Emil Ruderfer: Why International Aid Doesn’t Work

Recently received this interesting essay by email:

Why International Aid Doesn’t Work

By Emil Ruderfer

It’s raining development dollars. The World Bank enthusiastically pledged billions of dollars in new loans for education, health and agriculture during a Special Session of the UN General Assembly, in support of the Millennium Development Goals initiative to combat poverty. At that same UN session, President Barack Obama announced a new U.S. Global Development Policy, promising that “the United States will be a global leader in international development in the 21st century.” Come October, still more billions in loans to finance new projects in developing countries will be on the agenda of the annual joint meeting of the IMF and the World Bank. Indeed, there are hundreds of international aid bodies clamoring to lend for new investments in developing countries.

Poor countries certainly need the aid, but if such lenders as the World Bank really want to help, it should consider not only how much money to lend, but how to lend the money so that it actually helps to alleviate poverty more effectively. Despite the huge sums invested over the years, there is a broad consensus that efforts to better the lives of the poor in developing countries have fallen well short of expectations.

How far short? As things stand, the aid community’s policies have turned developing countries into vast junk heaps of dysfunctional and prematurely deteriorating schools, clinics, roads and other such “assets.”

Take the case of the World Bank itself, the premier lending institution. As much as 90 percent of all World Bank aid is used to finance such projects as irrigation systems, environmental protection schemes, health clinics, access roads, and so forth, what John Kenneth Galbraith once described as “the furniture of economic development.” Typically, these assets are intended to have a projected operational life of 25-30 years during which they will benefit needy populations. Their actual life, however, is often far shorter, and as a result the number of people they help is minimal.

What’s the problem? It’s not an issue of lending more aid money. The problem is that borrowing governments have been chronically short of the money they need to keep all these assets in good operating condition after the lenders are gone. (For economic and political reasons, the Bank does not underwrite such assets throughout their intended shelf lives.) What happens is that the Bank lends developing countries sufficient funds to cover the initial costs of creating the assets, plus some of the early operating expenses. This money, mostly in foreign exchange currencies, is spent within a fixed period, usually five years. After that the borrowing government must become responsible for the operations and maintenance costs.

It is at the end of this first five-year period, when the lenders are gone, that the aid process often breaks down, and with it the new schools, roads, and clinics. The Bank’s working assumption is that borrowing governments will generate enough local currency to pay the expenses of the assets when they assume responsibility for them. However, there is strong evidence that the Bank has been wrong. Borrowers have failed to come up with the money.

Moreover, there is historical evidence that the World Bank has known all along that borrowers were not taking care of the billions of dollars in vital assets. Thus, tens of thousands of poor families never receive the education, health care or other services intended for them. Not only has the Bank ignored this evidence, it has routinely increased its lending for the creation of new assets, thus compounding the problem.

Much development literature attests that the problem with failed assets is well known. One 1979 report states, “Rare is the country that has not witnessed this phenomenon. In Colombia, new tarmac roads have suffered rapid and premature deterioration for lack of maintenance. Throughout West Africa, many new schools have opened without qualified teachers, educational materials, or equipment. Agricultural projects are starved for extension workers, fertilizers, or seeds…. In Bolivia, doctors are often stranded at rural health centers for lack of gasoline for their vehicles." A 1996 Bank report notes “schools without teaching materials, health clinics without drugs, and rehabilitated roads once again becoming impassable because of the absence of subsequent maintenance.” Perhaps in a few years a future such report will add Afghanistan and Iraq, where vast development programs are now underway, to this frustrating list.

A report written in 1986 hit the nail on the head and remains sadly relevant 25 years later: “The problem is not that donors refuse to finance recurrent expenditures during project implementation…the real problem emerges in its most acute form after the end of donor involvement in a project; this is one reason why projects … often cannot be sustained.”

Nevertheless, the Bank continues to turn over billions of dollars in assets to developing countries without demanding any guarantees that the necessary funding for their operations will be provided. In the last five years alone, the Bank has turned over $200 billion in assets to borrowing countries, and many – if not most -- of them face the same discouraging fate: an abbreviated useful life serving relatively few beneficiaries.

The result is that dysfunctional assets have proliferated in developing countries. Neither the Bank, nor any other international aid lender has adapted its assistance strategy to take into account the fact that borrowers simply lack the wherewithal to take care of the assets they already have on the ground, to say nothing of those on the way.

A straightforward solution is available. The architects of international aid created the World Bank at a time when the only thing developing countries needed was new development projects. Borrowers have now acquired hundreds of billions of dollars in vital social and economic assets, but they are desperately short of the funds needed to keep these assets in good operating condition. The best thing the aid community can do is to lend only to those borrowers that can demonstrate that they will be able to generate the cash to operate and maintain the assets they already have as well as any new ones.

The U.S. Government successfully tackled the problem of a lack of local currencies to finance the operating costs of Europe’s rebuilt infrastructure under the Marshall Plan 60 years ago. As J. Bradford De Long and Barry Eichengreen wrote in their 1991 account of the Marshall Plan, the U.S insisted that “For every dollar of Marshall Plan aid received, the recipient country was required to place a matching amount of domestic currency in a counterpart fund…….”
The international aid community must recognize that it should no longer continue to lend without insisting that borrowers generate the revenues needed to maintain the expensive assets created to help them raise the standard of living for their poor.

To end this cycle of waste, the World Bank needs to include in its feasibility studies - the Bank’s blueprints for aid projects - an estimate of costs covering the 25 to 30 year projected life of each asset. In fact, a 2002 World Bank internal policy research paper recommended doing exactly this and a 2007 Bank publication made similar recommendations, stating that, “The evaluation of costs for a capital project should include not only the construction costs themselves but also any resulting ongoing operating and maintenance costs.”

Once those costs are established, the Bank must make sure that borrowers will be able to generate and allocate the necessary local currency revenues to take care of created assets before any new loans are approved. If the Bank determines that borrowers can’t generate the revenues to maintain new schools, clinics, roads, etc., it should not approve the loans. The rest of the international aid community should take similar steps.

Resolving this failed-assets situation will not by itself fix all the problems with development aid; developing countries also suffer a glaring lack of technical and professional expertise that must be addressed. However, solving the dysfunctional-assets problem will put an end to the breathtaking waste that is currently built into the international aid process. Indeed, the financial and economic losses from dysfunctional assets greatly dwarf any losses resulting from corruption, even though corruption gets all the publicity.

In his UN speech, President Obama renewed his call for “a new approach to development that unleashes transformational change and allows more people to take control of their own destiny.” A “new approach” would be to make sure that the expensive assets in poor countries last as long as they are supposed to; after all, they consume almost 90 percent of all aid money. The alternative is perpetuation of the waste.

Emil Ruderfer spent nearly 30 years with the World Bank.

Save Athur Conan Doyle's House from Developers!

Suppprt the Save Undershaw Preservation Trust...

Michael Dirda's Conan Doyle...

Michael Dirda signing books at the Arts Club of Washington on Feb. 7th, 2012.

Enjoyed hearing Michael Dirda speak at the Arts Club of Washington last night about his love of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, membership in the Baker Street Irregulars, and his new book from Princeton University Press, On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling. Here's a clip:

Netflix Streams Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?

My film now on Netflix streaming video, according to this site http://streaminginstantly.com/movie/who-shall-live-and-who-shall-die-1982/

Uzbek "Human Rights Activist" Indicted on Terror Charges in Colorado

This just in...

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
NEWS RELEASE

John F. Walsh
United States Attorney, District of Colorado

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 23, 2012

AURORA MAN ARRESTED FOR PROVIDING MATERIAL SUPPORT TO A DESIGNATED FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION

DENVER – Jamshid Muhtorov, a/k/a Abumumin Turkistony, a/k/a Abu Mumin, age 35, of Aurora, Colorado, was arrested Saturday afternoon at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Department of Justice announced today. The arrest took place without incident. Muhtorov made his initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Chicago this morning.

Muhtorov’s arrest is the result of a long-term investigation conducted by the FBI’s Denver Joint Terrorism Task Force. The Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Force provided investigative support.

The defendant is a refugee from Uzbekistan. According to the Criminal Complaint, which was obtained in Denver and initially filed under seal, Muhtorov indicated that he planned to travel overseas where he intended to fight on behalf of the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), a designated foreign terrorist organization.

The IJU, a Pakistan-based extremist group, adheres to an anti-western ideology, opposes secular rule in Uzbekistan, and seeks to replace the current regime with a government based on Islamic law. In addition to conducting suicide attacks in Uzbekistan, the IJU has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Muhtorov allegedly has sworn allegiance to the IJU, stating he was ready for any task, even with the risk of dying. The alleged activities of Muhtorov highlight the continued interest of extremists residing in the United States to join and support overseas terrorists.

The government does not allege that Muhtorov was plotting attacks against any targets inside the United States.

The defendant is charged by Criminal Complaint with one count of providing and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, specifically provision and attempted provision of personnel to the IJU. If convicted, Muhtorov faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, and up to a $250,000 fine.

This case was investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is comprised of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in cities across the country. The investigation was also aided by the Counter-terrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Muhtorov is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Holloway.

The charges in the Complaint are allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

####

United States Attorney’s Office Press Releases are also on the Internet
Visit http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/co

Full text of complaint: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80276741 

More on Muhtorov's "human rights activism" at Registan.net

Still more here at Different Stans.

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

AUSCHWITZ, SWITZERLAND AND WORLD WAR II INTELLIGENCE by Eliyho Matz

The memory of the Holocaust has enabled Israel to be a responsible and restrained conqueror. Memory is the key to morality.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg

(I would assume that many American and Israeli Jews would agree with him.
“Think before you think….” EM)

In the almost seventy years that have passed since the end of World War II, among the questions that remain unanswered are a number that have to do with the arrival and dissemination of the information about the German government’s systematic operation of mass murder. More specifically, the question involves the path the information took into Switzerland, and out to the West -- how it was received, and then disseminated once it reached contacts in Switzerland. This is a short essay in which some incidents are presented as interwoven vignettes to introduce some new aspects of Holocaust research in this regard. I leave it to the reader to reach his or her own conclusions.

In his attempt to unravel the identity of the German informants who brought to the West the plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe, historian Walter Laqueur mentions an American by the name of Sam Woods, who resided in Switzerland during WWII and was a key figure in the mysterious and intriguing world of Intelligence. According to Laqueur, Sam Woods was in a key position during WWII in Intelligence circles [Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret (Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1980); pp. 96-97]. Although not much is known about Woods, we know for sure that he was the person who received in Berlin a copy of the German plan to invade the Soviet Union.

Many years ago when I started, sort of in total darkness, to figure out certain events that led to the Holocaust, I did not pay much attention to the issue of Intelligence in Switzerland. In the mid-1970’s, it was well known to most scholars of the Holocaust that Switzerland had been a hotbed of spying. Moreover, Switzerland was also recognized to be the place where Germans who were unhappy about Hitler’s Nazi regime came to unload their evidence and complaints to the Allies -- their hopes of enlisting the Allies’ help to overthrow Hitler were not met with too much success. The German dissidents eventually had to go it on their own, and they of course paid the ultimate price for their adventures.

Dr. Gerhardt Riegner was World Jewish Congress representative residing in Switzerland during WWII. As a result of his own claim, he is widely believed to have been the person who met with one of the German dissidents who laid out details about the ongoing massacre of European Jewry. It was eventually Dr. Riegner who did send the informant’s testimony to the United States, consequently forcing the US government to recognize the facts of the Holocaust. Also as a result of this testimony, the American Jewish leadership was prompted to ask for a meeting with FDR. The President subsequently invited the entire American Jewish leadership to the White House, in fact the only time that such a meeting was to take place during the war. In the August/September 1980 issue of Midstream, I published an article that included comments that Adolf Held, the president of the Jewish Labor Committee, wrote on that meeting; Held’s comments represent the only source found to-date describing the event. Unfortunately, FDR, aside from a verbal show of sympathy, hardly took any steps to act to save Jews. Meanwhile, later on in my research I discovered that Dr. Riegner would have been the wrong person to be in a position such as to have met personally with any German informant during WWII, for he apparently lacked the strength of character and insight necessary to take on the responsibilities of this position; in fact he was in reality not the person who met with one of the German informers. This issue of German informants about the massacre of European Jewry is a very complex one, some aspects of which I will illuminate below [see also my “Letter to the Editor” in Commentary (Vol. 77, Number 1,January 1984)].

In the course of my research to understand the Holocaust, I ran into an Israeli who, in the early 1970’s, was writing a book on the Zionist leadership and its response to the Holocaust. His name was S.B. Beit-Zvi [S.B. Beit-Zvi, Post-Ugandian Zionism in the Crucible of the Holocaust (Tel Aviv: Bronfman Publishers, 1977). Unable to find a single publisher who wanted to take it on, eventually Beit-Zvi self-published his book. As he and I predicted, the book raised some eyebrows, and some articles about it appeared in Israeli newspapers, but when his book came out in Israel in 1977, it basically hit a brick wall. Eventually, Beit-Zvi convinced professor Yehuda Bauer of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to arrange a year-long seminar on the topic of Zionist Leadership during the Holocaust. But Beit-Zvi’s assessments were criticized and ridiculed by an Israeli Holocaust research establishment that was too caught up in its own politics. Today a number of historians have accepted Beit-Zvi’s assessment of the Zionist leadership. In an unpublished article I wrote in the early 1980’s on the American Zionist leadership during the Holocaust, my conclusions were similar.

Ideology, the ideology of Zionism and building a nation, was so overwhelming to them that no serious attention was given to the Holocaust events. The question of how they would build a nation without Jews was on their minds, but was not treated seriously. In a very significant revelation in his book, Beit-Zvi for the first time published the June 11, 1944, minutes of the Executive Zionist leadership in Jerusalem in which a discussion ensued among the Jerusalem Zionist leadership concerning the issue of whether Auschwitz should be bombed. Beit-Zvi points out that our very dear and larger-than-life leader, David Ben Gurion, declared that Auschwitz should not be bombed; he based his reasoning on what he stated to be a lack of information. However, in reality, as many documents show, including the documents of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, as well as newspapers published in Palestine, there was enough information about Auschwitz if only one wanted to know.

In 1982 I published a book review [“Britain and the Holocaust” in Midstream (April 1982)], in which I also included the text of the minutes of that famous meeting, including the following paragraph:

The Chairman, Mr. Ben-Gurion, summarizes: The opinion of the Executive is that it ought not be proposed to the Allies to bomb places where there are Jews.

I always felt indebted to Beit-Zvi, who became a personal friend, for his book and for the revelation about Ben-Gurion.

It is well known in many circles, among historians as well as former Intelligence officials and other mavins, that the United States was at a great disadvantage in the area of Intelligence during WWII (for a short summary of this fact, see the “Introduction” to Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al-Qaeda, by Thomas Powers.) The Intelligence agencies were late to be established, thus requiring further time to acquire the right personnel to work with Intelligence and set the wheels in motion. The Americans’ approach to create an Intelligence Agency was first to consult the British Intelligence agencies in order to establish a close relationship and cooperation with them. Consequently, the British opened an office in New York City at Rockefeller Center adjacent to the office of Bill Donovan, who was the head of America’s Intelligence agency (the OSS). The close relationship between these two agencies produced some level of friendship and mediocre Intelligence, but it also created some major snags, as some of the British Intelligence officers turned out to be double agents for the Soviets, and perhaps even for the Germans [see William Stevenson, Intrepid’s Last Case (New York: Villard Books, 1983)]. In their broad scale of Intelligence work, the British were responsible for many Intelligence disasters on a number of fronts. Among them was Switzerland, where, especially but not only in this instance of the Holocaust, their failures became evident, specifically in the area of dealing with the German dissidents who wanted to negotiate with the Allies to end the War and eliminate Hitler.

In the mid-1970’s, I worked with Dr. David S. Wyman doing research on the American response to the Holocaust [David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984)]. During that time I supported most of his arguments, except that I had a few questions concerning the role that Dr. Gerhardt Riegner played in transmitting the famous cable to the Secretary of State in Washington on the extermination of European Jewry. I wrote but never published a short article titled, “The Mysterious Riegner” on this question. In the October 7, 1983, issue of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, correspondent Dan Margalit published an interview he had with Riegner on the subject of that mysterious German whom Riegner supposedly personally received the information from concerning the German’s program of extermination. In answer to Margalit’s question on the matter, Riegner is quoted as saying, “I don’t respond, I don’t confirm, and I don’t deny” any information about the identity of that German informant. It seemed odd to me that Riegner, after so many years of withholding the name of the informant, would still not release his name. This otherwise pointless refusal fueled my belief that Riegner simply did not know the answer to that question because he was not the person who met the informant. I questioned Riegner’s sincerity and his character, and my suspicions were confirmed later on when I met with a woman named Cecilia Zimmermann, who had been secretary to Abraham Silbersheim. Silbersheim had founded RELICO, the committee for the aid of the war-stricken Jewish population. Originally he worked within the World Jewish Congress with Riegner, but, due to a dispute over policy between them, Silbersheim was forced to leave. According to Zimmermann, Riegner was not courageous enough to show flexibility in saving Jews through any creative methods, illegal or otherwise.

For me, the second more serious issue with Wyman’s book concerned the question of bombing Auschwitz. I strongly supported his arguments on the necessity and feasibility of bombing Auschwitz; the only point of his that I questioned was one issue that had to do with when Auschwitz and its death machine were discovered and made known to the wider world. Contrary to Wyman’s argument that the full extent of the information was known only in June 1944, I think, and I am almost sure, that as soon as this machinery of death started to operate at the beginning of 1942, sketchy details of this place and its happenings were transmitted to the world via various ways and were reflected in news reports coming out at that time. I totally disagree with the absurd arguments set forth in a book against the bombing of Auschwitz that was published in the year 2000 in association with the US Holocaust Museum (Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum, eds, The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies have Attempted It? [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000]). I often wonder how can it be that Israeli children are brought to this site to complete their education and understanding of the Holocaust. What are they to learn at Auschwitz? From my point of view, this place should be condemned, and not a single person should ever enter within its gates again. A memorial is one thing, but a tourist attraction? How Jews of modern times, after the Holocaust, can be tourists at Auschwitz, is beyond my understanding.

During the late 1970’s, I worked in the office of Samuel Merlin and Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), those two individuals who worked day and night in 1943 with the mission to save European Jewry. Their work was in some ways successful when in January 1944 President Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board (for further explanation see my article “Political Action vs. Personal Relations” in Midstream [April 1981]). I raised the issue of Auschwitz with them, along with the possibility of my searching the OSS archives to see what type of information the US Intelligence services had on that machinery of murder. Samuel Merlin contacted his friend Paul O’Dwyer, a very distinguished Irish American lawyer and one of their supporters in the 1940’s. With O’Dwyer’s help we received the necessary permit, and I subsequently spent one week at the Carlisle Army Barracks in Pennsylvania examining Bill Donovan’s papers. As it turned out, I found almost no messages from Europe concerning Auschwitz. However, I did find two documents of special interest. One was a “United States Strategic Bombing Survey” dated 25 August 1945, in which the maps in the survey showed the year 1943 where Auschwitz was indicated as a producer of methanol. In addition, I found an OSS document from 23 June 1945 titled the “Memorandum of Information for the Joint U.S. Chiefs of Staff Subject: OSS Operations in Switzerland 1942-1945,” in which it was written, “Contacts leading directly into the German Abwehr [German Military Intelligence Service] were developed through a key agent with close connections to high German political circles.” To better understand some issues concerning Switzerland, Merlin encouraged me to travel to Israel to visit the former Irgun member Dr. Reuven (Rudolf) Hecht, whose family had lived in Switzerland and was involved in the shipping and supply of grain. What they did during WWII is still a mystery. Dr. Hecht, an avid Zionist and supporter of the Irgun, worked in Switzerland during WWII and was involved in his family business. After WWII he moved to Israel and established the same sort of business in the port city of Haifa. He was an avid supporter of Menachem Begin and his political party. Before I left for Israel, Merlin handed me a letter of introduction to Dr. Hecht, along with another letter which was a copy of an official US document that Sam Woods had handed to Hecht as a thank you note for his service to Allied causes during WWII. It took awhile for me to secure an appointment, but finally I arrived by invitation at Dr. Hecht’s office. But my welcome was brief: as I had suspected, once I just opened my mouth and mentioned Sam Woods, Hecht politely asked me leave – he had no interest in telling me what had happened between him and Woods. Switzerland, a supposedly neutral country during WWII, was not so neutral after all.

The relationship between neutrality and Intelligence during WWII remains, I believe, a worthwhile subject for research, for it bears on the whole issue of the massacre of European Jewry -- might the extermination process at least have slowed to some degree, if not been halted, if Intelligence had not been sabotaged, or if some Jews who were free to act, had acted more courageously? Today’s Jewry, which is living and thinking after the events of Auschwitz, should look with objective introspection at the Holocaust event. It is sort of sad, or one might say too early, to analyze events that just happened to Jews seventy years ago. To me, the attempts to explain the Holocaust via Elie Wiesel in the United States or Yad Vashem in Jerusalem have been total failures. Wiesel prefers to limit his writings to telling Chasidic stories rather than dealing with political realities that are associated with the Holocaust. Following his release from Auschwitz, Wiesel ended up in Paris, where he sympathized with the Irgun and knew Peter Bergson [Hillel Kook]. Later on Bergson came to Wiesel’s aid in NYC after he was injured in an accident. To-date I have not yet seen any reference in Wiesel’s writings about Hillel Kook, who definitely knew what to do in the Holocaust, and certainly understood the post-Holocaust historical momentum of the establishment of Israel as a modern Republic with a written constitution (which has not yet happened). On the other hand, Yad Vashem focuses on Jewish heroism in the Holocaust but completely forgot until a year or so ago to include the sole most important Jew of the century, Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook) who, with a few Irgun members persisted in their insistence that the United States Government should take an active role in saving Jews (who but the US would be capable of such a feat?). Jews living after the Holocaust in the US or in Israel need to find better ideas, deeper thoughts, in order for them to conduct their affairs in such a way so as not to be blinded from the real and evolving world around them.

The Happy Table of Eugene Walter..

My UCLA film school classmate Don Goodman has a new book, The Happy Table of Eugene Walter: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink. He is featured in this UNC Press interview:

Q: Who was Eugene Walter?

A: Eugene was a creature of the Deep South who expressed his talent and interests in a variety of areas. He identified with a cat's curiosity and a monkey's playfulness. He wrote poetry, short-stories, and novels; translated French, German, and Italian works into English; designed sets and costumes; built and manipulated marionettes; served as editor for a number of literary journals; published a number of books relating to the history and preparation of food as well as being a gourmet chef; and, acted in films produced in Rome.

Q: Why is his legacy important?

A: Eugene Walter's career is an intensely personal vision of what constitutes the good life. Good cooking is a part of it, but only a part. The arts and an appreciation of beauty are crucial. Friends are essential. Good writing is a path to clear thinking. Fame would have been nice, but Eugene's long list of projects which interested him but never found a commercial market are evidence that it was never a driving force. Money, too, would have been convenient, but he never had much of it and managed to live a very happy, productive life anyhow. In a time when people are career driven, fame driven, money driven, Eugene Walter remains an example of what it means to be true to oneself and one's own sense of what's important and how that can lead to a life of substantial achievement.

Q: Although Walter was the author of several cookbooks, including the celebrated American Cooking: Southern Style, which was published in 1971 in the Time-Life Foods of the World series, his New York Times obituary makes no mention of his food writing at all. Why was his reputation as a food writer eclipsed by his reputation as a poet and novelist?

A: Eugene led a multifaceted life with groups of people knowing him and his reputation based on the interest of the group. There may have been an awareness of Eugene's other interests but he was known for many things and mainly the one in which a particular group was interested. For example, in the literary world he was known for his prize winning first novel, The Untidy Pilgrim, and the many books and journal articles published throughout his life. Artists knew him for his paintings and humorous "squiggles" which were pen and ink sketches. Musicians appreciated his collaboration with a number of composers. He was known in the food world as a publisher of several cookbooks and a keen observer of traditional as well as new variations of southern foods. Above all, his humor and wit were appreciated by his many admirers.

Q: This is a posthumous collection of Eugene Walter's recipes. How was it compiled? Have these recipes appeared elsewhere?

A: At the time of his death, Eugene was working on a variety of books. In his personal papers which were collected and boxed was a cookbook titled, "Dixie Drinks." The cookbook was organized into sections with each containing a jumble of recipes and essays. It was our task to make sense of everything and get it organized into a coherent book. Eugene included recipes published previously, primarily in Delectable Dishes from Termite Hall, and essays from Alabama periodicals. Since the recipes and essays were included in this cookbook and no longer available in print we decided to follow Eugene's wishes and leave them in.

Q: What were some of the challenges that you faced when putting this cookbook together?

A: Eugene titled the book, "Dixie Drinks," but it contained not only drink recipes but a wealth of food recipes which incorporated wine or spirits as an ingredient. He had intended the book to be in three sections: Mixed Drinks, Homemade Wine and Cordials, and Food Recipes. We were unable to find pages referring to wine and cordials so that section was dropped. Every recipe had to be examined for obvious errors along with researching what appeared to be mistakes in ingredient proportions. Some essays seemed to be included for further elaboration by Eugene but which we deleted since they were incomplete.

Q: Talk about your editorial collaboration.

A: Tom's wealth of knowledge and history in the food world helped with determining the validity of statements in Eugene's essays about food. I was able to verify Eugene's "voice" throughout the cookbook since I spent countless hours talking with Eugene about southern foods and drinks. Being from Alabama as well as remembering Eugene's tales about southerners he knew, I confirmed names and places associated with various essays and recipes.

Q: What is distinctive about Eugene Walter's voice?

A: His is the voice of the old southern gentleman coupled with the awareness of a modern man who died on the cusp of the 21st century. Humor and wit were constants in his writing.

Q: I was struck by how contemporary Walter's approach to cooking seems. Was he ahead of his time?

A: Eugene's view of cooking might be called "what's old is new again." In the South of his generation and before, everyone had a garden whether it was formal or a patch of rich soil behind the house. Eugene was accustomed to fresh food from the home garden along with seafood just brought in from the Gulf. Many people kept a chicken coop so that eggs were always fresh along with meat available for frying and baking. Grocers and vendors supplied other meats along with freshly churned butter. Most people had ice boxes but not freezers so foods couldn't be kept indefinitely. Before canned foods became ubiquitous, most southerners "put up" their foods by home canning which meant sealing the food in sterilized jars. Many still do. Eugene never forgot the taste of fresh and encouraged using it whenever possible. He had a vast knowledge of herbs and picked those he needed in recipes from his herb garden. Today's use of "fresh" and "free range" reflects earlier southern generations' method of cooking.

Q: And yet he was not above using some convenience foods. Can you give an example?

A: Canned broths, stocks, and consommé were some of the ingredients Eugene recommended for their ease of preparation and use. If time is limited then use canned instead of spending a day preparing a stock. Corn, okra and tomatoes were vegetables Eugene found acceptable when canned mainly due to ease of use versus time spent preparing. Jell-O brand gelatins and instant puddings work as well if not better in specific recipes than their time-consuming relatives.

Q: Which five recipes from the book seem most interesting, and why?

A: Green Gumbo is a departure from what is usually thought of as gumbo. The mix of greens provides a base for the addition of ingredients of the cook's choosing.
Prima Donna Chicken has a variation of a bread sauce made with nuts. It's a southern version of a Middle Eastern dish.
Cold Turkey Pâté is a creative way to deal with leftover turkey from a Thanksgiving meal.
Not Quite Tartar Sauce provides the cook with a variety of uses for the sauce.
Demopolis Caramel Cake is a look back at an old southern favorite.

Q: Do you have any favorite cocktails as presented by Eugene Walter?

A: The Milton Makeover, La Mechante, and Merry Mabel (punch)

Q: Eugene Walter was clearly one of a kind. Does he have any contemporary counterparts?

A: In the 19th century Edward Lear was an author, artist, and poet who was devoted to his cat and chef; Jean Cocteau in the 20th century was an artist, poet, designer, author, playwright, and filmmaker; Steve Martin in the 21st century is an actor, writer, musician, art collector, comedian, playwright, and humorist.

Q: What might a guest in Eugene Walter's home be served? Or, what made his table a happy one?

A: Eugene served wine with an assortment of olives, cheeses, and nuts an hour or so before the meal. There was an enlightening and entertaining discussion on the history of the wine and the assorted appetizers or nibbles as Eugene called them. I never left a meal without learning something interesting about the food. A dish Eugene enjoyed serving was his Patent Leather Pie. This was a savory pie which got its name from the darkened flesh of the baked eggplant which glistened with a coat of olive oil. Dessert was usually fresh fruit, sometimes with cream. After the meal guests were invited into the sitting room and served a digest if along with a bit of crystallized ginger. During this time Eugene solicited information and stories while telling humorous ones of his own. It was a time of enchantment.

Q: Who are some of the luminaries who were part of Eugene Walter's world?

A: Pat Conroy, Federico Fellini, Patricia Highsmith, Anais Nin, George Plimpton, Ned Rorem, Muriel Spark, Alice B. Toklas, Andy Warhol

Q: The photos and illustrations included in the book are quite charming. How were they collected and selected?

A: Eugene left hundreds of photographs and sketches in his estate. Those drawings related to food were selected along with photos from different times in his life.

Q: Do you have a favorite anecdote about Eugene Walter?

A: More than an anecdote is a favorite memory. Eugene was to receive an award in Tuscaloosa for his distinguished career in the Arts in which he represented southern culture and Alabama history. Eugene asked me to drive him to Tuscaloosa and attend the event. Eugene prepared a picnic basket and we set off for the four-hour drive to Tuscaloosa from Mobile. An hour or so out from Mobile we spotted a green field shaded by large oak trees and decided to stop for lunch. We spread out a blanket under a tree and Eugene brought forth our lunch from his large picnic basket. Laid out before us was fried chicken, biscuits, beans, corn on the cob, a fruit cobbler, a bottle of wine, as well as chicken salad sandwiches, nuts, and olives. The weather was agreeable and everything was delicious. While we were eating a small terrier approached out of nowhere which I feared would disrupt the meal. Instead, Eugene spoke calmly to the dog and told him to wait until we finished and he would be rewarded with the leftovers. To my amazement the dog sat at the edge of the blanket and waited for his treat.

Q: What are your favorite Eugene Walter quotes from The Happy Table?

A: "The best advice to cooks is, I feel, seek fresh, avoid chemicals, keep a light hand, rise to the occasion, try what you don't know, have fun . . . and good eating, you-all!"

"Do not under any circumstances, other than a case of lockjaw, use a straw when drinking [a julep], but drink from a tankard."

"Iced tea is never taken with food in most households. It's a midmorning or midafternoon refreshment during warm weather."

"Avoid like the plague those dire synthetic cheeses that become ropey when heated and plug up both children and adults."

"Do your own thing: invent!"

"Miss Ruth and Miss Meta Huger never tired of telling folks to whom they gave copies of their famous shrimp dish, 'If you overcook the shrimp,' they'd say, 'you are offering your guests bits of pink and white rubber, not shrimp.'

"A table without a good pepper mill is a family without a spiritual leader."

###
This interview may be reprinted in its entirety with the following credit: A conversation with Donald Goodman, co-editor of The Happy Table of Eugene Walter: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink (University of North Carolina Press, Fall 2011). The text of this interview is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/uncp/media/walter/.

Agustin Blazquez Speaks!

About the plight of Cuban-American artists:

LUISA MARIA GÜELL my decision / mi decisión
En español con subtitulos en ingles / Spanish with English subtitles
 
Synopsis
 
Luisa María Güell was a singer and a child actress before and a popular rising star after the Castro Revolution.  The political aftermath of a society fundamentally transformed by a new ideology had a profound effect on the life and career of the young performer.  The radical changes and intolerance of the communist system presented her, unprepared, with new and dire consequences that could not be ignored.  Stripped of liberty and suddenly unable to allow her creativity to guide her, she found her creativity replaced with fear inside the closed, oppressive new society. Finding no other outlet, she made the devastating decision to leave her country, her family and her singing career at its peak as a teen idol.  Her plan to escape culminated with one year of forced labor before she was allowed to leave Cuba.  Her story continues with her creativity freed to triumph once again as a free human being until she was confronted once again by the ghost of another Marxist experience in Spain, which brought back her Cuban nightmare, forcing her to make the decision yet again to leave everything behind to seek refuge in the U.S.  However, in the U.S., art and politics are as intermingled as in communist countries and while she attained success in her community, the doors remained closed in the American show business field in spite of her great, one-of-a-kind privileged voice and ability to sing not only in English but in other languages. Out of necessity, she also developed her abilities to manage her own career including all phases of arranging complex concerts.  Being a Cuban American exile artist in the U.S. is an extremely difficult handicap to overcome.  my decision presented her with the opportunity to tell her story and for viewers to learn what's behind the hauntingly beautiful music created by Luisa Maria Güell.
 
Luisa María Güell fué una cantante y actriz infantil antes y una popular estrella después de la revolución de Castro. La secuela política de una sociedad fundamentalmente transformada por una nueva ideología tuvo un profundo efecto sobre la vida y carrera de la joven artista. Los cambios radicales e intolerancia del sistema comunista que se le presentaron, sin preparación, con nuevas y horribles concecuencias que no podían ser ignoradas. Despojada subitamente de libertad creativa, esta fué replazada por el miedo dentro del enclaustramiento de la opresiva nueva sociedad. Sin encontrar otra salida, ella tomó la devastadora decisión de marcharse del país, dejando su familia y su carrera en el cenit como ídolo juvenil. Su plan de escape culminó en un año de trabajo forzado antes de que le permitieran marcharse de Cuba. Su historia continua con la liberación de su creatividad y su rotundo triunfo nuevamente como ser humano libre hasta que confrontó nuevamente el fantasma de otra experiencia con el Marxismo en España. Esto le hizo revivir su pesadilla en Cuba, forzandola a tomar nuevamente la misma decisión y abandonandolo todo refugiandose en los EE.UU. Sin embargo, en los EE.UU., el arte y la política estan tan entrelazados como en los paises comunistas y mientras ella obtuvo el éxito en su comunidad, las puertas se mantuvieron cerradas en el mundo del espectáculo norteamericano a pesar de su privilegiada gran voz fuera de serie y no solo su abilidad de cantar en ingles, sino que en otros idiomas. Por necesidad en este país ella desarrolló sus abilidades de administrar su propia carrera, incluyendo todas las faces organizativas de sus conciertos. El ser un artista cubanoamericano exiliado en los EE.UU. es un problema extremadamente dificil de sobreponer. mi decisión le presentó la oportunidad de contar su historia y a los espectadores la oportunidad de aprender lo que hay detras de la encantadora música creada por Luisa María Güell.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.

Sad to learn that Christopher Hitchens has died.

I met him twice. The first time, in the last century, in the offices of The Nation magazine in New York City. The last, on February 24, 2006, at the "Stand Up for Denmark!" rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC, which he had organized. Here's a transcript of his remarks at the event, as posted on The Adventures of Chester blog at the time:

Brothers and sisters, I just thought I would thank everyone for coming and say how touching it is that people will take a minute from a working day to do something that our government won't do for us, which is quite simply to say that we know who our friends and our allies are, and they should know that we know it. And that we take a stand of democracy against dictatorship. And when the embassies of democracies are burned in the capital cities of dictatorships, we think the State Department should denounce that, and not denounce the cartoons.

[Cheers of support and applause]

And that we're fed up with the invertebrate nature of our State Department.

[Laughter, cheers, applause]

If we had more time, brothers and sisters, I think that we should have gone from here to the embassy of Iraq, to express our support for another country that is facing a campaign of lies and hatred and violence. And we would -- if we did that we would say that we knew blasphemy when we saw it, we knew sacrilege when we saw it: it is sacrilegious to blow up beautiful houses of worship in Samarra. That would be worth filling the streets of the world to protest about.

[Cheers and applause]

We are not for profanity nor for disrespect, though we are, and without any conditions, or any ifs or any buts, for free expression in all times and in all places

[applause]

and our solidarity . . . [inaudible]

[applause]

So, we said we would, I told the Danish embassy that we would disperse at one o'clock. I hope and believe we've made our point, I hope and believe that today's tv will have some more agreeable features, such as your own, to show, instead of the faces of violence and hatred, and fascism, and I think I can just close by saying, solidarity with Denmark, death to fascism.

Hitchens wasn't afraid to take a stand, and his intellectual courage set an example for us all. He was a mensch.

Here's a link to my first account of Hitchens' pro-Denmark rally, and to another article on Stand Up for Denmark!.

Finally, a link to a review of Hitchens' autobiography, HITCH-22.

ADL Condemns Thomas Friedman's Defamation of Jews

In an unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Times, dated December 14th:

In leveling his criticism of Israel on its domestic agenda, Mr. Friedman ventures into absurd territory when he "illuminates" the reason Mr. Netanyahu was received with a standing ovation when he spoke before the U.S. Congress. His claim that "the ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby" is insulting to the American people and reads like a page out of "The Israel Lobby," the biased treatise by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

Poll after poll, including a recent one by ADL, shows overwhelming support for Israel by the American public. Congressional support reflects that reality.

Mr. Friedman's allegation is not merely wrong and offensive. It's dangerous. It plays into the most insidious conspiratorial notions about Jewish control of American institutions.

From My Email Inbox (Believe it or not...)

Subject: [ChevyChase] Cultural Revolution Cookbook Monday night, Tenley Library

Foodies, Sinologists, and Politicos unite! Come to Monday's author talk at the Tenley-Friendship Library to celebrate the publication of The Cultural Revolution Cookbook. Authors Sasha Gong and Scott Seligman will discuss the stories behind the recipes and their process of collaboration. The book is beautifully illustrated and the recipes include lots of vegetarian dishes. http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Revolution-Cookbook-Sasha-Gong/dp/9881998468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323631930&sr=8-1 Copies will be for available for sale before and after the talk (sorry, we can't handle credit cards).

The Tenley-Friendship Library is located at 4450 Wisconsin (at Albemarle Street, across from the Metrorail station). The talk starts at 7pm and will take place in the large conference room on the second floor. Coffee and light refreshments will be served.

Hope to see you there!

Sue Hemberger
for Friends of the Tenley-Friendship Library

NOTE: According to the Necrometrics website, between 2-7 million Chinese were killed in the Cultural Revolution. Other estimates range as high as 30 million. Personally, I'd prefer that the DC Public Library System promoted authors like Sheng Mei-Ma, who wrote CONTRASTING TWO SURVIVAL LITERATURES: ON THE JEWISH HOLOCAUST AND THE CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION, instead.

New Film About My Old Film Premieres in NYC...

Coincidentally, my old film now available online in streaming video from EPIX:

http://www.epixhd.com/who-shall-live-and-who-shall-die/

Meet the 1%

(ht cranky professor)

Free Alan Gross!

Spent lunch hour today in front of the Cuban Interests Section on 16th Street, NW at a protest with Judy (with megaphone) the wife of hostage American Alan Gross, a USAID contractor reportedly arrested for giving computers to members of the Cuban Jewish community so they could surf the internet. He's been in jail two years, serving a 15-year sentence, and is apparently a pawn in some international intrigue. His wife is a member of my congregation at Adas Israel, which had a delegation at today's protest, sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council, that included our former cantor.

Free Alan Gross Vigil Monday, Dec. 5th, Washington, DC

Free Alan Gross Vigil
Monday, December 5

From 12–1 pm, Adas Israel will lead a vigil in front of the Cuban Interests Section, 2360 16th Street, NW. These weekly vigils are coordinated by the JCRC, with many area synagogues participating. Alan Gross is in a maximum security prison in Cuba since 2009 serving a 15 year sentence for undermining "the independence of Cuba." He was in Cuba on behalf of USAID performing humanitarian work for the peaceful non-dissident Jewish community. Alan's health is failing and both his mother and daughter have serious health issues. Come show your support for Alan and his wife Judy who is a member of our congregation....

Happy Thanksgiving!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving

Scenes from Occupy DC, McPherson Square, November 9, 2011

They're certainly not bothering President Obama, since there were no protesters at all to be seen in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House...and not many in McPherson Square, either. However, there was a more genuine sign of protest on display at a nearby bus stop: