The real scandal at the World Bank

Johann Hari

The Bank is killing thousands of the poorest people in the world

Published: 26 April 2007

While the world's press has been fixated on the teeny-weeny scandal over whether the World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz helped to get his girlfriend a $300,000-a-year gig next door, they have been ignoring the rancid stench of a far bigger scandal wafting from Wolfie's Washington offices.

This slo-mo scandal isn't about apparent petty corruption in DC. It's about how Wolfowitz's World Bank is killing thousands of the poorest people in the world, and knowingly worsening our worst crisis - global warming - every day.

Let's start with the victims. Meet Hawa Amadu, 70-something, living in the muddy slums of Accra, the capital of Ghana, and trying to raise her grandkids as best she can. Hawa has a problem - a massive problem - and the World Bank put it there. She can't afford water or electricity any more. Why? The World Bank threatened to refuse to lend any more money to her government, which would effectively make it a leper to governmental donors and international business, unless it stopped subsidising the cost of these necessities. The subsidies stopped. The cost doubled. Now Hawa goes thirsty so her grandchildren can drink, and weeps: "Am I supposed to drink air?"

She is not alone. Half a world away, in Bolivia, Maxima Cari - a mother - is also thirsty. "The World Bank took away my right to clean water," she explains. In 1997 the World Bank demanded the Bolivian government privatise the country's water supply. So Maxima couldn't afford it any more. Now she has to use dirty water from a well her villagers dug. This dirty water is making her children sick, and she is sullen. "I wash my children weekly," Maxima says. "Sometimes there's only enough water to wash their hands and faces, not their whole body ... This is not a nice way to live." The newly elected socialist government of Evo Morales is planning to take the water back - and he is, of course, condemned and threatened by the World Bank.

Meet some more victims. I have met hundreds, from Africa to Latin America to the Middle East. Muracin Claircin is a rice farmer in Haiti - only he can't grow rice any more. In 1995, the World Bank demanded Haiti drop all restrictions on imports. The country was immediately flooded with rice from the US, which has been lavishly subsidised by the US government. The Haitian government barely exists and can't offer rival subsidies anyway: the World Bank forbids it. So now Muracin is jobless and his family are starving.

Some 5,000 miles away, Charles Avaala in Ghana is watching his tomatoes rot. He used to grow them for a government-owned community tomato cannery that provided employment for his entire community. The World Bank ordered his government to close it down, and to open the country's markets to international competition. Now he can't compete with the subsidy-fattened tomatoes from Europe. He, too, is starving.

How would Hawa and Maxima and Muracin and Charles feel if you told them none of this is considered a scandal, but business as usual?

These victims are not merely an anecdote soup; they are an accurate summary of the World Bank's effect on the poor. Don't take my word for it. The World Bank's own Independent Evaluation Group just found that barely one in ten of its borrowers experienced persistent growth between 1995 and 2005 - a much smaller proportion than those who stagnated or slid deeper into poverty. The bank's own former chief economist, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, says this approach "has condemned people to death... They don't care if people live or die."

Why? Why would a body that claims to help the poor actually thrash them? Because its mission to end poverty has always been mythical. As George Monbiot explains in his book The Age of Consent, the World Bank was created in the 1940s by US economist Henry Dexter White to be a further projection of US power. The bank's head is invariably American, the bank is based in Washington, and the US has a permanent veto on policies. It does not promote a sensible mix of markets and state action - the real path to development. No: the World Bank pursues the interests of US corporations over the poor, every time.

The bank's staff salve their consciences by pickling themselves in an ideology - neoliberalism - that says there is never a conflict between business rights and human rights. If it's good for Shell, it must be good for poor people - right?

This ideology also backfires on us in the rich world. In 2000, the World Bank was finally forced to undertake a review of its energy policies. It did its best to rig it, putting the former energy minister of the corporation-licking Indonesian dictator General Suharto in charge. Emil Salim was even serving on the board of a coal company at the time he was appointed. But - to everyone's astonishment - Salim concluded by opposing the carbon-pumping oil and gas projects that make up 94 per cent of all the bank's energy projects. He said they should be stopped altogether by 2008.

The bank's response? It ignored its own report and carried on warming. The business climate, it seems, trumps the actual climate. Feel the heat.

While the elites huff and puff about Wolfowitz's alleged small corruption and ignore his organisation's proven immense corruption, there is something we - ordinary citizens - can do. In the summer of 2001, at the global justice protests in Genoa, I met Dennis Brutus, a former inmate of Robben Island prison alongside Nelson Mandela. He had been repelled by the bank's actions in South Africa, and started his protests against them by asking a very basic question: who owns the World Bank? It turns out we do. Ordinary people in the West - through their trade unions, churches, town councils, universities and private investments - own it. The bank raises nearly all its funds by issuing bonds on the private market. They are often held by socially minded institutions, the kind who signed up to Make Poverty History. So, Brutus realised, we have a simple power: to sell the bonds and bankrupt the World Bank. "We need to break the power of the World Bank over developing countries just as the disinvestment movement helped break the power of the apartheid regime in South Africa," he explained.

The campaign to make World Bank bonds as untouchable as apartheid-era investments has already begun. The cities of San Francisco, Boulder, Oakland and Berkeley have sold theirs. Several US unions have also joined. Even this small ripple has caused anxiety within the bank about the threat to its "AAA" bond rating.

In the Genoa sun, as tear gas fired by the Italian police hissed in the background, Brutus told me: "I lived to see the death of political apartheid. Now I want to live to see the end of global financial apartheid."

This is the fight we should join. Not some petty squabble over which Washington technocrat is morally pure enough to lead the forces of subsidy-slashing and starvation.

j.hari@ independent.co.uk

Mismanaging Iraq: Stealing From the Poor and Giving to the Rich

Ramzy Baroud, Aljazeera.net English.

Locating Dartmouth House, where Hans von Sponeck, former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq was scheduled to speak in London on April 18, was a challenge. Yet the moment I slipped quietly into the lecture hall, getting lost for an hour in the ever confusing and yet expanding city of London was the least of my concerns. His statements were shocking as were his many statistics: Iraq was simply and shamelessly robbed blind during the US-led UN sanctions. Sadly, the robbery and mismanagement continue until this day, but this time the figures are much more staggering.

As von Sponeck spoke, I reflected on my lengthy interview with Iraq’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Mohammed Al-Duri. Al Duri, being interviewed for the first time by English speaking media since claiming his post at the UN, revealed to me in early 2001, in equally shocking details, what sanctions had done to his country and people. He claimed that the UN was part of the problem. Led by two countries, the US and Britain, the UN Oil for Food Program and the “humanitarian” mission it established in Iraq was, he said, robbing the country blind and mismanaging funds, with needy Iraqi families receiving next to nothing. He spoke of the manipulation of Iraq’s wealth for political purposes and alleged that the UN was a tool in the hands of the United States government aimed at encouraging widespread popular disatisfaction with Saddam’s government before the country was dragged off to war.

In hindsight, Al-Duri’s assessment was very accurate. Promoting his new book: “A Different Kind of War,” von Sponeck reiterated in essence and substance Al-Duri’s claims; the only difference is that von Sponeck was an insider; his numbers and stories were impeccable and could hardly be contested. It’s no wonder that one and a half years after assuming his post in Baghdad in 1998, he resigned. Even at such uncongenial bureaucracy like the UN, some people still possess a living conscience; von Sponeck was and remains a man of great qualities.

By March 2003, when Iraq was invaded by American forces, the UN was generating $64 billion in sales of Iraqi oil, according to von Sponeck. But, scandalously, only $28 billion reached the Iraqi people. Around 70 percent of the Iraqi people benefited from the program. If distributed evenly, each Iraqi received half a US dollar per day. According to UN figures, an individual living under one dollar per day is classified as living in “abject poverty”. Even during the most destructive phases of war with Iran, Iraq has managed to provide relatively high living standards. Its hospitals were neither dilapidated, nor did its oil industry lie in ruins. Only after the UN sanctions in 1991 did the Iraqis suffer at such an appalling magnitude. Alas, the tyranny of Saddam expanded to become the tyranny of the international community as well.

“Neither the welfare of the Iraqi people nor the sovereignty of the Iraqis was respected,” by the UN and its two main benefactors, asserted von Sponeck. The UN Security Council’s “elected 10 or veto-wielding five” had nothing for Iraq but “empty words,” but there were “deliberate efforts to make life uncomfortable (for the Iraqis) through the Oil for Food program.” All efforts to modernize Iraq’s oil industry were blocked, said von Sponeck, all at the behest of “two governments that blocked all sorts of items,” which could’ve made that possible: Again, the United States and Britain, coincidently the same two countries that invaded and currently occupy Iraq. The logic in all of this is clear; the “preemptive” war on Iraq was factored into the sanctions from its early days.

The assessments of Al-Duri and von Sponeck converge, revealing the disagreeable intents of the US government and its followers many years before the horror of 9/11 polarized public opinion and allowed Washington’s political elites, the neoconservatives and contractors to make their case for war.

But where did the money go, during the sanctions and now, four years after the invasion?

Von Sponeck reported that a large chunk of the money generated from Iraq’s oil, 55 percent, went to fund the UN’s own inadequate “humanitarian” programs. Much of the rest was taken by the UN compensation commission, entrusted in handling claims of damages made by those allegedly harmed by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. According to von Sponeck, the Iraqi oil pie was so large, there was plenty for everyone: Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, and all the rest. But most ironically, the commission awarded a large sum of money to two Israeli kibbutzim in the Occupied Syrian Golan Heights, for allegedly losing some of their income due to the fact that the war damaged the tourism industry in Israel.

The robbery in Iraq hardly discontinued after the “liberation.” To the contrary, it intensified beyond belief. The US Government Accountability Office uncovered awesome discrepancies in the US military administration’s handling of the money: Billions went missing, hundreds of contractors fully compensated but whose work was never accounted for, layers upon layers of shady companies, contractors and sub-contractors (of which Halliburton and its subsidiary firm Kellogg, Brown & Root are just a mere illustration), in partnership with the new rulers of Iraq, are stealing the wealth of the once prosperous nation, leaving it in shambles.

And now, the Iraqis are facing enormous pressure to approve the new Iraqi oil and gas law. The draft bill, according to Iraqi MP Nur Al-Din Al-Hayyali, would give “50 percent of the Iraqi people’s oil wealth to foreign investing oil firms.” The nationalization of the country’s oil industry in 1972 is being reversed. The robbery that began in the early 1990s continues unabated. Shameful as it is, Iraq’s new rulers are stealing from the poor and giving the spoils to the rich.

Democracy is for the rich

KEVIN BARR

Friday, March 30, 2007

Democracy is a system of government where the political power rests with the nation's population either directly or through elected representatives. It is government of the people, for the people, by the people.

From this one should be able to infer that the purpose of democracy is to build a just society where the interests of all the people are cared for rich and poor, men and women, minorities as well as the majority and the economy works for the benefit of all. Democracy should be about the ordering of society to bring about justice for all. If it does not work for the common good then there is something seriously wrong.

The United States, in particular, has been a staunch promoter of democracy and has fought to have democracy entrenched throughout the world. Yet some writers have raised a number of important questions about the nature of US democracy.

For example, why is it that only those from wealthy backgrounds are able to become presidential candidates?

Why is it that the US not only champions democracy but champions extreme individualism and unbridled capitalism and has strongly opposed any form of socialism (which might spread the benefits of development more widely among people)?

Why is it that America's wealthy elites are able to exert such strong influence on political elections and economic decisions?

Alesina and Glaeser in their book Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe (2004) point out that all the American political institutions are ultimately the product of an 18th Century Constitution which was crafted by a minority of white and wealthy men of property determined to stop the State from expropriating their wealth and to limit the amount of redistribution the poor could demand of the rich.

Hence, the concerns of the rich are strongly protected and the US has a bias against welfare for the poor and redistribution of wealth. Comparing the US and Europe they note:

"Not only does government spending in the Europe favour the poor much more than in the United States, but government tax policy as well is much more distributive. Income tax rates are more progressive than in the United States."

Phillips in his book, Wealth and Democracy: a Political History of the American Rich (2002) provides hard evidence of the extreme prosperity of America's wealthy elite and shows how they are able to use their strong political influence to structure economic policy (e.g. tax policy) in their own self-interest. On the other hand, Barbara Ehrenreich in her Nickel and Dimed (2001) shows how the US economic system so adversely affects the lives of the working poor.

So, while all Americans may be able to vote in elections, does democracy in the US work for the benefit of all the people or mostly for the benefit of those with wealth and power?

If democracy is for the benefit of all the people of a nation, why is such blatant inequality tolerated? Does democracy necessarily work in the interests of justice for all?

William Blum once of the US State Department in his book Rogue State (2000:170) notes that: "Americans are raised to fervently believe that no progress can be made in any society in the absence of elections. They are taught to equate elections with democracy, and democracy with elections."

Yet, as we know, elections alone do not guarantee real democracy.

Some would say that liberal democracy in the US (and some other countries as well) has become an integral part of the capitalist system and, therefore, is class-based and not fully or truly democratic or participatory. It is "bourgeois democracy" where only the most financially powerful people have their say.

Consequently it is fundamentally un-egalitarian and facilitates economic exploitation of the poorer classes. Certainly the cost of political campaigning may mean that the system favours the rich (who may be a small minority of the total number of voters) and thus in reality the elected government becomes a form of plutocracy (or rule of the elite).

Thus, according to Marx, parliamentary elections are an opportunity citizens of a country get every few years to decide who among the ruling classes will misrepresent them in parliament.

Or again, modern democracy may be regarded as a dishonest farce used to keep the masses from getting restless by providing the hope that things might get better when they have another election.

Reforms are needed in the electoral process so that the power of big money is removed. Otherwise democracy can never be "of the people" i.e. poor or middle class people. It will always be class dominated. Democracy will be for the rich.

In this connection ownership of the media by a few of the rich elite may lead to more specific distortion of the electoral process. The media are themselves a vital element of the electoral process. They can be used to protect the interests of their own class and suppress any criticism of the status quo.

It is important for us to understand this US bias towards individualism and wealth and against welfare and redistribution because the US dominates decisions made by the World Bank and other financial institutions.

Moreover it is a key player in the decisions of the G8 countries which advise us on development.

The US will obviously side with regimes which think as it does and try to mould us in their own image. Consequently the benefits of its form of democracy will not benefit all the people but only the elite. We have seen this happen even in our own country. In this connection it is interesting to note the words of Epeli Hau'ofa (1987:101): "One very important development that we have to watch carefully is the emergence of privileged classes in the islands of the South Pacific for it is certain that the fates of the island communities are being decided by the ways in which these groups act, first, in relation to their own underprivileged people and, second, in relation to their important connections with each other and with similar groups elsewhere. It is the privileged who decide on the needs of their communities and whose rising aspirations and affluence entail worsening conditions for the poor."

Father Kevin Father is the program co-ordinator economic justice for ECREA. The views expressed are his and not necessarily that of his employer

A police state on skid row

The LAPD is again rousting and searching homeless people without cause.

By Ramona Ripston, RAMONA RIPSTON is executive director of the ACLU of Southern California.
March 12, 2007

THE LOS ANGELES Police Department has a message for skid row residents: The 4th Amendment doesn't apply here. That's the constitutional protection from arbitrary searches, and L.A. police officers have been violating it since late last year by detaining, handcuffing and going through people's pockets and possessions on the slimmest pretenses.

Cecil Bledsoe is a 65-year-old African American man who was once homeless and now works as a counselor helping others find housing. He was on his way to the bus in December when a police car rolled up and officers ordered him against a wall, then searched and questioned him. Bledsoe was released because he had done nothing wrong.

Police are also detaining homeless people for minor infractions such as jaywalking or sitting on the sidewalk, then using those pretexts as a basis to search them. Shawn Robertson was packing up his belongings one morning last November when police stood him against a wall and handcuffed him. They searched his stuff, ran his name, then let him go.

Paul Johnson was searched in December by officers who told him that "everybody down here is on probation or parole." Johnson isn't. The police officer who stopped him later admitted that he could not offer a reason for the search.

These aren't the hard-core criminals police promised to round up when the LAPD assigned 50 more officers to skid row last September. They're ordinary people whose only mistake was being homeless in the wrong part of town.

City leaders promised that the new officers would be part of a strategy to solve the homeless problem that included housing and services. Instead, the city has done exactly what everyone said it should not do: send police out as its primary tool. We're seeing the inevitable result.

We've been here before. Twenty years ago, the city and civil rights groups agreed that police were going too far on skid row by trashing residents' belongings in twice-daily sweeps. "It would appear that we have miraculously solved the horrible problem of destitute homelessness in our community by simply declaring it illegal," actor Martin Sheen wrote in The Times that year.

Since then, we've been caught in a disturbing cycle, with police abusing their power and then being challenged in court, only to either back down or be nudged into compliance by the courts.

Three years ago, a federal judge found that police were conducting arbitrary searches in the 50-square-block skid row area of L.A. and stopped them. The ACLU of Southern California and civil rights attorneys have filed a motion to extend that injunction.

The police shouldn't need a judge's order to know that this kind of activity is unlawful. The Bill of Rights has a nearly 220-year-old prohibition against "unreasonable searches."

New York started to reduce homelessness only when it decided that an enforcement-only approach to the problem was inefficient and expensive. A 2004 study on the costs of homeless services in the U.S. shows that jails and prison are twice as expensive as housing and shelter. L.A.'s leaders say the police are stretched too thin, yet they seem to have deep pockets for skid row police and prosecutors while always coming up short for housing.

Some say aggressive policing is working. Today, skid row's streets are strangely empty, as if hundreds of people who just months ago crowded the area's alleys every night have disappeared. Where have they gone? Some are in jail where they belong. A handful are in pretrial diversion programs where they can get the help they need. The vast majority have likely moved — to Hollywood, the Valley or Venice. These places have fewer services that the homeless need. When this crackdown ends, they'll be back.

We know where they haven't gone: into housing that's connected to services such as mental health care and job training, the only solution we know works. Meanwhile, constant police searches have added to the burdens of those who are seeking help for mental illness and addiction in skid row and complicated the efforts of those who would help them.

"The fear and stress people feel from interactions with the police add significantly to their issues," Casey Horan, executive director of Lamp Community, a homeless services provider, said in a statement the ACLU filed with the court. "When people are subject to aggressive policing, it makes outreach more difficult."

Politics Lite: No Sacrifice, No Substance, No Success: RORY STEWART

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
GUEST COLUMNIST

Politics Lite: No Sacrifice, No Substance, No Success

By RORY STEWART

Published: March 10, 2007

It is patronizing to assume that voters can’t handle demanding, imaginative and risky policies.

The accepted wisdom in British political circles is that Tony Blair won three elections by giving the British voters charisma and energy unfettered by dull or controversial policies. The Tories have now taken the lesson to heart. They are fighting back with feel-good, idea-light campaigns of their own, and it seems to be working. They are now significantly ahead in the polls.

This is not just electoral strategy. Many of them believe that we live in a postideological age, that there are no great questions anymore and that there can be no new solutions for domestic poverty or problems with immigration, energy or the economy.

But why do people stand as politicians if they have no policies? Many politicians claim privately that they are simply concealing their policies until they are elected. It is more likely that when the winds of office change in their favor, they will find their faces frozen into an expression of affable inaction. The role of a modern politician is apparently to be likable, to tinker with existing institutions and to manage occasional crises.

Churchill has been replaced by Bertie Wooster.

In Iraq, hundreds of thousands have died over the last few years and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent by the U.S.-led coalition. The international system is fractured; the Islamic world is angry.

--MORE

New York City to close largest homeless shelter

NYC's largest homeless shelter closing

By MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 6 minutes ago

Every day, a bus picks up homeless men off the streets of New York City and takes them 70 miles out into the countryside to a shelter, in a practice that has been going on quietly since the Depression, when homeless people were called Bowery bums and fresh air was the solution to just about all ills.

The 1,001-bed Camp LaGuardia is New York City's biggest homeless shelter — and the only one surrounded by farms and trees — but its very existence is probably a surprise to many lifelong New Yorkers.

Now the city is closing it down.

While 73-year-old Camp LaGuardia was born of good intentions and what was then considered progressive thinking, some activists disapprove of it as an out-of-sight, out-of-mind answer to the city's homeless problem.

City Hall says its decision to shut down the shelter was more practical: It is too far outside New York, and the city wants to move away from temporary shelters to subsidized housing.

The shelter opened in 1934 on the site of a women's prison. It was named for the city's exuberant mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, a year later. The place was expanded greatly in the 1980s with the growth of New York's homeless population.

Old jail cells in the main brick building are still used to house older, frailer men, though most of the men are assigned a cot and a squat locker in dorm-style rooms in other buildings, some of which were built in recent decades. The rooms and halls are careworn, and some of the paint is peeling.

In the camp's early decades, the homeless men could rustle up summer work in the kitchens at the big Catskills-style hotels, grow potatoes on the camp's farm, even relax over beer at the tap room — yes, a tap room — though they were not allowed to get drunk.

Nowadays, some of the men work day jobs at places such as a chicken-plucking plant operated by a community of Hasidic Jews.

Homeless men who seek shelter from the city and are assigned to Camp LaGuardia can refuse, and go back on the streets, or they can seek a transfer. Once they are here, they can come and go from the 300-acre camp, but there are not many places to go. The commercial center of Chester, a town of about 12,000, is more than a mile down the road.

About a third of the men leave on the daily buses to New York City for medical appointments, housing searches or family visits. Some work in the city.

Mohamed Chakdouf, 58, lost his job as a concierge at a big New York City hotel, separated from his wife, became depressed, fell behind in his rent and was evicted. By 2001, the Moroccan immigrant was camping out in a park in Manhattan. Breathing problems made winters tough on the street, and he came here by bus one night in January 2005.

"First day I woke up I'm surrounded by mountains," he recalled. "I say, `OK, I have no problem here, but it's so far away.'"

Isolation is a big complaint among homeless men used to urban hubbub. Richard Berlly said he considered staging a fistfight to get kicked out. Celso Trinidad said the 90-minute bus ride back to the city is tiring, so he stays in his room studying maps of the city, hoping to get another job driving a bus.

"It's not a fun place," he said.

Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York said the big problem with LaGuardia is that it is so far from the city. That makes it difficult for the men to look for jobs and housing or take advantage of other services.

Though LaGuardia was started for the right reason, Markee said city leaders found the shelter especially useful when homelessness soared in the '80s.

"The city expanded Camp Laguardia and made it into the largest homeless shelter in New York in part to sort of keep the homeless out of sight of the general population," Markee said. He commended Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration for "doing the right thing" by closing LaGuardia.

With a homeless population estimated at 35,000, the city wants to spend LaGuardia's $19 million budget on longer-term solutions such as subsidized housing with social services.

Robert Hess, city commissioner of homeless services, said the goal is to reduce the shelter population by at least two-thirds by 2009.

Hess said local opposition to the camp was also a factor in the decision to close the place. For decades, people have complained about LaGuardia men wandering into town, getting drunk, urinating in public and, once, slashing a woman.

Michele Murphy, a mother of two children who lives next to the camp, said: "You're afraid to have them play outside because you're not sure."

Still, some men have turned themselves around at LaGuardia.

Chakdouf has become a full-time liaison between homeless people and caseworkers. Berlly, 60, has come a full-fledged caseworker at LaGuardia.

A year ago, all of Camp LaGuardia's beds were full. The last new arrival came in November, and the camp is now down to about 360 men. The last will leave by May 31.

Orange County is buying the place for $8.5 million, perhaps for a senior-citizen dining center, voting machine storage, an office park or affordable housing for workers in the county, which is undergoing a housing boom.

Remaining staff members like Berlly are looking for other jobs. He is still interested in social work.

"I'm going to miss it," he said. "It's like a family, almost."

___

On the Net:

New York City Department of Homeless Services:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dhs/html/providers/meetadult.shtml

Evidence against Muslim charity appears fabricated

An official summary of an FBI-wiretapped conversation contains anti-Semitic slurs that do not appear in the actual transcript.

By Greg Krikorian, Times Staff Writer

February 25, 2007

When the Bush administration shut down the nation's largest Muslim charity five years ago, officials of the Dallas-based foundation denied allegations it was linked to terrorists and insisted that a number of accusations were fabricated by the government.

Now, attorneys for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development say the government's own documents provide evidence of that claim.

In recent court filings, defense lawyers disclosed striking discrepancies between an official summary and the verbatim transcripts of an FBI-wiretapped conversation in 1996 involving Holy Land officials.

The summary attributes inflammatory, anti-Semitic comments to Holy Land officials that are not found in a 13-page transcript of the recorded conversation. It recently was turned over to the defense by the government in an exchange of evidence.

Citing the unexplained discrepancies, defense lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish in Dallas to declassify thousands of hours of FBI surveillance recordings, so that full transcripts would replace government summaries as evidence.

The demand could force government prosecutors to either declassify evidence it has fought to keep secret or risk losing a critical portion of evidence in its case.

In December, the judge denied a defense request to declassify the documents so they could be examined by defendants in the case. Seven former foundation officials, six of them U.S. citizens, have been charged with funneling money to overseas charities controlled by Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The defendants have denied the charges.

Though defense attorneys already have government clearances that allow them to review the material, under the federal Classified Information Procedures Act they have been prohibited from sharing it with their clients. And unless the act's rules are declared unconstitutional in the case, defense attorneys argue, the defendants will have no way of proving that the statements attributed to them were misconstrued or never made.

The recently declassified summary of surveillance on April 15, 1996, asserts that during a conversation wiretapped by the FBI, Holy Land's former executive director Shukri Abu Baker told two associates there was no need to worry about the foundation being unfairly targeted because U.S. courts were not under the control of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or its sponsor, "the government of the demons of Israel."

The summary portrays Baker as raging against "the Jews of the world" and as claiming that Jews have no allegiance to anything but "their pockets and to preserving the illegal Zionist state of Israel."

Additional anti-Semitic comments the FBI summary attributed to Baker or Ghassan Elashi, Holy Land's former board chairman, included:

• "Their [Jews'] only purpose here in the U.S. is to purchase as many politicians as possible and to warp the way the American Christians feel and think not just about the Christian religion but mainly about the Palestinian people … and to rob as much money as possible from American taxpayers for the illegitimate excuse of protecting and preserving the chosen people of God."

• "Even Jesus Christ had called the Jews and their high priests … the sons of snakes and scorpions."

• "I am confident that in the end justice, and not the Jews, will prevail. I believe that there is still justice in America."

None of those quotes was contained in a 13-page transcript of the conversation, defense lawyers said in their motion to expand access to classified evidence.

"Throughout the run-up to trial, the government has insisted that the defendants can learn what is contained in the [surveillance] intercepts by reading the so-called 'summaries' of those intercepts," defense attorneys said in their papers.

But the recently disclosed transcript, attorneys said, shows that "not only are the summaries so inaccurate and misleading as to be useless," but that the "author of the attached summary has cynically and maliciously attributed to the defendants racist invective and inculpatory remarks the defendants never uttered."

"It is appalling that such summaries even exist, much less that the government represented that this is all our clients need to know in order to defend themselves."

Defense lawyers declined to comment about their motion. A federal prosecutor said the government would respond with its own filings to the court.

How the summary and transcript could be so different was unclear, though experts in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act arena theorized that its top-secret nature may have led some analysts to believe that the work product would never be publicly disclosed, much less entered into evidence in a trial.

Because the court records are heavily redacted, it could not be determined who provided the summaries of the FBI wiretaps.

Other alleged discrepancies also have dogged the case. Holy Land lawyers challenged the accuracy of an FBI memo, for example, that quoted a foundation office manager as telling Israeli authorities that charitable funds were "channeled to Hamas."

But defense lawyers told the court the translation from Arabic to Hebrew to English distorted the official's original statement, and that he should have been quoted as saying, "We have no connection to Hamas."

The Holy Land Foundation was closed weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The action followed years of efforts by Israel and many pro-Israeli groups in the U.S. to close the foundation on the grounds that it was a fundraising front for Hamas.

The former Holy Land officials facing trial are charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists by sending money, goods and services to Palestinian charities controlled by Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group since 1995.

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greg.krikorian@latimes.com

U.S. economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty

Posted on Thu, Feb. 22, 2007

By Tony Pugh
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975.

The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown "more than any other segment of the population," according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began," said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who co-authored the study. "We're not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we're seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty."

The growth spurt, which leveled off in 2005, in part reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren't as effective as they once were at catching those who fall into economic despair.

About one in three severely poor people are under age 17, and nearly two out of three are female. Female-headed families with children account for a large share of the severely poor.

Nearly two out of three people (10.3 million) in severe poverty are white, but blacks (4.3 million) and Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) make up disproportionate shares. Blacks are nearly three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while Hispanics are roughly twice as likely.

Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, has a higher concentration of severely poor people - 10.8 percent in 2005 - than any of the 50 states, topping even hurricane-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana, with 9.3 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively. Nearly six of 10 poor District residents are in extreme poverty.

'I DON'T ASK FOR NOTHING'

A few miles from the Capitol Building, 60-year-old John Treece pondered his life in deep poverty as he left a local food pantry with two bags of free groceries.

Plagued by arthritis, back problems and myriad ailments from years of manual labor, Treece has been unable to work full time for 15 years. He's tried unsuccessfully to get benefits from the Social Security Administration, which he said disputes his injuries and work history.

In 2006, an extremely poor individual earned less than $5,244 a year, according to federal poverty guidelines. Treece said he earned about that much in 2006 doing odd jobs.

Wearing shoes with holes, a tattered plaid jacket and a battered baseball cap, Treece lives hand-to-mouth in a $450-a-month room in a nondescript boarding house in a high-crime neighborhood. Thanks to food stamps, the food pantry and help from relatives, Treece said he never goes hungry. But toothpaste, soap, toilet paper and other items that require cash are tougher to come by.

"Sometimes it makes you want to do the wrong thing, you know," Treece said, referring to crime. "But I ain't a kid no more. I can't do no time. At this point, I ain't got a lotta years left."

Treece remains positive and humble despite his circumstances.

"I don't ask for nothing," he said. "I just thank the Lord for this day and ask that tomorrow be just as blessed."

Like Treece, many who did physical labor during their peak earning years have watched their job prospects dim as their bodies gave out.

David Jones, the president of the Community Service Society of New York City, an advocacy group for the poor, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee last month that he was shocked to discover how pervasive the problem was.

"You have this whole cohort of, particularly African-Americans of limited skills, men, who can't participate in the workforce because they don't have skills to do anything but heavy labor," he said.

'A PERMANENT UNDERCLASS'

Severe poverty is worst near the Mexican border and in some areas of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs in the textile, apparel and furniture-making industries disappear. The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard hit as economic restructuring and foreign competition have forced numerous plant closings.

At the same time, low-skilled immigrants with impoverished family members are increasingly drawn to the South and Midwest to work in the meatpacking, food processing and agricultural industries.

These and other factors such as increased fluctuations in family incomes and illegal immigration have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate in at least 32 years.

"What appears to be taking place is that, over the long term, you have a significant permanent underclass that is not being impacted by anti-poverty policies," said Michael Tanner, the director of Health and Welfare Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, disagreed. "It doesn't look like a growing permanent underclass," said Sherman, whose organization has chronicled the growth of deep poverty. "What you see in the data are more and more single moms with children who lose their jobs and who aren't being caught by a safety net anymore."

About 1.1 million such families account for roughly 2.1 million deeply poor children, Sherman said.

After fleeing an abusive marriage in 2002, 42-year-old Marjorie Sant moved with her three children from Arkansas to a seedy boarding house in Raleigh, N.C., where the four shared one bedroom. For most of 2005, they lived off food stamps and the $300 a month in Social Security Disability Income for her son with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Teachers offered clothes to Sant's children. Saturdays meant lunch at the Salvation Army.

"To depend on other people to feed and clothe your kids is horrible," Sant said. "I found myself in a hole and didn't know how to get out."

In the summer of 2005, social workers warned that she'd lose her children if her home situation didn't change. Sant then brought her two youngest children to a temporary housing program at the Raleigh Rescue Mission while her oldest son moved to California to live with an adult daughter from a previous marriage.

So for 10 months, Sant learned basic office skills. She now lives in a rented house, works two jobs and earns about $20,400 a year.

Sant is proud of where she is, but she knows that "if something went wrong, I could well be back to where I was."

'I'M GETTING NOWHERE FAST'

As more poor Americans sink into severe poverty, more individuals and families living within $8,000 above or below the poverty line also have seen their incomes decline. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University attributes this to what he calls a "sinkhole effect" on income.

"Just as a sinkhole causes everything above it to collapse downward, families and individuals in the middle and upper classes appear to be migrating to lower-income tiers that bring them closer to the poverty threshold," Woolf wrote in the study.

Before Hurricane Katrina, Rene Winn of Biloxi, Miss., earned $28,000 a year as an administrator for the Boys and Girls Club. But for 11 months in 2006, she couldn't find steady work and wouldn't take a fast-food job. As her opportunities dwindled, Winn's frustration grew.

"Some days I feel like the world is mine and I can create my own destiny," she said. "Other days I feel a desperate feeling. Like I gotta' hurry up. Like my career is at a stop. Like I'm getting nowhere fast. And that's not me because I've always been a positive person."

After relocating to New Jersey for 10 months after the storm, Winn returned to Biloxi in September because of medical and emotional problems with her son. She and her two youngest children moved into her sister's home along with her mother, who has Alzheimer's. With her sister, brother-in-law and their two children, eight people now share a three-bedroom home.

Winn said she recently took a job as a technician at the state health department. The hourly job pays $16,120 a year. That's enough to bring her out of severe poverty and just $122 shy of the $16,242 needed for a single mother with two children to escape poverty altogether under current federal guidelines.

Winn eventually wants to transfer to a higher-paying job, but she's thankful for her current position.

"I'm very independent and used to taking care of my own, so I don't like the fact that I have to depend on the state. I want to be able to do it myself."

The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that, in a given month, only 10 percent of severely poor Americans received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in 2003 - the latest year available - and that only 36 percent received food stamps.

Many could have exhausted their eligibility for welfare or decided that the new program requirements were too onerous. But the low participation rates are troubling because the worst byproducts of poverty, such as higher crime and violence rates and poor health, nutrition and educational outcomes, are worse for those in deep poverty.

Over the last two decades, America has had the highest or near-highest poverty rates for children, individual adults and families among 31 developed countries, according to the Luxembourg Income Study, a 23-year project that compares poverty and income data from 31 industrial nations.

"It's shameful," said Timothy Smeeding, the former director of the study and the current head of the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University. "We've been the worst performer every year since we've been doing this study."

With the exception of Mexico and Russia, the U.S. devotes the smallest portion of its gross domestic product to federal anti-poverty programs, and those programs are among the least effective at reducing poverty, the study found. Again, only Russia and Mexico do worse jobs.

One in three Americans will experience a full year of extreme poverty at some point in his or her adult life, according to long-term research by Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

An estimated 58 percent of Americans between the ages of 20 and 75 will spend at least a year in poverty, Rank said. Two of three will use a public assistance program between ages 20 and 65, and 40 percent will do so for five years or more.

These estimates apply only to non-immigrants. If illegal immigrants were factored in, the numbers would be worse, Rank said.

"It would appear that for most Americans the question is no longer if, but rather when, they will experience poverty. In short, poverty has become a routine and unfortunate part of the American life course," Rank wrote in a recent study. "Whether these patterns will continue throughout the first decade of 2000 and beyond is difficult to say ... but there is little reason to think that this trend will reverse itself any time soon."

'SOMETHING REAL AND TROUBLING'

Most researchers and economists say federal poverty estimates are a poor tool to gauge the complexity of poverty. The numbers don't factor in assistance from government anti-poverty programs, such as food stamps, housing subsidies and the Earned Income Tax Credit, all of which increase incomes and help pull people out of poverty.

But federal poverty measures also exclude work-related expenses and necessities such as day care, transportation, housing and health care costs, which eat up large portions of disposable income, particularly for low-income families.

Alternative poverty measures that account for these shortcomings typically inflate or deflate official poverty statistics. But many of those alternative measures show the same kind of long-term trends as the official poverty data.

Robert Rector, a senior researcher with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, questioned the growth of severe poverty, saying that census data become less accurate farther down the income ladder. He said many poor people, particularly single mothers with boyfriends, underreport their income by not including cash gifts and loans. Rector said he's seen no data that suggest increasing deprivation among the very poor.

Arloc Sherman of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues that the growing number of severely poor is an indisputable fact.

"When we check against more complete government survey data and administrative records from the benefit programs themselves, they confirm that this trend is real," Sherman said. He added that even among the poor, severely poor people have a much tougher time paying their bills. "That's another sign to me that we're seeing something real and troubling," Sherman said.

McClatchy correspondent Barbara Barrett contributed to this report.

BY THE NUMBERS

States with the most people in severe poverty:

California - 1.9 million
Texas - 1.6 million
New York - 1.2 million
Florida - 943,670
Illinois - 681,786
Ohio - 657,415
Pennsylvania - 618,229
Michigan - 576,428
Georgia - 562,014
North Carolina - 523,511

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

London Mayor Signs Oil Deal With Chavez

Wednesday February 21, 2007 1:01 AM

By JENNIFER QUINN
Associated Press Writer

LONDON (AP) - London's socialist mayor signed an agreement Tuesday with Venezuela's state-owned oil company to provide discounted oil for the city's iconic red buses, praising the idea as the brainstorm of the country's leftist leader, Hugo Chavez.

Ken Livingstone - a committed socialist known locally as ``Red Ken'' - met with Chavez last year at City Hall to discuss the deal to provide cheap oil to London in exchange for advice on urban planning in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.

Venezuela has signed similar agreements with cities in several other countries, including the United States. Critics call it ``oil diplomacy'' - and say it is designed to embarrass President Bush, whom Chavez has repeatedly mocked.

``This arose out of the suggestion of President Hugo Chavez, and builds on the work he is doing around the world to tackle the problem of poverty,'' Livingstone said.

The savings - which would cut fuel costs by 20 percent for the city and could amount to about $32 million - are to be directed toward cheaper bus travel for up to 250,000 Londoners living on income support. Those who qualify will get a half-price discount on bus fares.

Under the agreement, city officials in Caracas will receive recommendations from British experts for ``the urban reorganization'' of the capital, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicholas Maduro said in an interview broadcast on state-run television.

Conservatives on the London city council said in a statement that London shouldn't be doing business with ``third-rate South American dictators with an appalling human rights and democratic record.''

``Why does London, one of the richest capitals in the world, need to exploit a developing nation?'' asked Richard Barnes, deputy leader of the London Assembly Conservatives. ``This money would be better directed at the poor of Venezuela.''

The U.S. government and Chavez's opponents at home accuse him of undermining Venezuela's democratic institutions since he was first elected in 1998. Chavez, who was widely re-elected to a six-year term in December, says he is trying to remake an unjust system that sidelined the poor majority.

Livingstone, an advocate of green policies, said Venezuela and London were merely exchanging commodities.

Venezuela is the world's eighth-largest oil exporter.

London spends about $195 million a year on fuel for its fleet of 8,000 buses. The savings from the new oil agreement with Venezuela are equivalent to slightly less than 1 percent of the total cost of providing London's bus services, the mayor's office said.

Associated Press Writer Christopher Toothaker in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

If they preach the cause of the poor, they're my people

Aggressive secularism on the left is bizarre given that religious leaders are now among the few ready to speak out against injustice

Neal Lawson
Wednesday January 3, 2007
The Guardian

Where do we get moral leadership from today? As we pick up the pieces of another swiped out festive season it's a fitting question. Is there something more to life than the endless cycle of overconsumption? How can the Iraq war or exorbitant city bonuses be justified? Increasingly it is our religious rather than political leaders who attempt to answer these difficult and pressing questions.

The head of the Catholic church in England, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, said in his Christmas mass: "Our nation is in great need because it is deprived of some of the greatest values of life." He spoke of the emergence of a culture that espoused "individual freedom as the fundamental value to which all others must be subject". This culture, he said, is the cause of a break with the moral traditions of humanity that meant we were no longer able to "respond to the fundamental questions on the sense and direction of our lives".

The Pope also berated "unbridled" consumerism in his address, while the Archbishop of Canterbury said: "The poor deserve the best. They do not deserve what's left over when the more prosperous have had their fill." And they don't just talk. They do. Religious communities are among the increasingly few places that bring people together as citizens rather than as consumers - fighting for a living wage and against poverty.

For me, as an atheist and a full-time politico, this is unsettling. It reveals the moral vacuum at the heart of our politics. Many politicians I know agree with the sentiments of these messages - but they feel trapped in a political system that only adapts itself to the demands of big business. Because it is the economy that now dominates our politics, it is the market that decides our morals - or lack of them. The fact that it is "the economy, stupid" requires a moral recession that then creates its social equivalent.

Whether you want a "K or a big P" becomes the political dilemma of our age. A generation of politicians are morally blighted by their support for the war in Iraq. They stayed silent over the bombing of Lebanon in the summer and the decision to drop the BAE case. Now Trident is being traded for the mistaken belief that committing the country to a new generation of nuclear weapons will help win the next election. Our politicians have forgotten that power and principle are two sides of the same coin. Politics has stopped being a different vision of the good society and is instead a job for technocrats and for self-proclaimed rationalists.

Given all this, it might seem strange that there are signs of an increasingly aggressive secularism that borders on a hatred of religion. This was revealed most starkly through attitudes to the veil. Many of the "liberal" elite were alarmingly hostile in their condemnation of some of society's most vulnerable people. Progressives I've known for 20 years, with whom I had agreed on virtually everything, were to my mind on the wrong side of the argument. It was not just getting religion out of the state they wanted, but out of society. This anti-religious left has found its leader in the shape of Richard Dawkins and his book The God Delusion, which is just a gratuitous tirade against faith.

So why are some on the left so hostile to faith? Perhaps it is an example of classic Freudian displacement activity as some progressives turn their political impotence and ire on religion. If their surrender to the nostrums of neoliberalism denies them moral purpose, then they will attack those who are prepared to stand with the poor and denounce the culture of greed at institutions such as Goldman Sachs. More likely, it is the overly rationalist view of some on the left that fuels their distaste for anything vaguely spiritual. This is the conception of socialism as science that ultimately failed both Lenin and the Fabians.

I am a secularist and believe in the disestablishment of church and state - in particular, I want to see the end of faith schools. And, of course, religion has been the cause of terrible deeds - although none perhaps in recent years as abhorrent as those of atheists. But in words and deeds, in the world I see around me, the positive role faith plays far outweighs the negatives. Religious leaders hold a mirror up to the injustice and immorality of our society and are prepared in their own small way to do something about it. I would rather it was politicians, but too often they decline to stand up and be counted.

The left must be fuelled by the vision of the good society. This has to be about more than just economics, science and rationalism, ending in an angry reaction to one of the few institutions in our society that is saying and doing the right thing.

As the lifeblood of morality drips from our body politic, it leaves a small pumping heart of socially and morally aware religious leaders and institutions. I don't care if they are Muslim, Catholic or Church of England - if they preach the cause of the poor and the needy in our bloated materialistic world, then they are my people.

We live in a society of smug complacency. All too often it is only religious leaders who puncture the anaesthetised contentment of our consumerised lives. Injustice, poverty, corruption, insecurity and disaffection sweep our nation. Technocratic politics has replaced religion as the opiate of the masses.

· Neal Lawson, who chairs the left-of-centre pressure group Compass, is writing a book about turbo-consumerism
www.allconsuming.org.uk

Neal Lawson writes regularly for the Guardian and the New Statesman about equality, democracy and the future of the left. He sometimes appears on TV and radio as a political commentator. He is chair of the fast-growing pressure group Compass, whose goal is a more equal and democratic world. He is author of the pamphlet Dare More Democracy, which was based on interviews with swing voters in London and Birmingham. He is also the managing editor of the quarterly progressive policy journal Renewal. He was formerly an adviser to Gordon Brown and before that a trade union researcher. He co-edited The Progress Century (Palgrave, 2001). At the end of 2004 he gave up his job as a founding director of a public affairs company to focus full time on writing and activism.

Betrayal of the Big Easy

Hurricane Katrina forced out New Orleans's poor residents, and developers don't want them back

Giles Fraser
Tuesday January 2, 2007
The Guardian

It's well over a year since the levees collapsed and billions of gallons of water flooded into New Orleans, trashing the city and displacing several thousand residents, most of them black and poor. Many may not return. For Hurricane Katrina produced acres of empty real estate that are being eyed up as a promising opportunity for corporate developers. Mayor Ray Nagin wants the new New Orleans to be "market driven". The Episcopalian Bishop of Louisiana thinks differently. Once a conservative, he was rebaptised with dirty water. He now speaks for many in condemning the mayor's words as "a blow against the poor and needy", and says developers threaten "the soul of the city".

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Last August two-thirds of New Orleans was under water. In low-lying areas - such as the lower ninth ward, where many of the city's musicians originate - almost no reconstruction work is being done. Insurance companies won't cover new buildings unless the levees are reinforced to withstand another big storm, and the government won't cough up the $30bn-plus the work is expected to cost. So the powers that be are effectively abandoning the lower-lying areas, offering precious little hope of return to the Katrina diaspora spread over the south. A city that had a population of nearly half a million has been reduced by 300,000. Some are whispering that this is a way of rebalancing the city's ethnic mix, which has been majority black for some time.

Dr Courtney Cowart, who runs the Diocese of Louisiana's disaster relief team, escaped from the shadow of the World Trade Centre on 9/11. She cannot help but compare the government's response to both tragedies, noting that nothing like the financial commitment made to New York is being offered to New Orleans. The Big Easy, disliked by conservatives because of its reputation for debauchery, is in danger of being ignored.

Debauched and religious. In this most Christian of cities, the churches are forming powerful alliances with local community groups to spearhead the fight against mammon. For this is a place where the language of the Bible seems to have daily application. Those who experienced the scale of this disaster wouldn't think the Bible's apocalyptic literature fanciful. They have lived it. Outside the shell of an old Baptist church in the lower ninth, a scruffy piece of board is scrawled with the prophecy from Ezekiel in which dead bones are reformed into living human form. "Can these dry bones live?" is the question.

In the increasingly lawless central district, the resurrection is given a hedonistic inflection through the tradition of the second line. The first line is the sombre procession to a funeral. The second line is the exuberant, jazzy, band-led, umbrella-popping return. Most Sunday afternoons, thousands gather to dance their way through the wreckage, reclaiming the streets for music and laughter.

Last month I watched as the second line jigged down Washington Street and came to rest outside one of the city's social housing projects, declared out of bounds by the civic authorities. The music intensified. A huge number of the projects are fenced off, even though many received only superficial damage. It's surely no coincidence that some are in areas of prime real estate. Residents were evicted at gunpoint during the storm and have not been allowed back.

Mark Twain said there were only three cities in the US with any real culture: Boston, San Francisco and New Orleans. What a tragedy if this once-great city is to be saved from the waters only to be destroyed by developers set to rebuild another generic US metropolis, designed for profit and not for people.

· Dr Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney and a lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford giles.fraser@btinternet.com

Hugo Chavez is ‘Black’ Santa Claus for U.S. Poor

Related

Chavez Landslide Tops All In US History
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HOLIDAY ISSUE Dec.20 - Jan. 2

True Solidarity in a Cold World: Hugo Chavez is ‘Black’ Santa Claus for U.S. Poor

by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

“Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth, because of my curly hair. And I’m so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it’s African.” – Hugo Chavez, Democracy Now, September 20, 2005


For tens of thousands of needy Americans this holiday season, “Saint Nick” arrived in the person of a former paratrooper with straight-from-the-barrio Afro-Indian features, commanding fleets of trucks bearing millions of gallons of heating oil heavily discounted for the poor. Through his year-round policy of international solidarity – which is quite different than seasonal generosity – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the most frequently and fairly elected head of state in the history of the Americas, has revealed the identity of the real Global Grinch: George Bush and the multinational oil companies and fat cats he serves.

It’s a lesson even reality-starved North Americans should comprehend, and one that should find particular resonance among African Americans. Had he been born in Georgia, rather than in the backwater interior of a Spanish-speaking country, Hugo Chavez would certainly have been considered a Black man. The white elites of Venezuela seem to feel the same way – Chavez is routinely referred to as a “monkey” in his homeland’s oligarchic media. Indeed, Chavez’s status as the most popular politician in Latin America has resulted in a kind of perverse North-South hemispheric solidarity among white elites, who collectively tremble at every stirring of Black-brown political power.

--MORE--

Americans See Widening Rich-Poor Income Gap as Cause for Alarm

By Matthew Benjamin

Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Americans overwhelmingly say the growing gap between rich and poor has become a serious national concern, a sentiment that may bolster Democrats' plans to narrow the income divide when they take control of Congress.

Almost three-quarters of Americans believe inequality is a major issue, versus 24 percent who don't think so, according to a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll. Most of the concern is among Democrats and independent voters, though a majority of Republicans -- 55 percent -- also called the situation serious.

``Income inequality is widening quite rapidly,'' said Alice Rivlin, a former vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve who's now a public policy professor at Georgetown University in Washington. ``It does matter to people that there are such unequal chances to get ahead.''

A month after Republicans lost their majority in Congress, poll respondents generally expressed optimism about the economy, with about three in five saying it's doing well. They were divided over how effectively President George W. Bush is managing the economy, with almost half saying they approve of the job he's doing and about the same number saying they disapprove.

There's little concern about a housing-market collapse, with only 15 percent of respondents saying they expect home values in their neighborhoods to fall during the next six months. And while more than a third expect to spend less money on gifts this holiday season, 68 percent called their personal finances secure.

Anxiety

Still, anxiety about the growing rich-poor divide unites Americans, crossing income and political divisions. Among those earning less than $40,000 a year, 84 percent called the gap a serious problem, with more than half saying it's ``very serious.'' Among those earning more than $100,000, more than three in five said it's a serious concern. Those in the middle- income group making between $40,000 and $60,000 were almost as concerned as the least wealthy.

``The ultra rich and the rich continue to have mechanisms to make money like the stock market and executive salaries,'' Kevin Godsea, an employee with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, said in a follow-up interview. ``And the wages of middle class workers are stagnant,'' said Godsea, 30, a registered Republican in Fort Myers, Florida, who considers himself middle class.

Rich Get Richer

Income growth has begun to pick up, with average hourly wages gaining 4.1 percent over the last 12 months, the biggest increase since February 2001. Still, Census Bureau data point to a long-term trend of the rich taking home a larger slice of U.S. income every year.

The portion of national income earned by the top 20 percent of households grew to 50.4 percent last year, up from 45.6 percent 20 years ago; the bottom 60 percent of U.S. households received 26.6 percent, down from 29.9 percent in 1985, according to the Census Bureau. Meanwhile, average pay for corporate chief executive officers rose to 369 times that of the average worker last year, according to finance professor Kevin Murphy of the University of Southern California; that compares with 131 times in 1993 and 36 times in 1976.

``We are creating have and have-not classes in this country,'' said Jane Huntley, 77, a retired elementary school teacher from Brunswick, New York.

Democrats are considering proposals to shrink the income gap, such as boosting the minimum wage, scrutinizing executive pay, increasing tax credits available to the poor, and making health care and higher education more affordable.

Stagnation

Several of those ideas, if implemented, can provide immediate relief to the working poor, said Gene Sperling, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic research group in Washington. More difficult, he said, is dealing with the ``insecurity in the middle class. People want to know where the new middle class jobs are coming from,'' said Sperling, who is a Bloomberg News contributor.

Americans have become more optimistic about the state of the economy, with those saying it's doing well rising to 61 percent from 54 percent in September. That may reflect the drop in gasoline prices in the last several months and the burst of wage growth, analysts say.

Marks Improving

Bullishness rose with household income, with more than three-quarters of those earning more than $100,000 a year saying the economy is doing well. Those earning less than $40,000 were the only group in which a majority said the economy is doing badly. About seven in 10 respondents said they expect the economy to be about the same six months from now.

The poll of 1,489 adults was taken Dec. 8 to Dec. 11 and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Bush's marks on the economy also improved since September, with 48 percent of respondents saying they approve of how he's handling it, up from 43 percent three months ago. An equal percentage said they disapprove, down from 51 percent in the last poll.

``I don't take issue with his domestic policy, just his foreign policy,'' said Jon Jackson, 32, of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Jackson, a registered Republican who works as an operations manager at a snack food company, said he will spend less this holiday season than last year on gifts, mostly because he's got a new baby and health-care costs are crimping his budget.

About one in five of those surveyed said they expect to spend a lot less money on gifts this year. Almost half said they will spend the same amount and only 15 percent said they plan to increase spending.

``It's time to be really, really careful with our money because the economy is overrated,'' said Francisco Garcia, 50, a computer systems architect in Houston and an independent voter. ``With so many jobs that have been outsourced, the only thing I can compute is that a lot of people are just spending on credit cards, and that's going to cave in.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Matt Benjamin in Washington at mbenjamin2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 12, 2006 18:35 EST

New Orleans approves project demolition

Dec 9, 2006, 13:36 GMT

NEW ORLEANS, LA, United States (UPI) -- New Orleans` plan to demolish the city`s four largest public housing projects has taken a step forward.

The Housing Authority of New Orleans approved the destruction Thursday, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported. The plan would remove about 7,500 subsidized apartments -- including the St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, Lafitte and B.W. Cooper projects -- and another 600 apartments scattered around the city.

City officials say the projects -- which had never been renovated since their construction a half-century or more ago -- were already in bad shape and Hurricane Katrina rendered them uninhabitable and not worth repairing. They also argue that rehabilitation would restore economic and racial segregation.

The city has plans to build mixed-income housing to replace the projects.

Any construction must wait for the resolution of a civil rights suit filed in June. At a meeting last week, former residents of the projects opposed demolition.

'The day you tear down St. Bernard, you`re going to break a lot of hearts,' said Sharon Jasper, a former resident.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

Chavez uses petro-dollars to help the poor - in America

Sheldon Alberts
CanWest News Service

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela - Hugo Chavez coasted to another six-year term as Venezuela's president on the strength of petro-dollars and promises to spread more of his country's oil wealth to the poor.

But as Chavez struggles to alleviate poverty for eight million of his own citizens, the 52-year-old leftist leader is using his oil riches in an unlikely way - by paying the winter heating bills for hundreds of thousands of underprivileged Americans.

Even as Chavez demonized the United States as an evil imperialist empire during campaign events leading to his re-election Sunday, Venezuela's state-owned oil company renewed a deal to provide 40 per cent discounts on furnace oil to 400,000 people in 15 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

The act of generosity is dismissed by Chavez's critics as pure propaganda - an attempt to embarrass the Bush administration - and it is drawing mixed reaction among Venezuelans.

''I think he is just giving the money away,'' huffs Carmen Herrara, a retiree who lives in a suburb of east Caracas. ''There is a lot of poverty in this country that needs to be solved first.''

The heating-oil program offered by Venezuelan-owned Citgo is but one element of an incredibly complex, carrot-and-stick relationship Chavez and the U.S. have with each other, one revolving predominantly around the politics and economics of oil.

Chavez won Sunday with 61 per cent of the vote.

In Washington, the Bush administration expressed hope the U.S. could improve relations with Venezuela even though Chavez called his victory another "defeat for the devil."

Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said "we hope that we could have a positive constructive relationship" with Chavez in the future.

"There are, of course, well-reported frictions on some issues. From our standpoint, there don't have to be any frictions," said McCormack, who added the U.S. was awaiting reports from international election observers before passing final judgement on the election.

Chavez had rankled President George W. Bush in August 2005 when he offered to ship emergency fuel supplies to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

He followed up by personally endorsing a plan by Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., to offer the heating oil discounts through a non-profit Massachusetts-based group called Citizen's Energy Corp.

The latest public-relations bonanza from that venture was a splashy press conference two weeks ago at the home of 75-year-old widow Matilda Winslow in Dorchester, a hardscrabble neighbourhood of Boston.

With Venezuelan officials present, Winslow took delivery of a winter's worth of heating oil.

''No matter the differences we might have, there is always room for co-operation,'' said Bernardo Alvarez, the Venezuelan ambassador to the U.S.

In a telephone interview Monday, Winslow said she had no qualms about accepting discounted oil from a country whose leader called Bush ''Mr. Danger'' following Sunday's elections.

''Bush bothers me, not Chavez,'' said Winslow, who has survived on Social Security since the death of her husband five years ago. ''I figure that Bush should wake up and think about the elderly and low-income people out here.''

American critics of Chavez are not as impressed.

In an editorial last week, the Wall Street Journal questioned Chavez's motives. The Venezuelan leader ''is trying to shape U.S. public opinion in the hope that more gringos will come to see the Chavez government as benevolent,'' the newspapers said.

But Brian O'Connor, a spokesman for Citizens Energy, said the Venezuelan oil is vital to low-income families because funds for a U.S. government heating-fuel assistance program have failed to grow in line with rising energy costs.

''It's about need, not politics,'' said O'Connor, who said Citgo was the only major company to respond to appeals for assistance to poor U.S. families.

Despite the political differences between governments in Washington and Caracas, Venezuela and the U.S. have a mutually dependent relationship.

Venezuela exported almost 560-million barrels of oil and petroleum products to America last year - not only from Citgo but from U.S. companies such as Chevron and Exxon, which have major operations here.

''What Citgo is doing is providing 2.4-million barrels, which is one half of one per cent of all the oil products sold into the U.S. from Venezuela,'' said O'Connor. ''So how do you criticize that tiny fraction that is used to help the poor?''

Chavez's anti-U.S. rhetoric, however, is threatening to damage his nation's oil industry.

After the Venezuelan president called Bush ''the devil'' at the United Nations in September, the 7-Eleven convenience store chain announced it was dropping Citgo as the gasoline supplier to more than 2,000 stations across the U.S.

''Regardless of politics, we sympathize with many Americans' concerns over the derogatory comments about our country and its leadership,'' 7-Eleven said in a statement.

Citgo's heating-oil subsidies in the U.S. are modeled after Chavez's PetroCaribe program, which provides oil to a dozen Caribbean nations, including Cuba. The program, which allows countries to defer payments for 25 years on low interest, has helped Chavez gain influence over the U.S. in Latin America.

Venezuelans benefit too - gasoline here sells at about 17 cents a gallon thanks to government price controls.

But some domestic opponents say Chavez's penchant for peddling discount oil comes at the expense of Venezuelans.

An estimated 33 per cent of the country's 25 million residents live in poverty.

Chavez has also used oil revenues to pay for infrastructure in countries such as Bolivia and Uruguay.

''He has been using very audaciously money from oil to buy support, in the same imperial way of the United States,'' says Teodoro Petkoff, editor of Caracas' Tal Cual newspaper and a senior opposition party strategist.

''This country can afford to be generous. But if you give money for a hospital in Uruguay when the majority of Venezuelan hospitals are worth nothing, then people resent that.''

But not everyone.

In Caracas neighbourhoods such as Petare, a sprawling hillside barrio, many residents approve of Chavez selling low-cost oil, even to the richest nation in the world.

''He is not giving it to the government of the United States,'' says Manuel Jose Petate, 46. ''He is giving it to poor people who need it, who live in poor neighbourhoods like this. If it is necessary, then I think it is good that some of these Americans have it.''

CanWest News Service

EDs: Updated with U.S. reaction to Chavez win in firstoptional cut

© CanWest News Service 2006

U.N., World Bank: U.S. And U.K. Drug War Has Backfired In Afghanistan, Hurting The Poorest

Afghan opium fight hurts poorest
Posted 11/28/2006 1:01 AM ET

By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY

U.S. and European efforts to end heroin production in Afghanistan have done little to hamper the drug industry and have hurt the country's poorest people, according to a new report by the United Nations and the World Bank.

The report, released today, is the latest indication of the difficulties faced by the British-led effort to eradicate Afghanistan's opium crop, which drives the economy in parts of the embattled nation and has helped to fund a resurgence of the Taliban. The report says the production of opium, whose poppies are used to make heroin, permeates daily life in Afghanistan and eliminating the illegal drug trade there could take decades.

The opium trade accounts for about $2.7 billion in Afghanistan's economy — equal to more than one-third of the nation's gross domestic product — and is responsible for thousands of jobs, the report says. The Taliban government, which had harbored al-Qaeda, virtually eliminated opium production in 2001, before U.S.-led forces toppled it. Production has soared since, even as the United States and its allies have stepped up efforts to kill fields of opium and persuade farmers to grow other crops.

Opium has remained the nation's most lucrative crop by far, and drug traffickers — through incentives and intimidation — have kept farmers in the opium business across Afghanistan, which the United Nations says produces about 87% of the world's opium. Last year, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan produced 4,100 metric tons of opium, nearly as much as the biggest harvest in 1999. The United Nations predicts a record harvest in 2007.

Today's report describes how opium farmers' flexibility has helped harvests increase. When government officials end the opium trade in one province, opium brokers typically move cultivation and trade elsewhere, the report says.

Counter-narcotics efforts also have fueled corruption, the report says. Farmers who can afford it have bribed local officials to preserve opium crops, while the poorest farmers have been driven deeper into debt when their crops are destroyed, the report says. Investigators found several instances in which farmers planned to replant opium to pay their debts.

The report also says local government officials sometimes help drug lords drive competitors out of the market in exchange for a cut of the profits or protection payments.

Antonio Maria Costa of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime has recommended focusing agents on areas with less opium cultivation to keep such farming from spreading and help establish an alternative economy. The U.S. State Department's Anne Patterson, acknowledging "there is no silver bullet" to the opium problem, has said much of the growth in production is in areas with weak local governments.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-28-afghan-opium_x.htm

From the Venezuelan Heart to the U.S. Hearths

Last update: November 24, 2006 – 10:11 PM

Chippewa Tribe accepts free heating oil from Citgo
The tribe said it would be foolish to refuse the offer from the Venezuelan-owned firm despite political controversy.
Archie Ingersoll, Associated Press


When the Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum Corp. approached the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe with a gift of about $1.7 million in heating assistance, members of the tribe's six bands raised a collective eyebrow.

"There are a lot of people who offer things to Indians," said Winona LaDuke, a member of the White Earth Band and director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project. "I see a lot of snake oil salesmen coming to Indian country."

But the deal proved genuine: Texas-based Citgo dispensed millions of gallons of heating oil last year to roughly 181,000 American households in need in the Northeast and is expanding the program this winter, according to the company's website. LaDuke now is a facilitator for Citgo's program in Minnesota.

Still, there were the political connotations of accepting fuel from a firm owned by Venezuela's state oil company. The firm has a direct link to President Hugo Chavez, who famously called President Bush "the devil" in September during a speech at the United Nations.

Citgo's program, called "From the Venezuelan Heart to the U.S. Hearths," has been widely viewed as an effort by Chavez to embarrass the U.S. government. A few native villages in Alaska recently rejected Citgo's offer.

Wayne Bohn, an attorney for the Leech Lake Band, said the politics of the deal were "hotly debated," but the tribe didn't see the point in rejecting the offer.

"To us, it would be a foolish move. We're not a wealthy tribe," Bohn said. "We could make a political statement, but making a political statement while your people freeze is not very wise."

Citgo will donate a lump sum to each of the six bands based on how many members are eligible for state heating assistance. Those band members will receive direct credits on their heating bills through Citgo's program, said Gary Frazer, the tribe's executive director.

Citgo has allotted 250 gallons of heating oil or the equivalent for each household. With Citgo figuring that each gallon is worth $2.25, the donation is $562.50 per household, about a 40 percent discount on most winter heating bills for homes on Chippewa reservations. The program runs from Nov. 15 until March 15.

Based on last year's state heating-assistance rolls, the tribe estimates that more than 2,700 households will be eligible for aid. Tribal day-care facilities for children and the elderly will also get a discount on heating fuel.

The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe -- an umbrella group that includes Bois Forte, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs and White Earth bands -- plans to distribute money to the bands in the coming weeks.

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/833632.html