Radical Christian Missionaries in Iraq

Zionist settlers in Palestinian land (an everyday pratice)

 Ref: 

Israel uses excessive force and annexation in Palestinian territories – UN report + UN expert: Palestinian terror ‘inevitable’ result of occupation

30 September 2003 –
Israel is using excessive force in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), violating human rights in the name of counter-terrorism, and its building of a “separation wall” and expansion of settlements bear the hallmarks of annexation and illegal “conquest,” according to a United Nations human rights report released today.While acknowledging Israel’s legitimate security concerns and its right to take strong action to prevent suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism, the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights for the OPT, John Dugard, says the lawfulness of Israel’s response is to be measured in accordance with the principle of proportionality.

“The Special Rapporteur finds it difficult to accept that the excessive use of force that disregards the distinction between civilians and combatants, the creation of a humanitarian crisis by restrictions on the mobility of goods and people, the killing and inhuman treatment of children, the widespread destruction of property and, now, territorial expansion can be justified as a proportionate response to the violence and threats of violence to which Israel is subjected,” Mr. Dugard writes.“On occasion, Israel’s action in the OPT is so remote from the interests of security that it assumes the character of punishment, humiliation and conquest,” he adds. “Some limit must be placed on the violation of human rights in the name of counter-terrorism.

A balance must be struck between respect for human rights and the interests of security.”Mr. Dugard notes that the wall separating Israel from the West Bank “has been frenetically pursued,” does not follow the de facto boundary line, and incorporates large areas of the West Bank into Israel, with over 210,000 Palestinians threatened with being effectively cut off from their farmlands, workplaces, schools and health clinics.“The evidence strongly suggests that Israel is determined to create facts on the ground amounting to de facto annexation. Annexation of this kind, known as conquest in international law, is prohibited by the Charter of the United Nations and the Fourth Geneva Convention,” he adds, calling for it to be condemned as unlawful annexation.

Mr. Dugard also says that restrictions on freedom of movement continue to create a humanitarian crisis in the OPT and that the death toll continues to rise as a result of suicide bombings and military incursions.Calling for an independent inquiry on Palestinians in Israeli jails, he writes: “Sadly, allegations of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment continue to be made.”

 Ref: UN

UN report + UN expert: Palestinian terror ‘inevitable’ result of occupationA report commissioned by the United Nations suggests that Palestinian terrorism is the inevitable consequence of Israeli occupation and laws that resemble South African apartheid – a claim Israel rejected Tuesdayas enflaming hatred between Jews and Palestinians.The report by John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the UN Human Rights Council, will be presented next month, but it has been posted on the body’s Web site.AdvertisementIn it, Dugard, a South African lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in the 1980s, says “common sense … dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by Al-Qaida, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation.”

“While Palestinian terrorist acts are to be deplored, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation,” writes Dugard, whose 25-page report accuses the Israel of acts and policies consistent with all three.He cited checkpoints and roadblocks restricting Palestinian movement to house demolitions and what he terms the Judaization of Jerusalem.

“As long as there is occupation, there will be terrorism,” he argues.”Acts of terror against military occupation must be seen in historical context,” Dugard says. “This is why every effort should be made to bring the occupation to a speedy end. Until this is done, peace cannot be expected, and violence will continue.

“Israel’s UN ambassador in Geneva slammed Dugard’s analysis.”The common link between Al-Qaida and the Palestinian terrorists is that both intentionally target civilians with the mere purpose to kill,” Itzhak Levanon said. “The fact that Professor Dugard is ignoring this essential fact, demonstrates his inability to use objectivity in his assessment.””Professor Dugard will better serve the cause of peace by ceasing to enflame the hatred between Israelis and Palestinians, who have embarked on serious talks to solve this contentious situation.

“Dugard was appointed in 2001 as an unpaid expert by the now-defunct UN Human Rights Commission to investigate only violations by the Israeli side, prompting Israel and the U.S. to dismiss his reports as one-sided.

Israel refused to allow him to conduct a UN-mandated fact-finding mission on its Gaza offensive in 2006.The report will be presented next month at the 47-nation rights council’sfirst regular session of the year. The new body has been widely criticized – even by its founder, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan – for spending most of its time criticizing one government, Israel’s, over alleged abuses.Ref:

Haartez

Something bad is happening to us (the Israeli version of Abu Ghraib )

Three years ago, the CBS television network broadcast photos of American soldiers abusing prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The horrifying pictures led to the trials of eight soldiers, dismissals and a storm of outrage in America. At the trial of one prison guard, who was sentenced to eight years in jail, a psychologist gave his evaluation: that the man was an entirely ordinary person, without any particular violent tendencies, who served as a guard for many years in civilian life but never behaved sadistically toward American prisoners. The situation of occupier and occupied, as opposed to that of citizen versus citizen, causes ordinary people to become violent and lose restraint. At Abu Ghraib, the trial found, there was institutionalized contempt at every level. The prison guards understood that “this is the way to behave here.”

Last night, the investigative television program “Fact” broadcast pictures of our own Abu Ghraib affair. It is doubtful whether a country that has grown used to 40 years of occupation, and the stories that accompany it, will be shocked. We have become accustomed to treating the Palestinians as inferior people. Generations come and go, and new soldiers abuse the residents of occupied Hebron in almost the same manner. Stories similar to those broadcast last night were exposed by the Breaking the Silence group three years ago. The saying “occupation corrupts” has become a slogan of the left instead of a warning signal to everyone.

This time, it was regular soldiers in the Kfir Brigade. They exposed their backsides and sexual organs to Palestinians, pressed an electric heater to the face of a young boy, beat young boys senseless, recorded everything on their mobile phones and sent it to their friends. One of their “mischievous acts” was to test how long a Palestinian who was being choked could survive without breathing. When he passed out, the experiment was stopped. The soldiers described activities to “break the routine” that consisted entirely of abuse. It was enough for a boy “to look at us the wrong way” for him to be beaten.

Earlier, at the trial of First Lieutenant Yaakov Gigi, officers spoke of burnout, of “something bad happening to the brigade,” of a Wild West, of a moral crisis. The commander of the brigade, Colonel Itai Virov, said “we failed on several parameters.” His words reflect a denial of the depth of the failure. This continuing routine, far from the eyes of the commanders, must lead to a series of investigations, and perhaps to dismissals as well. It is unconscionable for the head of the Hebron Brigade, the division commander, the GOC Central Command and even the chief of staff to ignore the ongoing behavior of soldiers in the brigade responsible for routine security in the West Bank. Colonel Virov admitted that there was a conspiracy of silence in the brigade – in other words, a norm of abuse and its concealment. To change norms, one has to shock and be shocked, not be satisfied with a few imprisonments and empty words about a loss of values.

Perfectly ordinary people, as the American psychologist said of the Abu Ghraib abusers, are capable of behaving like monsters when they receive a message from the top that it is permissible to abuse, beat, choke, burn, make people miserable and generally do anything that man’s evil genius is capable of inventing to others who are under their control. Something bad is happening to us, they are saying in the Kfir Brigade. That “something” is the occupation.

Ref: Haaretz

Canada’s top court rules out ‘Jerusalem, Israel’ in passports

OTTAWA – A Canadian Jew has lost his court battle to have his birthplace, Jerusalem, recognized as part of Israel on his Canadian passport.

The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear an appeal by Eliyahu Veffer, who wanted his passport to show that he was born in “Jerusalem, Israel,” rather than “Jerusalem.”

Veffer appealed to the Supreme Court after lower courts ruled that Canada’s policy did not unreasonably violate his freedom of religion, nor did it unfairly discriminate against him.

“With the exception of Jerusalem, Canada’s policy is that when a passport applicant is born in a city that is in disputed territory, the applicant is allowed to choose which country to include on his or her application. But for Jerusalem alone, Canada says you cannot put Israel, you cannot put Jordan, you cannot put anything,” said David Matas, Veffer’s lawyer.

Lawyers for the Canadian government argued that Canada did not want to show favoritism to either side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or prejudice a peaceful political settlement. In a court affidavit, former Canadian ambassador to Israel Michael Bell added that “Canada opposes Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem and does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of the City of Jerusalem as defined in the UN Partition Plan.”

In response, Matas said that Canada’s current policy has only been in existence since April 1976. “From 1948-1976, Canada allowed Jerusalem, Israel in Canadian passports, for East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem, without any apparent impact on Canadian perceived neutrality,” he said.

Matas did not take a position as to what the passport office ought to do if a Palestinian chose “Jerusalem, Palestine” for his passport. “That would be up to the passport office,” Matas said. “But the problem would be that Palestine is not a country.”

Ref: Haartez

U.S. teens stumped by history survey

ewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic questions about history and literature during a recent telephone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one-quarter thought that Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World sometime after 1750, not in 1492.

The results of the survey, released Tuesday, demonstrate that a significant proportion of American teenagers live in “stunning ignorance” of history and literature, according to the group that commissioned it. Known as Common Core, the organization describes itself as a new, nonpartisan research and advocacy organization that will press for more teaching of the liberal arts in American public schools.

The group argues that President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law has impoverished America’s public school curriculum by holding schools accountable for student scores on annual tests in reading and math but in no other subjects.

Politically, the group’s leaders are strange bedfellows. Its founding board includes Antonia Cortese, the executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, the union that is a powerful force in the Democratic Party, and Diane Ravitch, an education professor at New York University who was assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush. Its executive director is Lynne Munson, a former deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and former special assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne.

“We’re a truly diverse group,” Munson said. “We almost certainly vote differently, and we have varying opinions about different aspects of educational reform. But when it comes to concern that all of America’s children receive a comprehensive liberal arts and science education, we all agree.”

In the survey, 1,200 17-year-olds were reached by telephone in January and asked to answer 33 multiple choice questions about history and literature, which were read aloud to them. The questions were drawn from a test administered by the U.S. government in 1986.

About a quarter of the teenagers surveyed were unable to correctly identify Adolf Hitler as Germany’s chancellor during World War II, instead identifying him variously as a munitions maker, an Austrian premier and the German Kaiser.

On literature, the teenagers fared even worse. Only four in 10 could pick the name of Ralph Ellison’s novel about a young man’s growing up in the south and moving to Harlem, “Invisible Man,” from a list of titles, and only about half knew that in the Bible, Job is known for his patience in suffering. About as many said he was known for his skill as a builder, or his prowess in battle, or his prophetic abilities.

The history question that proved easiest asked the respondents to identify the man who declared, “I have a dream.” Ninety-seven percent of teenagers correctly picked Martin Luther King Jr.

About eight in ten teenagers, a higher percentage than on any other literature question, knew that Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is about two children affected by the conflict in their community when their father defends a black man in court.

In a joint introduction to their report, Cortese and Ravitch did not directly blame the No Child law for the dismal survey results, but argued that the law has led schools to focus too narrowly on reading and math, thereby crowding time out of the school day for history, literature and other subjects.

“The nation’s education system has become obsessed with testing and basic skills because of the requirements of U.S. law, and that is not healthy,” Cortese and Ravitch said.

A string of studies have documented the narrowing of the American public school curriculum since Bush signed the U.S. law in January 2002. Last week, the Center on Education Policy, a Washington research group that has closely studied the law’s implementation, estimated, based on its own extensive survey, that 62 percent of school systems nationwide had added an average of three hours of math or reading instruction each week, at the expense of time spent on social studies, art and other subjects.

But the Bush administration and some business and civil rights groups warn against weakening the law, arguing that students need reading and math skills to succeed in other subjects.

Ref: Herald Tribune

Latin America breaks free of the US

The US has lost ground in Latin America over the past decade, since the project to develop the Free Trade Area of the Americas flopped and since leftwing governments took power and used it with imagination and vigour. The US continues to try to block such emancipation by promoting more free trade agreements, and increasing military cooperation in the name of the war on terrorism and narcotics and the defence of market democracy.

Ref: Le Monde

Africa says no – and means it

The unimaginable has happened, to the displeasure of arrogant Europe. Africa, thought to be so poor that it would agree to anything, has said no in rebellious pride. No to the straitjacket of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), no to the complete liberalisation of trade, no to the latest manifestations of the colonial pact.

It happened in December at the second EU-Africa summit in Lisbon, where the main objective was to force the African countries to sign new trade agreements by 31 December 2007 in accordance with the Cotonou Convention of 2000 winding up the 1975 Lomé accords. Under these, goods from former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific are imported into the European Union more or less duty-free, except for products such as sugar, meat and bananas that are a problem for European producers. The World Trade Organisation has insisted that these preferential arrangements be dismantled or replaced by trade agreements based on reciprocity, claiming that this is the only way African countries can continue to enjoy different treatment. The EU opted for completely free trade in the guise of EPAs. So the 27 were asking African, Caribbean and Pacific countries to allow EU goods and services to enter their markets duty-free (1).

The president of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, denounced these strong-arm tactics, refused to sign and stormed out. South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki immediately supported his stand and Namibia also decided not to sign (bravely, since an increase in EU customs duties would make it impossible for Namibia to export or continue to produce beef). Even French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who made unfortunate remarks at Dakar in July 2007 (2), supported the countries that were most strongly opposed to these agreements, saying he was in favour of globalisation but not the despoliation of countries that had nothing left (3).

The EPAs aroused wide public concern. Social movements and trade union organisations south of the Sahara mobilised against them. And the revolt against them bore fruit: the summit ended in failure. The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, was forced to back down and accept the African countries’ call for further discussions. He has promised to resume negotiations in February.

This crucial victory is another sign that things are improving for Africa. In the past few years, the bloodiest conflicts have been settled, leaving only Darfur, Somalia and East Congo. Democratic progress has been consolidated and local economies prosper under the guidance of a new generation of leaders, despite social inequalities.

Africa has another asset in the form of massive Chinese investments. China will overtake the EU as one of the continent’s principal suppliers and could beat the United States to become its most important client by 2010. The time when Europe could impose disastrous structural adjustment programmes is long gone. Africa has had enough.

Ref: Le MOnde By Ignacio Ramonet

Why the US has really gone broke

Global confidence in the US economy has reached zero, as was proved by last month’s stock market meltdown. But there is an enormous anomaly in the US economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the housing bubble and the prospect of recession: 60 years of misallocation of resources, and borrowings, to the establishment and maintenance of a military-industrial complex as the basis of the nation’s economic life
By Chalmers Johnson

The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the “smartest guys in the room” — the title of Alex Gibney’s prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.

As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.

There are three broad aspects to the US debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on “defence” projects that bear no relation to the national security of the US. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.

Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures — “military Keynesianism” (which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic). By that, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.

Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the US. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.

Fiscal disaster
It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations’ military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defence budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China. Defence-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The US has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth. Leaving out President Bush’s two on-going wars, defence spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defence budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since the second world war.

Before we try to break down and analyse this gargantuan sum, there is one important caveat. Figures on defence spending are notoriously unreliable. The numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and the Congressional Budget Office do not agree with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow for political economy at the Independent Institute, says: “A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon’s (always well publicised) basic budget total and double it” (1). Even a cursory reading of newspaper articles about the Department of Defense will turn up major differences in statistics about its expenses. Some 30-40% of the defence budget is “black”,” meaning that these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects. There is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate.

There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand — including a desire for secrecy on the part of the president, the secretary of defence, and the military-industrial complex — but the chief one is that members of Congress, who profit enormously from defence jobs and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department of Defense. In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within the executive branch closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. It required all federal agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department of Homeland Security, has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not penalised either department for ignoring the law. All numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect.

In discussing the fiscal 2008 defence budget, as released on 7 February 2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William D Hartung of the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative (2) and Fred Kaplan, defence correspondent for Slate.org (3). They agree that the Department of Defense requested $481.4bn for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment. They also agree on a figure of $141.7bn for the “supplemental” budget to fight the global war on terrorism — that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually covered by the basic Pentagon budget. The Department of Defense also asked for an extra $93.4bn to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional “allowance” (a new term in defence budget documents) of $50bn to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This makes a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5bn.

But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the US military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4bn for the Department of Energy goes towards developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3bn in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt and Pakistan). Another $1.03bn outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment and re-enlistment incentives for the overstretched US military, up from a mere $174m in 2003, when the war in Iraq began. The Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7bn, 50% of it for the long-term care of the most seriously injured among the 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and 1,708 in Afghanistan. The amount is universally derided as inadequate. Another $46.4bn goes to the Department of Homeland Security.

Missing from this compilation is $1.9bn to the Department of Justice for the paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5bn to the Department of the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund; $7.6bn for the military-related activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and well over $200bn in interest for past debt-financed defence outlays. This brings US spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year, conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion.

Military Keynesianism
Such expenditures are not only morally obscene, they are fiscally unsustainable. Many neo-conservatives and poorly informed patriotic Americans believe that, even though our defence budget is huge, we can afford it because we are the richest country on Earth. That statement is no longer true. The world’s richest political entity, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, is the European Union. The EU’s 2006 GDP was estimated to be slightly larger than that of the US. Moreover, China’s 2006 GDP was only slightly smaller than that of the US, and Japan was the world’s fourth richest nation.

A more telling comparison that reveals just how much worse we’re doing can be found among the current accounts of various nations. The current account measures the net trade surplus or deficit of a country plus cross-border payments of interest, royalties, dividends, capital gains, foreign aid, and other income. In order for Japan to manufacture anything, it must import all required raw materials. Even after this incredible expense is met, it still has an $88bn per year trade surplus with the US and enjoys the world’s second highest current account balance (China is number one). The US is number 163 — last on the list, worse than countries such as Australia and the UK that also have large trade deficits. Its 2006 current account deficit was $811.5bn; second worst was Spain at $106.4bn. This is unsustainable.

It’s not just that our tastes for foreign goods, including imported oil, vastly exceed our ability to pay for them. We are financing them through massive borrowing. On 7 November 2007, the US Treasury announced that the national debt had breached _$9 trillion for the first time. This was just five weeks after Congress raised the “debt ceiling” to $9.815 trillion. If you begin in 1789, at the moment the constitution became the supreme law of the land, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not top $1 trillion until 1981. When George Bush became president in January 2001, it stood at approximately $5.7 trillion. Since then, it has increased by 45%. This huge debt can be largely explained by our defence expenditures.

The top spenders
The world’s top 10 military spenders and the approximate amounts each currently budgets for its military establishment are:

Rank Country Military budget
1. United States (FY 2008 budget) $623bn
2. China (2004) $65bn
3. Russia $50bn
4. France (2005) $45bn
5. United Kingdom $42.8bn
6. Japan (2007) $41.75bn
7. Germany (2003) $35.1bn
8. Italy (2003) $28.2bn
9. South Korea (2003) $21.1bn
10. India (2005 est.) $19bn
World total military expenditures (2004 est) $1,100bn
World total (minus the US) $500bn

Our excessive military expenditures did not occur over just a few short years or simply because of the Bush administration’s policies. They have been going on for a very long time in accordance with a superficially plausible ideology, and have now become so entrenched in our democratic political system that they are starting to wreak havoc. This is military Keynesianism — the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption.

This ideology goes back to the first years of the cold war. During the late 1940s, the US was haunted by economic anxieties. The great depression of the 1930s had been overcome only by the war production boom of the second world war. With peace and demobilisation, there was a pervasive fear that the depression would return. During 1949, alarmed by the Soviet Union’s detonation of an atomic bomb, the looming Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, a domestic recession, and the lowering of the Iron Curtain around the USSR’s European satellites, the US sought to draft basic strategy for the emerging cold war. The result was the militaristic National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze, then head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. Dated 14 April 1950 and signed by President Harry S Truman on 30 September 1950, it laid out the basic public economic policies that the US pursues to the present day.

In its conclusions, NSC-68 asserted: “One of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living” (4).

With this understanding, US strategists began to build up a massive munitions industry, both to counter the military might of the Soviet Union (which they consistently overstated) and also to maintain full employment, as well as ward off a possible return of the depression. The result was that, under Pentagon leadership, entire new industries were created to manufacture large aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and surveillance and communications satellites. This led to what President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address of 6 February 1961: “The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience” — the military-industrial complex.

By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in US manufacturing. From 1947 to 1990, the combined US military budgets amounted to $8.7 trillion. Even though the Soviet Union no longer exists, US reliance on military Keynesianism has, if anything, ratcheted up, thanks to the massive vested interests that have become entrenched around the military establishment. Over time, a commitment to both guns and butter has proven an unstable configuration. Military industries crowd out the civilian economy and lead to severe economic weaknesses. Devotion to military Keynesianism is a form of slow economic suicide.

Higher spending, fewer jobs
On 1 May 2007, the Center for Economic and Policy Research of Washington, DC, released a study prepared by the economic and political forecasting company Global Insight on the long-term economic impact of increased military spending. Guided by economist Dean Baker, this research showed that, after an initial demand stimulus, by about the sixth year the effect of increased military spending turns negative. The US economy has had to cope with growing defence spending for more than 60 years. Baker found that, after 10 years of higher defence spending, there would be 464,000 fewer jobs than in a scenario that involved lower defence spending.

Baker concluded: “It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy. In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment” (5).

These are only some of the many deleterious effects of military Keynesianism.

It was believed that the US could afford both a massive military establishment and a high standard of living, and that it needed both to maintain full employment. But it did not work out that way. By the 1960s it was becoming apparent that turning over the nation’s largest manufacturing enterprises to the Department of Defense and producing goods without any investment or consumption value was starting to crowd out civilian economic activities. The historian Thomas E Woods Jr observes that, during the 1950s and 1960s, between one-third and two-thirds of all US research talent was siphoned off into the military sector (6). It is, of course, impossible to know what innovations never appeared as a result of this diversion of resources and brainpower into the service of the military, but it was during the 1960s that we first began to notice Japan was outpacing us in the design and quality of a range of consumer goods, including household electronics and automobiles.

Can we reverse the trend?
Nuclear weapons furnish a striking illustration of these anomalies. Between the 1940s and 1996, the US spent at least $5.8 trillion on the development, testing and construction of nuclear bombs. By 1967, the peak year of its nuclear stockpile, the US possessed some 32,500 deliverable atomic and hydrogen bombs, none of which, thankfully, was ever used. They perfectly illustrate the Keynesian principle that the government can provide make-work jobs to keep people employed. Nuclear weapons were not just America’s secret weapon, but also its secret economic weapon. As of 2006, we still had 9,960 of them. There is today no sane use for them, while the trillions spent on them could have been used to solve the problems of social security and health care, quality education and access to higher education for all, not to speak of the retention of highly-skilled jobs within the economy.

The pioneer in analysing what has been lost as a result of military Keynesianism was the late Seymour Melman (1917-2004), a professor of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia University. His 1970 book, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, was a prescient analysis of the unintended consequences of the US preoccupation with its armed forces and their weaponry since the onset of the cold war. Melman wrote: “From 1946 to 1969, the United States government spent over $1,000bn on the military, more than half of this under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — the period during which the [Pentagon-dominated] state management was established as a formal institution. This sum of staggering size (try to visualize a billion of something) does not express the cost of the military establishment to the nation as a whole. The true cost is measured by what has been foregone, by the accumulated deterioration in many facets of life, by the inability to alleviate human wretchedness of long duration.”

In an important exegesis on Melman’s relevance to the current American economic situation, Thomas Woods writes: “According to the US Department of Defense, during the four decades from 1947 through 1987 it used (in 1982 dollars) $7.62 trillion in capital resources. In 1985, the Department of Commerce estimated the value of the nation’s plant and equipment, and infrastructure, at just over _$7.29 trillion… The amount spent over that period could have doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing stock” (7).

The fact that we did not modernise or replace our capital assets is one of the main reasons why, by the turn of the 21st century, our manufacturing base had all but evaporated. Machine tools, an industry on which Melman was an authority, are a particularly important symptom. In November 1968, a five-year inventory disclosed “that 64% of the metalworking machine tools used in US industry were 10 years old or older. The age of this industrial equipment (drills, lathes, etc.) marks the United States’ machine tool stock as the oldest among all major industrial nations, and it marks the continuation of a deterioration process that began with the end of the second world war. This deterioration at the base of the industrial system certifies to the continuous debilitating and depleting effect that the military use of capital and research and development talent has had on American industry.”

Nothing has been done since 1968 to reverse these trends and it shows today in our massive imports of equipment — from medical machines like _proton accelerators for radiological therapy (made primarily in Belgium, Germany, and Japan) to cars and trucks.

Our short tenure as the world’s lone superpower has come to an end. As Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman has written: “Again and again it has always been the world’s leading lending country that has been the premier country in terms of political influence, diplomatic influence and cultural influence. It’s no accident that we took over the role from the British at the same time that we took over the job of being the world’s leading lending country. Today we are no longer the world’s leading lending country. In fact we are now the world’s biggest debtor country, and we are continuing to wield influence on the basis of military prowess alone” (8).

Some of the damage can never be rectified. There are, however, some steps that the US urgently needs to take. These include reversing Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, beginning to liquidate our global empire of over 800 military bases, cutting from the defence budget all projects that bear no relationship to national security and ceasing to use the defence budget as a Keynesian jobs programme.

If we do these things we have a chance of squeaking by. If we don’t, we face probable national insolvency and a long depression.

Ref: Le Monde

A Christmas Reflection on Palestine

As Christmas approaches this year, the thoughts of Christians all over the world will once again turn to Bethlehem, the holy town where Jesus was born over two millennia ago. Voices will be raised in joyful celebration and children everywhere will re-create the Christmas story to help us remember the circumstances in which the Christ child was born.

Such a momentous occasion in such humble surroundings heralded a new way of thinking about people’s relationship with God and with each other. It shook the foundations of an unforgiving society presided over by an unforgiving God and proclaimed peace and goodwill on earth amongst all people. There was indeed much to hope for.

However, the tranquil pastoral scene so familiar to us is not at all evident in Bethlehem today. Bethlehem does not lie still, and peace on earth and goodwill towards all is as elusive as ever. The tyranny of Israel’s occupation and its colonial expansionism is crippling the lives of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike. Yet, many Christians will again ignore the misery suffered by the Palestinians in the Holy Land and will celebrate Christmas without remembering that it was amongst this people and in their land that Jesus was born. Priests will chant, masses will be said, carols will be sung and nativity scenes will be created, but it is unlikely that many sermons will urge Christian congregations to speak out against the crimes being committed in Palestine.

Only recently, a delegation of eminent Australian Church leaders returned from visiting the Holy Land and reported their distress at “the suffering and fear experienced daily by large numbers of people.” [1] The report criticizes Israel’s military occupation for the “systematic harassment, physical and psychological oppression, widespread unemployment, poverty, and economic deprivation” [2] of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims. No doubt these church leaders will encourage their ministries to spread the word before the momentum is lost, but there are many forces working against justice for the Palestinians. Their statement has already been criticized by the Israeli ambassador and they are likely to face objections not only from Jews who support a Zionist state in Israel, but also from Christian quarters.

A dangerous Christian ideology which endorses the rhetoric of Zionism and the conquest of all Palestine for Israel is making its presence felt in Australia. This Christian fervour for Israel has found expression in a revitalised Christian Zionism that began back in the sixteenth century [3] and is directed today against Islam and Muslims. In America particularly, it has misconstrued the messianic and apocalyptic legacy of the Christian faith and has replaced the Jewish and communist Anti-Christ of Christian Zionism’s earlier imaginings with an Islamic Anti-Christ. This Anti-Christ, it believes, will be defeated in Israel where all mankind will gather for the coming of the Messiah. That it should take place in Israel, given the numbers of the world’s populations, is an absurd notion even amongst the most devout. That the dispossession, degradation and humiliation of the Palestinians who have lived in this land for millennia, can be condoned on such a pretext is even more abhorrent and preposterous.

Unfortunately, the influence of this Christian Zionism is growing rapidly and threatens the thinking of a whole generation of mainstream Christians regardless of their denominations, including Christians in the Holy Land. Father Rafiq Khoury of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, gives a very disturbing account of Christian Zionism’s effect on religion and politics. [4] Where once Christians and Muslims shared common values and aspirations in Palestinian society, Christian Zionism has succeeded in fragmenting this already battered community as it struggles to withstand Israel’s punishing occupation. Amongst certain sections of this society, Christians and Muslims are now viewing each other with suspicion, and Christians in Palestine, like those abroad, are beginning to see Islam as the enemy. Needless to say, this has been enormously detrimental to the Palestine liberation movement.

It would surprise many Christians in the West that Palestinian Christians and Muslims have prayed in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity for centuries. In fact, the Qur’an – the holy book of Islam – refers often, and with great reverence, to Jesus and Mary. Muhammad himself preserved an icon of Mary and the child Jesus after the conquest of Mecca and ordered that it remain within the Ka’ba to which Muslims make their obligatory pilgrimage from all over the world. [5]

Since 638 CE, Muslims have had the right to pray in the south aisle of the church when the Patriarch of Jerusalem handed over Palestine to Caliph Omar as he swept into Bethlehem with his Arab armies. [6] Muslims recognise Jesus as the Christ, the mightiest Messenger of God who was born miraculously of the Virgin Mary and who, through God, was able to perform miracles. However, Christians and Muslims part ways on Christ’s divinity. Muslims believe that there has always been and continues to be one God only and that joining Christ and the Holy Spirit with God the Father in what is known as the Trinity ­ a major tenet of Christianity compromises that singular divinity of God.

It has not though affected their recognition of, and reverence for, Jesus and Mary. The highly regarded theologian of the early Christian Church, St John of Damascus actually thought that Islam was merely another form of Christianity[7], and indeed today, St John would probably be more comfortable with the practices and beliefs of Muslims than he would with the form of Christianity that has developed in the West, particularly Christian Zionism.

So much of the fear and antagonism we see today against Muslims come from ignorance. In Palestine, Christian and Muslims have lived together in harmony for centuries, and particularly in Bethlehem, they have not only shared Christmas celebrations, but even the Muslim feasts Eid al-Fitr at the end of the Ramadan fast and Eid al-Adha. As one young Bethlehem tour guide commented in 2002:

“We know how to celebrate together, because we know how to weep together. We have suffered as one people under 35 years of occupation. The same week that Mary, a Muslim mother of seven was killed in Beit Jala, Johnny, a 17-year-old, died in Manger Square as he was coming out of the Church of the Nativity, both shot by Israeli snipers. We’re all inmates together, Muslims and Christians, in the same miserable prison called Palestine. We have no freedom, no peace, no jobs, no money for winter heating, no travelling to Jerusalem or between towns and villages, no future.”

And that is the sum of what is so often forgotten in the search for peace and justice: the escalating inhuman situation suffered by the Palestinians Christians and Muslims.

Sing as we might this Christmas, the hopes and dreams of all the years is unlikely to be met in Bethlehem for those who live there. Nor are they likely to be met for the Palestinians barely hanging on to their miserable existence in Gaza, or the Palestinians in the other cities, towns and villages in the Holy Land and even less for the stateless Palestinians long deprived of hope in the refugee camps. Every chorister’s hallelujah will just be a death knell for another generation of Palestinians and every Christmas reflection will become meaningless words of Christian faith, unless we are prepared to look beyond the tinsel and the feasting and really do something to stop Israel’s crimes against both Christians and Muslims in Palestine.

Ref: Counterpounch
Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia. See http://www.womenforpalestine.com

Footnotes:

[1] Statement by Australian Church Leaders, Bethlehem, 18 December 2007

[2] Ibid.

[3] Fr Rafiq Khoury, “Effects of Christian Zionism on religion, Christian local churches and peace research”, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Jerusalem, 2004 (a presentation given at the Al-Sabeel International Conference on 15 April 2004)

[4] Ibid.

[5] Uri Rubin, “The Ka’ba: Aspects of its Ritual Function and Position in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986) 97-131

[6] Dr G S P Freeman-Grenville, The Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestine Exploration Fund, January 1994

[7] William Dalrymple, “What Muslims and Christians share: A Christmas meditation”, The New Statesman, 19 December 2005