New Price Tag on the Iraq war

The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expanded on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war.

The paper on the real cost of the war, written by Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard budget expert, is likely to add to the pressure on the White House on the war. It also followed the revelation that the White House had scaled back ambitions to rebuild Iraq and did not intend to seek funds for reconstruction.

Mr Stiglitz, a former World Bank chief economist, told the Guardian that despite the staggering costs laid out in their paper the economists had erred on the side of caution. "Our estimates are very conservative, and it could be that the final costs will be much higher. And it should be noted they do not include the costs of the conflict to either Iraq or the UK."

In 2003, as US and British troops were massing on the Iraq border, Larry Lindsey, George Bush's economic adviser, suggested the costs might reach $200bn. The White House said the figure was far too high.

Congress has appropriated $251bn for military operations, and the Congressional budget office has now estimated that under one plausible scenario the Iraq war will cost over $230bn more in the next 10 years.

[Excerpt of an article by Jamie Wilson, The Guardian]

100,000 Mercenaries an Unseen Surge in Iraq

The number of American forces in Iraq is not 140,000, but more like 240,000.

What makes up the 100,000 difference is the huge army of mercenaries - known these days as "private contractors." After the U.S. Army itself, they are easily the second-largest military force in the country. Yet no one seems sure of how many there are since they answer to no single authority.

The private contractors are Americans, South Africans, Brits, Iraqis and a hodgepodge of other nationalities. Many of them are veterans of the U.S. or other armed forces and intelligence services, who are now deployed in Iraq (and Afghanistan and other countries) to perform duties normally carried out by the U.S. Army, but at salaries two or three times greater than those of American soldiers.

They work as interrogators and interpreters in American prisons; body guards for top U.S. and Iraqi officials; trainers for the Iraqi army and police; and engi-neers constructing huge new U.S. bases. They are often on the front lines.

Their salaries are paid directly by the U.S. government - or tacked on as huge additional "security charges" to the bills of private American or other contractors.

Yet the Central Command still doesn't have a complete list of who they are or what they are up to. The final figure could be much higher than 100,000.Yet these private contractors man their own helicopters and Humvees and look and act just like American troops.

[Excerpt of an article by Barry Lando, a former 60 Minutes producer, writing in Alternet]

Richest 2 percent own more than half the world

Two percent of adults command more than half of the world's wealth, while the bottom 50 percent possesses just 1 percent, according to a U.N. development institute study. "Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and high-income Asia-Pacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90 percent of total world wealth," the survey said.

The Helsinki-based institute World Institute for Development Economics Research said this was the first global research on the topic, for which there are only limited data. The study is based on figures from 2000.

Institute director Anthony Shorrocks said if the world's population was reduced to a group of 10 people, one person would hold $99 (50 pounds) and the remaining nine would share $1.

According to the study, a couple in 2000 needed $1 million in capital to number among the richest 37 million people in the world, the top 1 percent. More than half of that group lives in the United States or Japan.

At the bottom of the list came nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, with capital of less than $200 per head.

[By Tarmo Virki, Reuters]

Top recipients of US aid annually

Besides Iraq, which has sucked in billions through the US’s support of the so-called War on Terror, following is a list of the top recipients of US aid each year:

Israel - The largest recipient of US largesse in 2003, getting $2.1 billion in military aid annually; $600 million in economic aid.

Egypt - Out of a US foreign aid budget of about $14 billion in 2003, Egypt was the second largest recipient with $1.3 billion in military aid; $615 million for social programs.

Colombia - Got $540 million to battle the drug trade, and local terrorist groups.

Jordan - Got $250 million in economic support; $198 in military financing.

Peru, Ukraine, Russia - Received approximately $200 million each in economic and military aid annually.

[Source: Council on Foreign Relations]

$50 billion later, taking stock of US Aid to Egypt

A recent meeting between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and President Bush at his Texas ranch serves as a reminder of America's deep involvement in Egypt, a key Arab nation.

Aid is central to Washington's relationship with Cairo. The US has provided Egypt with $1.3 billion a year in military aid since 1979, and an average of $815 million a year in economic assistance. All told, Egypt has received over $50 billion in US largesse since 1975.

The money is seen as bolstering Egypt's stability, support for US policies in the region, US access to the Suez Canal, and peace with Israel. But some critics question the aid's effectiveness in spurring economic and democratic development in the Arab world's most populous country - a higher US priority after Sept. 11, 2001.

Each year USAID gives $200 million to the Egyptian government in cash handouts to do with as it pleases. The money is theoretically conditional upon economic reforms in problem areas such as deregulation, privatization, and free trade.

"Aid offers an easy way out for Egypt to avoid reform," says Edward Walker, the US ambassador to Egypt from 1994 to 1998. "They use the money to support antiquated programs and to resist reforms."

USAID has been ineffective at changing economic policy here because Cairo knows that in the end it will get the US money regardless of its economic policy, according to Walker, who since leaving the State Department has become head of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

Egypt is dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party, which uses a 23-year-old emergency law to restrict civil liberties. There are strict limitations on the establishment of newspapers and political parties, and presidential elections are single-candidate referendums.

[Excerpt of an article by Charles Levinson, The Christian Science Monitor]

U.S. arms sales overseas double

Sales of military weapons by U.S. contractors to foreign governments doubled in the past year, as … the U.S. government loosened policies to allow more American weapons to be sold on the world market.

A total of $21 billion in arms sales agreements were signed from September 2005 to September 2006, compared with $10.6 billion in the previous year, according to data compiled by the Pentagon. Foreign military sales agreements have typically ranged from $10 billion to $13 billion a year since 2001.

A number of factors are behind the surge in sales. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has used arms sales as a way to reward allies and cement international relationships. Middle Eastern countries, flush with oil revenue, have become big buyers. Countries like India, Pakistan and Indonesia that were once barred from buying American weapons have had those bans lifted, and some have placed big orders.

One of the biggest orders was placed by Pakistan, which had been banned from buying most American weapons because of its nuclear program. A similar ban on India was also lifted, opening a potentially lucrative market to American contractors.

Foreign sales also have an importance to military contractors beyond the dollar value of the contract: Once a country buys a weapon system, it will need to continue to buy spare parts or upgrades.

"In the next couple of years," said Cai Von Rumohr, an industry analyst with S.G. Cowen in Boston, "foreign sales as a percentage of company revenues will be tracking up."

[The New York Times]

Why there is always a war going on somewhere

"If a country develops an economic system that is based on how to pay for the war, and if the amounts of fixed capital investment that are apparent are tied up in armaments, and if that country is a major exporter of arms, and its industrial fabric is dependent on them, then it would be in that country's interests to ensure that it always had a market.

"It is not an exaggeration to say that it is clearly in the interests of the world's leading arms exporters to make sure that there is always a war going on somewhere."

-- Marilyn Waring, excerpt from her book 'Counting for Nothing'.

US spent a million dollars for every dead Iraqi

Early this year the Bush administration is to ask Congress to approve an additional $100bn for the onerous task of making life intolerable for the Iraqis. This will bring the total spent on the White House's current obsession with war to almost $500bn.

Of course, there's another thing that George Bush could have done with the money: he could have given every Iraqi $18,700. I imagine that would have reduced the threat of international terrorism somewhat. Call me old-fashioned, but I can't help thinking that giving someone $18,700 brings them round to your side more quickly than bombing the hell out of them.

In 2002 the house budget committee and the congressional budget office both guesstimated the cost of invading Iraq at approximately $50bn; so $500bn seems a bit wide of the mark. What's more, with over half a million dead, it means that the world's greatest military superpower has spent a million dollars for every Iraqi killed. That can't be value for money!

So how on earth could such a vast overspend occur? After all, the US is the flagship of monetary common sense. Well, for starters, in 2003 the White House refused to allow competitive bidding for contracts in Iraq, which is odd for the champions of free enterprise. Then the White House ensured there would be no overseeing of what was spent. In the original Iraq spending bill, which earmarked the first $87bn to go down the drain, there was a provision for the general accounting office to keep a check on things, but that provision was stripped from the bill - even though the Senate had originally voted for it 97 to 0.

But what I want to know is: how do they actually spend all that money? Well the answer is: they don't. According to the website Halliburtonwatch, the Halliburton subsidiary KBR bills the US taxpayer for $50-$80 per day for laborers working for it in Iraq, but pays them only $5-$16 per day.

It's the same with Halliburton. In December 2003 the US army discovered that the company had overcharged by $61m for fuel transportation and $67m for food services in Iraq.With all this double-dealing and incompetence, you'd expect that those responsible would have been penalised by now. But that's where the mystery deepens. Companies such as Halliburton and its subsidiaries have never had it so good. In January 2006 the Bush administration intervened in a dispute between the Pentagon and Halliburton, and agreed to pay the company $199m in disputed charges. On January 26 2006 Halliburton announced that its 2005 profits were the "best in our 86-year history".

Vice-President Dick Cheney, formerly CEO of Halliburton, has not had a bad war either. His tax returns for 2005 show that he earned $194,862 from his Halliburton stock options alone. Mind you, it's small change compared to his $36m payoff when he left the firm. Was that for his past role, or was Halliburton anticipating further services from the future vice-president of the US? Perhaps it's just as well that in 2003 the White House removed from the Iraq spending bill any provision to penalise war profiteers who defrauded US taxpayers.

[Terry Jones, Python film director and actor, writing in The Guardian]

Iraq: Teach an old dog new tricks?

The media informs us that President Bush is considering a new war strategy, shuffling his commanders and moving his spy chief to handle Iraqi diplomacy.

Teach an old dog new tricks?

The Deficit

$440,000 debt per American household

$440,000 per American household. That's what America's total liability stands at --$50 trillion, up from $20 trillion in just six years.

Since 1938 the Democrats have held the White house for 35 years, the Republicans for 33. Over that time the national debt has increased at an average annual rate of 8.7%, the Democratic yearly average being 8.3%, and while the Republicans ran the White House 9.3% per year. There was not much difference between the two parties debt philosophy.

However the debt has been on a steady incline ever since the Reagan Presidency. The only exception to the steep increase over the last 25 years was during the Clinton Presidency, where he brought spending under control and the debt growth down to almost zero.

The debt increased at an average of 13.8% for every year Mr. Reagan was in office, the highest average of any President since this nation was founded, and he still holds that record. While Mr. Reagan was in office this nation’s debt went from just under 1 trillion dollars to over 2.6 trillion dollars, a 260% increase.

The current President Bush came into office and set a record in 2003 for the biggest single yearly dollar increase in debt in the nation’s history; he did it again in 2004.

The debt is now increasing at the rate of 600 billion dollars a year. Even Mr. Reagan never increased the debt that much in a single year.

America's Incredible Red Ink Stats

While it hasn't been on the front page, this Letter to the Editor from David M. Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States, Government Accountability Office, Washington DC sums up the mess that has been accelerated over the past 6 years:

The largest employer in the world announced on Dec. 15 that it lost about $450 billion in fiscal 2006. Its auditor found that its financial statements were unreliable and that its controls were inadequate for the 10th straight year. On top of that, the entity's total liabilities and unfunded commitments rose to about $50 trillion, up from $20 trillion in just six years.

If this announcement related to a private company, the news would have been on the front page of major newspapers. Unfortunately, such was not the case -- even though the entity is the U.S. government.

To put the figures in perspective, $50 trillion is $440,000 per American household and is more than nine times as much as the median household income.

The only way elected officials will be able to make the tough choices necessary to put our nation on a more prudent and sustainable long-term fiscal path is if opinion leaders state the facts and speak the truth to the American people.

The Government Accountability Office is working with the Concord Coalition, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation and others to help educate the public about the facts in a professional, nonpartisan way. We hope the media and other opinion leaders do their part to save the future for our children and grandchildren.

[The Washington Post]

Holiday Donations on Behalf of Those With Plenty

In their 10 years together, Paige and Matt Rodgers have given each other a lot of gifts.

When Ms. Rodgers found herself feeling stumped this year, an online search turned up the perfect solution: computer training for school children in Sierra Leone.

Mr. Rodgers, a product manager for a software company, had lamented that his busy life left little time for volunteering. With a few computer clicks from the comfort of their home in Corte Madera, Calif., Ms. Rodgers made a donation in her husband’s name. "I was so excited about it," she said. "I told him about his gift in advance."

Increasingly, people are making donations in the names of spouses, cousins, co-workers and clients, all feel-good gifts to people who want for nothing.

Savvy marketing by charities that tie donated dollar amounts to individual causes make such gifts all the more attractive. An $18 gift can buy a can of worms for a farmer in Ecuador. For $250, a family in Thailand can receive a water buffalo. And for $4,000, an entire school in rural India can receive needed financing.

[Excerpt of an article by Lynette Clemetson, The New York Times]

You don’t have to be rich to give to others

Every day we are confronted with choices: what we wear, what we eat, how and with whom we spend our leisure time. These choices reveal something about us, our priorities and our personal values.

The same is true for our charitable giving. How much (if anything), where, and to whom we give is a reflection of who we are.

But there's another option that allows the donor to have a bit more input in the giving process: family foundations. To dispel a popular myth, you don't have to be a Rockefeller or a Bill Gates to start one. You don't have to give away millions.

The values by which my parents raised my sisters and me: If you can, you should give. Both my mother and father participated in civic activities, supported numerous charitable organizations, and encouraged their children to get involved in local community programs. I was raised to give back to the community the same way I was taught to be kind and honest; it was just something that was expected because it was something my parents valued.

So it was no surprise when my mother approached my adult sisters and me some years after my father died with the idea of creating a family foundation. For her it was a way to foster closer family ties between us and her nine grandchildren and to extend, for future generations, the tradition of giving. My sisters and I had all been giving independently for years, but doing it as a family seemed like a logical progression.

[Excerpt of a commentary by Kathie Klarreich, The Miami Herald]

Tragedy of the death of a child in the developed world

For Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, the ideal of valuing all human life equally began to jar against reality some years ago, when he read an article about diseases in the developing world. He came across the statistic that half a million children die every year from rotavirus, the most common cause of severe diarrhea in children. He had never heard of rotavirus.

“How could I never have heard of something that kills half a million children every year?” he asked himself.

He then learned that in developing countries, millions of children die from diseases that have been eliminated, or virtually eliminated, in the United States. That shocked him because he assumed that, if there are vaccines and treatments that could save lives, governments would be doing everything possible to get them to the people who need them.

As Gates told a meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva last year, he and his wife, Melinda, "couldn’t escape the brutal conclusion that — in our world today — some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not."

Gates’s speech to the World Health Assembly concluded on an optimistic note, looking forward to the next decade when "people will finally accept that the death of a child in the developing world is just as tragic as the death of a child in the developed world."

[Excerpt of an article by Peter Singer, The New York Times]

What to Give for Christmas? –The Gift of Life

What is a human life worth? You may not want to put a price tag on it. But if we really had to, most of us would agree that the value of a human life would be in the millions.

Consistent with the foundations of our democracy and our frequently professed belief in the inherent dignity of human beings, we would also agree that all humans are created equal.
With Christmas approaching, and Americans writing checks to their favorite charities, it’s a good time to ask how these two beliefs square with our actions.

We are very far from acting in accordance with that belief. In the same world in which more than a billion people live at a level of affluence never previously known, roughly a billion other people struggle to survive on the purchasing power equivalent of less than one U.S. dollar per day. Most of the world’s poorest people are undernourished, lack access to safe drinking water or even the most basic health services and cannot send their children to school.

According to Unicef, more than 10 million children die every year — about 30,000 per day — from avoidable, poverty-related causes.

[Excerpt of an article by Peter Singer, The New York Times]

US accused of using aid to sway votes in UN security council

The US uses its aid budget to bribe those countries which have a vote in the United Nations security council, giving them 59 per cent more cash in years when they have a seat, according to research by economists.

Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN Secretary-General, expressed his frustration at the power the US wields over the UN in his parting speech last week. In a detailed analysis of 50 years of data, Harvard University's Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker provide the clearest evidence yet that money is used by the council's richest member to grease the wheels of diplomacy.

Anti-poverty campaigners reacted angrily to the findings. 'Aid should go to the people who need it, not as a political sweetener,' said Duncan Green of Oxfam. 'In recent years most rich countries have been making progress on this, but showering bribes on developing countries just because they sit on the UN security council is clearly a step backwards.'

Charities often complain that the US uses its aid as a political tool, and this new evidence of what the authors call 'vote-buying' will raise fears about whether the surge of aid money that was promised at last year's Gleneagles G8 summit will be fairly spent.

Ten of the 15 seats on the security council are filled for two years at a time, by rotation. Kuziemko and Werker found that, in years when they have a seat, countries get an average of more than £8m extra in foreign aid from the US.

Countries with a security council seat also receive an average of £500m extra from the UN itself, most of it channelled through its children's fund, Unicef, over which the US traditionally has been able to exert control. President George Bush recently provoked controversy by appointing a close political ally, former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, as Unicef's chief.

[Excerpt of an article by Heather Stewart, The Observer]

Hewlett, Gates foundations team up

In an unusual partnership unveiled today, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation of Menlo Park and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of Seattle will donate at least $60 million over the next three years to improve Third World schools.

Under the arrangement, the Gates Foundation will give $40 million to the Hewlett Foundation, which will contribute $20 million of its own money. "It is the first time in our history that we have received a grant from another institution," said Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest.

The Hewlett Foundation already is assisting international organizations and Third World governments to improve education in poor countries. Last year, for example, it joined five other foundations in a $200 million effort to strengthen higher education in seven African nations.

[Excerpt of an article by Steve Johnson, The San Jose Mercury News]

The Consequences of the Death of Empathy

One of the most devastating consequences of unearned privilege -- both for those of us on top and, for very different reasons, those who suffer beneath -- is the death of empathy.

Too many people go to great lengths not to know, to stay unaware of the reality of how so many live without our privilege. But even when we do learn, it’s clear that information alone doesn’t always lead to the needed political action. For that, we desperately need empathy, the capacity to understand the experiences -- especially the suffering -- of others.

The problem with privilege is that it so often leads to incredible arrogance, the belief that one has a right to blurt out in public anything on one’s mind, no matter how uninformed or thoughtless.

Perhaps such arrogance has something to do with seeing the issue from the comfortable position of someone safe in the United States with no direct experience of the struggle and suffering of people [in the rest of the world]..

Most of us in the West live in a country in which he has never had to pass through a checkpoint or justify himself to authorities simply because of the color of his skin, ethnicity, or citizenship.

How can I be so sure of that claim? Because it’s the way I was raised as a white man of European heritage with U.S. citizenship. Comfortable in my privilege, I spent much of my life wondering why so many other people who didn’t look like me complained so much. I understood there was inequality and injustice in the world, but life seemed reasonably fair to me. After all, my hard work seemed to be rewarded, which suggested to me that those not so well off should just work a little harder and stop whining.

Even though I don’t come from the wealthy sector of society, the unearned privileges that I enjoyed had diminished my capacity for empathy. I had access to lots of information, but I was emotionally underdeveloped. I could know things, but at the same time not feel the consequences of that knowledge. That meant I could avoid the difficult conclusion that would have come from a deeper knowing and feeling -- that the inequality and injustice in the world was benefiting me at some level, and therefore I had a heightened obligation to confront it.

As I became politicized later in my life, I realized I not only had to learn more about the world but also had to fight to reclaim an ability to empathize. From there, it moved to the global, by recognizing the poverty and violence suffered by the targets of U.S. power.

Each day we struggle to empathize, we hold onto our humanity.

[By Robert Jensen, dissidentvoice.org]

Clueless in America

While traveling these past weeks in Asia, the following article caught my attention. Allow me to share excerpts with you:

There are millions of Americans who still care about the health of the planet and the rights of other people, and they struggle to be heard above the din of excessive commercialism that overwhelms the senses and causes us to behave like caged rats in a laboratory.

Much of the world sees the average American as detached from reality, isolated from the suffering of others. They see us as self-absorbed, over indulgent, willfully ignorant, and imbued with enormous hubris--characterizations that are difficult to argue against. Unfortunately, I am well acquainted with the type.

Most Americans somehow believe that we are an exceptional people--God's chosen few. Deep down, Americans may reason that if we are to continue our lives of excess, if we are to carry on driving our Hummers and other inefficient motorized polluting obscenities, we need an inexhaustible supply of oil. As keepers of the world's strongest military, we have the means of procuring oil anywhere in the world, and that makes it ours.

From the moment of birth onward Americans are conditioned to think that we are not only special, but are superior to everyone else; that we are somehow entitled not only to our share of the world's wealth, but to everyone else's share as well. While we remain primitive Conquistadors in our thinking, we believe that we are the truly enlightened, the envy of the world, and everyone aspires to emulate our shining example.

[Excerpt of an article by freelance journalist Charles Sullivan] More

Clueless in America II

Material goods and services are a poor substitute for inner tranquility and global community. We are a people bombarded by commercial media every waking hour of our lives. Our troubled existence is a matrix of distracting white noise from which the only escape is the calm slumber of death. The result is that few of us have ever had a true waking moment in our lives. We have replaced wild nature with Disney World and have forgotten which is real and which is bogus. We have recreated god in the image of capital and put him on our currency.

Even so, despite the dominant paradigm of capitalism, there are Americans who have escaped the fate of excess to which so many others have fallen prey. There are millions who were not caught in the web of commercialism, who have maintained a spiritual connection to the earth and to the greater biological community, and to the unfathomable cosmos beyond. There are millions of people who still consider a long walk in unbroken wilderness their greatest blessing--as something beyond valuation by capital.

Despite pervasive cultural brainwashing, there are millions of Americans who still care about the health of the planet and the rights of other people, and they struggle to be heard. It is the conscientious ethical fringe that keeps us afloat and provides hope for a better future by operating outside of the mainstream.

[Excerpt of an article by freelance journalist Charles Sullivan]

Billionaire's Donation Saves German University

Klaus J. Jacobs, a German-born billionaire who lives in England and studied at Stanford, came back to his hometown here the other day to announce that he was donating more than $250 million to the International University Bremen.

The gift is the biggest private donation ever made to a German university - so big, in fact, that its only real parallel is the kind of mega-philanthropy that periodically swells the coffers of American universities.

That is precisely the point for Mr. Jacobs and for the newly appointed president of the university. "I hope that this sets a precedent," Mr. Jacobs, 69, said. "There is a lot of wealth in private and corporate hands in Germany. It certainly would be desirable to see more of it going to institutions."

Jacobs said he hoped his gesture would encourage more large-scale philanthropy in a land where it is largely unknown.

Private giving to German universities is limited by several factors, ranging from the lack of a philanthropic tradition to rules that limit the amount of tax-free donations. The biggest hurdle, however, is the state, which has historically been the main financier of higher education.

[Excerpt of an article by Mark Landler, The New York Times]

Muslim Charity Sue Treasury Dept.

In a new challenge to Washington over its closing several American Muslim charities that it has accused of aiding terrorism, the largest such group sued on Monday seeking dismissal of many of the charges.

Lawyers for the group, the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Tex., filed suit in Federal District Court in Dallas two weeks after a federal judge in California called into question a crucial provision in designating terrorist supporters. Since December 2001, the Treasury Department has designated Holy Land and five other Muslim charities in the United States as terrorist supporters, seizing millions of dollars in assets and halting their activities.

No accused charity or any senior officer have been convicted on a charge of terrorism. Some charities have faced no criminal charges.

In a separate case against a Georgia man whom the prosecution identified as a fund-raiser for Holy Land, the defendant pleaded guilty this year to sending money to Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian political party that Washington first designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.

[Excerpt of article by Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times]

Shakira and Nobel Prize laureate fight poverty in Colombia

Shakira joined with fellow Colombian and Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez on Tuesday to launch a star-studded foundation to fight child poverty in Latin America.

Backed by the two Colombians and other luminaries of entertainment and finance, the Latin America in Solidarity Action — whose Spanish acronym is ALAS, or "wings" — took flight with a promise to tackle poverty that kills 350,000 children each year in the region.

Spanish singer Miguel Bose will serve as executive director of the foundation, conceived about a year ago by Shakira, who also heads the Colombia-based non-profit foundation Pies Descalzos, or Barefoot, which helps the child victims of violence in that South American country.

The ALAS promoters said the foundation doesn't seek to replace other organizations that work with children or eliminate the obligation governments have to eradicate poverty, but to strengthen existing efforts.

[Associated Press]

Bill Gates on life, philanthropy and competition

From an interview with Bill Gates:
Q What problems do you feel need to be addressed on a global scale?
A Well, 12 million children a year die who shouldn't die, so we might start with that one. That's the biggest priority at our foundation: the way that human life is not treated equitably between rich countries and poor countries. In fact, there are 24 infectious diseases that, if we could come up with the right interventions, you can eliminate the vast majority of the difference.

Q Do you see parallels with your work as a global philanthropist and your work with Microsoft? Or are they completely different worlds?
A They're identical in a lot of ways. It's picking smart people who want to dedicate themselves to the problem, taking a long-term approach, being willing to have some failures and come back around and learn from those things; that paradigm of how we plan, how we pull the team together is virtually the same, and it's partly why the foundation has come in on these diseases. We've been able to galvanize a lot of activity very quickly.

[Excerpt of an interview with Bill Gates, by John Boudreau, The San Jose Mercury News]

Meet Melinda Gates, married to Bill

After the birth of her first child a decade ago, Melinda Gates, the wife of Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, left her job as a manager at the software giant and devoted her time to caring for their children and quietly guiding strategy for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropic powerhouse the couple founded.

Now that her third child is nearing school age, the 42-year-old Mrs. Gates is stepping into the limelight as an outspoken advocate for closing the global health gap. On Thursday, she plans to announce an expanded initiative with President Bush and first lady Laura Bush's summit on fighting malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that kills one million people a year, mostly children under five.

The Gates Foundation plans to award $83 million in new grants for vaccine research, treatment programs and expansion of its model malaria-control program in Zambia to five more countries. The new grants will bring the foundation's spending on malaria to $765.8 million. The foundation also has given $650 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which also finances malaria control.

The Gateses' new alliance against malaria with the president and first lady -- following a high-profile partnership with former President Bill Clinton -- culminates several years of behind-the-scenes consultation with the Bush White House on its AIDS program. The President's Malaria Initiative, a $1.2 billion effort, aims to cut malaria's death toll in half in 15 countries.

In excerpts from a wide-ranging interview, Mrs. Gates talks about juggling responsibilities for her young family and the foundation's management of its global health program, brainstorming with her famous husband and stepping out of her previously unseen internal work for the foundation and into the public arena

[Excerpt of an article by Marilyn Chase,The Wall Street Journal]

Sad state in Aceh 2 years after the tsunami

Former US president Bill Clinton was in Aceh last week and found that two years after the disaster only 30-35 per cent of the homeless had been placed in permanent accommodation.

About 320,000 people, or 70 per cent, of the Aceh homeless, still await permanent homes.

Of the millions donated to the largest aid agencies for victims, a staggering amount still remains in relief agency accounts.

Moreover, some governments that promised set amounts over five years for tsunami relief and Indonesian development, are behind on those promises.

Darfur and International Human Rights Day

Outgoing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will ask Friday how the international community can allow the "horror" in Sudan's Darfur region to continue and say there is more than enough blame to shared all around.

In a speech to be given in New York, Annan says blame can be shared by those valuing abstract notions of sovereignty over human lives; those whose response of solidarity puts them on the sides of governments and not people; and those who fear commercial interests could be jeopardized.

"The truth is, none of these arguments amount even to excuses, let alone justifications, for the shameful passivity of most governments," Annan says in the speech to be given to mark International Human Rights Day.

"We have still not summoned up the collective sense of urgency that this issue requires," said Annan, who pledged earlier this week to make the killings in Darfur his priority until he leaves office on December 31.

Some 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since the rebels took up arms against the central government in 2003, while another 2 million have been driven out of their homes.

[Reuters]

Silicon Valley emigres tackle poverty

Vidyashree, a 15-year-old with doleful eyes and a soiled but tidy green-and-white school uniform, works as a servant every morning and evening, making less than $9 a month. In between shifts, she attends school.

The teenager is direct: She does not want to follow the path of her poor parents. She wants out of the slums. She glimpsed her way out when the computers arrived this summer at Government High School, Cotton Pet, courtesy of Silicon Valley's American India Foundation (AIF), a group of high-powered executives who are reinvesting in their native country, and in the process redefining how immigrants give back to their homeland.

Though the teenagers have grown up in India's tech mecca, a city of modern office campuses for countless engineers writing code for the world's elite companies, they had not seen up close, let alone touched, a keyboard before. Vidyashree hopes that learning how to operate a computer, and speak English, will persuade her parents to let her continue school, instead of dropping out to work as a maid and get married.

Vidyashree is the unseen India, the child AIF hopes to help.

"How many people in Silicon Valley think beyond the Indian engineer as far as India is concerned?" asked Lata Krishnan, president of the Santa Clara-based American India Foundation, a 5-year-old philanthropic group. "Nobody stops to think that 500 million people in India live on less than $1 a day and that you have such dire, impoverished circumstances in so many households in India."

Countless Indo-Americans, also known as non-resident Indians, have returned to their homeland with business plans in hopes of participating in an economy growing at more than 8 percent a year. But they also come back to help those whose lives have largely remained untouched by the good times, for those like young Vidyashree

[Excerpt of an article by John Boudreau, The San Jose Mercury News]

Britain’s Military Spending

The British Ministry of Defence quietly secured a £1.7bn increase in its budget.

That's the equivalent of half the annual budget for the Department for International Development. But another billion or two doesn't make much difference when we are already sloshing out £32bn a year on a programme whose purpose is a mystery.

A report by the National Audit Office failed to answer, or even to ask, why we need attack submarines, destroyers, Eurofighters and anti-tank weapons. Are the Russians coming? It is preposterous to suggest that we face the threat of invasion, now or in the foreseeable future.

The UK wants to be able to fight either three small foreign wars at the same time or one large one, which "could only conceivably be undertaken alongside the US". In other words, our "defence" capability is now retained for the purpose of offence. Our armed forces no longer exist to protect us. They exist to go abroad and cause trouble.

Competition for resources means that the regions which possess them - particularly the Middle East - will remain the focus of conflict. As improved education is not matched by better prospects for many of the world's poor, the resulting sense of marginalisation provides a more hospitable environment for insurrection.

Military spending … diverts money from helping the poor; it generates a self-justifying momentum which stimulates conflict.

[Excerpt of ana rticle by George Monbiot, The Guardian]

Clinton Holds Up Cambodia's AIDS Effort as Model

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton praised Cambodia on Monday for its success in fighting HIV/AIDS, saying other countries should take note of its twin strategy of public education and widespread condom promotion.

"There is a hope that Cambodia can be a model for the rest of Asia and perhaps for the rest of the world,'' Clinton said after a signing ceremony on behalf of his Clinton Foundation with Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The impoverished southeast Asian nation has one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the region, although infection levels among the adult population dropped to 1.9 percent in 2004 from 3.3 percent in 1998.

It is not known how much HIV/AIDS assistance the Clinton Foundation is giving Cambodia, although Minister of Health Nuth Sokhom said it included testing equipment for at least four laboratories.

[The New York Times]

Arab Nations To Lift Financial Blockade On Palestine

Arab nations hope to lift the financial blockade on Palestine following the US veto on a U.N. Security Council draft resolution which would have condemned Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip, reports AP.

The Arab decision to lift the blockade on Palestine was arrived at following discussions at a meeting of 11 Arab foreign ministers and other senior officials and diplomats at the headquarters of the Arab League in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. The Arab League had called an urgent meeting of foreign ministers of its member countries on Sunday to decide how to respond the latest Israeli offensive and the US veto.

The United States had vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israel for its military operations in Gaza. The US says that the resolution was "biased against Israel and politically motivated." The UN draft resolution, proposed by Qatar, called for an immediate withdrawal of the Israeli forces from Gaza Strip.

Earlier, the Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa had strongly condemned the US decision to veto the draft UN Security Council resolution.

[RTTNews]

Vaccines tell a wider tale of human progress

Global poverty stretches out across an endless plane, so the caravan of progress can sometimes appear stationary. Yet in fact there is advance:

Since 1990 the proportion of the world's people living on $1 or less a day has fallen by a third, and primary school enrollment in developing countries has gone from 79 percent to 86 percent.

One of the most heartening changes -- and the one for which aid donors most clearly deserve credit -- is improved access to medicines in poor countries. The number of people receiving AIDS drugs in sub-Saharan Africa has jumped tenfold in three years, and yesterday the William J. Clinton Foundation announced plans to boost AIDS treatment for children in 62 poor countries.

Meanwhile, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), which since 2000 has prevented more than 1.7 million early deaths by supporting immunization programs, pledged to accelerate the deployment of new vaccines.

[Excerpt of an editorial in The Washington Post]