Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: poverty

  • Poverty, Tax Breaks and Militarism

    David KriegerOne of the key lessons learned by the United States during the Vietnam War was that conscription leads to middle class discontent with war.  Middle class parents joined their college-age children in protesting an illegal and brutal war.  Ultimately, these protests made the continuation of the war untenable.  A popular protest chant among college students of the era was, “Hell No, we won’t go.”


    The political and military establishment in the country found a solution to the problem of middle class protest by doing away with conscription and moving to an all volunteer military force.  As long as there was high enough unemployment and lack of affordable higher education, the military would have a large pool of young people to draw upon for its force, and foreign wars could be pursued without fear of widespread protest.  Middle class children (and, of course, upper class children) could go to college and then into the workplace undisturbed, and their parents would not be concerned or frightened by the possibility of their children being conscripted into the military in a time of war. 


    The system has worked reasonably well to dampen protest of foreign wars, even a war as egregiously illegal and needless as the war against Iraq.  As volunteers, the soldiers are more pliable and less inclined to protest even the repeated deployments to war zones that they have endured.  With rare exceptions, the soldiers seem to believe they are acting patriotically in carrying out orders, without questioning whether the wars themselves are either beneficial or legal. 


    While the country spends a great amount of money on its military forces (about one-half of the discretionary funds that are allocated annually by the Congress), this does not necessarily extend to protecting the soldiers themselves.  There have been reports of inadequate body armor for the troops, prompting communities to hold fundraising events to secure the funds to provide such protection to individual soldiers. 


    Among the lures that the military uses to fill its recruiting quotas are the promises of job security and future educational benefits.  Thus, for poorer members of the society, both jobs and educational opportunities are available through enlistment in the military.  Of course, these are only attractive to those who cannot attain them by other means.


    Recently, Simon Johnson, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, was interviewed about Obama’s proposed “compromise” with the Republicans to extend tax cuts for the top two percent of Americans.  Johnson said, as other economists have, that this deal, if enacted, would add substantially to the national debt while providing very little stimulus to the economy in return.  He recommended, as a far better alternative plan for stimulating the economy, to put the majority of the $900 billion it would cost, mostly for tax breaks for the very rich, into education.  On purely economic grounds, the funding for education, with its attendant job creation, is a far better investment in society than tax breaks for the very rich.


    But if education and job opportunities for the poorest elements of our society were available through non-military governmental incentives, perhaps impoverished young people would reject the education and job incentives offered through the military.  They would not have to risk their lives in war to get the educational and job opportunities that middle and upper class children have handed to them.  Don’t we owe all young members of our society equal access to education and the workplace, which in essence provides them with equal opportunity? 


    War should be a last resort for society.  By doing away with conscription, we have made it possible for it to be a first resort.  But we do so by structuring our society so that the poor must go through the gauntlet of the military (and in recent years also repeated tours of duty in war zones) in order to get their opportunity for higher education and gainful employment.


    If the current compromise legislation on the extension of the Bush-era tax breaks for the very rich goes through, it will be largely on the backs of the poor.  For the political class promoting this compromise, it will also have the side benefit of assuring enough poverty and unemployment so that the military will have no problem in recruiting soldiers for the ongoing wars of choice that continue to burden our society and our economy.

  • Helen Caldicott: Credo

    I believe that women have the fate of the Earth in the palm of their hands. Some 53 per cent of us are women and we really are pretty wimpish. We don’t step up to the plate – and it’s time we took over. I think men have had their turn and we’re in a profound mess.

    I believe that money is the root of all evil. When people start believing that materialism will produce ultimate, lasting happiness, it is a sure sign that they will be intensely unhappy. One third of Americans are on anti-depressants. Instead, what they should be doing is lifting their souls, not their faces.

    I believe in the sanctity of nature. I believe we can save the planet. We are smart enough to do that, but we must act with a sense of dire emergency.

    I believe that the media are controlling and determining the face of the Earth. As Thomas Jefferson said, an informed democracy will behave in a responsible fashion.

    I believe in the beauty of classical music. I must have it; it feeds my soul.

    I believe in the goodness in every person’s soul even though it’s sometimes hard to see. I treat a lot of patients where either their children are dying or they are dying. Even though sometimes it’s heavily obscured, in extremes this goodness will emerge.

    I don’t believe in a god. I have helped many people to die and believe that it’s ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

    I believe that heaven and hell are present every day.

    I believe that life is an absolute gift to be treasured accordingly. We are very privileged to even have been conceived.

    I believe that we are here to serve. We are not here to make ourselves happy, to be self-indulgent or to be hedonistic. The happiest state that I achieve is when I work in my clinic helping my children with cystic fibrosis to face death and help to treat them and look after their siblings. I’m utterly exhausted at the end of the day, but deeply, deeply fulfilled.

    I believe in the beauty of my garden. I’ve got two and a half acres and I’m never more in touch with the power of the universe than when I’m in my garden on a warm, sunny day tending to my flowers and my trees, with the pelicans circling overhead.

    I believe that there are far too many people on the planet. In the year 1900 there were one billion of us in the world. Now there are 6.5 billion and the predictions are that within a few decades there will be 14 billion.

    I believe that the greatest terror in the world is not a few terrorists hitting the World Trade Center. It’s the fact that half the world’s people still live in dire poverty and 30,000 to 40,000 children die every day from malnutrition and starvation, while the rich nations continue to get richer and richer.

    I believe that the most important job in the world is parenting. Women need to be financially supported for it. Their job is far more important than that of chief executive officers at the head of huge corporations.

    I believe the secret of happiness is a) serving our fellow human beings and loving and caring for everyone. I don’t mean crappy Californian love; I mean really deep caring for each other; b) to understand our own psychology in a profound way, so we can be a more constructive human being; and c) to care for this incredible planet of ours.

    Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician, is president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and author of Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer (The New Press). She lives near Sydney, Australia.

    Originally published by The Independent UK

  • Why I Don’t Trust Them or Sleeping With the Enemy

    When G8 finance ministers announced last month a £40bn debt relief package for some of the world’s poorest countries, Bob Geldof praised it as “a victory for the millions of people in the campaign around the world”. Bono called it “a little piece of history”. Forget the immoral condition of enforced liberalisation and privatisation that it contained. That was not all. Bono went on to hail George W Bush as the saviour of Africa. “I think he has done an incredible job”, he pronounced, adding: “Bush deserves a place in history for turning the fate of the continent around.” He came across as serious. Does Bono know that the US is the lowest aid donor in the industrialised world, giving only 0.16 per cent of GNP? Does he not care about climate change and about Bush’s role as serial environmental abuser? Maybe he has forgotten.

    The mutual admiration club between Bono, Geldof, Blair and Bush – rock stars and men who would love to be them – has been the abiding symbol of the G8. It is deeply disturbing. It has nothing to do with the commitment and the passionate argument of the 225,000 people who took to the streets of Edinburgh on 2 July encircling the centre of Scotland’s capital to protest against global injustice. This demonstration – at which I was a speaker – provided the real backdrop, the real pressure for change. Not that many people, particularly those south of the border, would have known. Saturation television that day from Live8 in Hyde Park beamed pictures from as far away as Philadelphia, Berlin and Tokyo – cities united in superficial soundbites about desperately serious issues. The newspapers fared little better.

    Edinburgh was nowhere to be seen. Was it inadvertent, or did our celebrity musicians conspire to allow the biggest demonstration of people power in Scotland’s history and the biggest march against poverty the UK has seen to be erased from the public’s consciousness? When Gordon Brown announced his intention to take part in the Edinburgh March I was appalled. I finally understood the Machiavellian plan by prime minister and chancellor to neutralise and co-opt the efforts of hundreds of NGOs, grassroots organisations and people throughout the world united in their desire to see poverty eradicated. They achieved their aims with the help of Geldof and Bono. I know that we need to persuade politicians, but do we really need to sleep with the enemy?

    For years thousands of people have campaigned to draw the public’s attention to the harm globalisation has done to the developing world and to expose the unjust policies of the unholy Trinity – the World Bank, IMF and the World Trade Organisation. All of a sudden Brown wanted to march hand in hand with us. Was he going to protest against the policies the UK government was imposing on the poorest countries in the developing world? Was he aware the UK government has been instrumental in pushing an aggressive “free trade” agenda at the WTO, disregarding developing countries’ pleas that they should be allowed to defend their infant industries from predatory EU and US multinationals?

    Was he not aware that the UK also stands behind the damaging Economic Partnership Agreements designed to open markets, in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, exposing small scale producers to overwhelming competition from powerful multinationals? Is he aware that the UK has taken the lead in promoting privatisation of public services in developing countries, despite the increase in poverty this has brought to million of peoples in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere? Does he not know that the department for International Development has channelled millions from the aid budget to privatisation consultants such as KPMG, Price WaterhouseCoopers and the Adam Smith Institute, engaged to “advise” developing country governments on the privatisation of their public services? What about the UK government’s efforts to undermine international calls to hold multinational corporations to account for their activities overseas, championing the voluntary alternative of “corporate social responsibility” rather than corporate regulation? Then come the arms industry, and Britain’s seemingly unquenchable thirst to sell to the poorest and most volatile of dictatorships.

    After all the excitement of the Live8 crowd, and the self-congratulation of the organisers for what we should acknowledge was perhaps the greatest rock music spectacle the world has seen, what will have been achieved? Beside the thrill of seeing some of the greatest artist alive perform, has Blair, the same politician who misled the world over WMD in Iraq, managed to reinvent his legacy as the prophet of the social justice movement? Has the consciousness of the world really been raised, or have the consciences of the political leaders simply been soothed?

    In Scotland, we were making concrete demands from the G8 leaders, to stop imposing the neoliberal policies that have contributed to exacerbating poverty in the developing world; perhaps our aims were a little too unsettling, and a little too unpalatable, for Bono and Bob. By ignoring the real issues in the Make Poverty History Campaign and by embracing politicians with uncritical enthusiasm, they have undermined the real movement for change, helping to preserve the cycle that keeps the developing world subjugated to the financial institutions that are making poverty inevitable.

    You may wonder why I feel so deeply about these issues, I was born in one of the 18 countries in the debt relief package; Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the southern Hemisphere. Throughout my life I have seen first hand the devastating effect that poverty has on children’s lives. For me, witnessing the death of a child is not just a dramatic click of a finger, it is a terrible tragedy. Bono and Bob Geldof’s blind ambition has led them to legitimise and praise George W. Bush and Tony Blair, perpetrators of the objectionable policies that are causing the demise of millions of innocent people throughout the developing world. Although, one cannot deny they have succeeded in bringing attention to Africa, one feels betrayed by their moral ambiguity and sound bite propaganda which have obscured and watered down the real issues that are at stake in the debate.

    Originally published in the New Statesman

  • Rights: Billion Children Under Threat, Says Unicef

    Poverty, conflict and HIV/AIDS are the biggest threats to children’s lives in developing countries, says a new Unicef report.

    “Poverty does not come from nowhere: war does not emerge from nothing; AIDS does not spread by choice of its own,” United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) director Carol Bellamy said at the launch of the 10th ‘State of the World’s Children’ report in London. “These are our choices.”

    Half of all children in the world suffer from extreme deprivation, Bellamy said. “When that many children are robbed of childhood, our shared future is compromised.”

    Unicef says in the report ‘Children Under Threat’ that 956 billion dollars were spent last year on military and war supplies. An additional 40-70 billion dollars a year could finance the Millennium Development Goals, she said.

    “Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood,” Bellamy said.

    The annual Unicef report into the living conditions of 2.2 billion children was produced by a research team from the London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Bristol working together with Unicef.

    The report sets out seven areas of essential needs for children: food, safe water, healthcare, education, sanitation, shelter, and information.

    “Over one billion children were found to suffer from at least one form of severe deprivation of human needs and 635 million to suffer from two or more deprivations,” said Peter Townsend from the LSE at the launch.

    The team found that one in six children is hungry and one in five does not have access to safe water. Healthcare is delivered only to one in seven children. Governments in industrialised countries spend an average of 15 percent of their budget on health. In developing countries the figure drops to one percent.

    Conflicts are one of the major causes of deprivation, the report says. Half of 3.6 million people killed in wars since 1990 were children.

    Not only do conflicts displace communities from their home, with an aftermath of hunger, diseases and psychological distress affecting especially children, but in many cases youths and children are forced to become combatants, the report says.

    “In today’s wars where civilians have become the prime targets, we have to accept responsibility for the fact that children are suffering when we go to battle,” Bellamy said.

    HIV/AIDS is increasingly threatening young people: it has become the largest killer of people aged 15-49 in the developing world, while there are now 15 million AIDS orphans worldwide, the report says.

    But poverty is not experienced only in developing countries. In many developed countries the number of poor children increased notably in the last decade, the report says.

    “Children experience poverty differently than adults, and whether or not their families are poor, these children can and should be provided with basic services,” Townsend said.

    Unicef, which has an annual budget of 1.6 billion dollars, is working to improve the living conditions of children, providing early childhood and maternal care, immunisation programmes, education to girls and extra care in case of HIV/AIDS.

    “The elimination of poverty can be financed,” Townsend said. “Cash transfers offer a model of the strategy by which these rights can be delivered.”

    In Mexico, the programme ‘Oportunidades’ (Opportunities) provides cash directly to mothers to pay for food, children’s school needs and basic healthcare. Similar programmes have been developed successfully in Brazil and South Africa.

    “We are working everyday to try to make a difference in these areas,” Bellamy told IPS. “We commit ourselves, not just talk, but we need to engage more partners – governments, NGOs, funding partners and kids themselves.”

    One Unicef campaign in Nigeria seeks to get young people involved in policy-making as a strategy to inform children and young people of their rights, and involve them in change. With about 75 percent of the population of Nigeria under 35 years of age, a Children and Young People’s Parliament is representative enough to interact with the National Parliament to propose laws.

    “Thanks to support from Unicef, we proposed the compulsory immunisation of every child under five years old and the compulsory use of insecticides in schools against malaria,”18-year-old Dayo Israel-Abdulai from the youth parliament told IPS. “Both proposals have become laws.”

  • The Real Problem on the Indian Sub-continent

    In May 1998, India stunned the world when it successfully conducted nuclear tests in Pokhran, a desert site in the western state of Rajasthan. The tests were reciprocated by its traditional rival, Pakistan , dramatically raising the stakes in the stand-off over Kashmir , one of the world’s longest-running feuds.

    Subsequently, in mid-1999, India fought a brief but bitter conflict with Pakistani-backed forces that had infiltrated Indian-controlled territory in the Kargil area close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. The confrontation between the two countries, just over a year after the nuclear tests, confirmed that the nuclear status didn’t remove the danger of conflict between India and Pakistan; rather, it has increased the stakes if war is to ever occur. Both countries were in an advanced state of nuclear readiness during the entire period of the Kargil conflict. Never before can I remember the tensions within both countries being so high.

    Yet, in a statement in 2001, President Abdul Kalaam of India , continuing to promote and defend the further development of nuclear weapons, asked, “When was the last war with Pakistan? That both sides are nuclear capable has helped not engage in a big war.” 1 However, Kalaam blatantly ignored the fact that tensions escalated during the Kargil conflict due to the nuclearization of the sub-continent. With blinkers on, both President Musharraf of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India are pressing on to develop more advanced nuclear arsenals. Despite limited resources, in a region where there is chronic social and economic problems with hunger and disease rampant in every corner of each country, India and Pakistan continue to reiterate their commitments to develop and deploy nuclear weapons as part of their national security programs.

    But what is needed, right now more than ever, is a realistic consideration of the problems that lie in the internal sphere of each country. Socio-economic, socio-religious, sectarian, and caste conflict in several parts of the two countries are epidemic. The chaos in Karachi including several street riots, ethno-nationalist insurgencies in Assam and Nagaland in Northeast India continue to claim over a hundred lives every year and the recent Hindu-Muslim riots that killed over a thousand innocent people in the western state of Gujarat in India all point to the increasing threats within each country’s domestic sphere. Nuclear weapons are not the answer to these social problems. Furthermore, more than four million in both India and Pakistan live in abject poverty – that is more than half of the combined population of both countries. Mass unemployment and illiteracy are on the rise. The internal debt figures in India alone have more than tripled. There is a lack of basic needs such as clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. Infrastructure and the quality of education continue to rapidly diminish. There are rising number of suicides by farmers in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Unbridled drug and arms trafficking in Pakistan are becoming more common and widespread. Spending inadequate financial resources on nuclear weapons is not the way out of these pressing socio-economic problems.

    Additionally, incidents of terrorism within both countries have also increased to include suicide attacks on not only the Indian military and para-military but also on their families. Recent bomb blasts in commercial areas in Karachi are proof that Pakistan isn’t immune from terrorism, well within its own borders, either. Nuclear weapons cannot offer a solution to these flagrant acts of terror. Moreover, there is an increasing criminalization and corruption of politics in India and Pakistan. The degradation of politics is starting to question the credibility of both countries. Nuclear weapons provide no real answer to this range of domestic issues, yet this lesson remains unlearned.

    What is needed from both countries right now is a commitment to the welfare of their populations and a firm plan for decreasing poverty, eradicating disease and death from hunger and starvation. Spending limited resources – financial or otherwise on developing a more complete range of nuclear weapons is not going to help the people of India, Pakistan or, for that matter, the people of Kashmir. Providing basic needs such as drinking water, safe infrastructure and hygienic sanitation facilities is what is urgently required. Increasing the quality of education, decreasing the level of illiteracy and paving the way for increasing youth employment are the needs of the hour. Both India and Pakistan have traditionally focused on threats on their borders. It is now time for each country to look inward and form a strong resolve to solve these deep rooted issues within each society.

    Archana Bharath an is a senior at the University of Michigan and was a Lena Chang Intern at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Summer 2004.

  • To Address Gang Problem, Abandon Ageist Ideas

    Adults have no monopoly on problem solving. If policing, prison and other conventional methods aren’t working, maybe it’s time to ask young people what they think should be done and really listen to what they say.

    I began teaching classes in nonviolence theory and practice in a maximum-security juvenile facility near Washington, D.C., in 1998. The young men and women incarcerated there were being detained for myriad crimes: gang-related issues, shooting family members or violence against siblings or peers, for example. These young people had a few things in common: They were all people of color, all poor, all with low levels of literacy. Yet these qualities did not impede their ability to internalize the values and tenets of active peacemaking. As I worked with these young women and men, we all began to uncover the true meaning of nonviolence: listening to each other, validating each other’s experiences, figuring out how to make things more just, and becoming more in control of our emotions and responses to anger and violence.

    By many people’s standards, I should not have been there teaching the people whom society deems unlovable, unteachable and unreformable, and who are at the end of a heavy-handed legalistic punitive society, all victims of finger-pointers rather than problem solvers. Yet the nonviolence classes at this juvenile prison worked because of faith in the creativity and self-expressiveness of each young person. I entered the jail ready to hear their stories in their own words and to address the issues most affecting them, like physical abuse at home, substance abuse and escalating verbal conflict.

    In my estimation, violence stems from misunderstanding, which comes in comfortable positions who make decisions affectinfrom lack of communication, which comes from ignorance in the true sense of the word–and ignorance is combated only through education and dialogue. To truly get at the root of a problem, as a society we must abandon our ageist ideologies that adults have a monopoly over access to community building and problem solving. We must reincorporate young people back into the loop. This begins by listening to them and straightforwardly addressing their concerns and grievances.

    In the first presidential debate, George W. Bush labeled “at risk” kids as “kids who basically can’t learn.” This stereotype haunts kids, especially minorities, making escape from these externally imposed confines more precarious. What is it like to be heard and understood? What is it like to be an adult with stature, a stable life, a voice and clear language and thoughts to express that which pleases and displeases? What must it be like not to be discounted based on race, age, appearance, location or other transient factors? Perhaps before our communities can make progress toward more peaceful relations, we need to hear and accept the daily complications that make life perilous for kids, in their own words and language, absent judgment and malevolent suspicion.

    The recent smattering of gang-related shootings in Oxnard opens a door of potential dialogue for a long-standing and gravely important problem. First, designate a permanent means of addressing the complicated issues surrounding gang violence in Ventura County by institutionalizing classes in alternatives to violence specifically for gang members, creating a safe space for them to learn concrete methods of conflict management. Peace is not static; it is a forever-changing dynamic that requires finesse and negotiation and consistent maintenance. Peace is not the lull between explosions. To create a lasting peace, we must equip our young people with the teachable and learnable tools necessary to make competent, broad-minded decisions.

    Next, give these young people the chance to be articulate and play an active role in making their communities better places. Offer the option of intra-gang and inter-gang facilitated dialogues by an impartial third party. Gandhi provides a wonderful guideline for such an encounter: Describe all that is shared in common against the one unshared separation, claiming a different gang. Allow them to become policy-makers and set the guidelines for creating safer communities. Ask them how to begin making things as right as possible rather than handing down mandates that might not address the real issues of why the gang violence has recently escalated.

    If heavier policing, stricter sentencing and more time in juvenile hall or prison are not making a positive difference, then we ought to ask those directly involved what they think ought to be done. Their answers might just surprise us.

    * Leah C. Wells is Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She teaches a nonviolence class at St. Bonaventure High School and is director of the Southern California chapter of Nonviolence International. She is youth coordinator for Season for Nonviolence 2001.