The World at a Crossroads

Pushing Everything Far in to the Future

2011-08-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

Why not offer more fuel efficient cars in America now?

President Obama recently announced new fuel
efficiency regulations for cars and light trucks

White House Blog
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/07/29/president-obama-announces-new-fuel-economy-standards

Regulations to begin not until 2017 and continue through 2025, car-light truck fleets will be required to average 54.5 miles per gallon.

Why would President Obama be setting new fuel efficiency standards for future Presidential Administrations?

Same phenomenon with our Government's planning for the federal budget spending - "savings" in the budget generally is calculated over 10 years - a period of time out of place with respect to the service terms of Presidents and Members of Congress, and for Presidents, their being limited to a maximum of 8 years in office.

Does this political math have something to do with why our national debt is akin to a runaway train? We're counting on future 'savings' that can easily be nullified by a subsequent Administration or majority in Congress. Plans for cutting program spending are pushed off to future Presidents and members of Congress who don't want them.

Same with plans for raising fuel efficiency standards. CAFE standards for passenger cars were stuck at 27.5 miles per gallon for 20 years, from 1990 through 2010. Only in 2011 did they get a boost to 30.2 mpg. Now the Obama Administration proposes an ambitious leap to 54.5 mpg - but not something that will happen under his administration. Can Americans count on those standards actually being implemented under whomever is President from 2017 to 2025?

The CAFE standard is limited - why not also require that automakers sell certain high fuel efficiency cars, a change that, if we look at the UK and Europe, seems like it could be done in 2 years - by simply offering smaller engine vehicles.

Engines in cars sold in America usually are 1.4 liters or larger. But many automakers offer 1.0L to 1.2 litre engine models for the UK-Europe markets, where gasoline costs yet more than it does at $3.60 to $4.00 in the USA today.

Fiat - which is now selling it FIAT 500 in the US with a 1.36 litre engine, claims 30/38mpg city/highway fuel economy - whereas the 1.2 liter UK model claims as much as 65.7 mpg highway, and 49.6 mpg city.

That's almost double the fuel economy of the American offering. And such higher fuel efficiency is not exclusive to the tiny car market - other larger sporty Fiat models achieve upwards of 50-60mpg on the highway.

And Fiat is not the only automaker producing very fuel efficient cars: Ford UK sells the 1.2 litre Ka which gets a combined 57mpg highway-city, and offers the 1.25 Litre UK Fiesta which achieves a combined 51 mpg. Meanwhile, the American Ford Fiesta brags about its gas mileage of 40 mpg on the highway.
http://www.ford.com/cars/fiesta/?intcmp=fv-hpbb-dflt-40mpg-fiesta

Though it may be that US estimates of fuel economy for the FIAT 500 and some other small American cars are lower than the actual possible fuel economy. Even my big Honda accord 4 door with a 2.2 litre engine can achieve 40 mpg on the highway.

But with gasoline prices at $3.50 to $4 per gallon, I would like to be able to purchase a Ford Ka or Fiesta with a smaller engine, by 2012 - not by 2017... All automakers have to do is offer a smaller engine option for some of their current models.

The Obama Admin did also announce new fuel economy standards for freight trucks and buses to begin in 2014.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/09/president-obama-announces-first-ever-fuel-economy-standards-commercial-vehicles

See my old 2007 article on the small-engine car offerings in UK and Europe http://dmfine.com/2007gas_guzzle.html

Raise the Federal Gasoline Tax

2011-04-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

updated 1:22pm MT from Texas, USA

U.S. Gasoline prices jumped suddenly in the past few months, about 40 cents to $3.60 per gallon (aproximately $3.30 in 2005 dollars - perspective: gasoline was selling for $1.88 in 2004) according to US Energy Info Administration, as both the oil market and oil companies are raising prices ostensibly due to the strife in the Middle East.

But hardly any of our petroleum imports, if any, have anything to do with Libya or Egypt, and about half come from South and Central America.

My suspicion is that Big Oil is looking for a pretext to keep its enormous profits high or take them higher - Exxon reported a quarterly profit of more than $9 billion in January (WSJ.com).

But if American consumers are going to be pressured by prices at the pump, more of their money should be going back to their government than to the mostly wealthy shareholders and executives of the Big Oil companies.

If the US Government would raise the federal gasoline tax, that would probably be what happens - as Big Oil would likely resist pushing prices higher than $3.60 to $4 per gallon, and just take lower profits. The tax revenues our Federal Government could then apply to reduce the federal deficit, and/or funnel them into programs for alternative energy and energy-efficient technologies research and development or purchase incentive programs - such as for people or businesses buying solar panels or electric or hybrid vehicles.

Generally, we should desire higher gasoline prices in the United States (around $3 to $4 per gallon), because higher prices should moderate our consumption of this valuable natural resource, which we have been wasting for many years now, by making us switch to energy-efficient or alternative energy-powered cars, trucks, other transportation and appliances.

Oil is a limited natural resource - the market prices it according to present supply and demand, but not according to that future reality that eventually there will be no more or very little of it. Nor does the market consider the impacts on our environment of the extraction, refining, and combustion of its products...

We certainly do not want to find ourselves pumping the last drop of oil from the ground 30 years from now, because we desire to be wasteful today.

Given the inexorable advancement of alternative energy technologies, and, finally, the appearance of electric and hybrid vehicles on the market, we probably won't be pumping the last drop of oil from the ground - but if we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil imports, generally safeguard petroleum supplies for the next century, as well as reduce our carbon dioxide emissions and impact on the environment, we should be continually making the effort to reduce our burning of gasoline...

2010 did see a significant decline in gasoline consumption, with deliveries down to 45 million gallons per day, compared to 50 to 60 million gallons per day from 1984 to 2009.

Oil has also been used to generate electricity, though that use appears to also be plummeting, from 200 million barrels of oil in 2001, to only 40 million barrels in 2010. http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table2_2_a.html

The Obama Adminstration should be fearless in its energy policy and recommend an increase in the federal gasoline tax of around 25 cents to 40 cents per gallon - though a general carbon tax on fossil fuels should also be considered ( See previous blog post Carbon Tax Time) - to encourage the transition to more fuel efficient, hybrid and electric cars and trucks.

other resources NY Times Greenblog

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/energy-policy/

The Extremist Disposable Society: Plastics, Recycling, Disposables and Garbage

2010-12-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

The United States of America has yet to do enough to address the garbage and recycling challenges we face. We have lived in a world for decades where we purchase food or a beverage in a container that we use for all of a minute and then throw away as garbage.

That is insane! Think of that absurdity of that consumer reality that millions of people participate in daily, that we accept as normal, but is nuts. Why would we make millions of containers - plastic containers, for example - to be used for only a minute (such as soda and juice bottles) and then sent to a landfill to sit there for eternity?

According to the Container Recycling Institute, a 121.8 billion cans and bottles have been landfilled, littered, or incinerated in the U.S. in 2010 alone. The website says 2 million tons of PET plastic containers were wasted - not recycled, while 636 thousand tons were recycled.

Aluminum can recycling rates were less than 50 percent in 2005.

I noticed recently that while the State of California charges an additional 5 to 10 cents per plastic bottle as a redemption value for turning the bottles in to certain recyclers, there are no convenient places to redeem the bottles - such as your grocery store. Tons of CRVed bottles end up in garbage cans. Why add the CRV if citizens have no convenient place to redeem the bottles?

But a 5 to 10 cent RV (Redemption value) is, obviously, not sufficient incentive to Americans to significantly reduce their container waste.

State governments and the Federal government should consider passing a new container RV law that adds a real incentive RV to many types of containers, such as from 25 to 75 cents, depending on the container type, so that our country gets serious about recycling those containers that are recycleable. So that America significantly increases recycling rates of aluminum, glass, and plastic - to the much higher rates they should be at in this enlightened decade.

Other types of "to go" containers - cardboard and styrofoam, might also be subject to a "extreme wastefulness" tax to remind consumers that such quick use of resources is a pathetically extreme form of the "unthinking disposable society". Under the current system, a person is penalized at fast-food restaurants for dining in (charged sales tax), and often exempted from tax for "to go" orders, despite those orders requiring more packaging.

Cities and towns also desperately need to provide recycle-able container disposal cans or machines in public places: malls, parks, town centers. Currently most public areas offer only typical, often unsightly, often overflowing garbage cans. But there do exist machines that refund the container's RV. If the RV were 25 or 50 cents, people would be far more likely to make sure they go to the designated machine to obtain their refund...

It is encouraging to see growing adoption of biodegradable corn-based or other food-based plastics. Many Whole Foods Market groceries now offer "potato-ware" (or Tater-ware, SpudWare) forks, spoons, and knives that reportedly biodegrade in the right composting environment in a few months. And some bottled water companies are packaging with, they claim, biodegradable plastic bottles (Biota water).

America needs more biodegradeable containers, and more recycling, and to escape from the wastefulness of the extremist disposable society mentality we've had for decades.

Other resources:

"Corn Plastic to the Rescue" Smithsonian

ENSO biodegradable bottles

"Plastic Bottles Pile Up As Mountains of Waste" MSNBC.com

~ Corn Plastic Store

Laser War on the Mosquito?

2010-04-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

On ForeignPolicy.com a story about "Nathan Myhrvold, Bill Gates's ideas guy" - one of several ideas / technology concepts to kill mosquitos: using a computer-assisted laser-gun.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/23/interview_nathan_myhrvold?page=0,2

"...There are other, more complicated things like our laser that shoots mosquitoes out of the sky where we'll have to work with some development partner. Although, it is amazingly cheap at the moment. When we first proposed this, people said, "Oh, it's like the Star Wars program; it'll cost you tens of millions of dollars!" But it turns out that every cell phone has a processor in it; every digital camera has a little image sensor in it. All those things that people thought would be so expensive -- we just bought on eBay. Still, that project needs to have a commercial partner who will work with us for some application. That application might be malaria. The first one might actually be in a developed-world context. If you want to sell your crops to Whole Foods, you can't use a crop-duster, but if you use a laser crop-duster -- either by flying in an airplane or [a drone], or if you had it on a pole at the edge of the field -- you can control your pests in a totally environmentally friendly way..."

I have posted in past years my suggestions that the world consider a new kind of hi-tech war on the mosquito, using already on the market mosquito-eater machine concepts - attracting them with carbon dioxide and other chemicals and then zapping them with electricity - and maybe building some very large versions of these - see links below. It's good to read about others

coming up with hi-tech, non-poisonous methods of reducing the mosquito population... It seems developing nations should have eradicated malaria by now.

2008

"World: Declare War on the Mosquito"

2007

http://worldmayday.blogspot.com/2007/09/using-technology-to-attack-mosquito.html

Malaria was eradicated from the U.S. by the late 1940s, by using poisonous DDT.

http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/history/eradication_us.htm

~~~ D

Carbon Tax Time: The US Congress Should Pass a Carbon Tax Bill to Fight CO2 emissions

2010-02-09T15:40:00.000-08:00

Back in late June 2009 the U.S. House passed a "Climate" bill that would establish a Cap-and-Trade market incentive program for carbon dioxide emissions. That is, companies would by the rights to pollute so much CO2, and companies that want to reduce their pollution could trade pollution-rights on a market. The bill would also address technological improvements in all areas of energy transport and generation...

American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:3:./temp/~c1112bztye::

But now, that bill is being downplayed by Republican Senators, who have joined with Senator John Kerry on a new bill

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/01/27/27greenwire-kerry-to-climate-bill-backers----get-angry-62896.html?pagewanted=print

saying the House bill will be "too onerous" on energy companies, and possibly consumers...

But this is the typical pro-business, unconcerned-about-the-environment argument. If the US cares about genuinely reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, we are probably going to have to institute not just Cap-and-Trade of carbon emissions, but a carbon tax also... There were a few carbon tax bills submitted in the House this year, and they would initially apply a relatively small tax - such as equivalent to 15 cents per gallon of gasoline - to carbon fuels.

A tax that not only can Americans handle, but could be used to help the federal government cover its massive spending the past few years on bailouts, stimulus, and military operations...

Generally, consumers will care more about the energy they use the more it costs - and they will try harder to conserve energy as prices increase. Certainly there's an upper limit to what consumers are willing to pay for for electricity, gasoline, natural gas - but we're nowhere near there yet. In England and Europe, people pay 5 to 6 dollars per gallon of gasoline.

Links:

LOBBYING: Conoco, BP, Caterpillar leave climate coalition

http://www.eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2010/02/16/1

American Social Security is a Secure Government Program

2010-02-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

There is no "entitlements" crisis. The perennial propaganda spin-war against Social Security continues... USA Today just ran the title to the news story: "Rash of retirements pushes Social Security to brink"

"...Social Security's annual surplus nearly evaporated in 2009 for the first time in 25 years as the recession led hundreds of thousands of workers to retire or claim disability.
The impact of the recession is likely to hit the giant retirement system even harder this year and next. The Congressional Budget Office had projected it would operate in the red in 2010 and 2011, but a deeper economic slump could make those losses larger than anticipated..."

What the USA Today news story doesn't tell readers is that the retirement Social Security (OASI) and disability Social Security were netting money through 2008, and probably did also in 2009 - as the table projected a net income of $137 Billion (though the Disability fund was projected to be negative $10 billion )

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html

So, not only was social security not pushed to any brink, but it still is sitting atop about $2.5 trillion of a Trust Fund which, under a worst-case scenario of government and public neglect, would still last us until 2037...

But that worst-case scenario is extremely unlikely. With a huge increase in retirees looming from 2012 to 2030, more voters will be relying on and counting on OASI - Retirement Social Security - than ever before.

Meanwhile, raising or eliminating the limit on the amount of income to which the SS tax rates are applied (currently only the first $102,000 of income) "could reduce or eliminate the long-term Social Security deficit." - according to this 2008 US Senate report

It is a stating of the obvious, or what should be obvious, to say that increasing taxes or increasing the tax base will bring more money in to the Social Security program.

Is such a tax increase excessively burdensome? An individual earning $300,000 per year today would pay only about $6,000 in OASI and disability tax, but $18,000 if the limit on income taxed were removed. If that individual has no other income, such as capital gains which are not currently subject to SS taxes, that is a significant tax increase that person might find painful.

Perhaps SS taxes could be attributed to a range of income, such as up to $102,000, and $500,000 and above - the person making 500,000 or more in income is better situated to pay more tax.

Short-term Capital Gains taxes already seem rather substantive, though perhaps we should consider allocating 2 percent of them to the Social Security trust fund, to get Social Security through the baby-boomer era.

Medicare should be considered more separately from SS retirement and disability, being a very different entity, health insurance. And what would make most sense given its projected rising costs is to give healthy young people the insurance too - such as a Medicare-for-all program...

The fear-mongering spin about Social Security "going bankrupt" that's been a "conservative" staple probably for the past 20 to 30 years, doesn't have legs to stand on. It's unclear whose interests such lobbying that represents other that the super-wealthy who can provide for their own retirement - a relatively small group of Americans.

Thievery by the Rich? Goldman's $13B Profit

2010-01-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

----- Forwarded Message ----

From: David Maxwell Fine
To: letters@nytimes.com; editorial@nytimes.com; letters@washpost.com; oped@washpost.com; letter@globe.com; oped@globe.com; newsletter@epi.org; news@epi.org; ncoleman@epi.org; kconner@epi.org; aorr@epi.org; egould@epi.org; newseditors@wsj.com; letters@prospect.org; editor@prospect.org; letters@tnr.com; letters@thenation.com; editorial@theprogressive.org; letters@newsweek.com; letters@economist.com; dollars@dollarsandsense.org; letters.editor@ft.com
Sent: Thu, January 21, 2010 2:08:29 PM
Subject: Does Goldman Sachs $13 B profit in 2009 Stink Something Awful?

Does Goldman Sachs $13 B profit in 2009

Stink Something Awful?

Goldman Sachs posts a profit of $13 B on $45 billion in revenues, while WAL-MART does about the same profit on $400 Billion in revenues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/business/22goldman.html?hp

Did WAL-MART get government help

in the past 2 years?

And why isn't Goldman Sachs listed below WAL-MART in this Fortune 500 list?

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/performers/companies/profits/

Is Goldman-Sachs trying to keep this

profit number quiet?

" The bank’s earnings of $8.20 a share easily topped analysts’ expectations of $5.20 a share "

beating analysts expectations by $3 a share is... Isn't that a red flag? Usually a company is lucky to beat them by a few pennies per share...

Goldman originally took $10 Billion in TARP money,

and then may have or be trying to " pay " that back

through stock - not cash...

So, how much of Goldman's huge " profit " for 2009 is

Corporate Welfare from the US Government?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

David Maxwell Fine

Toledo, Ohio, USA

419-320-6120

Website of Articles and Photography

http://www.dmfine.com

The World Should Get Serious About Fighting Poverty and Population Growth

2010-01-10T18:48:00.000-08:00

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals include the goal of “eradicating extreme poverty” a goal of: halving “…between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.” http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

That goal itself is a modest one – it encourages analysts to regard those living on $2 or $3 a day, possibly still very poor, as less in need of our concern. If the goal is achieved, will it alleviate suffering? Probably, but those whose standards of living have increased only modestly – perhaps to prevent them from daily hunger - presumably will still be living in very poor conditions., such as in a shanty-town or other deplorable, inadequate and possibly unhealthy home.

What would constitute real progress in the fight against poverty?

The UN’s MDGs ignore the need to reduce childbirth amongst women living in poverty. Why should women living in destitution bear children into poverty? If women who are very poor have a child or more than one child, their ability to work will be greatly reduced or restricted, as will their mobility – as will their options to escape poverty.

The entire world needs to adopt a realistic view regarding childbirth and the freedom to bear children with respect to poverty. For example, the poor and very poor should not be free to bear children, to their own detriment, and to the detriment of the children. The middle classes should not be free to bear many children, but should be limited to a certain number of children – such as 1 or 2. China instituted a 1-child policy to combat its population growth – and as the world sees its total population nearing 7 billion in 2010, up from 3.7 billion in 1970. In the past 40 years, human beings brought 3 billion more people into the world – and it is possible that 40 percent of them live in poverty.

Poverty is not merely an evil afflicting the developing countries – the United States of America is home to about 30 to 40 million people living in poverty, and there are pockets of misery throughout this wealthy nation. About 64 percent of Americans are barely middle class, households living on $75,000 or less per year – not very much money in 2010, and their lifestyles are likely supported by a lot of debt.

The entire world, countries rich and poor, should have an obvious incentive to wage war on poverty within its own borders and globally.

According to Forbes magazine today the world is home to just under 800 billionaires whose wealth is worth about $2.4 trillion – and there are about 9 million millionaires worldwide (that leaves out billionaires that can hide from such lists, as well as money obtained through illicit businesses, such as drugs). The number of households with $30 million or more in wealth is estimated at 95,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire

Meanwhile, of the nearly 7 billion people on the planet, probably as many as 3 billion live in poverty to extreme poverty, and another billion are probably barely middle class. I’m estimating – but given that 65 percent of American Households range from poor to middle class, a world figure for that same percentage would be 4.55 billion people ranging from very poor to middle class.

This reality of global extreme income and wealthy inequality should be a moral outrage in the year 2010, with such advancements in technologies and the vast increase in global wealth over the past 50 years that the world has seen. The poor cannot eat or improve their lots with cellphones and laptops, as current marketing would like us to believe.

Political and business elites speak and act as though world poverty is an intractable problem – possibly because they fear any real effort to address poverty will involve seizing some of their wealth and/or income.

However, the world has not been effectively reducing poverty the past 20 years because, in part, there are certain individuals whose political values and ideologies are very right-wing and do not mind there being a billion or more people living in extreme poverty in the world.

Also, an enormous pool of poor people desperate for work to make any money provides businesses over the world with guaranteed cheap labor - and labor groups that will find it difficult to unionize or organize for higher wages and better working conditions.

The world should not allow the current poverty-wealth dynamic in our world to continue – it should take steps to greatly reduce childbirth amongst the poor in every country, by providing the poor and those young children already born in the past 12 years with financial assistance incentives pegged to abstaining from having children, or postponing childbirth to one’s late 20s.

Often having more children means bringing more children in to a life in poverty. That is true even in the United States, not just in poor countries.

What incentive do the world’s women have to postpone childbirth to or after their 25^thbirthday?

The financial assistance would come in the form of a small amount of cash up front, provided monthly, and as a savings bond held in banks, of varying amounts, that would mature after a period of years, and be obtainable when a woman reached the age of 25 - if they abstained from having children until that age - as much as between US$1000 to $3000 (even in developing countries).

Relocation assistance, financing for farms, as well as grants towards job training and education would also be made available.

This Poverty-population program would have to begin educating girls as early as the age of 11 years, since teenage pregnancy is common worldwide (In Africa there are about 209 million young people ages 15 to 24 source: UN Data

http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=PopDiv&f=variableID:21;crID:156,484,643,792,826,900,903,905,908,911,912,916,920,921,923,924,931,941,947;timeID:1061&c=2,4,6,7&s=_crEngNameOrderBy:asc,_timeEngNameOrderBy:desc,_varEngNameOrderBy:asc&v=1

)

Poverty relief workers would communicate to young women (12 years and older) and men regularly that they will likely have a better life and future if they postpone childbirth – and that a dividend for doing so is waiting for them in their latter 20s.

The financial incentives program would be funded by the wealthy countries of the world, and possibly some private wealth , and could be administered partly by the World Bank and the United Nations.

Most of that money would end up in banks held in savings bonds. The program should be invested with around $2 trillion to serve approximately 500 million women globally – US $3,000 per woman, plus to fund education and training or business financing. Maybe $2.5 trillion would be needed. The funding of the program would be done gradually, annually: maybe $200 billion per year over 10 years, contributed by rich countries and wealthy donors ( the United States alone has found $130 billion per year to spend in 2009 and 2010 on the Iraq andAfghanistan wars/occupations, and at the same time the U.S. also managed to find $260 billion for a domestic economic stimulus effort source: propublica.org )

There should be some kind of financial or other incentives for young men to have incentive to abstain from trying to father children - though I don't have an idea for how that would work yet.

Most critics will probably say the world will never make such an investment in fighting poverty – in wars, at least, the bulk of the money is being funneled to big defense businesses and contractors. Meanwhile, how successful would the program be in delaying childbirth? If the world waits to “test” such a system on a small group, by the time the test is finished, the world will have added another billion people… At worst, the world will be giving a very large number of women in poverty a significant amount of financial aid.

If done with the resolve of that kind of enormous investment and mobilization of resources, the benefit to the world both in alleviating extreme suffering and improving the economies of developing nations could be tremendous.

Author's disclosure: I lived on about $14,600 per year since 2006, $40 per day, in the United States - though I have at times received free rent and other assistance.

Bono on America and Fighting Extreme Poverty NYT

2009-10-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

Rebranding America
By BONO

Well, I happen to be European, and I can project with the best of them. So here’s why I think the virtual Obama is the real Obama, and why I think the man might deserve the hype. It starts with a quotation from a speech he gave at the United Nations last month:
“We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”
They’re not my words, they’re your president’s. If they’re not familiar, it’s because they didn’t make many headlines. But for me, these 36 words are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity — if the words signal action.
The millennium goals, for those of you who don’t know, are a persistent nag of a noble, global compact. They’re a set of commitments we all made nine years ago whose goal is to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Barack Obama wasn’t there in 2000, but he’s there now. Indeed he’s gone further — all the way, in fact. Halve it, he says, then end it.
( for the full opinion click the link below )

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/opinion/18bono.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Can the world make progress on extreme poverty without interfering with freedoms? Like China's one-child policy, or military interventions - to make progress on poverty, does the (wealthy) world need to move with the same intensity and resolve as the US and allies did invading Iraq and Afghanistan, and funding those military operations?

Should Financier George Soros give $1 B to fight climate change or to fight Poverty?

2009-10-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

"Soros to Invest $1 Billion in Clean Energy, Form Advisory Group"

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aMU3BkV3yqPU

According to the Bloomberg story, "New global investment in renewable energy technology totaled $25.9 billion in the third quarter, 22 percent below the same quarter in 2008, according to New Energy Finance, a London- based research company."

The technology-to-fight-climate change sector, does it really need any more investment capital? Aren't we waiting for technological advancement, such as solar cells that can provide more energy per time in the sun than what currently exists?

Perhaps the world's billionaires should turn their attentions to the United Nation's millenium development goals, the first goal of which is, "END HUNGER & EXTREME POVERTY"

HTTP://WWW.ENDPOVERTY2015.ORG/GOALS/END-HUNGER

To end hunger and extreme poverty, the world should try to make two things happen: give the poor money and greatly reduce childbirth, through financial incentives and birth control. Women in poverty should not be having children until their mid-20s at the earliest, if at all, especially very poor women - they will just be bringing children into a reality of abject poverty, and making it more difficult to move themselves out of poverty.

(previous post on this issue

June 2007 "Reducing Population Growth to Alleviate Poverty"

http://worldmayday.blogspot.com/2007/06/managing-global-population-growth-to.html )

Afghanistan: A Big Business for Dept of Defense

2009-08-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

In Afghanistan, the Choice Is Ours

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/opinion/21haass.html?_r=1&ref=global

Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.”

Haass supports the war in Afghanistan in this opinion. However, he doesn't tell us the number of Taliban or insurgents that America and allies are fighting over there - nor does he contemplate the extent to which our military presences in the Middle East in general may have become additional and enormous funnels of money to the Department of Defense and defense contractors ($154 Billion has been spent on defense contracting in the Middle East probably since 2001).

The financial incentives of these military endeavors are probably clouding all decision-makers thinking on the issues. Supposedly the US is spending $4 billion per month on Afghanistan alone...

The best way of providing health insurance and health care to everyone

2009-08-18T06:12:00.001-07:00

Very quickly, the Obama administration's proposal for a "public option" of government-run health insurance for Americans who do not have health insurance, as a means of plugging the uninsured gap and giving almost all Americans easy access to health care, is being painted by the media as unlikely to pass committees or the U.S. Congress as a whole...

Health Insurance Co-operatives are now being touted as the solution, but with little details...

Thinking about the American health insurance market - I recently investigated big private insurer Humana, who now has 11 million people it fully insures with health insurance, and another 6 million that it partially insures, one of the biggest health insurance companies in the U.S. with almost $30 B in annual revenues - I was thinking about how size of the pool of the insured helps to spread risk and cost - the healthy pay for those with chronic illnesses, those who develop an illness, or find themselves in an accident, as well as the elderly with health problems.

But the U.S. health insurance system looks like a system almost deliberately designed to help private companies make millions of dollars off of health care - the federal government insures many of the costly Americans who probably use health care often, the elderly (Medicare), and those with low incomes and several children (Medicaid) - a combined group of about 70 to 75 million Americans...

By the federal government taking on the big consumers of health care, companies like Humana, they hope, can mostly insure people who, relatively, use health care only occassionally - enabling Humana to focus on its stock price - which largely determines whether its executives take home millions of dollars per year, or only $500,000.

Aetna, another large insurance company, also pulls in about $32 billion in revenues each year, and nets more than $1 billion. It's CEO makes $3 million in salary, its President $2 million, and does not include their stock options.

According to Wikipedia, Aetna insures about 17.5 million people with medical insurance, 10 million with pharmacy insurance, and 13.6 million with group insurance.

Obviously, health insurance execs with their pay tied to their companies stock price have a conflict of interest built-in when it comes to how to best serve the American public health care and health insurance.

Companies like Aetna and Humana can make big profits off of health insurance because the federal government assumes the coverage of the poor and elderly, and because another 40-plus million go without health insurance.

That is, they are essentially a perfect example of Corporate Welfare from the U.S. Government.

The American health insurance system is a system that evolved to enable private/public corporations and stockholders to make a lot of money off of health inurance - not a system that evolved to provide health care access to all efficiently and easily. Even Medicare and Medicaid are excessively bureaucratic, and many Medicare enrollees are required to buy supplemental private insurance.

The best way to provide health insurance to Americans, if the goal is providing health care to everyone, as opposed to making billions of dollars for corporations - is to combine all of these "pools" of Americans together.

We already have a very large "pool" of about 300 million people - American citizens.

Our solution doesn't have to be government-run health insurance, but it has to be not-for-profit.

The focus on making a profit on health insurance and health care in America is why we're spending so much on health care - but leaving about 40 million uninsured.

The federal government is already spending nearly enough annually to provide health insurance - and excellent health coverage - to all Americans.

Medicare spending, 2008: $454 billion
Medicaid spending, 2008: $206.8 billion (by federal govt) / $319 B (with state contributions)
CHIP Spending: $2 billion
State Spending on Medicaid: California, $33 billion

Per capita health care spending given spending on these insurance plans alone:

about $2,500 (300 million Americans)

That number is very close to the amount most other nations are spending

http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm

But according to that graph, actual per capita spending on health care in the U.S. is more than double that amount: $5,700.

What needs to happen in the U.S. is obvious - that money being spent on these two federal insurance programs which are restricted to membership by age and income - could that be unconstitutional? - needs to be accessible to all Americans.

Who doesn't want that? Obviously, companies like Aetna and Humana.

That's all the argument is really about.

The corporate insurance businessnes may be afraid that this public health insurance option in the House health care bill might be the beginning of a transformaton to a more sensible health insurance system in America...

Doing away with a system of health insurance system as a business focused on profits and stockholders - not providing health care.

One way an ideal health insurance system would look is similar to what some European nations currently have: 2 (two) or 4 (four) Government-chartered non-profit organizations, for example, could assume health insurance management responsibilities, breaking the U.S. into 2 or 4 regions, of pools of 150 million or 75 million people. They would be funded and regulated by the federal government, which would also set the salaries of the managers.

Every American and U.S. resident gets mailed a health insurance card, and your government ID number is part of your account number - just like with Medicare.

Anyone will be able to be provided health care quickly by providing your social secutrity number - say if you go to the ER, or want to go to a different doctor in a different town for some reason.

And an ideal system would cover all your health care needs: pharamaceuticals, basic dental (so anyone can get their teeth cleaned every 6 months) basic eye-exams and lenses - most everything, anywhere in the U.S.

A government-managed Medicare-for-All system could work, too. Though if that's the way thigns go, the name should be changed, and the benefits improved to cover everything. Making Medicare enrollees buy supplemental private insurance, so that corporations can make money off of them is ridiculous.

The solution to providing easy access to health care in America is not complicated - but the politics is ludicrous, and the corporations selling health insurance and profiting from the current complex and ridiculous system are like parasitic interests looking out for their benefit and not what is best for America and Americans.

The ideological argument - that market competition in health insurance might improve quality of health care - is empty. Health care servies are not like buying a car. If you get into an accident in Texas but live in California, you can't spend a week shopping around test-driving all the emergency rooms. Health care depends on hundreds or thousands of factors - where you obtain your services, whether you have an acute or chronic health problem, and even good doctors and nurses can make mistakes.

Health care can be improved upon by consumer groups and consumer involvement in the process, news media oversight, and government regulations - "competition" is just putting millions of dollars in the pockets of health insurance execs and stockholders, and making the system unnecessarily expensive and convoluted.

The Obama Administration and the House of Representative's "public option" plan may be a short-term band-aid addition to a health insurance system that needs to be completely changed - but it may also be the best way in the short term to make sure most Americans have health insurance.

David Maxwell Fine

www159.pair.com/dmfine7

Regarding WSJ.com story “Taliban Now Winning”

2009-08-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

US-NATO Occupation of Afghanistan

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

Subject: Regarding your story “Taliban Now Winning”

From:

"David Maxwell Fine"

Date: Mon, August 10, 2009 10:26 am To:

newseditors@wsj.com

Cc: yochi.dreazen@wsj.com ; peter.spiegel@wsj.com

"BBC Have Your Say"

"Boston Phoenix"

"Editors Columbia Journalism Review"

"Democray Now - Amy Goodman"

"Guardian - Foreign"

"Havard International Review"

"Newsweek International"

"International Herald Tribune"

"Journalism.Org"

"Journalism.org Tom Rosenstiel"

"Just Foreign Policy"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

WSJ Editors, Regarding your story

“Taliban Now Winning”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124986154654218153.html

I have commented about this with respect to other stories I’ve read: can anyone tell us the number of “insurgents” American and other military are fighting in Afghanistan? Are they all Taliban?

Where do they get their weapons and supplies, and why do we have difficulty cutting those off?

And $4 billion seems like an enormous amount to be spending over there – what is that money going to?

And how does our occupation compare to what the Soviets did there in the 1980s?

David Maxwell Fine

Toledo, Ohio

Letter regarding Time story: Does the U.S. Have an Exit Strategy in Afghanistan?

2009-08-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

-- On Mon, 8/3/09, David Maxwell Fine wrote:

From: David Maxwell Fine

Subject: Editors: Re: Does the U.S. Have an Exit Strategy in Afghanistan?

To: letters@time.com

Cc: letters@nytimes.com, letter@globe.com, oped@globe.com, letters@washpost.com, oped@washpost.com, oped@latimes.com, letters@latimes.com, oped@csps.com

Date: Monday, August 3, 2009, 1:09 PM

Time magazine Editors and other journalists:

Re: Does the U.S. Have an Exit Strategy in Afghanistan?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1914224,00.html

I continue to wonder how many "insurgents" American, UK, and other military are fighting against over in Afghanistan. This question seems to be of rather large import with respect to how large a military presence we should keep in Afghanistan, for how long, and whether we're going about things there the right way... And obviously, whether there's going to be a constant trickle of insurgents from Pakistan for decades to come... As you point out, the cost in lives and money seems to be rather high...

Actually, I would think the Obama Administration's unspoken goal seems to be to prevent another 9/11 or some type of terrorist attack here or in the UK or Europe. And yet, because of a change in law enforcement and security since and in response to 9/11, this "war/occupation" of Aghanistan might not be necessary to accomplish that goal...

I am glad you're asking this question...

Letter to NY Times editors: Why are we fighting this 'war' in Afghanistan?

2009-07-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

---------[ Received Mail Content ]----------
Subject : correction regarding the story "Biden Warns of More ‘Sacrifice’ in Afghanistan"Date : Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:01:47 -0400 (EDT)From : "David Maxwell Fine" To : letters@nytimes.com

NY Times editors:

regarding the story "Biden Warns of More ‘Sacrifice’ in Afghanistan"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/world/europe/24afghan.html?_r=1&hp

I have been wondering, whenever I watch, read, or hear some news, why American troops and so many American troops are fighting a "war" in Afghanistan 8 years after the initial war that ousted the Taliban from Kabul...

The military - and policymakers - can too easily tell Americans that we're fighting to prevent another September 11th attack... American troops could be over there another 10 years fighting to "prevent" some terror attack.

Didn't American troops finish most of the job in 2002 - 2003?

How many guerrilla fighters are fighting in Afghanistan? 800 rebels to our 60,000 - 70,000 American and British troops?

Isn't that ridiculous?

8 years after 9/11 we see how that tragedy has militarized America, funding and running 8 years of wars and occupations in the Middle East... At large costs in lives, injuries, and money that might be better spent in constructive activities.

Why doesn't America bring the troops home from Afghanistan?

David Maxwell Fine

Cc : , "Josh Marshall" , "Bob Calo Journalist Berkeley" , "Talking Points Memo" , , , "Alex Ruskell" , "Alex Ruskell" , "Ben Jones" , "Jason Zengerle" , "Spence Smith" , "Jon Cohn" , "Scott Stossel Atlantic Monthly" , "Joan Walsh" , , "For The Nation Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel" , "Liss Riethoff" , "Irina Prentice" , "Cristina Padres" , "Sage Stossel" , "Kiri Miller" , "Boston Phoenix!" , "Peter Kadzis" , "Dan Eggen W Post" , "D Balz W Post" , "La Times National" , "Washington Post - National" national@washpost.com

AIG: "Financially Very Strong" in 2005

2009-03-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

"In what has been a most eventful and
challenging year for AIG, I am pleased
to report that your company is financially
very strong and well positioned for
the future."

- from AIG's 2005 Annual Report
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/76/76115/reports/10K_2005a.pdf

Letter to the Editors of the WSJ on National Debt

2009-03-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

---------------------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------------------Subject: WSJ Editors: regarding editorial Old Europe is Right on StimulusFrom: "David Maxwell Fine" <dave@davidfine.org>Date: Fri, March 13, 2009 3:03 pmTo: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WSJ Editors: regarding editorial "Old Europe is Right on Stimulus" (3/12/2009)

I am sure I'm not the only person to notice that you cite a partial US National Debt figure when you write 36% of GDP - when the total/gross US national debt at $11 trillion is around 70 percent of GDP...

Which numbers are you using for the Europe nations? I would think the latter number very important, and what would you say is the significance to the US Economy over the long term, when it is paying out on those bonds to other nations such as China, as opposed to US-based bondholders?

With respect to the stimulus, I don't know yet what the money will be spent on, but marginal taxrate cuts seem essentially a different type of short-term solution...

Not all government spending is alike, obviously, and certain investments could have long-term benefits to a national or global economy - such as the internet developing into the world wide web...

It does seem that our US Government prefers to have a short term focus, which, given the election cycle, makes sense - but makes little sense when considering planning for a healthy economy over the next 20 years...

Sincerely,

David Maxwell Fine
from Savannah, Georgia

Financial Crisis: The Bail-out Idea Is So Wrong. They were so wrong before, could they be so wrong again?

2008-10-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

draft 1, 11am est, October 3, 2008

The Bail-Out Idea Is So Wrong

They were so wrong before, could they be so wrong again?

Today's NY Times ran the story "Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt, and Risk" by Stephen Labaton where Labaton writes "How could Mr. [Cristopher] Cox [Chairman of the SEC] have been so wrong?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/03sec.html

The investment banks went begging to the SEC to allow them to borrow more than was allowed under regulations at the time, their borrowing then destroyed them - and now they and the financial industry want the US Government and other governments to pick up the pieces for them.

"Over the following months and years, each of the firms would take advantage of the looser rules. At Bear Stearns, the leverage ratio — a measurement of how much the firm was borrowing compared to its total assets — rose sharply, to 33 to 1. In other words, for every dollar in equity, it had $33 of debt. The ratios at the other firms also rose significantly."

I wrote in previous opinions that comparing this "crisis" to the market crash that occurred in 1929 is absurd. From an exclusively market speculation perspective there are some similarities, but the reason commentators and journalists are making the comparison is to spark fears of a widespread economic depression that follows the crash - and they're trying to manipulate this fear and panic to force through a Government bailout of irresponsible and greedy speculators.

But will we be asking again "How could they have been so wrong, again?" after the U.S. Government passes a bailout, and encourages reckless gambling in the financial markets? Laissez-faire free marketeers should be applauding the business and banking shake-out, this is the market getting rid of foolish and inefficient companies, companies like parasites subsisting off of an ability to borrow, and for some, play big-time Wall Street Keno with their debt.

The Wall Street Journal article "Uncertainty Over Rescue Intensifies Credit Crisis" gives us some numbers from the federal reserve, and the new concern in this downturn in the commercial paper market, short-term loans that, supposedly, keep some businesses able to meet their costs and payroll.

But what the article doesn't tell us is what companies, and what types of companies, need this this short-term debt, whether this reliance on this short-term debt is a good or bad way to do business, and what these companies will do if they can't get more credit - go out of business? Lay off workers? Nor does the article speculate where this short-term debt market might go in the next 3 to 6 months. Is this a very short-term crisis? How might we know?

Right now a lot of banks and companies may be ruled by fear after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, and some other banks, a fear that is keeping them from lending beyond a few days - right now.

But this could all change in six months to a year, even without any U.S. Government intervention, as everything shakes out.

Financial news media like the Wall Street Journal are not revealing that they possess expertise in these areas of reporting on and explaining to readers the financial markets. There's still a lot of focus on bond and interest rate numbers, and big company deals, which tell us little, especially since the claim is that this crisis could devastate "main street". Could this "crisis" maybe get rid of some inefficient companies that need to get the boot?

Why aren't the financial papers beating the bible about how this is how the free market clears out poorly managed and inefficient companies? Instead they're pathetically clamoring for government intervention, suffering, possibly, from an acute case of cognitive dissonance, brought on by the anxiety of watching their wealth evaporate as the stock markets get caught up in a downward spiral...

Looking around Toledo, Ohio today, I don't see any crisis. No one is talking about the "financial crisis" either.

The bailout idea still stinks. The U.S. Congress should be debating how to invest $250 billion or more in the 75% of Americans who earn about $75,000 or less a year, not coddling the fools who put the financial system in this mess. It seems the U.S. Congress was snoozing when the SEC permitted these big banks to borrow so much money.

Investing in the American people and in American infrastructure is a win-win - it would help the U.S. economy, average americans, and create jobs. This bail-out, who knows what it will do, but it might funnel millions of dollars into the hands of the frauds and gamblers who caused the "crisis" in the first place...

Wake up U.S. Congress, you represent the American people, not Wall Street gambling addicts.

David Maxwell Fine

www.davidfine.org

Toledo, Ohio

(419) 320-6120 cell

An Overnight Banking Crisis? Don't Rescue, Regulate

2008-10-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

draft 1, Thursday, October 2, 2008

An Overnight Banking Crisis?

Don’t rescue, regulate.

by David Maxwell Fine, Toledo

What no news article I’ve read has yet dared to explain to the world public: banks lend to each other overnight to cover their daily required reserves they need to back up their deposits, and that is where they are having trouble finding the money, and the overnight interest rate has gone up to around 6 percent, up from 2 percent. Banks do not want to lend for longer periods of time for fear other banks may default.

But meanwhile, Swiss company Roche Holding AG doesn’t think it will have trouble raising money to fund its $44 billion effort to a controlling stake in the company Genentech (Wall Street Journal). So where is money tight again?

Though mergers and acquisitions of companies will probably slow with the tightening of lending, it’s not as though mergers and acquisitions are essential to the health of the world economy. That is, they consume a large amount of liquidity, and their value may be of suspect worth to the global economy as a whole.

What is absurd is that banks have been using overnight lending to get around reserve requirements – about 1/10 to the dollar of deposits in the United States - probably for many decades, which perhaps should be outside the rules of the game – if it were, the banks wouldn’t be desperate right now.

The U.S. Congress’ move to increase FDIC insurance seems to be bogus public relations move that has very little to do with this short-term tight money problem.

There’s a lot of people talking about impending disaster, which could well be more lies and delusions than hyperbole. How can we listen to the fools who caused this “crisis” about what to do to deal with it? “Give us a bunch of money!” Maybe we should give them a bunch of cocaine, too.

A look at the U.S. Federal Reserve’s report on borrowing and lending in global credit markets shows that, compared to 2003 to 2007, household sector borrowing decreased dramatically in 2008, down to about an average annual rate of $325 billion, compared to rates at or near $1 trillion of borrowing annually in the 4 years prior.

www.federalreserve.gov/releases/Z1/Current/z1r-3.pdf

One would think that this huge borrowing contraction would leave billions of dollars in banks looking for a home to be lent out, though it is possible a lot of equity just evaporated with the mortgage defaults, and the financial speculation with mortgage bonds.

That question brings us back to the fact that we just don’t know, because the news media aren’t telling us.

Some factoids from the Federal Reserve:

Total average annual borrowing has dropped by about half of what it was in 2006-2007, down to about $2.6 trillion. Time and savings deposits went into the negative in the 2^nd quarter of 2008. In 2007 they were at $500 billion.

Bank loans to the non-financial sector have made up between 7% and 15% of total lending, since 2006, with commercial paper, treasury bonds, municipal and corporate bonds, and “other loans” making up the rest. In 2003 mortgage loans made up about 60 percent of all non-financial sector lending, declining to 43 percent by 2007.

While borrowing via corporate bonds seems to have collapsed from $660 billion in 2007, and $800 billion in 2006, to an average in 2008 so far of zero.

Corporate equities (stocks) weighed negatively on national savings estimates in 2007, negative $1 trillion, offset by tangible assets, savings and time deposits, money market funds, pension reserves, and other assets.

That is, Certificates of Deposit may be not just the way to go for the individual investor, but collectively, for the whole economy. Does cash in a CD have more value that shares in a company? If you own stock in a company, you mostly just want the value of the stock to go up, so you can sell it and make a profit. Do you care about your stake in the company? The value of the stock is reduced to market expectations that stocks will go up for whatever reasons, and maybe a dividend, if the company issues one.

But the real value of the stock to the company is the first sale of the stock, where it raises money so the company can expand and build its business. The company likes best its first investors – those who buy in after that really have nothing to do with the company unless they buy a very large quantity of shares and want to play an active role in the company – which few people do.

But if you make time savings deposits in banks, you enable the bank to engage in its core business, lending. You become very important to the bank, in a sense, you’re investing in the bank, though you do not have any ownership in the company. If more people put their money in CDs instead of stocks and mutual funds, the financial system might be more stable – especially if banks’ reserve requirements were higher, and they weren’t allowed to borrow overnight to cover their shortfalls.

Basically, the whole system of banking and finance has been corrupted by speculators and gamblers ever since it was first invented, and it is not operating by sensible rules or philosophies, but runs largely on expectations based on a very long tradition of speculation. That is, millions of investors have agreed upon the rules of the game, be they legitimate or no: that stocks in companies go up and down based upon earnings, news reports and expectations, not because these stocks possess any intrinsic value. The only potential value stocks possess to holders are any dividends they issue, the possibility they will be bought-back by the company, the ability of stockholders to play a role in the company, and future sale value – the latter of which is often determined by a variety of factors, including, possibly, insane hype-afflicted gamblers looking to make a quick buck. Are the stock market and Keno much different?

I’ve noticed that when you read the news media stories about the crisis, you don’t get much detailed information about why there’s a crisis, examples of companies who can’t get loans that want them, and the financial papers just want to regurgitate the numbers of Treasury yields and lending rates, and whether the stock markets are up and down – as if this tells us anything. It tells us all very little.

What tells us something is that the journalists in the news media aren’t telling us much of anything other than there’s a crisis and it could turn into a devastating disaster – they don’t want to tell us more, because they’re lying. They’re like public relations people for the rich speculators. Though Time magazine had the good taste to run this opinion

“Let Risk-Taking Financial Institutions Fail”

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1845209,00.html?imw=Y

But largely the news media is failing the American public in its reporting on this “crisis”.

The U.S. House of Representatives should again vote against this second attempt of rescuing the foolish rich, and let the speculators face the harsh realities of the market.

Not that the U.S. Government can’t inject $250 billion or more into the U.S. Economy – but a “rescue” of these speculators is not the way to do it.

There’s money out there, the financial system can weather the storm. Big banks are buying up smaller banks – but risk averse financiers like Warren Buffet want the government to help insure his investments in places like Goldman Sachs and General Electric.

Then the U.S. Congress should consider forming a task force to evaluate and consider reforming the United States' financial system, its regulations, and possibly providing more incentives for American citizens to buy time savings deposits. Should we allow banks to engage in all of this overnight lending? Should we raise banks’ reserve requirements?

If this “crisis” is as potentially disastrous as the Bush Administration and others are clamoring about, then the punishments for the financial markets and speculators should be severe. It’s ironic, if pathetic, that the Bush Administration and others want to spin this as an attempt at “bold government rescue” of an ostensible disaster caused by moral hazard and criminal irresponsibility on the part of gamblers, speculators, and brokers - and the U.S. Government’s laissez-faire regulation of the markets.

David Maxwell Fine

www.davidfine.org

Toledo, Ohio

(419) 320-6120 cell

The Vague Financial Crisis: Don’t Panic And Don't Bailout The Wall Street Gamblers

2008-10-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

The Vague Financial Crisis

Don’t Panic

And Don't Bailout The Wall Street Gamblers

Apparently a $60 billion stimulus bill died in the Senate last week because the Bush Administration threatened a veto - the bill would have extended unemployment benefits and provided infrastructure funds for states and Medicaid funding, in addition to funding some other areas, according to Congressional Quarterly.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=cqmidday-000002962932

It shows where the Bush Administration's, and many Republicans' priorities are - helping the reckless rich who have probably ridiculed "socialist" government policies and intervention most of their lives, and certainly despised many market regulations, until their greed gets the best of them... Threatening not just their businesses, but ostensibly, the whole American economy...

Then these bankers, insurance people, investment bankers, speculators, and other finance and money people run begging to who else? The United States Federal Government. They say we need a bailout to save Main Street just as much as Wall Street – sounds like a broker’s sales pitch…

So this “crisis” has been spun as a potentially devastating crisis that's going to take the whole country, if not the whole world, down with it, into an economic slowdown not seen since the Great Depression… The Dow Jones Industrials falls another 700 points…

But everyone knows the world today in 2008 is very different from the world in 1929. There was very little technology helping humanity and the world along then, and today technology is running the modern world almost entirely, making businesses and industry thousands of times more efficient and producing unbelievably hi-tech products, often cheaply. Obviously, the world, and financial markets, are both much larger and have been globalized massively over the past 80 years – while the pessimist might argue that can contribute to a world financial collapse, an optimist would say it should keep the world economy more stable…

Agriculture is both hi-tech and run by big corporations which will not go out of business during tough economic times, and there are about 5 billion more people on the planet.

How can journalists and "experts" responsibly compare this financial "crisis" to 1929, trying to ignite fears of another Great Depression? The world is completely different, and the world economy many times larger... The comparison is so absurd, one can only presume it is, in part, sky-is-falling propaganda by the Gamblers who want to be bailed out, and some junior-high news media and commentators who care more about hype than reality.

Why this very negative, crisis-focused, pessimistic attitude about this financial crisis, caused by nearly two million defaults on mortgage loans which were bundled into bond-like securities, and speculated with by investment bankers, often doing so by borrowing 30 times their dollar? You would think those on Wall Street would largely subscribe to the adage, “attitude is everything” . On the one hand, the Republicans (and some Democrats) who wanted and permitted this laissez-faire regulation of the mortgage market during the housing boom, and of investment banking, paved the way for this crisis, and it’s an embarrassment for the US Government that it permitted this to occur.

Simple restrictions on borrowing for investment banks and hedge funds (say, limiting their ability to leverage to 5 to 1, as opposed to 30 to 1) and not allowing or limiting banks to shift their mortgage risk to other investors via these mortgage-backed securities (opening the way for bad and risky lending) probably would have prevented this crisis.

How can the the banks and money people point a gun at the Government now saying “we need a bailout, there’s no liquidity, there’s a credit crunch!” like panicked gamblers in need of a fix, when they were borrowing their asses off, leveraging at the insanely irresponsible rates of 30 to 1? At least I read that’s what brought down companies like Lehman Brothers and probably the insurance company AIG.

It would seem the last thing the U.S. Congress should do is pass a bailout plan that rewards the gambling addicts of Wall Street, which are trying now to leverage the panic to push a probably irresponsible plan through real fast before Congress goes on vacation - something smells fishy. Congress should instead take its time, and consider other ways of providing money to the financial system.

Is spending $250 billion to $800 billion on this "bailout" the best way to spend that enormous amount of money? Or should we spend $800 billion on investments throughout the U.S. and let the lenders and speculators face the harsh reality of the unregulated markets?

How could America invest $800 billion in America? It’s certainly a question we should be thinking about - and the commentators talking about.

For example, the U.S. Government could create a Government Voucher Certificate of Deposit program, and provide CD vouchers to America's 75 million kids under 18 worth $3000 each, vouchers that could be redeemed at the age of 18, and would be eligible to be used only for approved education, training, and possibly investing in your own business.

The CDs would be special, lasting as long as the years till the kid would turn 18, some being 18-year CDs. This would infuse about $310 billion into U.S. banks, much of it very long term savings (real savings, not stocks) and provide many middle class and even poor children with better opportunities to get education and training, so that they can afford a mortgage when they’re ready to buy a house years from now.

And the program would provide much money into the banking system, the “liquidity”, that the markets say is in such desperate need.

There are other, innovative ways to infuse money into the banks and financial system, and its an embarrassment that Washington isn’t debating them. The current version of this bailout is the same old way, anachronistic thinking that brought us the lax regulations that permitted this crisis to occur in the first place.

And the Wall Street gamblers don’t give a damn about innovative ways of infusing money into the financial system that would help the American middle class. If the U.S. Government throws some $250 billion at these “distressed debts” you can bet some of these sleezy characters who caused this crisis with their hazardous gambling will try to be skimming of a few millions for themselves…

Why, if you listen to the news talk shows and read the papers, mostly what we get from the news media are vague characterizations of this "crisis" - why are these banks failing? How much money is available to be lent by banks and lenders, in America and globally, now, compared to a year or two ago? And who will be receiving the bailout money, whose pockets will it end up in, after the U.S. Government starts buying this “distressed debts”? Debt the Government will buy with debt.

That information would give the public an idea of what this "credit crunch" really means - but the news media aren't telling the public the details.

Instead, they are using a lot of meaningless metaphors (I just heard the crisis called a Tsunami), calling the mortgage bonds "arcane" and "byzantine" (NY Times) and implying the crisis is too complex for Americans to understand...

The opposite is true – the crisis is simple, and most people can understand it. The Wall Street greedy gamblers over-borrowed and played reckless gambling games with mortgage-backed investments, the banks and mortgage providers lended unwisely at the end of a hot housing market, encouraged to do so by the mortgage bond market, which shifts the risk away from the banks. The U.S. Government allowed it all to happen because many of these very rich gamblers on Wall Street want to be able to get richer – and if their plans run into a problem, we’ll ask the Government to bail us out – and say we’re doing it for middle class Americans too.

US Congress: don’t bail out the Wall Street gamblers and their political buddies who got us into this mess, and punish them by making hi-stakes leveraging (borrowing) a crime. Then invest billions in middle and lower-income Americans. About 75% of American households make less than $75,000 a year. A stronger and bigger middle class means a stronger and more stable economy.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

draft 2, 2:40pm est

David Maxwell Fine

www.davidfine.org

Toledo, Ohio

(419) 320-6120 cell

Financial Crisis: Opportunistic Socialism for the Banks and Wall-Street Gamblers- But no Stimulus for the American People

2008-10-06T07:28:00.000-07:00

opinion draft 1
Sunday 9/28/08

Opportunistic Socialism for the Banks and Wall-Street Gamblers
- But no Stimulus for the American People

Apparrently a $60 billion stimulus bill died in the Senate last week because the Bush Administration threatened a veto - the bill would have extended unemployment benefits and provided infrastructure funds for states and Medicaid funding, in addition to funding some other areas, according to Congressional Quarterly.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=cqmidday-000002962932

It shows where the Bush Administration's, and many Republicans' priorities are - helping the reckless rich who have probably ridiculed "socialist" government policies and intervention most of their lives, until their greed gets the best of them in the financial markets... Threatening not just their businesses, but ostensibly, the whole American economy...

Then these bankers, insurance people, investment bankers, speculators, and other finance and money people run begging to who else? The United States Federal Government.

Just spin the whole thing as a potentially devastating crisis that's going to take the whole country, if not the whole world, down with it, they say, and then give us your billions of dollars...

The world today in 2008 is very different from the world in 1929. There was very little technology helping humanity and the world along then, and today technology is running the modern world almost entirely. Obviously, the world has been globalized massively over the past 80 years, agriculture is both hi-tech and run by big corporations, and there are about 5 billion more people on the planet.

How can journalists and "experts" responsibly compare his financial "crisis" to 1929? The world is completely different... The comparison is so absurd, one can only presume it is sky-is-falling propaganda by the Gamblers who want to be bailed out, and the junior-high news media and comentators who care more about hype than reality.

Currently, the DOW and S&P 500 stock market indices are up 25% from 5 years ago, down from up 55% about a year ago. The DOW is up 50% over the past 10 years, and the S&P 500 up 25% over 10 years, but was up 60% just before 2008.

Depending on when one bought in to the market, some investors may have done quite well. The S&P does look weak over 10 years after this recent drop in the market, but from a long-term investment perspective,
the major indices are now doing mediocre over the long term. From a long term perspective, is this a crisis for the stock market? How will it be doing 5 to 10 years on?

In the short term, and immediate term, this Government "bailout" may reassure Wall Street for a little while, but where is this $800 billion going to go? ($700 billion bailout, plus $85 billion for AIG) No one is telling us where this money is going to end up, and how that will affect the economy over the next 5 to 10 years...

Which raises the question, is spending $800 billion on this "bailout" the best way to spend that enormous amount of money, to bring "confidence" back to financial markets that engage in such recklessness, and to keep the American economy from slipping in to recession? Or should we spend $800 billion on investments throughout the U.S., and let the lenders pay the price of their speculation?

How could America invest $800 billion in America?

It's about 1/4 of the current annual budget of the federal government, a huge amount of money. I can't answer it off the top of my head, but I certainly think America should be asking that question...

It seems the Bush Administration doesn't even want to spend $60 billion on the American people...

David Maxwell Fine

www.davidfine.org

419-320-6120

Toledo,Ohio

Iran says it can hit Israel, if attacked; North Korea may keep certain nuclear materials, build new reactors

2008-08-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

"Iran says can hit Israel with missiles if attacked" (Reuters)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080827/wl_nm/iran_nuclear_israel_dc_1

"N Korea Reneges on Nukes — Again" (Time magazine / Time.com )
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1836612,00.html?xid=rss-world

One question that arises here is whether all the pressure we're putting on North Korea and Iran to get rid of their nuclear capacity, which to a large degree they may wish to use to generate energy, is about Oil politics as much as international security...

With Oil prices through the roof - and Iran provides very cheap gas to its citizens by subsidizing the industry (about 30 cents per gallon) like Venezuela, Iran may well be interested in nuclear power for energy generation as a means of, well, for one, possibly exporting more oil, but also just for its own energy needs.

North Korea does seem to have the more fanatical/militaristic government, which might be even more interested in developing nuclear weapons than the average country aspiring for regional dominance...

Generally, I tend to feel that the U.S. has made too much of an issue out of these nuclear developments by these nations... They should certainly be allowed to develop nuclear reactors for energy generation - potential nuclear weapons development the US, NATO and the UN should watch like hawks, but the real risk there is more that a nuclear weapon could potentially find its way into the hands of anarchistic terrorists, not that one of these nations
would act irrationally with them.

The difference between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons needs to be pointed out more in the news media and by those speaking for the various nations or UN concerned with the issues - reading the Time.com brief, one does not know what the various reactors are used for exactly...

What is the law and/or ethics regarding a bombing of Iranian industry as a counter to terrorism?

2008-07-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I suggested that if Iran was actually engaging in terrorism or funding terrorism in Iraq, the US might consider a strike - missile/bombing strike - of some key industry in Iran as a way of "encouraging" Iran to end its support of terrorism, in Iraq and possibly even other nations...

But someone suggested to me that this is illegal, and I was wondering in this gray area of international relations what should be considered acceptable ways of dealing with such a situation...

For one, an isolated strike against Iranian industry would not necessarily be a declaration of war, though under current laws might require one to undertake... If it were proved at the international court that Iran was supporting or engaging in terrorism or other destabilizing activities in Iraq, what next steps would be within the law for nations with interests (Iraq, US, Israel) to take to compel Iran to stop such policies?

Destroying some industrial infrastructure, but avoiding war, seems potentially a more ethical route of dealing with the conflict with Iran and in the region... If carrots will not improve relations.

Though Iran is not a direct threat to the U.S., or shouldn't be - it's too far away. Though it can be as long as we have 100,000 troops in Iraq... It could be a threat to Lebanon and Israel, and Iraq once we leave...

World: Declare War on the Mosquito

2008-07-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

World: Declare War on the Mosquito

Why has modern humanity not waged an all-out war on the disease-spreading insect the mosquito? Given modern inventions such as the supercomputer, rockets and missiles, nuclear bombs and nuclear power, humanity could use such technology to destroy itself, but the mosquito can still live to infect some 700 million people each year with disease?

It’s mosquito season in North American again and I’ve already suffered a few “bites”. Now, North Americans may even be afraid of the mosquito, with West Nile virus in the area. (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/list_mosquitoborne.htm )

With the global climate changing over the next 20 years, the world might be at risk of seeing malaria immigrate to certain parts of North America and Europe.

In general, it seems to be an obvious serious public health failure to permit such an insect, which carries blood and disease, to persist, when modern technology should certainly be able to eradicate it, or massively reduce the number of mosquitoes.

A news release on medical research on treating malaria (http://www.wehi.edu.au/WEHI_Press/index_single_press.php?id=151 ) made me think again of this, if the mosquito buzzing around me last night wasn’t enough of a reminder.

Thanks to modern science, we know that mosquitoes are attracted by carbon dioxide and various other chemicals which humans sweat and excrete from their bodies – chemicals which can be replicated in machines which are and can be used to attract and kill mosquitoes.

Various types of “Mosquito Eaters” are sold for home use – but as of yet no city, state, or nation seems to have embarked on industrial-level trials of this type of war on the mosquito. Poison sprays are often still used, which might be effective at keeping mosquitoes away from certain areas, but do not kill them, and pollute the environment unnecessarily.

The U.S. should work with other nations and the United Nations, and private companies, to distribute effective mosquito-eating machines – they could be solar-powered for portability and range from small-sized to industrial-sized, variations on those linked to below. Those models claim to cover 1 acre.

The U.S. should spend $2 billion annually on these type of hi-tech mosquito-attracting machines and have them installed all over the U.S. With every next warm season, there will be a significant and progressive reduction in mosquito populations. So, $20 billion over 10 years could result in a massive reduction in mosquitoes in North America - working with Canada, where there are cases of mosquito-transmitted diseases.

In countries where malaria exists or is endemic, this type of mosquito-eradication should be tested, and if effective, the international community should invest however many billions of dollars necessary to win the war on the mosquitoes. Maybe tall solar-powered tree-like towers with solar-celled roofs which contain the attract-and-kill technology are the answer, installing hundreds in key areas. It might take ten to twenty years to vanquish the mosquito, but it will be a worthwhile investment.

I walk in a park here in Toledo, Ohio and often think several of these machines could be installed throughout the park, a wet place where many of the local mosquitoes likely originate, to “eat” mosquitoes all summer long. They could design very large ones that look like trees that attract and kill mosquitoes from Spring through Autumn.

The smaller the mosquito population, the lower the risk of disease transmission. There’s no reason why humanity shouldn’t be working, and using modern technology, to eradicate the mosquito. That we haven’t yet waged a world war on the mosquito is cause for concern about humanity’s wisdom, given how many millions of people contract malaria. Think of that whenever you find yourself swatting at them this summer of 2008.

Mosquito-Eater that attracts mosquitoes with Octenol and Carbon dioxide
http://www2.yardiac.com/long.asp?tgs=19219107:39636811&cart_id=7345439:596217787265&item_id=42669

Description of how they work
http://www2.yardiac.com/long.asp?tgs=19219107:39636811&cart_id=7345439:596217787265&item_id=42694

Mosquito-eater that attracts mosquitoes with carbon dioxide
http://www2.yardiac.com/long.asp?tgs=19219107:39636811&cart_id=7345439:596217787265&item_id=42722

Iran, Israel, U.S. conflict and diplomacy - Who determines Iranian Foreign Policy

2008-07-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Who determines foreign policy in Iran? Though Ahmadinejad is President, there are, we suspect, other players, maybe many other players, both within government and not. The experts write about "Iran" as if the land-mass of the nation acts politically on its own and the elites determining policy remain conveniently unnamed. If "Iran"
is actually deliberately encouraging instability in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, via some guerilla or "terrorist" group, then some kind of quick air-missile attack destroying key valuable infrastructure in Iran might make sense to "encourage" Iran to stop such destabilizing "policy". But, it depends on who in Iran is supporting the anarchic policies, any such attack would have to be very specific. Meanwhile, what do the Iranian people want for their country and government, and what can we expect over there in the next 10 years or so? Is there hope of ending/changing that authoritarian regime? Do the Iranian people want that - what is public opinion there?

Iran on Its Heels
In Tehran's Setbacks, an Opportunity in Iraq

By Vali Nasr

Thursday, June 19, 2008; Page A19 Washington Post

"Iran still has considerable influence in Iraq. It may reconstitute the Mahdi Army and pick up the fight against America, using special groups of the type suspected in the Baghdad car bombing Tuesday. It may also try to use nationalist opposition to the U.S.-Iraq "status of forces" agreement to its advantage. But Tehran will find it difficult to regain lost turf in Baghdad or Basra, or to go back to happily supporting Shiites both at the center and in the militias. It will have to choose whether it is with the state or the sub-state actors.

That debate is unfolding in Tehran. In not-too-subtle criticism of the Quds Force's handling of Iraq, even Tehran's conservative press heaped praise on Maliki during the Basra operations. Some calls for expelling Sadr from Iran even made it into the media.

Washington needs to see this as an opportunity not just for Iraq but for U.S. relations with Iran. The U.S. and Iraqi governments should build on recent gains. Stepped-up action against Mahdi Army cells and disrupting the flow of money and weapons are important, but so is quickly improving the economic lot of the poor of Basra, Sadr City and other Mahdi Army strongholds. In the long run, only good government will change the calculus in Iraq.

It is a frequent refrain in Washington that the United States needs leverage before it can talk to Iran. In Iraq, Washington is getting leverage. America has the advantage while Iran is on its heels. Engaging Iran now could even influence who wins the Iraq debate in Tehran."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/18/AR2008061802632.html

"Iran does present serious problems for the United States. Its quest for a nuclear capability, its mischievous interventions in Iraq, and its strident opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process constitute a formidable list of grievances. But the bigger issue is the Bush administration's fundamental belief that Iran cannot be a constructive actor in a stable Middle East and that its unsavory behavior cannot be changed through creative diplomacy. Iran is not, in fact, seeking to create disorder in order to fulfill some scriptural promise, nor is it an expansionist power with unquenchable ambitions. Not unlike Russia and China, Iran is a growing power seeking to become a pivotal state in its region..."

~ from "The Costs of Containing Iran" in Foreign Affairs

The Costs of Containing Iran
Washington's Misguided New Middle East Policy
Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080101faessay87106/vali-nasr-ray-takeyh/the-costs-of-containing-iran.html

Iran’s Political, Demographic, and
Economic Vulnerabilities

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG693.pdf

Thoughts and ideas May 2008

2008-05-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

Former President Putin appointed as Prime Minister of Russia. The article I read in the NY Times doesn't say anything about or question whether this is legal given Russia's laws or government constitution. Nor does it discuss the powers of the prime minister vs. the President...

Seems anti-democratic, I'm not sure what the rationale is for keeping Putin in power.

Also, the news media do not yet seem to think this is very peculiar - it's not front-page on their websites...

Bush just proposed $770 million in Food aid...

- I just "ran out" of thoughts and ideas...

War with Iran? Article in Christian Science Monitor

2007-10-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

from the Christian Science Monitor:
Are U.S. and Iran headed for war?
Despite hard-line rhetoric on both
sides, analysts say diplomacy is the far more likely outcome.

By Scott Peterson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 3, 2007 edition

Istanbul, Turkey - The drumbeat may sound like a march to conflict between the United States and Iran:

•US commanders are building a small forward base in Iraq – Combat Outpost Shocker, just miles from Iran's border – to stanch what they say is the flow of lethal weaponry that is part of an Iranian "proxy war" against the US.
•Iranian commanders are touting better missile capability and electronic surveillance of the "enemy," and making leadership changes that appear to prepare for a fight.
•And the US Senate last week voted for a resolution to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a "terrorist" group. Iran's parliament reciprocated on Saturday, designating the CIA and US Army as "terrorists."

But in the wake of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial US visit, are signs pointing toward war or diplomacy?
Despite hard-line rhetoric on both sides – and a lengthy story by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker posted on Sunday that suggests the Bush administration is ready for "surgical strikes" against Iran – analysts say diplomacy is the far more likely outcome.
"I am convinced they have zero interest in a war with Iran," says Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, who has spent time with key US decisionmakers in recent months and visited Iraq in July. "They are completely fixated on Iraq." The military in Iraq is "apoplectic" about Iran's role, he says, prompting a "steady drumbeat to take stronger and stronger measures against the Iranians."
Click for full article

The Significance of Iran

2007-10-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, maybe 5 or so, I don't remember exactly, the news about Iran was about the healthy participation in its democratic institutions, such as its parliament (The Majles-e Shura-ye Eslami or Islamic Consultative Assembly), and Mohammad Khatami, considered a moderate, was elected president.

This PBS Online Newshour article is from 1997, announcing Khatami's being elected and discussing Iranian politics. An exerpt...

HOOSHANG AMIRAHMADI: Rutgers University:
This is a truly landmark event and getting interest to the end. And its significance cannot be underestimated, and the elections of this sort are very rare in the Middle East and particularly are rare among the Arab allies of the United States; therefore, first we have to give the Iranians credit for what happened there as a result of the selection. Second, I just was in Iran a few months ago before the election--I spoke to many--the mood in Iran, as our previous speaker said, is for change.

Iran is, according to estimates, the 18th largest country geographically, with the 18th largest population - 70 million people. It is more that twice the size of Iraq, with almost 3 times the population.

With the departure of Khatami and Ahmadinejad taking over the Presidency after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the US's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the foreign dialogue has become much more contentious on both sides, and while official diplomatic relations between the US and Iran do not yet exist, Ahmadinejad's controversiality has brought him much media attention in the U.S. with appearances at the Council on Foreign Relations, now Columbia University, and at the United Nations.

Why our fascination with this Iranian President - and our near- demonization of him?

Meanwhile, despite the talking, the attitudes of governments such as the U.S. and France under the leadership of new President Sarkozy, about Iran's nuclear program are contentious and threatening.

from the US Dept of State:

Ambassador Wolff: "Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability constitutes a grave threat and demands a clear statement from the Security Council. Today, we are placing Iran in the small category of states under Security Council sanctions, and sending Iran an unambiguous message that there are serious repercussions to its continued disregard of its obligations and defiance of this important body."

We've threatened sanctions, suggested possible military action, insisted that Iran stop the nuclear program, Iran refuses, and the diplomacy is tense and hot. Must we characterize it as a "grave threat"? Since we were wrong about WMD with respect to Iraq, can we trust that what the ambassador is saying is even true? Maybe the nuclear program has nothing to do with building nuclear weapons...

Unfortunately, Iran's leaders, the Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Council, which hold much of the power, are stuck in old, authoritarian ways, despite the existence of more modern, democratic governing philosophies and attitudes amongst the up-and-coming generation (ages 20 to 40, maye some in their 50s). The Grand Ayatollah Khamemei was born in 1939, making him 68 years old today, which is only a little bit older that former President Bill Clinton, and yet, perhaps just enough to put Khamenei in a more conservative generational mindset.

But then, the current President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is only 50 years old, born in 1956, coming of age in the liberal 60s and 70s... And yet he seems not that interested in liberalizing Iran and appears to be a Holocaust revisionist, which I find rather odd in 2007.

The politics of Iran seem stuck in the past and not in the spirit of the 21st century. While China and India focus on and embrace economic growth and nations like Mexico have become much more democratic in the past decade, Iran is not showing the evolution which seems contagious throughout most of the world.

From the CIA's World Factbook

Iran's economy is marked by a bloated, inefficient state sector, over reliance
on the oil sector, and statist policies that create major distortions throughout. Most economic activity is controlled by the state. Private sector activity is typically small-scale workshops, farming, and services. President Mahmud AHMADI-NEJAD has continued to follow the market reform plans of former President RAFSANJANI, with limited progress. Relatively high oil prices in recent years have enabled Iran to amass nearly $60 billion in foreign exchange reserves, but have not eased economic hardships such as high unemployment and inflation

The CIA also notes that there's a shortage of skilled labor there.

What is holding the Middle East region back? Outdated values and authoritarianism? Iran has natural resources such as oil, so certainly has the potential to create a vibrant economy - though it uses all of the natural gas that is produces, and uses a third of the oil it produces.

Improving Iran's economy seems far more important than Holocaust revisionism or negative statements about Israel or the U.S. However, a nuclear-energy program that doesn't involve building nuclear weapons would probably help Iran export more oil or at least reduce its use.

How does the United States and other successful nations help guide a nation like Iran in the right direction? Are we looking 20 years ahead, trying to put together a new Iran leadership that would be friendly to the U.S. and Israel, while helping the nation of Iran improve its economy and living standards and make the country more open, tolerant, and democratic?

Current U.S. foreign policy appears to have its own problems with being stuck in old ways. It is too beholden to the electoral calendar and what philosophy reigns in the White House.

This is old from the Dept of State website, but let's consider it...

Iran: Vetting of Candidates for December Elections
In preparation for the upcoming Assembly of Experts, municipal councils, and several parliamentary by-elections on December 15th, the Iranian regime has once again disqualified
thousands of aspiring candidates on purely ideological grounds. Furthermore, the regime continues to crack down on media outlets, blocking Iran's citizens from access to unbiased information and a diversity of thought and opinion. The regime's track record of restricting the freedom of expression and participation in electoral competition demonstrates a profound disrespect for the will of the Iranian people and international standards of free elections. We continue to support the Iranian people in their efforts to exercise these basic rights.

If the US and other nations make such a hot issue out of potential nuclear weapons programs in Iran, and so publicly, then we get away from beating the drum of encouraging a growing economy and modernizing the country, a free press, and liberalizing attitudes. U.S. dialogue is focused on "evil empire" type rhetoric, we're just leaving out the evil now...

How do we help evolve Iran and at the same time improve the West's image in the Middle East?

I think some type of engaging diplomacy is needed, and long-term vision and support of liberal and moderate young people and businesspeople in Iran. I don't know what types of work are being done now to that goal - maybe there are some programs - let me know if you know of anything interesting.

Using Technology to Attack the Mosquito Problem

2007-09-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

I just read about cases of Dengue Fever and West Nile being spread by mosquitos, the latter in the U.S. and Canada.

Most are well aware of the dangers of malaria-carrying mosquitos in Africa and some other places, and the health crisis malaria poses for nations where its endemic.

Why is erradicating the mosquito a difficult thing for the modern world? Are we even trying to eradicate the mosquito? Shouldn't we be trying to eradicate the mosquito?

Typically, humans have sprayed poisonous chemicals in mosquito-infested areas to deal with the problem. However, that's a very primitive technique for dealing with the problem, and the poisons will likely find their way back into our bodies via the water and food chain.

There are mosquito-eating machines which give off carbon dioxide and other chemicals to attract mosquitos and then kill them, that people can buy for their personal and home use.

Has anyone ever considered making these mosquito-eaters industrial-sized, making millions of them and putting them every place in the world where mosquitos are a problem? Further research into best attracting the bugs would make them more effective (rumour is the mosquito-eaters are not currently that great a means of killing off mosquitos, but surely the technology can be improved upon with investment in research...)

The public health situation demands that humanity embark on global mosquito-erradication, as global warming is only going to put more people at risk of contracting these weird mosquito-transmitted illnesses.

It's remarkable that the world hasn't already done so. I recall in Toledo, Ohio earlier in the summer, a truck drove through the downtown gassing poison into the air. The grassless cement-land seemed the least likely place for mosquitos to be, but I got a wiff of the stuff. It seemed borderline stupid policy to be dealing with the mosquito problem that way, but then, old habits die hard...

The Goals for Iraq II - from eliminating WMD to Stability

2007-09-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

What I didn't re-consider in the first post on Iraq was that the initial goals of Iraq War II were to remove the dictator Saddamn Hussein and destroy his weapons of mass destruction (wmd)capabilities.

The latter didn't exist but the US coalition accomplished the former anyway - then the goals shifted, to creating a stable democratic Iraq and preventing terrorist groups from making Iraq their new home.

Those goals bring with them the sub-goal of dealing with Iran in some manner, be it diplomatically or militarily, given Iran's support for Shia's and perhaps insurgents in Iraq.

US Building Military Base near Iraq-Iran border (from RadioFree Europe)

"General David Petraeus, said on September 12 that he has solid evidence -- including statements from alleged Iranian agents that have been captured -- proving that Iran has been involved in lethal attacks in Iraq. Petraeus warned the U.S. Congress that the United States already is fighting what he called a "proxy war" with Iran."

Reflecting upon the mutations of the goals for Iraq and the region, and the invalidity of the initial excuse for invading in the first place (WMD), US policy in that region seems to be evolving along with events on the ground.

If getting rid of WMD in Iraq and Saddam were the primary goals, the US can exit Iraq now and claim relative success.

The US could spend the next 10 to 20 years trying to prevent terrorist groups from making Iraq their home, and that would still leave such groups other good location options in Africa and other places in the Middle East.

The Iraq Occupation Defense-Contractor Windfall

2007-09-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

Talk about the Military-Corporate Complex, the numbers from this good article on MSN.com "War means a windfall for CEOs" seems to bear out the unpleasant connection between war being insanely good for a few people, and horrifically awful for millions of others.

On the one hand, you have these defense-industry companies (KBR, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Boeing, Alliant Techsystems, Oshkosh Truck, and more ) doing very well from the occupation, and their CEOs doing even better, and the CEOs and upper management are going to be the ones who will have the ears of the Bush Administration, and where policy is going to be maybe easily influenced. An exerpt:

General Dynamics CEO Nicholas Chabraja tops the list of defense-contractor chiefs who have made the most money during the 2002-2006 defense buildup. Between 2002 and 2006, he pocketed $97.9 million, or an average of $19.6 million a year.
Sales at General Dynamics increased 76% from 2002 to 2006, with significant help from Department of Defense spending. Overall sales increased to $24.1 billion from $13.6 billion, and at least a third of that increase came from higher Department of Defense spending.
Those contract awards helped General Dynamics stock more than double to $80 a share from $39 at the start of 2002

However, one would think that the incentive to go to war in the first place would be encouraged by such corporations, but they might also encourage a more hawkish policy in Iraq, more troops, more money.

What is the opinion of the Corporate CEOs in these defense companies on the US's handling of the occupation of Iraq? Maybe we should get those on the record.

The US Occupation of Iraq: Withdraw or Stay?

2007-09-27T09:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday via an email from the Council on Foreign Relations I found this op-ed by Senator and Presidential candidate Joe Biden (D-DE) "A Plan for a Stable Iraq".

Writing that "The surge is at best a stopgap that delays, but will not prevent, chaos," Senator Biden argues to start withdrawing US troops and that "we have to separate the warring factions into separate regions, and give them breathing room, with local control over the fabric of their daily lives — police, education, jobs, marriage, religion — as Iraq’s constitution provides," arguing for a revised government, what is refered to as a "federal" Iraq where largely autonomous provinces exist, physically separating the religious and ethnic factions, except for in Baghdad - but where they share oil revenues and other key resources.

Senator Biden asks the reader to support the Biden-Brownback-Boxer amendment which would move Iraq toward this federal system.

I quickly shot off a hastily-worded email to one of my senators, Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) encouraging him to vote for the amendment, as I support a withdrawal of US Troops from Iraq.

Dear Senator Voinovich,

I read an op-ed by Senator Biden today in South Carolina's The State which mentioned the Biden-Brownback-Boxer Amendment. I encourage you to vote in favor of the amendment.
http://www.thestate.com/editorial-columns/story/182790.html

I support a withdrawal of troops from Iraq and for the US Congress and President to consider various non-military means of helping that nation become stable. Our presence in Iraq may be causing the instability it is trying to quell.

I then sent this letter to various news media, even though my argument pro-withdrawal was hardly developed. I wanted to keep the message short for the Congressional staffers, and let Senator Biden's op-ed serve as my argument. However, I inevitably reflected further on the issue and wanted to post my thinking here.

Why has the US failed in achieving a post-war stable Iraq?

It took less than 2 months to win the war in Iraq War II, but more than 4 years later, we appear to be losing the Occupation of Iraq as badly today as ever.

The first question that comes to my mind is: the $400 Billion/year US Military, which is considered the best in the world, certainly has experts which must have known how the post-war occupation would develop, must have known exactly what the US and its allies needed to do to ensure a successful post-war occupation, and yet despite this, the occupation has been a disaster, with nearly 4,000 US soldiers killed, more than 20,000 wounded or ill (according to wikipedia, more than 36,000 have been medically evacuated) and possibly 500,000 to 1 million Iraqis killed or wounded, displaced, suffering poverty and health problems - given the presumed existence of these experts, why the failure? Why this humanitarian disaster?

And if I am wrong about presuming the existence of these experts, why continue pouring vast sums of money into the US Military?

The answer to the first question is surely politics. However, in modern 2007, it's disturbing that such bad politics could override military expert counsel to create the disaster that is Iraq today.

What might those experts have recommended?

- Many arabic-english translators (5,000 to 10,000) prepared and ready by
2004, if not 2003;
- Commit 200,000 to 300,000 US and allied troops in Iraq as of 2003 as opposed to 140,000 or even the 165,000 troop total of the relatively small "surge";
- Have a plan to employ most Iraqis in some type of mandatory, paid national service (unemployment was at crisis levels after the war);
- Have a better plan to invest in and rebuild basic infrastructure, with more money committed - water, electricity services;
- Diplomatic overtures to neighboring nations;
- Ensuring that Iran stays out of the
Occuptaion stage in Iraq via negotiations and deals; (Instead, by pressing Iran
on the nuclear issue, are we encouraging Iran to cause us trouble in Iraq?)

This roundtable discussion from the Lehrer Newshour "Experts Still Divided After Iraq Study Group Recommendations" features Fred Kagan, military analysis of the American Enterprise Institute, who said:

The fact of the matter is that it's never been the primary mission of the U.S. military presence in Iraq to establish security for the people of Iraq, and that's a fundamental failure. When you go back to Counterinsurgency 101, establishing security for the population is key.

And I absolutely agree that the unemployment is a major issue. I absolutely agree that the political situation is a major problem. There is no prospect for having forward progress on any of that until the violence can be brought under control.

Kagan cites the "fundamental failure" of the US Military Presence in Iraq, a policy which had certainly been thought about and decided on prior to going to war in 2003. Kagan says in this report that, according to military recommendations, 150,000 US troops may be needed to secure the city of Baghdad alone, but he does not give a total troop number recommendation.

I read that there are nearly 300,000 Iraqis working in security and police operations, however they are likely vulnerable to corruption and have religious and ethnic loyalties.

One major problem facing current policy debate and decisions on the Occupation of Iraq today is the already significant number of lives lost, troops injured, Iraqis killed and injured, low morale and lack of Iraqi confidence in US troops - policies, such as massive troop commitments of 200,000 or 250,000, that could have been implemented in 2003 do not seem politically viable when the general refrain amongst the Democrats is "withdraw".

Today, a massive re-commitment of US Troops in Iraq, if unsucessful, would be politically disastrous, whereas in 2003 it would have been no different than the situation we are faced with today. That is why President Bush's "surge" was rather small - just 25,000 troops, politically acceptable.

So, what is the right policy option for Iraq?

We don't know.

If experts say what you need is 150,000 troops in Baghdad, and perhaps more in other areas in Iraq, then we would have to try that and see. Would that commitment worsen the relations between the troops and Iraqis? Would insurgents be effectively eliminated? Would US Troops commit new crimes and hurt their relations with Iraqis?

Politically, it doesn't appear that anyone in the US Government has any desire to wage such a big gamble. Certainly, commitment of more troops alone, without employing more Iraqis, more investment, and non-confrontational diplomacy with Iran, seems insufficient. And the full menu of options would raise the financial cost to something probably politically unbearable.

On the other hand, what may be politically "bearable" might be bad, unsuccessful policy in Iraq waged for 5 or 10 years with a gradually increasing number of killed and injured.

Complete US military withdrawal from Iraq is better than bad but politically bearable policies. President Bush and his administration missed an opportunity in 2003 after winning the war, to launch a more decisive, smarter, and generous occupation of Iraq.

The Bush Administration's lack of foresight on a host of issues with respect to post-war Iraq is really unconscionable in light of how much our nation spends on Defense and the experts, advanced technologies and intelligence at DoD's disposal in the 21st century. It suggests something very wrong with our US Government's or DoD's functioning - too much political influence and possibly the influence of private companies who aim to be war profiteers. They still make good money if the Occupation goes miserably for another 10 years.

The economic incentives for US-based companies involved in war and defense industries, like Halliburton, that have made billions of dollars from government contracts, are gargantuan. These companies in turn influence the US Government politically and US Government policies well beyond VP Richard Cheney's connections to Halliburton.

Preoccupations of those interests with revenues and profits may have more to do than we see with the disastrous post-war Occupation of Iraq.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates just put in a new funding request for Iraq and the War on Terror, totalling $147 billion.

That request included $70.6 billion for operations, $37.6 billion to repair or replace equipment, $15.2 billion for force protection, and $4.7 billion to train and equip Afghan and Iraqi security forces.

At the end of July, the department asked for another $5.3 billion to buy 1,520 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles. These vehicles, known as MRAPs, offer better protection from improvised explosive devices and car bombs, the leading killers of Americans in Iraq. This brought the total request to $147 billion.

The $42 billion request the president will submit includes $6 billion to support Army and Marine combat formations in Iraq through fiscal 2008. This includes surge forces in the country and the president’s announced intention to redeploy five Army brigade combat teams by next summer, Gates said. The request also includes $14 billion for force protection, including another $11 billion to field 7,000 more MRAP vehicles. If approved, this would bring the request to 15,000 vehicles. “This also includes funding to better defeat enemy snipers and to modify Army combat vehicles to improve survivability,” Gates said. The request adds $9 billion for econstitution of equipment. This is vital to ensure the armed forces have the equipment and technology needed for future operations, Gates said.

The companies building these MRAP vehicles and building the equipment for the troops and security forces will post excellent financial results in 2008. Not that the weapons and vehicles are not needed, they surely are, and not that those companies making them are necessarily influencing policy, but they could be.

According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report:

"Since September 2001, the Congress has appropriated $602 billion for military operations and other activities related to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terrorism."

Such huge sums - $600 billion in 6 years - are to be made for defense-related industries during such massive war undertakings that they clearly rebut the hypothesis that the war in Iraq has to do with oil - war itself is a very profitable industry.

Iraq is only making about $20b - $25b a year on oil, nothing compared to what the US has spent on military operations in the past 6 years.

(More on Iraq and defense issues as the Council on Foreign Relations website)

Perhaps I will contemplate Iraq policy more in a follow-up post.

Military Interventions: One Way to Help Africa

2007-06-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

From June 14th, 2007, NY Times, "Africa's World War" by Nicholas Kristof

"...the best book on international affairs so far this year: Paul Collier's ''The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.''
Mr. Collier, a former research director of the World Bank, notes that when the G-8 countries talk about helping Africa, they overwhelmingly focus just on foreign aid. Sure, aid has a role to play, but it's pointless to build clinics when rebel groups are running around burning towns and shooting doctors.
One essential kind of help that the West can provide -- but one that is rarely talked about -- is Western military assistance in squashing rebellions, genocides and civil wars, or in protecting good governments from insurrections. The average civil war costs $64 billion, yet could often be suppressed in its early stages for very modest sums. The British military intervention in Sierra Leone easily ended a savage war and was enthusiastically welcomed by local people -- and, as a financial investment, achieved benefits worth 30 times the cost.
Josh Ruxin, a Columbia University public health expert living in Rwanda, notes that a modest Western force could have stopped the genocide in 1994 -- or, afterward, rooted out Hutu extremists who fled to Congo and dragged that country into a civil war that has cost millions of lives.
''Had an international force come in and rounded them up, that would have been the biggest life-saving measure in modern history,'' he said.
So it's time for the G-8 countries to conceive of foreign aid more broadly -- not just to build hospitals and schools, but also to work with the African Union to provide security in areas that have been ravaged by rebellion and war. A starting point would be a serious effort to confront genocide in Darfur -- and at least an international force to prop up Chad and Central African Republic, rather than allow Africa to tumble into its second world war."

I agree that some sort of international multilateral military force, like UN "peacekeapers" or NATO, should be used to address, or put to an end, certain conflict situations. The conflict in Darfur, Sudan may be one of those types of situations. On the other hand, many people, including myself, argue for a removal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

On the one hand, I have no expertise in this matter of how to stabilize a nation suffering chronic terrorism and anti-government bombings.

However, when you look at America's policies in Iraq since the military victory, it doesn't appear that our military and political experts had much expertise on how to quickly stabilize Iraq post-Saddam either. Which is pretty disturbing, given the vast undertaking of the war and the post-war occupation, and the now more than 3,000 American lives lost and many more injured, as well as the thousands of Iraqi lives lost. Deaths and injuries that may have been prevented by better pre-war planning on what to expect in the second phase of the operation in Iraq.

If it's something simple, like bombing arms depots and laboratories, advanced fighter jets can do that type of action very well for minimal cost. But in the case of Iraq, the security situation begs that the whole country be put under something like martial law... A massive undertaking for a country of that size. So, despite technological advancements to 2007, we must still consider geography, population size, and so forth.

Interestingly, Sudan is an enormous country, the 10th largest in the world, almost as big as India, consisting of 2.6 million sq. km., with 37 million people.

Iraq, as enormous as it is (500,000 sq. km) is the 58th largest country, with 26 million people.

Of course, there are different types of internal conflicts, requiring different military approaches. The U.S. however, is already stretched militarily by its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and success in the former has been elusive, which bodes ill for the argument for very pro-active military action to stabilize nations and regions, or rebuild nations.

Reducing Global Population Growth to Alleviate Poverty

2007-06-13T05:44:00.000-07:00

As the world grows from a global population of 6.5 billion to 9 billion by the year 2050, all the discussion about mitigating poverty, there is little discussion about probably the greatest means of mitigating poverty: reducing childbirth, or preventing it entirely. The report by UNICEF “Poverty Reduction Begins With Children” seems to get it wrong. The progress of the international community on reducing global child poverty over the past 50 years has been overshadowed by the larger global picture of increasing poverty and destitution.

The UN’s Millennium Development Goals discuss nothing of managing or reducing global population growth, which could be one of the most successful methods of reducing poverty, especially child poverty. The MDG indicators show some progress on poverty from 1990 to 2002, but not so much in Africa.

UN millennium project Fast Facts on world poverty

According to the UN’s Population Division: “In 2005-2010, fertility remains above 5 children per woman in 27 of the 150 developing countries, and those 27 countries account for 9 per cent of the world population…”

Economist and anti-poverty crusader Jeffrey Sachs, however, does not list population growth as one of the reasons many nations in Africa find themselves in a poverty “trap”

In the report “Ending Africa’s Poverty Trap”

Sachs lists the causes of these nations’ “poverty trap”

—very high transport costs and small market size
—low-productivity agriculture
—a very high disease burden
—adverse geopolitics
—very slow diffusion of technology from abroad.

Prof. Sachs and his co-authors then propose…

“….to increase the capital stock in one step, as it were, through a large, well-targeted infusion of foreign assistance. In other words, we are arguing not for endless flows of increased aid, and not for aid as simple charity, but rather for increased aid as an exit strategy from the poverty trap. For those who fear that aid increases dependency, our response is that aid that is ambitious enough would actually end Africa’s dependency. Moreover, we see no other likely successful strategy for ending Africa’s poverty trap.”

What about helping these nations reduce their population growth?

According to the U.S. Census (2006) of all one-parent family groups in the US, there being an estimated total of 12.9 million, 10.4 million of those were maintained by the mother, of which 7.2 million mothers were employed, but 5 million had annual family incomes under $20,000. 3.6 million were below the poverty level.

* 5.56 million single-mother homes with 1 child under 18
* 3.2 million single-mother homes with 2 children under 18
* 1.17 million single-mother homes with 3 children under 18 (22.5 % not in labor force)
* 478,000 single-mother homes with 4 or more children under 18 (37.4 % not in labor force, and 9.5 % unemployed)

About 80% of single-parent fathers were employed, while about 70% of single-parent mothers are employed, except for those with 4+ children…

Developed nations like the United States – which still has about 30 million people living in near poverty - could begin managing their own birth rates by providing generous financial incentives to abstain from having any children (Like $20,000 in education grants and a $2,000 cash payment), and fairly generous incentives for having just one child, as well as reducing tax breaks for those who have more than one child.

Poor populations could be focused on at early ages, (since some young women have children before voting age) and provided with federal trust funds for education and training, as well as some cash assistance, provided the women in question abstain from giving birth and/or agree to being sterilized.

It is obvious that most women without children will be able to focus more on their own self-enrichment, as long as they are channeled away from unhealthy, self-destructive behaviors. Over the long run (say, 50 years) which seems to not be considered much these days, policies that give worker training and education grants to women who will forgo childbirth could have the effect of eradicating poverty in a developed nation like the United States, by helping to lift those women out of poverty.

A global fund to reduce poverty and stabilize population could be created along the same lines, where a little bit of cash assistance would go very far ( the US dollar and Euro being strong relative to the other nations' currencies) and could quickly reduce the number of new births. If begun soon, by 2050 the program could not only begin lifting women out of poverty but possibly be in a position to reduce the total global population by 2100, which will certainly be stressing our global resources of water and other natural resources.

If the world is going to be adding an additional 2.5 billion people in the next 50 years, the creation of a $1 trillion international fund to mitigate poverty in part by stabilizing the world’s population growth is not a ridiculous suggestion. If there are about 3 billion people living in poverty, that’s only US$333 per person.

The easiest way to administer the program would be to offer women under a certain income level the option of sterilization for some type of generous financial grant to be applied to job training and education, combined with some type of up-front cash payment. Sterilization after one child might be given a less generous but substantial benefit. In some poor countries, direct cash payments combined with no-interest loans might be the only way to make the program work.

The international community does not seem to be debating this type of program to reduce global poverty. Why?

Source: World Bank

Jeffrey Sachs' Crusade to End Poverty - Vanity Fair

2007-06-12T06:26:00.001-07:00

In Vanity Fair's Africa issue "Jeffrey Sachs's $200 Billion Dream"

Jeffrey Sachs—visionary economist, savior of Bolivia, Poland, and other struggling nations, adviser to the U.N. and movie stars—won't settle for less than the global eradication of extreme poverty. And he hasn't got a second to waste.
by Nina Munk ~ July 2007

Eating on $1.23 a week

2007-06-12T05:23:00.000-07:00

A family in Chad spends only $1.23 a week for food while a family in Sicily spends about $260. An American family, $340. From Time magazine.

We in more developed nations certainly could spend less on food. A big bag of lentils, beans, and rice with some vegetables thrown in and a little meat would probably cut weekly food expenditure down (in the US) to about $100 per week - and maybe people would be thinner.

The Americans and their food. Other Americans getting by on $160 week in food.

Eating for $68 a week in Egypt.

Eating for $31.55 a week in Ecuador.

Eating for $40 week in Ulaanbaatar (Capital of Mongolia)

Eating for $5 a week in Bhutan (About Bhutan)

All the less developed nations rely on grains, vegetables, and meats, and far fewer processed foods. I'm surprised they're not healthier than us...

Below, family in Bhutan with their eats, from Time magazine

War in the Democratic Republic of Congo

2007-06-12T04:53:00.000-07:00

New York Times Editorial

Still Dying in Congo

Published: June 12, 2007

Darfur is not the only place where people are dying in staggering numbers. Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken more than three million lives in the last nine years. Since damping down a civil war in 2003, the outside world has largely focused on the struggle for power in the capital, Kinshasa, culminating in elections last year that were mostly free and fair.

Fine, but thousands of people are still dying as violence once again flares in the east of this huge country where government troops and rebels continue their ruthless war of attrition. Meanwhile, throughout the country, government security forces terrorize and rape civilians and pillage their goods in lieu of the wages they fail to receive. To escape the violence, tens of thousands of civilians have been driven into the forest, where far too many die from preventable disease and malnutrition.

A large United Nations peacekeeping force — the largest in the world — has been present in the region for years. It deserves credit for reducing the fighting. But peacekeepers have also been accused of smuggling gold, sexually abusing minors and deliberately killing militia members in their custody. The U.N. is investigating these killings, but the organization has a poor record of seeing that the guilty are appropriately punished. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon needs to insist on full disclosure and accountability when peacekeepers commit crimes under the U.N. flag.

The Congo’s biggest need, however, is for better governance, including a healthy, independent judiciary and better disciplined security forces. The international community needs to do a lot more to help the government on these fronts. Until that happens, the death toll will continue to rise.

The DRC, with over 60 million citizens, is the 20th most populous country in the world, more populous that the United Kingdom, and nearly tied with Thailand (I didn't know Thailand was home to 62 million people...)

There are 18,000 United Nations peacekeepers stationed in the DRC. (UN MONUC)

The DRC's economy

From MBendi: The DRC has the 2nd largest rainforest in the world.

The DRC's economy from the CIA's World Factbook

The CIA's entry says the DRC holds "vast potential wealth..."

Agriculture: coffee, sugar, palm oil, rubber, tea, quinine, cassava (tapioca), palm oil, bananas, root crops, corn, fruits; wood products

Industries: mining (diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, coltan zinc), mineral processing, consumer products (including textiles, footwear, cigarettes, processed foods and beverages), cement, commercial ship repair

The BBC's profile of the DRC.

The US Dept. of State's profile of the DRC
"Although 700 local languages and dialects are spoken, the linguistic variety is bridged both by the use of French and the intermediary languages Kikongo, Tshiluba, Swahili, and Lingala."

World "Human Development Index"

2007-06-10T04:42:00.000-07:00

Source: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/as_a_comparision_human_development_index_hdi_in_2002

Click here for Human Development Reports from the United Nations Development Programme

Fighting Malaria: A New Method of Mosquito Reduction?

2007-06-07T14:33:00.001-07:00

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is really focused on funding programs to help prevent and cure diseases in foreign countries, especially Africa, where malaria is such a problem. However, its recommendations for dealing with malaria on the supply side, that is, preventing the mosquitos from biting a person, are so far limited to using pesticides and bed nets.

There exist several technologies for attracting and killing mosquitos, using machines that emit carbon dioxide, octenol, which attract the bugs, and have a vacuum.

It would seem to make sense that special industrial versions could be designed in an global effort to eradicate, or greatly reduce, mosquito populations. I was walking in a park here in Ohio recently, and there were quite a few mosquitos that were landing on me, and I thought it would make sense to have several of these things, designed to look like trees, stationed throughout the park...

America should be very concerned about reducing its mosquito population, as climate change could bring malaria to the U.S. and there are other viruses occasionally transmitted by the bugs.
Why rely on pesticides, instead of attract-and-kill technology? Why not build enormous machines for this, with the goal of eradicating the mosquito?

Click here for Reviews of various mosquito "magnet" products

Little Progress on Poverty

2007-05-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

Source: International Monetary Fund, "How Can the Poorest Countries Catch Up?"

Between 1987 and 1998 not much progress was made on poverty in Africa, and though growth in Asia reduced poverty during that time, there were still many people living on less than $1 a day.

Two quotes from the document:

"In Africa, the level of real per capita income today is lower than it was 30 years ago."

"Overall, the number of very poor (those living on less than $1 per day) has remained roughly unchanged over the past decade, and only limited progress has been made in reducing the share of the world population living in poverty. This represents both huge amounts of unnecessary human suffering and an enormous squandering of human potential."

The World at a Crossroads

2007-05-21T04:52:00.000-07:00

What are some of the salient characteristics of our world today in 2007?

Population and poverty. There are now about 6.5 billion people on earth (compared to 1.6 billion in 1900) and that will soon grow to 9 billion; About 3 billion of them live in poverty, while there may be between 500 to 1000 individuals worldwide who can claim themselves actually to be billionaires (in US Dollar terms). That doesn't include the maybe 9 million millionaires over the globe;

About 850 million people live in hunger, and about 9 million people per year die from lack of food, according to the World Food Programme
2.6 billion live without proper sanitation, UNICEF estimates

The primary international peace and security concern, beyond political instability in Iraq, the Middle East, and North Korea's militant nature, has become terrorism. The international community is still somewhat reluctant to intervene in some conflicts like the one in Sudan's Darfur region, which has been called genocide.

Technology and engineering have made our more modern world what it is today - think of how much the world has advanced in the past 100 years compared to all of human history. When many people think of technology, they think of consumer technology, such as home computers, the internet, cellphones, and music players. But the technology that is used to make automobiles, computer chips, solar cells, conduct drug research, conduct scientific research, and to build military weapons and vehicles is the more hidden high-level technology, which we rarely see and interact with, but which is constantly pushing our world into modernity.

Medicine has advanced, but not as much as one might think it should have over the past 50 years. We don't have good cures and prevention methods for major diseases like malaria and HIV, 6.7 million people died of cancer in 2002, about 1.6 million people died from Tuberculosis in 2005, about 8 million people died from heart disease in 2003. See the top 20 causes of death worldwide from the World Health Organization, for 2003 (this doesn't list the 9 million that the WFP claims die from hunger). We would think that the future would hold cures for or preventions of nearly all diseases, eliminating nearly all suffering.

Environment and Global Climate Change. Possibly the biggest challenge put to engineering, science, and technology, to develop more efficient energy-consuming buildings, vehicles, and appliances, or new sources of energy, new devices to harness energy (like solar cells) or new ways to absorb carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse' gases. So far, though automobiles have become more modern, bigger, more luxurious and can include technological novelties like GPS maps, very little advancement has been made on making them more fuel-efficient or to run on alternative fuels. The ethanol movement, if it takes hold, promises a renewable source of fuel, but likely emits similar quantities of carbon dioxide when combusted as gasoline, thereby not solving the problem contributing to global climate change.

Destroying or polluting our natural environment and making animals and species extinct. We do not have good excuses in a modern era for thoughtless destruction and pollution of our environment - technology and science should offer good solutions for recycling and cleaner disposal of pollutants, and responsible land and forest management. We should care to conserve our fellow animals on this planet, the sign of wise and responsible caretakers of the planet. The disappearance of our fellow animals, and other species, suggests bad stewardship of planet earth. Mother Jones magazine's cover story this month tackles this issue.

Finite resources: Fuels. "Despite increased world-wide demand, estimates of supply and demand indicate that less than half the world’s total oil reserves will be exhausted by 2025." - US Energy Information Administration. However, a Wikipedia entry on Fossil Fuels estimates about 45 years of oil production left. There appears to be enough coal for many generations in to the future.

Finite resources: Fresh Water. According to the United Nations, by 2025, about 1.8 billion people will be living in water-scarce areas, and nearly 2/3 of the world's population could be under water-stressed conditions. See Water Day 2007.

The other day I looked through Time magazine's, 1900 to Now issue for 2007, which included photographs and captions from the 20th Century. Looking back at the awesome technological and engineering advancements made during that time, what will the next 93 years hold for this century? How will humanity cope with and address all the resource pressures it will face, the security issues, and will it do so humanely, striving for opportunity for all and eliminating poverty? It would seem that it would demand something like a stronger world government to do so, a government that could impose rule over nations like Sudan, to end the bloodshed there; or a government that could better control diseases in certain countries, when the government of that nation isn't able to.

I will be writing on and exploring these topics and perhaps others as they arise.