Is Destructive Addiction Accelerating Poverty in America?

Even those with incomes have less “wealth”

Year after year, federal spending on poverty programs has been going up, but we still see more and more people who have no margin to guard against unexpected expenses or job loss. At the same time, for different reasons, Americans who are not impoverished have seen their wealth decline sharply.  In this Brookings Podcast video interview, Ron Haskings discusses poverty in America.

Child Poverty and Deprivation Concerns

Report Card 10, from UNICEF’s Office of Research, looks at child poverty and child deprivation across the industrialized world, comparing and ranking countries’ performance. This international comparison, says the Report, proves that child poverty in these countries is not inevitable, but policy susceptible – and that some countries are doing much better than others at protecting their most vulnerable children.

“The data reinforces that far too many children continue to go without the basics in countries that have the means to provide,” said Gordon Alexander, Director of UNICEF’s Office of Research. “The report also shows that some countries performed well – when looking at what is largely pre crisis data – due to the social protection systems that were in place. The risk is that in the current crisis we won’t see the consequences of poor decisions until much later.”

“The report makes clear that some governments are doing much better at tackling child deprivation than others,” said Mr Alexander. “The best performers show it is possible to address poverty within the current fiscal space. On the flip side, failure to protect children from today’s economic crisis is one of the most costly mistakes a society can make.”

Is Rampant Military Spending Responsible?

More than half of every dollar Americans pay into taxes goes toward military spending, according to an analysis in an Al-Jazeera video featuring a conversation between radio host Dennis Bernstein and journalist Dave Lindorff.

“People have to realize that 53 cents of every dollar that they are paying into taxes is going to the military,” Lindorff says. “It’s an astonishing figure. There is an enormous, enormous amount of money being blown on war and killing and destruction.”

Of the proposed $3 trillion budget, Lindorff says, $717 billion would be allocated to the Pentagon budget; a $158 billion “contingency fund” would be used for military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan; $40 billion in “black box” intelligence spending.

“They never tell us how much they spend on the CIA, NSA and DIA, and all these different intelligence activities, which are all war-related,” he says. An error in testimony about two years ago an error in Congressional testimony led to the revelation that the covert intelligence budget was around $37 billion, Lindorff says, adding that he suspects the budget is really closer to $60 billion or $70 billion.

Poverty Impacts Life Expectancy

Despite modest gains in lifespan over the past century, the United States still trails many of the world’s countries when it comes to life expectancy, and its poorest citizens live approximately five years less than more affluent persons, according to a new study from Rice University and the University Colorado at Boulder.

The study, “Stagnating Life Expectancies and Future Prospects in an Age of Uncertainty,” used time-series analysis to evaluate historical data on U.S. mortality from the Human Mortality Database. The study authors reviewed data from 1930 through 2000 to identify trends in mortality over time and forecast life expectancy to the year 2055. Their research will be published in an upcoming issue of Social Science Quarterly.

Although the researchers found that the U.S. can expect very moderate gains in coming years (less than an additional three years through 2055), the U.S. still trails its developed counterparts in life expectancy. For example, the average life expectancy in the U.S. for a person born today is is 78.49, which is significantly lower than people born in Monaco, Macau and Japan, which have the three highest life expectancies (89.68, 84.43 and 83.91 years, respectively). In addition, the most deprived U.S. citizens tend to live five years less than their more affluent countrymen, according to Justin Denney, Rice assistant professor of sociology, who was principal author for the study.

Denney said that in 1930, average life expectancy in the United States was 59.85. By 2000, it rose to 77.1 years. “But when broken down, these numbers show that those gains were mostly experienced between 1930 the 1950s and 1960s,” he said. “Since that time, gains in life expectancy have flattened out.

The Ugly Side of Inequality

“During periods of expansion in length of life, a similar expansion has occurred between more and less advantaged groups – the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, inequality grows and life expectancy is dramatically impacted,” Denney said. “And despite disproportionate spending on health care, life expectancy in the U.S. continues to fall down the ladder of international rankings of length of life. It goes to show that prosperity doesn’t necessarily equal long-term health.”

Denney said many of the chronic conditions that have led to smaller gains in life expectancy are more easily treated when people are more financially stable. He said the study shows “the ugly side of inequality,” and he hopes it will draw attention to the fact that more needs to be done to address stagnating life expectancies in the U.S. and eliminate inequalities in the U.S.

“Even in uncertain times, it is important to look forward in preparing for the needs of future populations,” Denney said. “The results presented here underscore the relevance of policy and health initiatives aimed at improving the nation’s health and reveal important insight into possible limits to mortality improvement over the next five decades.”

Gallery: Azawad Interim Council President Inauguration

Supporters of an independent Azawad gathered in Mali on Friday, 15 June 2012 for the official inauguration of an interim president, MNLA Secretary-General, Bilal Ag Acherif.

Ag Cherif reiterated [fr] the aims of the council as listed in the Azawadi Declaration of Independence and announced initiatives to establish state institutions, and to develop a charter that defines the fundamental principles of a new constitution for Azawad. He again called on the international community to recognise the 28-member Transitional Council of the State of Azawad (Conseil de Transition de l’Etat de l’Azawad, CTEA).

A concerted lobbying effort for military intervention by members of ECOWAS and the African Union is still in progress, notably with the United Nations Security Council. Old enmities between key north African countries impact discussions, and force interested parties to perform an elaborate diplomatic dance of meetings followed by visits to share developments with estranged ones. A little like friends and family trying to maintain relationships with both sides of an acrimonious divorce, it all slows and complicates the process, while creating a breeding ground for intrigue. Countries that under normal circumstances might be expected to have a say – Libya, Egypt, Yemen – are to be excused, as they have enough on their respective domestic plates. Beyond Africa, France (its Foreign Minister more specifically) is still bullish, while the US is relying on “media diplomacy” for now. I’ve not noticed any official statements from Gulf states. Perhaps Iran will weigh in with an opinion on Azawad, and then the rhetoric can really begin to fly.

One thing all sides agree on is the worrying humanitarian situation of tens of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people as the “lean period” approaches. There is ample space at the borders with Algeria and Mauritania to create humanitarian corridors under an agreement not to resume hostilities. I am interested to see if anyone raises this idea, and whether this possibility also exists at the borders with Niger, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast. I assume this would conflict with the agenda of the rebel groups, as they now enjoy relatively unrestricted access to and from neighbouring countries, and the pro-invasion crowd aren’t canvassing for suggestions. Therefore I don’t hold out much hope for a logical solution.

Ten years and six billion dollars later, Afghanistan’s Opium Blooms Ever Stronger

Mohnkapseln, getrocknet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

KABUL, Afghanistan — For years, American officials have struggled to curb Afghanistan’s opium industry, rewriting strategy every few seasons and pouring in more than $6 billion over the past decade to combat the poppies that help finance the insurgency and fuel corruption.

It is a measure of the problem’s complexity that officials can find little comfort even in the news this month that blight and bad weather are slashing this year’s poppy harvest in the south. They know from past seasons that blight years lead to skyrocketing opium prices and even greater planting efforts to come.

“Now I am desperate, what can I do?” said Mohammed Amin, a poppy farmer in Tirin Kot in Oruzgan Province, who harvested only one kilogram of opium poppy this year compared with 15 last year. “I don’t have any cash now to start another business, and if I grow any other crops, I cannot make a profit.”

The seemingly unbreakable allure of poppy profits — for producers and traffickers, government officials and Taliban commanders alike — has kept fighting opium at the heart of efforts to improve security. It drove Richard C. Holbrooke, later the special envoy to Afghanistan, to write in 2008: “Breaking the narco-state in Afghanistan is essential, or all else will fail.”

That concern is no less serious today, on the eve of the departure of thousands of American troops. But even as American leaders continue to emphasize the importance of the anti-opium effort, some officials are privately conceding that there is little chance for its large-scale success before the end of the NATO military mission in 2014.

The withdrawal is one worry. As the money from the Western military and civilian aid programs dwindles, the relative importance of opium to the economy is likely only to increase, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan.

“Some money is available through the licit economy, but less than in the past as the Western contracts dry up, and so the importance of the illicit, informal economy will increase: human trafficking, gems, timber and weapons smuggling, and of course narcotics is a huge chunk of it,” he said, adding: “The prognosis post-2014 is not a positive one.”

Opium poppy, much like the coca grown in Colombia and Peru, poses a number of problems because there is so much money to be made that powerful political players, from police chiefs to governors, inevitably want a cut. The Taliban also support the drug trade, directly by protecting opium farmers, and indirectly by shielding traffickers, who pay off everybody in order to move their products quickly to the borders, according to narcotics experts at the United Nations and the Afghan government.

“Drugs are not the only priority issue for Afghanistan,” said William R. Brownfield, the State Department’s assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement, in an interview this month. “But by the same token, if you do not address the drug issue you will not succeed in the other security, stability, democracy, prosperity objectives you are aiming for.”

Despite all the effort, there are many troubling indicators. Nationwide, the number of poppy-free provinces, which reached a high of 20 in 2010, has now dropped to at least 17 and could be found to be still lower once researchers finish surveying remote provinces. Overall acres under poppy cultivation began rising again in 2009 after a significant drop the year before, and the total has grown slowly but steadily since.

Interdiction, while somewhat improved under new Afghan counternarcotics leadership, nets only about 3.5 percent of the 375 tons of heroin that leaves the country every year, according to the United Nations.

Even the success stories are unlikely to be sustainable, officials say. The prime example is the combined American and British counternarcotics campaign in the Helmand River Valley, in the heart of the province that produces nearly half of Afghanistan’s opium. Since its start in 2009, the military mission has coincided with a 33 percent decrease in opium poppy cultivation in the area, and concurrent programs to create alternative jobs and crops have had a significant effect there.

But the troops are leaving — as many as 14,000 American Marines could depart Helmand by the end of the year — and many of the incentive programs are closing down unless Afghanistan’s counternarcotics minister can persuade the West to renew them.

“We have to watch the answer develop over the next 6 to 12 months,” Mr. Brownfield said, speaking of the effects of the military withdrawal. “That’s what transition is all about — we’re changing from a known to an unknown.”

This year’s low opium harvest has thrown another element of unpredictability into the picture. It has already driven a few farmers to commit suicide and others to flee because they feared retribution from creditors, according to the governor’s office in Helmand. But rather than serving as a disincentive, the poor crop is more likely to prompt many to plant even more poppy next year to make up for this year’s losses. That was the pattern in previous blight seasons, like 2010.

Mr. Amin, the poppy farmer in Tirin Kot, says that despite the risks, there is nothing to replace opium: “The poppy is always good, you can sell it at any time. It is like gold, you can sell it whenever and get cash.”

In the meantime, the price for opium at the farm gate has soared — up more than 50 percent from a month ago and now selling for more than $320 per kilogram — another factor likely to spur more planting, Mr. Lemahieu said. Traffickers, who stockpile opium from year to year, are making a killing, he said.

On the Afghan side, the minister for counternarcotics, Zarar Ahmad Muqbel Osmani, has increased poppy eradication efforts in areas where farmers can grow other crops and is lobbying to expand the alternative crop program. But he remains deeply frustrated with the overall lack of law enforcement. Asked what it would take to affect the country’s drug problem, he answered tersely, “Political will.”

Among the continuing problems with corruption: information leaks that scuttle potential drug raids; political pressure that results in the release of major traffickers; and local politicians and police officers who participate in the poppy trade and use eradication programs to attack their rivals.

The deputy interior minister for counternarcotics, Lt. Gen. Baaz Mohammed Ahmadi, said his specialized force must still answer to local police officials.

“Because they are dependent on the regular force for everything, for gas for their vehicles and for the vehicles, even a very junior fuel dispatcher will know about the details of our operations,” he said. “And when we plan an operation, we have to have approval of the local police chief or his deputy or the zone police chief, and if one of those people is corrupt or linked to a big trafficker, it leaks.”

The Americans have taken at least three different tacks to fighting opium poppy cultivation.

In the early days after the 2001 invasion, a little more than half the current acreage was under cultivation, a legacy in part from the Taliban’s ban on opium, which they ignored selectively. The Western emphasis was on driving the remaining Taliban fighters from the country, and with that in mind the Americans made allies of many of the old warlords who were also involved in the drug trade, entrenching a culture of impunity.

In 2005, British forces found nearly 20,000 pounds of opium in the office of the Helmand governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, an ally of President Hamid Karzai. He was forced out at the behest of the British, but was later named to the Senate.

In 2006, as Americans began promoting eradication by specially trained Afghan forces, heroin was found in a car belonging Hajji Zaher Qadir, whom Mr. Karzai had been considering to lead the border police force. That appointment was scrapped, but Mr. Qadir is now one of the leaders in the lower house of Parliament. Many of the northern power brokers are also believed to be involved in the drug trade.

In 2007, as poppy growth reached a record-high 477,000 acres, the new American ambassador, William B. Wood, began to lobby for aerial eradication of the kind that had been undertaken in Colombia.

Mr. Wood became such a vocal proponent that he was known in the British press as “Chemical Bill.” He once even tried to overcome President Karzai’s skepticism about spraying by offering to publicly sit in a vat of pesticide clad only in a Speedo bathing suit to prove the chemicals were safe, said a Western official familiar with the discussions at the time.

Strenuous opposition from Mr. Karzai, European diplomats and some American policy makers stopped the program from getting off the ground. They feared it would backfire by reminding impoverished Afghans of Soviet-era spraying and would push them further into poverty, and into the arms of the Taliban.

In 2009, with the arrival of President Obama’s team, including Mr. Holbrooke, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and later Gen. David H. Petraeus, the focus turned toward a counterinsurgency strategy that hinged on gaining acceptance from local Afghans.

Aware of how eradication deeply alienated rural Afghans who depended on opium for their families’ subsistence, the American military distanced itself as much as possible from destroying poppy crops, instead supporting alternative crops and livelihoods. The State Department paid provincial governors to use Afghan forces to eradicate.

At the same time, officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department mentored the Afghan police in interdiction and Afghan lawyers and judges in prosecuting narcotics cases.

The efforts have led to two perceived success stories: new drug courts, and the alternative crops and jobs effort in Helmand Province. Both initiatives have taken several years to mature. The drug courts, in particular, are widely viewed as largely insulated from corruption and are efficient, handling 635 cases in 2011. A few of them involved government employees, including police officers who were smuggling heroin. In the vast majority, the prosecutors obtained convictions.

Still, for many Afghans in the poppy belt, the idea of placing a bet on the government’s future by cultivating anything other than poppy seems like one of the longest of shots.

“It is not an easy choice to grow poppies,” said Tahir Khan, a local village leader in Khogyani district in the Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan. “We know the danger and threat from the government and it is difficult, it needs hard work to recoup our investment. But the people are poor, they have no choice.”

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
First Published May 27, 2012 1:01 pm

Related articles

• Even blighted poppy crop little help in Afghan drug war
• Drug Traffic Remains as U.S. Nears Afghanistan Exit
• It’s About To Get Even Uglier In Afghanistan
• More land used for Afghanistan opium than for Latin America coca
• Lifting the veil on Afghanistan’s female addicts

War: Lies and Consequences

WAR (Photo credit: WeMeantDemocracy)

They tell lies, to excuse wars that are in any case against all conventions and constitutions. Then we call them out on their lies, but we get punished or silenced or ignored or fed new lies while the war mechanics do all in their power keep their machinery going. But where does their power come from? They represents us. We need a new system, a way to monitor use of our delegated power to prevent abuse of our mandate.

From war we have acquired taxes and debt.  Expenses on war and war preparation in the United States are now over half of federal discretionary spending, more than all other nations of the world combined, and more than at any time during the Cold War.  Military spending increases, not with the need for military defense, but with the level of corruption in U.S. elections.

Decreasing in proportion to the rise in military spending are our civil liberties; our representative government; the balance of powers within the government; resistance to policies of warrantless spying, imprisonment without charge, torture, and assassination; and the health of our news media.  The war machine has become the greatest destroyer of the natural environment we have.  And the shifting of funding from all other areas to the military has had disastrous results in as many fields as we might choose to name.

via OP-ED: Lies and Consequences in Our Past 15 Wars | Huntington News.

BY DAVID SWANSON

David Swanson

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their peoples in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was their object.  This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”–Abraham Lincoln

AFGHANISTAN

Prior to 2001, the Taliban was willing to turn Osama bin Laden over to a third country if he was promised a fair trial and no death penalty, and if some evidence of his guilt of crimes were offered.  In 2001, the Taliban warned the United States that bin Laden was planning an attack on American soil.  In July 2001 the United States was known to have plans to take military action against the Taliban by mid-October.

When the United States attacked Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, the Taliban again offered to negotiate for the handing over of bin Laden. When President George W. Bush refused, the Taliban dropped its demand for evidence of guilt and offered simply to turn bin Laden over to a third country.  Bush rejected this offer and continued bombing.  At a March 13, 2002, press conference, Bush said of bin Laden “I truly am not that concerned about him.”[i] When President Barack Obama announced, in May 2011, that he had killed bin Laden, the war didn’t even slow down.

#Iran hangs ‘Mossad agent’ for scientist killing

Reuters video here.

Iran has hanged a man it said was an agent for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad whom it convicted of killing one of its nuclear scientists in 2010, Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.

Tehran has accused Israel and the United States of assassinating four Iranian scientists since 2010 in order to sabotage its nuclear programme which the West suspects is hiding Iran’s attempt to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

While Israel has declined to comment on the killings, it regards Iran’s nuclear programme as an existential threat and has threatened military action against Tehran. Washington has denied any U.S. role.

Victim, Massoud Ali Mohammadi

Twenty-four year old Majid Jamali Fashi was hanged at Tehran’s Evin Prison after being sentenced to death in August last year for the murder of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, Iran’s state news agency quoted the central prosecutor’s office as saying. It said he had confessed to the crime.

Ali-Mohammadi was killed in January 2010 when a remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle outside his home in Tehran went off.

Tuesday’s report said Fashi had confessed to travelling to Tel Aviv to receive training from Mossad before returning to Iran to plot the assassination.

A spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation said at the time that Ali-Mohammadi, a 50-year-old Tehran University professor, was not involved in its activities. The most recent attack on an Iranian scientist occurred in January. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan – a deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility – was killed when a magnetic bomb planted on his vehicle detonated.

Israel has a policy of not commenting on the allegations but an unnamed Israeli source previously said the daylight killings provoked panic in surviving colleagues and generate a phenomenon Mossad veterans dub “virtual defection” which hinders Iran’s nuclear progress.

Last month, Iranian intelligence officials said they had arrested 15 people they called a “major terror and sabotage network with links to the Zionist regime”. The group had plotted to assassinate an Iranian scientist in February, the authorities said.

Iranian officials have also accused Israel of infiltrating neighbouring Azerbaijan to organise attacks against the Islamic Republic.

Unsubstantiated reports in the Iranian media earlier this month said Israel has pushed for the transfer Of 1,200 members of the exiled Iranian rebel group Mujahideen Khalq Organisation (MKO) from their base in Iraq to Azerbaijan.

Late last year Israel distanced itself from the MKO’s efforts to be removed from the U.S. terrorism blacklist, saying it did not consider the group to be “an asset”.

Iran denies Western accusations it is seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability, but major powers are pushing Tehran to become more transparent and cooperative ahead of talks later this month.

Israel says it could attack Iran if it thinks that is the only way to stop it from getting nuclear arms.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Monday warned the European Union would impose tougher sanctions on Iran if it failed to take concrete steps to allay international concerns over its nuclear programme. (Reporting By Marcus George; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Giles Elgood)

Reuters.