April 24, 2016

New Questions About Whether African Child Soldiers Secured U. S. Bases in Iraq

Sierra Leone child soldier

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Aegis Defense Service, a UK firm, may have recruited former child soldiers from Sierra Leone to provide security for U.S. bases in Iraq, according to a new TV documentary to premiere next week in Denmark.

The film – The Child Soldiers’ New Job – includes testimony from interviewees who said they once served as child soldiers, and documents their employment with Aegis.

A former top officer at Aegis between 2005 and 2015, says that contractors had a duty to recruit from countries such as Sierra Leone, “where there’s high unemployment and a decent workforce”, in order to reduce costs for the US presence in Iraq.

The officer, James Ellery, a former brigadier in the British army, told the UK’s Guardian newspaper, that his company enlisted Africans regardless of their history as child soldiers.

“You probably would have a better force if you recruited entirely from the Midlands of England,” Ellery told the Guardian. “But it can’t be afforded. So you go from the Midlands of England to Nepalese etc etc, Asians, and then at some point you say I’m afraid all we can afford now is Africans.”

Aegis hired some 2,500 mercenaries for as little as $16 a day in order to fulfil contracts to guard U.S. military bases from 2004 onwards, according to the film.

“When war gets outsourced, then the companies try to find the cheapest soldiers globally. Turns out that this means former child soldiers from Sierra Leone. I think it is important that we in the west are aware of the consequences of the privatization of war,” the filmmaker Mads Ellesøe said.

Ellery previously served as chief of staff to the UN’s mission in Sierra Leone at the time when the organization was demobilizing thousands of former child soldiers.

The film is sure to raise controversy over the use of private security firms, who received nearly $100 billion dollars in U.S. contracts, hiring Africans already traumatized by wars in their own countries.

Aegis, now run by a Canadian firm, told The Guardian: “Aegis takes issues pertinent to our industry, such as post-traumatic stress very seriously, and has worked closely with experts in the field to develop and implement procedures for the management of trauma risk.”

An English-language trailer for the film can be seen at http://www.madsmedia.dk/childsoldier.

April 24, 2016

Harriet Tubman - Economic Freedom Fighter
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) When Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that Harriet Tubman would grace the new $20 bill, my heart sang hallelujah.  Additional changes to the currency were also announced.  The back of the $10 will now recognize the five leaders of the women’s suffrage movement and the back of the $5 bill to recognize civil rights leaders, and honor historic events from the Lincoln Memorial. The faces on our money will no longer be all pale and male, and that’s progress.

It is especially fitting that Harriet Tubman grace the $20, since she was an economic freedom fighter.  She is credited with ushering more than 300 people out of enslavement, many of them family members from the state of Maryland.  She hit slaveholders in the pocketbook, costing them billions of today’s dollars.  If the average enslaved person sold for $1000 (which is about right for 1860), then the 300 she freed cost $300,000 in 1860 dollars, or about $8.8 billion in today’s dollars.  That’s quite a blow for a slaveholding society to absorb.  Every time an enslaved person ran away, they struck a blow for freedom, and a blow against the economic stability of the South.

Enslavement was at the root of the development of contemporary US capitalism. Black lives were the collateral that plantation owners used to purchase more land, to purchase more slaves, to purchase equipment, to expand.  Enslaved people were, in many ways, a form of currency.  Harriett Tubman gracing the $20 makes perfect sense.

The new $10 is supposed to be available in 2020, nearly four years from now.  The new $20 may not be available until 2030.  The design and production schedule have to be approved by the Federal Reserve Board.  That shouldn’t be much of a challenge – Fed Chairman Janet Yellen has hailed the decision to put Harriet Tubman on the $20, and many have applauded the other elements of currency design.  Perhaps the Fed can be lobbied to speed the production schedule up.  I can’t wait to cash a check and ask for my money in “Harriets”.

As exciting as the currency design is, it is a symbolic, not a substantive change.  Real change would close the income gap between men and women.  Real change would close the racial economic gap.  Real change would take a look at the reparations issue.  In this last year of his Presidency, President Obama could use his executive order to appoint a commission to look into issues of racial economic justice.  He could make an amazing, if belated, contribution by bringing the reparations issue to the economic forefront.  The Black Lives Matter community has raised the reparations issue with both Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  President Obama would do his successor a favor by starting the public work on this key issue.

I suppose we have to reconcile ourselves to progress at a snail’s pace, to symbolism, not substance.  Still, the image our economic freedom fighter on the twenty-dollar bill will be inspirational for all of us, especially for the young people who don’t know all of the sordid details of our history of enslavement.  I hope that as we talk about Harriet Tubman on the money, we also talk about the economic impact she had on the institution of slavery by freeing those 300 people.  This is part of the history we must never forget, and Tubman’s presence on the $20 will help us to remember.

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist in Washington DC. Her latest book Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy is available at www.amazon.com and www.juliannemalveaux.com

April 24, 2016

April 24, 2016

To Be Equal 

The Fight for $15: Lifting Communities from Poverty by Raising the Minimum Wage
By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by vast sporadic remedies. In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk, we have not weeded out the over privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness. No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and for our families.” — President Franklin D. Roosevelt, State of the Union Address, January 4, 1935

Day in and day out men and women all over our country work hard at their jobs—but hardly have anything to show for it.

As the debate over income inequality and narrowing the ever-widening wealth gap continues to dominate our national and political conversations, private corporations and states are taking matters into their own hands, bridging the dueling divides of income and opportunity by increasing the minimum wage.

Target is reportedly raising employee wages to a $10 minimum in May. This would be the second wage hike in a year for the retail giant. Only a few weeks ago, the governors of New York and California signed bills that would gradually increase their states’ minimum wages to $15—the highest in the nation.

In the face of the Congress’ refusal to increase the federal minimum wage, these gestures from private enterprise and legislative offices reflect a new reality in our post-recession economy: jobs are coming back, but, for the most part, they aren’t the kinds of jobs that pay a living wage. Very often, they are not the kinds of jobs that serve as a platform to better paying work. And they are the kinds of jobs that predominately employ young people, minorities and women—the most vulnerable members of our low-wage, slow growth recovery economy.

What was a Franklin Roosevelt era labor law meant to put a floor on poverty in America has become a low ceiling barring millions of American workers from present and future prosperity.

For 10 years, the National Urban League has advocated for a federal minimum wage hike tied to the Consumer Price Index, which tracks inflation by observing changes over time in consumer pricing for a variety of goods. If prices are going up—and they are—wages that don’t reflect these hikes in prices translates into working-class employees never getting ahead and being forced to make difficult choices to survive, provide for themselves and their family.

The current federal minimum wage stands at $7.25. President Barack Obama, during a State of the Union address, said, “Let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty.” Well, on $7.25 an hour, you can bet they will. In fact, if the minimum wage kept pace with inflation, the current minimum wage would be $19. We support a $15 minimum wage, tied to inflation.

With more Americans surviving on minimum wage than at any other point in our history, to ignore the issue of wages is to ignore the problem of income inequality, and to ignore the struggles of men and women left behind as the economy recovers. While I applaud the initiative taken by states and businesses to provide employees with living wages, we must put an end to the “vast, sporadic remedies” condemned by President Roosevelt.

The current patchwork of state minimum wages is not a solution. Congress needs to do its job. Republicans supported minimum wage increases under President George W. Bush, but have blocked all efforts to raise it since then. Rather than condemn a generation to a lifetime of poverty, let’s afford them the opportunity to earn living wages and climb the economic ladder of opportunity and success.