Advocate Forum

Comment

Comment by Paul Kortenhoven on June 8, 2009 at 10:49am

Good article for all of us to read...Paul

Military spending sets new record

By Jorn Madslien
Business reporter, BBC News
Global military spending rose 4% in 2008 to a record $1,464bn (£914bn) - up 45% since 1999, according to the Stockholm-based peace institute Sipri.

In contrast with civilian aerospace and airlines, the defence industry remains healthy.

"The global financial crisis has yet to have an impact on major arms companies' revenues, profits and order backlogs," Sipri said.

Peace-keeping operations - which also benefit defence firms - rose 11%.

Missions were launched in trouble spots such as Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"Another record was set, with the total of international peace operation personnel reaching 187,586," said Sipri, or Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Growth industry

As the world's aerospace and defence industry prepares for next week's Paris air show centenary, it seems much of the focus is set to shift away from troubled civilian aircraft makers, which are struggling with reduced orders from recession-hit airlines, towards the companies that make fighter jets and other military hardware.

The top 10 global arms producers
Boeing $30.5bn
BAE Systems $29.9bn
Lockheed Martin $29.4bn
Northrop Grumman$24.6bn
General Dynamics $21.5bn
Raytheon $19.5bn
EADS (West Europe) $13.1bn
L-3 Communications $11.2bn
Finmeccanica $9.9bn
Thales $9.4bn Source: Sipri
In total, the 100 leading defence manufacturers sold arms worth $347bn during 2007, the most recent year for which reliable data are available.

Almost all the companies were American or European. Some 61% of the total was accounted for by 44 US companies, with 32 West European companies accounting for a further 31%. Other companies were Russian, Japanese, Israeli and Indian.

"Since 2002, the value of the top 100 arms sales has increased by 37% in real terms," Sipri said. "The US presidency of George W Bush... was a period of continuity in the arms industry. This followed a period of consolidation in the 1990s and early 2000s."

The US aerospace and defence giant Boeing remains the world's largest, with arms sales of $30.5bn during 2007. The UK's BAE Systems ranked a close second, with arms sales of $29.9bn, while Lockheed Martin was third with $29.4bn in sales.

Big spender

The top 10 military spenders
USA $607bn
China $84.9bn
France $65.74bn
UK $65.35bn
Russia $58.6bn
Germany $46.87bn
Japan $46.38bn
Italy $40.69bn
Saudi Arabia $38.2bn
India $30.0bn Source: Sipri. All figures from 2008.
The US remains the biggest spender, accounting for 58% of the total global spending increase during the decade, though China and Russia have reduced the gap.

Both tripled military spending over the decade, and Russia "is maintaining plans for further increases despite severe economic problems".

Military spending in the Middle East fell slightly during 2008, but Sipri saw this as a temporary drop. "Many countries in the region [are] planning major arms purchases," Sipri said.

One exception was Iraq, whose military budget rose 133% during 2008 when compared with 2007. "Iraq remains highly dependent on the US for ams supplies, with numerous orders planned," Sipri says.

US military spending accounted for 58% of the total global spending increase during the decade, with extra funds set aside to fight the "war on terror".

In addition, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost the US $903bn.

"The idea of the 'war on terror' has encouraged many countries to see their problems through a highly militarised lens, using this to justify high military spending," said Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of the military expenditure project at Sipri, or Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Trouble ahead?

High levels of military spending can cause economic difficulties for even the wealthiest of nations, Sipri insisted.

"During the eight-year presidency of George W Bush, US military expenditure increased to the highest level in real terms since World War Two," Sipri said.

"This increase has contributed to soaring budget deficits," the yearbook states, pointing to how both the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts were funded "primarily through emergency supplemental appropriations outside the regular budgetary process", funded by borrowing.

"Arms companies may face reduced demand in the future if governments cut military spending in response to rising budget deficits," Sipri observed.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/8086117.stm

Published: 2009/06/08 09:00:10 GMT

© BBC MMIX
Print Sponsor

Comment by Paul Kortenhoven on April 25, 2009 at 1:35pm

Good article to help us understand the violence in the Israeli-Palestinian continued conflict....Paul

BBC NEWS
Demolitions build Jerusalem tension

By Katya Adler
BBC News, Jerusalem

Five young children cling to their mother. All of them are crying. This morning, without warning, Israeli bulldozers came to destroy their home in Jabal Mukabar area of East Jerusalem.

Speaking amongst the mangled remains of her house, Samia Ihdaidoon says she was still sleeping when Israel's police arrived.

"They came pounding on the doors and climbed in through the bedroom window as if it was a raid. They said I had five minutes to put on my scarf and collect our valuables, then I had to get out. It's a shock for the children. Look at their faces. I'm in despair."

Israel says the Ihdaidoon's house was demolished because it was built illegally.

Angry neighbours congregate in the rubble.
“ We're not going to leave. Why should I leave for the Israelis? This is our land. Even if we have to put up a tent and live in it ”
Samia Ihdaidoon

Osama Zahaika told us Israel makes it almost impossible for Palestinians to get building permits in East Jerusalem.

"As a Palestinian I know why they do it. Israel doesn't want us here. My house, most of the Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem are illegal. Not granting us construction permission, demolishing our houses. It's a form of quiet transfer," Mr Zahaika says.

"People like to talk of human rights. Where are human rights here? If you destroy a family home in winter, it's cold. In summer, it's hot. At the same time Israelis can build and live in East Jerusalem without being disturbed. Is it one rule for us, one rule for the Jews, the Israelis?"

More to come

Israel's Association for Civil Rights says Jerusalem's municipality uses planning regulations to curb Palestinian construction.

Although Palestinians make up an estimated one third of the Jerusalem population, according to ACRI, only 7.25% of the city's land is designated for their building projects.

Hundreds of East Jerusalem Palestinians have lost their homes over the past few years, thanks to demolition orders.

Israeli NGO's, such as B'Tselem, warn that close to 2,000 could face the same fate over the next months.

If current demolition orders are carried out, this would be the largest loss of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem since Israel captured the territory just over 40 years ago.

At the same time, Jewish Israeli citizens are moving in to the area. This is illegal under international law as East Jerusalem is occupied territory, though Israel disputes this and has annexed the area.

Palestinians fear this could mean the end of a dream - to one day have East Jerusalem as the capital of their own state.

The international community's Middle East envoy Tony Blair told me this cannot be allowed to happen.

"The only two-state solution which will work is one that is fair and that will mean East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. It will also mean that it is a state that is viable in terms of its territory."

'Hot air'

The issue of home demolitions is now attracting widespread international attention.

As we stood, hot and dusty, amongst the Ihdaidoon's rubble, four smart, shiny United Nations cars powered towards us.

“ Even if we are talking about a few buildings that have been pulled down, this is not expulsion. When there is illegal building, we have to enforce the law but nothing will be done without the co-operation of the residents. ”
Naomi Tsur Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem

Robert Serry, the UN's Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, stepped out.

It was a surprise visit. He offered his sympathies to the family. They thanked him politely but asked for action, not just words.

Mr Serry said he'd spoken about the East Jerusalem demolitions to Israel's new right-wing government.

"Of course, if these kind of things which I'm now seeing here continue they will not help any peace process. I know how much Jerusalem is dear to many Israelis but it is also dear to Palestinians," Mr Serry said.

"We have to find a solution to that but we, as the international community, expect from the parties - in this case from the Jerusalem authorities here - not to make our work even harder."

New plan

At Jerusalem's municipality, the new Deputy Mayor, Naomi Tsur, said there was a lot of hot air surrounding the issue, that all Jerusalem residents are treated equally. Illegally built houses are demolished in West Jerusalem too.

"Even if we are talking about a few buildings that have been pulled down, this is not expulsion. When there is illegal building, we have to enforce the law but nothing will be done without the co-operation of the residents," Ms Tsur insists.

"Jerusalem is a city for all its citizens, north, south, east and west. No group that asks to meet myself or the mayor is refused.

"We are looking into affordable housing projects in east Jerusalem for young Muslim couples, young Christian couples. We have a new city plan. The first in Jerusalem since 1959."

Back at the Ihdaidoon's, father of the family, Amar, began replanting two trees uprooted by Israel's bulldozers almost as soon as they had left. He wants to rebuild the family home as soon as possible. Jerusalem, he told me, is Palestinian.

"We're not going to leave," his wife Samia insists. "Why should I leave for the Israelis? This is our land. Even if we have to put up a tent and live in it."

The Ihdaidoons have opted for quiet resistance but other Palestinians warn growing frustration in East Jerusalem could spark violence.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8016258.stm

Published: 2009/04/25 13:47:26 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Print Sponsor

Comment by Marc Peterson on October 29, 2008 at 8:47pm

Hi Paul,

Thanks for responding. I did not mean to imply that you didn't love your country, I just wanted you to feel a little happier about our collective contribution and you hadn't mentioned private aid, which many think is more efficacious and also includes more person-to-person contact than a govt. check. On the legislation, you are correct. The timeline stops with the proposal to congress, who has the reins in those matters. It was an alarm call which was ignored. Why they would do that might be because of the following top recipients from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac;
1. Sen. Dodd, Christopher J (D-CT) - $133,900
2. Sen. Kerry, John (D-MA) — $111,000
3. Sen. Obama, Barack (D-IL) - $105,849
4. Sen. Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) - $75,550
5. Rep. Kanjorski, Paul E (D-PA) - $65,500

But, that may just be me being cynical ;)

Comment by Paul Kortenhoven on October 29, 2008 at 5:24pm

Hello Marc
Thanks for joining the discussion. Let me respond.
First, I think it is important for you to know that I do love my country. Having lived 35 years in Africa and seeing its strengths and weakness from outside gives me perspective quite different than I would have had if I had stayed in Chicago, my home town. I worked with two US Ambassadors as a cultural consultant and analyst and participated with them in several peace initiatives in the civil war in Sierra Leone, 1991-2002. I do feel good about my country and really do not appreciate your innuendo on the subject. I believe that leaving one’s country helps one to appreciate it in many ways. And it teaches us that well intended criticism is patriotic while silence is not.
Having said that, I stand by my comment on foreign aid quote from the Refugees International Report. My intent was to compare it (as our former president Eisenhower did) to military spending and I was referring specifically to government foreign aid not at he combined private and government aid you refer to in your comment. I apologize for not making that clear. Please note that later in the article you quoted, “United States Is Largest Donor of Foreign Aid, Report Says” by Jaroslaw Anders (24 May 2007) he makes the following comment on the private generosity of US citizens:
“The scope of U.S. private giving often is overlooked in statistics that compare the relative generosity of various countries, the authors of the report say. Most of the other developed countries deliver their international aid primarily through official development aid programs run and financed by government agencies.
U.S. official development assistance (ODA) in 2005 was $28 billion, the largest of all official donations by an individual country. But, according to the often-quoted measure used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which compares government aid as a percentage of a country’s gross national income (GNI), U.S. government aid is only 0.22 percent of GNI, which ranks the United States as the 20th of the 22 listed donor states.”

Yes, the US people are compassionate. I thank God for that. This article that you cited helps paint a comprehensive picture of where it comes from.
Government to government foreign aid, in my opinion, is necessary but not the answer to bringing the poorest nations out of their poverty pit. If I were a government lobbyist for the poor nations of Africa, for instance, I would lobby for changes in foreign policy in the area of agriculture and trade barriers and also push for a larger portion of the US GNI to be considered which has a much tougher monitoring component than is currently in place.
Your second point is informative. The 2003 Bush recommendation sounds like a good one. But I am having a difficult time figuring out the time table on the “regulatory overhaul” you mention. If it was proposed in 2003, was it ever signed into law? Was it or is it being implemented? What was its status before the beginning of the 2008 financial collapse? If it was proposed in 2003 and passed by congress, I would think that it was either not implemented for some reason or the proposed regulators were simply ineffective. Otherwise, the current financial crisis should not have happened, right?
And again, I think it is time for all of us, individual, corporate and government to begin practicing the economics of enough.
One of my colleagues just dropped off a good article on the subject from Orion Magazine (May/June 2008). It is entitled, “The Gospel of Consumption” by Jeffrey Kaplan. I haven’t finished it yet but it looks like a very relevant analysis.
Paul

Comment by Paul Kortenhoven on October 29, 2008 at 5:22pm

Mr. van den Bosch

Again, thanks for your comments. I am amazed and impressed at how much you can put together on the way to work. Let me try to respond to a couple of your points.

First, my point about being pro-life was that logically, pro-life leads to an anti-killing and therefore, anti-war stance. I am not a historian, ethics professor or a pacifist so I can not really judge accurately whether the millions of lives lost in any wars were sacrifices warranted. No doubt some of them were but my inclination is to believe that most of them were not. Some wars may have been just and the just war theory applicable to them…WWI and WWII in the last century certainly would fit that category in my mind.

I am 100% pro-life as the term is used politically today. I can not imagine anyone of any political persuasion advocating for more abortions, more mercy killing, and another selective breeding program ala the NAZI super race theory of Hitler, and the like. All lives are precious.

While living through the civil war in Sierra Leone and advocating for peace on the local, national and international scene, I often questioned why the “international community” generally considered to be led by the US and Europe, did not intervene to stop the horrendous killing that was happening there. And I questioned why the “international” community” did intervene in the Yugoslavia massacres and the Kuwait US led invasion. Milosevic and his cronies as well as Saddam Hussein and his “advisors” were certainly evil and deserved to be removed from power a hundred times over. But so did Idi Amin in Uganda, Mobutu in Zaire, Mengistu in Sudan, Charles Taylor in Liberia, Mugabe in Zimbabwe and the list goes on. Most intelligence analysts and world leaders today acknowledge that Saddam Hussein was not a threat to US national security even though he was a brutal, murdering and evil man and that he did not have nuclear weapons as was alleged.

It is also impossible for me to add more or less value to the life of an aborted baby than to that of a fallen soldier or collaterally killed civilian. Making that moral distinction, for me, is an attempt to be God.

Yes, I do read the bible as you do and the passages you allude to from the Old Testament are difficult ones to understand. The OT and the teachings of Christ contain a number of really tough words. This and the problem of theodicy have kept and still keep many interested people out of the church. Many people I have met over the years cannot understand how I or anyone could believe in a God who orders “genocide”, as they say, in the conquest of Canaan. And if I really did believe that God who made heaven and earth and all that is in it was a God of violence and destruction, I imagine I would have a tough time following Him and his teachings. In seminary, we asked these questions (circa 1968-1972) of our OT and NT professors and ethicists. We were, in my opinion, never given a compelling argument to justify the ethnic cleansing of Canaan and/or some of the difficult sayings of Jesus. What we did get was a fair amount of hairsplitting textual criticism, views of various super scholars and a bit of pablum to feed to new believers which never worked in real life. So, I live with more ambiguity than many of my colleagues on these issues and tend to agree with Lewis Smedes who says in How Can It Be All Right When Everything is All Wrong? : “Deep down, I know beyond doubt that God is in control, not people.” Another book I have found helpful is an old one by F. F.F Bruce called The Hard Sayings of Jesus. It is worth a read if you haven’t already done so.

Re: your questions on my analysis of the current US economy, I think your next response and the comment by Karl Westerhof are very good “answers”.

And, yes I am aware of the IRS 501 c3 regulations having helped to start a few of them. I often wondered if James Dobson, John Hagee, Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell know/knew about them.

And yes to the “sphere sovereignty” question as well. From 1968-1972 we had an on going debate between the Dooyeweerdians and the Kuperians in the classrooms and in the coffee shop. I learned a fair amount from both although the overlaid and multiple diagrams in the Dooyweerdian camp seem now to be the mother of the flow charts more than an attempted explanation of what part of life is sacred and what is not.

Enough for now. Thanks again for the discussion.

Paul

Comment by vikas on April 23, 2008 at 12:02pm

for any tax related query visit this site sharma consultancy