with wolves

It turns out Misha Defonseca's Holocaust memoir was mostly fabricated. Here's a little summary:

"Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years. She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, killed a Nazi soldier in self-defense and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her."

This is such an improbable series of events, and yet the publishers and the general public believed it. There are probably a few reasons why. In part, it may have to do with the feeling that a Holocaust-survivor would not lie about her experiences. The Holocaust was in many ways stranger than fiction and therefore to embellish a story taking place during the Holocaust would be a fruitless effort. Another reason it was accepted may be that it was simply too improbable to be untrue. The thinking goes: "This has to be true! If you were lying about your past and wanted people to take your word, why would you say you lived with a pack of wolves?"

K.A. Dilday's piece on why "black" is better than "African-American".

antidepressants

They don't work. Read on.

America the beautiful

I read this summary of the United States of America at The Onion:

"United States
The Land of Opportunism
The Unites States was founded in 1776 on the principles of life, liberty, and the reckless pursuit of happiness at any cost - even life and liberty."

on Africa

Throughout the world, a great number of people live in extreme poverty. Mostly in Africa, Asia, Central America, and South America, about one billion people make due with less than a dollar a day. Imagine that: everything they have and everything they consume is purchased with their savings from a dollar-a-day wage. Of course, nothing can really be purchased and consumed with such paltry provisions. They are on a dead end street, along which they can’t possibly meet their basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, water and health care. It’s a sad situation. But, luckily, crushing poverty of this magnitude is universally considered worthy of attention. Most agree this is an issue that cannot be ignored. But exactly what should be done?

The Columbia University economist, Jeffrey Sachs, wrote a book recently called The End of Poverty. In it he argues the prosperous nations of the world can reduce, and perhaps eliminate, extreme poverty by increasing their current level of foreign-aid spending. Put simply, the west should give poor countries more money. Because Africa is the region hardest hit by extreme poverty, Sachs is primarily interested in donations directed there.

The work of Sachs and similar economists has become the norm in the international community. The United Nations Millennium Project, created in 2002, has concluded that the goals of alleviating poverty, hunger, and disease in Africa, can be attained with sufficient levels of foreign-aid, i.e. donations from rich countries. With greater political will, we can transfer more money to those in less favorable positions than us; and with that money, they can lift themselves out of the darkness of poverty and into the light of economic development. It’s a very neat solution to a widespread set of problems - a thing of beauty, really. And along with Bono of U2, Africa’s self-proclaimed benefactor, I have been under its spell. But now its magical power over me has weakened. I began to suspect it couldn’t be this simple; that some problems would have to arise from this strategy; and that perhaps something was fundamentally paternalistic about this system.

The United Nations’ Food Program and similar programs directed by individual countries have been confronted by the criticism that they do more long-term harm than good. According to James Shikwati, a prominent Kenyan economist, when food is requested it “often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign.” This, of course, is simply a problem of logistics that could be solved with better coordination and tracking; and thus doesn’t knock down foreign-aid and goods transfers as a good solution. Yet, the real problem is what happens with the rest of the food the corrupt politicians were given. The food ends up flooding the local market at prices far below their value. This makes it near impossible for local farmers, and the like, to make a decent living because their goods suddenly can’t compete in the face of much cheaper, foreign, goods. So, they quit working, reducing the area’s supply of locally produced goods, therefore perpetuating its dependence on foreign-aid.

This is a system that can’t be sustainable. Another reason why is that it doesn’t tap into the potential for local innovation. As long as ideas on what development constitutes are imposed externally, locals will not have the voice and power to use their deep knowledge of their home region to innovate. Rather than enforcing standards of development, aid agencies could do well to harness the knowledge of locals and therefore take the latter’s lead.

Another problem is the rigidity of the kinds of loans given to African nations. They are stifling, impede production, and reduce the kinds of options required for real development. Shikwati illustrates the situation in this way:

The problem in Africa has never been lack of money, but rather the inability to exploit the African mind. Picture a banana farmer in a rural African village with a leaking roof that would cost $100 to fix. If one purchased $100 worth of his bananas, the farmer would have the power and choice to determine whether the leaking roof is his top spending priority. On the other hand, if he is given $100 as a grant or loan to fix the roof, his choice would be limited to what the owner of the big money views as a priority. Out of 960 million Africans in 53 states, there are innovators and entrepreneurs who, if rewarded by the market, will address the challenges facing the continent.

In my eyes, this appears to be a much more sustainable practice than the old set. The perpetual transfer of foreign-aid is essentially self-defeating and should be cast aside. This doesn’t mean all foreign-aid is bad, but that it should be less systemic. Africa should be helped in such a way that it could come to help itself. It’s capable of doing so. Let’s drop the latent paternalism of constant aid transfer and create a world of equal partners.

eastside

Of late, I've been reading reports on homelesness in Canada and different approaches on combating it. The complexities involved are increadible and the challenges great. But it's a good sign that many are considering it a situation no person should find themselves in. I'll be writing something on this shortly, but for now read this to get a sense of the problem in Vancouver, specifically it's downtown eastide.