Secrets

Why is so much real policy debate done behind closed doors? Joseph Stiglitz's "The Private Uses of Public Interests" (PDF) argues that sometimes it's for security... but most of the time it's to protect private interests:

The one argument that may have some merit is that hiding information may sometimes provide a tactical advantage in the political bargaining game. But my own experience is that all too often, secrecy is neither justified by national security interests, nor as a prerequisite for rational and thoughtful debate, nor even as a tactical necessity in a broader strategy, but rather, secrecy serves as a cloak behind which special interests can most effectively advance their interests, outside of public scrutiny. There is an old expression that sunshine is the most powerful antiseptic. In this sense, I understood why discussions concerning privatizing the production of enriched uranium-the critical ingredient of nuclear bombs-had to proceed in secrecy. It was not because national security would have been jeopardized, but because there rightly might have been a public outcry if it was known that we wererisking nuclear proliferation for at most a meager few hundred million dollars. I also understood why discussions concerning ethanol had to be conducted in secret-again, private interests seeking favorable treatment might have might have failed to get what they wanted had there been an open public discussion, especially amidst accusations that campaign contributions seemed to affect public policy.

Machine gun roundup: the story gets worse

Machine Gun Preacher opens widely today. I wrote a piece for Foreign Policy that went up last night titled "Machine Gun Menace." It's mostly a summary of what I've written before on Childers (here, here, and here) but with some new material -- including Childers' denial to me of ever having sold arms -- and some further thoughts on the perils of armed humanitarianism. It starts with my favorite quote from Childers' book: "The Lord I serve is the living Lord Jesus. And to show you he's alive, I'm going to send you to meet him right now!" You can read the full article here. Thanks to Joshua Keating at FP for the chance to take the arguments I've made here to a broader audience (and to my friend Jesse for editing help). Dave Gilson brings the story to another audience at Mother Jones and Scott Baldauf at the Christian Science Monitor, who expressed early interest in the story, also writes about it there.

But the biggest new information on Sam Childers comes in this Christianity Today story by Mark Moring (with reporting in South Sudan by Uma Julius and Esther Nakkazi). I've been a bit frustrated by this whole Childers story since I first started writing about it, as I don't have the resources (or time, as a full time grad student) to travel and do the research necessary to address all the doubts raised by Childers' stories. Since I started writing on him I've received several emails from folks who previously or currently work in South Sudan, expressing a range of doubts -- but most of them did not want to be quoted by name for various reasons.

It looks like Moring, Julius, and Nakkazi have done the hard work of asking around to people in the community -- moving beyond the sort of trip where journalists only see what the charity wants them to see. If even half of the allegations they convey are true then this whole series of events is an absolute travesty: dozens if not hundreds of media outlets have interviewed, written about, or featured Childers. It seems that very, very few asked any critical questions or presented his story with much complexity. Some of this may be about resource constraints, but the questions are beginning to be asked now that the movie is coming out, so it's hard to say that's the whole story. I think one lesson for the future is this: when you talk to a supposed humanitarian making outlandish claims, it is not OK to only talk to them. Their actions affect others, and media should be more than megaphone-holding cheerleaders or fundraisers.

Back to the Christianity Today story. It opens:

Witnesses have said that the children at Shekinah Fellowship Children's Village are malnourished, unhealthy, and unhappy. Several locals—including pastors, government officials, and a high-ranking member of the military—tell Christianity Today that Childers has exaggerated or outright lied about his work in the African nation.

Community leaders want his orphanage in Nimule—near the border with Uganda—to be shut down immediately, and for local ministries to take over. In a September 2 letter to Childers, 14 local leaders—including the man who says he gave 40 acres of land to Childers to build the orphanage—wrote that Chiders has "dishonored our agreement" to take care of orphans, and that they demand "immediate closure of the compound." Childers told CT he never received that letter.

So it sounds like Childers may not have the community support you'd expect if he was doing good work. Childers predictably blames the allegations all on a disgruntled former employee. (Careful followers of aid scandals will note the almost exact parallel between that and Greg Mortenson's reaction to allegations against him -- Mortenson at first blamed almost everything on a disgruntled and dishonest former employee). If that was the only source of these accusations there would be plenty of reason to doubt them. But here's more from an American doctor who visited in 2009:

Wilson said no adults—including Childers—were at the orphanage when his team visited in 2009, but that they left medicine and antibiotics with clear instructions how to administer them. But when they returned two days later, none of the medicine had been given to the children.

"I don't know what to do," Wilson said, "but I have to do something." He ended up asking CT to investigate, and several people we spoke with recently confirmed what Wilson and the nurse observed.

They go on to talk about the health problems many of the children were having. Really, read it. There's also a claim that echoes a criticism someone in South Sudan emailed to me, that Childers often stages photographs and acts differently when media are around:

Okumu and others said they witnessed Childers staging photographs of himself fighting against the LRA in order to make his story sound more compelling and to attract more donors to his ministry. Okumu said Childers used guards and children from the orphanage to stage the photos nearby. "He claimed to be rescuing kidnapped children from the LRA," Okumu said. "But it was false. He just took pictures of the children in the bush around the compound here."

Seth Trudeau, who is involved with another orphanage in Nimule, South Sudan, says that Childers' orphanage was shut down by the local government last month. If that's true, it raises the question of why and how Childers is still promoting the movie to raise money for his charity (I haven't read that the orphanage was actually shut down anywhere else). Seth writes this:

Over the course of the last year, Sarah and I knew extended families who were taking their children away from the home, which surprised us. As the LRA's strength had waned in South Sudan, this children's home had broadened its focus from rescued child soldiers to all orphans and vulnerable children - which made it all the more shocking to us that families would be taking their children back: by definition, these children had come to the home because the families were so ill equipped to care for the children in the first place. At CCH, we had families who would lie about their circumstances in order to get their children in, so it struck us as strange that the opposite phenomenon was taking place on the other side of town.

Very strange indeed. If the children had extended families that could take care of them but just lacked the resources, it raises the troubling question of whether an orphanage was an appropriate charity model in the first place. Why not just support the families so they can care of the kids themselves? That -- along with the stories of Childers being absent for long periods of time and the lack of adults on site -- remind me again of criticism of orphanages as an aid model (here and here) at the blog Good Intentions Aren't Enough. Hopefully the attention from the movie and these first critical reports will lead to more questions being asked and answered.

Yes

Elizabeth Warren:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Spot on, from the social contract to the big hunk and paying it forward. (h/t Jesse)

Monday Miscellany

Amanda Taub of Wronging Rights writes on private cities in Africa. Ben Goldacre explores a common statistical mistake in neuroscience journals, based on this article in Nature Neuroscience.

Over the last decade the CIA has increasingly focused on killing people.

"Pakistan views India as the perpetual enemy and the US as an unfaithful ally." (source)

The always interesting (at least for evaluation nerds) World Bank Development Impact blog has this post on "partner selection bias," which is evidently about organizations -- not STI transmission dynamics or gender roles.

Princeton professors reflect on 9/11:

When [Woodrow] Wilson School professor Stanley Katz remembers 9/11, his first thoughts are not of Sept. 11, 2001, but rather of the walk to his office in Robertson Hall the very next day. That his workplace and the now-demolished World Trade Center at the base of Manhattan Island had been designed by the same architect — Minoru Yamasaki — had never, before the morning of Sept. 12, stood out in such high relief to Katz, who began to notice eerie similarities between the buildings.

Music for math + econ

Music for math: "I Will Derive":

And music for economics: "Fear the Boom and Bust," a Keynes vs. Hayek rap battle...:

Math Camp!

Two weeks ago I wrapped up my work as an Epi Scholar with the NYC Department of Health, where I was researching childhood lead poisoning (on which I should be writing more soon). I had a few days off to enjoy the city, and then last weekend I moved to Princeton, NJ. I'm in Princeton to work on an Master in Public Affairs in 'Economics and Public Policy' at the Woodrow Wilson School. The other Woo students (as the school and its denizens are called) and I moved to Princeton three weeks before our "real" classes begin to enjoy a Woo ritual known as Math Camp. We spend a good chunk of each day in classes that teach or review basic concepts in mathematics and economics. There are four math tracks; the one I'm in has already covered some advanced algebra, univariate and multivariate calculus, and some basic linear algebra. We'll spend the next two weeks doing more calculus and focusing on optimization problems, and touch briefly on some concepts in probability. The Math Camp classes have homework and tests and grades, but their main purpose is to help place us in the most appropriate 'track' in our microeconomics, macroeconomics, and quantititative analysis coursework.

I'm sure I'll end up writing more about Math Camp and the Woo in general, as well as my amazing classmates. I am looking forward to being able to make some comparisons as time goes by -- looking at epidemiology and economics, large schools and small schools, public health and public policy, and so forth. But generally I'll try and keep my writing here about the subject matter I encounter rather than the mechanics of how grad school works.

I'm sorry (for technical reasons only)

If you have a lot of RSS feeds for infrequently-updated personal blogs in your feed reader of choice* then you can't avoid seeing posts that follow this format:

"I'm so sorry I haven't posted in [length of time which is generally a short period in analog world but forever in the blogosphere]. I really planned on posting more and committed to doing so for [New Year's, my blogoversary, Ramadan, etc]. But then my [work commitments, school schedule, real research projects] got in the way. I'm really sorry, dear readers, but I'll try to do better in the future.

I think this genre of post is fascinating because it speaks to our expectations for the frequency with which a good blog should be updated, and our almost universal failure to live up to that ideal. Also, if you're reading a feed via RSS, you wouldn't necessarily have noticed the gap in posting without the "I'm sorry" post.

My posting isn't always as frequent as I'd like it to be, but I was sure I'd never write one of those posts because I find them irksome. However, I've encountered an entirely new reason for not posting and thought it was novel enough to share.

I moved to Princeton, NJ a week ago and found that my blog (and the back-end that I access to edit it) are completely blocked on all the Princeton wireless networks. This is disheartening as without such a blockage my musings would likely have a much stronger impact on the elite policy-making world (just kidding). It's also surprising since I would expect this more at my undergrad alma mater than at Princeton, and I have yet to write anything critical about Reunions. Oddly enough you don't get any indication that the site has been blocked -- no Websense notice -- but rather the site just never loads. It took me quite a while to realize it wasn't me, and for the moment it looks like I've been blocked because this site was the source of a phishing attack. I hope to get it resolved and resume my regular posting schedule soon, but I wanted to clarify that this particular gap in my posting is actually due to technical problems and not due to any deficiencies in my work ethic or personal character. And, dear reader, thanks for reading.

*Aside: if you're reading this via a web browser, you're old fashioned and should start using Google Reader today. Exceptions granted if you found this link via social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

What does social science know?

Marc Bellemare wrote a post "For Fellow Teachers: Revised Primers on Linear Regression and Causality." Good stuff for students too -- not just teachers. The primers are PDFs on linear regression (6 pages) and causality (3 pages), and they're either 1) a concise summary if you're studying this stuff already, or 2) something you should really read if you don't have any background in quantitative methods. I also really enjoyed an essay by Jim Manzi that Marc links to, titled "What Social Science Does -- and Doesn't -- Know." Manzi reviews the history of experimentation in natural sciences, and then in social sciences. He discusses why it's more difficult to extrapolate from randomized trials in the social sciences due to greater 'causal density,' amongst other reasons. Manzi summarized a lot of research in criminology (a field I didn't even know used many field trials) and ends with some conclusions that seem sharp (emphasis added):

...After reviewing experiments not just in criminology but also in welfare-program design, education, and other fields, I propose that three lessons emerge consistently from them.

First, few programs can be shown to work in properly randomized and replicated trials. Despite complex and impressive-sounding empirical arguments by advocates and analysts, we should be very skeptical of claims for the effectiveness of new, counterintuitive programs and policies, and we should be reluctant to trump the trial-and-error process of social evolution in matters of economics or social policy.

Second, within this universe of programs that are far more likely to fail than succeed, programs that try to change people are even more likely to fail than those that try to change incentives. A litany of program ideas designed to push welfare recipients into the workforce failed when tested in those randomized experiments of the welfare-reform era; only adding mandatory work requirements succeeded in moving people from welfare to work in a humane fashion. And mandatory work-requirement programs that emphasize just getting a job are far more effective than those that emphasize skills-building. Similarly, the list of failed attempts to change people to make them less likely to commit crimes is almost endless—prisoner counseling, transitional aid to prisoners, intensive probation, juvenile boot camps—but the only program concept that tentatively demonstrated reductions in crime rates in replicated RFTs was nuisance abatement, which changes the environment in which criminals operate....

I'd note here that many researchers and policymakers who are interested in health-related behavior change have been moving away from simply providing information or attempting to persuade people to change their behavior, and moving towards changing the unhealthy environments in which we live. NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Farley spoke explicitly about this shift in emphasis when he addressed us summer interns back in June. That approach is a direct response to frustration with the small returns from many behavioral intervention approaches, and an acknowledgment that we humans are stubborn creatures whose behavior is shaped (more than we'd like to admit) by our environments.

Manzi concludes:

And third, there is no magic. Those rare programs that do work usually lead to improvements that are quite modest, compared with the size of the problems they are meant to address or the dreams of advocates.

Right, no pie in the sky. If programs or policies had huge effects they'd be much easier to measure, for one. Read it all.

Accompaniment

Paul Farmer has a piece in Foreign Affairs titled "Partners in Help". Much of it is a re-telling of stories and ideas Farmer has used before (to great effect, of course), focusing largely on the idea of 'accompaniment.' I especially like (and wish he would expand on) this ending section:

Another way of putting this is: Beware the iron cage. About 25 years ago, when I was a graduate student at Harvard, I bought a copy of sociologist Max Weber's collected works. It hurt my back and brain to even look at this giant tome, but his topic -- how the "iron cage" of rationality comes to suppress innovation -- remains relevant to this day. It occurs through "routinization," a process by which rationalized bureaucracies gradually assume control over traditional forms of authority. This is often a good thing: Rationalized procedures can improve efficiency and equity. (Atul Gawande made this insight the core of his "checklist manifesto.") When the World Health Organization launched its directly-observed therapy protocol for tuberculosis, many countries, such as Peru, made great strides against the ancient scourge.

But exceptional events -- black swans, in popular parlance -- expose the limits of this form of efficiency. When patients began falling ill with drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, WHO guidelines suggested they be treated with the same first-line drugs as non-resistant patients. Yet treating patients with the very drugs to which their disease had developed resistance not only failed to help them; it enabled the worse strains to spread unchecked among patients' families and co-workers. This is the double-edged sword of routinization: Rationalized treatment protocols first helped health providers increase the effectiveness and reach of treatment but later prevented them from taking necessary steps to curb the spread of drug-resistant strains. Increases in bureaucratic efficiency can come at the price of decreased human flexibility. In other words, as institutions are rationalized, and as platforms of accountability are strengthened, the potential for accompaniment can be threatened, since it is open-ended, elastic, and nimble.

When the iron cage of rationality leads to a poverty of imagination, cynicism and disengagement follow. It is easy to be dismissive of accompaniment in a world in which arcane expertise is advanced as the answer to every challenge. But expertise alone will not solve the difficult problems ahead. This was the long, hard lesson of the earthquake: We all waited to be saved by expertise, but we never were. True accompaniment does not privilege technical expertise above solidarity, compassion, and a willingness to tackle what may seem insuperable challenges. It requires cooperation, openness, and humility; this concept may, I hope, infuse new vitality into development work.

The limitations of life on earth

Our lonely little sliver of biosphere on our sole habitable planet (so far) has its limits. But what are they? How can we know? From the September 2009 edition of Nature:

The framework presented is an attempt to look holistically at how humanity is stressing the entire Earth system. Provocatively, they go beyond the conceptual to suggest numerical boundaries for seven parameters: climate change, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, biodiversity, freshwater use, the global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, and change in land use. The authors argue that we must stay within all of these boundaries in order to avoid catastrophic environmental change.

... But even if the science is preliminary, this is a creditable attempt to quantify the limitations of our existence on Earth, and provides a good basis for discussion and future refinement.

The actual article, "A safe operating space for humanity" is worth a read if you have access. Interesting concept, even if the numbers themselves are incredibly preliminary.

How Sam Childers endangers humanitarians everywhere - reax from the web

(For background see my original long post and this update.) Sam Childers gets back from Somalia (where he's currently scouting for a humanitarian mission??) on August 10th, and I've been asked to contact him. I plan to, as I want to see if he's willing to answer some of the many questions that potential donors deserve answers to -- based on his own prior statements.

In the mean time, several aid/development bloggers have written about the Machine Gun Preacher:

A couple short mentions: Tom Murphy and Ken Opalo both link, while Tom Paulson at Humanosphere calls it all "fascinating and disturbing."

Tales from the Hood is a long-running blog written by "J." While the author is anonymous, many aid / development bloggers have met him (including me) or know who he is and what he does -- which is how we know that he's not just talk: he's a legit humanitarian bad-ass who's worked in countries your high school geography teacher has never heard of. J's work is widely respected and his blog is a watering hole for aid and development workers around the globe. He also has a certain flair for description, as you can see in his piece on Childers:

[Childers] has a custom chopper and a movie deal, and when he’s not out busting caps into LRA, Childers pastors a biker-themed church in rural Pennsylvania (but of course). I think my favorite part is where he states that he is after Joseph Kony. Like, to kill him. Like, good old-fashioned cowboys and Africans.

And nothing says, “I worship the Prince of Peace” quite like vowing to kill someone.

While some commenters on this blog have said that Childers' actions are just "between him and God" -- and thus we shouldn't criticize him -- in reality nobody works in a vacuum. Reckless actions today can make future work via more reasonable approaches impossible. This critique, regarding how what Childers does and says can impact humanitarians everywhere, is very important. Here's J again:

There is already suspicion, in some cases rightly earned, that humanitarian aid workers may not be strictly humanitarian... But thanks to the Machine Gun Preacher, next time I'm stopped and questioned at a checkpoint, it will be even harder for me to make the case that I'm really there (wherever 'there' is) for strictly humanitarian purposes. And so that we're clear, this is true regardless of whether I'm in Killinochi, Erbil, or LAX. His videos and pics (along with those of many others) are up there, out in the open for all to see...

I have colleagues and close personal friends in South Sudan, including exactly the areas where Sam Childers claims to “help where no one else will.” I frequently must make the decision to deploy people who I supervise and for whom I am responsible to places where the ratio of assault rifles to healthy babies in the general population is far higher than it should be.... We very often go into insecure places where our presence and the associated suspicion that we may have ulterior motives puts not only us, but our local colleagues and those we’re trying to help at greater risk, too.

And so every time the inarticulate Machine Gun Preacher packs heat into South Sudan he makes the entire world more dangerous for me and my friends and innumerable real aid worker colleagues. Every time he puts up another video of himself jumping into his white SUV with an AK47 across his lap, he increases the likelihood that I or someone I care about is going to get shot.

Commenter MB adds this:

As someone who spent many years in South Sudan (pre- and post- CPA), who is currently in Iraq (stuck behind T-walls and armored SUVs)… this burns me up!. Any one who portrays us as CIA, military, armed, mercenary, or anything other than trying to help is beyond stupid! And anyone who would do a “reality series” (is that for real??) about them puts all of our lives, the lives of our friend, colleagues and those we are trying to help, in serious danger!...

Later in the thread the same commenter notes:

I think it’s fairly telling that those of us who have worked in South Sudan, over many years and people currently in South Sudan (a friend did an informal poll of people she knows there) knew nothing whatsoever about this guy.

I've heard the same sentiment from others, which is telling. I've also exchanged emails with two people in Sudan who have raised other concerns about Sam, and I'm hoping that they'll decide to share those publicly soon. While there are some supporters who will believe Childers is on a mission from God regardless of what I say (or anyone else for that matter), it's important for anyone who has information or concerns about Childers to share them as the publicity machine for the movie gears up. On that note, it would be great if someone who edits Wikipedia (I won't because I think I'm too close to the issue) could update his ridiculously one-sided Wikipedia page to have a more objective voice.

Another aid worker who blogs, Erin in Juba, adds some thoughts here. She notes this passage from the Machine Gun Preacher blog:

As we neared Nimule we began to relax but we weren’t out of danger yet.  We rounded a corner and hurtled in a tribal clash between the Dinka and Madi tribes.  4,000 fighters, armed with pangas (machetes), rudimentary bows, spears and clubs, stormed back and forth looking for someone to fight.  In amongst the drunks I saw an elderly man poised for battle and a young woman with a bow in her hand and a baby slung across her back.  As the situation escalated we had no choice but to lock and load.  Shots were fired and we drove through the screaming remnants of the volatile mob.  Luckily, no one was killed.

If that strikes you as outlandish, you may appreciate Erin's take:

AGGGGHHHHHH.  Tribal violence in South Sudan is a complicated clusterf[***], to say the least. However, most of the violence is in between the tribes. The traditions of violence and cattle raiding go back generations, and are a tragedy for sure, but because of their specific tribal-focused aims, they tend to not focus on targeting humanitarians.  And then this idiot claims he has “no choice” but to go blazing into the middle of a mob? ...

Right. She also notes:

It’s also ironic that Sam claims to work with the SPLA to free child soldiers since the army had its very own child soldier branch (the Red Army).

For now the feedback is this: some aid workers who work in Sudan and other dangerous environments think Childers' stories should be taken with a grain of salt, and say that what he is doing makes this work more dangerous for everyone. All of the supporting statements seem to be coming from people who are associated with his church and don't seem to question Rev. Childers at all. They shouldn't expect the same free pass as the movie brings him more attention. Childers has simply said a lot of outrageous things, and if he wants people to trust his judgment and give him money he has his work cut out for him.

Future poverty

I'm not usually a fan of institutional blogs. When a big NGO creates a blog it's often for solely promotional purposes, and much of what I find interesting is criticism. Also, blogs are often written by younger, lower-level staff who don't necessarily have the same freedom to innovate and must have their posts approved by higher-ups. One of the few blogs associated with an NGO that does make it into my Google Reader is From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green at Oxfam. This post at the end of July caught my eye: "By 2015 Nigeria will have more poor people than India or China."

This post highlights two ideas that I've come across again and again in the last year, which make me most optimistic and hesitant about the near future:

1. A much, much smaller percentage of the world lives in extreme poverty today than 30-40 years ago.
2. Most of that decline has been driven by reductions in India and especially in China. Thus, as those nations continue to see reductions and many countries in Africa lag behind, the largest countries in Africa with the youngest populations (ie, Nigeria) will soon outpace India and China in terms of absolute numbers living in the worst poverty. While some African countries -- I'm thinking of Nigeria and South Africa in particular -- have considerable resources to devote to poverty alleviation, when they choose to, those resources pale in comparison to those available to say, the Chinese state.

The commenters on the original post also highlight some important methodological limitations in the Brookings study that Green cited. Read it all here.

Another way to help in Somalia

One of the best ways to address the severe acute malnutrition seen during famines -- like the one in Somalia now -- is a Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF). They're basically nutritionally fortified peanut butter manufactured to certain quality standards, and they're incredibly effective. Which brings me to MANA, or Mother-Administered Nutritive Aid (and yes, a Biblical reference). They're on a long list of things I've been meaning to write about, but my memory was jogged by their Somalia email blast. I'm a natural skeptic about start-up nonprofits, but over time they've won me over with their idea. The model is relatively simple: for now they're manufacturing RUTFs in the US and selling them to UNICEF and large NGOs that have established distribution networks. I like that aspect -- they're not trying to be all things to all men by distributing it themselves, as they've recognized that role is better done by others.

But the US manufacturing is just a stop-gap. For one, it's helping them learn the ropes on producing high quality RUTFs  and supplying these badly needed and under-produced goods to organizations with complicated purchasing requirements. Their end goal is to establish a self-sustaining (ie, profitable) manufacturing plant in Rwanda, and they're making progress on it.  A donation now will help them make more RUTFs and help them establish the Rwanda facility until it gets to a point where it no longer requires ongoing help.

One reason I think MANA is the right sort of group to establish such a business in Rwanda is that it's co-founded by Mark Moore, and he's well situated to work on both the problems of small enterprises in east Africa and international politics and supply chains. Like me, Mark is a Harding alum. He's a smart guy who spent ten years in eastern Uganda as a missionary (and started the Kibo Group development org), but he also has a Masters in development studies from Georgetown and served as Mary Landrieu's Africa specialist in the Senate. His work was the sort of evangelical aid I thought of when I read Dave Algo's recent post on how secular aid and development workers should be less hostile to good aid work done by evangelicals. Well, this it: in my opinion it's a smart business model run (an being an aspiring development professional, I'd welcome critical feedback in the comments as well) by people who can provide some necessary help to get things set up, and then step back out of the way. Once the facility is up and running in Rwanda it will mean more of our aid money can actually go into the east African economy as NGOs buy RUTFs from MANA and pay its local workers' wages.

Those who know me well or read this blog know that I have ambivalent feelings about Harding. I went there planning on being a medical missionary, and while I lost my faith I also made many friends, and my experiences there led me to my current interests in global health. So I have good things to say and bad things to say. One of the good things -- that I don't say enough -- is that there are a lot of incredibly sincere, hard-working people who come out of the school and do work that I couldn't find fault with if I tried. This is one of them, and I'm sure they'd appreciate your support.

Monday Miscellany

On coining new words:

The book coins dozens of new terms for the male member, like “thundertube,” “seedstick” and the “Malcolm Gladwell..."

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

On a related topic, Tim Harford highlights a paper called "Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?" That's right, a cross-country regression on how penis size correlates with economic outcomes over time. Westling, the author, notes that 13.5 cm (5.3 in) is "the GDP maximising size." It's a joke yes, but it's also a serious commentary on interpreting such cross-country regressions. Harford continues:

Well, well. What are we to make of this? I asked Westling how he would characterise his research paper, and he suggested the term "sardonic economics" – and, he added, "Scientifically, this paper is probably as worthless as much of contemporary economics."

(As an aside, in my last year as an undergrad I wrote my political science thesis doing this sort of cross-country comparison, except I didn't even do a regression... but the program I was in did not have strong quantitative training.)

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

This week Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column features a great, simple explanation of adjustment by stratification. I've actually used this same hypothetical example (lung cancer with drinking alcohol, or with drinking coffee) to explain the concept to friends before. If you've ever struggled to explain this sort of thing to someone who isn't an epidemiologist (or similarly trained researcher) it's a great read: "Any set of figures needs adjusting before it can be usefully reported."

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

There's an entire genre of New York Times articles that should all be subtitled "What you need to know if you make $500k or more each year." The latest is "Planning Summer Breaks with an Eye on College Essays." Reminds me of the one about taking private jets to summer camp...

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

The always insightful and often disheartening "Sociological Images" blog notes how advertising can reinforce stereotypes about Africa by doing things like erasing Nairobi. I think of this too every time I see a picture of the Pyramids at Giza. If you've been, you know that they're actually surrounded on three sides by city -- which isn't exactly picturesque. But in postcards they're always shown from one angle, and in movies the 'ugly stuff' (ie, where real people live) is often photoshopped out.

1WTC

After years of delays, the new One World Trade Center is going up fast. I took this picture just one block from my office:

Business Week has an interesting account of how the redevelopment of the site was debated and negotiated over the last 10 years. And of course the next month will see a flurry of writing and coverage related to the ten-year anniversary of 9/11. Ten years ago I was a high school student in Arkansas and New York City felt very far away. My mom had been visiting her sister in DC and was flying home that morning. I needed to see the orthodontist in Little Rock so my dad and I drove down together to pick her up at the airport, and heard the first reports on the radio on the drive down. Nobody in my family flew very often so everyone knew she'd be flying -- my parents spent the rest of the day contacting people to assure them my mom hadn't been on one of the flights. I missed all the emotional reactions of learning at school that many people recount, but that afternoon I worked my normal shift at my town's Kroger grocery store as we had a small rush of people buying supplies, and listened to people talking about lining up to get gas, just in case.

Famine

I want to write something about Somalia, but I don't feel qualified to add much to the discussion. Many smart people have already said much (read here, here, and here). One theme is that it's important to recognize that famine is a human political and economic phenomenon, not a natural one. But others are making those arguments better than I can. The more you know, the more you want to help, and the harder that can seem to do. I think the work I've done this summer in NYC with their Dept of Health has been valuable, but I also feel constrained by my imminent return to the classroom. My emotions say it would be great to assuage my feelings of helplessness now by going somewhere awful and doing whatever needs to be done, right now. But I'm in school because I believe that technical skills are really important when it comes to choosing the right things to do (and measuring their impact) ... so for now I have to wait and let others do the doing.

By all accounts, the situation in Somalia is truly horrific and likely to get worse. Honestly, I've been avoiding reading too much about it because it makes me sad, and it makes me angry. If you're looking for something to do too, the One campaign has compiled a list of organizations working on famine relief. I just made a donation to my charity of choice and hope you will too. My only recommendation is to make your donation to an organization's main donation link, rather than one specific to famine response. Most of the best organizations were likely poised to respond precisely because they had unrestricted, non-earmarked funds from previous donors. They will likely spend as much as they can on these efforts, so your donation will go to Somalia if needed. Or it will go, alas, to the next calamity.

More on Rev. Sam Childers

Earlier this week I wrote five posts (combined into one here) on a scary character named Sam Childers. He goes by the name "Machine Gun Preacher" (website) and I concluded that he was either a self-aggrandizing liar, dangerous, or both. His enthusiastic supporters and a PR rep have commented and contacted me, and I wanted to related the new information below. The short version is that the needle is swinging farther from liar and closer to dangerous. Regardless of the corrections and additions I've noted here, I think it obviously stands that you shouldn't give Childers your money. Childers has been promoting himself as just the hero the children of South Sudan need, and is finally getting a movie based on his life. For the full list of dubious claims (which were not limited to working with the SPLA) see my prior posts, but it's worth noting again that he's stockpiling arms at his orphanage and has admitted to selling weapons to unnamed armed factions in Sudan, Uganda, and Rwanda. He's apparently fighting with or is friends with the SPLA or some faction of it (details are unclear). His organization doesn't seem up-front enough about what they have done and will continue to do with your donation to deserve it. And now (according to comments here) he may be poised to start raising money for famine relief in Somalia.

If you just want Kony killed, Childers doesn't sound like your best shot -- and it's simply not true that the use of child soldiers in the region will end if you kill Kony, as the SPLA has used them too, after all. For reasons why contributing more arms to the conflict is a bad idea, start here. If you want to give to a charity that helps children in South Sudan but is not associated with Childers' violent tactics, try this organization for starters (rec here) -- and I'm sure there are many, many others.

The new information:

1. Whoever moderates the Machine Gun Preacher Reality Series Facebook page (possibly the directors of an upcoming documentary on Childers?) posted this document: It is dated July 12, 2011, signed by a Lt. Gen Mete, and reads:

This is to certify that Rev. Samuel hee Childers has worked with the SPLA for over 10 year he also RUN an orphanage in Nimule, and travels the out South Sudan he has been granted permission to posses and carry a pistol and rifle for personal security while executing his duties. When seen assist where necessary.

This obviously contradicts the prior press release, apparently from the main SPLA spokesperson denouncing Childers. Assuming this new release is legit, it raises questions about the SPLA's cohesion and communication. That isn't too surprising, as one former South Sudan resident said they thought there was considerable struggle over control between the center and other factions.

2. Maria Sliwa, Childers' (update: former) current publicist, commented on this post noting that she was not yet representing Childers at the time she wrote the article I linked to. Thus, I was in error to say she had failed to disclose that, and I've added corrections to the appropriate posts.

3. I evidently goofed in saying Marc Forster was on Oscar-winning director -- apparently he's only directed films that were nominated for Oscars. I could care less about the Academy Awards so this distinction isn't important to me , but some (including Childers supporters who commented here) evidently think this is a big deal that throws my entire credibility into doubt. Sorry?

While I'm at it, here's a clip of Childers being interviewed by Pat Robertson on the 700 club. In it he says that many US government officials have contacted him, that he's also fought the Janjaweed (funny how that didn't make it into his dramatic report of his trip to Darfur), and that he gets his weapons from the government (presumably of South Sudan?) rather than buying them from "the Russians" as he said elsewhere. Again, I'm not against helping children in South Sudan, but it doesn't seem giving Childers money is the best way to do so.

Who is Sam Childers? (conclusion)

This is part 5 of a longer article on Sam Childers, the “Machine Gun Preacher.” Read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4, or view the whole series as one long article. In the April 2011 Times of London profile (not online), Childers said this:

"I tell you this - and I believe the day is coming soon - if I had the money, I could have Joseph Kony's head. I could bring him down. And I will have the money, soon." […]

… Childers insists the film will be a hit: "It's going to do unbelievable well." He hopes it will make him famous, so he can raise more funds for his manhunt and his orphanage.

My hope is that more people will think critically about what the “Machine Gun Preacher” is advocating and doing in Sudan, and choose to give to other organizations instead. There are plenty of reasons to doubt his work:

1. Violence. By his own claims Childers has personally killed people – in the double digits. He is not a man of peace, and it’s hard to see how his claimed tactics bring the situation closer to that. Even if he were the best option for getting Kony (highly doubtful), it doesn’t seem to me that the use of child soldiers in the region would disappear with Kony’s demise. Also, since many of Kony’s troops are themselves soldiers, how does Childers avoid killing them?
2. Weapons. Again by his own claims, Childers has sold weapons to armed groups in Sudan, Rwanda, and the Congo. There are no happy-go-lucky bands of nice Christian warriors in the area; every group I’ve read about has been accused of terrible crimes at some point. Feeding more weapons into the conflict will only make things worse, and end up hurting the children Childers purports to help. His solutions are woefully shortsighted.
3. Lies. Childers claimed to be a “white commander” in the SPLA, but the SPLA has publicly denounced him and called for legal action. This apparent falsehood casts some doubt on whether Childers really does the things he claims – the violence and weapons described above – so we’re left choosing between whether he is dishonest or dangerous. Or both. (Update: see Childers' letter of support from an SPLA general here -- but also note that this isn't the only of his claims that begs skepticism.)
4. Disrespect. Much of what Childers’ trafficks in – weapons aside – is poverty porn of the worst sort. By only emphasizing the worst aspects of any situation Childers may drive up his donations, but he demeans those he seeks to serve. He goes even further in his report on South Darfur, prompting a commenter who worked in the region to call him out.
5. The White Man’s burden. Childers’ story is only the latest in a long history of “Whites in Shining Armour” narratives that emphasize the heroics of white Americans and Europeans while downplaying the agency of the people of Sudan and elsewhere in Africa.
6. It’s a bad model to begin with. Saundra S of the blog Good Intentions Are Not Enough has written extensively on why donors should be wary of orphanages.

What then shall we do?

I realize some people will find these posts and be discouraged because they were moved by stories of suffering in Sudan and just want to give to someone. Don’t respond to the emotion you’re feeling by supporting Sam Childers, as there are – contrary to his claims – many other organizations working in South Sudan that do good work. If you feel compelled to give to a charity in South Sudan you might consider Oxfam. If you only give to Christian groups, consider World Vision. No group is perfect, but these are both reputable charities. My apologies for not being familiar with smaller charities on the ground, and I would appreciate suggestions from those who are more familiar with the area.

Ironically, I think Sam Childers is best summed up by blogger Chris Baron in this review – where Baron obviously believes in Childers. He asks good rhetorical questions, but obviously I think the evidence points to a different conclusion:

There are only two options, he is either an insatiable liar or there is a God in Heaven who has tasked his angels concerning Sam’s work. And how many liars do you know give up everything in order to save children, build orphanages and fight enemies who are not their own? Liars don’t do that. Liars are self serving.

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Notes on Angels of East Africa’s finances: The organization’s income has increased in recent years from $309,166 in 2006 (tax PDF), $578,992 in 2007, $446,294 in 2008, and $877,755 in 2009. Vanity Fair reported that the orphanage has an “annual budget of about $600,000, raised primarily through Childers’s speaking fees and donations from a global network of evangelicals.”

I’m not a Form 990 tax expert, so I will leave more detailed explorations to others. The travel costs ($233,717 in 2008 and $216,809 in 2009) seem high to me. Childers certainly isn’t taking a huge salary: the first year his salary was listed was 2008, at a mere $38,900. It’s hard to tell what all they’ve spent money on – all orphanage expenses are listed under line items such as “Wires to Africa.” Presumably some of this money went to purchase weapons as well?

Miscellaneous notes: here are some additional semi-relevant links that I could not work into this narrative but you may enjoy:

• The FAA fined Childers $28,000 in 2007 for transporting oil and other hazardous materials by plan.
• A bunch of photos of Sam Childers in Africa.
• A video interview in which Childers says he joined SPLA, features sick, crying Africans and naked children, and describes him as a “a rebel turned savior called the bearded white man.”
• An adaptation of a chapter in Childers’ book.
• It’s not clear to me where the claims in this PDF come from, but they outline some even more grandiose claims supposedly made by Childers – seems less reputable to me.
• This video is a short documentary on Childers (or maybe a preview for one?).
• Childers has a second book titled Living on the Edge coming out in a year or less.
• This long-ish MSNBC story also features Childers. It’s remarkable how uncritical the coverage of him has been by so many media sources. I also find it hard to imagine that they would take his more extraordinary claims seriously if he were an African rather than an American.

Disowned

This is part 4 of a longer article on Sam Childers, the “Machine Gun Preacher.” Read part 1, part 2, and part 3, or view the whole series as one long article. So how do we know that Childers isn’t telling the truth? His SPLA buddies said so. After claiming that he was the only white SPLA commander, that he let them use his house as a radio base, and that he recruited SPLA troops as his own personal child-rescuing mercenary outfit, in October 2010 the SPLA put out a press release (through long-time Sudan hand John Ashworth). It reads:

Sam Childers is not associated with the SPLA

This is to inform all who are concerned that Sam Childers is not associated with the SPLA. Sam is alleged to be busy now collecting money in the USA using the name of the SPLA. He went to the level of alleging that he is “paying  his militia force – a platoon of seasoned fighters recruited from the SPLA – and for his effort, he says, the Government of Southern Sudan has named him an honorary commander, the only white man to achieve that distinction”.

The SPLA does not know Sam Childers. SPLA cannot release its soldiers for militia purposes as that is not allowed by the SPLA Act of 2009. If the allegation is true, then the SPLA is appealing to those who are concerned to take legal measures against Sam for the misusing the name of an organization which is not associated with him.

Thanks. Signed: Lt. Gen. Kuol Deim Kuol, SPLA Spokesman

A rather inconvenient truth. This press release was actually the first I had heard of Childers, as the blogger Roving Bandit (formerly of Sudan) highlighted both Childers’ story and the SPLA’s press release.

Post-press release I believe the most sympathetic possible view of Childers is that he started an orphanage and rescued some children… but maybe he’s prone to exaggerating his feats and the means by which he accomplishes them. Maybe Maria Sliwa got carried away in promoting him writing about him and exaggerated his SPLA claims and violent tactics. But even if those stories originated with her (who can ever know?) (Update: see previous post re: Sliwa’s work as his publicist not beginning at the time of her article) [Now] Childers has now fully claimed them as his own. You can read a few excerpts of his memoir through Google Books. In it he claims:

I had SPLA soldiers with me from the first time I went to Africa. Once they realized I was as committed to helping the people of Sudan as they were, they accepted me as their friend and fellow soldier. When I saw that they didn’t have the equipment and supplied they needed in the field, I started bringing them gifts like binoculars, tents, and sleeping bags.

I started hiring the SPLA for security work, and because we worked so close together, I became an SPLA soldier myself. They saw that my heart was to make a difference in the lives of their people, so they started calling me a commander. I carried truckloads of food, salt, sugar, blankets, and other supplies to the front for soldiers, as well as preaching to them and encouraging them in battle.

In his book Childers also claims to have been present during the negotiation of the CPA (which brought Sudan’s civil war to a close). By his own telling he was the only one at the table concerned with the humanitarian needs of the Sudanese people, which didn’t make people happy: “U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell had some representatives at the talks, and I heard they got upset with me. One of them asked somebody else, ‘Who the hell is this white guy?’”

So who the hell is Sam Childers? He wants you to believe he’s working to resolve South Sudan’s problems, but to me he seems dangerously unstable. Here’s a man with a temper, selling arms to groups he likely doesn’t understand, and promoting himself with dubious claims. I certainly won’t donate. But like it or not, the Machine Gun Preacher movie is coming soon. USA Today has a brief preview, and more is sure to come. In the meantime Childers has been touring the country’s churches in a custom-painted Machine Gun Preacher truck and raising money through the Machine Gun Preacher store.

Those who follow the aid and philanthropy world may find all of this a bit reminiscent of the Greg Mortenson scandal. The Mortenson scandal erupted in part because people who were suspicious about exaggerations in Mortenson’s story kept quiet for much too long. I imagine there are many people who have met Childers throughout the years who feel the same. The United States has thousands of tiny charities – many of them with a religious mission – that never make it big. Mortenson’s claims were finally scrutinized when his books became bestsellers, but by that time his organization had already raised millions of dollars. I’m worried that Sam Childers is about to see the same type of fame: a massive increase in donations driven by his book, and especially by the Machine Gun Preacher movie.

To be fair, I see no indication that Childers has mishandled money as Mortenson apparently did. You can look up the tax records for “Boyers Pond – Shekinah Fellowship – Angels of East Africa Inc” using their tax number, EIN 251841332. (See the note at the end of this series for more on the finances.) But the lack of accountability is troubling. If the organization has a board it’s not listed publicly. The main employees of the charity appear to be Childers, his wife, and their daughter. That may be standard issue for smaller charities, but with revenues approaching $1 million annually – and certain to increase after the movie is released – it should be cause for some concern.

Continue reading part 5 here, or you can read the whole series as one long article.

To be lowly in spirit

This is part 3 of a longer article on Sam Childers, the “Machine Gun Preacher.” Read part 1 and part 2, or read the whole series as one long article. Childers has never been a modest man. More from Urbina's profile of him:

[Childers] compares himself to the biblical figure Ishmael, whose wild spirit, he says, drove women into transports of desire. “It was insane. I would have five girls in a single night. I mean, seriously, I could have had your mother if I had wanted her.” He glares at me, a speck of food stuck in his mustache, as if I don’t believe him. More than the drugs and sex, it was the violence that fed Childers.

That is the image the Reverend Sam chooses to project. He’s a violent man on a mission, and God is on his side. To some that message may be horrifying, but he’s obviously found a niche. Unfortunately there is a strain of American Christianity that eats this up. It’s quite different from the church I grew up in, which was historically pacifist (but has lately strayed towards mainstream Republican militarism). I hope most Christians will recoil in horror when they hear what Childers does in the name of God, but not everyone will. Those groups will latch onto Childers’ violent streak will just pour more money into his work.

The story could end there – with Childers as some bizarre mash-up of Rambo and missionary – except that it gets stranger. Childers claims have grown more grandiose with time, and/or he’s tailored them to fit different audiences to avoid mentioning important parts of his work that might be relevant to donors.

Childers’ organization is now called Angels of East Africa. If you go to their website, www.AngelsofEastAfrica.com, you get redirected to MachineGunPreacher.org. But, if you go to any other page on the website the content is still there, giving you a taste of how the site looked before it got the fancy (and I imagine expensive) Machine Gun Preacher makeover. The original Angels of East Africa “About” page is here. The history page has more. Much of the story is the same, but there are glaring omissions: no mention of being involved with the SPLA. Despite a description of Kony, there’s no indication that Childers was trying to hunt him down. It’s all much simpler — just rescuing orphans and building the orphanage.

Angels of East Africa is also associated with a Christian ministry called Boyers’ Pond / World Missions New Sudan. Their website (www.boyerspond.com) also now redirects to MachineGunPreacher.org. But the original webpages behind the main page are still there, including descriptions of rescue missions January 2007 (including an ambush) and May 2007. Again, there’s no mention of fighting with the SPLA or tracking down Kony. Incredibly, Childers does note in the January 2007 report that as “many times happens, several were not healthy enough to make the trip and we had to leave them behind.”

You shall not swear falsely

All of this made me think: when and where did Childers first claim involvement with the SPLA? As late as 2007 he wasn’t making those claims in material clearly written by him, even in places you’d expect him to do so. After some searching, the earliest instance of his more outrageous claims regarding active involvement in combat and interactions with the SPLA didn’t come from Childers. It came from this 2005 article written by Maria Sliwa (emphasis added):

With a physique like Jean Claude Van Damme, 42-year-old Sam Childers has hunted alligators in the US and has smacked down miscreants in Africa. This titan, who could easily pass for Hulk Hogan’s younger brother, sold hard drugs in the late 70s and early 80s and was a rider with the Outlaws, a motorcycle gang in Florida. He has since put his notorious ways behind him and now uses his muscular prowess to save lives in Sudan and Uganda.

On a recent morning, Sam surveyed the orphanage he built on the 36 acres of bush land he cleared four years ago in Nimule, South Sudan. His orphanage is a safe haven for children who are captured out of, or are lucky enough to escape from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel paramilitary group operating in Uganda and Sudan, which has been designated a terrorist group by the US State Department. Though Sam’s gut is overstocked with intestinal fortitude, the terror that rages around his orphanage is so frightening that just thinking about it can send a cold shiver of electric sparks up and down his sturdy spine.

Sam is a pastor and is the only white commander in the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), another rebel group, which, like the LRA has troops in Sudan and Uganda.

Maybe Childers has been telling a consistent story all along in private, but this is (as far as I can tell) the first public mention of his work with the SPLA. And this narrative took over the others until it became the hyperbolic Sam we hear from today. So who is Maria Sliwa? Though she didn’t disclose it in writing her article, Sliwa runs a PR firm, and Childers is her client. (Updated Correction: Maria Sliwa left a comment on this post saying that she did not begin representing Childers until 2008. I had assumed so because a) the page that has her contact info appeared to be much older, judging by the web design, and b) it reads more like a PR piece than objective journalism. She later clarified that she does not currently represent Childers.) An old page on the Boyers’ Pond site lists her as his press contact. Her website (and an older version) lists media appearances she’s arranged for clients, and her ability to push a story is quite impressive.

Maria Sliwa’s clients include several people connected to modern-day slavery and Sudan (such as Simon Deng) but also many conservative figures. One is Joseph Farah – founder of World Net Daily and one of the leading proponents of Birtherism (the “birther czar”). Farah is known to play fast and loose with the facts, to say the least, so Sliwa’s work promoting him should not inspire us to have confidence in her devotion to the truth.

Continue reading part 4 here, or you can read the whole series as one long article.