Since the DFP’s last article on the Koch brothers, certain events, both humorous and compelling, have involved the covert political powerhouse. A recap of the infamous duo’s past couple of weeks:

After successfully convincing secretaries and aides that he was indeed Mr. Koch, the blogger was connected to the Governor. The conversation went right to Walker’s budget repair legislation and the protests against it in the state capital. The impersonator told Walker that he considered “planting some troublemakers” (possibly with the help of Americans for Prosperity, a special interest group supported by the brothers) to damage the protestors’ image.

Scott responded by saying he had considered the same idea. After agreeing with the fake Koch’s statement that MSNBC’s Mika Brzeznski is a “real piece of ass,” Walker revealed his aspiration to defeat unions à la Reagan and the striking air traffic controllers of 1981. The fake Koch then promised, “Once you crush those bastards I’ll fly out to Cali and show you a good time.” Walker accepted this offer and claimed that his efforts are done in the name of freedom.

The phone call revealed more about Scott Walker than it did the Kochs. Still, Walker’s obvious truculence demonstrates the brothers’ influence. James Joyner of Outside the Beltway says the call “showed the extent to which politicians are beholden to campaign money.” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate noted Walker’s refusal to listen to the workers of Wisconsin while nonetheless listening to an oil billionaire. The Wisconsin Legislature has responded to the prank by introducing a bill that would prohibit misleading call recipients about the caller’s identity. State Republicans like Mary Lazich have authored the bill, which would also ban masking one’s voice during a phone call.

A ‘hacktivist’ group, Anonymous, recently started an Internet protest against paper products of Koch companies and its subsidiaries. The blacklisted products include popular toilet papers like Quilted Northern, Brawny, Angel Soft as well as a list of other brands owned by Koch subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. In a press release, the group invites all citizens of the United States to join in the effort against what they see as an attempt to “usurp American Democracy” by the Kochs. While this effort has spread awareness about the brothers’ shady doings, the prominence of Koch Industries products will make it hard to have a real effect on the powerful conglomerate.

Last week I had the opportunity to interview three-time US presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Our conversation, which ranged from topics of consumer advocacy, collective bargaining, the media, and the election process, begins at the fourth paragraph below.

Beyond his political ambitions, Mr. Nader is a renowned consumer advocate whose 1965 report on car safety is largely credited with inspiring Congress to pass federal seat belt laws. Additionally, he founded Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG) and the Center for Study of Responsive Law, where he now works alongside his “Nader’s Raiders”—a team of expert investigators, attorneys, and consumer advocates.

Since his last election, Nader has received scant media attention. To my surprise, though, he has been far from quiet in Washington, advocating for more legislation and creating more non-profit organizations than ever.

When I asked him what new initiatives he’s involved with, he replied, “Well we’re always busy. We were recently trying to pass a bill in response to the recent recalls with Toyota, but it got vetoed by the Republicans in Congress. We have also been working on financial regulation reform. So to answer your question, we at CSRL believe people need more choices and more voices. And in this era of corporate globalization, we need to remind people that some things are not for sale. Government should not be for sale. Basic education should not be for sale. Democracy around the world is on the verge of a huge breakthrough, and now its time to subordinate corporatism to the sovereignty of the people here in the United States. Look how little energy it took to sound the national alarm in Wisconsin!”

Knowing that Nader is not known for optimism, I pointed out that “the overall political climate of the US right now, at least in the media, is a tendency for liberals to compromise both in Town Halls and in the White House. What about the watered-down Obama budget, or the growing resistance to liberal institutions in the Midwest?”

“The Republicans are just better fighters than the Democrats,” Nader, the Independent, responded. “Unlike Republicans, Democrats often flounder in their victories and lose lasting impact. Governor Scott Walker won his election on a tea-party platform sponsored by the Koch Brothers and driven by mass media, and now that he is there he plans to exercise his power.” (This statement that Walker ran on a tea-party platform is actually inaccurate. In reality, Walker ran on a moderate platform and beat out a self-described tea-party candidate in the Republican Primary). Nader continued, “You’ll notice that when you hear conservatives talking about the hot issues, their arguments are generally either factually inaccurate or extremely vague moral or ethical stances.”

“Scott Walker has been defending the ban on collective bargaining on the grounds that collective bargaining punishes the most efficient workers,” I added. “He also says that it is necessary to reduce the deficit in a struggling economy. How would you respond to that?”

“Collective bargaining exists,” said Nader, “so that if somebody messes up they go to their union and file a complaint, and based on their argument they evaluate the complaint to raise standards or wages. Nothing about that punishes an efficient worker. On the contrary, the most productive workforce in American history were the car manufacturers in the 50’s who were supported by the largest unions in the country. Walker is just using the deficit as a so-called ‘useful’ crisis which he hopes will gain momentum in order to fight other democratic institutions associated with unions, such as health care reform. The truth is that Wisconsin’s total deficit isn’t actually that bad. Even if the crisis were real, we should not be taking money away from unions first. What about the corporations and special interests to whom the Wisconsin taxpayers gave over $140 million last year? Which one should go first?”

The actual budget deficit in Wisconsin is $137 million, and is by no means an outlier when compared to other states. Contrary to popular belief, Wisconsin’s public sector is among the 10 leanest in the country. The idea that the Wisconsin deficit is due to a ballooning public sector with a byzantine bureaucracy is a myth.

“The decision of the Democrats to flee the state,” I suggested, “while passionate and successful in the short term, is not a long term solution. As a specialist in legal matters, what do you think is the best way to win back collective bargaining in the long run? Is anything Scott Walker doing illegal? What about threatening to cut 12,000 jobs if the protesters don’t stand down, isn’t that essentially blackmail?”

“Governor Walker isn’t doing anything illegal,” Nader said with cold confidence. “The best thing we can do is elect him out of office in two years. In the long run, what we can focus on is teaching students and advocates better civic skills. Even up there at Dartmouth, they teach you how to maximize efficiency and profits, and to do many other wonderful arts and sciences, but they don’t teach you how to defend your rights, organize a protest, and subordinate the corporations to the sovereignty of the people.”

Though I had told myself to refrain from questioning him about his presidential campaign, I couldn’t help but ask, “Many people, both Democrats and Republicans, claim that you were the reason why Bush was elected to 8 years in office. How do you justify your presidential campaign in 2000?”

“This is an absurd idea. The American people have the freedom to vote for whomever they want, and the suggestion that I should not run for president goes directly against the constitutional right for my supporters to vote for whoever you want.”

Finally, as I had the impression that Mr. Nader was extraordinarily well informed, I asked him where he reads his news.

“You know, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian. They tend to cover everything, and after a while you get used to cutting through all the fat. One publication that I recommend especially for the liberal-minded is an online publication called ‘Progressive Populist.’ It really has a lot of great ammunition for people like you, with columns by really eloquent people like Amy Goodman from Democracy Now.”

I thanked Mr. Nader for his time and he immediately asked me for my address so that he could send me a box full of books, magazines, and other resources. If there is one thing If there is one thing I learned about Ralph Nader from this interview, beyond that he has an unapologetic yet benevolent attitude towards politics, it is that the man certainly does his homework.

For your consideration: Anyone who remembers 8th grade US History might recall the progressive journalist Ida Tarbell as among the first and most influential of the “muckrakers.” What you might not recall, however—what your teacher might have neglected to impart—is that the chief offender for whose shame Tarbell diligently raked muck had come close to—but decided against—buying out her father’s struggling oil company.

All Koch’d Up – “Prosperity”

The Great Gatsby and the efforts of Charles and David Koch to libertarian-ize America present eerily similar pictures of what we all know as “The American Dream.” My favorite thing about the Tea Party, if I have to pick one, is that its hosts like to play Jay Gatsby. They would stay always in panoptical confinement relative to the fruits of their funds if they could, but alas—print media! In August 23rd’s New Yorker Jane Mayer profiled Charles and David Koch and revealed, seemingly to the brothers’ bitter disappointment, that they essentially funded the Tea Party movement by way of Americans For Prosperity (AFP). AFP is an epic political action committee (PAC), one of the largest in Washington, and is largely funded by Koch Industries—a giant private energy (oil) company based in Wichita—and by the out-lying Koch Foundations.

These bros, known in Washington as “the Kochtopus,” have had their tentacles in everything for decades. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and historian (who once worked at a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund) told The New Yorker, regarding the Tea Party movement, that the Kochs are “Trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.” For what it’s worth, they have personally denied any involvement in the Tea Party movement. In response to The New Yorker article, Koch Industries immediately published “Koch Facts,” which outlined the alleged truth about Koch Industries’ and Koch Foundations’ philosophy and initiatives.

Charles and David Koch want—as their political “philanthropy” choices suggest—most of all to reshape American politics in accordance with their far right ideals. According to Jane Mayer’s article in The New Yorker, their political values were drilled into them first by their father. Later, these values were fine-tuned by exposure to Robert LeFevre’s radical libertarian philosophy. Since their mainstream political failure in 1980, when David Koch ran on the Libertarian ticket with Ed Clark (opposing Reagan from the right), they have used their personal wealth to actively accrue underground political influence wherever possible. Self-interest, possible “daddy” issues, power-madness and deep-seated misconceptions, which allow them to mistake money for freedom, help explain the last few decades’ Koch initiatives. Nothing, however, excuses them.

For one thing, oil—Koch Industries’ next favorite thing after “anarcho-totalitarianism” (William F. Buckley’s name for Ed Clark’s far, far right brand of libertarianism)—is bad news, as are AFP initiatives to “rein in” the EPA. It’s no surprise that the Cato Institute, the first Libertarian think tank in America—initially funded by the Kochs and friends in 1977—has for years now succeeded in curtailing Americans’ belief in global warming. Cato—like Koch Industries—puts commerce before climate change, and the Institute has funded dozens of studies that dispute global warming. It even took out a full-page anti-global warming ad in the New York Times in 2008, and has fought the Clean Air Act tooth and nail. And now that the Kochs, through the AFP, principally fund the House Energy and Commerce Committee, committee members intend to reverse restrictions on greenhouse gases and actively fight the Clean Air Act, according to a recent LA Times article.

The Kochs’ Gastby-esque behaviors persist, considering the Kochs’ subtly lawbreaking, tax-evasive and generally slippery power-gaining tactics. And hey: let’s say the American people are Daisy Buchanan; any given incumbent administration is Tom; the Kochs’ dream of an anarcho-totalitarian, populist America is Gatsby, and what’s this? Gatsby’s finally got some game? The Tea Party movement is his party mansion on West Egg. Be wary, Daisy. Be wise: stay hip to their tricks, if you can!

Balm for the Hopeful Soul – “Progress”

Republicans fear and often craft their own elaborate conspiracy theories about Hungarian-born moneyman and philanthropist George Soros’ “secret plots” to take over the nation. There’s no denying that George Soros is pretty scary: he’s basically a philanthropic version of Gordon Gekko. He is—thank God—also on our side.

Soros’ philanthropy, unlike the Kochs’, has never been much of a secret. In 2010, a record low year for charitable giving, he capped Slate’s Top Sixty Donors list as the number one philanthropist of the year, having given $332 million to his own Open Society Foundations, which fund democratic initiatives in the United States and more than 70 countries across the globe. A little more covertly, Soros provided the seed funds for the Center for American Progress (CAP), another large-scale PAC, whose latest and most effective initiatives include the renowned global warming blog ClimateProgress.org and the progressive site MoveOn.org.

Soros broke the British pound and predicted the ’08 bubble-burst, but perhaps the scariest thing about him, for people like Glenn Beck, is that he’s foreign. The actual unlikelihood of Soros’ trying to do in America what he did in revolutionary Yugoslavia is not so obvious to everyone. George Soros is the last guy right wing conspiracy theorists want playing the little man behind the curtain and overturning our government because (who knows?) he just might be able to pull it off, and there’s no guarantee we could stop him if he tried—unless we sic the Koch brothers on him.

There is something refreshing about the raw spirit of the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Their messages were simple and unwavering, and the best part was that they didn’t have a face—political dissent was carried out in pure, unadulterated form— by the masses. The protesters have proven that the previously foolproof military, economic, and social tools on which Arab dictators relied to suppress their populations no longer work as well as they used to. Though democracy in the Arab world is still far from ubiquitous, it is clear that the people have begun to insist on the basic democratic tenets of limited terms in office and freedom of speech. We have a long way to go in fulfilling our goals of “reaching out a hand to Egypt,” as President Obama pledged in his Cairo speech last year. But it is obvious that the democratic movement in the Arab world is accelerating.

Unlike Arabic revolutions in years past, when murder and mass oppression could go unnoticed for months or years, the revolution in Egypt, from start to finish, lasted only a few weeks. In Tunisia, one man lit himself on fire and within weeks that fire had spread to the rest of the country via the internet and cell phones. The result transformed the entire country. In comparison, the Iranian revolution of 1979, which was considered exceptionally speedy and widely popular, lasted a year.

Of course, in 1979, Iranians didn’t have the internet. In contrast, with today’s increased connectivity between vastly disparate cultures across the globe, the oppressive chokehold of dictators across the Arab world is beginning to slip. Experts disagree as to whether or not the revolutions are the beginning of a more widespread and frequent series of democratic uprisings to come. One thing, however, I think we can all agree upon: when they do happen, they will probably be quicker and hopefully easier than ever before.

Again, this is not to say that the revolution in Cairo was by any means “easy.” At least 135 protesters were killed during the 18 days of battle, and many hundreds more were wounded. But compared with the estimated 3,000 people killed in the Iranian Revolution, this number is a sigh of relief. The truth is that one man who is videotaped dying for his country will have a much greater political effect than many more equally brave men giving their lives without media coverage.

The important role that internet-based media has played in the Arab revolutions is undeniable. And yet, ask any Egyptian or expert on the matter, and they will tell you that such media platforms played only a secondary role in the revolutions. Facebook and Twitter are applications, not people; they cannot get angry and they certainly cannot fight. Revolutions have taken place for thousands of years before any of these were invented. To credit the success of the revolution in Egypt to these technological advancements from the comfort of our privileged lives is to disrespect the brave and arduous struggle of protesters. Technological advancements must take, at most, a secondary role to the human willpower in our analysis of what has happened in the past few weeks, as Kate Miller makes clear in her column inside.

And yet, staging a revolution is not just a cooperation problem; it is also a coordination problem. Without either of the two—if the military had not finally sided with the protesters, or if protesters hadn’t found a way to circumvent cell phone and Internet outages—the revolution would have been much messier, and in all likelihood Mubarak would still be in power. Without any single revolutionary figurehead, the protesters had to resort to a Google map of the current protest locations in Cario (televised on AlJazeera) to assemble and motivate hundreds of thousands of people within minutes.

As the global internet nexus continues to expand and intensify, so will the strategic efforts of dictators to suppress information and media. The scale of the Egyptian internet shutdown was unprecedented: 97% of Egyptian internet traffic disappeared in minutes, with just enough remaining for the stock market to function. Nothing comparable has ever happened in history. Even more impressive, however, was the tenacity of Egyptian protesters who managed to use what little resources they had to penetrate the information barrier to coordinate their struggle into a concerted movement. With the aid of technology, every Egyptian could act as a journalist, and every world citizen could become an activist.

Before this all started, most Americans I spoke to were largely unaware of the dire situation in Egypt, a country that receives roughly $1.7 billion of American taxpayers’ money every year—more than the budget of our lovely State of Vermont next door. This disconnect between our intimate political connection with Egypt and our public awareness of the country was no mistake: Mubarak understood the value of controlling the flow of public information—whether in the form of cell phones, television, or social media.

And his understanding was spot on. Freezing the media may not provide long term “solutions,” but it certainly acts as an anesthetic during times of upheaval. Note the 1959 Cuban Revolution: the first thing Fidel Castro and Che Guevara did when they laid siege on Havana was to destroy every existing media company, replacing them with the socialist propaganda machine “Cubavision.” Next, they replaced all newspapers with a single government-run publication called “Granma.” By controlling the media, from the newspaper to TV to the internet today, they were able to solidify a movement that still exists after 50 years.

Both in Cuba and across the Arab world, things are beginning to change. It is becoming cheaper and easier to start an Internet blog, buy a cell phone, or watch restricted TV channels. The problem of coordinating an organized demonstration is becoming increasingly surmountable. Ultimately, though, without the willpower and cooperation of the masses, this does not get anyone anywhere. What these media technologies do is help open the doors of democracy across the world. If every country living under oppressive rule eventually gains access to this kind of public media, then the voices of the oppressed will be impossible to ignore. Such a future would by no means be perfect; there would still be miscommunication and general bad behavior. But hey, isn’t that what democracy is all about?

Founder Jimmy Wales (pictured) launched Wikipedia in 2001.

In my opinion, there are two distinctly polar views that people hold of Wikipedia; some take its every word to be true despite its seeming unreliability while others actively question the validity of its content. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which professionals claim is only suited to provide brief background knowledge and yet is responsible for the recent surge in cursory research, has been extremely influential in its ten years of existence. Regardless of its questionable reputation, it is thanks to Wikipedia that the current generation has access to a plethora of free information.

Although Wikipedia is revolutionary in that it grants its users free, instant access to an estimated seventeen million articles, no one benefits from the fact that over eighty percent of it is content is edited by men. This overwhelming majority of male editors may or may not materialize systematically biased encyclopedia articles. However, this fact may explain why, according to The Examiner, “approximately eighty-one percent of the Wikipedia articles about living people are about males.”

That so many fewer women are less inclined to exhibit their analytical ability than men is unsettling. Historical, societal, and traditional treatments of women in the media and in real life engender social disparity between men and women. This is not news. Still, I have to think that women even today inadvertently facilitate acceptance of the characteristics stereotypically associated with their sex. We have yet to see women negotiate for higher salaries to anywhere near the extent that men have. That there is still lingering apprehension among women to initiate assertiveness may account for why men are overwhelmingly more likely than women to negotiate higher salaries—in fact, nine times more likely according to Slate magazine.

However, women’s ability to vie intellectually with men has held increasing credibility in recent years. Perhaps as a reaction to former Harvard president Larry Summers’ extremely controversial 2005 study of women’s roles in the male dominated fields, Drew Gilpin Faust became the first female Harvard president as of 2007. And whether you love Hilary Clinton or hate her, you cannot deny that she has made a stride for women’s empowerment after establishing herself as America’s first viable female presidential candidate

Clearly we females can bring it, but why the hesitation when asking for raises? I would hope that the apprehension that discourages women from asking for a raise is not the same apprehension that discourages women from contributing their knowledge to an audience of over “400 readers a month” (Techspot). Whatever the reason is for this disparity in male and female contributions, it is encouraging to know that Wikipedia’s primary goals is the diversification of its editing staff. According to a Huffington Post article, female scholars, the most underrepresented demographic, as well as scholars of various age-groups and ethnicities will be recruited to join existing editors. Diversification is just one of the many endeavors set forth to improve Wikipedia’s site and service in honor of its ten year global celebration.

After ten years of reading Wikipedia articles, what have we learned? Wikipedia is convenient? Yes. Absolutely reliable? Doubtful. Gender-biased? Probably. Free? At least for now. Anyone who has read a Wikipedia article within the last two months will be familiar with the name Jimmy Wales or at least with his steely gaze and the words, “Please read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.” Reading the appeal reminded me why I am drawn to such a site. In his appeal, Wales implores readers to donate to the non-profit Wikipedia Foundation. The volunteer based web-project, which prides itself on being “the free encyclopedia,” raised the targeted sixteen million; the amount needed to keep the site running, at least for now. Despite its popularity, Wikipedia’s future could be in a state of peril unless, as Wales puts it, we are sure to “keep it free of charge and free of advertising.”

This is what I find great about Wikipedia; you’re bound to find the answers to your questions by the first, or at the very least, fourth search result, information that facilitates an interactive and culminating experience of learning by linking terms of variously related concepts throughout a single article due to its simplicity of navigation, the unadulterated experience of reading without being bombarded with ads targeting specific age groups, and access to non-partisan information.

Whether you frequent the site to quench your curiosity, combat ignorance in a specific field of study, or simply supplement course material, Wikipedia continues to be the front-running online encyclopedia. Whether or not Wikipedia is unbiased is uncertain, but we do know that Wikipedia’s fate is no more certain than its credibility. The tenth anniversary efforts to keep Wikipedia free are a reminder of this uncertainty, but looking back on these ten years also remind us of the impact a single website has had in just a decade, and will continue to have on society, for better or for worse.

Fourteen trillion, 57 billion, 176 million, 190 thousand and 762 dollars — the total of federal debt as of January 20th. That’s more than $40 thousand for every man, woman and child in the United States. In comparison, the debt in 200 per capita would have been about $20,000 (about 25k if adjusted for inflation). In 1980, the government owed about 11 thousand dollars for each citizen in today’s money.

The problem with the debt isn’t just that it’s huge, but that it’s too huge for anyone — politicians and citizens alike — to easily comprehend. Any number in the billions or trillions sounds very big, and it’s very difficult to conceive how large it actually is.

Recently, this number passed a milestone: In the second quarter of 2010, the U.S. government’s debt exceeded the total debt privately held by businesses for the first time in 13 years. The fact that the government owes more than the private sector is troubling, but not entirely surprising. The government borrowed large amounts of money to finance economic recovery, and took on the debts of private banks when it bailed them out. The problem is that the government is ill-suited to handle debt. While private businesses generally repay their debts in a timely manner or go bankrupt, the government can continue to borrow without much fear of collapsing — and can always print money to repay their debts if they spiral out of control.

Unfortunately, printing money to pay off debts causes inflation, which cripples the economy. Holding debt is not a much better option. Unless they are paid off, debts require large interest payments (about $400 billion a year). These interest payments are lost money, and they must be paid for through taxes, budget surpluses or (often) more borrowing. In this way, debt can be as harmful to the economy as inflation: budget surpluses could only be achieved by massively cutting the size of the government and the services it offers, and increasing taxes drags the national economy down by making production more expensive.

As worrying as the ballooning national debt is, most economists would agree that government debt can be a positive force. In times of recession, private businesses and individuals are wary of spending money, which worsens the economic situation. Deficit spending by the government is often the only way to ensure economic recovery. Balancing the budget during times of economic crisis can be disastrous; many believe that the great depression was largely caused by President Hoover’s insistence on balancing the budget by raising taxes.

Although short-term debt can be a necessary investment for growth, at some point the national debt level becomes dangerously, unsustainably high. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to tell where that line is. Greece experienced a major debt crisis at a lower debt per capita, but Switzerland is considered one of the world’s most stable economies despite having a per capita debt of six figures.

Another concerning aspect of the national debt is that it is held by other countries – in our case, mostly China. Should foreign investors start to refuse to lend money to the U.S. (or increase the interest rates at which they lend),. the U.S. economy would go into shock— decreasing the value of the dollar. This gives China substantial leverage over the United States, which puts us (at least somewhat) at the mercy of the Chinese government.

I’ve been looking at debt per capita, but there are other useful ways of looking at debt. One way is as a percentage of GDP (the value of all goods and services produced in the country). This comparison shows that our debt is certainly high now, but not as high as it was at the end of World War II. It is also interesting to note that Republicans and Democrats have both increased and decreased the debt, and that it is not tied to a political party as politicians often claim.

Debt can certainly be a positive force, and was definitely a necessity to combat the recession. But ,as the economy recovers, the government must consider reducing, —or at least reducing the the growth rate , of—the national debt to be a priority. Otherwise, the debt will eventually force major economic cutbacks to pay off creditors, and perhaps cause a recession or depression.

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see… that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
-Henry David Thoreau

As the mid-winter cold descends, the war machine rolls on free of any friction or restraint. Come October 2011 the War in Afghanistan will be ten years old. It has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians, along with thousands of U.S., coalition and Afghan troops. The larger War on Terror has expanded to two continents as the CIA carries out covert and illegal military operations in countries as varied as Yemen, Kenya, and Tajikistan. Thus far, the U.S. has spent nearly $400 billion in Afghanistan. It will likely spend another $119 billion in 2011. Little progress has been made in defeating the Taliban. Particularly damning is a private statement made by General Petraeus: “I don’t think you win this war… This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

To pursue his war, President Obama has reneged on campaign promises and ignored the voices of the American majority opposed to it. To what avail, then, this endless death and suffering, this abandonment of the democratic principles of our country?

The War in Afghanistan should not be reduced to the status of mere “strategic blunder.” I am not suggesting that had the Taliban been routed, had civilian casualties been halved, this war would be justified. Any such critique, which confines itself to the moral void of “strategy,” is as irresponsible as it is parochial, for it leaves unchallenged the institutional structures of power most responsible for our aggression. It allows propagandists to justify future wars with allegedly “better” intelligence. It allows unjust wars to occur again. And again.

The war must instead be challenged as morally and fundamentally wrong. The idea of American exceptionalism, which encourages the U.S. to occupy any country it “deems” threatening—to ignore international law and commit crimes against humanity—must be rebuked. Only then, will we be able to challenge the legitimacy of the war machine. This is not a matter of policy, of the Democratic/Republican divide, or the internal workings of the CIA. Rather, war, in this country, transcends party-lines and generation gaps. It culminates in historical and everlasting imperialism. The American state is a military-industrial complex that draws on nearly all sectors of the economy. It is an inertial behemoth, unresponsive to the statutes of international law or the voices of public opinion. It feeds on profit and death. After devastating one country, it moves to the next, destroying economies and lives. It is a machine, and it must be stopped.

Appeals to mainstream channels of power are useless. Obama, elected in part for his anti-war message, has betrayed the public by expanding and prolonging the war. As Israel-Iran tensions build, U.S. involvement in Iran seems inevitable. Elected Democratic representatives are now virtually powerless to stop American aggression. What choice, then, is left for those who despise war, for those who morally and fundamentally oppose such policies, to voice their opposition? How does one confront and challenge the barbarity of our war state?

On December 16, 2010, 131 activists—myself included—chose the route of civil resistance. Led by anti-war group Veterans for Peace, we illegally stood against the White House fence, demanding that Obama end his policy of endless war. One by one we were handcuffed, photographed, placed in paddy wagons, and driven to Anacostia Detention Center. Along with a majority of veterans, those arrested included Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, and CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin. After hours in jail, we were released. Those who refused to pay the small fine were given court dates.

Moral acts of protest and civil resistance ideally move from isolated events to broad cultural movements. Starting with just a few individuals, they can grow to include millions and produce lasting and dramatic effects on society. Both the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam movement are examples to this end. At the December 16 protest, we hoped that our work might inspire a similarly broad movement. Yet no one doubted the enormity of the task ahead. None of us underestimated the perseverance that would be required. The War in Afghanistan, for most Americans, lacks the immediacy of Vietnam or of Civil Rights. With no draft, only a minority of citizens, mainly soldiers and their friends and family, experience the war directly. The sorrow and trauma of combat is thus contained, perhaps to the preclusion of a broad, popular movement.

But there was another motivation for our actions. One simpler, more personal. Through my conversations with the veterans and my fellow activists, and through the speeches and the songs, this motivation sounded a clear, pure note. It was the moral imperative to oppose that which is wrong.

Mario Savio, speaking at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964, aptly described this motivation. Addressing protestors, the leader of the Free Speech Movement spoke:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.

By leaving the structures of power unchallenged, we participate—if only passively—in the execution of its crimes. As the War in Afghanistan trudges on, all of us are partly responsible. Our tax dollars, our economic output, even our symbolic allegiance to the U.S. allow the war to continue. The burden of war rests not only on the shoulders of policy makers, but on ours too.

Thus, only active opposition to the war will lessen our complicity. Protest, civil resistance, speeches, articles—these all, if ever so slightly, work to this end. The goal of an anti-war movement is peace. And yet, in the absence of this accomplishment, we must not believe that our efforts have been wasted. If one solitary veteran, suffering from the trauma of war, sees a protest and knows that she has not been abandoned, then all our work will be justified. If by merely holding a sign, encourages a passerby to consider an issue previously insignificant to him, then all our efforts will likewise be justified. And if by rmerely efusing to give up, by refusing to descend to indifference—by working day after day, year after year to combat injustice—we keep warm the embers of hope, then our efforts, our lives, will be justified.

Starkly reminding us of the threat of domestic terrorism, the Tucson shootings killed 6 people, severely injured 14, and opened old wounds across the nation. The episode has sparked a finger-pointing debate that seeks to find a single motive for the tragic episode. This event, albeit similar to other lone-wolf terrorist acts, should be treated with particular attention. If analyzed correctly—with specific attention to the perpetrator’s derangement and the charged political environment—this event can cast a light on its greater social and political context.

It may be seductive to blame this tragedy on recent dissent movements, lax gun control policies, or political demagogues. It is relatively easy to forgo the real, underlying factors in favor of finding guilt in a person or institution. However, if we really want to know why tragedies like this happen, we should begin by recognizing that a combination of several conditions make people like Loughner act and react how he did.

More often than not, the media only impedes this kind of rational approach.

While most of the national news venues converge to cover statements, and focus on heated speeches by key politicians from both sides of the aisle, the man behind the shootings of January 8th, Jared Lee Loughner, 22, remains a puzzle largely avoided or touched very lightly by the headlines. Speculation over his political ideologies seems to dominate attempts to describe him. Even after investigating his background, national media outlets have offered little light into the mental state, which most convincingly influenced his recent homicidal actions. We should focus more closely on his mental health and less closely on his alleged political ideology.

However, it would be a mistake to categorically think of someone with any mental disturbance as a ticking time bomb. Most cases in this country are monitored regularly, and patients tend to assimilate better in society and become functional members. Contrary to popular belief, a great number of these patients give no indication of future violence. The distinguishing factor between most mental health cases and Loughner’s—and this is key in his case—is that any undiagnosed or untreated patient runs the risk of developing symptoms and engaging in destructive behavior. We must consider this factor as a valid condition that renders the individual more inclined to act and feel abnormally.

After spending some time researching his life, I’ve noticed a pattern that could identify him as someone living with schizophrenia. I may not be an expert, but the conditions that Loughner exhibits are curiously similar to those caused by the disorder. These include hallucinations, social detraction, and substance abuse. Additionally, modern psychiatry has associated Schizophrenia with the loss of cognition and a swift change in behavior and emotions. These symptoms impair the individual from thinking and acting rationally and generally become evident only after adolescence. Through most of Loughner’s belongings and writings we find rambling behavior and attitudes indicative of unstable thoughts and emotions. Those close to him confirmed a shift in personality, from once talented and amiable, to quiet, somber, delusional, or“creepy.”Yet even with these symptoms, he never attended counseling, or sought any other kind of psychiatric help.

During his time at Pima Community College, Loughner repeatedly caused disturbances in class. His writings and videos found online indicated that his problems stemmed from feelings of deception and constraint by the college and the federal government. Counselors and teachers have also described how his violent attitudes ended with his dismissal from the college.

While not trying to exculpate Loughner from the crimes committed, the public must discern fairly the information presented by the media. Yes, he ultimately committed murder, but our laws have long held that any person with a veridical mental disorder should not be tried in the same way mentally healthy individuals is.

Why, then, are people focusing on demagogues who have indirectly advocated for retaliation against Democratic politicians? The media has long held a reputation of going after headlines that do not directly tackle the issue, but rather tangentially discuss it, focusing more on what’s in vogue. In this case, the fashion trend is the charged political atmosphere and special interest movements.

But, if the point is to find an actual connection between Sarah Palin’s rhetoric, gun control, and Loughner’s killing spree, then I gladly affirm two points. Both stem from the idea of responsibility:
Firstly, though rhetoric was indeed heated, demagogues were ultimately within their rights to express their discontent with the current political leadership. However, as elected political officials, they should practice responsible freedom of speech. Leaders must be aware that their words will have an impact beyond their person; materials will be read, speeches will be heard; banners will be waved. Their message will thus be extended to people who may not process it correctly, opening the door to misinterpretations and misguided actions.

Secondly, any reform of gun control law should not be perceived as an attempt to take away the beloved freedom to possess a gun. It is only about guaranteeing responsible gun use. Like we saw in this tragedy, we must evaluate how we think of this freedom because Loughner, obviously, should never have held a gun.
What happened in Arizona is something that has a greater lesson. The issue here is not about political demagogy or gun rights. It is about mental health and healthcare in our country; it is a call to revise policies on medical intervention for the mentally ill, yet also a mandate for responsibility. Above all, it is a call for prudence when exercising our right to speak, assemble, and bear arms.

At 9:45 a.m. on April 20th, an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling rig owned by British Petroleum (BP) in the Gulf of Mexico. Survivors had mere minutes to escape the inferno as black, multi-story clouds of smoke rose into the sky. The captain of a rescue boat reported the fire as being so hot that it melted the paint off of his boat. One hundred and fifteen were evacuated, 17 of whom were injured. After burning for two days, the Deepwater Horizon sank at 10:21 a.m. on April 22nd. By that time the United States National Guard had already covered more than 1000 miles by sea and air in a massive rescue operation. The next day, the Guard called off the search for 11 missing persons who were probably incinerated on the spot and are now presumed dead. At a press conference on April 30th, BP still did not know the cause of the explosion. Interviews with rig workers conducted during BP’s internal investigation revealed that a bubble of flammable methane gas escaped from the oil well and shot up the drill column, expanding rapidly and bursting through several barriers before igniting and exploding in what is known as a blowout.

According to the most recent estimates, the oil spill emanating from the site of the sunken rig measures an area of at least 2,500 square miles and is viewable from space. Five to twenty-five thousand barrels, or between two hundred thousand and a million gallons, of crude oil from the Macondo Prospect deepwater oil field is being discharged into the Gulf daily. Efforts have been made to contain the spill, including the construction of a hundred ton steel-and-concrete box, and the controlled burning of sections of oil slick in open water. However, the spill will surely eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez as the worst US oil disaster in history. The oil slick has already reached the Gulf coast 48 miles away. On May 8th, blobs of tar appeared on Alabama’s white beaches. Like the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, also caused by a blowout of an Union Oil rig, this oil spill will undoubtedly cause black tides and the unnecessary deaths of endangered turtle and bird species. The spill will damage fishing and tourism industries in addition to destroying or disrupting hundreds of estuaries, deltas, ecosystems and habitats that house thousands of species. This is the Gulf Coast environment’s 9/11. Like the human version, this 9/11 is a call to arms, not against the Middle East, but the United States’ continued reliance on oil, coal and other fossil fuels, whether dredged from the Middle East or from off our shores.

Like the recession, the blowout wasn’t supposed to happen, and like bailout companies such as AIG and GM, Deepwater Horizon was “too big to fail.” Reminiscent of the Titanic, Deepwater was built to epic proportions. The ultra-deepwater, column-stabilized, semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) or floating drill rig was completed for Transocean Ltd. by South Korean Hyundai Heavy Industries in 2001 and leased to BP until 2013. One of the largest of its kind and built to tap leftover oil beds once inaccessible due to ocean depth, Deepwater measured 396 by 256 feet, could operate in waters of eight thousand feet deep, and drill up to 30 thousand feet deep. BP churned out a lovely 52-page safety report in February 2009 to condone the necessity of drilling that deep, saying it was “unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities,” and that “due to the distance to shore and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected.” In fact, seven BP executives who were later injured but survived were celebrating Deepwater’s safety record when the blast occurred.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, a lost race of dwarves unearthed a fiery demon while mining for precious metal. Likewise, BP “delved too greedily and too deep,” expressing an eagerness to violate the law by drilling to depths of 22-25 thousand feet instead of the 18 thousand feet maximum depth allowed by its permit. Such eagerness and greed contributed to the calamity.

BP was named as the responsible party by the US government, and will be held accountable for all costs of the clean-up. The company has accepted responsibility but, anticipating multiple lawsuits, now argues that the accident was not entirely its fault because the rig was run by Transocean personnel. Adrian Rose, vice president of Transocean, has said that there was “no indication of any problems” just prior to the blowout. Workers were performing standard routines and the rig was drilling but was not in production. Rose then passed the buck to US oil company Halliburton, which had completed a delicate operation of reinforcing the drilling hole’s metal pipe casing with concrete only 20 hours before the blast. Pressured by Congress on May 1st, Halliburton confirmed that it cemented the Macondo Prospect oil well but never set a cement plug to properly cap the hole, claiming that “operations had not reached a stage where a final plug was needed.” Rose concluded that “undoubtedly abnormal pressure” accumulated in the drill column contributing to the massive destructive power of a single fiery methane bubble. Eighteen of the 39 oil rig blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico have been triggered by poorly-done concrete reinforcements of oil pipes. Meanwhile Haliburton, which has been associated with the Bush family and once had former Vice President Cheney as its CEO, is already under fire in Australia for an earlier catastrophic 2005 blowout in the Timor Sea caused by its faulty application of concrete casing.

Some politicians are still touting a “drill, baby, drill” approach to solving the nation’s up and coming oil crisis. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), for example, still supports offshore drilling and downplayed Deepwater, saying “accidents happen.” Some conservatives see this as an opportunity to criticize President Obama. On May 5th, former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin tweeted “learn from Alaska’s lesson w/foreign oil co’s: don’t naively trust.” Palin, however, seems to forget not only that a Valdez oil tanker leak in 1989 off the coast of Alaska was the fault of ExxonMobil, a U.S. company, but also that BP once employed her husband, Todd. Due to this oil spill’s proximity to New Orleans, right wing pundits have been quick to call Deepwater President Obama’s Katrina. But this comparison is a dangerous one for conservatives if they are trying to make Obama look bad. First, the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2007 was abysmally slow, while in less than a month the Obama Administration has assigned personnel from the Coast Guard, the Corps of Engineers, the Interior Department, the Departments of Commerce and Defense, the EPA and NOAA to the task of investigating and cleaning up the spill. Second, long-term culpability for the disaster belongs to the Bush Administration for the utter corruption of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), an Interior Department oil drilling oversight agency.

Like the recession, Deepwater was another “accident” that was a long time in coming. Both problems can be linked to the Bush Administration’s rabid efforts to deregulate, whether it was Wall Street or “Big Oil.” Between January and March 2001, incoming Vice President Cheney sat down with more than a hundred oil industry officials in secret meetings that eventually drew up a “wish list” of industry demands to be implemented by the Big Oil-friendly administration. Cheney also packed the MMS with many of his oil-loving cronies, who lead the corrupted regulatory agency to go to bed with the industry– often literally. In 2009, the Inspector General conducted an investigation into the MMS that found that MMS officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.” Female employees and sexual favors were sent to industry big wigs in return for illegal oil contracts for agency workers. Agency workers were more likely to turn a blind eye to unsafe or unfair oil company policies if they could do things like get so drunk at a golf event sponsored by Shell that they had to stay in a hotel paid for by Shell. Lobbyists also paid out agency officials with personal contracts, concert tickets, golf, paintball or ski outings and other bribes.

This “culture of ethical failure” that pervaded the industry and its regulatory agency not only cost the American taxpayers millions but also went out of its way to produce bad science to justify unregulated offshore drilling in the tempting, never-before tapped oil prospects of the Gulf of Mexico. The comprised regulatory agency encouraged companies to take dangerous risks, such as BP’s failure to install a deep pipe shut-off valve. Also in 2003, the MMS released a study saying that “acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly.” An acoustic regulator or a remotely triggered “dead man’s” switch could have shut off Deepwater’s gushing pipe at the seafloor oil well opening when the manual switch failed or couldn’t have been reached. However, no such switch was installed on BP’s oilrig because President Bush’s 2005 energy bill dropped an earlier 2000 MMS requirement for such regulators, claiming that industry standards at oilrigs were “failsafe.” An “expensive” acoustic trigger costs $500,000 while the cost of Deepwater will be more than $14 billion.

However, in the wake of Deepwater, it looks like there could be political movement in a better direction. An energy bill in the works that sought to expand offshore drilling will no longer hold water with Democrats, especially those from Gulf Coast states. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said such a bill was “dead on arrival.” Governors have also shown solidarity, most notably Arnold Schwarzenegger of California who said, “You turn on the television and see this enormous disaster, you say to yourself, ‘Why would we want to take on that kind of risk?’” Greenpeace is already out protesting in the capital. They also have an online petition touting clean energy, citing the dangers of not only Deepwater, but another, earlier methane gas explosion that took the lives of 29 West Virginian coal miners in April.

How many more will the U.S. sacrifice for our quest for fossil fuels? Even if Deepwater had not happened, the oil it would have ultimately pumped to the surface would have been later burned for fuel, releasing tons more carbon dioxide into the air. Forget offshore drilling; the U.S. is already scraping the bottom of the barrel with our aging on-shore oil wells and our dependency on OPEC’s volatile gas prices, which were more than four dollars a gallon before the recession. Worldwide, oil wells will only hold out at the current rate of consumption for 30-50 more years. What will we do when those wells run dry? How much more of the environment and the economy will we be willing to lift as a burnt offering to our faulty faith in high profit margins? Surely, the money can’t be worth what we are doing to our planet. Humanity’s funeral pyres of flaming rigs, scrubbed and un-scrubbed smokestacks, and avid coal mining in China are all a part of a fossil fuel complex that is trapping heat in the atmosphere. Doomsday preachers predict the world ending in fire, but their apocalyptic myths can’t be all that far from the reality of global warming.

Thankfully there’s hope on the horizon. By May 12th, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) hopes to unveil his long-awaited bi-partisan energy and climate bill, which aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. No longer will the Senate pander to the obstructions of Big Oil and special interests which perpetuate America’s addiction with dirty, unsafe fossil fuels. Capitol Hill will finally penalize pollution and push the car industry and the national grid into a new era of clean, safe energy. In January’s State of the Union Address, President Obama proposed a plan to combat fossil fuels and unemployment by offering funding to green start-ups that will provide the technology for alternate energies as well as a new wave of “green” jobs. President Obama knows that China, or any nation, that produces a viable industrial alternative to oil or coal will become the world’s future green giant and stands to benefit from the future jobs and capital flowing in from such a venture. President Obama rightfully wants the United States to be that nation. Not only will such a coupling of interests allow the U.S. to get back on its feet, but it will allow us to fulfill the disreputable BP’s early green moniker and finally move “Beyond Petroleum.”

Despite the green movement, even the most optimistic must fear that people tend to care a lot more about terrorism, immigration, abortion and gay rights than the future of the environment. The green revolution, worryingly, has become something of a fad—especially for commercial corporations trying to tap the media’s next great new hype. Terrorism and other topics are indeed very important, but only a few people seem to realize that a planet in peril is just as important and pressing. Somebody has to take green beyond the fad; somebody has to take it seriously. Green jobs must be, have to be, in America’s future. Between oil spills and oils wells drying up, the stakes are just too high for things to be otherwise. Our environment and our world cannot afford another Deepwater.

Last issue, I reported on Dr. Dambisa Moyo’s talk on her book Dead Aid in which she argues that the billions of government-to-government aid to Africa is not only an inefficient mess, but is also hurting African countries. She reasons that aid harms development directly by causing foreign dependence and inflation, and indirectly through corruption, mismanagement of resources, lack of foreign investments, inadequate healthcare and civil unrest. Moyo believes that greatly reducing and eventually eliminating aid will reduce the dependency of African governments on first-world countries and allow them to pursue investments and encourage entrepreneurs and microfinance on their own. The West’s low expectations for the potential of African economic success has kept these nations on a seemingly never-ending stream of aid.

Moyo received her MA from Harvard and her PhD at Oxford. She has worked on hedge funds and macroeconomics for eight years at Goldman Sachs. Hailing from Zambia, she has seen first-hand the effects of the band-aid of aid. Others such as New York University economist William Easterly also agree with Moyo, yet her argument is still up and coming. For years, more aid has been the only way to go. Surprisingly, the man who has backed billions of dollars in Western aid to Africa is none other than Moyo’s former mentor and lecturer: Jeffrey Sachs.

Who is Jeffrey Sachs? Raised in Detroit, Sachs received his BA, MA, and PhD all from Harvard, and was appointed the special advisor to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and from 2002 to 2006 he was the director of the UN Millennium Project. Sachs currently also serves as special advisor to the current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He’s been named as one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” twice, once in 2004 and again in 2005.

Despite Sachs’ impressive education, he still believes that the only way to end extreme poverty, (defined by living below a $1 a day, as 70 percent of the billion people in Africa are) is through donations in the form of billions of dollars from Western governments. He wants to raise worldwide aid from $65 billion a year in 2002 to $195 billion in the 2015. In his New York Times bestseller The End of Poverty, he cites India and China as examples of aid success stories; in the span of two decades (70’s and 80’s), 300 million people in China alone were lifted out of extreme poverty. However he fails to realize that China received little economic aid packages from national governments when it was making the shift from a communist economic framework to capitalist. A major internal land reform was the primary force that lifted thousands of Chinese peasants from the communes into the middle class. Africa instead has received billions of dollars in external aid, yet since 1970 the continent has actually grown poorer. While the rest of the world, for the most part, has grown richer, the GDPs for African nations continue to lag behind.

In a 2009 article in the Huffington Post, Moyo responded to one of Sach’s Huffington Post articles continuing the ongoing dialogue regarding foreign aid. According to Moyo, when Sachs was her lecturer at Harvard he made the statement: “the path to long-term development would only be achieved through private sector involvement and free market solutions.” Nonetheless, Sachs still pushes foreign aid. William Easterly, in his book review of The End of Poverty in the Washington Post and his subsequent book White Man’s Burden, argued that nations stuck in a “poverty trap” can escape without the massive scaling up of government-to-government aid. He offered statistical evidence that many emerging markets in Asia, i.e. China, Singapore and South Korea, have gained momentum without the help of billions of dollars of aid. There is an inherent bigotry in Sach’s approach to ‘helpless Africans.’ Moyo feels that “Mr. Sachs’s development approach was made for countries such as Russia, Poland and Bolivia, whereas the aid- dependency approach, with no accompanying job creation, was reserved for Africa.” Instead of allowing elected officials to represent Africa nations, seven of which have said they don’t need a continuous flow of aid, Sachs and his celebrity friends Bono and Angelina Jolie dictate what Africa needs during UN and G8 conferences.

On the weekend of April 17th, the Dartmouth Great Issues Scholars and yours truly went to YaleUniversity for the 7th Annual Unite for Sight Conference on Global Health and Innovation. Conference sessions were held in a host of different fields, such as: the non-profit sector, philanthropy, medicine, public service, microfinance, human right advocacy, and health policy. There were a number of keynote speakers, including Sachs himself. The Great Issues Scholars had already had lunch with Moyo, heard her talk, and obtained signed copies of her book. That weekend we heard the argument from the other side—Jeff Sachs.

Sachs began his talk by pointing out that it has been a decade since “We the Peoples,” the creation of the Millennium Development Goals: eight commitments against global issues like poverty, treatable disease, discrimination against women, and illiteracy. In 2000, Secretary-General Annan and Sachs challenged the world to achieve these goals by 2015. With only five years left, is the world any closer to ending problems like poverty and hunger? Sachs felt that advances made in technology such as cell phones, the improvement of primary health delivery, new HIV/AIDS medicines, and new finance and business models were helping the whole world work toward achieving the MDGs. Sachs also believed that if the richest one billion in the world each gave $30 year, in one year $30 billion could be put towards the MDGs. Ten cents on each $100 could go to funding health services for the third world.

Sachs remains dedicated to aid because he feels that since African governments have so little to budget, spending on one sector means not having enough to allocate to another sector like, say, healthcare. Because of this, supposedly an African government lacks the ability to improve their entire nation. He sees no window for microfinance and he wishes to quadruple world aid and pad the World Fund. According to Sachs, the UN should also open another global fund and pump troubled economies, such as that of the US, for more money that will be ineffectively used and will contribute to the conditions that necessitate aid in the first place. Sachs says donor countries don’t give enough, and although he makes a good point that the US spends too much on military funding, he wants to press world leaders into passively dumping aid on Africa instead of actively seeking investments in Africa.

For the final question in the Q&A period after the talk, I asked Sachs about his thoughts on Moyo’s position and those of other intellectuals who say aid isn’t working. Sachs became quite spirited, to say the least, and lashed out at Moyo, referring to her as “that Goldman Sachs employee.” One Great Issue Scholar remarked afterward “I thought he was going to jump off the stage and throttle you.” Sachs defense of aid was constituted almost entirely by what Moyo calls the “emotional argument for aid”; his position was mainly ‘Children are dying!’ Indeed, Sachs did mention how he has been to Africa and has seen children suffering and dying but he offered no economic or logical argument for why aid would work just as well as or better than microfinance or investments in the private sector. He offered no rebuttal to the poor track record of aid and offered no end date for aid. He did not even address Moyo’s most powerful argument: that bucket loads of aid may actually be contributing to the continued destitution of the African continent. In a nutshell, Sachs said there are horrible problems in Africa, so don’t criticize aid; just send more money.

The Unite for Sight Conference was, for the most part, a pro-aid community, and Sachs answer was met by applause. Yet it was obvious that introducing the opposing argument was troubling not only Sachs but to the audience. After Sachs left the podium, his wife Sonia Ehrlich-Sachs, MD came up to talk on the Millennium Villages’ progress on the MDGs in Africa. Dr. Sachs wasn’t as charismatic as her husband and her presentation relied more on its power point instead of effective speaking. Those who questioned her wanted to know if the facts and figures she had up on the screen translated into actual lasting improvement on the ground or in the nation’s government. One questioner wanted to know if this was enough evidence to justify that aid was working, especially for “the other side of the debate.”

Now this isn’t meant to villainize Jeff Sachs. Sachs’s privileged position does not prevent him from taking a deep-seated interest in those in need. However, I think his benevolent character prevents him from seeing that there are other, better ways to help Africa. Moyo doesn’t want the West to ignore the needs of Africa, but she feels that continuing to catch all the fish for Africa will keep it in continuous poverty and is not a sustainable economic course for the West, and the US in particular. As Daniel Quinn describes in his book Ishmael, feeding a group of starving people will only allow them to thrive enough to raise the next generation, and unless these children are taught to feed themselves, they will have no choice but to demand even more.

We cannot hold the Continent’s hand forever and then blindly hope that African governments will suddenly become less corrupt and the common people will magically become entrepreneurs and hedge fund managers. And there are signs that others in the aid community think so too. Although Unite for Sight was pro-aid, it appeared from this conference that the not-for-profit sector is in a transitional stage. More and more people want to empower Africa through investments, loans and business models.

The first keynote speaker of the conference, Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund, gave a presentation entitled “Patient Capital for an Impatient World.” The Acumen Fund supports entrepreneurs in Kenya and other parts of eastern Africa who start projects to alleviate poverty. One entrepreneur started a housing project in the slums of Nairobi, offering small, clean houses with indoor plumbing to people living in tin shanties. Most importantly, these houses are not handouts—they aren’t free, but are offered at reduced loans that once paid off are used to build more houses. Novogratz notes that the fact that houses are not free is key because it gives people a sense of dignity rather than shame at being the recipient of hand-outs.

Innovation in aiding Africa doesn’t stop there. Scott Hilstrom, Co-founder and CEO of the HealthStore Foundation helps create local franchises to dispense much needed medicines as an alternative to the many companies selling counterfeit medicine. HealthStore’s franchises not only have local Africans as business owners and mangers, but also provide the needed oversight to prevent the dispensing of fake pills. Ted London, PhD from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, believes in empowering the people and hidden assets at “The Base of Pyramid” (BoP) through nurturing innovators and encouraging social enterprise balanced with traditional enterprise. The new business model for developing economies involves a development community, a private sector and most importantly, interdependence.

Andrew Wok is the CEO of Root Cause, which according to its website is a research and consulting firm dedicated to “mobilizing the non-profit, public and business sectors work together in a new social impact market.” Wok argues that after trillions of dollars have been poured into poor communities, there has not been a corresponding amount of social progress in return. He wants to create a social impact market that nurtures relationships between non-profits, embraces citizens on the ground as public innovators, and engages Western governments as well as local government. Billy Shore of Share Our Strength, a national organization committed to fighting hunger in the US, spoke on achieving global health through small community wealth. The culture of the non-profits must be recast to capture untapped wealth and aspiring entrepreneurs. How the aid community works right now is “good, but not good enough” he says. Shari Barenbach, President and CEO of the Calvert Foundation, also believes in investment at the “base of the pyramid” instead of handouts. Her foundation works to maximize the flow of capital to developing nations through mainstream investments. Allen Hammond, co-founder and chairman of Healthpoint Services sees the need for hybrid profit/non-profit models. In poverty stricken communities, the poor either pay exorbitant amounts for simple things like sanitary napkins from crooked merchants or they receive free medicine, food and other goods and services from the NGOs. However, due to shame, pride or social stigma, they will avoid the NGOs and will continue to pay exorbitant amounts or go without. It is not immoral to charge a small fee for medicine or clean water if a poor community will buy those goods.

Kevin Starr MD, affiliated with the Mulago Foundation for tactical philanthropy, pushed for an overhaul of the entire way the non-for profit sector does business. Instead of focusing on sad anecdotes to attract donors, NGOs need to start thinking like a capitalist business. He offers the microfinance non-profit Kiva as a good example of a successful NGO that is run well and helps poor communities through loans. Moyo is an avid supporter of Kiva.

The bureaucracies of NGOs right now are for the most part flabby and ineffective. They must start thinking about results in impact rather than profits, and the scalability of their projects and efforts. You can’t have an NGO delivering aid but only 25% of its aid recipients actually climbing out of poverty. A successful intervention in a poor community must be replicable, scalable, and engaging to the local and later national government. Most importantly, the efforts of an NGO must have a staying power so that when the NGO eventually leaves, the community will not revert back to poverty. Aid is like war; there has to be a way to get out once the intervention is over. As the eloquent Dr. Starr put it, “What happens when the donor dollar is gone?”

The face of the aid community is changing, and fortunately Sachs was the only person I heard at the Unite for Sight Conference advocating for billions more in aid. Sachs has done great work drawing attention to global hunger and poverty with the Millennium Villages and the Millennium Development Goals, but he’s stuck in the old way of helping the poor, through free handouts. Although handouts in the billions may alleviate a problem temporarily, they offer no lasting change and do not strike at the root of sustained extreme poverty: lack of investments, capital or participation in global bond markets. Moyo, Starr, Wok, Hammond, Easterly and others are the faces of a new era for aid that will hopefully bring about the end of the current aid situation. “I think Moyo and Sachs desire the same things,” commented Amy Newcomb, director of the Great Issues Scholars program, “but they’re going about it differently.” While Sachs’s vision sees no end in sight for poverty in Africa, Moyo offers a way to systematically revamp Africa’s economy. Sachs would do well to end his long rivalry with Moyo and join in efforts to move Africa beyond aid.