%. Now, the percentage is around 12%. So, that means that three times more working stiffs in the recent past had the protection of a union, however weak or compliant that union may have been. Today, this empire can breathe easily as fewer and fewer working stiffs even have a union!

To this writer, with all the many factors that have contributed to the demise of our nation via this Military-Industrial Empire, the number one factor is our foreign policy. When over half of your spending goes for military reasons, how can a nation sustain itself at home? When you have over 1,000 military bases in over 100 countries, and you consistently are involved in these phony wars, the home front must feel the strain. Our myriad of domestic bleeding is so obvious . . . yet so few here will acknowledge it. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our health care is a mess, too many mediocre paying jobs (with too many being part time with NO benefits), our political system is controlled by Big Money, our media is controlled by the same Big Money . . . and the fools still fight amongst each other over the Two Party/One Party con job.

Let’s face it: All the major industrialized nations are controlled by their super rich. There are really few exceptions. Sadly, with over 99+ % of the populace in all these countries being just simple working stiffs, it is time for a change of mindset. The mindset must be simple: The super rich need to go back to paying their fair share, and government needs to become what Mark Twain prescribed: ‘To protect us from the crooks and scoundrels.’

Gandhi’s Truth: Ending Human Violence One Commitment at a Time

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By Robert J. Burrowes

Gandhi Jayanti – 2 October, the date of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s birth in 1869 and the International Day of Nonviolence – offers an opportunity to reflect on human violence and to ponder ways to end it. There may be a fast way to end human violence but, if there is, Gandhi did not know it. Nor do I. Nor does anyone else that I have read or asked either. But this does not mean there is no way to end human violence.

Human violence has a cause. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’. It has many manifestations. And it can be ended. But if this is to happen, then many of us must make the commitment to work towards that end. This is because, as Gandhi noted: ‘The future depends on what we do in the present.’

In other words, if human violence is to end, it will happen because individuals and organizations commit themselves to joining the effort to do so. Here is a sample of individuals around the world who have made that commitment, each in their own unique way. You are invited to join them.

HRH Prince Simbwa Joseph was born to a Ugandan Royal Family in Kampala. He abhors violence and is involved in many charities for helping those in need, as well as human rights organisations. He is currently manager of Nsambu and Company Advocates – a law firm and one of the oldest legal chambers in Uganda and East Africa, having been established in 1970. Among other engagements, he is also president of the African Federation Association in Uganda, which is a member of the World Federalist Movement Institute for Global policy. Following negotiations with Prince Simbwa as project manager in 2014, and involving the Ugandan Vice-President in launching the project, the World Sustainability Fund and its partners agreed to provide €1.5m to launch the AFA-WFM permanent office in Kampala in support of efforts to assist Uganda to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. In Prince Simbwa’s words: ‘Today the world is on tension due to so many things in social, economic, political disparities and pending nuclear wars. We are concerned as global citizens because if violence or war escalates those whom we call “Nalumanya ne Salumanya” in our local Luganda language (literally meaning “those concerned and less concerned”) shall be trapped equally…. Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and elder statesman appealed to the world during his lifetime to reinvent Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent approach to solving conflicts.’

Lily Thapa is the inspirational founder president, in 1994, of Women for Human Rights, single women group (WHR) in Nepal. WHR is an NGO ‘dedicated to creating an active network of single women on a regional, national and international level. By working exclusively with and for them, WHR is dedicated to addressing the rights of single women and creating a just and equitable society where the lives of single women are strengthened and empowered.’ Rejecting the label ‘widow’, WHR ‘issued a national declaration to use the term “single women” instead of “widow”. The word “widow” (“Bidhwa” in Nepali) carries negativity and disdainful societal views which leaves many single women feeling humiliated and distressed.’ Working to empower women economically, politically, socially and culturally in order to live dignified lives and enjoy the value of human rights, WHR works at the grassroots, district, regional, national, South Asian and international levels. Lily has pointed out that there are ‘285 million single women in the world, among them 115 million fall below the poverty line and 38 million conflict-affected single women have no access to justice; these women are last.’ You can read more about Lily and WHR’s monumental efforts on their website. Recently, Lily was awarded the South Asian ‘Dayawati Modi Stree Shakti Samman’, which is ‘presented annually to a woman who has dared to dream and has the capability to translate that dream into reality’.

John McKenna’s commitment is to end discrimination in all of its forms against those with disabilities. In one recent article, the Australian surveyed the value of recent disability-mitigating technologies becoming available. In his thoughtful article ‘What’s App?’ he assessed the value of technologies that, for example, assist people who are blind, people who have problems with speech, and people with disabilities who are getting older.

In a nonviolent action to draw attention to the horror of drone murders, US grandmother Joy First was one of four nonviolent activists arrested at the Wisconsin Air National Guard Base (Volk Field) during one of the monthly vigils (held for over five years now) by Wisconsin Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars. Volk Field is a critical component of the drone warfare program being conducted by the US government in a number of countries in the Middle East and Africa. At Volk Field personnel are trained to operate the RQ-7 Shadow Drone, which has been used for reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition. You can read more about drone warfare and resistance to it in Joy’s highly informative article ‘Four Citizen Activists Arrested at Volk Field as they Attempt to Identify the Base as a Crime Scene’.

Father Nithiya is the National Programme Coordinator of the Association of Franciscan Families of India (AFFI). Their inspirational work is focused on two campaigns: the Violence of Extreme poverty and hunger and the Right to Food Campaign, as well as the National Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women. In relation to the latter campaign, AFFI has released a DVD and a booklet as a result of a four day intensive national consultation and training organised by them in 2016. Through their vast network of educational, social and medical ministries, AFFI has committed itself to stopping violence against women using various strategies all over the country, especially through their schools and colleges. Identifying ten types of violence against women – gender selection, female foeticide, child marriage, child abuse, harassment at work, prostitution and trafficking, domestic violence and Eve teasing, child labour, effects of alcoholism of men, and unemployment and underemployment of women – the DVD and booklet include analytical data, information about the legal framework and redress mechanisms. The aim is to empower women for their safety and security. Fr. Nithiya has given seminars to teachers and students to raise awareness of how they can stop any form of violence against women in their personal life, in their families, communities and society at large. The aim is to make these AFFI resources available in various Indian languages.

In one of her many engagements, Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire from Northern Ireland continues her ongoing solidarity work in support of the Rohingya, the ethnic group in Burma currently suffering the genocidal assault of the Burmese government and its military forces, the Tatmadaw. In a recent evocative appeal to their fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, signed by Mairead and four other laureates, they asked ‘How many Rohingya have to die; how many Rohingya women will be raped; how many communities will be razed before you raise your voice in defence of those who have no voice? Your silence is not in line with the vision of “democracy” for your country that you outlined to us, and for which we all supported you over the years.’ See ‘Five Nobel Laureates urge Aung San Suu Kyi to defend Rohingya Muslims’.

So if you would like to join the individuals above, as well as those individuals and organizations in 101 countries who have made the commitment to work to end human violence, you can do so by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ which, thanks to Antonio Gutiérrez Rodero in Venezuela, is also available in Spanish.

If you also subscribe to Gandhi’s belief that ‘Earth provides enough to satisfy every [person’s] needs, but not every [person’s] greed’, then you might consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which he inspired as well.

And if you wish to use nonviolence, as Gandhi developed and employed it, for your campaign or liberation struggle, you will be given clear guidance on how to do so on these websites that draw heavily on his work: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

Will enough people make the commitment to end human violence? Will you? As Gandhi warns us, fear of inadequate outcomes is no excuse for inaction: ‘You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing there will be no results.’

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

—

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68 Daylesford
Victoria 3460 Australia

Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:

http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com (Nonviolence Charter) http://tinyurl.com/flametree (Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth) http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence (‘Why Violence?’) https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Campaign Strategy) https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy) http://anitamckone.wordpress.com (Anita: Songs of Nonviolence) http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com (Robert) https://globalnonviolencenetwork.wordpress.com/ (Global Nonviolence Network)

5 Reasons why donations to the poor may bring bad results!

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By John Hawthorne

Source: Business Connect

Does donating to poor countries actually help? Keep in mind there is a big difference between disaster response and longer term, more effective and sustainable development.  Much of the time outside assistance and donations do not have much impact and in the long term, can be harmful.

When people see images of impoverished countries and situation, our first thought is, I should donate something.

This is noble  and shouldn’t be dismissed. However, many people fail to realize that donating to the poor often makes them more poor. It creates a vicious, unintended cycle.

This isn’t an anecdotal argument either. More and more research is showing that donations have long term consequences that end up hurting more than helping.

In this post, we’re going to lay out five reasons why donating to the poor often hurts more than it helps, and then pose a possible solution. Our goal is to convince you that there is a better way.

Reason #1: The Communities Can’t Sustain The Things Donated To Them

It’s an idea that sounds great on paper and makes for ovation-garnering speeches. Go into an impoverished community, help them create life-giving resources (like a well), and then let the community reap the benefits.

It sounds so noble. Enlightened. The wealthy westerners coming into rescue the poor and the impoverished who can’t survive on their own. Knights in shining armor delivering those imprisoned by their own poverty.

This mentality is incredibly shortsighted and even insulting to the recipients of that charity.

It’s shortsighted because it fails to consider one massive problem: how will impoverished communities continue to support and maintain the created resources? A drilled well may function effectively for several years, but it won’t be long before it starts to break down.

Where will they get the parts to repair it? Will they have the necessary technical expertise to maintain the well? These aren’t hypothetical questions.

This does not mean you should do nothing. But it does mean that any solution must involve, at the minimum, the following components: time, education, partnership, a champion, and accountability.

As Jamie Skinner comments:

There is no point an external agency coming in, putting in a drill-hole and then passing it over to the local community if they can’t afford to maintain it over the next 10 or 20 years. There needs to be a proper assessment of just how much local people are able to finance these water points. It’s not enough to just drill and walk away.

What happens if this kind of support is not offered? Annie Kelly notes:

In 2007, before the African Medical and Research Foundation and Farm-Africa began their development work in Katine, worms were found in the polluted water supply at the village of Abia, next to the Emuru swamp. A badly constructed and poorly maintained shallow well, dug by a charity, was full of soil and animal faeces and was making local people sick.

That well that you helped dig on your church mission trip? How are they going to maintain that? Are you going back every three months to fix it? Are you going to stay in constant contact to make sure they always have the supplies they need? Those parts are probably only available in other countries, so how in the world are you going to get them to those who need them?

It’s easy to feel good about yourself but you probably just made things worse.

Reason #2: It’s Misguided And Doesn’t Solve The Problem

Too often, remedies and relief are donated without considering whether they solve the problem. Take water disinfection treatments. Many organizations and donors assume that supplying water treatments is an effective solution for polluted water.

And so they distribute water disinfectants in great number, feeling good about how they are fixing the problem.

But they’re NOT necessarily fixing the problem. In fact, there is debate over whether some of (not all) these disinfectants actually produce real, lasting change.

As microbiologist Paul Hunter notes:

Disinfection household water treatments don’t seem to have any public health benefit. I’d be more than happy to change my mind if someone comes up with some good evidence, but it would have to be a large double-blinded study.

In other words, a solution that is taken as gospel by many organizations may not add much benefit at all to impoverished communities.

Don’t assume that every solution is equally good. Sure, you paid for some malaria nets to be given to a village. Is that what they need? Will that solve the most pressing problems they have? It’s easy to feel good about yourself for donating something, but you may be trying to solve the wrong problem.

Reason #3: The Solutions Aren’t Fully Developed

More and more, tech companies are trying to step into underdeveloped countries and offer solutions that will “solve” all their problems. They distribute tablets and apps and internet kiosks, believing that these will help people elevate themselves out of poverty.

And while this is a noble notion, it fails the majority of the time. Why? Because the tech companies haven’t fully developed the solutions in conjunction with local governments and businesses. If the underlying infrastructure isn’t in place, these tech solutions are like a band aid on a cannon ball wound. They may stop the bleeding for a few minutes, but they don’t solve the problem.

One of the very first learnings a donor agency or new volunteer learns is that poverty issues are never in isolation. Everything is connected, integrated, and often, complex.  For example, lack of adequate income is tied to lack of education, poor infrastructure, public policy, access to capital, inferior quality water which means poor health, community loyalties, and on and on. Every initiative needs to be evaluated in terms of the multiple relationships between other issues.

Speaking of tech companies attempting to “upgrade” India, Eric Bellman writes:

A $40 tablet that was supposed to revolutionize education has not been getting the government orders it expected. The national networks of Internet kiosks that were supposed to empower farmers have largely shut down. The $2,000 Tata Nano minicar that was supposed to allow millions of people upgrade from the dangerous family motorcycle was not popular and anti-rape apps which were supposed to use mapping and automatic SMS to protect women were never connected to the country’s police force.

You simply can’t put high-tech equipment into a country that doesn’t have the infrastructure for it. It would be like giving the Pilgrims automatic machine guns or airplanes. All chaos would break loose.

Tech nonprofits are big these days. You donate some money and they import computers into impoverished countries. But can those computers even be used, or are they going to collect dust in a warehouse? Can the country even handle this type of computer? Can it be hooked up to the internet? This is a ready, fire, aim strategy that usually hits the wrong target.

Reason #4: Donors Don’t Have A Sustainable Plan

Too often, donors come into help without any real plan for how to sustain things after they’ve left. They assume that their work is done once they’ve implemented the initial solution, not realizing that without a plan for the future things will quickly fall apart.

Too often the support structures for success are not even considered whether it be government policies, ongoing encouragement, mentoring, or something as simple as adequate financial support.  Many of us live in the fantasy world that people who have lived their entire life surviving the harsh reality of poverty, doing what it takes to live with so little, suddenly can embrace and understand the values and resources that make the new intervention possible.

A prime example of this is World Bank’s billion dollar effort to bring improved water access to the country of Tanzania. While it was certainly a noble goal, it generated a stunning lack of success.

The Global Post reports:

In 2007 [before the project], only 54 percent of Tanzanians had access to what is called an improved water source — a water point, like a well or water pump, that is protected from contamination. By 2012, that figure had actually decreased to 53 percent, according to the latest available World Bank Data. Coupled with Tanzania’s rising population, 3.5 million more Tanzanians lacked access to improved water than did before the project began.

The problem? The lack of a sustainable plan. Over time, the water sources begin to fail and become polluted, and the local communities didn’t have the finances or resources to fix them. Suddenly, the communities are worse off than when they started.

Herbert Kashililah makes this damning statement: “If I am from the World Bank, it is easier to count new projects than try to ensure people are running their own systems.”

A problem is not a problem to be addressed by good hearted outsiders unless identified and owned by the local population, and there are champions, local people who are committed, to work and address it.

To put it into practical terms, maybe you financed a cow for a family through a charity. That’s great, but what will that cow actually do for the family? Do they even have the land necessary to pasture it? How will they afford the food? Do the people even know what’s required to raise a cow?

Reason #5: It Kills Local Economies

Several years ago, Jason Sadler had the idea to collect and donate 1 million t-shirts to Africa. Now, besides obvious questions like, “Is that what they really need?” Sadler failed to consider one enormous factor: the impact on the local economy.

What so many donors fail to realize is that their giving can actually kill a local business.

Disaster response efforts especially must be careful about destroying local businesses.  It would be so much wiser to further develop the capacity of local entrepreneurs to meet the local needs. This is also true when hunger is prevalent. Buy local food first, create initiatives to produce more, purchase relief supplies locally. Organizations need to deeply consider the economic impact of their actions. Will this help or hurt the economy? Will it create or kill jobs? Will it ultimately provide self-generated income for the residents? A failure to weigh these things results in the poor becoming poorer.

Let’s say an individual had a thriving t-shirt business. He makes his livelihood and supports his family by making and selling t-shirts. What happens when a million shirts are suddenly dropped into his country? No one will buy from him. Why would they? They can get shirts for free. Suddenly the t-shirt economy is destroyed and the business goes under.  What happens when the donated t-shirts wear out?  There is no local business to fill the void and another donation is needed; dependency is created.  All this because of the well-intentioned efforts of a donor.

The Solution?

Business Connect embraces the concept that self-sustaining business solutions will have more longer lasting impact for the alleviation of poverty than a thousand give away products. Every donation we receive or facilitate goes through a local entrepreneur, who then gets a commission of the sale. That entrepreneur is then there to support the product for its lifespan, including maintenance and parts.

By empowering entrepreneurs, we are lifting an entire economy and helping build strong local businesses where green, life-improving products can be purchased.  In the process we pay duties and the fees so that the entire economy is boosted.

This is our mission. We’re passionate about helping local communities thrive, rather than simply dropping supplies on them. It’s simply a better way.

 

8 Critical Factors Behind Every Food Crisis

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FILE – In this Monday, Aug. 15, 2011 file photo, children from southern Somalia hold their pots as they line up to receive cooked food in Mogadishu, Somalia. A report by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet, estimating that 260,000 people died – more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File)

By John Hawthorne

Source: Business Connect

From the beginning of time, their have been food crises in one form or another. Ancient books such as the Bible have records of various famines devastating portions of the world.

And while it’s easy to attribute these crises to a single cause, such as war or drought, the causes are usually much deeper and much more complex.

Nelson Mandela said, “Overcoming poverty is not an act of charity, it is an act of justice.”

In order for us to achieve the kind of justice envisioned by Mandela, it’s essential that we first understand the underlying causes of food crises. Only after we have understood can we then begin creating meaningful solutions.

With that in mind, here are 8 primary factors behind almost every global food crisis. While not all 8 of these will be present at a time, you will almost always find several of these at work.

Factor #1 – Poverty

One of the greatest factors in every food crisis is stark and abject poverty. This isn’t surprising. With enough money, anyone can ensure they have enough food. But with many developing nations sitting well below the poverty line, the population simply can’t afford the food they so desperately need.

Additionally, poverty has a distinct effect on food output. In Africa, for example, many farmers can’t afford proper irrigation and fertilizer. This, in turn, leads to lower yields, which then reduces the overall amount of food available to the population.

The population of the Sub-Saharan region of Africa is expected to grow at an astronomical rate, topping out at 2.4 billion by 2050. This will continue to exacerbate the poverty issue, which will then continue to drive the lack of sufficient food in the area.

Factor #2 – Drought and Desertification

Widespread droughts, leading to the desertification of particular locations also causes huge disruptions to food production. For example, leading up to and during the global food crisis of 2008, 110 countries experienced significant droughts. This caused even the most well-irrigated, fertile areas to become arid deserts, making it impossible to grow crops.

As Mark Hughes noted:

Australia is normally the second largest exporter of grain, after the U.S. The continent, though, is experiencing an ongoing drought that has been described as the worst in a century. Grain yields have shrunk and many silos remain empty. Australia’s drought is a major factor in global wheat stocks being at their lowest since 1979. In fact, many wheat and rice farmers are switching to crops that demand less water, such as wine grapes.

Additionally, farmers often let animals over-graze on their land, reducing the amount of vegetation and increasing desertification. If the soil becomes dry enough, it is ruined and unable to support any crops at all.

Finally, as populations grow, deforestation occurs at an increased rate, which then leads to less vegetation and more desertification.

Factor #3 – Political Pressure

In the past, the International Monetary Fund has pressured small farmers, particularly in impoverished African countries, to abandon agricultural farming in favor of industrial work. The money generated from this practice would be used to pay off debt and import food.

While it may sound like a working strategy, it has created catastrophic results.

As Eric Holt-Giménez noted:

The urban population increased seven-fold, swelling from 18% to 33% of the population. Millions of poor and unemployed workers have swelled the cities—with two-thirds of them living in slums. The manufacturing and industrial sector did not “take off” in African countries; the percent of the GDP coming from industry was 30% in 1961 and 32% in 2000. In the countryside, as plantations for agro-exports expanded, food production plummeted and poverty grew. Though the rural population, density increased by 180% as more farmers were crowded onto smaller plots.

Factor #4 – Increased Consumption of Meat and Dairy

Many countries have begun adopting a more Western diet, which includes eating significantly more meat and dairy. To make this happen, farmers have been forced to raise more cattle, and more cattle means more grain being consumed.

The problem, however, is that this causes a significant deficiency in terms of calories consumed versus calories available. A cow consumes approximately 700 calories worth of grain to produce a piece of meat containing only 100 calories. When this happens on a massive scale, an enormous shortage of food is the end result. The longer this deficit continues, the greater the imbalance will become.

Factor #5 – Increased Oil and Transportation Costs

When the price of oil goes up, the energy cost for planting and transporting foods goes through the roof. When food costs more to grow, it then costs more to sell. These rising costs then make it more difficult for the local population to purchase crops as well as for farmers to export their crops to industrialized nations.

Additionally, increased oil costs has led many countries to invest heavily in the development of agro-fuels. More agro-fuels always means less food available.

As Esther Vivas helpfully puts it:

The increase in the price of oil, which doubled in 2007 and 2008 and caused a big rise in the price of fertilizers and transport related to the food system, has resulted in increasing investment in the production of alternative fuels such as those of plant origin. Governments in the United States, the European Union, Brazil and others have subsidized production of agro-fuels in response to the scarcity of oil and global warming. But this green fuel production comes into direct competition with the production of food. To give just one example, in 2007 in the United States 20% of the total cereal harvest was used to produce ethanol and it is calculated in the next decade that this figure will reach 33%. We can imagine the situation in the countries of the South.

Factor #6 – Falling World Aid

At the peak of the 2007-2008 food crisis, food aid was at it’s lowest point since 1961. This is one of the oddities about the national food market. When cereal prices are low, countries look to sell their food through international aid. However, when food prices are high, they prefer to sell them on the open market for increased profits.

In other words, during food crises, when food is scarcest and at it’s highest prices, it isn’t available for international aid. When the bottom falls out of world aid, food crises grow in magnitude.

Factor #7 – International Conflicts

International conflicts are a particularly visible factor behind many food crises. During conflicts, it’s common for one country to restrict exports to another country, which then reduces the amount of food available to the general population.

Or, even worse, dictators will intentionally isolate their countries, refusing foreign aid that is desperately needed. Aid workers may be blocked from entering the country, making it difficult for the citizens to receive needed help. If foreign aid does come, they seize it for themselves, depriving the population of desperately needed sustenance.

Factor #8 – Disease

If a country experiences a particularly violent outbreak of a disease, it can completely disrupt the overall food supply. For example, the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa has killed farmers, which in turn pushes families deep into poverty.

When a population is undernourished, drugs become less effective and can at times create intense hunger pains. These two factors combined create a vicious cycle of death, poverty, and hunger.

Additionally, certain highly contagious diseases can restrict the amount of aid available to a country. For example, during the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, aid workers were restricted from traveling to the region due to fear of spreading the disease.

Perfect Storms

Most food crises aren’t the result of a single factor. Rather, they are caused by a perfect storm of events that coalesce into a deadly storm.

For example, in 2011, Somalia was devastated by a drought that caused widespread crop failure. The food crisis was made even worse by a non-functioning government as well as a national conflict. All these forces combined to make it difficult for aid workers to reach those who so desperately needed help.

The result was that approximately 260,000 people died.

Because the problems are almost always complex and multi-layered, the solutions must be equally multi-faceted. Simple solutions typically exacerbate the problem at the expense of the local population.

The best solutions are those that involve numerous parties working together to create a tangible, workable solution.

There will always be food crises to one degree or another. But as we grow in our understanding of what causes them, we can also grow in our ability to bring them to an end.

What Happened to All Those Foreclosed Houses?

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Wall Street bought them — and is now leasing them out and driving up rents.

By Jim Hightower

Source: OpEdNews.com

We know that millions of American families lost their homes after Wall Street’s 2007 financial crash. But where did all those houses go?

It turns out that Wall Streeters themselves formed profiteering investment groups that rushed out to scoop up tens of thousands of those foreclosed properties, usually grabbing them on the cheap at courthouse auctions in suburban metro areas that were hard-hit by the crash.

These moneyed syndicates have deep, deep pockets, so they easily outbid local buyers to take possession of the majority of the single-family homes being sold off in many distressed places.

Why are they buying? To turn the homes into rental properties and become the dominant suburban landlord, controlling the local market and constantly jacking up rents.

For example, the Wall Street Journal found that in Nashville’s suburb of Spring Hill, just four of these predatory giants own 700 houses — giving this oligopoly of absentee investors ownership of three-fourths of all rental houses in town.

One of these bulk buyers is an arm of Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm. Another is an equity outfit that was spun out of the housing speculation department of Goldman Sachs. And still another is a billionaire whose investors include the Alaska state oil fund.

Not only do rents jump dramatically when such outfits seize a market, but Wall Street’s intention is to impose “a new way” on housing America: They’re pushing a cultural shift in which homeownership is no longer part of the American Dream, and tenants are taught to accept annual rent increases as the price of having a home.

So the banksters crash the economy, you lose income and your home, they buy your house at auction, then they rent it to you at an ever-increasing price. The “new way” is the same old story: The rich robbing the rest of us.

 

Media’s Grim Addiction to Perseverance Porn

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By Adam Johnson

Source: FAIR

You’ve seen or heard or read the personal interest story a thousand times: An enterprising seven-year-old collects cans to save for college (ABC7, 2/8/17), a man with unmatched moxie walks 15 miles to his job (Today, 2/20/17), a low-wage worker buys shoes for a kid whose mother can’t afford them (Fox5, 12/14/16), an “inspiring teen” goes right back to work after being injured in a car accident (CBS News, 12/16/16). All heartwarming tales of perseverance in the face of impossible odds—and all ideological agitprop meant to obscure and decontextualize the harsh reality of dog-eat-dog capitalism.

Man walks eight miles in the snow to get to work every day (ABC 27, 3/14/17). Or was it a teen walking 10 miles in freezing weather to a job interview (New York Daily News, 2/26/13)? Or was it 10 miles to work every day (Times Herald Record, 3/17/17)? Or was it 12 (ABC News, 2/22/17) or 15 (Today, 2/20/17) or 18 (Evening Standard, 2/9/09) or 21 (Detroit Free Press, 1/20/15)? Who cares—their humanity is irrelevant. They’re clickbait, stand-in bootstrap archetypes meant to validate the bourgeois morality of click-happy media consumers.

These stories are typically shared for the purposes of poor-shaming, typically under the guise of inspirational life advice. “This man is proof we all just need to keep walking, no matter what life throws at us,” insisted Denver ABC7 anchor Anne Trujillo, after sharing one of those stories of a poor person forced to walk thousands of miles a year to survive.

A healthy press would take these anecdotes of “can do” spirit and ask bigger questions, like why are these people forced into such absurd hardship? Who benefits from skyrocketing college costs? Why does the public transit in this person’s city not have subsidies for the poor? Why aren’t employers forced to offer time off for catastrophic accidents? But time and again, the media mindlessly tells the bootstrap human interest story, never questioning the underlying system at work.

One particularly vulgar example was CBS News(12/16/16) referring to an “inspiring” African-American kid who had to work at his fast food job with an arm sling and a neck brace after a car accident. To compound the perseverance porn, he was, at least in part, doing so to help donate to a local homeless charity. Here we have a story highlighting how society has colossally failed its most vulnerable populations—the poor, ethnic minorities, children and the homeless—and the take-home point is, “Ah gee, look at that scrappy kid.”

Journalism is as much—if not more—about what isn’t reported as what is. Here a local reporter is faced with a cruel example of people falling through the cracks of the richest country on Earth, and their only contribution is to cherry-pick one guy who managed—just barely—to cling on to the edge.

Perseverance porn goes hand in hand with the rise of a GoFundMe economy that relies on personal narrative over collective policy, emotional appeals over baseline human rights. $930 million out of the $2 billion raised on GoFundMe since its inception in 2010 was for healthcare expenses, while an estimated 45,000 people a year die a year due to a lack of medical treatment. Meanwhile, anchors across cable news insist that single-payer healthcare is “unaffordable,” browbeating guests who support it, while populating their broadcasts with these one-off tales of people heroically scraping by.

It’s part of a broader media culture of anecdotes in lieu of the macro, moralizing “success” rather than questioning systemic problems. Perseverance porn may seem harmless, but in highlighting handpicked cases of people overcoming hardship without showing the thousands that didn’t—much less asking broader questions as to what created these conditions—the media traffics in decidedly right-wing tropes. After all, if they can do it, so can you—right?