| Ninth |
[Apr. 12th, 2005|07:42 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  curious | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Here Comes the Sun, Beatles/George | ] |
I seem to update about once every month. Here are the major things I've done since March 11th:
- I got my fall job. You are reading the LJ post of the new Neighbor's Project service coordinator for Pre-K and Elementary Education. I'm so excited to start this job; it's unreal. D.C. schools are in such disarray, and I've been so obsessed with fixing them for the past two years (since I started at CentroNia), that this is going to take over my life. I can tell already. I'm going to spend the summer coming up with recruitment ideas and stuff - I'll probably attend all the CI's and meet with agencies and design awesome fliers - I already have some good plans. This job will also give me the opportunity to work at different volunteer agencies. I have a huge binder of all of our partnerships; sooo many of them look like things I could devote some time to - I can't wait. Volunteering is probably the most important thing a person can do.
- Tomorrow I have an interview at Borders. I always need two jobs, and this one will be marvelous if I get it. I spent five years working in various libraries; I really missed being surrounded by books. Oh my god...discount...I hadn't thought of it until just now...DISCOUNT!!! Right now, as a side note, I am reading Demons by Dostoevsky and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Both are superb.
- Ryan is visiting. More updates about that next week; once he is gone, I can tell you all the fun things at once.
- I shaved my head. Woot!
- I saw Sin City and it was lovely.
- I went on two Marine Bio field trips. On the first, I just went in the ocean and collected some marvelous seashells. On the second, I got stuck in the mud. When this girl tried to pull me out, she just got stuck. The same thing happened to the guy who tried to pull her out. Eventually, we all escaped. Then, Q and I painted our faces with mud. Twas delightful.
- Lydia friended me on facebook. When I think of PreTeen America (ITS NOT A BEAUTY PAGEANT DAMNIT!!!), I think of Lydia, Claudia and Cali. I'm now back in touch with the two former. Everyone is doing such super things too, I'm really happy to have heard from them again.
I want to learn something interesting tonight. Preferably about adolescence. I'm obsessed with adolescent psychology, even if I can't seem to wake up for class everyday. I've decided some things about my children:
- They will listen to books on tape in several languages as babies
- They will go to a bilingual elementary school
- They will play an instrument/sport/dance
- They will be homeschooled in H.S. and meet others through community activities and volunteerism. I will teach them what is necessary to get into college and survive and things. Other than that, they will travel and be involved in shitloads during that important time usually filled with high school, which I think is pointless. I'd be willing to answer any questions you have about that.
I think that's it. I'm bored of typing random stuff now. I may add more later. Adios amigos/as... |
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| Eighth |
[Mar. 11th, 2005|04:48 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  creative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Cole Porter | ] |
Today is March 11th. I just realized that the day that really matters is MAY 11th, however, the lesson is still the same. HEY ITS RAINING!!! I'll be right back........okay back.
Anyway, MAY 11th is Mr. Brown's birthday - this year is his thirtieth in fact. I remember sitting in his second year Latin class, listening to him absolutely freak out about his 25th. "Close your books. Let's talk. I am a quarter of a century old. My life is a quarter over AT LEAST...." and on it went for an hour and fifteen minutes.
He taught me a lot about life that wasn't about Latin. He must have broken his wrist 10 times while I was his student, doing crazy shit that no teacher should ever tell his students to do, but he did. He experimented like crazy - I remember one time he came in with the most hideous hair (his hair was super long for a while, longer than mine used to be!) because he had decided to try to put honey and mayonnaise in it because some girl told him it would make it really smooth. Only Mr. Brown would go out, buy extra honey and mayonnaise, mix them together, and actually put it in his hair. He was a freak. He was a jerk too, because if you didn't fit his idea of the kind of person he could relate to (crazy), he wouldn't really talk to you, unless it was about latin, and he would patronize you. Jackass. I love him though.
Anyway, he died in a car accident a while ago, and I always like to think about him on his birthday and stuff. Until a few minutes ago, I thought it was his birthday. I can't even begin to imagine how he'd freak out if he'd lived to see his thirtieth birthday. That's a fucking crazy thought. If he'd lived long enough to freak out that he was going to die in 70 years.....
So, the message is to do all the crazy shit that pops into your head. Always experiment....don't freak out about getting old unless you're going to freak out every day, and if you do that then you're just wasting your life anyway. So, logically, its a fallacy to worry about getting old.
All of this is really fitting with my music right now....I'm listening to the music of Cole Porter, who was real big on experimentation in life.
I think the biggest challenge in my life is to experiment as much as I want to in general, without hurting people, considering that my goal in life is to make life easier for everyone.
This post is very poorly written. I apologize.
Out of my post last week, I have made a few friendship bracelets, read a book or two, made some jewellry, and done some purchasing towards completing various knitting projects.
Dancing on the Kennedy center is a priority.
Oh, RENT is coming to DC....who wants to come with?
That's the end. |
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| Seventh |
[Mar. 3rd, 2005|01:57 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  pensive | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Morcheeba - Big Calm (LISTEN TO IT) | ] |
I have not posted in a long time. I started because I was really inspired with politics and changing things (you'll notice that everything took place directly after the election), and, although I remain inspired and interested, I don't really see the point of posting about it on a daily basis. Why not go out and do something rather than write about it on the internet for about 4 people to read?
Today I am posting because I have another reason. Several actually.
Reason #1 - I am bored. I do not want to begin reading yet. I should, though, as I have to go to work in 2 hours.
Reason #2 - I would like to make a list of the things I want to do and make. I tend to write all of these things on little bits of paper that I lose. Then, I forget about the awesome impulsive things that I want to and its sad. So, I've decided to keep a list online and then let the world know what I have completed. So, here are the things I need to do as soon as possible, but don't have enough time to do. Let me know if you want to take part in any of them:
Knitting Projects: Lisa's sweater that she has yet to conclusively design, an awesome skirt for someone - if you want it, call it, Hats for my future bald self, Hats for charity, Design some hat/scarf/shawl things that I can sell, all the stuff I've started but not finished.
Sewing Projects: another awesome skirt for someone - if you want it, call it, more skirts of similar design (some will be patchwork, others will be ruffles of random fabrics)
Arty Projects: friendship bracelets with Lisa, if anyone else wants to make them, I fucking love friendship bracelets, a photography box with Andrew's box expertise - using my hot girl pictures, more jewellry, I want to do a photo shoot of several people - including myself and my new hat all dressed up to go along with it....perhaps with Clockwork Orange-esque eye makeup, a music video to Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley - also giving me a chance to use my dvd burner, and my last one depends upon the consent of one Ms. Lauren Christopher. I would like to create a new iPod commercial featuring her fabulous dancing. It would be all silhouetty just like the actual commercials and stuff. Andrew would help with his awesome camera.
Random weird shit: I want to create some sort of campus wide scavenger hunt for someone utilizing loose bricks, codes, sidewalk chalk, and perhaps a secret language. If you want to be my victim, let me know. I want to go dance with someone on the roof of the Kennedy Center - again, if you're up for it.....oohhh yeah and a threesome with Janie and Lisa :p
Books to read: Demons, Don Quixote, Bros. Karamazov, Nabokov stuff, Chekov stuff, Madame Bovary, More Kundera, Mansfield Park, something recommended by Janie, cool people (Althea and Lauren) like Cisneros so I feel I should read some, other stuff that cool people like.
Enough of that for now. I should also consider my homework for once. This weekend I would like to do the following: Read at least half of Demons, preferably all, re-read short stories, read for Memory and Cognition, Watch Emporer's Club and write the paper, read Teacher, Marine Bio labs...I think that's it for the weekend. That's a ton though. Oh well, I'll try and be productive while still hanging out with Janie, Joey and seeing the Vagina Monologues - I can't wait to see it again.
I have a question for anyone still reading this long post, which I realize I could shorten by doing that link thing. Okay, I borrowed some notes from a girl in my Marine Biology class. As I was trying to find the right notes, I flipped through it and noticed that she has a list of quotes from Kundera in her notebook. I am one who appreciates someone who collects quotes like that - I started doing that when I read Anna Karenina. Now, I was excited to see someone who also does that, so I considered leaving a page of my quotes in the notebook, and I actually put a page in, but then Andrew convinced me that it's really kind of crazy to do that. I realize that I have a tendency to do weird and crazy things, like convince people that I'm a pathological liar accidentally, so I believed him and removed the wonderful quotes from the notebook. Now, I'm going to link to this on my facebook account, so if she makes her way to this page, I would like to note that this proposed action was not a way of hitting on you or anything, you don't need to think I'm scary. Anyway....I want anyone who reads this to post whether or not they would be freaked out if I'd done that to you.
Okay, I've procrastinated enough for the day. I am going to go read Dostoevsky. If you have questions regarding housing selection or housing in general, I beg you not to call or come in between 4 and 8 today. I won't like you anymore if you do...unless you're coming in to bring me cookies or just keep me company.
I'm going to bake vagina cookies tonight! |
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| Sixth |
[Nov. 16th, 2004|02:44 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | inspired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Zombie, The Cranberries | ] |
November 7, 2004
Spend $150 Billion Per Year to Cure World Poverty
By DAPHNE EVIATAR
Jeffrey Sachs is standing on a dusty brown hillside in Nazareth. Not the Nazareth of biblical renown, but the Nazareth of ancient Abyssinia, now Ethiopia, one of the poorest and most godforsaken places in the world.
Surrounded by skinny, dirt-caked children, Sachs looks awkward in a navy blazer, white dress shirt and tan slacks. Balanced carefully on a rock, he stands in brown loafers that offer just enough traction to keep him from sliding into the mounds of dirt that surround him. Although Sachs's eyelids droop, he seems to be listening intently. His brow furrows, he nods, he cups his chin as if deep in thought.
An ash-colored woman with a creased face is mumbling in Amharic, Ethiopia's main language, pointing with a broken stick to rows of trenches, shrubs and stones. A translator offers a muddled explanation.
When the presentation is over, the odd mix of about 20 Ethiopian peasants, international aid workers and Columbia University academics respectfully applauds and starts back down the hill. Sachs scrambles after Lee Bollinger, Columbia's president and Sachs's boss. Blond and tanned, in jeans and sneakers, Bollinger shakes his head, looking perplexed.
''It's their G.I.S.,'' says Sachs without hesitation -- as in Geographical Information System, a sort of computerized 3-D map. ''She's showing how the community uses trees and builds terraces in the hills to stabilize the land and prevent soil erosion.''
Though Sachs has been in the countryside for less than half an hour, it takes him just minutes to place this scene in the larger story he has come to tell. ''Right now, these are just survival mechanisms,'' he says, referring to the puppet-size project. ''But small things on this scale get washed away. It's like giving subtherapeutic levels of drugs to a dying patient.'' He steps around the dried cow dung that litters the path toward the row of waiting Toyota Land Cruisers. A small boy in sweatpants lingering by the dirt road looks up at Sachs curiously, then stretches out a tiny cupped hand. Sachs looks over at me. ''We need something much bigger,'' he says.
Sachs is nothing if not a big thinker. And in July, the renowned macroeconomist and special adviser to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was in Ethiopia on a world tour advancing his most ambitious project yet: the elimination of global poverty. While others tinker with incremental steps, Sachs has no patience for the small scale. Ethiopia and sub-Saharan Africa have slid deeper into poverty in the last 20 years, and whereas many economists stress the failures of local leadership, Sachs is telling a different story. In his version, Africa, through no fault of its own, is trapped. Held back by geographical impediments like climate, disease and isolation, it cannot lift itself out of poverty. What Africa needs, then, is not more scolding from the West. It needs a ''big push'' -- a flood of foreign aid -- to boost its prospects and carry it into the developed world.
It's a controversial claim that has made Sachs a lightning rod in the world of development policy, where experts are still fighting over whether foreign aid even works. In many ways, Sachs's ideas are a throwback to the 1950's and 60's, when economists believed chronic poverty resulted from a lack of savings and investment -- creating an obvious role for foreign assistance. John F. Kennedy increased aid by 25 percent; under Lyndon Johnson, American foreign assistance reached its apex in real dollars. But the 70's brought more market-oriented theories, and by the late 80's, most economists converged around the ''Washington Consensus'' -- a belief that free trade, low taxes, deregulation and privatization would make all boats rise. Sachs himself bolstered that orthodoxy when he co-wrote a highly influential paper in 1995 that largely blamed protectionist policies for the lack of economic growth in poor countries.
The consensus has since broadened, adding the need for efficient, law-abiding governments to its concerns. But it has also blurred, as development economists debate the relative merits of large- and small-scale solutions, trade, aid and the promotion of micro-loans.
Even as the experts quarrel, the war on terrorism and the backlash against economic globalization have induced wealthy nations to begin putting more in the collection plate. That has created an unusual opportunity for an impassioned advocate like Sachs to barrel along, spurred on by complete confidence in his own convictions. Although his advocacy of huge increases in foreign aid has won him both admirers and critics, all agree he now occupies an enviable position of enormous influence. He is the leading strategist on the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals -- an ambitious initiative that aims to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, as well as achieve universal primary education and significantly reduce child mortality, by 2015. He is also director of the Columbia University Earth Institute -- a $90 million think tank that joins the natural and social sciences with the explicit aim of helping the poor while preserving the planet. George Soros calls him ''a great pr
oselytizer.'' Sachs advises governments across Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa. That he's always ready to offer strong views on matters seemingly beyond his expertise -- assailing American policy toward Iraq or Haiti, for example -- has only raised his global profile.
It's an image Sachs has been shaping, in various forms, for decades. Sachs, now 50, first attracted attention in the 1980's as a budding Harvard academic proposing to heal troubled economies through ''shock therapy'' -- a quick jolt of market-oriented reforms. After early successes, he stumbled badly when he sought to apply the formula to Russia, an experience that tarred his reputation and battered his ego. It also sparked Sachs's conversion from a believer that free trade can help deliver all from poverty to an advocate of the view that Adam Smith's ''invisible hand'' isn't nearly strong enough. In what could be seen as an act of atonement for his market-oriented years, he is committed to convincing the world that only a direct transfer of alms from the rich can possibly save the poor -- and ward off an apocalyptic, terror-filled future.
Sachs makes no pretense at modesty. ''To the extent that there are any international goals, they are the Millennium Development Goals,'' he told me over breakfast at the Sheraton Hotel in Addis Ababa, a palatial structure of archways and fountains perched on a hill rising up from the center of Ethiopia's decrepit and polluted capital. ''And I've helped put them much higher on the agenda.''
I met Sachs at his hotel just hours after he arrived from Bangkok -- one stop on a nine-nation, five-week journey. A small, lean man with a large head that looks bigger because of his thick waves of brown hair, Sachs is famous for his boundless energy. This morning, though, he looked tired; his suit was rumpled, and he had missed some spots shaving.
Still, Sachs was on message. ''Africa's challenges are enormous,'' he told me over a bowl of corn flakes, citing statistics on the frequency of drought and the failures of rain-fed agriculture. ''But we have powerful tools of science and technology. And we're here to say, 'Here are the things that can and should be done.'''
Ever the macroeconomist, Sachs is in the process of calculating exactly what it will require to do them. Adding the costs of basic infrastructure, health care and primary education, among other things, he estimates that it will take about $100 per beneficiary per year for Africa to meet the Millennium Development Goals in the next 10 years. He figures African governments and households can kick in about $45, and donors already contribute about $10, so that leaves $45 more per person. On a global scale, meeting the goals would require about $150 billion of development assistance per year. If that sounds like a lot, it's still less than the 0.7 percent of G.N.P. a year that donor countries have repeatedly promised, most recently in Mexico, where in 2002 they signed the Monterrey Consensus pledging ''concrete efforts'' toward that goal. (Despite recent increases, the United States still spends under 0.2 percent of its G.N.P. on foreign aid -- less than any other wealthy industr
ialized country.) ''You can't have a civilized world in which the rich aren't even willing to live up to this tiny commitment,'' Sachs says. ''We're talking about less than 1 percent,'' he adds, a statistic that seems to astound him. ''It's stunning.''
Sachs isn't just expecting rich nations to fork over the cash, though. He's traveling the world to rally poor countries to draft plans showing what they need and how they'll spend it. Hunger, for example, can be eliminated with the right science and technology, he says, which can be purchased with foreign aid. So in July, Sachs convened in Ethiopia a United Nations conference on hunger to persuade African leaders to see it that way. Ambitious as ever, Sachs aimed to start an African ''green revolution.''
On the morning of the revolution's scheduled kickoff, Sachs hovered in the vast lobby of the United Nations conference center in Addis Ababa. ''What if no one shows up?'' he said, laughing. Some nervousness around this hunger conference was warranted. For weeks beforehand, Sachs frequently wondered aloud whether calling his campaign a green revolution was such a good idea. The first green revolution, financed by private foundations, began in the 1940's and introduced hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and powerful pesticides to the developing world. Although countries like Mexico, India and China vastly increased food production, the means by which they did it were later criticized for destroying biodiversity, creating dependence on expensive polluting chemicals and driving small farmers out of business. Meanwhile, economists grew skeptical that even the best technology would help countries whose own economic policies seemed to be stunting their growth.
Such controversy does not deter Sachs, however. He strategically timed the hunger conference for the day before the the start of the African Union summit, an annual meeting of African leaders, so that heads of state would attend. (Sachs said he also hoped to address the summit.) Judging from the hundreds who filled the conference hall and the long row of African leaders who took their places at the dais, including Kofi Annan and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, it was clear by 9:30 a.m. that Sachs had a good turnout. (Unexpectedly, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan also showed up -- a stark reminder that not all heads of state are especially deserving aid recipients.) Sachs was the only non-African on the stage.
When the Africans spoke, they stressed the importance of ending the continent's conflicts and applying African solutions to Africa's problems. Then Sachs took the podium. Leaning forward, his gaze spanned the audience. ''This is a moment of historic opportunity,'' he began. ''You are here to launch a 21st-century green revolution.''
He went on, his voice rising: ''The poor are blamed for their problems. We say the poor are poor because they're corrupt or because they don't manage themselves. But in the past two years I've seen exactly the opposite.'' Hunger can be eliminated, he told them. ''My country spends nearly $450 billion on its military and only $15 billion on development aid per year. We have so much money we don't know what to do with it.''
Like a preacher rapt by his own evangelical zeal, Sachs was soon transformed from one of the rich himself to one of the Africans in the audience. ''They need to hear from us that this is not wishful thinking, this is not money down the drain,'' he declared. ''They need to hear from us.''
Sachs went on to suggest that the rich countries should cancel all of Africa's debts. ''If they won't cancel the debt -- and I'm stretching here -- I would suggest that you do it yourselves,'' he announced, eliciting murmurs of surprise and then growing applause. His voice rising, he said, ''The time has come to end this charade.''
Dick Beahrs, retired president of Court TV, and Hans Eenhoorn, a retired senior vice president of the food giant Unilever, hardly seem like revolutionaries. Yet as we bumped along potholed dirt roads in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia on the day before Sachs's arrival in the country, they certainly sounded like converts to his cause. Alongside our air-conditioned white Land Cruiser, tiny children led miniature donkeys loaded with yellow plastic water buckets. Bony cows with calves so skinny they looked like stray cats grazed on barely perceptible shrubs. But as we wound through the arid mountainous terrain, the eroded and abandoned soil gave way to small plots of freshly plowed dirt.
''I love those living fences!'' Beahrs exclaimed as we passed a row of cactuses that had been placed around newly planted trees to keep cattle from eating them. From the front seat, Eenhoorn spouted statistics: ''The amount of soil lost in one year in Ethiopia could fill a string of three-ton trucks circling the equator twice.''
Beahrs and Eenhoorn are members of the United Nations Millennium Project Hunger Task Force, one of 10 groups that Sachs has created that combine scientists, aid specialists, economists and philanthropists to draft ''business plans'' for meeting each of the Millennium Development Goals. Notwithstanding his relentless attack on wealthy governments, Sachs maintains strong ties with wealthy corporations and individuals. He has dined with the C.E.O. of General Electric, for example, and publicly touts Monsanto's latest research on drought-resistant seeds as a panacea for Africa, as he did at the United Nations hunger conference -- to an African audience strongly suspicious of genetically modified crops. To all his antipoverty work, Sachs takes a businesslike approach, with detailed plans, needs assessments and cost analyses, as if to make what many see as nebulous and unrealistic goals seem less so.
The members of the hunger task force returned to the capital just in time for a meeting on how Ethiopia could meet the Millennium Development Goals. ''We had a really exciting trip yesterday,'' Beahrs told Sachs. ''A picture is worth a thousand words. It really shows that scaling up on a mass scale is possible.''
''That's a great op-ed,'' Sachs said, laying out the headline in the air. '''Scaling Up Is Possible.' I'll have to write that.''
Addressing about 200 Ethiopian officials and United Nations functionaries 20 minutes later, Sachs emphasized the ''on-the-ground realities'' his colleagues had just seen, he said. ''Clearly, the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved. A huge scale of development can take place.''
But can the problems of a country like Ethiopia be solved so readily by money and technology? It's unlikely that there are enough skilled administrators, teachers, engineers and health and agricultural workers to implement the programs Sachs says are needed. The projects in Tigray are a good example: 70,000 water-harvesting ponds and tanks were built hastily under government orders last year, but many were designed so poorly they don't actually hold water. And the region lacks the necessary workers and materials to fix them. What's more, although Ethiopia's communist rulers were overthrown more than a decade ago, private land ownership is still forbidden, destroying farmers' incentives to improve the soil. At the Council on Foreign Relations last January, the head of USAID, Andrew Natsios, said in a public debate with Sachs that Ethiopia has ''the worst economic policies next to Zimbabwe in Africa,'' citing it as an example of wasted foreign aid.
But travels through the country suggest Ethiopia does benefit from the aid it receives -- and could use far more. After Sachs left town, I drove with a local priest to Wonji, a dusty village of dry hills and grass huts a few hours east of Addis Ababa. When we arrived, a little girl in a bright yellow dress and neat rows of braids ran up to greet us. A year ago, the priest said, she was so skinny and her belly so swollen from hunger he assumed she would die. Now, she looked relatively healthy -- thanks to food aid trucked in by the United States. And with the help of Catholic Relief Services, financed by USAID, the villagers built a system bringing water from the nearest town to a bank of modern faucets in the village center. Still, the project is only a Band-Aid covering deeper wounds. If the rains don't come soon, said Almaz Tafara, a weary-looking 35-year-old mother of seven balancing a large clay jug as she screwed shut a shiny new water tap, ''we are lost.''
To Sachs, such developments support his argument for a big infusion of immediate cash. But to others, such aid projects are beside the point. The government isn't meeting its larger responsibility to develop the country. How much can foreign assistance change that?
The debate had been crystallized three months earlier, when I accompanied Sachs to the World Bank headquarters in Washington. Sachs and Arye Hillman, an economist from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, had been invited to discuss the question: ''How and Why Do States Fail?''
''The idea that African failure is due to African poor governance is one of the great myths of our time,'' Sachs began, addressing a packed hall. ''They can't get out of the hole on their own. If we don't take a different approach, we will not only see certain collapse; we will see a catastrophic downward spiral of violence.''
He continued, his voice rising: ''If you go to rural Ethiopia, Burkina Faso or Mozambique and try to figure out how to solve the problems of crushing disease burden, lack of cooking fuel -- they're living on dung as their cooking fuel. They lack access to basic medical care. We have not begun to take this problem seriously. What will it take for villages with no access to anti-malarials, where 10 percent of the adult population is H.I.V.-positive and has depleted soils because they can't afford fertilizer? If you have another idea of how they're supposed to do this all by themselves,'' he said, his voice shaking now, ''let me know.''
Understandably, Hillman began on the defensive. ''We all have the same objective,'' he said steadily, as if he'd just been accused of killing small children. ''We all want to help the poor. But billions of dollars have been spent in Africa over the course of two decades. Someone has to show us that throwing more money at the problem will solve it.'' Turning to Sachs, Hillman said: ''All the problems you pointed to are the responsibility of the government. Most of these problems are resolved in civil societies. It's a problem with culture here. We all know there are political elites in poor countries that do very well.''
It's an argument Sachs confronts repeatedly. He agrees that foreign aid should be focused on countries with good governments: don't give money to Zimbabwe, for example. But how many good governments exist in Africa? In a recent article, Sachs argues that, controlling for income levels, African governments are no worse than others around the world. But ''the question is not whether governance is good relative to income,'' says Stephen O'Connell, a Swarthmore College economist who wrote a response to Sachs's paper, ''but whether it is good enough in absolute terms to avoid sharply diminishing returns or even outright institutional deterioration when managing a massive scaling-up of public services.''
Indeed, for all the research that has been conducted since the Marshall Plan first inspired American foreign aid to the developing world, there's little agreement on when or whether aid works. Many studies show that more spending fails to improve services like health or education in the long term; others say those studies measure the wrong things -- counting aid given for political or humanitarian purposes rather than development.
The World Bank's latest world development report reflects the growing view that money alone is not the answer. Even when governments spend large sums on health and education, for example, the bank's study finds they spend little of it on poor people: In Nepal, for instance, 46 percent of education funds are spent on the richest fifth; only 11 percent are allocated to the poorest. Even when the spending makes it to the local level, qualified staff members still have to show up for work; yet a survey of health clinics in Bangladesh found an absentee rate among doctors of 74 percent.
But Sachs is no longer fighting numbers with numbers. The economist has effectively bowed out of the debate, shedding his academic robes for a new cloth. He's become a believer, a preacher for the ''Big Push'' theory. His book, ''The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time,'' which will be published next spring, is a personal plea to heed the call. Ultimately, Sachs is convinced that we've never really pushed hard enough. ''It's like trying to put out a forest fire with one hose,'' he likes to say. ''If the fire continues to spread, it doesn't mean firefighting doesn't work. It means we need more firefighters.''
Although he is the son of a prominent labor and constitutional rights lawyer in Michigan, Sachs did not always have an especially progressive outlook. In fact, the ''shock therapy'' he engineered imposed austerity on nations in distress and earned him a reputation as a heartless market advocate.
In 1985, he successfully advised the Bolivian government on its recovery from a bout of 25,000 percent inflation. A few years later, he turned to Poland, where the fledgling Solidarity government wanted to create a market economy. Then only 35, Sachs boldly advised slashing government subsidies, abolishing price controls, liberalizing trade and devaluing the Polish currency. He also helped persuade Western nations to finance currency stabilization and cancel much of Poland's debt. Inflation dropped, new businesses started and government coffers grew, securing Sachs's reputation as an economic savior.
Not long after, the new Russian Federation was teetering. Central planning had collapsed; inflation was rising; shops were empty. In December 1991, Sachs arrived to advise the government with a team of Harvard economists. But the Polish prescription had markedly different results in Russia, which was rent by political infighting and lacked markets or a strong civil society. Many proposed reforms stalled in Parliament. Those implemented, like elimination of price controls, led to spiraling inflation that wiped out Russians' savings and thwarted investment. Privatization led to looting of the country's most valuable assets by its leading businessmen and organized criminals. Fairly or not, many still hold Sachs responsible.
Whenever I asked Sachs about Russia, he bristled, the only times in months I saw him lose his composure or stray off message. When it first came up, we were standing outside his four-story town house off Central Park West at the end of a long workday. Sachs launched into his standard defense: he gave the right advice, but the Russians didn't follow it. It was the United States' fault, too, for refusing to give enough money to stabilize the currency and create a safety net for the unemployed.
There was a clap of thunder. Then raindrops. Sachs's words seemed to race ahead of him. ''You try your best and do what you can do, but you couldn't imagine all of the blame that came afterward,'' he said. ''Say that malaria aid didn't work. It would be like being blamed for malaria for the next 10 years. Am I going to be blamed for AIDS too?'' The rain started coming down harder, and his wife, Sonia, rushed out with an umbrella and reminded him that the guests for a fund-raising dinner were already there. He paused for a moment and his voice lowered, cracking slightly. ''Frankly, the Russia thing was a very painful period.''
Instead of wallowing in the pain, however, Sachs has set out to redeem himself. It's as if having failed at the second-greatest challenge of modern history -- the transition from communism to capitalism -- he is intent on solving the first: the persistence of global poverty.
Sachs has many of the necessary talents. ''Jeff has been extremely successful at putting ideas on the policy agenda of governments,'' says Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. ''All of these organizations and institutions he has criticized, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are very much aware of him.'' But Sachs's supreme self-confidence also rubs many the wrong way. ''I would criticize his lack of humility,'' Rodrik says. ''Whatever he's focused on, he has this evangelical attitude that it's obviously the right thing to do, that people who disagree either have an ax to grind or are simply not thinking straight.''
In fact, some experts, like the Harvard economist Michael Kremer, are highly skeptical of Sachs's current focus on the Millennium Development Goals. ''Focusing aid and development planning on the M.D.G.'s may distort how funds are spent,'' he says. Developing an AIDS vaccine, for example, could get short shrift because it isn't likely to yield results by the 2015 deadline.
Wealthy nations' attitudes toward foreign aid do appear to be shifting, however. Two years ago, the United States pledged a 50 percent increase in foreign aid by 2006 as it announced a new ''Millennium Challenge Account'' that aims to support ''the poorest nations that rule justly, invest in their people and encourage economic freedom.'' (Sachs accepts the idea but says it's not ambitious enough.) That's on top of the $15 billion the United States has pledged to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. Britain, meanwhile, has promised to double development spending by 2010, and this summer pledged to reach the developed countries' long-stated goal of donating 0.7 percent of G.D.P. by 2013. Five European countries have already met that goal, and five more, including France and Spain, recently promised to reach it by specific dates.
Sachs, for his part, realizes he's standing at a critical juncture in the history of foreign assistance and intends to use his clout to create an international clamor for its expansion. But he also realizes that to convert the world, he needs to win the faith of aid's intended recipients.
That goal was evident up until his last hours in Ethiopia. For months, Sachs was angling for an invitation to address the African Union during its summit meeting. By Tuesday night, his third day there, he still hadn't received one. Discouraged, he'd moved up his departing flight from Wednesday evening to early that afternoon.
I waited for Sachs to arrive at the United Nations conference center Wednesday morning. African leaders surrounded by bodyguards swept in, but Jeffrey Sachs was nowhere to be found. Then, around 10 a.m., I saw him hurrying across the hallway. ''I did it!'' he said, a smile filling his face. He had the triumphant look of a schoolboy who'd just beaten his greatest rival in the chess finals. ''I addressed the African Union!'' After slipping in late to a closed-door session, Sachs had whispered his request to President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, the new African Union chairman. When Obasanjo opened the meeting, he invited Sachs to speak.
Mission accomplished, Sachs was now running late. He had to catch a flight to Paris for a meeting of international donor agencies. Still grinning, he strode quickly across the convention hall, his head bobbing above his oversize suit -- an unlikely-looking revolutionary sweeping through the thick crowd of African dignitaries and out the front door. |
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| Fifth |
[Nov. 10th, 2004|01:00 pm] |
Sudan.
A Brief History:
In 1956, Sudan won its independence from the United Kingdom. Except for a brief period in the 1970's and early 1980's, the country has been in the midst of a civil war. The political and economic power rests with the Arab population in the north of the country. The African non-Arab/non-Muslim population is primarily contained in the south, where it is mostly farmland. In 1989, the power of this Islamist group in the north was cemented in a military coup. The group has not been unsuccessful, economically speaking, and has "turned around a struggling economy with sound economic policies and infrastructure investments," according to the CIA. The country, which is across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia, has begun exporting crude oil, although its main source of income rests in the farmlands of the south. The country, although improving, is destined to remain at the poverty line for years to come.
Several rebel groups arose to fight the domination of the Islamist party, but these groups were met with an extreme response. The ruling body of Sudan outsourced its terror to a militant group called the Janjaweed. The government denies this accusation, but the Janjaweed utilizes government airplanes and weapons to bomb and otherwise terrorize the nation.
Darfur is the city in which the violence is centralized. Reports of rapes of women and children, and the murder of males make headlines only on the internet and Time magazine. UNICEF says that these attacks are indiscriminate. If a woman or child leaves one of the refugee camps, they are more than likely to be raped or murdered.
What's been done?
The Sudanese government signed a cease-fire treaty in April, promising to end the torture of their people. This agreement was not adhered to. Sudan remains what the United Nations calls the worst human rights violation today. In fact, the Holocaust museum has a wing specifically dedicated to the violations present in Sudan today because this ethnic cleansing of the African population by the Islamists is very similar to that which occurred during World War II. This week, the government agreed to No-Fly zones over parts of Sudan, including Darfur. This comes as a result of the government planes that have been used to bomb the country. Aid workers do not believe that the government will adhere to their agreement, but we will see.
The United States government and media (except Time magazine) has said and done nothing. |
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| Fourth |
[Nov. 9th, 2004|08:50 pm] |
I've done as I promised. I have addicted myself to CSpan. For the past two days, as I knitted my sister's Christmas present and studied Organic Chemistry, I watched the Washington Journal and various speakers. It's interesting: yesterday was an incredibly Republican day (I heard from Mr. Newt Gingrich, Mr. Grover Norquist, Mr. Bush, Mr. Otherrichwhitemale) and today was a Democrat day, with appearances by Celinda Lake, Eleanor Smeal, Kim Gandy, Bruce Reed, Al From, Ron Brownstein, Donna Brazile, Will Marshall, and the great Blanche Lincoln. Here is what I have learned over the past two days:
1. The right wing actually does have a vast conspiracy - and they don't mind telling everyone about it. Newt Gingrich described to his GOPAC listeners phase four of the conservative movement. It is going to consist, first and foremostly, of defining america. He discussed immigration and God under this heading, finishing with the "ownership society." Democrats that are destined to remain democrats (the other categories he delineated will become republicans soon) do not understand America because they don't understand the "ownership society." He referenced House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, and her district. Since she comes from a place (San Francisco), where only 30% of people own their own homes. He says that the national averatge is 70%. I don't believe that - give me one moment while I look up that statistic.
(Found it. Okay, so Gingrich was right - 68.3% of Americans own homes according to http://www.danter.com/statistics/homeown.htm . I can't figure out how to instert a link here. I apologize. It's interesting, however, that this information is based on the Census (I guess there isn't another viable option, really). But, who fills out the census? My guess is that homeowners are overrepresented. That's just a guess. Another interesting fact is that both older populations and married populations statistically own more homes. A lot more homes. That's not my main point, just something to ponder.)
Anyway, Gingrich was saying that "Pelosi Democrats" can't understand America because they come from places where fewer occupants own homes, and that is not a part of the ownership society (defined by the right, of course). Therefore, those places and people with less home ownership are unamerican. Great. Single moms, dads, college students, single persons, 18-35 year olds, urbanites, homosexuals, democrats, etc. - all unamerican.
So why do we care about them?
Well, we don't....but we would like to change them. We want these people to buy (nice diction) into the "ownership society," and the other ideals of the right. There is no room for diversity in this new america. Thus, they must crush the left - the left who "doesn't want independent, autonomous thinking individuals because how can they ever run their lives?" (Norquist). Interesting.
2. Don't worry, there'll only be two. This is what I have learned from democrats. We suck. Well, no. We don't suck - just the people who want to be our leaders. They suck. Washington Journal yesterday featured Harold Ickes (founder of ACT) and Some guy named Rosenberg or Rosenthal or something. The founder of the New Democratic something or other. You can tell how impressed I was. Democrats have this great message: we really care about the working class - and everyone else in the United States and the rest of the world. We care. We want progressive policies that will keep everyone happy, healthy, and with te basics to keep themselves and their families (which we'll allow you to define) above water. Yet, we allow that message to appear jaded in the eyes of Americans. How does this happen? Because nerds like Ickes and Rosenwhatsit go on television, spout our rhetoric, and then laugh at the very people we are trying to convince to join us. We can't think of Americans as people to persuade at the same time as we consider them the enemy. Blargh.
Yet, as our leadership falters, the ones who may be able to help us out - namely, Donna Brazile - don't want the position. Okay, I'm getting distracted and disjointed. I bid you good night. |
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| Third |
[Nov. 6th, 2004|11:19 am] |
Apparently one of the precincts in Ohio gave Bush a few thousand extra votes because of a problem with the voting machines. My gut reaction is to be very very angry and scour the internet until I find news that this happened in many Ohio districts, thus stealing the election from Democrats once again.
Unfortunately, this news will probably never surface. So, although I do feel cheated, I have to turn my head to that and hope that if it is the case, we will find out because there is nothing that I can do about it. |
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| Second |
[Nov. 5th, 2004|03:31 pm] |
I've spent the past two days considering what I will do to improve both myself and this country. I still don't know what to do. My first thought is that I need to keep myself more aware of what is going on in the world. I have to catch up on current events. Since I am going home for the remainder of the semester (if you know me and would like to be filled in, please contact me), I think that I will addict myself to the television, the internet, as well as my classic novels - for I find that my books have the power to enlighten me more than anything else. Hmm...that last statement bothers me a bit. My books provide me answers to the questions discovered in experience. Does that make sense? I hope so.
I will have to find or invent a new outlet for this sense of urgency I feel in regard to changing the world. Do I find a new non-profit job? Do I volunteer at a different location everyday? Do I start a new non-profit organization? Do I write a book? Do I encourage those who would write a better book to write a book? Do I go on a country-wide activism binge? If I could, I would do all of those things, unfortunately, I have Organic Chemistry, Physics, and the ever-looming MCAT to consider.
The answer, right now, seems to be fairly simple: put off the MCAT and medical school until this country is able to sustain itself. I am not at all suggesting that this country cannot sustain itself without me individually; I am fairly certain, due to Tuesday's "event," that the country needs everyone like me to do what we can.
To further illustrate the last point, I am on a lot of listservs, one of which is moderated by the Human Rights Campaign. Every day, it seems, I receive several emails delineating the precarious position of homosexuals in this country - and exactly what they need me to do to help them. I delete those emails. "Why?" you ask with a look of disgust upon your face. Because I could not imagine that ELEVEN states would pass anti-gay marriage laws. It never entered my consciousness that these issues would even exist. People like me need to wake up. I hope that we all have, because this country needs those who would have done more to act now; do more.
I have to believe that more than 49% of us care about the rights of our fellow citizens - the rights of our brothers and sisters throughout the world. We need to pull them together to change the minds of those who don't realize exactly what is happening. |
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| First |
[Nov. 4th, 2004|03:22 pm] |
So I don't really know what to do with myself. The United States of America decided that George W. Bush deserves another four years as president. Do you know why? Morality. Because W. believes that homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to marry, and that abortion should be considered murder - he is going to be our leader (again). I don't quite know what to say to that.
The only thing that I can do is question the meaning of my existence.
So, I have been going to school to focus on Biology, Psychology, and my future as a doctor. I don't think that's going to work anymore. I think I have to do other things, now. Joining the Peace Corps, Teach for America, etc. all seem like better ideas now - as does joining various other "activisty" (thank you, Jill) organizations.
Although I'll do my best to fit stuff in, I don't have time for any of this while I'm in school. What about after I graduate? The plan was med school. Is it worth it to spend the time that this country is falling apart in school? Is it fair to the people who would never get the chance to go to medical school? How can I justify that? I don't think I can.
I have goals. One of them is to have a lot of money. A lot of people have that goal though. A lot of people can't go to school or even take a day off to make it though. I can. I can do both of those things. I always will be in a position to do that, somehow. I'm not sure why I've been given such opportunities, but since I am lucky enough to be here, have the ability to recognize all of that, I have a moral obligation to put off my plans for the aquisition of wealth at least a few years. I'm 19. I can swing that.
So what do I do first? |
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