The bill, which was cosponsored by multiple student government members, was similar to previous bills that have been discussed since April 2010. Based on the 2012 version, which failed to pass last year, today’s bill received a vote of 20 in favor, 12 against and 1 abstaining.

Similar bills passed by student governments at UC Irvine, UC Berkeley and UC Riverside are raising pressure on the University of California (UC) administration to divest from companies profiting from war crimes and human rights violations in the region. Student activists have argued that the UC has a long history of using divestment as a tool for positive social change–  starting with cigarette companies to companies profiting from apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s. “Divesting from Israeli human rights violations in the Palestinian Territories is the next natural step for the UC,” said an SJP member.

UC President Mark Yudof had commented that “The U.S. has not made any declaration regarding the State of Israel and, therefore, we will not bring a recommendation before the Board to divest from companies doing business with the State of Israel.” Yudof will be resigning in August and students are hopeful that his resignation combined with increasing pressure on the UC will lead the to a more ethical investment scheme for UC funds.

Prominent AS Member, Sean Estelle, summed up the mood of the meeting. “Proud of our council for joining the growing movement to divest, and I hope the UC Regents take the voices of the people they claim to represent seriously.”

As she distributed buckets filled with paintbrushes and gloves, an audible hum of excitement began to fill the room. Dessy announced today’s project – the completion of a white roof installation atop the Koch Theater.

Why a white roof?, you might ask. The bright paint helps conserve energy by reflecting the sun’s light back into the atmosphere, Dessy explained. As opposed to conventional roofs, which absorb heat – adding up to five degrees to the surrounding environment – white roofs create an envelope of cooler temperature, reducing the cost spent on air conditioning to cool the building during summer

Dessy said the majority of Service projects she helps organize are in the city’s outer boroughs, areas that lack the resources and political attention received by boroughs in mainland Manhattan.

Accordingly, Tuesday’s cool roof installation at the Koch Theater was the result of extensive public-private collaboration. The NYC Service, a volunteer-based initiative started by Mayor Bloomberg in 2009 and led by Dessy, teamed up with the nonprofit Community Environmental Center and ConEdison, the city’s main energy utility and a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc. Together, the agencies recruited volunteers, students, and employees to paint the roof.

David Shih, 24, an MBA candidate at New York University and one of the cool roof volunteers, said projects like this are critical to the modern business world.

Another volunteer named Rich Megia described the link between business and sustainability as “a type of synergy.” Megia, a graduate student at Marist College, said, “When you are helping people to save money, conserve energy, and protect our environment, you are contributing to that synergy. The cool roof is an easy way to do all three.”

Koch Theater Managing Director Mark Heiser expressed equal satisfaction with the project. “It’s a no brainer,” he said after touring the roof.

“It’s nice and cool in here,” said Jacqlyn Aloisi, a volunteer from ConEdison, as she entered the shadowed stairwell after a stint of rooftop painting.

“See, it’s working already,” said Heiser.

MBA candidates and energy utility employees team up with volunteers from a New York City service agency to paint a theater in the notorious Midtown area white.

While Virginia disallows gun ownership for five years by people who have been involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric problems, Seung-Hui Cho never had inpatient psychiatric care before the shooting at Virginia Tech. This is because Virginians can only be involuntarily detained for presenting an “imminent threat,” which he was.

There is no evidence that the US Army’s Psychological Operations division required Wade Michael Page, the shooter of a Wisconsin Sikh temple, to receive mental health attention for his propensity to kill. They hired him for it.

And that may be the case with Terence Tyler, the ex-marine who ended three lives in New Jersey, early Friday morning.

While there has been much necessary focus on gun-control and security competence in the aftermath of these acts of terror, such reactionary approaches do not answer the infinitely more important question: what happens in an individual’s mind to make him or her want to kill?

Before cultural assumptions lead to accusations that someone with such a warped sense of reality needs to be locked in a mental institution with other “schizophrenics,” one must know that individuals with debilitating conditions such as schizophrenia are more often the victims than the perpetrators of assault.

However, delusions of grandeur, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and sociopathy as displayed by many of the domestic terrorists of the past few years are also mental illnesses. Truly, any individual who premeditates the murder of a human being is nothing short of mentally ill.

In a country where we think of arms-bearing as a civil liberty, we must treat mental health as a right.

Still, limited resources and a culture of neglect leave tens of millions of Americans, including these killers, without appropriate mental health attention. In fact, more Americans live in mental health resource shortage areas than in any other medical service shortage area.

Further, the federal healthcare safety net, Medicaid, requires an individual be ill for a full year before qualifying for mental health coverage. Even if they fulfill that prerequisite, the person must fail to achieve “substantial gainful activity,” potentially disqualifying those with NPD, Anti-Social Personality Disorder (which, contrary to the name, is marked by manipulative behavior and a hyper-polarizing view of people), or delusions of grandeur.

If there is to be a comprehensive prevention plan for mass murders, the United States can no longer treat mental health as a privilege to be earned. In a country where we think of arms-bearing as a civil liberty, we must treat mental health as a right.

First, every American must have access to resources without condition, including documentation status. One path to achieve this would be to open Medicaid’s doors to anyone seeking psychiatric help. Another would be to require private insurers to offer and encourage mental health services without charge, to be reimbursed in part or whole by the government. Most likely, a combination of the two would be necessary.

The only reasonable argument against defining mental health resources as a human right is the expense associated with providing services to everyone who wants or needs them without restrictive costs. But as a nation we must ask ourselves: how much will the families of murder victims pay for their own therapy? How much would they have paid – in psychiatric, hospitalization, medication bills for a total stranger – to prevent the murders of their loved ones?

Second, legislation relating to mental health has to get serious. If Holmes had been in a psychiatric hospital, he wouldn’t have been at that theater. If hospital-groups felt an unconditional responsibility to their patients, he would have spoken with a professional just before committing the murders. In Virginia, a judicial officer had declared Cho an “imminent threat.” It was within the state’s capacity and responsibility to hospitalize Cho and deny his right to firearms.

Federal laws allowing courts, physicians, and police to detain individuals against their will for evidence of mental instability need to expand. States need to enforce these laws accordingly.

Involuntary detention, of course, is not something to be taken lightly. However, hospitalization is not imprisonment; these detentions are opportunities rather than punishment. Further, detentions end in freedom. Death does not.

Such a transformation in law and culture would not be an unnecessary, paternalistic obstruction of liberties. Nor would it be so simple as a universal entitlement program for people with mental and emotional instability. The redefinition of mental health as a basic and inalienable human right would improve the lives of nearly everyone with mental illness, and it would save tens of thousands of lives each year.

After the shooting on Friday, Mayor Owen Henry of Old Bridge, New Jersey told a local newspaper, “You can prepare for these things, but you can’t prevent them.” This defeatist perspective will see more massacres. It’s well past time to start preventing mass murders in the US by addressing the underlying mental health problems.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been helping my friend on some search engine optimization (SEO) work for WiserEarth, a non-profit dedicated to fostering collaboration among individuals from other non-profits and government and civic organizations around the world. WiserEarth does this through its online social network platform at Wiser.org. After doing some keyword research for the “social network for sustainability” and further diving into other pages on the site,some ideas about societal reform started brewing in my head.

I recently read an article in TheNew York Times about the expected dearth of primary care physicians as a result of Obama’s health care law. Here area few sobering statistics from the article:

•    By 2015,“the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors than needed” (source: Association of American Medical Colleges)
•    By 2025, with expanded insurance coverage mandated by the law, “that number will more than double”
•    “Even without the health care law’s [mandated insurance coverage expansion], the shortfall of doctors in 2025 would still exceed 100,000”

These figures got me thinking about the United States’ need for more doctors. The country’s baby boomer population is aging and living longer than previous generations. That means increased demand for health care services from a system that hasn’t been able to keep pace with providing such services. The predicted increasing shortage of primary care physicians certainly paints a grim picture, especially considering it takes about a decade to fully train doctors and that one “third of the country’s [doctors] are 55 or older, and nearing retirement. ”

The opportunity costs for becoming a doctor are pretty steep as well, with the average debt incurred from medical school tuition reaching $145,020 . Factor in debt incurred from college and an undergraduate student on the med school track will be living paycheck to paycheck for a while. As if more deterrents to becoming a doctor were needed, a recent post on the New York Times blog “Well,” a blog dedicated to living a healthy lifestyle, showcased the high amount of verbal and physical abuse third year medical students encountered while working with residents and doctors in hospitals. Such a culture of abuse and intimidation in a highly regarded and established profession is a travesty.

Given the intense and steep costs to earn a MD, it’s no wonder that the amount of medical students becoming doctors has not been able to keep pace with increases in population. This is where the need for a national alternative doctor-training program akin to Teach For America ought to be established. This program should be called Heal For America and operate in a similar fashion like Teach For America, the alternative teacher certification program that helps prepare recent college graduates for teaching gigs in the neediest areas of the United States. A national doctor-training program like Heal For America can alleviate the health inequality gap and end the dearth of primary care physicians.If anyone can become a highly qualified teacher without any traditional and standardized training and education, then anyone can certainly become a highly qualified doctor without going to med school.

Given Teach For America’s success thus far in the blighted low-income neighborhoods still suffering from the war on poverty that was lost, it would make perfect sense to replicate all of Teach For America’s business model to create a dedicated corps of eager, hard-working, and highly talented college graduates to serve our nation’s under-served and ailing populace. Applying their energies and passion to fixing our nation’s healthcare system is a good way to remedy a longstanding problem that in time will get worse.

Corps members, the term used to describe Heal For America’s cadre of doctors, will dedicate two years of their lives to treating the nation’s most under-served patients.They will work in hospitals and clinics around the nation and ensure that true health equity and reform becomes a reality. During those two years, corps members will be provided with a surfeit of resources to assist them in their endeavors. They will also undergo an intense and highly rigorous five-week training program that certifies them as licensed physicians – complete with M.D. and white coat.Heal For America corps members will be treating patients and diagnosing their ailments in no time! Monthly professional development sessions will also be provided to help each corps member not only become better doctors, but also close the health inequality gap within their two-year stint. After they finish their two-year commitment, corps members can continue serving as doctors or pursue other career opportunities. I envision corps members continuing their advocacy for health equity in whatever career path they choose, whether it is corporate law or investment banking. These doctors will essentially be healing America through their leadership.

Over time, through the revolutionary efforts of Heal For America, there will be tens of thousands of doctors working tirelessly on the front lines, assisting their medical school-trained counterparts in providing the best care for millions of Americans. Just like working with and educating other people’s kids, it doesn’t take much skill – aside from hard work and passion – to work with other people in healing their ailments. All it takes is a little bit of hard work, a love for this country’s poor, hungry, and tired, and a commitment to health equity.

First, a recap: PPACA includes an expansion of Medicaid, the federal health safety net which provides health coverage to people with disabilities as well as poor pregnant women and families with children (Medicaid 1.0).

The expansion would include “childless adults” and others with incomes up to 133 percent of poverty (about $30,000 a year for a family of four, or $15,000 for an individual), also called Medicaid 2.0. The federal government would not mandate the expansion, but hoped that any state that refused would lose all Medicaid funding, not just money for Medicaid 2.0.

However, the Supreme Court decided that the federal government does not have the power to deny a refusing state total Medicaid funding for which it would otherwise be eligible (Medicaid 1.0); this would comprise “coercion.” That is to say states may, if they so choose, refuse to expand to Medicaid 2.0, and the federal government would still be responsible for funding Medicaid 1.0.

As soon as their staffers were able to interpret the Supreme Court decision, several governors declared they would take advantage of the decision and refuse to expand Medicaid.

The ultimate decision whether to reject Medicare 2.0 is a complex one; it will involve considerations of associated costs, savings, payment transfers, and potential changes in employment that the expansion would bring about.

And while it is all but certain that private insurers and hospitals will benefit financially from many aspects of PPACA, much of the debate surrounds the effects of Medicaid 2.0 on national, state, and personal budgets.

Soon after the Supreme Court decision, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) submitted an economic analysis of the projected impacts on the federal budget. Prior to the decision, the CBO had projected that PPACA would reduce net federal deficits over the next decade. However, updated for Medicaid 2.0 exemptions, the CBO expects Congress will save an additional $84 billion on funds refused by states. This comprises 0.2% savings on federal budget expenditures over 10 years.

PPACA, as written, pays the full cost of Medicaid 2.0 from federal coffers for three years, 95% for three more, then finally paying 90% of the cost long-term. Therefore, Medicaid 2.0 will transfer funds from the national Treasury to accepting states’ health programs. If a state refuses Medicaid 2.0 funding, that becomes one less expense for the federal budget.

Several state HHSA’s and Treasuries project savings from Medicaid 2.0 funds transferred from the federal government. With this external money, the Arkansas Department of Public Health expects to save about $372 million between 2014 and 2020. Much of the state’s savings come from direct federal payments and reductions in uncompensated care – the cost of uninsured emergency room visits, for example.

After 2020, the federal government will pay 90% of the Medicaid 2.0 expenses. From that point on, Arkansas projects net costs of $3.4 million yearly, breaking even in approximately a century.

Medicaid 2.0′s costs to states are largely those of outreach to newly eligible patients, new administrative demand, and covering those who were eligible for Medicaid 1.0 but never had coverage. As a result of the latter item, states who were previously non-compliant with Medicaid will share some of the cost of the program in the first three years (approximately 3 percent). According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, however, these states tend to have higher rates of uninsurance, and therefore have more to save from uncompensated care.

Beyond the healthcare costs, state economies may also experience changes in employment related to Medicaid 2.0. The CBO expects Medicaid 2.0 to provide coverage to 15 million people; the health industry would grow accordingly. Manufacturing, delivery, and construction would also see job growth, following the expansion of the health industry. While there appear to be no studies estimating how many jobs would result from Medicaid 2.0, it would increase insurance coverage by approximately 6 percent nationally.

In addition, the impact on health would change the labor force. Chronic illness and other preventable diseases impede the capacity to be an economically productive individual. In fact, according to the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study, “[more] than half of men and one-third of women who left the labor force before the Social Security early-retirement age of 62 said that health limited their capacity to work.” Providing coverage to uninsured persons may improve health outcomes.

Economist Casey Mulligan, however, believes that Medicaid 2.0 will increase unemployment. He reasons the promise of coverage will be an incentive for workers to quit their jobs in order to collect health benefits.

However, the original focus of the Medicaid 2.0 was families and individuals. Again, the Obama administration wrote PPACA to ensure that people with incomes up to 133 percent of federal poverty would have access to Medicaid coverage. People with incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of poverty could receive subsidies to purchase private insurance. Those in the overlap (100 to 133 percent) could choose between Medicaid or subsidies for private insurance. For this group, choosing subsidies over Medicaid would likely lead to seven times the expenses for consumers, and 30 percent higher costs for the health field altogether.

If a state refuses Medicaid 2.0, there will be what’s called the new Medicaid doughnut hole. While the availability of subsidies will not change, for those with incomes less than 100 percent of poverty, subsidies are not an option, and most are not eligible for Medicaid 1.0; they have no option but to pay full-price for health insurance. In Texas, where Gov. Perry declared he would refuse Medicaid 2.0 according to PPACA, 25 percent of the population – over 6 million people – would be left in poverty without any insurance assistance. Based on expectations of which states will refuse the expansion, as many as 8.5 million people would be stuck in the new doughnut hole nationally.

A family of four living at the federal poverty line in a Medicaid 1.0 state will pay, on average, an $8,600 share of health costs out of their $23,000 yearly income, or 37 percent of income.

Without Medicaid 2.0, individuals and families in poverty will be left with either very expensive insurance or no care at all. These people will be more likely to fall ill, struggle to pay health bills, declare bankruptcy due to health bills, develop chronic or debilitating illnesses, and die prematurely. The economic impacts of these trends have not yet been studied in relation to Medicaid 2.0.

Contrary to popular opinion, this legislative harbinger is not Obama’s healthcare bill. As important as Obama’s plans for overhauling the U.S. health system have been, the legislation about which I write, in fact, will begin on our nation’s plates rather than in America’s hospitals or clinics (though these changes will, no doubt, have significant impacts there as well). This legislation is the U.S. Farm Bill.

Admittedly, few of us are intimately familiar with the details of the 2012 U.S. Farm Bill. The initial legislation for the bill was introduced during the Great Depression, as farmers struggled to insure themselves against financial losses in conditions where people had little or no money to buy food. Even when some Americans were lucky enough to have access to food, the aftermath of the Dust Bowl left hundreds of millions of acres of American farmland completely arid. The Farm Bill legislation, updated by Congress every five years, grew to include nutritional programs such as food stamps (now SNAP) and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Interest groups also added rural development programs and land conservation to the original bill.

The bill took its most significant turn in the 1970s, when it began to reflect the interests of a burgeoning agribusiness industry. Agricultural corporations saw in the Farm Bill a new opportunity to profit from a direct payment system (as opposed to the safety net system used for Depression-era farmers). These corporations found an ideologue in President Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz. To Butz’s credit, he was a genuine product of the Great Depression and worked for an administration whose motto was “Let them eat cake, if it shuts them up.” Butz quickly warmed to demands from agribusiness to incentivize overproduction with direct payments. Today, nearly 90 percent of the $42 billion subsidy package Butz and his agribusiness friends created covers only five crops. These commodity-crops, by definition, are not meant to be food, and include corn, wheat, soy, rice, and cotton.

Of course, it seems contradictory that non-food agriculture should affect our health. So how do these five single crops have such a large impact on American bodies?

High-fructose corn-syrup (HFCS) is one of the major culprits. Derived from corn, HFCS is a key contributor to diabetes and diabetic emergencies in the United States, and has also been implicated in the development of kidney disease. Hydrogenated soybean oil, like HFCS, is another hidden staple of the American diet. While the majority of Americans think of soy as largely absent from their diets, these same individuals would be hard-pressed to go a day without digesting it in the form of hydrogenated soybean oil. Consumed in excess, any kind of oil can lead to high blood pressure, contributing to kidney disease or cardiovascular disease. This particular type of oil, however, also contributes to LDL cholesterol, further increasing the risk of cardiovascular complications.

Soy and corn, along with other “commodity crops” listed above, are also processed into feed for livestock. As a natural function of biology, about 90% of the calories these animals consume is burned up as energy, meaning that only one out of every 10 calories is transformed into the meat that we eventually consume. Therefore, ranchers feed their animals ten times more calories than they can “harvest” from them. As a matter of straightforward economics, therefore, meat is thus strikingly more expensive (and inefficient) to produce and sell than, say, plain ole’ fruits and veggies. If you’ve ever been to the grocery store, however, what you will find is the opposite – meat is far cheaper than fresh produce. This economic dissonance is a result of a Farm Bill-induced conundrum: subsidized grains are being fed to subsidized animals, to produce a subsidized product that is neither healthier nor more “nutritious.” In fact, those who consume this industrial meat are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. New to the subsidies program this year is dairy – specifically cow’s milk. This addition seems to be in total ignorance of the vast pool of Americans who cannot consume it as a result of lactose intolerance. Among Latin@s in the U.S., 50 percent are lactose intolerant; 75 percent or higher of Black Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans cannot consume milk, according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Overall, more a quarter of Americans will pay taxes to subsidize foods they cannot eat. These statistics, however, may not be of concern to a Congress who is 83 percent white.

These facts indicate that Farm Bill subsidies lower the price of calories, not of food. With payments from the Bill, agribusinesses pump out unhealthy commodities at prices as low as 60 percent of the cost of producing them. These “foods” find their way into so much of what we eat primarily as cheap filling (no pun intended). In a sense, the Bill spends tens of billions of dollars to feed us diabetes, heart attacks, and strokes.

Just as commodity-crop subsidies artificially lower the prices of corn and soybeans in the U.S., they also lower the prices of wheat, rice, and cotton across the globe, flooding international markets. While the U.S. has written trade laws blocking the use of such protectionist subsidies, the Farm Bill leads to illegal American inundation of Mexican corn markets with corn, Haitian rice markets with rice, and West African cotton markets with cotton, outselling the world’s poorest people and blocking their best way to a better livelihood. Before Afghanistan was priced out of the market by U.S. growers, its poppy fields were fields of wheat. Research from Oxfam estimates that, without American subsidies, West African cotton farmers could immediately earn 50 percent more on the international market. While this may not affect American health directly, the Bill unnecessarily impedes the health of other countries.

If the above ramifications weren’t enough to keep the U.S. Congress from eating and selling these crops, the environmental effects should be. While the Farm Bill has minor components which attempt to promote environmental stewardship, the commodity farming aspect of the Bill directly incentivizes the use of artificially-produced pesticides and fertilizers. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has found connections between these often petroleum-based additives and cancer rates in the workers applying them as well as in consumers. The Center has also discovered evidence linking consumption of these pesticides with harmful hormone disruptions.

It is not too late to change the Farm Bill and protect American families. Baby-steps indicating healthy progress already exist in the Senate – among these is a proposal to eliminate direct payments (one of the main factors encouraging the industry to overproduce in the first place). Additionally, the safety nets inherent in the Great Depression-era Farm Bill legislation are being expanded to also protect farmers who produce our fresh fruits and vegetables. Some are also proposing helpful changes to reduce U.S. violations of international trade laws, many of which were thought-up and composed initially on American soil.

Still, we can do better. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, America needs more than double the land currently committed to fruits and vegetables to meet the country’s dietary needs. This represents only three percent of total U.S. agricultural terrain. Such an expansion in the availability of fresh produce would require an investment equal to only two percent of today’s corn and soybean subsidies. Additionally, the Senate is currently reviewing plans to cut SNAP, the federal food stamps program, by $4 billion dollars; in a bill that distributes $42 billion to wealthy agribusiness owners, is it wise to cut funding from the neediest target population, particularly in a recession?

The Supreme Court’s decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) later this month will, without a doubt, carry enormous weight for our nation’s health. However, the doctors, hospitals, insurers, pharmaceuticals affected by the decision – that is to say, the entire health system – await the announcement because it will determine how they respond to the health crisis caused by the Farm Bill, whether or not they know the root cause. The cost-containment problem that lead to PPACA isn’t so much a discussion of the price of a hospital stay, but the collateral price of an agricultural corporate subsidy. We can begin the next health revolution when we commit to an American Farm Bill that encourages the accessibility of fresh fruits and vegetables instead of overproduced, nutritionally void commodity-calories.

Upon what bases they stake their claims is unclear – the terms and even the exact amount of the bailout are yet to be determined. What is evident, however, is that Europe and the U.S. have made many attempts to respond to financial crises (or “the crisis”). The financiers who partook of the emergency meeting have seen the U.S. real estate crisis caused by collapse in collateralized debt obligations (CDO’s, here distinct from “bonds” to avoid confusion with government bonds); they have witnessed the Greek bond collapse related to massive, chronic, and opaque public debt; and they have watched as individual economic problems plague Portugal, Ireland, and Italy. They have also seen – if not participated in – attempted solutions. So, for better or for worse, they have had lots of examples from which to draw inspiration.

Spain’s crisis has been, perhaps more often than not, compared to Greece’s recent financial situation. Greece faced out-of-control tax evasion and a 50% increase in public wages (without a commensurate increase in GDP or top-bracket tax revenues). At the onset of the global recession, the Greek government found itself unable to pay off the loans it had accrued. In 2010 and 2012, Greece received in total over €200 billion in loans from the IMF and the EU. Accompanying these loans was a debt-refinancing deal that halved the value of the public liabilities to the private sector and lowered the interest rate of the remainder. This package, however, came with “Merkozy” conditions (named for France’s then-President Sarkozy and Germany’s Chancellor Merkel) which demanded a more austere Greek budget including cuts to public programs and payroll. Even recognizing the disconnect between wage growth and the Greek economic reality, critics of the Merkozy school have called these standards everything from “harsh” to “Draconian.”

In Spain, individual regions have a reputation for outspending their revenues. Some have accrued debts in the hundreds of millions, often for projects with no revenue, i.e.: cultural centers and unused airport expansions. The Spanish national government, however, may deserve the best credit rating of any of the Euro countries. According to the Bank for International Settlements, Spain in 2010 had lower government debt (as percentage of GDP) than Germany, Italy, and France. In fact, up until 2008, Spain was the only Eurozone country to maintain the 3% borrowing limit set by the Euro establishment in 1997. Further, Spanish households have a saving rate ranging from twice to quadruple that of U.S. families. The perception of Spain as a debt-ridden country thus arises largely from its aforementioned regional spending (akin to “state spending” in the U.S.) and private sector liabilities to international investors (harking back to similarities with U.S. banks before the onset of the recession): private Spanish debt outdoes government debt 4 to 1.

The proposed bailout, judging by the few details released thus far, is resultantly different from the Greek package. While the Greek loan attempted to cover public spending, the €100 billion to Spain will go exclusively to private financial institutions. What is inexplicably similar, however, is accountability: as Athens is held responsible for the repayment of the public spending loan, the Spanish government ultimately will be the party repaying the loan destined to go to the country’s private sector. What remains unclear in the Spanish package is repayment rates: how much Madrid will give each bank as a percent of their outstanding debt, whether these banks will need to refinance their debts as Greece had the opportunity, and how much of the payments to the private sector Madrid will recoup.

The constant comparisons of this bailout to the Greek plan not withstanding, the nature of the Spanish package likens it more to the U.S. Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Even the crises are more closely related; both Spain and the U.S. had significant international investments in the private housing market, all of which systematically collapsed. Although TARP is considered by many economists and leaders as successful, even its supporters admit it is not without flaws. Less than a week after the start of TARP, the American International Group (AIG), recipient of $180 billion of the program’s funds, hosted a half-million dollar retreat for its upper echelon. Further, despite the allegedly “stabilizing” effect of this American bailout, banks like Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are now less prepared for a major economic shock than four years ago, according to research by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Engle. And though U.S. taxpayers are expected to ultimately profit from TARP, the U.S. Treasury reported in August 2011 that it had received only 76% repayment of its TARP investment. *Note: If the Spanish government is 24% shy of collecting the €100 billion at the time of repayment, the difference would be a loss almost twice the value of the country’s GDP growth in 2011. Finally, the intent behind TARP was two-fold: first, stabilize the financial sector, and second, help to stabilize the mortgages upon which it stood. If the program had accomplished the latter, Congress may not have needed to enact two additional programs — the Home Affordability Modification Program (HAMP) and the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) — to help struggling homeowners stay off the streets.

All things considered, one question remains – will a financial package be more effective than a public spending bailout? Charles Diebel of Lloyds Banking Group called the proposal “Bailout Lite,” citing that the primary intent of the payment, like TARP, would be to stabilize private investment institutions, not necessarily promote growth. While some leaders have expressed hope that stabilizing the financial sector would promote confidence in markets leading to economic improvements, Nobel laureate-economist Paul Krugman claims belief in this “confidence fairy” evaporated after repeated such attempts failed to improve growth in Europe. The value per-person of the bailout is in the neighborhood of €2,100, which could increase consumer spending by 6% if distributed to families rather than banks. The high propensity for the Spanish to save could also lend much needed financial support to the banks.

Negotiating a public use-package without the addition of austerity conditions, however, might prove difficult.

Germany’s Chancellor Merkel seemed reluctant to accept a bailout without austerity conditions, even when aid is directed at private financial institutions rather than public sector spending. This trend continues, even with France and Greece rejecting their respective austere political parties. In the quarter after austerity conditions were introduced in Greece, the GDP shrank by over 6%. Irish GDP growth, too, sank with the budgetary changes. Portuguese unemployment has approached 15%. After Italy installed austerity, unemployment rose from 8.4% to 10.2% in a country where it hasn’t broken 9% since 2001. Further, these programs tend to decrease consumer-confidence; Spain’s consumer-confidence is already the lowest it has been since the start of the global recession.

The announcements of this weekend leave many questions unanswered, perhaps intentionally. The leaders of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF have established a bank-audit as their next step. While auditors determine the level of need, policy-experts will likely pour over the details of Spain’s particular needs and draw lessons from past bailouts to finagle the conditions of this particular package. Details are expected to be released within the week. Regardless of the decision, someone will doubtless be disappointed.

Saudi women only recently gained suffrage rights, and this recent legislation does away with the additional approval restrictions. The first election where women may vote without male guardian approval will take place in 2015, which is also the first time women candidates may run for municipal government.

Saudi Arabia has long been run under the rules and advice of socially conservative religious advisers who share a strict interpretation of religious texts and patriarchical attitudes. Strict restrictions and male guardianship laws are stiffing for women in Saudi Arabia. Women are subject to dress codes, mobility restrictions, segregation, limited access to fields of employment, and limited participation in public sports, etc.

The new law includes some other new rights for women, including the right to work at lingerie stores for the first time in Saudi history. Compared to existing restrictions on the right to drive, right to gain equal inheritance, and many others, these new gains seem like a pittance.

Still, the new laws are a welcome step toward a more equitable society. Small changes can be the catalyst for dramatic changes that follow soon after, and for women’s rights activists, this is the hope.

To protect themselves from the police’s heavy use of tear gas, Moustafa and his friends secured scarves around their faces, gas masks over their mouths, and goggles across their eyes. Some wore bicycle helmets to protect from rubber-coated bullets and birdshots fired by the police. Unfortunately, their makeshift armor offered no protection from the live ammunition fired at them by Egyptian forces intermittently since Tuesday.

Attacks by the police on protesters began last Saturday, after CSF attempted to clear Tahrir Square of peaceful demonstrators, who had united in their call for a quicker transition from military to civilian rule.

After Mubarak’s ouster on 11 February, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took over, promising to return the country to civilian rule after six months. Yet nine months of military rule have come and gone, characterized by oppressive crackdowns on the media and activists as well as the trial of over 12,000 civilians before military courts. The SCAF’s mismanagement of the post-Mubarak transition to democracy reveals that at best, the SCAF is incompetent; at worst, that it is systematically derailing a proper transition in order to safeguard its own power and interests in the new Egypt.

The young revolutionaries in our Tahrir apartment understand the latest violence as an extension of Egypt’s January revolution. “All we did in January was cut off the head of the regime,” said Ahmed Sabry, age 23. “Now, we’re going for the body.” According to him, the larger aims of the revolution—achieving basic political, personal, and social rights for the Egyptian people—can only be negotiated in the streets.

Although the myth persists that the January revolution was peaceful, Hossam el-Hamalawy, a well-known Egyptian journalist, says that it was not. “The revolution (like any other revolution) witnessed violence by the security forces that led to the killing of at least 846 protesters,” he writes on his blog. “But the people did not sit silent and take this violence with smiles and flowers. We fought back … with rocks, Molotov cocktails, sticks, swords and knives.” In the six-day battle that rocked downtown Cairo last week, the protesters used lessons learned in January to inform their tactics and strategies in confrontations with the police.

“The best way to defend is to attack”

Earlier that night, Moustafa and his friends huddled over a piece of paper, on which he had sketched, hands shaking, a circle with spokes coming out if it—a rough representation of Tahrir Square and surrounding streets.

The brunt of the battle was being waged on Mohammed Mahmoud Street, where protesters and CSF fought for control of the route leading from the square to the Ministry of Interior. The next spoke on the wheel was Tahrir Street, which is connected to Mohammed Mahmoud by a series of alleyways. A main focus of the protesters was to keep the police forces from spilling from Mohammed Mahmoud to Tahrir Street; from there, they could move on to the next spoke, then the next. With control of the surrounding streets, CSF could easily contain protesters in the Square itself, which, for Moustafa and his friends, meant defeat.

“The best way to defend is to attack,” Mohamed Ferghaly, 21, offered, wide-eyed and nervously chain-smoking.

The group decided to weave around to the far side of Tahrir Street, away from the square, and then cross over to Mohammed Mahmoud, surprising the police from behind their own line. They dressed for battle and went out into the street.

Just five minutes later, three of the group surged back into the apartment, keeled over and panting, tear gas residue streaking their faces. Their plan had failed.

The protesters are a diverse group, but the same obstacles facing Moustafa and his friends are reflective of those facing other cells of revolutionaries who were meeting with each other across the square: a lack of organization, a lack of arms, and a lack of numbers. Although experience has taught the protesters methods to mitigate such setbacks, they still face challenges in each area.

When it comes to organization, the protesters play good defense. For example, they have developed sophisticated systems wherein men, and occasionally women, on motorcycles shuttle the injured from the front lines to one of the many field hospitals set up in the square and surrounding streets. Ferghaly points out that there are two men on each motorbike, between whom victims are sandwiched. “We used to just put one runner, but the injured fell off easily, so now we have two.”

When the street got too crowded and the tear gas too overwhelming, we could see protesters in the street below holding hands and forming two parallel lines, constructing two human walls that created an open pathway for fast access to field hospitals via motorcycles.

But when it comes to offense, the protesters “operate in chaos,” says Moustafa.

If Moustafa and his friends had been more organized, they could have rallied enough people to attack the police as per their original plan. But such organization, Ferghaly explains, requires connections and means of communication that they simply did not have. “We couldn’t rally people from the streets. They thought that we were going to lead them into an ambush.”

Yet at heart, they do not want to hurt the police or soldiers. “They don’t want to attack us; they are following orders.” He adds, “Egyptians: when they want, they do. It’s a fact. But we don’t want more blood. Enough blood.”

Even if they had had proper organizing channels, the protesters faced a wall of police well equipped with shotguns, rifles, and CS gas. The protesters used rocks they had ripped up from the sidewalks.

“There is a 50 meter no-man’s-land separating the protesters and the army,” explains Moustafa. “You can only throw rocks so far.” The Ultras – a hard core group of soccer fans who played an instrumental role in the January and February revolution – are slightly better equipped with fireworks, which can travel much farther. The problem is that the fireworks are expensive: 350 Egyptian pounds for just one, about 58 US dollars. Still, the problem is not just a financial one. “If we asked people for money, they would give it to us,” Moustafa said. “The problem is we don’t have enough fighters.”

“Freedom fighters,” he adds, tongue-in-cheek.

With few resources of their own, the protesters have become experts on how to protect themselves from tear gas—one of the CSF’s most effective tools. “When the officers shoot tear gas bombs, they shoot at a 45 degree angle so it’ll go far into the protesters’ ranks. So the protesters have to look at the bomb, and calculate its trajectory,” explains Ferghaly “Then we have to make the people aware of where the bomb will fall.” Once the tear gas bomb explodes and releases its noxious gasses, protesters chuck the canisters back at police or douse them in a mixture of water and sand. To attenuate the effects of lingering clouds of gas in the streets, they build small fires, the smoke of which heats the air and rises, taking the tear gas with it.

Yet these tactics only go so far. I have heard multiple calls by defeated-looking protesters, having seen many friends “fall around them,” as Sabry put it, to take up arms against the police. But in the end, it was all talk. They are peaceful, but angry, and desperate for the police to cease brutality against their ranks.

The violence has stopped, for now

With the protesters unable to overcome the well-equipped security forces yet unwilling to go home – Ferghaly insisted they would stay in Tahrir until “either the army resigns or a massacre wipes us out” – the battle became a seemingly unwinnable war of attrition.

According to Moustafa, the protesters will go home only in the event of SCAF’s immediate resignation and the formation of a National Salvation Government.  The country’s various revolutionary forces have yet to agree on who exactly would comprise the transitional body, but they have floated the names of well-respected figures such as Nobel Laureate and current presidential candidate Mohamed El-Baradei to lead it.

Not waiting for political solutions, the army rolled in to relieve the police of their duties and declared a truce. The army has set up a giant concrete barrier on Mohammed Mahmoud Street, barring protesters from the Square from entering the corridor. Engulfed just a short while ago in urban warfare, downtown Cairo is calm.

SCAF refuses to give up power

The SCAF is thus far unwilling to yield power, or to even take responsibility for the violence that was committed against civilians under SCAF’s watch.

Field Marshall Tantawi, the head of the SCAF and object of the protesters’ popular chants “Down, down, with the Field Marshall,” announced on Wednesday that the SCAF had accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and his government. In his place, the SCAF appointed Kamal el-Ganzoury as Prime Minister and tasked him with the formation of a new government.

Asked what he thought of Tantawi’s response, Moustafa just said, “zift” – the Egyptian word meaning tar. “It’s like bullshit,” he translates. As long as the SCAF remains in power, Ganzoury and whatever cabinet he builds will be just another token civilian government with no real authority or legitimacy.

Although many were initially opposed to the protesters’ fighting back the police, heavy losses among their ranks garnered sympathy from a larger swathe of the Egyptian public. By Friday, a week after the start of clashes, tens of thousands of Egyptians were back on the streets, marching from all corners of the city to gather in Tahrir Square and calling for the military to hand over power to a civilian authority immediately. Thousands remained overnight for an ongoing sit-in.

With the current abatement of violence, Sabry goes home to check in with his parents. Moustafa prepares to re-take university exams he missed. Ferghaly set up camp in the square—equipped with tents, warm blankets, and electricity for night lighting and cell-phone charging.

As they reintegrate limited doses of work and school into their daily routines, their lives transition into a state of balanced normalcy. But the battle is from over.

Today, the first round of post-Mubarak parliamentary elections begins amid much controversy. Even within Moustafa’s group of friends, some will vote, thinking that elections, though highly problematic, are a necessary step forward; others will boycott, convinced that any elections under military rule are inherently illegitimate. In any case, they expect more violence.

For his part, Ferghaly is sticking close to the square. “We hope it will be peaceful,” he says. “But if it’s not, we’re ready to fight.”

Photo Credits: (Left to Right)
Top Row: Hassan Sharaf, Stephanie Figgins, Stephanie Figgins
Bottom Row: Hassan Sharaf, Stephanie Figgins, Hassan Sharaf

The debates, which give us a glimpse into the brains (or lack thereof) behind the potential candidates for the next United States presidency, have become a new source of comedy for many progressives seeking to discredit the Republican nominees. This year, the GOP, or “Grand Old Party” candidates have stood up to their namesake — Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Perry have successfully displayed their affluence (evidence of their intelligence, however, remains to be seen).

“If you are not rich,” Herman Cain told Occupy Wall Street protesters at the October 5th debate, “don’t blame Wall Street. Blame yourself.”

As a corporate executive, Cain has represented a slough of profitable companies, from Coca-Cola to Burger King. Cain resigned from his most recent position, as CEO and Chairman of Godfather’s Pizza, in 1996. But from April of 2010 to April of this year, Cain made between $1.2 and $2.4 million. His net worth is between $2.8 and $6.3 million. (See the full financial disclosure here.)

Romney, like Cain, has said that the American people would benefit from a form of political leadership that ran its government more like a corporation than what it actually is — a social service agency.

Unlike Cain, however, Romney’s net worth is nowhere near a humble $2 million dollars. According to financial records he submitted to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Romney has amassed a fortune of somewhere between $90 million and $260 million. The former Massachusetts Governor, who has made famous the statement that “corporations are people,” has reaped his rewards not only as manager of a mainstream Boston venture capital firm, but as a major Wall Street investor. In 2007, Romney was criticized by GOP presidential campaign rivals for investing in corporations with interests in Iran and China, countries known for committing recent human rights violations.

At the last debate, which focused on the topic of national security, candidates attempted to address issues including the depiction of terrorists and the protection of the nation’s borders.

When moderator Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates whether the United States should continue to supply Pakistan with economic and military aid, for example, Michelle Bachmann said — in a play on words from the last GOP debate in which Rick Perry said some corporations are “too big to fail” — that Pakistan was “too nuclear to fail.” Perhaps this would not be the case if the U.S. was not the world’s second-largest supplier of military equipment to the country (after China) and its largest source of economic aid.

Cain added, simply, “We know this about terrorists: they want to kill us all.”

Rick Santorum, not to be outdone, pitched in a series of stand-out responses on the issue of racial profiling. Asked if he supported the use of racial profiling at airports as part of an effort to reduce terrorism, Santorum said:

“Obviously, Muslims would be someone you’d look at, absolutely. The radical Muslims are the people committing these crimes, by and large… Not exclusively but these are things you profile to find the most likely candidate.”

Texas congressman Ron Paul responded, “What if they look like Timothy McVeigh?” referring to the white U.S. Army veteran who detonated a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people and injuring over 800.