Credit: UNDP Nepal

By Aaron Glantz
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2019 (IPS)

Cultural and creative industries, which include arts and crafts, advertising, design, entertainment, architecture, books, media and software, have become a vital force in accelerating human development.

They empower people to take ownership of their own development and stimulate the innovation that can drive inclusive sustainable growth.

If well-nurtured, the creative economy can be a source of structural economic transformation, socio-economic progress, job creation and innovation while contributing to social inclusion and sustainable human development.

It is thus not by chance that the 2004 UNDP Human Development Report made a case for respecting diversity and building more inclusive societies through policies that recognize cultural differences and multicultural perspectives.

Cultural and creative industries (CCI) are generally inclusive. People from all social classes from the indigenous to the elite participate in this economy as producers and consumers. Work in the sector tends to favour youth and women compared with other sectors.

For example, a 2015 UNESCO publication highlighted that CCI sectors in Europe typically employed more youth than any other sector. The study also highlighted that though women account for only 47% of the active population, they accounted for more than 50% of people employed in the United Kingdom’s music industry in 2014.

A recent UNDP/HDRO paper also shows how women play a dominant role in making creative products in the developing world. In countries such as Rwanda and Uganda, for example, women sustain the practice of making baskets, mats and other craftwork.

In Turkey and South Asia, women have been playing a major role in making carpets and other ancient crafts for millennia. Another UN report pointed out how creative industries offer eco-friendly solutions to sustainable development challenges, giving examples such as eco-friendly fashion, including jewelry, handicrafts and interior design products as well as protecting biodiversity by marketing natural health and cosmetic products that work in harmony with nature.

Though these examples show the cultural and creative sectors help achieve inclusive development, the intensification of the creative economy is also exacerbating existing income inequalities and marginalisation of certain population groups.

For example, Richard Florida in his new book, The New Urban Crisis: How Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class – and What We Can Do About It highlights how the cities that have the most innovative and creative economies are often associated with the worst social and economic inequality.

The book shows a strong correlation between the presence of the creative class in metropolitan areas and income inequality. This is because the creative industry generally employs skilled workers which led to a rise in the relative wages of more educated workers.

Yet, the creative industries have become an increasingly important contributor to GDP growth. Data show, over the past 15 years, that the creative economy is not only one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the world economy, but also transformative in generating income, jobs and exports.

According to UNESCO estimates, in 2013 CCI generated $2.3 trillion (3 percent of world GDP) and 29.5 million jobs (1 percent of the world’s active population). An Oxford Economics study estimated that CCI account for over 10 percent of GDP in Brazil and the United States.

Global trade in creative goods and services is also increasing rapidly. Globalization and new technologies have accelerated cultural interactions among countries and the export of creative goods has been growing at about 12 percent per annum in the developing world in the last 15 years or so.

However, these gains are not equality distributed across the globe. Asia and the Pacific, Europe and North America are seeing rapid and unprecedented growth in the creative economy.

These regions account for 93% of the global CCI revenue and 85% of jobs. By contrast Africa, the Middle-East, and Latin America and the Caribbean have not yet capitalised on their potential.

For these regions, the CCI represent untapped economic potential, and a chance to contribute to the innovation economy and other sectors through supply chain effects.

This is an opportunity for policies that accelerate and sustain a dynamic creative economy that contributes to human development progress. Growing a dynamic creative economy depends in part on how proactive countries are in grasping opportunities and tackling challenges across many areas—including technology, education, labour markets, macroeconomic policies, gender issues, urbanization, migration, and more.

Cultural and creative activities are usually diverse and multifaceted. And while no “one-size-fits-all” solution will work in this sector, we advocate some policy options as follows.

First, in line with the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), countries need to integrate the opportunities and challenges related to CCI into their national development plans, strategies and budgets.

Second, greater effort needs to be devoted to protecting intellectual property rights. Failing to properly reward creators is holding back growth. Legal frameworks that protect the rights of creators and secure fair remuneration for them is key.

Third, culture often transcends borders. And so improved international, regional and South-South cooperation is important.

Fourth nurturing talent is vital for CCI. The cross-fertilization of ideas, leveraging new technologies and learning from mistakes are important for any economic sector, but these play a fundamental role in the cultural and creative sectors.

Governments and higher education institutions have an important role in attracting, developing and retaining talent.

Fifth, a sound understanding of the challenges and opportunities is vital for planning and policy making. Collecting and analysing CCI data should be a priority to support better policies.

The UN has made a concerted effort to promote the cultural and creative economy in the last decade, through a series of joint UNESCO, UN Convention on Trade and Development and UNDP knowledge products and meetings.

The United Nations will continue to provide a platform for governments, business and others to consider long-term goals and partnerships in an area that can make an important contribution towards achieving sustainable development for all.

Excerpt:

More than 400 homeless veterans from across northern California relaxed in comfort at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton.

The occasion – a “Stand Down”, where the homeless veterans were given access to good food, clean clothes, showers and beds.

A group of veterans stayed in camouflage canvas tents, met with employment counselors and even made their case to superior court judges, who prescribed modest penalties in exchange for dropping charges related to failed appearances on old warrants. Such warrants often started as unpaid traffic tickets, but the charges escalated as they were ignored.

“The good thing about the East Bay Stand Down is they can get the services they need,” said Army Reserve Capt. Tonya Pacheco, who helped handle logistics for the event.

“If they need counseling – whatever they need it’s available to them,” she said. “A lot of veterans will have the opportunity to turn their lives around.”

100,000 Homeless Vets

Nationally, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimates that on any given night more than 100,000 veterans are homeless, with double that number experiencing homelessness in the course of a year.

Conservatively, the National Council for Homeless Veterans estimates that one out of three homeless men sleeping in a doorway, alley or box in U.S. cities and rural communities has put on a uniform and served the country.

About half of homeless veterans served their country during the Vietnam years, and service providers say they are beginning to see disturbing numbers of veterans recently back from Iraq and Afghanistan living in their cars or couch surfing with family, friends or wherever they can crash.

According to the VA, 56 percent of homeless vets are African American, even though nearly 80 percent of U.S. military veterans are white.

As a blazing sun shone down on the fairgrounds, John Morgan sat under a large tent in the centre of the Stand Down, a computer thumb drive around his neck.

“I just got a resume made, and they gave me a flash drive,” Morgan said. “I needed to get that done ’cause I wanted to go back to work.”

A U.S. Army veteran, Morgan served as a medic in the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio in the years following the Vietnam War. When he got out of the military in the early 1980s, the Vacaville native started snorting cocaine, then dealing it.

“I would work a job and save a lot of money. And then I would get a bundle of coke, and I would sell and I would use…. Inevitably, I would go into jail or get in some kind of thing with the police,” he said.

This year, Morgan caught a break. An official from the Department of Veterans Affairs visited him at San Luis Obispo State Prison and told him about the Homeless Veteran Rehabilitation Programme (HVRP), a supportive housing facility on the VA campus in Menlo Park.

“HVRP saved my life,” he said. Now he’s trying to make sure he has a way to support himself once he graduates from their program.

Morgan is comparably lucky to get a space at HVRP. According to the VA, for the more than 12,000 homeless veterans in Northern California, there are only about 400 transitional housing beds.

That’s why the Stand Downs are so important – for one weekend this year, every veteran who showed up got the help they needed.

*Aaron Glantz is an editor at New America Media, where this article first appeared, and author of two books on the Iraq war, “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans” (UC Press) and “How America Lost Iraq” (Tarcher/Penguin). He is also co-author with Iraq Veterans Against the War of “Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations” (Haymarket).

Prudential cheated the families of dead U.S. soldiers and Marines out of more than 100 million dollars in interest on their life-insurance policies, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in a Massachusetts federal court.

The suit, brought by the parents of two veterans who committed suicide after returning home from Iraq, came as the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans Affairs and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo all announced investigations into the allegations, first disclosed by Bloomberg Markets magazine this week.

“We want the government and the business world to understand that they need to stop the policy of profiting off the deaths of our loved ones,” said one of the plaintiffs, Kevin Lucey, whose son, former Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey, hanged himself on Jun. 22, 2004, after returning home from his first tour.

“They sacrificed their lives,” Lucey said. “No one should profit from that.”

The lawsuit cites VA reports showing that Prudential, as the administrator of government-backed veterans’ policies, earned interest of more than 5.69 percent on life-insurance funds that it held for beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, Prudential paid beneficiaries just one percent interest, the suit said.

That means, on an average death benefit of 400,000 dollars, Prudential stood to earn 22,760 dollars in interest over the course of a year, while paying survivors just 4,000 dollars.

Lucey’s attorney, Cristobal Bonifaz, said the interest “doesn’t belong to Prudential”.

“It belongs to the families,” he said.

According to the lawsuit, Prudential paid more than 1.2 billion dollars in death and traumatic injury claims in 2009 alone, earning interest income on nearly every claim. The plaintiffs say Prudential has kept more than 100 million dollars that should have gone to veterans’ families.

This practice is made possible because rather than paying a lump sum to survivors when a policyholder dies, Prudential keeps the money in its own accounts and issues checks to the beneficiaries that draw on those funds.

According to Bloomberg, which also made similar charges against MetLife, the practice is now widespread in the insurance industry, affecting military and non-military families alike. But what’s unique about the veterans’ life insurance programme, Bonifaz said, is that Prudential is administering a programme of the federal government.

“Every government contract requires fair dealing,” he said.

The VA did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But in a statement, Mike Walcoff, acting undersecretary for the Veterans Benefit Administration, said, “The possibility that life insurance companies are profiting inappropriately from these service members’ sacrifice is completely unacceptable.”

Prudential spokesperson Bob DeFillippo refused to comment on the lawsuit, but said there’s nothing wrong, or illegal, about Prudential keeping the death benefits of the bereaved in its portfolio or holding onto a portion of the interest.

“It’s like a checking account with a bank,” he said. “You deposit your money, and the bank pays you a fixed rate of interest. The bank is then free to make money on your deposit by investing it somewhere else.”

But families of the fallen say there’s a big difference between opening a checking account at a bank and receiving a life insurance payment when your loved one dies.

When his son, Jeffrey, died, “money was the last thing I was thinking of,” Kevin Lucey said.

“Families assume that these people are protecting us and would never take advantage of us,” he added. “That’s where a lot of the anger comes from.”

Lucey said he is not seeking to enrich himself by the lawsuit and said he hopes any settlement money goes to charities and organisations that help other families of other dead soldiers and Marines.

*This story was originally published by New America Media: http://news.newamericamedia.org/.

Giselle Jiles could be the new face of foreclosure. The 52-year-old financial planner has owned her home in Oakland’s Laurel District for 12 years. She did not buy an expensive home that was beyond her means and she did not sign up for a predatory adjustable rate mortgage that was reset at an unsustainably expensive rate.

Jiles did not make any of the mistakes she sees in stories about distressed homeowners on the nightly news. Her economic stress comes from a more traditional source.

Jiles was laid off in March 2009. More than a year later, she’s exhausted her savings and dipped into her retirement. Now, she’s worried about losing her home.

“I worked for the company 20 years and 20 years ago I got a job, like that,” she says snapping her fingers. This time, despite sending out hundreds of resumes, Jiles says she’s only gotten “a few interviews, a few call backs, but the companies started saying, ‘We just don’t have the money to hire you.'”

Jiles believes it could be a long time before she finds a new job. She says many of her friends and family members have been unemployed even longer. Nationally, the Labour Department reports 6.5 million citizens have been unemployed for more than six months, the highest number since the government began keeping records in 1948.

Housing counselors say they’re increasingly seeing people like Giles, who are worried about losing their home because of persistent unemployment.

“It’s as common or more common” than resetting adjustable rate mortgages or “underwater” borrowers who owe more than their home is worth, said Josie Ramirez, homeownership programme manager at the Mission Economic Development Association in San Francisco.

Until recently, federal anti-foreclosure efforts provided little help to unemployed workers, but on Mar. 26, the Barack Obama administration announced changes to its Making Home Affordable Programme that would allow some unemployed borrowers to have their mortgage payments temporarily reduced for a minimum of three months, and up to six months for some borrowers while they look for a new job.

The cost of that forbearance will be shared between lenders and the taxpayers, with the government’s participation funded through a 50-billion-dollar allocation for housing programmes under the Troubled Asset Relief Programme, or TARP.

“It’s all based on incentives,” Ramirez said, “and you can’t just incentivise.”

The Treasury Department estimates six million home loans nationally are at least 60 days delinquent on payments, but through the end of March, the government reported that only 230,801 citizens had modified their loans through the Making Home Affordable programme.

“There’s a picture of chaos and unaccountability and people just getting shafted with no recourse,” added Ramirez. “There’s no way to appeal a bank’s decision.”

Giselle Jiles has been trying to renegotiate her loan since November, when – eight months after losing her job – she attended an all-day clinic organised by the city of Oakland designed to help people stay in their homes.

That day, Jiles said, she filled out all the paperwork that her lender, JP Morgan Chase, required. She’s called the bank’s toll free number every week since and faxed over required documents again and again.

Jiles still doesn’t have an answer.

“It’s just overwhelming,” she said. “I totally get it when I see people on TV crying, because I’m pretty close.”

Chase spokesperson Tom Kelly initially refused to go on the record to discuss Jiles’s case, but after repeated inquiries from New America Media, he agreed to take down Jiles’s full name, address, and loan number.

The next day, Kelly called back to say that Jiles had only sent in the necessary documents the day NAM started reporting her story. Jiles’s loan modification request would be decided “in a few weeks”, Kelly said.

The same day, Jiles was contacted by an underwriter, the first time a bank employee had been assigned to work with her.

“These institutions typically only work with people when you put pressure on them,” said Josie Ramirez of the Mission Economic Development Agency. Sometimes she complains to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, government-chartered corporations that hold loans serviced by banks like Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America. Other times, she calls a politician. Other times, she goes to the media.

“The regulations are so weak even the Obama administration is simply trying to shame them,” Ramirez said. “Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

To date, JP Morgan Chase has been earmarked for more than 4.9 billion dollars in taxpayer money to subsidise mortgage modification for struggling homeowners. Earlier this month, the company reported profits of 3.3 billion dollars for the first quarter of 2010.

*Aaron Glantz is New America Media’s stimulus editor. Reporting assistance from the investigative news non-profit ProPublica. This story originally was originally published by New America Media: http://news.newamericamedia.org/.

By Aaron Glantz
SAN FRANCISCO, Apr 9 2010 (IPS)

In his State of the Union address to Congress, U.S. President Barack Obama promised to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which forbids gays and lesbians from serving openly in the Armed Forces. Three months later, efforts to repeal the policy continue to languish in Congress.

Dan Choi Credit: Courtesy of Dan Choi

But when Lt. Dan Choi, an openly gay New York National Guardsman, wanted to protest the policy, he didn’t take it to Capitol Hill, but instead chained himself to a White House fence, where he was arrested Mar. 18.

Choi spoke with New America Media editor Aaron Glantz about his arrest and his opposition to “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

Q: Why did you chain yourself to the gates of the White House? A: Pres. Obama has the authority right now to demonstrate leadership. The president has made clear that he wants to see “don’t ask, don’t tell” repealed and the only way you can see repealing this through Congress is for the president to take executive leadership. We needed to make that message loud and clear.

Q: In March, you came out as openly gay on the Rachel Maddow show, but now you have been recalled to drill with your unit. How is that possible? A: In June, I was put on trial [for violating ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’] and they recommended discharge. But now it’s been nine months, 10 months, and I have been recalled to drill with my unit. Our unit is going to deploy and they need experienced leadership. I’ve been deployed to Iraq before.

I graduated from West Point with a degree in Arabic and I speak Arabic with a degree of proficiency. There has been no disruption in my unit [as a result of my coming out]. It is certainly proof that our country can deal with the repeal just like all the other countries in NATO… But in the last nine months, hundreds of soldiers have been kicked out for doing just what I did. The policy must end.

Q: Recently, the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before Congress and, with the exception of Admiral Mullen, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs, each of them said they had reservations about repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” What went through your mind when you saw them testify? A: Being a racial minority, I wondered if those same sentiments about why they had those fears – I wonder, now that we are 60 years across from racial segregation in the military, if you heard those same things about a racial minority, would we have that same kind of reaction? It was insulting. From what I know on the ground, not on a political level but as a military person with personal experience, I know that those things are totally unfounded. But the reason they’re allowed to make these political overtures based on fears and untruths is that the president hasn’t shown any leadership.

When you talk about racial desegregation in Harry Truman’s time, it was leadership that came from the highest military leader. You’re hearing all these incredulous things not only from the lower-level commanders but also from the Joint Chiefs and the retired generals [and] that’s absolutely false. This kind of confusion is rooted in a lack of leadership.

Q: Do you see this resistance in the high level of the military brass against allowing gays to serve openly in the military? A: It’s not outright resistance. You haven’t heard people say, “Absolutely not”, but they express their fears, they express their doubts, they express things that I have never heard from military people. [They’re] expressing this kind of insecurity and discomfort in such a cowardly way. They’re saying that their actions must be based on these fears, and that’s not in keeping with any of the military traditions and for any military leader to allow that. If, indeed, this is a clarion call from the president that this is the right thing to do, then why would you allow any of these wrongheaded things to go out?

Q: Are your parents supportive of what you’re doing? A: [Laughs] Well, that’s another interview. My dad is a Southern Baptist minister. My mother is very conservative and they were both supportive of Proposition 8 and it [my being gay] was very difficult for them. I only came out to them 15 months ago, and when I did they had difficulty understanding the concept of what that means.

So it was difficult, but I think deep down in their hearts it was just because they didn’t want me to face the kind of discrimination they did. They’ve gone through discrimination because of their language barriers, because of their immigration status, because of their race, and they didn’t want the next generation to go through the same kind of pain.

I explained to them that I don’t want people in future generations to have to lie to get into the military, I don’t want them to have to be unequal. If they love somebody, they should be able to get married to them. They shouldn’t be fired for being who they are.

You know, it’s funny, my dad always said I was going to be a spokesperson for minority rights. I don’t think he meant gay rights. I think he meant the Korean community, but it’s the same kind of discrimination. And it’s going to require the same kind of determination from our community and from our generation to see that this is a moral fight.

*NAM Editor Aaron Glantz is author of “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans” (UC Press). This story originally was originally published by New America Media: http://news.newamericamedia.org/.

Excerpt:

It’s been seven years since Fernando Suarez del Solar buried his son, Jesus. Seven years since Mar. 27, 2003, when just one week into the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Lance Corporal Jesus Suarez del Solar stepped on a piece of unexploded ordnance and came home in a flag-draped coffin.

Lance Corporal Jesus Suarez del Solar and his family. Credit: Courtesy of the Suarez Family

When he died, Jesus left behind a wife and infant son, Erik, who even today doesn’t understand what happened to his father.

“He asks me, ‘Where is my dad?'” Fernando says, choking back tears. “‘Why is my dad not here?’ I try to explain that he is in another place, that he watches over and protects us. But my grandson just cries and says, ‘I need my dad, I want my dad,’ and I don’t have the intelligence to explain to him why his dad is not there.”

Jesus Suarez was 20 years old when he died. A native of Tijuana, Mexico, he immigrated to Southern California with his family in the late 1990s and joined the Marine Corps straight out of high school. When he died, he still hadn’t received U.S. citizenship.

“People don’t understand when one person dies, the whole family is destroyed,” Fernando says.

He says the passage of time has not diminished the loss. Instead, it has become more pronounced, even as the Iraq war has receded from the front page to the back page of the newspaper, from the lead story each night on network news to a short weekly segment, overtaken by health care, immigration, and the failing economy.

When Barack Obama was elected president, he lifted a controversial ban, allowing the media to film and photograph caskets of dead soldiers as they arrived at Dover Air Force base, but few media have published those images on a regular basis.

The remoteness of the war in Iraq “produces a feeling of isolation” among families who have lost loved ones in the war, says Ami Neiberger-Miller, spokesperson for TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Programme for Survivors, a non-profit independent organisation of the military that provides grief support to families.

On Mar. 10, TAPS estimated that the 5,398 U.S military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan had left 3,779 children without a parent, while 2,669 spouses had been widowed.

The organisation reported that 10,796 parents had lost a child and 4,264 siblings had lost a brother or sister.

Ami Neiberger-Miller’s 22-year-old brother, U.S. Army Specialist Christopher Neiberger, was killed in August 2007 by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

“Grief rewrites your address book,” she says. Because most Americans find it difficult to talk about the loss of war, “They don’t ask [about dead loved ones] or [they] change the subject. I think my new baby looks a lot like my brother when he was a baby,” she says, “but I won’t tell other people that because it would make them uncomfortable.”

To help break through that isolation, TAPS offers peer-based emotional support to people who have lost loved ones in the war, pairing up survivors with others in similar circumstances. The organisation also offers a grief camp for children who have lost a parent to the war, helping form a sense of community so the children realise they are not alone.

Fernando Suarez del Solar has channeled grief over his son’s death into political activism. In December 2003, he traveled to Iraq as part of a peace delegation and visited the exact spot where his son died.

“I had the opportunity to meet with families in Iraq who lost two, three, four, five members at the same time,” he said. “These people opened their hearts and doors and gave us a beautiful welcome. It was important for me to show the Iraqi families that many American people do not support this occupation, and that like the Iraqi people who have lost their family, American people have lost members of their family in the war in Iraq.”

Since then, Fernando has paid hundreds of visits to middle and high school classrooms across Southern California where he’s urged students not to join the military. He’s stood at the front of dozens of anti-war marches and founded his own non-profit organisation, the Guerrera Azteca Project, dedicated to countering military recruitment targeting the Latino community.

But such activism has come at a tremendous personal and financial cost. He’s now estranged from Jesus’s mother and widow who believe Fernando’s activism disgraces his son’s memory. And because Fernando has poured his heart and soul into stopping the war, he’s been unable to advance economically. He works as an overnight cashier at a 7-Eleven outside San Diego.

“I’m tired,” he says. “But I need to continue.”

*Aaron Glantz is author of “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans” (UC Press). This story originally was originally published by New America Media: http://news.newamericamedia.org/.

A U.S. soldier shot five of his colleagues dead at a base in Baghdad, Iraq Monday. The Pentagon says at least two other people were hurt in the shootings and the gunman is in custody.

Details are still coming in, but the incident reportedly happened at a stress clinic where troops get help for personal issues or combat trauma.

At an afternoon press conference, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates was tight-lipped about the details of the shooting, the first such spree by a U.S. soldier through six years of war in Iraq.

“We’re still in the process of gathering information on exactly what happened,” Gates said, “but if the preliminary reports are confirmed, such a tragic loss of life at the hands of our own forces is a cause for great and urgent concern.”

A military statement said the shooting took place at around 2 p.m. local time in the mental health clinic at Camp Liberty, a sprawling base next to Baghdad International Airport. The Pentagon said the names of the dead soldiers were being withheld pending family notification. The name of the shooter was also not released.

Veterans’ advocates say the details of the incident will be critical in assessing whether the killings could have been prevented.

“We need to know if this soldier was examined by a physician before or after deployment and if any mental health symptoms were observed,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

“We know from repeated Congressional investigations and hearings that the military has knowingly sent soldiers with physical and mental health diagnoses and severe symptoms back to the war zones. In some cases, the service members killed themselves or others,” he said.

More than 230 active soldiers, airmen and marines committed suicide last year – the highest military suicide statistic in nearly 30 years. In January, more U.S. soldiers killed themselves than died in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

In November 2006, a New York National Guardsman was arraigned in a military court on charges of murdering two officers in an explosion at one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.

The series of incidents leaves some observers to recall the military’s internal meltdown during the Vietnam War.

“In December of 1972, the Defence Department acknowleged that somewhere between 800 and 1,000 officers had actually been blown up by their subordinates,” explained Vietnam war widow Penny Coleman, author of the book ‘Flashback: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Suicide and the Lessons of War’.

Back then, the killings were called ‘fragging’, because fragmentation bombs were usually used.

“The fragmentation devices were the weapon of choice because they left no evidence. There were obviously no fingerprints,” Coleman said. “There was no way of tracking it.”

Iraq war veterans watched the news come in with a mixture of shock, outrage, and resignation.

Former U.S. Army Captain Luis Carlos Montalvan received two Bronze Stars and one Purple Heart for wounds sustained during his two tours in Iraq. He first saw the news in the waiting room in Manhattan’s Veterans’ Affairs hospital, where Montalvan and his fellow veterans had all been waiting for hours to see a doctor.

“We were just shaking our heads,” he said.

Montalvan said many of his fellow veterans felt a mix of irony and horror that while they were waiting for hours to receive government health care stateside, their active duty counterparts were being killed by one of their own in a clinic in the war zone.

“It’s horrifying,” he added, “that there were men and women in a combat stress centre at Camp Liberty who were going to seek help and now their relatives back home who thought that their loved ones were going to get treatment are dead. They went to get treatment and they’re dead. Can you imagine the grief?”

At the Pentagon press conference this afternoon, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said the military’s investigation will include an examination into the number of tours the suspect had served in Iraq and whether he had been deployed to the war zone despite an earlier mental health diagnosis.

Mullen said the shooting spree “does speak to me about the need for us to redouble our efforts in terms of dealing with the stress [of war], dealing with those kinds of things.”

After eight years of war in Afghanistan and six years of war in Iraq, the Pentagon reports nearly 800,000 U.S. soldiers have served more than one tour in the war zone. According to the non-partisan Rand Corporation, approximately 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, while another 320,000 have sustained a traumatic brain injury, physical brain damage often caused by roadside bombs and mortars.

“The first impulse is to be angry at a service member for taking lives, that’s the first inclination,” Montalvan added, “but then you can’t help but ask: ‘What caused this person to be this upset, this angry?’ And the likely conclusion is that this person could not get help.”

*IPS contributor Aaron Glantz is author of “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans” (University of California Press/January 2009).

Eighteen U.S. veterans kill themselves every day. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas. One in every three homeless men in the United States has put on a uniform and served his country. On any given night, the U.S. government estimates 200,000 veterans sleep on the street.

This is the crisis General Eric Shinseki will inherit when he takes the reins at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The general, who retired from the Army after the George W. Bush administration ignored his warnings on Iraq, sat for his Senate confirmation hearing for VA secretary Wednesday, where he received accolades from Democrats and Republicans alike.

The chair of the committee, Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, predicted Shinseki will be confirmed by the full Senate Jan. 20, the same day Barack Obama takes office.

Mentioning the retired general’s experience having one of his feet blown off nearly 40 years ago during the war in Vietnam, Akaka told Shinseki he was “confident you have a strong sense of empathy to those who are served by VA and a deep commitment to VA’s mission…This will serve you well as secretary.”

For his part, Shinseki promised to be “a forceful advocate for veterans”, saying Obama “charged me to ensure that veterans receive the benefits and services they earned and that the nation expects”.

Most observers agree the situation Shinseki inherits is dire.

The non-partisan Rand Corporation estimates 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, while another 320,000 have experienced a traumatic brain injury – physical brain damage often caused by roadside bombs.

Less than half, however, are getting help from the government that sent them to battle. Wounded veterans are being forced to wait six months to two years on average to learn if they qualify for disability payments, and many have been turned away when they seek medical care.

At his confirmation hearing, Shinseki vowed to “transform” the VA, to cut down on long delays, promising “timeliness and consistency” in processing disability claims, a more “transparent” bureaucratic process and increased use of new technologies.

Like the senators at the hearing, veterans’ advocates expressed optimism about Shinseki’s selection.

“As a wounded combat veteran, he has a firm understanding of the issues veterans face not only when they’re deployed and when they return home, but also just the everyday issues that a veteran has to deal with that most civilians wouldn’t understand,” said Ernesto Estrada, an Iraq War veteran and policy associate at the organisation Swords to Plowshares.

Now Estrada and others are waiting to see the specifics of Shinseki’s proposals. His answers to most of the questions posed by senators were vague, and none of the lawmakers pressed him for specifics.

In his written answers to questions from Senator Akaka, for example, Shinseki spoke of the long wait times veterans face for disability payments “I have much to learn with respect to the specifics of the claims process, but it seems to me that timeliness and quality should be primary concerns in the decision-making process,” he said.

Veterans hope Shinseki’s reputation for honesty will lead to a change in approach at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Under Pres. Bush, high-ranking officials have tried to cover up these problems. In one infamous example, the head of the VA’s mental health division, Dr. Ira Katz, directed an agency spokesperson not to tell CBS News that 1,000 veterans receiving care from the VA attempt to kill themselves every month. The subject line of Katz’s e-mail read: “Shh!”

Those who did call attention to the crisis have been punished. In 2006, Dr. Frances Murphy was working as the undersecretary for health policy coordination at the VA when she told the medical journal Psychiatric News that waiting lists for mental health care were so long the care was “virtually inaccessible”. Days later, Dr. Murphy was sent packing.

Indeed, General Shinseki had his own battles over facts with the Bush administration.

Announcing the appointment on NBC, President-elect Obama said he picked Shinseki to head the VA because he “was right” when he warned Congress and the Bush administration about the dangers of war in Iraq.

As secretary of Veterans Affairs, Shinseki advocates hope he will continue to tell the country inconvenient truths about the long-term effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

*IPS contributor Aaron Glantz is author of “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans” (University of California Press, 2009).

IPS contributor Alaa Hassan was killed on his way to work last Wednesday. He was 35 years old. He is survived by his mother, five brothers, five sisters and his wife who is pregnant with their first child.

Alaa was not killed for being a reporter. Indeed, he had only just begun helping IPS gather news. When fighters ambushed him and machine-gunned his car, it was simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time – one of so many people killed seemingly for no reason in Iraq each day.

The same day Alaa was killed, Reuters reports 11 other violent incidents in Iraq – including the car bombings of day labourers in Baquba 50km north-east of Baghdad, and of shoppers in the Shia Qadamiya district of Baghdad.

At least four Iraqi policemen and a U.S. soldier died in separate attacks across the country. In Baquba, the U.S. military admitted to killing a “non-combatant” during a raid on a civilian home.

Most of the people killed Jun. 28 (along with the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died over the last three years) will remain only numbers. Because we knew Alaa so well, we can tell his story.

Alaa lived in al-Tajiyyat neighbourhood in northeast Baghdad. He managed the inventory of a stationery store in Baghdad’s famed book market on Mutanabe Street.

He lived near the Tigris river in housing that had been reserved for employees of the ministry of industry when Saddam Hussein was president.

He lived next door to what was once an electronics factory and across the street from the former building of the Institute of Arab National Oil Studies. Both were looted after the U.S. invasion. After that, the U.S. government turned them into military bases. So Alaa’s neighbourhood was regularly attacked by insurgents.

The only way from his neighbourhood to central Baghdad was to cross the al-Muthana bridge over the Tigris river, a regular spot for insurgent attacks. Because of an Iraqi police checkpoint and a bend, every car passing over the bridge has to slow down. Killings occur here many times a week.

When Alaa crossed the bridge Jun. 28, gunmen sprayed his car with machine-gun fire, killing him with six bullets. A second passenger was seriously injured.

The day he died, Alaa had worried aloud about crossing the bridge. A good friend, Abu Laith, had just been killed there. “He was just coming home from work and randomly someone showed up and shot and killed him,” Alaa had said.

“I know it’s dangerous to leave the house,” he told his brother Salam over the phone. “But what can I do? I have to go on living.”

Alaa was always in a difficult situation. “The Americans built a base that’s in front of my house that used to be a government institute, and another one across the street,” he told his brother.

“Now when we go out the Americans are right there at our front door. The wall for the American base is exactly in front of the house. Now it’s not safe to go from the house to the main road just a half a kilometre away.”

Alaa Hassan was born near ancient Babylon, one of 11 children. His father was a courthouse clerk and his mother a housewife. As a young man, he moved to an area just outside Baghdad and worked as a computer programmer in the ministry of industry. He got married in 2000.

Under Saddam’s reign, one could not get married (or open a shop or business for that matter) without security clearance. But Alaa apparently married without following proper procedures. He and his wife ran into difficulties with the marriage; eventually someone reported his illegal marriage to the government. Alaa was held in a torture centre for nine months in 2000.

“The family had to pay a bribe to find him,” his brother Salam recalls. “He was held in a warehouse near the law college. They beat his hands and his body. He had bruises everywhere.”

Salam recalls visiting Alaa where he was detained. “It was a big warehouse with a lot of rooms on the top floor. They would do the torture in an open area so all the other prisoners could see. Eventually, they decided to put him on trial. They sentenced him to 25 years in jail but we paid a bribe so it was reduced to three years.”

Alaa served his sentence at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, among hardened criminals and political prisoners. He was incarcerated there until just before the U.S. invasion in 2003, when Saddam Hussein announced a general amnesty for all prisoners.

Alaa emerged from prison traumatised. He divorced his wife and moved back to Babylon.

He continued living with his family there for three months after the fall of Saddam, but eventually he decided to look for a job again. When a cousin found him a job in a stationery shop on Mutinabe street, he moved back to Baghdad.

He remarried three months before he was killed. He had just learnt his wife was pregnant.

As with many Iraqi casualties, it has been difficult for Alaa’s family to grieve his death. When one of his brothers called the Baghdad morgue about retrieving his body, an employee advised them not to come because he said the area around the morgue is controlled by insurgents.

So his extended family and friends gathered together – all armed – and walked to the morgue together through firing to retrieve the body. When they arrived, they had to pick their way through corpses to find Alaa.

Alaa was buried in the holy city of Najaf last Wednesday. It was a difficult trip for the family because the roads are unsafe. The family obtained guards from the Mehdi Army of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who escorted the family on the highway to Najaf and provided security for the funeral.

Alaa’s family will be observing the traditional 40 days mourning at their home in Babylon. His whole family is now moving out of Baghdad.

“If this continues for another three or four years every single family in Iraq will be affected by this war,” Alaa’s brother Salam says. “It will put us on another path in the future and it will be very difficult to make it a peaceful country again.”

*With colleague Alaa Hassan, Aaron Glantz covered the increasing violence and sectarian divisions swallowing up Basra in the south of Iraq; the untold stories of Haditha, raided by the U.S. army last year; and the local reactions over the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.