Somalia: World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis

Despite the recent surge in media coverage, pirates and foreign toxic waste are hardly the most pressing issue facing the fledgling Somali government. In fact, according to a recent Refugees International report, Somalia presents a near perfect storm of failed-state conditions: a barely-functioning central government, a plethora of opposition groups, rampant crime and corruption, a persistent drought, a dependence on imported food aid, and a displacement of almost two million refugees and IDPs - about one-fifth of the population:

Somalis live in some of the worst conditions imaginable -- from the slums of Aden to the cramped camps in Dadaab, from drought-stricken villages in south central Somalia to teeming neighborhoods in Nairobi. Somalis die at sea while trying to reach Yemen, are threatened by boys and men with guns in Mogadishu, and face demands for bribes and harassment while trying to find asylum in Kenya. Almost nowhere can vulnerable Somalis receive the humanitarian assistance and protection that are their rights.

HRW: Extensive Evidence of Israeli War Crimes in Ghaza

Human Rights Watch has released a new report documenting Israel's indiscriminate use of white phosphorous against civilian populations.

The unlawful use of white phosphorus was neither incidental nor accidental. It was repeated over time and in different locations, with the IDF "air-bursting" the munition in populated areas up to the last days of its military operation. Even if intended as an obscurant rather than as a weapon, the IDF's repeated firing of air-burst white phosphorus shells from 155mm artillery into densely populated areas was indiscriminate and indicates the commission of war crimes.

The dangers posed by white phosphorus to civilians were well-known to Israeli commanders, who have used the munition for many years. According to a medical report prepared during the hostilities by the ministry of health, "[w]hite phosphorus can cause serious injury and death when it comes into contact with the skin, is inhaled or is swallowed." The report states that burns on less than 10 percent of the body can be fatal because of damage to the liver, kidneys and heart.

The HRW report was not the only documentation of war crimes released this week - a collection of videos released by The Guardian highlight the use of unmanned drones, human shields, and deliberate attacks on medical personnel during this winter's genocide in Ghaza.

        

Food NGOs: Tilting at the Wrong Windmill?

A coalition of organizations, led by Food & Water Watch, is urging Congress and President Obama to reform commodities markets to prevent excessive speculation, which the group cites as a primary cause of last year's global food security crisis. According to the authors, the food crisis “could have been stopped with sensible rules that, if enforced, would have staved off the malnutrition and starvation that was caused by excessive gambling of food prices. Important reforms are needed now to prevent mega-investors from viewing the futures market like a casino where they can gamble on hunger.”

While regulation may indeed be a good idea, there's certainly not a consensus that price speculation was a primary cause of the crisis. Economists are extremely divided (surprise, surprise!) over the cause of the crisis, and the role speculators play. Some argue that short-term speculators actually reduced volatility and moderated price increases. Others, like Paul Krugman, find a lack of evidence of hoarding that would suggest that speculators are to blame. And then, of course, there are those who place most of the blame on biofuel-fueled demand.

Fixing The Facts Around The Idiocy

Now that's just cute.

Those infamous science-deniers at the Cato Institute are at it again, planning to publish an advertisement in major U.S. newspapers citing the number of scienticians and climatationists who disagree with President Obama's statement that "the science [of climate change] is beyond dispute and the facts are clear."

So far they've got only one signatory. His name is Name Here, and he apparently has a lot of similarly-named relatives also in the science-denial business.

Perhaps most infuriating is the cherry-picked pretzel logic of citations the author used to justify ridiculous positions like "there has been no net global warming for over a decade now" and "computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior." Both of these examples no doubt take advantage of American public perception that we've just been through a particularly cold winter, even though globally it has in fact been the ninth-warmest winter on record. Thankfully, the folks at RealClimate have thoroughly destroyed the ad's premise with a vigorous hot fact injection:

The "global warming stopped" meme is particularly lame since it relies on both a feigned ignorance of the statistics of short periods and being careful about which data set you use. It also requires cherry-picking the start year, had the period been "exactly a decade" or 12 years then all the trends are positive.

The use of the recent Swanson and Tsonis paper is simply opportunism. Those authors specifically state that their results are not in any way contradictory with the idea of a long term global warming trend. Instead they are attempting to characterise the internal variability that everyone knows exists.

Pwned.(Pichlmair, 2007)

        

Adam Smith Was A Socialist?!?

In a new article in the New York Review of Books, economist Amartya Sen discusses the current financial crisis in the context of seminal economists Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Arthur Cecil Pigou.

Though Sen lauds the Keynesian approach of economic stimulus in combating the crisis, he cautions that the social welfare aspects of Pigou and - yes - Adam Smith in ensuring access to non-market public goods such as education and health care:

While Keynes was very involved with the question of how to increase aggregate income, he was relatively less engaged in analyzing problems of unequal distribution of wealth and of social welfare. In contrast, Pigou not only wrote the classic study of welfare economics, but he also pioneered the measurement of economic inequality as a major indicator for economic assessment and policy. Since the suffering of the most deprived people in each economy—and in the world—demands the most urgent attention, the role of supportive cooperation between business and government cannot stop only with mutually coordinated expansion of an economy. There is a critical need for paying special attention to the underdogs of society in planning a response to the current crisis, and in going beyond measures to produce general economic expansion.

        

Tree Unemployment On The Rise

According to a new report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization the global economic crisis is not only impacting people around the world, but forests as well. Reduced demand for wood products as a result of the collapse of the housing sector is decreasing investment in forest management, diluting long-term green policies, and increasing illegal logging. The hardest-hit forests are in Africa, where forest recourses are being used as a coping strategy in the face of high fuel and food prices, and in Asia and the Pacific, where demand for wood products and rapid industrialization is far outpacing forest regrowth and development.

And just like the Chinese term wēijīhuì (危机会) is a linguistically-nonexistent mashup of "crisis" and "opportunity" often misquoted by Simpsons and lazy scholars alike, this economic crisis presents a "crisitunity" for the world's forests:

It is impossible to know when the global economy will begin to recover. However, such crises also offer opportunities to chart new paths of development. The forest sector could benefit from the pursuit of a “green path” to development – through building up of natural resource capital (e.g. through afforestation and reforestation and increased investments in sustainable forest management), generation of rural employment and active promotion of wood in green building practices and renewable energy. Certainly, this change of path will require fundamental institutional changes, but the crisis may bring about greater willingness to accept and implement long-overdue reforms.

        

Surprise! The Surge Didn't Work After All...

According to an Oxfam survey of 1,700 Iraqi women, a reduction in violence since 2006 has not translated into improved living conditions. Poverty is rampant, electricity is sporadic, and nearly halfdo not have access to clean water.

"Women are the forgotten victims of Iraq. Despite the billions of dollars poured into rebuilding Iraq and recent security gains, a quarter of the women interviewed still do not have daily access to water, a third cannot send their children to school and since the war started, over half have been the victim of violence. And to add further insult more than three quarters of widows, many of whom lost their husbands to the conflict, get no government pension which they are entitled to," said Oxfam International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs.

New Plan To End the Food Crisis: Stop Making Plans to End The Food Crisis

A statement by members of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty posted on the GRAIN web site presents an alternative to the usual initiatives being proposed by the usual suspects at the High-Level Meeting on Food Security for All. While the big donors, in collaboration with big agrobusiness, are pushing for comprehensive neo-liberal solutions such as a Green Revolution in Africa, the IPC is urging the international community to think small, with food soveriegnty replacing food security as the new (well, very retro) paradigm:

Contrary to the impression that is given by confused officials, a solution to the crisis exists and is easy to implement if there is sufficient political will. Peasant based agriculture and livestock raising and artisanal fisheries can easily provide enough food once these small-scale food producers can get access to land and aquatic resources and can produce for stable local and domestic markets. This model produces far more food per hectare than the corporate model, enables people to produce their own food and guarantees stable supply.

        

Endorois Demand a Better Slice of the Tourism Pie

In an event marking World Responsible Tourism Day, November 12, Minority Rights Group International shed some light on the plight of Kenya's Endorois people, evicted from their traditional lands in the 1970s to make way for a nature reserve frequented by tourists.

The traditional lands of the 60,000 Endorois lay in what is now Lake Bogoria National Reserve, a 41-square mile river basin in the Rift Valley. The Endorois now no longer have access to vital grazing land or ceremonial sites, and receive only a pittance in tourism revenue.

Leader of the Endorois people, Wilson Kipkazi, says, "We welcome visitors to our country. But loss of our lands has forced my community into poverty. It is high time that we benefit fully from the income generated through tourism."

While in Lake Bogoria, tourists can visit reconstructions of typical Endorois village and watch locals perform traditional dances, yet they remain oblivious to the dispossession of the Endorois.

MRG has started the Trouble In Paradise campaign to right this injustice for the Endorois.

        

I Got Yer Conditional Cash Transfer Right Heah

In the latest International Poverty Centre working paper, Michelle Morais de Sá e Silva offers a qualitative analysis of New York's controversial Opportunity NYC program. Based on conditional cash-transfer (CCT) programs in Latin America such as Brazil's Bolsa Família and Mexico's Oportunidades programs, Opportunity NYC provides cash rewards to students and families in low-income areas of the city for good attendance, participation in parent-teacher conferences, and obtaining a library card.

In a controversial departure from the Latin American models, Opportunity NYC also provides rewards for proficiency in standardized tests. This, as e Silva explains, may have some unintended consequences:

First, that may entail “leakage” of programme benefits to students who would achieve those grades regardless of the programme incentives. Second, in many cases the programme may come to reward not school effort but differences in family background and English-language proficiency, which is an important issue in a place like New York City with many immigrant families. That would ultimately mean that, if there is significant diversity of characteristics among the beneficiaries (which may be the case with Spark), the programme might actually be “rewarding the fittest”.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the program from a policy standpoint is its funding. Since the program is privately funded, it effectively bypassed any democratic oversight by the City Council or the court of public opinion. This may have significant impact on any future attempts to scale up the program from its current pilot phase.