"Hospitality in a Suspicious World" -- by Kate Clark, BBC News

This piece was broadcast on the program "From Our Own Correspondent" on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday, January 26 at 11:30 GMT. To find out when this excellent show is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service (both available streaming on the internet) click here. Subscribe to the podcast here.

Working as a Westerner in the Muslim world has been complicated by the conflicts of recent years but BBC correspondent Kate Clark who has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza still finds delight in the hospitality and kindness of strangers.

The taxi driver was calling me back. It was late at night in Irbil, and there was a problem with the fare.

We had spent the half hour journey chatting. He told me he was struggling to bring up a young family on a low income and with soaring inflation.

"Rent," he said, "had gone up five-fold and petrol prices 20-fold since 2003."

So I paid him a bit extra. He called me back to argue over the money because he thought I had paid him too much.

"Why do you go to such dangerous places?" people often ask me. They mean dangerous, Muslim countries. I usually report from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East.

"Do you have to wear a headscarf?" I'm asked.

"Do you ever feel threatened as a woman?"

It is difficult to explain that the sort of generosity and open-heartedness shown by the Kurdish taxi driver is very compelling and very normal across the Islamic world. It is generally a good place to be a guest.

But it has become more complicated.

Bin Laden's war and the US-UK military response, and the polarisation between the Western and Islamic worlds mean such ordinary human encounters have become more difficult.

Western journalists are now targets for some Muslims in some Muslim countries. And it does not matter what we actually do or believe, we may be considered enemies.

In Afghanistan, foreign reporters and aid workers used to work alongside every faction in the long civil war.

When I lived there before 2001, there was very little anti-Western sentiment, not even from the Taliban.

They still remembered Western support during the 1980s for the jihad against the Soviet occupation, so when the US criticised them, they were actually surprised, nonplussed.

These days, many Afghans, including some friends, speak darkly of Western conspiracies to oppress the Umma, the global Muslim community. And now I am nervous just walking down the street in Kabul.

Places in Pakistan where I used to go on holiday have become strongholds of the Pakistani Taleban.

Basra, in southern Iraq, where in 2003, I drove around with a female producer and was invited in for tea or lunch by interviewees, is now ruled over by hard-line religious militias.

In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, where I lived in the late 1980s, life was extremely tough.

It was during the first Palestinian intifada - the uprising against the Israeli military occupation - and there were curfews, strikes and clashes.

In one of the Gazan refugee camps, I remember an adult carefully explaining to a small child who had picked up a stone to throw at me, that this would be shameful - I was a guest.

People would send a child out to buy a can of cola for me - they could not afford a whole bottle. Actually, they could not afford a can either.

Palestinians were generous despite their bleak, constrained lives. Lives which, they were usually too polite to point out, my country was historically, partly responsible for.

The kidnapping of Western journalists in Gaza would have been unimaginable when I was there 20 years ago.

The dangers make operating as a journalist very difficult.

You want to find out what is going on. And you particularly want to hear from the marginalised and powerless.

But how can you do that if the only way you see a country is by being embedded with the British or American army?

Who tells the stories of civilians in Iraq or southern Afghanistan? Indeed, who tells the stories of Taleban foot soldiers?

And if that is not done, who is to know whether the American military or the British government or the Afghan president sitting in Kabul or indeed the Taleban spokesmen are telling the truth or not?

In some places, you now have to work out more devious ways to report.

In September, the British were assuring everyone that life in Basra was fine. But it was too risky to go, so I did my interviews by phone.

People said music was banned and assassinations commonplace. "The ruling religious militias," they said, "were like Shia Taleban."

In Afghanistan, I continue to travel.

I have met members of the Taleban and spoken to civilians from areas affected by fighting and discovered richer and more complex truths than the official views.

Complaints about political exclusion, predation by provincial authorities and economic hardship seem to drive men to fight more frequently than jihadi ideology.

Afghanistan remains a place where strangers offer you tea and a bed for the night, where proverbially, people say that, when faced with guests, what is important is not how big your house is, but how big your heart is.

But the threat of violence means travel has become a cautious business.

Visiting Iraqi Kurdistan, then, was a treat. It is Iraq and it is safe. I encountered everything I like about the Islamic world, without any fear.

When I eventually managed to pay the Kurdish taxi driver his extra fare, I thought, "this wouldn't happen in London".

But actually it does sometimes.

If the driver is Afghan or Pakistani or Iraqi and we chat about his home country, I do quite often end up trying to drive the fare up, while he endeavours to drive it down.

"Crisis in the Drylands" -- by Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs

Thanks to Lee Gaede (EGR contact for Diocese of Chicago) for pointing us to this piece from the most recent Scientific American magazine.

The vast region of deserts, grasslands and sparse wood­lands that stretches across the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia is by far the most crisis-ridden part of the planet. With the exception of a few highly affluent states in the Persian Gulf, these dryland countries face severe and intensifying challenges, including frequent and deadly droughts, encroaching deserts, burgeoning populations and extreme poverty. The region scores at the very bottom of the United Nations’s Index of Human Development, which ranks countries according to their incomes, life expectancy and educational attainments.

As a result of these desperate conditions, the dryland countries are host to a disproportionate number of the world’s violent conflicts. Look closely at the violence in Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan—one finds tribal and often pastoralist communities struggling to survive deepening ecological crises. Water scarcity, in particular, has been a source of territorial conflict when traditional systems of land management fail in the face of rising populations and temperatures and declining rainfall.

Washington looks at many of these clashes and erroneously sees Islamist ideology at the core. Our political leaders fail to realize that other Islamic populations are far more stable economically, politically and socially—and that the root of the crisis in the dryland countries is not Islam but extreme poverty and environmental stress.

The Washington mind-set also prefers military approaches to developmental ones. The U.S. has supported the Ethiopian army in a military incursion into Somalia. It has pushed for military forces to stop the violence in Darfur. It has armed the clans in the deserts of western Iraq and now proposes to arm pastoralist clans in Pakistan along the Afghan border.

The trouble with the military approach is that it is extremely expensive and yet addresses none of the underlying problems. Indeed, the U.S. weapons provided to local clans often end up getting turned on the U.S. itself at a later date. Tellingly, one of the greatest obstacles to posting the proposed peacekeeping troops to Darfur is the lack of a water supply for them. Given the difficulty of finding water for those 26,000 soldiers, it becomes easier to understand the severity of the ongoing and unsolved water crisis facing the five million to seven million residents of Darfur.

Fortunately, much better solutions exist once the focus is put squarely on nurturing sustainable development. Today many proven techniques for “rainwater harvesting” can collect and store rain for later use by people, livestock and crops. In some areas, boreholes that tap underground aquifers can augment water availability; in others, rivers and seasonal surface runoff can be used for irrigation.

Such solutions may cost hundreds of dollars per household, spread out over a few years. This outlay is far too much for the impoverished households to afford but far less than the costs to societies of conflicts and military interventions. The same is true for other low-cost interventions to fight diseases, provide schooling for children and ensure basic nutrition.

To end the poverty trap, pastoralists can increase the productivity of livestock through improved breeds, veterinary care and scientific management of fodder. Often pastoralists can multiply their incomes by selling whole animals, meat products, processed goods (such as leather) and dairy products. The wealthy states of the Middle East are a potentially lucrative nearby market for the livestock industries of Africa and Central Asia.

To build this export market, pastoralist economies will need help with all-weather roads, storage facilities, cell phone coverage, power, veterinary care and technical advice, to mention just a few of the key investments. With crucial support and active engagement of the private sector, however, impoverished dryland communities will be able to take advantage of transformative communications technologies and even gain access to capital from abroad.

Today’s dryland crises in Africa and Central Asia affect the entire world. The U.S. should rethink its overemphasis on military approaches, and Europe should honor its unmet commitments of aid to this region, but other nations—including the wealthy countries of the Middle East and new donors such as India and China—can also help turn the tide. The only reliable way to peace in the vast and troubled drylands will be through sustainable development.

Jeffrey Sachs is an American economist known for his work as an economic advisor to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, Asia, and Africa. He is currently a professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

"Tales from the Peace Corps" by Sarah Bush

I recently had the chance to visit a dear friend of mine who is serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica. Like me, Heidi Koester is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied journalism, and has written for a variety of publications including National Geographic Adventure. Heidi is doing great work in Costa Rica that I thought readers of the blog, especially those considering joining the Peace Corps, might enjoy learning about. So this month, my blog will be a short interview with Heidi.

SB: What is the Peace Corps?

HK: The United States Peace Corps, founded in 1960, provides opportunities for Americans to spend two years working in a developing community in one of 130 countries. Volunteers serve in projects ranging from clean water acquisition to computer center construction. The program has three goals: helping interested countries meet their own needs through trained men and women, promoting a better understanding of Americans abroad, and providing Americans with greater understanding of other cultures. You can read about the application process and specific project details in world regions at www.peacecorps.gov.

SB: What projects are you working on?

HK: I am finishing my two years of service in Cabeceras, Costa Rica, a rural mountain town home to 700 residents. My official assignment is “Rural Community Development,” and I've focused my work in community organization, education and economic opportunity.

Cabeceras is close to a tourist destination, the Monteverde cloud forest, so one of my major projects has been working with a women's group to create a program where tourists can visit our local elementary school, learn about rural education in Costa Rica, and participate in a pen-pal exchange with our students. Tourists try home-made bread and students in our year-old folkloric dance group practice their presentations for visitors. We've created a safe way for tourists to donate to community projects, and a lot of my work has been in modeling donor relation skills and introducing project management/ project design steps to a women's group. The group has managed more than $15,000 in donations and invested in classroom repairs and expansions, the creation of a computer center, construction of a fence for increased school security and the purchase of musical instruments.

Along with the women's group, we created an annual Cabeceras Calendar, using donated disposable cameras. Kids documented their lives, some of them using a camera for the first time, and they wrote small descriptions of their images. We created a bilingual calendar with local and international sponsors, marketing the project in Costa Rica, Canada, England and the United States. In our first year we raised more than $4,000 and the second annual calendar project is almost done. We have cameras ready to go for the third edition, and the test of the project's sustainability comes in next year's project, when I've left the community.

As secondary projects, I work in adult English language instruction, computer education and creative arts workshops for children. This weekend I'm working with a Chilean couple to bring one of Costa Rica's premiere symphony orchestras (La Big Band) to Cabeceras for a free concert. We hope to begin a program of cultural performances in this rural community, introducing music and theater to those who have never experienced the arts.

SB: What is the impact of tourism in your community?

HK: Tourism is the number-one source of income in Costa Rica, and as the most-visited country in Central America, Costa Rica offers valuable travel experiences to its visitors. Almost every child in Cabeceras comes from a family that depends on tourists for income, either directly (through employment in Monteverde hotels or restarutants) or indirectly (selling milk to a factory in Monteverde, where tourists buy ice cream or cheese, or growing coffee that many tourists purchase). Tourists leave tremendous financial donations and build memories and relationships with community members through pen-pal programs and continued communication. One eight-year-old boy who lives near the school has covered the walls of his tin-roofed house with postcards and drawings from tourists, or stories he wrote with visitors. He's taken on the role of “tour guide” for groups visiting the school and is learning more and more English each day, a testament to the way tourism is changing perspectives for kids in Cabeceras.

However, in Cabeceras I have seen tourists leave behind negative side effects - giving large amounts of money to a handful of children (causing problems among families and other students) or simply arriving, taking photographs and leaving. The latter treatment makes the Cabeceras community (and my work) out to be a zoo or an exhibit. My goal has been to help create a positive experience for both the tourist visiting Cabeceras and the community members who call the town home.

SB: How can we make sure that we are respectful and responsible tourists?

HK: Many people have great intentions to help a community or group of people that they met during their trip. From my experiences in Cabeceras, I see that it is important to remember a few things to be a responsible and respectful tourist.

1. Say something in the native language. Even if it is just hello or goodbye.

2. If you want to help with community cause or an individual, try to understand the donation protocol or think through methods of donation in order to do everything possible to make sure your funds are well-managed.

3. Promise what you can deliver, but not more. And don’t let your desire to contribute fade when you return to your “real” life.

Sarah Bush is a PhD candidate in International Relations in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. Sarah has worked with Americans for Informed Democracy, an organization on 1,000 colleges that works to raise global awareness among students, as its Co-Executive Director during the 2005-2006 academic year. Her previous experience also includes work for the U.S. State Department, the St. Louis City Mayor's Office and Teach for America.

"What is Development, Really?" -- by Kevin Jones

What constitutes development? This question arose on a list serve I pay a lot of atention to. I’ve been working at this one a while. I think the market is most effective communication of value and the feedback loops of business failure or success that exists. And now that wants and needs have been changed, subtly altered by the new moral hunger, as Kathleen Fulton calls it, as people wake up to the situation the world is in, their buying and investing behavior is changing.

I think the market is learning how to factor in a new set of risks and opportunities, which will lead to meaningful development (I’m with Amartya Sen on this one, development equals freedom, along with my friend and his colleague Sabina Alkire at her new center at Oxford Univ..

What’s changed? The basic investment equation has moved from a single focus, what I get, risk and return, to risk, return and impact. Risk and return, for you or for me was the way, post Friedman (dead Milt) the market calibrated value. It was the way individual investors believed (not knowing where that belief came from really, it was just part of the cultural furniture and still is to a large extent. It’s just dead and hollow and rapidly passing away. The question is, how big a laggard are you going to be.

“Was this thinking, maybe like a legacy, a tradition that was passed down?” the guy asked?” “More like an inherited environmental disease,” I sez to him. “A twisted parasite, that grew out of a bad idea. a crust of meme gnome in the baby’s pudding. But that’s another part of the story” .
Now people are realizing Jed Emerson is right that business creates undifferentiated value; some is social some is financial, but it’s all value; it’s all important to us, it creates we things we want and find valuable. Or it doesn’t. And those businesses fail,which is a very good thing as we watch it happen and see what works and what doesn’t. If only bad foundations would fold up shop as well.

We are looking up from the consumer trough, I think, to the state of the cafeteria and trying to make consumerism sustainable. We’ve reached a point where more isn’t more anymore. Yet consumer power is still a way we express ourselves and buying things and services can be a way to do good. To those who are skeptical about using consumerism as a tool to change the world, I say one thing: Get over it. You move the ship that exists, not wait for the world you would rather live in in your (or my) public radio encrusted, blogosphere saturated echo chambers.

For instance, there’s Better World Books.

Kevin Jones is a serial entrepreneur and clergy spouse. Kevin was the editor of the Every Voice daily newspaper at the 2003 General Convention of the Episcopal Church and has worked on global poverty issues for several years, through on the ground projects in sub-Saharan Africa (such as the Anglican Malaria Project), technology infrastructure to make it simpler for people to care about the people effected by the Millennium Development Goals, and events. He is also active in investing for good.

"One Humanity" -- by Erin Bernstein

Whenever people learn that I am going to Africa, they either praise or criticize me. Those who praise me revere me as some kind of savior who braves the dark exoticness of the third world and performs a tremendous good for humanity. Those who criticize me often question my line of reasoning in choosing to “risk my life” by “helping people” in this faraway land.

Well, friends, this entry is for the “praisers” and critics alike…those who think too highly of people like me and those who brush me off as a naïve, idealistic college student.

My first trip to Africa was in July 2006 to South Africa (which is a country, not a continent). I
went to find service projects and lived for a month in a mansion that overlooked the Indian Ocean as it sat atop a coral-colored cliff in a private nature reserve protected by three guarded checkpoints that delayed the entering and leaving of its residents.

To be honest, I began my trip as a naïve American, a novice traveler, your typical do-gooder. I went with the intention of “changing the world,” of making a difference, and I left with the reality that I did nothing in that month that those people truly needed.

I learned a harsher reality in July 2007, when I traveled to Botswana, Uganda, and again to South Africa. Northern Uganda is currently recovering from a recently ended 21 year-old civil war between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army. The atrocities of the war have physically and emotionally destroyed the lives of millions of Acholi in the north, which is now jam-packed with “muzungus” (outsiders) who feel they know how to heal the deep wounds of these traumatized people.

Yes, I suppose I was one of these “muzungus,” and yes, when I return, I will once again join the masses of Westerners drawn to this region of the world. But why am I drawn there, and why do I question my presence there?

Over the summer, I wrote in my blog that I always knew suffering existed. I had seen pictures of the internally displaced persons camps. I had read about the IDP camps. I even went to a small IDP camp earlier in the trip, but all of these things either kept me removed from reality or seemed like a dream. One camp in particular, however, changed the way I looked at humanity. I had never experienced anything so real.

It was the first time that I questioned my methods. Who did I think I was with my camera in hand, taking pictures of their sick children, their sad faces, their sorry lives? Who did I think I was photographing them as they lined up in the hundreds, herded like cattle into lines to receive the food rich people far away brought for them in big trucks? Who did I dare think I was crouching close to the ground with my fancy camera so I could capture the young children collecting every fallen pea or kernel of corn before the goats got to them? I was ashamed of myself and knew that if I lived in Pagak IDP camp and had visitors come take pictures of me, I’d resent those foreign saviors and the life I was forced to live.

Since my trip to Uganda over the summer, I have struggled everyday with whether or not I am meant to be there…whether or not I am even wanted there. These thoughts are scary, especially when you’re designing a major revolving around this part of the world, but I prefer to embrace these thoughts as invitations to learn—starting points that will allow me to lead by example and open the eyes of the people carrying the so-called “white man’s burden” to “civilize” the third world. I used to say that the white man’s burden was to clean up the mess he made through colonization, but if I spent all my life picking up after my ancestors, I would not create true progress.

Progress, I have learned, lies in empowering the many competent locals I met in Uganda over the summer. Was I surprised to find capable Ugandans? Absolutely not. They are just as much human as we are. Just as intelligent as we are. Just as deserving of peace and justice as we are. My calling, I suppose, is to enliven the human element in a place where Western confidence dehumanizes the locals. By doing this, you achieve one humanity. When you’ve acknowledged one humanity…well, that’s when you’ve truly achieved something praiseworthy.

----------------
Erin Bernstein is a junior at the University of Tennessee, designing a major in the comparison of post-conflict education in Northern Uganda and education in inner-city Knoxville. Her passion for serving people has brought her to Hungary, Romania, and South Africa through the Rotary Club of Knoxville and to Botswana, Uganda, and back to South Africa through the Knoxville Jazz for Justice Project, which seeks to music as healing in war-torn Northern Uganda. She will be living in Uganda for two months beginning in March for an internship at the Ugandan Parliament and to work on an art therapy project with young women in the north.

Bush to request doubling funding for global HIV/AIDS in State of the Union tonight

From USAToday.com

WASHINGTON — President Bush will propose doubling the funding to combat HIV/AIDS overseas in his last State of the Union address tonight, one of several new initiatives he says will demonstrate his intention to "sprint to the finish" of his time in office.

The five-year, $30 billion proposal would provide treatment for about 2.5 million people infected with the disease and preventive measures for about 12 million others. The initiative, approved by Congress in 2003 at $15 billion, operates in 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

"Our compassion should be manifested in helping people who suffer from disease and hunger," Bush said Thursday in an interview with USA TODAY. "We have a strategy that's working. It is to support a strategy that has made a difference in over a million people's lives in a relatively quick period of time."

That effort will be on display next month when the president travels to five African democracies, including Rwanda, a nation wracked by civil war and genocide in the 1990s. Bush also will visit Tanzania, Ghana, Liberia and Benin during a six-day trip from Feb. 15-21.

-------------------------
So what does this mean?

The ONE Campaign has issued this statement, which includes a lot of great information on what our government is currently doing:

President Bush, along with Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, should be proud of the successes in the fight against HIV/AIDS, global disease and extreme poverty in the world's poorest countries and particularly in Africa. Today, two million people are receiving life-saving anti-retroviral drugs thanks to the generosity of Americans.

"The results are in: funding efforts like the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) and Millennium Challenge Corporation has proven to be money well spent, an effective investment not only in saving lives in poor countries, but also in promoting the goodwill and generosity of America around the world.

"We now have an opportunity, for the first time, to build on that success. While we continue our fight against AIDS and malaria, we can take these strategies and scale up efforts in expanding clean water and education to help the world's poorest people beat global poverty. Fulfilling our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals will help secure the future and stability of both America and the world's poorest countries. President Bush has requested a ten to 12 percent increase for International Affairs in past years, a similar increase for the 2009 budget dedicated to these proven programs and core development and humanitarian accounts will ensure that America continues to lead the world in this fight. As President Bush prepares to travel to Africa next month to see the achievements of these initiatives, ONE hopes that he will use the State of the Union to highlight the historic and bipartisan progress America has made in helping to combat crippling disease and poverty."

Background:

President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

Built on bipartisan Congressional initiatives, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a five year, $15 billion initiative to combating HIV/AIDS in an effort to reach two million people with life saving antiretroviral treatment, prevent seven million new infections and care for ten million in need, has been enormously successful. Already, as of September 2007, PEPFAR has supported 1.4 million people with life saving anti-retroviral treatment, provided care for 6.7 million (including 2.7 million orphans and vulnerable children), provided services to prevent the transmission of the HIV virus from mother to child for ten million pregnancies and more than 30 million voluntary counseling and testing services. This year, the U.S. will consider key legislation to reauthorize PEPFAR for 2009-2013.

(EGR note - For more information on PEPFAR, go to its official website. Here is also the Wikipedia site, which (if you scroll down), contains the salient criticisms of it -- including a provision that 1/3 of all funds go to abstinence only programs and its refusal to support needle exchange programs.)

Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria

The Global Fund has supported programs that have saved the lives of more than two million people who would have died from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The Global Fund has provided ARV treatment for 1.4 million people, DOTS treatment for tuberculosis to 3.3 million people, 46 million insecticide treated nets to protect families from malaria and 44 million malaria treatments. To date, the United States has contributed 28% of funding to the Global Fund.

Bilateral Malaria Funding

On June 30, 2005, President Bush announced the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), a new commitment to spend an additional $1.2 billion between 2005 and 2010 and cut deaths related to malaria by 50% in 15 focus countries in Africa. As of November 2007, PMI has reached distributed 2.3 million insecticide treated bed nets, procured 15 million treatments and conducted indoor residual spraying to benefit five million in need.

Millennium Challenge Account

Created in 2003, the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) is designed to reward democratic countries dedicated to fighting corruption and poverty while at the same time creating an incentive for other countries to qualify in the future. The MCA is focused specifically on supporting programs that reduce poverty by fueling sustainable economic growth through market-based investments in areas such as agriculture, education, private sector development, health and capacity building. A unique feature of the MCA is the fact that the countries themselves are responsible for identifying the greatest barriers to their own development.


ONE is a grassroots effort by millions of Americans working with more than 150 of the nation's leading relief, humanitarian and advocacy organizations to rally Americans -- ONE by ONE -- to fight the emergency of global disease and extreme poverty. For more information, please visit ONE.org.

"The False Gospel of Mindless Consumption" -- by the Rev. Mike Kinman

Yesterday, a $150 billion "economic stimulus package" was unveiled -- a package agreed to both by the president and Congress.

When I heard about it on NPR last night, I did the math quickly in my head. As a married parent of two with a family income less than $150,000 we will get between $1,200 and $1,800 -- depending on whom you believe.

Politicians, pundits and economists are arguing the economic efficacy of it. Whether it is enough of an infusion of capital into the economy. Whether putting another $150 billion on the government's tab while we're running record deficits and the national debt is more than $9 trillion and increasing at $1.43 billion per day is a good thing. Whether we can sustain tax cuts and a war in Iraq that has already cost us more than $488 billion and is sucking $275 million a day at the same time.

What I haven't heard anyone question is the morality of the entire system this rebate supports.

And then I opened this morning's USA Today and saw Steve Breen's excellent cartoon from the San Diego Union-Tribune (above), which wonderfully and tragically lays out the problem.

We have an economy that is based on -- and, in fact, only sustainable through -- hyperconsumption. That's the whole basis for these "tax rebates." We define economic recession by lowered consumption. The answer is to increase consumption, which is what everyone is hoping will happen with these checks -- that people will use them to consume more goods and services. (The irony that Breen illustrates is that this recession was triggered by people trying to consume beyond their means -- in the form of bait-and-switch subprime mortgages on houses they shouldn't have been able to afford.)

Except this economy is not sustainable. Like a cancer that continues to grow until it consumes the entire body, an economy based on hyperconsumption will kill us ... and will take the rest of the world with us.

An economy based on entitlement to hyperconsumption puts our consumer desires (I won't call them needs) above all other values. It has caused us to cripple the creation with which God has entrusted us. It has led us into a war in Irak that has escalated to genocidal proportions in terms of civilian casualties and done inestimable damage to our relationships around the world.

It has also eaten away at our nation's soul. We routinely sell out our most treasured values -- freedom, care for "the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free," -- so that "our American lifestyle (code for hyperconsumption) can be preserved."

Jesus says, "where your treasure is, your heart will be also." When the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and asks "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus responds, "Go, sell all you have, give it to the poor, and come and follow me."

The call of Christ stands in direct opposition to the dominant culture ... the false gospel of mindless consumption. And we are at a holy moment of decision.

Which Gospel will we choose?

As a church, we have embraced the Millennium Development Goals -- and that is a good thing. We have embraced those goals because we see in them a framework for living out the Gospel imperative of Christ to heal the world. But these goals ... and much more important, our call to be a Body of Christ through which God transforms the world ... will never be achieved unless we speak prophetically against this false gospel not only with our lips but with our lives.

To our American culture, the path of Christ is a path of almost untenable paradox. It is a path of liberating sacrifice -- a phrase that seems oxymoronic in the context of mindless consumption. And yet it is the path before us.

Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all he had, not because the poor needed it or because material goods are evil but because in order for that young man to have the depth of life he desired, he needed to be liberated from the materialism that bound his heart. He needed to be able to give his heart to the divine ... and to do that he first had to free it from the treasure in which it was bound.

This is about liberation. Perhaps a more accessible image for us is that it is about breaking addiction. Recessions like the one we are experiencing are warning shots that this is unsustainable -- that our addiction to consumption is killing us. But instead of entering rehab, we are like the junkie who treats the negative symptoms of his addiction with another hit.

The truth is we don't need an infusion of capital, we need an intervention. We need to confront each other and be confronted by each and lovingly told "you are killing yourself ... and we love you too much to let you do this any more."

The check that will arrive in the mail sometime in the coming months gives us an opportunity to say that to ourselves and one another. To take a stand and say we want to break free from our addiction to consumption and grasp the abundant life Christ means for all.

When that check comes...

Don't spend it.

Don't save it.

Don't even use it to pay down debt.

Give it away.

Our economy of mindless consumption is sustained on the backs of the poor around the world. It is sustained on the backs of refugees in Irak trying to put back together what is left of their families and their lives. It is sustained by draining the resources of a planet that is crying out in pain.

It is sustained at the price of our souls.

This check is literally blood money. Don't take it.

Send it to the International Red Cross/Red Crescent -- which is one of the only relief organizations trusted by the people on the ground in Irak.

Send it to be used on the MDGs through your companion diocese relationship, to help rebuild the relationships and lives our consumption is destroying.

Send it to Episcopal Relief and Development, Five Talents, Anglican Relief and Development, or the myriad of other organizations that are working toward sustainable development in nations of extreme poverty.

Use it to buy carbon offsets and contribute to reforestation, renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Resolve to do it now, before the check is in your hand. Tell someone else you have resolved to do this, so it's harder to go back. When the check is in your hand, it will get harder ... it's always hardest to resist the drug when it's right in front of you.

Then tell your friends what you are going to do and urge them to do the same.

Write letters to your Senators and Representatives and tell them what you are going to do ... then write them again when you have done it.

Write letters to the editor of your newspaper and tell them what you are going to do ... then write them again when you have done it.

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation is a movement of spiritual transformation. We are about a call to conversion -- confession, repentance and amendment of life -- through which Christ will change the world.

Let this be our first step on that path.