Last weekend, British aid worker Linda Norgrove was killed in Afghanistan during a rescue attempt after she had been abducted by insurgents in the mountainous eastern part of the country. It was initially reported that she had been killed by her abductors, but it now appears that she was killed by a Navy SEAL after she had gotten away from the insurgents and lay in a foetal position to avoid harm.

But the purpose of this post is not to discuss the propriety and execution of the rescue mission. There is an ongoing discussion of this subject in the British media. Instead, I am curious about what the death of Norgrove reveals about the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. Peter Beaumont of The Guardian described Norgrove as an aid worker associated with Developmental Alternatives, Inc. She was specifically working on a DAI project funded by the United States Agency for International Develoment, commonly known as USAID, in eastern Afghanistan, a project described as the Incentives Driving Economic Alternatives for the North, East and West Program.

According to DAI:

Afghan farmers cultivate opium poppy because they need to feed their families. For many poor rural Afghans, poppy is the only reliable source of cash, credit, and access to cropland to supplement subsistence farming. Sometimes, coercion is also a factor. IDEA-NEW is designed to dissuade Afghans from growing poppy by increasing access to licit, commercially viable, alternative sources of income.

In alliance with Mercy Corps and ACDI/VOCA, DAI adopts a technical approach that DAI used with tangible success in USAID/Afghanistan’s Alternative Development Program–Eastern Region. This approach defines program interventions with reference to customers, uses value chain techniques to reveal customer needs, and then provides tailored, customer-specific incentives to help meet those needs.

The IDEA-NEW project builds on DAI's successful work in the eastern part of the country and extends it into the north. Its primary customers are the communities where poppy is (or is likely to be) cultivated. Infrastructure is our point of entry to a community because the immediate needs of farmers and villagers typically consist of building or repairing basic infrastructure—including roads from farm to market, irrigation, electricity, and cold storage. We offer technical expertise and cash-for-labor.

DAI’s value chain analysis reveals opportunities and high-priority needs, prioritizes subsectors, targets markets, reveals comparative advantages and weak links, and indicates how best to improve value chain functioning and increase community participation in viable value chains. Our diverse program interventions—including efforts to expand private sector activity—then address identified needs by exploiting the opportunities in collaboration with community leaders, government ministries and agencies, and the private sector.

DAI identifies USAID as the client for the project, and Beaumont concisely explains the purpose of the program as follows: A large part of the effort was focused on rebuilding local infrastructure, part of a programme seen as key to denying the Taliban its support among the Afghan population. In other words, Norgrove was a participant in the US military counterinsurgency program there that goes under the acronym COIN.

Accordingly, it is no wonder that the insurgents considered her an adversary. Given her involvement in a pacification project that the US military openly promotes as a part of the war effort, media characterizations of her as merely an aid worker don't fully capture the true nature of her activity in Afghanistan. For example, consider this excerpt from Beaumont's article:

DAI's president, James Boomgard, said: This is devastating news. We are saddened beyond words by the death of a wonderful woman whose sole purpose in Afghanistan was to do good – to help the Afghan people achieve a measure of prosperity and stability in their everyday lives as they set about rebuilding their country. Linda loved Afghanistan and cared deeply for its people, and she was deeply committed to her development mission. She was an inspiration to many of us here at DAI and she will be deeply missed.

At least Beaumont acknowledged that USAID funded Norgrove's project. David Harrison couldn't find any space to mention it in an obituary published in the London Telegraph.

Beyond this mystification, there are also the perils associated with her efforts to facilitate a modernization project in a region where much of the populace remains hostile to centralized state authority. Perhaps, it is impolite to say it at this sad time, but there is hint of what Edward Said described as orientalism in the accounts of her enthusiasm for her work, such as, in addition to the ones of Beaumont and Harrison, this one in the New York Times, although the reporters themselves may be responsible for it.

Labels: Afghanistan, American Empire, Neoliberalism, NGOs, US Military

Blue Texan has a good post over at firedoglake today, one about the extreme concentration of wealth in the US economy. He cites a salon.com article that highlights confirmation of a 2005 study by Citigroup:

In 2005, three Citigroup analysts -- Ajay Kapur, Niall MacLeod and Narendra Singh -- answered yes. They explained: Plutonomies have occurred before in sixteenth century Spain, in seventeenth century Holland, the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties in the U.S ... Often these wealth waves involve great complexity, exploited best by the rich and educated of the time. According to the Citigroup experts, a plutonomic economy is driven by the consumption of the classes, not the masses: In a plutonomy there is no such animal as 'the U.S. consumer' or 'the UK consumer,' or indeed the 'Russian consumer.' There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the 'no-rich,' the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie. The Citigroup analysts speculated that a plutonomic world economy could be driven by the spending of the world’s rich minority, whose ranks are swelling from globalized enclaves in the emerging world.

The data support their analysis. According to Moody’s Analytics, the top 5 percent of American earners are responsible for 35 percent of consumer spending, while the bottom 80 percent engage in only 39.5 percent of consumer outlays. Meanwhile, the top 20 percent received nearly half of all income generated in the U.S. -- 49.4 percent -- and the ratio of the income of the top 10 percent of Americans to the poor has risen from 7.69-to-1 in 1968 to 14.5-to-1 in 2010.

The author of the article, Michael Lind, a well known advocate for a progressive populism in the US, then explains the perils of such a concentration by invoking the famous New Deal department store owner, Edward Filene:

At the same time, however, the top 10 percent of earners received 50 percent of all income, while they accounted for only 22 percent of spending. Where did the rest of their money go? Much of it went into speculation in the two waves of the bubble economy between the late 1990s and 2008. Had more of that money been in the hands of the bottom 50 percent, more of it would have been spent on consumer goods, including manufactured products, and far less would have gone to gambling on condos in Manhattan and Miami and trendy stocks.

One was Edward Filene. With his brother Lincoln, Filene had sought to implement the principles of welfare capitalism in their Boston department store, where they established a company union, an employee thrift plan, an insurance plan, a free health program, and a cafeteria. Filene became a spokesman for the credit union movement in the U.S. and a champion of progressive causes. Among his legacies are the Century Foundation and Filene’s Basement, a discount clothing store.

In his book Successful Living in This Machine Age (1932), Filene argued that the drive for lower wages and the privileging of investment over consumption had produced chronic overcapacity: At a time when more buying was the need of the hour, [capitalists] were still calling upon the masses to refrain from buying goods, and to invest their savings in more production; and when industries languished from want of customers, they advised reducing wages, a process which must result in a further falling off of sales. As in the stock bubbles of the 1990s and 2000s, financial experts in the 1920s urged ordinary Americans to emulate the rich by gambling in stocks. According to Filene, financial experts recommended that ordinary people hould better themselves by investing their savings and drawing either interest or dividends, instead of having to depend forever upon the wages which they might receive from week to week.

Uh, I could be mistaken, but wasn't there someone who figured out almost all of this 60 to 70 years before Filene published his book? Someone who wrote extensively on the subject, and recognized that capitalism would invariably generate overcapacity? Someone who theorized on everything that Filene describes, with the possible exception of the encouragement of the middle class to select investment over purchasing goods and services? Apparently, Lind had to substitute Filene for him in order to avoid breaking the taboo against acknowledging he had said anything that was actually validated by subsequent experience.

Labels: Marxism, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of America

Just in case you might go out and about and decide to get some coffee:

In 1998, Starbucks' C.E.O. Howard Shultz was given The Israel 50th Anniversary Friend of Zion Tribute Award, by Aish HaTorah. News of the award was once displayed on the Starbucks website, but later deliberately removed to erase the link between the company and apartheid Israel after the boycott campaign gained momentum. The original page displaying the award can be seen at http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-starbucks.html.

Aish HaTorah, headquartered in the Old City of Jerusalem [internationally recognized as occupied territory], has been awarded by the government of Israel 40 percent of the Palestinian-owned land facing the Western Wall. Aish HaTorah champions the return of Jewish youth to Israel, and thus continues to prop the exclusivist nature of Israel as an apartheid state shutting out Palestinians and depriving them en mass of their right of return to their historic homeland. Such right has been enshrined in international law and U.N. resolutions. Howard Schultz has accepted an award from Aish HaTorah whose existence in Jerusalem violates Palestinian rights and is illegal under international law.

According to an article written on Sept. 26th 2008 by Meg Lauglin in the St. Petersburg Times, the same organization, Aish HaTorah, also developed the Clarion Fund, which distributed millions of DVDs through major newspapers across the U. S. of the anti-Islamic film Obsession, which characterized Islam as a terrorist dogma. The Clarion Fund and Aish HaTorah International are also connected to a group called HonestReporting which produced Obsession. All three companies share the same address in Manhattan and have shared staff.

Starbucks' Chairman Howard Schultz most critically has championed and funded defense of Israel on U.S. university campuses. He "has been praised by the Israeli Foreign Ministry for allowing American students to hear Israeli presentations on the Middle East crisis. It was this propaganda work on behalf of Israel that earned Schultz The Israel 50th Anniversary Friend of Zion Tribute Award by Aish HaTorah.

Even more damaging are the comments made by Schultz himself during Israeli massacres of Palestinians in Jenin in early April 2002. According to Starbucks: The Cup That Cheered written by William McDougall and published on Znet, July 11th 2002, quotes Shultz speaking at a Seattle synagogue, criticizing the Palestinians, saying, They aren't doing their job ... they're not stopping terrorism. He also warned attendees at the synagogue that the rise of anti-Semitism is at an all-time high since the 1930s, and If you leave this synagogue tonight and go back to your home and ignore this, then shame on us. His comments were protested for being anti-Palestinian and for comparing legitimate criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands and its human rights violations against Palestinian citizens with anti-Semitism.

The hastily retracted comments — which had received an ovation from the crowded synagogue — have further added to the growing unease amongst corporate watchers who are concerned that Schultz's growing reputation as a mouthpiece for Israeli propaganda could have an adverse effect on Starbucks business.

Actions against Starbucks are ongoing in the US and the Middle East.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Boycott Divestment and Sanctions, Israel, Palestine, Zionism

A release from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression on Tuesday:

Chicago, October 5th, 2010, five anti-war and international solidarity activists from Chicago and Minneapolis announced they are invoking their 5th amendment right to not testify in front of a Grand Jury investigation. Stephanie Weiner, one of those raided and subpoenaed spoke to 150 supporters at a press conference outside the Dirksen Federal Building in downtown Chicago, This is an attack on the anti-war movement, but the strong response of our movement, where more than 61 protests in cities across the country, makes it absolutely clear that this is about more than just 14 activists in the Midwest. It is an attempt to limit the voice of anti-war, peace, and international solidarity activists.

The five signed letters to Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox. They informed him of their decision to invoke their 5th amendment rights to not testify. One of those subpoenaed to appear today, Meredith Aby of the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, said, Our opposition to U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, our scathing criticism of U.S. government support for repressive regimes and death squads in Colombia and Israel is well known and public. This attempt to criminalize the fourteen of us in the anti-war movement must be stopped. The Grand Jury should be ended. There should be no charges.

Joe Iosbaker stated, We have nothing to say to a Grand Jury. Most people do not understand how secretive and undemocratic the Grand Jury is. I am not allowed to have my lawyer with me. There isn’t even a judge. How strange is that? It is the U.S. prosecutor with 23 people they hand picked to pretty much rubber stamp whatever the prosecutor says. A person is defenseless in that situation.

Jim Fennerty an attorney working to defend the activists said, Assistant U.S. Attorney Fox is cancelling the subpoenas for the five due to appear today. This does not put an end to the Grand Jury investigation however. Fox can reissue subpoenas for new dates or decide to arrest the activists and charge them with crimes.

Labels: "War on Terror", Activism, American Empire, Colombia, FBI, Israel, Palestine

UPDATE: 35 more tankers burnt on the GT Road near Nowshera

INITIAL POST: The US blinks in Pakistan:

Dozens of tanker trucks carrying fuel to Afghanistan for NATO troops were torched near Quetta in western Pakistan on Wednesday, the third major attack on supplies since Pakistan closed a border crossing to Afghanistan a week ago and the first at the only checkpoint that remained open.

The latest sabotage came as American officials for the first time offered an explicit apology to Pakistan over a shooting that led to the closing of the other border crossing, possibly laying the ground work for its reopening.

At least one person was killed in the Quetta torchings after three carloads of gunmen fired at the tankers and then burned them, the police said.

According to eyewitnesses and initial reports some terrorists came on vehicles a few minutes before morning prayer and started firing and then burned some of the tankers, said Hamid Shakeel, the deputy inspector general of the Quetta police.

About 40 tanker trucks were at the terminal, and about half were saved from the attack, Inspector Shakeel said.

The attacks began last Friday after Pakistan closed a border crossing into Afghanistan at Torkham. Interestingly, the first attack took place in southern Pakistan, away from the border crossings:

More than 27 oil tankers carrying supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan were burnt Friday when some attackers fired rockets at the vehicles parked at a fuel station in southern Pakistan, Geo News reported.

NATO sources told media, the ambush took place around 2 a.m. near Shikarpur Super Highway where over 30 fuel tankers were parked at a fuel station. Two civilians were also injured in the attack.

The miscreants unleashed rocket assault, which raged fierce fire in consequence, while the blazes engulfed 27 tankers laden with highly inflammable fuel, witnesses said, adding that three other vehicles parked nearby also caught fire.

Shikarpur police have placed stern cordon around the district, Saeed Ahmed, district coordination officer, said. Nearly 15-20 men were behind the attack, he added.

It is possible that the war has entered a new phase, with Taliban allies within Pakistan targeting NATO supply routes. The attacks upon the tankers highlight one of the major vulnerabilities of US forces in Afghanistan, its dependence upon fossil fuels transported over long distances. Michael Klare addressed this subject in relation to the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan back in 2007:

Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.

Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That's greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million -- and yet it's a gross underestimate of the Pentagon's wartime consumption.

Such numbers cannot do full justice to the extraordinary gas-guzzling expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, for every soldier stationed "in theater," there are two more in transit, in training, or otherwise in line for eventual deployment to the war zone -- soldiers who also consume enormous amounts of oil, even if less than their compatriots overseas. Moreover, to sustain an expeditionary army located halfway around the world, the Department of Defense must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel, and equipment every year by plane or ship, consuming additional tanker-loads of petroleum. Add this to the tally and the Pentagon's war-related oil budget jumps appreciably, though exactly how much we have no real way of knowing.

And foreign wars, sad to say, account for but a small fraction of the Pentagon's total petroleum consumption. Possessing the world's largest fleet of modern aircraft, helicopters, ships, tanks, armored vehicles, and support systems -- virtually all powered by oil -- the Department of Defense (DoD) is, in fact, the world's leading consumer of petroleum. It can be difficult to obtain precise details on the DoD's daily oil hit, but an April 2007 report by a defense contractor, LMI Government Consulting, suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (14 million gallons) every day. This is greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.

Not surprisingly, there are reports that the Pentagon is becoming a champion of alternative fuels:

The Pentagon is working hard to promote development of biomass fuels that could power future fighter jets and other warplanes, but defense officials say it could take years to get a full-fledged industry on its feet.

Top U.S. defense officials and executives from the petroleum, alternative fuels and renewable energy sectors are meeting outside Washington this week to address new technology developments and initiatives such as the Pentagon's work on developing biofuels to power military aircraft.

The long-term goal is to decrease U.S. dependence on foreign crude oil, said Air Force Colonel Francis Rechner, director of operations of the Defense Energy Support Center, run by the Pentagon's main logistics agency.

Rechner cited the March flight of an Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II attack plane, powered by a mix of biomass and jet fuel, and the flight of the Navy's Green Hornet, a Boeing Co (BA.N) F/A-18 fighter jet powered a blend of jet fuel and a biofuel made of camelina, a hardy U.S. plant.

But can it be done quickly enough to escape the perils on the ground in places like Pakistan?

Labels: "War on Terror", Afghanistan, American Empire, Pakistan, US Military

An on the scene report about the One Nation rally yesterday from Louis Proyect:

To start with, I have to confess that I didn’t attend the entire rally. At around 2:30 I decided that I had heard enough blather for one day and took off. As might have been expected, the speakers were handpicked in order to satisfy the main organizer’s One Nation theme, which has largely left them helpless before the unrelenting bared fangs approach of the Republican Party.

Yes, yes, yes, believe it or not, American unions and civil rights organizations spent substantial resources upon a rally for jobs, justice and education for all that did not place responsibility upon the Obama admininstration and the Democratic Congress for the failure to take meaningful action in these areas. In effect, the event was a form of political science fiction that served the purpose of diverting public attention from the failure of the Democratic Party to assist anyone other than capital interests by scapegoating the Republicans. It was one of the most cynical, most dishonest political events in recent memory.

On Democracy Now! this morning, Amy Goodman aired three of the speeches at the event for her audience, speeches by Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children's Defense Fund, Colin Whited, a student at Gallaudet Universty and Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO. They were worse than worthless, they were deliberate obfuscations of why so many are demoralized in a social system that treats them as disposable. To encourage people to put their time and energy into participating in an event like this is contemptible, and can only result in further alienating them from activism and the political process.

In January 2009, Barack Obama took office with the largest Democratic majorities in the Congress since LBJ. The Democratic Party had the opportunity, through elimination of the filibuster and use of the reconciliation process, to implement the most progressive agenda since the Great Society. Instead, it relied upon Republicans, moderate Democrats and their covert allies, the Tea Party movement, to implement corporate friendly policies reminiscent of Reagan, with plans already in place to cut Social Security and Medicare after the election. Meanwhile, Obama has intensified the war in Afghanistan and expanded the conflict into Pakistan. Outside the rally, the reality based community is well aware, which may partially explain why attendance was spotty.

Labels: American Empire, Barack Obama, Democrats, Liberals, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of America

Labels: American Empire, Ecuador, Neoliberalism, South America

This is just one of the many candid, biographical videos of gays and lesbians describing how they overcame bullying and familial and community ostracism to live fulfilling lives as adults.

They are part of the It Gets Better project launched by columnist Dan Savage. He was inspired to do after the suicide of Billy Lucas in Greensberg, Indiana earlier this month:

Billy Lucas was just 15 when he hanged himself in a barn on his grandmother’s property. He reportedly endured intense bullying at the hands of his classmates—classmates who called him a fag and told him to kill himself. His mother found his body.

Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids.

“My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas,” a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. “I wish I could have told you that things get better.”

I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

Indeed, Billy was treated horribly by his classmates:

He was a teenager who didn't quite fit in. His classmates said Billy Lucas was bullied for being different.

The 15-year-old never told anyone he was gay but students at Greensburg High School thought he was and so they picked on him.

People would call him 'fag' and stuff like that, just make fun of him because he's different basically," said student Dillen Swango.

Students told Fox59 News it was common knowledge that children bullied Billy and from what they said, it was getting worse. Last Thursday, Billy's mother found him dead inside their barn. He had hung himself.

Students said on that same day, some students told Billy to kill himself.

They said stuff like 'you're like a piece of crap' and 'you don't deserve to live.' Different things like that. Talked about how he was gay or whatever," said Swango.

Not surprisingly, it's not a new phenomenon at Greensberg High School:

It's a common problem inside Greensburg High School that goes way back.

I was bullied several times because I was gay. I was called f**, queer. i was thrown up against lockers. I would tell the school officials about it and they would dismiss it," said a former student who did not want to be identified.

Furthermore, it is important to note that, according to his mother, Lucas wasn't gay, although her statements are tinged with language of fundamentalist denial. So, it's not just gay teens at risk, but anyone that bullies like the ones in Greensberg and Techachapi believe are gay. They abuse their gay peers and seek to enforce their code of conduct by calling non-conformist students gay and bullying them as well. Next thing you know, they will be bullying straight kids who support the gay ones.

And, then, there's the suicide of Asher Brown in Houston, Texas:

Brown was found dead on the floor of his stepfather's closet at the family's home in the 11700 block of Cypresswood about 4:30 p.m. Thursday. He used his stepfather's 9 mm Beretta, stored on one of the closet's shelves, to kill himself. He left no note. David Truong found the teen's body when he arrived home from work.

On the morning of his death, the teen told his stepfather he was gay, but Truong said he was fine with the disclosure. We didn't condemn, he said.

His parents said Brown had been called names and endured harassment from other students since he joined Cy-Fair ISD two years ago. As a result, he stuck with a small group of friends who suffered similar harassment from other students, his parents said.

His most recent humiliation occurred the day before his suicide, when another student tripped Brown as he walked down a flight of stairs at the school, his parents said.

When Brown hit the stairway landing and went to retrieve his book bag, the other student kicked his books everywhere and kicked Brown down the remaining flight of stairs, the Truongs said.

Durham said that incident was investigated, but turned up no witnesses or video footage to corroborate the couple's claims.

Savage and the participants in the It Gets Better effort couldn't reach kids like Walsh and Brown and even Lucas, because these videos aren't just for gays and lesbians, they are for everyone. But, hopefully, they will reach them in the future, and perhaps make a critical difference in someone's life.

NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: For those of you have thoughtfully challenged my willingness to compare these deaths to the lynchings of African Americans, please consider that the bullies of gay and suspected gay teens have actually induced the victims to inflict the same violence upon themselves that lynch mobs directed towards African Americans. Walsh and Lucas hung themselves, and Brown shot himself. In this, they can be said to have improved upon the technique.

Labels: American Culture, Gay Rights, YouTube