Social Justice Quiz 2008 (click below for answers)

Authored by Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Click for answers (and documentation) below.

1. How many deaths are there world-wide each year due to acts of terrorism?

2. How many deaths are there world-wide each day due to poverty and malnutrition?

3. 1n 1965, CEOs in major companies made 24 times more than the average worker.
In 1980, CEOs made 40 times more than the average worker.
In 2007, CEOs earned how many times more than the average worker?

4. In how many of the over 3000 cities and counties in the US can a full-time worker who earns minimum wage afford to pay rent and utilities on a one-bedroom apartment?

5. In 1968, the minimum wage was $1.65 per hour.
How much would the minimum wage be today if it had kept pace with inflation since 1968?

6. True or false?
People in the United States spend nearly twice as much on pet food as the US government spends on aid to help foreign countries.

7. How many people in the world live on $2 a day or less?


Expand the post +/-

Answers to Social Justice Quiz 2008

1. 22,000. The U.S. State Department reported there were more than 22,000 deaths from terrorism last year. Over half of those killed or injured were Muslims.
Source: Voice of America, May 2, 2008. "Terrorism Deaths Rose in 2007."

2. About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. Poverty.com – Hunger and World Poverty. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes – one child every five seconds.
Bread for the World. Hunger Facts: International.

3. Today's average CEO from a Fortune 500 company makes 364 times an average worker's pay and over 70 times the pay of a four-star Army general.
Executive Excess 2007, page 7, jointly published by Institute for Policy Studies and United for Fair Economy, August 29, 2007. 1965 numbers from State of Working America 2004-2005, Economic Policy Institute.

4. In no city or county in the entire USA can a full-time worker who earns minimum wage afford even a one bedroom rental. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) urges renters not to pay more than 30% of their income in rent. HUD also reports the fair market rent for each of the counties and cities in the US.

Nationally, in order to rent a 2 bedroom apartment, one full-time worker in 2008 must earn $17.32 per hour. In fact, 81% of renters live in cities where the Fair Market Rent for a two bedroom rental is not even affordable with two minimum wage jobs.
Source: Out of Reach 2007-2008, April 7, 2008, National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

5. Calculated in real (inflation adjusted) dollars, the 1968 minimum wage would have been worth $9.83 in 2007 dollars. Andrew Tobias, January 16, 2008.

The federal minimum wage is $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008 and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009.

6. True. The USA spends $43.4 billion on pet food annually. Source: American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, Inc. The USA spent $23.5 billion in official foreign aid in 2006. The government of the USA gave the most of any country in the world in actual dollars. As a percentage of gross national income, the USA came in second to last among OECD donor countries and ranked number 20 at 0.18 percent behind Sweden at 1.02 percent and other countries such as Norway, Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and others. This does not count private donations which, if included, may move the USA up as high as 6th.
The Index of Global Philanthropy 2008, page 15, 19.

7. The World Bank reported in August 2008 that 2.6 billion people consume less than $2 a day.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/Poverty-Brief-in-Eng...

[More Social Justice Quiz next Sunday morning.]
Cross-posted on Border Explorer.

Bush Loses War on Terrorism; Begins War on Iran

Post by The Existentialist Cowboy


Bush pimps a possible nuclear strike on Iran, though a panel of experts claim his "war on terrorism" is all but lost. What Bush will not tell you is that the world has become a much more dangerous place because of his administration's incompetent and boneheaded policies.
Foreign-policy experts deem US national-security strategy in disrepair, the war in Iraq alarmingly off course, and the world increasingly more dangerous for Americans. In the third Terrorism Index, more than 100 of America's most respected foreign-policy experts see a world that is growing more dangerous, a national security strategy in disrepair, and a war in Iraq that is alarmingly off course.

Six years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, just 29 percent of Americans believe the United States is winning the war on terror—the lowest percentage at any point since 9/11. But Americans also consider themselves safe. Six in 10 say that they do not believe another terrorist attack is imminent. Likewise, more than 60 percent of Americans now say that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake.


US Losing War on Terror, Experts Say in Survey

The fact that world terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes is not a coincidence. It is by design that GOP regimes cause, inspire and aggravate world terrorism. The Iran/Contra scandal is a notable instance in which the GOP terrorists were very nearly brought to justice.

Bush's threats have given nations cause to arm. Secondly, the US has a record of arming nations only to turn on them later for having armed. As nonsensical at that would seem on its face, it has nevertheless been the case, most notably with both Iran and Iraq. Saddam Hussein, for example, was a US puppet, armed and protected by the US until he lowered the price of oil.

If Iran is an armed threat, we have the incompetent, criminal GOP to blame. Sadly, the Iran/Contra "affair" seems all but forgotten. Briefly, the regime of Ronald Reagan sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy of the US. The proceeds were then funneled to a terrorist organization that decimated Nicaragua in the 1980s. The word for that is high treason. Here's the brief summation of the activities of Ronald Reagan's criminal conspiracy to arm an avowed enemy of the US.


The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President's willful activities.


Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Lawrence Walsh

The US has a history of financing and encouraging terrorism. Bush, meanwhile, claims to pursue a peaceful resolution with regard to Iran. Hitler made similar statements about Poland before his own SS staged a "Polish attack" on a radio tower inside German territory. The Reichstag Fire was most certainly not Hitler's last and only "false flag" operation, nor 911 Bush's.

Statements by Bush that he prefers to avoid war with Iran are not in character. Bush's thinking reflects that of the radical, right wing ideologues that surround him. Among them --the conservative think tank, the the American Enterprise Institute.

I admire AEI a lot. After all, I have been consistently borrowing some of your best people. More than 20 AEI scholars have worked in my administration.

George W. Bush, Speech to AEI

One of those scholars wrote an op-ed for the L.A. Times entitled "We Must Bomb Iran , in which he made the absurd case that diplomacy has done nothing to stop the Iranian nuclear threat. What diplomacy? Only a "show of force", says AEI, is the answer.

We can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it. Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel argues for the former, saying that "if Iran is bound and determined to have nuclear weapons, let it." We should rely, he says, on the threat of retaliation to keep Iran from using its bomb. Similarly, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria points out that we have succeeded in deterring other hostile nuclear states, such as the Soviet Union and China.

And in these pages, William Langewiesche summed up the what-me-worry attitude when he wrote that "the spread of nuclear weapons is, and always has been, inevitable," and that the important thing is "learning how to live with it after it occurs."

But that's whistling past the graveyard. The reality is that we cannot live safely with a nuclear-armed Iran. One reason is terrorism, of which Iran has long been the world's premier state sponsor, through groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Now, according to a report last week in London's Daily Telegraph, Iran is trying to take over Al Qaeda by positioning its own man, Saif Adel, to become the successor to the ailing Osama bin Laden. How could we possibly trust Iran not to slip nuclear material to terrorists?

Joshua Muravchik, American Enterprise Institute, November 19, 2006

The same, sorry cast of characters said the same thing about Saddam Hussein. The spectre of a huge mushroom cloud was summoned repeatedly. But, of course, there were no WMD in Iraq. There was no nuclear threat. Bush is the puppet who cried Wolfowitz!
Saddam's main strength - his ability to control his people through extreme terror - is also his greatest vulnerability. The overwhelming majority of his people, including some of his closest associates, would like to be free of his grasp if only they could safely do so. As the recent account of a defector from Saddam's nuclear program makes clear, even Iraqis who help Saddam build nuclear weapons can't escape from the constant threat of torture and death, for their families as well as themselves.

A strategy for supporting this enormous latent opposition to Saddam requires political and economic as well as military components. It is admittedly more complicated than launching a few cruise missile attacks. Perhaps it is more complicated than this Administration can manage, but it is eminently possible for a country that possesses the overwhelming power that the United States has in the Gulf.


--Paul Wolfowitz, Statement to the House National Security Committee Hearings on Iraq , September 16, 1998

Wolfowitz was dead wrong! History will, of course, prove Bush and company to have been wrong about everything of which it was most certain.

Therein lies the problem. When a real threat presents itself, Bush will not, should not be believed. Bush has squandered his credibility on a gambit, the purpose of which was the seizure of Iraqi oil fields. Oil is central to administration policy with regard to Iraq. Over the years, there have been many dictators throughout the world that were not attacked by the US. But when was the last time the US invaded a nation that did not have vast oil fields?

If Bush never attains credibility, it would make no differences to me. I never believed a word he said anyway. I didn't have any money riding on Bush's "credibility". Rather, the danger is to the American people and the world, where survival depends upon the ability of a people to make intelligent assessments. In an ideological world, the only moral dictum that makes sense goes like this: behave in such a way that what is true can be verified to be so. By contrast, the Bush administration believes truth to be whatever you can sell.

A student of the Reagan regime might have predicted the many failures of the Bush administration. Reagan's "presidency" was very nearly as disastrous but the former movie star had better "press agents". Certainly, "terrorism" grew worse over the course of Reagan's occupation of Lebanon. Indeed, like Iraq today under Bush, Lebanon became a magnet for "terrorists who grew more active during the US occupation. They eventually won. Like Bush today, Reagan's definition of victory was defined with meaningless slogans -- "you can run but you can't hide".

Reagan, in fact, lost his war against "terrorism". He was literally forced to withdraw when the marine barracks was attacked. Terrorism grew worse until the ascension of Bill Clinton. Bush, however, hopes to recoup his losses by playing yet another hand in which the stakes are raised to cover his losses. I don't care how Bush otherwise gambles --but NOT with my future, not with country, NOT with my life, not with the very future of the world. Yes, I do take it personally. Yes, I am personally threatened by Bush and so, too, every other freedom loving American. And, yes I am not objective about proven liars, mass murderers and war criminals. And, yes, I am working to bring his sorry ass to trial for capital crimes in America, war crimes and crimes against humanity abroad.

At some point, those who exploit terrorism will try to have it both ways. These demagogues will say that terrorist are succeeding and that there is a threat, statements made to justify dictatorship, oppression, the maintainence of their own illegitimate exercised power. At last, however, the liars must be held to account. Either the war on terrorism is working or it is not. In Bush's case the war was phony but now threatens to inspire real terrorism, real resistance to an illegitimate American hegemony. In the early days, we are always inclined to believe official accounts. But when no progress is made, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe two conflicting stories that attacks still constitute a threat to national security but, don't worry, we are making progress! Both are lies.