Food prices continue to rise worldwide

Recent developments in grain markets point to prolonged international supply shortages and price spikes, exposing billions of people to hunger and malnutrition.

US commodity exchanges have seen extreme volatility in the past week, with speculation on spring wheat crops driving per-bushel prices to record levels, while high oil prices and severe weather have contributed to rising corn and soybean prices.

Last week, the three US Midwest grain exchanges—the Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGE), the Kansas City Board of Trade and the Chicago Board of Trade—all raised their daily trading limits to triple the previous ceilings, encouraging rampant speculation and substantially heightening trade activity.

On February 15, trading on the anticipated March wheat crop hit $19.88 a bushel on the MGE, the highest price ever, and 79 percent higher than a year ago. The surge came on the announcement that Japan had purchased 190,000 tons of US wheat shortly after the Egyptian government bought 235,000 tons, and in anticipation of weather-related food disruptions in China.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has warned that the nation’s wheat inventories are dropping dangerously low. In part, this is due to the fevered rate of exports driven by the weakening dollar and relative strengthening of currencies of many importing countries.

By June, the USDA projects that actual stores of wheat will fall by 40 percent, to the lowest level in three decades. Goldman Sachs’ February commodities report put world wheat stocks at the lowest level since 1948.

The world food shortage cannot be understood as a temporary phenomenon or a simple supply and demand dilemma. Rather, a number of complex and interrelated forces are behind the development, all of which underscore the inability of capitalist markets and institutions to rationally plan and provide for human needs.

Following the collapse of the housing market and subsequent crisis in the financial sector, much speculation shifted from those areas into commodities, which are considered to be more stable and, in US trading houses in particular, less vulnerable to the unfolding recession. Agricultural commodities are seen as a “safe bet” for investors; people need to eat, no matter how inflated the price of food.

It is precisely this attitude that makes agricultural markets extremely vulnerable to crises, and increases the hunger threat posed to the world’s population. The prices of crops are negotiated not when they are harvested, but well in advance, in anticipation of future yields, production needs, and so on. Agricultural producers sell so-called “futures contracts” on crops several months before harvest, thereby guaranteeing certain prices. Grain distributors and processors buy these futures contracts, guaranteeing they will not pay more upon harvest.

However, futures contracts cannot guarantee that crops will survive, or that they will meet demand when harvested. Shortages or blights, which can be ruinous to farmers and consumers, are often celebrated by speculators, who buy up futures contracts and turn profits on unmet demand.

Speculation generates volatility, in turn triggering yet more speculation. Since the eruption of the credit crisis, the grain market has assumed an increasingly volatile character, forcing up retail inflation and worsening the effects of economic downturn for the working class population.

Agricultural production is vulnerable to shocks because it is intimately connected to climate trends, declining water tables, and weather-related disasters.

Agriculture is also affected by fluctuations in the energy market. The distribution of grain is directly impacted by transportation costs, tying grain prices to oil prices. This drives prices up especially in countries dependent upon sea-shipped imports.

Further, farming and processing operations are more expensive when oil rises, not only because of fuel costs, but also because the cost of fertilizer, the nitrogen of which is made from natural gas, is bound up with energy market trends. USDA figures show that fertilizer prices have risen enormously in recent years. In the past year, diammonium phosphate, commonly used as a corn fertilizer, rose from under $300 last year to $792 per ton February 15.

Moreover, as fuel prices rise, demand for biofuel also rises. As a result, more corn, soybeans, and other feedstock crops are diverted into biofuel production. This exacerbates shortfalls in the human food system and increases the cost of feeding livestock and poultry, pushing up meat, egg, and dairy consumer prices.

The US government has pressed for the replacement of 15 percent of gasoline consumption with ethanol and other biofuels in the next few years. According to the USDA, this mandate will consume at least a third of the nation’s corn crop. And with an incentive to grow biofuel-destined crops, agricultural operations have less cropland for growing staple food grains. The drive to produce ethanol has contributed to a doubling in the price of corn in two years, and a significant drop in global corn reserves.

In a report released February 18, the European bank UniCredit projected an average $15 per-bushel for wheat in 2009, based on the trends in land allocation for ethanol crops and in increasing demand for meats in Asia. “Rising global population, the production of biofuels and more protein-rich nutrition in emerging markets are triggering a steady increase in demand,” the report said, noting that acreage devoted to wheat has been stagnating for three decades.

More at the World Socialist Web Site.

Largest beef recall in US history reveals compromised food supply

Published today on the World Socialist Web Site.

Nearly three weeks after the release of an undercover video documenting sick cows being sent to slaughter, a major US beef producer has requested the recall of more than 143 million pounds of beef—much of it supplying public schools nationwide over the past two years.

The recall, many times larger than any other beef recall in US history, yet again exposes the dangers posed by the weakening of government regulations on corporate operations in general and food production in particular. At every step, from production through to marketing, public health is dependent on voluntary safety measures of big business.

The video, released January 30 by the Humane Society, shows cows that are too sick or crippled to stand up being shoved, dragged and rolled across cement-floored pens at the Hallmark Meat Packing slaughterhouse in Chino, California. Immobile cows whose hides are caked with manure can be seen being rammed with forklifts, jabbed in the eyes, dragged along by chains, shocked and subjected to simulated drowning with high-pressure hoses to get them on their feet in the so-called “kill box” of the facility.

The Hallmark plant is a subsidiary of Westland Meat Company, which has sold about 100 million pounds of beef, worth $146 million, to the federal Department of Agriculture over the past five years for its school lunch and needy families programs. Westland received the department’s “Supplier of the Year” award for the National School Lunch Program in 2004-05.

Cows too sick to stand, or “downers,” are officially banned from use as human or animal food because of the risk of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The disease, which eats away at the brains and nervous system of cattle, can be spread among livestock and contracted by humans in a variant form that is untreatable, irreversible, and fatal. It cannot be cooked out of tainted meat, and its symptoms may take years to surface.

In addition, downer cattle have much more contact with feces, increasing the likelihood of contamination of entire lots of processed meat from life-threatening bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella.

Thousands upon thousands of children and poor people have been put at risk in a way that may take years to assess. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) placed an “administrative hold” on Westland meat in its possession beginning January 30, yet it was not until February 18 that the company itself announced a recall. Beef products dating all the way back to February 1, 2006 were included in the recall.

In spite of the record-breaking scope of the recall and potential for a public health crisis, company and federal officials have sought to downplay the incident. The USDA called the risk of mad cow disease “negligible,” classifying the recall as Class II, indicating a “remote probability” of adverse consequences.

Dick Raymond, the USDA’s undersecretary of agriculture for food safety, told reporters, “We do not know how much of this product is out there at this time. We do not feel this product presents a health risk of any significance.”

Reflecting the reluctance with which federal regulatory bodies approach their mandates, Raymond added, “But the product was produced in noncompliance with our regulations, so therefore we do have to take this action.” In a separate statement widely quoted by press reports, Raymond made the absurd claim that the meat posed little health risk because “The great majority has probably been consumed.”

For its part, the company said it was “shocked” by the exposure of the practices at its Chino plant. Two employees captured in the Humane Society video were fired from the Westland plant and face criminal charges for animal cruelty. Daniel Agarte Navarro, the pen manager, has been charged with five felony and three misdemeanor counts, and Luis Sanchez faces three misdemeanor counts in San Bernardino district court.

The company itself, however, faces no criminal charges.

In an interview with the Washington Post published January 30, Westland President Steve Mendell, who is also the manager of operations at the Hallmark Meat Packing plant, claimed no knowledge of the use of stun guns. “That’s impossible... electrical prods are not allowed on the property,” he said.

Asked whether workers were using forklifts to move downer cows, he told the newspaper, “I can’t imagine that.” Questioned as to whether cows were subjected to simulated drowning, Mendell said, “That’s absolutely not true. We have a massive humane treatment program here that we follow to the nth degree, so this doesn’t even sound possible... I don’t stand out there all day, but to me it would be next to impossible.”

Mendell’s statements notwithstanding, the video makes clear that the two fired workers were not acting furtively in their abuse of the downer cows. Rather, they acted in the open, in a manner that suggested their behavior was common, routine and accepted.

Obvious questions arise as to the conduct of USDA inspectors required to be on-site at slaughterhouses such as Hallmark. The USDA maintains a continuous presence at more than 6,200 slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities nationwide, with a staff of 7,800 inspectors.

Inspectors are supposed to be on-hand to conduct pre-slaughter inspections of all cows to ensure that no diseased animals pass into the food supply. They are also supposed to return unannounced to observe the handling of the animals to ensure they are managed in a way that minimizes discomfort and stress. Yet for at least two years, the USDA estimates Westland violated federal regulations under the noses of its inspectors. How was this possible?

In a February 17 press release, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service made it clear that it would not stiffen inspection procedures at slaughter facilities because of the recall. “FSIS believes this to be an isolated incident of egregious violations to humane handling requirements and the prohibition of non-ambulatory disabled cattle from entering the food supply,” the agency said.

Such “isolated incidents” are becoming more and more frequent. In 2007, the FSIS issued 66 suspensions of meat processing facilities and registered 691 “noncompliance records” for inhumane handling. Very few downer cows are checked for BSE, even when they are identified as sick or injured by USDA veterinarians. Instead, hundreds of thousands are approved for slaughter and sent into the food supply each year.

National recalls on E. coli-contaminated meat have spiked in the past year, to 21, up from eight in 2006 and five the year before. 2007 saw a string of huge recalls, including a recall of nearly 22 million pounds of tainted ground beef, at the time the second-largest beef recall in history.

Governmental oversight has been steadily dismantled and consumer protections loosened over the past decade in the name of the “free market,” even as the food system has become more international. When outbreaks occur, they are widespread, and federal agencies are able to respond only with requests to companies to voluntarily initiate a recall. As a result, the population is increasingly exposed to hazards which it has no means of detecting or preventing.

In the case of the present recall, parents have no way of knowing whether the food their children are served in public school lunch rooms is safe, or where it comes from.

Needs outstrip military health services for returning US veterans

Published today on the World Socialist Web Site.

While President Bush’s 2009 fiscal year budget calls for nearly $94 billion in Veterans Affairs (VA) spending, indications of massive inadequacies in medical and mental health care programs for veterans continue to emerge. Hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans contending with urgent health needs are forced to wait months for care, in many cases compounding medical and domestic problems, with no end to the war in sight.

Announced February 4, the president’s 2009 budget proposal calls for some $47 billion in discretionary funding for the VA, mostly for health care. Approximately $41 billion has been requested for medical care, of which $34 billion would fund medical services and $4.66 billion would serve medical facilities. The VA requested another $46 billion in mandatory funding for pensions, education, home loans, and other veteran benefit programs.

The budget must provide for the treatment of 5.8 million patients in VA facilities, including 3.9 million returning veterans from occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these military personnel suffer extremely serious injuries and mental trauma and have little in the way of economic security. They are dependent on the military to provide care and stability.

The VA estimates it will treat 333,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in 2009, a 14 percent increase over its 2008 estimated figure. Spending on benefits and programs for this group would increase by $216 million in 2009, to $1.27 billion.

Some sense of proportion is needed to interpret these figures. Although $1.27 billion represents a 21 percent increase over 2008 spending for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the amount is barely a drop in the bucket when compared to overall federal spending on the military. By contrast, Congressional Budget Office estimates put the current cost of the Iraq occupation alone in excess of $1.3 billion every five days. The 2009 budget calls for $730 billion for defense spending, and even this huge amount undoubtedly represents only a fraction of what will be the eventual 2009 defense spending total.

The budget also calls for higher co-pays for prescription drug costs and other fees, making up $5 billion of the proposal.

Total proposed veterans’ mental health spending for 2009 would increase by 9 percent over the current fiscal year, to $3.9 billion, a figure that comes nowhere near to managing the widespread incidence and worsening severity of mental trauma. The Defense Department estimates as many as 230,000 returning veterans—one in five—have suffered traumatic brain injury, and various estimates put post-traumatic stress disorder prevalence as high as 36 percent, or 600,000 troops back from deployment.

In a 28 percent increase over 2008, $762 million is requested for non-institutional long-term care of severely disabled veterans. Yet the increase actually constitutes a decline in per-person spending, since this group is expected to grow over the period by 38 percent, to 61,000.

The budget would also cut research programs, including an 8 percent cut in the VA medical and prosthetic research budget, and a 7 percent cut in rehabilitation research.

Cuts to sorely needed medical facility construction funds are also proposed. Funds for new facilities would be cut by 44 percent, and grants for extended care facility construction cut in half.

VA spending is predictably held up as evidence that the Bush administration and the Democratic Congress “support the troops,” yet the VA cannot accommodate huge numbers of veterans seeking treatment. The VA has announced, somewhat ironically, that in addition to setting “the national standard of excellence for the health care industry,” the proposed budget would “provide resources for VA to virtually eliminate the patient waiting list”—but not until the end of 2009.

The backlog is severe. According to the VA’s inspector general, fully a quarter of those attempting to see a VA doctor must wait more than a month. Veterans’ advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) reports that internal VA reports suggest one third of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical help wait for more than a month.

American Veterans communications director Jay Agg said in a February 14 VCS press release that 870,000 veterans currently await claims decisions from the VA. “That’s about the same size as 15 Yankee Stadiums full of veterans.” Veterans filing compensation claims wait an average of 183 days. The VA has said the 2009 proposal would reduce this wait time to 145 days.

VCS estimates that because of growing needs, the 2009 budget would substantially underfund medical care for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Testifying before Congress February 7 on the budget proposal, VCS director Paul Sullivan noted that the VA spends an average of $7,100 per veteran, but the 2009 budget allocates “only $3,900 per new veteran.”

In fact, in carrying out their “war on terror,” the military and political establishment has sought to squeeze as much service from troops at as little cost as possible. As a result, veterans have been subjected to long, harrowing, and repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, with shortened recuperation periods and denial of psychological distress.

The advocacy organization Veterans for America released a report February 12 that detailed the conditions of mental health care at the Fort Drum Army base in New York. Some 3,500 Fort Drum troops with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team have spent more than 40 months deployed since September 11, 2001, on four separate deployments, making them the most deployed brigade in the Army.

The report states that members of the 2nd Brigade were more than five times more likely to have been killed and over four times as likely to have been wounded than others who have served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. During its most recent deployment, the report notes, the 2nd Brigade encountered intense combat; 52 members were killed in action, 270 others were classified as “non-fatality casualties,” and 2 members remain missing in action. Military studies suggest that the likelihood of a soldier developing mental health problems increases by 60 percent with each deployment.

The situation at the base represents in more apparent form the problems confronting active duty troops at bases nationwide. Rates of drunken driving, going absent without leave, and stress disorders at Fort Drum are high and morale is low, the VFA report found. Yet, when soldiers sought mental health treatment with on-base psychiatrists, they frequently waited months.

In response, the military has attempted to shift its resources around, effectively putting more strain on its medical system and personnel. In January 2008, three psychiatrists from Walter Reed Medical Center were assigned to the base to help the three permanently stationed psychiatrists with the large number of mentally distressed soldiers. The VFA report points out that this “temporary fix” will last only a few weeks, and that assigned psychiatrists “left crucial positions at Walter Reed, in some cases creating gaps in coverage and discontinuities in care for severely mentally wounded soldiers” at the Washington, D.C., facility.

Fort Drum has no hospital, and any soldier needing emergency or in-patient care must be sent to a regional hospital with only 32 beds for psychiatric patients. According to the VFA, soldiers distrusted the local hospital and have opted to drive over an hour to another hospital because of the fear that doctors will side with military higher-ups who “in some cases, cast doubt on the legitimacy of combat-related mental health wounds.”

The military has cultivated a profound stigma regarding mental disorders and brain injury. At Fort Drum, soldiers reported that the director of the base mental health clinic told them not to discuss their mental health problems with people outside the base. The VFA noted, “Attempts to keep matters ‘in house’ foster an atmosphere of secrecy and shame that is not conducive to proper treatment for combat-related mental health injuries.”

There is an undeniable connection between traumatic combat experiences and mental disorders. Left untreated and, in many cases, unacknowledged, these manifest themselves in society. Recurrent deployments and carrying out brutal orders leave deep scars on soldiers, and the most disturbed are at risk of being abandoned by the military medical system. Domestic violence, suicides, homelessness, and drug dependence are all increasingly common among veterans, considered by the military as one more component of “collateral damage” in the wars and occupations.

Many soldiers and veterans of the current wars are already on the edge of crisis due to economic stresses. In contrast to the composition of the military in wars past, soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan—especially those who joined through the National Guard reserves—are older, have children, mortgage payments, and other obligations that long deployments disrupt. As with the working class at large, family breakdown, divorce, job insecurity, debt and home foreclosure are consequently also common sources of stress for soldiers.

In its ongoing series “War Torn,” an examination of violence committed by returned veterans, the New York Times identified 150 cases of fatal domestic violence or child abuse involving new veterans and service members from October 2001 to the present. In a third of the cases, the paper determined that the service members had served in Iraq or Afghanistan; in another third, the offender had not been deployed.

Based on interviews and court documents, the Times found that the military had deployed some soldiers who had already been charged and in some cases convicted of domestic violence crimes. This constitutes a violation of military regulations, and in some cases, federal laws prohibiting individuals convicted of domestic violence crimes from carrying firearms.

To wage dual open-ended occupations, and wary of reinstating the draft, the military has lowered its standards on mental health and criminal records for new recruits. Soldiers known to suffer from PTSD and other mental disorders have been sent into combat, compounding these problems.

The military, and with it the political establishment, has strong motivation to downplay or ignore growing psychological ailments among the veteran population. Indeed, while the Bush administration’s proposed VA budget would provide $252 million for research projects on returning veterans, no funding request was made to establish promised PTSD and traumatic brain injury screening for active duty service members.

US military admits to a dozen civilian deaths in Iraq

Published today at the World Socialist Web Site.

The US military confirmed Tuesday that soldiers shot dead at least three Iraqi civilians in their beds Monday night north of Baghdad. The admission comes just a day after military officials acknowledged that nine civilians were killed in an Army air raid south of the capital on February 2.

The incidents, which were only acknowledged by the military after inquiries from the media, highlight the ongoing brutality of the US occupation and its reliance on indiscriminate firepower.

On Saturday, witnesses in Iskandariya said the air raid came after a mortar attack on a US convoy at a checkpoint manned by US-backed Sunni fighters, members of the so-called Awakening Councils. Calling the air raid “the deadliest case of mistaken identity since November,” the Associated Press reported that the Army retaliated to the hostile fire by calling in strikes on a nearby home where Awakening Council fighters had sought cover. Helicopters bombarded the house, killing eight adults and a child, and wounding three others, including two children.

The area has been subjected to massive US air strikes since the beginning of the year, with the initiation of operation Phantom Phoenix. Tens of thousands of pounds of bombs have been dropped on Baghdad suburbs and other areas inhabited mainly by Sunnis who have refused to join the Awakening Councils.

The militias were formed primarily out of the desire of former Baathist military and tribal leaders to challenge Shiite dominance in the government by securing US backing.

In November, US troops killed dozens of Awakening Council members north of Baghdad, but officials insisted simply that the dead were suspected militants who were engaged because they were within “the target area” of operations. More militia members have been killed in similar circumstances in the months since.

As with so many US assaults, the attacks on the Awakening Councils reveal that the difference between civilians and “suspected militants”—or the catch-all “suspected Al Qaeda”—is frequently a matter of taxonomic convenience to US command.

The latest instance has stoked anxiety among Sunni leaders that US atrocities will cause former insurgents who enlisted the Awakening Councils over the past year to defect. Reflecting the unsound and shallow character of the Sunni-US alliance and the Iraqi government itself, Sunni government official Salman al-Jumaili commented to the Associated Press, “Al Qaeda could exploit such mistrust in order to win back some Awakening Council members ... any attempt to hurt them, even if it is by mistake, could endanger the political process in the country.”

The military issued a potted statement following the attack that steered clear of any acceptance of blame. “We offer our condolences to the families of those who were killed in this incident and we mourn the loss of innocent civilian life,” US navy lieutenant Patrick Evans, acting as a military spokesman, told the press Monday.

Council fighter Abu Abeer, who witnessed the attack, told the AP that helicopters were targeting anyone near the house. “It was a crime and it shows the Americans’ disrespect for Iraqi blood,” he said. “The US apology will not bring the dead people back to life.”

On Monday night in Adwar, a predominantly Sunni village 10 miles south of Tikrit, US soldiers stormed a one-room house and killed several members of a family. Iraqi police said that while the US military reported three dead, two young children were also shot and one died of her wounds on Tuesday.

Witnesses say the raid was unprovoked. According to a cousin of the victims, soldiers burst in and opened fire on the unarmed residents immediately. The dead included a 40-year-old woman, her 55-year-old husband, and their teenage son, who was a member of the local Awakening Council.

One surviving family member, a 16-year-old girl, told reporters that when US troops forced their way into the home, their interpreter tried to stop them from killing her parents, and put himself between the soldiers and a five-year-old and six-year-old.

In contrast, US military officials, in typical fashion, insisted that soldiers came under fire and killed two suspected terrorists in self-defense. Absurdly, officials claimed in an email sent to the AP that the military did not know who shot the woman or the children. Contradictorily, officials also implied that militants used the civilians as human shields and the troops had no choice but to use force.

Elsewhere in Iraq Monday, the US touted the killing of 15 “suspected militants” in raids northeast of Baghdad. According to the official press statements, the dead were targeted by US forces at a “possible bed-down location” for Al Qaeda. Over the weekend at least 11 others were killed in similar raids and 64 were detained.

While US officials insist that the addition of 30,000 troops in 2007 resulted in a drop in civilian and troop casualties, reliance on indiscriminate force suggests that the deaths of innocents are not being reported consistently, and that the military may be classifying civilians as militants in their public statements.

Receiving even less media attention is the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of civilians killed by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan doubled over 2007, largely due to air strikes. Last year, US-led forces dropped about a million pounds of bombs in the country.

In a report published February 5, Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch told the Washington Times that from 2006 through 2007, “You see a jump from some 20,000 pounds of bombs dropped per month to some 80,000 to 100,000 pounds dropped.”

The paper said a similar increase was seen in Iraq. In 2006, US forces dropped 62,000 pounds of bombs during air strikes. In early 2007, the US was dropping 10,000 to 15,000 pounds per month. In the latter half of the year, the US was bombarding Iraq with 71,000 pounds of explosives per month.

The result for both countries is a humanitarian disaster, vastly downplayed by the media and denied by US military and political leaders. A number of studies have put the civilian death toll in Iraq in the hundreds of thousands or more than a million, and polls by both the British firm ORB and the BBC found roughly one in five households had lost family members to war violence. While the Iraq Health Ministry has recently estimated civilian war dead at 155,000, the Iraq Ministry of Human Rights reported February 4 that there were at least 1.5 million widows registered with the government, many of whom lost their husbands to war-related violence.

An update

I've been a bit busy lately and haven't updated the old blog for a while. But I got up early this morning and did this painting of my hands (acrylic, 12 x 16 inches).

I've written several articles in the past month, including one published today ("New study estimates more than 150,000 violent deaths in Iraq over three years"). I was very happy to get interviews with authors of both the new study from the Iraq Health Ministry and the one out of Johns Hopkins University.

Right now I'm reading a couple of books. One is Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising, by Alexander Rabinowitch. This book is filled with so many valuable pieces of information that I have to resist underlining the better part of every paragraph. For example, on page 49, Rabinowitch describes the Petrograd Soviet's "Order Number One" regarding behavior in the armed forces, which was published in late February or early March 1917:

Among other things, the order authorized the immediate election of soldier and sailor committees with broad but vaguely defined administrative authority in all military units, placed control of all weapons in the hands of these committees, announced that orders of the Provisional Government should be obeyed only if they did not conflict with the orders of the Soviet, and proclaimed full civil rights to soldier when not on duty. The practical effect of these provisions was to make garrison units responsible to the Petrograd Soviet, and to all but destroy traditional codes of behavior in the armed forces.

I also picked up a copy of Broken Wings, written by Kahlil Gibran in 1912. Juan Cole, who translated the novel, said that beyond its interest as social criticism of the era in which it was written, it "has a fair claim to being the first Arabic-language novel." Cole says,

As with most premodern languages, classical Arabic literary forms did not include the novel. Arabic literature did boast the picaresque adventure cycle, including the stories of Sinbad the Sailor or the Maqamat (trickster-stories). Some nineteenth-century Arabic works of fictions attempted to revive these adventure stories in a new way, but these were not novels in the modern sense.

The book is illustrated with Gibran's paintings, done in a delicate Symbolist style that reminds one almost of Delacroix. "Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation," he wrote.

Student loan debt bearing down on graduates

Published today on the World Socialist Web Site.

By a number of measures, university graduates in the US are finishing school with unmanageable levels of debt. Owing tens of thousands of dollars on average and just entering the workforce, young people increasingly face the prospect of paying exorbitant monthly loan repayments well into middle age.

The burden of student loan debt is part of widespread economic crisis confronting working people, which has been defined by the collapse of the housing market and subsequent tightening of the credit market over the past year.

College tuition and fees have skyrocketed in the last decade, while the real worth of both wages and student grant aid has stagnated. Working class students have no choice but to take on employment, debt, and additional time to complete their degrees.

After college, payments kick in. Overall, average workers between the ages of 25 to 34 must spend 25 cents on every dollar earned on debt repayments, according to Tamara Draut, whose 2006 book Strapped: Why America’s 20- and-30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead detailed the growth in credit card use among young Americans. The average college senior carries thousands of dollars in credit card debt, often for the most elementary expenses, including gas, food and books.

According to new data from the Project on Student Debt, in 2006 alone, student debt loads for graduating seniors grew by 8 percent. Wages, meanwhile, grew by only 4 percent. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that two thirds of undergraduate students are carrying loan debt with them upon graduation, on average $19,237. The median debt load is $17,120; a quarter of undergrads borrow more than $25,000, and a tenth borrow more than $35,000.

The figures are sharply higher for those pursuing higher degrees. Graduate students add tens of thousands of dollars more to their debt loads. Depending on the degree, average cumulative debts range from more than $42,000 to nearly $126,000.

Loans from the for-profit private loan industry have especially increased as share of the total student loan volume over the past few years, as students max out their borrowing limits on federal loans. Increased private borrowing is also related to the collapse in family home equity and tightened alternative avenues for credit. Last year, students borrowed $18.5 billion from private lenders, up 6 percent from the 2005-2006 school year to fully a quarter of all borrowing.

By comparison, private lending accounted for only 7 percent of all student loans a decade ago. In 1993, less than half of four-year graduates carried any student loans; the current loan volume represents a tenfold increase over a decade ago. According to the Institute for College Access & Success, the average debt load today is 50 percent higher than in 1993, after accounting for inflation.

Private loans, which frequently have no guaranteed limit on interest rates and fees, can present the hardest financial burdens for graduates entering a slow job market. Private loans are often designed so that getting out from under them is impossible. Unlike other forms of debt, student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

In addition, many loans have no payment deferrals for exceptional circumstances. Packages that do offer deferrals for unemployment, disability or other hardships do not include a deferral on interest, which continues to accrue and compound, and the time limits on deferrals are usually very strict. Assets held by spouses can be seized by private loan companies. Even in the event that the borrower dies, the balance on private loans is non-dischargeable. Instead, the remaining balance is passed on to next of kin.

While the for-profit loan industry is particularly onerous, several not-for-profit, public loan corporations have recently come under investigation for steering students into high-interest loan packages. The New York Times reported December 9 that in Iowa the volume of private loans has grown five times greater than the already enormous national average.

The Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corporation, a nonprofit state entity, is the dominant student lender in the state, holding some $3.3 billion in outstanding loans. According to the Times, the agency oversaw more than 90 percent of the student loan borrowing at Iowa State and 80 percent at the University of Northern Iowa.

Yet despite its non-for-profit status, for years the agency was being run in the interests of profit and at the expense of students. Email messages between officials quoted by the Times stressed the need for “continued ‘hypergrowth’” in student lending and the rewards of “an aggressive, offensive strategy to bring in new loan volume.”

Not surprisingly, at Iowa’s public universities, 27 percent more freshmen students took on loans than the national average, and 44 percent higher loan amounts. At private colleges in the state, freshmen borrowed at rates a third higher. Community college students, typically the lowest-income section of the student population, took out loans in Iowa at three times the national rate as freshmen, with loan amounts averaging 19 percent higher. Federal borrowing in the state followed a similar pattern.

Other state-administered agencies are being found to have similar operating schemes, including in Missouri and Pennsylvania. Top officials at the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, the Times article notes, have awarded themselves $7 million in bonuses over the past three years. The federal Education Department’s inspector general found that the agency “improperly exploited a federal subsidy program to rake in $34 million,” according to the paper.

Ongoing investigations spearheaded by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo into the student loan industry have established that such conflict of interest is also rampant in relations between lenders and university financial aid offices. Dozens of administrators and universities have been implicated in kickback schemes, euphemistically called “revenue sharing” arrangements, in which lenders bestowed money, travel and other gifts in exchange for signing students onto loan deals. These deals often turned out to be far from the best financial options available to students.

A recent study by economists from the College Board and the Project on Student Debt, based on the most recent Census data, found that even among full-time workers with bachelor’s degrees and debts of only $10,000 (using the 6.8 percent federal Stafford loan interest rate), about 1 in 10 would face “unmanageable” payments. At $20,000, near the median debt load, 18 percent would be unable to make payments. At $30,000, 1 in 3 would be confronted with unmanageable payments, and at $40,000, more than half would find themselves unable to cope with the monthly bills.

For students who drop out before completing school, loan debt plus lower wages create the conditions for loan default rates at 10 times the average. In addition, graduates entering social service fields including teaching and nursing may carry substantial debt, yet receive low wages. In addition to students themselves, parents may take on loans or mortgage their homes to pay for college.

When borrowers default on their student loans, according to Department of Education statistics, lenders slap on “collection costs” as high as 40 percent of the total loan balance.

Virtually every sector of the US economy is showing signs of the financial duress of working class households. The auto loan industry recorded significantly higher rates of default in September, according to a December 6 report in the Wall Street Journal.

Auto loans originated in 2006 jumped from a 2.9 percent default rate in August to 4.5 percent in September, the largest one-month rise in eight years, according to the paper. Delinquencies made up a full 12 percent of subprime policies—those whose rates and terms were poorer, generally because of borrowers’ lower credit ratings.

“The numbers will get worse for auto loans,” Dan Castro of the debt-related investment firm GSC Group told the Wall Street Journal. “We’re starting to see signs of rising losses, and delinquencies are creeping up.”

As the paper explained, defaults in the auto loan industry are an indicator of economic crisis, since this sector has not been exposed to wild speculation, as has been the case in the housing market. “The typical delinquent borrower in a car loan isn’t a speculator,” the Journal noted, “but someone who became unable to make what previously seemed like a manageable payment.”

Credit card companies have also registered higher default rates. Capital One Financial, in reporting third-quarter losses of nearly $82 million, revealed that cardholder delinquency rate in October was 4.46 percent, up from 3.53 percent a year ago, with fourth-quarter delinquencies projected to rise to 5.25 percent. These figures only prefigure the trajectory of the credit market in the coming months and years.

Food prices rise, living standards fall for US families

Published today on the World Socialist Web Site.

Living expenses in the US have risen dramatically in the past few years, in ways that are not reflected by official measures of inflation or considered in already grim economic outlooks for the coming year. Soaring energy costs and a spike in the costs of basic foods relative to wages have had a significant impact on living standards for working class families already hurt by the ongoing collapse of the housing market and tightened credit market.

US core inflation—a measure that excludes energy and food—has risen by 2.2 percent in 2007. Retail food prices, however, have risen by 5.5 percent in the first 10 months of 2007, according to the Labor Department, and energy has increased by 12.3 percent over the same period. Continuing the upward trend since early 2002, petroleum-based energy costs increased at a 20.6 percent annual rate in 2007.

Prices of certain goods have risen drastically. Milk prices have risen nearly 20 percent so far this year; the price of eggs has jumped by more than 42 percent since October 2006. Likewise, a study published December 5 from the University of Washington found fresh fruit and vegetable prices have risen by 20 percent in the past two years.

One immediate consequence is a decline in the quality of food available within household budgets already strapped by steeply rising energy prices. The University of Washington study, published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, tracked price changes in 370 foods in Seattle-area supermarkets over two years.

Significantly, the study notes that the recommended diet, including a variety of less calorie-dense foods, now costs upwards of $36 a day. In comparison, a 2,000-calorie diet consisting of junk food would cost just $3.52 per day.

Nearly 26 million people in the US depend on the federal Food Stamp program each month, which, like all federal assistance programs, has not risen commensurate to inflation. The average food stamp allocation amounts to $3 a day, and approximately 800,000 recipients are allotted only $10 in food assistance per month, a minimum that has not increased in three decades.

According to the University of Washington study, the average American currently spends about $7 a day on food, while low-income Americans spend only $4 a day, indicating that millions are already making enormous compromises in their nutrition and long-term health.

“That the cost of healthful foods is outpacing inflation is a major problem,” lead researcher at the University of Washington’s Center for Public Health, Adam Drewnowski, noted in a December 4 press release. “The gap between what we say people should eat and what they can afford is becoming unacceptably wide. If grains, sugars and fats are the only affordable foods left, how are we to handle the obesity epidemic?”

“We are an overfed but undernourished nation.... If you have $3 to feed yourself, your choices gravitate toward foods which give you the most calories per dollar,’’ Drewnowski told the New York Times December 5. “Vegetables and fruits are rapidly becoming luxury goods.”

What is behind food price increases? There are a number of complex and interrelated factors driving up the cost of food worldwide, including stock market speculation over commodities; the economic growth of China and India and a demographic shift of the world’s population toward urban rather than rural areas; corporate consolidation of agricultural production; and ethanol production in the United States.

USA Today reported December 3 that the current rise in prices on commodities including oil, grains, crops processed for fuel, steel and other raw materials was at the highest sustained rate since the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period of economic crisis directly related to commodity inflation.

“Investment banks are scrambling to hire commodity traders and analysts, even as they lay off thousands of existing employees,” the paper noted; in the midst of housing market collapse, the Federal Reserve has been attempting to contain inflation “even while pumping money into the nation’s banking system.”

However, the predictable result of federal supplementation of the financial sector has been the shift of rampant speculation from the credit and housing markets into commodities, resulting in increased prices on raw materials that are passed onto consumers in inflated prices.

In addition to the effects of speculation on the market, food prices have been pushed up by the increasing global demand for fuel and conflicts over strategic control of resources. Transportation and processing costs for all other commodities tie in to the price of oil. Demand for oil and other raw materials has risen in China, India and other areas experiencing rapid industrial growth. Another aspect of such industrialization is urbanization of the world’s poor, which has distanced millions from agricultural production and increased the need for ready-made and processed foods.

Ethanol, a fuel produced from a variety of staple crops and added to gasoline in the United States, has been a primary driver of global grain prices in the past year. The Bush administration has funneled billions of dollars in subsidies into the low-yielding and acreage-intensive corn-based ethanol program, pushing the price of feed corn to more than $175 per metric ton, a world record.

A December 6 report from the Economist noted that, while corn has since scaled back to $150 per ton, prices remain 50 percent above the 2006 average. The US is by far the world’s largest supplier of grain. However, in 2007, about a third of the US corn harvest went to ethanol production, according to the Economist report, surpassing the amount of corn exported annually.

Higher corn prices and demand for biofuel production have substantially increased the cost of raising cattle and chickens, resulting in continually higher meat, dairy and eggs prices.

Concentration on ethanol-bound corn has also pushed out other grain crops. As a result, wheat, rice and soybean prices have skyrocketed. Since 2000, the price of wheat has tripled, and rice and corn prices have doubled. In May, wheat broke $200 a ton on the world market, the Economist reported; by September, following a poor growing season that cut yields and brought supplies to a 30-year low, the price exceeded a record $400 per ton.

The International Food Policy Research Institute revealed on December 4 that in 2006 global cereal stocks, and in particular wheat, were already at their lowest levels since the early 1980s. World cereal production figures are projected to reflect a rise of 6 percent for 2007, attributable to sharp increases in corn production.

All of this has a very direct effect on the world’s population, held at the mercy of irrational markets and the profit motive. The World Bank has pointed out that the grain used to fill the tank of a large-size automobile with biofuel could feed an individual for an entire year. Billions in the poorest regions, and paradoxically, those 2.5 billion people working in rural farming regions, are increasingly being confronted with a situation in which they are unable to eek out the barest level of subsistence against the spike in grain prices and extreme weather associated with climate change.

Internationally—including in the US—hunger and malnutrition are projected to rise in the coming years.

US military judge orders witness names withheld from Guantánamo detainee

Published at the World Socialist Web Site.

The identity of witnesses who will testify against a Guantánamo detainee next year will be kept secret, a military judge ordered October 15. The decision, which was not disclosed to the public at the time it was issued, gives further license for the illegal detentions and drumhead military courts at the prison.

The judge, Colonel Peter Brownback, issued the blanket order prohibiting disclosure of all witnesses in the upcoming trial of Omar Khadr, a Canadian, who is likely to be the first detainee to face prosecution by a military commission. His trial could go forward as early as May 2008.

Khadr’s lawyers, who were given witness information, were ordered not to reveal names to their client or anyone else. The ruling makes it virtually impossible for the defense to either establish the veracity of claims made against Khadr or argue against them.

Documents obtained by the New York Times and first reported on December 1 make it clear that military prosecutors sought the measure as a precedent for future military commissions. The order stipulates that the prosecution may either dispense with or extend the secrecy protections three weeks before trial. According to the Times, prosecutors have suggested they may pursue an extension of secrecy over all information identifying witnesses in any way.

Invoking the standard official claim of an omnipresent security threat, prosecutor Major Jeffrey Groharing wrote to Brownback, “It is conceivable, if not likely, that Al Qaeda members or sympathizers could attempt to target witnesses.” Witnesses in Khadr’s upcoming trial may include US military personnel who were present during his capture in 2002.

Khadr’s military defense lawyer, Navy Lieutenant Commander William Kuebler, told the Times that, with the decision, the military was depriving his client of an open trial and treating him as though he were already convicted. “Instead of a presumption of innocence and of a public trial,” Kuebler said, “we start with a presumption of guilt and of a secret trial.”

Nevertheless, Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, a senior official in the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, insisted the commission system was open to public scrutiny. “But there are certain things that simply must be protected,” he told the Times. “It is so fundamental that we’re in this global war on terror. We need to protect our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines and there’s nothing nefarious about it.”

Similarly, Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gordon told the Associated Press Saturday, “Military Commissions have been designed to be open and transparent while at the same time protecting national security and the safety of our military men and women.”

Like every attack on democratic rights by the Bush administration, the use of secret testimony is justified by the so-called “war on terror” and national security. By this reasoning, there is to limit to the arbitrary powers of the executive branch and military since the US is said to be embroiled in a never-ending war against an amorphous enemy.

“It is ‘1984,’ ” Joshua Dratel, a lawyer for another detainee, told the Times. “No system in the United States would operate this way.”

Not only is the intent of the ruling aimed at instituting anti-democratic and secret measures, but the process of the hearing itself was conducted in such a way as to keep the process secret. Arguments from the defense and prosecution were submitted to Brownback through e-mail, and the 700-page ruling was not made available to the public or the press for more than a month and a half, despite repeated complaints from the media.

The Times quoted an October 11 message from Kuebler to Brownback in which he expressed concern over the credibility of the process. “The manner in which this is being dealt with (i.e., off the record, via e-mail),” he wrote, “creates an added level of difficulty by making it appear that the government is trying to keep the secrecy of the proceedings a secret itself.”

Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan after allegedly throwing a grenade at US soldiers during a firefight at an Al Qaeda compound. For five years he has been held on suspicion of being a trained Al Qaeda operative.

There is nothing legal in Khadr’s detention. He was deemed an “enemy combatant” in spite of international protections against the prosecution of child soldiers, as well as laws distinguishing between wartime battle and war crimes. In the five years of his detention, Khadr has been brutally beaten and abused by his captors, has only spoken with his mother once, and has been denied access to civilian lawyers of his choosing.

Proceedings against him were halted in 2006 when the Supreme Court rejected Bush’s military commissions as unconstitutional. However, under the Military Commissions Act, passed by Congress in September 2006, Khadr was re-charged with murder, attempted murder, spying, conspiracy, and providing material support for terrorism.

The 2006 law is a flagrant violation of the US Constitution, stripping Guantánamo prisoners of their right of habeas corpus—i.e., the right to contest their incarceration in a civilian court. It was passed because Democratic leaders in Congress refused to block it by means of a Senate filibuster.

Last June, the military judge presiding over Khadr’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) dismissed all charges against Khadr as improper. At that time, the State Department announced that the US would not have to release him in spite of the dismissal. In September, the ruling was reversed and war crimes charges were again reinstated.

Khadr filed an appeal with the Washington, D.C., federal circuit court in October after the military court refused to consider an appeal. However, under the Military Commissions Act, no civilian court has jurisdiction to consider an appeal in a war crimes case until the military issues its final ruling, and the D.C. court rejected his appeal without consideration.

The witness secrecy ruling is yet one more example of the unconstitutional character of the Guantánamo prison and the entire array of repressive measures enacted in the name of the “war on terror.” The implications of secret evidence, unnamed witnesses, and non-disclosed rulings go far beyond the fate of individual detainees. The fundamental democratic rights of the American people are the ultimate target of such precedents.

The right of detainees to fair hearings is at stake in arguments scheduled Wednesday before the Supreme Court, where a petition from Guantánamo detainees for federal hearings will be heard. The Bush administration is adamantly opposing any such move, arguing that the president, by virtue of his wartime powers as commander-in-chief, has the unlimited right to declare any individual an “enemy combatant” and order him or her imprisoned by the military without any legal recourse.

Lawyers representing the detainees note that the military CSRTs are drumhead proceedings and are not a substitute for legal hearings in civilian court. “CSRTs exist just to confirm the desired result,” Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer representing one of the detainees petitioning the Supreme Court, told Bloomberg News on December 3. “It’s a totally loaded, rigged process.”

In its brief on the Supreme Court review, the Justice Department reiterated the Bush administration’s insistence that habeas corpus rights for foreign prisoners held outside the country did not apply. “The detainees now enjoy greater procedural protections and statutory rights to challenge their wartime detentions than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war,” the brief declares. “Yet they claim an entitlement to more.”

The denial of habeas corpus has been carried out with the full collaboration of the Democrats. In 2004 and 2006, the Supreme Court overturned the military commissions set up by executive order, and ruled that detainees had a legal right to a review of their imprisonment in accordance with the due process provisions of the Constitution.

Rather than drafting protections against executive branch abuses, Congress, with the complicity of the Democrats, rubber-stamped Bush’s drumhead courts and passed a law prohibiting the courts from hearing complaints from Guantánamo prisoners.

US House passes Democrat-crafted “homegrown terrorism prevention” legislation

Published today on the World Socialist Web Site.

A month ago, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved passage of legislation that would set up a commission targeting domestic “radicalization” as a threat to so-called homeland security. Although it has received little media attention, civil liberties groups have expressed concerns for the future of public protest and other forms of constitutionally protected speech.

The bill, H.R. 1955, “The Violent Radicalization Homegrown Terrorism Act of 2007,” was crafted and sponsored by Democrat Jane Harman of California and approved by the House by a margin of 404-6. A mere three Democrats and three Republicans voted against the bill.

Twenty-three congress members abstained, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers. The bill is currently pending approval in the Senate and is widely anticipated to pass by a similar proportion before the end of the session.

Introduced in April as an amendment to the 2002 Homeland Security Act, the legislation adds provisions for the establishment of a 10-member commission to collect data on radicalization. Evoking the memory of the anticommunist House Committee on Un-American Activities headed by Joseph McCarthy, the anti-radicalization commission would be granted authority to “hold hearings and sit and act at such times and places, take such testimony, receive such evidence, and administer such oaths as the Commission considers advisable to carry out its duties.”

As Equal Justice Alliance director Odette Wilkens pointed out, the commission would be empowered to subpoena and investigate anyone, and would “create a public perception that whoever is being investigated by the Commission must be involved in subversive or illegal activities.” Wilkens noted to Truthout.org reporter Matt Renner, in an article published November 29, “It would give the appearance that whoever they are investigating is potentially a traitor or disloyal or a terrorist, even if all they were doing was advocating lawful views.”

The commission would be composed of appointees, one chosen each respectively by Bush, Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, the Senate and House majority and minority leaders, and by the ranking majority and minority members of the two congressional homeland security committees. Such a selection process would certainly result in an extremely right-wing panel.

The language of the bill is very broad and includes in its designations of terrorist activity a category of intent. For example, “ideologically based violence” is defined as “the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs.” No force or violence need have occurred; the government commission needs only charge, without the burden of evidence, that an individual or group thought about violence.

Similarly, the term “violent radicalization” is defined as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.” The definition of “an extremist belief system” is not specified, leaving interpretation to the discretion of the commission.

“Homegrown terrorism” is defined by the bill as “the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

The implications of this definition of terrorism are far-reaching. Participants in protests against US policy, for instance, could be designated as terrorists if the conduct—or intent—of any individual were alleged by police to be violent.

Under the legislation, after 18 months the anti-radicalization commission would report to Congress on its findings, then establish a university-based organization, the “Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States.”

The Center’s mission would not be limited to research, but also would include a mandate to “contribute to the establishment of training, written materials, information, analytical assistance and professional resources to aid in combating violent radicalism and homegrown terrorism” in coordination with federal, state and local homeland security officials. This could have a definite chilling effect on the political activity and exercise of free speech on campuses because of the virtual enlistment of students and academics into the campaigns of the government’s intelligence apparatus.

The legislation specifically singles out the Internet as a “weapon” for domestic radicalization. In remarks introducing the legislation November 6 to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, Congresswoman Harman said, “There can be no doubt: the Internet is increasingly being used as a tool to reach and radicalize Americans and legal residents.” The web, Harman said, allowed Americans “to become indoctrinated by extremists and to learn how to kill their neighbors ... from the comfort of their own living rooms.”

In the same speech, Harman portrayed American youth in a thoroughly contemptuous manner. “Combine ... personal adolescent upheaval with the explosion of information technologies and communications tools,” she said, “tools which American kids are using to broadcast messages from Al Qaeda—and there is a road map to terror, a ‘retail outlet’ for anger and warped aspirations. Link that intent with a trained terrorist operative who has actual capability, and a ‘Made in the USA’ suicide bomber is born.”

Even more absurdly, she added, “How we address violent radicalization—while respecting the Constitution in the process—is not easy. There is no magic pill or rulebook or law that will fix this.”

It is already clear that not the slightest attempt will be made, by legislators or by the empanelled commission, to actually explain the social origins of unrest, let alone the political aggravators of extremism.

Both the bill’s content and its landslide congressional support underscore the fact that the entire “war on terror” is geared toward quashing political opposition and dissent and dismantling constitutional protections, not fighting a supposed terrorist threat. While targeting the civil liberties of the population as a whole, it poses a particular threat to workers’ and students’ organizations as well as left-wing and socialist parties.

As with the bill’s predecessors since 2001—including the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act, and the Military Commissions Act—the Democrats are working to actively undermine free speech and protections against government surveillance in their role as the nominal opposition in Congress.

New drawing

My sons asleep
oil pastel and ink
24 x 18 inches

US Army reports rising desertion rates

Published today on the World Socialist Web Site.

After a decline in desertion rates following an initial exodus before the preemptive strikes on Afghanistan and Iraq, the military is recording a rise in the number of soldiers who abandon their posts. The Associated Press reported November 16 that desertions this year stand 80 percent higher than in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq.

According to the US Army, 4,698 soldiers—about 9 in every 1,000—deserted in the fiscal year ending September 2007. Over the same period, the Department of Defense reported 1,163 total US deaths and 8,190 wounded. Overall, desertion is the largest cause of personnel attrition—over fatalities and injuries—serious enough to result in military discharge.

A deserter is an active duty service member away from his or her unit without permission for more than 30 days. The Army reports that more than three quarters of its deserters are soldiers in their first term of enlistment.

Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources with the Army, told the Associated Press that soldiers generally exit the military in one of four ways: They are determined unable to meet fitness requirements; they are found to be “unable to adapt to the military”; they violate the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prohibiting someone who is gay from revealing their orientation; or they simply go absent without leave and do not report for duty.

For the Army, the desertion rate for 2007 is 42 percent higher than that of the previous year, when 3,301 deserted. In 2005, 2,011 Army soldiers deserted, representing the lowest annual rate of the war period. In 2001 and 2002, the number of desertions was similar to the most recent figures for the Army (4,597 and 4,483, respectively) before they began to decline.

Historically, the military has not actively pursued deserters. Troops who leave their posts are denied veterans benefits and their names are permanently added to a national database of fugitives. If they are picked up by civilian law enforcement, they are handed over to military police for court martial.

However, Army prosecutions of desertions and other unauthorized absences have greatly increased over the past four years in an attempt to deter other would-be deserters, according to Army lawyers in interviews with the New York Times earlier this year. In a report published April 9, the Times noted that from 2002 through 2006, the average annual rate of Army prosecutions for desertion was triple the preceding five-year period, and prosecutions of similar absences have doubled. This increase in disciplinary action is an unmistakable acknowledgment by the chain of command that the rise in desertions represents not a fluke but a sign of things to come.

Pointing to the far higher Vietnam-era desertion rates, which rose as high as 5 percent, the military has insisted the current rise in desertion rates has nothing to do either with the so-called war on terror or with mass antiwar sentiments.

According to the Army, lower rates in 2003-2005 were the result of successful efforts to identify soldiers likely to desert during basic training, before they were assigned to their posts.

The current higher desertion rates, the Army insists, are too small an increase to attribute to any factors other than personal or familial stress. As Army planning director Wallace put it for the Associated Press, “We’re asking a lot of soldiers these days. They’re humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I’m sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier.”

What the military will not acknowledge is the obvious connection between “issues back home” and military culture and the war itself. Above all, the open-ended and brutal nature of colonial-style occupation has taken a psychological toll on the soldiers charged with carrying it out on the ground, as well as on their families and friends in the United States. Consequently, morale among active duty troops is low and stress is very high.

The military has encouraged a dehumanizing attitude in its ranks toward the Iraqi population, which is understandably hostile to the occupying force. A survey conducted a year ago by the Pentagon of soldiers stationed in Iraq found that more than a third thought torture of captured Iraqis was acceptable. The survey also found that destruction of civilian property, assault and abuse of civilians by troops were utterly routine.

The same survey, conducted by the military’s Mental Health Advisory Team, found that 40 percent of Iraq-deployed soldiers were concerned about uncertain redeployment dates and extended tours. Lengthened tours of duty exacerbate exhaustion and stress, as well as domestic difficulties. Last year, a quarter of soldiers reported marital problems, and 20 percent were in the process of divorce.

When soldiers return home, there is no guarantee they will not be redeployed even when diagnosed with post-traumatic stress or other psychiatric disorders. Nearly 40 percent of Army and half of National Guard personnel who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness.

Senior brass readily admit that the military is stretched to the breaking point, even as preparations are drawn up for an expansion of the war into Iran. Yet how to resolve the numbers crisis poses a major policy problem for the current administration and the Democrats, who recognize that a re-institution of the draft would have a devastating effect on public acquiescence of the war.

The great majority of deserters during the Vietnam-era had been conscripted; by comparison, the “all-volunteer” composition of the current military—drawn almost entirely from the poorest layers of the working class and secured with enticements of signing bonuses and college tuition—has undoubtedly acted as a suppressant upon desertion rates.

Since 2003, the Army has greatly relaxed recruitment and enlistment standards in order to wage the two wars and increase numbers for future occupations. Over the past few years, the proportion of Army recruits without high school diplomas has risen from fewer than 10 percent to 24 percent. About 20 percent of current recruits would not have been accepted before the Iraq invasion, including a higher percentage of recruits issued “moral waivers” for criminal records. The Army has also increased monetary inducements for officers, including bonuses of up to $35,000 to retain sergeants and other mid-level commanders.

Coinciding with the troop surge early this year, the Bush administration called for an additional 65,000 Army troops and 27,000 Marines over the next five years, putting pressure on the military to find volunteers. An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office in April suggested the addition would cost $65 billion, not including the expense of extra training facilities and likely hospital care.

Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s senior military assistant, Peter Chiarelli, asserted that the military must be better structured for open-ended occupation. According to a piece by Art Pine in the National Journal November 12, Chiarelli wrote, “Like it or not, until further notice the US government has decided that the military largely owns the job of nation-building.... We need to accept this reality instead of resisting it.”

The National Journal cited Andrew Bacevich, a military analyst at Boston University, who advocated the institution of a “small-scale draft, supplementing the current all-volunteer force with a small cadre of conscripts. One possibility,” the Journal specified, “making military service an option in a broader program in which young people would be required to do a stint in some kind of ‘national service.’ ”

This proposal has been high on the Democratic Party platform since the 2006 congressional elections. Bacevich told the Journal, “A draft would involve a broader spectrum of Americans with the military and would serve as a constraint for policy makers.... But there’s a need to begin debating the issue because the heavy lifting for future Iraqs is going to be done by the Army.”

Still life

Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches.

Drawing

Colored pencil on paper, approximately 10 x 18 inches.

I did this sketch this morning. Around the time I decided I was an artist, I decided I would do at least one drawing of myself every year. I still think it is a good idea, and anyway I've never understood how anyone could manage to avoid doing a self portrait. Perhaps one day my boys can line my drawings up and see me age.

The old scene

“Whatever happened to your blog?” my favorite critic recently remarked. “You used to have ‘Annotated Life;’ now you just have a life.”

In many ways this is very true. My relation to and with the Internet has changed a lot over the past year due to all sorts of changes in my life. Of course the importance or purpose of a blog changes with it. I have new reservations about and new mechanisms for pouring my heart out.

This morning I’m getting things together for the holiday. Today we’re heading back to Kentucky, where I may see a lot of people out of “the old scene.” About this possibility I feel some ambivalence, partly because the Internet has conveyed some scenes of this scene to me already. Just looking at images of parties I “should have been at” makes me tired. No doubt part of it is that I never quite considered myself in the scene at all, at least until it had scattered.

But just what do we see when we see “the old scene,” anyway? We see the same people, wearing the same fashions, drinking the same, playing the same songs. There is, by all appearances, an incredible stagnation in America. As one observer put it so well recently, our social setting has "a certain depressing vibrancy."

"Nothing’s changed"—and yet everything has. For one thing, we’re all, always, older. We’ve had children and gotten married and divorced and been in accidents and jail and the military and college, and we’ve moved and gone through jobs and joblessness. Those are our small shifts, which move us across our local and psychological ground, the "aggravating factors." Together the small shifts constitute big ones.

But the big shifts move us too, even if our own plot has not shifted much relative to the ones next to it in the avalanche. The economy has been transformed. Consider, the house I lived in ten years ago had 11 rooms and cost $43,000. Wal-Mart was just a little box at the edge of town, not the economic supernova at its center.

We’re in the middle of militarization and the ground has been laid for dictatorship. In Kentucky, too, the bridges are turreted with cameras and stern warnings about terrorism. Our caves are useful for intelligence and military storage. Our youth, of course, are one more valuable resource in war-time.

Depictions persist of Appalachia as somehow more resistant to change than other regions, but if anything the economic impenetrability the place has suffered has been the precise driver of change. I’ve heard newcomers complain of a social “molasses” that one must somehow fight through to communicate and get things done. Of course this has been the complaint of cultivated worrywarts since the Settlement School era, when banjos were banned and the children of miners were taught to speak “Elizabethan.” Because of the surface stagnation, the entrepreneurial spirit in Kentucky takes the form of a scheming Samaritan in a public office, “drastic measures.” Nothing is dealt with in any way but in a “war on ___,” the justification being that anything less is futile against the molasses.

Yet, and I say this not vindictively, it is clear that our old social forms serve in some ways as surface maintenance. The fact that the world has so tremendously changed and yet so many aspects of our social outlet have not budged is testament to the essential conservatism paralyzing American social life and culture and epitomized in the binge drunk. What is the weekend bender, after all, if not an excessive but unproductive release of something pent-up—unless it is a substitution for it? (Perhaps, rather than lamenting the decline in church congregations, pastors should be marveling gratefully over the inertia that has maintained them so long.)

I also see in this paralysis, however, something more akin to Trotsky’s compressed spring, rather than the molasses of the reform-minded.

But now I’m off with these thoughts, and little outlet for them. Take care.

US veteran population: a mounting social catastrophe

Published today on the World Socialist Web Site.

As thousands of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan return to the US, the dimensions of the social burden of war are beginning to take shape. A number of recent reports highlight the toll colonial occupation has taken on the physical and mental health of military personnel, as well as the lack of US government medical and financial assistance awaiting them on their return.

Incidence of veteran suicide, homelessness, drug addiction, incarceration, severe poverty, unmanaged mental illness, and the redeployment of mentally unstable troops all point to a growing social crisis faced by returning soldiers and a military on the verge of collapse.

More than 3,860 US troops have been killed in Iraq, and well over 60,000 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Because of medical and technological advances, the ratio of survivors to fatalities in the current war operations is greater than in any other war in modern history. Thousands of wounded soldiers are surviving with extremely serious injuries, and many more suffer untreated psychological and brain trauma on the battlefield.

When these soldiers return to the United States, they face long waits for medical care in overcrowded, mismanaged, and underfunded Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities—or drop out of the system entirely, into all manner of social misery.

The volume of cases is overwhelming an already ill-prepared system. On November 14, Veterans for Common Sense reported that the VA admitted in court filings related to a lawsuit against it by the group that nearly 264,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were treated in VA hospitals and clinics through October 2007. In 2008, the VA expects to treat 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, according to House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filer. The government estimates healthcare will cost upwards of $650 billion for veterans of the two wars.

Even conservative estimates from the military suggest an epidemic of mental trauma among new veterans. The Pentagon reported earlier this year that of the 1.6 million military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, 38 percent of Army and fully half of National Guard service members have been diagnosed with mental illness.

Incidence of traumatic brain injury, PTSD

One of the most common injuries is among the most difficult to diagnose and treat: traumatic brain injury, or TBI. Symptoms, which can range from irritability and dizziness to forgetting how to walk and talk, often take weeks to surface and worsen over time.

According to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, more than 4,200 returned troops have been seen for TBI at military hospitals this year. Doctors believe that thousands more troops suffer TBI but have not reported it. Post-deployment screenings of returning troops suggest that one in five have sustained TBI, most from proximity to roadside bomb detonations.

Reflecting the brutal nature of the occupation, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, has also been diagnosed in a large percentage of returned combat troops. A recent survey conducted by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research found that, of nearly 22,000 returned personnel diagnosed with PTSD, four in five had either fired weapons in order to kill or witnessed someone being killed or wounded.

A new study by the institute of 88,235 soldiers, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association November 14, revealed that while only 4 to 5 percent of soldiers were referred for mental health care in their initial Post-Deployment Health Assessment, the percentage leaped up in follow-up exams.

After three to six months, more than 20 percent of active-duty soldiers and more than 42 percent of reserve soldiers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan were recommended for mental healthcare for post-combat stress and PTSD. Severe depression rates doubled, from 5 percent to 1 in 10 soldiers; reports of conflict with family and friends rose from 3.5 to 14 percent for active-duty personnel and from 4 to 21 percent for returned reservists.

The institute concluded that earlier estimates were inaccurate assessments of the prevalence of trauma because of the early timing of mental health screenings. “The study shows that the rates that we previously reported based on surveys taken immediately on return from deployment substantially underestimate the mental health burden,” the authors wrote.

The result of underestimation is lack of care for traumatized veterans. A September report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggested that half of the military’s so-called Warrior Transition Units had “significant shortfalls” of caregiving staff. The GAO stated that “46 percent of the Army’s returning service members who were eligible to be assigned to a [Warrior Transition] unit had not been assigned due in part to staffing shortages,” and that over half of the units had staffing shortfalls of more than 50 percent.

Large numbers of new veterans are abandoned by the military both financially and medically, and the burden of medical care falls overwhelmingly onto the shoulders of those least prepared to cope, family members or the soldiers themselves.

Homelessness and incarceration

Soldiers recruited from economically distressed areas are thrust back into them with enormous medical and psychological challenges. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), thousands of returned Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have already been identified among the millions of homeless in America.

Based on 2005 figures from the VA and the Census Bureau, the NAEH estimated that in 2006, on any given night, 194,254 homeless people were veterans. Just under half a million combat veterans—one in four homeless persons—lived on the street for at least part of the year.

The government actually puts the proportion higher. As of August 2007, the VA estimates that one in three homeless people are veterans. While there are nearly 200,000 homeless veterans, the government provides only 15,000 shelter beds nationwide to supplement the 8,000 supplied by local non-profit organizations. The VA web site notes, “Many other veterans are considered near homeless or at risk because of their poverty, lack of support from family and friends, and dismal living conditions in cheap hotels or in overcrowded or substandard housing.”

Ricky Singh of Black Veterans for Social Justice told OneWorld news service, “What typically happens to young adults who go into the military at 17 or 18, when they return home, the same kind of economic conditions that forced them towards the military still exist or have gotten worse.”

The vast majority of homeless veterans are single males from poor economic backgrounds. About 45 percent suffer mental illness, and 70 percent suffer alcoholism or other drug dependency; 56 percent are ethnic minorities.

Unsurprisingly, a large number of veterans are also incarcerated. Justice Department statistics suggest roughly 12 percent of the 7 million people within the corrections system—in prison, jail, or on parole—have served in the military. Four in five incarcerated veterans reported drug dependency, and nearly a quarter held in jails were homeless in the year before arrest. A quarter were also identified as mentally ill.

Lack of affordable housing is the primary driver of homelessness in general, the NAEH states, and while veterans as a subset of the population in general have high rates of home ownership, a significant segment of the Vietnam and post-Vietnam veteran population face severe housing burdens. Rather than returning to an economic boom, veterans from wars of the past four decades have come home to an economic vacuum, particularly in the manufacturing sector where veterans of previous generations were able to enter the workforce.

Besides the half a million homeless veterans, the NAEH estimates 467,877 veterans were “severely rent burdened and paying more than 50 percent of their income for rent.” This group is considered at risk for homelessness. “More than half (55 percent) of veterans with severe housing cost burden fell below the poverty level and 43 percent were receiving food stamps,” the report states.

Redeployment and relaxed enlistment standards

The plight of mentally ill veterans does not end with adjustment problems in the United States. Many are sent back into war, dangerously compounding psychiatric trauma.

Reflecting the unpopularity of both the war and the prospect of a draft, enlistment standards have been substantially relaxed over the past few years to allow recruitment of people with mental illness and criminal records. At the same time, the Pentagon has extended tours and made it much more difficult to leave the military and still qualify for disability benefits.

Even so, the military is experiencing a significant troop shortage in the two wars, creating a numbers problem for the Bush administration’s plans for a war against Iran.

Current military policy allows soldiers diagnosed with serious mental problems to be redeployed to combat zones if they are assessed as stable for three months. According to a November 11 investigation by Boston’s ABC affiliate station, WCVB TV/DT Channel 5, the National Guard and Army were redeploying soldiers diagnosed with PTSD in direct violation of already lax standards.

The report cited the redeployment of a 25-year-old soldier, Damian Fernandez, who had been classified as 70 percent disabled from PTSD. “Everyday, for 365 days, they were under attack there,” his mother told WCVB. “Bombings and land mines were in the street and he saw his fellow soldiers killed.” After Fernandez got his order to redeploy, his mother said, “All day long he was just getting more and more agitated until he said he was going to kill himself rather than go back.”

An Army soldier, Michael DeVlieger, got the order to redeploy just one day after being released from a Kentucky military hospital for acute stress disorder, the station reported. “The closer that it got, he kept saying, ‘Mom, I’m going to die, I’m not coming back this time. I’m feeling it, I’m dreaming it. I’m not coming back,’ ” his mother said.

Suicide among active-duty troops and veterans

Extreme psychological distress among active-duty troops is reflected in the occasional official figures released concerning suicide and self-harm. The Department of Defense recognizes 130 self-inflicted fatalities among US personnel since 2003 in Iraq.

This is a substantial understatement of suicide rates in the military. An Army Suicide Event Report made public in August 2007 revealed 97 cases of suicide among US Army personnel last year alone—the highest rate of suicide in 26 years. The report d