War as a "trade fair" for arms sales

Quakers are one of a handful of historic Christian peace churches.  To read more about the Quaker Peace Testimony please go here.  From the blog, Ecumenics and Quakers, comes this interesting article about war as a marketing exercise for weaponry.

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This week declassified secret documents reveal that at the time of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq the British government saw its participation in the war against Saddam precisely as an “unparalleled opportunity” to increase its weapons sales:

“In a letter marked “secret”, written on 19 August 1990, days after Saddam Hussein’s forces had invaded Kuwait, Clark [Alan Clark, then defence procurement minister, to the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher] wrote a private memo to Thatcher in which he described the expected response from the US and its allies as “unparalleled opportunity” for the Defence Export Services Organisation (now known as the DSO).

“Clark explained: “Whatever deployment policies we adopt I must emphasise that this is an unparalleled opportunity for DESO; a vast demonstration range with live ammunition and ‘real’ trials.”…” The government’s efforts reaped dividends. The war provided a significant fillip for arms sales to the region and helped nurture a strong relationship that continues to this day.”…” Over 10 years, the report ranks Britain as the second biggest arms dealer in the world behind the US.” The Guardian.

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Please read more here

And here are some up and coming events

...and please remember:

 while all these weapons are being purchased

there are still poor people who are homeless;

there are still aged people struggling on the pension;

there are still Australians out of work;

penalty rates are being ripped off workers;

slave labour is being employed; and

wealthy people and corporations are paying little or no tax

as they off-shore the wealth of Australia.

Pope Francis says "World economic system is 'madness; "

The article below is republished from Australia's ABC News website.

Comment from The Editor of Beside The Creek:  And so say all of us???

World economic system is 'madness', 

puts money ahead of people, Pope Francis says

Updated Sat 14 Jun 2014, 1:36pm AEST

PHOTO: Pope Francis says the global economy puts money ahead of people and discards the young and old.(Reuters: Jack Guez, file photo)

RELATED STORY: Pope says Israeli, Palestinian presidents 'must respond' to yearning for peace

RELATED STORY: Pope in Bethlehem urges end to Middle East conflict

MAP: Holy See (Vatican City State)

Pope Francis has launched a sweeping attack on the world's economic system, saying it discards the young, puts money ahead of people and survives on the profits of war.

The 77-year-old leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics said some countries had a youth unemployment rate of more than 50 per cent, with many millions in Europe seeking work in vain.

"It's madness," the Pope said in an interview with the Barcelona-based Vanguardia daily's Vatican correspondent Henrique Cymerman.

"We discard a whole generation to maintain an economic system that no longer endures, a system that to survive has to make war, as the big empires have always done," he said.

"But since we cannot wage the third world war, we make regional wars.

"And what does that mean? That we make and sell arms. And with that the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies - the big world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money - are obviously cleaned up."

Pope Francis says there is enough food to feed all the world's hungry.

The rich and the rest

French academic and economist Thomas Piketty talks to the ABC's PM about the world's growing inequality.

"When you see photographs of malnourished children you put your head in your hands, you cannot understand it," he said.

"I think we are in a global economic system that is not good."

The Pope says the people's needs should be at the heart of the economic system.

"But we have placed money in the centre, the god of money. We have fallen into the sin of idolatry, the idolatry of money. The economy moves by the desire to have more and paradoxically it feeds a disposable culture," he said.

The pontiff said the young were discarded when "the birth rate is limited" and the old were discarded when they no longer were considered productive.

"By discarding children and the old, we discard the future of a people because the young will pull us strongly forward and the old will give us wisdom," he said.

AFP